Abdellah Fourtassi
@fourtassi.bsky.social
Multimodal Communication and Learning in Social Interactions (CoCoDev team). Associate Professor of Computer/Cognitive Science at Aix-Marseille University.
afourtassi.github.io
afourtassi.github.io
Pinned
Happy to share our new paper: "Scaffolding Early Dialogue: A Unified Account of Response Contingency in Child–Caregiver Interaction" with @abhiagrawal.bsky.social and Benoît Favre.
Question: How can infants participate in dialogue while their linguistic and cognitive abilities are still immature? 🧵
Question: How can infants participate in dialogue while their linguistic and cognitive abilities are still immature? 🧵
Reposted by Abdellah Fourtassi
We're hiring! 2 postdocs + 3 PhD students to join InfantNeuroAI at Trinity College Dublin: awake infant fMRI & OPM-MEG, plus computational models of how infants learn.
Aims: understand infant visual cognition, infant neuroimaging methods, more energy-efficient learning 🧵
www.cusacklab.org/vacancies
Aims: understand infant visual cognition, infant neuroimaging methods, more energy-efficient learning 🧵
www.cusacklab.org/vacancies
September 10, 2026 at 3:18 PM
We're hiring! 2 postdocs + 3 PhD students to join InfantNeuroAI at Trinity College Dublin: awake infant fMRI & OPM-MEG, plus computational models of how infants learn.
Aims: understand infant visual cognition, infant neuroimaging methods, more energy-efficient learning 🧵
www.cusacklab.org/vacancies
Aims: understand infant visual cognition, infant neuroimaging methods, more energy-efficient learning 🧵
www.cusacklab.org/vacancies
Reposted by Abdellah Fourtassi
How does the architecture of a city shape the way we think, talk, and draw space? And how do spatial conventions travel across cultural generations? New paper in Open Mind, spearheaded by Z Alinam (w J Nölle, C Vesper, K Tylén & me):
doi.org/10.1162/OPMI.a.380 🧵 1/
doi.org/10.1162/OPMI.a.380 🧵 1/
When the City Speaks: How Urban Form Shapes the Cultural Transmission of Spatial Conceptualization
Abstract. How do urban environments shape the way people conceptualize and communicate space? Using a cultural transmission experiment in virtual reality, we asked participants to navigate one of two ...
doi.org
September 10, 2026 at 7:25 AM
How does the architecture of a city shape the way we think, talk, and draw space? And how do spatial conventions travel across cultural generations? New paper in Open Mind, spearheaded by Z Alinam (w J Nölle, C Vesper, K Tylén & me):
doi.org/10.1162/OPMI.a.380 🧵 1/
doi.org/10.1162/OPMI.a.380 🧵 1/
Reposted by Abdellah Fourtassi
The hippocampus sits at the interface of perception & memory, allowing us to link past, present, & future through its role in generating predictions.
Excited to share this theme issue in @royalsociety.org's Philosophical Transactions B, co-edited with @barense.bsky.social & @mariamaly.bsky.social
Excited to share this theme issue in @royalsociety.org's Philosophical Transactions B, co-edited with @barense.bsky.social & @mariamaly.bsky.social
Volume 381 Issue 1954 | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B | The Royal Society
Influential themed journal issues across the life sciences.
royalsocietypublishing.org
July 9, 2026 at 10:24 AM
The hippocampus sits at the interface of perception & memory, allowing us to link past, present, & future through its role in generating predictions.
Excited to share this theme issue in @royalsociety.org's Philosophical Transactions B, co-edited with @barense.bsky.social & @mariamaly.bsky.social
Excited to share this theme issue in @royalsociety.org's Philosophical Transactions B, co-edited with @barense.bsky.social & @mariamaly.bsky.social
Reposted by Abdellah Fourtassi
Now out in BBS, as commentary on @futrell.bsky.social & @kmahowald.bsky.social's "How linguistics learned to stop worrying and love the language models"!
Humans learn much of spoken language structure from speech (not text), & we can study models that do the same.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Humans learn much of spoken language structure from speech (not text), & we can study models that do the same.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
July 3, 2026 at 10:03 AM
Now out in BBS, as commentary on @futrell.bsky.social & @kmahowald.bsky.social's "How linguistics learned to stop worrying and love the language models"!
Humans learn much of spoken language structure from speech (not text), & we can study models that do the same.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Humans learn much of spoken language structure from speech (not text), & we can study models that do the same.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Reposted by Abdellah Fourtassi
Accepted to EMNLP 2026: "Beyond Decodability: Reconstructing Language Model Representations with an Encoding Probe".
Probing asks what you can decode from a model's activations. We reverse it: reconstruct activations from interpretable features, then ablate to rank them.
arxiv.org/abs/2605.00607
Probing asks what you can decode from a model's activations. We reverse it: reconstruct activations from interpretable features, then ablate to rank them.
arxiv.org/abs/2605.00607
Beyond Decodability: Reconstructing Language Model Representations with an Encoding Probe
Probing is widely used to study which features can be decoded from language model representations. However, the common decoding probe approach has two limitations that we aim to solve with our new enc...
arxiv.org
September 5, 2026 at 2:29 PM
Accepted to EMNLP 2026: "Beyond Decodability: Reconstructing Language Model Representations with an Encoding Probe".
Probing asks what you can decode from a model's activations. We reverse it: reconstruct activations from interpretable features, then ablate to rank them.
arxiv.org/abs/2605.00607
Probing asks what you can decode from a model's activations. We reverse it: reconstruct activations from interpretable features, then ablate to rank them.
arxiv.org/abs/2605.00607
Happy to share our new paper: "Scaffolding Early Dialogue: A Unified Account of Response Contingency in Child–Caregiver Interaction" with @abhiagrawal.bsky.social and Benoît Favre.
Question: How can infants participate in dialogue while their linguistic and cognitive abilities are still immature? 🧵
Question: How can infants participate in dialogue while their linguistic and cognitive abilities are still immature? 🧵
September 1, 2026 at 8:17 AM
Happy to share our new paper: "Scaffolding Early Dialogue: A Unified Account of Response Contingency in Child–Caregiver Interaction" with @abhiagrawal.bsky.social and Benoît Favre.
Question: How can infants participate in dialogue while their linguistic and cognitive abilities are still immature? 🧵
Question: How can infants participate in dialogue while their linguistic and cognitive abilities are still immature? 🧵
Reposted by Abdellah Fourtassi
Our new paper is now out in @pnas.org!
How does the (baby) brain extract regularities from sequences from what-follows-what up to large-scale network structure? What if it all came from a single mechanism?
www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...
How does the (baby) brain extract regularities from sequences from what-follows-what up to large-scale network structure? What if it all came from a single mechanism?
www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...
August 24, 2026 at 11:51 AM
Our new paper is now out in @pnas.org!
How does the (baby) brain extract regularities from sequences from what-follows-what up to large-scale network structure? What if it all came from a single mechanism?
www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...
How does the (baby) brain extract regularities from sequences from what-follows-what up to large-scale network structure? What if it all came from a single mechanism?
www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...
Reposted by Abdellah Fourtassi
Great to see Ellie Spens’ model out! Interplay btwn episodic (hippo) & semantic (neocort’l) systems, in encoding, consolidatn, recall & problem solving with sequential info, as compressive retrieval-augmented generation. Inc gist-based distortion in stories & inference
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Hippocampo-neocortical interaction as compressive retrieval-augmented generation - Nature Communications
Here the authors model interactions between episodic and semantic memory as ‘retrieval-augmented generation’, explaining consolidation of structure from sequential experience, the reconstruction and d...
www.nature.com
August 8, 2026 at 4:10 PM
Great to see Ellie Spens’ model out! Interplay btwn episodic (hippo) & semantic (neocort’l) systems, in encoding, consolidatn, recall & problem solving with sequential info, as compressive retrieval-augmented generation. Inc gist-based distortion in stories & inference
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Reposted by Abdellah Fourtassi
Let’s study learning trajectories in self-supervised speech models! 🔊 Do they reflect the hierarchical organization of spoken language?
We have analyzed a lot of training checkpoints to find out 🌠
Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2604.02043
⬇️
We have analyzed a lot of training checkpoints to find out 🌠
Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2604.02043
⬇️
June 30, 2026 at 11:01 AM
Let’s study learning trajectories in self-supervised speech models! 🔊 Do they reflect the hierarchical organization of spoken language?
We have analyzed a lot of training checkpoints to find out 🌠
Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2604.02043
⬇️
We have analyzed a lot of training checkpoints to find out 🌠
Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2604.02043
⬇️
Reposted by Abdellah Fourtassi
🎉 Happy to have presented my postdoctoral work in collab with
Laurent Prévot & @fourtassi.bsky.social at #ESLP2026 !
🧠 Can distributional input alone support the emergence of abstract relational knowledge? We explore this through computational models of child-directed speech.
#NLPproc #cogsci
Laurent Prévot & @fourtassi.bsky.social at #ESLP2026 !
🧠 Can distributional input alone support the emergence of abstract relational knowledge? We explore this through computational models of child-directed speech.
#NLPproc #cogsci
July 31, 2026 at 9:28 AM
🎉 Happy to have presented my postdoctoral work in collab with
Laurent Prévot & @fourtassi.bsky.social at #ESLP2026 !
🧠 Can distributional input alone support the emergence of abstract relational knowledge? We explore this through computational models of child-directed speech.
#NLPproc #cogsci
Laurent Prévot & @fourtassi.bsky.social at #ESLP2026 !
🧠 Can distributional input alone support the emergence of abstract relational knowledge? We explore this through computational models of child-directed speech.
#NLPproc #cogsci
Reposted by Abdellah Fourtassi
Had fun presenting our work (@gretagandolfi.bsky.social, @gabriellavigliocco.bsky.social, @fourtassi.bsky.social, Yan Gu) on multimodal coordination in early word learning w 3–4-year-old children and their caregivers today at Embodied and Situated Language Processing at Lancaster University. (1/4) 👇
July 29, 2026 at 3:21 PM
Had fun presenting our work (@gretagandolfi.bsky.social, @gabriellavigliocco.bsky.social, @fourtassi.bsky.social, Yan Gu) on multimodal coordination in early word learning w 3–4-year-old children and their caregivers today at Embodied and Situated Language Processing at Lancaster University. (1/4) 👇
Reposted by Abdellah Fourtassi
We are excited to announce the second keynote of CoNLL 2026!
Adele Goldberg (Princeton University)
“Compositionality and creativity in natural language and LLMs”
📅 Saturday, July 4, 2026
🕘 09:00
📍 Room Harbor B
#CoNLL2026 #NLP #Compositionality
Adele Goldberg (Princeton University)
“Compositionality and creativity in natural language and LLMs”
📅 Saturday, July 4, 2026
🕘 09:00
📍 Room Harbor B
#CoNLL2026 #NLP #Compositionality
June 24, 2026 at 10:58 AM
We are excited to announce the second keynote of CoNLL 2026!
Adele Goldberg (Princeton University)
“Compositionality and creativity in natural language and LLMs”
📅 Saturday, July 4, 2026
🕘 09:00
📍 Room Harbor B
#CoNLL2026 #NLP #Compositionality
Adele Goldberg (Princeton University)
“Compositionality and creativity in natural language and LLMs”
📅 Saturday, July 4, 2026
🕘 09:00
📍 Room Harbor B
#CoNLL2026 #NLP #Compositionality
Reposted by Abdellah Fourtassi
My current position will be coming to a close at the end of 2026, so I’m beginning to explore next steps. I’m a postdoctoral researcher at UCL working at the intersection of language, cognition, and multimodal communication. 1/4 👇
May 5, 2026 at 9:01 AM
My current position will be coming to a close at the end of 2026, so I’m beginning to explore next steps. I’m a postdoctoral researcher at UCL working at the intersection of language, cognition, and multimodal communication. 1/4 👇
Reposted by Abdellah Fourtassi
Does verbal coordination help 3–4 year old children learn new words? In our new preprint (w/ @gabriellavigliocco.bsky.social, @gretagandolfi.bsky.social, @fourtassi.bsky.social, Yan Gu), we explored 20 predictors of word learning. One combination stood out.
👇 (1/4)
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
👇 (1/4)
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
April 23, 2026 at 9:18 AM
Does verbal coordination help 3–4 year old children learn new words? In our new preprint (w/ @gabriellavigliocco.bsky.social, @gretagandolfi.bsky.social, @fourtassi.bsky.social, Yan Gu), we explored 20 predictors of word learning. One combination stood out.
👇 (1/4)
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
👇 (1/4)
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Are you an advanced PhD student looking for a reviewing experience? I’m looking for one emergency reviewer for one paper in ACL Rolling Review in the track "Linguistic Theories, Cognitive Modeling, and Psycholinguistics" --due before next Tuesday April 28th.
April 21, 2026 at 12:17 PM
Are you an advanced PhD student looking for a reviewing experience? I’m looking for one emergency reviewer for one paper in ACL Rolling Review in the track "Linguistic Theories, Cognitive Modeling, and Psycholinguistics" --due before next Tuesday April 28th.
Reposted by Abdellah Fourtassi
Call for a PhD position in Cognitively inspired natural language processing with Lisa Beinborn and me. Part of the new SPP "Robust Assessment & Safe Applicability of Language Modelling: Foundations for a New Field of Language Science & Technology” (LaSTing). huds.uni-goettingen.de/assets/Call_...
huds.uni-goettingen.de
April 3, 2026 at 2:53 PM
Call for a PhD position in Cognitively inspired natural language processing with Lisa Beinborn and me. Part of the new SPP "Robust Assessment & Safe Applicability of Language Modelling: Foundations for a New Field of Language Science & Technology” (LaSTing). huds.uni-goettingen.de/assets/Call_...
Reposted by Abdellah Fourtassi
Applications open for the School on Analytical Connectionism
📅 August 17-28, 2026
🗺️ Chalmers University of Technology Gothenburg
📚 Topical focus: language acquisition ... with me, Michael Biehl, Paul Smolensky & many other incredible researchers 😊 www.analytical-connectionism.net/school/2026/
📅 August 17-28, 2026
🗺️ Chalmers University of Technology Gothenburg
📚 Topical focus: language acquisition ... with me, Michael Biehl, Paul Smolensky & many other incredible researchers 😊 www.analytical-connectionism.net/school/2026/
2026 School on Analytical Connectionism
A 2-week summer course hosted at Chalmers University of Technology on analytical approaches to language acquisition and higher-level cognition.
www.analytical-connectionism.net
March 31, 2026 at 2:49 PM
Applications open for the School on Analytical Connectionism
📅 August 17-28, 2026
🗺️ Chalmers University of Technology Gothenburg
📚 Topical focus: language acquisition ... with me, Michael Biehl, Paul Smolensky & many other incredible researchers 😊 www.analytical-connectionism.net/school/2026/
📅 August 17-28, 2026
🗺️ Chalmers University of Technology Gothenburg
📚 Topical focus: language acquisition ... with me, Michael Biehl, Paul Smolensky & many other incredible researchers 😊 www.analytical-connectionism.net/school/2026/
Reposted by Abdellah Fourtassi
What if you could automatically transcribe children's speech sounds from their first babbles to full sentences?
Screening for speech delays. Comparing how kids learn to talk across languages. Following how sounds evolve month by month.
We're building toward this with BabAR🧵 (sound on 🔊)
Screening for speech delays. Comparing how kids learn to talk across languages. Following how sounds evolve month by month.
We're building toward this with BabAR🧵 (sound on 🔊)
March 9, 2026 at 1:07 PM
What if you could automatically transcribe children's speech sounds from their first babbles to full sentences?
Screening for speech delays. Comparing how kids learn to talk across languages. Following how sounds evolve month by month.
We're building toward this with BabAR🧵 (sound on 🔊)
Screening for speech delays. Comparing how kids learn to talk across languages. Following how sounds evolve month by month.
We're building toward this with BabAR🧵 (sound on 🔊)
Open PhD/Postdoc position (start: Oct 2026). Topic: AI/LLMs and child language/communicative/cognitive development. The exact project will be shaped with the candidate. Join our team @univ-amu.fr at the intersection of computer and cognitive science (& right next to the Calanques!). Send me your CV!
March 8, 2026 at 4:32 PM
Open PhD/Postdoc position (start: Oct 2026). Topic: AI/LLMs and child language/communicative/cognitive development. The exact project will be shaped with the candidate. Join our team @univ-amu.fr at the intersection of computer and cognitive science (& right next to the Calanques!). Send me your CV!
Deadline approaching (March 20), consider submitting!
The process is flexible to accommodate different situations:
- Hybrid presentation mode
- Direct submission or via ARR
- Non-archival option: present work that is (or will be) published elsewhere
- Short (4 pages) or long (8 pages) papers
The process is flexible to accommodate different situations:
- Hybrid presentation mode
- Direct submission or via ARR
- Non-archival option: present work that is (or will be) published elsewhere
- Short (4 pages) or long (8 pages) papers
Thrilled to announce the 1st Workshop on Computational Developmental Linguistics (CDL) at ACL 2026 🎉 A new venue at the intersection of development linguistics × modern NLP, spearheaded by @fredashi.bsky.social @marstin.bsky.social, and and outstanding team of colleagues!
A thread 🧵
A thread 🧵
March 6, 2026 at 8:25 AM
Deadline approaching (March 20), consider submitting!
The process is flexible to accommodate different situations:
- Hybrid presentation mode
- Direct submission or via ARR
- Non-archival option: present work that is (or will be) published elsewhere
- Short (4 pages) or long (8 pages) papers
The process is flexible to accommodate different situations:
- Hybrid presentation mode
- Direct submission or via ARR
- Non-archival option: present work that is (or will be) published elsewhere
- Short (4 pages) or long (8 pages) papers
Reposted by Abdellah Fourtassi
📢 PhD position in the NeuroAI of Language
Why can LLMs predict brain activity so well? We're hiring a PhD student to find out -- AI interpretability meets neuroimaging
Deadline March 20
Please RT 🙏
👇
mpi.nl/career-education/vacancies/vacancy/fully-funded-4-year-phd-position-neuroai-language
Why can LLMs predict brain activity so well? We're hiring a PhD student to find out -- AI interpretability meets neuroimaging
Deadline March 20
Please RT 🙏
👇
mpi.nl/career-education/vacancies/vacancy/fully-funded-4-year-phd-position-neuroai-language
March 5, 2026 at 1:34 PM
📢 PhD position in the NeuroAI of Language
Why can LLMs predict brain activity so well? We're hiring a PhD student to find out -- AI interpretability meets neuroimaging
Deadline March 20
Please RT 🙏
👇
mpi.nl/career-education/vacancies/vacancy/fully-funded-4-year-phd-position-neuroai-language
Why can LLMs predict brain activity so well? We're hiring a PhD student to find out -- AI interpretability meets neuroimaging
Deadline March 20
Please RT 🙏
👇
mpi.nl/career-education/vacancies/vacancy/fully-funded-4-year-phd-position-neuroai-language
My interview with the Photizo channel on how AI can help us understand language development!
The interview is in French, but you can enable the auto-translated English subtitles at your own risk 🙂
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ8h...
The interview is in French, but you can enable the auto-translated English subtitles at your own risk 🙂
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ8h...
COMMENT L'IA AIDE À COMPRENDRE L'ACQUISITION DU LANGAGE CHEZ L'ENFANT (avec Abdellah Fourtassi)
YouTube video by Photizo on AI
www.youtube.com
March 4, 2026 at 8:20 AM
My interview with the Photizo channel on how AI can help us understand language development!
The interview is in French, but you can enable the auto-translated English subtitles at your own risk 🙂
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ8h...
The interview is in French, but you can enable the auto-translated English subtitles at your own risk 🙂
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ8h...
Reposted by Abdellah Fourtassi
*Preprint*: Pedagogy in the speech-gesture couplings of caregivers: Evidence from a corpus-based analysis by @marinewang.bsky.social, @eddonnellan.bsky.social and myself: doi.org/10.31234/osf...
OSF
doi.org
March 1, 2026 at 10:23 AM
*Preprint*: Pedagogy in the speech-gesture couplings of caregivers: Evidence from a corpus-based analysis by @marinewang.bsky.social, @eddonnellan.bsky.social and myself: doi.org/10.31234/osf...
Reposted by Abdellah Fourtassi
📣📣📣Job alert Multimodal Language Department Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics MAX PLANCK RESEARCH GROUP LEADER POSITION (W2 BBESG) lnkd.in/eaq5MW9a
LinkedIn
This link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn
lnkd.in
February 26, 2026 at 8:32 PM
📣📣📣Job alert Multimodal Language Department Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics MAX PLANCK RESEARCH GROUP LEADER POSITION (W2 BBESG) lnkd.in/eaq5MW9a
🚨 New Paper: How can AI help us understand child lang dev? If we train models on children’s environment, they can tell us if this environment support learning.
E.g., models tested child linguistic input (Huebner et al.) and visual input (Vong et al.).
What about Social Interaction? (a thread 🧵)
E.g., models tested child linguistic input (Huebner et al.) and visual input (Vong et al.).
What about Social Interaction? (a thread 🧵)
February 27, 2026 at 12:55 PM
🚨 New Paper: How can AI help us understand child lang dev? If we train models on children’s environment, they can tell us if this environment support learning.
E.g., models tested child linguistic input (Huebner et al.) and visual input (Vong et al.).
What about Social Interaction? (a thread 🧵)
E.g., models tested child linguistic input (Huebner et al.) and visual input (Vong et al.).
What about Social Interaction? (a thread 🧵)