Professor Okko Räsänen receives prestigious ERC Consolidator Grant for pioneering research on early language acquisition
Professor Okko Räsänen has received a substantial ERC Consolidator Grant for research on early language acquisition. His project, titled Charting Infants’ Language, Auditory, and Motor Experiences in Everyday Contexts (EveryContext), will examine how babies’ language experiences are formed and shaped by their daily interactions and environments as well as identify factors that predict later language development. The project will run from 2026 to 2031.
Infants’ language exposure often comes from parents and siblings, and the way children are spoken to can vary across different circumstances. Beyond these linguistic experiences, the project will also examine infants’ overall development from the perspectives of both language and motor skills and how their active engagement in daily interactions influences the speech they hear.
Previous research on this topic has relied either on small datasets analysed in detail or on large-scale datasets and surveys analysed using broad indicators. Studies that combine large-scale data with detailed analyses of children’s individual language experiences in different everyday contexts, as well as how they influence language development, are still lacking.
“In this project, my research group and I will develop automated methods to enable analyses that are simultaneously detailed and based on extensive data. Our aim is to uncover what infants’ language experiences truly consist of and work towards identifying the elements that are supportive of early language development,” says Räsänen.
The researchers will collect extended, day-long recordings of children’s auditory surroundings together with their physical movements. Data will be collected in the home settings of infants and toddlers aged 3–18 months using wearable sensors designed specifically for this purpose.
“By following the same children and recording thousands of hours of data, we can investigate phenomena that are difficult to study in a laboratory setting,” notes Räsänen.
Early language acquisition remains only partially understood
According to Räsänen, early language acquisition has been widely studied but is still not fully understood.
“Earlier studies have confirmed that there is a connection between the quantity of spoken language children hear and their language development. However, the amount of speech alone does not explain all the individual variation in children’s language development,” he notes.
“This is why it is so fascinating to explore what the speech infants hear is made up of, how its features relate to different everyday situations, and what ultimately drives language development.”
A better understanding of early language acquisition could also shed light on the general functioning of autonomous cognitive systems.
“Human beings can be seen as information processing systems that are capable of processing sensory input and performing motor functions and that learn this link through interaction with their environment,” says Räsänen.
The methods developed during the project will be broadly applicable and are expected to support further progress in this research field.
“The tools we develop will enable increasingly precise and comprehensive analyses of children’s language experiences worldwide,” says Räsänen.
“Although our study focuses on fundamental research, a deeper understanding of early language acquisition also holds promise for providing better support to children and families facing language-related challenges,” says Räsänen.
ERC Consolidator Grants are awarded to mid-career researchers to help them strengthen their research groups. In the latest call, 349 researchers received ERC Consolidator Grants, with the total funding amounting to €728 million. To read more, please visit the ERC website.
