Researchers at UConn investigate whether early exposure to sign language can forestall cognitive issues in deaf children, challenging a longstanding debate. The study finds that congenitally deaf children who learn sign language from birth develop language, cognition, and literacy on normal timetables.
A new study reveals that prelinguistic infants (5-7 months) exhibit brain activity in response to color categories, indicating an innate ability to categorize colors. This finding suggests that color perception is independent of language and can develop independently of linguistic acquisition.
The #AnalyzeMyData campaign sheds light on questionable data practices by highlighting past news stories involving consent issues. The daily tweets also include mini-surveys to gather public opinion on these matters, aiming to support future policy decisions.
Researchers use virtual reality to investigate how people adapt their speech in conversation, finding that language behavior is identical to dialogue with a human partner.
Research by Mary Kohn and colleagues suggests that language change is more individualistic and varies for each person, not just during the teenage years. Language development occurs constantly, adapting to the generation speaking it, according to the study.
A recent study reveals that the evolution of differences between human language's sound systems is partly linked to climatic or ecological conditions. The researchers found a correlation between ecological factors and the ratio of sonorant segments to obstruent segments in languages.
Professor John J. Ohala has been awarded the Acoustical Society of America's Silver Medal in Speech Communication for his contributions to understanding speech production and perception, as well as applying phonetic principles to study spoken language change over time.
Researchers at the University of Montreal found that humans can recognize familiar voices with nearly 100% accuracy, even in noisy environments. This surpasses current automatic speech recognition systems, which struggle to reach 99.9% accuracy.
A study by Professor Victor Boucher of the University of Montreal found that repeating aloud boosts verbal memory, especially when done in a context of communication. The research showed that repeating aloud to someone else increased information recall compared to repeating silently or in one's head.
A $5 million NSF PIRE grant is awarded to Penn State's Center for Language Science to translate the science of language learning into education. The project aims to harness recent discoveries on bilingualism benefits to inform educational practice and policy, bringing science to classrooms globally.
Professor Nick Enfield and his colleagues found evidence of a universal trait in human conversation, with the word 'Huh' appearing in 31 languages. They also discovered that people stop for clarification once every 90 seconds, regardless of language.
A team of Penn State researchers, led by Ping Li, has been awarded a nearly $1 million grant to investigate how readers comprehend science texts. The project aims to capture cognitive and brain representations during and after reading, with implications for STEM education.
Researchers analyzed case systems in over 600 languages, finding that complex constructions tax the brain more than simple ones. The brain activity is stronger for simple cases, leading to simplifications and changes in grammatical structures.
Researchers at Binghamton University used brain signals to identify individuals with 94% accuracy, suggesting a new type of biometric security. Brainprints are cancellable and cannot be stolen, offering an alternative to traditional methods.
UBC researchers found that non-verbal social cues, such as photographs of Chinese Canadians, can affect speech comprehension. Participants rated Chinese Canadian speakers with less foreign accent when aware of their ethnicity due to the photo prompt.
Researchers found that native English speakers had difficulty recalling words spoken in a Korean accent, suggesting that understanding foreign accents may reduce information processing capacity. The study's results have implications for communication strategies in settings like schools and hospitals.
Researchers provide guidelines to evaluate apps for real educational benefits, focusing on features that promote active participation, sustained engagement, and social interaction. They warn against apps with distracting 'bells and whistles' and those that present information in a vacuum.
A comprehensive new report integrates research from psychological science, linguistics, and neuroscience to provide an evidence-based guide for evaluating the quality of educational apps. The report presents four principles that can help distinguish between apps with true educational value and those that masquerade as such.
A Yale-led study found that people who search for information online overestimate their knowledge base compared to those who obtain information through other methods. The effect was strong enough that even without providing a full answer, internet searchers still felt smarter.
Human language likely developed quickly into a sophisticated system, featuring syntax and structures, according to MIT linguist Shigeru Miyagawa. Words bear traces of syntax, challenging the idea that they originated from simple primal utterances.
A study by New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development found that crowdsourcing using Amazon Mechanical Turk can produce high levels of agreement among listeners, even when individual responses are not highly accurate. With samples of nine or more AMT users, performance converges with that of ex...
Researchers identified key features that make tweets more likely to get attention, including using words like 'please' and being informative. The study's algorithm predicted tweet popularity more accurately than human observers, with potential applications in longer forms of discourse.
The Lieber Institute for Brain Development won the grand prize at the National Collegiate Conference for Mahima Sukumar's research on electroconvulsive therapy. The study found that ECS can spur hippocampal neurogenesis, improving behavioral symptoms and brain structural changes associated with major depression.
Research at the University of Kansas explores how native language impacts processing auditory words in a second language. Annie Tremblay's study investigates cues that signal word beginnings and endings, finding that some cues are easier to pick up than others.
Sheila E. Blumstein received the Silver Medal in Speech Communication from the Acoustical Society of America for her work on how acoustic signals are transformed into linguistic representations. She has made significant contributions to our understanding of speech processing and neural systems.
Researchers analyzed Campbell's monkey alarm calls at two sites, revealing greater complexity than previously thought. The study found distinctions between roots (e.g., 'hok' for serious aerial threats) and suffixes (-oo), allowing monkeys to describe both threat nature and degree of danger.
Researchers found that successful language learners had more connected brain networks than less successful participants, both before and after learning. This suggests that learning a second language can lead to structural and functional changes in the brain.
Scientists have created a voice recognition system that can identify subtle cues in speech to determine attitudes and opinions. The system, developed by researchers at the University of Washington, uses audio recordings to recognize patterns in speech, such as faster talking speeds and louder pitches when expressing strong opinions.
The University of Delaware has received a $3.3 million NSF grant to develop a program that aims to increase the recruitment, retention, and advancement of women faculty, particularly in STEM fields. The five-year program will provide research support and mentoring opportunities for faculty.
The University of Gothenburg has received grants for the recruitment of computational linguist Shalom Lappin and philosopher Paul Russell, both from top-ranked institutions. The grants total SEK 189 million over ten years, supporting their research in language, philosophy, and moral responsibility.
Researchers found that taste-related words activate emotional centers and gustatory cortices, whereas literal words only stimulate emotion when part of a sentence. Metaphorical sentences may spark increased brain activity in emotion-related regions due to physical associations.
Researchers found that brain activity is more similar to that of speakers when listeners can predict what they will say, even before a sentence is spoken. This suggests the brain acts as a prediction machine, anticipating events in communication.
A study published in Current Biology found that lactase persistence variants were at medium frequencies among the Khoe people, but very low or absent among San hunter-gatherers. The research suggests that pastoralist practices were brought to southern Africa by a small group of migrants from eastern Africa.
The Holberg Prize 2014 has been awarded to scholar Michael Cook for his groundbreaking research on the relationship between Islam, religion, and politics. Cook's work emphasizes the role of religious values in shaping Islamic civilization from the medieval period to the present.
The study found that voices similar to one's own convey a sense of community and social belongingness. Key gender differences were identified, with females preferring breathier voices and males preferring shorter average word length. Regional dialects also played a significant role in voice preferences.
The five Neimark Award winners explore biostatistics, molecular plant sciences, and particle astrophysics among other areas. Their research in second language acquisition also sheds light on human cognition.
The 88th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America will take place in Minneapolis, featuring cutting-edge research on various aspects of language. Researchers will present papers and posters on topics such as dialect features in social media, differences in Black and White American Sign Language, and changes in accent over time.
Children who speak dual-marking languages grasp the concept of 'two' earlier than English-speaking counterparts and learn number words faster. The study suggests that naturalistic speech is critical to number word learning, but teaching routines are still necessary for later math performance.
The University of Texas at Arlington has received $270,000 in NSF grants to document and revitalize Native American languages through participatory models. The projects aim to preserve indigenous cultures and ensure the survival of endangered languages.
Fluent bilinguals have both languages active at all times, regardless of conscious use. This suggests that they control parallel language activity and select intended language without conscious thought.
Researchers at MIT create systems that can translate natural-language descriptions into working code in a few narrow cases. The method involves mapping regular expressions to equivalent natural-language expressions, enabling programmers to specify complex searches using simple language.
Researchers are working on creating a model that can accurately distinguish word meanings using a weighted map of relationships created from hundreds of thousands of documents. This approach utilizes supercomputers and Hadoop to process large amounts of text data, enabling the development of more effective language technologies.
A new study by MIT researchers shows that people make mental edits when processing confusing information and use specific strategies to make sense of language. They also adapt their approach when presented with increasingly nonsensical sentences, inferring lower amounts of 'noise' in the language.
A new study from the University of Pennsylvania found that children as young as 2 understand basic grammar rules when they first learn to speak, contradicting a long-held debate. The research also applied statistical analysis to data from the famous Project Nim experiment and found that Nim Chimpsky never grasped such rules.
A new species of leafcutter bee, Megachile chomskyi, has been found in Texas. The species is known for its narrow preference for specific pollen sources, particularly the Evening-Primrose Family. Its unique characteristics include an elongated tongue and mandible structure.
Researchers found that nearly a million measurements show two-thirds of Philadelphia vowels are changing, with some shifts towards Northern influences. The study spans over a century and involves over 1,000 people.
A new project called Wordovators will study how people create, learn and use new words through mathematical modeling and large-scale computer games. Players from around the world will be recruited to perform tasks and challenges in invented languages.
According to MIT researchers, human language may have originated in birdsong, combining an expression layer with a lexical layer. This combination triggered the emergence of complex communication patterns, including finite vocabularies and melodic capacity.
Researchers have developed a sophisticated tool to reconstruct protolanguages, the precursors of modern languages, with high accuracy. The system analyzes sound changes at the phonetic level and has been applied to 142,000 word forms from 637 Austronesian languages, producing results that are 85% accurate compared to manual reconstruct...
A new research unit at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz will investigate how differences between individuals and communities arise or are created, and how these change or disappear. The study aims to understand the conditions that obtain to human differentiation and categorization.
A person's style of speech, including the pronunciation of 's' sounds and vocal resonance, affects how listeners perceive their gender. According to CU-Boulder researcher Lal Zimman, a higher pitch can still be perceived as male if the speaker pronounces 's' sounds in a lower frequency.
Researchers found that students attending national research institutions increase their use of standard pronunciation, while those attending community colleges show little change. College choice plays a significant role in shaping linguistic variations among adolescents.
Spatial cognition researchers will form a virtual institute to collaborate and advance the field of spatial intelligence and learning. The Thematic Network in Spatial Cognition aims to establish spatial cognition as a scientific discipline, with relevance to education in STEM fields and professional areas.
The study suggests that languages develop word order rules to minimize miscommunication across a noisy channel. Researchers found a correlation between word order and case markings, with strongly case-marked languages like Japanese defaulting to SOV word order.
Using different languages to discuss and express emotions in multilingual families may impact children's emotional understanding and regulation. Parents' language choices can influence their children's emotional competence.
The University of Houston has received a nearly $100,000 grant from the National Security Agency to offer a professional training program for Chinese language teachers in Texas. The two-week program, supported by STARTALK, will focus on teaching methodologies and techniques for teaching Chinese as a second language.
Marta Fairclough, associate professor at University of Houston, receives Fulbright grant to study Croatian as a heritage language in Croatia. The six-month project aims to document her own learning experience and shed light on the importance of teaching heritage languages.
Researchers create 'Literal Lucy' to test speakers' ability to distinguish between literal and pragmatic meaning. The study finds that adopting a third-party perspective improves reliability in making this distinction.
Linguists are racing to document and revitalize struggling languages with the help of new digital tools. The National Geographic Society has created a comprehensive platform featuring eight talking dictionaries containing over 32,000 word entries in endangered languages, alongside audio recordings and photographs.
Linguist Michael Cysouw disputes Quentin Atkinson's claim that the cradle of language is in southwest Africa, citing inconsistent results from comparative linguistics analysis. The study's findings suggest the site of language origin may be located in eastern Africa or the Caucasus, rather than supporting an 'Out-of-Africa' model.