At TEDxRainier, Patricia Kuhl shares
astonishing findings about how babies learn one language over another
-- by listening to the humans around them and "taking statistics" on the
sounds they need to know. Clever lab experiments (and brain scans) show
how 6-month-old babies use sophisticated reasoning to understand their
world.
Patricia Kuhl studies how we learn language as babies, looking at the ways our brains form around language acquisition.
Dr. Patricia K. Kuhl is the Bezos Family Foundation Endowed Chair for
Early Childhood Learning, Co-Director of the UW Institute for Learning
& Brain Sciences, Director of the NSF-funded Science of Learning
Center, and Professor of Speech and Hearing Sciences. She is
internationally recognized for her research on early language and brain
development, and studies that show how young children learn. Dr. Kuhl's
work has played a major role in demonstrating how early exposure to
language alters the brain. It has implications for critical periods in
development, for bilingual education and reading readiness, for
developmental disabilities involving language, and for research on
computer understanding of speech.
Dr. Kuhl is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Rodin
Academy, and the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. She was
awarded the Silver Medal of the Acoustical Society of America in 1997,
and in 2005, the Kenneth Craik Research Award from Cambridge University.
She received the University of Washington's Faculty Lectureship Award
in 1998, and in the 2007, Dr. Kuhl was awarded the University of
Minnesota's Outstanding Achievement Award. Dr. Kuhl is a Fellow of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Acoustical
Society of America, the Cognitive Science Society and the American
Psychological Society. In 2008 Dr. Kuhl was awarded the Gold Medal from
Acoustical Society of America for her work on learning and the brain. In
2011 in Paris, she was awarded the IPSEN Fondation’s Jean-Louis
Signoret Neuropsychology Prize.
Dr. Kuhl was one of six scientists invited to the White House in 1997
to make a presentation at President and Mrs. Clinton's Conference on
"Early Learning and the Brain." In 2001, she was invited to make a
presentation at President and Mrs. Bush's White House Summit on "Early
Cognitive Development: Ready to Read, Ready to Learn." In 2000, she
co-authored The Scientist in the Crib: Minds, Brains, and How Children
Learn (Morrow Press).
Dr. Kuhl's work has been widely covered by the media. She has appeared
in the Discovery television series "The Baby Human"; the NOVA series
"The Mind"; the "The Power of Ideas" on PBS; and "The Secret Life of the
Brain," also on PBS. She has discussed her research findings on early
learning and the brain at NBC's Education Nation, and on The Today Show,
Good Morning America, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, NHK, CNN, and
in The New York Times, Time, and Newsweek.
