cheat yourself

[dkogan]

A friend recently linked to an article on metacognition. The article argues that the crucial quality for resisting temptation is not willpower, but metacognitive skills. For example, children tempted by candy resisted better when taught to pretend the candy was a picture

Comments

[lisefrac]

Metacognition is good stuff - doesn't seem like there's enough research into it. My undergrad thesis was on how metacognitive awareness of language gives foreign language learners an advantage.

[dkogan]

Hmm, does it? What kind of advantage? (English is my second language.)

[lisefrac]

Well, as usual in undergraduate research, I had so small a sample I couldn't really prove anything ;) But the idea is that people who were raised bilingual (defined as learning two languages to fluency before adulthood) have a better metacognitive awareness of how languages work, which helps them out when they go to learn a third language.

What I DID end up doing is replicating previous research that had been done in the field that showed that if you learned a language in adulthood, your aptitude in it didn't vary if you had two years or twenty years of experience with it.

[dkogan]

I dunno - I always loathed french classes, and did quite poorly in them. :)

Hmm, but twenty years of experience isn't the same as twenty years of learning. It's sort of like driving a car - most people reach a plateau of skill, and coast on that for the rest of their life. I'd be curious to see how well people with 20 years of actively trying to improve do. Is it really impossible to learn a new language in adulthood, or do most people just not put the work in necessary to get there?