publications

2025

  1. Idiosyncratic but Not Opaque: Linguistic Conventions Formed in Reference Games Are Interpretable by Naïve Humans and Vision–Language Models
    Veronica Boyce, Ben Prystawski, Alvin Wei Ming Tan, and Michael C. Frank
    In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2025
  2. From Screens to Words: Exploring Family Media Ecology and Language Outcomes in Infancy
    Nevena Dimitrova, Alvin Wei Ming Tan, Fabio Sticca, Jalisse Schmid, Eva Unternaehrer, and 3 more authors
    Jun 2025
  3. Continuous Developmental Changes in Word Recognition Support Language Learning across Early Childhood
    Michael C Frank, Virginia A Marchman, Claire A Bergey, Veronica Boyce, Mika Braginsky, and 9 more authors
    Oct 2025
  4. Measuring Children’s Early Vocabulary in Low-Resource Languages Using a Swadesh-style Word List
    George Kachergis, Alvin Wei Ming Tan, Virginia A. Marchman, Philip S. Dale, and Michael C. Frank
    Oct 2025
  5. The BabyView Dataset: High-resolution Egocentric Videos of Infants’ and Young Children’s Everyday Experiences
    Bria Long, Robert Z. Sparks, Violet Xiang, Stefan Stojanov, Zi Yin, and 7 more authors
    Jul 2025
  6. Developmental Changes in the Precision of Visual Concept Knowledge
    Bria Long, Wanjing A Ma, Alvin Wei Ming Tan, Rebecca Silverman, Michael C Frank, and 1 more author
    Aug 2025
  7. Infants’ Social Evaluation of Helpers and Hinderers: A Large-Scale, Multi-Lab, Coordinated Replication Study
    Kelsey Lucca, Francis Yuen, Yiyi Wang, Nicolás Alessandroni, Olivia Allison, and 89 more authors
    Developmental Science, Aug 2025
  8. Action Anticipation Based on an Agent’s Epistemic State in Toddlers and Adults
    Tobias Schuwerk, Dora Kampis, Nicolás Alessandroni, Nicole Altvater-Mackensen, Natalia Arias-Trejo, and 118 more authors
    Sep 2025
  9. Characterizing Young Children’s Everyday Activities Using Video Question-Answering Models
    Tarun Sepuri, Khai L Aw, Alvin Wei Ming Tan, Robert Z Sparks, Virginia A Marchman, and 2 more authors
    In Proceedings of the Data on the Brain & Mind (DBM) Workshop at NeurIPS 2025, Oct 2025
  10. Acceptability Judgements in Colloquial Singaporean English
    Alvin Wei Ming Tan, and Louise Mycock
    Jun 2025
  11. Assessing the Alignment between Infants’ Visual and Linguistic Experience Using Multimodal Language Models
    Alvin Wei Ming Tan, Jane Yang, Tarun Sepuri, Khai Loong Aw, Robert Z. Sparks, and 4 more authors
    Nov 2025
  12. Context Informs Pragmatic Interpretation in Vision-Language Models
    Alvin Wei Ming Tan, Ben Prystawski, Veronica Boyce, and Michael C. Frank
    In Proceedings of the Interpreting Cognition in Deep Learning Models (CogInterp) Workshop at NeurIPS 2025, Nov 2025
  13. DevBench: A Multimodal Developmental Benchmark for Language Learning
    Alvin Wei Ming Tan, Sunny Yu, Bria Long, Wanjing Anya Ma, Tonya Murray, and 3 more authors
    In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, Jan 2025
  14. The Power of the Page: Comparing Richness in Text and Talk during Book Sharing with Two-Year-Old Children
    Alvin Wei Ming Tan, Kirsten Read, Sophia Gamboa, Janet Y Bang, and Virginia A Marchman
    Nov 2025

2024

  1. Cognitive Diversity in Context: US-China Differences in Children’s Reasoning, Visual Attention, and Social Cognition
    Alexandra Carstensen, Anjie Cao, Alvin Wei Ming Tan, Di Liu, Yichun Liu, and 6 more authors
    Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Nov 2024
  2. The Replication Database: Documenting the Replicability of Psychological Science
    Lukas Röseler, Leonard Kaiser, Christopher Doetsch, Noah Klett, Christian Seida, and 92 more authors
    Journal of Open Psychology Data, Sep 2024
  3. Characterizing Contextual Variation in Children’s Preschool Language Environment Using Naturalistic Egocentric Videos
    Robert Z. Sparks, Bria Long, Grace E. Keene, Malia J. Perez, Alvin Wei Ming Tan, and 2 more authors
    Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Sep 2024
  4. Predicting Ages of Acquisition for Children’s Early Vocabulary across 27 Languages and Dialects
    Alvin Wei Ming Tan, Georgia Loukatou, Mika Braginsky, Jess Mankewitz, and Michael C. Frank
    Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Sep 2024
  5. The Role of Translation Equivalents in Bilingual Word Learning
    Alvin Wei Ming Tan, Virginia A. Marchman, and Michael C. Frank
    Developmental Science, Sep 2024

2023

  1. Effects of Target Age and Genre on Morphological Complexity in Children’s Reading Material
    Nicola Dawson, Yaling Hsiao, Alvin Wei Ming Tan, Nilanjana Banerji, and Kate Nation
    Scientific Studies of Reading, May 2023
  2. Plurality Is a Good Start, but It’s Time for Unification: A Commentary on “Computational Modeling of Bilingual Language Learning: Current Models and Future Directions”
    George Kachergis, Alvin Wei Ming Tan, and Michael C. Frank
    Language Learning, May 2023

2021

  1. Features of Lexical Richness in Children’s Books: Comparisons with Child-Directed Speech
    Nicola Dawson, Yaling Hsiao, Alvin Wei Ming Tan, Nilanjana Banerji, and Kate Nation
    Language Development Research, May 2021