New book! I have written a book, called Syntax: A cognitive approach, published by MIT Press. This is open access; MIT Press will post a link soon, but until then, the book is available on my website: tedlab.mit.edu/tedlab_websi...

Why do some advanced L2 learners process grammar in real time—and others don’t? 🤔 New paper w López-Beltrán, Dussias & @mh-christiansen.bsky.social We find that chunking ability -not working memory- predicts online sensitivity to L2 morphosyntax. 📄 doi.org/10.1177/0267... (Open Access)

Parent report of English proficiency and exposure converged with bilingual children's performance on English standardized tests of vocabulary and morphosyntax, suggesting that parent report is a valuable tool. https://on.asha.org/3MwfNaY

While the first year of life is crucial for language development, our team found that sound categorization continues to develop throughout the early school years. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Since central auditory processing disorder tests rely heavily on language, authors here aimed to evaluate the impact of test language on CAPD assessment performance in Spanish–English bilingual speakers. https://on.asha.org/48ScGDo

Piel de gallina‼️ VAMOS PALESTINA 🇵🇸 CARAJO‼️ #GlobalSumudFlotilla #FreePalestine #StopGenocide

Ready for Summer? 🌞

Today, U.S. Department of Education will resume collecting on defaulted student loans. It sounds hard to believe, but college used to be free. This is the real story behind skyrocketing student debt. (Spoiler: It has a lot to do with Ronald Reagan)

🚨 BREAKING: The mega power outage in Spain and Portugal threatens to last 10 more hours. Read the developing story here: ow.ly/ce9150VIRn9

Spanish news calling it the largest outage in recent history. Power outages across most across Spain and Portugal continues. Causes tbd. #power #electricity #spain #españa https://elpais.com/economia/2025-04-28/apagon-electrico-masivo-en-espana.html

Elon backtracked on DOGE savings goals from $1 trillion to $150 billion. But watchdogs report only $12.6 billion in verifiable savings. That represents just 0.173% of the U.S. federal budget for 2025. We're losing vital government services for basically nothing in return.

I am teaching my phd writing workshop course this quarter, question: are there any words/phrases said to you by an advisor/mentor that stuck with you, were memorable, or particularly helpful? If so please reply below!

Previous to the FDA, folks would put chalk and plaster of Paris in milk to make it appear white. They could also add formaldehyde to cover the smell and taste of spoiled milk.

New R package almost birthed - SemanticDistance - computes two semantic distance metrics (experiential and embedding) for any rolling chunk size (ngram-to-ngram, word-to-word, turn-to-turn, ngram-to-word). You give it your language sample. It does the rest, including lemmatize and stopword omit

In @elife.bsky.social: Stimulus dependencies—rather than next-word prediction—can explain pre-onset brain encoding during natural listening doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

The irony of the richest man in the world almost single-handedly destroying an agency designed to help the world’s poor, so that the U.S. federal budget has more room for another giant tax cut for the richest man in the world and his pals, should not be lost on anyone. [Cartoon by Mike Luckovich]

That’s one heck of a garden-path sentence.

Why do we not remember being a baby? One idea is that the hippocampus, which is essential for episodic memory in adults, is too immature to form individual memories in infancy. We tested this using awake infant fMRI, new in @science.org #ScienceResearch www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Two noteworthy things about the White House press release ahead of today's announcement regarding ED: (1) It's all about K-12, while most federal money goes to higher ed. (2) Most of the links are to NCES reports...and NCES is now down to about three employees. www.whitehouse.gov/articles/202...

Great to see this report of a new #OpenAccess journal in #linguistics, founded by Mike Putnam (@syntaxpunk.bsky.social) and David Natvig. The journal, #Continua, published by #PennState Libraries, focuses on #words and the mental #lexicon www.psu.edu/news/univers...

#booksky #wordoftheday

Navajo Code Talkers disappear from military websites after Trump DEI order www.axios.com/local/salt-l...?

Free Mahmoud Khalil!!!

Columbia University pushed out professor @katherinefranke.bsky.social because of her pro-Palestine advocacy. She joins @premthakker.bsky.social to discuss the systematic free speech crackdown at Columbia and across the US. Watch the full conversation: zeteo.com/p/columbia-t...

Here's what linguistics experts think about the recent executive order declaring English as the official language of the US (spoiler: they don't think it's a great idea): www.lsadc.org/content.asp?... I'm so proud to be a member of the executive committee of @lingsocam.bsky.social!

Words stick together in our minds—think #collocations like strong coffee but not powerful coffee. ☕ But how do collocations connect to one another? Using eye-tracking, we (M Macis, S Sonbul & myself) explore how we process "nested collocations". New paper in JEP: LMC! 🔗 doi.org/10.1037/xlm0...

What is human #StatisticalLearning for? The standard assumption is that the goal of SL is to learn the regularities in the environment to guide behavior. In our new Psych Review paper, we argue that SL instead is provides the basis for novelty detection within an information foraging system 1/2

We argue that the environment is constantly in flux and thus that SL therefore cannot be the end goal but rather provides a baseline against which novelty can be detected from random noise. We discuss the implications of this perspective for #CognitiveScience 2/2 doi.org/10.1037/rev0...

Because of four decades of bad faith narratives by rich folks who want your taxes to go up and their taxes to go down, most folks don’t know this: career federal workers are heroes who work extremely hard every day and go above and beyond all across America to improve your lives.

As promised, here are the slides I shared with students to convince them to NOT use chatGPT and other artificial stupidity. TL;DR? AI is evil, unsustainable and stupid, and I'd much rather they use their own brains, make their own mistakes, and actually learn something. 🪄

“This is truly a national tragedy and one that is being executed by people who do not understand the value of scientific research.” 🧪 from @science.org

This brief tutorial on Mixed-Effects Models by Professor Marc Brysbaert could be helpful for novice researchers interested in second language acquisition! LINK 🔽

Stand Up for Science rallies will be held in DC and state capitals on March 7th. Share with friends. Sign-up here to get email updates with details: www.eventbrite.com/e/stand-up-f...

👋 Welcome to the official ISB15 BlueSky account! Conference Info: 🗓 June 9 - 13, 2025 📍 San Sebastián, Spain 🔗 Registration is open! Early bird rates available until March 16: tisa.teventos.com/isb2025/en/m... Follow us for updates on speakers, sessions and more!

Please share Dick Aslin's excellent blog on indirect costs: dickaslin.substack.com/p/are-we-pay...

@bpsofficial.bsky.social would you share our video, made with clinicians and ppl with lived experience, about how mental health practitioners can make therapy more accessible for ppl with Developmental Language Disorder? Made for #childrensmentalhealthweek ! :) youtu.be/Ko6sFea3v0w?...

Senior undergrad starting my PhD next year. I’m absolutely terrified — I love science and I’m great at it, but that might not be enough anymore. I’ve channeled my rage into making and distributing this:

Applications are now open for our new summer school in 'Corpus Linguistics for Language Testing and Assessment' offered as part of our free annual Lancaster Summer Schools series. 16-20 June 2025, Lancaster University Find out more: wp.lancs.ac.uk/corpussummer...

🚨BREAKING. From a program officer at the National Science Foundation, a list of keywords that can cause a grant to be pulled. I will be sharing screenshots of these keywords along with a decision tree. Please share widely. This is a crisis for academic freedom & science.

NEW: CDC's top advisors are demanding answers, and an in person meeting, from the agency's acting director. Why were websites taken down, when will they be back, and how is the data being protected? The removal has "dire consequences" says @danieldawes.bsky.social www.statnews.com/2025/02/01/c...

The history of fascism provides valuable insights into assaults on education. (Wannabe) Authoritarians long understood the power of student movements in shaping democratic change. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

NIH memo addresses ‘confusion’ about restrictions imposed by Trump, easing some concerns | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

Does the culture you grow up in shape the way you see the world? In a new Psych Review paper, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I tackle this centuries-old question using the Müller-Lyer illusion as a case study. Come think through one of history's mysteries with us🧵(1/13):

Welcome immigrants from X interested in science to the friendlier skies of @bsky.app, as documented by a new @nature.com survey (but you already knew that 😉) "Bluesky is much better for science. There is much less toxicity, misinformation, and distractions." www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I think the last single author publication I had was my thesis, but in any case, here's another. An integrated framework for the learning, recognition and interpretation of words. 100% Gaskell, for better or for worse: doi.org/10.1177/1747...

The price of eggs in the US is spiking, mostly due to #H5N1 bird flu. Solving the problem requires urgent, important communications from the CDC & FDA* and rapid development of research by the NIH** * Currently paused by Executive Order ** Grant reviews now all canceled www.kcur.org/news/2025-01...