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Language Learning

How Does the Brain Learn Language?

We communicate with one another using movements (gestures), sounds (speech), and symbols (writing). Language is intrinsically tied to our emotions, social relationships, and many other aspects of cognition. Much is still mysterious about the process. Here’s what we know so far.
Language Learning

KidTalk: A Natural Experiment in the Time of Covid-19

A new citizen-science project offers parents a virtual scrapbook to record their children’s speech, so researchers can see how their language skills develop in home settings—as well as see how they may be affected by staying at home during the pandemic.
Language Learning

Finding the Rhythm of Literacy

Q&A with Nina Kraus, Ph.D.

Dana grantee Nina Kraus and her lab discovered that synchronization ability, like tapping your foot along to a beat, matches the rapid brain activity linked to reading, language and phonological skills. Understanding children’s rhythmic strengths and bottlenecks could help teachers help them improve language skills.
world map of countries made of speech bubbles
Language Learning

What Bilingual Has Meant to Me

Viewpoint

Does being bilingual help preserve cognition? Our columnist, in his 80s now, thinks so, and is a believer in the adage, "Use it or lose it."
Violinists hands
Language Learning

Do Complex Tasks Train Your Brain to be More Efficient?

Musicians and people who speak multiple languages are faster at identifying sound location and type but show differences in speed of recalling past sounds.
baby with toy
Language Learning

Music, Art, and Cognitive Benefit: Separating Fact from Fallacy

Q&A with Elizabeth S. Spelke , Ph.D.

Dana grantee Elizabeth Spelke discusses her recent study on the effects of music classes on math abilities in children
man has one language going in ear and another coming out of other ear
Language Learning

The Cognitive Benefits of Being Bilingual

Today, more of the world’s population is bilingual or multilingual than monolingual. In addition to facilitating cross-cultural communication, this trend also positively affects cognitive abilities. Researchers have shown that the bilingual brain can have better attention and task-switching capacities than the monolingual brain, thanks to its developed ability to inhibit one language while using another. In addition, bilingualism has positive effects at both ends of the age spectrum: Bilingual children as young as seven months can better adjust to environmental changes, while bilingual seniors can experience less cognitive decline.
Language Learning

Children Need Natural Languages, Signed or Spoken

Sign languages are as different, and as specific to their communities, as spoken languages. They are, in fact, true natural human languages—a relatively recently discovered fact with crucial implications for the education of deaf children, say cognitive neuroscientist Daphne Bavelier and her colleagues. They probe both the profound similarities and notable differences that characterize signed and spoken languages, including how they are processed by the brain, and ask if the “devised systems” of communication now being tried with deaf children can ever replace the benefits of natural language.

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