Rachel Ryskin

🧵 Human language comprehension is remarkably robust, but it also breaks down in surprising ways. In this preprint, we argue that both can be explained by one theory: noisy-channel inference. osf.io/preprints/ps...

Open until filled: Postdoc, cognitive and linguistic mechanisms underlying memory for information encountered during conversation, w/ S.O. Yoon NYU Comm Sci Disorders apply.interfolio.com/196072

Imagine two people standing in the same spot, looking at the same Goya. They inspect exactly the same parts of the painting, but in a different order. Later, they talk about what they saw. Ignoring all other differences: are the memories they formed identical?

Semantic embeddings capture what is said. Style embeddings capture how, and get far less attention. Our #EMNLP2026 survey on representing linguistic style: definitions, methods, evaluation, open problems 🧵 📄 annawegmann.github.io/pdf/Style_Su... 🧑‍💻 annawegmann.github.io/StyleSurvey/

Are you: * A cognitive science (or adjacent) PhD (current or graduated, or equivalent research exp.)? * Interested in studying LMs abilities for conceptual reasoning about cog sci, and helping to improve them? If so, apply to our new conceptual reasoning fellows program! Link below:

DINOv2 has never seen a caption, and Qwen3 has never seen an image. We still aligned their embedding spaces without a single image-caption pair. It even works when the images and the captions come from different datasets. Project page: dominik-schnaus.github.io/unpaired-rosetta ⬇️

Postdoc opening in my lab to work on NeuroAI approaches to improve prosthetic devices for human hearing. We offer a great training environment and strong mentorship. Prior expertise in machine learning and signal processing are essential. Apply here: careers.peopleclick.com/careerscp/cl...

delighted to share my review article, out now in Trends in Cognitive Sciences! i have been thinking a lot about dynamics lately. this article outlines three key principles - persistence, parallelism, and time-stamped encoding - that support human speech comprehension 🧠✨🌀

What’s role of fun in linguistics? Do you do linguistics/language research where you collect data from people? Looking for language researchers across subfields to do a short survey about how they think about the role of fun in collecting data! Survey here: ucsb.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

These are great opportunities that can lead to tenure-track positions in the UC system. Happy to support a PPFP application if there’s a good research fit!

Applications are open for the 2027 summer school on statistical methods for linguistics and psychology: All details are here: smlp.science

Today I'm releasing the "1000×1000 collection": a unified place to learn about dynamical structure. 1000 simulated time series (1000 samples each) spanning 133 dynamical processes. Have a play? 🐛 #timeseries #dynamicalsystems #complexity #opendata dynamicsandneuralsystems.github.io/1000x1000/

🚨New paper alert! 🚨 The visual system tunes itself to the statistics of its input. How do individual experiences differently tune vision? In this work, @bjbalas.bsky.social and I examined how one individual difference—height—changes the visual diet and how this affects perception. 1/

📣📣📣 Preprint Alert! 📣📣📣 Do predictive processes shape brain representations during learning? We investigated the effect of Predictive Coding by training identical recurrent networks with different optimization procedures and then comparing them to human EEG under the same visual learning task.

Converting abstract thoughts into fluent speech requires a rapid, subconscious orchestration of syntactic structure, word choice, and motor planning. Language Production by Zenzi M. Griffin https://doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.b076f599 #CognitiveScience

since I'm getting many pokes about grad school applications, I wanted to re-up some previous public advice on grad school applications. looking back at it a year on, I still think all this is right, but let me update the 'research statement' part to include a bit on genAI:

Announcing two tenure-track faculty openings in the Psych Dept at Northwestern University: Cognitive/Affective Neuroscience and Clinical Psychology psychology.northwestern.edu/people/facul...

We uncovered spontaneous evolution of new languages in populations of AI agents. This creates extraordinary scientific opportunities but also safety risks. New blog post with about how we created a platform for studying this safely. www.schmidtsciences.org/glossogen/

UCSD Cognitive Science Department is hiring an Assistant Professor incorporating novel computational approaches in the study of biological and/or artificial intelligence. I have had the privilege of working in this department for 10 years and the intellectual environment really is unique. 1/3

Deadline Nov 9: Asst prof (tenure track), cognitive science: "foundational issues in cognitive science, incorporating modern computational approaches, to deepen our understanding of biological and/or artificial minds and intelligences", U California San Diego apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF04633

Can self-interested, self-improving, self-replicating agents learn to cooperate? Our new paper, Tapes Together Strong, shows they can: when social behavior, computation, and reproduction share one energy budget, cooperation evolves from scratch. arxiv.org/abs/2609.10817 🧵

How does a speech plan become fluent movement? In Nature Human Behaviour, led by Kumar Duraivel: Intracranial recordings reveal how hierarchical speech plans become continuous motor sequences across planning, articulation, and monitoring networks. doi.org/10.1038/s415... 1/5

How does the architecture of a city shape the way we think, talk, and draw space? And how do spatial conventions travel across cultural generations? New paper in Open Mind, spearheaded by Z Alinam (w J Nölle, C Vesper, K Tylén & me): doi.org/10.1162/OPMI.a.380 🧵 1/

UCSD Psychology is hiring!! We’re seeking a new assistant professor colleague who studies high-level human cognition, broadly construed. Please share and/or apply! apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF04646

Are you interested in lexical competition, agent-based modelling, strong inference and Ukrainian? Then this paper, just published in @pnasnexus.org, is for you. With @oliviermorin.bsky.social and @sobchuk.bsky.social, we asked a simple question: why do some words become more common than others?

New preprint! 🧠👀🤖 Behavioral and brain responses to language reflect different levels of linguistic representation w/ @whylikethis.bsky.social , @evfedorenko.bsky.social , and @rplevy.bsky.social (1/10)

🤖🧠NEW PAPER🧠🤖 (The result of an 8-year project!) LLMs seem very different from symbolic systems. Yet LLMs excel in symbolic domains (e.g., language/code/math). How do they do it? Our finding: LLM representations have implicit symbolic structure! Link in thread ⬇️ 1/n

If this makes you mad, submit your cognitive science research to @openmindjournal.bsky.social No APCs, no subscription fees. It's funded by university libraries, at low cost.

Super excited to see our review out in TiCS! Here me & @cogsci.nl present the first comprehensive framework of the mechanisms driving relationships between spontaneous pupil-size fluctuations, neural activity, and behavior 👀🧠👩🏻‍💻 Spoiler: arousal is only one of at least four 😶‍🌫️ doi.org/10.1016/j.ti...

Chimpanzees usually fail a simple pointing task that human infants and dogs pass. In our new iScience paper, we provide a possible explanation: once their attention is engaged, chimpanzees use human pointing to find hidden food 73% of the time. Attention may be the missing piece.

Exciting update! You can run Image Based Meta-Analyses (IBMA) on our platform 🚀 We've known for ~TWO decades that images are better than coordinates, but data has never been shared/organized properly to make that an accessible reality. We did it, enjoy: compose.neurosynth.org

careers.udel.edu/cw/en-us/job... My lab is hiring a postdoc to help wrap up a clinical trial (data wrangling/data sharing/stats and and analytics /publications related to child psycholinguistics). Position begins immediately. #rstats #slpeeps #childlanguage #DLD please reach out if interested!

Very clear demonstration of the remarkable preservation of the language network in the brains of older adults (in contrast to the MD network)! 🧠 👵

🚨Job Search announcement 🚨 @psychillinois.bsky.social is searching for an assistant prof in cognitive neuroscience. Come join us! Pls RT 🙏 Full ad: illinois.csod.com/ux/ats/caree... #neuroskyence #psychscisky #neuroimaging

@salonisameernaik.bsky.social did a fantastic job leading this—impressive since she isn't even in grad school yet (applying this fall!). Super fun to collab w/ @tylermarghetis.bsky.social on the role of perceptual processes in seemingly abstract math reasoning. See thread & preprint for details!👇

Join us in Barcelona for a postdoc! We are looking for candidates with a strong NLP/ML/AI background and an interest in linguistic diversity and human and machine cognition: dub.sh/blasi_nlp_po...