Katherine (Katie) Twomey
Lecturer
A bit about Katherine (Katie) Twomey
I am a Lecturer in Language and Communicative Development at the University of Manchester. I use empirical and computational methods to examine the foundations of language acquisition, with a particular interest in the effect of nonlinguistic input on early language development. Previously I worked as a Senior Research Associate at Lancaster University (UK) with Gert Westermann, and before that a postdoc in the University of Liverpool (UK) Child Language Study Centre with Ben Ambridge and Franklin Chang, where I used corpus analysis and a connectionist model of sentence production to investigate school-age children’s acquisition of the English locative construction. I completed my PhD at the WORD Lab at the University of Sussex (UK), where I focused on toddlers’ word learning and object and action categorisation. This research included fast mapping, familiarisation and habituation experiments and Dynamic Neural Field neural network modelling. I also collaborate with Prof. Angelo Cangelosi (Computer Science, UoM) in using developmental robotic systems to conduct embodied word learning studies.
My Role in LuCiD
My LuCiD research looks at the effect of different sources of environmental variability on children’s early category formation and word learning, and the interaction between children’s curiosity-driven learning and their language development.
In my empirical studies I ask what children do when they form categories and learn words. I use eye-trackers in categorisation tasks with infants to discover what factors (e.g., colour variation, object/action familiarity) influence children’s object and action category formation. I also conduct word learning studies with toddlers to explore how these same aspects of the environment affect longer-term word learning.
In my computational work I ask how they do it! I use connectionist neural network models and developmental robots to examine the development over time of the cognitive processes which underlie infants’ behaviour in these empirical tasks.
LuCiD publications (61) by Katherine (Katie) Twomey
Hilton, M., Twomey, K. & Westermann, G. (2024). Caregivers as experimenters: Reducing unfamiliarity helps shy children learn words Infancy : the Official Journal of the International Society on Infant Studies, 29(6):877-893
Chen, X., Twomey, K., Hayes, M. & Westermann, G. (2025). The limits of curiosity? New evidence for the roles of metacognitive abilities and curiosity in learning Metacognition Learning 20, 1
Ferry, A. L., Corcoran, M. G., Williams, E., Curtis, S. M., Gale, C. J., & Twomey, K. E. (2024). Bigger versus smaller: Children's understanding of size comparison words becomes more precise with age Child Development
Lester, N., Twomey, K. E., & Theakston, A. (2024). What difficulties do children learning English in addition to another language experience with English oral language? A systematic review The Language Learning Journal
Hilton, M., Twomey, K. E., & Westermann, G. (2023). Face time: Effects of shyness and attention to faces on early word learning Language Development Research, 3 (1), pp. 156-181.
Lester, N., Theakston, A. & Twomey, K. (2023). The role of the natural history museum in promoting word learning for young children Infant and Child Development, ISSN: 1522-7219
Chen, X., Twomey, K. E., & Westermann, G. (2022). Curiosity enhances incidental object encoding Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Volume 223,105508, ISSN 0022-0965
Ma, L., Twomey, K., & Westermann, G. (2022). The impact of perceived emotions on toddlers' word learning Child Development, Volume 93, 1584-1600.
Twomey, K. E. & Hilton, M. (2019). Word Learning. In Hupp, S., Jewell, J., & Nagel, M. C. (Eds.), Encyclopaedia of Child and Adolescent Development (1st Ed). Wiley.
Twomey, K. E. & Westermann, G. (2019). Building the Foundations of Language: Mechanisms of curiosity-driven learning In Horst, J. S. & von Koss Torkildsen, J. (Eds.), International Handbook of Language Acquisition (1st Ed). Routledge.
Twomey, K. E., & Cangelosi, A. (2020). Heads, shoulders, knees and toes: What developmental robotics can tell us about language acquisition. In Trends in Language Acquisition Research. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 39–64.
Rowland, C., Theakston, A., Ambridge, B., & Twomey, K. E. (Eds.). (2020). Current Perspectives on Child Language Acquisition: How Children Use Their Environment To Learn. Trends in Language Acquisition Research. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 330 pp.
Lieven, E., Ferry, A., Theakston, K., & Twomey, K. E. (2020). Similarity, analogy and development in radical exemplar theory: A commentary on Ambridge (2020) First Language, Vol. 40(5-6) 600–603.
Polišenská, K., Chiat, S., Szewczyk, J., & Twomey, K. E. (2020). Effects of semantic plausibility, syntactic complexity and n-gram frequency on children's sentence repetition Journal of Child Language, 48(2):261-284.
Silverstein. S., Westermann, G., Parise, E. & Twomey, K. E. (2021). Infants Learn to Follow Gaze in Stages: Evidence Confirming a Robotic Prediction Open Mind 5:174–188.
Ishibashi, M., Twomey, K.E., Westermann, G. & Uehara, I. (2021). Children’s scale errors and object processing: early evidence for cross-cultural differences. Infant Behavior and Development. Infant Behavior and Development, 65, 101631.
Ambridge, B., Rowland, C. F., Theakston, A. L. & Twomey, K. E. (2020). Introduction. In Current Perspectives on Child Language Acquisition: How children use their environment to learn. John Benjamins pp. 1-7.
Bazhydai, M., Twomey, K. E. & Westermann, G. (2020). Exploration and curiosity. In Benson, J.B. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Infant and Early Childhood Development (2nd ed.), Vol. 2: Cognition, Perception & Language, pp. 370-378. Academic Press
Taxitari, L., Twomey, K. E., Westermann, G. & Manu, N. (2019). The Limits of Infants’ Early Word Learning. Language Learning and Development
Capelier-Mourguy, A., Twomey, K. E. & Westermann G. (2020). Neurocomputational Models Capture the Effect of Learned Labels on Infants’ Object and Category Representations. IEEE
Twomey, K., Ma, S., Westermann, G. (2017). Extraneous visual noise facilitates word learning. Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.
Silverstein, P., Westermann, G., Parise, E., Twomey, K. (2019). Do infants learn to follow gaze through reinforcement learning? Testing a robot prediciton. In J. Torresen & K. Dautenhahn (Eds.) Proceedings of the 9th Joint IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning and on Epigenetic Robots
Horst, J., Twomey, K., Morse, A., Nurse, R., Cangelosi, A. (2019). When object colour is a red herring: Extraneous perceptual information hinders word learning via referent selection. IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems doi: 10.1109/TCDS.2019.2894507
Hilton, M., Twomey, K., Westermann, G. (2019). Taking their eye off the ball: How shyness affects children's attention during word learning. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 183, 134-145.
Twomey, K. E., Smith, A., Monaghan, P. & Westermann, G. (2016). Neural Network Models of Psychological Phenomena Proceedings of the 14th Neural Computation and Psychology Workshop (NCPW).
Twomey, K., Westermann, G. (2015). A neural network model of curiosity-driven infant categorization. (1) Paper presented at 5th IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning and on Epigenetic Robotics Brown University, Rhode Island, USA.
Twomey, K., Morse, A., Cangelosi, A., Horst, J. (2014). Competition affects word learning in a developmental robotic system. In G. Westermann, P. Monaghan, K. E. Twomey & A. Smith (Eds.), Proceedings of the 14th Neural Computation and Psychology Workshop (NCPW14). World Scientific.
Loucaides, M., Twomey, K. E., and Westermann, G. (2016). The effect of labelling on infants’ object exploration. (1) Marina Loucaides, Katherine E Twomey and Gert Westermann presented this poster.
A. Capelier-Mourguy, Katherine Twomey and Gert Westermann. (2010). Where's my label?! Studying how a missing label and other missing features are perceived. A. Capelier-Mourguy, Katherine Twomey and Gert Westermann presented this poster.
Capelier-Mourguy, A., Twomey, K. E., & Westermann, G. (2016). New light on the status of labels. Poster presented at the 38th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Philadelphia, PA, USA. Page 2 (Conference proceedings).
Ke, H., Malem, B., Westermann, G. & Twomey, K. E. (2018). New evidence for systematicity in infants’ curiosity-driven learning. (1) Poster presented at the 2018 Budapest CEU Conference on Cognitive Development, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary.
Ke. H., Westermann, G., & Twomey, K. E. (2018). Infants generate structured learning environments during curiosity-driven category exploration. Poster to be presented at Expanding the Field 2018: Multidisciplinary Developmental Dynamics Workshop, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK
Ke, H., Westermann, G., & Twomey, K. E. (2018). New evidence for systematicity in infants’ curiosity-driven learning. In Eiterjoerge, S. (chair) Using Innovative Methods to Understand Infants’ Curiosity-Driven Learning. Symposium presented at the XXI ICIS International Conference on Infant Studies, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Twomey, K. E. & Cangelosi A (2018). Modeling Cognitive Mechanisms in an Embodied System Paper presented at the European Society for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, Leiden, The Netherlands
Keating, L. & Twomey, K. E. (2017). A closer look at the shape bias. Poster presented at the Lancaster University 2017 Christmas Conference, Lancaster, UK.
Twomey, K. E., & Westermann, G. (2017). Curiosity-based learning in infants: A neurocomputational approach. Developmental Science. 10.1111/desc.12629
Twomey, K. E., Ma, L., & Westermann, G. (2017). All the Right Noises: Background Variability Helps Early Word Learning Cognitive Science. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12539
Twomey, K. E. & Westermann, G. (in press). (2017). Learned labels shape pre-speech infants’ object representations. Infancy.
Twomey, K. E., & Westermann, G. (2016). A learned label modulates object representations in 10-month-old infants. In Papafragou, A., Grodner, D., Mirman, D., & Trueswell, J.C. (Eds.) (2016). Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.Page 10.
Twomey, K. E., Westermann, G., Oudeyer, P.-Y., & Yu, C. (2016). Understanding infants’ curiosity-based learning: empirical and computational approaches. Symposium presented at the XX Biennial International Conference on Infant Studies New Orleans, LA, USA.
Hilton, M., Twomey, K. E., & Westermann, G. (2016). Caregivers as experimenters: Reducing unfamiliarity helps shy children learn words. Paper presented at the XX Biennial International Conference on Infant Studies, New Orleans, LA, USA.
Loucaides, M., Twomey, K. E., & Westermann, G. (2016). The effect of labelling on infants’ object exploration. Poster presented at the 1st Lancaster Conference on Infant & Child Development, Lancaster, UK.
Westermann, G. & Twomey, K. E (2016). A computational model of infants’ curiosity-based learning. In Twomey, K. E., (chair) Understanding Infants’ Curiosity-Based Learning: Empirical and Computational Approaches. Symposium presented at the XX Biennial International Conference on Infant Studies, New Orleans, LA, USA. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.3821.5288
Twomey, K. E., Malem, B. & Westermann, G. (2016). Infants’ information seeking in a category learning task. (chair) Understanding Infants’ Curiosity-Based Learning: Empirical and Computational Approaches. Symposium presented at the XX Biennial International Conference on Infant Studies, New Orleans, LA, USA.
Horst, J. S., Twomey, K. E., Morse, A., Nurse, R., & Cangelosi, A (2016). Toddlers and robots learn more object names when everything they see together is the same colour. Paper presented at the 1st Lancaster Conference on Infant & Child Development, Lancaster, UK.
Hilton, M., Twomey, K. E. and Westermann, G. (2016). FaceTime: Shy children’s increased attention to faces and its effect on word learning. Paper presented at the 1st Lancaster Conference on Infant & Child Development, Lancaster, UK.
Twomey, K. E. & Westermann, G. (2016). Learned labels shape prelinguistic infants’ object representations. Paper presented at the 1st Lancaster Conference on Infant & Child Development, Lancaster, UK. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.22396.13442
Ma, S., Twomey, K. E., & Westermann, G. (2016). The effect of background variability on referent selection in fast mapping tasks: Evidence from eye movements. Poster presented at the XX Biennial International Conference on Infant Studies, New Orleans, LA, USA. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.20877.33763
Twomey, K. E., Morse, A. F., Cangelosi, A., & Horst, J. S. (2016). How context affects early language acquisition: An embodied model of early referent selection and word learning. Poster presented at the 2016 IEEE ICDL-EPIROB Workshop on Language Learning, Cergy-Pontoise, France. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.26329.93282
Twomey, K. E., Smith, A., Monaghan, P. & Westermann, G. (2016). Neurocomputational Models of Cognitive Development and Processing: Proceedings of the 14th Neural Computation and Psychology Workshop (NCPW). World Scientific. Trends in Psychology and Artificial Intelligence. Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference.
Capelier-Mourguy, A., Twomey, K. E., Kovic, V. & Westermann, G. (2016). Categories with Mismatching Feature Salience and Diagnosticity: How a Label Helps Learning. Poster presented at the 15th Neural Computation and Psychology Workshop. Phliadelphia, USA.
Capelier-Mourguy, A., Twomey, K. E. & Westermann, G. (2016). A neurocomputational model of the effect of learned labels on infants’ object representations. Paper presented at the 38th Annual Cognitive Science Society Meeting. Philadelphia, USA.
Twomey, K. E., Chang, F., & Ambridge, B. (2016). Lexical distributional cues, but not situational cues, are readily used to learn abstract locative verb-structure associations. Cognition, 153, 124–139.
Thill, S., & Twomey, K. (2016). What’s on the inside counts: A grounded account of concept acquisition and development. Front. Psychol. (Cognition), 7, 402.
Twomey, K. E. (2016). Book review: The Handbook of Language Emergence. First Language.
Twomey, K. E., Morse, A. F., Cangelosi, A., & Horst, J. S. (2016). Children’s referent selection and word learning: insights from a developmental robotic system. Interaction Studies, 17(1).
Frost, R., Twomey, K. E., Taylor, G., Westermann, G. and Monaghan P. (2015). Word for word. Nursery World Magazine, 27 July, 21-23
Twomey, K. E., & Westermann, G. (2015). Curiosity optimises learning in a simulated infant categorisation task. Paper presented at the British Psychological Society Developmental and Social Section Annual Conference, Manchester, UK.
Twomey, K. E., & Westermann, G. (2015). A neural network model of curiosity-driven infant categorization. Paper presented at the Fifth Joint IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning and on Epigenetic Robotics, Brown University, USA.
Ambridge, B., Bidgood, A., Twomey, K. E., Pine, J. M., Rowland, C. F. & Freudenthal, D. (2015). Preemption versus Entrenchment: Towards a construction-general solution to the problem of the retreat from verb argument structure overgeneralization. PLoS ONE, 10 (4): e0123723.
Westermann, G. and Twomey, K. (2014). Some thoughts on curiosity in infants and neural network models. Paper presented at the 1st Interdisciplinary Symposium on Information-Seeking, Curiosity and Attention (Neurocuriosity 2014). Bordeaux, France