Learn while Sleeping? Photo by Abe and Liina Novy
As a boy, I was up on my rock bands. From April Wine to ZZ Top, if it was on rock radio, I knew it.
At the time, I remember being a little surprised of my own (rather impressive) knowledge of rock radio bands, since I didn’t really pay attention to the stuff. The music was just there, in the background of my life. Even when I slept.
You see, I used to leave my favorite rock radio station on all night. It was habitual for me.
Now I’m wondering if listening to music and radio talk while asleep inadvertently educated me on rock music minutiae.
More importantly, can listening to Spanish while asleep help you and I learn the language more efficiently today?
So I thought I’d poll my friends on Twitter, and the good people on Aardvark:
Twitter: @rinkjustice
Here were some responses (and a big thanks to everyone who participated):
Reply by Germán Salízar P. Twitter: @gersapa
Reply by Seth Meadows. Twitter: @SethCo_Inc
Reply by Kent Julian. Twitter: @KentJulian
Reply by Garo Hovnanian. Twitter: @ghovnanian
Reply by Tony Gonzalez
Here’s my favorite reply (and a ray of hope for pro-subliminal learners everywhere):
Reply by Tony Gonzalez
Tony’s clarification really resonates with me. I suspect we need to consciously process our new words and phrases, and deliberately find or create those relationships and patterns in the new information, for these words to snap snugly into our mental maps and become part of our new vocabulary.
It’s a huge subject, and not fully understood by anyone, so I’ll leave further extrapolation for another time ;-)
Conclusion: I think I’ll continue with my subconscious / subliminal training, but only on preprocessed material and not uncharted terrain. Who knows, maybe it’ll help me dream in español a little bit sooner.
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