Papers by Malcolm DeBevoise
Choice Reviews Online, 2016
Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 2001
As a researcher in the area of early communication and language I found How Language Comes to Chi... more As a researcher in the area of early communication and language I found How Language Comes to Children a thorough and thought-provoking description of early language development and the research related to how infants learn to talk as well as how infants respond to speech. Or, to be more precise, responses to speech from before birth until the end of the second year. Particularly interesting to me was the cross-cultural focus. De Boysson-Bardies compares research from different parts of the world to determine similarities and differences in development as well as the variations in how parents view and respond to the early speech of their children. The author is the Director of Research in the Experimental Psychology Laboratory at the Center Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris, and the book is translated from French. However, the examples of the children's earlier word productions are in French. As a mono-lingual English speaker who does not know French pronunciation, the French examples required a bit more effort than they would have in English. However, the depth and detail of the information make the book well worth the effort. The book is organized into 8 chapters. Generally the information follows the development of the child with the first chapter focused on infants and early perceptions related to speech, and the last chapter focused on the language of 18-24 month olds. In addition to an in-depth look at speech perception and vocal development, deBoysson-Bardies discusses the communication environment of the young child, cultural variations in development, and individual variations among children. For example, one of the early discussions in the book was about the speech perception of young infants. For the past 30 years or so researchers have been devising creative ways to answer questions about infant perception of different dimensions of speech. Because infants are not yet able to answer questions or to directly indicate preferences researchers have identified something infants can do, suck, and built studies around that ability. The premise is that infants suck harder to indicate preference or novelty. Results of these studies indicate that infants even a few days old show a preference for their mother's speech when compared to that of another woman. They also prefer the prosody (the rhythms and tonal variation, sometimes referred to as the music of the language) of their mother's voice compared to another woman's voice when listening to voices with the phonetic information screened out. However, if the tape of their mother is played backwards, making the prosody "unnatural" the infant no longer prefers the voice of the mother. These early studies also show that infants
In 2009, the Wall Street Journal published the results of a survey designed to find out what is t... more In 2009, the Wall Street Journal published the results of a survey designed to find out what is the best job to have based on a range of criteria including job satisfaction, stress level and salary. Perhaps just a little surprisingly the job of mathematician came top. Since then, the survey has been carried out regularly and although the job of mathematician has not completely monopolised first place, it has always been in the top handful and occasionally first. So what is it about mathematics that makes the job of mathematician so attractive? Cédric Villani makes a fascinating attempt to answer this question.
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Papers by Malcolm DeBevoise