Hey. The fragmentation of the social media landscape has been hard on indie #scicomm 🧪 projects So if you'd like to follow a podcast that's enthusiastic about #linguistics, could you check out @lingthusiasm.bsky.social? And if you think your followers might like to, could you give this a repost?

Learning the moment-to-moment, fast-paced dance of turn-taking in conversation is tricky. Imme, Maartje, Middy and I show how 2 year old (Dutch) kids track pronoun use to predict who is gonna speak next in an interaction. Just published in JECP. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

"The models are trained on three dialogue corpora in English and Japanese, where backchannels and fillers are preserved and annotated, to investigate how fine-tuning can help LMs learn their representations." arxiv.org/abs/2509.20237

In a new paper, Mike Tanenhaus and I articulate the rationale behind different experimental tasks in the visual world paradigm and give recommendations for future studies. “Rethinking task importance in the Visual World Paradigm“ (Brain Research, in press). pure.mpg.de/rest/items/i...

Curious about the human ability to extract regularities from sensory input (i.e., “statistical learning”) and individual differences therein? #CognitiveScience #Learning Our #Consensus paper presents the collective insights of 27 researchers worldwide 🌎 💬 🌍 💬 🌏 💬: 🔗 doi.org/10.31234/osf...

New chapter on sentence production in "Speaking: The Free Book" bookdown.org/v_piai_resea... beautifully written by @drlearnasaurus.bsky.social Go check, very useful resource for free (!) for teaching & initiating folks on topic of language production (usually missing from textbooks on "language"!)

So fun to talk about talking with @kleonard.bsky.social of Chicago's The Second City Improv on the "Getting to Yes, And" Podcast. A wonderful discussion about the value of talking, listening, comedy, improvisation! On the podcast apps or here on YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=MElx...

New paper: We argue that linearization in language production is a foraging process, with speakers navigating semantic and spatial clusters. Lead author: Karina Tachihara, former UC Davis postdoc, now faculty at UIUC! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The Linguistics Department at the University of Florida has an opening for a lecturer in General Linguistics, starting Fall 2026. Come join our team! explore.jobs.ufl.edu/en-us/job/53...

UCDavis Psych is hiring an Assistant Professor in Human Cognition or Cognitive Neuroscience 🧠✨ Come join a vibrant, collaborative dept and live in a fun college town near Sacramento, San Francisco, Napa, and Lake Tahoe. Applications due Oct.21. Please share widely! recruit.ucdavis.edu/JPF07300

Aislinn Keogh @mandolinguist.bsky.social gave my new book to her mother to help her understand some of Aislinn's research area. Her mother is in a book-crochet group; she loved the book so much that she made a blanket (aka granny) square inspired by the book cover! This is so fantastic and touching!

Nice study on the value of science communication!

The Second City improv theater conducts improv exercises helping police attend to *all* of what people say. Though we can sometimes predict final words, the ends of utterances are where speakers put important NEW info. That's the how talk-planning works! tucson.com/news/nation-...

Example of how comprehenders have time and capacity to predict producers' ends of utterances imgs.xkcd.com/comics/predi... imgs.xkcd.com/comics/predi...

Teachers are so underpaid, overworked, and underappreciated that it's a textbook(!) case for humor. www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/if-...

A common response to "Thank you" is "No worries!" or "No problem!" in many English-speaking areas these days. But in Oregon, where I'm attending @lsa2025uo.bsky.social, the overwhelming response to "thank you" is "Of course!" Where else is the "of course!" dialect?

Just taught my first class at the 2025 Linguistics Soc of America Summer Institute, at U Oregon, @lsa2025uo.bsky.social. I haven't taught since 2023. I forgot to use a microphone and to mention assorted housekeeping stuff at the start, but the class itself was fun, fun, fun! At least to me.

So fun to talk about talking on the Talk Nerdy podcast! We talked science communication, adults' talking to and writing for boys vs. girls, talking and learning in school, and more. www.carasantamaria.com/podcast/mary...

And you don’t need a spoon

While #ISHPSSB2025 is underway, I'd just like to draw attention to an opportunity at University of Vienna @univie.ac.at for international researchers: senior & early-career fellowships at the new #Vienna Center for Advanced Studies #ViCAS vicas.univie.ac.at Deadline: Sept 1, 2025. Please apply!

📣 We are hiring! 📣 #BCBL has new PhD positions available for you! 🔸 1 PhD – #Neurolinguistics and #Aphasia Group 🔸 1 PhD – #PerceptualInference Group 🔸 1 PhD – #BrainRhythms and #Cognition Group The application deadline is soon! +info 👇 www.bcbl.eu/es/unete-a-n...

The ruling here seems to put huge burdens on bilinguals to switch languages rapidly for one interlocutor in a context of many other people nearby on the train who may need the other language. Seems like a recipe for all kinds of production interference. Thoughts? www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/w...

Garden Path of the day, 3 layers deep! Subject N (man) [reduced relative 1 (arrested) [reduced relative 2 (found) [subject relative (crashed)]]] mainV (faces) madison.com/news/state-r...

Have you noticed that the Apple Mail AI assistant loves passives? Some email summaries: "framing was considered; additional analysis was suggested" "details are provided" "response is confirmed" "appreciation is expressed." Whether language is changed by this ++passive exposure is wondered by me.

My university has announced a special international graduate fellowship for PhD students whose acceptance at a US university has been rescinded. Check it out: grad.uwo.ca/finances/wes...

Here's novelist Rachel Kushner on being invited to give a graduation speech at Berkeley when she recalls almost nothing from the classes she took there. Remembering activities but not what we "learned" in class is the norm & well studied; see next post for example. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/30/o...

Happy that my book More Than Words is named one of the 10 best Psychology books so far in 2025! @avery-books.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/nextbigi...

🧠 Newly out: Paper-with-a-way-too-long-name-for-social-media! How does the brain turn words into sentences? We tracked words in participants' brains while they produced sentences, and found some unexpectedly neat patterns. 🧵1/9 rdcu.be/epA1J in @commspsychol.nature.com

My book MORE THAN WORDS from @avery-books.bsky.social is on the June book list for the Next Big Idea Book Club, @nextbigidea.bsky.social‬. You can hear or read 5 key ideas from my book here: nextbigideaclub.com/magazine/pro...

Thrilled to announce that my book MORE THAN WORDS (Avery/Penguin Random House) is out! It explains why language production has huge positive effects on talkers: attention, emotion regulation, exec function & more. Accessible science for general audiences! www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/724046...

I'm talking about talking on the Something You Should Know podcast. This episode also has an interesting interview with Rebecca Lemov on brainwashing and persuasion. www.somethingyoushouldknow.net/1212-why-you...

Today, we received notice that our team’s last remaining NSF grant was terminated. For the first time since 2009, when I received an NSF Fellowship for Graduate Research, I have no active NSF grants.

You can hear a sample of me reading my audiobook here. It's from Ch 1, about nonhumans' abilities to understand vs. produce language. Despite the ick-factor of hearing my own recorded voice, I'm really excited that this is available! www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/724046...

Speech error heard at a graduation speech: “bro pono” for pro bono

Chekhov’s Gun, Applied to Motherhood www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/che... Now 25+ years past young motherhood, I think this is better than "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie"

My book reveals the mostly hidden effects of talking *on talkers.* Talking boosts focus & learning, regulates emotions, changes perception, & more. The reason lies in how utterance planning for talking works. It's a book for gen'l audiences, but w scientific claims for production & its consequences

Unfortunately, the NSF grant that supports our work has been terminated. This is a setback, but our mission has not changed. We will continue to work hard on making cognitive science a more inclusive field. Stay tuned for upcoming events.

This email from Google Calendar includes an AI summary that gets the temporal phrase attachments exactly backwards! Medication for Wyatt (the cat) is an all-day event in the calendar, and gym is at 3pm. Don't wanna go to the gym all day.

Video of a talk Mark Seidenberg & I gave to teachers+ at Planet Word Museum @planetworddc.bsky.social. We urged ⬆️ focus on child learning and sentence comprehension in reading instruction. Questions from teachers at the end are phenomenal! Please forward to educators! www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfeF...

Day 3 recording the audiobook for my book. Thoughts: 1. No mind-wandering allowed! It's absolutely exhausting. 2. My speech errors are way more anticipatory than perseveratory, as in spontaneous speech. Yes, reading isn't "real" lang production, but it seems super useful for studying phon encoding.

John McWhorter discusses a creole named Kriol today, and also gives a shout out to my book! www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/o...

Took a picture of one of the beautiful mosaics at the WI capitol yesterday during the #StandUpForScience rally

Madison folks, hope to see you Friday downtown for Stand Up For Science! www.eventbrite.com/e/stand-up-f...

One mission I have in retirement is making the reading education field more aware of adult sentence comprehension research, which is largely absent at the kid level. One small data point from this recent talk at Planet Word Museum maybe suggests some first steps of progress?

My new book, MORE THAN WORDS (Avery/PenguinRandomHouse) arrives 6/3! It tells the story of how we produce language & how talking shapes our lives in surprising ways. It's psyling for gen'l audiences! Info & preorders www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/724046/more-than-words-by-maryellen-macdonald-phd/

Our paper from AI at Meta and @bcbl.bsky.social is out on arxiv 🔥 “From Thought to Action: How a Hierarchy of Neural Dynamics Supports Language Production” arxiv.org/abs/2502.07429 How does the brain transform a thought into a sequence of motor actions? Results summarized in 🧵1/8

Psycholinguists! Send your students to the LSA summer Institute, where there are many psycholinguistics classes, including one taught by me. And of course wonderful linguistics classes, and talks, and so much interaction. I loved my LSA Summer Institute student experience back in the day!

Have you ever struggled to quantify the benefit of federal funding for research on a local level? ☀️ Here's a great resource for that 👉 www.unitedformedicalresearch.org/nih-in-your-... Focuses on the NIH, & gives you state-level information about awards funded, economic activity & jobs supported!

If you're interested in psycholinguistics, check out @fernandaedi.bsky.social's new book! An eBook version (not paperback) is now available & costs only $6.99 now (what a bargain)! It covers a wide range of topics, incl. some new/controversial topics (e.g., bilingual advantage, LLMs). Check it out!

I'm giving a talk with Mark Seidenberg at Planet Word Museum on March 1. We haven't done a joint talk in over 30 years! My part aims to bring insights from psycholinguistic research to children's reading instruction. planetwordmuseum.org/events/eyes-...