Helen Schmidt

#30DayMapChallenge | Day 2: Lines | 2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season 🌀

New Open dataset alert:
🧠 Introducing "Spacetop" – a massive multimodal fMRI dataset that bridges naturalistic and experimental neuroscience!

N = 101 x 6 hours each = 606 functional iso-hours combining movies, pain, faces, theory-of-mind and other cognitive tasks!

🧵below

🎉 The upshot: Even casual "small talk" has deep structure! Conversations follow predictable patterns as people jointly navigate semantic space to build connections.

Check out our full paper & data here: osf.io/69yw2/

#CogSci #Conversation #NLP

🔍 Why does this matter? It suggests strangers aren't just chatting randomly – they're systematically exploring "topic space" together, starting with safe common ground before venturing into more personal territory.

Think of it as conversational foraging!

🌊 Key finding #2: Conversations have NESTED specificity! Both within individual topics AND across entire conversations, people start general and get increasingly specific – like waves within waves – demonstrating fractal conversation structure. 🌀

🎯 Key finding #1: Topics aren't random! We found systematic patterns in how people transition between conversation themes. Some topics cluster at conversation beginnings (introductions), others toward the end (politics, relationships).

🔬 Our approach: We had 1,505 people annotate topic shifts in stranger conversations from the CANDOR corpus. Then we used semantic embeddings to track how meaning changes throughout conversations.

The validation was solid – annotated topic shifts = sharp drops in semantic similarity!

🤔 The big question: When people chat, are they just randomly jumping between topics? Or is there actually a method to the conversational madness?

We suspected conversations have a fractal-like structure – getting more specific at multiple nested levels.

Icon image of computer screen with text messaging conversation shown

🗣️ New paper alert! Ever wonder how strangers navigate the messy world of casual conversation? We analyzed 200+ video calls to uncover the hidden structure behind "idle talk" – and found it's way more systematic than you'd think!

Thread 👇

A collection of modules, datasets, and other resources for learning to program in R, geared toward students in psychology and neuroscience: ritcheym.github.io/ppn/

Conversational linguistic features inform social-relational inference - Psychonomic Bulletin & Review Whether it is the first day of school or a new job, individuals often find themselves in situations where they must learn the structure of existing social relationships. However, the mechanisms throug...

Thrilled to share that my first, first-author paper is out now!

Using an episode of 'Survivor', we find that distinct features of conversation – semantic similarity, emotional tone, and confidence – strongly inform observers about underlying social relationships.

link.springer.com/article/10.3...

Linguistic properties of memory expression differentially relate to accuracy, specificity, and perceived veracity - Psychonomic Bulletin & Review When communicating our memories to others, we use specific language to represent and express those memories. However, whether the linguistic properties associated with memory expression, such as commu...

New haunted house paper out led by Steven Martinez exploring the language we use to recall high and low threat experiences!

link.springer.com/article/10.3...

Reappraisal and Distraction of Intense Emotions: Use and Forecasting in Naturalistic Studies Researchers often study how we manage emotions in controlled settings, using participants who are trained in specific strategies, told when to use them, and given limited options for self-regulation. ...

Very excited to share our new emotion regulation use and forecasting paper in JEP:G

We studied ER using high-intensity settings (e.g., haunted houses) and stimuli (e.g., horror movies) and with subjects not trained in ER strategies or even prompted to regulate in some cases.

#30DayMapChallenge Day 5: A Journey 🏃🏼‍♀️

Such a fun challenge to recreate the route from my first time running the Cherry Blossom 10 Mile race in D.C.!

🙋‍♀️

Day 3: Polygons 🧱

Thoroughly enjoyed creating my own Lego bricks!

Day 2: Lines 📏

Ancient geoglyphs mapped in modern day R

Day 1: Points 📍

So excited to participate in my third #30DayMapChallenge!

Thrilled to announce that I received the notice of award for my NRSA F31! I'll be exploring behavioral, neurocognitive, and cardiovascular signals that support social-relational learning, with the goal of reducing loneliness across the lifespan. Huge thanks to my mentorship team!