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New research on language acquisition in babies leads scientists to believe that babies map sounds and critical aspects of their language before they begin speaking.

This article describes the result of an experiment which examined babies' neural responses to social interactions with their parents. They found the amount of brain activity had a positive correlation with their future language development and acquisition at three years old.

Of all the terrible sounds in the world, few are worse than that of a screaming baby -- especially when it's sitting next to you on an international flight. Now, science has an explanation for why the sound of human screaming is so awful.

How do babies develop differently, and how does it relate to the brain? How do genetics, environment, etc. play a role?

Feature article on Kanzi and Panbanisha, two bonobo apes, and the work of Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, head scientist at the Great Ape Trust in Iowa. Savage-Rumbaugh asserts that apes can acquire a lot of language if they learn it the same way human babies do, and is attempting to create conditions that foster the apes' acquisition of lexical symbols, as well as a greater understanding of spoken human language.

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.

"More than many nations, China is a place where names are imbued with deep significance. Western companies looking to bring their products to China face a problem not unlike that of Chinese parents naming a baby boy... And so the art of picking a brand name that resonates with Chinese consumers is no longer an art. It has become a sort of science, with consultants, computer programs and linguistic analyses to ensure that what tickles a Mandarin ear does not grate on a Cantonese one. ... Precisely why some Chinese words are so freighted with emotion is anyone's guess. But Denise Sabet, the vice general manager at Labbrand, suggests the reasons include cultural differences and the Chinese reliance on characters for words, rather than a phonetic alphabet. "

A community-based program in Providence, Rhode Island aims to reverse the verbal achievement gap between affluent and low-income families. On average, by the time they are 3 years old, children in professional families have heard about 30 million more words than children from lower-income households. Through a yearlong series of home visits, Providence Talks aims to coach low-income parents to speak more, and differently, to their children.

Using a brain-imaging technique that examines the entire infant brain, University of Washington researchers have found that the anatomy of certain brain areas - the hippocampus and cerebellum - can predict children's language abilities at one year of age. Infants with a greater concentration of gray and white matter in the cerebellum and the hippocampus showed greater language ability at age 1, as measured by babbling, recognition of familiar names and words, and ability to produce different types of sounds. This is the first study to identify a relationship between language and the cerebellum and hippocampus in infants. Neither brain area is well-known for its role in language: the cerebellum is typically linked to motor learning, while the hippocampus is commonly recognized as a memory processor. "Looking at the whole brain produced a surprising result and scientists live for surprises. It wasn't the language areas of the infant brain that predicted their future linguistic skills, but instead brain areas linked to motor abilities and memory processing," Kuhl said. "Infants have to listen and memorize the sound patterns used by the people in their culture, and then coax their own mouths and tongues to make these sounds in order join the social conversation and get a response from their parents." The findings could reflect infants' abilities to master the motor planning for speech and to develop the memory requirements for keeping the sound patterns in mind. "The brain uses many general skills to learn language," Kuhl said. "Knowing which brain regions are linked to this early learning could help identify children with developmental disabilities and provide them with early interventions that will steer them back toward a typical developmental path."

ASL dictionary Browse thousands of words in the ASL dictionary online. May 2012: There are linguistic and educational benefits of learning both American Sign Language and spoken/written English. Deaf children can acquire two languages ... An interview with Francois Grosjean by Nataly Kelly, Chief Research Offier, Common Sense Advisory. Not only does this site act as a dictionary for ASL, but it teachers baby signing and finger signing too! It also highlights benefits of knowing sign.

An article that further elucidates ideas brought up in class about becoming bilingual at a young age. Interesting enough, I discovered this article from Descubre.com, my Spanish class' practice site.

suggests that different languages have different rhythms, and that those rhythms are also reflected in the music of that culture

Perhaps this has to do with the babies crying study also? "...not only are human neonates capable of producing different cry melodies, but they prefer to produce those melody patterns that are typical for the ambient language they have heard during their foetal life."

"While we know abstractly that we are hearing a sequence of arbitrary sounds, it feels as if thoughts are simply pouring into our minds... Learning to understand a language is like cracking a deeply encrypted code." "Babies are born knowing a great deal about language. They also have powerful learning procedures that allow them to add to that knowledge and, in particular, to learn all the details and peculiarities of the language of their own community."