Excited to share that the 4th and final paper from my PhD is now published in First Language: doi.org/10.1177/0142... Onomatopoeia are embedded in playful, multimodal interactions and often used to enact rather than simply label meaning. Infants' use is predicted by caregiver use in the interaction.

Nice write up about Leverhulme fellows at University of Birmingham. Very excited to be one from October 😀 www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2026/un...

University of Birmingham's Leverhulme Early Career Fellows - University of Birmingham

The University of Birmingham has been awarded eight Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowships, with over £1 million in financial support

birmingham.ac.uk

PhD Graduation yesterday. Very gratifying to finally wear the floppy hat. #Educationcompleted Congratulations to my fellow graduates too! @cyberming.bsky.social @warwickpsych.bsky.social

Pleased to share that our paper has been published in Child Dev. When caregivers use more iconic speech, infants are more engaged. Iconic caregiver speech is also associated with heightened IDS but effects on infant engagement remain after controlling for this. academic.oup.com/chidev/artic...

Caregivers' use of iconic words is associated with high positive engagement by both caregivers and infants

Abstract. Iconic words are more frequent in infant-directed speech, but it is not known why. We examine whether caregivers use iconic words to engage infan

academic.oup.com

Excited to share our new paper in Child Dev! 🎉 We taught children names for 'monster' toys. Some names matched the sounds they made, some didn't. Children, especially 3-yr-olds, learned matching names more easily. Iconic words support word learning. Read here: track.smtpsendmail.com/9032119/c?p=...

Young children benefit from iconicity when learning novel onomatopoeia

Abstract. Iconic words, especially animal onomatopoeia, are more prevalent in infant- than adult-directed speech, possibly because iconicity bootstraps wor

track.smtpsendmail.com

Congratulations to Kirsty Green on passing her viva! Kirsty’s PhD, supervised by Prof. Sotaro Kita, explored how iconicity - when a word or gesture resembles what it means - supports early communication. She found caregivers using iconic words sparked greater engagement from infants.

Excited to share my first PhD article, published in Scientific Data 👉 rdcu.be/eIRqD We present the Shared Book Reading Corpus: 44 caregiver-infant dyads, 3 camera views (headcams + overview), speech transcriptions & developmental measures. Access on Databrary for discovery & reuse! ✨ #OpenScience

Just submitted my thesis. Feels momentous!

I've enjoyed the Child Language Symposium at the University of Reading. It was especially fun to present my work on the iconicity advantage for young children learning onomatopoeia as part of our Iconicity Symposium @suzanneaussems.bsky.social @cyberming.bsky.social @cathelaing.bsky.social

Really enjoyed presenting this talk at ISGS10 in Nijmegen. Some great discussions with people and lots of lovely feedback 🙂 @isgs2025.bsky.social

I presented my latest work on whether young children benefit from iconicity when learning novel onomatopoeia at the EPS meeting in Lancaster last week (spoiler -they do!) Great conference, lovely people and excellent range of talks.

@thomhills.bsky.social looking chuffed with his baby: Behavioural Network Science: Language, Mind, Society. Go ask your library to stock this masterpiece!

In my paper with @mperlman.bsky.social and Sotaro Kita (published in Gesture last week benjamins.com/catalog/gest...) we show that infants can create their own iconic gestures, producing their first iconic gesture between 12 and 20 months! Gestures varied in level of conceptual difficulty.

My first article has been published online in Gesture today. Take a look if you're interested in iconic gestures and caregiver- infant interactions 😁 www.jbe-platform.com/content/jour...

🎉 Big news! I'm submitting my PhD thesis this September! 📝✨ It's been a wild ride of research, resilience, and way too many snacks to fuel me, and now I’m officially on the hunt for my next adventure. 🚀