Research conducted by COLT members now out in Science. We find a common cognitive foundation for child language development and language evolution in lexical creativity, or how old words are recycled for new meanings. This link between the creative use of words by children (individual-level) and the outcomes of creative language use over long periods of time by communities of speakers (population-level) was found in a large scale study encompassing over 1400 languages.
Link to the article: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade7981
See also Simon Greenhill's perspective article on this research: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adj2154