being skilled with tools improves one’s understanding of language

Researchers have just confirmed that tinkering could improve our grammar skills using medical imaging techniques. They asked volunteers to handle small parts using pliers, then asked them to do some grammar. As a result, the same circuits in the brain are activated in an area called the basal ganglia. For the brain, then, putting pieces together with a tool or analyzing the order of words in a sentence is pretty much the same thing.

In their study, these researchers, Claudio Brozzoli and Simon Thibault, have even gone further: they have succeeded in demonstrating that one could improve one’s performance in syntax by doing manual exercises. They asked a group of adults to try for 30 minutes to insert, using pliers, different pawns on a tablet pierced with holes at different angles. Then, the volunteers had to answer a written comprehension test with sentences of more or less complex structure. As a result, performance on the reading test was better among participants who did manual work compared to those who did nothing. or who had watched a video. And the reverse is also true. After a grammar comprehension exercise, the participants were more adept at inserting the pawns into the holes in the tablet.

Claudio Brozzoli and Simon Thibault, the authors of this work, believe that it could work with other tools from the moment the gesture requires fine handling: use of knitting needles for example, screwing parts with a screwdriver or even use of chopsticks to eat.

What could be the practical applications of this discovery? The tests concerned adults and should be repeated with children. But the researchers say that manual work exercises could help those who are angry with grammar. It also opens up avenues for rehabilitation techniques after stroke. And that remains to be verified, perhaps the handymen have more aptitude for learning foreign languages.