Language

Experimental psychology research on attention, perception, learning, memory, language and reasoning falls within the society’s Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology remit. Supports small empirical projects in experimental psychology, including research assistance, participant costs, specialist software, scanning fees, essential small equipment and consumables. The maximum is GBP 10,000 for a project normally completed within one year. Applications are due 1 December 2026, with earliest start 1 February. Funds are reimbursed to the host institution in arrears; overheads, student fees and

Experimental psychology research on attention, perception, learning, memory, language and reasoning falls within the society’s Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology remit. Travel and accommodation support for a visit to another institution to learn experimental methods or undertake studies unavailable at the home department. Up to GBP 3,500 is available to the visitor, with up to GBP 100 of additional actual host costs. Subsistence, conference fees and poster costs are excluded. The next submission date is 1 December 2026; visits should start at least three months after submission. Appl

The Cognitive Neuroscience (CogNeuro) program seeks to fund proposals that can advance our understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying human cognition and behavior. Funded proposals typically relate precise and rich quantifications of physiological responses and behavior in ways that advance theory (Intellectual Merit). Funded proposal also typically strengthen the field through, for example, outreach, mentoring the next generation of diverse cognitive neuroscientists, and/or increasing awareness and utilization of the research the field produces (Broader Impacts). Intellectual Merit In

Investigate how the human capacity to understand and create complex sequences in language, memory, music, dance and narrative relates to behavioural sequencing in other animals. The meeting uses ecological demands on animal behaviour to explore the evolution of these abilities and fundamental questions in comparative cognitive science. This Theo Murphy meeting is intended for researchers in relevant fields and takes place in person. Attendance is free but requires an invitation: applicants state their expertise and reasons for attending, and organisers review requests on a rolling basis. Cater

…in networks involved in motor control, language and vision (Fig. 1). However, individual genetic variants disposing to dyslexia

The transcription factor FOXP2 is a regulator of vocalization-, speech-, and language-related phenotypes in human and non-human species. The FOXP2 protein contains multiple domains including a DNA-binding forkhead domain, a zinc finger domain, a leucine zipper, and N-terminal polyglutamine (polyQ) repeats. We have recently found that the FOXP2 N-terminal polyQ region drives the liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) of the protein. FOXP2 LLPS is regulated by the evolutionary length variation of the polyQ repeats and has a role in modulating the transcriptional activity of the protein. The poten

…in children’s development of language and phonology, providing a context for exploring atypical reading development (dyslexia). Children with dyslexia are relatively insensitive to acoustic cues related to speech rhythm patterns. This lack of rhythmic sensitivity is related to the atypical neural encoding of rhythm patterns in speech by the brain. I will describe our recent data from infa

Andrea Martin develops an account of language that combines compositional structure with physiological constraints from human brains. She discusses neural dynamics and low-dimensional manifolds as a way to connect statistical regularities with formal organization, and considers how this approach relates to the capabilities and limitations of large language models.

Metaphor is a pervasive phenomenon in language and cognition. To date, the vast majority of psycholinguistic research on metaphor has focused on noun-noun metaphors of the form An X is a Y (e.g., My job is a jail). Yet there is evidence that verb metaphor (e.g., I sailed through my exams) is more common. Despite this, comparatively little work has examined how verb metaphors are processed. In this talk, I will propose a novel account for verb metaphor comprehension: verb metaphors are understood in the same way that analogies are—as comparisons processed via structure-mapping. I will discuss t

Analogical reasoning –learning about new things by relating it to previous knowledge– lies at the heart of human intelligence and creativity and forms the core of educational practice. Children start creating and using analogies early on, making incredible progress moving from associative processes to successful analogical reasoning. For example, if we ask a four-year-old “Horse belongs to stable like chicken belongs to …?” they may use association and reply “egg”, whereas older children will likely give the intended relational response “chicken coop” (or other term to refer to a chicken’s hom

A fundamental and distinguishing feature of human intelligence is that we transfer and accumulate knowledge as a society and across generations. We suggest that for communication and accumulation, explicit (but not implicit) intelligence is likely encapsulated by a network of attractors representing abstractions such as objects or actions and direct connections between them, rather than one that utilizes hidden layers of representation. We propose a network model for explicit human intelligence that is composed of attractors and learned connections as elemental units. As attractors are added a

…Language, too, has for a long time been treated across scientific domains as a system operating largely independently from perception, action, and the body (articulatory-perceptual organs notwithstanding). This could lead one into believing that to emulate linguistic behaviour, it would suffice to develop ‘software’ operating on abstract re

…successfully explain key aspects of language. However, the precise relation between abstract theoretical ideas and empirical data from language use is not always apparent. Here, we propose to empirically test abstract semantic theories through the lens of probabilistic pragmatic modelling. We consider the historically important case of quantity words (e.g., `some', `all'). Data from a large-scale production study seem to suggest that quantity words are understood via prototypes. But based on statistical and empirical model comparison,

People from cultures around the world tend to borrow from the domain of space to represent abstract concepts. For example, in the domain on time, we use spatial metaphors (e.g., describing the future as being in front and the past behind), accompany our speech with spatial gestures (e.g., gesturing to the left to refer to a past event), and use external tools that project time onto a spatial reference frame (e.g., calendars). Importantly, these associations are also present in the way we think and reason about time, suggesting that space and time are also linked in the mind. In this talk, I wi

Humans are incredible learners, a talent supported by our ability to detect and transfer relational similarities between items and events. Spotting these common relations despite perceptual differences is challenging, yet there’s evidence that this ability begins early, with infants as young as 3 months discriminating same and different (Anderson et al., 2018; Ferry et al., 2015). How? To understand the underlying mechanisms, I examine how learning outcomes in the first year correspond with changes in input and in infant age. I discuss the commonalities in this process with that seen in older