Children have abilities that we, adults, do not possess

The journalists of the Saint Petersburg University Journal have visited our lab again. You can see that these guys are true professionals – they know where to go for the best interview material.

In a new issue you can read the interview with Marina Vasilieva (Ph.D., Senior Research Scientist, Department of the Higher Nervous Activity and Psychophysiology).

Marina addresses a set of popular questions related to the phenomenal abilities of children for language learning.

What is fast mapping? How is it connected to the rapid increase in vocabulary during the first stages of learning a language? Why three-year-old children can understand a request to bring an object they have never seen before?

What neurophysiological explanation can be given for the common aspects of student life? Why is it better to sleep before an exam even if you have only a couple of hours left? As it turns out, there is a component of the brain called the hippocampus, which records and stores the information while you are asleep.

However, there are also cases when we memorise things faster, sidestepping the hippocampus. How does it happen and what fast mapping has to do with it?

And, last but not least, child superheroes – able to understand animals and learn in their sleep.