Anyone need a concrete demo of the cocktail party problem? Conan O'Brien can help.

The kids are alright

On the event of James Watson's death, I highly recommend this 2023 commentary from @matthewcobb.bsky.social and Nathaniel Comfort with crucial new insights into the discovery of the double helix. (And also check out Cobb's brand new biography of Francis Crick) www.nature.com/articles/d41...

80% of getting “there” is being “here”. (Apparently, Saturday-morning-Steve writes motivational posters...)

If a teacher has made a positive difference in your life, let them know. It's one of the most moving ways to help them see that flowers have bloomed in their footsteps. #EduSky

UNSW students have burning questions, like why do we yawn? And why is yawning contagious? It turns out that yawning isn’t boring! It touches on some of the deepest parts of being human. (My answer, with appreciation for the exciting yawning research of Andrew Gallup and colleagues, cited within!)

I promised myself that when I next had a successful grant, I'd share a snapshot of my trail of unfunded submissions. With gratitude to the ARC, looking forward to next several years of collaboration on effort motivation with @minzlicht.bsky.social, Deena Skolnick Weisberg, and Frederik Anseel!

Guilty

Nothing here is moving

So proud of my former PhD student and current colleague, Sandersan Onie, who was recognized with the 2025 UNSW Alumni Award for Social Impact and Service last night. This video does a lovely job showing why he is so deserving of it. His work is a beacon of light!

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." Chatbots may provide information more efficiently than library books (also free), but that's the filling of a pail. It takes the spark of human connection to light the fire.

We are wave functions of possibility, small in the universe only as bounded infinity is next to unbounded: endless just the same.

You gently massage the data, cheekily omitting that one participant lingering teasingly beneath the exclusion cutoff. Then a final flourish, as you add the covariate you're almost ashamed to justify. You feel — you 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 — it's wrong, and it's exhilarating. ...p = .049.

Facebook data reveal the devastating real-world harms caused by the spread of #misinformation theconversation.com/facebook-dat... by @acarson.bsky.social et al. Misinformation’s real-world impact: "linked to poor health outcomes, falling public trust, and significant societal harm."

‘Storytelling is your best weapon for convincing people’ - @willstorr.bsky.social www.bps.org.uk/psychologist... Repost for your chance to win a copy of his book, 'The Science of Storytelling'.

A number of students follow me on LinkedIn, so I posted this for them. What good is being old-ish if you can’t pretend you have some life wisdom to offer?

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘚𝘩𝘰𝘸: The story of a high-concept, decades-long TV show undone by statistical learning.

Australian squirrel

In a slow centrifuge, it’s easier to unite in the middle. By word and deed, some invest in spinning it faster. It seems so obvious.

💯 Our minds seek analogy, pattern recognition to help make sense of the world. Without history, national myths and Hollywood tropes fill the void, which remove complexity and are easily moldable. Teaching history helps combat "System 1 thinking" at a societal level. Thanks for what you do.

Thanks, @ellecordova.bsky.social

Welcome, everyone, to UNSW Open Day. It’s gorgeous outside, and just as much fun in the lecture halls, where I’m loving giving the Psychology talk. One down, another at 2:30. Hope to see you there! 😃

It was a terrific treat to present to the team at the Reserve Bank of Australia today. I'm on a mission to share cognitive science's most useful insights with as many people as possible, and today's fantastic audience made it particularly enjoyable. Thanks for having me!

My dept at the University of Auckland (NZ) will be hiring in social psych at the junior level this cycle. Official ad to follow It's a big research-active dept with fun colleagues, plus you can commute to uni on a boat, paired with a pleasant walk thru Albert Park (this pic from heading home today)

For those of you starting up school again -- or with kids who are -- here's my under-10-minute introduction to science-backed study tips. Let me know if you find them helpful, and feel free to share!

In light of ideological attacks on US universities and other science-backed institutions (see CDC), what backups or safeguards are there for the generations of research and knowledge stored within the archives of US-based peer-reviewed journals? Are those so easily purged?

Adding just six hours of media literacy training to an American Government course significantly improved students’ ability to identify credible sources and boosted their confidence in evaluating where information comes from. theconversation.com/college-stud...

Vision peeps... Gah! What's the citation demonstrating people's ability to track objects defined purely by common motion, as in this demo? I've been racking my brain for days. Thanks!

“James, another signatory, said “the only thing that makes the information we learn from university any different from what we can gather online by ourselves is the in-person lectures performed by actual professors in our fields of study”.”

In the age of short-form video on apps on our phones, are we now unable to focus on anything longer? It was a pleasure to talk with eminent science journalist Robyn Williams on the ABC's "Science Show" about attention in the modern age.

Very awesome work!

💥 Are you looking for a quick overview of the consensus on how people learn? Then I suggest you check out the "Summary" in "How People Learn: Mind Brain, Experience, and School" from the National Academy of Sciences. Key insights, delivered concisely! 💥 #PsychSciSky #AcademicSky #EduSky

🧠 Why trust some experts but ignore others? Worsnip et al. show how bias, ego & ideology shape our choices. TL;DR: Trust experts more when topics are complex. 🤔🔍 👉 doi.org/10.1080/0951... #PsychSciSky #AcademicSky #EduSky

Whereas oldTwitter was great for connecting with and bringing together multiple audiences, my sense is that—between LinkedIn and Bsky—LinkedIn gets greater engagement from students and the public. (IG and TikTok are outside the scope of this post.) Do others find the same?

"The psychology of death, at least as conceived by terror management theory, is dead. We killed it." www.speakandregret.michaelinzlicht.com/p/psychologi...

Presenting on cognition to a great audience of high school teachers (which I am always delighted to do), I grasped for a metaphor for the role of cognitive schemas in learning, and landed on this: 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘧𝘴 𝘶𝘱𝘰𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘴𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘮𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘭𝘦𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘸 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘧𝘭𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘩. I think that works!

Thank you to Stella Maris College in Manly for hosting me at their Staff Development Day! It was a pleasure to present the cognitive science of memory & learning... and a wonderful opportunity to share insights from the field with a community committed to making a positive difference for students.

Yes, and our follow-up with Mike and Sam maybe even more so

Are you a top US-based scientist wanting to relocate to Australia? We are now calling for formal applications from both Australian and non-Australian citizens based in the US whose work is internationally recognised as exceptional. 📅 Applications close: Aug 29, 2025 🔗 science.org.au/gtap/?utm_so...

Layover coming up in Singapore from 10pm to 10am. Any suggestions for what to do? It’s enough time to get out and see a bit of the city, but at that hour? We also have a 15- and 11-year old in tow.

A very nice write-up by UNSW of our recent joint meeting of the Australasian Society for Experimental Psychology and the Asia-Pacific Conference on Vision, which we hosted at UNSW www.unsw.edu.au/news/2025/07...

1/ New paper by Hame Park, (@AraziAyelet), Bharath Talluri, Marco Celotto, Stefano Panzeri, Alan Stocker & Tobias Donner published in Nature Communications – “Confirmation Bias through Selective Readout of Information Encoded in Human Parietal Cortex”: rdcu.be/etlR7. Here is a summary:

Here's a video where I use one of my favorite party tricks to explain the availability bias. I use it my lectures, as well, and it gets a nice reaction.

This is great! Thanks, @amiyake.bsky.social, for putting together. Everyone should check this out -- both teachers and students!

Just a quick trip to Brisbane to give a talk to the Australasian Society for Social & Affective Neuroscience. Congrats to @socialneuro.bsky.social and the organising team on a great conference! #AS4SAN

Wrapping up my year as President of the Australasian Society for Experimental Psychology — with eternal gratefulness for this amazing team of fellow 2025 EPC/APCV organisers and advisors: Branka Spehar, @jamesdunn.bsky.social, @popwatson.bsky.social, David Alais, & @visnerd.bsky.social... 1/n

Students are the pride and joy of EPC and APCV. Congratulations to this year’s student presentation award winners!

And that's a wrap!! #epc2025 is in the books, with a lovely closing speech from @visnerd.bsky.social. SO many thanks to the organising committee for building such a successful conference 🙌 We'll see you next year in Auckland 🇳🇿

I had a blast but organising a conference is full on and it's hard to focus on anything else when the thing is running. Thankfully my co-hosts were excellent and the team made it happen. Branka Spehar, @sbmost.bsky.social @jamesdunn.bsky.social. You wear many hats in academia and now I need a rest