New interactive blog! "Why Adjusted Regression Coefficients Are Less Descriptive Than They Look" rpsychologist.com/descriptive-...

My list on what to read about theory-driven cognitive science has now been updated to add a few more thoughts and references about the role of AI as 'in silico' models of human cognition. Your comments welcome - please add to the googledoc. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

The Lplus international school on language acquisition is *open* for applications. In its 3rd edition, this online school aims to promote knowledge about 1st language acquisition & establish a global network of collaboration. 1/ www.lplusschool.org/home

'It was not a huge surprise to find myself in the Epstein files...' My investigation into the scientists bewitched by money and the dilettante superficiality of Jeffrey Epstein's need to be near clever men. newhumanist.org.uk/articles/a-t...

- @jennisander.bsky.social et al. (2026) show that social operationalisation of joint attention (JA) better predicts vocab than gaze-based one, emphasizing critical role of methodological choices in understanding how & why JA predicts vocab size #infancypapers onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

New review paper led by our PI Tilbe Göksun, Demet Özer, Burcu Arslan, Gyulten Hyusein, and Emir Akbuğa! @tilbegoksun.bsky.social @gyultenhyusein.bsky.social "Gesture Use Across Different Concepts: Focusing on Cross‐Linguistic Diversity" onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Congratulations to Jenni! Her work is super interesting 🎉

Jenni Sander's PhD manuscript was approved yesterday (hooray!). To celebrate I thought I'd share a thread of her publications to date. Her work is on the challenge of reference - how children learn to connect novel labels with their referent objects - in both spoken and sign languages. 1/

In the 1st five years of your life you learned more about the world than you ever learned since, and at a faster pace than any machine has ever achieved. And you learned none of it from the written word.

Join us at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig as a fully funded 4-year postdoc position (m/f/d) in Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience (Area: Social Cognition). Excellent infrastructure with a leading scientific network. Apply by 13 July: recruitingapp-5218.de.umantis.com/Vacancies/44...?

@wordaware.bsky.social and I are developing a vocabulary resource for 3-5 year olds based on books. We really need more stories that have a good representation of ethnic diversity and more female characters. Do you have any good recommendations?

Interested in a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship at Oxford's Department of Education? If your research aligns with my work and you're looking for a supervisor, please get in touch. EOI deadline: 17 June 2026. #Postdoc www.education.ox.ac.uk/news/marie-s...

Deadline June 19: 2 positions, Asst., Assoc/Full (tenure track/tenured), Speech and Hearing Sciences, Arizona State apply.interfolio.com/185788

Deadline Nov 1: Asst. prof (tenure track), open area, but encouraging corpus ling [syntax, morph, lexicon] or experimental sociolx or psycholx; Linguistics, NC State Univ Dept. of English. jobs.ncsu.edu/postings/230...

Onze faculteit verliest een hele goede decaan aan Paula Fikkert, en een belangrijke stem in de slag tegen doorgeschoten efficientiedenken en lege strategieën. Paula is hierin beslist niet alleen — hier zijn mijn notities van Nov 25 bij de strategie (voor de UGV): markdingemanse.net/shared/Dinge...

Breaking news: America discovers European-style welfare state.

Today is the day!🥳 Gaur da eguna!🥳

Correct

I'm so fucking furious. So, here's my podcast in a podcast app, which now has this nice "show transcript" button Perhaps it's taking you to our free, high quality transcripts that we PAY A HUMAN to make? Absolutely not. 🧵

Ah classic traditional English pursuits. "While the human participants offer suffer bumps, bruises and worse, the cheeses generally fare well and are edible afterwards" www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

“So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean.” -Pope Leo in Magnifica Humanitas

Every summer I repost this article on how to spot drowning. Please read it and pass on. In the last few years I’ve had SIX messages from people who saved a kid’s life after clicking on the link from my feed. slate.com/technology/2...

I'm collecting together my prior Bluesky threads addressing popular misconceptions about genetics. A thread of threads, beginning with this brief guide to heritability: 🧬🧵🧪

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

The choice is not between p-values or effect sizes. They go hand in hand. The p-value is there to keep you from seeing effects where there are none. If that bar is passed, you can treat effects as non-zero, and start to reason about what they mean in practice or for a theory.

Revolutionary for child language researchers!

Interested in analyzing 𝗖𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗱-𝗔𝗱𝘂𝗹𝘁 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 with computational tools? Then the 𝗖𝗔𝗜𝗧 𝗧𝗼𝗼𝗹𝗸𝗶𝘁 🪁 (pronounced [kaIt]) might be just what you’re looking for! It includes a brand-new i𝗻-𝗱𝗼𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗱𝗲𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘀𝗲𝗿, 𝗣𝗢𝗦 𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗴𝗲𝗿, and 𝘂𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲-𝗹𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗴𝗲𝗿.

go and work w @alpar.bsky.social in copenhagen for a 2y postdoc on comparing llms and humans on metaphor processing (including eye-tracking fun stuff): employment.ku.dk/faculty/?sho...

A great lady. The biases she identified are present now, just as much as then… bsky.app/profile/anna...

"However, the education system alone cannot eradicate the attainment gap, so a true strategy would include a plan to reduce and ultimately to end child poverty in the UK"

✍️ "The attainment gap is cause by a variety of factors in the home and at schools – many made worse by the Covid pandemic and cost of living crises. Poverty undeniably plays a major role." Learn more about the attainment gap in our breakdown ⤵️

I can't read the original NYT article cos of the paywall but @meganfigueroa.bsky.social is absolutely correct that babytalk is absolutely not the answer to why humans have language & apes not. Cultural learning now, that is another story. But even then, that happens in myriads of different ways....

Child language development expert here. No. The answer is absolutely not. So-called baby talk is culturally specific. Developing language is not. #linguistics

"We are largely confusing linguistic coherence for ontological intelligence" (quote from a redditor whose name I am - unforgivably - unable to recall to cite!)

Just started planning lectures for School on Analytical Connectionism. 1st step - synthesising the literature & figuring out what we 100% know - & thus needs to be modelled - & where findings dont replicate (abstract algorithmic rules in infancy anyone?) www.analytical-connectionism.net/school/2026/

Can't wait for this conference! Register now! iccg14.oa-event.com

What is the function of function words ⁉️Using head-mounted eye-tracking and machine learning, we show how tiny words like THIS and THAT actively power word learning 👶🤖. Check our preprint, we’d love to hear your feedback!!!

In our latest paper on how multimodal interaction supports language acquisition, Zhang, Dong et al use head mounted eyetracking technology to demonstrate (!) the role of demonstratives (this/that) in helping children identify the correct referent in a complex visual scene osf.io/preprints/ps...

Can digital parenting interventions benefit early language development? Join our online BRC Colloquium with Danielle Matthews and find out! June 2nd, 2-3.30 pm, Amsterdam time. babyandchild.nl/evenementen/...

Does engaging with the arts help to slow the aging process? According to this new paper from Fancourt et al the answer is yes! Alas, the paper is actually unsuitable for such claims. Let’s examine by discussing how you'd establish whether arts engagement actually caused future health! 1/18 🧵

Want to do an experimental PHD on the evolution of human language? Only one more week left to submit your application!

Many of us were taught experiments are for testing hypotheses. In Ch 1 of Experimentology, our free, open methods textbook, my coauthors and I argue differently: experiments are for estimating the magnitude of causal effects. This reframing has important consequences. 🧵 experimentology.io

Whilst I applaud the desire to do something, I can’t help thinking that this has already been done. Both of these areas were opportunity areas, and have had money poured into them by the EEF- test and learn is already established and probably broken. bsky.app/profile/scho...

This should probably be required reading for anyone interacting with Brits. I use *all* of these! www.bbc.com/travel/artic...

Our *Monster paper* is finally out. Begun instead of data collection during covid for Melis's PhD, expanded during Jenni's PhD, & finally now published. Some papers are worth the wait onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Who's next? Turn anticipation in Dutch preschoolers with and without developmental language disorder. New paper by Imme Lammertink, @carorowland.bsky.social & Marisa Casillas doi.org/10.1044/2025_JSLHR-25-00180

Abstract submission for Many Paths to Language conference at fabulous @mpi-nl.bsky.social now extended until 20th May. This 3-day conference focuses on meaningful differences in the way children acquire language. With keynotes by Allison Fitch & Amanda Seidl. www.mpi.nl/events/many-...

Pleased to report that the Liver birds, clearly visible from my hotel room, are still there, so Liverpool is unlikely to sink into the sea any time soon. I'll keep a eye out. explore-liverpool.com/a-tale-of-th...

Today I ready yet another article where I thought "how on earth did something this flawed get accepted in PNAS ... oh its contributed". PNAS really needs to stop publishing via this route. Evidence seems to back me up link.springer.com/article/10.1...

This was one of the most enjoyable collabs I've had. Grateful for any and all feedback.