[{"command":"openDialog","selector":"#drupal-modal","settings":null,"data":"\u003Cdiv id=\u0022republish_modal_form\u0022\u003E\u003Cform class=\u0022modal-form-example-modal-form ecl-form\u0022 data-drupal-selector=\u0022modal-form-example-modal-form\u0022 action=\u0022\/en\/article\/modal\/6999\u0022 method=\u0022post\u0022 id=\u0022modal-form-example-modal-form\u0022 accept-charset=\u0022UTF-8\u0022\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHorizon articles can be republished for free under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.\u003C\/p\u003E\n \u003Cp\u003EYou must give appropriate credit. We ask you to do this by:\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n 1) Using the original journalist\u0027s byline\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n 2) Linking back to our original story\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n 3) Using the following text in the footer: This article was originally published in \u003Ca href=\u0027#\u0027\u003EHorizon, the EU Research and Innovation magazine\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\n \u003Cp\u003ESee our full republication guidelines \u003Ca href=\u0027\/horizon-magazine\/republish-our-stories\u0027\u003Ehere\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\n \u003Cp\u003EHTML for this article, including the attribution and page view counter, is below:\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cdiv class=\u0022js-form-item form-item js-form-type-textarea form-item-body-content js-form-item-body-content ecl-form-group ecl-form-group--text-area form-no-label ecl-u-mv-m\u0022\u003E\n \n\u003Cdiv\u003E\n \u003Ctextarea data-drupal-selector=\u0022edit-body-content\u0022 aria-describedby=\u0022edit-body-content--description\u0022 id=\u0022edit-body-content\u0022 name=\u0022body_content\u0022 rows=\u00225\u0022 cols=\u002260\u0022 class=\u0022form-textarea ecl-text-area\u0022\u003E\u003Ch2\u003EWhy are children so good at learning languages?\u003C\/h2\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn 2003, \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/eric.ed.gov\/?id=EJ672461\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 rel=\u0022noopener noreferrer\u0022\u003Ean influential study\u003C\/a\u003E showed that children from rich families were exposed to around 30 million more words before the age of three than children from poor families - a difference that put children from lower-income families at an educational disadvantage even before they\u2019d started school.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBut being bombarded by a large volume of words does not necessarily lead to rich and natural language use. Let\u2019s take speech recognition software as an example. Scientists have been working on creating machines that can learn language through exposure to enormous datasets, but Siri and Google Assistant are still no match for a toddler.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018If you look at some of the algorithms \u2026 they use \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1607.08723\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 rel=\u0022noopener noreferrer\u0022\u003Eten times more data\u003C\/a\u003E than a child has accessible until they are four years old,\u2019 said Dr Sho Tsuji, a psycholinguist at \u00c9cole Normale Sup\u00e9rieure in Paris, France.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESo what\u2019s the secret? The key, experts think, is precisely that a baby does not learn in isolation, nor in only one way. Learning to speak is an interactive, social process with inputs and reinforcements coming from many sources.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDr Tsuji is investigating how social cues such as eye contact and smiling are linked to language acquisition as part of a project called \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/cordis.europa.eu\/project\/rcn\/195812\/en\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 rel=\u0022noopener noreferrer\u0022\u003ESCIL\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ETo test the impact of social interaction on learning, she is running a series of experiments where babies are taught a word via video chat. In one version of the experiment, a person on screen \u2013 who cannot see the baby but uses gaze-tracking technology to know where he or she is looking \u2013 interacts with the baby for 5-10 seconds before teaching them a word. In a second test, a cartoon character does the same thing, while in a third, the baby is played a pre-recorded, non-interactive video.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDr Tsuji has found that when the human or the cartoon react to the baby\u2019s gaze, the baby is better at learning the word than when there is no such interaction prior to the teaching.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOnce she has untangled the role of different social cues, she wants to try and understand how they function by detecting which brain areas are activated for each process. The results of her research could be used to design effective educational apps that can support parents.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018It will never be better than a real social situation. But there are so many apps out there and many of them are not scientifically proven. If there could be a game that is interactive and teaches (a child) a word, that could be a great application.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EWearable technologies\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe whole field of language acquisition research is taking a big leap thanks to the development of wearable technologies, says Dr Tsuji, as sensors and cameras are enabling researchers to track children outside of a lab environment and get a realistic picture of how they learn language at home.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cblockquote class=\u0022tw-text-center tw-text-blue tw-font-bold tw-text-2xl lg:tw-w-1\/2 tw-border-2 tw-border-blue tw-p-12 tw-my-8 lg:tw-m-12 lg:tw--ml-16 tw-float-left\u0022\u003E\n \u003Cspan class=\u0022tw-text-5xl tw-rotate-180\u0022\u003E\u201c\u003C\/span\u003E\n \u003Cp class=\u0022tw-font-serif tw-italic\u0022\u003E\u2018Traditional studies on language tended to consider only spoken language or only text.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\n \u003Cfooter\u003E\n \u003Ccite class=\u0022tw-not-italic tw-font-normal tw-text-sm tw-text-black\u0022\u003EDr Laura Sparaci, Italian National Research Council \u003C\/cite\u003E\n \u003C\/footer\u003E\n\u003C\/blockquote\u003E\n\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThis view is shared by Dr Laura Sparaci, a researcher at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies within the Italian National Research Council, who is investigating the link between motor skills such as grasping, pointing and playing with objects, and language acquisition.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018A lot of research on motor skills in the past took place in lab environments. We need more research in the wild, in the sense of observing kids in their home environment with multiple caregivers, their peers, or even pets sometimes.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EShe says that to really understand how children pick up language it is important to consider gestures, facial expressions and body posture as part of language. \u2018Traditional studies on language tended to consider only spoken language or only text. Language has to be considered as multi-modal. There is a strong link between not only gestures and spoken word, but also actions and words.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDr Sparaci says that the link between actions such as grasping objects, gestures such as pointing, and the development of language, which she investigated in a project called \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/cordis.europa.eu\/project\/rcn\/195952\/factsheet\/en\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 rel=\u0022noopener noreferrer\u0022\u003EFORGE\u003C\/a\u003E, sounds surprising but exists for a very straightforward reason. As soon as a child starts walking they are able to hold objects in their hands which they may then show to their caregivers. \u2018And the caregivers usually give labels for those objects \u2026 so they start linking the label with the object,\u2019 she said.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHowever, she says that scientists still need to establish what goes on in a child\u2019s brain when this happens to understand more about exactly how different skills are linked.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018In development there are many roads to the same skills. The main questions right now that research is focusing on is the roads themselves.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EAutism\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOne way of unpicking the routes to language development is to study children outside the range of typical development, for example those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1007%2Fs10803-018-3477-1\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 rel=\u0022noopener noreferrer\u0022\u003Ea study\u003C\/a\u003E published in 2018, Dr Sparaci tested the link between the development of actions and vocabulary on the younger siblings of children with ASD. Because autism has a genetic basis, \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/pediatrics.aappublications.org\/content\/128\/3\/e488\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022 rel=\u0022noopener noreferrer\u0022\u003Esiblings are at high risk\u003C\/a\u003E of being diagnosed with the condition themselves.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThrough repeated observations of the children over a number of years, she and her colleagues found a child\u2019s ability to perform functional actions \u2013 being able to use an object as a tool \u2013 at 10 months was predictive of their language development at 12, 24 and 36 months.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018What we saw is that at 10 months, the infants in our group that later developed autism, never produced functional actions in the situations that we observed, which was using a spoon,\u2019 she said. \u2018And this predicted their vocabulary at later points of observation.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EShe says that her research could provide new questions for research into autism \u2013 for example, could supporting functional actions help children with their language development?\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBut a wider understanding of the relationship between actions, gestures and language can also help guide parents of typically developing children about the best ways to support a growing vocabulary, such as giving names to objects that children point to or making time for simple conversations.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u2018Today we live in a society where adults have very little time. A smiling face or a parent that is engaged will support vocabulary development more than an adult that is typing on a computer.\u2019\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003EThe research in this article was funded by the EU. 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