My strange NSERC DG outcome: Offered a 2-year grant but my cash-strapped uni must find matching funds 🙃 . This feels like a regressive tax. If NSERC wants researchers at undergrad institutions to do more research (which is what the text of the award implies) they should just provide what's required.

For other NSERC watchers this week:

We have a new paper in Communications Psychology. In three experiments, we show that people connect more with LLMs that, through language, mimic aspects of their personality like extroversion and anxiety, despite full knowledge that they’re chatting with an AI www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Exciting news! The @yorkpsychology.bsky.social are recruiting 3 new ART (research and teaching) lecturers! One role will be prioritised for cognitive, affective and/or social neuroscience. #neuroskyence #cognition #psychscisky #neurojobs

We have a new paper in Communications Psychology. In three experiments, we show that people connect more with LLMs that, through language, mimic aspects of their personality like extroversion and anxiety, despite full knowledge that they’re chatting with an AI www.nature.com/articles/s44...

A new Department of Cognitive Science is being created at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy. Here is the call for a cluster hire (for around 10 faculty) in all areas of cognitive science, at both junior and senior levels: www.unibocconi.it/en/faculty-a... Deadline: May 4th, 2026

me paying $30 in gas to buy imported things that have been hit with tariffs bc joe rogan is learning about politics at age 58

No new wars.

A THOUSAND people have signed up for our class in the last 6 hours. Officially the largest single "class" I've taught.

Dr. Lauren Wilson Finniss and I developed a critical AI Literacy course at Acadia that is now freely available to everyone. Within a month of launch, 15% of Acadia students completed it to very positive reviews. The link to the 2.5-hour course is in the CBC article: www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Building a Corpus to Analyze Stuttering according to a Dynamic Model of Speech Rhythm Production: https://osf.io/5cfyq

Nice interview with Jonathan Haidt on CBC Front Burner. I don't really get the Haidt hate in some psychology circles. Yes, correlation does not equal causation. But when you see the same pattern over and over again across contexts it certainly provides a good hint. www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-p...

Our latest paper, “Visual language models show widespread visual deficits on neuropsychological tests”, is now out in Nature Machine Intelligence: www.nature.com/articles/s42... Non-paywalled version: arxiv.org/abs/2504.10786 Tweet thread below from first author @genetang.bsky.social...

if bovino is out and conservatives are turning on noem then there is a real opportunity to demand that miller resign too.

Walz needs to be clear with Trump. Pull ICE out by midnight tonight or he sends in the National Guard.

The Psychonomic Society is now accepting nominations for the 2026 Mid-Career Award, which recognizes individuals who have made exceptional contributions to experimental and cognitive psychology and are currently in the middle of their careers. The deadline is March 31. Submit today: buff.ly/Pct3kUM

This Carney speech is incredible. "But when we accept what’s offered, and compete with each other to be the most accommodating, this is not sovereignty—it’s the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination." youtu.be/-9EFPdcSot0?...

With some trepidation, I'm putting this out into the world: gershmanlab.com/textbook.html It's a textbook called Computational Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience, which I wrote for my class. My hope is that this will be a living document, continuously improved as I get feedback.

Major kudos to the Acadia finance department who turned around my complex (multi currency, equipment, and travel) reimbursement request in TWO days! They’re always fast but this has to be some sort of university record.

It's an old and obvious pattern. An unpopular president - failing on the economy and losing his grip on power at home - decides to launch a war for regime change abroad. The American people don’t want to “run” a foreign country while our leaders fail to improve life in this one.

This press conference is bananas, and the questions being asked are terrible. He's basically saying that anything he deems the US needs the US will just take regardless of where it is. "We're taking wealth out of the ground ..." like WTAF? Greenland and Canada next?

Paper alert! (1/2) We examined brain activation for each content word in a podcast relative to incrementally larger ngrams (1-word, 5-words, 10-words) that precede each word with a focus on semantic distance. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

New evidence from over 6,000 college students finds that digital devices are bad for academic performance and even effect peers in negative ways! Mobile app use reduces grades, increases stress & lowers class attendance, job applications, and wages coming out of school. www.nber.org/system/files...

I swear it's like a cheat code, doesn't matter what it is you're writing. Grammatical oddities, character voice inconsistencies, tonal or perspective whiplash...something about just reading it aloud as if you were reading it off to a buddy across the room makes problems jump out at you.

Wrapped my third writing class. Lessons learned: Uni students want to improve their writing but they don't like min word counts, forced topics, and BS rules e.g. no contractions. The class works because papers are short, on what they want, and I teach writing as a form of effective conversation.

There was never any point to having reference letters. That's why we've all started using AI to do this nonesense task. References should only be used for short-listed candidates for important positions/awards, and ideally, be done via a call to get the most honest opinion possible.

If recent events have caused you to lose trust in The New York Times, might I suggest a subscription to @us.theguardian.com.

HAPPY FOUR SEASONS TOTAL LANDSCAPING DAY TO ALL WHO CELEBRATE

It's astonishing -- almost every single sentence uttered by Mettler in this pod made me want to scream. This is every bit of reheated reactionary-centrist conventional wisdom, distilled to its essence, delivered under the guise of "political science." So utterly, disastrously wrong, all of it.

Heavyweight is one of my favorite podcasts, and I was relieved to see it back after a long hiatus (Spotify cut it loose to pay for Joe Rogan —ahem—). This week’s episode is a quiet heartbreaker. overcast.fm/+ABNzfgKxvqs

It's that time of year when many start thinking about applying for PhDs. If you're applying for a UK PhD position, here is a blog post I wrote a while back that might be helpful #cognition #psychscisky #neuroskyence #psychjobs

Had the discussion. 1/3 of the class (15 students) said it was the first time they'd read something this long (7k words) in one sitting. To me, this suggests not that students don't read anymore but that we should assign more interesting things for them to read.

my latest is expanding on the observation that your view of the politics of opposition to the administration depend largely on your view of the election (gift link)

Posting on behalf of Tamar Gollan, who is not on Bluesky: A postdoc position is open and available immediately in Dr. Tamar Gollan’s Laboratory of Aging Bilingualism at the University of California, San Diego, funded by NIH & NSF. See link for details! psychiatry.ucsd.edu/about/LAB_Go...

Tomorrow, in my science writing seminar, we're discussing "Daryl Bem Proved ESP is Real—Which Means Science is Broken". I highly recommend this piece if you haven't read it. Writer Dan Engber turns a story about shoddy research methods into something absolutely captivating. slate.com/health-and-s...

Inner speech and the neurobiology of psychosis biorxiv.org/content/10.1... With @daniellametti.com and David Green

More from the Suffolk University poll: www.suffolk.edu/-/media/suff... Do you support or oppose "defund the police"? Support - 21% Oppose - 74% Would you support or oppose cutting some of the police budget and using the money for social services? Support - 54% Oppose - 41%

Health and science reporters should lead the coverage of all these health-related conspiracy theories & newsroom leaders should keep their both-sides political reporters out of their way.

'Tylenol' is known in the civilised world as Paracetamol 2.4 million children born in Sweden between 1995 and 2019. Studied 186,000 children whose mothers were treated with paracetamol during pregnancy. news.ki.se/no-link-betw...

There is no world in which it is normal for the president to publicly call upon his attorney general to hurry up and prosecute his political foes. It’s like the Watergate tapes but posted on social media. Let’s get a grip on what’s happening here.

After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like.

This is an adaptation for AI. These assignments used to be done entirely at home.

Trying some new pedagogy. Without the internet or notes, students complete short assignments in-class as part of a small group. We then, as an entire class, answer the two questions deemed the hardest. Students have a week to submit their answers individually via Moodle. Pretty fun so far!

Thrilled that our new review "Motor Working Memory" is now in press at TiCS! @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social @cellpress.bsky.social By me + Hanna Hillman We argue that a dedicated research program on 'working memory for movements' is long overdue Link: authors.elsevier.com/a/1lmMX4sIRv...

GPT-5 answers PhD-level problems and, yet, when I give it my uni's academic calendar and ask it to play advisor (an aspect of my job I would love to automate!) it makes trivial mistakes. Generalization of learning is a challenge long noted in psych, and still a real limitation of LLMs.

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

Universities forcing profs to incorporate AI into their pedagogy so students can "learn how to use it" is bananas—there's nothing to learn. I showed my 75-year-old mom how to effectively use ChatGPT in like 20 minutes. Now she's a prompt engineer.

Gave my now annual lecture to new Acadia U undergrads on how AI works, how students should and should NOT use it (if they decide to use it), and the ethical implications of AI use. It was a full house with loads of interesting questions!

imagine actually writing the sentence "Hamas propaganda lines such as 'stop killing children'"