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Posts

January 05, 2013

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4:05 PM | What shall we do with the drunken subject?
Early in the morning a research assistant is preparing for her first subject. She is a little nervous and quietly rehearses the instructions she is about to give. In walks the subject. His gait is a little unstable and it sure looks like he hasn’t had a shower in a long time. His eyes have trouble focusing as she starts […]
Rolf Zwaan
Language | Psychology

January 03, 2013

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1:59 PM | Breeding a Behemoth
In the current discussion about the methodological crisis in psychology, there are calls to (1) include exact self-replications in papers, (2) provide chronological rather than plot-driven accounts of your research, and (3) publish null results. This makes a lot of sense but what happens when you heed these calls? You might […]
Rolf Zwaan
Language | Psychology

January 02, 2013

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10:21 AM | Replicating pencils and eagles but not steaks
What happens when we understand language?  What kind of mental representations do we form? Are they word-like or more perception-like? Traditionally, cognitive psychology has been leaning toward the first option but a little more than a decade ago, people started thinking that the second option might actually be […]
Rolf Zwaan
Language | Psychology

January 01, 2013

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12:36 PM | Coming out of the file drawer
My previous post was about the why of replication studies. This one is about my first foray into the replication business. That is, my first venture outside the file drawer (where several nonreplications of other people’s work reside, as well as nonreplications of studies of my own that were never submitted because […]
Rolf Zwaan
Language | Psychology

December 30, 2012

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5:33 PM | It’s the building, stupid, not the builders!
Bands like The Beatles, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Led Zeppelin, and Queen have spawned many tribute bands that produce note-for-note faithful renditions of original tunes like Can't Buy Me Love, Hey Joe, Stairway to Heaven, and Bohemian Rhapsody. They even look the part, with wigs, generous amounts of exposed chest hair, […]
Rolf Zwaan
Language | Psychology
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5:30 PM | Corpus Linguistics, Literary Studies, and Description
One of my main hobbyhorses these days is description. Literary studies has to get a lot more sophisticated about description, which is mostly taken for granted and so is not done very rigorously. There isn’t even a sense that there’s something there to be rigorous about. Perhaps corpus linguistics is a way to open up read more...
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language

December 17, 2012

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5:31 PM | Literary History, the Future: Kemp Malone, Corpus Linguistics, Digital Archaeology, and Cultural Evolution
In scientific prognostication we have a condition analogous to a fact of archery—the farther back you draw your longbow, the farther ahead you can shoot. – Buckminster Fuller The following remarks are rather speculative in nature, as many of my remarks tend to be. I’m sketching large conclusions on the basis of only a few read more...
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language
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3:00 PM | Eighteen papers on replication
Last month, Perspectives in Psychological Science published a special section on replicability in psychological science. With 18 papers, it took me a while to get through all of them, so I am only blogging about them now. The issue contains many useful articles, particularly if you have not been following the replicability crisis/discussion carefully. I have been following the discussion pretty closely, and I still found a lot worth reading (a particularly enjoyable surprise […]
Games with Words
Language | Psychology

December 16, 2012

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8:09 AM | 3rd Linguistic Conference for Doctoral Students: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Language, Discourse, and Culture
Here’s a link to another conference that might be of interest: The 3rd Linguistic Conference for Doctoral Students will take place at Heidelberg University, Germany from 05.-06. April 2013. The overarching topic of the conference will be: “Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Language, Discourse, and Culture.” The deadline for submissions is 15 February. I’ve included the Call for read more...
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language

December 14, 2012

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7:18 PM | In praise of experiments
Today, the excellent Neuroskeptic writes about a new study investigating which US states are most suicidal. The interesting twist was the form of the data: Google searches. It's an interesting study and an interesting use of Google searches, but what struck me was Neuroskeptic's closing thoughts. Over the past couple of years there's been a flurry of studies based on analyzing Google and Twitter trends. What's interesting to me is that we're really in the early days of this, when you think […]
Games with Words
Language | Psychology

December 13, 2012

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9:12 PM | Lab Notebook: You know you are writing a paper when
Your "recently added" list in Mendeley is growing at an exponential rate: (click to expand. note time added.) Every new paper you read results in downloading at least two more (not unlike the Hounds of Resurrection. Coincidence? I think not). I don't think I've ever actually finished my reading list for a paper. At some point, I shut down the process before it overwhelms my hard drive.
Games with Words
Language | Psychology

December 12, 2012

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4:32 PM | Findings: That Kind of Person
That Kind of Person is now complete. Many thanks to all who answered the call to participate. For some time now, I have been studying the effect of context on pronoun interpretation. If words and sentences always meant what they meant regardless of context, linguistics and psycholinguistics would be much easier, and we would have much better computer translation, speech recognition, etc. Unfortunately, the same word (bank) can often mean different things in different contexts (he paddled over […]
Games with Words
Language | Psychology

December 09, 2012

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9:52 AM | Ways to protolanguage conference
The third Ways to Protolanguage conference has released its call for papers.  It will take place in Wrocław, Poland from 25–26 May.  The deadline for submission is 31 March. Plenary speakers include Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Robin Dunbar,  Peter Gärdenfors, Josep Call  and Tomasz P. Krzeszowski. More details on the website here: http://www.wsf.edu.pl/57793.xml  
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language

December 06, 2012

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3:55 PM | Small World of Words
A group of researchers in Belgium is putting together a very large word association network by asking volunteers to say which words are related to which other words. They are hoping to recruit around 300,000 participants, which makes it my kind of study! (Technically, I've never tried 300,000 participants -- I think we've never gone beyond about 50,000, though we have some new things in the pipeline...) It looks interesting. To participate, go to www.smallworldofwords.com. You can read more […]
Games with Words
Language | Psychology

November 28, 2012

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4:11 PM | I say "uncle", you say "DaJiu"
Kinship terms (mother, uncle, niece, etc.) are socially important and generally learned early in acquisition. Interestingly, different languages have different sets of terms. Mandarin, for instance, divides "uncle" into "father's older brother", "father's younger brother", and "mother's brother". Stranger things (to an anglophone, anyway) happen, too: In Northern Paiute, the kin terms for grandparents and grandchildren are self-reciprocal: you would use the same word to refer to your […]

Kemp, C. & Regier, T. (2012). Kinship Categories Across Languages Reflect General Communicative Principles, Science, 336 (6084) 1049-1054. DOI:

Games with Words
Language | Psychology
Citation
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3:00 AM | Still testing...
I was hoping to post the results of That Kind of Person today. When I announced the study two weeks ago, I estimated that it would take about two weeks to get enough data. For some reason, traffic on the site plummeted late last week. So maybe one more week. As soon as I know the results, you will, and since this is (please let it be) the last experiment (#8!) for a paper, I am checking the numbers constantly. Many thanks to those who have already participated (those who haven't, you can […]
Games with Words
Language | Psychology

November 26, 2012

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10:55 AM | The Role of Foreigner-Directed Speech in Language Evolution
After all of this talk of spurious cross-cultural correlations it might be time to direct the discussion back to ways to resolve an over-reliance on statistical tendencies. Sean and James did a workshop on this at this year’s EvoLang about how constructive, idiographic and experimental approaches also need to be considered when investigating how linguistic and social structure are linked. read more...
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language

November 23, 2012

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7:50 AM | Heatmaps and Spurious Correlations
Today’s XKCD was good enough to share. As both Sean’s spurious correlations and my pixel maps are relevant, I figure some of you might get a good laugh, too. As always, the alt-text might be the best part.
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language

November 22, 2012

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9:56 AM | The origin of language in gesture–speech unity
In honor of a new book entitled “How Language Began” by David McNeil, the author has been blogging about the origin of language in gesture–speech unity over at the Cambridge Extra/Linguist List part of the CUP site. These blog posts are lengthy, thought provoking and include very thorough reading lists for the interested. Part 1: read more...
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language

November 19, 2012

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9:47 PM | Findings: Linguistic Universals in Pronoun Resolution - Episode II
A new paper, based on data collected through GamesWithWords.org, is now in press (click here for the accepted draft). Below is an overview of the paper. Many of the experiments at GamesWithWords.org have to do with pronouns. I find pronouns interesting because, unlike many other words, the meaning of a pronoun is almost entirely dependent on context. So while "Jane Austen" refers to Jane Austen no matter who says it or when, "I" refers to a different person, depending mostly on who says it […]

Hartshorne, J. & Snedeker, J. (2012). Verb argument structure predicts implicit causality: The advantages of finer-grained semantics, Language and Cognitive Processes, 1-35. DOI:

Goikoetxea, E., Pascual, G. & Acha, J. (2008). Normative study of the implicit causality of 100 interpersonal verbs in Spanish, Behavior Research Methods, 40 (3) 760-772. DOI:

Garvery, C. & Caramazza, A. (1974). Implicit causality in verbs, Linguistic Inquiry, 5 (3) 459-464. Other: Link

Roger Brown & Deborah Fish (1983). Are there universal schemas of psychological causality?, Archives de Psychologie, 51 145-153.

Games with Words
Language | Psychology
Citation

November 16, 2012

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12:17 PM | New Perspectives on Duality of Patterning
For those of you who might be interested: Language and Cognition has a special issue on the nature and emergence of duality of patterning (paywall access, sorry!). As one of Hockett’s (1960) design features, duality of patterning is the property of human language that enables parts of language to be recombined in a systematic way [...]
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language

November 15, 2012

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2:00 PM | New Experiment: That Kind of Person
I just got back reviews on one of the pronoun papers. Although the paper already had seven experiments, they want two more. The worst part about it is that they are right. Luckily, the experiment they asked for can be done online. It takes about 5 minutes. Native English speakers preferred (though I look at all data). That Kind of Person (takes about 5 minutes) My target is to post the results for this and the seven previous experiments in 2 weeks ... if I get enough participants quickly. […]
Games with Words
Language | Psychology
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10:57 AM | miR-941 – The new Language Gene
Sorry for the hyperbole in the title, but now I’ve got your attention – Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have found a gene which is implicated in human brain development which humans have, but chimpanzees don’t. The study compared the human genome to 11 other species of mammals, including chimpanzees, gorillas, mice and rats, and found that miR-941 [...]
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language

November 14, 2012

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12:45 PM | Is ambiguity dysfunctional for communicatively efficient systems?
Based on yesterday’s post, where I argued degeneracy emerges as a design solution for ambiguity pressures, a Reddit commentator pointed me to a cool paper by Piantadosi et al (2012) that contained the following quote: The natural approach has always been: Is [language] well designed for use, understood typically as use for communication? I think [...]

Piantadosi, S., Tily, H. & Gibson, E. (2012). The communicative function of ambiguity in language, Cognition, 122 (3) 280-291. DOI:

A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language
Citation

November 13, 2012

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9:21 PM | Chocolate Consumption, Traffic Accidents and Serial Killers
Last month there was a paper published about a correlation between chocolate consumption and Nobel Laureates.   Me and James wrote a response article, but it’s just been rejected, citing ‘lack of space’ (Dorothy Bishop has also posted a recent response).  Here’s the 175 words we submitted.   Amongst the 4 statistical tests, try spotting [...]

Messerli, F. (2012). Chocolate Consumption, Cognitive Function, and Nobel Laureates, New England Journal of Medicine, 367 (16) 1562-1564. DOI:

A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language
Citation
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1:30 PM | Is Psychology a science?: Redux
The third-most read post on this blog is "Is Psychology a science?". I was a few years younger then and still had strong memories of one of my friends complaining, when we were both undergraduates, that he had to take a psychology course as part of his science distributional requirements. "Psychology isn't a science," he said, "because they don't do experiments." Since he was telling me this over AIM as I was sitting in my psychology laboratory, analyzing an experiment, it didn't go over […]
Games with Words
Language | Psychology
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12:22 PM | Degeneracy emerges as a design feature in response to ambiguity pressures
Two weeks ago my supervisor, Simon Kirby, gave a talk on some of the work that’s been going on in the LEC. Much of his talk focused on one of the key areas in language evolution research: the emergence of the basic design features that underpin language as a system of communication. He gave several [...]

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:

Edelman, G. & Gally, J. (2001). Degeneracy and complexity in biological systems, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98 (24) 13763-13768. DOI:

Ay, N., Flack, J. & Krakauer, D. (2007). Robustness and complexity co-constructed in multimodal signalling networks, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 362 (1479) 441-447. DOI:

Eduardo G. Altmann, Janet B. Pierrehumbert & Adilson E. Motter (2010). Niche as a determinant of word fate in online groups, PLoS ONE 6(5), e19009 (2011), arXiv:

Whitacre, J. (2010). Degeneracy: a link between evolvability, robustness and complexity in biological systems, Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling, 7 (1) 6. DOI:

Mason, P. (2010). Degeneracy at Multiple Levels of Complexity, Biological Theory, 5 (3) 277-288. DOI:

A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language
Citation

November 12, 2012

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9:06 PM | Cultural Evolution: Headspace with Dr. Kenny Smith
Edinburgh’s student radio station, Fresh Air, has a show called “Headspace” which aims to discuss ideas related to how we perceive, act, learn, communicate and think. Today’s episode was all about Cultural Evolution and features an extended discussion with Kenny Smith. Cultural Evolution by The Headspace on Mixcloud Readers can also listen to our very own Rachael [...]
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language
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8:42 PM | The Simming Problem
I’m currently reading Iain M. Banks’ latest Culture novel The Hydrogen Sonata (quotes, but no spoliers ahead).  It has a discussion of the ethics of simulating individuals, what Banks calls the Simming Problem.  As someone who uses modelling to study cultural evolution, it struck a chord.  Those who’ve read culture novels will be familiar with [...]
A Replicated Typo
Evolution | Language
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5:00 PM | What you missed lately on the Web: 11/12/2012
I've switched the title of these posts from "last week" to "lately", since apparently posting every week is too ambitious (last Monday my excuse was the hurricane + BUCLD, but that wasn't the first time I missed a week). An elegant defense of prescriptivism Quoted by Harm*less Drudg*ery, with some additional discussion at Language Log. Are  differences in brain connectivity in Autism actually motion artifact? Neuroskeptic considers the possibilities. What is the purpose of a […]
Games with Words
Language | Psychology
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