Assistant Professor Department of Psychology University of Warwick Room: H1.25, Humanities Building Coventry CV4 7AL
Twitter: @OlgaFeher Research InterestsI am interested in the cultural evolution of birdsong and language, with a particular interest in how social interactions influence the cultural evolution of vocal communication systems. During my PhD at CUNY, I studied how zebra finch wild-type song with abnormal characteristics evolves species-typical features over a few generations in different social environments. As a post-doc at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute, I ran further experiments to investigate the necessary social requirements for the appearance of wild-type song features by self-tutoring juvenile zebra finches. My experiments used isolate birds who grew up without tutoring and invented their own songs.After my second post-doc, I switched study organisms and moved my focus from birds to humans and from birdsong to human language. As a Newton Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, I began looking at how random variation which is rare in natural languages, is eliminated as a result of learning, communicative interactions and cultural transmission. Now, as a member of the Psychology Department at Warwick, I am establishing my own lab with plans to look further into social and communicative mechanisms impact on cultural evolution in humans and birds (for the moment only in collaboration with birdsong researchers). PublicationsFehér, O., Ritt, N. & Smith, K. (2019). Asymmetric accommodation during interaction leads to the regularisation of linguistic variants. Journal of Memory and Language. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2019.104036. 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. 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., Kirby, S., Smith, K. (2019). Experimental conditions affect how social cues guide the regularization of unpredictable linguistic variation. In A. K. Goel, C. M. Seifert, & C. Freksa (Eds.), Proceedings of the 41st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (p. 3454). Montreal, QB: Cognitive Science Society. Fehér, O., Wonnacott, L., Jarvinen, H., Smith, K. (2018). Semantic conditioning in interaction and transmission. (In Cuskley C., Flaherty, M., Little, H., McCrohon L., Ravignani, A. & Verhoef, T. (Eds.) The Evolution of Language: Proceedings of the 12th International Conference. 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. Fehér, O., Ljubičić, 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. Edited proceedingsRoberts 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. Outreach June 28th 2016: I presented my research at the British Academy Soirée in London sponsored by the BA. http://www.britac.ac.uk/soiree2016 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! Museum Lates at the London Science MuseumOther interests |
