Writing tributes isn’t my strongest suit, but when it comes to Larry, I’ll just tell it like it is (and no, this isn’t an endorsement of Donald Trump).
I’ve spent most of my academic career immersed in Psycholinguistics and Cognitive Science. My primary focus has always been on what some might consider the more mundane topics, like syntactic representation and parsing. However, much of my work has also drawn upon Larry’s seminal research in grounded cognition, often through collaborations with other researchers and PhD students. This has led to studies on perceptual simulations of voices during silent reading, verb-related speed of motion, mental simulations of motion trajectories during spoken language comprehension, and spatial biases in the representation of time, to name but a few. These are all fascinating areas of research, though, truth be told, I still have a soft spot for the more “boring” syntactic topics.
Despite frequently reading and citing Larry’s work, I hadn’t actually met him in person until he joined our department in 2015. I had always imagined him to be a very serious and perhaps unapproachable figure—a typical “big wig” in the scientific community. But over the past decade, I’ve been both surprised and delighted to discover that nothing could be further from the truth. Larry is, without a doubt, one of the most approachable researchers I’ve ever encountered. His enthusiasm for scientific innovation is infectious, and he exemplifies what a scientist should be: curious, open-minded, and generous, yet also incredibly competent, well-read, and creative. I’m not sure whether I’ll ever measure up to him in these respects—all I can do is keep trying.
I truly enjoyed collaborating with Larry and his team on the SAM2 paper, which was—finally!—published in 2023. That was quite a journey. We submitted to various outlets, including journals focused on personality, individual differences, and social psychology, adapting the theoretical framing each time, largely thanks to Larry’s deep knowledge of these areas. However, we soon realized that our findings were somewhat controversial, ruffling quite a few reviewers’ feathers. As a consequence (a phrase Larry often uses, I discovered), there are many perfectly readable versions of this paper. I wish we could publish them all. The final version that made it to publication primarily emphasizes the methodology, using habits as a case study. I vividly remember our lengthy debates about the correct interpretation of Cronbach’s alpha—though I’m not quite sure we ever fully resolved that one. Larry has a way of making you question what you’ve always taken for granted.
Much of my current research is directly inspired by Larry’s work on perceptual symbols, and I’m fortunate to have received many helpful comments and insights from him with regards to this project. In this memory-related research, my students and I discovered that words like “rain” or “train” are better recalled when encoded in alignment with their spatial associations (for example, reading “rain” vertically and “train” horizontally during encoding). We call this the “crossword effect” in free word recall, and I believe it directly supports the concept of words as perceptual symbols, at least in the sense that motoric responses (horizontal versus vertical eye movements during reading) influence the depth of encoding of related word meanings into short-term memory. Once I finish writing this up, I might consider making Larry a co-author—not entirely ethical, perhaps, but it would certainly boost our chances of getting published in a top journal…
What I admire most about Larry is that I can discuss big philosophical questions, general relativity, or quantum physics with him without feeling out of my depth. Fortunately, he enjoys whisky as much as I do—if not more. We’ve also had many conversations about music (we’re even toying with the idea of forming a band), politics, our shared aversion to bureaucracy, and various personal matters. Indeed, I can’t recall a single conversation with Larry that didn’t somehow make me a better version of myself, either academically or personally. So, for all his remarkable achievements in psychological science and beyond, I believe it’s equally important to recognize what a truly great person Larry is—a person I’m proud to call my friend.
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As a consequence of Christoph noting how often I use this phrase, I’m making a mental note to use it less often. In the SAM2 work that we developed with Léo Dutriaux and others, we used it 6 times in version 7 but only 4 times in version 19, the version FINALLY published. So, perhaps this represents a modest sign of improvement? I wonder, though, if this decrease is actually significant statistically (maybe by a one-tailed test)?
Two of the great pleasures of coming to Glasgow have been to work with Christoph and become friends, together with our co-pal and colleague, Dale Barr (who happened to be at Chicago the same time I was). Some of the most fun I’ve had since moving here is learning R, data wrangling, and mixed-effects modeling from these guys (even more fun than being a humble student of Scottish whisky, or even writing AFNI scripts in C shell). Obviously, Dale and Christoph are both accomplished and brilliant at these kinds of things. Their classic article, Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal, has 10,606 citations on Google Scholar this morning. If you haven’t read it, you probably should. As a consequence (ahem) of reading it, my understanding of inferential tests was transformed, along with how I implement them. I can only aspire to one day to helping Christoph and Dale understand Cronbach’s alpha as well.
Everything that Christoph says about me is true of him. He appears to be projecting. His work is brilliant and creative, not to mention elegant, rigorous, pragmatic, sensible, and infinitely clever. Syntax and parsing become a beautiful thing in Christoph’s hands. Christoph is also generous, patient, and gracious in sharing his time and expertise widely (perhaps to a fault), serving as one of the University’s ethics officers for years, sharing his methodological expertise and wisdom widely with others, typically teaching whatever’s asked of him, and magnanimously heading our department’s most recent REF application (a tortuous task), which led to our best return yet, again placing us in the UK’s top few departments.
And what a great true friend, you are, Christoph, one of the strands woven through life here in Scotland bringing me strength, joy, and meaning. Infinite thanks.