My research was featured at the Museum Lates in the London Science Museum in June 2015. The theme was The Next Big Thing, a collaboration between the Science Museum and the Royal Society to showcase research undertaken by RS fellows. I and PhD students from the Centre for Language Evolution at Edinburgh University ran demonstrations on how transmission leads to different outcomes in a linguistic versus a non-linguistic task. It featured aliens, carrots and celery, and it was lots of fun!
Publications
Fehér, O., Ljubicic, I., Suzuki, K., Okanoya, K.
& Tchernichovski, O. (2017). Statistical learning in songbirds: from
self-tutoring to song culture. Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society B. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2016.0053.
Smith, K.,
Perfors, A., Fehér, O., Samara, A., Swoboda, K., & Wonnacott, E.
(2017). Language learning, language use and the evolution of linguistic
variation. Philosophical Transactions of
the Royal Society B. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2016.0051.
Tchernichovski,
O., Fehér, O., Fimiarz, D. & Dalton, C. (2017). How social learning adds up to
polymorphic culture: from songbirds to humans. Journal of Experimental Biology. 220, 1.
Fehér, O.,
Wonnacott, E., & Smith, K. (2016). Structural
priming in artificial languages and the regularization of unpredictable
variation. Journal of Memory and Language. doi: 10.1016/j.jml.2016.06.002.
Fehér, O.
(2016). Atypical birdsong and artificial languages provide insights into
how communication systems are shaped by learning, use and transmission. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review. Available online: doi:10.3758/s13423-016-1107-5.
Lipkind, D., Marcus, G. F., Bemis, D., Sasahara, K., Jakoby, N.,
Takahashi, M., Suzuki, K., Fehér, O., Ravbar, P., Okanoya, K., & Tchernichovski, O. (2013). Stepwise
acquisition of vocal combinatorial capacity in songbirds and human infants. Nature, 498, 104-108.
Fehér, O.,
Wang, H., Saar, S., Mitra, P. P., & Tchernichovski, O. (2009). De novo establishment of wild-type song
culture in the zebra finch. Nature, 459, 564-568.
Derégnaucourt, S., Mitra, P. P., Fehér, O.,
Pytte, C., & Tchernichovski, O. (2005). How sleep affects the developmental
learning of birdsong. Nature, 433,
710-716.
Derégnaucourt,
S. Mitra, P. P., Fehér, O., Maul, K. K., Lints, T. J., & Tchernichovski, O.
(2004). Song Development: In Search of the Error-Signal. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 1016, 364-376.
Under
review / In prep
Fehér, O.,
Ritt, N., & Smith, K. (submitted). Eliminating unpredictable linguistic
variation through interaction. Cognitive
Psychology.
Fehér, O., Kirby, S., & Smith, K. Social influences on the
regularization of unpredictable linguistic variation.
Fehér, O., Smith, K., Ljubicic, I.,
Suzuki, K., Okanoya, K., & Tchernichovski, O. Recursive self-tutoring
induces acoustic convergence and periodic song structure in zebra finches.
Book
chapters
Fehér, O., & Tchernichovski, O. (2013).
Vocal culture in songbirds: An experimental approach to cultural evolution. In J.
J. Bolhuis & Everaert, M. B. H. (Eds.), Birdsong,
Speech & Language: Exploring the Evolution of Mind and Brain.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Selected conference
proceedings (peer-reviewed)
Fehér,
O., Wonnacott, L., Ritt, N., & Smith, K. (2016). Eliminating unpredictable
variation through interaction. In Roberts S.G., Cuskley C., McCrohon L.,
Barceló-Coblijn L., Fehér O. & Verhoef T. (Eds.) The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 11th International
Conference. doi:10.17617/2.2248195.
Fehér,
O., Kirby, S., & Smith, K. (2014). Social influences on the regularization
of unpredictable linguistic variation. In P. Bello, M. Guarini, M. McShane,
& B. Scassellati (Eds.), Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference of
the Cognitive Science Society (pp.
2187-2191). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
Smith, K., Fehér, O., & Ritt, N. (2014). Eliminating unpredictable
linguistic variation through interaction. In P. Bello, M. Guarini, M. McShane,
& B. Scassellati (Eds.), Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference of
the Cognitive Science Society (pp.
1461-1466). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
Fehér, O., Ljubicic, I., Suzuki, K.,
Okanoya, K., & Tchernichovski, O. (2014). Birds tutored with their own
developing song produce wildtype-like song as adults. In A. D. Smith, M.
Schouwstra, B. de Boer & K. Smith (Eds.), The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 10th International
Conference (pp. 479-480). Singapore: World Scientific Publishing.
Sasahara, K., Takahashi, M., Suzuki,
K., Fehér, O., Tchernichovski,
O., & Okanoya, K. (2010). Considering language evolution from birdsong
development. In A. D. Smith, M. Schouwstra, B. de Boer & K. Smith
(Eds.), The Evolution of Language:
Proceedings of the 8th International Conference (pp. 479-480). Singapore: World
Scientific Publishing Co.
Edited proceedings
Roberts, S.G., Cuskley, C., McCrohon,
L., Barceló-Coblijn, L., Fehér, O., & Verhoef, T. (Eds.) The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of
the 11th International Conference. doi:10.17617/2.2248195.
Selected conference
talks
Fehér,
O., Wonnacott, L., Ritt, N., & Smith, K. (2015). Eliminating unpredictable
variation through interaction. (Presented
at the 40th Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston, USA.)
Fehér,
O., Smith, K., Ljubicic, I., Suzuki, K., Okanoya, K., & Tchernichovski, O.
(2015). Self-training in zebra finches reveals genetically and environmentally
determined aspects of song. (Presented at Interdisciplinary Advances in
Statistical Learning, San Sebastian, Spain.)
Fehér, O., Ritt, N., Smith, K., & ten Wolde, E. (2014). The spread
of (in-)definiteness marking in Early English: reconstructing category
emergence in the lab. (Presented at the 18th International Conference on
English Historical Linguistics, Leuven, Belgium.)
Smith, K., Fehér, O., & Ritt, N. (2014). Eliminating unpredictable
variation through interaction. (Presented
at Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing, Edinburgh, UK.)
