Babelfisch Lab

A new theme issue of #PhilTransB examines the mechanisms of learning from social interaction. Read articles for free: buff.ly/K8v43YM

📣 Reminder: Doctoral Recruitment Call 2026 👨‍🔬👩‍🔬
Deadline: 📅2 March 2026, 14:00 CET
The University of Vienna invites applications for at least 40 fully funded, 4-year doctoral positions in the #SocialSciences, #humanities and cultural studies. #AcademicSky #univie
Find all information here: ⤵️

Infants’ sensitivity to the predictability of exchanged actions in socially contingent exchanges: the contingency cube Abstract. Previous studies on social contingency have revealed that young infants are sensitive to the consistent temporal pairing of contingent responses

Officially out! In this review, Tibor Tauzin discusses young infants' sensitivity to social contingency, suggesting that it is not just about timing. To infer agency and social relatedness, infants track what, when, and how others respond—the foundation of human communication and cooperation. 🎲

Our PhD students Priscila Borges and @viktoriagroiss.bsky.social had a great time at #ICON2025 🧠 in Porto last week, presenting their latest work on inner speech 💭 and reconnecting with friends! 🌅

Communicative mentalization is limited in nonhuman great apes | PNAS Communicative mentalization is limited in nonhuman great apes

📣 New paper alert!
"Communicative mentalization might be human-specific—an ability that humans use spontaneously, in novel contexts, from early on with their conspecifics." In his letter to Townrow & Krupenye, Tibor Tauzin argues for the importance of task novelty in testing mentalization skills 👇🐒

Join us at Osnabrück University for "Inner Speech: Philosophical and Psychological Questions", 28-30 May!
Our PI Jutta Mueller will give a keynote, and you will have a chance to meet our PhD students Priscila Borges and
@viktoriagroiss.bsky.social

📄 More info with QR code
🔁 Please RT!

Memory4Music Memory4Music

We talked to Anja-Xiaoxing Cui's about her latest project: "Music for Memory: Exploring Music-Based Interventions for Alzheimer's Disease."

cogsci.univie.ac.at/research/mem...

Babies learn best from those who respond to their babbling! 👶✨ @juliaavenditti.bsky.social, @mikehgoldstein.bsky.social et al. (2025): infants form stronger social expectations when their babbling gets a timely response—even from a robot car! 🤖🚗 #infancypapers #EarlyYears doi.org/10.1111/infa...

Thoughts, loud and silent. Comment on “The sound of thought: Form matters – The prosody of inner speech” by Kreiner and Eviatar

New paper in Physics of Life Reviews by Kreiner & Eviatar on importance of prosody—not just in speech and listening, but even in silent self-talk. Intriguing idea, though we are not fully convinced it is as crucial as argued. Read Jutta Mueller’s commentary 💭➡️ www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

We had great fun and discussion presenting our newest research on infants' understanding of referential pointing with Tibor Tauzin and @tizianasrdoc.bsky.social at BCCCD25 🎉👶💬 #BCCCD #CogDevCeu

Challenges and promises of big team comparative cognition Nature Human Behaviour - Big team science has the potential to reshape comparative cognition research, but its implementation — especially in making fair comparisons between species, handling...

Challenges and promises of big team comparative cognition. Read our comment in @naturehumbehav.bsky.social
It is one of the many upcoming #Manymanys projects! Stay tuned for more :) #BigTeamScience, #BTS, #OpenScience.
rdcu.be/d30KP

Functional reorganization of brain regions supporting artificial grammar learning across the first half year of life Infants have impressive auditory learning capabilities, even from the newborn stage. This study provides neuroimaging evidence that both newborns and 6–7-month-olds already learn and detect grammar-li...

Reposting on 🦋 Using an artificial grammar-based approach, a recent study by our PI Jutta Mueller and an international team reveals the neurodevelopmental origins of non-adjacent dependency learning in infants! 🧠👶

Open Access in @plosbiology.org

Guck mal, wer da gestikuliert Ein Forschungsprojekt der CEU zeigt hoch entwickelte Kommunikationsfähigkeiten bei 18 Monate alten Kindern.

Bereits 18 Monate alte Kinder passen ihre Gesten gezielt an, um ihre Kommunikationspartner besser zu informieren – eine beeindruckende Fähigkeit, die unser Postdoktorand Tibor Tauzin in einer Studie erforscht hat. Auch der Kurier berichtet darüber. 🧐

Infants Produce Optimally Informative Points to Satisfy the Epistemic Needs of Their Communicative Partner Abstract. Pragmatic theories assume that during communicative exchanges humans strive to be optimally informative and spontaneously adjust their communicative signals to satisfy their addressee’s infe...

Reposting for our new Bluesky followers! 🦋

Check out this fascinating paper by our lab member Tibor Tauzin 👶👇

Open Access in @openmindjournal.bsky.social:

Infants Produce Optimally Informative Points to Satisfy the Epistemic Needs of Their Communicative Partner
direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...

Several PhD scholarships are available for joining the IDEALAB, an int. Grad School. Projects are carried out at 2 sites, e.g. Potsdam and Groningen or Sydney. Topics in Psycho- and Neurolinguistics, Phonetics, Language Acquisition and Clinical Linguistics. phd-idealab.com/application/...

👋 Could you add our lab? Thanks!

Für alle Neuankömmlinge, die über das Wochenende zu uns gestoßen sind, hier nochmals eine dringende Folgeempfehlung für unsere zahlreichen Wissenschafter:innen hier im Himmel! ☝ ⤵
go.bsky.app/UyRt4h3

Advertisement slide for a Talk Titled Chatbot Thinking - How Language Does (Not) Help Us Think by Jutta Mueller. 19 November, 18:30, Hörsaal 1 Main Building (Universitätsring 1) cogsci.univie.ac.at/FutureThinking

💬🤖🤔
Next up in our Interdisciplinary Future Thinking Lecture Series: Jutta Mueller (Babelfisch lab, @univie.ac.at) on "Chatbot Thinking"!

🗓️ Tuesday, Nov 19, 18:30
📍 Hörsaal 1, Main Building of the University of Vienna

Upcoming talks and recordings: cogsci.univie.ac.at/futurethinki...

Immer auf dem aktuellsten Stand der Forschung sein? 👩‍🔬 👨‍🔬Hier findest du alle Wissenschafter:innen der Universität Wien die auf Bluesky aktiv sind! 👀 ⤵
go.bsky.app/UyRt4h3

#HiSciSky, we are the Babelfisch Lab @univie.ac.at!

We study cognitive and neurophysiological processes in language acquisition, processing, and related cognitive functions, using EEG, eye-tracking, fNIRS, computer simulations and behavioural analyses. 🧠👶

Follow us to learn more! 🌟