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Sotaro Kita

@sotarokita.bsky.social
74 followers 42 following 25 posts

Born and raised in Japan. Lived in the US, and the Netherlands. Now, I am teaching psychology in a British university. warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/psych/people/…

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Sotaro Kita @sotarokita.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Our paper tinyurl.com/3duukb2w shows that iconicity in adults' speech may facilitate infant language development through heightened interactional engagement. When parents use highly iconic words, infants are more engaged with the interaction and the parental speech is more strongly infant-directed.
tinyurl.com
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Sotaro Kita @sotarokita.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
Our new paper showed that, in video conferencing, speakers produce more gestures when the other side can see them, but speakers did not significantly change the rate of gesturing based on whether or not they can see the other side. rdcu.be/fkR7p
rdcu.be
Perspective Taking Increases Representational Gesture Production in Videoconferencing Settings
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Sotaro Kita @sotarokita.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
Our paper with Kirsty Green and @mperlman.bsky.social showed that 3 year olds learn onomatopoeias (words sounding similar to their referent sound) better than non-onomatopoeias. We created novel onomatopoeias that refer to bird vocalisations. <https://tinyurl.com/2tcyjksy>.
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Matthew Mak @matthewmakpsy.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
Killing 'delve': We analysed 4,800+ student-authored reports across a decade to uncover how ChatGPT is shaping undergrad writing—style, sentiment, and quality. 📉📈 GenAI isn't just a tool. It's a co-author. 📝 #Preprint: www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-7...
researchsquare.com
Style, Sentiment, and Quality of Undergraduate Writing in the AI Era: A Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Analysis of 4,820 Authentic Empirical Reports
As generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) becomes widespread in education, its influence on students’ academic practice raises concern. We conducted pre-registered analyses of 4,820 empirical repo...
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Sotaro Kita @sotarokita.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
Our paper showed that seeing the address' face triggers gesture production. This provides a new explanation for why people produce more gestures in face-to-face situations than in situations where they cannot see each other. Eye-contact may be especially important <https://tinyurl.com/4cxdukxy>
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Sotaro Kita @sotarokita.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
A PhD opportunity in a collaborative project between myself and Anna Margetts, Lucien Brown, and Jill Vaughan at Monash University (in Australia) on crosslinguistic comparison of motion event gestures. tinyurl.com/23xjmwfa
tinyurl.com
PhD opportunity - Caused Motion Events
PhD Opportunity: Multimodal Expression of Caused Motion We are calling for expressions of interest for conducting PhD research in conjunction with the Australian Research Council Discovery Project Wh...
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Sotaro Kita @sotarokita.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
Assistant/associate professor job at U of Warwick tinyurl.com/3ewmd7u9. A great opportunities for researchers who work on language and communication (including gesture) and on other areas of psychology.
tinyurl.com
Assistant or Associate Professor (111338-0226) - University of Warwick
Title: Assistant or Associate Professor (111338-0226). Application Deadline: . Position Type: Permanent
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Sotaro Kita @sotarokita.bsky.social · 30/09/2025
Our paper describing a new video corpus of infant-parent interaction, which researchers can freely access from Databrary. 44 dyads of shared book reading sessions, captured by three cameras: head-mounted cameras on the infant and the parent, and an overview camera. tinyurl.com/yzs38uwz
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Multisensory Research Group (MRG) @mrgbcn.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
👋 PhD opportunities for African women in STEM 👩‍🎓. Check it out 👀, distribute 📨, and get in touch ✍️with us www.upf.edu/web/mrg if interested. www.upf.edu/web/phd-engi...
upf.edu
PhD in Information and Communication Technologies - Dorcas Muthoni PhD Fellowship
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Simon Fisher @profsimonfisher.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
Extraordinary resource! "Comprehensive recordings from 621,733 neurons in 297 brain areas of 139 mice (12 labs) performing a decision-making task with sensory, motor & cognitive components: a public dataset to understand how computations distributed across & within brain areas drive behaviour."👇🧪
nature.com
A brain-wide map of neural activity during complex behaviour - Nature
The International Brain Laboratory presents a brain-wide electrophysiological map obtained from pooling data from 12 laboratories that performed the same standardized perceptual decision-making task i...
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Sotaro Kita @sotarokita.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
Our new paper about the second international conference on research culture at Univ. of Warwick, IRCC2024, with 250 in-person and 250 on-line participants. Find out what themes were discussed. tinyurl.com/2m43yty3 And, IRCC2025 tinyurl.com/y9jexub7 will be on 17-Sept-2025.
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‘One Year On’: Reflections on the International Research Culture Conference 2024 (IRCC24) | Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal
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Sotaro Kita @sotarokita.bsky.social · 01/09/2025
Our paper on the vision of the National Centre for Research Culture at the University of Warwick, which we founded in 2023. It aims to coordinate sector-wide effort to improve research culture, making our universities optimal places for researchers and research excellence. tinyurl.com/y4yuvx8p
tinyurl.com
The National Centre for Research Culture at the University of Warwick: Vision and current activities | Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal
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Sotaro Kita @sotarokita.bsky.social · 01/09/2025
Our article on a groundbreaking positive action programme for Black researchers at the University of Warwick, the Warwick PATHWAY programme, which we developed. It provides undergraduate research bursary, PhD studentship and postdoc fellowships, also creates a community. tinyurl.com/23tyep92
tinyurl.com
Warwick PATHWAY Programme: A positive action programme to facilitate Black researchers’ careers | Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal
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Teruni Ahamat @teruniahamat.bsky.social · 15/07/2025
🌟Deeply honoured to have been selected as the 1st-Place Winner in the Interdisciplinary category of the Warwick Open Research Awards 2025, for my open-approach work on infants’ comprehension of pointing gestures 👶👉 Excited to keep pushing for open, rigorous, and collaborative science!💡🔍 #OpenScience
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Suzanne Aussems @suzanneaussems.bsky.social · 12/07/2025
Very grateful to the organisers for pulling off such a wonderful three days. We had a great time at #ISGS10 @isgs2025.bsky.social and are already looking forward to ISGS11 in Hong Kong!
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Sotaro Kita @sotarokita.bsky.social · 14/07/2025
Our paper tinyurl.com/4upbjayy showed children can create foundations of phonetics and phonology: discreteness of form units and duality of patterning. We analyzed handshapes in homesign (gesture by deaf children without linguistic input) and mothers' co-speech gesture.
tinyurl.com
Deaf homesigners can create the foundations of phonetics and phonology without an adult linguistic model
Children who are exposed to minimal linguistic input can nevertheless introduce linguistic features into their communication systems at the level of m…
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Dr Lena Matyjek @lmatyjek.bsky.social · 30/04/2025
Autistic and neurotypical adults use different neural mechanisms to integrate AV speech, but benefit equally in word recognition 🧠 📜New paper in Autism Research (OA):📜 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... w/ @mrgbcn.bsky.social, @sotarokita.bsky.social, & @mireiatorralba.bsky.social 🙏
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Warwick Psychology @warwickpsych.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
@sotarokita.bsky.social, along with Marie Sams and Rika Nair, reflects on the International Research Culture Conference 2024 and looks ahead to this year’s conference: wrap.warwick.ac.uk/i... 1/2
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Mingtong Li @cyberming.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
Thrilled to see my first publication out in PB&R with @sotarokita.bsky.social and @suzanneaussems.bsky.social! Adults interpret novel verbs using iconic speed cues in speech prosody and hand gesture, with a small but reliable link across modalities. Open access: link.springer.com/10.3758/s134...
link.springer.com
Adults interpret iconicity in speech and gesture via the same modality-independent process - Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
Iconicity is the resemblance or similarity between the form of a signal and its meaning. In two studies, we investigated whether adults interpret iconicity in speech and gesture via a modality-indepen...
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Sotaro Kita @sotarokita.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
Our new paper on our ability to judge iconicity (similarity) between information in different modalities. People interpret iconicity in speech and hand gesture using the same general-purpose modality‑independent process. <https://tinyurl.com/2y3775nf>
stimulus videos
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Sotaro Kita @sotarokita.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
I am a psychologist and linguist at the University of Warwick @uni-of-warwick.bsky.social. I am interested in the role of gesture in communication and thinking, the role of iconicity in language, and language development. I am also interested in how to improve research culture.
warwick.ac.uk
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Sotaro Kita @sotarokita.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
Our paper with Suzanne Aussems found no evidence that 14–17-month-old infants use iconic speech and gesture cues to interpret word meanings. In a special issue on Iconicity and Sound Symbolism in JASA. doi.org/10.1121/10.0...
doi.org
Do 14–17-month-old infants use iconic speech and gesture cues to interpret word meanings?
This experimental study investigated whether infants use iconicity in speech and gesture cues to interpret word meanings. Specifically, we tested infants' sensi
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Sotaro Kita @sotarokita.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
A new paper of mine about how a good research culture looks like. exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/ex... In the proceedings of International Research Culture Conference 2023 (held at the University of Warwick).@exchangesjournal.bsky.social
exchanges.warwick.ac.uk
Five Adjectives to Convey What Good Research Culture Looks Like: A tool for effective and efficient communication | Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal
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Sotaro Kita @sotarokita.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
A new paper by Rika Nair and me about why we founded an international research culture conference. exchanges.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/ex.... In the proceedings of International Research Culture Conference 2023 (held at the University of Warwick). @exchangesjournal.bsky.social
exchanges.warwick.ac.uk
Why Do We Need an International Research Culture Conference? : Lessons from IRCC23 and future directions | Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal
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Sotaro Kita @sotarokita.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
Our new paper: Audio-visual integration in multimodal communication leads to stronger alpha suppression than in unimodal versions of the communication. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Multisensory integration of speech and gestures in a naturalistic paradigm
We explored brain mechanisms underlying multisensory integration (MSI) of audio-visual speech and gestures in an ecologically valid context. Audio-visual versus only audio or visual trials triggered ...
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Sotaro Kita @sotarokita.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
Our new paper on seeds of language-like generativity in bird vocal communication. Pied babblers can interpret a novel sequence of calls in a compositional way, just as humans can understand a sentence we have never heard before. <https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/epdf/10.1098/rspb.2024.0922>
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Sotaro Kita @sotarokita.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
Our new paper by my PhD student Kirsty Green @KirstGreen on iconic gestures produced by infants. Infants are not just imitating their parent's gestures, but they often use interactional materials from preceding contexts to create iconic gestures. tinyurl.com/5n8afnjc
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Sotaro Kita @sotarokita.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
Our new paper <https://tinyurl.com/mr8fj7nm> showed that (orally trained) Deaf and hard of hearing people can detect bouba-kiki sound symbolism, but their performance is worse when their tongue movement was suppressed. This provide evidence for articulatory basis for sound symbolism.
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