Feature Channels: Speech & Language

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Sunil Puria, Ph.D., recently joined Massachusetts Eye and Ear as the second Amelia Peabody Scientist in the Eaton-Peabody Laboratories. Dr. Puria, an electrical engineer who trained as a postdoctoral researcher at Mass. Eye and Ear from 1991 to 1997, brings more than 20 years of experience in mathematical modeling and hearing research in both academia and industry settings back to Mass. Eye and Ear, where he will direct the OtoBiomechanics Group.

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An adolescent orangutan called Rocky could provide the key to understanding how speech in humans evolved from the time of the ancestral great apes, according to new research.

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USC program combines expertise of education experts, speech language pathologists and audiologists to improve bilingual literacy and writing skills among children who are hard of hearing.

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Yiddish is a language spoken by few but remembered by many. The language is alive and well on many U.S. campuses--including Binghamton University in New York, where Yiddish classes, available since the 1980s, are seeing growth in enrollment and are consistently full to capacity.

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Students at The University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston sharpened their communication skills in an elevator speech contest.

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Games are usually more fun when you play with other people, but if you’re playing an educational game, interacting with other players may help you learn more, according to Cornell University research. Using a language-learning game called “Crystallize,” created by Cornell computer science faculty and students, researchers found that when players are required to work together they learn more words – and enjoy the game more.

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Vocal cords are able to produce a wide range of sound frequencies because of the larynx’s ability to stretch vocal cords and the cords’ molecular composition.

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Most parents will admit that talking with a teenage child can be difficult. It's even more challenging when they don’t speak the same language – a reality for a growing number of immigrant families. New research suggests this language barrier can have negative consequences.

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Older Americans with some hearing loss shouldn’t feel alone if they have trouble understanding British TV sagas like “Downton Abbey.” A small study from the University of Utah suggests hearing-impaired senior citizens have more trouble than young people comprehending British accents when there is background noise.

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Vocal fatigue is a common complaint among teachers and one of the most debilitating conditions that can lead to vocal damage. The typical symptoms include hoarseness, vocal tiredness, muscle pains and lost or cracked notes. However, the actual physiological mechanism of vocal fatigue is still being explored. Now, a group of researchers have found a potential link between pulmonary function and the symptoms of voice fatigue unique to women, the predominate population of teaching workforce.

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Gestural communication in bonobos and chimpanzees shows turn-taking and clearly distinguishable communication styles.

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Women talk more than men, texting makes you dumb, sign language is pantomime. These are just a few of the myths Abby Kaplan, professor of linguistics at the University of Utah, debunks in her recently published book, “Women Talk More Than Men…And Other Myths about Language Explained.”

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A study led by Associate Professor Leher Singh, from the Department of Psychology at the National University of Singapore’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, suggested that learning two languages from the start helps children master the rules of each language faster.

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click to see today's top stories

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click to see today's top stories

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New University of Washington research shows that a five-minute measurement of resting-state brain activity predicted how quickly adults learned a second language.

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New University of Washington research shows that a five-minute measurement of resting-state brain activity predicted how quickly adults learned a second language.

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click to see today's top stories

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A new study reveals children's language development is a learnt skill and is intricately linked to their ability to recognise patterns in their environment.

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A new study has found that children with autism are capable of learning new words the same way any child would—by following someone’s gaze as they name an object. They just take longer to pick up the skill.

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Wichita State Communication Sciences and Disorders Professor Ray Hull has co-authored a new book, "The Art of Communication," with New York Times best-selling author Jim Stovall.

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What if a map of the brain could help us decode people's inner thoughts? Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have taken a step in that direction by building a "semantic atlas" that shows in vivid colors and multiple dimensions how the human brain organizes language. The atlas identifies brain areas that respond to words that have similar meanings.

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A new study published in Nature Chemical Biology reports the first small molecule targeted therapy for progressive hearing loss in a mouse model of USH3, an USH classified by progressive loss of hearing and vision starting in the first few decades of life along with variable balance disorder.

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University of Kansas neuroscientist Jonathan Brumberg has been awarded a $25,000 New Century Scholars Research Grant by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation to develop and test a brain-computer interface (BCI) that will directly control commercially available augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices for individuals with profound speech and motor disorders

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A new in-classroom laboratory approach by University of Saskatchewan (U of S) researchers Laureen McIntyre and Laurie Hellsten promises to provide a real-world look at assessment and teaching strategies for students with speech, language and learning difficulties.

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Mice that vocalize in a repetitive, halting pattern similar to human stuttering may provide insight into a condition that has perplexed scientists for centuries, according to a new study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the National Institutes of Health. These mice, which carry a mutation in a gene associated with stuttering in humans, may help scientists understand the biological basis of the disorder, and potentially lead to treatments.

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That old trope about there being at least 50 Eskimo words for snow has a new twist. Researchers at UC Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon University have taken a fresh look at words for snow, taking on an urban legend referred to by some as "the great Eskimo vocabulary hoax."

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Two University of Washington undergraduates have won a $10,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for their “SignAloud” invention — gloves that can translate American Sign Language into text or speech.

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As with any muscle in the body, prolonged or improper use can cause injuries to these vocal cord muscles causing a partial or even complete loss of the voice.

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Is language innate? How did we get language? A new book offers a revolutionary, unifying framework to understand the processing, acquisition and evolution of language.

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American University School of Communication professor Robert Lehrman has co-authored a new book, Democratic Orators from JFK to Barack Obama (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2016).

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The first study to use eye-tracker technology to monitor eye movement of children with autism spectrum disorder shows that children with the developmental disorder fixate longer on a speaker’s mouth rather than the eyes when the conversation turns emotional.

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A psychology professor will continue a unique longitudinal study of bilingual development in children from Spanish-speaking homes. Her research will provide the scientific foundation for best practices to support language, literacy, cognitive growth, and academic achievement of children from Spanish-speaking homes.

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Researchers at Georgia State University and the University of Chicago have found that congenitally blind adults use gestures -- important markers in language development in children -- similar to those by sighted adults, even though they've never seen the gestures before.

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Researchers have identified a single, universal facial expression that is interpreted across many cultures as the embodiment of negative emotion. The look proved identical for native speakers of English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese and American Sign Language (ASL). It consists of a furrowed brow, pressed lips and raised chin, and because we make it when we convey negative sentiments, such as “I do not agree,” researchers are calling it the “not face.”

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UA researcher Julie Miller believes birds can help us understand the genetics behind language problems associated with Parkinson's disease.

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A readability analysis of presidential candidate speeches by researchers in Carnegie Mellon University's Language Technologies Institute (LTI) finds most candidates using words and grammar typical of students in grades 6-8, though Donald Trump tends to lag behind the others.

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The two University of Kentucky linguists created ancient languages of more than 40,000 words with established grammar, syntax and structure to breath life into the recently released video game Far Cry Primal, by Ubisoft. The professors say the game and its languages are important to the academic world because 1) it's the first time Proto-Indo-European has been used as a living language since it was spoken thousands of year ago and 2) it's the first time any video game creator included a constructed, prehistoric language in the game.

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Athletes who speak English as a second language may have disparities when completing sideline concussion tests, according to research presented this week at the Association of Academic Physiatrists Annual Meeting in Sacramento, Calif.

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Bilinguals use and learn language in ways that change their minds and brains, which has consequences -- many positive, according to Judith F. Kroll, a Penn State cognitive scientist.

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A team of researchers at the University of Connecticut is reexamining a decades-long debate as to whether deaf children should learn sign language to maximize their potential for optimal development.

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It may start with a simple word you can’t pronounce. Your tongue and lips stumble, and gibberish comes out. Misspeaking might draw a chuckle from family and friends. But, then, it keeps happening. Progressively, more and more speech is lost. Some patients eventually become mute from primary progressive apraxia of speech, a disorder related to degenerative neurologic disease.

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The results of a study recently published by the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology show that bilingual children are better than monolinguals at a certain type of mental control, and that those children with more practice switching between languages have even greater skills.

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Using a new methodology that measures how closely words’ meanings are related within and between languages, an international team of researchers has revealed that for many universal concepts, the world’s languages feature a common structure of semantic relatedness.

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A study led by the University of Southampton has found there is no difference in the time it takes people from different countries to read and process different languages.

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A recent study by Jamie Desjardins, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the speech-language pathology program at The University of Texas at El Paso, found that hearing aids improve brain function in persons with hearing loss.