Tinkering improves… our language skills

Tinkering and chatting are linked. If this seems improbable, it is nevertheless the observation of a French research team. In the scientific journal Science, researchers and researchers from Inserm, CNRS and Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 and Université Lumière Lyon 2, in collaboration with the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, explain that there is a correlation between knowing handling tools and the ability to understand sentences with complex syntax. When you master one of these skills, it allows you to improve the other.

Common brain processes

“Studies have thus suggested that areas of the brain that control certain language functions, such as processing the meaning of words, for example, are also involved in the control of fine motor skills.“, recall the authors. In 2019, Claudio Brozzoli, in collaboration with other members of the team, demonstrated that people skilled in the use of tools were generally better at mastering the intricacies of Swedish syntax.

Thanks to various tests and medical imagery, the scientists observed the cerebral mechanisms linked to the various tasks in an experiment carried out with pliers. The participants had to do exercises with a mechanical gripper and syntax exercises in French. “The choice of pliers and not of another object is no coincidence, says Claudio Brozzoli. Indeed, it is a tool that allows a sophisticated movement, in which parameters such as the distance traveled to reach the object that one wants to catch, the opening of the “fingers” of the gripper and the orientation, and which can therefore be compared in terms of complexity to the handling of syntax in language.” At the end of the experiment, he and his team found that the same brain areas were mobilized for these two types of exercise, those of the basal ganglia.

Can we train our language skills with manual tools?

The second part of the study focused on the applications of this observation: is it possible to improve our skills in understanding syntax through the manipulation of mechanical tools? This time the participants had to complete a syntactic comprehension task before and after a 30-minute motor training with the forceps. “The motor training consisted of inserting small pins with the pliers into holes adapted to their shape but with variable orientations.“, specify the researchers. The syntax exercise was based on understanding sentences containing the relative pronoun “that” Where “who“, because they are generally more difficult for the brain to process.

These exercises showed that motor training with the forceps is accompanied by an improvement in performance in syntactic comprehension exercises, and that the reverse is also true. For the authors of this study, these results could be used in the clinical field, to help children with language disorders, for example.