@caterinavillani.bsky.social presenting at #ESLP2026 also our study on the development of language-mediated abstraction in children and #LLMs And this includes work in collab with @gpucce.bsky.social and Andrea Esuli ESLP2026.SCIENCESCONF.ORG @abstractionerc.bsky.social

@caterinavillani.bsky.social presenting a collaborative project in which we explore the content of conceptual categories at different levels of granularity, by humans and #LLMs ESLP2026.SCIENCESCONF.ORG #ABSTRACTION #ESLP

Late lunch for an @abstractionerc.bsky.social delegation at ESLP2026.SCIENCESCONF.ORG in Lancaster today :-) And the conference starts tomorrow! @tomlamarra.bsky.social @grambelli.bsky.social @caterinavillani.bsky.social

🎓 My PhD won #BestPhDThesisAward at #UniBo. Moving beyond the abstract-concrete dichotomy, it shows abstract concepts exist in different types—flexible, multidimensional domains shaped by expertise & social-linguistic interaction. Grateful to my mentors & colleagues! Full text shortlink.uk/1mfUb 🧵

Big paper release! ConversationAlign - methods for computing lexical and affective alignment between interlocutors in dyadic conversation transcripts. Open Access in Behavior Research Methods. link.springer.com/epdf/10.3758...

Had a great time chatting with Ava about our latest conversation research. If you're interested in what makes for a good conversation, check it out! www.mindsmatterpodcast.com/s5-ep-01-you...

S5 Ep01: Your Mind on Conversation

What makes for a great conversation? Dr. Sebastian Spear shares his research using hyperscanning (neuroimaging on multiple brains at once) to study people's brains during real conversations. We discus...

mindsmatterpodcast.com

Spending time with @abstractionerc.bsky.social Team is always nourishing — intellectually during the talk, and physically right after, as this photo reveals.

Tommaso Lamarra@tomlamarra.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Our ritual picture during lunch break 😎: Team @abstractionerc.bsky.social and the invited speaker @kristinadespot.bsky.social discussing metaphors around the table! @mariannabolog.bsky.social @caterinavillani.bsky.social @lauraocchipinti.bsky.social @paolavernillo

📣 Abstraction seminars are back! 🗓️ 12 December, 10:30 (CET) 🎙️Prof.ssa Kristina S. Despot 🎓Metaphor literalization strategy: From concrete to abstract and back to concrete again 📍 Bologna 💻 Microsoft Teams (link: shorturl.at/B4H7R) 👉 Save the date & spread the word! ✨@abstractionerc.bsky.social

Don't miss this!! 📣 November's Abstraction seminar is all set too! 🗓️ 19 November, 11:30 - 12:30 (CEST) 📍 Bologna (in presenza) or 💻 Microsoft Teams (link: shorturl.at/xW7mF ) 🎆 Join us, details in the figure! 👉 Save the date & spread the word!

Happy with this popular science article about our work (with @lindadrijvers.bsky.social and @judithholler.bsky.social), showing that listeners use co-speech hand gestures to predict upcoming meaning ✋ www.medscape.com/viewarticle/...

What Using Our Hands While Speaking Reveals About Our Brains

Researchers now have fascinating insights into how our brains function while we communicate — and our hand gestures hold the key.

medscape.com

Conversational turn-taking feels effortless, but it's a complex dance. We find social context—who you're talking to and what you're talking about—fundamentally changes conversational dynamics in both autistic & TD children. 1/ onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... w @chrismmcox.bsky.social

Social Context Matters for Turn‐Taking Dynamics: A Comparative Study of Autistic and Typically Developing Children

Engaging in fluent conversation is a surprisingly complex task that requires interlocutors to promptly respond to each other in a way that is appropriate to the social context. In this study, we dise...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

📣 November's Abstraction seminar is all set too! 🗓️ 19 November, 11:30 - 12.30 (CEST) 📍 Bologna (in presenza) or 💻 Microsoft Teams (link: shorturl.at/xW7mF ) 🎆 Join us, details in the figure! 👉 Save the date & spread the word! ✨ @abstractionerc.bsky.social

📣 Abstraction seminars are back! 🗓️ 17 October, 10:00 (CEST) 📍 Bologna (in presenza) or 💻 Microsoft Teams (link: shorturl.at/RjrOU) 🎆 Join us for another seminar, details in the figure! 👉 Save the date & spread the word! ✨ @abstractionerc.bsky.social

📣 Abstraction seminars are back! 🗓️ 16 October, 15:00 (CEST) 📍 Bologna (in presenza) or 💻 Microsoft Teams (link: shorturl.at/0fw5a) 🎆 Join us for a thought-provoking seminar, details in the figure! 👉 Save the date & spread the word! ✨ @abstractionerc.bsky.social

📣The chapter "𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗶𝘁𝘆: 𝗠𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗡𝗼𝗿𝗺𝘀" w/@mariannabolog.bsky.social is now online & forthcoming in the #ElsevierEncyclopedia of Language & Linguistics 🔍 Theoretical overview, quantification tools, and behavioral evidence on specificity. 👉 Read: urly.it/31c4nm @abstractionerc.bsky.social

No better way to finish my post-doc than with a new publication on #specificityeffect in semantic processing! I’ll really miss the @abstractionerc.bsky.social team, but exciting projects are still underway. Thrilled and optimistic about what’s next! 💫

Tommaso Lamarra@tomlamarra.bsky.social · 11mo ago

New Paper Alert 🚨🆕 "Specificity Effect in Concrete/Abstract Semantic Categorization Tasks" doi.org/10.1007/s103... We observed faster response times for specific words compared to general words in a semantic decision task, regardless of their level of concreteness.

Navigating Open Research: A Guide for Early Career Researchers. Great work from the CONUL Research Group. Free to download zenodo.org/records/1702... #irishResearch #openResearch

@caterinavillani.bsky.social presenting our collaboration between @abstractionerc.bsky.social and PRIN 2022 Wemb at #Cogsci2025 in San Francisco: "Development of Linguistic- Mediated Abstraction: Insights from Word Ladders Task". Well done! 💫

Because nothing says “ready to present” like literally wearing your findings at #CogSci2025 Ham Huang leveled up from poster session to superhero mode! 🦸

Kicking off #CogSci2025 at the iconic #InternetArchive with incredible speakers! Big focus on LLMs— #McClelland asks: Are humans still smarter than AI? Yes: we learn from less data & generalize better!

Just in time for the @cogscisociety.bsky.social conference and the Rumelhart 25th Anniversary Event, the 2023 Rumelhart Prize Issue Honoring Nick Chater is out in TopiCS in Cognitive Science, edited by Mike Oaksford and me: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/17568765... 🧵 1/3

Getting ready for #COGSCI2025 in San Francisco! 📆 July 31st, 02:37pm I’ll present a longitudinal study (w/@mariannabolog.bsky.social & @adeleloia.bsky.social) on how school-aged children build taxonomies using the #WordLadders task developed by @abstractionerc.bsky.social Catch up with us there!

🌟 Had a great time presenting our poster at #ACL2025! It was a great experience sharing our work with researchers interested in conceptual categories, #abstraction and #generalization, thanks for the insightful discussions and feedback! wt @andreapdr.bsky.social @mariannabolog.bsky.social #NLProc

🔊 New paper on #pragmatics! Rising or falling nuclear accentual movement on the sentence-final word is the key #prosodic cue for distinguishing questions from statements in Italian. 👉 l1nq.com/I8G4d W/@tomasellor.bsky.social @isabellaboux.bsky.social & #FPulvermüller at #FreieUniversitätBerlin.

Rosario Tomasello@tomasellor.bsky.social · last yr.

New publication on #experimentalpragmatics! When do listeners recognize speaker´s #communicativefunction conveyed by #prosody? Work led by @caterinavillani.bsky.social collab @isabellaboux.bsky.social and #FPulvermüller shorturl.at/NDXFM @freieuniversitaet.bsky.social @humboldtuni.bsky.social

Very proud and lucky to work with such a young, brilliant, and enthusiastic researcher. Well done @adeleloia.bsky.social 👏 👏 Next step: we'll bring this work to #CogSci2025🧠✨

MariannaBolog@mariannabolog.bsky.social · last yr.

@adeleloia.bsky.social presenting our joint collaboration between @abstractionerc.bsky.social and PRIN 2022 WEMB at the Phd CLUB international conference in Bologna today: THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE-MEDIATED ABSTRACTION IN SCHOOL CHILDREN

Informal moment with @abstractionerc.bsky.social two new postdocs: Laura Occhipinti on the left and Paola Vernillo on the right, both with white shirts. Welcome!

It was such a pleasure to have you here and discuss how abstraction plays out in conversations! (interactingminds.au.dk/events/singl...)

Caterina Villani@caterinavillani.bsky.social · last yr.

Kicked off my visiting week in #Aarhus with a great talk by @thaliawheatley.bsky.social and inspiring chats with the @interacting-minds.bsky.social group! Many thanks to @fusaroli.bsky.social for hosting me and to @abstractionerc.bsky.social for supporting my work on abstract language in dialogue!

Thought-provoking and #openaccess, Andy Clark reflects on the challenges and potentials of emerging human-AI collaborations in his new commentary "Extending Minds with Generative AI", published by @natcomms.nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Kicked off my visiting week in #Aarhus with a great talk by @thaliawheatley.bsky.social and inspiring chats with the @interacting-minds.bsky.social group! Many thanks to @fusaroli.bsky.social for hosting me and to @abstractionerc.bsky.social for supporting my work on abstract language in dialogue!

The recordings from our @abstractionerc.bsky.social workshop are now online — definitely worth a listen! ▶️ site.unibo.it/abstraction/...

MariannaBolog@mariannabolog.bsky.social · last yr.

The recordings of our @abstractionerc.bsky.social Workshop "Conversational Dynamics: How Abstraction and Abstractness Ebb and Flow in Interaction" are online (work in progress). site.unibo.it/abstraction/...