Arturo E. Hernandez

To the outsider, an expert seems as if they are doing everything effortlessly. A master chess player, an expert golfer, and a prolific writer seem to be able to quickly home in on what needs to be done and execute flawlessly over and over again. How do we master new skills? How do our brains and bodies transform performance from novice to expert? In Mastery, Arturo E. Hernandez shows that new skills are not built but rather bloom from the combination and recombination of small parts that come to represent a new whole. The process by which smaller things are blended over and over again is one that is not just restricted to high-level experts. Uniting the latest research findings from a cross section of disciplines and case studies with compelling storytelling, Mastery shows readers how the blooming of abilities can work in their favor and lead them to achieve much more than they thought was possible. Whether mastering a new language, learning to play a musical instrument, improving your tennis serve, or sharpening your memory, Hernandez teaches readers how to take advantage of our adaptability and open our minds to their fullest potential. Rather than hyperfocus and overspecialization, moving our focus from rigid perfection to a form of flexible adaptation can lead to unexpected improvement. This approach to skill sheds light on how to better harness our talents so that we can accomplish things that are seemingly out of reach. As our economy transforms and the ways in which we work and play change, we must learn new skills constantly. For anyone looking to learn a new skill, teach someone else to do the same, or to better understand how our brains evolve and excel, this fascinating tour of cognition will reveal the path to surprising potential.

This Element provides an overview of research considering variables deemed to impact bilingual language acquisition, and highlights research outcomes from a variety of disciplines. An exploratory study takes into account these variables and examines the language acquisition of adult Spanish-English bilinguals across a range of domains in their two languages. The results demonstrate that the highly interactive nature of bilingual speakers' languages is in line with a holistic view of the dynamic, interdependent nature of bilingualism as described by usage-based theories and dynamic systems theories, and by the conceptualization of bilingual language from a Dynamic Interactive Processing Perspective.

Cases of language loss and recovery bring up an intriguing paradox. If two languages are stored in the brain, how can it be that a person can lose one of them, but not the other, and then gain one back without relearning it? The traditional models of how a language is represented in the brain suggest that languages can become inaccessible, even though they are not entirely lost. As the author demonstrates through fascinating cases, stress--whether due to foreign language immersion, sleep deprivation, or brain damage--can lead to the apparent loss of one language, but not the other. Arturo Hernandez presents the results of 25 years of research into the factors that might help us to understand how two (or more) languages are stored in one brain. It is clear that the brain is not egalitarian--some languages are privileged and others are not, but why? Hernandez will extend recent work that has begun to take a biological or natural systems approach. He proposes that, in bilinguals, two languages live inside a brain almost like two species live in an ecosystem. For the most part they peacefully co-exist and often share resources. But they also compete for resources, particularly when under stress. Although there are still many questions to answer and many puzzles to solve, Hernandez argues that the nonlinear dynamical models, which have been used to uncover the underlying mechanisms seen in natural systems and more recently in language and cognition, can be used to shed considerable light on the neural bases of bilingualism.