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All Outputs (12)

The Christmas Lectures: extending the experience outside the lecture theatre (2022)
Journal Article
Little, H., Fogg-Rogers, L., & Sardo, A. M. (2022). The Christmas Lectures: extending the experience outside the lecture theatre. JCOM: Journal of Science Communication, 21(2), Article A01. https://doi.org/10.22323/2.21020201

Traditionally, the Royal Institution’s Christmas Lectures have always adopted a deficit model for communication, with one or two invited scientists giving lectures to an audience present at the Royal Institution (Ri) and, since 1936, an audience watc... Read More about The Christmas Lectures: extending the experience outside the lecture theatre.

Transforming tradition: how the iconic Christmas Lectures series is perceived by its audiences (2021)
Journal Article
Sardo, A. M., Little, H., & Fogg-Rogers, L. (2021). Transforming tradition: how the iconic Christmas Lectures series is perceived by its audiences. International Journal of Science Education, Part B: Communication and Public Engagement, 11(4), https://doi.org/10.1080/21548455.2021.2012298

The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures are a landmark in the history of science communication. With today’s changing media landscape, it is important to know who is currently watching, how they are watching, and how they are perceiving the content.... Read More about Transforming tradition: how the iconic Christmas Lectures series is perceived by its audiences.

“We had to be very clear that they weren't going to try to break into any of the cases”: What potential do ‘escape rooms’ offer as a science communication technique? (2021)
Journal Article
Wilkinson, C., & Little, H. (2021). “We had to be very clear that they weren't going to try to break into any of the cases”: What potential do ‘escape rooms’ offer as a science communication technique?. JCOM: Journal of Science Communication, 20(1), 1-7. https://doi.org/10.22323/2.20010307

‘Escape rooms’ are a recent cultural phenomena, whereby a group of ‘players’, often friends or colleagues, are ‘locked’ in a room and must solve a series of clues, puzzles, or mysteries in order to ‘escape’. Escape rooms are increasingly appearing in... Read More about “We had to be very clear that they weren't going to try to break into any of the cases”: What potential do ‘escape rooms’ offer as a science communication technique?.

CHIELD: The causal hypotheses in evolutionary linguistics database (2020)
Journal Article
Roberts, S. G., Killin, A., Deb, A., Sheard, C., Greenhill, S. J., Sinnemäki, K., …Jordan, F. (2020). CHIELD: The causal hypotheses in evolutionary linguistics database. Journal of Language Evolution, 5(2), 101-120. https://doi.org/10.1093/jole/lzaa001

Language is one of the most complex of human traits. There are many hypotheses about how it originated, what factors shaped its diversity, and what ongoing processes drive how it changes. We present the Causal Hypotheses in Evolutionary Linguistics D... Read More about CHIELD: The causal hypotheses in evolutionary linguistics database.

Communicating science: lessons from a Twitterstorm (2019)
Journal Article
Little, H. (2019). Communicating science: lessons from a Twitterstorm. JCOM: Journal of Science Communication, 18(4), Article L01. https://doi.org/10.22323/2.18040101

In early August 2019, the U.S.A. saw 2 significant mass shootings in just 48 hours. On Twitter, Neil deGrasse Tyson responded with a tweet to his millions of followers. He outlined the number of deaths in 48 hours from other causes, and seemed to dis... Read More about Communicating science: lessons from a Twitterstorm.

The iconicity toolbox: Empirical approaches to measuring iconicity (2019)
Journal Article
Motamedi, Y., Little, H., Nielsen, A., & Sulik, J. (2019). The iconicity toolbox: Empirical approaches to measuring iconicity. Language and Cognition, 11(2), 188-207. https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2019.14

© 2019 UK Cognitive Linguistics Association. Growing evidence from across the cognitive sciences indicates that iconicity plays an important role in a number of fundamental language processes, spanning learning, comprehension, and online use. One ben... Read More about The iconicity toolbox: Empirical approaches to measuring iconicity.

Iconicity in signed and spoken vocabulary: A comparison between American Sign Language, British Sign Language, English, and Spanish (2018)
Journal Article
Perlman, M., Little, H., Thompson, B., & Thompson, R. L. (2018). Iconicity in signed and spoken vocabulary: A comparison between American Sign Language, British Sign Language, English, and Spanish. Frontiers in Psychology, 9(AUG), https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01433

© 2018 Perlman, Little, Thompson and Thompson. Considerable evidence now shows that all languages, signed and spoken, exhibit a significant amount of iconicity. We examined how the visual-gestural modality of signed languages facilitates iconicity fo... Read More about Iconicity in signed and spoken vocabulary: A comparison between American Sign Language, British Sign Language, English, and Spanish.

Empirical approaches for investigating the origins of structure in speech (2017)
Journal Article
Little, H., Rasilo, H., Van Der Ham, S., & Eryılmaz, K. (2017). Empirical approaches for investigating the origins of structure in speech. Interaction Studies, 18(3), 330-351. https://doi.org/10.1075/is.18.3.03lit

© John Benjamins Publishing Company. In language evolution research, the use of computational and experimental methods to investigate the emergence of structure in language is exploding. In this review, we look exclusively at work exploring the emerg... Read More about Empirical approaches for investigating the origins of structure in speech.

Conventionalisation and discrimination as competing pressures on continuous speech-like signals (2017)
Journal Article
Little, H., Eryılmaz, K., & De Boer, B. (2017). Conventionalisation and discrimination as competing pressures on continuous speech-like signals. Interaction Studies, 18(3), 352-375. https://doi.org/10.1075/is.18.3.04lit

© John Benjamins Publishing Company. Arbitrary communication systems can emerge from iconic beginnings through processes of conventionalisation via interaction. Here, we explore whether this process of conventionalisation occurs with continuous, audi... Read More about Conventionalisation and discrimination as competing pressures on continuous speech-like signals.

Signal dimensionality and the emergence of combinatorial structure (2017)
Journal Article
Little, H., Eryılmaz, K., & de Boer, B. (2017). Signal dimensionality and the emergence of combinatorial structure. Cognition, 168, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2017.06.011

© 2017 Elsevier B.V. In language, a small number of meaningless building blocks can be combined into an unlimited set of meaningful utterances. This is known as combinatorial structure. One hypothesis for the initial emergence of combinatorial struct... Read More about Signal dimensionality and the emergence of combinatorial structure.

Introduction to the special issue on the emergence of sound systems (2017)
Journal Article
Little, H. (2017). Introduction to the special issue on the emergence of sound systems. Journal of Language Evolution, 2(1), 1-3. https://doi.org/10.1093/jole/lzx014

© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com How did human sound systems get to be the way they are? Collecting contributions implementing a wealth of method... Read More about Introduction to the special issue on the emergence of sound systems.

Using leap motion to investigate the emergence of structure in speech and language (2016)
Journal Article
Eryilmaz, K., & Little, H. (2017). Using leap motion to investigate the emergence of structure in speech and language. Behavior Research Methods, 49(5), 1748-1768. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-016-0818-x

© 2016, The Author(s). In evolutionary linguistics, experiments using artificial signal spaces are being used to investigate the emergenceof speech structure. These signal spaces need to be continuous, non-discretized spaces from which discrete units... Read More about Using leap motion to investigate the emergence of structure in speech and language.