Language Acquisition News

November 20, 2024

Top Headlines

R Sounds Are Rough, and L Sounds Are Smooth, According to Cross-Cultural Study

Nov. 20, 2024 — People around the world associate a trilled R sound with a rough texture and a jagged shape, and an L sound with smooth texture and a flat shape, according to the findings of a new study. Researchers ...

AI Needs to Work on Its Conversation Game

Nov. 12, 2024 — Linguistics and computer science researchers have discovered some of the root causes of why AI large language models perform poorly in human-like ...

Ouch! Commonalties Found in Pain Vocalizations and Interjections Across Cultures

Nov. 12, 2024 — An interdisciplinary team explored possible regularities in vocal emotional expressions by comparing expressive interjections, such as 'wow,' to nonlinguistic vocalizations, such as screams and ...

New Study Sheds Light on Language Development in Children With Hearing Loss

Nov. 14, 2024 — Researchers find a link between early vocabulary composition and later language development in children with cochlear ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:00pm EST

Foreign Accents Protect People from Being Judged for Bad Grammar

Oct. 31, 2024 — Speaking with a foreign accent mitigates the impact of making grammatical errors, depending on the personality type of the listener, a new study has ...

Scanning, Scrolling, and Swiping: New Research Uncovers Why Our Brains Are Effective at Quickly Processing Short Messages

Oct. 23, 2024 — A team of linguistics and psychology researchers has discovered that when a brief sentence is flashed, our brains detect its basic linguistic ...

Bilingualism May Maintain Protection Against Alzheimer's

Oct. 22, 2024 — In a study, researchers use neuroimaging methods to examine brain resilience in regions of the brain linked to language and aging. They found that the hippocampus in bilinguals with Alzheimer's ...

Bilingualism Makes the Brain More Efficient, Especially When Learned at a Young Age

Oct. 10, 2024 — A new study from The Neuro (Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital) of McGill university, the University of Ottawa and the University of Zaragoza ...

'Who's a Good Boy?' Humans Use Dog-Specific Voices for Better Canine Comprehension

Oct. 1, 2024 — Humans slow their own speech when talking to their dogs, and this slower tempo matches their pets' receptive abilities, allowing the dogs to better ...

How Are Pronouns Processed in the Memory-Region of Our Brain?

Sep. 27, 2024 — A new study shows how individual brain cells in the hippocampus respond to pronouns. 'This may help us unravel how we remember what we ...

Lengthened Consonants Mark the Beginning of Words

Sep. 24, 2024 — Speech consists of a continuous stream of acoustic signals, yet humans can segment words from each other with astonishing precision and speed. To find out how this is possible, a team of linguists ...

Reducing the Cultural Bias of AI With One Sentence

Sep. 17, 2024 — Cultural values and traditions differ across the globe, but large language models (LLMs), used in text-generating programs such as ChatGPT, have a tendency to reflect values from English-speaking and ...

Vital Language Sites in Brain Act Like Connectors in a Social Network

Sep. 16, 2024 — When surgeons perform brain surgery on people with brain tumors or epilepsy, they need to remove the tumor or abnormal tissue while preserving parts of the brain that control language and movement. A ...

Researchers Give Adult Zebra Finches Back Their Ability to Learn New Songs

Sep. 3, 2024 — We all know the adage, 'You can't teach an old dog new tricks.' As we age, our ability to learn new skills, like mastering a foreign language or picking up a musical instrument, seems to fade. The ...

Automatic Speech Recognition Learned to Understand People With Parkinson's Disease -- By Listening to Them

Sep. 27, 2024 — Listening to people with Parkinson's disease made an automatic speech recognizer 30-percent more accurate, according to a new ...

How Synchronization Supports Social Interactions

Sep. 25, 2024 — Turn-taking dynamics of social interactions are important for speech and gesture synchronization, enabling conversations to proceed efficiently, according to a new ...

How Do New Words Arise in Social Media?

Sep. 3, 2024 — The more centrally connected someone is within their social media network, the more likely that new words they use will become adopted into mainstream language, according to a new ...

Researchers Identify Basic Approaches for How People Recognize Words

Aug. 29, 2024 — Recognizing spoken words is a split-second competition, and a new study defines how people approach that competition and ultimately recognize words. The researchers identified three main approaches ...

Researcher Finds Sound Progress in Babies' Speech Development

Aug. 23, 2024 — The sounds babies make in their first year of life may be less random and more self-driven than previously believed, according to new ...

Study Explains Why Laws Are Written in an Incomprehensible Style

Aug. 19, 2024 — A new study on 'legalese' suggests this convoluted language acts to convey a sense of authority in legal documents. The researchers also found that even non-lawyers use legalese when asked ...

New Brain-Computer Interface Allows Man With ALS to 'Speak' Again

Aug. 14, 2024 — A new brain-computer interface translates brain signals into speech with up to 97 percent accuracy. Researchers implanted sensors in the brain of a man with severely impaired speech due to ...

Babbling Babies Need Timely Responses to Learn Language, Social Norms

Aug. 12, 2024 — New research shows the timing of others' reactions to their babbling is key to how babies begin learning language and social norms -- a process evident in infants' interactions with a ...

Brain Activity Associated With Specific Words Is Mirrored Between Speaker and Listener During a Conversation

Aug. 2, 2024 — When two people interact, their brain activity becomes synchronized, but it was unclear until now to what extent this 'brain-to-brain coupling' is due to linguistic information or other ...

Words Like 'This' and 'That' Act as Attention Tools Across Languages

July 29, 2024 — Words like 'this' and 'that' or 'here' and 'there' occur in all languages. Researchers show that such 'demonstrative' words are used to direct ...

Generative AI Pioneers the Future of Child Language Learning

July 26, 2024 — Researchers create a storybook generation system for personalized vocabulary ...

Language Affects How Quickly We Perceive Shades of Color

July 24, 2024 — People who speak a language that has multiple words for different shades of colour perceive the shades more ...

Creativity Starts in the Cradle, New Research Shows

July 10, 2024 — New research indicates that babies can begin grasping complex language and ...

Major Trial Looks at Most Effective Speech Therapy for People With Parkinson's Disease

July 10, 2024 — A major clinical trial has shown the Lee Silverman Voice Treatment (LSVT LOUD ) is more effective than the current speech and language therapy commonly provided, when treating patients with ...

New Research Finds Biases Encoded in Language Across Cultures and History

June 30, 2024 — Researchers share evidence that people's attitudes are deeply woven into language and culture across the globe and ...

Study Provides Insights Into the Use of Decodable Texts in Early Reading Instruction

June 26, 2024 — Reading comprehension is crucial for success in school and society but can be difficult for children initially. Decodable texts are widely believed to help by focusing on taught letter-sound ...

Conversation Is Changing: Why People Speak More Alike Today

June 25, 2024 — Over a 20-year period people from these sectors changed their behavior -- resonating with one another significantly more than they used to and gearing towards a more engaging style. We talk like ...

Rethinking English Essay Scores: The Argument for Argument Over Grammar

June 18, 2024 — To get high scores at essay writing tests, learners of English as a foreign language need to focus on good arguments more than on complex grammar. The finding challenges conventional approaches to ...

Using Novel Discourse Treatment to Improve Communication in People With Aphasia

June 17, 2024 — A new study has found that a novel discourse treatment improved the communication abilities of people with aphasia, a language disorder commonly resulting from ...

Detecting Early Linguistic Signs of Dementia by Studying the Natural Speech of Seniors

June 11, 2024 — A study led by linguists has found that early linguistic signs of dementia can be detected through the study of the natural speech of senior Singaporeans. The novel study revealed that participants ...