"ReSearch for the Future" magazine (Pdf, 10 Mb) - Lund University

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the human brainDid you know ...?... Innovation in Mind is an annual event aimed at people who are curiousabout the future and want to see new connections and opportunities?www.innovationinmind.seUlrika OredssonLanguageas for childResearch at the Humanities Laboratory inLund has refuted the myth that childrenfind it easier to learn languages thanadults. The studies show that children andadults are both just as good at identifyingnew words and understanding their meaningwhen they hear a foreign language forthe first time.It is primarily women who start lifestyle companies and they often do so for the sake of their families. ErikaAndersson Cederholm at the Department of Service Management conducts research on lifestyle entrepreneurship.Lifestyle entrepreneurs– drawing a fine line between work and private lifeThe experience industry is on the rise and with itcome new questions. How do we put a price on anexperience? Can one charge extra for breakfast withthe host couple, half an hour of wood chopping orplaying with the children on the farm? The entrepreneursthemselves claim that they are developingspecial expertise to maintain the fine line betweenwork and private life.They are called ‘lifestyle entrepreneurs’ and theyplay an increasingly important role in rural economicdevelopment. It could be horse farms with trekking, artgalleries which offer bed and breakfast or farmers rentingout beds to city dwellers who want to experiencelife in the country. But what is the product being soldand how does one put a price on an experience? Theseare questions which Erika Andersson Cederholm at theDepartment of Service Management is studying.Open up your home“Common to many lifestyle entrepreneurs is that theyhave an ambiguous position with regard to their business”says Erika Andersson Cederholm.”On the one hand they want to earn money fromtheir hobby, but on the other hand it is somewhat tabooto do it. ‘I’m really not a typical businesswoman’is a comment I have heard many times.”It is primarily women who start lifestyle companies,and they often do it for the sake of their families. Theywant to be able to stay at home with their childrenand running such a company makes this possible. Thewomen do feel that it doesn’t pay well, but definitelywould not say that they are trapped by gender roles.They are happy and proud that they have managed tocombine family and hobby with a career.For the visitors, warmth, spontaneity, familiarityand a certain portion of chaos are all part of theexperience. The intimacy often comes as a surpriseto the visitors and adds to the experience. The entrepreneursare well aware that the intimacy is partof the product, and this means they must maintaina fine balance between closeness and distance; theguests should feel at home, but not too much athome. One woman told Erika Andersson Cederholmabout an occasion when her bed and breakfast gueststucked into a cake that the children’s grandmotherhad baked for the family. They were gently but firmlyreprimanded, recounts Andersson Cederholm.Never a bad dayShe calls the relationship that develops between the visitorsand entrepreneurs ‘commercial friendship’. Sometimesthe commercial friendship develops into a closerrelationship and this often has an effect on the price:“One woman told me about a time when her childrenbecame very good friends with the visitors’ children.Then she suddenly couldn’t charge for experiences onthe farm which she would usually put a price on.”For an outsider, it could seem like hard work toopen up one’s home to paying strangers. Doesn’t ‘commercialfriendship’ place a strain on those involved?“We haven’t found anything in our studies to suggestthat”, says Erika Andersson Cederholm.Unlike ‘emotional labour’ in jobs such as air steward,waitress, call centre employee, etc., where employeeshave to be friendly and professional and never show ifthey are having a bad day, there is nothing to suggestthat lifestyle entrepreneurs suffer as a result ofthe fact that part of the experience they sell isintimately linked with human relationships.“The major difference is probably that thelifestyle entrepreneurs feel that they have madea choice and have control over their lives.”●Multilingual children often impress those aroundthem. The usual explanation for young children’sability to learn to speak two languages fluently is thatthey are better learners than adults. A research groupheaded by Marianne Gullberg, Professor of Psycholinguisticsand head of the Humanities Laboratory,wondered if this really was the case.“We were interested to know what happens duringthe first few minutes when we try to understand a newlanguage, when we really experience the language asa noise”, she says.By showing subjects aged 7 and aged 25 a weatherforecast in Chinese and then asking them to dovarious exercises and answer questions, the researchMarianne Gullberg’s research at the HumanitiesLaboratory has refuted the myth that adults haveless flexible brains than children.10 reSEARCH for THE FUTURE
Did you know ...?... there are 47 000 students and 6800 employees from around the world at LundUniversity in Lund, Malmö and HelsingborgDid you know ...?... In the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2011/2012, Lund University wasat number 80 in the world, 22 in Europe and 2 in Sweden, and was the highest ranked full-scaleuniversity in Sweden? In total there are 17 000 higher education institutions in the world.learning as easy for adultsrenteam was able to compare how much the two agegroups managed to learn. The results showed thatthe children did neither better nor worse than theadults.Subconscious learning“It is a myth that children have more flexible brains.Adult brains also change after only a couple of minutesof contact with a new language. The idea thatour brains are inflexible is not true”, says MarianneGullberg.Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), theresearchers could see that the blood flow in theresearch subjects’ brains changed after they had seenthe weather forecast. Marianne Gullberg believesthat this suggests many adults learnt something eventhough they were not conscious of it.“Just listening to a language can get you quite along way. But to learn a new language properly, it is ofcourse best to travel to a country where the languageis spoken. Then you get into a flow which is not necessarilygrammatically correct but which automatesyour use of the language.”●reSEARCH for THE FUTURE 11
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