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Mandela was right: the Foreign Language Effect

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Re: Mandela was right: the Foreign Language Effect

#71
Unfortunately others listening in their language implies you speaking in their language.

To gain a benefit from this scenario, you would need to prove that "learning a language for X years" increases the chances of "listener response is more emotional".

This, however, is much more unlikely since accent and language proficiency come into play.

So no HN-style hack yourself goal can be derived (which I kinda hoped to find here)

Re: Mandela was right: the Foreign Language Effect

#72
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone with personal experience inside academic psychology and academic computer science, it's my impression that psychology is far stronger as a field, having a much more rigorous community dedicated to scientific truth, and exhaustive standards of review and experimental design. But, I'm sure that your general opinion is well-informed as well, or you wouldn't make such strong claims about a very broad field. Wh…

>But, I'm sure that your general opinion is well-informed as well, or you wouldn't make such strong claims about a very broad field. I don't believe you are being genuine here at all. This passive-aggressive, sarcastic response is not appreciated. If you don't like what I wrote, respond directly and honestly.

Well dodged

Re: Mandela was right: the Foreign Language Effect

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, actually more than how you put it, its actually the language people use INSIDE OF THEIR BRAIN that matters. An average person, talks to himself multiple times in a day, evaluating decisions, simulating how things are/should be, thinking about course of action etc etc. This is done in a language, which often ends up as mother tongue to the outside world. But the missing link here is the mental stamina. The brain…

> An average person, talks to himself multiple times in a day, evaluating decisions, simulating how things are/should be, thinking about course of action etc etc. > This is done in a language Why do you believe this?

beefsack's comment and yours are surprising. I thought it was fairly intuitive notion, and generally accepted that language provides the basic concept and structure for thoughts. Basically the Saphir-Whorf theory [1]. There surely must be a base layer that doesn't rely on language, but anything most of the time we are handling higher level problems.

This is a theory, but most bi/tri-langual people I talked to experienced some kind of shift in their way of modeling their thought, sometimes relying on a concept only existing in a specific language (that's what makes the reliance on the language obvious).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

Re: Mandela was right: the Foreign Language Effect

#74
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An average person, talks to himself multiple times in a day, evaluating decisions, simulating how things are/should be, thinking about course of action etc etc. > This is done in a language Why do you believe this?

beefsack's comment and yours are surprising. I thought it was fairly intuitive notion, and generally accepted that language provides the basic concept and structure for thoughts. Basically the Saphir-Whorf theory [1]. There surely must be a base layer that doesn't rely on language, but anything most of the time we are handling higher level problems. This is a theory, but most bi/tri-langual people I talked to experie…

Yes, it is strange. I am a native German speaker, but my thoughts are strongly dependent on what I am thinking about. As I am reading most of the CS or philosophy books in English they are naturally thought of in English. Family and so on in German. And everything about daily life in Turkish (as I am living right now in Istanbul). On the other hand when I read a French novel my mind is switching completely back to French. Despite the fact that I am aware there should be a layer closer to the metal or irrespective the brain tissue, I can't really think of it without relying well on a language.

Re: Mandela was right: the Foreign Language Effect

#75
post #33

It's worth noting here that they demonstrated this effect with language learners i.e. it's very likely that the students had to labouriously work out the foreign language questions. Basically they've demonstrated that if people spend a lot more time on a question they answer less emotionally (which seems like it would be true independent of the language). If they can demonstrate the effect still holds with 2nd langua…

Just an anecdote, I speak French with native proficiency and while I can see the emotional detachment in languages as English, in French it is certainly not there. So I think it also depends on language immersion.

Re: Mandela was right: the Foreign Language Effect

#76
"engaging in a foreign language increases psychological distance and promotes deliberation"

Wasn't Latin a great invention? It was foreign to everybody (I mean after the fall of Rome) - looks like ideal for a language of diplomacy and science.

Re: Mandela was right: the Foreign Language Effect

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand your point in terms of formal logic (that saying 400k people will die does not necessitate that the other 200k can't also die). However, the initial sentence that starts the experiment is "Recently, a dangerous new disease has been going around. Without medicine, 600,000 people will die from it. In order to save these people, two types of medicine are being made." When you follow that by saying "If you c…

Are you referring to this? "I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too." (It's a lot funnier when delivered with good timing than when you read it.) His comedy was very hit-and-miss, but some of it was spectacularly funny.

Yes, yes I was.

Re: Mandela was right: the Foreign Language Effect

#78
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone with personal experience inside academic psychology and academic computer science, it's my impression that psychology is far stronger as a field, having a much more rigorous community dedicated to scientific truth, and exhaustive standards of review and experimental design. But, I'm sure that your general opinion is well-informed as well, or you wouldn't make such strong claims about a very broad field. Wh…

Perhaps your experience inside psychology is limited? Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman[1] would disagree with you, along with social psychologist Jonathan Haidt[2]. [1] http://www.nature.com/news/nobel-laureate-challenges-psychol... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/science/08tier.html

Oh no, I'm well aware of those -- but academic computer science is even worse! It's very new to have artifact evaluation at all, meaning almost any published result that represents an evaluation of a system (as opposed to something purely theoretical) is probably bunk. Almost no academic systems are released publicly for evaluation, so reproduction isn't just something that should be done, but isn't -- it's entirely impossible.

This is basically the same as publishing a psych paper with a Methods section including a line that says "and then magic occurs". It's like an unsafe cast in a programming language -- you totally escape the guarantees provided by the wider structure of the academic system.

Academia in general has serious problems. There's a fundamental problem of incentive, and until that's solved, nothing's really going to change. But psychology is definitely unfairly maligned.

(It doesn't help that plenty of people doing doing what's almost psuedoscience are still harbored in a lot of psych departments, but their methods are still more rigorous than HCI research in most cases.)

Re: Mandela was right: the Foreign Language Effect

#79
post #70
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone with personal experience inside academic psychology and academic computer science, it's my impression that psychology is far stronger as a field, having a much more rigorous community dedicated to scientific truth, and exhaustive standards of review and experimental design. But, I'm sure that your general opinion is well-informed as well, or you wouldn't make such strong claims about a very broad field. Wh…

Psychology isn't really comparable to computer science since computer science is the study of a manmade system, making it more like mathematics. Computer science is not a traditional "science" studying the mechanisms of an unknown phenomenon, so concepts like "experimental design" aren't easily mappable.

Theoretical computer science is much like mathematics. But virtually no other area in computer science is, even slightly.

If you look at computer science papers in machine learning, systems, human-computer interaction, networking, robotics, or architecture, you'll almost always see an experiment of some sort. These are typically benchmarks, but there are plenty of other examples of empiricism in computer science.

But the experiments in computer science are horribly designed! They lack almost any control, and use statistical methods that would make psychologists wince. Hypothesis testing is rare to the point of nonexistance. (Psychology sometimes adjusts too far in the other direction, using complex analyses where a simpler one would do.)

Further, experiments are nearly never replicable, at all, because the systems evaluated are never made public, or the experimental environment is never recorded. For a great treatment of this trend in systems, see http://www-plan.cs.colorado.edu/diwan/asplos09.pdf. Pointing out a systematic artifact in that many experimental designs would be career-making in psychology, or any other science! But you can look at modern papers and see exactly the same mistake being made.

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