Lisa Spiering
@lspiering.bsky.social
📤 1106
📥 352
📝 46
Postdoctoral neuroscientist @Oxford • she/her • decision-making, learning and mental health
pinned post!
🎉 My PhD work has just been published in
@natcomms.nature.com
! How do we learn who caused what - and how much control we had - when outcomes depend on multiple people? We studied how humans do so using a new social learning task, computational modelling and fMRI.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧵👇
3 months ago
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Lisa Spiering
Luianta Verra
5 days ago
New preprint! How do threat beliefs drive avoidance & what happens when avoidance prevents us from verifying them? New work showing a bidirectional link between beliefs and avoidance! Lucky to work w
@ondrejzika.bsky.social
@nicoschuck.bsky.social
@tobywise.bsky.social
osf.io/preprints/ps...
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OSF
https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/d7pja_v1
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Lisa Spiering
Charley Wu
8 days ago
🚨 New preprint w/ Valerio Rubino and Peter Dayan: how do people discover and use compositional structure under constraints?
osf.io/preprints/ps...
A key factor is a simple heuristic that favors reuse of repeated and symmetric fragments across scales, is robust to time pressure, and sped up RTs 🧵👇
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Lisa Spiering
Sacha Epskamp
13 days ago
My last game was frequentist. This one's Bayesian. In BATTLE BAYES you're M₀, the intercept-only null model — fed up with being rejected. Collect evidence, INTERCEPT your rivals' excess θ, get SELECTED. Yes, the button name is a pun.
sachaepskamp.com/battle_bayes/
#rstats
#statsed
#bayesian
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Lisa Spiering
Katharina V. Wellstein
15 days ago
Learn about all things modeling in psychiatry! Get a feeling for what computational modeling can be useful for in psychiatry Learn about good practice in comp. modeling in psychiatry Use models in hands-on tutorials -Connect with like-minded people
www.translationalneuromodeling.org/cpcourse/
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Lisa Spiering
Nature Reviews Neuroscience
22 days ago
Categorization is ‘baked’ into the brain — a Perspective by Lisa Feldman Barrett & Earl K. Miller
@lisafeldmanbarrett.com
@earlkmiller.bsky.social
#neuroscience
#neuroskyence
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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Categorization is ‘baked’ into the brain - Nature Reviews Neuroscience
Categorization, the grouping of objects, living organisms, actions or events into equivalence clusters, is fundamental to adaptive behaviour. In this Perspective, Barrett and Miller discuss evidence t...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41583-026-01036-2?utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=nrn
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Lisa Spiering
Yang Teoh
21 days ago
Now out in PNAS with
@jaeyoungson.bsky.social
, Alice Xia,
@apaxon.bsky.social
&
@orielf.bsky.social
. Medial temporal lobe encodes predictive representations of people's real-world social networks which afford them key advantages in social navigation.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
🧵
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Medial temporal lobe encodes cognitive maps of real-world social networks | PNAS
Humans routinely solve social problems by navigating densely interconnected networks—gossiping strategically, brokering across cliques, and coordin...
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2523345123
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Lisa Spiering
Stefano Palminteri
28 days ago
📘 Excited to share that Decision Making: A Very Short Introduction (OUP) is now available online (PDF for subscribers):
doi.org/10.1093/9780...
What is it about? Understanding how humans (and other agents) make choices. Below a bit more information👇
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Benedikt Ehinger
27 days ago
When recording experimental data, have you ever: 1) overwritten data? 2) changed the experiment and forgot when? 3) had a student leave the lab leaving a mess of dataset? 4) noticed how everyone has their own way to transfer data? We published a solution: LSLAutoBIDS - open science by design. 🧵
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Lisa Spiering
Sjoerd Meijer
about 1 month ago
🧠 What makes threat memories so hard to forget? 🐍😱 Using focused ultrasound we provide causal evidence that the human amygdala drives rapid threat learning 🐍⚡ and determines how resistant those memories become to subsequent extinction 🐍🚫 🆕📄
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
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The human amygdala in threat learning and extinction
Ultrasonic neuromodulation of the human amygdala provides causal evidence for its role in forming persistent threat memories.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aea8233
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Lisa Spiering
Charley Wu
about 1 month ago
🚨Last week to apply for a 3 year postdoc with me and
@dominikdeffner.bsky.social
, embedded in
theadaptivemind-excellencecluster.de
Focus is on developing innovative experiments and computational models to understand social & cultural learning. Deadline is March 30th 👉
hmc-lab.com/SocialLearni...
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Lisa Spiering
Saad Jbabdi
about 2 months ago
When we acquire multimodal MRI data, they give us complementary views on the same tissue. How can we combine this rich information to improve the specificity of tissue modelling in MRI?
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Lisa Spiering
Luianta Verra
about 2 months ago
💥New paper out! Why do some people generalise threat more than others? We show that anxious people generalise more strongly, even after accounting for perceptual mistakes. A huge (!) thanks to
@ondrejzika.bsky.social
@nicoschuck.bsky.social
and
@bernhardspitzer.bsky.social
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Lisa Spiering
Angela Radulescu
about 2 months ago
Proud to share the lab’s first preprint, led by the fantastic
@christinamaher.bsky.social
! 🎉 Real-world environments are high-dimensional and noisy. Selective attention is thought to shape the state representations that make reinforcement learning tractable.
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Lisa Spiering
Caroline Nettekoven
about 2 months ago
🧠 Resting-state fMRI is often treated as the gold standard for studying the brain’s intrinsic organization. But is it actually the best way to estimate functional architecture? We tested this directly. 🧵1/8
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Lilian Weber
2 months ago
Looking at the program again 👀 I can't wait for this! Stoked to contribute a talk on ✨the interoceptive basis of reinforcement learning✨
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Lisa Spiering
Charley Wu
2 months ago
🚀 Postdoc Alert! Are you passionate about social learning & cultural evolution?
@dominikdeffner.bsky.social
& I have a 3-year position with freedom to develop your research and work on cutting-edge multiplayer and immersive experiments. Apply by March 30!
hmc-lab.com/SocialLearni...
Pls share 🙏
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Postdoc position -- Social Learning and Cultural Evolution
Postdoc position -- Social Learning and Cultural Evolution posted on March 2, 2026 We are currently seeking a highly motivated individual...
https://hmc-lab.com/SocialLearningCulturalEvolution.html
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Soha Farboud | So
2 months ago
Ultrasound gives our brain a nudge in the right direction 🧠 👀 Look to your left, look to your right! We used
#ultrasound
to stimulate the brain and it changed human choice behavior within a fraction of a second. No surgery, no implants. Link to paper ⬇️
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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Rapid modulation of choice behavior by ultrasound on the human frontal eye fields - Nature Communications
Brief ultrasound to human frontal eye fields, but not motor cortex, rapidly biases eye movement contralaterally in a perceptual choice task. The size of this effect scales with individual baseline FEF...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-69854-7
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Lisa Spiering
Patricia Lockwood
2 months ago
We are recruiting! Postdoctoral research fellow at www.sdn-lab.org, studying the computational & neural basis of social decision-making. Birmingham is a fantastic & affordable place to live, with one of the youngest populations in Europe & over 600 parks. Please share!
www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQO275/p...
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Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Social Decision Neuroscience at University of Birmingham
Explore an exciting academic career as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Social Decision Neuroscience. Don't miss out on other academic jobs. Click to apply and explore more opportunities.
https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQO275/postdoctoral-research-fellow-in-social-decision-neuroscience
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I went to BAMB a few years ago and learned a ton! Do consider applying if you're looking for a summer school on advanced behavioural modelling.
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3 months ago
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Lisa Spiering
Todd Vogel
3 months ago
🎉 New paper in Nature Communications 🎉
rdcu.be/e24jT
Does our environment influence how likely we are to help others?
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Humans are more prosocial in poor foraging environments
Nature Communications - People constantly decide whether to stop what they are doing to do something else. Here, the authors show that the quality of available options has a greater influence on...
https://rdcu.be/e24jT
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Lisa Spiering
BAMB!
3 months ago
Applications will be opening soon for BAMB! 2026 The summer school will take place from 12 - 23 July 2026
www.bambschool.org
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BAMB! 2026 | Barcelona Summer School for Advanced Modeling of Behavior
Intensive training for experienced researchers in cognitive science, computational neuroscience and neuro-AI. Five interconnected modules, expert faculty, hands-on projects. July 12-23, 2026.
https://www.bambschool.org/#
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Lisa Spiering
Toby Wise
3 months ago
Now online in
@biologicalpsych.bsky.social
CNNI - our paper showing that reliance on habitual responding in transdiagnostic compulsivity may be underpinned by uncertainty about learned environmental structure 📃
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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🎉 My PhD work has just been published in
@natcomms.nature.com
! How do we learn who caused what - and how much control we had - when outcomes depend on multiple people? We studied how humans do so using a new social learning task, computational modelling and fMRI.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🧵👇
3 months ago
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reposted by
Lisa Spiering
Miriam Klein-Flügge 🧠
3 months ago
Fantastic position for a Research Lab Manager in EP - please pass this on to anyone interested and apply by Friday!
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Lisa Spiering
Lilian Weber
4 months ago
🚀 Deadline for this is this Sunday! 🏃♀️
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Do check out this amazing opportunity to join the brilliant
@lilweb.bsky.social
's lab 🤩! Do apply, deadline is 4th Jan
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5 months ago
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Lisa Spiering
Charlotte Reese Marshall used to be Tom Rhys Marshall
5 months ago
Passionate about women's mental health? Interested in brain stimulation? Excited by cutting edge neurotech? Come do a PhD with me!
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
(thread)
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Lisa Spiering
Michael Browning
5 months ago
These posts are live now! Oxford is a great place to work. Do apply if you'd like to apply neurostimulatory techniques to understand symptoms.
my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...
my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...
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Lisa Spiering
Alison Gopnik
5 months ago
New preprint in advance of a Phil Trans paper. Outlining a theoretical argument bridging Bayesian causal learning and empowerment in reinforcement learning. And empirical data that kids do too!
arxiv.org/abs/2512.08230
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Empowerment Gain and Causal Model Construction: Children and adults are sensitive to controllability and variability in their causal interventions
Learning about the causal structure of the world is a fundamental problem for human cognition. Causal models and especially causal learning have proved to be difficult for large pretrained models usin...
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.08230
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Lisa Spiering
Elsa Fouragnan
5 months ago
New study out today in Nature Comms:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
, in which we set out to test whether ultrasound could influence the reward-related learning computations of the nucleus accumbens, building on decades of work on dopaminergic prediction error and reinforcement learning. And it did.
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Non-invasive ultrasonic neuromodulation of the human nucleus accumbens impacts reward sensitivity - Nature Communications
This study shows that non-invasive ultrasound to the human nucleus accumbens can modulate deep brain activity and enhance reward-guided learning, offering a potential alternative to invasive neuromodu...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-65080-9
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Check out this preprint by
@simyciri.bsky.social
on the role of basis functions in social decision-making across development 🚀!
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5 months ago
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Lisa Spiering
Xiaosi Gu
5 months ago
📣🔥Thrilled to announce that 2026 Computational Psychiatry Conference will take place in New Haven, CT, btw July 14-16 -
www.cpconf.org
@robbrutledge.bsky.social
@drrickadams.bsky.social
@tobiasuhauser.bsky.social
@docqhuys.bsky.social
@clairegillan.bsky.social
Sonia Bishop More info to come soon!
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Sebastijan Veselic
6 months ago
1/ Excited to share that our symposium review covering cognitive mapping in the PFC just came out in the Journal of Neuroscience:
www.jneurosci.org/content/45/4...
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Cognitive Maps in the Prefrontal Cortex
The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is critical for our ability to rapidly and flexibly adapt our behavior in new environments based on our previous experience. Despite its importance, the neural substrates a...
https://www.jneurosci.org/content/45/46/e1358252025
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Lisa Spiering
Michael Browning
6 months ago
There are 3 Oxford-based post doc positions for this Wellcome Trust project that will be advertised soon! If you have experinece in neurostimulation (tms/tus) and/or modelling of cogneuro data in humans do contact one of us (me,
@mkflugge.bsky.social
@lilweb.bsky.social
, Jacinta OShea) to discuss!
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Lisa Spiering
6 months ago
1/4 I’m super excited to share our latest PNAS paper: a 7T-fMRI study shows that functional connectivity between habenula and VTA in humans is associated with individual differences in negative learning bias, which further associates with higher anxiety and depression scores.
doi.org/10.1073/pnas...
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Lisa Spiering
Marco K Wittmann
6 months ago
(1/3) Focused ultrasound stimulation is a versatile neuroscience tool. Depending on parameter settings it can safely and reversibly alter brain function, or it can lead to lasting tissue damage. That’s why we have safety guidelines (see ITRUSST:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
).
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Eleanor Holton
6 months ago
When does new learning interfere with existing knowledge in people and ANNs? Great to have this out today in
@nathumbehav.nature.com
Work with
@summerfieldlab.bsky.social
,
@tsonj.bsky.social
, Lukas Braun and Jan Grohn
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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Elsa Fouragnan
6 months ago
A brain injury was reported in a trial using ultrasound, framed as low-intensity TUS. Kim Butts Pauly and I reviewed the case and disagreed with how it's presented. Key acoustic data are missing. Case:
doi.org/10.1016/j.br...
Letters:
www.elsa-fouragnan.com/blog
|
web.stanford.edu/~kimbutts/Le...
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Brain Injury During Focused Ultrasound Neuromodulation for Substance Use Disorder
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1935861X25003584
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Lisa Spiering
Eleanor Holton
6 months ago
Super happy to see this review out! We ask why people are so reluctant to abandon goals and how this commitment could be understood computationally. Work with Jill O'Reilly &
@yaelniv.bsky.social
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Check out this chapter on recent methods in measuring brain plasticity - by the amazing
@luiantaverra.bsky.social
et al ✨🧠!
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6 months ago
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Lisa Spiering
Mona Garvert
6 months ago
🚀 We’re hiring - Join our lab 🚀 🔍 Hiring: PhD (75% TV-L) & Postdoc (100% TV-L) 🧠 fMRI, VR, EEG, modelling We combine a range of cognitive neuroscience methods to study flexible behaviour. 📅 Start: Feb 2026 or later | ⏳ Apply by Nov 3! More details:
tinyurl.com/ms3a9ajt
#CognitiveNeuroscience
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Lisa Spiering
Matthew Apps
6 months ago
Looking for a PhD? Interested in cognitive computational neuroscience, motivation and decision-making? See our project listed in the BBSRC MIBTP competition for funding for a 4-year PhD in the
@msnlab.bsky.social
in the
@thechbh.bsky.social
. Deadline 27/11. More info:
tinyurl.com/5d5vz8m7
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The computational and neural dynamics of human motivation and cognitive control at University of Birmingham on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - The computational and neural dynamics of human motivation and cognitive control at University of Birmingham, listed on FindAPhD.com
https://www.findaphd.com/phds/project/the-computational-and-neural-dynamics-of-human-motivation-and-cognitive-control/?p189023
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Lisa Spiering
Anne Saulin
7 months ago
🚨 Last Minute Spots Now Available🚨 Last minute spots became available for this year's
@biodgps-dgpa.bsky.social
Young Scientist Retreat🧠! If you want to come to Hamburg next week register vie email: 📧
[email protected]
Strongly Recommend!🙌
#Biopsychology
#YoungScientists
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Lisa Spiering
7 months ago
How do we decide to reach out and make friends? My PhD work on this question is out today in
@pnas.org
🎉 Study done in collaboration with the incredible
@mirunarascu.bsky.social
,
@sorcha-hamilton.bsky.social
, Ingrid Yu, and my two amazing supervisors, Matthew Rushworth and
@mkflugge.bsky.social
👇
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Lisa Spiering
Dan Mirea
7 months ago
🚨Out now in
@cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social
🚨 We explore the use of cognitive theories/models with real-world data for understanding mental health. We review emerging studies and discuss challenges and opportunities of this approach. With
@yaelniv.bsky.social
and
@eriknook.bsky.social
Thread ⬇️
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Andrea Reiter
7 months ago
job alert 🚨 come join us in beautiful Würzburg 🏰🌳🍷🫧this 3yrs Postdoc position is for German speakers interested in child&adolescent clinical psych. Although initially limited to 3 years, this position offers a possibility of tenure! happy to answer any question in advance-shoot me an📨&pls share🙃
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Prof Rick Adams
7 months ago
Post doc job alert 📢! Announcing a v exciting job on a Wellcome-funded project in my group at UCL, looking at auditory hallucinations... Advert here 👀:
rb.gy/230w8l
- deadline is end of Oct. Please apply! 1/5
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UCL – University College London
UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).
https://rb.gy/230w8l
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Quentin Huys
7 months ago
New
#job
alert! Clinical research fellow / postdoc in
#computationalpsychiatry
at the
@mpc-comppsych.bsky.social
/
@uclqsion.bsky.social
and UCL psychiatry. We will aim to understand the computations engaged by serotonin in the treatment of depression. Please re-sky.
www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...
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UCL – University College London
UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/search-ucl-jobs/details?jobId=38378&jobTitle=Clinical+Research+Fellow
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Franziska Brändle
7 months ago
What influences whether people have fun with a task? Our paper “Leveling up fun: learning progress, expectations and success influence enjoyment in video games” with
@thecharleywu.bsky.social
and
@ericschulz.bsky.social
now in Scientific Reports!
rdcu.be/eI069
Paper summary below 1/4
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Leveling up fun: learning progress, expectations, and success influence enjoyment in video games
Scientific Reports - Leveling up fun: learning progress, expectations, and success influence enjoyment in video games
https://rdcu.be/eI069
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Lisa Spiering
Simon Ciranka
7 months ago
😍 Our latest is out now in
@commspsychol.nature.com
. 🤩 We show with Bayesian modelling and experimental manipulation of uncertainty that developmental differences in social influence depend on differences in the internal uncertainty people have about their choice
doi.org/10.1038/s442...
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Internal uncertainty impacts social information use in risky choice across adolescence - Communications Psychology
Adolescents’ choices are influenced by others. A social risky choice experiment and Bayesian modelling reveal that age differences in internal uncertainty, being unsure how to choose, relate to differences in susceptibility to social influence.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-025-00314-6
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