Ben Ambridge
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ambridge.bsky.social
Ben Ambridge
@ambridge.bsky.social
500 followers 280 following 62 posts
Prof of Psychology/Child Language, University of Manchester. Author of PSY-Q, Are You Smarter than a Chimpanzee? and The Stories of Your Life
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ambridge.bsky.social
My latest book, about how we interpret real-life events using plots from movies, TV and novels, is now out in paperback: amzn.eu/d/0jiK7RoY. To celebrate, I talked about the book with my favourite writer Joel Golby on his podcast, Joel Golby's Book Club - shows.acast.com/joel-golbys-...
The Stories of Your Life: How Storytelling Explains Who We Are. Ben Ambridge
February 4, 2026 at 11:21 AM
ambridge.bsky.social
Good of Frontiers to send me a reminder to post my annual plea to my child language colleagues: DON’T SUBMIT TO OR REVIEW FOR FRONTIERS OR MDPI JOURNALS!
January 30, 2026 at 8:17 PM
Reposted by Ben Ambridge
manylanguagesc.bsky.social
ManyLanguages is on two social platforms:

✨ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/1107...

✨ Bluesky (this page): bsky.app/profile/many...

Follow us to stay in the loop, join discussions, and help us spread the word about Big Team Science.
January 30, 2026 at 10:26 AM
Reposted by Ben Ambridge
picornell.bsky.social
‘It is clearer than ever that recent claims [by the Bible Society] of a wide scale Christian revival, whether misinformation or disinformation, need to be retracted... everyone has the obligation to be rigorous in their presentation of data in the public realm and the claims they make for it.’
Gen Z churchgoing is actually still declining, new British Social Attitudes Survey shows
New analysis of recently published British Social Attitudes Survey data by Humanists UK has shown that churchgoing, including among Gen Z, has continued its long-term decline. The findings are consist...
humanists.uk
January 29, 2026 at 6:51 PM
ambridge.bsky.social
When setting up @langdevres.bsky.social I wrote into the rules that while special issues are welcome, all papers must be reviewed by a regular Action Editor - some people have been puzzled by that, but this is why it’s vital!
hansonmark.bsky.social Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 24d
We've got ISSUES. Literally.

We scraped >100k special issues & over 1 million articles to bring you a PISS-poor paper. We quantify just how many excess papers are published by guest editors abusing special issues to boost their CVs. How bad is it & what can we do?

arxiv.org/abs/2601.07563

A 🧵 1/n
January 26, 2026 at 8:51 AM
ambridge.bsky.social
Sorry to blow my own trumpet here, but I've just added all 17 of our empirical studies of the acquisition of under-researched languages to the new @iasclchildlang.bsky.social repository. Huge thanks to all the PhDs/Postdocs/RAs/Collaborators who made them all possible! www.zotero.org/groups/60446...
Zotero | Your personal research assistant
www.zotero.org
January 22, 2026 at 2:20 PM
Reposted by Ben Ambridge
tsrauf.bsky.social
This is a belated post about our paper in @poqjournal.bsky.social.

We analyzed 100 survey experiments fielded by TESS (tessexperiments.org), using only information from the proposals to identify intended hypotheses.

Here are some of the things we learned:
An Audit of Social Science Survey Experiments
Abstract. Survey experiments have become a popular methodology for causal inference across the social sciences. We study the efficacy of survey experiment
doi.org
January 14, 2026 at 7:17 PM
Reposted by Ben Ambridge
manylanguagesc.bsky.social
The recently accepted ManyLanguages project CLAPS - A Crosslinguistic Approach to Passive Semantics led by @ambridge.bsky.social is looking to fill four key leadership roles (Analysis Lead, Scaling Coordinator, Translation Coordinator, Ethics Coordinator). ⏰Deadline: 30th Jan.
January 13, 2026 at 5:47 PM
ambridge.bsky.social
I was surprised to see this as I’ve had reviewers strongly object when I’ve claimed in papers that LLMs store exemplars. So was I right all along? Or is there a sense in which what they’re doing isn’t quite “storing exemplars” per se? It certainly sounds like it!
theatlantic.com The Atlantic @theatlantic.com · 27d
New research presents the most compelling evidence yet that generative AI directly stores and reproduces material used to train it—a finding that could have massive legal consequences for the tech industry, Alex Reisner reports.
AI’s Memorization Crisis
Large language models don’t “learn”—they copy. And that could change everything for the tech industry.
bit.ly
January 12, 2026 at 4:07 PM
Reposted by Ben Ambridge
glossa-linguistics.bsky.social
It is unclear to me how much traction Glossa: a journal of general linguistics is getting on BlueSky. I am thinking of switching communication about new papers to LinkedIn, which gives better insight into the # of views garnered. Give us a like if you want Glossa to stay on the Blue side of things.
December 29, 2025 at 7:34 PM
Reposted by Ben Ambridge
mcopelov.bsky.social
Verily, it’s a total mystery why this might be a more salient issue in the assortative mating process nowadays 🤔🧐🤷‍♂️
December 31, 2025 at 3:28 PM
Reposted by Ben Ambridge
kph3k.bsky.social
Is one of your goals for 2026 to write more? One question I get all the time is, "How do you make time to write?" So, here is my unsolicited writing advice for the new year:
December 31, 2025 at 5:07 PM
Reposted by Ben Ambridge
mikegalsworthy.bsky.social
Call it “mutual” and suddenly people get it.
‘Mutual free movement’ for UK and EU citizens supported by 84% of Brits, in stunning new poll
Omnisis poll suggests opposition to free movement was based on lack of awareness and the UK government failing to enforce the rules
yorkshirebylines.co.uk
December 28, 2025 at 6:53 PM
Reposted by Ben Ambridge
tomcalver.bsky.social
What can 40 years of song lyrics tell us about society?

I analysed the lyrics of 1,600 pop songs going back to 1985.

Our music appears to be getting gloomier, less future-looking and more self-obsessed

1/6
December 28, 2025 at 11:55 AM
Reposted by Ben Ambridge
langdevres.bsky.social
Language Development Research, Volume 5, Issue 3 is now available for download on the LDR website. Thank you to all of our contributors!

Wishing everyone a joyous New Year!

ldr.lps.library.cmu.edu/issue/101/in...
December 27, 2025 at 11:08 AM
Reposted by Ben Ambridge
mcxfrank.bsky.social
Very excited to share the first empirical paper from LEVANTE: we describe the LEVANTE core tasks, a set of nine open source tasks for measuring learning and development in kids ages 5-12 years.

osf.io/preprints/ps...

🧵
title line screenshots from the nine tasks
December 18, 2025 at 10:20 PM
Reposted by Ben Ambridge
dansperber.bsky.social
Thom Scott-Phillips presents a novel analysis of people's spontaneous intuitions about sentence acceptability "grounded in theoretical and empirical knowledge from cognitive linguistics, cognitive psychology and evolutionary approaches to the mind." cadernos.abralin.org/index.php/ca...
Why Do Humans Have Linguistic Intuition? | Cadernos de Linguística
cadernos.abralin.org
December 18, 2025 at 7:11 PM
Reposted by Ben Ambridge
ec.europa.eu
The United Kingdom is coming back to Erasmus+ 🇪🇺🇬🇧

We have concluded negotiations for the United Kingdom’s association to Erasmus+ in 2027, making further steps in our renewed EU-UK Strategic Partnership.

More ↓
link.europa.eu/vf3vJk
Illustration showing the EU flag and the United Kingdom flag painted side by side. Text reads: “The United Kingdom is coming back to Erasmus+.” An EU flag appears in the bottom right corner.
December 17, 2025 at 1:39 PM
Reposted by Ben Ambridge
matthewcobb.bsky.social
If you value journalism, you have to pay for it. In the past, you would have bought a newspaper or a magazine. In the online world, you need to subscribe or it will eventually disappear under a tide of AI slop and adverts. @manchestermill.bsky.social is one of many local quality sources. Subscribe!
profsob.bsky.social Maria Sobolewska @profsob.bsky.social · Dec 3
An amazing opportunity to subscribe to the Mill, a local Manchester newspaper that does the proper reporting and investigating, for basically ‘give what you can’ prices!

manchestermill.co.uk/r/3359d2b6?m...
Join The Mill
Manchester's quality newspaper, delivered via email.
manchestermill.co.uk
December 3, 2025 at 9:11 AM
Reposted by Ben Ambridge
iasclchildlang.bsky.social
Language Development Research is now accepting submissions for a special issue on Multimodal Directive-Response Trajectories in Children's Language Socialization w/ Guest Editor: Alan Rumsey (Australian Nat'l Uni). Read more here: ldr.lps.library.cmu.edu & here: www.childlanguage.org/latestbulletin
December 2, 2025 at 8:00 AM
Reposted by Ben Ambridge
collabrapsychology.bsky.social
Semantics and Statistics in the Formation of Causatives in Hijazi Arabic: Data From Semantic Ratings, Grammatical Acceptability Judgments and Computational Modeling. New in developmental psychology from Khadeejah Alaslani, Ronnie Wilbur, and @ambridge.bsky.social doi.org/10.1525/coll...
Semantics and Statistics in the Formation of Causatives in Hijazi Arabic: Data From Semantic Ratings, Grammatical Acceptability Judgments and Computational Modeling
The aim of the present study was to investigate the possibility that Hijazi Arabic – like other languages previously studied – uses morphosyntactic marking to differentiate events of more- versus less...
doi.org
November 18, 2025 at 11:49 PM
ambridge.bsky.social
manchestermill.co.uk/lp-3/?referr... - really recommend subscribing to this - it’s a proper newspaper with investigative journalism and everything- no clickbait or churnalism!
Join The Mill - Quality journalism for Greater Manchester
The Mill produces local journalism that is both informative and enjoyable to read — including investigations, culture pieces and opinionated columns about Manchester's biggest talking points.
manchestermill.co.uk
November 20, 2025 at 8:34 AM
Reposted by Ben Ambridge
langdevres.bsky.social
Announcing publication of the full Special Issue of LDR on the Development of Metaphor. Thank you to Ingrid Lossius Falkum and Mary Beth Neff, PhD for organizing this volume and serving as Guest Editors! ldr.lps.library.cmu.edu/issue/100/in...
November 19, 2025 at 5:07 PM
Reposted by Ben Ambridge
dannykay68.bsky.social
EXCELLENT graphic on the drain of scientific publishing! zenodo.org/records/1759...
November 15, 2025 at 4:04 AM
Reposted by Ben Ambridge
hansonmark.bsky.social
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM