The full BBS treatment from me and @futrell.bsky.social on "How linguistics learned to stop worrying and love the LMs" is now out, with all the commentaries and our response. If you "Save PDF", it will give you the whole target article + commentary + response pdf: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

New preprint! Children often beat adults at learning hidden patterns. Using eye-tracking and a method we built in eLife (Hann et al. 2026), we found the edge is not better error detection. It is flexibility: kids update their beliefs, adults cling to old predictions. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

And we're live! academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/16459. come be my postdoc! these positions will be primarily supported by my NIH R01 on infant word learning, with a bit of wiggle for some other projects/new ideas/collabs.

New paper! w/ @cocoscilab.bsky.social🧵Can large language models reason flexibly, or have they learned what reasoning looks like? We introduce a new paradigm to test this question—the riddle riddle—and find that humans and LLMs show opposite patterns of performance. 📜

Finally out at @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social. Everything I think I know about word meanings. Particular focus on words that are unfamiliar or ambiguous. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

—— Open Mind is MIT Press’s Diamond Open Access Cognitive Science journal. We now have our first Impact Factor: 2.9 as of June 2026 Submit your papers to Open Mind direct.mit.edu/opmi

🎙️ 𝐍𝐞𝐰 #𝐖𝐢𝐀𝐈𝐑 𝐄𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐎𝐮𝐭! In the new #WiAIRpodcast episode with @neuranna.bsky.social, we talk about the relationship between language, thought, and intelligence, with insights from neuroscience, cognitive science, and AI research. 📷 YouTube: youtu.be/e36ryy0Dsdo

Because the eye’s high-acuity region is so small, where we look serves as a precise, moment-by-moment window into our cognitive goals and intentions. Eye Movements by Mary Hayhoe https://doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.a42adb11 #CognitiveScience

Audiomotor prediction errors drive speech adaptation even in the absence of overt movement journals.plos.org/plosbiology/... Planned, but not executed, speech-> neat paradigm. Results suggest that prediction errors, rather than corrective motor commands, drive audiomotor adaptation in speech

Thanks to the Weber School for inviting me to give a #TEDx talk! I discuss how much people vary in their inner thought — from thinking mainly in words to thinking mostly abstractly — and the implications it has for understanding AI cognition. youtu.be/WAm0XQIRBMw

How can we acquire new knowledge and skills on a daily basis while remaining the same person? I'm excited to share our new preprint led by @hyejinjadelee.bsky.social & Ally Dworetsky tackling this question, just in time for #OHBM2026: doi.org/10.64898/202... 🧵👇 #neuroskyence #PsychSciSky

It is not easy to characterize the features represented by human language cortex. This work is a step toward doing so. Using small, interpretable feature sets, we explain language-network responses and show a shared feature basis across brain regions, with graded variation across individuals.

Our new paper with @maxtaylordavies.bsky.social introduces a resource-rational model of Theory of Mind. The model can explain many of the successes and failures of mindreading in human adults and children, and non-human primates. 🧵 royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

We have a new postdoc position to work on Neuro AI and human intracranial recording with Pierre Bourdillon and I: Apply here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... Lab info: bourdillon-titan-lab.fr feel free to RT ;)

5/ In the language network, we can reliably decode stimulus (sentences vs. nonwords), and more accurately than we can decode task. In contrast, in the MD network, task is better decoded than stimulus type.

How do we predict what’s going to happen next? In a new paper, we @arikahn.bsky.social @licezhang.bsky.social @nathanieldaw.bsky.social @catehartley.bsky.social ask how kids, teens, and adults solve this problem. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Announcing #RStats package ggcube, now on CRAN -- make 3D #ggplot2 figures using `coord_3d()` matthewkling.github.io/ggcube/

Ever wondered why we fixate some locations longer than others? We initially thought that it had to do with recognition complexity, and were quite wrong. In Nature Neuroscience we present an alternative take: the need to memorise governs fixation durations.

Whoa. Praat can automatically transcribe audio using Whisper now. www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/manual...

Child-Directed Speech Facilitates Semantic Role Learning: A Machine Learning Approach

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Speakers Use More Redundant Color Adjectives When Speaking to Children Than Adults

Our Institute, part of Jefferson Moss-Magee Rehabilitation and Thomas Jefferson University, is hiring for a tenure track faculty position! Applicants should have experience conducting research focused on human translational neuroscience & neurorehabilitation. https://ow.ly/yCBA50Z2eMl

In a new piece with @kiante.bsky.social @taroyang3302.bsky.social @stephsmithphd.bsky.social , we argue for a paradigm shift. Webcam eye tracking offers what we call proof by presence. Gaze is a physiological signal that AI agents do not possess. (3/7)

Great work from Simone Videsen. We found sperm whale slow clicks maintain extreme isochrony with inter-click intervals up to ~10s. That's beyond any known neural system for precise interval timing. May be a long-distance communication system. nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

What is a psychological theory? Here's our take on this tricky and controversial question in this week's Experimentology chapter summary. Many things called "theories" in psychology aren't actually theories — they're frameworks. 🧵 experimentology.io

Now out in Nature Machine Intelligence @NatMachIntell “Adopting a human developmental visual diet yields robust and shape-based AI vision”: doi.org/10.1038/s422.... A wonderful case where brain inspiration improved AI. With @martisamuser.bsky.social, Radek Cichy and @timkietzmann.bsky.social .

Result: across LLMs, a head’s attention to its preferred dependency is lower for implausible sentences. In some cases, attention even shifts toward “lure” words that are semantically plausible but syntactically not part of the dependency. 5/8

Every token is a vector in the residual stream; string them together and you get a trajectory. We measured how sharply this path bends (its curvature) in different layers and asked: Do tangled paths produce flatter, more uncertain next-token distributions? (3/n)

Pleased to share that our MEG and eye-tracking study of visual memory formation, saccades, & alpha oscillations is now published (as a Featured Article!) in the Journal of Neuroscience! Full paper here: doi.org/10.1523/JNEU... w/ Jed Meltzer @drjenryan.bsky.social @rosannaolsen.bsky.social

A bit late but I've been reappointed after passing my 4th year review! 2 reviews down, 1 to go. This means that in fall I'll be on something of a pre-tenure sabbatical. If your department is looking for fall speakers & you think my work might be of interest, I'd welcome opportunities to give talks.

Remember Chomsky's arguments about language innateness based on its putative un-learnability? Those arguments hinge on a pretty crazy theory of grammar. Here is Ted Gibson's summary of the original claims and a proposed solution in the form of dependency grammar: tinyurl.com/yzjrpbb8

We're happy to release NeuralSet: a simple, fast, scalable package for Neuro-AI Supports: 🧠 fMRI, EEG, MEG, iEEG, spikes… preprocessing 💬 text 🔊 audio ▶️ video 🏞️ image… embeddings 📦 pip install neuralset 🔍 facebookresearch.github.io/neuroai/neur... 📄 kingjr.github.io/files/neural... 🧵 Details👇

Richard @futrell.bsky.social and I have posted our response to the commentaries on our BBS target article "How Linguistics Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Language Models." The response is: "You Can't Fight in Here! This is BBS!" arxiv.org/abs/2604.09501

The Bayesian Workflow book is coming! statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/04/16/t...

New paper out in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: we apply linguistic tools to sperm whale vowels. The result: sperm whale vowels do not just look like human vowels. They also behave like them. We found several parallels. Like in Latin, whales have short and long vowels.

How children remember time changes dramatically as they grow up & understanding that shift matters more than you might think. Two new papers from the lab's newest PhD, Dr. Owen Friend, explore what that difference looks like & what it tells us about the developing brain 🧠

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... "mental imagery reactivates the same sensory codes used during visual stimuli, suggesting the existence of a generative model capable of synthesizing detailed sensory contents from an abstract, semantic representation."

Really excited about our new work on aphasia! Even in fairly profound aphasia, we can recover semantic maps through visual stimuli and use them to decode language. This is a big step! Language BCIs in aphasia might be possible!

Using time-resolved EEG/MEG decoding?🧠 Here’s a new approach! No feature engineering (decode from raw signals), but capturing info that standard decoding often misses (oscillatory/aperiodic activity, connectivity). Lightweight, INTERPRETABLE, and easy to use. (1/6) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

A Suite of LMs Comprehend Puzzle Statements as Well or Better Than Humans By Supantho Rakshit, Jennifer Hu, Kyle Mahowald, Adele E. Goldberg

Happy to share our new preprint: Uncovering the representational geometry of durations Is time represented along a single mental timeline? We combine behaviour + EEG to show that duration is organised in a richer, multidimensional space. w/ @lnalborczyk.bsky.social & @virginievanw.bsky.social

New paper led by @jsrozner.bsky.social proposing and validating a way of studying LM representations as conduits for learning. Infect a model by training it on an adversarial example and trace the impacts on behavior. This has lots of perks explained in Josh's thread.

Excited for #HSP2026! LInC Lab has a busy Saturday! 🧠🗣️ 🖼️ Posters: • Olivia Gawel on memory & noisy-channel inference • Tevin Williams on linguistic alignment & memory for conversation 🎤 Talk: • Yours truly on eye-tracking & real-time noisy-channel inference Come chat/give feedback! 👋

Statistical Rethinking 2026 is done: 20 new lectures emphasizing logical and critical statistical workflow, from basics of probability theory to causal inference to reliable computation to sensitivity. It's all free, made just for you. Lecture list and links: github.com/rmcelreath/s...

Every day is a good day for sharing one of the most useful papers about research data ever written. PLEASE get your people to understand and follow this advice. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Language, Intelligence & Thought lab is looking for a lab manager! This is a 2-year postbac position that will allow you to gain experience in human neuroscience, cognitive science, and AI research prior to applying to PhD programs. Express interest here: forms.gle/npXEGUjGUbp5...

I am thrilled to announce that our group has received a new grant from the Shurl and Kay Curci Foundation to study the neural dynamics of vocal learning in children! I am looking for a postdoc to join us in this effort, currently funded for 2 years. Please reach out with CV and letter of interest.

We have three lectureships available at York Psychology (@yorkpsychology.bsky.social) with a broad remit for research/teaching areas. Home and overseas applications are welcome. Deadline for applications is early April - enquiries welcome. Come and join us! jobs.york.ac.uk/vacancy/lect...

I’m excited to share our new work, led by grad student Rajvi Agravat, using iEEG in 54 pediatric, adolescent, & young adult participants with deep neural network audio source separation to show how the brain prioritizes speech in audio containing both speech and music www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Excited to announce a new paper from our lab, by Ian Griffith @iangriffith.bsky.social with help from Preston Hess @phess2.bsky.social, introducing a model of attentional selection. www.nature.com/articles/s41... @mitbcs.bsky.social @mitscience.bsky.social Here is a summary. (1/n)