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In December 2020, research by psychology professor Ann Senghas was published in the third chapter of the Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology. In her article, "Connecting Language Acquisition and Language Evolution: Clues from the Emergence of Nicaraguan Sign Language," the sign language expert explores language as an "adaptive" system — one that is understood symbolically by a child's learning mechanisms — and focuses on young learners of Nicaraguan Sign Language, as an example for how language patterns are picked up and integrated.