Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center

Colonel Sue Ann Sandusky, USAColonel Sue Ann Sandusky, USACommandant, DLIFLCCommandant, DLIFLC

Presenter: Donald Fischer, PhD Provost, DLIFLCProvost, DLIFLC

Language Training for High ProficiencyThe Neurochemistry of Motivation and Learning

• Knowles’ Adult Learner vs K-12 Experience• Bandura’s Modeling• Irwin Guthrie’s Behaviorist Model• Schuman and Lee: Neurochemistry of Learning• Churchland’s Critique of the Theory of Pure Vision and the Four

F’s (fleeing, fighting, feeding and reproduction)• Proctor and Dutta: Practice and Automaticity• Schmidt: Unconscious and conscious sensory processing

– Chunking and increasing the size of the chunks• Bruer and Cognitive Science: There is no single critical period.

There are a bunch of them and we work to deal with them.

Conceptual Support for What We Do

Basically, work toward automaticity through practice and solid fundamentals. Control leads to success which motivates. Automaticity increases the size of the chunk.

Technology is key to practice, collaboration, advanced use of language

Discussion

• Learning in general

• Why children learn so well

• Motivation

• The problem with adults

• What we are doing about it

The Structure of Learning

What Happens when we learn something?

What happens when we learn something (2)?

Role of Dopamines (DA)

• DA strengthens synapses• Facilitates memorization and skill

acquisition• Acts as driver toward learning and action• Facilitates and inhibits actions

– D1: Facilitates action (lack – Parkinson’s)– D2: Inhibits competing actions (lack—

Huntington’s)

• Children’s brains are loaded with DA’s

Structure of DA Modulation

• Dopamine-glutamate interactions in the nucleus accumbens. information-laden glutamatergic inputs (blue) impinge on medium-spiny neuron dendritic spines (yellow) where they are subject to DA (orange) modulation. While glutamate receptors (green) are located on the postsynaptic membrane, many DA receptors (red) are located extrasynaptically, consistent with DA having a modulatory role. Also, DA neurons are actually DA/glutamatergic neurons (orange/blue striped) capable of fast excitatory transmission.

•In sum, Dopamine strengthens neuronal connections that encode and execute information and skills.

Why Children Learn So Well

Why Children Learn So Quickly and So Well

• Because they are immature they need assistance to survive

• Because they are programmed to survive, they are built for learning

• What is not used goes away

• DA drive is reinforced through opiates

• The combination is about 100 times that of adults

Life Cycle (Ontogeny) of Dopamine (DA)

• The densities of D1 and D2 dopamine receptors in the striatum rise and reach the highest level at the age of 3 or 4 and fall sharply until puberty for D1 receptor and age of 5 for D2 receptor.

• After age 20, D1 receptors disappear at 3.2% per decade and D2 at 2.2%.

• In adults, the receptor density is 48%(D1) and 59%(D2) less than that of children

Pruning Process

Ontogeny of Synaptogenesis and Pruning

Ontogeny of Glucose Consumption

Human Behavior: Seeking and Consuming

Ontogeny of Opioids, Vasopressin and Oxytocin

• “In normal infants brain levels of opioids at birth are 100 times greater than levels later in life.” (Waterhouse, Fein, & Modahl, 1996, p. 477).

• Vasopressin and oxytocin: there is a transient, but marked “over-production” (relative to the adult) of both oxytocin and vasopressin receptors in limbic brain areas in the young brain (Insel and Winslow,1998).

Motivation

The Neurochemistry of Motivation: Reiterated

• Motivation is modulated by interplay of Dopamine (DA) and Opiates.

• DA makes us and our students seek for goals • Opiates make us feel satisfied when goals are

accomplished • The combination restarts seeking behavior.• DA strengthens the neuronal connections for

declarative memory and procedural memory.

Considerations about the Adult Learner

Anatomy of Core Structures

The Brain Systems for Language Learning

Basal Ganglia (Procedural

Memory)

Cerebral Cortex

Dopamine (Motivation)Amygdala

(Emotional M.)

Hippocampus (Declarative

Memory)

Memory Taxonomy

• Adult language learners count on three neural systems.• Declarative Memory System: guide and monitor rule

formation and execution (e.g. explicitly knowing that the subject and the verb should agree in number and tense in English), encode vocabulary.

• Procedural Memory System: encode and execute rules of grammar and phonology to the extend of automatization (e.g. automatically execute the S-V agreement). The most fundamental difference between Level 2 and Higher Levels is the extent of proceduralization of language skills.

• Affect/Motivation System: strengthens both of the systems above.

Declarative/explicit M. Non-declarative/implicit M.

Semantic M. Episodic M. Conditioning Procedural M. Priming

1. The contents are consciously accessible.

2. Relatively flexible but not robust. Deteriorate dramatically w/ aging.

3. Phylogenetically and ontogenetically post-cedes NDM.

4. Encode lexicon, metalinguistic knowledge, knowledge about target culture.

5. Formed by knowledge.

6. Damage=>anterograde amnesia, trouble w/ irregular conjugation

1. The contents are consciously inaccessible.

2. Relatively inflexible but robust. Spared and preserved in the elderly.

3. Phylogenetically and ontogenetically precedes DM.

4. Encode rules of grammar, phonology, and pragmatics. Support automatic execution of the rules.

5. Formed by repeated practice.

6. Damage => agrammatism, foreign-accent syndrome, Parkinson’s…

Memory Taxonomy

Emotional Memory modulates both Declarative and Non-Declarative Memory

Human Behavior: in a nutshell

Goal Seeking w/ Strong DA

Goal Seeking w/ weak DA

Goal Achieving: Experiencing

Opiate

Fail: No Opiate

Stop

Schumann’s Motivation Model

Human motivation operates on the five planes of stimulus-appraisal as below. In other words, DA is produced (1994):

• when an action is relevant to needs and goals;• when a stimulus is novel; • when an action promotes positive self and social

image; • when an action is intrinsically present; and• when there is coping-potential.

Why are well-defined objectives Important?

Answer from Neurobiology

Learning with weak

motivation

No SuccessSuccess

Stop Trying

Clear Objectives Unclear Objectives

Learning with strong motivation + DA -

+ Opiate -

What we are doing about all this?

Curriculum• Balance drill and practice with flexible and

creative approaches. Create a high level training and education environment

--Flexibility in curriculum and classroom activities

--Authentic materials--Collaborative learning--Moving up on the Bloom Taxonomy--One teacher to three/four students

• In short, teach well using a mix of the new and the traditional

TechnologyTechnology

--Interactive White Boards--Tablet PCs--MP3 Devices--Commercial software to reflect what is being

used in government agencies--SCOLA--Learning and Knowledge Management Systems

• Emerging connectivity/wireless/Virtual Private Networks

• Make monitored practice feasible• Motivate the student to work actively with the

material

Develop motivated, informed, educated faculty

Public Resources

• www.dliflc.edu, www.lingnet.org, http://fieldsupport.dliflc.edu

• Global Language Online Support System• Language Survival Kits• Countries in Perspective• Iraqi, Pashto, Persian-Afghan (Dari), Persian-Farsi, Chinese, Korean

HeadStart (with French, Spanish and Russian on the way)• Online Diagnostic Assessment (Arabic and Korean, Listening and

Reading; Chinese Reading w/listening under development; Russian Listening and Reading under development)

• Weekly Training Events (Arabic, Korean, Chinese, Russian)• Online Language Courses (Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Persian, Russian,

Serbian Croatian)• Arabic Dialect Library• Arabic MSA/Accent Library• Emerging Blackboard/Sharepoint/Adobe Connect Based Field

Sustainment Program

Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center

Colonel Sue Ann Sandusky, USAColonel Sue Ann Sandusky, USACommandant, DLIFLCCommandant, DLIFLC

Presenter: Donald Fischer, PhD Provost, DLIFLCProvost, DLIFLC

Language Training for High ProficiencyThe Neurochemistry of Motivation and Learning

Languages Taught

• Cat I, 26 weeks: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French

• Cat II, 36 weeks: German, Indonesian

• Cat III, 47 weeks: Russian, Persian-Farsi, Persian-Afghan (Dari), Pashto, Turkish, Kurmanjae, Sorani, Uzbek, Urdu, Hindi, Thai, Tagalog, Hebrew

• Cat IV, 64 weeks: Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Japanese

• About 55 other low demand languages organized in the National Capital Region through the Foreign Service Institute and various contractors.

Full Accountability, Sensitive Missions

• 0+: Immediate survival needs

• 1: Limited practical capability, simple courtesies and greetings

• 1+: Satisfy limited social situations, can read simple materials, gets some main ideas

• 2: Gets the main idea and most details, able to satisfy routine social and limited working environments

• 2+: Able to satisfy most work requirements, can understand most factual material, capabilities can deteriorate under pressure or in unfamiliar domain areas

• 3: General professional proficiency, able to ‘read between the lines’, can discuss areas of interest and special fields with ease, can accurately follow the conversations of native speakers

Proficiency vs. Time/Difficulty

Three DA Pathways

Structure of DA Modulation(in a wider context)

Caption for slide 15 reference

The development and maintenance of affiliative bonds across two phases of reward. Distal affiliative stimuli elicit an incentive-motivated approach to an affiliative goal, accompanied by strong emotional-motivational feelings of wanting, desire, and positive activation. The approach phase not only ensures sociosexual interaction with an affiliative object, but also acquisition of a memory ensemble or network of the context in which approach, reward, and goal acquisition occur. Next, proximal affiliative stimuli emanating from interaction with the affiliative object elicit strong feelings of consummatory reward, liking, and physiological quiescence, all of which become associated with these stimuli, as well as the context predictive of reward. Dopamine encodes the incentive salience of contextual stimuli predictive of reward during the approach phase and, in collaboration with opiate mediated consummatory reward, encodes the incentive salience of proximal stimuli directly linked to the affiliative object. The end result of this sequence of processes is an incentive encoded affiliative memory network that continues to motivate approach toward and interaction with the affiliative object. Specialized processes ensure that affiliative stimuli are weighted as significant elements in the contextual ensembles representing affiliative memory networks. These specialized processes include the construction of a contextual ensemble via affiliative stimulus-induced opiate potentiation of dopamine processes, and the influence of permissive and/or facilitatory factors, such as gonadal steroids, oxytocin, and vasopressin on (i) sensory, perceptual, and attentional processing of affiliative stimuli and (ii) formation of social memories.

caption for slide 35 for your reference

Binding of salient context with incentive motivation in the NASshell. The acquisition of contextual ensembles is strongly dependent on DA facilitation in the NASshell (Aosaki et al. 1994; Depue & Collins 1999; Everitt et al. 1999; Graybiel 1998; Jog et al. 1999; Meredith & Totterdell 1999; O’Donnell 1999; White 1997; Wickens et al. 1996). Corticolimbic brain regions carrying contextual information (right side of figure) innervate the heads of dendritic spines of NASshell projection neurons using glutamate as a transmitter; most of these efferents are excitatory to NAS function and are reciprocated. In addition, approximately 8,000 VTA DA projections also innervate the dendritic shaft or spinal necks of each NAS spiny neuron. As illustrated in detail only at the proximal level of the dendrite for basolateral amygdala input (but occurring at all other input levels, as well), glutamate and DA can substantially increase release of each other via NMDA and D1 receptors, respectively, located on terminals. In this way, DA is thought to strengthen the connections between inputs of the salient incentive context predictive of reward and incentive processes integrated in the NASshell. See text for details. (Abbreviations as in Figure 6, except Glu = glutamate; NMDA = N-methyl-D-aspartate glutamate receptor; LTP = long-term potentiation; D1 = D1 dopamine receptor).

Interactive White Boards• Downloads from the Internet• Authentic, current materials• Transfer of information to and from tablet

PCs• Community work/group and collaborative• Enhance functionality of Sanako 1200

classroom lab--Show individual student work--Permit “wiki-like” environment

• Vital to efficient delivery of information to group

Tablet PCs• Downloads from the Internet• Authentic, current materials• Displays videos• Audio recording for sound files• Practice non-Roman fonts• Community work/group and collaborative• Sanako 1200 classroom lab

--Show individual student work on PC--Permit “wiki-like” environment

• Efficient delivery of information to individuals

iPods/MP3 Players

•Permits practice on the move•Easy storage of curricula, audio files, video files

•Acts as separate and detachable hard drive•High student approval•Rapid Rote flash cards can be played on the iPod

•Audio record capability•Easy playback of audio and video files