We are hiring! New PhD position starting later this year. The call will open soon: write us for more information! bravenewword.unimib.it/prospective-...

Opening Positions - BraveNewWord

A phd position will be available in the context of the project, starting in Autumn 2026.Send an email to marco.marelli@unimib.it for inquiries, information and expressions of interest.

bravenewword.unimib.it

PiF 2026 in Pavia was a success. Co-organized with the University of Pavia, the event featured 38 talks and nearly 60 posters. The BraveNewWord team was glad to contribute across the sessions. Thanks to all for a fruitful scientific exchange. sites.google.com/view/pifpavi...

Truly enjoyed hosting @bottinilab.bsky.social and his team for our joint lab meeting. A fantastic three-day exchange where everyone shared their research and explored new ideas together. Here is Roberto Bottini’s seminar on cognitive maps: www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3iv...

Mapping the Mind: How Cognitive Maps Guide Mental Action | Roberto Bottini | BraveNewWord | Unimib

YouTube video by Mbs Vector Space Lab

youtube.com

How do cognitive maps guide our actions in both spatial and conceptual worlds? Seminar by Roberto Bottini (CIMeC, UniTrento) on hippocampal–entorhinal systems and conceptual navigation. 🗓️ Wed, April 15 | 3:30 PM 📍 Bicocca (U6 - Sala Lauree) 🌐 Online: meet.google.com/yne-wucy-uju

Last Seminar on YoutTube🎥 Prof. Jamie Reilly's seminar "A Left/Right Cortical Hemispheric Dissociation between Local vs. Global Semantic Processing During Auditory Narrative Comprehension" is now on YouTube. Watch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoW3...

Left vs. Right Brain: Local & Global Semantic Processing | Jamie Reilly | Milan | Unimib

YouTube video by Mbs Vector Space Lab

youtube.com

Do human ratings and LLMs inform the same underlying latent structure of semantic transparency? And does the multidimensionality of transparency hold for Chinese compounds? Chen J., Chersoni E., Marelli M., Huang C. 🔗 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @jing1chen2yes.bsky.social

The Multidimensional Nature of Semantic Transparency in a Cross‐Linguistic Perspective: Evidence From Human Intuitions, Computational Estimates, and Processing Data for Chinese Compounds

Semantic transparency is a key construct for understanding how complex words are represented and processed, yet it has been conceptualized and operationalized in diverse ways across studies. In this ...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

How do our brain hemispheres divide the labor of narrative comprehension? Seminar by Prof. Jamie Reilly (Temple University, @reilly-coglab.com) on local vs. global semantic processing. 🗓️ Monday, March 9 | 2:00 PM 📍 Milano-Bicocca (U6 - Sala Lauree) 🌐 Join online: meet.google.com/wkc-tyiv-zdx

New study in JML @Marco_Marelli @mariakna.bsky.social, @kathyrastle.bsky.social How does morphological knowledge serve as a powerful heuristic for vocabulary growth and reading efficiency? How do readers navigate noisy text to learn the meanings of affixes? www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Morphemes in the wild: Modelling affix learning from the noisy landscape of natural text

Morphological knowledge serves as a powerful heuristic for vocabulary growth and contributes significantly to the speed and efficiency of reading. Whi…

sciencedirect.com

Our seminar archive is available online for those interested in the latest research on language and cognition. The latest upload features Prof. Giovanni Cassani (Tilburg University), discussing how humans and LLMs interpret novel words in context. www.youtube.com/channel/UClH...

Mbs Vector Space Lab

youtube.com

Join us for our next seminar featuring Prof. Giovanni Cassani (Tilburg Uni). We will explore how humans and LLMs interpret novel words in context. 🗓️ Today, Jan 19, 2:00 PM CET 📍 Bicocca (U6 - Sala Lauree) 🌐 Join online: meet.google.com/suf-ybti-oop

How does the brain handle semantic composition? Our new Cerebral Cortex paper shows the left inferior frontal gyrus (BA45) does it automatically, even when task-irrelevant. We used fMRI + computational models. Congrats Marco Ciapparelli, Marco Marelli & team! doi.org/10.1093/cerc...

Compositionality in the semantic network: a model-driven representational similarity analysis

Abstract. Semantic composition allows us to construct complex meanings (e.g., “dog house”, “house dog”) from simpler constituents (“dog”, “house”). Neuroim

academic.oup.com

🚨 New publication: How to improve conceptual clarity in psychological science? Thrilled to see this article with @ruimata.bsky.social out. We discuss how LLMs can be leveraged to map, clarify, and generate psychological measures and constructs. Open access article: doi.org/10.1177/0963...

A fascinating read in @theguardian.com on the psycholinguistics of swearing! Did you know Germans averaged 53 taboo words, while Brits e Spaniards listed only 16? Great to see the work of our colleague Simone Sulpizio & Jon Andoni Duñabeitia highlighted! 👏 www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

Italian blasphemy and German ingenuity: how swear words differ around the world

Once swearwords were dismissed as a sign of low intelligence, now researchers argue the ‘power’ of taboo words has been overlooked

theguardian.com

Join us for our next seminar! We're excited to host Hsieh Cheng-Yu (University of London) He'll discuss "Making sense from the parts: What Chinese compounds tell us about reading," exploring how we process ambiguity & meaning consistency 🗓️ 27th Oct ⏰ 2PM (CET)📍UniMiB 💻 meet.google.com/zvk-owhv-tfw

I'm sharing a Colab notebook on using large language models for cognitive science! GitHub repo: github.com/MarcoCiappar... It's geared toward psychologists & linguists and covers extracting embeddings, predictability measures, comparing models across languages & modalities (vision). see examples 🧵

New paper! 🚨 I argue that LLMs represent a synthesis between distributed and symbolic approaches to language, because, when exposed to language, they develop highly symbolic representations and processing mechanisms in addition to distributed ones. arxiv.org/abs/2502.11856

Important fMRI/RSA study by @marcociapparelli.bsky.social et al. Compositional (multiplicative) representations of compounds/phrases in left IFG (BA45), mSTS, ATL; left AG encodes constituents, not their composition, weighing the right element more, vice versa IFG 🧠🧩 academic.oup.com/cercor/artic...

Compositionality in the semantic network: a model-driven representational similarity analysis

Abstract. Semantic composition allows us to construct complex meanings (e.g., “dog house”, “house dog”) from simpler constituents (“dog”, “house”). Neuroim

academic.oup.com

Great week at #ESLP2025 in Aix-en-Provence! Huge congrats to our colleagues for their excellent talks on computational models, sound symbolism, and multimodal cognition. Proud of the team and the stimulating discussions!

📣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

The dataset includes over 240K fixations and 150K word-level metrics, with saccade, fixation, and (word) interest area reports. Preprint osf.io/preprints/os..., data osf.io/hx2sj/. Work conducted with @davidecrepaldi.bsky.social and Maria Ktori. (2/2)

How can we reduce conceptual clutter in the psychological sciences? @ruimata.bsky.social and I propose a solution based on a fine-tuned 🤖 LLM (bit.ly/mpnet-pers) and test it for 🎭 personality psychology. The paper is finally out in @natrevpsych.bsky.social: go.nature.com/4bEaaja

For those who couldn't attend, the recording of Abhilasha Kumar's seminar on exploring form-meaning interactions in novel word learning and memory search is now available on our YouTube channel!! Watch the full presentation here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJTs...

Abhilasha Kumar, Beyond Arbitrariness: How a Word's Shape Influences Learning and Memory

YouTube video by Mbs Vector Space Lab

youtube.com

Happy to share that our work on semantic composition is out now -- open access -- in Cerebral Cortex! With Marco Marelli (@ercbravenewword.bsky.social), @wwgraves.bsky.social & @carloreve.bsky.social. doi.org/10.1093/cerc...

Compositionality in the semantic network: a model-driven representational similarity analysis

Abstract. Semantic composition allows us to construct complex meanings (e.g., “dog house”, “house dog”) from simpler constituents (“dog”, “house”). Neuroim

doi.org

Marco Ciapparelli@marcociapparelli.bsky.social · last yr.

🚨New preprint!🚨 1/7 Happy to share new work with Marco Marelli, @wwgraves.bsky.social & @carloreve.bsky.social! We re-analyze fMRI studies to identify which regions represent semantic information compositionally, and what operations best describe composition. doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Great presentation by @fabiomarson.bsky.social last Saturday at #AMLAP2025! He shared his latest research using EEG to study how we integrate novel semantic representations, “linguistic chimeras”, from context. Congratulations on a fascinating talk!

For those who couldn't attend, the recording of Prof. Harald Baayen's seminar on morphological productivity and the Discriminative Lexicon Model is now available on our YouTube channel. Watch the full presentation here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN7G...

The Computational Approach to Morphological Productivity | Harald Baayen at Bicocca

YouTube video by Mbs Vector Space Lab

youtube.com

New seminar announcement! Exploring form-meaning interactions in novel word learning and memory search Abhilasha Kumar (Assistant Professor, Bowdoin College) A fantastic opportunity to delve into how we learn new words and retrieve them from memory. 💻 Join remotely: meet.google.com/pay-qcpv-sbf

📢 Upcoming Seminar! A computational approach to morphological productivity using the Discriminative Lexicon Model Professor Harald Baayen (University of Tübingen, Germany) 🗓️ September 8, 2025 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM 📍 UniMiB, Room U6-01C, Milan 🔗 Join remotely: meet.google.com/dkj-kzmw-vzt

I’d like to share some slides and code for a “Memory Model 101 workshop” I gave recently, which has some minimal examples to illustrate the Rumelhart network & catastrophic interference :) slides: shorturl.at/q2iKq code (with colab support!): github.com/qihongl/demo...

🎉We're thrilled to welcome Jing Chen, PhD to our team! She investigates how meanings are encoded and evolve, combining linguistic and computational approaches. Her work spans diachronic modeling of lexical change in Mandarin and semantic transparency in LLMs. 🔗 research.polyu.edu.hk/en/publicati...

ChiWUG: A Graph-based Evaluation Dataset for Chinese Lexical Semantic Change Detection

research.polyu.edu.hk

📢 New paper out! We show that auditory iconicity is not marginal in English: word sounds often resemble real-world sounds. Using neural networks and sound similarity measures, we crack the myth of arbitrariness. Read more: link.springer.com/article/10.3... @andreadevarda.bsky.social

Cracking arbitrariness: A data-driven study of auditory iconicity in spoken English - Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

Auditory iconic words display a phonological profile that imitates their referents’ sounds. Traditionally, those words are thought to constitute a minor portion of the auditory lexicon. In this articl...

link.springer.com