Caterina Villani

What Using Our Hands While Speaking Reveals About Our Brains Researchers now have fascinating insights into how our brains function while we communicate — and our hand gestures hold the key.

Happy with this popular science article about our work (with @lindadrijvers.bsky.social and @judithholler.bsky.social), showing that listeners use co-speech hand gestures to predict upcoming meaning ✋ www.medscape.com/viewarticle/...

Social Context Matters for Turn‐Taking Dynamics: A Comparative Study of Autistic and Typically Developing Children Engaging in fluent conversation is a surprisingly complex task that requires interlocutors to promptly respond to each other in a way that is appropriate to the social context. In this study, we dise...

Conversational 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

📣 November's Abstraction seminar is all set too!
🗓️ 19 November, 11:30 - 12.30 (CEST)
📍 Bologna (in presenza) or 💻 Microsoft Teams (link: shorturl.at/xW7mF )
🎆 Join us, details in the figure!
👉 Save the date & spread the word!
✨
@abstractionerc.bsky.social

📣 Abstraction seminars are back!
🗓️ 17 October, 10:00 (CEST)
📍 Bologna (in presenza) or 💻 Microsoft Teams (link: shorturl.at/RjrOU)
🎆 Join us for another seminar, details in the figure!
👉 Save the date & spread the word!
✨
@abstractionerc.bsky.social

📣 Abstraction seminars are back!
🗓️ 16 October, 15:00 (CEST)
📍 Bologna (in presenza) or 💻 Microsoft Teams (link: shorturl.at/0fw5a)
🎆 Join us for a thought-provoking seminar, details in the figure!
👉 Save the date & spread the word! ✨
@abstractionerc.bsky.social

📣The chapter "𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗶𝘁𝘆: 𝗠𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗡𝗼𝗿𝗺𝘀"
w/@mariannabolog.bsky.social is now online & forthcoming in the #ElsevierEncyclopedia of Language & Linguistics
🔍 Theoretical overview, quantification tools, and behavioral evidence on specificity.
👉 Read: urly.it/31c4nm
@abstractionerc.bsky.social

No better way to finish my post-doc than with a new publication on #specificityeffect in semantic processing!

I’ll really miss the @abstractionerc.bsky.social team, but exciting projects are still underway. Thrilled and optimistic about what’s next! 💫

Cover matter: Navigating Open Research A Guide for Early Career Researchers From CONUL - consortium of national and university libraries #openResearch #irishResearch

Navigating Open Research: A Guide for Early Career Researchers. Great work from the CONUL Research Group. Free to download zenodo.org/records/1702... #irishResearch #openResearch

@caterinavillani.bsky.social presenting our collaboration between @abstractionerc.bsky.social and PRIN 2022 Wemb at #Cogsci2025 in San Francisco: "Development of Linguistic- Mediated Abstraction: Insights from Word Ladders Task".

Well done! 💫

A smiling researcher at CogSci 2025 stands indoors wearing their scientific poster draped like a cape, with charts, graphs, and text visible on the fabric. The background shows a spacious conference hall with people walking and blurred architectural details.

A research poster draped like a cape, showing charts, graphs, and text about collaborative memory and decision-making. The poster includes colorful data plots, grid diagrams, and sections labeled “Introduction,” “Results,” “Model Benchmark,” and “Conclusions.” The bottom includes the researcher’s contact information and social links

Because nothing says “ready to present” like literally wearing your findings at #CogSci2025

Ham Huang leveled up from poster session to superhero mode! 🦸

Kicking off #CogSci2025 at the iconic #InternetArchive with incredible speakers!

Big focus on LLMs— #McClelland asks: Are humans still smarter than AI? Yes: we learn from less data & generalize better!

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

Getting ready for #COGSCI2025 in San Francisco!
📆 July 31st, 02:37pm
I’ll present a longitudinal study (w/@mariannabolog.bsky.social & @adeleloia.bsky.social) on how school-aged children build taxonomies using the #WordLadders task developed by @abstractionerc.bsky.social
Catch up with us there!

🌟 Had a great time presenting our poster at #ACL2025!
It was a great experience sharing our work with researchers interested in conceptual categories, #abstraction and #generalization, thanks for the insightful discussions and feedback!
wt @andreapdr.bsky.social @mariannabolog.bsky.social
#NLProc

🔊 New paper on #pragmatics!
Rising or falling nuclear accentual movement on the sentence-final word is the key #prosodic cue for distinguishing questions from statements in Italian.

👉 l1nq.com/I8G4d

W/@tomasellor.bsky.social @isabellaboux.bsky.social & #FPulvermüller at #FreieUniversitätBerlin.

Very proud and lucky to work with such a young, brilliant, and enthusiastic researcher. Well done @adeleloia.bsky.social
👏 👏 Next step: we'll bring this work to #CogSci2025🧠✨

Informal moment with @abstractionerc.bsky.social two new postdocs: Laura Occhipinti on the left and Paola Vernillo on the right, both with white shirts. Welcome!

It was such a pleasure to have you here and discuss how abstraction plays out in conversations! (interactingminds.au.dk/events/singl...)

Thought-provoking and #openaccess, Andy Clark reflects on the challenges and potentials of emerging human-AI collaborations in his new commentary "Extending Minds with Generative AI", published by @natcomms.nature.com:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Kicked off my visiting week in #Aarhus with a great talk by @thaliawheatley.bsky.social and inspiring chats with the @interacting-minds.bsky.social group! Many thanks to @fusaroli.bsky.social for hosting me and to @abstractionerc.bsky.social for supporting my work on abstract language in dialogue!

The recordings from our @abstractionerc.bsky.social workshop are now online — definitely worth a listen!
▶️ site.unibo.it/abstraction/...

Video Credits: @grambelli.bsky.social

If you′re going to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair 🌸 see you there!!!

We just played analogical word ladders here :-)

It was such a meaningful experience organizing this Workshop! Big thanks to @abstractionerc.bsky.social and all the speakers for your incredible talks and the rich discussions!
@annaborghi.bsky.social @fusaroli.bsky.social @dingemansemark.bsky.social @catemauri.bsky.social @bodowinter.bsky.social

Starting off our workshop on Conversational Dynamics: how abstraction and abstractness ebb and flow in interaction.
Join us!
@abstractionerc.bsky.social

❗❗ See you tomorrow ❗❗

𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐊𝐒𝐇𝐎𝐏 | 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐃𝐲𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐜𝐬

🕘 9-18 (Rome Time)
📍 Aula Poeti, Str. Maggiore 45, Bologna
💻 online: shorturl.at/oEM7S

@annaborghi.bsky.social @bodowinter.bsky.social @dingemansemark.bsky.social @catemauri.bsky.social @fusaroli.bsky.social

YouTube video by ERC project ABSTRACTION Alla scoperta dell'astrazione linguistica (materiale video)

📢Da lunedì 31 marzo, almeno fino a fine aprile, il Dipartimento di Lingue, Letterature e Culture Moderne dell'Università di Bologna ospita la mostra "Alla scoperta dell'astrazione linguistica", curata da @abstractionerc.bsky.social
📍Via Cartoleria 5, Bologna.
Video preview
youtu.be/q4Ojvy2YjPY?...

Starting from Monday march 31st a temporary exhibition hosted by the Dep. Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures of the University of Bologna will showcase the scientific findings achieved by the Abstraction research group.
See you in Via Cartoleria 5, 40100 Bologna, Italy.

Join us in Bologna on April 3rd for our workshop on conversational dynamics!
🚨 In-person registration closes today🚨 Sign up by filling out this form: forms.gle/hsFVp4byWafC...