iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mert Kobaş @mkobas.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

Excited to share our paper: “Historical and Experimental Evidence that Inherent Properties Are Overweighted in Early Scientific Explanation” I’m grateful to Zach Horne & my dear advisor @andreicimpian.bsky.social to let me be part of this project, it was a great experience! doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

doi.org

Historical and experimental evidence that inherent properties are overweighted in early scientific explanation | PNAS

Scientific explanation is one of the most sophisticated forms of human reasoning. Nevertheless, here we hypothesize that scientific explanation is ...

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Reposted by Mert Kobaş

Koc University Language & Cognition Lab @kudilvebilis.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

New study alert from L&C Lab led by our former lab member Işıl Doğan! @mkobas.bsky.social @aslierciyes.bsky.social @ecedemirlira.bsky.social @tilbegoksun.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

tandfonline.com

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Reposted by Mert Kobaş

Tilbe Göksun @tilbegoksun.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

Recent paper from our lab led by Işıl: Early parental multimodal input is differentially associated with later vocabulary knowledge for preterm & full-term infants @ecedemirlira.bsky.social @aslierciyes.bsky.social @mkobas.bsky.social @kudilvebilis.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

tandfonline.com

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Reposted by Mert Kobaş

Ece Demir-Lira, PhD @ecedemirlira.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

I am so excited to be a part of this wonderful paper led by the very talented @mkobas.bsky.social and my fav collaborator @tilbegoksun.bsky.social. I am generally a big fan of beautiful descriptive statistics and Mert did an amazing job in this paper! Enjoy!

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Mert Kobaş @mkobas.bsky.social · 20/04/2025

Teşekkür ederim Akira hocam 😊

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Mert Kobaş @mkobas.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

Proud to share this work from my time in Koç University Language & Cognition Lab. Read the full paper here: sciencedirect.com/science/arti... We hope it contributes to better understanding early spatial language development pathways. #devpsycsky

sciencedirect.com

Spatial language development in preterm and full-term infants: The role of object exploration and parents’ spatial input

Infants learn object features and relations among objects by exploring them. Object exploration and parents’ verbal input related to these spatial cha…

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Mert Kobaş @mkobas.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

This work highlights the importance of parents' spatial input during infants’ early object exploration for early spatial language development especially for populations like preterm infants who may receive less of it.

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Mert Kobaş @mkobas.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

We also found that infants who both explored more and received more spatial language input had stronger spatial vocabularies later on. This suggests a cascading developmental effect shaped by early experiences.

A figure represents the relation between the interaction term and spatial language at Time 2.

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Mert Kobaş @mkobas.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

Importantly, the interaction between object exploration and spatial input at 14 months predicted spatial language at 26 months regardless of whether infants were born preterm or full-term.

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Mert Kobaş @mkobas.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

On average, spatial input co-occurred with 44% of object exploration events. This co-occurrence differed by group: -Preterm: 36.1% -Full-term: 52.1%

Two figures that represent temporal distribution of object exploration events with co-occurrences
Top figure shows the timelines for each preterm infant’s object exploration events. Different colors represent different action types: holding, inspective actions, mouthing and rhytmic actions. Co-occurences are represented by framed boxes.
The bottom figure represents timelines for each full-term infant’s object exploration events. Different colors represent different action types: holding, inspective actions, mouthing and rhytmic actions. Co-occurences are represented by framed boxes.

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Mert Kobaş @mkobas.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

We found that preterm and full-term infants showed similar levels of object exploration. However, parents of preterm infants used significantly less spatial language during play sessions.

Two figures. The top figure shows total object exploration duration (seconds) -on y axis- by neonatal condition -on x axis-.
The bottom figure shows parents' spatial input (tokens) -on y axis- by neonatal condition -on x axis. Each dot represents a data point. The means are represented by the black lines.

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Mert Kobaş @mkobas.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

This longitudinal study followed infants from 14 (Time 1) to 26 months (Time 2). We examined: 1-Infant object exploration at Time 1 2-Parents’ spatial input during play at Time 1 3-Infants' spatial language at Time 2

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Mert Kobaş @mkobas.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

You might wonder: do infants actually know spatial words before age 3? According to parent reports, many do! Our results from CDI showed that infants in our sample were already producing several spatial terms by 26 months. Here’s a summary from our data👇

A figure represents percentages of spatial words at Time 2 for preterm and full-term infants. The y-axis shows the percentages infants comprehend and produce. Each bar represents the percentage of infants in each group (preterm or full-term) who could comprehend or produce the corresponding spatial word shown on the x-axis.

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Mert Kobaş @mkobas.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

Learning spatial words opens important pathways for later cognitive development. While much of the existing research has focused on preschoolers and toddlers, the predictors of spatial language development in younger infants remain understudied, and this was our motivation.

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Mert Kobaş @mkobas.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

We investigated how early object exploration and parents’ spatial input shape infants’ later spatial language development — in both preterm and full-term infants. 🧸🗣️➡️🧠

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Reposted by Mert Kobaş

Tilbe Göksun @tilbegoksun.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

Here is the latest paper from our lab led by my former amazing graduate student Mert: Spatial language development in preterm and full-term infants: The role of object exploration and parents’ spatial input @mkobas.bsky.social @ecedemirlira.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

sciencedirect.com

Spatial language development in preterm and full-term infants: The role of object exploration and parents’ spatial input

Infants learn object features and relations among objects by exploring them. Object exploration and parents’ verbal input related to these spatial cha…

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