
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. This website is a little out of date (new lab website coming soon!). You can reach me at wdt@berkeley.edu.
My research examines human language and cognition using large scale behavioural experiments, computational and mathemtical modelling, and machine learning. Hear about a recent project on the Many Minds podcast, read about what netflix can do for psycholinguistics, check out Dallinger, Subs2vec, or Parselmouth, or read a paper on distributed computation in experimental microsocieties or why some words are funnier than others to find out more.
My research examines human language and cognition using large scale behavioural experiments, computational and mathemtical modelling, and machine learning. Hear about a recent project on the Many Minds podcast, read about what netflix can do for psycholinguistics, check out Dallinger, Subs2vec, or Parselmouth, or read a paper on distributed computation in experimental microsocieties or why some words are funnier than others to find out more.
output:
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Complex cognitive algorithms preserved by selective social learning in experimental populations
by Thompson, Bill and van Opheusden, Bas and Sumers, Ted and Griffiths, Thomas L. (2022)
Science, 376(6588), 95-98
Human biases limit cumulative innovation
by Thompson, Bill and Griffiths, Thomas L. (2021)
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 10.1098/rspb.2020.2752
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Biased transformation erases traditions sustained by conformist transmission
by Morgan, Thomas JH and Thompson, Bill (2020)
Biology Letters, doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2020.0660
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Cultural influences on word meanings revealed through large-scale semantic alignment
by Thompson, Bill and Roberts, Seán G and Lupyan, Gary (2020)
Nature Human Behaviour, doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-0924-8
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Robust, source-independent biases in children’s use of socially and individually acquired information.
by Atkinson, Mark and Renner, Elizabeth and Thompson, Bill and Mackintosh, Gemma and Xie, Dongjie and Su, Yanjie and Caldwell, Christine A. (2020)
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 10.1037/xge0000959
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subs2vec: Word embeddings from subtitles in 55 languages
by Van Paridon, Jeroen and Thompson, Bill (2020)
Behavior research methods, doi.org/10.3758/s13428-020-01406-3
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A data-driven approach to the semantics of iconicity in American Sign Language and English
by Thompson, Bill and Perlman, Marcus and Lupyan, Gary and sehyr, zed Sevcikova and Emmorey, Karen (2020)
Language and Cognition, 10.1017/langcog.2019.52
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Playful iconicity: structural markedness underlies the relation between funniness and iconicity
by Dingemanse, Mark and Thompson, Bill (2020)
Language and Cognition, 10.1017/langcog.2019.49
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Complexity can be maintained in small populations: a model of lexical variability in emerging sign languages
by Thompson, Bill and Raviv, Limor and Kirby, Simon (2020)
The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference,
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Evolutionary Dynamics Do Not Motivate a Single-Mutant Theory of Human Language
by De Boer, Bart and Thompson, Bill and Ravignani, Andrea and Boeckx, Cedric (2020)
Scientific Reports, 10.1038/s41598-019-57235-8
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Interpreting Silent Gesture: cognitive biases and rational inference in emerging language systems
by Schouwstra, Marieke and de Swart, Henriëtte and Thompson, Bill (2019)
Cognitive science, 10.1111/cogs.12732
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Inductive Biases Constrain Cumulative Cultural Evolution
by Thompson, Bill and Griffiths, Thomas L (2019)
Proceedings of the 41st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society,
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Using Universal Dependencies in cross-linguistic complexity research
by Berdicevskis, Aleksandrs and Çöltekin, Ça\backslashugr\backslashi and Ehret, Katharina and von Prince, Kilu and Ross, Daniel and Thompson, Bill and Yan, Chunxiao and Demberg, Vera and Lupyan, Gary and Rama, Taraka and Bentz, Christian (2018)
Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Universal Dependencies (UDW 2018),
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Evolving building blocks of rhythm: how human cognition creates music via cultural transmission
by Ravignani, Andrea and Thompson, Bill and Grossi, Thomas and Delgado, Tania and Kirby, Simon (2018)
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 10.1111/nyas.13610
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Iconicity in signed and spoken vocabulary: A comparison between American Sign Language, British Sign Language, English, and Spanish
by Perlman, Marcus and Little, Hannah and Thompson, Bill and Thompson, Robin L. (2018)
Frontiers in Psychology, 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01433
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Morphosemantic Complexity
by Thompson, Bill and Lupyan, Gary (2018)
Measuring Language Complexity Workshop,
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Automatic Estimation of Lexical Concreteness in 77 Languages
by Thompson, Bill and Lupyan, Gary (2018)
the 40th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2018),
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Quantifying Semantic Similarity Across Languages
by Thompson, Bill and Roberts, Sean and Lupyan, Gary (2018)
the 40th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2018),
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Predictors of L2 word learning accuracy: A big data investigation
by Hopman, Elise and Thompson, Bill and Austerweil, Joseph and Lupyan, Gary (2018)
the 40th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2018),
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Introducing Parselmouth: A Python interface to Praat
by Jadoul, Yannick and Thompson, Bill and de Boer, Bart (2018)
Journal of Phonetics, 10.1016/J.WOCN.2018.07.001
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Biology-Culture Co-evolution in Finite Populations
by de Boer, Bart and Thompson, Bill (2018)
Scientific Reports, 10.1038/s41598-017-18928-0
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Why Do Durations in Musical Rhythms Conform to Small Integer Ratios?
by Ravignani, Andrea and Thompson, Bill and Lumaca, Massimo and Grube, Manon (2018)
Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, 10.3389/fncom.2018.00086
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The Evolution of Musicality: What Can Be Learned from Language Evolution Research?
by Ravignani, Andrea and Thompson, Bill and Filippi, Piera (2018)
Frontiers in Neuroscience, 10.3389/fnins.2018.00020
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Structure and abstraction in phonetic computation: Learning to generalise among concurrent acquisition problems
by Thompson, Bill and de Boer, Bart (2017)
Journal of Language Evolution, 10.1093/jole/lzx013
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Book Review: Noam Chomsky, What kind of creatures are we?
by Ravignani, Andrea and Thompson, Bill (2017)
Language in Society, 10.1017/S0047404517000288
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Seeking Temporal Predictability in Speech: Comparing Statistical Approaches on 18 World Languages
by Jadoul, Yannick and Ravignani, Andrea and Thompson, Bill and Filippi, Piera and de Boer, Bart (2016)
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00586
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Culture shapes the evolution of cognition.
by Thompson, Bill and Kirby, Simon and Smith, Kenny (2016)
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 10.1073/pnas.1523631113
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Learning To Learn From Similar Others: Approximate Bayesian Computation Through Babbling
by Thompson, Bill and Rasilo, Heikki (2016)
The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference (EVOLANGX11),
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Interpreting Silent Gesture
by Thompson, Bill and Schouwstra, Marieke and de Swart, Henri\backslash"ette (2016)
The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference (EVOLANGX11),
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Catergory Learning In Audition, Touch, And Vision
by van der Ham, Sabine and Thompson, Bill and de Boer, Bart (2016)
The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference (EVOLANGX11),
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The effect of communication on category structure
by Thompson, Bill and Silvey, Catriona and Kirby, Simon and Smith, Kenny (2014)
The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference,
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Student Volume Following the 9th International Conference on the Evolution of Language
by McChrohon, Luke and Thompson, Bill and Verhoef, Tessa and Yamauchi, Hajime (2014)
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Universality in Cultural Transmission
by Thompson, Bill (2015)
Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences Satelite Event: The Evolution of Phonetic Capacities,
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Evolution & Language: Cultural Transmission
by Thompson, Bill and Smith, Kenny (2015)
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, vol. 8,
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Social Interaction Influences the Evolution of Cognitive Biases for Language
by Roberts, Seán and Thompson, Bill and Smith, Kenny (2014)
The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference,
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Regularization behavior in a non-linguistic domain
by Ferdinand, Vanessa and Thompson, Bill and Smith, Kenny and Kirby, Simon (2013)
Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society,
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Iterated Learning in Populations: Learning and Evolving Expectations About Linguistic Homogeneity
by Smith, Kenny and Thompson, Bill (2012)
The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference,