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      <a class="navbar-brand" href="index.html">Ellis Cain</a>
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<h1 class="title toc-ignore">Projects</h1>

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<div id="research-projects" class="section level1">
<h1>Research Projects</h1>
<p>Below are brief descriptions of my various research projects, along
with a representative citation for the corresponding area. See <a
href="cv.html">my CV</a> for the full citations.</p>
<hr />
<div id="communication-across-generations" class="section level3">
<h3>Communication Across Generations</h3>
<p>Under active development - check back later for updates!</p>
<hr />
</div>
<div id="lifespan-learning-and-cognitive-representations"
class="section level3">
<h3>Lifespan Learning and Cognitive Representations</h3>
<p>Patterns of language usage change over time, which means that the
context in which words and constructions are experienced differ across
an individual’s lifespan. This project investigates whether language
users’ cognitive representations track these changes in lockstep, or
instead retain traces of previous language usage patterns, and whether
these dynamics explain any age-related differences in language
processing.</p>
<div id="representations-of-meaning" class="section level4">
<h4>Representations of meaning</h4>
<ul>
<li>Cain, E., &amp; Ryskin, R. (2025). Semantic representations are
updated across the lifespan reflecting diachronic language change.
<em>Open Mind</em>.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div id="representations-of-structure" class="section level4">
<h4>Representations of structure</h4>
<ul>
<li>Cain, E., &amp; Ryskin, R. (2024). Diachronic change in verb usage
statistics predicts differences in sentence processing across the
lifespan. <em>Proceedings of the Workshop on Cognitive Modeling and
Computational Linguistics</em>.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div id="predictions" class="section level4">
<h4>Predictions</h4>
<ul>
<li>Chao, A., Cain, E., &amp; Ryskin, R. (2025). Language experience and
prediction across age groups: Evidence from diachronic fine-tuning of
language models. <em>Proceedings of the 47th Annual Meeting of the
Cognitive Science Society</em>.</li>
</ul>
<hr />
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<div id="stability-in-cultural-transmission" class="section level3">
<h3>Stability in Cultural Transmission</h3>
<p>How do narrative structures change as they cross cultural boundaries?
Real-world cross-cultural transmission is typically confounded with
large-scale changes in cultural context, making it difficult to
disentangle the mechanisms of cultural stability and change. This case
study aims to separate the cumulative effects of repeated transmission
from the stabilizing influence of shared cultural context.</p>
<ul>
<li>Cain, E., Geballe, E., &amp; Marghetis, T. (2026). A literary
translation cycle disentangles transmission pressures from sociocultural
changes in cultural evolution. <em>PsyArXiv preprint</em>.</li>
</ul>
<hr />
</div>
<div id="statistical-learning" class="section level3">
<h3>Statistical Learning</h3>
<p>Infants are though to aggregate statistical information across
multiple naming events to resolve ambiguous word-referent mappings,
which is often referred to as the cross-situational learning account.
Laboratory demonstrations of this ability, however, may not reflect the
ambiguity that is actually present in everyday learning environments.
This project examines the ecological validity of cross-situational
learning mechanisms using naturalistic parent-child interaction
datasets, investigating whether the statistics present in real-world
environments are sufficient to support word learning.</p>
<ul>
<li>Cain, E., Ryskin, R., &amp; Yu, C. (2025). Cross-situational
statistics present in an early language learning context: Evidence from
naturalistic parent–child interactions. <em>Cognitive Science</em>.</li>
</ul>
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