What’s preventing people from accepting that knowledge can be innate is itself innate.

Contrary to popular belief, language is not limited to speech. In a recent study published in the journal PNAS, Northeastern University Prof. Iris Berent reveals that people also apply the rules of their spoken language to sign language.

In the 52nd annual Robert D. Klein Lecture, psychology professor Iris Berent argued that human language is a product of a specialized biological system, that we are innately equipped with a language instinct.

Provost James C. Bean announced this week that Iris Berent is this year's Robert D. Klein Lecturer.

Research on spoken languages has shown that they rely on the human brain’s ability to unconsciously encode patterns in speech in the form of abstract rules. But do those same rules operate in American Sign Language?

New research from North­eastern pro­fessor of psy­chology Iris Berent and her col­leagues indi­cates that lan­guage and motor sys­tems are intri­cately linked—though not in the way that has been widely believed.

A groundbreaking study published in PLOS ONE by Prof. Iris Berent of Northeastern University and researchers at Harvard Medical School shows the brains of individual speakers are sensitive to language universals.

Humans are unique in their ability to acquire language. But how? A new study published in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences shows that we are in fact born with the basic fundamental knowledge of language, thus shedding light on the age-old linguistic “nature vs. nurture” debate.

Dyslexia affects about 10 percent of the population, and its cause is up for discussion.

Humans favor speech as the primary means of linguistic communication. Spoken languages are so common many think language and speech are one and the same. But the prevalence of sign languages suggests otherwise. Not only can Deaf communities generate language using manual gestures, but their languages share some of their design and neural mechanisms with spoken languages. New research by Northeastern University’s Prof. Iris Berent further underscores the flexibility of…

Many species on the planet employ a unique form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

All languages—spoken or signed—are comprised of patterns of meaningless elements.

All languages—spoken or signed—are comprised of patterns of meaningless elements.

While dyslexia is most often clas­si­fied as a reading dis­order, it is also well known to affect how indi­vid­uals process spoken lan­guage.