ABC News reporter Denise Powell highlights a new study by MIT researchers that shows that music education could help a child’s language skills. Powell explains that, “the results of this study give a boost to the idea of music training in kindergarten students as a method of enhancing the way brain cells and neurons process and respond to pitch.”
Bucking conventional wisdom, research co-authored by Prof. Josh Tenenbaum shows that “picking up the subtleties of grammar in a a second language does not fade until well into the teens,” writes Dana G. Smith for Scientific American. “To become completely fluent, however, learning should start before the age of 10.”
New research suggests “children are highly skilled at learning the grammar of a new language up until the age of 17 or 18, much longer than previously thought,” reports Kashmira Gander in Newsweek. “We may need to go back to the drawing board in trying to explain why adults have trouble learning language,” Joshua Hartshorne, who co-wrote the study as a postdoc at MIT, tells Gander.
A study co-authored by Prof. Josh Tenenbaum finds that learning a new language should start before age 10 to achieve a native-like grasp of the grammar, reports BBC News. People remain highly skilled language learners until about 17 or 18, but then fall off, which Tenenbaum says could be due to “a biological change” or “something social or cultural.”
Jenny Anderson of Quartz describes a new study from MIT’s McGovern Institute and others showing that back-and-forth banter proved much more predictive of a child’s language development than the number of words spoken to them. “[MIT graduate student Rachel] Romeo and her colleagues believe that these conversational turns help to actually rewire and grow kids’ brains,” writes Anderson.
Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg are donating $30 million to an MIT and Harvard initiative to improve child literacy. Reach Every Reader, which will be funded for five years, “will combine scientific research with new methods of tracking and predicting students’ reading abilities,” writes Jordan Graham for The Boston Herald.
The Associated Press reports that Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan are donating $30 million to Harvard and MIT, to help improve literacy skills in elementary school students. “[S]truggling to read can be a crushing blow with lifelong consequences,” said President Rafael Reif.
Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan are donating $30 million to Reach Every Reader, an MIT and Harvard initiative that aims to tackle low elementary school literacy rates. Students younger than third grade will be the focus as “early intervention can have the most profound effect on turning students into proficient readers,” writes James Vaznis for The Boston Globe.
According to a new paper from Prof. Shigeru Miyagawa, “cave drawings may show evidence of the development of spoken human language,” writes Laney Ruckstuhl for The Boston Globe. “There’s this idea that language doesn’t fossilize,” Miyagawa said. “And it’s true, but maybe in these artifacts [cave drawings], we can see some of the beginnings of homo sapiens as symbolic beings.”
A new study from the McGovern Institute suggest “that one of the most effective ways to stimulate children’s brains from a young age is back-and-forth conversation,” writes Elise Takaham for The Boston Globe. “We think that it’s because back-and-forth conversation is not only about hearing more words, it’s also about practicing paying attention to someone else and involves lots of emotional and social bonding,” said Prof. John Gabrieli.
Professor John Gabrieli and graduate student Rachel Romeo speak with WBUR’s Carey Goldberg about their new research. "What we found is, the more often parents engaged in back-and-forth conversation with their child, the stronger was the brain response in the front of the brain to language," Gabrieli explains.
Prof. Kerry Emanuel spoke about the work of former MIT professor Fred Sanders, who is credited with coining the term “bombogenesis." “Sanders described it kind of like a storm supercharged by a bomb…That term was quickly adopted in weather circles and, increasingly now, in popular parlance,” writes Edgar B. Herwick III for WGBH.
After studying more than 100 languages, Prof. Edward Gibson has “discovered a pattern in the way different cultures discern and label colors,” writes Ben Thompson for the Boston Globe.
A new study from Prof. Edward Gibson examines the way different languages describe colors. “If you were to take the spectrum of colors that are perceptibly different to humans and chop it in half, every language would have more words for describing the warm half than the cool half,” writes Rachel Gutman for The Atlantic.
A new study by MIT researchers examines how people who speak different languages describe colors, reports Zach Zorich for Science. The researchers found that, “the ability to describe colors isn’t as rooted in our biology as many scientists thought. And that means that language development may be far more rooted in our culture than in how we literally see the world.”