http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. An Autistica consultation published this month found that 24% of children with autism were non-verbal or minimally verbal, and it is known that these problems can persist into adulthood. Professionals have long attempted to support the development of language in these children but with mixed outcomes. An estimated 600,000 people in the UK and 70 million worldwide have autism, a neuro-developmental condition which is life-long. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-autistic-children.html Autism spectrum disorders Wed, 24 Apr 2013 19:00:02 EST news286045046 University of Miami (UM) Psychologist Alexandra L. Quittner leads one of the largest, most nationally representative studies of the effects of parenting on very young, deaf children who have received cochlear implants. The findings indicate that mothers who are most sensitive in their interactions with their children receiving cochlear implants have kids that develop language faster, almost "catching up" to their hearing peers. The report is published in the Journal of Pediatrics. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-mom-sensitivity-language-children-loss.html Psychology & Psychiatry Fri, 08 Mar 2013 10:24:03 EST news281960623 (Medical Xpress)—A study published recently in the Journal of Nutrition adds to the growing scientific evidence that when expecting mothers eat fish often, they are giving their future children a boost in brain development even though they are exposing their children to the neurotoxin, methyl mercury, present in fish. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-prenatal-exposure-fish-beneficial-child.html Health Fri, 04 Jan 2013 09:20:01 EST news276512312 Parents often wonder how much of the world their young children really understand. Though typically developing children are not able to speak or point to objects on command until they are between eighteen months and two years old, they do provide clues that they understand language as early as the age of one. These clues provide a point of measurement for psychologists interested in language comprehension of toddlers and young children with autism, as demonstrated in a new video-article published in JoVE (Journal of Visualized Experiments). http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-video-based-language-toddlers-children-autism.html Autism spectrum disorders Fri, 14 Dec 2012 14:57:20 EST news274719422 (Medical Xpress)—A good night's sleep can help children to acquire and retain vocabulary, according to new research by psychologists at the University of York and Sheffield Hallam University. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-sweet-language-skills-youngsters.html Health Tue, 27 Nov 2012 07:00:01 EST news273220555 Maternal depression and a common class of antidepressants can alter a crucial period of language development in babies, according to a new study by researchers at the University of British Columbia, Harvard University and the Child & Family Research Institute (CFRI) at BC Children's Hospital. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-maternal-depression-sris-affect-language.html Psychology & Psychiatry Mon, 08 Oct 2012 15:00:10 EST news268912767 Researchers from the University of Hertfordshire have found no evidence to support claims that using baby signing with babies helps to accelerate their language development. In a paper to be published in Child Development, researchers conducted a controlled study to evaluate the benefits of symbolic gesture or baby sign. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-language-babies.html Psychology & Psychiatry Fri, 05 Oct 2012 08:40:01 EST news268644236 New research examining auditory mechanisms of language learning in babies has revealed that infants as young as three months of age are able to automatically detect and learn complex dependencies between syllables in spoken language. By contrast, adults only recognised the same dependencies when asked to actively search for them. The study by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig also highlights the important role of basic pitch discrimination abilities for early language development. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-babies-ability-complex-language-outshines.html Psychology & Psychiatry Mon, 10 Sep 2012 15:00:23 EST news266500899 Positive social relationships in childhood and adolescence are key to adult well-being, according to Associate Professor Craig Olsson from Deakin University and the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Australia, and his colleagues. In contrast, academic achievement appears to have little effect on adult well-being. The exploratory work, looking at the child and adolescent origins of well-being in adulthood, is published online in Springer's Journal of Happiness Studies. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-early-relationships-brainpower-key-adult.html Psychology & Psychiatry Thu, 02 Aug 2012 12:41:27 EST news263130065 (HealthDay) -- Supplementation of infant formula with long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCPUFAs) is not associated with improved cognition; and infants fed with milk- or soy protein-based formula have similar cognitive development scores, which are slightly lower than those of breastfed infants, according to two studies published online May 28 in Pediatrics. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-pufa-formula-supplementation-doesnt-infant.html Pediatrics Tue, 29 May 2012 16:14:34 EST news257526865 (HealthDay) -- Nearly two-thirds of American children with autism have been bullied at some point in their lives, and these kids are bullied three times more often than their siblings without autism, a new survey finds. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-two-thirds-kids-autism-bullied.html Autism spectrum disorders Fri, 30 Mar 2012 13:30:01 EST news252332288 Babies who are raised in homes where two or more languages are spoken may appear to talk later than those learning just one language, leaving parents puzzled and concerned as to the reasons why. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-approach-urged-late-talking-bilingual-babies.html Psychology & Psychiatry Sun, 19 Feb 2012 16:17:04 EST news248890526 While babies are born ready to learn any of the world's languages, the crucial developmental period when they attune to their native languages can change due to environmental influences such as maternal depression or a bilingual upbringing, according to new University of British Columbia research. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-maternal-depression-bilingual-households-impact.html Psychology & Psychiatry Fri, 17 Feb 2012 12:42:11 EST news248704925 New research by Australian scientists reveals that males who are exposed to high levels of testosterone before birth are twice as likely to experience delays in language development compared to females. The research, published in Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, focused on umbilical cord blood to explore the presence of testosterone when the language-related regions of a fetus' brain are undergoing a critical period of growth. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-prenatal-testosterone-linked-language-male.html Psychology & Psychiatry Thu, 26 Jan 2012 04:17:06 EST news246773797 Bialik-Rogozin, a school in South Tel Aviv with an underprivileged student body hailing from 48 different countries, is the subject of the 2011 Oscar-winning documentary short Strangers No More. But before the cameras rolled, researchers at Tel Aviv University had been helping its students overcome the barriers to language development that often handicap children raised by immigrants or refugees. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-south-tel-aviv-school-language.html Psychology & Psychiatry Thu, 27 Oct 2011 11:53:47 EST news238935217 (Medical Xpress) -- College students looking at photographs spent more time gazing at the people in the pictures than the surrounding elements, even when those people were quite small or not centrally located, according to Penn State researchers. These findings could help the researchers develop better visual-scene displays (VSDs) -- computer-generated images that help people with disabilities learn to communicate. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-people-powerful-appeal-photos.html Psychology & Psychiatry Wed, 19 Oct 2011 05:30:42 EST news238221017 What type of childcare arrangements do parents choose before their children are 18 months old? Does the choice of childcare affect children's language skills and mental health at the age of five? http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-early-non-parental-childcare-children.html Health Tue, 27 Sep 2011 10:28:30 EST news236338092 (Medical Xpress) -- Which genetic mutations enabled the evolution of language? The foxp2 gene plays an important role in language development. Simon E. Fisher at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, Netherlands, and Sonja C. Vernes at Oxford University have discovered that this gene plays an important role in the branching of neurons in the brain during embryonic development. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-language-related-gene-responsible-neurons.html Genetics Thu, 01 Sep 2011 06:30:38 EST news234077385 (Medical Xpress) -- Talking to children has always been fundamental to language development, but new research reveals that the way we talk to children is key to building their ability to understand and create sentences of their own. The exaggerated speech we naturally use with young children is special register – often called ‘motherese’. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-motherese-important-children-language.html Psychology & Psychiatry Fri, 06 May 2011 10:27:34 EST news223896448