Dr. Zed Sehyr

A white male presenting person with short blond hair, wearing black pants and dark check shirt signing ASL and standing in front of a projection screen showing a drawing of a brain with black text on a white screen.

A group of people standing in a circle im a conference room with the window blinds drawn, one female is signing ASL to the rest of the group

Congratulations to Dr. Brennan @neurivulets.bsky.social for successfully delivering a PhD baby yesterday! What a delightful presentation and impactful research on neural networks for ASL. In words of @kemmorey.bsky.social “Brennan sets the bar for quality of research high!”

On stage now: Josh Tenenbaum asks how AI can mirror human cognition and what cognitive science can offer AI in return. #CogSci2025 #AI

Watch live: underline.io/events/489/m...

If you are also worried about ScienceDirect’s AI slop feature, you can directly contact them here: service.elsevier.com/app/answers/...

I have sent ScienceDirect the following questions and asked them to take down their harmful AI feature. Let’s see what they answer.

Statement from Katherine Maher, NPR President & CEO, on Closure of Corporation for Public Broadcasting Today, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced that it will begin a "wind-down of its operations" and ultimate full operational closure following the passage of a federal rescissions p...

Here’s our CEO’s statement. Factually, I just want people to understand that you can still help a lot if this is something you care about. And because at this very hard moment I am not in a position to answer for the network, I’m going to keep this closed. (3/3) www.npr.org/2025/08/01/g...

Sehyr, Z., Miller, D., Berardi, V., Hughes, S., Kihntopf, M., and Bosworth, R. (2025). Listening fatigue and communication health in deaf and hard-of-hearing adults. Poster presented at CogSci2025: Theories of the past, theories of the future, San Francisco, Jul. 30 - Aug. 2, 2025.

Infographic summarizing findings from a study on listening fatigue and communication health in 152 deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) adults. The top row shows three histograms titled: "Listening Fatigue (VFS10-A)," "General Fatigue (PROMIS-D)," and "Comm. Health (PROMIS-D)," displaying the distribution of outcome scores. The bottom row includes three scatterplots: A scatterplot showing listening fatigue increases with greater reliance on lipreading (x-axis: lipreading frequency; y-axis: fatigue score). A plot showing general fatigue decreases with higher ASL proficiency and earlier ASL exposure (x-axis: language dominance; y-axis: fatigue score). A plot showing communication health increases with greater ASL dominance and earlier exposure (x-axis: language dominance; y-axis: comm. health). Text highlights include: “Increases with greater reliance on lipreading & later ASL exposure” “Decreases with higher ASL proficiency & earlier exposure” “Linked to greater ASL dominance, usage & earlier exposure” Also shown are logos for Chapman University and the Cognition, Language & Plasticity Lab, a QR code labeled "References & PDF," and the contact email: sehyr@chapman.edu.

Infographic titled "Methodology" outlining the design of an online retrospective survey study with 152 deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) adults. Participant details include: Gender: 101 women, 6 non-binary Age of ASL exposure: Early (≤6 years) 38.8%, Late (>6 years) 49.3%, None 11.8% Hearing ability: Moderate 66%, Minimal 10%, None 24% Four data collection domains are highlighted in red boxes: Demographics: Age, Age of ASL exposure, Education, Hearing ability (self-reported), Lipreading frequency Vanderbilt Listening Fatigue (VFS10-A) (Hornsby et al., 2023): Measures listening fatigue using the prompt “I feel worn out from everyday listening.” PROMIS®-Deaf (Kushalnagar et al., 2020): General fatigue: “How often did you feel tired?” Communication health: “I can easily get the information I need to make decisions.” ASL-English Bilingual Language Profile (Lindeberg, 2022): Proficiency: “How well do you understand ASL/English?” Use: “What % of time do you use ASL, English?”

Go see poster P1 S 173 on Thursday 1 pm @cogscisociety.bsky.social

💡Promoting ASL proficiency isn’t just about access; it’s about reducing fatigue, improving well-being, and supporting communication equity for DHH bilinguals.

#DeafHealth #SignLanguageMatters #ASL #DeafBilingualism #ListeningFatigue #DeafResearch #CommunicationHealth #CogSci2025

📉 Listening fatigue increases with greater lipreading reliance & later ASL exposure
✋ Lower general fatigue & better communication health are associated with stronger ASL skills & early exposure
🧩 Sign language use provides cognitive relief, fosters community, and supports mental health.

Listening-related fatigue disproportionately impacts deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) individuals, especially those who rely on lipreading or have had limited early access to ASL.

🔍 In a survey of 152 DHH adults, we found:

Publication here: www.jbe-platform.com/content/jour...

CA is used to represent actions or thoughts of others and can vary from full body role-shifts to subtle facial expressions. It's often used along with signs or classifiers. This rich narrative device may take time to fully master in signing children & plays a key role in interpreting contexts!

In this BSL video summary, Kearsy Cormier revisits our highly cited 2015 paper on constructed action in British Sign Language (BSL), co-authored with Sandra Smith & @zedsehyr.bsky.social What is constructed action, you ask?

BREAKING: A federal judge reversed National Institutes of Health's terminations of hundreds of critical research grants that were canceled because of their alleged connection to disfavored topics, including diversity, equity, inclusion, and gender identity.

This is a major win for public health.

Beautiful place to spend summers! 🤩

Here Are the Nearly 2,500 Medical Research Grants Canceled or Delayed by Trump Some cuts have been starkly visible, but the country’s medical grant-making machinery has also radically transformed outside the public eye.

Cutting NIH or NSF funding sounds abstract. Seeing what research is actually being cut makes it real. Kudos to @nytimes.com for this piece:

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

An excellent book btw! 🙂

Sign up for the Signing Mind Seminar series mailing List Stay informed Sign up to receive email updates and reminders about our upcoming presentations. Receive Zoom link Information about how to join the webinar in Zoom will be emailed at least one week pri...

To receive the Zoom meeting link, just add yourself to the mailing list - see you there! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

The Signing Mind

Linguists & linguistically minded friends! If you are interested in how signs are organized in the mind, consider joining new seminar series "The Signing Mind" hosted by researchers at @bcbl.bsky.social + IDGS Hamburg University. The first seminar is 5/19 5pm CEST
sites.google.com/view/signing...

Update: The US National Science Foundation (NSF) terminated roughly 380 grants on Friday, 2 May, an NSF staff member told Nature. That raises the total number of terminated grants to approximately 1,425. Staff members at the US National Science Foundation (NSF) were told on 30 April to "stop awarding all funding actions until further notice," according to an email seen by Nature. The policy prevents the NSF, one of the world's biggest supporters of basic research, from awarding new research grants and from supplying additional increments of money or subawards to existing grants. But researchers should be able to draw down money from grant funds that they have already received, NSF staff members say. The

ancauy receivel, not slam membelosay. the email does not provide a reason for the freeze and says that it will last "until further notice. RELATED Earlier this week, NSF leadership also introduced a new policy directing staff members to Will US science survive screen grant Trump 2.0? proposals for "topics or activities that may not be in alignment with agency priorities". Proposals judged not "in alignment" must be returned to the applicants by NSF employees. The policy has not been made public but was described in documents seen by Nature. An NSF staff member says that although good science can still be funded, the policy has the potential to be "Orwellian nuarranch" Anstharcenfmamhar couc

has the potential to be "Orwellian overreach". Another staff member says, "They are butchering the gold standard merit review process that was established at NSF over decades". One program officer says they are resigning because of the policy. Nature spoke with five NSF staffers for this story, all on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media. An NSF spokesperson declined Nature's request for comment. Continuing turmoil The changes are hitting an agency already in crisis. In the past two weeks, the NSF has terminated roughly 1,040 grants that would have awarded US$739 million to researchers and their institutions. The agency's director, Sethuraman Panchanathan, resigned last month.

RELATED Uncertainty is also being felt by scientists outside the agency. Colin Carlson, an expert NSF slashes prestigious PhD fellowship awards by half in disease emergence at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, leads an initiative to predict viruses that pose pandemic threats. The project, which involves roughly 50 researchers across multiple universities, is funded by a $US12.5 million NSF grant. The project's latest round of funding was approved, but Carlson worries about subsequent rounds, and the fate of other researchers. Unless it is lifted, the freeze "is going to destroy people's labs," Carlson says. Funding for the NSF, as for all other federal agencies, is set by the US Congress. To date, the agency has received only about one-quarter of the funding that Congress appropriated to it for the current fiscal year,

Absolutely devastating news: NSF stops awarding new grants and funding existing ones
US science funder also plans to screen grant applications for compliance with ‘agency priorities’.

Research briefs from VL2 open access! Perfect Friday reading! Quality science 🤓😍

😱

a welcome development for the American Psychological Association (APA) starting to speak up, now after 1,000+ terminated NSF grants

American Psychological Association speaks up after NSF terminates 1,000+ grants!

“By halting research of this type we risk denying individuals high-quality care based solely on their heritage or background..our ability to understand & deliver effective services to ALL Americans..will be diminished”

How does one prove the credibility of a screenshot / downloaded PDF (if it really comes to it)?

Are any of the statements and numbers in the EO actually true? No sources are provided so hard to assess how credible those claims are

How can we work together to promote the importance of science and its benefits? Here is an idea:

How we’re battling Trump’s science cuts across small-town America Neuroscientist Jessica Cantlon is urging scientists to use the power of local newspapers in the fight against US research-funding cuts.

Science Homecoming is in the news today, talking about our mission and results 🧪🏠

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Even if you don’t have a disability, you likely know someone who does, a loved one or a dear friend perhaps. Consider deeply the harm such a registry can lead to if we allow this.

A fantastic post by @erinecampbell.bsky.social who led our recent project examining the relationship between form and meaning in language on a large scale. Paper out now in @pnas.org