Sign in

Dr Lena M Blott

@lenamblott.bsky.social
937 followers 1.4K following 115 posts

Learning and research.Psycholinguist at University of Mannheim. Academic Mama. Hunter of vintage treasures.

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Melissa Baese-Berk @m2b2.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
My student is looking for participants for her dissertation experiment (done online! Paid!). DM me if you're interested: Looking for native English speakers in the US between 18-35 years old learning Mandarin / Korean as their second language to participate in an online linguistics study!
133
Dr Lena M Blott @lenamblott.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
First time I'm siding with Elsevier on an issue....
000
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
alexbergs.bsky.social @alexbergs.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
Student at my department in need of some data! Check out her questionnaire. It's fun and all participants get a free labradoodle puppy :-) forms.gle/m6mmoHQhocBy...
forms.gle
English Language Use among L1 and L2 Speakers
Thank you for your interest in participating in this study. This survey is part of a Master’s thesis in English and American Studies at the University of Osnabrück. The study investigates different as...
001
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
GC CUNY - Linguistics Program @gccunylinguistics.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
The Second Language Acquisition Lab at the CUNY Graduate Center is recruiting Turkish speakers in the U.S. or Germany for an online study on Turkish and bilingualism. Not eligible? Please share, word of mouth really helps! slalab.gc.cuny.edu/post/new-stu... #linguistics @verbingnouns.bsky.social
slalab.gc.cuny.edu
Interested in a (paid) study about Turkish language use?
The Second Language Acquisition Lab (SLAL) at The City University of New York (CUNY) is inviting participants to take part in a short online research study on how Turkish is used and understood by peo...
01116
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Emily Myers @emilymyers.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
Researchers: are you reassured by Prolific's efforts to tamp down bot activity? Have you seen changes in data quality? We've gone from rejecting about 10% of the sample for headphone checks to more like 40%. Not confident the rest are real.
3122
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
In my ongoing attempts to give you a break from *gestures widely* THE HORRORS: Let's talk about the utterly bizarre science of cats' purring. Here's a weird starting point: There are NO cats (Felidae) that can BOTH roar AND purr. Cats that roar = genus Panthera Cats that purr = genus Felis
201507588
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
A very funny and satisfying rant by @acollierastro.bsky.social about the impact of "AI" on education and specifically the professor who outsourced his work to ChatGPT, lost it, then told the world about it (25 min.) www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pqF...
youtube.com
this is what 2 years of chatgpt does to your brain
YouTube video by Angela Collier
051
Dr Lena M Blott @lenamblott.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
I've been looking for an easy-to-follow explainer on how LLMs work for a class I'm teaching this term, but this series is so much more than that. Worth sharing with students (and everyone else)!
060
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
It's me, Andrew @itsandrewrusso.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
I'm looking to interview, read, and share disaster narratives. If you have a story to tell, data to share, and want to talk, I'm taking trains and bikes across the EU and want to talk to you. #academicsky #disasters #openscience www.andrewrusso.me/dnp
022
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Nicholas Pagnucco @nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social · 27/12/2025
So... as I write syllabi for next semester, I have to ask a question that makes me feel incompetent: Does anyone have solid resources on AI policies in class? This could be how to organize assessment to minimize AI use, or any of the other Faustian bargains. #sociology #academicsky #highered
834
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Dr Keith Wilson 💭 @keithwilson.eu · 21/12/2025
It’s the same with academic writing. The difficulty doesn’t lie in formulating grammatical sentences, but in deciding what it is you actually want to say. Writing is part of the process by which you figure that out, and isn’t something that can be outsourced to a machine.
3214
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Joachim Baumann @joachimbaumann.bsky.social · 12/09/2025
🚨 New paper alert 🚨 Using LLMs as data annotators, you can produce any scientific result you want. We call this **LLM Hacking**. Paper: arxiv.org/pdf/2509.08825
We present our new preprint titled "Large Language Model Hacking: Quantifying the Hidden Risks of Using LLMs for Text Annotation".
We quantify LLM hacking risk through systematic replication of 37 diverse computational social science annotation tasks.
For these tasks, we use a combined set of 2,361 realistic hypotheses that researchers might test using these annotations.
Then, we collect 13 million LLM annotations across plausible LLM configurations.
These annotations feed into 1.4 million regressions testing the hypotheses. 
For a hypothesis with no true effect (ground truth $p > 0.05$), different LLM configurations yield conflicting conclusions.
Checkmarks indicate correct statistical conclusions matching ground truth; crosses indicate LLM hacking -- incorrect conclusions due to annotation errors.
Across all experiments, LLM hacking occurs in 31-50\% of cases even with highly capable models.
Since minor configuration changes can flip scientific conclusions, from correct to incorrect, LLM hacking can be exploited to present anything as statistically significant.
6303106
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Sabrina Norwood @sabrinanorwood.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
Did you know that from tomorrow, Qualtrics is offering synthetic panels (AI-generated participants)? Follow me down a rabbit hole I'm calling "doing science is tough and I'm so busy, can't we just make up participants?"
Text reads: About synthetic panels
Recruiting the right participants for a study can be difficult. You may not get the exact demographics you need, and the shorter the deadline, the less sure you can be that everyone will answer on time. One possible solution can be to use synthetic panels.

Synthetic panels are powered by a first party proprietary AI model developed here at Qualtrics. Our synthetic panel is trained on thousands of responses from a variety of demographic backgrounds in order to more accurately predict how certain populations would respond to a survey.

Our synthetic panel is based on the United States General Population, and is only available in English. This panel comes with ready-made quotas and target breakouts in order to represent your chosen population and make it easy to launch your survey right away.Text reads:
Question-writing best practices
To get the most reliable and actionable results from synthetic audiences, consider these question-writing best practices:

Ask forward-looking and attitudinal questions.
Synthetic panels perform best with perceptions, preferences, and intent-based questions. For example, “How likely are you to try…?”
Synthetic panels are less applicable for studies on past behaviors, detailed recall, brand recall, or awareness questions. For example, “When did you last visit…?”Text reads:
Discussion
The current study aimed to conduct a meta-analysis of the TPB when applied to health behaviours which addressed the limitations of previous reviews by including only prospective tests of behaviour, applying RE meta-analytic procedures, correcting correlations for sampling and measurement error, and hierarchically analysing the effect of behaviour type and sample and methodological moderators. Some 237 tests were identified which examined relations amongst model components. Overall the analysis indicated that the TPB could explain 19.3% of the variance in behaviour and 44.3% of the variance in intention across studies. This level of prediction of behaviour is slightly lower than that of previous meta-analytic reviews which have found between 27% (Armitage & Conner, 2001; Hagger et al., 2002) and 36% (Trafimow et al., 2002)
of the variance in behaviour to be explained by intention and PBC.
37652285
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Stephen Collins @stephencollins.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
Every ad now
[Scene is a kitchen - a middle aged woman called JANET is boiling peas at the stove. A younger more colourfully dressed woman named LIZ approached her.]

JANET:
Ugh...

LIZ:
What's up?

JANET:
I am so bored of cooking peas!

LIZ:
Have you tried...

AI peas?

JANET:
AI peas?

LIZ:
They're peas with AI!

[Liz holds up to us a packet of peas labelled: Pea-i AI - Peas with AI].

LIZ:
Al-powered peas harness the potential of your peas

JANET:
What

LIZ [Now a voiceover as we cut to a whizzy technology diagram of peas all connected by meaningless dotted lines]

Why not take your peas to the next level with Al Peas' new Al tools to power your peas?

[Show a techno diagram of a pea with a label reading 'AI' pointing to a random zone in it]

LIZ:

Each pea has Al in a way we haven't quite worked out yet but it's fine

[Show Janet and Liz now in a Matrix-style world of peas]

LIZ:
With Al peas you can supercharge productivity and make AI work for your peas!

JANET:
What

LIZ:
Shut up

LIZ:
Our game-changing Pea-Al gives you the freedom to unlock the potential of the power of the future of your peas workflow

From opening the bag of peas

to boiling the peas

to eating the peas

To spending millions on adding Al to the peas and then having to work out what that even means.

JANET:
Is it really necessary to-

LIZ [Grabbing Janet by the collar]:
THE PEAS HAVE GOT AI, JANET

[Cut to an advert ending screen, with the bag of peas and the slogan:

AI PEAS: Just 'Peas' for god's sake buy the AI peas.

[Ends]
8271363078
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 09/10/2025
The advice I give young people on choice of degree programme. Choose something you love. You’ve got the rest of your life to be frustrated and miserable.
1742876
Dr Lena M Blott @lenamblott.bsky.social · 05/10/2025
Beautiful thread
131
Dr Lena M Blott @lenamblott.bsky.social · 08/09/2025
An die deutsche #Linguistics #Linguistik crowd: Kann es sein, dass die Leipzig corpora gerade down sind? Wenn ja, weiß da jemand vielleicht, wann man da wieder Zugriff haben kann?
000
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Jonathan Peelle @jpeelle.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
Psycholinguists and psychologists: Is there good R packages for distributing items across conditions? For example, I have 60 stimuli and some preliminary data on item-level accuracy. I'd like to create 3 lists of 20 items that are matched in accuracy without coding it myself. 👀
552
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Social Cognition Lab, University of Miami @soccoglab.bsky.social · 25/02/2025
We have another online study on Children Helping Science for adults with a baby between 2 and 24 months old! childrenhelpingscience.com/studies/7012...
Cartoon picture of a parent looking at a smiling baby in their arms.
032
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Amrei Bahr @amreibahr.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
Wie wäre es mal mit #Existenzstrategie statt #Exzellenzstrategie? Auch Wissenschaftler_innen wollen verlässlich Miete zahlen können, ihre Kinder ernähren & in finanziellen Notlagen nicht vollkommen aufgeschmissen sein. Plus: Existenzängste bremsen Forschung aus. Deshalb: #ExitExzellenz! #IchBinHanna
110422
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 12/03/2025
Research from 2022 that every Democrat apologist should chew on: “We do not find any evidence that accommodative strategies reduce radical right support. If anything, our results suggest that they lead to more voters defecting to the radical right.“ www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
cambridge.org
Does accommodation work? Mainstream party strategies and the success of radical right parties | Political Science Research and Methods | Cambridge Core
Does accommodation work? Mainstream party strategies and the success of radical right parties - Volume 11 Issue 1
4324051017
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Alissa Ferry @alissaferry.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
Come join us! We (me, Jill Lany, Perrine Brusini, and Gert Westermann) are recruiting a #devpsych PhD student to Lancaster Uni to join our ongoing Levehulme funded research project on how word learning shapes visual representations in infants! Please share! More info : tinyurl.com/ynbfkhbj
tinyurl.com
PhD - Lancaster University
044
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Doctors TARDIS @doctorstardis.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
We can upload 3 minute videos now. YOU KNOW THE RULE
18290784576
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Leah Greenberg ❌👑 @leahgreenberg.bsky.social · 09/03/2025
when the teams are "imperfect woman who demanded basic safety standards for herself and the rest of the crew and cast" vs "sexual harassers, the system that protects them, and the entire right-wing media ecosystem" I hope we're all clear which side we need to be on
51111130
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Michael Pleyer @symbolicstorage.bsky.social · 08/03/2025
JOB ALERT in #language and #linguistics! Postdoc Position at the Center for Language Evolution Studies, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland. Job offer here: www.umk.pl/en/jobs/?tas... We are now looking at a broader candidate pool so do consider applying! Please repost & share widely!
A picture of Torun oldtown at night in winter
16269
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Bernd Ulrich @derbernd.bsky.social · 08/03/2025
Es ist in Deutschland ja so: Jede Subvention der Autoindustrie gilt als Marktwirtschaft. Und jede Investition in unsere Kinder als Sozialismus. #Groko
313540892
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Louie Stowell @louiestowell.bsky.social · 09/03/2025
Big brains of #KidLitUK - someone's asking for books that provide authentic disability representation. What are your top recs? Across all spectrums of disability.
6216465
Dr Lena M Blott @lenamblott.bsky.social · 09/03/2025
At the playground with the 5yo. Daddy: You can lie on this hammock here if you want. M: I did a poo on my monkey in the night. D: What?! Really?? M: No! You said I can lie on here. #lexical #ambiguity #linguistics
25712
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Der Volksverpetzer @volksverpetzer.de · 04/03/2025
München, Solingen, Magdeburg: Zu allen Anschlägen gab es einen Brennpunkt in der ARD. Zur gestrigen Amokfahrt in #Mannheim bisher nicht. Warum wohl? www.volksverpetzer.de/aktuelles/ma...
volksverpetzer.de
Mannheim: Als die Herkunft bekannt wurde, machte man die Livestreams aus
München, Solingen, Magdeburg: Zu allen Anschlägen gab es einen Brennpunkt in der ARD. Zur gestrigen Amokfahrt in Mannheim bisher nicht.
611860580
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Erica Flaten (She/Her) @flatenerica.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Anyone in the developmental psychology/infant research community know of any existing parent-report questionnaires on infant babbling (i.e., syllable production), specifically for English families? #DevSci
031
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Laura Breimann @laurabreimann.bsky.social · 21/02/2025
My German election ballot only arrived today, a long shot but is anyone traveling from Boston to Berlin today who could take it? Any leads @germanyinboston.bsky.social ?
Picture of a letter containing the ballot.
15278169
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Ian Dunt @iandunt.bsky.social · 22/02/2025
Good morning. After a rough few days, this week's Blind Date was perfectly timed to fill you with joy. Couldn't wipe the smile off my face. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...
theguardian.com
Blind date: ‘I was hoping to meet a total babe. She was a total babe’
Gráinne, 31, a software engineer and musician, meets Alexander, 34, a civil servant
881477137
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Felipe De La Hoz @felipedlh.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
I think most people are intuitively aware of this but something like the official White House account posting an “ASMR” video of shackled immigrants is not just cruel for its own sake, it’s intentional envelope-pushing to ramp up to desensitization over inhumane detention, camps, and deaths
361171255019
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Felipe De La Hoz @felipedlh.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
By the way, people should understand that the admin doesn't have to shoot or gas people to kill them. If you pile people in military-run camps in Gitmo and the Panamanian jungle without adequate food or healthcare and just wait, people will die
17986347
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Amrei Bahr @amreibahr.bsky.social · 30/01/2025
Liebe dt. Wissenschaftsinstitutionen, wir lesen überall starke Bekenntnisse für unsere Demokratie & großes Entsetzen über Dammbruch durch Union, der Demokratie & Menschenrechte unmittelbar gefährdet. Auch Ihr solltet dazu nun laut werden: Wissenschaft hat Demokratieverantwortung! #LauteWissenschaft
336189
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Prof. Emily Nordmann @emilynordmann.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
I am writing psycholinguistics lectures for 1st time in many years, I only have 3 so it's a whistlestop tour but I want to ensure multilingualism & signed languages are represented. Am struggling to find sign research re: syntactic parsing models - has it been done? Any pointers appreciated!
3176
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Katie O'Reilly @drkatfish.bsky.social · 12/02/2025
On Darwin Day, a reminder that Charles Darwin had an inexplicable major beef with marine iguanas, writing that they were: "small and of a sooty black, which if possible, heightens their native ugliness" and "the most disgusting, clumsy lizards.... Somebody calls them 'imps of darkness'"
A marine iguana on algae-covered rocksA marine iguana on black lava rocksA marine iguana walks along the sand
2278
Dr Lena M Blott @lenamblott.bsky.social · 12/02/2025
Was really enjoying Bluesky for a moment there. And now it's like 5% jokes, 5% wholesome content and 90% the collapse of the United States. I cannot afford going back to my doomscrolling habit, help.
3190
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Konrad Kording @kordinglab.bsky.social · 05/02/2025
I know this site only reaches a subset of neuro/ cog professors. If you know a young professor in the area who would benefit from a week of targeted learning about doing good science, good mentoring, networking etc, it would be great if you could forward them: compneurosci.com/Neuro4Pros/i...
compneurosci.com
Neuro4Pros summer school
NeUroscience Computational LEAdership Retreat (NUCLEAR): happiness and success
713674
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Georg Henning @georghenning.bsky.social · 02/02/2025
US friends and colleagues, let me know if you are looking for European phd / postdoc positions to get out of this mess - I can explain how the systems work over here or know people who can (at least for Germany, Sweden. Spitzenkandidat, Norway and UK) and help you find possible job openings
3157
Dr Lena M Blott @lenamblott.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
Ein bisschen Hoffnung! www.zeit.de/gesellschaft...
zeit.de
Demonstrationen: Zehntausende Menschen demonstrieren erneut gegen Rechtsruck
Bundesweit wird auch an diesem Wochenende gegen die AfD und das Manöver von Friedrich Merz protestiert. Allein in Hamburg beteiligten sich 65.000 Menschen an einer Demo.
010
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Peter Jelinek @peterjelinek.bsky.social · 30/01/2025
Eine Rede, die Anerkennung verdient. In 1 Minute zeigt @ricardalang.bsky.social , wie man mit der AfD umgehen sollte und ja, sie spricht Friedrich Merz zurecht die Kanzlerfähigkeit ab. Hut ab vor dieser Rede!
17972762480
Dr Lena M Blott @lenamblott.bsky.social · 30/01/2025
Ok, Semester geht übernächste Woche wieder los und dann noch zwei Wochen bis zur Wahl. Würde gerne meine Student*innen zum Wählen motivieren zwecks Vermeidung von Faschismus. Frage: Wie macht ihr das so? Zeigt ihr z.B. Wahlomat?
000
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Amanda Van Horne @telllab.bsky.social · 31/12/2024
#Crowdsourcing I'm looking for current overview book chapter(s)/articles or systematic reviews on adult and child online language processing (emphasis on sentence processing rather than lexical procesing). Target audience = 1st/2nd year grad student level. #linguistics #devpsy #cogpsyc
123
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Dr Vanessa @hpsvanessa.bsky.social · 26/12/2024
ngl a lot of AI pick mes in academia are just exposing how poor their teaching/writing is without realising.
0365
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
CNN @cnn.com · 25/12/2024
Human rights advocates have warned that Palestinian children are bearing the brunt of Israel’s bombardment and siege.
cnn.com
Three Palestinian babies die due to freezing temperatures in Gaza as winter sets in | CNN
A newborn baby froze to death in a tent encampment in Al-Mawasi, in southern Gaza, on Wednesday, highlighting the stark challenges to survival faced by Palestinian children displaced from their homes ...
68618278
Dr Lena M Blott @lenamblott.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
Make it stop please.
010
Dr Lena M Blott @lenamblott.bsky.social · 15/12/2024
Nothing like the adrenaline you get when you think you might have lost your child's favourite stuffy 😭
020
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
Shiv Ramdas Mens Rice Activist @nameshiv.bsky.social · 14/12/2024
read the rest, it's great onehundredpages.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/d...
onehundredpages.wordpress.com
Don’t make fun of renowned Dan Brown
Renowned author Dan Brown woke up in his luxurious four-poster bed in his expensive $10 million house – and immediately he felt angry. Most people would have thought that the 48-year-old man had no…
1412224
Dr Lena M Blott @lenamblott.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
Q for fellow academic parents: when will I stop kidding myself with plans like "I'll work on this thing when I have a few uninterrupted hours"? #academicsky #parenthood
480