Shape bias helps us categorize the world. Shape bias refers to the tendency of children to sort similarly-shaped objects into a category and apply the same name to them. It is an assumption that children make to help them learn. In this case, it allows children to quickly learn names by linking words to objects. […]
.
I speak differently to my baby than to other adults. Is it actually helping them learn?
Parentese is more than baby talk. Named after parents around the world, parentese is a style of speaking that features a higher pitch and drawn-out vowels. Believe it or not, parentese is not baby-talk. Baby-talk is when a parent babbles to their infant. They might say things like “babababa” or mispronounce words and say things […]
.
Your toddler knows that new words (probably!) label things they don’t yet have a name for!
Mutual exclusivity helps babies learn about the world. Mutual exclusivity is a generally helpful assumption that young children (and adults) use as they learn a language. Under this assumption, they tend to believe an object should have just one name. This leads them to expect a new name for a new object and to avoid […]
.
Do words look or sound like what they mean? Sometimes! Iconicity vs. Arbitrariness
How much does a word resemble what it refers to? In languages, we use words to symbolize many things, like objects, concepts, sounds, people, actions, and anything else we might want to say! But why do certain words symbolize certain things? Why is a couch a couch? Many times, there’s no real reason!* Linguists use […]
.
Observing how something changes over time: longitudinal studies
Longitudinal studies, like their name, are long. Often in research, scientists are curious about how time will affect a particular aspect of life. In order to study this relationship, they might create a longitudinal study. A longitudinal study is the study of the same group of adult or child participants over a period of time. […]
.
Scientists can see your baby’s brainwaves! Using EEG to study language processing
Studying language through infants’ brainwaves. How babies learn language is deeply fascinating. Many experimental methods can help us understand when and how they acquire new words. In earlier posts, we discussed using behavioral methods and observational methods. A third type of method that is used to study word learning directly investigates how children’s (or adult’s) […]
.
Yes, you speak your own language: idiolects
Idiolects make everyone sound different. Similar to a dialect, an idiolect is a personal dialect. Just like groups of people have regional dialects and accents, every individual person has a unique way of speaking (or signing). They may vary in how fast or slow they talk, how they pronounce certain words, how breathy or raspy their […]
.
Your baby’s vocabulary is more than just the words they can say.
Everyone has both a receptive vocabulary and a productive vocabulary. Combined, they hold all the words we know. A vocabulary is well known to be all the words a person knows. A receptive vocabulary describes all the words a person understands, and is also called a comprehension vocabulary. A productive vocabulary describes all the words […]
.
More than words: infants also learn complex rules for combining words and phrases
Did you know that the sentences you say aren’t just a string of words in an order, but clusters of phrases that build on each other, like building with blocks? Scientists study the structure of a language and the way words relate to each other, called syntax. The syntax, or form, of a sentence is […]
.
Important EEG Waves
When we measure baby brainwaves, what do we measure and what does it mean? When scientists measure brainwaves, they find a lot of them happening at different times. Scientists call these waves components, but we will continue to call them waves in this post. Some of the waves show up […]