Group Leader at Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Netherlands
Assist. Prof. Dr. Limor Raviv is a leading scholar whose work connects psychology, linguistics, and cognitive science to understand language emergence. Her research in psychology explores how social and cultural environments shape language evolution and adaptation. With extensive contributions to experimental and computational studies, she brings psychology into dialogue with neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Dr. Raviv’s role as a research leader demonstrates her commitment to advancing psychology through interdisciplinary collaboration. She actively integrates psychology with social interaction, cognition, and learning. Her broad recognition highlights the importance of psychology for understanding human communication, language learning, and cultural development. This summary reflects her long-standing dedication to psychology as both a research field and an applied discipline in modern science.
Professional Profile
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Education
Assist. Prof. Dr. Limor Raviv education reflects a strong foundation in psychology and cognitive science, with advanced training in interdisciplinary approaches to language and cognition. She earned her Ph.D. in the psychology of language, which emphasized the role of systematic structure in human communication. Through her studies, psychology was consistently at the center of her academic development, guiding her focus on the mechanisms underlying language learning and evolution. Her master’s training combined psychology, linguistics, and cognitive science, reinforcing her expertise in integrating multiple domains. These experiences strengthened her psychology background and helped her develop a unique perspective on language emergence. Her academic path demonstrates how psychology, supported by rigorous training and critical analysis, provides essential tools for addressing complex questions about communication and learning.
Experience
Assist. Prof. Dr. Limor Raviv has gained wide-ranging professional experience in psychology through academic leadership, teaching, and interdisciplinary research. She has served as a research group leader, assistant professor, and international fellow, each role highlighting her contributions to psychology. Her appointments across top institutions in Europe, the UK, and the USA allowed her to advance psychology by linking experimental, computational, and theoretical perspectives. Within these roles, she introduced psychology into collaborations with computer science, linguistics, and neuroscience, expanding the field’s reach. Her teaching in psychology courses, such as psycholinguistics and cognitive neuroscience, further shaped new generations of students. Dr. Raviv’s professional experience shows a consistent effort to strengthen psychology as a discipline that bridges human cognition, cultural processes, and social interaction.
Research Interest
Assist. Prof. Dr. Limor Raviv’s research interests center on psychology, particularly the psychology of language, cultural cognition, and communication systems. She investigates how psychology explains language evolution, combining experiments, computational modeling, and cross-cultural studies. Her focus on psychology includes understanding learning processes, social structures, and cultural factors that shape linguistic adaptation. By connecting psychology to artificial intelligence, she explores how deep learning systems can simulate language development. Another core interest lies in psychology’s role in prosocial behavior, pointing gestures, and multimodal communication. Her research also expands psychology into comparative domains, examining animals and virtual reality environments. Overall, her interests demonstrate the versatility of psychology in addressing language-related questions, making her work a cornerstone in advancing experimental and applied psychology.
Award and Honor
Assist. Prof. Dr. Limor Raviv has received numerous awards and honors that recognize her excellence in psychology and related fields. Prestigious fellowships, competitive research grants, and international prizes highlight her leadership in psychology. Awards such as the Otto Hahn Medal and PhD Thesis Award confirm her contributions to psychology and language sciences. Grants from leading institutions have allowed her to build research groups that expand the boundaries of psychology. Honors from conferences and universities further confirm her role as a global figure in psychology. Each recognition reflects how psychology benefits from her innovative methods, rigorous experiments, and commitment to open science. Through these achievements, Dr. Raviv demonstrates how psychology is central to addressing big questions about language, learning, and human interaction.
Research Skill
Assist. Prof. Dr. Limor Raviv demonstrates exceptional research skills grounded in psychology, ranging from experimental design to computational modeling. Her psychology expertise includes designing cross-cultural experiments to investigate language evolution. She has advanced psychology by integrating behavioral studies with artificial intelligence to model communication processes. Her skills also extend to data analysis, statistical modeling, and visualization, enhancing psychology’s methodological tools. She employs preregistration and open science practices, ensuring that psychology research is transparent and reliable. Furthermore, her skills in supervising Ph.D. students and postdocs strengthen psychology’s future through mentorship. Dr. Raviv combines theoretical and applied psychology, using her skills to examine language learnability, cognitive diversity, and cultural dynamics. These research skills place her at the forefront of modern psychology and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Publication Top Notes
Title: How variability shapes learning and generalization
Authors: L Raviv, G Lupyan, SC Green
Journal: Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Title: The developmental trajectory of children's auditory and visual statistical learning abilities: Modality‐based differences in the effect of age
Authors: L Raviv, I Arnon
Journal: Developmental Science
Title: Larger communities create more systematic languages
Authors: L Raviv, A Meyer, S Lev-Ari
Journal: Proceedings of the Royal Society B
Title: Compositional structure can emerge without generational transmission
Authors: L Raviv, A Meyer, S Lev-Ari
Journal: Cognition
Title: Systematicity, but not compositionality: Examining the emergence of linguistic structure in children and adults using iterated learning
Authors: L Raviv, I Arnon
Journal: Cognition
Title: The role of social network structure in the emergence of linguistic structure
Authors: L Raviv, A Meyer, S Lev‐Ari
Journal: Cognitive Science
Title: What makes a language easy to learn? A preregistered study on how systematic structure and community size affect language learnability
Authors: L Raviv, M de Heer Kloots, A Meyer
Journal: Cognition
Title: Globally, songs and instrumental melodies are slower and higher and use more stable pitches than speech: A Registered Report
Authors: Y Ozaki, A Tierney, PQ Pfordresher, JM McBride, E Benetos, P Proutskova, ...
Journal: Science Advances
Title: Emergent communication for understanding human language evolution: What's missing?
Authors: L Galke, Y Ram, L Raviv
Journal: arXiv preprint
Title: Elephants as an animal model for self-domestication
Authors: L Raviv, SL Jacobson, JM Plotnik, J Bowman, V Lynch, A Benítez-Burraco
Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Title: What is simple is actually quite complex: A critical note on terminology in the domain of language and communication
Authors: L Raviv, LR Peckre, C Boeckx
Journal: Journal of Comparative Psychology
Title: Literate and preliterate children show different learning patterns in an artificial language learning task
Authors: N Havron, L Raviv, I Arnon
Journal: Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science
Title: Complexity can be maintained in small populations: A model of lexical variability in emerging sign languages
Authors: B Thompson, L Raviv, S Kirby
Journal: The Evolution of Language Conferences
Title: What makes a language easy to deep-learn
Authors: L Galke, Y Ram, L Raviv
Journal: arXiv preprint
Title: Language and society: How social pressures shape grammatical structure
Authors: L Raviv
Journal: Radboud University Nijmegen
Title: Morphology matters: Probing the cross-linguistic morphological generalization abilities of large language models through a wug test
Authors: A Dang, L Raviv, L Galke
Journal: Workshop on Cognitive Modeling and Computational Linguistics
Title: What's your point? Insights from virtual reality on the relation between intention and action in the production of pointing gestures
Authors: R Raghavan, L Raviv, D Peeters
Journal: Cognition
Title: Learning and communication pressures in neural networks: Lessons from emergent communication
Authors: LPA Galke, L Raviv
Journal: Language Development Research
Conclusion
In conclusion, Assist. Prof. Dr. Limor Raviv represents a distinguished figure whose career illustrates the power of psychology to connect language, culture, and cognition. Her leadership roles show how psychology drives interdisciplinary exploration, while her education and professional experience ensure solid grounding in scientific methods. Through her research, psychology is applied to human learning, social dynamics, and computational models. Her honors and publications confirm the transformative influence of psychology across disciplines. By combining research skills, academic service, and mentorship, she advances psychology’s impact in both theory and practice. Dr. Raviv’s work demonstrates that psychology provides essential answers to questions about communication, evolution, and cultural development, ensuring her legacy as a pioneering scholar of psychology.