iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

I find blind sight really fascinating, but @bayesandbounds.bsky.social has been trying to convince me it's not real! It's definitely worth looking into.

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And if you're curious where my profile picture came from, I'll leave you with this! youtu.be/mN9XXU70V_Y

Language of Mind

If there's anything you think would make an interesting cog sci video, let me know! I'm always looking for new topics, and I don't intend to stop making these! Oh, and happy new year! 🎉

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I hope you guys enjoy these! I have many more in the pipeline. Right now I'm working on two videos - one about Kiki-Bouba (if you haven't heard of this, google it! There are so many great memes), and another about the secret science of brand names (did you know there are linguists who work on this?)

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My very first video! The evolution of language is a huge mess of unanswered questions, but one linguist thinks he's found an interesting connection between some universals of human language and animal cognition. Can this tell us something about where language came from? youtu.be/CxzndPCOSV8

The deep evolutionary roots of language

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You're likely familiar with optical illusions, but did you know there are also auditory illusions? The McGurk Effect is a classic illusion where what we see fundamentally changes what we hear! And this strange experience can tell us a lot about how we perceive the world! 👁️👂 youtu.be/eKuFaIHrH00

Hearing lips and seeing voices: The science of the McGurk Effect

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Ever have a vivid memory of something, and then find out it never existed? You're not alone! The Mandela Effect is a common experience where our memory of an object or event turns out to be false. Some think it's evidence of alternate timelines. What does cog sci say? youtu.be/x61EL6y3gQM

Alternate realities, or false memory? The Mandela Effect explained

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My first entry in the Cog Sci Mind Challenge - Can machines think? With help from some former students, we explore the history and philosophy of artificial intelligence from the Turing Test to the Chinese Room. We won second place for this one! 🥈 youtu.be/HNcVxMnMupk

Can Machines Think? A brief history and philosophy of AI

You've probably heard about Broca's and Wernicke's Areas - brain areas responsible for language production and comprehension. This is the basic story in every textbook. The only problem is... it's wrong! Research of the last 50 years has challenged this view - time to update! youtu.be/iOkLKwAMyKQ

What textbooks get wrong about language and the brain

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Do you love dinosaurs? I know I do! So I made a video about dinosaur brains! How smart were the dinosaurs? Maybe smarter than you think! At least one neuroscientist thinks T-Rex may have been as smart as a baboon - smart enough to have culture and maybe even... use tools! youtu.be/U62weE3bA0g

Was T-Rex as smart as a baboon? The science of dinosaur brains

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On the topic of Nicaraguan Sign Language, did you know that this new language can help us solve a linguistic mystery? 40% of the world's languages have the same word order - the same order that mysteriously appeared in Nicaraguan Sign Language! How could this be? Watch 👇 youtu.be/5X5QPj8_boo

A language created by children unlocks a deep mystery: The science of word order

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Another entry in the Cog Sci Mind Challenge - why are there so many languages? Unfortunately, we didn't place. But I'm still super proud of this video that charts the course of language change in England, the Pacific, all the way to a brand new sign language in Nicaragua! youtu.be/bL77-yX91CI

Why are there so many languages? The science of language change

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Not gonna lie, this is a weird one. The story of Tourette Syndrome is a strange one that winds its way from 19th century pseudo-science to modern neurolinguistics and all the way back to the stone age. And the life of Gilles de la Tourette is just as strange! youtu.be/WyqmmKNrKeg

Jumping lumberjacks, stone age tools, and language? The (weird) science of Tourette Syndrome

Last new year's, I hung out with my friend Joseph @bayesandbounds.bsky.social to talk about the 100 most influential works in cognitive science. All the big names are here: Turing, Fodor, Marr, Miller, (Joseph's favorite) Herb Simon, and of course - Noam Chomsky! youtu.be/Zu6ZoZsRGG0

10 most important books in Cognitive Science

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Speaking of sci-fi languages, the 2016 movie Arrival uses an alien language to explore the way a language might fundamentally change the way we think. But what does the science say? If you haven't seen the movie yet, go watch it! Then, watch this 👇 youtu.be/lIPi3OiaG3I

Can language change the way you think? The science of Arrival

I'm not shy about the fact that I think most "alien" languages created for movies are just... lame. They're almost always just human languages with little tweaks! But what could an actual alien language sound like? There are so many possibilities... youtu.be/oHooIE_16Zw

Fixing Hollywood's sci-fi problem: The science of alien languages

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My most recent video was created for the Cog Sci Society's annual Mind Challenge - a contest to make the best 5-minute video on a chosen question for a general audience. In the video, I take a trip into my own brain to see how memories form and disappear. We won first place! 🏆 youtu.be/qGANd8o2yFE

Why do we forget? The neuroscience of memory

Ryan Rhodes @langofmind.bsky.social · 31/12/2024

It's a new year, so I thought I'd do a thread highlighting some of the content from my Cog Sci YouTube channel - Language of Mind! I'm really into language, the brain, cognition, and the connection between them - and I love science communication. So I made YouTube videos!

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Every semester I offer an extra credit assignment where students have to explain a concept from class to someone outside of class (a parent, sibling, roommate, friend) and report back what they learned. This semester I received this gem. This kid gets it 👇

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Ryan Rhodes @langofmind.bsky.social · 29/12/2024

love this! Do you know of any language with a tense system like this? I.e., marks a present/non-present tense distinction?

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Ryan Rhodes @langofmind.bsky.social · 29/12/2024

Yes, it was not meant to be an exhaustive list! Also nice to have economists, anthropologists, education researchers, etc

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Ryan Rhodes @langofmind.bsky.social · 28/12/2024

Recently I was trying to think of whether there were any languages that mark present and non-present tense (like English marks past/non-past). And today I realized English has this distinction in "now" (present) and "then" (past or future). So at least it exists in deictic terms!

Ryan Rhodes @langofmind.bsky.social · 28/12/2024

These positions are unique in that they are teaching-focused, unlike a more traditional research-focused postdoc. You work directly for the Cog Sci center, teaching and creating courses. The teaching load is 2:1, so you still have some time for research and job apps, too!

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Ryan Rhodes @langofmind.bsky.social · 28/12/2024

Are you a recent PhD grad in cog sci, linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, computer science, or other cog sci-adjacent field? Do you love teaching? Rutgers is hiring new teaching postdocs! Apply here! jobs.rutgers.edu/postings/240...

jobs.rutgers.edu

Post Doctoral Associate

• RuCCS Teacher-Scholars hold a full-time position• To accommodate the diversity of training and career paths, the scholarship expectations for RuCCS Teacher-Scholars are flexible and can include a br...

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Ryan Rhodes @langofmind.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

If you had to create terms to differentiate Merge and its outputs (nested unordered sets of lexical items) and linearization and its outputs (concatenated strings of lexical items), what terms would you choose? Which would you call "Language"?

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I just realized I got the notation totally wrong anyways! The child would have to learn 1 and 1 is 10, which does feel like a no-go for a 1-knower

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all my core memories are embarrassing injuries

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I honestly muted this guy a while ago. He's like a bad take machine

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The 1-knower knows what 1 is. Presumably they also know what "none" is (babies learn this pretty early!). Could a 1-knower learn that 1 and none is 1? That 1 and 1 is 11? This seems straightforward, but cognitive development isn't always straightforward.

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Ryan Rhodes @langofmind.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

When children learn about number, they go through distinct phases. First they learn 1 and become 1-knowers. Then 2-knowers, then 3-knowers. Once they learn 4, they unlock everything. Question: do you think you could teach a 1-knower to do binary arithmetic?

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Yes Ronald Fisher, please tell me more about your lady tasting problem

Are there other sacred animals that this applies to? Do you know of any?

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This is apparently because the ancient Germanic peoples had a taboo against saying the name of sacred animals, so they came up with euphemisms. You can see the same thing in the Slavic languages, which generally call the bear some version of "honey-eater".

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The English word "horse" doesn't come from the typical PIE root for horse! Instead, it derives from PIE *ḱers- ("run"). So a horse is a running thing! And likewise for bear: the typical PIE *h₂ŕ̥tḱos was replaced by *bʰerH- ("brown"), so a bear is literally a brown one!

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Ryan Rhodes @langofmind.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

I wear my Ecuadorian alpaca wool poncho and drink ginger lemon kombucha while my wife slums it up in a ten-year-old hoodie she got for free from a work vendor and slams a black coffee. We're a modern couple

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You're gonna have to explain this one to me chief

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Ryan Rhodes @langofmind.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

Wanted to spend the last day of class work shopping student papers, but instead they decided to teach me the true meaning of Christmas