Dr Lena M Blott
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lenamblott.bsky.social
Dr Lena M Blott
@lenamblott.bsky.social
900 followers 1.4K following 110 posts
Psycholinguist at Uni Mannheim. Academic Mama. Hunter of vintage treasures.
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
c0nc0rdance.bsky.social
In my ongoing attempts to give you a break from *gestures widely* THE HORRORS:

Let's talk about the utterly bizarre science of cats' purring.

Here's a weird starting point:
There are NO cats (Felidae) that can BOTH roar AND purr.

Cats that roar = genus Panthera
Cats that purr = genus Felis
January 24, 2026 at 11:12 PM
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
stancarey.bsky.social
A very funny and satisfying rant by @acollierastro.bsky.social about the impact of "AI" on education and specifically the professor who outsourced his work to ChatGPT, lost it, then told the world about it (25 min.) www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pqF...
this is what 2 years of chatgpt does to your brain
YouTube video by Angela Collier
www.youtube.com
January 26, 2026 at 5:45 PM
lenamblott.bsky.social
I've been looking for an easy-to-follow explainer on how LLMs work for a class I'm teaching this term, but this series is so much more than that. Worth sharing with students (and everyone else)!
perfors.net Andrew Perfors @perfors.net · 20d
I just created a series of seven deep-dive videos about AI, which I've posted to youtube and now here. 😊

Targeted to laypeople, they explore how LLMs work, what they can do, and what impacts they have on learning, well-being, disinformation, the workplace, the economy, and the environment.
Part 1: How do LLMs work?
YouTube video by Andrew Perfors
www.youtube.com
January 22, 2026 at 11:10 PM
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
nicholaspagnucco.bsky.social
So... as I write syllabi for next semester, I have to ask a question that makes me feel incompetent:

Does anyone have solid resources on AI policies in class? This could be how to organize assessment to minimize AI use, or any of the other Faustian bargains.

#sociology #academicsky #highered
December 27, 2025 at 8:04 PM
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
keithwilson.eu
It’s the same with academic writing. The difficulty doesn’t lie in formulating grammatical sentences, but in deciding what it is you actually want to say. Writing is part of the process by which you figure that out, and isn’t something that can be outsourced to a machine.
December 21, 2025 at 5:28 PM
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
joachimbaumann.bsky.social
🚨 New paper alert 🚨 Using LLMs as data annotators, you can produce any scientific result you want. We call this **LLM Hacking**.

Paper: arxiv.org/pdf/2509.08825
We present our new preprint titled "Large Language Model Hacking: Quantifying the Hidden Risks of Using LLMs for Text Annotation". We quantify LLM hacking risk through systematic replication of 37 diverse computational social science annotation tasks. For these tasks, we use a combined set of 2,361 realistic hypotheses that researchers might test using these annotations. Then, we collect 13 million LLM annotations across plausible LLM configurations. These annotations feed into 1.4 million regressions testing the hypotheses. For a hypothesis with no true effect (ground truth $p > 0.05$), different LLM configurations yield conflicting conclusions. Checkmarks indicate correct statistical conclusions matching ground truth; crosses indicate LLM hacking -- incorrect conclusions due to annotation errors. Across all experiments, LLM hacking occurs in 31-50\% of cases even with highly capable models. Since minor configuration changes can flip scientific conclusions, from correct to incorrect, LLM hacking can be exploited to present anything as statistically significant.
September 12, 2025 at 10:33 AM
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
sabrinanorwood.bsky.social
Did you know that from tomorrow, Qualtrics is offering synthetic panels (AI-generated participants)?

Follow me down a rabbit hole I'm calling "doing science is tough and I'm so busy, can't we just make up participants?"
Text reads: About synthetic panels Recruiting the right participants for a study can be difficult. You may not get the exact demographics you need, and the shorter the deadline, the less sure you can be that everyone will answer on time. One possible solution can be to use synthetic panels. Synthetic panels are powered by a first party proprietary AI model developed here at Qualtrics. Our synthetic panel is trained on thousands of responses from a variety of demographic backgrounds in order to more accurately predict how certain populations would respond to a survey. Our synthetic panel is based on the United States General Population, and is only available in English. This panel comes with ready-made quotas and target breakouts in order to represent your chosen population and make it easy to launch your survey right away. Text reads: Question-writing best practices To get the most reliable and actionable results from synthetic audiences, consider these question-writing best practices: Ask forward-looking and attitudinal questions. Synthetic panels perform best with perceptions, preferences, and intent-based questions. For example, “How likely are you to try…?” Synthetic panels are less applicable for studies on past behaviors, detailed recall, brand recall, or awareness questions. For example, “When did you last visit…?” Text reads: Discussion The current study aimed to conduct a meta-analysis of the TPB when applied to health behaviours which addressed the limitations of previous reviews by including only prospective tests of behaviour, applying RE meta-analytic procedures, correcting correlations for sampling and measurement error, and hierarchically analysing the effect of behaviour type and sample and methodological moderators. Some 237 tests were identified which examined relations amongst model components. Overall the analysis indicated that the TPB could explain 19.3% of the variance in behaviour and 44.3% of the variance in intention across studies. This level of prediction of behaviour is slightly lower than that of previous meta-analytic reviews which have found between 27% (Armitage & Conner, 2001; Hagger et al., 2002) and 36% (Trafimow et al., 2002) of the variance in behaviour to be explained by intention and PBC.
December 16, 2025 at 5:38 PM
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
stephencollins.bsky.social
Every ad now
[Scene is a kitchen - a middle aged woman called JANET is boiling peas at the stove. A younger more colourfully dressed woman named LIZ approached her.] JANET: Ugh... LIZ: What's up? JANET: I am so bored of cooking peas! LIZ: Have you tried... AI peas? JANET: AI peas? LIZ: They're peas with AI! [Liz holds up to us a packet of peas labelled: Pea-i AI - Peas with AI]. LIZ: Al-powered peas harness the potential of your peas JANET: What LIZ [Now a voiceover as we cut to a whizzy technology diagram of peas all connected by meaningless dotted lines] Why not take your peas to the next level with Al Peas' new Al tools to power your peas? [Show a techno diagram of a pea with a label reading 'AI' pointing to a random zone in it] LIZ: Each pea has Al in a way we haven't quite worked out yet but it's fine [Show Janet and Liz now in a Matrix-style world of peas] LIZ: With Al peas you can supercharge productivity and make AI work for your peas! JANET: What LIZ: Shut up LIZ: Our game-changing Pea-Al gives you the freedom to unlock the potential of the power of the future of your peas workflow From opening the bag of peas to boiling the peas to eating the peas To spending millions on adding Al to the peas and then having to work out what that even means. JANET: Is it really necessary to- LIZ [Grabbing Janet by the collar]: THE PEAS HAVE GOT AI, JANET [Cut to an advert ending screen, with the bag of peas and the slogan: AI PEAS: Just 'Peas' for god's sake buy the AI peas. [Ends]
November 13, 2025 at 5:38 PM
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
jowolff.bsky.social
The advice I give young people on choice of degree programme. Choose something you love. You’ve got the rest of your life to be frustrated and miserable.
October 9, 2025 at 7:59 PM
lenamblott.bsky.social
Beautiful thread
lydiamassiah.bsky.social Lydia Massiah @lydiamassiah.bsky.social · Oct 4
This could be a long and rambling thread. Be patient with me.

I bought an old mahogany bureau on Ebay. I didn't really want a bureau as we're meant to be downsizing, but it was a beautiful piece & obviously very old. Google lens suggests the brass chased handles are Queen Anne. That's 1702-1714 😯
October 5, 2025 at 9:15 AM
lenamblott.bsky.social
An die deutsche #Linguistics #Linguistik crowd: Kann es sein, dass die Leipzig corpora gerade down sind? Wenn ja, weiß da jemand vielleicht, wann man da wieder Zugriff haben kann?
September 8, 2025 at 9:31 AM
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
jpeelle.bsky.social
Psycholinguists and psychologists: Is there good R packages for distributing items across conditions? For example, I have 60 stimuli and some preliminary data on item-level accuracy. I'd like to create 3 lists of 20 items that are matched in accuracy without coding it myself. 👀
March 31, 2025 at 5:19 PM
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
soccoglab.bsky.social
We have another online study on Children Helping Science for adults with a baby between 2 and 24 months old! childrenhelpingscience.com/studies/7012...
Cartoon picture of a parent looking at a smiling baby in their arms.
February 25, 2025 at 2:13 PM
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
amreibahr.bsky.social
Wie wäre es mal mit #Existenzstrategie statt #Exzellenzstrategie? Auch Wissenschaftler_innen wollen verlässlich Miete zahlen können, ihre Kinder ernähren & in finanziellen Notlagen nicht vollkommen aufgeschmissen sein. Plus: Existenzängste bremsen Forschung aus. Deshalb: #ExitExzellenz! #IchBinHanna
mtobiasch.bsky.social Moritz Tobiasch @mtobiasch.bsky.social · Mar 13
Du vergisst Existenzangst, was wäre die deutsche Exzellenzforschung ohne sie.
March 13, 2025 at 2:46 PM
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
chanda.blacksky.app
Research from 2022 that every Democrat apologist should chew on:
“We do not find any evidence that accommodative strategies reduce radical right support. If anything, our results suggest that they lead to more voters defecting to the radical right.“

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Does accommodation work? Mainstream party strategies and the success of radical right parties | Political Science Research and Methods | Cambridge Core
Does accommodation work? Mainstream party strategies and the success of radical right parties - Volume 11 Issue 1
www.cambridge.org
March 12, 2025 at 9:06 AM
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
alissaferry.bsky.social
Come join us! We (me, Jill Lany, Perrine Brusini, and Gert Westermann) are recruiting a #devpsych PhD student to Lancaster Uni to join our ongoing Levehulme funded research project on how word learning shapes visual representations in infants! Please share! More info : tinyurl.com/ynbfkhbj
PhD - Lancaster University
tinyurl.com
March 10, 2025 at 7:38 PM
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
doctorstardis.bsky.social
We can upload 3 minute videos now.

YOU KNOW THE RULE
March 10, 2025 at 7:52 PM
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
leahgreenberg.bsky.social
when the teams are "imperfect woman who demanded basic safety standards for herself and the rest of the crew and cast" vs "sexual harassers, the system that protects them, and the entire right-wing media ecosystem" I hope we're all clear which side we need to be on
March 9, 2025 at 4:01 PM
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
symbolicstorage.bsky.social
JOB ALERT in #language and #linguistics!
Postdoc Position at the Center for Language Evolution Studies, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland.
Job offer here: www.umk.pl/en/jobs/?tas...
We are now looking at a broader candidate pool so do consider applying!
Please repost & share widely!
A picture of Torun oldtown at night in winter
March 8, 2025 at 4:04 PM
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
derbernd.bsky.social
Es ist in Deutschland ja so: Jede Subvention der Autoindustrie gilt als Marktwirtschaft. Und jede Investition in unsere Kinder als Sozialismus. #Groko
March 8, 2025 at 7:19 PM
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
louiestowell.bsky.social
Big brains of #KidLitUK - someone's asking for books that provide authentic disability representation. What are your top recs? Across all spectrums of disability.
March 9, 2025 at 9:18 AM
lenamblott.bsky.social
At the playground with the 5yo.
Daddy: You can lie on this hammock here if you want.
M: I did a poo on my monkey in the night.
D: What?! Really??
M: No! You said I can lie on here.

#lexical #ambiguity #linguistics
March 9, 2025 at 9:39 AM
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
volksverpetzer.de
München, Solingen, Magdeburg: Zu allen Anschlägen gab es einen Brennpunkt in der ARD. Zur gestrigen Amokfahrt in #Mannheim bisher nicht. Warum wohl? www.volksverpetzer.de/aktuelles/ma...
Mannheim: Als die Herkunft bekannt wurde, machte man die Livestreams aus
München, Solingen, Magdeburg: Zu allen Anschlägen gab es einen Brennpunkt in der ARD. Zur gestrigen Amokfahrt in Mannheim bisher nicht.
www.volksverpetzer.de
March 4, 2025 at 10:52 AM
Reposted by Dr Lena M Blott
flatenerica.bsky.social
Anyone in the developmental psychology/infant research community know of any existing parent-report questionnaires on infant babbling (i.e., syllable production), specifically for English families? #DevSci
February 28, 2025 at 5:33 PM