Snakes and spiders aren’t all you have to worry about in Australia (Photo taken in the Australian Reptile Park near Gosford)

From back when the 'C' in CGI stood for 'creativity'

Seen from the train, heading into the weekend. #Sydney #trainbow

🚨 Tom Griffiths has a podcast where he interviews cognitive scientists podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/t... This just went to the top of my list.

Question for the hive mind: Are there extra steps you recommend to help ensure that Prolific participants are real (i.e., not bots)? I’ve thought about adding a very complex math problem with a <1 second response window, filtering out those who get it right. But I suspect this isn’t ideal.

I believe one of the most important things we can do for our kids is to model resilience. So I’d like to thank this year’s journal decision letters (so far) for the opportunity. Onwards!

It’s here, just in time for my commute! Who else needs some fun, intellectual reading for the train? 𝘊𝑜𝘨𝑛𝘪𝑡𝘪𝑜𝘯, 𝑠𝘦𝑐𝘰𝑛𝘥 𝘦𝑑𝘪𝑡𝘪𝑜𝘯, by Chun & Most: pages.oup.com/he/us/cognit...

Significant differences are indicated with 🐦‍⬛

I’m a cognitive psychologist. Don’t tell me this isn’t a stroopwafel.

Cognitive psychology is everywhere, including in unexpected places! "Epistemic" emotions (e.g., surprise, curiosity) give us powerful tools to engage students — which I tried to use here, in this lecture opening from the Covid days of remote teaching. 1/3 #EduSky #PsychSciSky #cognition

The 2nd edition of Marvin's and my textbook, 𝘊𝘰𝘨𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯, is out! A labor of love. We hope our excitement for the field shines through. And look at this wonderful team at Oxford University Press we got to work with! You can request a free examination copy here: pages.oup.com/he/us/cognit...

Thank you to Garth Neufeld for having me on his PsychSessions podcast. Garth got me reflecting on the power of sharing our stories with students, AI in education, my research journey from cluelessness to a love affair with cognition, to why universities feel like home to me. 1/3 #PsychSciSky

In my >25 years as a researcher, this is one of my favorite and most personally meaningful studies to come out of my lab: 𝙀𝙙𝙪𝙘𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙖𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙡𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙤𝙛 𝙖 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙚: 𝙋𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙣𝙚𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙨𝙩𝙧𝙞𝙠𝙚𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙘𝙝 Preprint here: osf.io/preprints/ps... 1/4 #AcademicSky #EduSky #AI #HigherEd #SciComm

A new edition of Chun & Most's Cognition textbook — out now! Our 2nd edition updates our coverage and explores the evolving role of cognitive psychology in today’s world — all while aiming to help students love the field as much as we do. Request an exam e-copy here: pages.oup.com/he/us/cognit...

The purpose of assignments isn’t just to get As. It’s to try, see where you went wrong, and try to improve. It’s a problem that institutions, and their incentive structures, often misunderstand this as much as students do.

Here are the slides for a talk I gave earlier today on social media for academics, which includes a mention of an excellent new LinkedIn guide from @emilynordmann.bsky.social emilynordmann.github.io/linkedin-for...

PSA: With recent spikes in the news, I decided to get tested for my immunity to measles. Results came back saying I had none. If you got your vaccination back in the 1970s like me, you might want to check too.

For families like ours — who have a kid moving into middle school / high school — thought I’d reshare these science-backed tips on how to study and learn more effectively. Good luck, everyone! #EduSky #PsychSciSky #scicomm

I wonder if any alien civilizations out there celebrate another revolution around their sun like this. Sydney really does do New Year's Eve spectacularly. Happy New Year!

Things aren’t always black and white. These horses are identically bright.

Academics who love doing public outreach and #scicom don't always get this level of support from their universities. That's a shame because the more we share knowledge and passion, the more it encourages investment in what we do. Thanks to #UNSW for investing energy and time in this profile!

Within a week of the tragic and terrorist events that targeted the Jewish community here in Sydney, the Australian Prime Minister has announced a gun buy-back scheme to get guns off our streets. This is just one action item, there are more in the works (like license regulations, max caps, etc.)

Super figure-ground confusion here!

Compare this to the United States, where the 1st graders shot at Sandy Hook in 2012 could have been students at Brown shot 13 years later, and where we have done nothing. It's not impossible to make gun violence rare. We just keep choosing not to try.

Who needs brain training apps when, for free, I can just never use reference management software?

Picture this: You're teaching a cognitive psychology class and decide to show this clip of the 1972 hit song, 𝘗𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘶𝘴𝘰𝘭. What's the topic of the day, and what point are you illustrating with this song?

𝘊𝘶𝘳𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘮𝘦's idealization of 𝘧𝘶𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘦's energy and competence is a problem. Because 𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘮𝘦 is 𝘧𝘶𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘦 to 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘮𝘦, and AUGHH, 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘮𝘦 has left 𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘮𝘦 a sh%t ton to do.

**How distributed is the brain-wide network that is recruited for cognition?** That goes to the top of the list! #neuroskyence doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Fantastic day for a lab hike! From Spit Bridge to Manly Beach, featuring all stages of the lab life cycle: 1st year undergrad -> honours thesis student -> PhD scholar -> visiting international student -> old professor. #LabLife #UNSW #Sydney #Australia

Why yes, I did just try to reverse pinch the back of a cake mix box in order to increase the font size of the directions.

I have refined The uranium That was in The centrifuge And which You were probably Saving For power generation Forgive me It was so powerful I am Become death

These clips are great

UNSW maintains a 𝘛𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘕𝘦𝘸𝘴 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘊𝘢𝘯 𝘜𝘴𝘦 repository where teachers share 2-minute videos describing something they've tried that seems to work. Here's my contribution this year: a little something to help build interpersonal connection even in large lectures. #EduSky

Food for thought: "Students are more capable than their anxiety tells them they are."

It is our great honour to announce the APCV Keynote at #epc-apcv-2026: Prof. Hakwan Lau from the Institute for Basic Science in Korea! The call for member-initiated symposia & abstracts is now open: visualneuroscience.auckland.ac.nz/epc-apcv-2026 #psychscisky #visionscience #neuroskyence

Seriously???!!!

Google defaulting all Gmail users to a setting that enables Google to harvest all your emails into chatbot training is straight-up evil and invasive. www.huffpost.com/entry/opt-ou...

One of the world’s most dangerous spiders: the Sydney funnel-web! This large one seems bereft of life. Otherwise, the done thing is to scoop it into a container and bring it where its fangs can be milked to create antivenom.

Love this. But maybe, like islands, we are connected underneath, more deeply than we care to look

Bad news, folks. I just discovered something 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗯𝗶𝗻𝗴. Notice a common pattern among these (and other) supposed giants of literature? My gawd. Look at the em-dashes. They all used ChatGPT!

The world seems even larger when family is on the other side of the globe. But every now and then, something makes the distance feel smaller — like when a class assignment led my niece to ask me for a letter of life advice. Heck, I even got to build on my childhood love of the computer game #Zork.

I like to start and end my lectures with music to set the energy level — often selections that students aren't like to have heard. This week's was an oldie but a goodie, and I can't get it out of my head. Enjoy!

Edible fractals!

Lots of folks captioning aurora photos like "for a few minutes we didn't think about politics" guess I'm built different, every time I'm out trying to see night sky stuff I frequently think about how much light pollution is entirely preventable with just a tiny bit of regulation

We used a brain "pinging" again and found that distractor suppression is reactive rather than proactive, meaning attention is first drawn to the distractor before being suppressed.

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