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Materials for 9/17 discussion

Question 1: Is there a way that you consciously modify your discussion of ideas for an audience consisting of non-psycholinguist linguists versus an audience consisting of more psychologists?
Question 2: Can you think of any examples or anecdotes of times in which people did a particularly good or bad job reaching their target audiences?

Two papers on phonotactics addressed to linguists and psychologists respectively.

Kager, René and Joe Pater. 2012. Phonotactics as phonology: Knowledge of a complex restriction in Dutch. Phonology 29, 81-111.

Moreton, Elliott, Joe Pater and Katya Pertsova. To appear. Phonological concept learning. In Cognitive Science. [Nearly final version].

Psycholing Discussion 9/10

Here is a link to the Boekel et al. paper Adrian mentioned, and here is the abstract:

A recent ‘crisis of confidence’ has emerged in the empirical sciences. Several studies have suggested that questionable research practices (QRPs) such as optional stopping and selective publication may be relatively widespread. These QRPs can result in a high proportion of false-positive findings, decreasing the reliability and replicability of research output. A potential solution is to register experiments prior to data acquisition and analysis. In this study we attempted to replicate studies that relate brain structure to behavior and cognition. These structural brain-behavior (SBB) correlations occasionally receive much attention in science and in the media. Given the impact of these studies, it is important to investigate their replicability. Here, we attempt to replicate five SBB correlation studies comprising a total of 17 effects. To prevent the impact of QRPs we employed a preregis- tered, purely confirmatory replication approach. For all but one of the 17 findings under scrutiny, confirmatory Bayesian hypothesis tests indicated evidence in favor of the null hypothesis ranging from anecdotal (Bayes factor < 3) to strong (Bayes factor > 10). In several studies, effect size estimates were substantially lower than in the original studies. To our knowledge, this is the first multi-study confirmatory replication of SBB correlations. With this study, we hope to encourage other researchers to undertake similar replication attempts.

Semantics Workshop: November 19th – Preparation for Hackl Colloquium

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The next meeting of the semantics workshop will be held on Wednesday November 19th, from 12:20 to 1:10 in room 451 of the ILC.

At this meeting, Rajesh Bhatt will lead a discussion of background readings that Martin Hackl has recommended for his colloquium on the 21st. Those readings have been (temporarily) posted at the links below:

http://people.umass.edu/scable/Notley-etal-2009.pdf

http://people.umass.edu/scable/Fox&Katzir-2011.pdf

Given the topic of Martin’s talk, the Notley et al. (2009) paper seems to be the most important/pertinent; participants are encouraged to definitely look that paper over prior to Wednesday’s meeting.

Semantics Workshop: November 5th – NELS Discussion

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The next meeting of the semantics workshop will be held on Wednesday November 5th, from 12:20 to 1:10 in room 451 of the ILC.

At this meeting, participants who have attended NELS 45 will report on the conference. In particular, we will discuss those talks we found most interesting, and whether there were any noticeable trends amongst the work on display.

Participants who will be attending NELS 45 are encouraged to bring photocopies of handouts from talks that they’d like to discuss, in case any of the other participants would be interested in having them.

Semantics Workshop: October 29th – Abstracts Workshop (Part 2)

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The next meeting of the semantics workshop will be held on Wednesday October 29th, from 12:20 to 1:10 in room 451 of the ILC.

This meeting will be the second of the two sessions concentrating on abstract writing. In this meeting, participants will work together to workshop students’ abstracts. Students are strongly encouraged to bring abstracts of theirs, particularly abstracts that they will be submitting in the near future, so that we can together suggest improvements.  

(Note that the deadlines for submitting abstracts to GLOW and SALT are December 1st.)

Semantics Workshop: October 22nd – Abstracts Workshop

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The next meeting of the semantics workshop will be held on Wednesday October 22nd, from 12:20 to 1:10 in room 451 of the ILC.

This meeting will be the first of two sessions concentrating on abstract writing. Seth will review a short (non-exhaustive) list of some general ‘pointers’ on abstract writing, which participants are invited to expand on or respond to. Following this, some faculty (definitely Seth) will share abstracts of theirs which were accepted and rejected, allowing participants to see the range of issues that can sometimes make a difference.

Finally, if there’s time remaining, we’ll begin to together constructively workshop students’ abstracts. Students are asked to bring recent abstracts of theirs, particularly abstracts that they will be submitting in the near future, so that we can together suggest improvements. This ‘workshop’ portion of the workshop will continue into the next session, if need be.

Semantics Workshop: October 15th – Favorite Papers and What Makes a Good Paper?

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The next meeting of the semantics workshop will be held on October 15th, from 12:20 to 1:10 in room 451 of the ILC.

At this meeting, we will begin with a discussion of the participants’ favorite recent papers in semantics (where ‘recent’ can mean ‘recently published’ or ‘recently read for the first time’). This will provide a launching off point for a broader discussion of what makes something a ‘good’ or ‘lasting’ paper in semantics.