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Melody Jackson, a computer scientist at Georgia Tech, has been outfitting service dogs with computerized vests, so that in an emergency they can find another human and pull a mechanical lever on the vest that triggers an audio message: My handler needs you to come with me!

The importance of FOXP2, and how it affects language.

People have a deep desire to communicate with animals, as is evident from the way they converse with their dogs, enjoy myths about talking animals or devote lifetimes to teaching chimpanzees how to speak. A delicate, if tiny, step has now been taken toward the real thing: the creation of a mouse with a human gene for language.

Scientists have implemented the human gene deemed responsible for our ability to communicate into a strain of mice. This could be the first step towards having talking animals someday, and it also allows us to understand more about how genetics affect language.

Researchers at Harvard University have found that humans aren't the only ones who can groove to a beat - some other species can dance, too. The capability was previously believed to be specific to humans. The research team found that only species with the capacity for vocal mimicry, that is, copying sound, seem capable of beat induction, the ability to discern the beat in music. Beat induction also enables such actions as clapping, making music together and dancing to a rhythm. The data suggests that some of the brain mechanisms needed for human dance may have originally evolved to allow us to imitate sound.

Noc was a Beluga whale who learned to speak English (yes, "speak"). This article includes some discussion of mimicry vs. communication.

Eye contact plays a bigger role in communication than previously thought. Our pupils, which we cannot control, expands or contracts based on the attractiveness of what we're looking at. Blinking speed can also tell us something. You blink faster when talking to someone you find attractive. Too much constant eye contact can make people feel uncomfortable. A reason why children are often victims of pet attacks is that they stare too long at the animal and the animal feels threatened. The best use of eye contact is regular intervals rather than constant eye contact.

New research suggests that dolphins may have a spoken language of their own; in a recent study by Russian researchers two dolphins communicated using a series of whistles and clicks (called pulses), and didn't ever interrupt each other. They also noted that the pulses sounded like sentences. With new recording technologies, the researchers were able to separate potential words from filler clicks, and the researchers hope to one day build a machine that will allow humans and dolphins to communicate.

"Koko, arguably the world's most famous gorilla, has died at the age of 46. Known for her ability to communicate through sign language, Koko forever changed our conceptions of primate intelligence and emotional capacities."

Almost every language on the planet includes words that sound like the things they describe. Crash, yawn, glug… speech is just full of these onomatopoeias. And because they have their root in real things they're often easy to identify. Even a non-native speaker might recognise the Hindi "achhee" (a sneeze) or the Indonesian "gluk" (glug). Because these onomatopoeias are so widely encountered, easy to pick up, and convey information might they be the first form of language? That's the argument presented in a recent paper published in Animal Cognition. It points out that our ancestors would have begun encountering more and more noises that we could repeat. Tool use/ manufacture in particular, with its smashes and crashes, would be a prime source of onomatopoeias. Mimicking these sounds could have allowed early humans to "talk" about the objects; describing goals, methods, and objects. Might handing someone a rock and going "smash" been a way to ask them to make a tool? Perhaps different noises could even refer to different tools. Humans are good at extracting information from mimicked sounds. These sounds also trigger "mirror neurons" - parts of the brain that fire when we observe other people doing something - allowing us to repeat those actions. Seeing someone hold a rock a certain way and saying "smash" could have helped our ancestors teach the proper way to smash. But the biggest benefit would be the fact that you can communicate about these objects without seeing them. Having a sound for a tool would allow you to ask someone for it, even if they didn't have it on them. Given these advantages, it's easy to imagine how evolution would have favoured people who mimicked noises. Over time, this would have driven the development of more and more complex communication; until language as we recognise it emerged. Following this narrative, you can see (or maybe hear) how an a human ancestor with almost no language capability gradual

Documentary about Whale communication; similar to what we talked about in class. Talks about pods and different accents and interactions.

Robert Provine, a neuroscientist and professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, examines laughter as a means of exploring mechanisms and evolution of vocal production, perception and social behavior. He examines laugh structure, compares human to chimp laughter, sociolinguistic contexts of laughter, the contagiousness of laughter, and pinpoints directions for future study. This article, originally printed in American Scientist 84. 1 (Jan-Feb, 1996): 38-47, is a more in-depth, scholarly article than the other, related article on laughter that I posted: Provine's "The Science of Laughter."

"Chimpanzees appear to consider who they are "talking to" before they call out. Researchers found that wild chimps that spotted a poisonous snake were more likely to make their "alert call" in the presence of a chimp that had not seen the threat. This indicates that the animals "understand the mindset" of others."

I was surprised by this article and by the fact that sometimes, our seemingly boring moments in life has the potential to transform into a great college essay. This article made me change my views of college essays and reexamine what topics I want to write about.

I liked the ideas this essay shared because I realized that if I were to have written my college essay prior to reading this article, my essay would've been similar to the majority of students who submit college essays. This site stresses the importance of being different and that having humility, humor, and personal stories in college essays are attractive. But the article did imply that there are limits and that some things such as torturing animals and showing inconsideration to other people, are inappropriate.

It seems more common now for counselors and advisors to recommend writing about everyday things, but with our own personal "flair." So it was helpful to read in this article about how there are some negative everyday experiences that are important to leave out.

Euskara is Europe's oldest language, yet is teetering on the brink of extinction. Spoken in the autonomous communities of Navarre in northern Spain and the Basque Country across northern Spain and south-western France, Euskara is a linguistic mystery: it has no known origin or relation to any other language, an anomaly that has stumped linguistic experts for ages. The distinct language is a point of pride for Basques. An estimated 700,000 of them, or 35% of the Basque population, speak it today. Euskara has been shaped over time by the Basques' close contact with nature. The language contains varied vocabulary for landscapes, animals, the wind, the sea ‒ and about 100 ways to say 'butterfly'. The language may still be around, in part, because its early speakers were geographically secluded from the rest of the world by the Pyrenees.

A linguist who began to train her border collie for sheepdog competitions using a dog whistle realized that the commands reminded her of language. The article goes on to detail communication between dogs and people, and how dog's cognition and understanding goes past following basic commands. For example, Chaser, the border collie, was able to fast map and learn things through reference cues - which goes much farther past simply understanding commands. It turns out, shepherds use only a few whistle commands with their sheepdogs, but the whistles change meaning based on situation, pitch, speed, etc, and provide information to the dog, similar to prosody, a key part of human language.

Dr. Michael Rich is the director of the Center on Media and Child Health and the Clinic for Interactive Media and Internet Disorders. Rich notes some major takeaways: 1.Babies' brains are elastic: the first three years of life are critical for both language and overall brain development. Unlike other animals, humans are born with embryonic brains, rendering babies helpless and in need of caregivers while also providing a developmental advantage: allowing us to build our brains in response to the challenges and stimuli of the environment we're in," In the first three years of life, the brain triples in volume due to synaptic connections, therefore stimuli and challenges babies receive within that time frame help babies build creative, flexible and resilient brains. 2. Face to face interaction is valuable. 3. It's not just about screen time duration, but the type of content being consumed. For example, young children can interact meaningfully via Facetime, if they've previously interacted with that person. However, screens as a distraction for kids in lieu of human interaction= not good.

This article talks about how screen time affects babies language development. The first nine months of a baby's life are important for a child to understand sounds and how they should be used. They are able to understand language much earlier than they actually start talking. Many doctors and scientists encourage parents to communicate with their babies as soon as possible to develop language. Recent studies found that babies that spent more time in front of a screen than talking suffered in language development. I found it interesting that not all screen time is necessarily bad for a child's language development. For example, FaceTime can be beneficially for children because they are interacting in a meaningful way but using screens as a distraction for kids can be harmful.