Look Who's Talking-In Two Languages

[Francis Hult]

UTSA Discovery

 

Look Who's Talking-In Two Languages

 

To 9-month-old Warren*, a visit to the UTSA baby lab must have seemed like child's play. As he wiggled and fussed on his mom's lap, researcher Sophia Ortiz waved plastic toys in front of his face. A Barney video played silently in the background. A visiting professor placed a funny cap on his head. What looked from the outside like child's play was actually serious science.

 

The stretchy knit "pilot cap" Warren wore featured 19 sewn-in sensors dotting the surface, each filled with conducting gel. The sensors began picking up and amplifying a record of Warren's brain responses to sounds from a machine, and soon waves of squiggly lines began appearing on a nearby computer screen. After about 20 minutes, the electroencephalogram (EEG) recording was over, but the study of Warren and his brain was just beginning. 

Warren was one of 30 children recruited by UTSA sociologists in fall 2005 to participate in an ambitious project studying language acquisition in children growing up in bilingual environments. The project brings together sociologists, neuroscientists and educators from UTSA and the University of Washington's Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences in a multiyear collaboration. The aim of the research is to study the development of the bilingual brain using the methods of both the neuroscientist and the social scientist. 

 

Full story:

http://www.utsa.edu/discovery/f_baby_p1.htm

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