🎉 Happy to have presented my postdoctoral work in collab with Laurent Prévot & @fourtassi.bsky.social at #ESLP2026 ! 🧠 Can distributional input alone support the emergence of abstract relational knowledge? We explore this through computational models of child-directed speech. #NLPproc #cogsci

And here is @tomlamarra.bsky.social presenting his work on looking at difference between concreteness and specificity in a range of language processing contexts #ESLP2026

Tommaso Lamarra@tomlamarra.bsky.social · 6d ago

Our PI @mariannabolog.bsky.social as keynote speaker of #ESLP2026 conference presenting the @abstractionerc.bsky.social research and findings on how lexical specificity shapes the study of conceptual knowledge and language use in both the human mind and LLMs 🧠🗣️🤖

@caterinavillani.bsky.social presenting at #ESLP2026 also our study on the development of language-mediated abstraction in children and #LLMs And this includes work in collab with @gpucce.bsky.social and Andrea Esuli ESLP2026.SCIENCESCONF.ORG @abstractionerc.bsky.social

Go @tomlamarra.bsky.social ! Presenting his Phd project at #ESLP: experimental evidence on the processing of words varying in concreteness and specificity in isolated words, constructed dialogues and real conversations. @abstractionerc.bsky.social ESLP2026.SCIENCESCONF.ORG

Our PI @mariannabolog.bsky.social as keynote speaker of #ESLP2026 conference presenting the @abstractionerc.bsky.social research and findings on how lexical specificity shapes the study of conceptual knowledge and language use in both the human mind and LLMs 🧠🗣️🤖

@caterinavillani.bsky.social presenting @abstractionerc.bsky.social's study on categorization and abstraction in humans and LLMs at the #ESLP2026 conference, based on exemplar generation and typicality evaluation. The findings offer new insights into how conceptual knowledge is built 🧠🤖📚

Day 1 of the #ESLP2026 conference is in the books! Great presentations, especially the session on multimodality, along with plenty of opportunities for engaging discussions, reconnecting with familiar faces, and meeting new colleagues. Looking forward to Day 2!

Late lunch for an @abstractionerc.bsky.social delegation at ESLP2026.SCIENCESCONF.ORG in Lancaster today :-) And the conference starts tomorrow! @tomlamarra.bsky.social @grambelli.bsky.social @caterinavillani.bsky.social

OurPI, @mariannabolog.bsky.social, presented at @raammetaphor.bsky.social specialised seminar preliminary findings on how word specificity influences the comprehensibility of predicative metaphors. The talk sparked engaging discussions and insightful feedback 🗣️🎤

Thrilled to participate in my first @raammetaphor.bsky.social Conference! 🎤 An amazing community, inspiring conversations, and plenty of insightful discussions. 💡 Grateful for the experience and looking forward to the next one!

MariannaBolog@mariannabolog.bsky.social · 2mo ago

@tomlamarra.bsky.social presenting at RaAM specialized seminar his insight on how specificity (beyond concreteness) may impact conceptual metaphor comprehension. @abstractionerc.bsky.social

A great first day at @raammetaphor.bsky.social!✨🚀 Interesting talks, excellent organization, and great to connect with both new and familiar faces! 😎 @valentinabambini.bsky.social @mariannabolog.bsky.social @abstractionerc.bsky.social @al-azary.bsky.social @kristinadespot.bsky.social

@tomlamarra.bsky.social presents @abstractionerc.bsky.social results at PiF2026 on the role of concreteness and specificity on language processing, considering Word processing in isolation, in simulated dialogues and in naturalistic conversations.

Are you interested in how adults learn new words and concepts? Are you based in London? Sign up for our fun experiment with your friend. You’ll get to chat with your friend and learn some new things

greta gandolfi@gretagandolfi.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Hayley and Moon are two fantastic students at the Language and Cognition lab at UCL (www.ucl.ac.uk/brain-scienc...). They have just started recruiting participants for a study on social learning! If you are interested, get in touch or sign up here: calendly.com/ucjuhp1-ucl/... (more info below)

Paola Vernillo presenting @abstractionerc.bsky.social work at PiF2026: "Specificity, concreteness, and frequency in metaphor evaluation. Behavioral evidence from Italian predicate metaphors

@lauraocchipinti.bsky.social presents our study on text complexity elaborate on 5 levels, and its relation with lexical concreteness and specificity. At PiF2026, Pavia.

Ready for Psycholinguistics in Flanders Conference PiF (2026) at @University of Pavia! 🗣️⛪ Looking forward to meaningful discussions and new connections! @abstractionerc.bsky.social @mariannabolog.bsky.social @paover.bsky.social @lauraocchipinti.bsky.social

📣 Abstraction seminars are back! 🗓️ 13 February 2026, 10:30 (Rome time, UTC+1) 📍 Bologna (in presenza) or 💻 Microsoft Teams (link: shorturl.at/dBI5L) 🎆 Join us for another seminar, details in the figure! 👉 Save the date & spread the word! ✨ @abstractionerc.bsky.social

Our ritual picture during lunch break 😎: Team @abstractionerc.bsky.social and the invited speaker @kristinadespot.bsky.social discussing metaphors around the table! @mariannabolog.bsky.social @caterinavillani.bsky.social @lauraocchipinti.bsky.social @paolavernillo

@kristinadespot.bsky.social on the truthfulness of metaphor in conceptual metaphor theory @abstractionerc.bsky.social

🚨 IconicITA dataset is now available! We present Italian iconicity ratings from L1 and L2 speakers showing that more iconic words are more specific, and that higher L2 proficiency boosts sensitivity to form–meaning resemblance in L1. 📄 More details in the paper: journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

IconicITA: Iconicity ratings of the Italian affective lexicon

Iconicity, defined as the potential of linguistic signs to resemble properties or features of their referents, is increasingly recognized as a general property of language. One common approach for qua...

journals.plos.org

MariannaBolog@mariannabolog.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Say hi to the IconicITA dataset! We introduce iconicity ratings for Italian produced by L1 and L2 speakers, and show how iconicity relates to key psycholinguistic variables and chronometric data. Note: Specificity emerges as a good predictor of iconicity! journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Say hi to the IconicITA dataset! We introduce iconicity ratings for Italian produced by L1 and L2 speakers, and show how iconicity relates to key psycholinguistic variables and chronometric data. Note: Specificity emerges as a good predictor of iconicity! journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

IconicITA: Iconicity ratings of the Italian affective lexicon

Iconicity, defined as the potential of linguistic signs to resemble properties or features of their referents, is increasingly recognized as a general property of language. One common approach for qua...

journals.plos.org

Per chi fosse interessato a leggere cosa fa il gruppo ABSTRACTION @erc.europa.eu , ecco il flipbook interattivo con gli studi condotti fino ad oggi (in lingua italiana). heyzine.com/flip-book/61... Il flipbook accompagna un video introduttivo, che trovate qui: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIqc...

Alla scoperta dell'astrazione linguistica - final | PDF to Flipbook

Created with the Heyzine flipbook maker

heyzine.com

📣 Abstraction seminars are back! 🗓️ 12 December, 10:30 (CET) 🎙️Prof.ssa Kristina S. Despot 🎓Metaphor literalization strategy: From concrete to abstract and back to concrete again 📍 Bologna 💻 Microsoft Teams (link: shorturl.at/B4H7R) 👉 Save the date & spread the word! ✨@abstractionerc.bsky.social

New theoretical paper: “Beyond concreteness: why word specificity is the missing piece in theories on embodied language comprehension” shorturl.at/6Rv3Y Included in the special issue "Rethinking the Embodiment of Language: Challenges and Future Horizons", led by V. Cuccio, V. Gallese & Y. Shtyrov.

Frontiers | Beyond concreteness: why word specificity is the missing piece in theories on embodied language comprehension

The concreteness effect has long been associated with embodied theories of language, which propose that concrete words are easier to process than abstract on...

links.email.frontiersin.org

E oggi ho condiviso con il centro interdipartimentale Alma AI e un gruppo di colleghe e colleghi giuristi capitanati da Monica Palmirani i risultati a grandi linee del gruppo @abstractionerc.bsky.social su studi che coinvolgono l'uso di LLMs. Questa settimana è decisamente densa :-)

Dopo il seminario di Valentina Cuccio con una delegazionedi Abstraction, nel magnifico chiostro del dipartimento di storia, San Giovanni in Monte, Bologna.

Seeing this slide after completing my postdoc at @abstractionerc.bsky.social makes me emotional. Great talk of @mariannabolog.bsky.social at the workshop "Large and Small Language Models: stato dell’arte fra limiti e prospettive" at Unibo. Many works about abstraction and LLM are on the horizon! :)

Prof. Valentina Cuccio kicks off her seminar asking whether there are any cross-cutting, neglected dimensions that can explain the concreteness effect. She elaborates on the modality of acquisition of concepts @abstractionerc.bsky.social

Filippo Domaneschi, director of the Lab of Language and Cognition presenting at @abstractionerc.bsky.social on the reclamation of slurs, discussing pragmatic and psycholinguistic aspects in relation to abstraction mechanisms

Veronica Repetti explaining variation in animacy, alienability and syntactic structure of concrete and abstract possession, this morning for the second @abstractionerc.bsky.social seminar. All seminars are recorded and posted on site.unibo.it/abstraction/...