Learning Science
How the brain learns — and how to apply it to language and life.
The articles in this section are written and synthesised by AI from published research in the fields of learning science and linguistics.
The sources for each article are listed at the end of the piece — do read them, both for a fuller grounding and to satisfy yourself as to their reliability.
In the brain, learning a language happens on four timescales
Not one event but four, running on clocks a billion-fold apart: a wave at 400 milliseconds, a word locked in overnight,...
Deep encoding: why one study hour leaves a trace and another does not
The idea that deeper processing means better memory has a hole in it that its own authors later conceded. What survived...
One hour a day on a phone from age six: what actually changes in a child's brain
No study answers the question in the form you asked it. But one mechanism is barely disputed: an hour is an hour, and wh...
Procedural Memory in Language Learning
You know the rule. You can explain it, you got the exercises right — and mid-sentence it is not there. That gap is not y...
Does learning a new language improve your memory?
The question runs three different questions together, and each has its own answer. One of them rests on evidence that di...
What knowing some neuroscience actually does to how children and adults think
Knowing about the brain cuts in two opposite directions. The useful half is narrow and rather dull: knowing that you dec...
Childhood amnesia, and what parents can actually do about it
Almost nobody remembers anything before three. The surprise is that this is not because the memories never formed — five...
Is cognition really in the body?
You wave your hands while hunting for a word, even on the phone where nobody can see you. That observation leads to one...
Learning science through an evolutionary lens
Every normal child learns to speak without instruction. No child learns to read without it. The gap between those two fa...