Morten H. Christiansen
Cognitive scientist interested in the processing, acquisition and evolution of language; statistical learning; computational modeling.
Lab website: https://csl-lab.psych.cornell.edu
- Two more weeks to prepare and submit a proposal for a commentary on my BBS target article with Nick Chater about Social Tinkering as the social foundations of cultural complexity. We'd love to hear what you think. 🗓️ Feb 10 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
- If the idea of a bottom-up social interaction account of cultural evolution (with implications for the nature human cognition) piques your interest, consider proposing a peer commentary on my BBS paper with Nick Chater. 🗓️ Deadline: Feb 10, 2026 Details: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... 1/2
- I'm very excited about this paper with @yngwienielsen.bsky.social just out in @nathumbehav.nature.com in which we provide evidence for the mental representation of non-hierarchical linguistic structure in language use. 🧵 1/4 Read the paper here: rdcu.be/eZ26u
- Results from 4 phrasal decision experiments show that non-constituent sequences of Parts of Speech (PoS) can be primed. E.g., "knew that she" primes "wondered if you" - both consist of the same PoS sequence: PRON SCONJ VERB but have no overlap in words. 2/4
- We show that the results are not due to the repetition of PoS elements or because a complete constituent is inferred from a non-constituent fragment. Analyses of corpora of eye-tracked reading and conversational interaction further corroborate our findings under more naturalistic circumstances. 3/4
- Our findings challenges current theories of language to account for the existence of abstract, non-hierarchical linguistic structure, raising the tantalizing question: perhaps traditional constituent structure may not be necessary to account for human language use? 4/4 as.cornell.edu/news/discove...
- If the idea of a bottom-up social interaction account of cultural evolution (with implications for the nature human cognition) piques your interest, consider proposing a peer commentary on my BBS paper with Nick Chater. 🗓️ Deadline: Feb 10, 2026 Details: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... 1/2
- Here's a 🧵 about the paper: bsky.app/profile/mh-c...
- 📣 Very happy to announce a new BBS target article with Nick Chater in which we propose a new theory of cultural evolution, highlighting the importance of bottom-up social interaction in explaining the emergence of cultural complexity 🧵 1/8 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
- A quick read to start off 2026…
- Language Evolution by Morten H. Christiansen: doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.3…
- Reposted by Morten H. ChristiansenWhy do some advanced L2 learners process grammar in real time—and others don’t? 🤔 New paper w López-Beltrán, Dussias & @mh-christiansen.bsky.social We find that chunking ability -not working memory- predicts online sensitivity to L2 morphosyntax. 📄 doi.org/10.1177/0267... (Open Access)
- For those of you who read Danish 🇩🇰, here's an article based on an interview I did about language evolution and LLMs. We discuss how LLMs are forcing language scientists to rethink biological constraints on language (despite differences between humans and LLMs) blog.minlaering.dk/blogindlaeg/...
- Reposted by Morten H. ChristiansenSepsal recenzi na popularizační knihu The Language Game od Chatera a Christiansena @mh-christiansen.bsky.social. Je zdařilý úvod, který bere náhled evoluce a komunikace a kontrastuje s chomskyánským Jazykovým instinktem od Pinkera. Doporučuji pro výuku úvodů! digilib.phil.muni.cz/sites/defaul...
- 📣 Very happy to announce a new BBS target article with Nick Chater in which we propose a new theory of cultural evolution, highlighting the importance of bottom-up social interaction in explaining the emergence of cultural complexity 🧵 1/8 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
- Inspired by the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher Adam Ferguson, we explore how cultural and social organization arises from human action, but not human design: from myopic, moment-by-moment modifications to the rules by which we live—modifications intelligently chosen to solve current problems 2/8
- We propose a theory of Social Tinkering: how active coordination in social interactions provides the driving force behind cultural evolution. Our account departs from much current cultural evolutionary thinking, which we believe leans too heavily on parallels with Darwinian natural selection. 3/8
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View full threadThis theory of Social Tinkering can be thought of as a generalization of our idea of language-as-charades (detailed in our book, The Language Game) generalized to cultural evolution. If this piques your interest, keep an eye out for the call for commentaries 8/8 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
- Reposted by Morten H. ChristiansenCogSci in Aarhus is hiring, open rank (assi, asso or full prof). We want somebody working on and teaching computational modelling of cognitive processes and/or social processes. Students are amazing, work/life balance very satisfactory, and colleagues are nice! international.au.dk/about/profil...
- Congratulations to Dr. @sere-yu-wang.bsky.social for defending her PhD dissertation with flying colors! 👏
- Many congrats to Dr. Serene Wang @sere-yu-wang.bsky.social -- the newest PhD to come out of the @csl-lab.bsky.social. 🥳 She expertly defended her dissertation on "Chunking In the Second Language: Connecting Sentence Processing, Proficiency, and Memory Outcomes" 👏
- I am very saddened to see Cornell comply with the Trump administration’s dictatorial demands. @cornellaaup.bsky.social provides a careful analysis of the potential dire consequences of this capitulation
- Reposted by Morten H. ChristiansenConversational turn-taking feels effortless, but it's a complex dance. We find social context—who you're talking to and what you're talking about—fundamentally changes conversational dynamics in both autistic & TD children. 1/ onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... w @chrismmcox.bsky.social
- Human language acquisition and use is fundamentally interactive. By contrast, LLMs are generally assumed to be passive learners that merely soak up vast amounts of data, like a sponge. In this opinion piece, we argue that the picture is more nuanced 1/2 www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...
- Ross D. Kristensen-McLachlan, Pablo Contreras Kallens and I suggest that the introduction of Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback provides much need socially informed feedback and that this makes their linguistic behavior more human-like (including human errors) 2/2 Curious? The article is OA
- Reposted by Morten H. ChristiansenKnow someone whose excellence in research and contributions to the CogSci community should be recognized? Nominate them to be a Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society! Deadline: Nov 1 More info: cognitivesciencesociety.org/fellows/
- The CogSci Society is accepting nominations for 🌟Fellows of the Society🌟 Fellows are individuals whose research has exhibited sustained excellence and had sustained impact on the #CogSci community. Visit cognitivesciencesociety.org/fellows/ and submit your nomination until November 1st!
- Come see Cris Rivera's poster tomorrow at #AMLaP2025 👇
- 📣 If you're at #AMLaP2025 in Prague, come see the poster #184 by CSL Lab's Cris Rivera and @mh-christiansen.bsky.social: 👉 "Comparing natural language statistical learning and human intuition for chunking language" 🗓️ Thursday afternoon (Sept 4), 17:20-18:50
- Reposted by Morten H. Christiansen3️⃣ 2️⃣ 1️⃣ Just three days left to submit your nomination for the Early Career Talk at the #IASL26 conference. 🔗 ugent.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...
- 🏅 💬 At the '22 edition of our conference, we launched the Early Career Talk, giving a platform to an outstanding early-career scientist. We are now seeking nominations for the Early Career Talk at the #IASL26 edition. The deadline for nominations is August 15, 2025. Instructions in the thread.
- Check out the two posters from @csl-lab.bsky.social at #CogSci2025 on Friday and Saturday in Salon 8.
- 📣Come see the two posters from the CSL Lab at #CogSci2025! 👀 👉 @elmlingersteven.bsky.social is presenting his on Friday 10:30AM-12PM 👉 Calen MacDonald is presenting his on Saturday 1-2:15PM
- Just in time for the @cogscisociety.bsky.social conference and the Rumelhart 25th Anniversary Event, the 2023 Rumelhart Prize Issue Honoring Nick Chater is out in TopiCS in Cognitive Science, edited by Mike Oaksford and me: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/17568765... 🧵 1/3
- Learn more about Nick's groundbreaking work within cognitive science—including on simplicity, reasoning, similarity. decision-making, virtual bargaining, and language—along with personal musings by Mike and me. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... Papers by Oaksford Hodgetts & Hahn 2/3
- Papers (cont): Brown & Walasek Trujillo, Zhang, Zhi-Xuan, Tenenbaum & Levine Contreras Kallens & Christiansen Chater 3/3
- Happy to contribute an article on #LanguageEvolution to the Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science @oecs-bot.bsky.social Everything you ever wanted to know about language evolution in ~1K words—well just scratching the surface 😉 dig into the references for more info oecs.mit.edu/pub/18miikqb...
- Reposted by Morten H. Christiansen🏅 💬 At the '22 edition of our conference, we launched the Early Career Talk, giving a platform to an outstanding early-career scientist. We are now seeking nominations for the Early Career Talk at the #IASL26 edition. The deadline for nominations is August 15, 2025. Instructions in the thread.
- 📣 Save the date 🗓️ to present your exciting statistical learning research at the 6th Interdisciplinary Advances in Statistical Learning Conference June 10-12 2026 in San Sebastián 🇪🇸 Keynotes by @jennysaffran.bsky.social @noranewcombe.bsky.social @pyoudeyer.bsky.social More info to follow #IASL26
- I'm excited about this TICS Opinion with @yngwienielsen.bsky.social, challenging the view that structural priming—the tendency to reuse a recent syntactic structure—provides evidence for the psychological reality of grammar-based constituent structure. authors.elsevier.com/a/1lIFK4sIRv... 🧵1/4
- We review recent empirical work from within the structural priming literature itself and from research on LLMs that questions the standard view of what structural priming says about the mental representation of language. Instead we offer an alternative account rooted in basic memory processes. 2/4
- We propose a top-down, memory-based perspective on structural priming in which multiple contextual (including non-syntactic) constraints shape the representation of a sentence. This proposal resolves the anomalous empirical findings and accounts for structural priming in LLMs. 3/4
- Read the full account here ⬇️ authors.elsevier.com/a/1lIFK4sIRv... Read and download the article for free before August 08, 2025. @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social #Language #Grammar #Memory #Priming 4/4
- Reposted by Morten H. ChristiansenNick Chater now introducing the idea of social tinkering and spontaneous order and their role in the origin of language @mh-christiansen.bsky.social #LLGAwayDay @warwickpsych.bsky.social
- Nick Chater joins us online to present his work on spontaneous communicative conventions with @mh-christiansen.bsky.social @warwickpsych.bsky.social #LLGAwayDay
- Reposted by Morten H. ChristiansenNick Chater joins us online to present his work on spontaneous communicative conventions with @mh-christiansen.bsky.social @warwickpsych.bsky.social #LLGAwayDay
- Reposted by Morten H. ChristiansenLast was "The Language Game" by @mh-christiansen.bsky.social & Nick Chater, who cover the neurological underpinnings of language, linguistic theory, and the philosophy of language with scientific rigor and an engaging narrative. Highly recommend Full review: bookwyrm.social/user/bwaber/... (12/12)
- Reposted by Morten H. ChristiansenOur daily lives are packed w complex behaviours: reading a novel & piecing together the plot; negotiating decisions w family... How do we build mathematical models of the underlying cognitive mechanisms? Our new preprint osf.io/d2v54_v1 argues for a community approach A 🧵 1/
- Every year at the end of the semester, I ask the students in my Psych of Language class to create memes about what they've learned. They then vote for their favorites. Here's the winner about how the idea of a universal grammar is no longer as compelling as it once seemed. 1/5
- The runner up was about a second topic that elicited several memes: The rapid turn-taking in everyday conversations 2/5
- Two memes ended up in third place. The first one is about the McGurk effect in which an auditory /ba/ combined with the lip movements for "Ga" leads to the perception of a "Da". 3/5
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View full threadAnd a final bonus meme: Laura Bridgman was the first person with no sight and hearing who learned how to communicate via finger spelling. She later taught Anne Sullivan who introduced Helen Keller to finger spelling. Yet, sadly, most are unaware of Laura Bridgman's pioneering role today. 5/5
