Description: Despite the social isolation imposed in order to help manage the consequences of Caovid-19 pandemic we are able to stay in touch and we are able to meet while we work from home (assuming we still have work). Internet connectivity and the free availability of apps such as Zoom are making it possible for… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Language Development
Did Language Evolution Hijack Complex Tool Making Skills?
Description: The nature of our spoken communication skills is most certainly a big part of our adaptive evolutionary advantage as a species. Using language, we can break out of the ‘here and now’ and discuss past events and future possibilities and we can organize and coordinate complex individual and social tasks and strategies using our… Read more »
Why Watch Toddler TV?
Description: It is old news now, but do you recall any of the fuss about the Teletubbies TV show? When it first arrive to North American TV screens in 1997 there was an intense storm of media discussion about how very young children (2 and even younger) loved it and parents were perplexed as they… Read more »
Infant Hearing Deficits: Developmental Puzzles to Mysteries
Description: Malcom Gladwell, in various places writes and speaks about how in many areas of life but particularly in areas relating to health and wellbeing we have or are experiencing a shift in the task of figuring out how to make our lives and those of people around us better (healthier, longer, richer etc.). What… Read more »
Baby Strokes: Plasticity and Hemispheric Shifts in Loction of Function
Description: Two questions before we get into this topic. First, who has strokes? Second, if someone has a massive left hemisphere stroke what will likely happen to their spoken language abilities? Old people and language will suffer right? Well, not entirely. You see, infants, and in fact, newborns (about 1 in 4000) can have strokes…. Read more »
Infant – Parent “Conversations”: Synchronization of Vocalizations, Movements, AND Brainwaves!
Description: You may have heard in and an Introductory Psychology course or in a Child Development course that when a mother talks to her infant (fathers too) the parent changes their vocal patterns by exaggerating aspects of their speech in what we sometimes call “Motherese.” You may have also heard or even seen video examples… Read more »
Do Birds Learn to Sing the Same Way that Infants Learn to Speak?
Description: Before you read any further go and listen to these two YouTube linked videos ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaC6D1cW1Hs and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVuUMCLF48k). They feature birdsong, an specifically Zebra Finch birdsong. Now you have not likely thought of this but birds have to sing the right songs the right way if they are to get by in their worlds…. Read more »
Talking to Babies: A new look at Motherese
Description: Have you heard a form of speech called “Motherese”? Well even if you do not know it by name it is the pattern or form of speech that mothers AND father and adults in general typically use when they are speaking to infants and it is basically universal. For years in developmental psychology and… Read more »
SES and Academic Success: The Importance of Early Vocabulary
Description: Children raised in low socioeconomic status (SES) families do not do as well in school as children from high SES families. Why do you think that might be the case? You should be able to generate a long list of possible hypotheses. Perhaps the schools they go to are not as well supplied or… Read more »
When Brain Scanning is Too Slow: The Role of the Hippocampus in Language Processing
Description: From answering fill in the blank questions to be able to follow a conversation when you can hear every single word, we are actually quite good at dealing with missing information. We are not however doing without information that is missed at the sensation level, as our brain is finding the missing bits for… Read more »
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