BogaertsLab

❗🗓️ The deadline for abstract submission for #NeuroCog2025 is tomorrow, September 30th. Don't miss it!

@mireiamarimon.bsky.social, Alice Milne, @nemeth.bsky.social, @yngwienielsen.bsky.social, @catiamoliveira.bsky.social, @qzhever.bsky.social, Jinglei Ren, Jay Rueckl, @claudiaruzza.bsky.social, Christophe Vanhouwe, Arpitha Vasudevamurthy, Denise H. Wu, and Puyuan Zhang.

With Noam Siegelman, @davidecrepaldi.bsky.social, @haoyuzhou.bsky.social, @anabautista.bsky.social, Kevin Brown, Li-Yun Wendy Chang, Ruth de Diego Balaguer, Julia Hofweber, @erin-isbilen.bsky.social, @drmarcj.bsky.social, Ferenc Kemény, Panagiotis Kenanidis, Krisztina Sára Lukics [...]

Are you setting up a new research line or study, taking an individual approach?
Are you writing up a paper with a correlational analysis?
Check out the 9️⃣ actionable recommendations in Box 1.

We discuss:
1️⃣ Theoretical and operational definitions of statistical learning.
2️⃣ Trade-offs between controlled and ecologically valid paradigms.
3️⃣ Interpreting correlations with other abilities.
4️⃣ Reliability & statistical power.
5️⃣ Rationales for adopting an individual differences approach.

Curious about the human ability to extract regularities from sensory input (i.e., “statistical learning”) and individual differences therein? #CognitiveScience #Learning

Our #Consensus paper presents the collective insights of 27 researchers worldwide 🌎 💬 🌍 💬 🌏 💬:
🔗 doi.org/10.31234/osf...

We discuss:
1️⃣ Theoretical and operational definitions of statistical learning. 2️⃣ Trade-offs between controlled and ecologically valid paradigms.
3️⃣ Interpreting correlations with other abilities.
4️⃣ Reliability & statistical power.
5️⃣ Rationales for adopting an individual differences approach.

Are you setting up a new research line or study, taking an individual approach? Are you writing up a paper with a correlational analysis?
Check out the 9️⃣ actionable recommendations in Box 1.

We discuss:
1️⃣ Theoretical and operational definitions of statistical learning.
2️⃣ Trade-offs between controlled and ecologically valid paradigms.
3️⃣ Interpreting correlations with other abilities.
4️⃣ Reliability & statistical power.
5️⃣ Rationales for adopting an individual differences approach.

A systematic evaluation of Dutch large language models’ surprisal estimates in sentence, paragraph and book reading Reading is shaped not only by word length and frequency but also by how predictable a word is in context. Using Dutch language models, researchers show that smaller models often predict reading times ...

📖 New on the VSC Research Showcase:
Dutch language models reveal how word predictability shapes reading.

🧪 Key findings:
➡️ Smaller models often outperform larger ones
➡️ Predictability follows a logarithmic effect
➡️ Dutch > multilingual models

👉 www.vscentrum.be/post/a-syste...

👁️ 📖 👁️
@boevesam.bsky.social
made this interactive visualisation to get a feeling for word predictability:
🔗 wordpredictabilityvisualized.vercel.app

Curious how these predictability indices were obtained? Find out in our new paper!
🔗 doi.org/10.3758/s134...

#Reading #LargeLanguageModels #MECO

3️⃣ 2️⃣ 1️⃣ Just three days left to submit your nomination for the Early Career Talk at the #IASL26 conference.

🔗 ugent.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

To nominate a person:
1️⃣ Submit a brief supporting statement.
🔗 ugent.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

2️⃣ Send a copy of the nominee's curriculum vitae to 📧statistical2026@bcbl.eu with subject ‘Nomination SL Early Career Researcher [Last name of the candidate]’.

Eligibility: We invite nominations for candidates who finished their doctoral thesis within the past 10 years and are active in the field of statistical learning (allowances will be made for nominees who have had career interruptions). Please note that self-nominations will not be considered.

🏅 💬 At the '22 edition of our conference, we launched the Early Career Talk, giving a platform to an outstanding early-career scientist. We are now seeking nominations for the Early Career Talk at the #IASL26 edition.

The deadline for nominations is August 15, 2025. Instructions in the thread.

✔️✔️Target detection during exposure revealed learning of both initial and updated speech regularities.
✔️❌ The offline test only evidenced recognition of the initial regularities.
❌❌ Visual learning was absent.

Do we adapt when the structure of our environment changes?

Check out our new preprint: doi.org/10.31234/osf...

Save the date, more info will follow soon!
Organizing with @mh-christiansen.bsky.social @Blair Armstrong, @Ram Frost and @bcbl.bsky.social.

📣🗓️ The 6th Interdisciplinary Advances in Statistical Learning Conference #IASL26 will be held June 10-12 in San Sebastián.

Our keynotes:
@jennysaffran.bsky.social with 30 years of SL work since 1996.
@noranewcombe.bsky.social on learning and spatial cognition.
@pyoudeyer.bsky.social on curiosity.

cartoon characters in a classroom with a clock that says 0:04 ALT: cartoon characters in a classroom with a clock that says 0:04

📖 👀 When people read a novel, when do they blink?

We show that blinks are more likely:
(1) around punctuation marks
(2) following fixations on lower-frequency and less predictable words.

🔗 Now out in Scientific Reports: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#CognitiveScience #Reading #EyeTracking

Registration & abstract submission are now open:
🔗 neurocog.be

#NeuroCog2025 #CognitiveNeuroscience #AI

NEUROCOG 2025 is taking place in Brussels Nov 17–18!

The theme: AI and the Human Brain 🤖 🧠

We’re thrilled to welcome 6 amazing invited speakers:
@evfedorenko.bsky.social, @nicoschuck.bsky.social, @summerfieldlab.bsky.social, @jeffreybowers.bsky.social, @irisgroen.bsky.social & @mtoneva.bsky.social

(PDF) Reading Between the Blinks: The Timing of Spontaneous Eye Blinks in Text Reading Suggests Cognitive Role PDF | A growing body of research suggests that spontaneous eye blinks have a cognitive role in addition to their biological functions. Blinking has been... | Find, read and cite all the research you n...

Fascinating results!
Regarding blinking at natural breakpoints, we just replicated and extended Hall's findings on the timing of blinks during reading, which might be of interest to you: www.newscientist.com/article/2461...
&
www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Thanks @xeniaschmalz.bsky.social , @troembke.bsky.social and @benjamingagl.bsky.social for the invitations!

Proud PI! 👏 On #TeaP2025 two lab members presented their work:

Haoyu Zhou in the symposium #StatisticalLearning and its Role in #Language and #Reading acquisition.

@boevesam.bsky.social in the symposium From Babies to Semantics: Leveraging #LanguageModels for #Psycholinguistic Research.

📄🔗 psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?d...

We propose that statistical learning serves as a subcomponent of an information foraging system. The latter aims to detect and assimilate
novel recurrent patterns in the input that deviate from randomness, for which statistical learning supplies a baseline.

Our theoretical note 'Statistical Learning Subserves a Higher Purpose: Novelty Detection in an Information Foraging System' is now out in Psych Review. #StatisticalLearning

We argue that our environment (including our linguistic environment) is far from fixed: It's dynamic, and we interact with it.

Taking time: Auditory statistical learning benefits from distributed exposure - Psychonomic Bulletin & Review In an auditory statistical learning paradigm, listeners learn to partition a continuous stream of syllables by discovering the repeating syllable patterns that constitute the speech stream. Here, we a...

💬🙇🏼‍♀️💬🙇🏼‍♀️💬🙇🏼‍♀️
The advantage of spaced studying is well documented for explicit learning, but is there such an advantage for incidental #StatisticalLearning of novel #Language?

Jasper de Waard from @jthee.bsky.social’s lab tested it! Find out what we found here : 🔗 doi.org/10.3758/s134...

Our preprint featured in The New Scientist @newscientist.bsky.social:
"Blinking may give your brain a micro break during cognitive tasks"
🔗 www.newscientist.com/article/2461...