Research

Publications

Resources

CV

Vanessa Ferdinand

Research Fellow in Computational Cognitive Science

University of Melbourne




Room 614
Redmond Barry Building
Parkville, VIC 3010
Australia

+61 383442682

vanessa.ferdinand@unimelb.edu.au

Peer-reviewed Journal Articles

Kashima, Y., Perfors, A., Ferdinand, V., and Pattenden, E. (in press). Ideology, Communication, and Polarisation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

Uppal, A., Ferdinand, V., and Marzen, S. (2020). Inferring an Observer’s Prediction Strategy in Sequence Learning Experiments. Entropy, 22(8), 896.

Ferdinand, V., Kirby, S., & Smith, K. (2019). The cognitive roots of regularization in language. Cognition, 184, 53-68.

Hobson, E.A., Ferdinand, V., Kolchinsky, A., and Garland, J. (2019). Rethinking animal social complexity measures with the help of complex systems concepts. Animal Behavior, 155, 287-296.

Berdahl, A., Brelsford, C., De Bacco, C., Dumas, M., Ferdinand, V., Grochow, J.A., Hébert-Dufresne, L., Kallus, Y., Kempes, C.P., Kolchinsky, A., Larremore, D.B., Libby, E., Power, E.A., Stern, C.A., and Tracey, B.D. (in press). Dynamics of beneficial epidemics. Scientific Reports 9:15093.

Peer-reviewed Proceedings

Ferdinand, V. and Perfors, A. (2020). The evolution of category systems within and between learners. Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Cognitive Science Society.
[ watch the talk ]

Ferdinand, V. (2018). The coevolution of data and hypotheses in Bayesian cultural evolution. Proceedings of the 12th International Evolution of Language Conference.

Ferdinand, V. & Spike, M. (2016). Word learners regularize synonyms and homonyms similarly. Proceedings of the 11th International Evolution of Language Conference.

Ferdinand, V., Kirby, S., & Smith, K. (2014). Regularization in language evolution: on the joint contribution of domain-specific biases and domain-general frequency learning. Proceedings of the 10th International Evolution of Language Conference.

Ferdinand, V. & Thompson, B. (2014). Model fitting and prediction for language evolution. Proceedings of the 10th International Evolution of Language Conference.

Kamps, C., Ferdinand, V., & Kirby, S. (2014). The origins of regularity in language: why coordination matters. Proceedings of the 10th International Evolution of Language Conference.

Ferdinand, V., Thompson, B., Kirby, S., & Smith, K. (2013). Regularization behavior in a non-linguistic domain. Proceedings of the 35th Annual Cognitive Science Society.

Beuls, K., Ferdinand, V., & Kanwal, J. (2012). Self-organisation of a learnable language: What happens when an alien language replicates through human brains. IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning and Epigenetic Robotics (ICDL).

Ferdinand, V., Kirby, S., & Smith, K. (2012). Searching for substance in the Baldwin Effect: when learning causally affects genetic adaptation. Proceedings of the 9th International Evolution of Language Conference.

Ferdinand, V. & Zuidema, W. (2009). Thomas’ theorem meets Bayes rule: a model of the iterated learning of language. Proceedings of the 31st Annual Cognitive Science Society.

Invited Book Reviews

Ferdinand, V. (2018). A natural history of human morality by Michael Tomasello. American Anthropologist. 12 (1), 184-185.

Manuscripts

Berdahl, A., Bhat, U., Ferdinand, V., Garland, J., Ghazi-Zahedi, K., Grana, J., Grochow, J.A., Hobson, E., Kallus, Y., Kempes, C.P. and Kolchinsky, A. (2017). On the records.

Ferdinand, V. & Zuidema, W. (2008). An experiment in iterated function learning. ILLC Preprint Series (PP-2008-53), University of Amsterdam.

Ferdinand, V. & Zuidema, W. (2008). Language adapting to the brain: a study of a Bayesian iterated learning model. ILLC Preprint Series (PP-2008-54), University of Amsterdam.