Research

A first-of-its-kind study from the University of Kansas (KU), examining three key cognitive functions and their role in learning to write, suggests that insufficient focus on bilingual education has hindered the progress of Hispanic...

Neuroscientists at New York University have discovered that the brain uses a shared mechanism for combining words from a single language and for combining words from two different languages, which indicates that language switching...

Bilingualism has been linked to improved executive function and delayed onset of dementia, but it is unknown whether similar benefits can be obtained later in life through deliberate intervention. Given the logistical hurdles of...

After years of research, neuroscientists have discovered a new pathway in the human brain that processes the sounds of language. The findings, reported last month in the journal Cell, suggest that auditory and speech...

What motivates students to study languages? How do our students prefer to learn languages? Does school actually “get in the way” of language learning? To explore the learner’s perspec­tive on the current state of high...

UT Austin statisticians Giorgio Paulon and Abhra Sarkar have been awarded the prestigious Mitchell Prize for their paper on tone learning in adults. The Mitchell Prize, jointly sponsored by the American Statistical Association, the International...

Contrary to one of the most-cited studies in the field, a new research paper from University of Kansas (KU) linguists shows that even as beginners, adults can quickly begin mentally processing sentence structures in...

A first-of-its kind study in U.S.-born children from Spanish-speaking families has found that minority language exposure does not threaten the acquisition of English by children in the U.S. and that there is no trade-off...

New research shows that attending a Boston public preschool led to positive long-term impacts on educational attainment as attendees were more likely to graduate from high school and enroll in college. The short-term effect...

One-third of the nearly 23 million preschool-age children in the U.S. live with a parent who speaks a language other than English. Despite the size of this population and its distinct linguistic assets and...