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Caroline Rowland

@carorowland.bsky.social
1.4K followers 719 following 592 posts

Researcher in child language development @MPI for Psycholinguistics & Radboud Uni. She/her. "All models are wrong but some are useful" (George Box 1978). www.mpi.nl/people/rowland-caroline

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Reposted by Caroline Rowland
Mike Cook @mtrc.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Every AI/HCI paper I review now just sounds like this.
Research [25] shows that people [26] enjoy the feeling of winning games [3,5,19]. Enjoying things can lead to longer life expectancy [2], higher economic productivity [9,22,33-40,302] and improve mental health [9]. Yet many games still include losing players [67,4]. A recent study showed that less than half of the players in a Chess [1] match win on average [42]. We have developed an LLM-driven co-creative [66], user-led [11], mixed-initiative [80] assistant for Chess [2], through which players can redefine the rules of Chess [3] using generative AI prompting such that they are the winner of Chess [4]. A study (n=3) showed that 100\% of people felt better, healthier and more self-actualised after using our tool, showing that this may be the way forward for games and human culture more broadly in the future.
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Caroline Rowland @carorowland.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
There was a whole morning of science fun at MPI's babylab last weekend www.mpi.nl/news/young-v...
**Photo 1:**
Overhead view of a face-painting table. A woman with long wavy hair, in a cream knit sweater, paints the cheek of a smiling toddler sitting in a wooden high chair. On the round white table are a face-paint palette, a brush, a blue sponge, a bowl of water, a towel, a small mirror and sheets showing example face-paint designs. A boy in a teal shirt stands nearby watching, ad other people stand around the edges.

**Photo 2:**
Parents and young children sit on the floor watching an activity on a colourful play mat. A smiling woman in a navy T-shirt and lanyard, holding a booklet, reaches toward a person in a yellow-and-black bee costume lying on the mat. A toddler in pink sits beside her.
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Jane B. Kulow @cvlkulow.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
“It wasn’t until April 1975 that women had a word for talking about what their male bosses were doing to them.”
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Nikki Botting @profnikkibotting.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
What do you like to #eat? What #meals do you struggle with? We are looking for people (16 years and older) to tell us! We especially want to know if you have #DLD (Developmental Language Disorder) or have always found talking and listening tricky. cityunilondon.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...
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Cognitive Science Society @cogscisociety.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Many strong Elman Prize candidates are never nominated simply because no one thought to do it. Please repost! Your share might reach the colleague who writes the letter. Deadline: Nov 18 👇
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Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics @mpi-nl.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
When language comes too late: Developmental implications of delayed sign language exposure. New paper by @dilaykaradoller.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/cdpers/aadag021
doi.org
When language comes too late: Developmental implications of delayed sign language exposure
Abstract. Deaf children born to hearing parents—who represent the majority of deaf children—often do not have full access to the spoken language input arou
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Caroline Rowland @carorowland.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
This is crucial. And make sure the website is thorough - any grants, marks of esteem (invited talks), research, leadership & admin, teaching & teaching admin, Open Science, SciComm... I've seen all of these weigh large in decision making in the last 2-3 years the very competitive current climate.
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samuel mehr @mehr.nz · 02/10/2026
early-career academics, if you don't have a website, make yourself one. yes it's annoying but just do it it can be plain text on a white background, or google sites, or even a free Wix one with ads. nobody cares we just need to be able to look you up, quickly, bc there's like 100 other apps here
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Caroline Rowland @carorowland.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
As MD of MPI-PL I get an early sneak peak of the blogs written for our TalkLing blogsite by our researchers. From gendered language via seals and social media to the meaning of children's grammatical errors... All in quick easy reads here. www.mpi.nl/talkling
mpi.nl
Talkling. Blog about Language Science | Max Planck Institute
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Caroline Rowland @carorowland.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Woensdag 16 okt is het Wereld TOS dag. Hoe is het om met TOS te leven? Ontdek het aan de hand van deze nieuwe TOS-profielen van Deelkracht. Wed 16 Oct is DLD awareness day. Find out what its like to live with DLD with these new profiles from Deelkracht (in Dutch) www.deelkracht.nl/tos-portrett...
deelkracht.nl
TOS-portretten - Deelkracht
Hoe is het om een taalontwikkelingsstoornis (TOS) te hebben? Kinderen, jongeren en volwassenen met TOS beantwoorden die vragen en delen hun verhaal in videoportretten.
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Dan Quintana @dsquintana.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
And if you want to see how your OSF repos compare against this corpus in terms of usability try my OSF reusability checker app. This app also provides tips if it flags any potential issues dsquintana.shinyapps.io/osf-reusabil...
Screenshot of a web app called the OSF Reusability Checker. A panel on the left takes OSF project links or IDs, with a checkbox for "Also inspect code" and a Check button. On the right, results for one project, kd6p8: it contains data or code, is documented, and has retrievable code. A percentile chart shows its 21 downloads at the 10th percentile for projects of its age, 0.2 times what a repository that age typically gets. Below, three bars compare it with published psychology projects: documented (30% of 672 projects) — this repo yes; hard-coded path (34% of 333 with code) — no; loads a missing file (40% of 333 with code) — no. A results table lists 21 downloads, age-adjusted percentile 10, reuse score 4 out of 4, cleanup "clean", and "looks good".Screenshot of one row from the OSF Reusability Checker's results table, for project rxphw (one of mine!). It has 1,558 downloads, placing it at the 98th percentile for repositories of its age, but scores only 2 out of 4 on reuse, with the cleanup verdict "needs data/code added". The "what to fix" column reads: 6 scripts hard-code a file path — use here::here(); 6 missing files, including 3 data files — deposit them, or add a data-availability statement if access is restricted.
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Caroline Rowland @carorowland.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
"The power of computational models for theory testing"!
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Kevin Mitchell @wiringthebrain.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Loved this episode of the Many Minds podcast! open.spotify.com/episode/2NHw...
open.spotify.com
Coming of age in Ngogo
Many Minds · Episode
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 17/10/2025
Proudly published with @andreaeyleen.bsky.social: A metatheory of classical and modern connectionism. doi.org/10.1037/rev0... We touch on what has been up with connectionism as a framework for computational modelling — & for everything it seems these days with AI and LLMs — pre-2010 vs post. 1/n
article cover page
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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
🚨 Calling on all my Cognitive Science colleagues on here to please support the Cognitive Science program in Aarhus, Denmark, to stay international. 👇✉️ ✍️
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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
🚨 I have just signed this petition to keep the Cognitive Science program at Aarhus University (@au.dk) international. Please consider reading, boosting, and signing too. ✍️ The students will be grateful! This petition is on their initiative. 🙏 omnibus.au.dk/en/archive/s...
omnibus.au.dk
OPINION: AU wants international talent – but is closing the door on them at Cognitive Science
Students and alumni at Cognitive Science urge the Senior Management Team to reopen the decision to convert the Bachelor’s programme in Cognitive Science to Danish. Why should Arts be left without an E...
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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
I did a somewhat deep dive into the recent OpenAI and Anthropic "hacks" for an upcoming interview. IMO, the AI companies are better off running with the "rogue AI" story because the real story is actually pretty embarrassing. Like making your Wi-Fi password "wifi" embarrassing. 🧵
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JJ Cutuli @jjcutuli.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Attn Developmental Scientists: Next and Last Episodes of 7up premiere this week. Catch 70up and, if you need to, catch up on the rest! (If you don't know, these are great teaching materials) Part 1: 9:00 PM on Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026, on ITV1. Part Two: Airs one week later in the same time slot.
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Trung Le Nguyen @trungles.com · 02/09/2026
So Emma Woodhouse is a pretty girl who is pretty smart, pretty rich, and pretty much has no problems whatsoever. We’re off to a roaring start.
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Caroline Rowland @carorowland.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Sunday timeline cleanse
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Caroline Rowland @carorowland.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
6 decades long series following children from age in the 1960s to aged 70 now (7up) comes to an end this week. As a developmental psychologist I've been following this for the last 25 years and it really is fascinating. Watch 7 to 63 on YouTube and 70 up on BBC this week youtube.com/playlist?lis...
youtube.com
The 7 Up Series Documentary - YouTube
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Caroline Rowland @carorowland.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
No one should be allowed to talk about "dangerous super-human AI" until they have listen to this podcast (available on Spotify etc for non-apple users).
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 12/09/2026
because that's what the models were instructed to do by folks at open ai
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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 12/09/2026
But that's not because the chatbots are waking up and applying to join the Cult of the Dead Cow: it's because they were trained on a corpus of chat transcripts from excitable young people who love to fantasize about starring in a reboot of the movie "Hackers."
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Caroline Rowland @carorowland.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Okay this is the best reaction to the claims that AI is developing super-human intelligence yet.
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Anna Rogers @annarogers.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
ACL sustainable reviewing policy is live! aclrollingreview.org/sustainable-... This was an incredible amount of work by incredible people in & outside of peer review committee. As any policy, it has compromises and will leave some unhappy. But it'll help to not repeat the disaster of EMNLP'26.
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Julia Laite @julialaite.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
25 years ago, almost every plane that was over the North Atlantic when the second tower was hit was forced to land in Newfoundland. A call was on the radio: they needed folks who spoke various languages to come to the stadium to help organize the sea of humanity that just showed up at our door.
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Kanishka Misra @kanishka.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Understanding how learners conclude “X laughed Y” is incorrect is an age-old question, with several hypotheses, some of which have been ~impossible to disentangle! @tomyxw.bsky.social, @fredashi.bsky.social, and I use controlled rearing to shed light on this in our new EMNLP paper: 1/n
Title slide for “Disentangling Statistical Preemption from Entrenchment in Language Models’ Avoidance of Overgeneralization,” by Yixuan Wang, Freda Shi, and Kanishka Misra. Includes the main results plot and experimental design.
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Kanishka Misra @kanishka.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Here’s the paper: arxiv.org/abs/2609.017... Thanks to @adelegoldberg.bsky.social , @carorowland.bsky.social , and @qyao.bsky.social for a lot of helpful discussion!
arxiv.org
Disentangling Statistical Preemption from Entrenchment in Language Models' Avoidance of Overgeneralization
How do learners avoid overgeneralizations such as Tom laughed me without explicit negative evidence? Constructionists have posited two proposals that describe indirect negative evidence against overge...
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Caroline Rowland @carorowland.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
This is one of the best declarations - if not *the* best - I've seen. It: - uses may/could: acknowledges where there is not yet good evidence on the effect of AI on human cognition 🤷‍♀️ -identifies where we *do* know where there is harm/risks 😳 - gives thoughtful practical advice 💭 #PracticallyPerfect
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Sue Cowley @suecowley.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
I'm intrigued by this because someone made it up and then presumably claimed that people think these things in order to make a point about things that no one believes in such an absolutist way. Excuse me but how is that evidence based? 🤷‍♀️
Slide with 'seven myths of behaviour' claiming things like 'all behaviour is an unmet need'.
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bioRxiv Genetics @biorxiv-genetic.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Phantom genetic nurture: assortative mating accounts for most of the apparent association between parental genotypes and childhood cognitive performance www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
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Girish M. Duvvuri @gmduvvuri.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
The open secret to pedagogy research is that small class sizes/maximizing educator attention per pupil is the simplest, most effective, and unfortunately the least attractive to administration thing you can do to improve learning outcomes.
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Adam Rutherford @adamrutherford.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
I am annoyed that this is now my most popular post here on Bluesky. If you want more, I wrote a book about scientific racism called How to Argue With a Racist, and another one called Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics. www.adamrutherford.com/allbooks
adamrutherford.com
All — Adam Rutherford
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Aylwyn Scally @aylwyn-scally.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
This is a thoughtful piece by @ent3c.bsky.social, articulating a view of hereditarianism that I think is shared by many in anthropology, psychology & elsewhere. It's also one that I, as a geneticist working on human evolution, fundamentally disagree with. ericturkheimer.substack.com/p/the-cofnas...
ericturkheimer.substack.com
The Cofnas Manifesto
The social consequences of hereditarianism
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European Research Council (ERC) @erc.europa.eu · 06/09/2026
705 million euro in ERC Starting Grants has just been awarded to 421 researchers across Europe. In the coming months many will start to hire staff and set up their own research groups. Keep an eye 👀 on the ERC team positions advertised on the #Euraxess website. 👉 buff.ly/7xrOtMp
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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
As for tractability of cognition and the role of structure specifically, yes, that is my 20+ yrs research line. bsky.app/profile/iris...
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Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
It's a systemic problem in science reporting that these summaries exaggerate the evidence. In the actual candy study, the participants were all students, status was manipulated in the lab by telling some students they were better than others, and "nearly twice" means 1 piece vs 2 pieces.
Piff and his colleagues found that upper-class drivers were more likely to cut other cars off at junctions and ignore pedestrians at crossings. Wealthier people also appeared more willing to lie at work. In one experiment, volunteers were left alone with a jar of sweets ostensibly meant for children. When the researchers returned, upper-class people had snaffled nearly twice as many candies as lower-class people.
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Caroline Rowland @carorowland.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
This is my favourite. Bel je oma terug = phone your grandma back. #FeelGoodStreetFurniture
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Andrew D Wilson @adw.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Look forward to the sequel, Final_revised_revision, with all the bits she had to glue on to get past Reviewer 2
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Jo Kibble (Political Animal) @politicanimal.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
If a robot called Jeeves doesn’t intone ‘I could not advise it, sir’ to most requests and then accidentally on purpose dispose of a rather fetching white blazer you had worn to great acclaim in Cannes, it is not worthy of the name.
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Caroline Rowland @carorowland.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Like many others, I doubt we would be having these conversations if we hadn't started using the term "Artificial Intelligence" to refer to these machines. This whole debate is fascinating simply because it shows how deeply language affects how we think about things (Whorf-Sapir anyone?).
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Caroline Rowland @carorowland.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Language Development Research journal is fully non-profit and run by scientists for scientists. And the community support it and read articles publisbed there #JustSaying #RealAlternative. ldr.lps.library.cmu.edu
ldr.lps.library.cmu.edu
Language Development Research
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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Earlier in the summer I suggested I’d do a thread on this gnarly paper. Better late than never. (Yes, it's more WTF biology.) 🧵 /1 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Subnuclear genome compartmentalization controls bivalent chromatin activity - Nature
Knowledge of the spatial location of a gene is necessary to understand its epigenomic regulation.
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Caroline Rowland @carorowland.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Now the 3rd L+ summer/winter school on Language acquisition has come to an end, it's a good time to feature this article, summarisng lessons learned from arranging a school that tried to be truly global, with speakers & attendees from all over the world www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
tandfonline.com
Towards Diversifying Early Language Development Research: The First Truly Global International Summer/Winter School on Language Acquisition (/L+/) 2021
With a long-term aim of empowering researchers everywhere to contribute to work on language development, we organized the First Truly Global /L+/ International Summer/ Winter School on Language Acq...
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Marvin Lavechin @marvinlavechin.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
[1/5] Remember BabAR? With @wiernik.bsky.social, we took it and asked whether it could be used to measure how a child's babbling develops over time. We tested it in kids with Down, fragile X, and Angelman syndromes, where this development often looks different. 🧵 (preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...)
osf.io
OSF
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@SciTube.io @scitube.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Debunking the myths around sign languages. Adam Schembri, Kearsy Cormier and colleagues explore common misconceptions about sign languages and what research reveals about how they really work. Watch: scitube.io/adam-schembr... #SignLanguage #Linguistics
scitube.io
Professor Adam Schembri – Professor Kearsy Cormier | Debunking the Myths Around Sign Languages - SciTube
Sign languages are rich, complex languages used by deaf communities all over the world. Yet despite decades of research showing this clearly, many people still hold on to outdated misunderstandings ab...
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Caroline Rowland @carorowland.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Truly fabulous introduction to analysis in R by Giulia Calignano at the Lplus summer/winter school this evening . www.lplusschool.org
A slide titled "Plot and model are the same story," with a red divider line beneath the title. The main text reads: "The model said 87 ms. Your plot said 'the red dot on the right is a bit higher'." Below that are two bullet points: "Those are the same statement. One is in milliseconds, the other is in your eyes." and "The model adds precision and a way of being wrong out loud — nothing else." At the bottom, in larger text: "If the plot and the model disagree, believe the plot and check the model."
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Caroline Rowland @carorowland.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
So I read the article and got mad ... then I read all the funny replies and quote comments & felt a bit better. So now I'll just content myself by waving at all the Yale professors from "heavily unionised for decades" Europe 👋 Join a Union. Also mentor your postdocs properly. Both are possible ✊️
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Dermot Lynott @dermotlynott.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
For the avoidance of doubt, this is complete BS. if you are a post-doc (or worker of any description frankly) and you have the option of joining a union, you absolutely should.
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