#Grief on a #Booterstown plaque: “A particularly bright, holy and gifted child” – the life and losses of Richard Robert #Madden

Richard Robert Madden was one of those polymathic doctors of the 19th Century whose medical career, as I observe in passing here, was almost incidental to a life packed with incident and scholarship (thought clearly some disputed aspects of the scholarship) Nevertheless, he evidently rose through the institutional ranks of medical memberships and fellowships – and became a “convert” to homeopathy to boot (at a time when, after all, “mainstream” medicine was not exactly evidence based itself)

For all these achievements, there is a keen poignancy to this plaque. I’ve read (must track down source) that the common contemporary belief that in previous centuries, because of high child mortality, parents did not have the same emotional reaction to the loss of a child than we do now is in fact a myth (I think it was in a rebuttal to one of the historians cited by
Neil Postman in his The Disappearance of Childhood)

Séamus Sweeney

In The Church of the Assumption, Booterstown, Dublin we find the above poignant plaque. Here is the text as the above turns out to be a little blurry:

MADDEN. Of your charity pray for the soul of
/Richard Robert Madden, M.D.
/formerly Colonial Secretary
/of Western Australia &c. “A man who loved his Country.”/
Author of “History of United Irishmen” and many other works.
/Remarkable for Talents Piety, and Rectitude, the 21st and last surviving son of/Edward Madden, born in Dublin August 20th 1798 died at Booterstown Feb 5th 1886
/and interred in Donnybrook Churchyard/
also for the soul of his relict Mrs Harriet T Madden, the 21st and last surviving child of
/John Elmslie Esq. Born in London August 4th 1801
/converted by a singular grace to the Catholic Faith in Cuba (circa) 1837
/died at Booterstown Feb 7th 1888/
A woman of rare culture, endowments and piety, a…

View original post 1,043 more words

#digitalnatives and #edtech and #woolongong- The ‘digital natives’ debate: A critical review of the evidence. British Journal of Educational Technology, Bennett et al Feb 2008

I blogged the other day on a recent paper on the myth of the digital native. Here is another paper, by Sue Bennett, Karl Maton and Lisa Kervin, from nearly a decade ago, on the same theme – and equally trenchant:

The idea that a new generation of students is entering the education system has excited recent attention among educators and education commentators. Termed ‘digital natives’ or the ‘Net generation’, these young people are said to have been immersed in technology all their lives, imbuing them with sophisticated technical skills and learning preferences for which traditional education is unprepared. Grand claims are being made about the nature of this generational change and about the urgent necessity for educational reform in response. A sense of impending crisis pervades this debate. However, the actual situation is far from clear. In this paper, the authors draw on the fields of education and sociology to analyse the digital natives debate. The paper presents and questions the main claims made about digital natives and analyses the nature of the debate itself. We argue that rather than being empirically and theoretically informed, the debate can be likened to an academic form of a ‘moral panic’. We propose that a more measured and disinterested approach is now required to investigate ‘digital natives’ and their implications for education.

On an entirely different note, the authors are/were affiliated with the University of Woolongong. Recent days have seen the death of Geoff Mack, who wrote the song “I’ve Been Everywhere” Originally a list of Australian placenames :

The song inspired versions internationally – the best known being Johnny Cash’s and The Simpsons’ – but the wittiest alternative version is this (NB – Dapto is a few miles from Wollongong)

Anyway, back the digital natives. Bennet et al begin with a quote from Marcel Proust:

The one thing that does not change is that at any and every time it appears that there have been
‘great changes’.
Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove

The authors summarise what a digital native is supposed to be like – and the not exactly extensive evidence base for their existence:

The claim made for the existence of a generation of ‘digital natives’ is based on two
main assumptions in the literature, which can be summarised as follows:

1. Young people of the digital native generation possess sophisticated
knowledge of and skills with information technologies.
2. As a result of their upbringing and experiences with technology, digital natives have particular learning preferences or styles that differ from earlier generations of students.

In the seminal literature on digital natives, these assertions are put forward with limited
empirical evidence (eg, Tapscott, 1998), or supported by anecdotes and appeals to
common-sense beliefs (eg, Prensky, 2001a). Furthermore, this literature has been referenced,
often uncritically, in a host of later publications (Gaston, 2006; Gros, 2003;
Long, 2005; McHale, 2005; Skiba, 2005). There is, however, an emerging body of
research that is beginning to reveal some of the complexity of young people’s computer
use and skills.

No one denies that a lot of young people use a lot of technology – but not all:

In summary, though limited in scope and focus, the research evidence to date indicates
that a proportion of young people are highly adept with technology and rely on it for a
range of information gathering and communication activities. However, there also
appears to be a significant proportion of young people who do not have the levels of access or technology skills predicted by proponents of the digital native idea. Such generalisations about a whole generation of young people thereby focus attention on
technically adept students. With this comes the danger that those less interested and less able will be neglected, and that the potential impact of socio-economic and cultural factors will be overlooked. It may be that there is as much variation within the digital native generation as between the generations.

It is often suggested that children who are merrily exploring the digital world are ground down with frustration by not having the same access to computers in school. This is part of a more general (with familiar rhetoric for the health IT world) demand for transformation (the word “disruptive” in its modern usage had not quite caught on in 2008) As is often the case, the empirical evidence (and also, I would say, a certain degree of common sense) is not with the disrupters:

The claim we will now examine is that current educational systems must change in
response to a new generation of technically adept young people. Current students have
been variously described as disappointed (Oblinger, 2003), dissatisfied (Levin & Arafeh,
2002) and disengaged (Prensky, 2005a). It is also argued that educational institutions
at all levels are rapidly becoming outdated and irrelevant, and that there is an urgent
need to change what is taught and how(Prensky, 2001a; Tapscott, 1998). For example,
Tapscott (1999) urges educators and authorities to ‘[g]ive students the tools, and they
will be the single most important source of guidance on how to make their schools relevant and effective places to learn’ (p. 11).Without such a transformation, commentators
warn, we risk failing a generation of students and our institutions face imminent
obsolescence.

However, there is little evidence of the serious disaffection and alienation among students
claimed by commentators. Downes’ (2002) study of primary school children
(5–12 years old) found that home computer use was more varied than school use and
enabled children greater freedom and opportunity to learn by doing. The participants
did report feeling limited in the time they were allocated to use computers at school and
in the way their use was constrained by teacher-directed learning activities. Similarly,
Levin and Arafeh’s (2002) study revealed students’ frustrations at their school Internet
use being restricted, but crucially also their recognition of the school’s in loco parentis
role in protecting them from inappropriate material. Selwyn’s (2006) student participants
were also frustrated that their freedom of use was curtailed at school and ‘were
well aware of a digital disconnect but displayed a pragmatic acceptance rather than the
outright alienation from the school that some commentators would suggest’ (p. 5).

In 2008 Bennett et al summarised similar issues relating to students actual rather than perceived technical adeptness and net savviness to the 2016 authors:

Furthermore, questions must be asked about the relevance to education of the everyday
ICTs skills possessed by technically adept young people. For example, it cannot be
assumed that knowing how to look up ‘cheats’ for computer games on the Internet
bears any relation to the skills required to assess a website’s relevance for a school
project. Indeed, existing research suggests otherwise. When observing students interacting
with text obtained from an Internet search, Sutherland-Smith (2002) reported
that many were easily frustrated when not instantly gratified in their search for immediate
answers and appeared to adopt a ‘snatch and grab philosophy’ (p. 664). Similarly,
Eagleton, Guinee and Langlais (2003) observed middle-school students often making
‘hasty, random choices with little thought and evaluation’ (p. 30).
Such research observes shallow, random and often passive interactions with text,which
raise significant questions about what digital natives can actually do as they engage
with and make meaning from such technology. As noted by Lorenzo and Dziuban
(2006), concerns over students’ lack of critical thinking when using Internet-based
information sources imply that ‘students aren’t as net savvy as we might have assumed’
(p. 2). This suggests that students’ everyday technology practices may not be directly
applicable to academic tasks, and so education has a vitally important role in fostering
information literacies that will support learning.

Again, this is a paper I could quote bits from all day – so here are a couple of paragraphs from towards the end that summarises their (and my) take on the digital natives:

Neither dismissive scepticism nor uncritical advocacy enable understanding of whether
the phenomenon of digital natives is significant and in what ways education might need
to change to accommodate it. As we have discussed in this paper, research is beginning
to expose arguments about digital natives to critical enquiry, but much more needs to be
done. Close scrutiny of the assumptions underlying the digital natives notion reveals
avenues of inquiry that will inform the debate. Such understanding and evidence are
necessary precursors to change.

The claim that there is a distinctive new generation of students in possession of sophisticated
technology skills and with learning preferences for which education is not
equipped to support has excited much recent attention. Proponents arguing that education
must change dramatically to cater for the needs of these digital natives have
sparked an academic form of a ‘moral panic’ using extreme arguments that have lacked
empirical evidence.

Finally, after posting the prior summary of Kirschner and deBruckyne’s paper, I searched hashtag #digitalnatives on Twitter and – self-promotingly – replied to some of the original tweeters with a link to the paper (interestingly quite a few #digitalnatives tweets were links to discussions of the Kirschner/deBruckyne paper) Some were very receptive, but others were markedly defensive. Obviously a total stranger coming along and pedantically pointing out your hashtag is about something that doesn’t exist may not be the most polite way of interacting on twitter – but also quite a lot of us are quite attached to the myth of the digital native

“The myths of the digital native and the multitasker”

One common rhetorical device heard in technology circles – including eHealth circles – is the idea that those born after 1980, or maybe 1984, or maybe 1993, or maybe 2000, or maybe 2010 (you get the picture) are “digital natives” – everyone else is “digital immigrant” In the current edition of Teaching and Teacher Education, Kirschner and de Bruyckere have an excellent paper on this myth, and the related myth of multitasking.

The “highlights” of the paper (I am not sure if these are selected by the authors or by the editors – UPDATE: see comment by Paul Kirschner below!) are pretty to the point:

Highlights
•
Information-savvy digital natives do not exist.
•
Learners cannot multitask; they task switch which negatively impacts learning.
•
Educational design assuming these myths hinders rather than helps learning.

The full article is via subscription/library online, and this recent post on the blog of Nature discusses this paper and others on this myth. This is Kirschner and de Bruyckere’s abstract:

Current discussions about educational policy and practice are often embedded in a mind-set that considers students who were born in an age of omnipresent digital media to be fundamentally different from previous generations of students. These students have been labelled digital natives and have been ascribed the ability to cognitively process multiple sources of information simultaneously (i.e., they can multitask). As a result of this thinking, they are seen by teachers, educational administrators, politicians/policy makers, and the media to require an educational approach radically different from that of previous generations. This article presents scientific evidence showing that there is no such thing as a digital native who is information-skilled simply because (s)he has never known a world that was not digital. It then proceeds to present evidence that one of the alleged abilities of students in this generation, the ability to multitask, does not exist and that designing education that assumes the presence of this ability hinders rather than helps learning. The article concludes by elaborating on possible implications of this for education/educational policy.

The paper is one of those trenchantly entertaining ones academia throws up every so often. For instance here the authors are on the origins of the “digital native” terminology (and “homo zappiens”, a new one on me):

A

ccording to Prensky (2001), who coined the term, digital natives
constitute an ever-growing group of children, adolescents,
and nowadays young adults (i.e., those born after 1984; the official
beginning of this generation) who have been immersed in digital
technologies all their lives. The mere fact that they have been
exposed to these digital technologies has, according to him,
endowed this growing group with specific and even unique characteristics
that make its members completely different from those
growing up in previous generations. The name given to those born
before 1984 – the year that the 8-bit video game saw the light of
day, though others use 1980 – is digital immigrant. Digital natives
are assumed to have sophisticated technical digital skills and
learning preferences for which traditional education is unprepared
and unfit. Prensky coined the term, not based upon extensive
research into this generation and/or the careful study of those
belonging to it, but rather upon a rationalisation of phenomena and
behaviours that he had observed. In his own words, he saw children
“surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music
players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of
the digital age” (2001, p.1). Based only upon these observations, he
assumed that these children understood what they were doing,
were using their devices effectively and efficiently, and based upon
this that it would be good to design education that allows them to
do this. Prensky was not alone in this. Veen and Vrakking (2006),
for example, went a step further coining the catchy name homo
zappi€ens to refer to a new breed of learners that has developed e
without either help from or instruction by others e those metacognitive
skills necessary for enquiry-based learning, discovery based
learning, networked learning, experiential learning, collaborative
learning, active learning, self-organisation and self regulation,
problem solving, and making their own implicit (i.e.,
tacit) and explicit knowledge explicit to others.

The saw that children are invariably more tech savvy then their parents is also a myth:

Looking at pupils younger than university students, the largescale
EU Kids Online report (Livingstone, Haddon, Gorzig, € &
Olafsson, 2011 ), placed the term ‘digital native’ in first place on
its list of the ten biggest myths about young people and technology.
They state: “Children knowing more than their parents has been
136 P.A. Kirschner, P. De Bruyckere / Teaching and Teacher Education 67 (2017) 135e142
exaggerated … Talk of digital natives obscures children’s need for
support in developing digital skills” and that “… only one in five
[children studied] used a file-sharing site or created a pet/avatar
and half that number wrote a blog … While social networking
makes it easier to upload content, most children use the internet for
ready-made, mass produced content” (p. 42). While the concept of
the digital native explicitly and/or implicitly assumes that the
current generation of children is highly digitally literate, it is then
rather strange to note that many curricula in many countries on
many continents (e.g., North America, Europe) see information and
technology literacy as 21st century skills that are core curriculum
goals at the end of the educational process and that need to be
acquired.

Two more recent studies show that the supposed digital divide
is a myth in itself. A study carried out by Romero, Guitert, Sangra,
and Bullen (2013) found that it was, in fact, older students (>30
years and thus born before 1984) who exhibited the characteristics
attributed to digital natives more than their younger counterparts.
In their research, 58% of their students were older than 30 years
who “show the characteristics of this [Net Generation profile]
claimed by the literature because, on analysing their habits, they
can be labelled as ICT users more than digital immigrants” (p. 176).
In a study on whether digital natives are more ‘technology savvy’
than their middle school science teachers, Wang, Hsu, Campbell,
Coster, and Longhurst (2014) conclude that this is not the case.

The authors are not arguing that curricula and teaching methods do not need to change and evolve, but that the myth of the digital native should not be the reason for doing so:

Finally, this non-existence of digital natives makes clear that one
should be wary about claims to change education because this
generation of young people is fundamentally different from previous
generations of learners in how they learn/can learn because
of their media usage (De Bruyckere, Hulshof, & Kirschner, 2015).
The claim of the existence of a generation of digital natives, thus,
cannot be used as either a motive or an excuse to implement
pedagogies such as enquiry-based learning, discovery-based
learning, networked learning, experiential learning, collaborative
learning, active learning, self-organisation and self-regulation or
problem solving as Veen and Vrakking (2006) argued. This does not
mean education should neither evolve nor change, but rather that
proposed changes should be evidence informed both in the reasons
for the change and the proposed changes themselves, something
P.A. Kirschner, P. De Bruyckere / Teaching and Teacher Education 67 (2017) 135e142 137
that ‘digital natives’ is not.
The non-existence of digital natives is definitely not the ‘reason’
why students today are disinterested at and even ‘alienated’ by
school. This lack of interest and alienation may be the case, but the
causes stem from quite different things such as the fact that
diminished concentration and the loss of the ability to ignore
irrelevant stimuli may be attributed to constant task switching
between different devices (Loh & Kanai, 2016; Ophir, Nass, &
Wagner, 2009; Sampasa-Kanyinga & Lewis, 2015). This, however,
is the topic of a different article.

The paper also deals with multi-tasking. Firstly they examine the nature of attention. “Multi-tasking” is an impossibility from this point of view, unless the tasks are automatic behaviours. They cite a range of research which, unsurprisingly enough, link heavy social media usage (especially with the user instantly replying to stimuli) with poorer educational outcomes:

Ophir et al. (2009) in a study in which university students who
identified themselves as proficient multitaskers were asked to
concentrate on rectangular stimuli of one colour on a computer
monitor and ignore irrelevant stimuli entering their screen of a
different colour observed that
… heavy media multitaskers are more susceptible to interference
from irrelevant environmental stimuli and from irrelevant
representations in memory. This led to the surprising result that
heavy media multitaskers performed worse on a test of taskswitching
ability, likely because of reduced ability to filter out
interference from the irrelevant task set (p. 15583).
Ophir et al. (2009) concluded that faced with of distractors,
heavy multitaskers were slower in detecting changes in visual
patterns, were more susceptible to false recollections of the distractors
during a memory task, and were slower in task-switching.
Heavy multitaskers were less able than light/occasional multitaskers
to volitionally restrain their attention only to task relevant
information.

The authors specifically warn caution about the drive that students bring their own device to school.

Why is this paper so important? As the authors show (and the author of the Nature blog post linked to above also observes) this is not a new finding. There are many pieces out there, both academic and journalistic, on the myth of the digital native. This paper specifically locates the dicussion in education and in teacher training (they say much also on the issue of supposedly “digital native” teachers) and is a trenchant warning on the magical thinking that has grown up around technology.

There are obvious parallels with health and technology. The messianic, evangelical approach to healthtech is replete with its own assumptions about digital natives, and magical thinking about how easily they navigate online worlds. Using a handful of social medial tools or apps with visual interactive systems does not translate into a deep knowledge of the online world, or indeed a wisdom about it (or anything else)

“Sober Minds” Documentary Trailer

Sober Minds [2017] Short Documentary Trailer from Zimmerhands Films on Vimeo.

Sober Minds is an uplifting autobiographical documentary that showcases the beauty of urban wildlife through breathtaking photography and powerful anecdotes.

OFFICIAL SELECTIONS 2017

Flickers Rhode Island International Film Festival US (World Premiere)
Fingal Film & Arts Festival IRE (Irish Premiere)
DocUtah International Documentary Film Festival US.

Website: CharloJohnson.com/SoberMinds
Facebook: facebook.com/SoberMindsFilm

This trailer looks really interesting – even the trailer powerfully depicts the power of nature connection and suggests that nature can be a source of connection that more mainstream education (for instance) misses out on

Helmholtz and the ophthalmoscope, Eurotimes, 2008

Recently I rediscovered some articles for Eurotimes, the European Journal of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons that I had forgotten I had written. I have posted here before some of my book reviews for Eurotimes. I also wrote some pieces on historical ophthalmological figures – the first on Goethe and his work in optics, the second on Hermann von Helmholtz who was one of those towering, foundational figures in modern physics but who also invented the ophthalmoscope

Figure

In the last article, I considered one of the towering geniuses of world culture, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Goethe made enormous contributions to world literature and philosophy, and significant contributions to the nascent sciences of visual perception, linguistics, plant morphology, and felt he would be remembered most of all for his work on optics. Goethe perhaps epitomises the “natural philosopher”, the original term for “scientist” – an individual of boundless curiosity and enthusiasm, a gifted amateur in the true sense. Science owes much to the activities of men and women who operated outside the dynamic of universities and in an age before the research institute or the grant.

Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (1821-1894) is a less towering cultural presence than Goethe. His scientific activities have had a more lasting influence. He bridges the worlds of “natural philosophy” and organised, university based science – both in terms of his lifespan (eleven when Goethe died, he lived to directly influence Einstein and Maxwell) and in his professional life (originally training under paternal pressure as a doctor, he was appointed Professor of Physics in Berlin in 1871). Much of his work attacked the speculative tendencies of the natural philosophers, and was grounded firmly in observation and experiment.

Yet such was the breadth of his activity that he reminds one of the multi-talented natural philosopher as much as a contemporary, specialised physicist or physiologist. The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science describes him in summary as “physiologist, physicist, philosopher and statesman of science.” This begins to capture the breadth and diversity of his interest and involvement. We will discuss his work on perception, and on ophthalmic optics, below, but it is important to recall he was simultaneously working on conservation of energy, thermodynamics, and electrodynamics, and developed the philosophy of science itself. His writings ranged from the age of the earth to the origin and fate of the solar system.

One of the more humbling characteristics of the scientists of the past was their seeming mastery of measurement. We are so used to highly accurate, precise computerised measuring apparatus that we can forget that until relatively recently, researchers often had to build and calibrate their own equipment. And going back only a little further, they had to invent it as well. Most readers of EuroTimes probably use one of Helmholtz’s inventions every day – the ophthalmoscope.

Invented in 1851, the ophthalmoscope is a perfect illustration of Helmholtz’s combination of experimental and inventive skill. The invention made him world famous overnight. Helmholtz was actually independently reinventing a device of Charles Babbage’s from 1847. As so often in science, it was the reinventor who recognised the usefulness and applicability of the invention, rather than the first inventor (Babbage, of course, also managed to invent but not complete the first computer) The handheld ophthalmoscope was developed by Greek ophthalmolosist Andreas Anagonstakis later in the 1850s, and in 1915 William Noah Allyn and Frederick Welch invented the self illuminating ophthalmoscope (and founded Welch Allyn) that is the direct precursor of the modern device.

Who was Helmholtz, this man of so many talents and interests and such lasting influence? Born in Potsdam on 31st August 1821 into a lower middle class family that emphasised the importance of education and cultural activities, his father Ferdinand was a teacher of philosophy and psychology in the local secondary school. His mother was a descendant of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, and her maiden name was Penne. Ferdinand Helmholtz was also a close friend of the philosopher Fichte. The scientific and philosophical worlds of the nineteenth century often seem amazingly small and parochial.

Helmholtz’s natural inclination as a student was to pursue studies in physics – however his father observed the financial support available for medical students and the lack thereof for physics students, and persuaded him into medical studies. He enrolled in the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Institut in Berlin, the Prussian military’s medical training college. After this, the served as a medical officer in the Prussian military for a time, simultaneously publishing articles on heat and muscle physiology. In 1847 he published his treatise On The Conservation of Force, which was the clearest and ultimately most influential account of what would become known as the principle of the conservation of energy. From his observations of muscles physiology and activity, he tried to demonstrate that there is no energy loss in muscle movement, and no “life force” is necessary to move a muscle.

In 1848 he left military service and embarked on an academic career. In 1849, he became an associate professor of physiology in Konigsberg.. Shortly after he announced the invention of the ophthalmoscope and also made another discovery that would seal his fame – measuring the rate of conduction of signals in nerves. It had been believed that sensory signals arrived at the brain instantaneously, and it was considered beyond the capabilities of experimental science to measure the rate of nerve conduction. Using a new invention, the chronograph, Helmholtz measured the difference between stimulus and reaction times at different parts of the body, and found the speed of neural conduction to be comparable to that of sound, not light.

A full account of all Helmholtz’s discoveries and scientific achievements would take volumes. He had an intense interest in visual perception, especially visual illusions. This interest was based on his philosophical position that we are separate from the world of objects, and isolated from external physical events, except for perceptual signals which, not unlike language, must be learned and read according to various assumptions. These assumptions may or may not be appropriate. This philosophy underlay many of his research activities and interests, and also his idea that perceptions are “unconscious inferences.”

Most of what goes on in the nervous system, according to Helmholtz, is not represented in consciousness. Psychological and physiological experimental findings often surprise us for this reason, because we cannot discover by introspection how we see or how we think. We derive a perception from incomplete data, hence “unconscious inference.” This idea influenced Freud’s idea of the unconscious, and Helmholtz’s student Wilhelm Wundt, who took Helmholtz’s work and ideas further. Another of his students, Heinrich Hertz, further developed Helmholtz’s work on energy and electrodynamics.

Helmholtz had a huge impact on all areas of perceptual science, and many areas of physics. His name lives in a variety of laws and concepts (Helmholtz illusion, Helmholtz free energy, Helmholtz-Kelvin contaction) and that of an association of research institutes in Germany. And of course, for the humble working ophthalmologist, every day, almost without thinking, Helmholtz’s influence as the originator of the modern ophthalmoscope is literally palpable.

Review of Compulsive Acts, Elias Aboujaoude, 2008

This book did not impress me much at all. A far more readable and useful books on obsessions and compulsions is David Adam’s “The Man Who Couldn’t Stop” which I regularly recommend to patients. I did some book reviews for Fortean Times from 2003 til around 2008, I think this is likely to have been one of the last – none seem to have a life online but will turn up in various archives I have.

Compulsive Acts: A psychiatrists tales of ritual and obsession

The best that can be said of Elias Aboujaoude’s Compulsive Acts is that it’s an easy read. Director of the Impusive Control Disorders Unit at Stanford University School of Medicine, one would hope that Aboujaoude would give both the general and specialist reader some great insight into the world of compulsion. He ranges from obsessive-compulsive disorders to pathological gambling and problematic internet use, yet never really rises above the level of a decent magazine article, in say Time or Newsweek.

In his introduction Aboujaoude makes much of the weighty ethical dilemma facing him putting pen to paper. Clearly the issue of confidentiality looms over every medical writers wishing to make use of the material presenting every day. However Aboujaoude’s throat-clearing and disquisitions on storytelling in his Mediterranean ancestry serve to annoy when it finally comes to the writing itself. In his fictionalised composites, Aboujaoude adopts an irritatingly breezy style, as well as betraying a tin ear for dialogue and a weakness for twee framing devices (in particular his receptionist Aurora, an attempt at down-to-earth wisdom) Furthermore, the cases seem to progress neatly to their conclusions (not necessarily happy or successful ones) and lack real drama. One feels that Aboujaoude must have a decent book inside him – if only it could be compelled to come out.

3/10 – Far from compulsive

Language recognition in the womb – Fetal rhythm-based language discrimination – study from NeuroReport

I have blogged before about on the tendency to grandiosity of neuroscience, or rather (very often) how the science media portray neuroscience. This phobia of neurohype is not the same as a suspicion of neuroscience. The ingenuity of the methodology of studies like this is staggering. I don’t have access via my usual library sources to recent issues of NeuroReport so I’m afraid that I can’t assess the study directly (in so far as as I am at a certain stage of clinical practice, and the consequent distance from what personal study of relevance I have done)

Fetal rhythm-based language discrimination: a biomagnetometry study
Minai, Utakoa; Gustafson, Kathleenb; Fiorentino, Roberta; Jongman, Allarda; Sereno, Joana

Neuroreport: 5 July 2017 – Volume 28 – Issue 10 – p 561–564
Abstract

Using fetal biomagnetometry, this study measured changes in fetal heart rate to assess discrimination of two rhythmically different languages (English and Japanese). Two-minute passages in English and Japanese were read by the same female bilingual speaker. Twenty-four mother–fetus pairs (mean gestational age=35.5 weeks) participated. Fetal magnetocardiography was recorded while the participants were presented first with passage 1, a passage in English, and then, following an 18 min interval, with passage 2, either a different passage in English (English–English condition: N=12) or in Japanese (English–Japanese condition: N=12). The fetal magnetocardiogram was reconstructed following independent components analysis decomposition. The mean interbeat intervals were calculated for a 30 s baseline interval directly preceding each passage and for the first 30 s of each passage. We then subtracted the mean interbeat interval of the 30 s baseline interval from that of the first 30 s interval, yielding an interbeat interval change value for each passage. A significant interaction between condition and passage indicated that the English–Japanese condition elicited a more robust interbeat interval change for passage 2 (novelty phase) than for passage 1 (familiarity phase), reflecting a faster heart rate during passage 2, whereas the English–English condition did not. This effect indicates

that fetuses are sensitive to the change in language from English to Japanese. These findings provide the first evidence for fetal language discrimination as assessed by fetal biomagnetometry and support the hypothesis that rhythm constitutes a prenatally available building block in language acquisition.