What makes some stimuli more memorable than others? In a new paper w/ @davogelsang.bsky.social, we show that the magnitude of a stimulus's ANN representation predicts both image and word memorability Stimuli that activate more features, more strongly, leave a stronger memory trace Out now in JML⬇️

🧠🤖 It was a pleasure to host @andreadevarda.bsky.social for his talk, "Large Language Models as Models of Human Language(s) and Higher-Level Cognition." A truly inspiring talk! #NLProc

I am so excited about this finding from @pengrui-han.bsky.social and @andreadevarda.bsky.social, also with Jacob Andreas! Perhaps modularity is inevitable in intelligent systems, biological or in silico. :)

The human brain is strikingly modular: distinct networks for language, formal reasoning, social reasoning, physical reasoning. Is this fundamental to intelligent systems, or an accident of evolution? In our new preprint, we find the same modular organization emerges in LLMs.

Like the human brain, LLMs use separate sets of units for language, formal reasoning, social reasoning, and intuitive physical reasoning. A modular organization of cognition may be a fundamental principle of intelligence!

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

🤖🧠NEW PAPER🧠🤖 Children & neural networks can learn syntax from linear strings of words. How do they do it? Our hypothesis: Word co-occurrence statistics provide cues to syntax! (I.e., a new type of bootstrapping to consider!) Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2605.20529 1/n

Idan Blank (UCLA, psych) makes the complex intuitive if you want to learn how LLMs work, watch👇 newly posted to YouTube (no ads) www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGMn...

Can we process meaning unconsciously? Our new study suggests: not really… unless language has a way to express it!🧵 New paper out with Andrea Nadalini, Daniel Casasanto, @davidecrepaldi.bsky.social and Roberto Bottini

@tylerachang.bsky.social and I will be presenting the Goldfish as an oral at #LREC2026 in Mallorca! 🌴

Happy to share that our paper “Mixture of Cognitive Reasoners: Modular Reasoning with Brain-Like Specialization” (aka MiCRo) has been accepted to #ICLR2026!! 🎉 See you in Rio 🇧🇷 🏝️

Bridge AI and linguistics with the Computational and Theoretical Modelling of Language and Cognition (CLC) track at @cimecunitrento.bsky.social! Apply to our MSc in Cognitive Science First-call deadline for non-EU applicants: March 4, 2026. ℹ️ corsi.unitn.it/en/cognitive-science #cimec_unitrento #AI

The last chapter of my PhD (expanded) is finally out as a preprint! “Semantic reasoning takes place largely outside the language network” 🧠🧐 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... What is semantic reasoning? Read on! 🧵👇

Some words sound like what they mean. In IconicITA we show that the (psycho)linguistic factors that modulate which words are most iconic are similar between English and Italian. Lots more details in the paper!

Great work led by Daria & Greta showing that diverse agreement types draw on shared units (even across languages)!

What does it mean to understand language? We argue that the brain’s core language system is limited, and that *deeply* understanding language requires EXPORTING info to other brain regions. w/ @neuranna.bsky.social @evfedorenko.bsky.social @nancykanwisher.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2511.19757 1/n🧵👇

Computational psycho/neurolinguistics is lots of fun, but most studies only focus on English. If you think cross-linguistic evidence matters for understanding the language system, consider submitting an abstract to MMMM 2026!

Our paper “The cost of thinking is similar between large reasoning models and humans” is now out in PNAS! 🤖🧠 w/ @fepdelia.bsky.social, @hopekean.bsky.social, @lampinen.bsky.social, and @evfedorenko.bsky.social Link: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... (1/6)

🤖🧠I'll be considering applications for PhD students & postdocs to start at Yale in Fall 2026! If you are interested in the intersection of linguistics, cognitive science, & AI, I encourage you to apply! PhD link: rtmccoy.com/prospective_... Postdoc link: rtmccoy.com/prospective_...

New preprint! w/@drhanjones.bsky.social Adding human-like memory limitations to transformers improves language learning, but impairs reading time prediction This supports ideas from cognitive science but complicates the link between architecture and behavioural prediction arxiv.org/abs/2508.05803

Can't wait for #CCN2025! Drop by to say hi to me / collaborators!

Is the Language of Thought == Language? A Thread 🧵 New Preprint (link: tinyurl.com/LangLOT) with @alexanderfung.bsky.social, Paris Jaggers, Jason Chen, Josh Rule, Yael Benn, @joshtenenbaum.bsky.social, ‪@spiantado.bsky.social‬, Rosemary Varley, @evfedorenko.bsky.social 1/8

Next week I’ll be in Vienna for my first *ACL conference! 🇦🇹✨ I will present our new BLiMP-NL dataset for evaluating language models on Dutch syntactic minimal pairs and human acceptability judgments ⬇️ 🗓️ Tuesday, July 29th, 16:00-17:30, Hall X4 / X5 (Austria Center Vienna)

I'm sharing a Colab notebook on using large language models for cognitive science! GitHub repo: github.com/MarcoCiappar... It's geared toward psychologists & linguists and covers extracting embeddings, predictability measures, comparing models across languages & modalities (vision). see examples 🧵

📢 New paper out! We show that auditory iconicity is not marginal in English: word sounds often resemble real-world sounds. Using neural networks and sound similarity measures, we crack the myth of arbitrariness. Read more: link.springer.com/article/10.3... @andreadevarda.bsky.social

Many LM applications may be formulated as text generation conditional on some (Boolean) constraint. Generate a… - Python program that passes a test suite. - PDDL plan that satisfies a goal. - CoT trajectory that yields a positive reward. The list goes on… How can we efficiently satisfy these? 🧵👇

New paper! 🧠 **The cerebellar components of the human language network** with: @hsmall.bsky.social @moshepoliak.bsky.social @gretatuckute.bsky.social @benlipkin.bsky.social @awolna.bsky.social @aniladmello.bsky.social and @evfedorenko.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/n 🧵

PINEAPPLE, LIGHT, HAPPY, AVALANCHE, BURDEN Some of these words are consistently remembered better than others. Why is that? In our paper, just published in J. Exp. Psychol., we provide a simple Bayesian account and show that it explains >80% of variance in word memorability: tinyurl.com/yf3md5aj

Excited to share new work on the language system! Using a large fMRI dataset (n=772) we comprehensively search for language-selective regions across the brain. w/ Aaron Wright, @benlipkin.bsky.social, and @evfedorenko.bsky.social Link to the preprint: biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Thread below!👇🧵

New brain/language study w/ @evfedorenko.bsky.social! We applied task-agnostic individualized functional connectomics (iFC) to the entire history of fMRI scanning in the Fedorenko lab, parcellating nearly 1200 brains into networks based on activity fluctuations alone. doi.org/10.1101/2025... . 🧵

1/n Happy to share a new paper with Calogero Zarbo & Marco Marelli! How well do LLMs represent the implicit meaning of familiar and novel compounds? How do they compare with simpler distributional semantics models (DSMs; i.e., word embeddings)? doi.org/10.1111/cogs...

So excited to have our work on conlangs out in PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Congrats, Saima, Maya, and the rest of the crew -- well done! Here is the MIT news story: news.mit.edu/2025/esperan...

New preprint w/ @jennhu.bsky.social @kmahowald.bsky.social : Can LLMs introspect about their knowledge of language? Across models and domains, we did not find evidence that LLMs have privileged access to their own predictions. 🧵(1/8)

New preprint! 🧠🤖 Brain encoding in 21 languages! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... w/ Saima Malik-Moraleda, @gretatuckute.bsky.social , and @evfedorenko.bsky.social (1/)