What 'alien' languages can teach us about real ones

You can learn a lot about an animal by how it communicates. Birds tweet melodies to attract mates and defend their territory. Dogs befriend each other with wagging tails and smelly pheromones. Even plants communicate by diffusing ...

Nestling birds recognize their local song 'dialect'

A recent study, published in Current Biology, led by researchers at Stockholm University and Uppsala University, has shown that juvenile songbirds react to hearing the songs they will eventually produce as adults, even when ...

Social media echo chambers spread vaccine misinformation: study

WHO has named vaccine hesitancy one of the greatest threats to global health. Nonetheless, some people are hesitant or refuse to get vaccinated because they do not trust vaccines and health authorities. A new research result ...

Study shows second-language learning can happen quickly

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

Bats can use 'vocal learning' to change their tune

Humans learn to speak by mimicking speech sounds. Are there other mammals who can learn sounds by imitation? In an experimental study, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen and the Ludwig ...

page 2 from 11