Mark Torrance | Lightnews

Jamie Reilly 🦜 @reilly-coglab.com · 14d

2026 big update to the psycholinguistic database page! If you know of corpora, lexical databases, or other resources that I've missed, please LMK. Trying to keep this thing relatively current and could use the help www.reilly-coglab.com/data

Psycholinguistic Databases, Stimuli, Utilities — Concepts & Cognition Laboratory

www.reilly-coglab.com

Journal of Writing Research @journalofwriting.bsky.social · 21d

Martínez-Cano et al identified narrative characteristics in writing by people with schizophrenia to determine how these relate to positive and negative symptomatology. Results reveal that language difficulties occur in writing and allow for symptom differentiation.

www.jowr.org/jowr/article...

www.jowr.org

Morten H. Christiansen @mh-christiansen.bsky.social · 24d

I'm very excited about this paper with @yngwienielsen.bsky.social just out in @nathumbehav.nature.com in which we provide evidence for the mental representation of non-hierarchical linguistic structure in language use.
🧵 1/4
Read the paper here: rdcu.be/eZ26u

Evidence for the representation of non-hierarchical structures in language

Nature Human Behaviour - Language is often thought to be represented through hierarchically structured units. Nielsen and Christiansen find that non-hierarchical structures are present across...

rdcu.be

Journal of Writing Research @journalofwriting.bsky.social · 26d

𝑫𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒖𝒊𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒆𝒇𝒇𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒗𝒆 𝒘𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒔𝒕𝒚𝒍𝒆𝒔 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑷𝑬𝑹𝑺𝑼𝑨𝑫𝑬 𝒄𝒐𝒓𝒑𝒖𝒔- Morris, Crossley, Holmes, and Choi.
This article explores how high-quality persuasive essays differ in the linguistic features used, challenging the assumption that excellent writing is a single, uniform style. (vol. 17, no. 2)

Journal of Writing Research @journalofwriting.bsky.social · 26d

Hello Bluesky! Journal of Writing Research is bringing the conversation to this platform. We'll start by highlighting some of the fascinating research in our most recent volume.

Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · Jan 8

My talk here: rpubs.com/mark-torranc... - Direct evidence (we think) that looking back into your text while writing serves to maintain output fluency. All the hard work done by Astha Singh (Iowa State University). Her ACL paper is linked from the final slide.

"Write here, write now!" @sentwrite.bsky.social · Nov 19

Meet multilangapp's younger sister Spellname App. We're still work in progress but try the "Density plots" tab and click on the legend keys. This is `plotly`.

Spellname App

jens-roeser.shinyapps.io

Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · Nov 5

There's a whole rant about the publication process for this paper, possibly also valuable comment about publishing cognitive papers on a topic that looks "educational", but mainly a rant, that may feature in a later post. Probably best avoided when it appears.

end/

Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · Nov 5

...research and methods around tracking writers' eye movements within their ever-changing emerging text. Particularly github.com/chukharev/cy... and dating back to link.springer.com/article/10.1...
3/

GitHub - chukharev/cywrite: CyWrite

CyWrite. Contribute to chukharev/cywrite development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · Nov 5

Understanding written composition as fluent, semi-parallel process with occasional hesitations - work led by @sentwrite.bsky.social. We might possibly have already mentioned doi.apa.org/doi/10.1037/...

And...
2/

APA PsycNet

doi.apa.org

Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · Nov 5

When writers produce multi-sentence text they periodically pause and look back into what they've written. We describe this behaviour in adult L1 and inexpert L2 composition.

journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

This brings together methods / ideas from two research streams...

1/

"Write here, write now!" @sentwrite.bsky.social · Oct 22

Paper in Language and Cognition with @marktorrance.bsky.social and @seriousstats.bsky.social

We show that semantic contrast shapes timing of pre-planning in speech and writing.

doi.org/10.1017/lang...

If you're into how context shapes how we plan language, check it out!

Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · Sep 3

More written production poster excitement at AMLaP2025:

Thursday PM #200 English / Norwegian cognates and false friends sites.google.com/view/helenes...

Friday AM #167: Spelling difficulty now disrupts future lexical retrieval rpubs.com/jensroes/aml...

Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · Sep 3

This paper, of which I'm inordinately proud, is now out in JEP-General doi.apa.org/doi/10.1037/.... Huge credit to Jens Roeser @sentwrite.bsky.social for conception and all the heavy lifting.

Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · Sep 3

Writers composing multi-sentence texts often pause briefly, glance back at isolated words or short phrases, then continue writing. We think we have evidence that this cues what to say next. rpubs.com/mark-torranc... or, better, talk to me on Thursday morning at #AMLAP25.

Image showing research design from poster linked in text.

"Write here, write now!" @sentwrite.bsky.social · Aug 29

Spelling can be tricky but imagine switching between two spelling systems where some words are spelled differently ("hånd" in Norwegian) and others look similar ("gift" in Norwegian isn't nice).

Check out Helene's research (poster 200 on Thursday Afternoon, 4 Sept. 2025 at #AMLaP in Prague).

Helene Slaattelid Øya, PhD student

PhD phase 1 poster

sites.google.com

"Write here, write now!" @sentwrite.bsky.social · Aug 19

When do we actually think about what we want to say and what words to use? Interestingly our mind does a lot of this work while we're writing text. In fact, we demonstrated (psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...) that even young writers often don't stop before starting a new sentence. Way to multitask!

"Write here, write now!" @sentwrite.bsky.social · Aug 13

Ever wondered what happens in our mind when we write simple messages, posts, or full essays? Also how can psychologists tests theories about writing? English is known for it's tricky spelling rules which allows psychologists to study what's going on, when things are going wrong.

a cat is looking at a laptop computer screen with a lot of text on it .

ALT: a cat is looking at a laptop computer screen with a lot of text on it .

media.tenor.com

Dagmar Divjak @dagmardivjak.bsky.social · Dec 12

New paper out 🎺 introducing process-based measures of automatisation in L2

The elicited imitation task is widely used as a measure of automatized L2 knowledge. However, the scoring of the task relies exclusively on product-based measures (i.e., accuracy of L2 production).

Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · Nov 26

And to be clear, the multiple spelling errors in this thread are there for illustrative purposes, and to subliminally advertise our mail order ham side hustle.

Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · Nov 25

This looks massively useful. Thanks so much to bsky.app/profile/mari... and team.

Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · Nov 25

We don't have any new data to add just at the moment, though we do have an English written image naming dataset for difficult-to-spell words to write up. In the meantime, though, this is fun and potentially useful jens-roeser.shinyapps.io/multilangapp/. Short thread here bsky.app/profile/did:...

Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · Nov 25

So please pass jens-roeser.shinyapps.io/multilangapp/ on to anyone you think might find psycholinguistic joy in exploring these data.

I was reminded to post about this bsky.app/profile/jami... from @jamiereillycog.bsky.social. Our database features there alongside much, much more.

Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · Nov 25

Or compare typing speed in different countries / languages. These are English and Italian writers. Lots of scope for post-hock hypothesizing around effects of orthographic transparency. /6

Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · Nov 25

jens-roeser.shinyapps.io/multilangapp/ will also help you find stimuli for you written picture naming experiment, or just feed you prejudice about which Europeans are the worst spellers. Below are the top 9 hardest-to-spell Snodgrass image names. Norway taking a surprise first place. /5

Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · Nov 25

Collected face-to-face. Oh how naive we were. The plot in the first post shows correlations among naming diversity, spelling diversity, mean time onset latency (RT) and mean interkey interval once output commenced. /4

Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · Nov 25

Data from samples of at least 60 adults naming all of the images from the colourised Snodgrass and Vaderwart picture set in their first language (Bulgarian, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish). /3

Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · Nov 25

jens-roeser.shinyapps.io/multilangapp/ is a Shiny app produced by my colleague Jens Roeser that gives access to summary data and stimulus lists from the public dataset that we report here link.springer.com/article/10.3... /2

Timed written picture naming in 14 European languages - Behavior Research Methods

We describe the Multilanguage Written Picture Naming Dataset. This gives trial-level data and time and agreement norms for written naming of the 260 pictures of everyday objects that compose the color...

link.springer.com

Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · Nov 25

This rather pretty plot shows correlations among measures from adult writers providing written names for pictures of everyday objects in one of 14 (yes 14) different European languages. Courtesy of jens-roeser.shinyapps.io/multilangapp/ . A short thread follows...

Jamie Reilly 🦜 @reilly-coglab.com · Nov 24

It's that time again to update the lab's psycholinguistic database page. Lmk if you have any suggestions for stuff I've missed or sections to add (NLP, aphasia, discourse). Any suggestions for improving this hub would be most appreciated. www.reilly-coglab.com/data

Psycholinguistic Databases, Stimuli, Utilities — Concepts & Cognition Laboratory

www.reilly-coglab.com

Add to Home Screen

Light up
your news

Add to Home Screen

Light upyour news

Sign in to Lightnews

Sign up to start reading

Connect Bluesky

Connect with Bluesky

Light up
your news