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Posts

May 07, 2012

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3:47 PM | Since one can't be snarky in a response to a review...
I'll do it here. I am currently revising a paper for resubmission. On the whole, the reviews are fairly reasonable, with the exception of one cranky comment from a reviewer who complains that our literature review is woefully incomplete. This incompleteness seems to be our failure to cite one particular study. The reviewer writes It is possible that this work is flawed, but it really should be discussed. It does seem to be a relevant study and we would have cited it, had we known about it. [...]
Games with Words
Language | Psychology
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1:07 PM | Podcast on spurious correlations between social structures and linguistic structures
This week’s EU:Sci podcast includes an interview with me about my work on spurious correlations between social structures and linguistic structures (see my overview post here).  Christos Christodoulopoulos challenges me to find a link between the number of children a family has and the basic word order they use.  Complete nonsense with an important message:  [...]
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language
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1:07 PM | From Grooming to Speaking: Recent trends in social primatology and human ethology (Conference Announcement)
Should be of interest to some readers: The Centre for Philosophy of Science of the Faculty of Science of the Portuguese University of Lisbon is organizing a 3-day international colloquium entitled ”From Grooming to Speaking: recent trends in social primatology and human ethology”, on September 10-12th, 2012. Conference website http://cfcul.fc.ul.pt/linhas_investigacao/Philosophy%20of%20Life%20Sciences/int_col/index.htm Plenary talks will be given by Johan Bolhuis Constança […]
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language
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8:08 AM | The Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution – Book Review on Linguist List
My review of Maggie Tallerman‘s and Kathleen R. Gibson‘s “Oxford Handbook of Language Evolution”  was published on Linguist List yesterday (you can read it here). Here’s my opinion in a nutshell: This is a great volume and I’ve really learned a lot from reading it. The authors have done a great job trying to be accessible [...]
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language

May 03, 2012

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1:44 PM | Open Access for the Arts and Humanities
On Twitter, Rebekah Higgit reacted to David Willetts’ speech on Open Access to research results by asking – well, what about arts and humanities? In this short post, I would like to outline a couple of practices that I am familiar with from linguistics and psychology that do not require publisher action, but that can [...]
Speech and Science
Computer Science | Language

May 02, 2012

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2:08 PM | How a Post on Biased Thinking Used Research Twisted to Fit Its Own Bias
Last week, New Statesman journalist Martha Gill published a column in the New Statesman’s Current Account blog about the way in which our own biases affect how we process information. She based her argument not just on her own observations, but on a scientific study. Unfortunately the actual results of the study are not nearly [...]
Speech and Science
Computer Science | Language

May 01, 2012

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5:43 PM | Visualising language similarities without trees
Gerhard Jäger uses lexostatistics to demonstrate that language similarities can be computed without using tree-based representations (for why this might be important, see Kevin’s post on reconstructing linguistic phylogenies).  On the way, he automatically derives a tree of phoneme similarity directly from word lists.  The result is an alternative and intuitive look at how languages [...]

Bakker, D., Müller, A., Velupillai, V., Wichmann, S., Brown, C., Brown, P., Egorov, D., Mailhammer, R., Grant, A. & Holman, E. (2009). Adding typology to lexicostatistics: A combined approach to language classification, Linguistic Typology, 13 (1) 169-181. DOI:

A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language
Citation

April 26, 2012

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8:22 PM | What Does It Mean To Mean?
I’ve been agonizing somewhat over what to write as my first post. I am currently delving into the wonderful word of pragmatics via a graduate seminar at the University of Virginia, but I do not yet feel proficient enough to comment on the complex philosophical theories that I am reading. So, I am going to [...]
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language
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11:32 AM | The QHImp Qhallenge: Testing the semantic hypothesis
A few weeks ago we launched the QHImp Qhallenge to see if chimpanzees really did have better working memories than humans.  The results showed that humans were better than previously thought, but still not up to the level of chimps.  Now we’ve extended the QHImp Qhallenge to test Matsuzawa’s theory that semantic links are overloading [...]
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language

April 23, 2012

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2:38 PM | Observational learning in octopus vulgaris
A few months ago, a documentary I saw on the Discovery Channel covered some research by Graziano Fiorito and colleagues at the Stazione Zoologica  in Naples. They were investigating observational learning in wild Octopus vulgaris with a puzzle-box experiment similar to those demonstrating cultural transmission in chimpanzees. It goes like this: there’s a tasty and [...]
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language

April 20, 2012

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3:57 PM | Babies know who’s boss, whose boss, and who knows what else.
A forthcoming paper (grateful nod to ICCI) in PNAS from Oliver Mascaro and Gergely Csibra presents a series of experiments investigating the representation of social dominance relations in human infants, and it’s excellent news: we’re special. Social dominance can be inferred in a couple of ways. Causal cues such as age, physical aggression and size can tell us [...]
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language

April 19, 2012

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8:41 PM | The Academic Spring Debate – Towards Open Access for All
Both Jo Brodie and Alice Bell have questioned the wider implications of the “Academic Spring” of open access research papers. Providing easy access to research papers is all well and good, but what about helping people make sense of them? Jo raises an issue that is particularly important, patients and informal carers researching their own [...]
Speech and Science
Computer Science | Language
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3:47 PM | The Psychologist on Replication
The Psychologist solicited opinions on the importance of replication from a number of researchers, including yours truly. See a preview here.
Games with Words
Language | Psychology

April 18, 2012

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11:37 AM | 3 PhD positions on the Evolution of Combinatorial Speech
Just a quick announcement that might very well be of interest to some readers of this blog: Bart de Boer (of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Brussels, Belgium) is looking for 3 PhD students for his ERC project ABACUS (Advancing Behavioral and Cognitive Understanding of Speech). The project is about investigating (the evolution of) cognitive [...]
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language

April 16, 2012

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5:29 PM | Language Evolution and Levels of Explanation
A somewhat contentious debate among the behavioural sciences is currently underway concerning Mayr’s division of causal explanations in evolutionary theory. Here I’m going to give you a brief rundown of two papers in particular, before I chip in my two-cents about how other insights from the theoretical literature can inform this debate. It seems the [...]
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language

April 13, 2012

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10:03 PM | Monkeys can read! (not really)
OMG! Monkeys can read! Planet of the apes is coming! Not really.
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language
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9:25 PM | Language Evolution and The Impact Agenda
Let's talk about funding.
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language

April 09, 2012

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2:33 PM | Horizontal transfer metaphor borrowed from Star Wars
Finally, antagonists of the ‘tree’ view of evolution have a metaphor of their own (from SMBC).
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language
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4:57 AM | Eadweard J. Muybridge & Google Doodle
Today's Google Doodle is a fantastic tribute to Muybridge. I haven't found a permalink, but people looking after today can find it archived in a fashion on youtube.
Games with Words
Language | Psychology

April 05, 2012

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9:27 PM | The evolution of numeral classifier constructions
I went to a good talk almost a year ago at the Interfaces III conference at the University of Kent, and I said I’d write about it, but I never got around to it. The slides have been on my desktop ever since. Now that I have a couple hours to kill on the train [...]
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language

March 30, 2012

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8:29 AM | Correction: Theory and evidence in language evolution research session still open!
I recently posted about a thematic session entitled ‘Theory and evidence in language evolution research’ at the Poznan Linguistics Meeting.  The call for paper is still open!  Here’s the call: PLM2012 – Session CfP – Theory and evidence in language evolution
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language

March 27, 2012

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2:36 PM | Wild Replicator’s Got Funky Rhythm, Part 2
As its name indicates, this post builds on Wild Replicator’s Got Funky Rhythm, Part 1. I want to call your attention, in particular, to the next to the last section, Becoming Memetic. There I trace, albeit sketchily, the history of Rhythm Changes. The point is that Rhymthm Changes didn’t exist as a memetic entity in [...]
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language
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9:05 AM | Sound Reminders in the Home
One of the three projects I currently work on is the MultiMemoHome project. MultiMemoHome is a collaboration between the GIST Human Computer Interaction Group, University of Glasgow, the Centre for Speech Technology Research (CSTR), University of Edinburgh (where I work), and audiologists at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh. We work with a charity that supports people [...]
Speech and Science
Computer Science | Language

March 23, 2012

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6:05 PM | Wild Riplicator’s Got Funky Rhythm, Part 1
Now that the replicator meme is out and about I’ve got more to say. I’m going to republish two more posts from my 2010 cultural evolution series. These posts are about music. I have various reasons for using music as my cultural evolution conceptual sandbox. For one thing, it means that I don’t have to [...]
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language
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6:05 PM | Wild Replicator’s Got Funky Rhythm, Part 1
Now that the replicator meme is out and about I’ve got more to say. I’m going to republish two more posts from my 2010 cultural evolution series. These posts are about music. I have various reasons for using music as my cultural evolution conceptual sandbox. For one thing, it means that I don’t have to [...]
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language
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4:37 PM | Point-light walkers
By far the best point-light walker demonstration I've seen is at biomotiolab.ca. I'm classifying this as an illusion (see post label) because, of course, point-light walkers aren't really walking people -- they are just a few white dots moving around the screen. Comparing the male and female versions is particularly fun if you've ever wondered what exactly it is that makes for a stereotypical male or female stride. It also appears that there is an experiment you can participate in if you want [...]
Games with Words
Language | Psychology

March 22, 2012

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10:32 PM | QHImp Qhallenge: Results on day 1
Earlier today we released an experiment on working memory in humans and chimps.  You can play the game here. We’ve had responses from about 70 people, and we have some results.  Some are summarised on the live results page. Astoundingly, people actually managed to get 9 numbers shown for only 210 ms!  Replicated Typo’s very [...]
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language
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8:23 AM | The QHImp Qhallenge: Working memory in humans and Chimpanzees
Do you have a better memory than a chimp?  Tetsuro Matsuzawa demonstrated the amazing working memory abilities of Chimpanzees, but maybe humans can be just as good, with enough practice.  Justin Quillinan and I present the Quick-Hold Improvement Challenge (or QHImp Qhallenge).  Play our game and find out if you can beat a chimpanzee. Play [...]

Silberberg, A. & Kearns, D. (2008). Memory for the order of briefly presented numerals in humans as a function of practice, Animal Cognition, 12 (2) 405-407. DOI:

Inoue, S. & Matsuzawa, T. (2007). Working memory of numerals in chimpanzees, Current Biology, 17 (23) DOI:

A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language
Citation

March 21, 2012

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10:36 PM | Fair Use & FedEx
And now for something completely different:One private citizen's trials and travails trying to convince FedEx to print posters. I have wanted a map of Hong Kong on my wall for some time. The Survey & Mapping office of the Hong Kong government helpfully provides some free maps for public use on their website. You will notice how the website helpfully includes a "free maps"logo, along with a copyright notice forbidding only commercial use of the map. Presumably they thought this was a [...]
Games with Words
Language | Psychology
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10:00 PM | Are you a Red Sox or Yankees fan?
If so, a colleague has a short survey for you. It seems she is trying to get together as much data as possible for a talk next week. Apparently there is also an opportunity to win a $50 gift card, though my motivation for participating was in order to help out with some interesting research.
Games with Words
Language | Psychology
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