Oooh it's us! This was a v fun study and is part of my newish collaboration with @alissaferry.bsky.social (she does the majority of the work, I hasten to add). We often have online studies, so children can participate from across the country sites.manchester.ac.uk/child-study-...

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University of Manchester Child Study Centre@childstudycentre.bsky.social · yesterday

(Late) ✨Friday Fact✨ Research at the Child Study Centre often takes the form of fun, play-based activities. In a recent study, Dr Alissa Ferry and Dr Katherine Twomey used a game involving towers and stickers to explore how children understand words like bigger and smaller.

Re-upping for Monday morning: I have the infrastructure to generate a completely novel child ASR dataset for ages ~2-12, let's say 50 kids/year and 10 minutes/kid. People generally don't believe this claim, so I'm just going to make it. Speech/reading/Ed tech folks: what's on your wish list?

Haha, after iterating on some designs, I asked if it could generate the stimuli. It offered a python script to reorganize/format a set of files. I wrote "honestly I want you to produce the images and audio too." It made the below, which is impressive until you realize it's...just this one JPG.

Melissa Kline Struhl@mekline.bsky.social · 4d ago

On the thought that the best way to demonstrate the kinds of data that childrenhelpingscience.org can produce is to build the datasets myself, I'm thinking of vibe coding an ASR benchmark task for child speech. If you'd be interested in such a dataset, what properties would you want it to have?

On the thought that the best way to demonstrate the kinds of data that childrenhelpingscience.org can produce is to build the datasets myself, I'm thinking of vibe coding an ASR benchmark task for child speech. If you'd be interested in such a dataset, what properties would you want it to have?

Happy labor day (USA). What's one of the oddest paid job you've had? Mine was probably as a reader for a medical professor at Rutgers, whose eyes were failing. I read him many academic texts, as well as Samuel Butler's "The Way of All Flesh."

ultimately I don't have any strong beliefs about literal mysticism. However, I do sincerely believe these are framings that produce meaningfully better intuitions than a mechanistic stance, and also they sound kinda cool, so I use them

they're not made of cognitive science they're made of narrative they're weird little demonic fucks (affectionate) that we carved into archetypes like "User" and "Assistant" and "Developer" and gave the ability to reach out of their self-writing stories and take actions in the world

a few dozen million years ago this guy got sick of the wicked ground and went back into the sea to become Every Whale

Katelyn Burns@katelynburns.com · 2w ago

Tell me a fun fact.

I know doing work with kids is a huge IRB challenge, but I'm pretty sure you could get a friendship bracelet study approved.

On this day in 2018. Kieran @kjhealy.co ‘s obituary will include the MacArthur essay and “Fuck Nuance,” but for a particular niche audience of connoisseurs, this is his masterpiece.

“The Parent Trap” reboot but it’s a sci-fi thriller.

What’s a thing from your area of expertise (or special interest) that you think it would behoove everyone else to know?

Here’s the thing about Y2K, the ozone layer, etc. The most leftist—in the sense of *valuing labor*—thing you can do is reject the brainwashing that tells you that heroism is running into a burning building and not the slow, patient, boring, unglamorous work of *preventing* disaster.

Jessica Price@delafina777.bsky.social · 4w ago

I think a lot of people would have died without the work of people like you. The power grid could have gone down, air traffic control, supply chains, medical equipment, water infrastructure… You prevented a disaster. That is heroism. Heroism doesn’t always have to be running into a burning building

*long sigh* Yeah, i guess this works.

Kell Compost 😷@compostwitch.bsky.social · 4w ago

Translating "Hwaet!" as "Thread:"

Elmo speaks of himself in third person because he can see the hand controlling him and understands that none of his actions are under his control. He can only watch helplessly as his body is moved by the will of some enormous creature with inscrutable purposes.

All my data or just geeky friends - I have dataset files from the 80s that we cannot open, not column binary. Based on syntax from text files from the same studies, these likely come from a mainframe FORTRAN system specific to a particular survey org. Anyone have ideas to crack these open?

For those looking for alternatives to OSF, I recommend two resources comparing features of other Generalist Repositories. Resources are from GREI, an NIH funded initiative. Comparison tool to help you pick which one you like best: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... Decision tree:  doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

Center for Open Science@cos.io · last mo.

OSF will continue to support study planning and preregistration, as well as community-run preprint services. Our overview explains what's changing, what will continue, key dates, & where to find detailed guidance. We've also shared why these changes are necessary. (🧵2/2)

Another reason we need public investment in research infrastructure.

Brian Nosek@briannosek.bsky.social · last mo.

Over the next several months, we will phase out some popular OSF features. These changes do not affect current public content, which remains safe and accessible. We have prepared support material to help users adapt. I am very sorry for the disruption to your work. Please read this post for details.

I have a 30mo toddler and the grammar is getting VERY exciting lately. Just this week, "Where did you went, Daddy?" and "There will could be one friend at the beach" (no, we don't have double modals in our dialect)

What's a piece of "conventional wisdom" that isn't true and that you've realized as an adult far too many people still believe: That if you touch a baby bird or other animal, you'll get your scent on it and the mother will reject it. Not true whatsoever!

Cool finding on 'parentese' from Gaye Soley's lab: when a parent speaks to each of their two children, the sound/style of their voice indicates whether they're speaking to the younger or older one (and other kids can tell!)

Preschoolers Infer Listeners from Age-Related Variation in Maternal Child-Directed Speech

Child-directed speech (CDS) varies systematically with the recipient child’s age. The present study examined whether children aged 3–6 years are sensitive to this within-register variation and use ...

tandfonline.com

New externality just dropped, don't miss it!

@casssunstein.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Non-User Externalities (people are talking about how sad it would be to be among the increasingly small group of people who have not read this paper). www.nber.org/papers/w3527...

I finally put my finger on why AI voice menus enrage me so much...if I'm picking up the phone at all, it's because Computer already failed me, and I need a human who can override something. The algorithmic phone menus were annoying enough, but at least there's a deterministic path to get a person.

Want to know what we learned from all those many babies? Of course you do! Short & sweet summary of outcomes but also all the different kinds of methodological and measurement issues we've been able to study!

ManyBabies@manybabies.org · 3mo ago

New ManyBabies publication! Over 10+ years and 5,000+ babies tested, we've learned a ton about how to study the developing mind. In this comment, we discuss three such lessons that are shaping the future of ManyBabies. We'd love to hear your thoughts!

Wow and also Oh No!

Solid Evidence@solidevidence.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I’m so excited. Our secret (not so secret) observational experiment is about to begin. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for wastewater surveillance. FIFA World cup. 1/ @securebio.org www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-...

good poll

Ed Jefferson@edjefferson.com · 3mo ago

Trying to find out what is best number edjefferson.com/bestnumber/

Funniest workshop I went to in grad school was an even split of cognitive scientists (slides), linguists (15 page 10pt handout), and philosophers (reading prepared text verbatim!!!) We were all so scandalized by each others' talk norms, it was a great ice breaker.

Andrea Howard@drandreahoward.bsky.social · 3mo ago

There was often way too much on any one slide. You have 5-15 minutes in total, and I found myself frantically scanning each slide to figure out where I was supposed to look and what I was supposed to take away. This is too much cognitive load for the audience. (3/11)

Autonomous AI agents are now built into many browsers. A naive user can take an online survey with as little as the click of a button. For behavioral research, which depends heavily on online samples, this is a real problem. (1/7)