Maisy Hallam
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maisyhallam.bsky.social
Maisy Hallam
@maisyhallam.bsky.social
44 followers 71 following 4 posts
Little but fierce. PhD student in the Centre for Language Evolution (Edinburgh) studying the evolution of structure in kinship terminology. she/her
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Maisy Hallam
mandolinguist.bsky.social
⚠️ New paper! Why do words sound so similar? In an agent-based model + communication game, we show that production/comprehension pressures trade off to shape lexicon structure.

In @cognitionjournal.bsky.social w/ @simonkirby.bsky.social & Jenny Culbertson.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
The lexicon adapts to competing communicative pressures: Explaining patterns of word similarity
Cross-linguistically, lexicons tend to be more phonetically clustered than required by the phonotactics of the language; that is, words within a langu…
www.sciencedirect.com
November 10, 2025 at 11:59 AM
Reposted by Maisy Hallam
joshdeleeuw.bsky.social
We've just
launched a Discord server for #jsPsych users to collaborate and get technical help.

I'll be hosting office hours tomorrow from 10:30-11:30 AM EDT. Hop in with any questions!

discord.gg/RCKWJ4qb3p
Join the jsPsych Developers Discord Server!
Check out the jsPsych Developers community on Discord - hang out with 17 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.
discord.gg
October 13, 2025 at 1:46 PM
maisyhallam.bsky.social
New paper in @openmindjournal.bsky.social with @simonkirby.bsky.social, @kennysmithed.bsky.social and Fiona Jordan! Kinship terms overwhelmingly exhibit predictive structure - terms in one part of the system help us predict other terms - a pattern which emerges because it helps us generalise better.
Predictive Structure Emerges During the Generalisation of Kin Terms to New Referents
Abstract. Despite cross-linguistic diversity in how kin relations map to terminology, there are constraints on which kin may be categorised together. But what are the constraints on kin term variation...
direct.mit.edu
October 1, 2025 at 10:47 AM
maisyhallam.bsky.social
If you like semantic category systems and efficiency biases, come say hi at #CogSci2025!

Efficient communication drives the semantic structure of kinship terminology (P3-H-71, Friday 2 Aug @ 13:00)
uoe-cle.bsky.social Centre for Language Evolution @uoe-cle.bsky.social · Jul 25
Languages differ dramatically in how they categorise family members - what drives this semantic variation? For 1215 languages, our computational model reveals a hierarchy of semantic features for kinship, suggesting that kin term semantics are optimised for efficient communication. (8/)
July 31, 2025 at 4:34 PM
Reposted by Maisy Hallam
uoe-cle.bsky.social
Join us at the National Museum of Scotland July 19th to learn about animal communication and what makes human communication different from the rest of our primate family! 🐵 www.nms.ac.uk/events/monke...
A blonde woman in a grey t-shirt and a brunette woman in a red vest sit at a table. Both are smiling. On the table there is a plush monkey toy, a blue tray, and a green vine.
June 30, 2025 at 12:02 PM
Reposted by Maisy Hallam
rami.spaceaustralia.com
This comic is attacking me personally.

via @phdcomics.bsky.social and with Alt-text.
comic with top sentence: "I'm done with experiments" and bottom sentence "Well, there's one more, but then i'll be done." Two arrows on either side, one pointing up the other down form a loop motion. A label at the bottom says "The last three years of your P.h.D.
December 12, 2024 at 10:16 PM
Reposted by Maisy Hallam
kbneal.bsky.social
This, from a country whose economy has, for more than 20 years, been substantially subsidised by the benefits flowing from connection to a major movie franchise associated with a piece of fantasy literature...
siouxsiew.bsky.social Associate Professor Siouxsie Wiles @siouxsiew.bsky.social · Dec 4
This statement in particular is horrifying and clearly not true: “Real impact on our economy will come from areas such as physics, chemistry, maths, engineering and biomedical sciences.”
December 4, 2024 at 1:37 AM
Reposted by Maisy Hallam
sevenrasmussen.com
can I code fast? no. but can I code well? also no. but does my code work? alas, no
November 30, 2024 at 9:39 PM
maisyhallam.bsky.social
a ph-tea!!! i know the true meaning of research envy in this moment.
sheardcat.bsky.social Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · Oct 29
Fully-funded PhD position available on the cultural evolution of tea!

With me, Sabine Parrish, and David Burslem at the University of Aberdeen (🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿), come combine anthropology and biology to think about why people drink tea and how that may change in the future.

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
People and tea: past, present, and future at University of Aberdeen on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - People and tea: past, present, and future at University of Aberdeen , listed on FindAPhD.com
www.findaphd.com
November 30, 2024 at 9:58 AM