HEAR SPEECH, LEARN LANGUAGE
Language lies at the heart of our experience as humans and disorders of language acquisition carry severe developmental costs.
Recent results in auditory neuroscience show that speech processing depends on brain wave rhythms aligning to rhythms in speech. So the infant brain needs to learn to “copy” the rhythms produced when we talk. Consequently, successful language acquisition by infants must depend in part on successful rhythmic processing.
In the next months, our research team will launch an ambitious project to “drill down” into the relationship between brain rhythms, speech rhythms and language acquisition.
Link to the CNE
The Center for Neuroscience in Education (CNE) has always created experiments where we follow the same child over time (called a and longitudinal study) so that we can see how their language abilities change.
The BabyRhythm project is no different. We will continue the CNEs established work using rhythm and rhyme, but this time we are going even earlier.
By following the same baby as they develop from 2-11 months we will see if the infant brain learns language, in part, by “copying” the rhythms produced when we talk.