Photo caption: In Patricia Kuhl’s lab at the University of Washington, researchers study brain activity in babies less than a year old using a magnetoencephalography device, which measures the magnetic field around a baby’s scalp, to reveal the pattern of neurons firing. How nature and nurture combine to shape the brain is nowhere more evident than in the development of … Read More
Reading and the Brain: Rediscovery of a Major Pathway
I-LABS’ Jason Yeatman and his colleagues at Stanford University have published a new paper describing a nearly forgotten fiber path in the brain. It could have an important role in our ability to read. Yeatman, a research scientist at I-LABS, studies how the brain learns to read. While a graduate student in Brian Wandell’s lab in the Stanford University Department … Read More
Making Steps Toward Brain-to-Brain Communication
I-LABS’ Andrea Stocco and Chantel Prat have shown that information can be transferred from one adult brain to another. Imagine learning something new without studying, becoming alert without a jolt of caffeine, or recovering motor or speech functions after a brain injury without extensive rehabilitation training. Stocco and Prat, of the University of Washington’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, … Read More
New Paper: Students Do Best in Well-Designed Classrooms
The design and aesthetics of school buildings and classrooms have surprising power to impact student learning and success, according to a new analysis by Sapna Cheryan and I-LABS’ Andrew Meltzoff. With so much attention to curriculum and teaching skills to improve student achievement, it may come as a surprise that something as simple as how a classroom looks could actually make … Read More
Infant, Control Thyself
The latest I-LABS research shows that toddlers who watch an argument use that emotional information to avoid making adults angry. The study, led by I-LABS’ Betty Repacholi and Andrew Meltzoff, shows that children as young as 15 months can detect anger when watching other people’s social interactions and then use that emotional information to guide their own behavior. “Through studying … Read More
How a Second Language Trains Your Brain
I-LABS researchers Andrea Stocco and Chantel Prat show that the brain’s basal ganglia may be a key player for bilinguals’ improved executive function. One of the recent neuroscience puzzles has been that people who are bilingual outperform monolinguals on cognitive tasks that have nothing to do with language. But it hasn’t been clear what happens in the brain to enable … Read More
Q&A with Patricia Kuhl on her Inaugural Article in PNAS
In a Q&A with the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, I-LABS’ Patricia Kuhl talks about how babies fine tune their speech perception. The Q&A, tied to Kuhl’s research paper published by PNAS in July, touches on how infants learn to distinguish between languages, evidence for the “analysis by synthesis” theory, and the importance of using “motherese” when reading to infants.
Learning by Watching, Toddlers Show Intuitive Understanding of Probability
I-LABS’ Anna Waismeyer and Andrew Meltzoff report that 24-month-olds can make sense of imperfect cause-and-effect relationships. The latest research from I-LABS shows that toddlers as young as 24-months-old intuitively understand probability in a cause-and-effect game in which the children had to choose which strategy was more likely to work. I-LABS’ Waismeyer and Andrew Meltzoff and co-author Alison Gopnik at the … Read More
Parental language to infants — it’s quality not quantity
A new discovery to be published in the journal Developmental Science reports that speech directed to 11- to 14-month-old infants predicts both their concurrent and future language accomplishments, and points to practical information useful for parents. The first factor linked to success in language is the use of “parentese” (rather than standard adult-directed speech). The second factor predicting success is … Read More
I-LABS research published in PLOS ONE: I’ve got you under my skin
New research by I-LABS Co-Director Andrew Meltzoff and his colleagues Joni Saby and Peter Marshall is the first to show that babies’ brains are activated in particular ways when an adult performs a task with different parts of her body. The research published in the PLOS ONE shows that when 14-month-old babies simply watched an adult use her hand to … Read More