Learning their community language outside the home enhances minority ethnic children’s development, according to research led from the University of Birmingham. The research, which was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, found that attending language classes at complementary schools has a positive impact on students.
Full article: EurekAlert
Babies who use gestures to communicate when they are 14 months-old have much larger vocabularies when they start school than those who don’t, say US researchers. They say babies with wealthier, better-educated parents tend to gesture more and this may help explain why some children from low-income families fare less well in school.
Full article: ABC Science
First universal theory of humour answers how and why we find things funny. Published June 12, The Pattern Recognition Theory of Humour by Alastair Clarke answers the centuries old question of what is humour. Clarke explains how and why we find things funny and identifies the reason humour is common to all human societies, its fundamental role in the evolution of homo sapiens and its continuing importance in the cognitive development of infants.
Full article: Science Daily
“Instant messaging, or IM, is not just bad grammar or a bunch of mistakes,†says Dr. Pamela Takayoshi, Kent State University associate professor of English. “IM is a separate language form from formal English and has a common set of language features and standards.†…
Read the full article at EurekAlert
Tools developed by researchers exploring language and speech comprehension can become powerful aids for remedial readers, children with language challenges, and anyone learning a second language, according to psychology professor Dominic Massaro of the University of California, Santa Cruz. …
Read the full news release at the University of California Santa Cruz news room
Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have received funding from Microsoft Research to develop a virtual speech therapist, accessible on a cell phone, to aid stroke survivors in Malaysia. The self-contained language rehabilitation program will use a computer-generated talking head that provides realistic speech and mimics the natural movements of lips, tongue, and jaw. …
Read the full news release at University of California Santa Cruz news room
Dr. Michael Beißwenger from the Dortmund Institute for German Language and Literature has presented a study about communicative characteristics of chatting in the internet. The book with the title “Sprachhandlungskoordination in der Chat-Kommunikation†has just been released by the science publishing company de Gruyer. In his study, for which he got his PhD with honors from Culture Studies in March 2007, Beißwenger examines the differences between chats and oral conversations and the effects they have on the manner in which chatters organize their linguistic exchange. …
Read the full science news release at AlphaGalileo
Children in the UK with speech and language difficulties are prone to loneliness, feelings of frustration and poor self-esteem, a new Department of Health study has revealed. The study is the first scientific examination of quality of life for children with speech and language difficulties (SaLD). …
Read the full news release at the University of Portsmouth News Room
Refuting the popular stereotype that females talk more than men, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have found women and men both use an average of 16,000 words each day. …
Read the full news article at the University of Texas at Austin news room
It is more difficult for doctors to diagnose complex sources of pain in women than in men and the reasons for this are rooted in language use. This finding, which is of major importance for both doctors and patients, is revealed by a now completed project by the FWF Austrian Science Fund. The results of this research into how the two genders typically describe pain are to be presented at the 2nd International Congress of Gender Medicine on 2nd and 3rd June in Vienna. …
Read the full news article at Medical News Today
The most recent analysis of a long-term NIH-funded study found that children who received higher quality child care before entering kindergarten had better vocabulary scores in the fifth grade than did children who received lower quality care. The study authors also found that the more time children spent in center-based care before kindergarten, the more likely their sixth grade teachers were to report such problem behaviors as “gets in many fights,” “disobedient at school,” and “argues a lot.” …
Read the full article at National Institute of Child Health & Human Development news centre
A new electronic toy seems to be helping children with autism develop language skills. Helma van Rijn developed the toy as part of her graduation project at Delft University of Technology’s Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. …
Read the full news article at Science Daily
A new cross language research project could reduce language barriers across Europe. The Statistical Multilingual Analysis for Retrieval and Translation (SMART) project funded by the European Union (EU) and led by Xerox’s European Research Centre in France, was prompted by the fact that research by the EU suggested that more than half of Europeans can only hold a conversation in their own language, and that existing document translation services do not always produce accurate results that scan grammatically very well. …
Read the full article at Alpha Galileo
Since not much is happening news-wise at the moment, let me offer you a link to Lake Superior State University’s 2007 edition of the (in)famous banished words list.
Could the end of sign language for deaf children be in sight? A spate of new studies has shown that profoundly deaf babies who receive cochlear implants in their first year of life develop language and speech skills remarkably close to those of hearing children. Many of the children even learn to sing passably well and function almost flawlessly in the hearing world. …
Read the full article at New Scientist
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