In the beautiful series of project funding approved in 2020/2021, we are pleased to present two contracts dedicated to the acquisition and development of language in babies:

Coordinated by Clément François, the research project "BabyLang: Children's speech perception and vocabulary acquisition" was selected by the ANR within the framework of the JCJC 2020 call for projects. This project aims to study hierarchy learnings underlying language acquisition in term babies and premature babies. It will provide a better understanding of (i) the mechanisms of cerebral plasticity underlying the emergence of phonological categories, (ii) the links between early perception of speech and the ability to learn new words, (iv) the impact of 'premature birth on these processes, and (iv) identification of early biomarkers of later language skills.

The research project "LangDev: From speech perception in babies to vocabulary acquisition in children, an interdisciplinary project", coordinated by Laurent Prévot and Clément François, was funded within the framework of the call for projects 80 Prime du CNRS. It aims to determine how the development of the encoding of speech sounds influences the emergence of conceptual and lexical representations in babies. In addition, Estelle Hervé, winner of the doctoral scholarship associated with the project, joined the project team at the end of 2020.

Image by Andi Graf of Pixabay