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Matthew Mak

@matthewmakpsy.bsky.social

510 followers 510 following 37 posts

Assistant Professor at Warwick University. Psycholinguist interested in language and memory. Everything word-related. Previously at York and Oxford. https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=AeqBP58AAAAJ&hl=en

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Matthew Mak @matthewmakpsy.bsky.social · Aug 28

Killing 'delve': We analysed 4,800+ student-authored reports across a decade to uncover how ChatGPT is shaping undergrad writing—style, sentiment, and quality. 📉📈
GenAI isn't just a tool. It's a co-author.
📝 #Preprint: www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-7...

Style, Sentiment, and Quality of Undergraduate Writing in the AI Era: A Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Analysis of 4,820 Authentic Empirical Reports

As generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) becomes widespread in education, its influence on students’ academic practice raises concern. We conducted pre-registered analyses of 4,820 empirical repo...

www.researchsquare.com

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Matthew Mak @matthewmakpsy.bsky.social · Aug 28

@warwickpsych.bsky.social

Matthew Mak @matthewmakpsy.bsky.social · Aug 28

With @lukaszwalasek.bsky.social

Matthew Mak @matthewmakpsy.bsky.social · Aug 28

#AI #ChatGPT #GenAI

Matthew Mak @matthewmakpsy.bsky.social · Aug 28

Key finding #4
AI policy requiring students to provide a voluntary AI declaration doesn't seem to work, despite clear guidelines and regular communication. We need alternatives!

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Matthew Mak @matthewmakpsy.bsky.social · Aug 28

Key finding #3
Student writings are becoming more positive in tone. How does this affect critical engagement?

Matthew Mak @matthewmakpsy.bsky.social · Aug 28

Key finding #2
Writing style is increasingly formal and becoming GPT-like

Matthew Mak @matthewmakpsy.bsky.social · Aug 28

Key finding #1
ChatGPT-associated stylistic markers (e.g., delve, underscore) surged in prevalence shortly after ChatGPT's launch, but in 2025, we saw a rather consistent decline

Matthew Mak @matthewmakpsy.bsky.social · Aug 28

Style, Sentiment, and Quality of Undergraduate Writing in the AI Era: A Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Analysis of 4,820 Authentic Empirical Reports

www.researchsquare.com

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Matthew Mak @matthewmakpsy.bsky.social · Aug 4

Looking for a departmental seminar speaker for the coming academic year? Look no further! Am available to give a talk on how GenAI is shaping undergraduate writing — we analysed 4800+ authentic submissions from the last 10 years!

Matthew Mak @matthewmakpsy.bsky.social · Jun 30

Going to @exppsychsoc.bsky.social meeting next week. Gonna be my first time in Scotland! Will give a talk on my latest work analysing >4000 authentic student-authored reports to shed light on GenAI's influence on linguistic style and quality. Can't wait to share this work with the world!

Reposted by Matthew Mak

Suzanne Aussems @suzanneaussems.bsky.social · Mar 31

What initiatives in your department bring people together and encourage collaboration? Looking for fresh ideas to connect people! #AcademicChatter

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Matthew Mak @matthewmakpsy.bsky.social · Mar 26

Adult vs. children in word learning: Our latest study suggests that the effect of prior knowledge and consolidation may differ between adults and children in word learning. Noel Lam tested over 60+ kids! Impressive work.

Warwick Psychology @warwickpsych.bsky.social · Mar 25

New article with Dr. Mak (@matthewmakpsy.bsky.social) examines the timecourse of word learning across development -- now out in Journal of Experimental Child Psychology! (1/3)

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

#AcademicSky #PsychSky

Developmental differences in the timecourse of word learning: Greater improvements for children, semantic benefits for adults

Theories of memory consolidation claim that new word learning is bolstered by existing semantic knowledge. However, when semantic knowledge exerts its…

www.sciencedirect.com

Matthew Mak @matthewmakpsy.bsky.social · Mar 26

@warwickpsych.bsky.social is hiring two 1-year teaching-focussed assistant professors/teaching fellows (open to PhD students close to submission). Open area but one of the posts will likely be in social psy. Come join us!

warwick-careers.tal.net/vx/appcentre...

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Matthew Mak @matthewmakpsy.bsky.social · Mar 20

accidentally logged into my Twitter account. Had to log out after a minute of scrolling through my thread...

Reposted by Matthew Mak

Ian Hussey @ianhussey.mmmdata.io · Mar 18

Tens of thousands of psychological measures have been created, but 79% are not reused more than twice.

In a new article in NHB lead by @faridanvari.bsky.social and @ruben.the100.ci we quantify this fragmentation in psychology's measures and propose solutions.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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Matthew Mak @matthewmakpsy.bsky.social · Feb 25

Great question! In priming, seeing X-Y makes processing X-Y easier next time. But in our final experiment, after reading X-Y, participants judged X in the absence of Y—yet X and Y became closer in the participant's mind . So I would say this goes beyond priming, although definitely related.

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Matthew Mak @matthewmakpsy.bsky.social · Feb 25

Thank you David! More to come as we are doing some follow-up!

Matthew Mak @matthewmakpsy.bsky.social · Feb 24

Thank you! So glad to hear that I'm not the only one who finds this interesting! 😊

Matthew Mak @matthewmakpsy.bsky.social · Feb 24

Thank you Jamie. As a fellow word nerd, I think Exp 5 will be of particular interest to you. We used Walsh and Rissman's (2023) innovative measure to index relatedness between two words *without* showing to participants the two words together.

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Matthew Mak @matthewmakpsy.bsky.social · Feb 24

with @lewis-ball.bsky.social, @mggaskell.bsky.social , Catherine Walsh, and Alice O'Hagan.

@warwickpsych.bsky.social

Matthew Mak @matthewmakpsy.bsky.social · Feb 24

Results suggest involvement of episodic memory in language comprehension and highlight the flexibility of the mental lexicon. Results also provide a simple mechanism to how the lexicon acquires its associative structure.

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Matthew Mak @matthewmakpsy.bsky.social · Feb 24

Very proud of this latest paper, which shows that reading two unrelated words in a meaningful sentence will push these words closer in semantic space—an effect observed 5min, 20min, and 12 hrs after initial exposure.

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

Involvement of episodic memory in language comprehension: Naturalistic comprehension pushes unrelated words closer in semantic space for at least 12 h

Recent experience with a word significantly influences its subsequent interpretation. For instance, encountering bank in a river-related context biase…

www.sciencedirect.com

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Matthew Mak @matthewmakpsy.bsky.social · Feb 20

ex-student emailed to say they won full PhD scholarships at Oxford *AND* Cambridge, then thanked me for supervision over the years. #ProudSupervisorMoment

a close up of a woman crying with her hand on her face

ALT: a close up of a woman crying with her hand on her face

media.tenor.com

Reposted by Matthew Mak

Lewis Ball @lewis-ball.bsky.social · Feb 19

Very happy to share our new preprint revealing no evidence for a targeted memory reactivation (TMR) effect on word-meaning priming (1/8): osf.io/preprints/ps...

OSF

osf.io

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Reposted by Matthew Mak

Dr Lucy Foulkes @lucyfoulkes.bsky.social · Feb 10

Important new evidence published today: large-scale DofE trial (N=12,166) found that two universal MH awareness interventions, in secondary schools, led to an *increase* in emotional symptoms at long term (9-12 month) follow up

tinyurl.com/4ffday8y

Thread below

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Department for Education. Effectiveness of school mental health awareness interventions
Universal approaches in English secondary schools
February 2025

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