Language is the basis of human communication and is the most important key to complete mental development and thinking. Therefore, children must learn to communicate using appropriate language. For this to happen, the development of language in the child must be understood as a biological process, complete with internal laws and with marked stages…

Linguistic alignment--the contingent reuse of our interlocutors' language at all levels of linguistic structure--pervades human dialogue. Here, we design unique measures to capture the degree of linguistic alignment between interlocutors' linguistic representations at three levels of structure: lexical, syntactic, and semantic. We track these…

New research on brain development has profound implications in the areas of child development and education. This review of the research describes how the brain develops to shape children's growing intelligence, addressing such questions as: (1) What are the brain's functions? (2) What are the critical or sensitive periods in brain development?…

Since past studies have shown that females as well as left-handers do not demonstrate a right-ear advantage for verbal materials, suggesting that linguistic functions may not be handled in the left hemisphere exclusively, a study was conducted to examine these laterality effects more closely. Subjects, 24 undergraduate students at a small college…

This study investigated the premise that disordered temporal order perception in retarded readers can be seen in the serial processing of both nonverbal auditory and visual information, and examined whether such information processing deficits relate to level of reading ability. The adult subjects included 20 in the dyslexic group, 12 in the…

Discusses the centers of language in the brain and the critical period for language acquisition. Explains developmental milestones of language development--receptive language, babbling, short phrases, full sentences--in the context of brain development. Emphasizes parents' role in language development, including talking to the child, dialogic…