Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 15/06/2026Congratulations to Anna Persson (www.linkedin.com/posts/anna-p...) and Maria Lialiou @marialialiou.bsky.social on their outstanding theses, now awarded the 2025 PhD Thesis Award of the International Phonetic Association. Well deserved! 021
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 15/06/2026Thanks for the shout-out @timoroettger.bsky.social ! This was Maryann's first thesis study (originally intended as an experiment-only study). It turned out to be a really interesting journey to understand what seeming replication failures can tell us if we try to look beyond effects at *theories*. 010
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 20/05/2026On top of the analyses reported in the paper, we conducted fully Bayesian analyses of trial-level behavior using a multilevel psychometric model to combine the data from all subjects (using @paulbuerkner.com 's R library brms). Ping me if interested in the code! I think this approach is the future. 010
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 20/05/2026Now out in @elife.bsky.social: exogenous attentional gains in the fovea are modulated by spatial frequency, similar to extra-foveal gains elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre.... This collab w/ Yue Guzhang & Martina Poletti @aplabur.bsky.social @uor-braincogsci.bsky.social was extra fun. I learned a ton!elifesciences.orgFrequency-dependent modulation of foveal contrast sensitivity by fine-scale exogenously triggered attention 111
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 12/12/2025OSF with all stimuli, data, & code as well as detailed supplementary information: osf.io/2asgw/overview. Linked Github repo: github.com/hlplab/Causa...osf.ioOSF 000
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 12/12/2025Congrats to @brainnotonyet.bsky.social alumni Shawn Cummings, @gekagrob.bsky.social & Menghan Yan. Out in JEP:LMC @apajournals.bsky.social: listeners compensate perception of spectral (acoustic) cues based on visually-evident consequences of a pen in mouth of the speaker! dx.doi.org/10.1037/xlm0...dx.doi.orgAPA PsycNet 221
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 17/10/2025Very cool new accent-relatedness visualization, examples, and some insightful observations accent-explorer.boldvoice.comaccent-explorer.boldvoice.comHow AI Hears Accents 010
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 01/10/2025Looking for researchers in computational neuroscience and cognition (incl. language, learning, development, decision-making) to join our faculty! 010
Reposted by Human Language Processing LabMatt Goldrick @mattgoldrick.bsky.social · 12/09/2024Review starts 11/1: Asst. prof. (tenure track), human cognition, Brain and CogSci, U Rochester www.sas.rochester.edu/bcs/jobs/fac... 033
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 30/09/2025New R library STM github.com/santiagobarr... by Santiago Barreda that implements Nearey & Assmann's PST model of vowel perception, and a fully Bayesian extension (the BSTM). Easy to use and to apply to your data. It's also what we used in our recent paper www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...github.comGitHub - santiagobarreda/STM: The 'STM' (Sliding Template Model) R PackageThe 'STM' (Sliding Template Model) R Package. Contribute to santiagobarreda/STM development by creating an account on GitHub. 010
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 30/09/2025As we write, Nearey & Assmann's PSTM presents a "groundbreaking idea [...], with far-reaching consequences for research from typology to sociolinguistics to speech perception … and few seem to know of it." We hope this paper can help change that! OSF osf.io/tpwmv/ 3/3osf.ioOSF | Sign in 000
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 30/09/2025Nearey & Assmann's PSTM (2007, www.google.com/books/editio...) remains the only fully incremental model of formant normalization, conducting joint inference over both the talker's normalization parameters (*who*'s talking) and the vowel category (*what* they are saying). 2/3google.comExperimental Approaches to PhonologyThis wide-ranging survey of experimental methods in phonetics and phonology shows the insights and results provided by different methods of investigation, including laboratory-based, statistical, psyc... 000
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 30/09/2025New work w/ Santiago Barreda: www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi... .We reintroduce Nearey & Assmann's seminal probabilistic sliding template model (PSTM), visualize its workings, & find that it predicts human vowel perception with high accuracy, far outperforming other normalization models 1/3degruyterbrill.comReintroducing and testing the Probabilistic Sliding Template Model of vowel perceptionNormalization of the speech signal onto comparatively invariant phonetic representations is critical to speech perception. Assumptions about this process also play a central role in phonetics and phon... 200
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 30/09/2025DL captures human speech perception both *qualitatively* & *quantitatively* (R2>96%) for over 400 combinations of exposure and test items. Yet, previous DL models fail to capture important limitations. Specifically, we find that DL seems to proceed by remixing prev experience 2/2 000
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 30/09/2025Very excited about this: putting distributional learning (DL) models of adaptive speech perception to a strong, informative test sciencedirect.com/science/arti... by Maryann Tan. We use Bayesian ideal observers & adapters to assess whether DL predicts rapid changes in speech perception 1/2 110
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 25/02/2025This has been a really eye-opening collaboration that made me realize how little I knew about the auditory system, the normalization of spectral information, & the consequences of making problematic assumptions about the perceptual basis of speech perception when building (psycho)linguistic models! 000
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 25/02/2025This is the final paper from Anna Persson's thesis (www.researchgate.net/profile/Anna...) w/ Santiago Barreda (linguistics.ucdavis.edu/people/santi...). Article & SI fully written in #rmarkdown. All data, experiment code, & analyses available on OSF osf.io/zemwn/ #reproducibilityresearchgate.netAnna PERSSON | Lecturer | Doctor of Philosophy | Stockholm University, Stockholm | SU | Department of Swedish Language and Multilingualism | Research profileLecturer in Swedish as second language at the Department of Swedish Language and Multilingualism, Stockholm University. 000
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 25/02/2025Excited to see this out in JASA @asa-news.bsky.social: doi.org/10.1121/10.0.... provides a large-scale evaluation of formant normalization accounts as a model of vowel perception. @uor-braincogsci.bsky.socialresearchgate.netAnna PERSSON | Lecturer | Doctor of Philosophy | Stockholm University, Stockholm | SU | Department of Swedish Language and Multilingualism | Research profileLecturer in Swedish as second language at the Department of Swedish Language and Multilingualism, Stockholm University. 220
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 25/02/2025Together w/ @wbushong.bsky.social's recent paper bsky.app/profile/wbus..., this lays out the road ahead for careful research on information maintenance during speech perception. The discussion in Wednesday's paper identifies strong assumptions made in this line of work that might not be warranted. 000
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 25/02/2025Data and code available on OSF osf.io/cypg3/osf.ioBushong & Jaeger. Changes in informativity of sentential context affects its integration with subcategorical information about preceding speechHosted on the Open Science Framework 000
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 25/02/2025All experiment code, analyses, and trial-level data available on OSF osf.io/6fng2/.osf.ioBicknell, Bushong, Tanenhaus, & Jaeger (2024). Maintenance of subcategorical information during speech perception: revisiting misunderstood limitations.Accurate word recognition is facilitated by context. Some relevant context, however, occurs after the word. Rational use of such “right context” would require listeners to have maintained uncertainty ... 000
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 25/02/2025By comparing against ideal observer baselines, we identify a reliable, previously unrecognized pattern in listeners' responses that is unexpected under any existing theory. We present simulations that suggest that this pattern can emerge under ideal information maintenance w/ attentional lapses. 3/n 000
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 25/02/2025We present Bayesian GLMMs, ideal observer analyses, two re-analyses of previous studies and two new experiments. All data clearly reject the idea that uncertainty maintenance during speech perception is limited to ambiguous inputs or short-lived. 2/nosf.ioBicknell, Bushong, Tanenhaus, & Jaeger (2024). Maintenance of subcategorical information during speech perception: revisiting misunderstood limitations.Accurate word recognition is facilitated by context. Some relevant context, however, occurs after the word. Rational use of such “right context” would require listeners to have maintained uncertainty ... 000
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 25/02/2025Now out: exciting work w/ Klinton Bicknell, @wbushong.bsky.social, & Mike Tanenhaus www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti.... It's a massive tour-de-force, revisiting several misunderstood 'limitations' of information maintenance during spoken language understanding. @uor-braincogsci.bsky.socialsciencedirect.comMaintenance of subcategorical information during speech perception: Revisiting misunderstood limitationsAccurate word recognition is facilitated by context. Some relevant context, however, occurs after the word. Rational use of such “right context” would… 420
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 18/02/2025We also revisits long-held assumptions about how we study the maintenance of perceptual information during spoken language understanding. We discuss why most evidence for such maintenance is actually compatible with simpler explanations. 2/2 000
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 18/02/2025New work by @wbushong.bsky.social out in JEP:LMC: listeners might strategically moderate maintenance of perceptual information during spoken language understanding based on the expected informativity of subsequent context. 1/2 100
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 16/12/2024SFB-funded Collaborative Research Centre “Prominence in Language” at U Cologne, Germany offers junior & senior research fellowships for 1-6 months between 04-12/2025 (1800-2500 Euro/month) sfb1252.uni-koeln.de/en/ (20 projects in prosody, morphosyntax & semantics, text & discourse structure)sfb1252.uni-koeln.deCRC Prominence in Language 000
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 16/12/2024 Select Institute for Collaborative Innovation as your application unit. Apply by 1/28/25 career.admo.um.edu.mo 000
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 16/12/2024Join Andriy Myachykov in Macau =): U Macau invites applications for research assistant professor & postdoctoral fellows under UM Talent Programme aiming to attract high-calibre talents---including in neuroscience & cognitive science at UM Center for Cognitive & Brain Sciences (ccbs.ici.um.edu.mo).ccbs.ici.um.edu.moHomeRecent News and Events Research Highlight 100
Reposted by Human Language Processing LabCoraline Rinn Iordan @coralineiordan.bsky.social · 04/12/2024New paper story time (now out in PNAS)! We developed a method that caused people to learn new categories of visual objects, not by teaching them what the categories were, but by changing how their brains worked when they looked at individual objects in those categories. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...pnas.orgSculpting new visual categories into the human brain | PNASLearning requires changing the brain. This typically occurs through experience, study, or instruction. We report an alternate route for humans to a... 815663
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 07/12/2024Link to whole thesis www.diva-portal.org/smash/record... 000
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 07/12/2024Article 3 (currently under review at JASA) evaluates over a dozen of the most popular normalization accounts against the perception of English vowels & finds that some of the computationally most parsimonious accounts predict human behavior best. osf.io/zemwn/osf.ioPersson, A., Barreda, S. & Jaeger, T. F. Comparing accounts of formant normalization against US English listeners' vowel perceptionThis is the OSF for a paper that evaluates normalization accounts against US English vowel perception data. All data and code used to generate the article is available here. Hosted on the Open Sc... 000
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 07/12/2024Article 2 in Frontiers develops a general computational framework to evaluate accounts of formant normalization, and the predictions they make for perception www.frontiersin.org/journals/psy.... The article also discusses under-appreciated shortcomings of popular approaches to such comparisons. 000
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 07/12/2024Article 1 in Phonetica provides an in-depth characterization of the very dense vowel space of Central Swedish www.degruyter.com/document/doi...degruyter.comThe acoustic characteristics of Swedish vowelsThe Swedish vowel space is relatively densely populated with 21 categories that differ in quality and quantity. Existing descriptions of the entire space rest on recordings made in the late 1990s or e... 000
Human Language Processing Lab @hlplab.bsky.social · 07/12/2024Congratulations to Anna Persson (www.su.se/english/prof...) on defending her thesis at @stockholmuni.bsky.social! Fantastic work, thorough & insightful, a must-read for anyone interested in the auditory mechanisms supporting robust speech perception across talkers. www.linkedin.com/posts/floria...linkedin.comFlorian Jaeger on LinkedIn: Congratulations to Anna Persson on a great thesis! It has been a lot of…Congratulations to Anna Persson on a great thesis! It has been a lot of fun to be part of this project over the last five years, I learned a lot, and it was… 510
