What makes some words easier to learn than others? Researchers found that ideophones — words that sound like what they mean — are easier to learn than regular words. This suggests that some of our ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Made-up words like “clisious” and “smanious” are easier to remember when they sound beautiful. Could the feel of a word shape how ...

Splish-splash, boing, bang, thud, sparkle, and pitter-patter are all fun words to say — they also happen to sound exactly like their definition. A study published recently in the Journal of ...

A neuroimaging study by a UB psychologist suggests that phonics, a method of learning to read using knowledge of word sounds, shouldn’t be overlooked in favor of a whole-language technique that ...

For years, researchers have known that young children pick up words just by being around conversation. Toddlers do not need lessons or direct instruction. They listen, watch, and slowly connect sounds ...

In a paper published today in Communications Biology, auditory neuroscientists at the University of Pittsburgh describe a machine learning model that helps explain how the brain recognizes the meaning ...

Babies find it easier to learn words with repetitive syllables rather than mixed sounds, a study suggests. Assessments of language learning in 18-month-olds suggest that children are better at ...

What makes some words easier to learn than others? Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and Radboud University taught Japanese words to Dutch students and found that ...

Ideophones, or words that sound like what they mean—words whose sound evokes the sensory experience they describe, like swish or twinkle—are easier to learn than other words, a new study finds. The ...