Open Mind

Paul Smaldino@psmaldino.bsky.social · 2w ago

Academics: What's a journal in your field that's great? I feel like they are a dwindling breed. Criteria: (1) No APC. Supports green or diamond OA. (2) High-quality and relatively fast peer review. (3) Editors who provide real curational value and exercise purposeful agency in the decision process.

Do language models know who did what to whom? Led by grad student @josephdenning.bsky.social, and Hannah Guo (when she was the first undergrad RA in the lab!)

Do Language Models Know Who Did What to Whom?

Abstract. Language models (LMs) are commonly criticized for not “understanding” language. However, many critiques focus on cognitive abilities that, in humans, are distinct from language processing. H...

direct.mit.edu

I recently submitted a manuscript to OpenMind, and the review process was excellent—much better than many other journals I had submitted to! Highly recommended :)

A brief history of Open Mind 2013: Dick Aslin was disillusioned with Cognition (Elsevier). Nick Lindsay (MIT Press) wanted to create an open access cognitive science journal Nick contacted Dick, and Open Mind started. Editorial, February 2017, issue 1 of Open Mind direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...

For years I’ve always started with the same word… I was not prepared for this.

Every time a word violates a textbook grammatical rule, a corpus linguist gets their wings. (Lucas Zelnick using a predicative adjective before the noun)

Evidence against syntactic encapsulation in “syntax-specialized” attention heads - now with the thread from Thomas!

thomasmcgee.bsky.social@thomasmcgee.bsky.social · 3mo ago

New paper: Evidence Against Syntactic Encapsulation in Large Language Models We revisit a classic psycholinguistic question, but in LLMs: do LLMs have any syntactic computations that are isolated from meaning, or does semantics pervasively influence them? 1/8 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Evidence against syntactic encapsulation in large language models onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Evidence Against Syntactic Encapsulation in Large Language Models

Transformer-based large language models (LLMs) have recently demonstrated exceptional performance in a variety of linguistic tasks. LLMs primarily combine information across words in a sentence using...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Idan Blank (UCLA, psych) makes the complex intuitive if you want to learn how LLMs work, watch👇 newly posted to YouTube (no ads) www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGMn...

How Transformers Work: A Detailed, Conceptual Explanation (No Coding / Math)

YouTube video by IbanDlank

youtu.be

Looking forward to #CogSci2025 ! Find us throughout the conference

📣 I'm looking for a postdoc to join my lab at NYU! Come work with me on a principled, theory-driven approach to studying language, learning, and reasoning, in humans and AI agents. Apply here: apply.interfolio.com/170656 And come chat with me at #CogSci2025 if interested!

Thrilled to announce our symposium, Cognitively Inspired Interpretability inn Large Neural Networks, at #CogSci2025 featuring @taylorwwebb.bsky.social, Ellie Pavlick, Jiahai Feng, Gustaw Opielka, ‪‪@claires012345.bsky.social‬, and Idan Blank!

Explaining “viewpoint diversity”, a senior faculty told me—a gay person—that if we don’t hire people who oppose living near gay people, we’ll never hire from countries where most people oppose gay rights, and that’s discrimination. How am I supposed to handle that?

Does training LLMs on word prediction result in human-like representation of thematic roles? Work by @josephdenning.bsky.social, Hannah Guo, and Bryor Snefjella who is no longer with us

Do Large Language Models know who did what to whom?

Large Language Models (LLMs) are commonly criticized for not understanding language. However, many critiques focus on cognitive abilities that, in humans, are distinct from language processing. Here, ...

arxiv.org

1/x My NIH grant that would collect data to help *prevent suicidal thoughts and behaviors* among LGBTQ+ people was terminated today, along with many other LGBTQ+ focused grants. These terminations make no sense scientifically. Here's why:

Excited to introduce funROI: A Python package for functional ROI analyses of fMRI data! funroi.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ #fMRI #Neuroimaging #Python #OpenScience Work w @neuranna.bsky.social 🧵👇

New preprint “Monkey See, Model Knew: LLMs accurately predict visual responses in humans AND NHPs” Led by Colin Conwell with @emaliemcmahon.bsky.social Akshay Jagadeesh, Kasper Vinken @amrahs-inolas.bsky.social @jacob-prince.bsky.social George Alvarez @taliakonkle.bsky.social & Marge Livingstone 1/n

People talk a lot about objects, but what about the softness of a cushion, the greenness of an emerald, or the viscosity of oil? In our work just published @pnas.org, we shed light on how we make sense of the hundreds of materials around us. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

It's the *anti-DEI* drive now that has outsiders acting "like many faculty members' direct supervisor and telling them how and what to teach." DEI officials never reviewed syllabi or challenged course titles or targeted entire fields of scholarship. That's what the anti-DEI forces do.

Submit your discourse studies to this SI of Cortex. I’m co-editing with the fabulous @briellestark.bsky.social and @andreaeyleen.bsky.social. May 1 deadline.

Brielle Stark, PhD {she}@briellestark.bsky.social · 2y ago

Call for papers: extended until May 2025! *#Neurocognitive perspectives on #discourse & connected #language*. This special issue will highlight advances from cog & clinical #neuroscience in modeling discourse that spans from multi-word utterances to naturalistic stories. #aphasia bit.ly/4hdKbBb

Come work with me! We're hiring a 3-year Visiting Assistant Prof in Semantics, bonus if you can teach courses in other areas too. We're a small liberal arts college just outside Philly with a robust undergrad Ling dept. Full info at apply.interfolio.com/160957 Feel free to ping me with any Qs! 🐦🐦 🧪

Interested in a researcher position studying the neural and computational bases of adaptive and maladaptive decision-making, and their relationship to mental health? Our colleague Silvia Lopez-Guzman is hiring a Data Scientist/Data Analyst, read more at cdn-lab.github.io .

Registration for #Evolang2024 is now open! And in addition to a great regular program, we have 7 amazing workshops! evolang2024.github.io

We are now accepting submissions for HSP2024 at UMich! Deadline: Jan 8th. See the CfP for details.

My first post-doc, Bryor Snefjella, unexpectedly passed away last year. Before leaving the lab, he drew some punny sketches on the whiteboard. To commemorate him, I asked undergrad Faustine Wang to turn them into a poster, which we hung in the lab today. Rest in peace, friend.

Me applying for grants.

@travellifes_ on Instagram: "Unbelievable 😱"

8,028 likes, 428 comments - travellifes_ on December 5, 2023: "Unbelievable 😱"

instagram.com

A video shows UCLA pro-Palestenian protestors hitting and punching a piñata of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. I despise that man, and yet... this is unacceptable.

Mac email search is the WORST system I've encountered. Can't even do simple string match.

First post and big news - I am starting as an Assistant Professor in Psychology at Georgia Tech in Jan 2024! www.language-intelligence-thought.net

LIT Lab

Our goal is to understand the relationship between language and human thought. How does the language network in the brain interact with other systems to interpret meaning in the world? Can models...

language-intelligence-thought.net

Tenure/tenure-track faculty positions in NLP in CS. Looking for people in science of science! Super interdisciplinary dept, great place to work and grow, amazing location. Learn more jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta... Feel free to reach out and ask about the position and details.

The Department of Neuroscience at brown is looking to hire tenure track assistant professors in any field of neuroscience! Come join our inclusive community of scholars and educators! For details check out: apply.interfolio.com/132440