Psychology Professor Iris Berent has had the honor to be part of the Humanities Center Resident Fellowship Program this year, a program hosted by the College of Social Sciences and Humanities that brings together scholars from various colleges to discuss a common theme.

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.

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.

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