The latest paper from our lab is out in Current Biology. In the field of birdsong learning, most researchers focus on male singers rather than females, who in many species don’t sing. Our work shows that females play a crucial role in guiding song learning with rapid nonvocal gestures that are used by young males […]
Rachel Albert, a B.A.B.Y. lab Ph.D now at Lebanon Valley College, recently authored an article in Scientific American on our recent findings from a study on parental responses to infant babbling. In the study, we asked mothers to react to audio and video clips of unfamiliar infants engaged in babbling. We found that infants who babbled […]
A new article in Science Daily reports on our recent discoveries about the social functions of infant babbling. Traditionally, baby babbling was thought of as simple motor exercise, but we have found that babbling plays a crucial role in the development of communication and language. In our new paper published in Developmental Science, we asked […]
A new article in the Cornell Chronicle reports on our latest paper investigating the role of social motivation in learning how to communicate. Infant songbirds and humans learn from social feedback to their immature behavior, but the mechanisms linking social motivation to communicative development are unknown. In our new paper published in the Proceedings of the […]
Honors thesis student and all-around wonderful person Sara Schroer is being featured by Cornell as one of our star graduating seniors! Next year she will attend the Ph.D program in developmental psychology at Indiana University.
If someone spoke to you in a high pitched, animated manner, you might be a little confused. This style of talking is known as infant-directed speech (IDS) and is characterized by high pitch, slower tempo, tonal variation, and simplified language. But why do parents naturally use this speech with their children? As science has shown, IDS is […]
Come find us at Ithaca Festival! The Cornell B.A.B.Y. Lab will be hosting an activity booth on Cayuga Street (between Buffalo and Court St.) on Saturday and Sunday starting at noon. You can watch how your little ones play with toys that are structured, like balls or blocks, or unstructured, like play-dough. Come see the different […]
Lab director Dr. Michael Goldstein be interviewed on the NPR affiliate WSKG on Wednesday (4/15) afternoon as a guest on Community Conversation: A Public Discussion On Child Care. There will be a live audience as part of the public forum on child care and early education, then the interview will be broadcast at 7:00pm tonight on WSKG […]
Congratulations to graduate students Melissa Elston and Katerina Faust! Melissa won the prestigious National Science Foundation predoctoral fellowship, and Katerina received an honorable mention!
Perri Klass, a pediatrician, science writer, and NYU professor of pediatrics and journalism, wrote a wonderful article for the Harvard Medicine magazine on why we study both baby babbling and birdsong. Perri took the time to visit our lab and get an in-depth understanding of what we do and why we do it. Thanks, Perri!