bergelsonlab

plus you'd get a colleague with positive anymore!

We are hiring next year in semantics- one year positions of course less exciting and good for the field than straight up tenure track postings, but on the other hand hiring in something that isn’t computational feels like a win anymore in linguistics. Come bring some innovative takes on meaning!

How to Set Up and Run an Undergraduate Research Lab APS Fellow Julia Strand offers resources and recommendations to run a productive research lab.

Just out—a piece I wrote a piece for the APS Observer (@psychscience.bsky.social) in which I share recommendations and resources for running a research lab at a small, liberal arts college. I hope it helps others in the same boat! www.psychologicalscience.org/publications...

Are female economists treated differently than males in academic seminars?

These authors wanted to know whether gender shapes how scholars are treated when presenting research.

So they built a massive dataset of 2,000+ economics seminars, job talks, and conference presentations from 2019–2023...

Key Takeaways from NIH Director Bhattacharya's hearing from Miriam and Bethesda Declaration whistleblower Jenna Norton (speaking in personal capacity). Our analysis? "Oof."
(1/3 🧵)

Modernizing the National Institutes of Health: Faster Discoveries, More Cures | The U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Full Committee Hearing on February 3, 2026 at 5:00 AM

I'm on Capitol Hill watching NIH director Jayanta Bhattacharya testify to the Senate HELP committee.

Thankfully I haven't been escorted out of this event (yet). Here's what I'm following. You can also watch live here:
www.help.senate.gov/hearings/mod...

Given the news drop of elite institution in the Epstein files, I hesitate to say this about *any* institution but…if Harvard continues to hold out, it will matter. Something that he cannot buy. Nominally anyway.

NSF GRFP applicants (and mentors): Was your application Returned Without Review and deemed ineligible despite fitting in the allowed topics?
1) Write NSF
2) Write your Congressperson
3) CC us at grfp@grant-witness.us so we can compile + follow up

Details and template at grant-witness.us/grfp-letter

Psycholinguistic Databases, Stimuli, Utilities — Concepts & Cognition Laboratory

2026 big update to the psycholinguistic database page! If you know of corpora, lexical databases, or other resources that I've missed, please LMK. Trying to keep this thing relatively current and could use the help www.reilly-coglab.com/data

i hear you, also a little suspicious but will take this at face value for now... [hope this post ages well...😬]

almost painfully close close up of peregrine falcon in the golden light

closer up of peregrine falcon in the golden hour light, portrait mode

peregrine falcon outside my office window in the sunset golden hour staring past my office plant and into my soul

timeline cleanse. perry wants you to know that he too looks beautiful during golden hour. #BirdSky

living in Boston in the winter means that when a guy yells “are you frickin kidding me with that bike?!” at you out his window you just smile and think to yourself “aw, he was so impressed!”

some of you never had to apply for a BESH Clinical Trial and it shows (by how much time you saved not having to explain if your intervention was more like a prosthetic or drug or meditation therapy) #NIH. hooray for the downfall of besh ct!
grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

In most classes I have a credit/no credit ? at start of class where they get credit as long as we can tell they did the reading. Last time they could do it by hand on index cards or canvas. this sem, just index cards. We can already see how much more and more thoughtfully they’re answering the ?s! 🥹

Boston/cambridge get an A+ on neighborliness for this storm. We got about a foot and a half, but by 9am nearly all sidewalks en route to my t stop were totally clear, and the t was on time and *free*. ❄️😌

Why Writing by Hand Is Better for Memory and Learning Engaging the fine motor system to produce letters by hand has positive effects on learning and memory

I like seeing summaries like this one that integrate findings from practice, theory, empirical work, and neuroscience. Each domain provides a type of evidence and when they cohere, we can have greater confidence in making practice recommendations. #PsychSciSky #AcademicSky #EduSky

On research careers in academia and industry The epilogue to a series on Cognitive Science and AI

Should you go to academia or industry for research in AI or cognitive science? It's the most common question I get asked by PhD students, and I've written up some of my thoughts on the answer, as an epilogue to my research-focused series on these fields: infinitefaculty.substack.com/p/on-researc...

DeGette Introduces Bill to Protect NIH From Political Interference WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Congresswoman Diana DeGette (CO-01), Ranking Member of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, introduced the Follow the Science Act to shield the National Institutes...

NIH needs statutory protections against partisan politicized decision-making - especially around grant terminations. This bill is a solid start to achieving those aims.

degette.house.gov/media-center...

abstract screenshot with last sentence highlighted: Abstract Baby sign programs aim to support communication between parents and preverbal infants by pairing signs with spoken words. This study addresses a notable gap in the literature by evaluating the large-scale impact of baby sign on both lexical development and caregiver behavior. Using an online questionnaire in 1348 typically developing, French hearing children (50% female) aged 10 to 28 months, 723 children exposed to baby sign at home were compared with 625 non-exposed peers. After controlling for socioeconomic status and parent–child activities, results revealed weak to no effect of baby sign on vocabulary development or caregiver behavior. These findings suggest that while baby sign is not detrimental to vocabulary development, it does not enhance spoken vocabulary as often claimed.

ppl often ask if I rec Baby Sign to support early language. my 1-liner is "probably doesn't do much, but it doesn't hurt"
@sblldtrch.bsky.social & co new paper supports my 1-liner doi.org/10.1177/0142...
[n.b. NOT the same as sign lang access for DHH kids i.e. full lg access from birth, which is A+]

Exclusive: key NIH review panels due to lose all members by the end of 2026 Thirteen of the agency’s advisory councils, which must review grant applications before funding is awarded, are on track to have no voting members.

🚨 New from me: Grant review at more than half of NIH's institutes could be frozen by the end of the year.

That's because crucial NIH grant-review panels are slated to be empty at those institutes by Jan 2027.

A wonky bureaucratic problem with big implications.

A short 🧵

Last term I tried an experiment: I walked into my Tech and Design Ethics class, admitted that I had *no idea* what to do about ChatGPT - so I would let them figure it out.

As in: their first project was to decide and write the ChatGPT policy for the class.

Here's what happened:

niche post for my CogDev peeps: next time you have to deal w/some1 who's full of💩, just think of them like a toddler who's not a CP knower yet. You asked for 3 blueberries & they confidently gave you anywhere from 2-5 of them, but they can't help it, they just don't know any better, bless their ❤️

YouTube video by Andrew Perfors Part 1: How do LLMs work?

I just created a series of seven deep-dive videos about AI, which I've posted to youtube and now here. 😊

Targeted to laypeople, they explore how LLMs work, what they can do, and what impacts they have on learning, well-being, disinformation, the workplace, the economy, and the environment.

Amen. In person study sections >>>> zoom

It’s Penguin Awareness Day which seems like a great excuse to post the greatest ever Wikipedia edit.

The language on multiyear funding (MYF) is ineffective.

Final bill anchors MYF to 2025 instead of 2024. This means MYF will likely continue at the same rate we saw last year, where NCI's payline from ~10% to 4%.

This is incredibly harmful to the US research workforce - especially early career.

These pandemic kids are built different. Just gave a bog standard wug test and this feral toddler replied “those are wuglies!” I’m not even mad. 🐦🐦