A 15-month-old nestled in his mother’s lap points curiously at an object in a book he’s never seen before. “Whisk,” coos his mom, answering her son’s implied query. Reading books together is a cherished bonding ritual that takes place in homes across the nation every day, but what exactly is the boy learning during these
Month: February 2018
It’s a perfect spring day, and in the midst of a park full of picnic-goers and dogs playing fetch, a boy waves a yellow balloon in the air. From one corner of the park, a dad playing with his 2-year-old daughter draws her attention to the action. “I see a boy, and a balloon,” he
“Name everything you can think of that is alive.” How would you or your child respond to this prompt? Would your list be full of relatives, animals from movies and books, or perhaps neighborhood pets? Would the poppies blooming on the front steps make the list, or the oak tree towering over the backyard? And
“Up?” pleads the 13-month-old, reaching in the direction of her mother, who then sweeps the baby into her arms. For parents, our infants’ first one-word utterances feel like the magical entrance into a world in which infants can finally express their thoughts and understand ours. In the last decade, though, developmental psychologists have discovered that
Figuring out how objects and ideas relate to each other is at the core of learning; this capacity helps the preschooler solve her very first puzzle, the fledgling scientist see the connection between an atom and the solar system, and the young dancer stomp his feet in time to the beat. When you hand your
A growing number of infant studies show that well before very young babies begin forming words, simply hearing language boosts their thinking. We’ve demonstrated at our own research center that speech helps infants as young as 3 months old learn about the world: babies who are shown a group of objects while listening to speech
Our research assistants unanimously agree that the best part of the job is getting to connect with the friendly families (including grandparents, aunts and uncles, and sometimes even dogs—we’re looking at you, Buster!) that visit our research center every day. We feel incredibly fortunate to be so embraced by the Evanston community, and this holiday
Imagine spending a beautiful day at the lake with your little one. As an English speaker, you might delight in sharing descriptions of the deep blue water, green grass, and light blue sky in front of you. But speakers of Berinmo, an indigenous language of Papua New Guinea, have a single term for the colors we
As you’ve probably noticed, very young babies would rather listen to human speech (especially yours!) than just about anything else. Developmental psychologists have been surprised to discover, however, that newborns prefer listening to both human language andnonhuman primate vocalizations over other interesting sounds. What’s more, in the first months of life they also prefer looking at
Very little research to date has examined the first crucial months of preterm infants’ language development, but a new study out of our center sheds light on preterm babies’ earliest links between language and thought. Let’s consider Holly and Salvador, two babies conceived on the same date. Both are due on September 1, but Holly