Brilliant letter from Stuart Thompson to Jeremy Clarkson about his comments that benefit claimants should write weekly thank you letters to tax payers detailing how they spend their benefits each week.
Caroline Rowland
@carorowland.bsky.social
Researcher in child language development @MPI for Psycholinguistics & Radboud Uni. She/her. "All models are wrong but some are useful" (George Box 1978). https://www.mpi.nl/people/rowland-caroline
Deadline Dec 1: Asst prof (tenure track), open area, ‼️NU Linguistics‼️ "an integrated approach to the scientific study of language, utilizing experimental, computational, and/or data-intensive approaches to inform linguistic theory and its applications" linguistics.northwestern.edu/about/open-p...
![Screenshot of the Abstract of an open access article entitled "Sliding Into Silence? We Are Speaking 300 Daily Words Fewer Every Year" DOI: doi.org/10.1177/17456916261425131 authors - Valeria A. Pfeifer and Matthias R. Mehl
Our lives are lived day by day, hour by hour, and minute
by minute. This fine-grained, equally spaced resolution
of time means we do not always perceive changes
in the small, everyday things around us, like the slow
deterioration of the road we drive on every day. Sometimes
we need to take a step back and examine them
from a more distant perspective, for example, when
unexpectedly hitting a newly formed pothole.
Such an “unexpected pothole” was recently afforded
to us when analyzing several data sets jointly within
the scope of a registered replication report (Tidwell
et al., 2025). These data feature estimates of daily spoken
words for 2,197 participants based on a careful
analysis of passively sampled ambient audio recordings
of their daily lives. The participants, ranging in age from
10 to 94, were part of 22 studies conducted over the
span of 14 years and resided (mostly) in the United
States as well as Mexico, Australia, and Europe. The
report yielded an estimate for the average number of
spoken words per day of 12,792, an estimate noticeably
lower than what a prior study from 2007 yielded using
the same method (M = 15,959; Mehl et al., 2007). After
verifying that this was not a mathematical error, we
decided to put the hypothesis that we had lost words
over time to the test. By relating the estimates of participants’ daily spoken
words to the year their data were collected, we discovered
that for each year between 2005 and 2019 an
average of 338 fewer words were spoken per day, b =
−338, 95% credible interval (CrI) = [−652, −25], as estimated
using Bayesian multilevel modeling. At first
glance, 300 or so words seems like a small, insignificant
loss, as if it would not make much of a difference. And
indeed, this finding ultimately was burie…](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:oe5nwopbrs6dnzj4p5jzazqa/bafkreihyslbustwdoucsngzskrfx2l4fsgjjixtpniwc3aarxi3qrzva6a)
Not sure how I missed this (thanks @yayun23.bsky.social) but though I agree 100% that we need better theories I would add there is also a key role for observation ("when you run into something interesting, drop everything and study it" Skinner 1956). 1/2
Francesco Poli@francescopoli.bsky.social · 3w agoI went to ICIS in Panama last week, and the long trip back gave me time to think about how our field is doing and where it's heading. My general take is: there's not enough theoretical and methodological work in our field - but there's also reasons to be hopeful. A thread 🧵
How do young children predict what comes next in speech? Our study of bilingual Mandarin-English and monolingual English-learning children in Singapore highlights how language experience shapes real-time processing—and why diverse samples matter. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Predictive Sentence Parsing in Monolingual and Bilingual Learners
There is now substantial empirical support for incremental models of speech processing where language is processed in real-time as it unfolds. Developmental studies indicate that very young children ....
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
It's common for late diagnosed autistic people to find that they can't do some of the things they used to do before diagnosis - they seem to have a drop in function, which to friends & family can make it look as if the diagnosis made them worse. I don't know if I've exactly experienced this, but...
It's hard to believe that OECS has now published 200 articles!🎉 A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed to OECS—our authors, reviewers, readers, and fantastic section editors, and especially @mcxfrank.bsky.social frank.bsky.social and @hbaum.bsky.social Excited for the next chapter!
Philip Laughlin@philiplaughlin.bsky.social · 2w agoToday's #OA spotlight is extra special. Just this week, @mitpress.bsky.social published the 200th article in our OPEN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COGNITIVE SCIENCE. Congrats to @mcxfrank.bsky.social & @asifamajid.bsky.social! We've come far since the 2023 @cogscisociety.bsky.social in Rotterdam! oecs.mit.edu
If you’re at #cogsci2026, please come see presentations by some of the great folks collaborating with the Language and Cognition Lab at Stanford!
I'm incredibly honored to have been awarded the Glushko Dissertation Award! 🎓 Thanks to everyone who supported me along the way. If you're at #CogSci2026 in Rio 🇧🇷, I'll be presenting on Saturday at 12:25PM. I'd love to see familiar faces and meet new ones; excited for some great discussions!
1/5 Over a decade of comparing deep neural networks to the human brain—but what have we actually learned? Our new @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social Feature Review synthesizes a decade of brain–DNN comparisons, asking what they reveal about brain function across vision and language.
Our friends at the Endangered Languages Project (ELP) invite you to share a video message 🎬 to celebrate the #InternationalDayoftheWorldsIndigenousPeoples (Aug 9). 👋🏾 Share your greetings or good wishes. ⏰ The deadline is July 27
🧵Hey folks, I’m really hoping for help I had an inquiry from a Deaf person who is getting the run-around for autism assessment cuz no one can provide ASL interpretation. If the individual offers to have his own interpreter the places that accept his insurance (Medicare/Medicaid) decline the case
Hey #CogSci2026! I'm so honored to be receiving this year's Elman Prize! Please join @m2b2.bsky.social and me Friday 2-3:30pm in Gavea A for two joint talks: "Multilingualism in Cognitive Science" and "Multilingualism for Cognitive Science and Society" 1/4 @cogscisociety.bsky.social
For your convenience, the Pride and Prejudice live-posting super-thread 📚
Trung Le Nguyen@trungles.com · 2mo agoSo I’ve started Pride and Prejudice, and already I feel bad for Mrs Bennet.
So I’ve started Pride and Prejudice, and already I feel bad for Mrs Bennet.
The Cognition Group in the Psychology dept at Exeter are at risk of redundancy because "basic cognitive psychology research does not align with the current priorities of funding bodies" If you think this is overtly wrong and misguided, please sign this open letter docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Open Letter in Support of the Cognition Group, University of Exeter
To Executive members of the University of Exeter, including Vice Chancellor Prof. Lisa Roberts, Senior Vice-President and Provost Prof. Dan Charman, Pro Vice Chancellor and Executive Dean Prof. Sallie...
docs.google.com
A reminder of my all time favourite metaphor of how neural networks work. Soon to be incorporated into my lectures for the School of Analytical Connectionism later this summer. From www.quantamagazine.org/ai-is-nothin...
I know what I’m doing with my kids this weekend! (Also, websites like this one and the creativity and learning they might support are one other reason a contextless metric like “screen time” is an unhelpful way to think about technology in education.)
sami 🔵@hellosami.bsky.social · 4w agoI made a website that lets you cut out old magazines from the internet archive (or any PDFs you own) and make collage art out of them: ✂️ clipart.studio
Shameless plug by Courtney Filippi 😊 If you’re enjoying #ICIS2026 & are looking for another great community, come join us at @fitngin.bsky.social ! We’d love to see both familiar & new faces for a fun opportunity to connect, share ideas, & build community. Hope to see you this year at #fitng2026!
So #ICIS2026 is really great so far but unfortunately still needs my regular plea for everyone to use a microphone when asking questions. *Even* if you have a loud clear voice. Here's why www.hearingtracker.com/news/why-you... @infantstudies.bsky.social
Why You Should Always Use a Microphone in Meetings
It is critical to educate people about the importance of using a microphone for all meetings. Inclusion should never be sacrificed for the sake of ease.
hearingtracker.com
The Language Development dept of @mpi-nl.bsky.social are in Panama for #ICIS2026, presenting selections of our work on early language development. Find us at the following sessions..... 1/ @infantstudies.bsky.social
Welcome to #ICIS2026 in Panama! Remember to tag us @infantstudies.bsky.social in your posts about your presentations or reply to this post and we will repost them throughout the next few days! Registration is still open for last-minute attendees: infantstudies.org/registration/
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...
Theory: What to read
The role of theory in cognitive science Or: my guide to what to read if you really want to understand how to do good, robust , theory-driven cognitive science. (disclaimer: this is an aspirational gu...
docs.google.com
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
L+ 2026
24-28 August 2026
lplusschool.org
'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...
A twisted breed
Jeffrey Epstein attempted to gather the best minds of science around him. His interests were rooted in a perverse, eugenic fantasy
newhumanist.org.uk
- @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/...
Capturing Joint Attention: Theoretical Foundations and Their Implications for the Link Between Joint Attention and Vocabulary Growth
Despite decades of research, we still know less than we would like about the association between joint attention (JA) and language acquisition. One reason for this is that we still have not agreed ho...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
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/...
Gesture Use Across Different Concepts: Focusing on Cross‐Linguistic Diversity
This review synthesizes research findings on individuals' cospeech gesture production across four concepts (space, time, event, and emotion) that are encoded and expressed differently across language...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com