Journal Club

Welcome to the GeWoNN Journal Club! We meet once a month to discuss articles related to word and reading research. For more info, check out our past meetings. If you would like to join our Journal Club or present in our meetings, please send us a private message via Bluesky.


Journal Club Organisers

Next Meeting:

March 6, 2026 (Wednesday), 11:00 am–12:00 pm (CET)

Guest Talk by Katharina von Kriegstein (TU Dresden)

The role of sensory thalami and cortico-thalamic connections in developmental dyslexia

Abstract
Developmental dyslexia is a specific reading disorder with a high prevalence. It often has a substantial impact on the psychosocial well-being and academic achievement of affected individuals. Contemporary research characterizes developmental dyslexia as a multifactorial condition with phonological processing difficulties playing a central role. Neuroscientific research focuses often on explaining developmental dyslexia at the level of the cerebral cortex. However, this cortical focus leaves potential contributions from subcortical structures largely unexplained, particularly those of the sensory thalamus. In this talk, I will first summarize our work on the role of the auditory and visual sensory thalami, namely the medial geniculate body (MGB) and the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) in phonological and visual speech processing. I will then show that developmental dyslexia is characterised by alterations in these structures and that these alterations are related to key symptoms of developmental dyslexia.

Past Meetings


March 6, 2026 (Friday), 11 am-12 pm

Guest Talk by Prof. Katharina, von Kriegstein, "The role of sensory thalami and cortico-thalamic connections in developmental dyslexia".

Januray 21, 2026 (Wednesday), 9 am-10 am

Guest Talk by Dr. Kurt Winsler (UC Davis), "Experience-dependent Changes in the Visual Processing of Letters: Evidence from Electroencephalography Decoding".

December 9, 2025 (Tuesday), 4:30 pm–5:30 pm

Guest Talk by Prof. Julia Strand (Carleton College), "Error Prevention in Psychological Research".

November 21, 2025 (Friday), 11 am–12 pm

Iaia, C., Choksi, B., Wiebers, E., Roig, G., & Fiebach, C. J. (2025). The Representational Alignment between Humans and Language Models is Implicitly Driven by a Concreteness Effect. arXiv preprint.

October 20, 2025 (Monday), 11 am–12 pm

Guest Talk by Cheng-Yu Hsieh (Royal Holloway, University of London), "Making Sense from the Parts: What Chinese Compounds Tell Us About Reading".

June 5, 2025 (Thursday), 11 am–12 pm

Binz, M., Akata, E., Bethge, M., Brändle, F., Callaway, F., Coda-Forno, J., ... & Schulz, E. (2024). Centaur: a foundation model of human cognition. arXiv Preprint arXiv:2410.20268. https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.20268

March 20, 2025 (Thursday), 11 am–12 pm

Aczel, B. (2024). Let the data talk: embrace exploratory research. Nature, 635(8040), 788. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-03826-z

January 23, 2025 (Thursday), 11 am–12 pm

Born, J., Nikolov, N. I., Rosenkranz, A., Schabmann, A., & Schmidt, B. M. (2022). A computational investigation of inventive spelling and the "Lesen durch Schreiben" method. Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence, 3, 100063.

December 4, 2024 (Thursday), 11 am–12 pm

Crawford, M., Raheel, N., Korochkina, M., & Rastle, K. (2024). Inadequate foundational decoding skills constrain global literacy goals for pupils in low-and middle-income countries. Nature Human Behaviour, 1–10.

October 24, 2024 (Thursday), 11 am–12 pm

Changizi, M. A., Zhang, Q., Ye, H., & Shimojo, S. (2006). The structures of letters and symbols throughout human history are selected to match those found in objects in natural scenes. The American Naturalist, 167(5), E117–E139.

September 26, 2024 (Thursday), 11 am–12 pm

Guest talk by Prof. Matthew HC Mak (University of Warwick), "The Contribution of Episodic Memory and Subsequent Sleep-Related Consolidation to the Updating of Lexical Knowledge".

July 2, 2024 (Tuesday), 11 am–12 pm

Chang, Y. N. (2023). The influence of oral vocabulary knowledge on individual differences in a computational model of reading. Scientific Reports, 13(1), 1680. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-28559-3

May 16, 2024 (Thursday), 11 am–12 pm

Taylor, J. E., Rousselet, G. A., & Sereno, S. C. (2024). Can prediction error explain predictability effects on the N1 during picture-word verification? Imaging Neuroscience, 2, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1162/imag_a_0013

April 18, 2024 (Thursday), 11 am–12 pm

Ferrer, E., Shaywitz, B. A., Holahan, J. M., & Shaywitz, S. E. (2023). Early reading at first grade predicts adult reading at age 42 in typical and dyslexic readers. npj Science of Learning, 8(1), 51. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-023-00205-7

March 7, 2024 (Thursday), 11 am–12 pm

Viganò, S., Bayramova, R., Doeller, C. F., & Bottini, R. (2023). Spontaneous eye movements reflect the representational geometries of conceptual spaces. OSF Preprint https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/p9q7x

January 18, 2024 (Thursday), 11 am–12 pm

Guest lecture by Prof. Dušica Filipović Đurđević: Introduction to Semantic Models

December 14, 2023 (Thursday), 11 am–12 pm

Günther, F., Rinaldi, L., & Marelli, M. (2019). Vector-Space Models of Semantic Representation From a Cognitive Perspective: A Discussion of Common Misconceptions. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 14(6), 1006-1033.

November 16, 2023 (Thursday), 11 am–12 pm

Heitmeier, M., Chuang, Y. Y., & Baayen, R. H. (2022). How trial-to-trial learning shapes mappings in the mental lexicon: Modelling Lexical Decision with Linear Discriminative Learning. arXiv preprint arXiv:2207.00430.

October 19, 2023 (Thursday), 11 am–12 pm

Furnes, B., Elwér, Å., Samuelsson, S., Treiman, R., & Olson, R. K. (2023). The stability and developmental interplay of word reading and spelling: a cross-linguistic longitudinal study from kindergarten to grade 4. Reading and Writing, 1-18.

July 17, 2023 (Monday), 4 pm–5 pm

Lev-Ari, S., & McKay, R. (2023). The sound of swearing: Are there universal patterns in profanity? Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 30(3), 1103-1114.

June 19, 2023 (Monday), 4 pm–5 pm

Carr, J., Fantini, M., & Crepaldi, D. (2023). Efficient eye movements in visual word recognition: Sensitivity to the structure of the lexicon. https://osf.io/r5n3g

May 15, 2023 (Monday), 4 pm–5 pm

Winter, B., Fischer, M. H., Scheepers, C., & Myachykov, A. (2023). More is Better: English Language Statistics are Biased Toward Addition. Cognitive Science, 47(4), e13254-e13254.

February 8, 2023 (Wednesday), 10 am–11 am

Hendrix, P., & Sun, C. C. (2021). A word or two about nonwords: Frequency, semantic neighborhood density, and orthography-to-semantics consistency effects for nonwords in the lexical decision task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 47(1), 157-183.

January 11, 2023 (Wednesday), 10 am–11 am

Huettig, F., & Ferreira, F. (2022). The Myth of Normal Reading. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 17456916221127226.

November 30, 2022 (Wednesday), 10 am–11 am

Blasi, D. E., Henrich, J., Adamou, E., Kemmerer, D., & Majid, A. (2022). Over-reliance on English hinders cognitive science. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 26(12), 1153-1170.

November 9, 2022 (Wednesday), 3 pm–4 pm

Miton, H., & Morin, O. (2021). Graphic complexity in writing systems. Cognition, 214, 104771.

October 6, 2022 (Thursday), 9 am-10 am

Discussion on ERC Grant applications

September 7, 2022 (Wednesday), 10 am-11 am

Ginestet, E., Valdois, S., & Diard, J. (2022). Probabilistic modeling of orthographic learning based on visuo-attentional dynamics. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 29(5), 1649-1672.

July 6, 2022 (Wednesday), 10 am-11 am

Meixner, J. M., Nixon, J. S., & Laubrock, J. (2022). The perceptual span is dynamically adjusted in response to foveal load by beginning readers. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 151(6), 1219-1232.

June 15, 2022 (Wednesday), 10 am-11 am

Rastle, K., Lally, C., Davis, M. H., & Taylor, J. S. H. (2021). The dramatic impact of explicit instruction on learning to read in a new writing system. Psychological Science, 32(4), 471-484.

May 4, 2022 (Wednesday), 11 am-12 pm

Jevtović, M., Antzaka, A., & Martin, C. D. (2022). Gepo with a G, or Jepo with a J? Skilled readers generate orthographic expectations for novel spoken words even when spelling is uncertain. Cognitive Science, 46(3), e13118.

April 6, 2022 (Wednesday), 2 pm-3 pm

Lelonkiewicz, J. R., Ullman, M. T., & Crepaldi, D. (2022). Knowledge of statistics or statistical learning? Readers prioritize the statistics of their native language over the learning of local regularities. Journal of Cognition, 5(1): 18.

March 9, 2022 (Wednesday), 2 pm-3 pm

Siegelman, N., Rueckl, J. G., Lo, J. C. M., Kearns, D. M., Morris, R. D., & Compton, D. L. (2022). Quantifying the regularities between orthography and semantics and their impact on group- and individual-level behavior. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 48(6), 839-855.