New York Times reporter Pam Belluck writes that MIT researchers have found exposure to a specific combination of light and sound could improve Alzheimer’s symptoms. “It’s stunning that the intervention had beneficial effects on so many different aspects of Alzheimer-like pathology,” said Dr. Lennart Mucke, director of the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease.
MIT researchers have found that holding back-and-forth conversations with young children may help boost a child’s language development, report Drs. Edith Bracho-Sanchez and Richa Kalra for ABC News. The study found that conversations created “stronger connections between the brain regions responsible for comprehension and production of speech.”
Reuters reporter Lisa Rapaport writes about a new study that shows back-and-forth conversations between adults and young children could help build speech and language skills. “We found that the most relevant component of children’s language exposure is not the sheer number of words they hear, but the amount of back-and-forth adult-child conversation they experience,” explains research affiliate Rachel Romeo.
BBC Click reporter Gareth Mitchell speaks with postdoc Oggi Rudovic about his work developing a system that allows autism therapy robots to help teach children how to decipher different emotions. Rudovic explains that the technology can “assist the therapist and also to make the whole therapy process engaging for the child.”
In a new study from researchers at MIT’s McGovern Institute, “the authors pinpoint a specific way that piano lessons can help young children enhance their language processing skills,” writes Jamie Ducharme for TIME. “There’s evidence that early exposure to piano practice enhances the processing of sounds that extend not only from music, but also into language,” says Prof. John Gabrieli.
Popular Mechanics reporter David Grossman writes that MIT researchers have developed a new system that helps robots used in autism therapy better estimate how engaged a child is during an interaction. Grossman explains that, “using the personalized algorithm, the robot was able to correctly interpret a child's reaction 60 percent of the time.”
Prof. Patrick Winston is teaching a computer to read a truncated version of Macbeth in an effort to determine “how to build computer systems that can simulate the human mind’s unique powers of perception and insight,” writes Andy Rosen for The Boston Globe. Winston believes understanding stories is “a fundamental differentiating capability of us humans. And machines don’t have it yet.”
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.”
MIT researchers have identified the brain circuit required for observational learning, reports Xinhua. According to the study, the area involved in evaluating social information is more active when witnessing an experience and “relays information about the experience” to the region important for processing emotions.
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.
A study led by graduate student Hilary Richardson provides evidence that by age 3, children “have begun developing brain networks used to understand the beliefs and feelings of others,” writes Laney Ruckstuhl for The Boston Globe. “Richardson said researchers previously believed the networks used in theory of mind reasoning were not developed until at least age 4,” explains Ruckstuhl.
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.