Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics

New on MPI TalkLing: “The Average Brain Doesn’t Exist”. Lilit Dulyan explains why the idea of a single “typical” brain misses what makes our brains uniquely variable, and how researchers still make sense of all that diversity. 👇
www.mpi-talkling.mpi.nl?p=2854&lang=en

Abstracts open for MPAL 2026!

28–30 Oct 2026 | Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen + online

🗓 Submit by 15 May 2026 (midnight, anywhere). Theme: variation in child language acquisition.

Join us, more info: www.mpi.nl/news/abstrac...

Moore perspective-taking: An experimental investigation of the acceptability of Moorean conjunctions. New paper by Peter van Elswyk & Paula Rubio-Fernandez
doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2026.106485

In this new review in Nature Reviews Psychology our researchers Judith Holler and Anna K. Kuhlen argue that conversation is not simply one person speaking while another listens. It is more like a partnership between minds. www.mpi.nl/news/why-con...

Psycholinguistic perspectives on face-to-face conversation Nature Reviews Psychology - Language production and comprehension are often studied as separate processes, but they are intertwined in naturalistic conversation. In this Review, Holler and Kuhlen...

Psycholinguistic perspectives on face-to-face conversation. New paper by @judithholler.bsky.social & Anna K. Kuhlen
doi.org/10.1038/s44159-026-00538-1

rdcu.be/e4rlV

Common Ground: Between Formal Pragmatics and Psycholinguistics Common ground is the information that the participants in a conversation treat as background information for the purposes of their interaction. We review two traditions of research on common ground. T...

Common ground: Between formal pragmatics and psycholinguistics. New paper by Paula Rubio-Fernandez & Daniel W. Harris
doi.org/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-041824-032410

Adults mark the communicative relevance of their gestures more for children than for other adults According to relevance theory, communication relies on speakers’ ability to signal relevant information, which addressees use to infer meaning efficiently. Most research within the relevance theore...

Adults mark the communicative relevance of their gestures more for children than for other adults. New paper by @anitaslonimska.bsky.social @asliozyurek.bsky.social and Emanuela Campisi. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.....

Why does one song give you chills - but not your friend? Research shows genetics explain part of it, life experience does the rest. Even goosebumps have a backstory. www.mpi.nl/news/genetic...

#science #music #art #emotion #genetics

Read more: www.mpi.nl/news/seal-pu...

Koen receives his PhD this Friday 20 Feb.

Seal pup

Koen de Reus recorded 1,000+ hours of pup calls for his PhD at our Institute and Radboud University, with @pieterburen.bsky.social He discovered seal pups take turns when they ‘talk’ and even develop local accents. Surprisingly human!

#LanguageEvolution #VocalLearning

Genetic underpinnings of chills from art and music Author summary Many people experience chills when listening to music, reading poetry, or viewing art. Yet not everyone feels these reactions in the same way. These differences provide a window into ho...

Genetic underpinnings of chills from art and music. New paper by @giacomobignardi.bsky.social , @danielleadmiraal.bsky.social , Else Eising & @profsimonfisher.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1012002

The elusive lemma: on the representation of syntactic information in the mental lexicon According to Levelt, W. J., Roelofs, A., and Meyer, A. S. [(1999). A theory of lexical access in speech production. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22(1), 1–38.] theory of lexical access, word produ...

The elusive lemma: On the representation of grammatical information in the mental lexicon. New paper by Antje Meyer. doi.org/10.1080/2327....

Foreign Language Learners Show a Kinematic Accent in Their Co-Speech Hand Movements Abstract. Humans typically move and vocalize in a time-synchronized fashion, aligning prominence-lending hand movements to acoustically emphasized syllables. This requires complex coordination. When s...

Foreign language learners show a kinematic accent in their co-speech hand movements. New paper by Hans Rutger Bosker & al.
doi.org/10.1162/OPMI.a.321

Exploring auditory perception experiences in daily situations in autistic adults. Final version by Elena Sofia Silva, @lindadrijvers.bsky.social & James P. Trujillo
doi.org/10.1177/13623613251391492

Fast and slow errors: What naming latencies of errors reveal about the interplay of attentional control and word planning in speeded picture naming. Final version by Christina Papoutsi & al. with Elli Tourtouri, @vipiai.bsky.social , Antje Meyer
doi.org/10.1037/xlm0001472

Constructing language: A framework for explaining acquisition. Final version by @carorowland.bsky.social & al.
doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2025.05.015

Children sustain their attention on spatial scenes when planning to describe spatial relations multimodally in speech and gesture. New paper by @ercenurunal.bsky.social , @dilaykaradoller.bsky.social & @asliozyurek.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1111/desc.70128

Language nonselective lexical access in bilinguals: Input modality matters. New paper by Kristi Hendrickson & al. with Zara Harmon
doi.org/10.1017/S1366728925100928

Whole-exome sequencing in children with dyslexia implicates rare variants in CLDN3 and ion channel genes - Human Genetics Dyslexia is a specific difficulty in learning to read that affects 5–10% of school-aged children and is strongly influenced by genetic factors. While previous studies have identified common genetic va...

Whole-exome sequencing in children with dyslexia implicates rare variants in CLDN3 and ion channel genes. New publication by Marianski, K., Talcott, J.B., Stein, J. et al. with @profsimonfisher.bsky.social. doi.org/10.1007/s004....

Consonant Neutralization and Vowel Space Area in Tashlhiyt Berber’s Infant-Directed Speech - Abdellah Elouatiq, Christina Bergmann, Evan Kidd, Caroline F. Rowland, 2025 Infant-Directed Speech (IDS) and Adult-Directed Speech (ADS) are two registers that can differ across multiple linguistic domains and social contexts. In langua...

Consonant neutralization and vowel space area in Tashlhiyt Berber’s infant-directed speech. New publication by Abdellah Elouatiq, @chbergma.bsky.social , Evan Kidd, and @carorowland.bsky.social. doi.org/10.1177/0142...

Using all your fingers matters more than practice and typing shapes how we think. It boosts language learning, memory, even how we solve anagrams. Read our latest Talkling-blog: www.mpi-talkling.mpi.nl?p=2803&lang=en

#typing #learningscience

Polygenic and developmental profiles of autism differ by age at diagnosis - Nature A study of several longitudinal birth cohorts and cross-sectional cohorts finds only moderate overlap in genetic variants between autism that is diagnosed earlier and that diagnosed later, so they may...

Polygenic and developmental profiles of autism differ by age at diagnosis. Final version by Xinhe Zhang & al. with @everhoef.bsky.social , @bstpourcain.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09542-6

A Scoping Review on Conversational Memory and Characteristics of Conversations in Alzheimer's Disease Purpose: Typical late-onset Alzheimer's disease (AD) compromises episodic memory, the ability to encode new events and recollect past events. Muc...

A scoping review on conversational memory and characteristics of conversations in Alzheimer's disease. Final version by Annick F. N. Tanguay & al. with @shariceclough.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1044/2025_JSLHR-24-00780

Is rate-dependent perception affected by linguistic information about the intended syllable rate? - Psychonomic Bulletin & Review Speech is highly variable in rate, challenging the perception of sound contrasts that are dependent on duration. Listeners deal with such variability by perceiving incoming speech relative to the rate...

Is rate-dependent perception affected by linguistic information about the intended syllable rate? Final version by Giulio G. A. Severijnen, Hans Rutger Bosker & James M. McQueen
doi.org/10.3758/s13423-025-02746-x

Genomic Investigations of Spoken and Written Language Abilities: A Guide to Advances in Approaches, Technologies, and Discovery Purpose: The aim of this tutorial is to show how the rise of molecular technologies and analytical methods in human genetics yields exciting new ...

Genomic investigations of spoken and written language abilities: A guide to advances in approaches, technologies, and discovery. Final version by @profsimonfisher.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1044/2025_JSLHR-25-00152

De novo protein-coding gene variants in developmental stuttering. Final version by Else Eising & al. with Arianna Vino, @profsimonfisher.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1038/s41380-025-03170-2

Developing language in a developing body: Genetic associations of infant gross motor behaviour and self-care/symbolic actions with emerging language abilities. Final ed. by Ellen Verhoef & al. @luciadehoyos.bsky.social @profsimonfisher.bsky.social @bstpourcain.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.70021

These three 2025 releases by our researchers explore language evolution, social interaction, and the predictive mind. Check the overview here: www.mpi.nl/news/mpi-boo...

On our evolutionary branch, a few genes got an update unique to humans.

Some used to think those variants might have been difference that made all the difference: the key to becoming human.

This month's Q&A with Barbara Molz @mpi-nl.bsky.social gets into new results that tell a different story. 🧪