08 JAN 2018 by ideonexus
Negative Attention is Better Than No Attention at All
To give and receive attention is a fundamental human need. In the 13th century, King Frederick II of Sicily wanted to find out what language children would naturally grow up to speak if they were never spoken to. He took babies from their mothers at birth and placed them in the care of nurses who were strictly forbidden to either speak to or touch them. The babies, as it turned out, didn’t grow up to speak any language, as they all died of attention deprivation within a fortnight of the sta... 1 
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notes20 JUN 2017 by ideonexus
Role of Mirror Neurons in Learning to Read
In terms of early diagnosis, one study of thousands of babies “gaze-following” found that the skill appears first at about 10 to 11 months, and that babies who weren’t proficient at gaze-following by the time they were 1 year old had much less advanced language skills at age 2 (Brooks & Meltzoff , 2005).
Another possibility with regard to mirror neuron research is that early and systematic priming (stimulating) of mirror neurons engaged in speech could be a strategy for building th... 1 notes
notes12 OCT 2014 by ideonexus
The Absurd Visions from a Post-Hypnotic Suggestion
I hardly heard him for trying to keep track of what was going on in my skull. I knew it was just post-hypnotic suggestion, even remembered the session in Missouri when they'd implanted it, but that didn't make it any less compelling. My mind reeled under the strong pseudo-memories: shaggy hulks that were Taurans (not at all what we now knew they looked like) boarding a colonists' vessel, eating babies while mothers watched in screaming terror (the colonists never took babies; they wouldn't st... 1 notes
notesA character debunks all the crazy things running through his head with rationality.
28 MAY 2013 by ideonexus
Beginnings of Speciation in Romantic Paintings
She wandered on her own, looking at the portraits. The big crowd scenes were too much for her, like epic movies all jammed into a single frame. The subjects of the portraits, on the other hand, looked at her with expressions she recognized immediately. “I am always me, I am always new, I am always me”—for eight centuries they had been saying it. Nothing but women and men. One woman had her left nipple exposed, just under the curve of a necklace; in most periods that would have been tran... 1 notes
notesCharacter walking around an art museum.
08 AUG 2011 by TGAW
Vonnegut on Ibo Extended Family
I met a man in Nigeria one time, an Ibo who had six hundred relatives he knew quite well. His wife had just had a baby, the best possible news in any extended family.
They were going to take it to meet all its relatives, Ibos of all ages and sizes and shapes. It would meet other babies, cousins not much older than it was. Everybody who was big enough and steady enough was going to hold it, cuddle it, gurgle to it, and say how pretty or how handsome it was.
Wouldn't you have loved to be...
1 Vonnegut describes an Ibo family he met in Nigeria in 1970.
28 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Talk to Your Babies
The more parents talk to their children, even in the earliest moments of life, the better their kids linguistic abilities become and the faster that improvement is achieved. The gold standard is 2,100 words per hour. The variety of the words spoken (nouns, verbs, and adjectives used, along with the length and complexity of phrases and sentences) is nearly as important as the number of words spoken. So is the amount of positive feedback. You can reinforce language skills through interaction: l...2,100 words per hour in a variety of words. Babies are listening.
28 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Children are Scientists
Thousands of experiments confirm that babies learn about their environment through a series of increasingly self-corrected ideas. They experience sensory observations, make predictions about what they observe, design and deploy experiments capable of testing their predictions, evaluate their tests, and add that knowledge to a self-generated, growing database. The style is naturally aggressive, wonderfully flexible, and annoyingly persistent. They use fluid intelligence to extract information,... 1 notes
notesThey explore, test hypotheses, and record everything in memory to understand the world.
24 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
How to Provide Language Enrichment to Children
First of all, language stimulation should begin very early: by just three years of age, children are already headed down vastly different paths of verbal achievement as a result of their cumulative experience with language. Ideally, language stimulation should begin at birth, since we know that newborns' brains are already attuned to human speech and immediately start learning the sounds of their mother tongue. In fact. Fowler's group found that babies who entered their program between six a...Begin stimulating the child early, provide as much quantity of language stimulation as possible, and pay attention to the quality of language, making it age-appropriate and clearly enunciated.
24 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Being a Responsive and Involved Parent
Responsiveness is closely related to nurturing. For infants, responsive caregiving means not only prompt responding to a baby's physical needs interaction. Babies do cry out of boredom and their verbalizatinn—all that interaction. Babies do cry out of boredom, and their verbalization—all that enchanting cooing and babbling—is not just idle practice. They want and expect you to reply, to engage them in "protoconversation," and to light up their day with your interesting facial expression... 1 notes
notesDriving children around to classes is less important than engaging in intellectual discovery with them.
21 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Tummy-Time Improves Infant Motor Skills
The recent trend of putting young babies to sleep on their backs also appears to be having an effect on their motor skill acquisition. This posture, which has proven advantageous in reducing the number of SIDS fatalities, does not permit babies to exercise their arm and neck muscles as much as and see the world. In one recent study, pediatricians found that babies who slept on their backs were significantly slower to roll over, sit, crawl, and pull to stand than babies who slept on their stom... 1 notes
notesBy forcing the infant to work their neck and back to look around while on their tummy, they strengthen these important muscles; however, the infant should still remain on their back while sleeping to prevent SIDS.
