Our master's student Can Ceylan has been accepted to PhD in Psychology at the University of Toronto!

Congrats Can! 🎊 @scanceylan.bsky.social

Yesterday, we hosted Prof. Sotaro Kita @sotarokita.bsky.social from the University of Warwick at Koç University
@kocuniversity.bsky.social!

Dr. Kita gave a presentation on hand gestures, language, and thought.

Thank you for this great talk!

Great news from the Science Academy’s BAGEP Awards! Our lab director, Tilbe Göksun, spoke as a newly elected member, and our former postdoc, Dilay Karadöller, received the BAGEP award.

@tilbegoksun.bsky.social
@dilaykaradoller.bsky.social

Huge congrats to Dilay and all the awardees! 🎉

We hosted @ydkisa.bsky.social at our lab meeting this week, who is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology at the Max Planck Institute! Yağmur worked as an undergraduate assistant at L&C Lab. Thank you for this great presentation, Yağmur!

New study led by our PhD student Begüm Yılmaz!
@begumyilmaz.bsky.social
@dilaykaradoller.bsky.social
Müge Caferoğlu
@tilbegoksun.bsky.social
@ecedemirlira.bsky.social

"Parental gestural math input and children's math skills: An intervention study"

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

We are happy to announce that our PI Tilbe Göksun @TilbeGoksun.bsky.social has been elected to Academia Europaea (@acad-euro.bsky.social)! 🎊

Language and Cognition Lab is now accepting applications for Koç University Summer Research Program! 🎓✨

Open to both undergraduate and graduate students

🗓️ Application deadline: 15 May 2026

🔗 More info & apply:
research.ku.edu.tr/research-out...

The Links Between Spatial and Math Skills in Preterm and Full-Term Children The current study investigated the link between subdomains of spatial and math skills in preschool-aged full-term and preterm-born children. We assessed 238 English-speaking children living in the ...

New study led by our PhD student Begüm Yılmaz!

@begumyilmaz.bsky.social
@sultankarakas.bsky.social
@tilbegoksun.bsky.social
@ecedemirlira.bsky.social

"The Links Between Spatial and Math Skills in Preterm and Full-Term Children"

@tandfresearch.bsky.social
www.tandfonline.com/eprint/3PWR7...

Language and Cognition Lab is ready for the new term! ☺️🎉

At our final meeting of the fall semester, we had the pleasure of hosting Merve Tansan, a former undergraduate researcher at the L&C Lab. Merve presented her doctoral and postdoctoral research conducted at Temple University. Many thanks to Merve for such a great talk! 🥳

New study led by Demet Özer and Efe Soyman!

@tilbegoksun.bsky.social

"Distinct Temporal Dynamics of Speech and Gesture Processing: Insights From Event-Related Potentials Across L1 and L2"

Read the open-access article! 👇
psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

Talking Hands, Shifting Tongues: How Does the Use of Co-speech Gestures and Second Language Relate to Emotional Autobiographical Memory Narration? - İbrahim Akkan, Cagla Aydin, Sami Gülgöz, Tilbe Göks... Gestures can play a role in narrating emotionally valenced autobiographical events, particularly in second language use. We investigated how hand gestures, phen...

New article led by our PhD student İbrahim Akkan on how gestures and L2 speech relate to emotional autobiographical memory narration!

@ibrahimakkan.bsky.social
@caglaaydin.bsky.social
@sgulgoz.bsky.social
@tilbegoksun.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1177/1747...

Last week, we welcomed Mert Kobaş, a former master’s student in our lab, who shared his doctoral research at New York University (NYU). Thank you, Mert! 🥳

New study led by Aslı Aktan-Erciyes and Tilbe Göksun!
@aslierciyes.bsky.social
@tilbegoksun.bsky.social

"Narrative development in L1-Turkish children: A longitudinal examination of L2-English immersion effects"

bit.ly/4sj9QOM

Last week, we were delighted to host Dr. Can Çarkoğlu, a former undergraduate assistant in our lab. He presented his doctoral research at Purdue University and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago!

Last week, we hosted Salih Özdemir, who completed his MA at L&C Lab! Salih shared his ongoing doctoral research at the University of California, San Diego. Thank you Salih for this amazing talk! 🥳

Lab direktörümüz Tilbe Göksun'un Bilim Akademisi'ne asli üye olarak seçildiğini duyurmaktan mutluluk duyuyoruz! @bilimakademisi.bsky.social

We are proud to announce that our PI Tilbe Göksun has been elected to the Science Academy (Bilim Akademisi)!
@tilbegoksun.bsky.social

Last week, we hosted Işıl Doğan, who completed her MA at the L&C Lab! Işıl shared her ongoing doctoral research at the University of California, Davis. Thank you Işıl for this great talk! 🥳

Assessing Others’ Knowledge Through Their Speech Disfluencies and Gestures As part of the multimodal language system, gestures play a vital role for listeners, by capturing attention and providing information. Similarly, disfluencies serve as a cue for the listeners about o...

New article led by our PhD student Can Avcı!

@canavci.bsky.social
@tilbegoksun.bsky.social
Demet Özer
Terry Eskenazi

“Assessing Others’ Knowledge Through Their Speech Disfluencies and Gestures”

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Last week, we hosted Erim Kızıldere, who completed his MA at the L&C Lab! He shared his ongoing doctoral research at the University of California, Davis. Thank you Erim for a truly insightful and engaging discussion! 🥳

Last week, we hosted Dr. Emir Akbuğa, who completed both his MA and PhD at L&C Lab! He presented his doctoral research along with the exciting projects he is currently conducting at Lund University. Thank you for this wonderful presentation! 🥳

Our lab member Dila Falay has successfully defended her master’s thesis titled "Handing out novel metaphors: Gesture use in explanations by L1-Turkish and L2-English Bilinguals.” Congratulations Dila! 🥳 @dilafalay.bsky.social

Our PI Tilbe Göksun was a keynote speaker at IEEE ICDL Conference held in Prague with her talk on the links between spatial cognition and multimodal language!

@tilbegoksun.bsky.social
@ieee-icdl.bsky.social

One of our recent studies on speech disfluencies, gestures, and metacognition is now featured on the Cognitive Science Society blog! 🎉

Our PhD students İbrahim Akkan and Begüm Yılmaz presented their recent research at the 9th Lancaster International Conference on Infant and Early Child Development! Congratulations 🎉
@ibrahimakkan.bsky.social
@begumyilmaz.bsky.social

New publication from L&C Lab led by our former member Gyulten Hyusein and our PI Tilbe Göksun!
@gyultenhyusein.bsky.social
@tilbegoksun.bsky.social

"The Role of Non-Representational Hand Gestures in Creative Thinking"

Read the article 👇
www.mdpi.com/2226-471X/10...

Iconic Words Are Associated With Iconic Gestures Iconicity ratings studies have established that there are many English words which native speakers judge as “iconic,” that is, as sounding like what they mean. Here, we explore whether these iconic E...

Super excited to share our new multimodal corpus analysis, "Iconic Words Are Associated With Iconic Gestures" 🥳

Project led by our PhD student Ell Wilding and in collab w/ @jeannettel.bsky.social & @mperlman.bsky.social:

doi.org/10.1111/cogs...

New Publication with @tilbegoksun.bsky.social @kudilvebilis.bsky.social 🎉
Our study examines beat & palm-revealing gestures during creative thinking. mdpi.com/2226-471X/10...
Surprisingly, these gestures, unlike representational ones, may not always help creativity and sometimes even hinder it.

Spatial and social cognition jointly determine multimodal demonstrative reference: Experimental evidence from Turkish and Spanish All languages in the world have demonstrative terms such as ‘this’ and ‘that’ in English, which have traditionally been treated as spatial words. Here…

Spatial and social cognition jointly determine multimodal demonstrative reference: Experimental evidence from Turkish and Spanish. New paper by Paula Rubio-Fernandez, @madeleinelong.bsky.social & @asliozyurek.bsky.social.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti....

Screenshot of paper title

Our position paper is now out: "Learning Variability Network Exchange (LEVANTE): A Global Framework for Measuring Children's Learning Variability Through Collaborative Data Sharing".

srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
(preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...)

What is LEVANTE? 🧵