+- Teach the Brain Forums (https://www.teach-the-brain.org/forums)
+-- Forum: Teach-the-Brain (https://www.teach-the-brain.org/forums/Forum-Teach-the-Brain)
+--- Forum: How the Brain Learns (https://www.teach-the-brain.org/forums/Forum-How-the-Brain-Learns)
+---- Forum: John Nicholson (https://www.teach-the-brain.org/forums/Forum-John-Nicholson)
+---- Thread: Illustrations Of Incredible Brain Processes In Early Baby Brain Function (/Thread-Illustrations-Of-Incredible-Brain-Processes-In-Early-Baby-Brain-Function)
Illustrations Of Incredible Brain Processes In Early Baby Brain Function - John Nicholson - 15-10-2010
[SIZE="5"][/SIZE]Illustrations Of Incredible Brain Processes In Early Baby Brain Function
ScienceDaily (Mar. 26, 2010) — [SIZE="5"]Northwestern University researchers have found that even before infants begin to speak, words play an important role in their cognition. For 3-month-old infants, words influence performance in a cognitive task in a way that goes beyond the influence of other kinds of sounds, including musical tones.
The research by Alissa Ferry, Susan Hespos and Sandra Waxman in the psychology department in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, will appear in the March/April edition of the journal Child Development. In the study, infants who heard words provided evidence of categorization, while infants who heard tone sequences did not.
Three-month-old infants were shown a series of pictures of fish that were paired with words or beeps. Infants in the word group were told, for example, "Look at the toma!" --- a made-up word for fish, as they viewed each picture. Other infants heard a series of beeps carefully matched to the labeling phrases for tone and duration. Then infants were shown a picture of a new fish and a dinosaur side-by-side as the researchers measured how long they looked at each picture. If the infants formed the category, they would look longer at one picture than the other.
The results, say the authors, were striking. The researchers found that although infants who heard in the word and tone groups saw exactly the same pictures for exactly the same amount of time, those who heard words formed the category fish; those who heard tones did not.
"For infants as young as three months of age, words exert a special influence that supports the ability to form a category," said Hespos, associate professor of psychology and one of the authors of the study. These findings offer the earliest evidence to date for a link between words and object categories."
Participants included 46 healthy, full-term infants, from 2 to 4 months of age. Half of the infants within each age bracket were randomly assigned to the word group. All infants in the language group were from families where English was the predominant language spoken in the home. The remaining infants were in the tone group.
"We suspect that human speech, and perhaps especially infant-directed speech, engenders in young infants a kind of attention to the surrounding objects that promotes categorization," said Waxman, a co-author and professor of psychology. "We proposed that over time, this general attentional effect would become more refined, as infants begin to cull individual words from fluent speech, to distinguish among individual words and kinds of words, and to map those words to meaning."
ScienceDaily (Oct. 31, 2008) — Although babies typically start talking around 12 months of age, their brains actually begin processing certain aspects of language much earlier, so that by the time they start talking, babies actually already know hundreds of words. While studying language acquisition in infants can be a challenging endeavour, researchers have begun to make significant progress that changes previous views of what infants learn, according to a new report by University of Pennsylvania psychologist Daniel Swingley.
The report, published in the October issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, describes an increasing emphasis among researchers in studying vocabulary development in infants.
Infants have a unique ability to discriminate speech-sound (phonetic) differences, but over time they lose this skill for differentiating sounds in languages other than their native tongue. For example, 6 month old babies who were learning English were able to distinguish between similar-sounding Hindi consonants not found in English, but they lost this ability by 12 months of age. Since the 1980s it has been known that infants start focusing on their language’s consonants and vowels, sometimes to the exclusion of non-native sounds. More recently, researchers have increasingly focused on how infants handle whole words.
Recent research has shown that during infancy, babies learn not only individual speech sounds but also the auditory forms of words; that is, babies are not only aware of the pieces that make up a word, but they are aware of the entire word. These auditory forms of words allow children to increase their vocabulary and help them to eventually develop grammar. Although they may not know what the words mean, children as early as 8 months start learning the phonological (sound) forms of words and are able to recognize them—and just being familiar with the words helps increase the children’s vocabulary. Studies have shown that 18 month old children who are familiar with a word’s form are better at learning what it means and are also able to differentiate it from similar sounding words.
Knowing word forms may also contribute to children’s inferences about how their language works. For example, 7.5 month olds do not recognize words as being the same if they are spoken with different intonations or by a man and a woman. However, by 10.5 months of age, babies recognize the same words despite changes in the speaker or the intonation used. Another interesting finding was that although children learning a language can distinguish between long and short vowels, they interpret this difference according to the rules of their language. For instance, Dutch 18-month-olds considered tam and taam to be different words, while English 18-month-olds did not—showing children’s early learning of how each language uses vowel length.
How can researchers find out what young children know about words and the forms of words while children have only just begun to talk? One method takes advantage of the fact that even young toddlers like to look at images or objects that we name. In these experiments, the children’s eye movements are tracked while they are looking at two objects (for example, an apple and a dog). The researcher will say the name of one of the objects and see if the child’s eyes move to that object. In this way, researchers can change the sound of the words slightly (for example, instead of “dog†say “togâ€) and see if the baby will look at the dog the same amount, as if indifferent to the change, or less, as is the case with adults who know that “dog†cannot be said as “tog.†The results of those studies showed that the children were less likely to look at the correct object when it was mispronounced, indicating that by one year of age, children are able to recognize mispronunciations of words.
This new research in language acquisition indicates that infants learn the forms of many words and they begin to gather information about how these forms are used. The author notes that “these word forms then become the foundation of the early vocabulary, support children’s learning of the language’s phonological system, and contribute to the discovery of grammar.â€
In addition, there is a relationship between young children’s performance in word recognition and their later language achievement. The author concludes that “testing very young children’s ability to interpret spoken language, whether by identifying novel words as novel or by comprehending sentences, may prove a more sensitive predictor of children’s language outcomes than simpler tests of speech-sound categorization."[/SIZE]
Illustrations Of Incredible Brain Processes In Early Baby Brain Function - John Nicholson - 15-10-2010
[SIZE="5"]ScienceDaily (Mar. 23, 2006) — Infants are listening and learning their first words as young as 10 months, but they are only learning the words for objects that are of interest to them, not for objects of interest to the speaker, according to researchers at Temple University, University of Delaware and University of Evansville.
Their findings are reported in a new study, “The birth of words: Ten-month-olds learn words through perceptual salience,†being published in the March/April issue of the journal Child Development (Vol. 77, Issue 2).
In their study, the researchers showed infants two separate objects--one “interesting†and one “boring†in order to teach infants new words. The researchers examined whether 10-month-olds are guided by how much they like an object (i.e., perceptual cues) as well as which object the speaker with them is naming (i.e., social cues) to learn a new word.
At 10 months, before they say much of anything, the researchers discovered that the infants were truly capable of learning two new words in a single session. Using a measure of word comprehension (rather than expecting babies to say the word), they found that infants paired a new word to the object they liked best, regardless of which object the speaker named.
“We found that you could look at one of the objects, pick that object up and even move it, but the baby naturally assumes that the word you’re speaking goes with the object that they think is interesting, not the object that you show an interest in,†says Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, the Lefkowitz Professor of Psychology and director of the Temple University Infant Lab, and one of the study’s co-investigators.
“Ten-month-olds simply ‘glue’ a label onto the most interesting object they see,†adds Shannon Pruden, a doctoral student in psychology at Temple and the study’s lead author. “Perhaps this is why children learn words faster when parents look at and name the objects that infants already find interesting.â€
According to the researchers, these results have huge implications for parents and caregivers. They suggest that babies are listening into our conversations and trying to learn words well before they can say them. The findings also suggest that when we speak to our infants, we should talk about things that they like, not what we like.
As parents and caregivers, we must be sensitive and responsive to infants’ interests as they don’t have the flexibility to adopt our interests, says Hirsh-Pasek.
“Little babies are learning words fast, even at 10 months when they aren't saying much at all and that's huge,†says co-investigator Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, the H. Rodney Sharp Professor of Education at Delaware. “So, parents should talk to their babies from early on because that's the only way that infants can learn language. They should also talk about what the baby is interested in.â€
The researchers added that around 18 months of age, a child’s focus changes and they begin to learn words differently, using the speaker’s interest as a guide.
“The 18-month-old is a social sophisticate who can tap into the speaker’s mind and the vast mental dictionary that the adult has to offer,†says Hirsh-Pasek. “At 10 months they just cannot take the speaker’s perspective into consideration.â€
The study, which was funded through a grant from the National Science Foundation, was done in collaboration between Hirsh-Pasek, Pruden, Golinkoff, along with Elizabeth Hennon, Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Evansville.
Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff are co-authors of six books, including Einstein never used flashcards: How our children REALLY learn and why they need to play more and memorize less (2003) and How babies talk: The magic and mystery of language acquisition (1999).
[COLOR="Red"][SIZE="6"]LEARNINGChildren Under Three Can't Learn Action Words From TV -- Unless An Adult Helps
ScienceDaily (Sep. 21, 2009) — American infants and toddlers watch TV an average of two hours a day, and much of the programming is billed as educational. A new study finds that children under age 3 learn less from these videos that we might think—unless there's an adult present to interact with them and support their learning.[/SIZE][/COLOR]The study, by researchers at Temple University and the University of Delaware, can be found in the September/October 2009 issue of the journal Child Development.
The researchers studied children who ranged in age from 30 to 42 months to explore whether they could learn the names of actions (verbs) from videos. The names of verbs are generally harder for children to learn than names of objects. Yet verb learning is critical because verbs are the centerpiece of sentences, the glue that holds the words together. Using modified clips from the program Sesame Beginnings, the researchers showed children a video of characters performing unfamiliar actions that were labeled with new words (for example, "Look, she's daxing"). In some instances, the children watched without adult support, while in others, they watched with an adult who demonstrated the action that later appeared on the screen. The researchers then measured the children's ability to learn a new verb and apply that word to a new scene.
Without adult support, children under age 3 could not learn the words directly from the program, nor could they understand them when they appeared in a different context within the video. When they watched with an adult who reinforced what they were viewing, they could learn the words. In contrast, children over age 3 were able to learn the verbs from the video program and understand them later, even without an adult interacting with them.
"Learning verbs is difficult," suggests Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Lefkowitz Professor of Psychology at Temple University and one of the study's authors. "Young children need social support from adults to help them learn verbs from television. Watching on their own is not as 'educational' as watching with an engaged adult."
The study's take-home message, according to Hirsh-Pasek: "Amid the plethora of videos in the marketplace aimed at children under 3, our findings caution against using videos to teach language to very young children."[/SIZE]
Illustrations Of Incredible Brain Processes In Early Baby Brain Function - John Nicholson - 15-10-2010
[SIZE="5"][COLOR="Sienna"]Early Word Recognition Is Key To Lifelong Reading Skills Says New Study
ScienceDaily (May 12, 2009) — Children’s early reading experience is critical to the development of their lifelong reading skills a new study from the University of Leicester has discovered.[/COLOR]
It found that the age at which we learn words is key to understanding how people read later in life.
The study addresses a 20-year riddle: When researchers investigate reading behaviour in children they find different patterns. Some researchers have found children’s reading mimics that of adults, but others have seen a different pattern of reading behaviour. Psychologists have struggled for twenty years to offer a convincing explanation for why different studies looking at the same topic have found such different results.
Now research by Dr Tessa Webb in the School of Psychology at the University of Leicester sheds new light on the subject by taking into account the age at which words are learnt.
She said: “Children read differently from adults, but as they grow older, they develop the same reading patterns. When adults read words they learned when they were younger, they recognise them faster and more accurately than those they learned later in life.â€
In her research children from three different school years read aloud common and rarely used words, with half of the words following spelling to sound rules and the other half not obeying them. Unlike previous studies, Dr Webb made sure her research considered word learning age as well.
She found that children in their first few years at school read the words differently from adults. However, by age 10, they were mimicking the reading pattern of adults. This suggests that the different pattern of results found in children compared to adults may be due to the fact that word learning age was not considered.
[COLOR="sienna"]This led her to conclude that word learning age is a key aspect of reading that should not be left out of research, lest the results are unsound.
The results of this research could have implications in tackling reading-related disabilities, such as dyslexia, said Dr Webb. Children Better Prepared For School If Their Parents Read Aloud To Them
ScienceDaily (May 12, 2008) — Young children whose parents read aloud to them have better language and literacy skills when they go to school, according to a review published online ahead of print in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.
Children who have been read aloud to are also more likely to develop a love of reading, which can be even more important than the head start in language and literacy. And the advantages they gain persist, with children who start out as poor readers in their first year of school likely to remain so.
In addition, describing pictures in the book, explaining the meaning of the story, and encouraging the child to talk about what has been read to them and to ask questions can improve their understanding of the world and their social skills.[/COLOR]
The review brings together a wide range of published research on the benefits of reading aloud to children. It also includes evidence that middle class parents are more likely to read to their children than poorer families.
The authors explain that the style of reading has more impact on children's early language and literacy development than the frequency of reading aloud. Middle class parents tend to use a more interactive style, making connections to the child's own experience or real world, explaining new words and the motivations of the characters, while working class parents tend to focus more on labelling and describing pictures. These differences in reading styles can impact on children's development of language and literacy-related skills.
The Reach Out and Read programme in Boston has improved the language skills of children in low income families by increasing the proportion of parents reading to their children.[/SIZE]
Illustrations Of Incredible Brain Processes In Early Baby Brain Function - John Nicholson - 15-10-2010
[SIZE="7"]
[COLOR="Sienna"]The earlier that any child is taught systematically the better
system one 4 every 1
clearly building layer after layer of vital knowledge at the earliest point possible in any and every child’s life is the one sure way we can assist every child to perfect their reading [/COLOR]
[/SIZE]system one 4 every 1
clearly building layer after layer of vital knowledge at the earliest point possible in any and every child’s life is the one sure way we can assist every child to perfect their reading [/COLOR]
[SIZE="5"][COLOR="Purple"]Pre-School Age Exercises Can Prevent Dyslexia, New Research Shows
ScienceDaily (Aug. 22, 2008) — Atypical characteristics of children’s linguistic development are early signs of the risk of developing reading and writing disabilities, or dyslexia. New research points to preventive exercises as an effective means to tackle the challenges children face when learning to read.
The results achieved at the Centre of Excellence in Learning and Motivation Research were presented at the Academy of Finland’s science breakfast on 21 August.[/COLOR]
Headed by Professor Heikki Lyytinen at the University of Jyväskylä, the research has dug deep into how to predict and prevent difficulties in learning to read and write. The study involved a comparison between 107 children whose either parent is dyslexic and a control group of children without a hereditary predisposition to dyslexia. The researchers followed intensively the development of the predisposed children, from their birth through to school age.
“Half of the children whose parents had difficulties in reading and writing found learning to read more challenging than children in the control group. The atypical characteristics of these children’s linguistic development indicated the risk at a very early stage, and we were also able to draw a clearer picture of the typical progression of a development that indicates reading and writing difficulties,†says Lyytinen.
According to Lyytinen, the predictors of reading and writing difficulties are evident primarily in two contexts: on the one hand as a delayed ability to perceive and mentally process the subtleties of a person’s voice, on the other hand as a sluggishness in naming familiar, visually presented objects. When approaching the age when they acquire the ability to read, the children seem to have more difficulties than expected to store in their memory the names and corresponding sounds of letters.
“Acquiring the ability to read demands much more practice from these children than from their peers. The automatisation of reading poses an additional challenge. Also, a fluent ability to read is a prerequisite to be able to understand a demanding piece of text,†says Lyytinen. “A slow reader isn’t able to grasp a given text as a whole, and therefore has a hard time following the storyline. This is why we should pay special attention not only to the accuracy of reading and writing but also to the comprehension of texts even with quite long sentences.â€
Computer game to aid learning
The difficulties children experience when learning to read can be significantly reduced through training – “and in a way that children find amusing, even if they do have difficulties in learning to read,†Lyytinen points out.
The CoE in Learning and Motivation Research has developed computer game-like learning environments to aid preventive training, and made them available on the internet free of charge. They are especially recommended for children with a perceived risk of developing reading and writing disabilities or who have had a hard time learning to read already in first grade.
“The best time to start these exercises is the latter part of the pre-school age, but it’s not too late even after the children have started school. The learning result, of course, improves with repeated training: more than once a day and in short sessions. The optimal time for a single playing session is however long the children find it enjoyable.â€
[COLOR="Red"]Researchers at the CoE in Learning and Motivation Research have made good use of a wide range of scientific disciplines in creating the learning environment. Apart from psychology, the exercises include elements from phonetics, mathematics and information technology. This has allowed the researchers to make the learning environment more effective than traditional educational games.
With funding from the Ministry of Education and in collaboration with researchers of the Niilo Mäki Institute, the researchers at the CoE are also working to create constantly-developing, game-like exercises as well as tools with which to identify risks and detect learning disabilities[/COLOR].[/SIZE]