New review paper on the development of friendship psychology/ cognition (w/ @zoeliberman.bsky.social): By age 6, children appear to recognize friendship as a ranking-based relationship with outstanding social expectations and obligations. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

New paper in Child Development! When we enter others' homes, we learn about them from the placement of their belongings. This requires integrating multiple social factors (social context, pref). We find 6+yo succeed at integration & 'read the room' in this way! academic.oup.com/chidev/artic...

I’m on-route to #CDS2026! Rodney Tompkins is presenting several streams of work across both my and Lindsey’s labs. In our poster, we find kids+adults make rich, nuanced social inferences about people from the presence of protective architecture in towns (fences, gates, walls) - P3-155, 1:15 Sat!

Attending CDS 2026? Consider joining us at the morning pre-conference workshop on intuitive theories of care and protection in development @cogdevsoc.bsky.social

I'm hiring a new lab manager for my lab @ UCSD! For more info on the lab, check out our website: lillab.ucsd.edu Target start date is June 1 (flexible) and application deadline is March 26. Please share with anyone you think might be a good fit! Apply here: employment.ucsd.edu/laboratory-c...

I and my lab are happy to be at #cogsci2025! Here's a shortcut to find work from the fabulous folks in my lab (and me) 😄

⭐ Out now in Developmental Science ⭐ "Sounds of Hidden Agents: The development of causal reasoning about musical sounds" (by Minju Kim and me) causal reasoning, music/auditory cognition, event reconstruction, kids' integration of information... onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

Come check out our symposium at #SRCD2025: "Navigating social groups and relationships"! There'll be talks by Sarah Ramsey, Rongzhi Liu, @rtompkins.bsky.social, and me. Thursday at 10 am.

#SRCD25, I and my lab are here! Come see @rtompkins.bsky.social on social reasoning from sleep arrangements-Th 10-11:20am talk 3, room 200B; R Santiago on how children use objects’ placements to learn about people-Fri 10:50 Poster 90; & K Han on the origins of dance in infancy-Sat 10:30, Poster 52!

Interested in working with me and/or any of my awesome colleagues at @UCSDPsychology for grad-school? Come check out this virtual event that @asmithflores.bsky.social organized for next week! Registration deadline this Friday (Oct 11)! diversifyingpsychology.ucsd.edu

Many of our faculty panelists are looking to accept students this cycle (@brialong.bsky.social @adenaschachner.bsky.social @nadiabrashier.bsky.social to name a few), so it’s a chance to hear from them before you apply! Come spend two days learning about our program! We can’t wait to meet you! 3/4

For years, I’ve been saying it was interesting that I would probably hear back about whether I would get tenure (or not) just around my 40th birthday. Well — the best version of this just happened.

Correction: our talk on hearing water temperature is now a bit earlier, at 3:20 today!!

Looking forward to CDS 2024! Come hear about: Kids’ perspective-taking over video chat (Chaolan Lin); hearing water temperature (Tanushree Agrawal); expectations about shared sleep arrangements (Rodney Tompkins); and social reasoning about placement of possessions (Rob Santiago)!

It's CDS week!! The SoCal Lab will be there, looking forward to lots of science & fun. Here are some places you'll be able to find us:

New Substack! smallpotatoes.paulbloom.net/p/how-to-giv...

Hi Bluesky! I'm recruiting graduate students and postdocs to launch the Visual Learning Lab with me at UC San Diego in Summer/Fall 2024! The lab will focus on how we learn to derive visual meaning, integrating methods from developmental psychology, machine learning, & vision science.

New job alert - UC San Diego Psych is looking to hire an Assistant Prof using computational approaches to understand behavior and/or its neural mechanisms. (I can vouch for our dept. & city as a great place to live, work, & do science!) Apps due Nov 7: apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF03684

NEW job alert, social psychologists - the UC San Diego Psych Dept is looking to hire an Assistant Professor in social psychology! (I can vouch for our dept. & city as a great place to live, work, & do science!) Applications are due November 7: apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF03683

🚨Job Alert x2! UCSD Psych has two assistant professor openings this year: 1. Computational approaches to understanding behavior and/or its neural mechanisms. apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF03684 2. Social psych, broadly defined. apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF03683 Apply for either (or both?) by November 7th!

I’ll be joining this virtual event too — and I’m also looking to recruit a grad student this cycle!