Week of Nov 17

ASL talk by Sampson

Dr. Tory Sampson (postdoc, BU and Harvard) will give a talk on historical linguistics of sign languages on Wednesday November 19 at 6:45pm. If you are interested in sign languages or just curious about history of another language, please join us in Lecture Hall C of the Science Center. ASL interpretation will be provided. See you then! 

LangCog 

The next LangCog meeting will be Tuesday, 11/18 from 5:30-7:00pm, in William James Hall, Room 1550. The speaker is Zhenghan Qi (Northeastern University), and the title and abstract of their talk can be found below. You can find the schedule for the remainder of the semester on the LangCog website. Food will be provided, as always. 

Title: Language learning as a window into neural plasticity

Abstract: The implicit ability to rapidly detect and extract regularities and variabilities from linguistic inputs is a building block of human cognition. The sensitive period hypothesis suggests young children outperform experienced language users in learning. But on the other hand, experienced language users can take advantage of their lifelong knowledge to scaffold further learning. Who is more efficient when facing new input? I will present evidence from both developmental studies and work with special populations, illustrating the dynamic relationship between long-term experience and short-term learning. I will highlight the malleability of learning processes through the lens of developmental differences and deviations in learning mechanisms across populations.