Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

Language Development

Language Development

Children master language quickly and with relative ease, supported by both biological predisposition and reinforcement. B. F. Skinner (1957) proposed that language is learned through reinforcement, while Noam Chomsky (1965) argued that language acquisition mechanisms are biologically determined.
The critical period for language acquisition suggests that the ability to acquire language is at its peak early in life. As people age, this proficiency decreases. Language development begins very...

Language and Cognition

Language and Cognition

Language serves as a bridge between ideas and communication, influencing how individuals perceive and interact with the world. Psychologists have long debated whether language shapes thought or vice versa. This discussion gained grip with Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf in the 1940s, who proposed that language determines thought, a concept known as linguistic determinism. They suggested that the vocabulary and structure of a language influence how its speakers think and perceive reality.

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Distinct Temporal Stages of Infant Brain Processing Associate With Early Versus Later Autism Diagnosis.

Developmental science·2026

Same author

Genome-wide association studies of infant and toddler temperament in European and multi-ancestry populations.

Nature human behaviour·2026

Same author

Cross-cultural evidence for positive control and mind-mindedness as buffers for parental distress.

Communications psychology·2026

Same author

Toward Understanding Free-Flowing Manual Object Contact: Real-Time Interaction Between Body Position and Object Type in 9-Month-Olds.

Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies·2026

Same author

Decreased attention in 10- and 14-month-olds with neurofibromatosis type 1 and association with later ADHD traits.

Journal of neurodevelopmental disorders·2026

Same author

The neonatal brain at rest: A systematic review of task-free functional connectivity in the first 100 days.

Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews·2026

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Apr 1, 2026

A Novel Experimental and Analytical Approach to the Multimodal Neural Decoding of Intent During Social Interaction in Freely-behaving Human Infants

A Novel Experimental and Analytical Approach to the Multimodal Neural Decoding of Intent During Social Interaction in Freely-behaving Human Infants

Published on: October 4, 2015

Concurrent Relations between Face Scanning and Language: A Cross-Syndrome Infant Study.

Dean D'Souza¹, Hana D'Souza², Mark H Johnson¹

¹Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, London, United Kingdom.

|October 2, 2015

Summary

Children with neurodevelopmental disorders like Down syndrome (DS), fragile X syndrome (FXS), and Williams syndrome (WS) show delayed word learning. Their visual attention differs, with some focusing on eyes instead of mouths, impacting language acquisition.

More Related Videos

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm

Published on: May 15, 2019

Using the Visual World Paradigm to Study Sentence Comprehension in Mandarin-Speaking Children with Autism

Using the Visual World Paradigm to Study Sentence Comprehension in Mandarin-Speaking Children with Autism

Published on: October 3, 2018

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Apr 1, 2026

A Novel Experimental and Analytical Approach to the Multimodal Neural Decoding of Intent During Social Interaction in Freely-behaving Human Infants

A Novel Experimental and Analytical Approach to the Multimodal Neural Decoding of Intent During Social Interaction in Freely-behaving Human Infants

Published on: October 4, 2015

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm

Published on: May 15, 2019

Using the Visual World Paradigm to Study Sentence Comprehension in Mandarin-Speaking Children with Autism

Using the Visual World Paradigm to Study Sentence Comprehension in Mandarin-Speaking Children with Autism

Published on: October 3, 2018

Area of Science:

Developmental Psychology
Neuroscience
Linguistics

Background:

Typically developing infants use visual cues, like mouth movements, to learn spoken language.
Word learning is often delayed in children with neurodevelopmental disorders, potentially due to atypical visual attention patterns.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate visual attention strategies during speech perception in infants and toddlers with Down syndrome (DS), fragile X syndrome (FXS), and Williams syndrome (WS).
To determine if differences in face scanning, particularly attention to the mouth, correlate with vocabulary size in these groups compared to typically developing (TD) controls.

Main Methods:

Eye-tracking technology was used to measure visual attention in 95 infants and toddlers with DS, FXS, and WS, and 25 TD controls (16 months old).
Participants viewed talking faces presenting congruent or incongruent auditory-visual speech stimuli (/ga/ sound with /ga/ or /ba/ mouth movements).

Main Results:

TD children with larger vocabularies fixated more on the mouth of the incongruent face.
Toddlers with FXS or WS and larger receptive vocabularies fixated more on the eyes of the incongruent face.
In DS, fixation on the overall face, not specific features like eyes or mouth, predicted vocabulary size.

Conclusions:

Language acquisition in DS, FXS, and WS involves distinct visual attention processes compared to TD development.
Atypical face scanning strategies may contribute to language delays in these neurodevelopmental disorders.
Syndrome-specific interventions could benefit from early focus on improving face-scanning behaviors for efficient language learning.