How the listener's response affect the speaker during second language processing

2018 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K16894
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Foreign language education
• Research Institution: National Institute for Physiological Sciences
• Principal Investigator: Nakagawa Eri 生理学研究所, システム脳科学研究領域, 特任助教 (20734940)
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2019-03-31
• Keywords: fMRI / インタラクション / フィードバック / 社会的随伴性

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Teachers give positive or negative response to the students based on their performance. In this study, we investigated how the valuation of the social signals, such as acceptance and rejection, is mediated by the neural networks. We developed a task that simplified a conversational interaction between a teacher and a student, and conducted a functional MRI study. Positive response of the teacher enhanced the pleasure rate whereas negative one reduced it. Pleasure rate was more prominent when the participant uttered than uttered by the PC. Feedback to the utterance of the participant, either reject or acceptance, compared with the feedback to the PC utterance, activated the rostral medial prefrontal cortex, which is reported to be related to social contingency detection. Irrespective of the agent of the utterance, acceptance compared with rejection activated the right visual cortex, and the reverse contrast activated the left visual cortex.

Free Research Field

外国語教育学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

自分自身のとった行動の結果得られたポジティブな聴覚反応は，他者に向けられた同様の反応より「嬉しい」と感じられることが先行研究で示されていた。本研究では，聴覚以外の反応やネガティブな反応がどのように処理されているのかをその神経基盤とともに明らかにすることができた。本研究の社会的意義は，科学的なエビデンスに基づいた外国語学習・指導法の提案につなげることができるという点にある。また本研究は，外国語教育学的側面だけでなく，自己の行動に随伴した反応の処理に関わる神経基盤の解明という社会神経科学的な側面もあわせ持っており，この点において学術的意義をもつ。