It’s a wrap! Presented my favourite PhD study today at #ICIS2026 on how peripheral visual attention might help children learning a sign or spoken language solve the reference problem. @infantstudies.bsky.social

The developmental trajectory of gaze and joint attention in native signing children. New paper by @jennisander.bsky.social & al. With @yayun23.bsky.social , @carorowland.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2026.101730

- @jennisander.bsky.social et al. (2026) show that social operationalisation of joint attention (JA) better predicts vocab than gaze-based one, emphasizing critical role of methodological choices in understanding how & why JA predicts vocab size #infancypapers onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Capturing Joint Attention: Theoretical Foundations and Their Implications for the Link Between Joint Attention and Vocabulary Growth

Despite decades of research, we still know less than we would like about the association between joint attention (JA) and language acquisition. One reason for this is that we still have not agreed ho...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Jenni Sander's PhD manuscript was approved yesterday (hooray!). To celebrate I thought I'd share a thread of her publications to date. Her work is on the challenge of reference - how children learn to connect novel labels with their referent objects - in both spoken and sign languages. 1/

Our *Monster paper* is finally out. Begun instead of data collection during covid for Melis's PhD, expanded during Jenni's PhD, & finally now published. Some papers are worth the wait onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Capturing Joint Attention: Theoretical Foundations and Their Implications for the Link Between Joint Attention and Vocabulary Growth

Despite decades of research, we still know less than we would like about the association between joint attention (JA) and language acquisition. One reason for this is that we still have not agreed ho...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Really excited I was able to present my work at #BUCLD ! Thanks for everyone who attended my talk and asked great questions!

Coming to CogSci 2025 - where do we look when watching sign language? Deaf signers look at the face (tho novice hearer-speakers look at the hands), showing how the language faculty adapts to different modalities. Led by @jennisander.bsky.social & Patrick Trettenbrein escholarship.org/uc/item/0183...

Deaf Signers Adapt Their Eye Gaze Behaviour When Processing an Unknown Sign Language

Author(s): Sander, Jennifer; Meister, Nina-Kristin; Finkbeiner, Thomas A.; Rowland, Caroline F; Steinbach, Markus; Friederici, Angela D.; Zaccarella, Emiliano; Trettenbrein, Patrick C. | Abstract: Sig...

escholarship.org

How does speaking a free word order language influence sentence planning and production? Evidence from Pitjantjatjara (Pama‐Nyungan, Australia). New paper by Evan Kidd & al. with Gabriela Garrido Rodríguez doi.org/10.1111/cogs.70087

How Does Speaking A Free Word Order Language Influence Sentence Planning and Production? Evidence From Pitjantjatjara (Pama‐Nyungan, Australia)

Sentence production is a stage-like process of mapping a conceptual representation to the linear speech signal via grammatical rules. While the typological diversity of languages is vast and thus mus...

doi.org

Our @dondersinst.bsky.social funded collaboration project EnvisionBoxBaby is in full swing. Leveraging object detection for eye tracking-object dynamics. With @babajideowoyele.bsky.social @Davide Ahmar, @sabinehunnius.bsky.social @carorowland.bsky.social @yayun23.bsky.social

I am excited to share the abstract video to our study on Joint Attention in Signing Caregiver-Child Dyads! youtu.be/M8EUU1_p4so

Sander, Rowland & Lieberman 2025 video abstract

YouTube video by Lieberman Research Lab School of Education

youtu.be

Jenni Sander@jennisander.bsky.social · last yr.

Exciting news - three years after visiting @amymlieberman.bsky.social in Boston for 6 wonderful weeks, our project on joint attention and sign familiarity in ASL has been published!

Exciting news - three years after visiting @amymlieberman.bsky.social in Boston for 6 wonderful weeks, our project on joint attention and sign familiarity in ASL has been published!

Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics@mpi-nl.bsky.social · last yr.

Caregivers use joint attention to support sign language acquisition in deaf children. New paper by @jennisander.bsky.social , @carorowland.bsky.social & Amy M. Lieberman. doi.org/10.1111/desc.70034

Watch and learn. 👀 🧠 I’ve written often about how infants learn language not just with their ears, but with their eyes. But I’ve rarely run across a better video example than this lovely moment shared to IG by seanandcaitlin. (Thread 🧵)

In 2025 I’m writing threads summarising papers by my amazing team here at MPI-PL. No.4: Sander, Zhang & Rowland on learning in multimodal interaction:Commentary on Karadöller, Sümer & Özyürek @yayun23.bsky.social @jennisander.bsky.social @mpi-nl.bsky.social journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... 1/

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

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Together with @carorowland.bsky.social and @yayun23.bsky.social I wrote a commentary on Karadöller, Sümer and Özyürek: Language acquisition occurs in multimodal social interaction Find it here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

1st results from the 1st ever Sign Language of the Netherlands CDI. Results for children's comprehension and production, reliably correlate with age. All the work of the extraordinary Jenni Sander and Dilys Eikelboom @jennisander.bsky.social

In case you missed my poster at #TISLR15 today, find me tomorrow or send me a message and let’s have a chat! We are able to show that signing children do indeed get parallel input of object and object labels on a regular base and that bimodal bilingual children’s show modality specific patterns!

You can now find a starter pack with our researchers, alumni and collaborative partners currently on Bluesky. Please dm us to add to the pack. go.bsky.app/rthUcG