SLA Seminar: Antoni Rodriguez-Fornells (Barcelona)

Antoni Rodriquez-Fornells is a Research Professor at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), and currently, a visiting scholar at Columbia Zuckerman Institute, Mind, Brain and Behavior. His research focuses on the neural mechanisms underlying language learning. His talk will be devoted to his study of motivation in language learning, which has surprising implications for language teaching and learning. The talk will be given as part of the seminar SLAA 649R: Research Critique in Second Language Acquisition.

The role of instrinsic reward and metacognition in language learning

Abstract: During the last decade we have accrued important knowledge regarding the cognitive and neural mechanisms involved in the hard process of learning a second language, these studies being essential to the understanding of how the brain of bilinguals is sculpted. However, it is still unknown, which neural processes underly the human interest and drive to learn a language, and what maintains this effortful activity in time. Recent theoretical models have proposed that during human evolution, emerging language-learning mechanisms might have been glued to phylogenetically older subcortical reward systems, reinforcing human motivation to learn a new language. Supporting this hypothesis, we recently showed that adult learners exhibited robust functional MRI activation in core reward-pleasure centers (ventral striatum) when successfully learning the meaning of new words. These results provided the first neural evidence of the important role of reward and motivation during language learning and supported the idea that a strong coupling between neocortical language regions and the subcortical reward system provided a crucial advantage in humans for successful acquisition of linguistic skills. Following this research, we observed that successful active language learning (without the presence of external feedback) also triggered the activation of motivation-reward memory circuits [midbrain dopaminergic circuits and the hippocampus]. The engagement of intrinsic reward-motivational circuits might depend on the proper evaluation of learning success (metacognitive processes).

We believe this intrinsically motivated learning mechanism might be crucial for boosting the formation of long-term memories, especially in our everyday lives, as we continually acquire new knowledge in the absence of any obvious immediate reward. A key question for the future is whether tapping into intrinsically rewarding forms of learning might be a more effective educational strategy than relying on external feedback and incentives. A second critical issue is to which extent the implication of these reward-learning intrinsic mechanisms could predict the success of the process of learning a new language (considering the contextual and sociolinguistic factors surrounding the learning experience). This could be crucial for improving the design of educational programs – for example, in teaching foreign languages – and for improving the recovery of verbal skills lost after stroke.