I attended a seminar on language development a few months ago. One of the topics concerned modularity in Williams' Syndrome, and a not-so-trivial procedural question arose: What should we compare the Williams data to?
To normal adults? But the disparity there is clear and not particularly enlightening.
To the "mental age" match? Closer, but there are still small problems that arise from the fact that these adults, despite stunted brain developments, are not four.
The presentation went on to say that the best way to examine this with respect to the topic at hand was in terms of development. It ended up concluding that Williams froze brain development at about age six, I think it was. And so the functions that matured before then, such as most aspects of language, seem to be spared. Other processes, such as certain kinds of spatial abilities, performed at distinctly childish levels.
There was another thing that did not match the "mental age": encyclopedic knowledge. Because no matter their brainpower, they've lived for a double digit number of years with functional memory. They're bound to learn facts in all those years. Things like the names of the states in the US, synonyms for happy, stuff like that.
I'm pondering this because I think the concept of mental age is useful when considering long-lived sapient races found only in fantasy. Here we have peoples who routinely live decades while their mind is at a younger state of maturity.
There's a lot of romanticism about this. Some worlds go too far in the years direction. Sorrow beyond their years. Full of ancient wisdom. And so on. (FE8 is rather like that.) Others stick to the mental age direction. (Fa ticks me off.) I mean, maybe dragon brains don't mature like ours. It's not impossible. But there's something a bit hollow about it, to me. Their situation is unique, and not like a human who has lived a thousand years or only five.
I think it would be interesting for laguz and dragon children to be no more "wise" than your average child (because wisdom is something that distinctly requires brain maturity, and anything that comes off as wise before then is a matter of pure perception) but filled with seemingly prodigious knowledge. Goodness Fa, why do you know the names of all the plants in the world? And I know you lived through a lot of history but you sure remember it in absurd detail. Y-you've memorized magic chants? ... Oh, you want to play hide-and-seek with me? O-okay.
Tellius isn't much better, sticking fervently to mental age except with Nailah's comment about the dragons/herons living long enough to learn ancient tongue. In fact, the beorc are the children of wisdom, of intelligence and strategy and learning! (I would be more okay with that if the laguz, children of strength, could win their own wars.) Seems like laguz minds, magic types exempt, peak at somewhere below beorc maturity in abstract thinking.
It's a shame, really. I think that fundamental difference in the way life is lived could produce a lot of interesting bits of culture, alongside things like pushing for peace because of repopulating issues, living more simply to avoid stress and trauma that accumulates with age, things like that.
To normal adults? But the disparity there is clear and not particularly enlightening.
To the "mental age" match? Closer, but there are still small problems that arise from the fact that these adults, despite stunted brain developments, are not four.
The presentation went on to say that the best way to examine this with respect to the topic at hand was in terms of development. It ended up concluding that Williams froze brain development at about age six, I think it was. And so the functions that matured before then, such as most aspects of language, seem to be spared. Other processes, such as certain kinds of spatial abilities, performed at distinctly childish levels.
There was another thing that did not match the "mental age": encyclopedic knowledge. Because no matter their brainpower, they've lived for a double digit number of years with functional memory. They're bound to learn facts in all those years. Things like the names of the states in the US, synonyms for happy, stuff like that.
I'm pondering this because I think the concept of mental age is useful when considering long-lived sapient races found only in fantasy. Here we have peoples who routinely live decades while their mind is at a younger state of maturity.
There's a lot of romanticism about this. Some worlds go too far in the years direction. Sorrow beyond their years. Full of ancient wisdom. And so on. (FE8 is rather like that.) Others stick to the mental age direction. (Fa ticks me off.) I mean, maybe dragon brains don't mature like ours. It's not impossible. But there's something a bit hollow about it, to me. Their situation is unique, and not like a human who has lived a thousand years or only five.
I think it would be interesting for laguz and dragon children to be no more "wise" than your average child (because wisdom is something that distinctly requires brain maturity, and anything that comes off as wise before then is a matter of pure perception) but filled with seemingly prodigious knowledge. Goodness Fa, why do you know the names of all the plants in the world? And I know you lived through a lot of history but you sure remember it in absurd detail. Y-you've memorized magic chants? ... Oh, you want to play hide-and-seek with me? O-okay.
Tellius isn't much better, sticking fervently to mental age except with Nailah's comment about the dragons/herons living long enough to learn ancient tongue. In fact, the beorc are the children of wisdom, of intelligence and strategy and learning! (I would be more okay with that if the laguz, children of strength, could win their own wars.) Seems like laguz minds, magic types exempt, peak at somewhere below beorc maturity in abstract thinking.
It's a shame, really. I think that fundamental difference in the way life is lived could produce a lot of interesting bits of culture, alongside things like pushing for peace because of repopulating issues, living more simply to avoid stress and trauma that accumulates with age, things like that.
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