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...

Socioemotional Development during Infancy

Socioemotional Development during Infancy

Socio-emotional development in infancy is primarily shaped by early emotional responses and social connections, with temperament playing a central role. Temperament refers to the consistent patterns in an individual's emotional and behavioral responses, observable even in infancy. By examining temperament, researchers can better understand an infant's unique ways of interacting with the world, influencing subsequent personality and socio-emotional growth.
Primary Temperament Types

Piaget's Stage 1 of Cognitive Development

Piaget's Stage 1 of Cognitive Development

The sensorimotor stage, the initial phase of Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development, spans the first two years of a child's life. During this period, infants actively engage with their surroundings, building cognitive awareness through direct interaction with the world. This interaction is primarily based on sensory perception and motor actions, allowing infants to gradually understand basic physical properties and predict how objects interact within their environment.
Exploration...

You might also read

Related Articles

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

Sort by

Same author

Modulating Multisensory Processing: Interactions Between Semantic Congruence and Temporal Synchrony.

Vision (Basel, Switzerland)·2025

Same author

Sex-Related Measurement Bias in Autism Spectrum Disorder Symptoms in the Baby Siblings Research Consortium.

JAMA network open·2025

Same author

The maluma/takete effect is late: No longitudinal evidence for shape sound symbolism in the first year.

PloS one·2023

Same author

Trajectories of Vocabulary Development in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Across Multiple Measures.

Journal of autism and developmental disorders·2021

Same author

Boosting the input: 9-month-olds' sensitivity to low-frequency phonotactic patterns in novel wordforms.

Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies·2021

Same author

Eleven-Month-Olds Link Sound Properties With Animal Categories.

Frontiers in psychology·2020

Same journal

Perceptual asymmetries in the development of lexical tone perception in Thai-learning children.

Journal of child language·2026

Same journal

To bind or not to bind: Individual differences in pronominal processing among adolescent Mandarin-English heritage speakers.

Journal of child language·2026

Same journal

Influence of Visual Context Stability on Word Learning in Fourteen- and Nineteen-Month-Old Children.

Journal of child language·2026

Same journal

Revisiting the Acquisition of Conditionals: Children's and Adults' Expression of Hypothetical Thought.

Journal of child language·2026

Same journal

The effect of distributional information on the categorization of unaccusativity.

Journal of child language·2026

Same journal

Examining the Robustness and Generalizability of the Shape Bias: A Meta-Analysis.

Journal of child language·2026

See all related articles

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Aug 24, 2025

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

Utterance-Initial Prosodic Differences Between Statements and Questions in Infant-Directed Speech.

Susan Geffen^1,2, Kelly Burkinshaw^3,2, Angeliki Athanasopoulou³

¹Department of Psychology, Occidental College.

Journal of Child Language

|October 26, 2022

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Infants may distinguish between statements and wh-questions using prosody. Differences in the first two words

Keywords:

and infant-directed speech input prosody statements wh- questions

More Related Videos

A Within-subjects Experimental Protocol to Assess the Effects of Social Input on Infant EEG

A Within-subjects Experimental Protocol to Assess the Effects of Social Input on Infant EEG

Published on: May 3, 2017

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

Published on: April 19, 2017

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Aug 24, 2025

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

A Within-subjects Experimental Protocol to Assess the Effects of Social Input on Infant EEG

A Within-subjects Experimental Protocol to Assess the Effects of Social Input on Infant EEG

Published on: May 3, 2017

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

Published on: April 19, 2017

Area of Science:

Linguistics
Developmental Psychology
Speech Science

Background:

Syntactic structures of statements and questions differ across languages.
Language learners may initially use non-syntactic cues to differentiate sentence types.
Prosodic cues, such as intonation and rhythm, can signal grammatical information.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate prosodic differences between infant-directed wh-questions and statements.
To identify potential non-syntactic cues available to infants for sentence-type discrimination.
To explore the relationship between utterance-initial prosody and syntactic properties.

Main Methods:

Analysis of F0, duration, and intensity of the first two words in naturalistic speech.
Data collected from 13 mother-child dyads in the CHILDES database (Brent corpus).
Comparison of prosodic features in wh-questions versus statements.

Main Results:

Significant prosodic differences were observed between sentence types.
The distinction was more pronounced when the second word was an open-class word.
Findings suggest a link between utterance-initial prosody and syntactic information.

Conclusions:

Infants may utilize prosodic cues in the initial part of utterances to distinguish between wh-questions and statements.
Prosody provides a potential non-syntactic pathway for early language acquisition of sentence types.
The study highlights the interplay of prosody and syntax in early language development.