Posts

April 05, 2013

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11:57 PM | Sticking the tongue out: Early imitation in infants

The nativism-empiricism debate haunts the fields of language acquisition and evolution on more than just one level. How much of children’s social and cognitive abilities have to be present at birth, what is acquired through experience, and therefore malleable? Classically, this debate resolves around the poverty of stimulus. How much does a child have to read more...

April 03, 2013

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7:10 PM | Do we need a gaming literacy: Literacy metaphor hack

I am a gaming semi-literate! I was listening to the discussion of the latest BioShock game on the latest TWiT podcast when I realized that I am in fact game illiterate. I am hearing these stories and descriptions of experiences but I know I can’t access them directly without a major investment in knowledge and [...]

April 02, 2013

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9:10 PM | Since you asked…. March 13

In this monthly series, I'm answering the questions that turn up in the search terms people use before ending up on this blog. Last month's installment is here. Below are my readers' FAQs for March 2013. False friends: A few people likely ended up on my post introducing the notion of "false friends". These are words in different languages which look or sound as if they might have a similar meaning, but don't. People used words like: false... Read more

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2:56 PM | Iterated learning using YouTube videos

I recently discovered that videos uploaded to YouTube are automatically transcribed (if they’re in English). As you might guess, the transcriptions are not perfect, so there will be a discrepancy between what the speaker actually said and what is transcribed. This is essentially all you need to run an iterated learning experiment (e.g. Kirby, Cornish read more...

Kirby, S., Cornish, H. & Smith, K. (2008). Cumulative cultural evolution in the laboratory: An experimental approach to the origins of structure in human language, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105 (31) 10681-10686. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0707835105

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1:30 PM | Laying to rest an old myth about Chinese

I just got back from my second research trip to Taiwan in three years (with another planned soon!) and fourth trip overall. As always, I had a great time and ate as much beef noodle soup as I could manage. As always, I spent a couple months beforehand brushing up my reading and writing. This isn't something I have to do before trips to Spain or Russia. A few hours spent learning Spanish or Russian orthography, and you are set for life. As soon as I blink, I forget how to read and write […]

March 30, 2013

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8:30 PM | Update on DuoLingo

I have been using Duolingo for a few months to brush up my Spanish. I have generally found it to be pretty useful and a significant improvement over my strategy was to listen to the news in Spanish. So I was interested to see a report on the effectiveness of Duolingo. Even though most people enrolled in the study did not actually spent much time using DuoLingo (only a handful managed more than 30 hours in two months), there was a statistically significant improvement. How much […]

March 29, 2013

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3:02 PM | Archiving without the Clutter – We Need Your Help!

Archiving our digital life without clutter is a dream for many of us, as we accumulate a steady stream of data, pictures, books, and videos and have to rely on intelligent searching and serendipity to find what they need. Can we do better than this? A group of European researchers and companies hopes that we [...]

March 25, 2013

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3:11 PM | The yoghurt of ignorance

I am thoroughly bemused by yoghurt. Why are there so many kinds? Low-fat, with extra calcium, smooth, with bits in, for drinking, for treats, for every day, for pouring, in cereal bars, for children, pre-biotic, pro-biotic (though I note no anti-biotic)... not to mention all the different flavours! Try as I might to understand the differences, it's all Greek to me. This yoghurt-based confusion leads me to the question "What is science?" If this strikes you as a bit of a […]

March 21, 2013

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5:05 PM | Beware of Voodoo Experimentation

In my previous […]

March 18, 2013

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2:23 PM | The Value of Believing in Free Will: A Replication Attempt

Earlier this year I taught a new course titled Foundations of Cognition. The course is partly devoted to theoretical topics and partly to methodological issues. One of the theoretical topics is free will and one of the methodological topics is replication. There is a lab associated with the course and I thought we’d be killing two birds with one stone if we’d try to replicate a study that was discussed in the first, theoretical, part of the course. The students would then have hands-on […]

March 15, 2013

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4:22 PM | More Language Evolution positions available

It’s job frenzy out there. You can see here seven postdoctoral positions in the Dutch research consortium ”Language in Interaction” including one on language evolution below: WP 5: Language evolution and diversity The goal of this WP is to contribute to a better understanding of the biological underpinnings of linguistic universality as well as diversity, both at read more...

March 14, 2013

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11:01 PM | Circumference Equals Two Stones

I recently had my first dream in German. Actually, it was a nightmare, although that had nothing to do with the language. Given that, I am almost prepared to declare myself trilingual (having been brought up in an English-speaking home and having gone through the French school system). I am not sure I will ever be as fluent as a native speaker of German (see also my post on why speaking German is like driving a car, as opposed to... Read more

March 13, 2013

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12:52 PM | Assessing the Armada: Language Comprehension and the Motor System

In the wake of the discovery of mirror neurons an armada of studies on the role of the brain’s motor system in language processing has appeared over the horizon the past decade. We review some of this work here. Behavioral studies have shown interactions between reading and motor tasks and brain-imaging studies […]

March 08, 2013

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8:54 AM | Positions available on major Research Project on Cultural and Cognitive Evolution

The university of St. Andrews is on a hiring frenzy: Applications are invited to join an interdisciplinary research programme directed by Professors Kevin Laland (School of Biology) and Andrew Whiten (School of Psychology and Neuroscience) at the University of St Andrews’ Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution. “Exploring the Evolutionary Origins of Culture Complexity, Creativity and Trust” read more...

March 07, 2013

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9:25 PM | Festival of Bad Ad Hoc Hypotheses

Zach Weinersmith of SMBC comics and various science folk are putting on a Festival of Bad Ad Hoc Hypotheses. The festival will include presentations of “well-argued and thoroughly researched but completely incorrect evolutionary theory”. They’re looking for people to give 5 minute presentations. It takes place at MIT on the 20th April, submissions are due read more...

March 06, 2013

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11:19 AM | The Evolution of Speech: Lip-smacking monkeys

In January, Ghazanfar, Morrill & Kayser published a paper in PNAS entitled “Monkeys are perceptually tuned to facial expressions that exhibit a theta-like speech rhythm”. The abstract is below: Human speech universally exhibits a 3- to 8-Hz rhythm, corresponding to the rate of syllable production, which is reflected in both the sound envelope and the visual mouth read more...

March 05, 2013

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10:54 PM | Periodic Table of Etymologies: Watermaker

To a first approximation, the Universe does not exist. Almost all of it isn't there, in the usual sense of something being somewhere. By and large, it's just emptiness. However, we are here to think, and if there's nothing there to think about, we might as well call it a day. That doesn't really get us anywhere intellectually, though. So let's use a new, equally valid approximation: the Universe is entirely made of hydrogen. Now we're getting somewhere... But what... Read more

March 04, 2013

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12:23 PM | Culture – Language – Cognition: Special Issue of Pragmatics & Cognition on Dan Everett’s ‘Language: The Cultural Tool’

The 20th anniversary special commemorative issue of Pragmatics & Cognition features a number of interesting articles which comment on linguist Dan Everett‘s 2012 book “Language: The Cultural Tool“. In this book, Everett, who is best known for his work on the indigenous language Pirahã, argues for the important of culture and interaction and against the Chomskyan idea read more...

March 01, 2013

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11:21 PM | Since you asked… Feb 13

Most search terms which lead to my blog are fairly predictable. Others, however, make me sit up and think "huh?" In this monthly series, I'll be answering those burning questions people have asked to wind up on this blog. What we're all looking for One of the fun things about blogging (and there are many) is getting an insight into what People On The Internet are like. Aside from the trolls & seemingly endless negativity, there are some real gems out... Read more

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4:04 PM | A review of a review on Fitch’s The Evolution of Language

Maggie Tallerman has published a review of Techumseh Fitch’s 2010 book, “The Evolution of Language” in the journal of linguistics. It is largely very critical, mostly of Fitch’s ideas about a musical protolanguage stage preceding language, and of the fact that the focus of the book is largely about vocal imitation and the evolution of speech, rather than on linguistic read more...

February 28, 2013

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5:26 PM | Whorfian economics reconsidered: Residuals and Causal Graphs

Yesterday I posted an analysis of some work by Prof. Keith Chen on the link between future tense marking and economic decisions. Prof. Chen made some suggestions about changes to the analysis, some of which I’ve carried out here. The new results below indicate that the link between future tense and the propensity to save read more...

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3:05 PM | You Say You Want a Revolution

The popular press as well as the psychological literature itself is abuzz with reports about the field trying to clean up its act, especially by demanding replications (though not everyone agrees). Many reports do not fail to mention that this sudden sanitation urge was prompted by the Stapel fraude case. This is ironic, […]

February 26, 2013

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10:59 PM | Now That’s What I’m Tolkien About

My first proper post to this blog (aside from the introduction) was the start of a series all about "false friends" in languages. False friends are words or expressions in a foreign language which look or sound similar to terms in your own language, but which have a different (sometimes even completely opposite) meaning. Such false friends are common, as was borne out in the comments section by the myriad examples people submitted. By the way, thanks to everyone who has... Read more

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2:52 PM | Maurice is Back! Time in Narrative Comprehension

In our everyday experience time is continuous and chronological. In stories we can jump around in time. Just as with many other things, Aristotle had already given this discrepancy thought. In his Poetics he declared that historians are to provide a blow-by-blow chronological account of events. Authors of fiction, on […]

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1:58 PM | Whorfian economics reconsidered: Why future tense?

A recently accepted paper by Keith Chen has been getting a lot of press coverage. Chen has discovered a close link between the properties of the language people speak and their economic decisions. People who speak languages which mark the future tense differently to the present tense tend to make fewer provisions for the future. read more...

Sean Roberts & James Winters (2012). Social Structure and Language Structure: the New Nomothetic Approach, Psycology of Language Learning, 16 (2) 89-112. Other: 10.2478/v10057-012-0008-6

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February 25, 2013

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9:08 PM | Leashing the sequences

What do dogs have in common with DNA sequences? Don't worry, this question isn't like "why is a raven like a writing desk?" - there is an answer, hidden away in the depths of a foreign language. Before I tell you the answer, here's a cute picture of a dog to settle your nerves. I imagine it's feeling about as bemused as you are right now... Wissenschaft! During my undergraduate degree, I was fortunate enough to spend a year abroad... Read more

February 21, 2013

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5:05 PM | New paper on the emergence of hierarchical structure

After Berwick, Friederici, Chomsky, Bolhuis (2013) last month, Berwick has contributed to another paper featuring evidence from birdsong. Miyagawa, Berwick and Okanoya (2013) is published in frontiers of psychology here. Abstract below: We propose a novel account for the emergence of human language syntax. Like many evolutionary innovations, language arose from the adventitious combination of two read more...

February 19, 2013

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11:40 PM | Introducing my false friend

My whole life, I have worked and studied with people for whom English was not their first language. Along the way, I have often come up against the notion of "false friends". One of the main series of posts in Do You Speak Science? will be all about these so-called "false friends". To start off though, I should explain what I mean by "false friends" because, as it turns out, "false friend" is itself a false friend. How very meta. Languages are like species... Read more

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3:53 PM | The 3rd annual meeting of the European Society for the study of Human Evolution

There’s the European Human Behaviour & Evolution Association (EHBEA), the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES), and the European Society for the study of Human Evolution (ESHE) too. I’m reminded of the People’s Front of Judea. Anyway… the 3rd annual meeting of the ESHE will be held in Vienna, Austria, on 20-21 September, 2013. The meeting read more...

February 18, 2013

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11:01 AM | Hello World, Do You Speak Science?

Words. We all use them, in one form or another. Science. We all use it, in one form or another. I'm here to join the dots, to make connections between scientific concepts and the way they are expressed. I'm very excited to be starting this blog to share my passion for science and languages with the world. It all starts with the question: Do you speak science? There are many ways to answer this, and I will cover several... Read more