Infant-directed speech, or "baby talk", displays similar properties across 36 different languages.
Children exposed to diverse regional accents on a frequent basis have an edge when it comes to language acquisition.
The earlier language disorders in children are identified, the earlier help can be provided to insure fluid language acquisition.
Children with developmental language disorder have less myelin in parts of the brain associated with acquiring rules and habits, as well as brain areas associated with language production and comprehension.
Bilingualism can slow and mitigate the course of age-related changes in the brain.
Older adults who studied to learn a new language showed similar improvements in critical cognitive skills as those who used brain training apps to stay sharp.
A new study may answer why it is so difficult for us to learn a second language as we enter adulthood.
Learning a new language can affect musical processing in children, researchers report. Findings support the theory that musical and linguistic functions are closely linked in the developing brain.
Within months of learning a new language, increased activity in brain areas associated with auditory processing, memory, and grammatical comprehension occurs. As language skills improve, the activity decreases.
Learning a new language as an adult alters hemisphere specialization for comprehension, but not for production.
Parents who speak to their infant in parentese, or baby-talk, help increase their child's language acquisition skills.
Both adults and young children assign a narrower interpretation to a word if it is exemplified by an atypical category member. The study sheds new light on how children learn to see, talk and understand the world around them.
