about

Hi. I’m Jacob. Some things I’m interested in are human language processing and inference algorithms. My research builds on probabilistic models of cognition, using information theory, algorithmic complexity, and tools from linguistics and machine learning.

In my current position I research and coordinate at CHI FRO, and I am part of the GenLM research consortium. Previously, I was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, working with Roger Levy, in the Computational Psycholinguistics Laboratory. I completed my PhD in Linguistics at McGill University, under the supervision of Tim O’Donnell, where I was a member of the Montreal Computational & Quantitative Linguistics Lab and Mila – Quebec AI Institute.

I’m also a dancer, formerly with Festival Ballet Providence (now Ballet RI) in Rhode Island, The Vanemuine Theatre in Tartu, Estonia, and Jose Mateo Ballet Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Here is my CV.

I sometimes post about things on the blog.

publications

• Google Scholar
• BibTeX

• Ensembling Language Models with Sequential Monte Carlo Robin Shing Moon Chan, Tianyu Liu, Samuel Kiegeland, Clemente Pasti, Jacob Hoover Vigly, Timothy J. O'Donnell, Ryan Cotterell, Tim Vieira arXiv preprint
  arXiv

  bib

  @online{chan.r:2026arxiv,
    title = {Ensembling {{Language Models}} with {{Sequential Monte Carlo}}},
    author = {Chan, Robin Shing Moon and Liu, Tianyu and Kiegeland, Samuel and Pasti, Clemente and Vigly, Jacob Hoover and O'Donnell, Timothy J. and Cotterell, Ryan and Vieira, Tim},
    date = {2026-03-05},
    eprint = {2603.05432},
    eprinttype = {arXiv},
    doi = {10.48550/arXiv.2603.05432},
    url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2603.05432},
  }

• Fast Controlled Generation from Language Models with Adaptive Weighted Rejection Sampling Ben Lipkin, Benjamin LeBrun, Jacob Hoover Vigly, João Loula, David R. MacIver, Li Du, Jason Eisner, Ryan Cotterell, Vikash Mansinghka, Timothy J. O'Donnell, Alexander K. Lew, Tim Vieira CoLM 2025 (Outstanding Paper Award)
  OpenReview

  bib

  @inproceedings{lipkin.b:2025,
    title = {Fast Controlled Generation from Language Models with Adaptive Weighted Rejection Sampling},
    author = {Lipkin, Ben and LeBrun, Benjamin and Vigly, Jacob Hoover and Loula, João and MacIver, David R. and Du, Li and Eisner, Jason and Cotterell, Ryan and Mansinghka, Vikash and O'Donnell, Timothy J. and Lew, Alexander K. and Vieira, Tim},
    date = {2025-10-07},
    publisher = {OpenReview.net},
    location = {Montréal, Canada},
    url = {https://openreview.net/forum?id=3BmPSFAdq3},
    eventtitle = {Second Conference on Language Modeling ({{COLM}})},
  }

• When Unpredictable Does Not Mean Difficult to Process Jacob Hoover Vigly, Peng Qian, Morgan Sonderegger, Timothy J. O'Donnell CogSci 2025
  link

  bib

  @unpublished{vigly.j:2025cogsci,
    type = {Poster},
    title = {When Unpredictable Does Not Mean Difficult to Process},
    author = {Vigly, Jacob Hoover and Qian, Peng and Sonderegger, Morgan and O'Donnell, Timothy J.},
    date = {2025-07-31},
    doi = {10.48448/jqwa-9g33},
    url = {https://underline.io/events/489/posters/20440/poster/119457-},
    eventtitle = {Annual Meeting of the {{Cognitive Science Society}}},
    venue = {San Francisco, CA}
  }

• A Model of Approximate and Incremental Noisy-Channel Language Processing Thomas Hikaru Clark, Jacob Hoover Vigly, Edward Gibson, Roger Levy CogSci 2025
  link

  bib

  @inproceedings{clark.t:2025cogsci,
    title = {A Model of Approximate and Incremental Noisy-Channel Language Processing},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 47th Annual Meeting of the {{Cognitive Science Society}}},
    author = {Clark, Thomas Hikaru and Vigly, Jacob Hoover and Gibson, Edward and Levy, Roger},
    date = {2025-07},
    location = {San Francisco, CA},
    url = {https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9kr1b1gm},
  }

• Comprehension Effort as the Cost of Inference Jacob Hoover Vigly, Peng Qian, Morgan Sonderegger, Timothy J. O'Donnell PsyArXiv preprint
  PsyArXiv

  bib

  @online{vigly.j:2025psyarxiv,
    title = {Comprehension Effort as the Cost of Inference},
    author = {Vigly, Jacob Hoover and Qian, Peng and Sonderegger, Morgan and O'Donnell, Timothy J.},
    date = {2025-06-18},
    number = {2498w},
    doi = {10.31234/osf.io/2498w_v1},
  }

• Implicit Gender Bias in Linguistic Descriptions for Expected Events: The Case of the 2024 United States Presidential Election Jacob Hoover Vigly, Veronica Boyce, Michaela Socolof, James Michaelov, Titus von der Malsburg, Roger Levy HSP 2025
  pdf

  bib

  @unpublished{vigly.j:2025HSP,
    type = {Poster},
    title = {Implicit Gender Bias in Linguistic Descriptions for Expected Events: {{The}} Case of the 2024 {{United States}} Presidential Election},
    author = {Vigly, Jacob Hoover and Boyce, Veronica and Socolof, Michaela and Michaelov, James and family=Malsburg, given=Titus, prefix=von der, useprefix=true and Levy, Roger},
    date = {2025-03},
    url = {https://hsp2025.github.io/abstracts/254.pdf},
    eventtitle = {The 38th {{Annual Conference}} on {{Human Sentence Processing}}},
    venue = {University of Maryland, College Park},
  }

• Modeling Human Inferences and Reading Behavior with an Incremental, Resource-Rational Model of Noisy-Channel Language Processing Thomas Hikaru Clark, Jacob Hoover Vigly, Edward Gibson, Roger Levy HSP 2025
  pdf

  bib

  @unpublished{clark.t:2025HSP,
    type = {Poster},
    title = {Modeling Human Inferences and Reading Behavior with an Incremental, Resource-Rational Model of Noisy-Channel Language Processing},
    author = {Clark, Thomas Hikaru and Vigly, Jacob Hoover and Gibson, Edward and Levy, Roger},
    date = {2025-03},
    url = {https://hsp2025.github.io/abstracts/187.pdf},
    eventtitle = {The 38th {{Annual Conference}} on {{Human Sentence Processing}}},
    venue = {University of Maryland, College Park}
  }

• The Cost of Information: Looking beyond Predictability in Language Processing Jacob Louis Hoover McGill University (PhD) dissertation
  link pdf précis

  bib

  @thesis{hoover.j:2024phd,
    type = {phdthesis},
    title = {The Cost of Information: Looking beyond Predictability in Language Processing},
    shorttitle = {The Cost of Information},
    author = {Hoover, Jacob Louis},
    date = {2024-08},
    institution = {McGill University},
    location = {Montréal, Canada},
    url = {https://escholarship.mcgill.ca/concern/theses/r494vr42w},
    pagetotal = {xi, 110},
  }

• Contextualized Topic Coherence Metrics Hamed Rahimi, David Mimno, Jacob Hoover, Hubert Naacke, Camelia Constantin, Bernd Amann EACL 2024
  ACL Anthology

  bib

  @inproceedings{rahimi.h:2024,
    title = {Contextualized {{Topic Coherence Metrics}}},
    booktitle = {Findings of the {{Association}} for {{Computational Linguistics}}: {{EACL}} 2024},
    author = {Rahimi, Hamed and Mimno, David and Hoover, Jacob and Naacke, Hubert and Constantin, Camelia and Amann, Bernd},
    editor = {Graham, Yvette and Purver, Matthew},
    date = {2024-03},
    pages = {1760--1773},
    publisher = {Association for Computational Linguistics},
    location = {St. Julian's, Malta},
    url = {https://aclanthology.org/2024.findings-eacl.123},
    eventtitle = {Findings 2024},
  }

• The Plausibility of Sampling as an Algorithmic Theory of Sentence Processing Jacob Louis Hoover, Morgan Sonderegger, Steven T. Piantadosi, Timothy J. O’Donnell Open Mind, Volume 7 (2023)
  DOI PsyArXiv code surprisal explorer

  bib

  @article{hoover.j:2023,
    title = {The Plausibility of Sampling as an Algorithmic Theory of Sentence Processing},
    author = {Hoover, Jacob Louis and Sonderegger, Morgan and Piantadosi, Steven T. and O’Donnell, Timothy J.},
    date = {2023-07-21},
    journaltitle = {Open Mind: Discoveries in Cognitive Science},
    shortjournal = {Open Mind},
    volume = {7},
    pages = {350--391},
    issn = {2470-2986},
    doi = {10.1162/opmi_a_00086},
    openaccess = {true},
    pmcid = {PMC10449406},
  }

• Measuring Morphological Fusion Using Partial Information Decomposition Michaela Socolof, Jacob Louis Hoover, Richard Futrell, Alessandro Sordoni, Timothy J. O'Donnell COLING 2022
  ACL Anthology

  bib

  @inproceedings{socolof.m:2022,
    title = {Measuring Morphological Fusion Using Partial Information Decomposition},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 29th {{International Conference}} on {{Computational Linguistics}}},
    author = {Socolof, Michaela and Hoover, Jacob Louis and Futrell, Richard and Sordoni, Alessandro and O'Donnell, Timothy J.},
    date = {2022-10-12},
    pages = {44--54},
    publisher = {International Committee on Computational Linguistics},
    location = {Gyeongju, Republic of Korea},
    url = {https://aclanthology.org/2022.coling-1.5},
    eventtitle = {{{COLING}} 2022},
    openaccess = {true},
  }

• With Better Language Models, Processing Time Is Superlinear in Surprisal Jacob Louis Hoover, Morgan Sonderegger, Timothy J. O'Donnell AMLaP 2022
  link

  bib

  @unpublished{hoover.j:2022poster,
    type = {Poster},
    title = {With Better Language Models, Processing Time Is Superlinear in Surprisal},
    author = {Hoover, Jacob Louis and Sonderegger, Morgan and O'Donnell, Timothy J.},
    namea = {Piantadosi, Steven T.},
    nameatype = {collaborator},
    date = {2022-09-06},
    url = {https://virtual.oxfordabstracts.com/#/event/3067/submission/297},
    eventtitle = {Architectures and {{Mechanisms}} for {{Language Processing}} ({{AMLaP}} 28)},
    peerreview = {no},
    venue = {York, England}
  }

• Linguistic Dependencies and Statistical Dependence Jacob Louis Hoover, Wenyu Du, Alessandro Sordoni, Timothy J. O'Donnell EMNLP 2021
  ACL Anthology code slides poster

  bib

  @inproceedings{hoover.j:2021EMNLP,
    title = {Linguistic Dependencies and Statistical Dependence},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2021 {{Conference}} on {{Empirical Methods}} in {{Natural Language Processing}}},
    author = {Hoover, Jacob Louis and Du, Wenyu and Sordoni, Alessandro and O'Donnell, Timothy J.},
    date = {2021-11},
    pages = {2941--2963},
    publisher = {Association for Computational Linguistics},
    location = {Online and Punta Cana, Dominican Republic},
    doi = {10.18653/v1/2021.emnlp-main.234},
    url = {https://aclanthology.org/2021.emnlp-main.234},
    eventtitle = {{{EMNLP}} 2021},
    openaccess = {true},
    peerreview = {db},
  }

• Accounting for Variation in Number Agreement in Icelandic Dative-Nominative Constructions Jacob Louis Hoover WCCFL 38
  link pdf handout

  bib

  @inproceedings{hoover.j:2021WCCFL,
    title = {Accounting for Variation in Number Agreement in {{Icelandic}} Dative-Nominative Constructions},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 38th {{West Coast Conference}} on {{Formal Linguistics}}},
    author = {Hoover, Jacob Louis},
    editor = {Soo, Rachel and Chow, Una Y. and Nederveen, Sander},
    date = {2021-06},
    pages = {231--241},
    publisher = {Cascadilla Proceedings Project},
    location = {Somerville, Mass., USA},
    url = {http://www.lingref.com/cpp/wccfl/38/abstract3568.html},
    eventtitle = {{{WCCFL38}}, {{March}} 6--8, 2020, {{University}} of {{British Columbia}}, {{Vancouver}}},
    openaccess = {true},
    peerreview = {no},
    annotation = {lingref.com document 3568},
  }

Note on my name: My surname is Vigly. Prior to September 2024, my surname was Hoover, which is now a middle name.