UC Merced Connect: Study shows link between walking, talking in infants

UC Merced developmental psychologist Eric Walle recently discovered a link between walking and talking in infants. This development, however, brought up additional questions.

Was the link specific to culture? Age? Native language?

Walle, a professor in the psychological sciences graduate group, collaborated with researchers from UC Berkeley and East China Normal University to see if what was true in the United States was also true for infants exposed to Mandarin in China.

“In terms of language and culture, you can’t get more different from American English-speaking society than urban China,” Walle said. “In addition to those distinct differences, Chinese infants typically begin walking about six weeks later than American infants. It provided us with an interesting group for comparison.”

Despite the differences between infant experiences in China and the U.S., the results – published in the academic journal Infancy – were the same for both groups: Walking infants were better able to speak and understand their native language than crawling infants of the same age. The language differences between crawlers and walkers were similar, and the walking-talking relation was present in both noun and non-noun vocabularies.

“These results show us that learning to talk and understand the spoken word isn’t tied to the age of an infant, the complexity of his or her native tongue, or cultural norms associated with raising infants,” Walle said.

The next question Walle hopes to answer is a big one: Why?

He’s working with UC Merced cognitive scientist Anne Warlaumont right now on a study in which infant babbling is transcribed to document differences between the sounds uttered by crawlers and walkers. He and his collaborators from China are also running a series of experiments in Shanghai on different processes that could be related to walking and language, such as parent-child interactions, infant imitation and infant gaze following.

“We’re trying to home in on the mechanism, the trigger, for the shift in language development as infants begin to walk,” Walle said. “If a child never walks, they will still learn language – they just might learn differently. Development is not a linear process.”

Campus wins career services award

UC Merced’s Center for Career and Professional Advancement has long been a source of campus pride for the services it provides to students, and now it can add national recognition to its list of accomplishments.

The center recently won the Career Services Excellence: Large College award from the National Association of Colleges and Employers for its innovative student professional development programs and employer relations initiatives during a post-recession era. Other category finalists were the University of Georgia, University of Miami and UC Irvine.

The campus’s entry, “Powering Up the Recovery: Rebuilding the Post-Recession Talent Pipeline,” highlights unique programs that were established to improve the talent pipeline of the San Joaquin Valley region through proactive outreach, employer-led training seminars and experiential development with local and regional employers.

“The NACE award represents the premiere award for campus career services throughout the nation, and it is an incredible honor to be recognized for the work that students, faculty, campus partners and our team implemented over the past year,” said Brian O’Bruba, the interim assistant vice chancellor for campus life and director for the Center for Career and Professional Advancement.

The competition is national in scope and recognizes the outstanding achievements of college career services and human resources professionals. NACE represents more than 1,800 four- and two-year colleges and more than 900 employers who hire college graduates.

This story was originally published June 23, 2015 at 2:04 PM with the headline "UC Merced Connect: Study shows link between walking, talking in infants."