Children acquire object category representations from their everyday experiences in the first few years of life. What do the inputs to this learning process actually look like? New preprint! arxiv.org/abs/2605.14990

How do you measure early language development in languages where you don't have word lists? New paper: Measuring children’s early vocabulary in low-resource languages using a Swadesh-style word list - led by @kachergis.bsky.social and @alvinwmtan.bsky.social osf.io/njm7d_v1

*Sharing for our department’s trainees* 🧠 Looking for insight on applying to PhD programs in psychology? ✨ Apply by Sep 25th to Stanford Psychology's 9th annual Paths to a Psychology PhD info-session/workshop to have all of your questions answered! 📝 Application: tinyurl.com/pathstophd2025

When people form conventions in reference games, how easy are they for outsiders to interpret? (for values of "outsider" that include naïve humans and vision-language models) Check out @vboyce.bsky.social's poster today at #CogSci2025 to find out. paper: escholarship.org/uc/item/16c4...

New #cogsci2025 paper! with @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social In “Generics Revisited: Analyzing generalizations in children’s books and caregivers’ speech” we revisit the connection between generic use in children’s language input and psychological essentialism.

Come see us at #cogsci2025! Here’s a (revised) list of posters and talks from my lab!

Super excited to submit a big sabbatical project this year: "Continuous developmental changes in word recognition support language learning across early childhood": osf.io/preprints/ps...

When I was finishing undergrad, I put together a short reader in the history and philosophy of linguistics. I've now ported it to Quarto Book and added a new chapter on computational approaches (along with other updates). Feedback is welcome! 😊 alvinwmtan.github.io/ling-approac...

🚨Publication Alert!🚨 The ManyBabies4 paper is out! 37 labs around the world tested over 1,000 babies in the largest investigation of infants' social evaluation to date. doi.org/10.1111/desc...