Language Acquisition News

December 27, 2024

Top Headlines

Dyslexia Genetics Linked to Brain Structure

Dec. 18, 2024 — Dyslexia is a common learning difficulty in which genes often play a role. How do genes associated with dyslexia relate to brain structure in the general population? In a large-scale study, a team of scientists found that genetic variants that ...

Heart Rate Activity Influences When Infants Speak

Dec. 17, 2024 — A psychologist found that a baby's first sweet sounds and early attempts at forming words are directly linked to the baby's heart ...

Breaking Barriers: Study Uses AI to Interpret American Sign Language in Real-Time

Dec. 16, 2024 — A study is the first-of-its-kind to recognize American Sign Language (ASL) alphabet gestures using computer vision. Researchers developed a custom dataset of 29,820 static images of ASL hand ...

Mothers' Language Choices Have Double the Impact in Bilingual Families

Dec. 10, 2024 — New research shows that mothers have twice the impact on language exposure, challenging traditional parenting advice. In a new study, researchers found that there wasn't a single strategy that could be singled out as 'best' to raise a child ...

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Unraveling the Power and Influence of Language

Dec. 23, 2024 — A choice was made to include each word in this sentence. Every message, even the most mundane, is crafted with a specific frame in mind that impacts how the message is perceived. The study of framing ...

Could Online Technology Be a Clue as to Why Boys in Norway Are Outperforming Girls in Learning English as a Second Language?

Dec. 8, 2024 — Bucking conventionality, boys in Norway are making early gains in reading English as a second language and even outperforming girls at age 10 and 13 ...

Unlocking the Science of Sleep: How Rest Enhances Language Learning

Dec. 5, 2024 — Sleep is critical for all sorts of reasons, but a team of international scientists has discovered a new incentive for getting eight hours of sleep every night: it helps the brain to store and learn a ...

Scientists Discover Shared Genetic Foundations Between Musical Rhythm and Human Language

Nov. 27, 2024 — A study has revealed that genetic variants associated with higher likelihood of rhythm impairments tended to be also associated with higher ...

Great Apes Visually Track Subject-Object Relationships Like Humans Do, Study Finds

Nov. 26, 2024 — Great apes track events with their eyes in the same way that humans do, according to a new ...

Your Child, the Sophisticated Language Learner

Nov. 21, 2024 — Sentences contain subtle hints in their grammar that tell young children about the meaning of new words, according to new ...

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...

Tracking Other People's Minds in Communication

Dec. 18, 2024 — Language and social cognition are fundamental to human communication. But how do these capacities interact? In a review paper, researchers show how language and social cognition are integrated in ...

Hear This! Transforming Health Care With Speech-to-Text Technology

Nov. 21, 2024 — Researchers study the importance of enunciation when using speech-to-text software in medical ...

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 structure extremely quickly -- in roughly 150 ...

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 in Spain elaborates on bilingualism's role in ...

'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 understand their commands, according to a new ...

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 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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 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 ...

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 ...