Feature Channels: Speech & Language

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Released: 6-Apr-2015 5:00 AM EDT
Eye-Tracking Technology Aids Wichita State Student's Research on Infant Behavior
Wichita State University

Wichita State University grad student Jennifer Francois is conducting research that studies the ways in which infants' eyes track their mothers' faces -- a small detail that can have a big impact on a child's foundation for future language development.

Released: 25-Feb-2015 3:00 PM EST
Online Crowdsourcing Meets Speech Therapy
New York University

Crowdsourcing – where responses to a task are aggregated across a large number of individuals – can be an effective tool for rating sounds in speech disorders research, according to a study by NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.

Released: 24-Feb-2015 9:15 AM EST
Communicating Emotions
McGill University

Mandarin-speakers rely more on tone of voice rather than on facial cues to understand emotion compared to English-language speakers. This may be a result of the limited eye contact and more restrained facial expressions common in East Asian cultures.

Released: 19-Feb-2015 11:00 AM EST
Tracing Languages Back to Their Common Ancestors Through the Statistics of Sound Shifts
Santa Fe Institute

A statistical technique that sorts out when changes to words’ pronunciations most likely occurred in the evolution of a language offers a renewed opportunity to trace words and languages back to their earliest common ancestor or ancestors.

Released: 17-Feb-2015 8:45 AM EST
Crowdsourcing a Valid Option for Gathering Speech Ratings
New York University

Crowdsourcing – where responses to a task are aggregated across a large number of individuals recruited online – can be an effective tool for rating sounds in speech disorders research, according to a study by NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.

   
6-Feb-2015 2:00 PM EST
F-Bombs Notwithstanding, All Languages Skew Toward Happiness
University of Vermont

Arabic movie subtitles, Korean tweets, Russian novels, Chinese websites, English lyrics, and even the war-torn pages of the New York Times—research from the University of Vermont, examining billions of words, shows that these sources—and all human language—skews toward the use of happy words. This Big Data study confirms the 1969 Pollyanna Hypothesis that there is a universal human tendency to “look on and talk about the bright side of life.”

   
Released: 7-Jan-2015 8:00 AM EST
Do Infants Judge Others’ Language Proficiency? It Depends on Their Own, Research Shows
New York University

Monolingual infants expect others to understand only one language, an assumption not held by bilingual infants, a study by researchers at New York University and McGill University has found.

Released: 15-Dec-2014 11:05 AM EST
Serious Monkey Business: Linguistic Methods Uncover Sophisticated Meanings and Monkey Dialects
New York University

The same species of monkeys located in separate geographic regions use their alarm calls differently to warn of approaching predators, a linguistic analysis by a team of scientists reveals. The study reveals that monkey calls have a more sophisticated structure than was commonly thought.

Released: 9-Dec-2014 9:30 AM EST
Are You Helping Your Toddler’s Aggressive Behaviour?
Universite de Montreal

Physical aggression in toddlers has been thought to be associated with the frustration caused by language problems, but a recent study by researchers at the University of Montreal shows that this isn’t the case. The researchers did find, however, that parental behaviours may influence the development of an association between the two problems during early childhood. Frequent hitting, kicking, and a tendency to bite or push others are examples of physical aggression observed in toddlers.

Released: 2-Dec-2014 3:00 PM EST
Speaking of Language: Birthday v. Birfday and More
West Virginia University - Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Kirk Hazen, a linguistics professor in the Department of English at West Virginia University, wants everyone to learn how language works. His new book, “An Introduction to Language,” provides readers who have no background in linguistics a tour of English and how language works in their lives.

23-Oct-2014 6:00 PM EDT
The Science of Charismatic Voices
Acoustical Society of America (ASA)

When a right-wing Italian politician named Umberto Bossi suffered a severe stroke in 2004, his speech became permanently impaired. Strangely, this change impacted Bossi’s perception among his party’s followers -- from appearing authoritarian to benevolent. Now researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles think they know why.

23-Oct-2014 7:05 PM EDT
Hearing Loss in One Infant Twin Affects Mother’s Speech to Both Babies
Acoustical Society of America (ASA)

Is it possible that hearing loss in one infant from a pair of twins can affect the mother’s speech to both infants? A new acoustics study zeroes in on this question and suggests that not only is this alteration of speech entirely possible, but that mothers speak to both infants as if they are hearing impaired.

Released: 27-Oct-2014 10:00 AM EDT
Ultrasound Guides Tongue to Pronounce “R” Sounds
New York University

Using ultrasound technology to visualize the tongue’s shape and movement can help children with difficulty pronouncing “r” sounds, according to a small study by NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development and Montclair State University.

Released: 23-Oct-2014 2:00 AM EDT
A New Tune: There Is Intonation in Sign Language Too
University of Haifa

Intonation is an integral part of communication for all speakers. But can sign languages have intonation? A new study at the University of Haifa shows that signers use their faces to create intonational ‘melodies’ just as speakers use their voices, and that the melodies of the face can differ from one sign language to another.

Released: 6-Oct-2014 11:00 AM EDT
Children Understand Familiar Voices Better Than Those of Strangers
New York University

Familiar voices can improve spoken language processing among school-age children, according to a study by NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. However, the advantage of hearing a familiar voice only helps children to process and understand words they already know well, not new words that aren’t in their vocabularies.

Released: 6-Oct-2014 6:55 AM EDT
Kids' Oral Language Skills Can Predict Future Writing Difficulties
Universite de Montreal

Children's future writing difficulties can be identified before they even learn how to begin writing, according to a new study by Professor Phaedra Royle and Postdoctoral fellow Alexandra Marquis of the University of Montreal’s School of Speech Language Pathology and Audiology.

26-Sep-2014 9:55 AM EDT
Improving Babies’ Language Skills Before They’re Even Old Enough to Speak
Rutgers University

In the first months of life, when babies begin to distinguish sounds that make up language from all the other sounds in the world, they can be trained to more effectively recognize which sounds “might” be language, accelerating the development of the brain maps which are critical to language acquisition and processing, according to new by April Benasich and colleagues of Rutgers University-Newark -- published in the October 1 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

Released: 10-Sep-2014 3:00 PM EDT
Diverse Neighborhoods May Help Infants’ Social Learning
University of Chicago

Experiencing diverse communities by hearing different languages at the park, on a bus or in the grocery store may make babies more open-minded in their social learning, a new study finds.

Released: 27-Aug-2014 12:05 PM EDT
Parents, Listen Next Time Your Baby Babbles
University of Iowa

Parents who try to understand their baby's babbling let their infants know they can communicate, which leads to children forming complex sounds and using language more quickly. That’s according to a new study by the University of Iowa and Indiana University.

Released: 18-Aug-2014 6:00 PM EDT
Hand Gestures Improve Learning in Both Signers and Speakers
University of Chicago

Spontaneous gesture can help children learn, whether they use a spoken language or sign language, according to a new report.



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