ラベル English entries の投稿を表示しています。 すべての投稿を表示
ラベル English entries の投稿を表示しています。 すべての投稿を表示

2025年10月13日月曜日

Reclaiming Action: How the Attention Economy Rewired Our Brains—and How We Can Heal

1. Why Do We Feel Constantly Exhausted Even When We Do Nothing?


A recent video essay explored a simple yet haunting question:
Why do we feel bored even when surrounded by endless entertainment? (Harris, 2025)
In the video, Johnny Harris describes a familiar modern condition —a quiet Sunday afternoon when the children are playing outside,all chores and work are done, and yet a sense of restlessness lingers.

You find yourself thinking about the past and the future, unable to act on anything in the present.Eventually, you reach for your phone, scrolling through it without purpose —but the feeling of boredom remains.

That, Harris suggests, is not ordinary boredom.
It is a neurological signal — a symptom of a brain overwhelmed by artificial stimulation, no longer knowing what to do in silence.
And that observation struck me deeply, because until recently, I was living in exactly that state.

Barely keeping up with daily tasks, feeling exhausted for no reason, constantly drawn back to YouTube or social media as if by gravity. Hours would pass without awareness, leaving only fatigue behind.

Then I began encountering a term that explained everything: the “Attention Economy.”

The concept was first proposed in 1969 by economist Herbert A. Simon, who noted that “in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of attention.”
Half a century later, this has become our reality: platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram have turned human attention itself into a tradable resource (Steinhorst, 2024).
Even in Japan, the term “attention economy” has entered mainstream vocabulary (Eleminist, 2023).
In a world overflowing with information, our attention has become a resource to be mined, traded, and competed over (Manamina, 2023).


To understand this phenomenon, we need to look at it from two seemingly distant perspectives — economics and neuroscience.
It is no longer that we use our brains for the economy.
Rather, the economy has begun to decide how our brains are used.

2. The Evolution of the Attention Economy: From Television’s Control to Algorithmic Guidance


In the latter half of the twentieth century, television sat at the center of society. People across the country watched the same programs every night, gathering the next day to discuss them. Television succeeded in aligning collective consciousness in a single direction.

For certain generations, television remains the primary source of information. Even today, news coverage and televised debates continue to shape public opinion. Yet that influence has rapidly waned with the rise of the Internet.

We have shifted from an era in which old media “controlled” attention to one in which digital platforms “guide” it. The media’s power has not disappeared—it has simply changed form.

At first glance, this transformation might appear to be a healthy democratization of information. A world where anyone can create and verify content. I, too, once welcomed that change. But in recent years, it has become increasingly clear that this new economic model—fueled by advertising revenue—has begun to reshape human behavior itself.

Ø   The Transformation of Advertising: From “Viewership” to “Neural Response”


Television’s advertising model was simple. Audiences watched programs according to fixed schedules, and advertisers purchased commercial slots during the hours when potential customers were most likely watching. Marketing effectiveness was measured by a single number: the viewership rating.

That simplicity vanished in the late 1990s with the rise of the Internet. Platforms like Google and YouTube abandoned the vague metric of viewership and began quantifying behavior at the individual level.

Which ad you clicked. Where you stopped watching a video. What search terms you entered. All of it became data—measured, analyzed, and monetized in real time.

Advertisers no longer needed to imagine “target demographics.” Platforms now calculate, with astonishing precision, who is most likely to make a purchase and display ads directly to that person.

The core of this system lies in predicting what captures human attention— and converting that attention into a tradable commodity.

In the television era, value was defined by how many people you could reach. In the algorithmic era, value is defined by how deeply you can penetrate a single brain. Attention has shifted from the collective to the individual, and within the individual, down to the level of neural response.


Ø   The Algorithm's True Goal: To Prevent You from Leaving


This transformation has changed the very nature of information. It is no longer something delivered—it is something optimized. The goal of every major platform is simple: keep the user from leaving.

To achieve that, algorithms continually feed stimuli that sustain engagement— endless scrolls, suggested videos, the red glow of notification badges.

Such designs are not mere technical conveniences. They are neural architectures of reward.

Our brains are wired to respond most strongly to unexpected rewards. The uncertainty of “What comes next?” triggers the highest bursts of dopamine.

YouTube’s recommendations and social media feeds exploit this mechanism with surgical precision. An algorithm is no longer an information delivery system. It is a device that transforms human attention and emotion into reproducible economic resources.

3. Neuroscience: Overstimulation and Down-Regulation of the Reward System


The human brain is equipped with mechanisms that reinforce behaviors advantageous for survival. Eating, gaining social approval, solving problems — when these actions succeed, the brain releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter that generates a sense of pleasure. This circuit, known as the reward system, primarily involves the prefrontal cortex, nucleus accumbens, and ventral tegmental area (Purves, Augustine, & Fitzpatrick, 2018, as referenced by ChatGPT, unverified by the author; see also Schultz, 2015).

These regions form a neural network that governs motivation and pleasure. A large body of neuroscientific research supports the connection between dopaminergic activity, reward prediction, and behavioral reinforcement (Japanese Society for Neuroscience, 2019).

The reward system does not merely respond to pleasure; it learns the temporal structure of reward. Dopaminergic neurons react most strongly to unexpected rewards or those that occur after a brief delay — using those experiences to strengthen future behavior (Schultz, 2015, pp. 853–858).


Ø   Digital Stimuli and the Collapse of Reward Timing


Modern digital environments have disrupted this evolutionary design at its core. A “like” on social media, the automatic replay of a video, the sound of a level-up in a game—each of these can activate the dopaminergic system with minimal effort. In the short term, such stimuli may produce a false sense of achievement, reinforcing both expectation and reactivity toward rewards, as suggested by studies on the neural reward system (Bromberg-Martin, Matsumoto, & Hikosaka, 2010; Stanford Medicine, 2021).

When exposure to such stimuli becomes repetitive, adaptive changes occur within the dopaminergic pathway—such as receptor down-regulation or decreased sensitivity. As a result, the same stimulus no longer produces the same level of satisfaction, prompting individuals to seek stronger or more frequent stimulation. This hypothesis, observed in contexts such as substance addiction, has been widely discussed in contemporary neuroscience (Mustafa, 2024).

In neuroscience, this state is known as down-regulation of the reward system—a physiological decline in the brain’s sensitivity caused by chronic overstimulation.

Ø   The Diminished Capacity for “Quiet Satisfaction”


As this process progresses, people begin to lose the ability to experience deep focus or quiet fulfillment as a form of reward. The sense of satisfaction once derived from activities such as reading, studying, or creating is now replaced by the fleeting bursts of stimulation provided by social media.

Long-term goals become difficult to sustain, and the feeling of “I can’t keep going” becomes chronic. Empirical studies have linked decreases in attention, memory, and working-memory capacity to chronic overstimulation of dopaminergic pathways (Zahrt, Taylor, Mathew, & Arnsten, 1997; Arnsten, 2011).


Furthermore, the prefrontal cortex, a region closely tied to the brain’s reward system, also deteriorates under these conditions. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for inhibiting impulses and making long-term decisions—the very foundation of human rationality (Miller & Cohen, 2001).

Research on addiction has shown that chronic exposure to reward stimuli can cause hyper-adaptation within this region, leading to impaired self-control and an intensified drive for immediate gratification (Goldstein & Volkow, 2011).

Ø   The Inversion of the Reward System — When Pleasure Destroys Effort


This process can be summarized in a single, devastating equation:

The immediacy of reward erases the meaning of effort.
The loss of effort collapses the value of reward.

As a result, we begin to oscillate between fatigue and apathy. We feel drained even when we have done nothing, and when we try to begin something, our focus quickly disintegrates. This is not mere psychological exhaustion. It is a physiological reaction of a brain whose reward system has lost its equilibrium.

4. The Structural Reality: Profit Design and the Seeds of Political Use


Up to this point, we have seen how advertising-driven models stimulate the human brain and reshape patterns of behavior. But what drives this system is not merely technology or algorithmic design. It is the economic structure itself.

Platform corporations—Google, YouTube, Meta, TikTok—are all built upon mechanisms that capitalize on human attention. Within these systems, user retention time serves as the primary metric of profit. In other words, the core of their business lies in how effectively they can capture and prolong human focus.

The issue here is not that these companies are inherently malicious. Quite the opposite: few platforms set out with the intention of making people addicted. They simply followed the logic of efficiency and profit—and in doing so, arrived at an “optimal solution” that continuously stimulates the human nervous system.

Yet this is precisely where we must pause and reflect. Even if the system emerged accidentally, it now functions as a structure capable of governing collective cognition and behavior across society. And increasingly, that structure is expanding beyond the boundaries of economics—into the realm of politics.

Ø   The Connection Between Power and Platforms


In September 2025, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee launched an investigation into whether Google/YouTube had restricted certain political content under pressure from government agencies. In the course of this inquiry, Google acknowledged that it had once received a censorship request from the Biden administration—describing it as “inappropriate” and “unacceptable” (Donovan, 2025).


The Committee’s findings revealed several key facts:

l   Government agencies (including the Department of Health and the White House) had requested the removal or limitation of content related to COVID-19 and election topics.

l   As part of a cooperation posture, Google considered reinstating channels that had been deplatformed.

l   Indirect restrictions via third-party fact-checking organizations were also being used.

This is not merely a domestic U.S. political issue. These facts suggest that the collaboration between state power and platforms may have already been operating as a functional “information sieve.”

More importantly, this may be the first time in history that the infrastructure for intentionally manipulating human behavior has been (1) constructed, and (2) demonstrably deployed.

For years, we assumed algorithms steered us unconsciously. Now, that architecture has matured into a tool that can be consciously wielded. Whether for political ends or economic gains, this structure is beginning to function as an infrastructure of control.

5. Synthesis: Regaining Agency in an Engineered World


As we have seen, our sense of inability—the feeling that we “can’t focus” or “can’t begin”—is not a failure of willpower or discipline. It is the natural consequence of a brain that has adapted to an optimized environment.


You are not lazy. Your brain has simply adjusted to a world that constantly refines itself around your behavioral data.

Social networks and video platforms learn your patterns, identify the stimuli that trigger the strongest responses, and present them in rhythm with your habits. Without realizing it, your mind is surrounded by a pleasure apparatus tailored uniquely to you—one that gradually rewires your reward system to comply with its logic.

Once, entertainment existed between the rhythms of daily life. Now, daily life itself is engineered around entertainment.

Notifications, autoplay, gaming events—these do not fill our spare moments; rather, our moments are shaped to accommodate them. Within this structure, resistance through sheer will alone becomes extraordinarily difficult.

There is another factor we must not overlook: the speed of this transformation.

In all of human history, no generation has ever faced environmental adaptation at the neurological level occurring over so short a span of time. And as long as this process remains tied to the acceleration mechanisms of capitalism, it is unlikely that any meaningful social restraint will emerge.

That is precisely why self-defense must begin at the individual level. The algorithm is not your enemy, but its design will always optimize you for consumption. And in that process, our capacity for free, human action is being quietly eroded.

6. Behavioral Recovery in Three Steps: Externalize, Attenuate, Replace


Ø   Regaining Control Over Action


Many people begin to recognize this problem only when they confront a behavior they themselves cannot fully explain. Watching videos for hours. Closing a social-media app—only to open it again moments later. Most of us have experienced this cycle at least once. And in many cases, even after deciding “This time I’ll stop,” we find ourselves slipping back into the same pattern when our energy or mood fluctuates.

Everyday behavior has its own form of homeostasis. Even when willpower allows temporary withdrawal, the brain exerts a powerful force to return to its previous state. That is why this problem cannot be solved through mindset or discipline alone.

After repeated trial and error, I eventually discovered a method that worked for me: streaming myself while I work. By creating a simulated social environment—the subtle awareness that others might be watching—I naturally began to reduce passive video consumption and found myself spending entire days in focused work. A week later, I could feel a dramatic improvement in my productivity and mental clarity.

Ø   Streaming” as Externalization — Turning Social Inhibition into an Ally


From a neuroscientific perspective, the act of streaming oneself is a form of externalized self-regulation. The human brain—particularly the prefrontal cortex—activates stronger inhibitory control the moment it senses the presence of others. This phenomenon, known as social inhibition, leads individuals to suppress impulsive behaviors and opt for more deliberate, goal-oriented actions when they feel they are being observed (Beer & Ochsner, 2006; Izuma, Saito, & Sadato, 2008).


My own experiment deliberately recreated this mechanism. Through streaming, the brain shifts its orientation—from being a viewer to becoming a creator. In doing so, it redirects the output of the reward system away from external stimuli and toward self-generated action. This subtle rewiring transformed passive consumption into active engagement, allowing concentration to emerge naturally rather than through force of will.

Ø   Step 1: Externalization — Supporting Self-Control Through Environment


The first step is simple: do not overestimate your brain. Human willpower and attention are finite resources; when fatigued, they function poorly.

Therefore, instead of relying on discipline, we must design the environment to guide behavior.

In practice, this means implementing external systems of control, such as:

l   Using time-lock apps to limit social-media access

l   Streaming yourself while working

l   Placing your smartphone in another room
Behavioral science consistently shows that it is easier to change the environment than to change the person. The goal is not to “trick” the brain but to support it through structural design.

l   Practical Example — Redesigning Context


Neuroscience offers a useful concept known as context-dependent memory. The brain tends to encode actions together with the physical environment in which they occur. If your desk at home has been repeatedly associated with opening YouTube, simply sitting there may automatically trigger “viewing mode.” This phenomenon is well documented: when the environment during learning and recall is the same, memory and behavioral responses are facilitated (Godden & Baddeley, 1975; Smith & Vela, 2001).

To break this conditioning, physical context reconstruction is remarkably effective. Take your laptop to a café or library and establish a new rule: this is a place only for work. Such a simple environmental switch can become a surprisingly powerful behavioral-modification tool.


Ø   Step 2: Downscaling — Gradually Lowering the Intensity of Reward Stimuli


The brain's reward system is highly sensitive to abrupt change. When stimulation is cut off suddenly, the brain reacts with a rebound of anxiety, boredom, and lethargy. This occurs because the dopaminergic system enters a transient state of hyporesponsiveness, leading to diminished pleasure and motivation (Volkow et al., 2004; Koob & Le Moal, 2001).

Therefore, the goal is not abstinence, but attenuation.

Examples include:

l   Instead of turning off all notifications, check them only twice a day—morning and evening.

l   Instead of background watching videos, schedule specific viewing periods.

l   Instead of deleting social media apps entirely, reinstall and use them only once a week.

By managing information intake as carefully as one manages meals, the reward system gradually settles into a calmer, more stable state.

The key lies not in prohibition, but in choice. The brain resists deprivation, but it can adapt to self-imposed boundaries. This principle aligns with neuroscientific models of addiction recovery, which emphasize gradual recalibration of reward stimuli to restore natural motivation and self-regulatory capacity (Volkow et al., 2011).


l   Practical Example — Using a Café as a “Low-Stimulation Window”


In the previous section, we discussed the effectiveness of changing environments—working in a café or library. It is important to clarify that such places need not become permanent workspaces. The purpose is simpler: to create short windows of minimal stimulation.

1.         The initial goal is not “hours of deep focus,” but merely 15-30 minutes of low-stimulation time.

2.         The café should not be fully linked to “productivity” but used as a temporary refuge from social media and video feeds.

3.         Even brief disconnection reveals just how fatigued the brain has become—and that realization alone is transformative.

When you return home, you may relapse into old patterns—and that is perfectly fine. What matters is the gradual reduction of stimulation, allowing the brain to adapt step by step to calmer environments.

Human beings do not change overnight. But small, repeated recoveries make the next small choice possible.

Over time, you may find that you no longer need to leave home to create quiet space. Perhaps you simply place your phone in another room for 15 minutes before bed, or brew coffee with notifications turned off. Such small rituals eventually train the brain to recreate silence without leaving it behind.

Ø   Step 3: Replacement — Redirecting the Source of Reward Toward Creation


In the final stage, the goal is to shift the direction of reward from receiving to creating. The human brain exhibits strong dopaminergic activity during creative acts such as writing, designing, composing, or learning. Indeed, studies have shown that musical creation and even aesthetic appreciation trigger dopamine release within the striatum, the core of the reward circuitry (Salimpoor, Benovoy, Larcher, Dagher, & Zatorre, 2011).


In other words, the same neural pathways that once delivered external pleasure can be repurposed into creative reward.

For me, that meant writing and streaming. Through these practices, my brain gradually relearned to find pleasure not in the result but in the process itself. The stimulation is gentler, deeper, and closer to what the human brain is naturally designed to seek.

l   Practical Example — Creation as Replacement


When you start going to a café simply to step away from stimulation, a new question soon emerges: “What should I do now?” Without the constant feed of social media or video, the brain—long optimized to receive—suddenly faces a gap.

That gap feels empty at first. Yet it is precisely within that emptiness that creation begins.

Many people struggle at this moment. But the instant you choose to create—to write in a notebook, sketch, fold paper, or simply think—the brain’s reward pathways start to reorganize quietly. The essential point is not what you make, but that the time is generated from within rather than filled from without.

What I recommend is reclaiming the sensation of building time with your own hands, however small the act may be. Write something. Design something. Record something. The purpose is to transform the habit of consuming time into the art of creating time.

As you spend more moments in creative flow, you begin to remember the quiet focus and satisfaction that once felt natural. Completing even a simple piece—no matter how small—redefines pleasure itself, restoring the courage to pursue what truly matters to you.

Small creations are the gateway to large transformations. They mark the first step by which the brain shifts from being a receiver of experience to once again becoming its creator.

Ø   Small Successes Reshape the Brain


The key to behavioral recovery lies in accumulating small moments of success. The brain encodes each successful experience as a signal to continue the behavior.

“Today, I didn’t check my notifications.”
Today, I managed to focus for thirty minutes.” Even such seemingly minor achievements begin to restructure the reward system in a positive direction.

This is not a matter of willpower. It is an exercise in neuroplasticity—the brain’s inherent capacity to learn and rewire itself.

Ø   Digital Detox Is Not Withdrawal — It Is Redesign


To reclaim ourselves within a digital society is not to reject technology.

It is to reclaim the design of our own reward systems. “Digital Detox” is not the act of cutting off information—it is the act of redesigning our relationship with it.

It means taking back the architecture of attention that has been delegated to algorithms, and rebuilding it through conscious choice. That is the essence of this chapter—and the first true step toward restoring our capacity to act.


7. Epilogue — The Brain That Still Remembers


My niece has stopped going to school. When I asked why, I was told she can no longer let go of her smartphone—staring at the screen until dawn before finally falling asleep.

What I have written in these pages may describe precisely what is happening among her generation. Even those of us who grew up in the age of television and early video games—a kind of prelude to today’s attention economy—are now deeply woven into its design. For those who were born with a smartphone already in hand, their very sense of action may have been built upon the consumption of attention itself.

There are two things I wish to leave here.

Ø   First: Radical deprivation does not work.


Taking away a smartphone rarely solves the problem. The human brain is not that simple.

When the machinery of pleasure is abruptly cut off, no one can predict where the rebound will go. What social media stimulates is not mere entertainment—it is the circuitry of approval, empathy, and identity.

To strip that away by force risks redirecting the brain’s search for reward into destructive outlets—extremism, conspiracy, or despair. At the root of such behavior lies not malice, but adaptation. To suppress it without understanding its mechanism only strengthens the brain’s instinct to defend itself.

Ø   Second: Yet the human brain still remembers how to adapt.


Despite the staggering shifts of the last twenty years, our brains carry the inheritance of hundreds of thousands of years—an unbroken chain of adaptation to nature.

Your current actions are not sustained by will alone; they are the sum of countless ancestral experiments that refined how we endure, learn, and reconnect with the world. That same capacity for adaptation still resides within you.

No algorithm, however sophisticated, can erase the deeper intelligence that evolution has left in the human mind. No design can outdesign the design of survival itself.

As I write these final lines, I do not know who will read them. But if you have come this far—and if these words help you understand your own brain and reclaim even a few quiet moments of your time—then that alone is enough. That alone is joy.

Author’s Note

This article—including its structure, phrasing, and all accompanying visuals—was created with the assistance of generative AI (ChatGPT).
All factual content was verified by the author through primary sources wherever possible.

For readers interested in the original Japanese edition,
you can find it here:

  • Note (日本語版) → https://note.com/yourlinkhere
  • Blogger (日本語版) → https://yourbloggerlinkhere

 

 References

 

Confirmed References

 

Harris, J. (2025, May 22). Why we feel bored even when we have everything [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uoJNv9ufjM

 

Berkeley Economic Review. (2021). Paying attention: The attention economy. Retrieved from https://econreview.studentorg.berkeley.edu/paying-attention-the-attention-economy/

 

Eleminist. (2023, August 2). The Attention Economy: The quality of information and the dangers of manipulation(アテンションエコノミーとは 注意したい情報の質と過剰な誘導). Retrieved from https://eleminist.com/article/2534

 

Manamina. (2023, May 15). The Attention Economy: Current challenges and future outlook(アテンションエコノミー~課題と今後). Retrieved from https://manamina.valuesccg.com/articles/4048

 

Simon, H. A. (1969). Designing organizations for an information-rich world. In M. Greenberger (Ed.), Computers, communications, and the public interest (pp. 37–72). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press.

 

Steinhorst, C. (2024, February 6). Lost in the scroll: The hidden impact of the attention economy. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/curtsteinhorst/2024/02/06/lost-in-the-scroll-the-hidden-impact-of-the-attention-economy/

 

Mustafa, A. (2024). The role of dopamine in addiction: A neurobiological perspective. Journal of Addiction and Dependence, 10(2), 1–8. Retrieved from https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access-pdfs/the-role-of-dopamine-in-addiction-a-neurobiological-perspective.pdf

 


AI-Assisted References

Purves, D., Augustine, G. J., & Fitzpatrick, D. (Eds.). (2018). Neuroscience (6th ed.). Oxford University Press.
※ Citations in this section were referenced via generative AI (ChatGPT). The author was unable to access the primary sources directly; verification is pending.

 

Japanese Society for Neuroscience. (2019). Neuroscience: Exploring the brain’s reward mechanisms. Tokyo: JSN Press.

 

Schultz, W. (2015). Neuronal reward and decision signals: From theories to data. Physiological Reviews, 95(3), 853–951. https://doi.org/10.1152/physrev.00023.2014

 

Bromberg-Martin, E. S., Matsumoto, M., & Hikosaka, O. (2010). Dopamine in motivational control: Rewarding, aversive, and alerting. Neuron, 68(5), 815–834. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2010.11.022

 

Stanford Medicine. (2021, October 4). Addictive potential of social media, explained. Retrieved from https://med.stanford.edu/news/insights/2021/10/addictive-potential-of-social-media-explained.html

 

Volkow, N. D., Fowler, J. S., & Wang, G. J. (2004). The addicted human brain: Insights from imaging studies. The Journal of Clinical Investigation, 111(10), 1444–1451. https://doi.org/10.1172/JCI18533

 

Arnsten, A. F. T. (2011). Catecholamine influences on dorsolateral prefrontal cortical networks. Biological Psychiatry, 69(12), e89–e99. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2011.01.027

 

Zahrt, J., Taylor, J. R., Mathew, R. G., & Arnsten, A. F. T. (1997). Supranormal stimulation of D1 dopamine receptors in the rodent prefrontal cortex impairs spatial working memory performance. Journal of Neuroscience, 17(21), 8528–8535. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.17-21-08528.1997

 

Miller, E. K., & Cohen, J. D. (2001). An integrative theory of prefrontal cortex function. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 24(1), 167–202. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.neuro.24.1.167

 

Goldstein, R. Z., & Volkow, N. D. (2011). Dysfunction of the prefrontal cortex in addiction: Neuroimaging findings and clinical implications. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 12(11), 652–669. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3119

 

Beer, J. S., & Ochsner, K. N. (2006). Social cognition: A multi level analysis. Brain Research, 1079(1), 98–105. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2006.01.002

 

Izuma, K., Saito, D. N., & Sadato, N. (2008). Processing of social and monetary rewards in the human striatum. Neuron, 58(2), 284–294. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2008.03.020

 

Godden, D. R., & Baddeley, A. D. (1975). Context-dependent memory in two natural environments: On land and underwater. British Journal of Psychology, 66(3), 325–331. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1975.tb01468.x

 

Smith, S. M., & Vela, E. (2001). Environmental context-dependent memory: A review and meta-analysis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8(2), 203–220. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03196157

 

Koob, G. F., & Le Moal, M. (2001). Drug addiction, dysregulation of reward, and allostasis. Neuropsychopharmacology, 24(2), 97–129. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0893-133X(00)00195-0

 

Volkow, N. D., Wang, G. J., Fowler, J. S., & Telang, F. (2004). Overlapping neuronal circuits in addiction and obesity: Evidence of systems pathology. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 363(1507), 3191–3200. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2008.0107

 

Salimpoor, V. N., Benovoy, M., Larcher, K., Dagher, A., & Zatorre, R. J. (2011). Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music. Nature Neuroscience, 14(2), 257–262. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2726

 


2018年11月20日火曜日

Why is Japanese so difficult to learn for English speakers? Part.2

Part.1 of this series is here: Why is Japanese so difficult to learn for English speakers? Part.1

In the last journal, I explained why it is important not to use a dictionary when you read.
If I rephrase what I tried to say, it goes like this:
"Instead of trying to understand all the words in front of you in your own language, we should let 'your' Japanese words explain what others mean."

It's tricky in a way that knowing exactly what it is in your language seems very convincing and means a lot more to you, but for real, your words actually work separately in your mind and they in fact explain very little to you.

But when you start reading without a dictionary, the words you have already known would actually try to tell you what others mean. Although they seem to mean so little to you at first, and although it may make you anxious by so reading, they start to bind themselves together and get stronger each time they succeed to explain what the other words are, and the newly learnt words join in to your vocabulary to tell you more eloquently by collaborating with others which you'd already known.

Anyways, that's pretty much how reading without a dictionary works.

So, reading is a way for you to be exposed to hundreds of thousands of different ways to describe things, but when it comes to actually speaking it, what should we do? This is when writing comes into place.

2. Writing

When I say "writing", you would probably imagine you would try to write down the right words and feel what a terrible writer you are, compared to the expression you would be using in your own language. No, I don't mean that.

Instead of trying to write the correct sentences, you just go on and on with writing down what you are thinking at that very moment in Japanese.
Do not worry for making mistakes, it really doesn't matter what it is about, all you need is to write down what pops out in your head in Japanese.

Probably you would be thinking; "it's impossible because I can't think in Japanese". Okay, then when do you think you would ever start thinking in Japanese? Does it happen in your mind all of a sudden? NO WAY!

When you start writing like this, your Japanese would exactly be how your speech sounds like. Yeah, it's what your current level really is, you kinda have to face it.

If we think about it, have you ever seen kids in age of 4 or so who never makes grammatical mistakes, not a single wording? If you ever do, try capture that kid because he is an alien (Again, just messing around. Please do not take it seriously. I'm just trying to make a sense here).

Rather, probably the kids would go off and keep telling us ridiculous fake stories with lots of grammatical mistakes. In a way, how they create ways to use words they just learned is astonishing, although it still may sound stupid.

I believe they are (and we once were) just trying to have fun by making all sorts of mistakes, and by listening to themselves how stupid they sound, compared to adults' speech. And I also believe this is why they like dirty words. They are just playing around by saying those bad words to hear how inappropriate and funny they sound.

And we all have to admit that we had fun that way when we were kids.

But wait here. If you say out loud things like "O-Chinko" in Yamanote line just like a 4 year-old-kid does, there's a slight chance that you may end up in jail. I know there's some strange people in Tokyo, but you don't have to be so just to learn Japanese, absolutely not.

Instead of violating common wellness of good Japanese societies (or others around you), you just need a notebook and a pencil to write down whatever you are thinking at the moment. You may sound stupid or inappropriate, but it's all alright. It's just a notebook after all. It takes whatever you say.

The teacher at the English institute I went called this "journals". And, I was told to write down for at least ten minutes a day. On the first day, you would probably feel a drop of sweat going down in your butt crack after writing "journals", but you need to keep trying. The more you write, the better you would come to feel ease.

So, give it a try? It goes like this. It's me writing what I was thinking in English for about 3 minutes.

*****************<me writing a journal>*******************
I am watching a news and it's about "Yuru-chara", and they are saying about how city employees manipulated the vote for choosing the best in Japan. hmmmm, I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I'm thinking... What's the point making their characters the best in Japan is all about the money. It's sad that the characters so cute are used to sell more of their things.
Anyways, I am writing a journal since so long ago, and kind neat that I can even think so clearly in English like this. Things were not so easy back when I was studying English when I went to the U.S....
*****************<the end of the journal>*******************

I intentionally left all the mistakes I made. I was drunk when I was writing this, and thank God I didn't curse in this example, but it's so embarrassing that I was bragging about my English.

Also, I found how my English sucks by this example, and exposing this is so embarrassing, although I bet this series of journals still have tons of mistakes. But, you don't have to show off like I did. You just need to write down on a notebook, not on the web site.

Please note that this method only works with reading books on day-to-day basis. And let me explain a little bit more of how this works.

Unfortunately, your writing skill would not make any progress just by writing the same thing over and over. You just remember the words you write. In order to become good at writing (and speaking in turn), you need input from somewhere else. Yeah, that's to read books.

When writing what you are thinking in Japanese, you are unintentionally referring to what you have read by then and strengthen what you have learnt by far by writing that down in your own way.

Still it doesn't make any sense to you to write down this way at your level? Let me put how ridiculous writing the correct sentences and memorizing them would sound to me this way.

Let's say I was learning English to try to have a girlfriend in the U.S. or Canada. I would have google'd "what are some examples of flirting conversations" and have started to memorize:
****************************<quote>**************************
Me: Hey, Jake
Jake: Uh…h-hi. (His stutter is adorable)
Me: What’s new with you?
Jake: Same. Mom still hate-messages me, school is boring, Tyson is awful.
Me: I’m sorry.
Jake: Nothing I’m not used to. Sorry, am I being annoying?
Me: No, relax. (I put my hand on top of his and he turns red). I like talking to you.
*****************************<quote>*************************
I hope you would be kind enough to stop me right there.

Instead, what I would actually have to do is to go for a dinner with a girl and try to describe how beautiful she is in many different ways even though I may sound stupid. I would rather give it a try, and hopefully she may think of me as adorable.

Or, there's this one guy studying Japanese by answering English questions on a tape like "I have three children and a dog" and what you are supposed to say, and the only given answer would be "私には三人の子どもがいて、犬も一匹飼っています" and the tape goes on like this. Hey, I can come up with at least three different ways to say the same thing in Japanese, and it's the fluency you want to achieve, isn't it? Memorizing only one answer would not allow you to reach that goal, sorry to say this, but it NEVER happens.

Quite honestly, it really sounds stupid for me to memorize one sentence in just one right way by saying it over and over again. Dude, for me, it almost sounds like you memorize one "haiku" to remember one "kigo" so that you can explain what Spring is like in Japan. Let us face the reality, "kigo" itself has more than 2,000 different words to describe the seasons about which you make a poem (or namely, "haiku").
Then, why not express yourselves in many ways instead of trying to find the right sentence you memorized that matches the situation?

The other anxiety you might still have before you start writing this way is the grammar, I guess. Yeah, we may have so many tenses and appropriate manners of connecting words.

If I were your Japanese teacher, I would of said "Fxxk it, fxxk the grammar!" But since I am not teaching you, I might have to be more explicit why grammar doesn't matter at this point.

Would you think all Japanese people know all the grammars about how and when we use suffix? If you have Japanese friends, go ahead and ask them when to use "は" and "が" and what the difference would be, and the answer you would end up with is something like "it just doesn't sound right" in most cases.

Or, let me ask you something similar about your language. What are the grammatical explanations when to use "on" and "in", and "at", and what would be the difference among them? Do the explanations you would give fit all situations? Probably they don't but yet you still know the right answers. How did you get that skill in English?

We probably learned what sounds right and wrong way before we studied grammars when we learned our mother tongues. But, when it comes to learning other languages, we suddenly start trying to memorize all the grammars before enjoying playing around with the language. There's no such easy way out when you learn other languages, I would say.

When you read books, say suffix like "が" and "は" would be something you would read at least ten thousand times in a book, even without realizing it. That is to say, we quite naturally get used to what it should be like in real Japanese in ten thousand different ways.

Instead of learning perfect grammars, what we did to learn our own languages was reading or listening to so many articles and phrases and kept trying to express ourselves by trials and errors using what we'd read or listened to. So, what's wrong with doing the same thing over in learning the language we are about to learn right now?

I have written so long so far, but all the above explanations and analogies tapered to this one point:  Do not think in your language when you learn another. And the method I presented above is merely just one of examples of how you do that.

Learning Japanese in Japan, especially for English speakers would be really difficult, because there are so many Japanese people who are eager to answer your questions in English, probably because of ethnicity, or of your accent, etc. etc... But if you ever face this problem, please just ask them to talk with in Japanese and tell them why it is important to you. I bet most Japanese people would be kind enough to do as they are told.

Thank you for reading these lengthy posts, even though my English sucks like hell. I suppose you would have more questions than you get out of this series. Please feel free to leave a comment or two if you feel like so. I would put as much effort as I could afford to answer your questions.

And, I hope you enjoy learning Japanese, I really do. Peace :)

2018年11月15日木曜日

Why is Japanese so difficult to learn for English speakers? Part.1

The topic on this journal is more like "How English speakers need to learn Japanese to become fluent: from a Japanese perspective".

In this journal, I would make some suggestions that MAY work for English speakers (or other Western language speakers). So, please read on if this topic rings a bell somehow.

As a Japanese, I learned English a while ago, and well, my English is not perfect, but I can say I am fluent enough to express myself in English to the natives to the point where they would understand what I mean almost 100% if they have some time to chat with me.

For Japanese people, learning English is far more difficult than English speakers' learning Spanish. So, I suppose the other way around could be true, or maybe even more so. And, it was hard for me to learn English as well.

Well known difficulty in learning Japanese is the number of characters we use. 2 sets of 46 basic characters and well over 1,000 Chinese characters (in a way, it's countless number because I heard there may be 10,000 or more, which I don't even bother to research).

But hey, don't complain! You guys have so many words as opposed to characters, and have you ever even bothered to count the number of words you guys know or even use in everyday life?

I took an MBA program, a well known word as "Master of Business Administration", and most Japanese back in time went like "What?! You played basketball at NBA in the U.S.? It's the top league in the world, d'oh!" (This was somewhat true. I came back home and had to explain what I learned by telling them the difference between M and N almost all the time).

Or like one day when I was watching NEWMAX TV, they were talking about Kyle Rittenhouse case, and they used the word "vigilante", which sounds pretty much French or some other languages. Now I have a question, do you guys even use the word, even once in your life? But still you guys manage to know what it is. And there's another word "vigilant", looks pretty English, please imagine how complicated
it could be for English learners as a second or so forth language?

Or, ROI, ROE, IOU, etc... What's up with that?

This may be a little too extreme as an example, but you know what I mean. In the world today, we have to condense words so that we could shorten the sentences, and squeeze some precious time out of it. And, Japanese essentially is an extremely efficient language to import and digest new ideas and words and to concentrate what they mean to our society (and that's why we have so many sets of characters. It's the historically proven fact, I think).

Well, these are the complaints Japanese English learners would have, and it's pretty much the same when I read comments on how difficult Japanese is, by English Japanese learners (or other language speakers learning Japanese).

So, here's some suggestions I would make. It's from my experience when I learned English.
1. Reading
2. Writing
That's it. Yeah, I hear you say "What?! I've already done those for so long and it ain't gave us nothing, you moron!".
Okay, just calm down and listen to me for a little bit more. It's not what you do is wrong, but it is how you do is wrong. Let me explain.

1. Reading

By reading, I meant "without a dictionary".

When I went to the U.S. and started studying English, my daily task was to write the whole chapter of the assignment in English, and look up all the words in a Japanese dictionary and wrote them down in the following row, then I translated the sentences into Japanese and wrote them down in the last row. It took 4 to 5 rows in notebooks to do the above and the neat looking notebooks gave me some awkward satisfaction.

Do you think I made any progress with that? The answer is a huge "NO".

Probably Japanese teaching method (Or, maybe Asian's) is totally cursed and that's why most Japanese teachers recommend to do the same thing like this, but think about this: Did you come over all the way down to this tiny little islands to become a translator? Well, even so, become fluent first.

Let me ask a question here. Have you looked up words when you read articles in your own languages when you were kids? Probably no.
Even for Japanese speakers like me, it would be a rare occasion to even pick up a dictionary in any case.
A Japanese dictionary was something we needed when my brother and I fought over which of our definition of things is right, or else, hit him in his head with the dictionary.

When I was a kid, reading was something fun in that my mom used to read me books right before going to bed and I begged for the next sentence when she stopped until I fell asleep. Reading was something so addictive that I couldn't even stop reading until 4 o'clock in the morning when I was reading a novel in which a mysterious thief was about to grab treasures and when a hero came out from middle of nowhere.

Yeah, you need to get to the certain level to read novels, but this is the level probably the most learners would start complaining about how hard the Japanese is to learn. I suppose you already hit the point where you need to move on if you can read hiragana, katakana and say, 200 Chinese characters or so (yeah, you can include numbers in that number as well).

Let us dig a little bit more into why it is wrong to look up a dictionary in your own language when you are studying another language.

The first stage of language learning process is two folds, I believe. First you need to understand what each word means by recognizing the image which represents the word.
Say, what red looks like, what water is like, sort of words which cannot be described just in words. At this point, you probably need to write or say the words over and over again.

By the way, even doing so was not a painful experience when we were babies. We just pointed pictures and have our parents (or others) express them in words and giggled. The same response for the same picture was such an exciting moment, I guess. It may not be a painful thing even after we became adults after all.

Second, when we achieve the point where we have enough vocabulary to describe other things in words we know, then that's when we start reading by ourselves. And, this is when you guys feel how stupid you are, unfortunately.
Remember, you are not. You just need to change what you do to learn further, instead of keeping remembering what each word means.

At this point, what you need to do is to let the words explain other words and accumulate the meanings by each other. To do so, we used to read something we were eager to proceed to the next page without knowing every single word to know what the ending would be like, don't you think?

I looked up the word "作る" and it came up with:
1. to make; to produce; to manufacture; to build; to construct
2. to prepare (food); to brew (alcohol)
3. to raise; to grow; to cultivate; to train
4. to till...
and this goes up to 13! This word may be a little too easy because it only means "make" in your language, but do you intend to look it up in your dictionary to find the right match every single time you encounter the new meaning of it? NOOOOOOOoooooooH!

In this example, the word "tsukuru" is a verb to describe when you form a thing from other thing(s) or something like that. Probably initially it was just making a pot or something, and because the meaning fits, it came to mean other things like "to have sex" by saying "子作り", yeah, we say it.

By the way, the word "作る" symbolizes the act when a person cut off branches from a trunk according to this site. It's amazing how far this word could stretch its meanings to even "try having a baby".

The whole idea of reading in this method is this:
Try read and add meanings to words you already knew in Japanese, instead of pointing out what they mean in your own languages.

This is pretty much why reading is so important in learning Japanese. And, well, it was really important for me to learn English.

So, just seal your dictionary and go get some Japanese books that look interesting to you. We are so lucky we have so many options here, even adult books (not recommended) would be fine if that's what you really want.

The important thing to remember when you read in this method are follows:
1. Any book that you are interested in is fine, but I would recommend novels because it would be easy to follow the plot without knowing meanings of all the words. Comic? Yeah, but you probably tend to end up with less vocabulary compared with the time you spend and all the words you would know would be about how we communicate with each other. And, you may also end up with becoming a regular at a "Maid cafe", or wearing "gothic lolita" fashion. If that's what you really want, go ahead (I'm just kidding).

2. If it's possible, read the same book twice or more. In each other time you read, you would appreciate more by knowing what to come, although how boring it may sound. From my experience, the excitement of realizing how much more you can learn by doing so would exceed just following the plot.
It's like you would understand 40% of the novel in the first run, 60% in the second, and so on.

3. Use Japanese dictionary (instead of English, or your own languages) every once in a while when you have to stop because you don't understand.

4. Keep reading the novel without thinking what each sentence would mean in your own language. Just keep going on. This might be pain in the butt when you start, but when you reach 20 to 30% of the novel, I would say you would be urged to go forward, not backward.

5.When you reach 20% to 30% of the novel, and if you don't have any clue of what's going on in it, the novel is way too above your league. The novel can wait for you. Just grab an easier one.

Thank you for reading this by far. And, this goes on a little more, so I wrote the second part of this series in Part.2.

Reading itself would really work better for your language skill, but it's not enough to become fluent. Writing in a certain way is fundamental.

2017年5月15日月曜日

Days at home 6: the 4th patriarch, and another story begins?

(日本語のエントリーはこちら
It was the day before I came back to Tokyo, the island held a festival, which has the event in that children could catch fish with bare hands.
The last year, my nephew said he didn't want to go that kind of childish event, but I scolded him and forced him to go by saying "you can't even earn money for what you do. If you can get something for free because your are a child, get it for the family ( ゚Д゚)", but this year, I took him to let him help our tasks.
It's the picture of my nephew worn by the worker's cloth.


I wrote this before but my brother is a doctor. Though, I thought he would take a house because he is the first born.
With an incident, we fought and I had never talked to him since then till my father's death.
The year before he passed away, I was told that my brother borrowed a huge amount of money and made a doctor's office near his wife's home. Also, my father told me to support my mom as much as possible and to go home whenever I got tired of living in Tokyo. About my brother, he sadly said that my brother never made it to take our house because he already had his own house.
He was on an artificial ventilator at the time, so he told me that much of his orders with his writing and leaking of his breath from his throat.
After that, it looked like she was synced with my father's will but my mom started to gather all the family heritage and let me have it. After a bit while later, I agreed to take the house.
(Picture: The nephew timidly tries to scratch the ground with a pickaxe of which one claw was broken, which probably used to belong to the first patriarch. He is preparing to be a doctor to take my brother's office. I don't know about the nieces who at the time were catching fish in the event, but I suppose he is going to be another house's patriarch.)


One thing I recalled. My father's will was "go to work 15 minutes before it starts, and do not hesitate to do dirty tasks." Sorry father, I almost forgot.
The day my father passed away, we had a big fight again, and at the time my brother said "I can't force my kids to take a house or anything. People should live in liberty", or something like that sort of bull shit. Well, it makes some sense but he was better off being a doctor with his lack of consideration like how the father would have to think of the circumstances of his doing whatever he wants at a time as a result.
(Picture: This was actually  the first time I myself lead construction tasks, so it was totally experimental, but we probably make the way wide enough for the agrimotor to pass by. The wall on the left of the picture is that the nephew dug, and the right is of my work. He sometimes stopped working when he found lizards came out of the ground, but well done, buddy, I praise you.)


At the moment, I really don't have anything on hand, but when it comes to think about it, the nation is made of the families in it. The growth of nuclear families weaken it, and may be the reason of less children in the developed countries.
If there's something I could do to the nation, it's me keeping a family, I came to think that way. Well, I don't even have a girlfriend who may possibly be my wife yet though lol.
(Picture: We dressed the fish the nieces got from the event and made a dinner with them. The guts of 7 fish became a soy-sauce cooked dish and it's something you got to have alcohol with it. At the time my nephew and I tried to make the way wider, they really enjoyed the festival.)


Tsunoshima became a big sightseeing spot after the bridge was made, and the road would be filled with people who have nothing else to do other than drive. We were not able to move from the house and we had nothing to do, so I made my nephew to help me chop woods. He never lived in the countryside, it was rather a rare experience for him. I remember it was around the same age when I got the first permission to chop woods.
The day after right before I came back to Tokyo, I instruct him how to chop one other time then I took Shinkansen. On the way to the apartment in Tokyo, I went to a motor cycle shop to pick up my motor cycle I dropped before going back home.
I got my motorcycle's front wheel and its brake pad replaced and rear brake overhauled because it was not working.
The story of me as the 4th patriarch has just begun, and I'm still working on to make things work out to live half the time in hometown and the rest in Tokyo.