The Los Angeles Times: Does being bilingual help children learn to prioritize information, provide a defense against some effects of Alzheimer’s or just provide a great workout for the brain? All of the above, according to studies discussed Friday at the 2011 American Assn. for the Advancement of Science meeting More
We all want our children to be smart. Why else would parents spend millions of dollars on videos and DVDS designed and marketed specifically for infants and young children every year? But do they work? NBC’s ‘Today’ show recently suggested that claims from the manufacturers of baby media products may More
It may not be obvious, but hearing two languages regularly during pregnancy puts infants on the road to bilingualism by birth. According to new findings in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, infants born to bilingual mothers (who spoke both languages regularly during pregnancy) exhibit different More
We are surrounded by a multitude of different accents every day. Even when a speaker of another English dialect pronounces words differently than we do, we are typically able to recognize their words. Psychologist Catherine Best from MARCS Laboratories, University of Western Sydney, along with colleagues from Haskins Laboratories and More
Although babies typically start talking around 12 months of age, their brains actually begin processing certain aspects of language much earlier, so that by the time they start talking, babies actually already know hundreds of words. While studying language acquisition in infants can be a challenging endeavor, researchers have begun More
Understanding the concept of a “living thing” is a late developmental achievement. Early research by Jean Piaget, showed that kids attribute “life status” to things that move on their own (e.g. clouds or bikes) and even 10-year-olds have difficulty understanding the scope of a living thing. New research, supported by More
