Bill Thompson
@wdt.bsky.social
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Cognitive Scientist. Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley.
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Bill Thompson
Emily M. Sanford
21 days ago
Are humans really the only rational animals? Our NEW PAPER 🎉 out in
@science.org
suggests otherwise! In a large collaboration led with my joint first author
@hanna-schleihauf.bsky.social
, we show that “Chimpanzees rationally revise their beliefs” 🧵
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Chimpanzees rationally revise their beliefs
The selective revision of beliefs in light of new evidence has been considered one of the hallmarks of human-level rationality. However, tests of this ability in other species are lacking. We examined...
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq5229
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Julian Jara-Ettinger
about 1 month ago
Our paper in annual review of dev psych is out! It's a big-picture look at the development of social cognition from a computational perspective:
compdevlab.yale.edu/docs/2025/an...
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https://compdevlab.yale.edu/docs/2025/annurev-devpsych-111323-112016.pdf
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Mark Ho
about 2 months ago
I'm recruiting grad students!! 🎓 The CoDec Lab @ NYU (
codec-lab.github.io
) is looking for PhD students (Fall 2026) interested in computational approaches to social cognition & problem solving 🧠 Applications through Psych (
tinyurl.com/nyucp
) are due Dec 1. Reach out with Qs & please repost! 🙏
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codec lab
https://codec-lab.github.io/
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Nature Human Behaviour
about 2 months ago
Children can solve a difficult sorting task by spontaneously discovering efficient sorting algorithms. Older children outperform younger children, showing developmental growth in strategy use and problem-solving.
@hw-yang.bsky.social
@celestekidd.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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Children spontaneously discover efficient solutions to a difficult sorting task - Nature Human Behaviour
Children successfully solved a challenging sorting task by spontaneously discovering efficient sorting strategies, such as selection sort and shaker sort. Older children outperformed younger ones, demonstrating developmental progress in strategic thinking and problem-solving abilities.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-025-02302-6
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Joe Barnby
2 months ago
🤖After a fantastic debut in 2025, the Theory of Mind in AI workshop at AAAI is back for 2026! We invite submissions on ToM in artificial & biological intelligence—across comp sci, cog sci, comp psych, psychiatry & more. CFP 👉
tom4ai.github.io/AAAI2026/cal...
2025 procs 👉
arxiv.org/abs/2505.03770
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Call for Papers - ToM4AI Workshop@AAAI 2026
https://tom4ai.github.io/AAAI2026/call-for-papers/
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Noga Zaslavsky
7 months ago
Excited to share our new paper "Towards Human-Like Emergent Communication via Utility, Informativeness, and Complexity"
direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...
@rplevy.bsky.social
And looking forward to speaking about this line of work tomorrow at
@nyudatascience.bsky.social
!
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Towards Human-Like Emergent Communication via Utility, Informativeness, and Complexity
Abstract. Two prominent, yet contrasting, theoretical views are available to characterize the underlying drivers of language evolution: on the one hand, task-specific utility maximization; on the othe...
https://direct.mit.edu/opmi/article/doi/10.1162/opmi_a_00188/128779
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Manuel Bohn
7 months ago
I'm looking for a PhD Student at the intersection of Machine Learning and Developmental Psychology. We study everyday experiences in children from 🇰🇪🇩🇪🇹🇷 and use ML models to quantify interactions. 4 years, fully funded, great team, beautiful location. Please share and apply!
tinyurl.com/2mafdyh4
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Research Associate (m/f/d) Applying Machine Learning to Developmental Psychology
https://www.leuphana.de/en/university/open-positions/research-teaching/eng-ansicht-forschung-lehre/2025/04/09/research-associate-m-f-d-applying-machine-learning-to-developmental-psychology.html
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Elizabeth Mieczkowski
8 months ago
We often assume that specialized roles improve performance in multi-agent systems, but when does specialization emerge based on a given task and environment? 🧵👇 ⭐️ New preprint w/ Ruaridh Mon-Williams,
@neilbramley.bsky.social
, Chris Lucas,
@natvelali.bsky.social
&
@cocoscilab.bsky.social
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Royal Society Publishing
9 months ago
This year marks 360 years since the first edition of
#PhilosophicalTransactions
, launching the world’s longest-running scientific journal. Join us as we take a 360° view of publishing, exploring its history, reflecting on its present impact, and imagining its future.
royalsociety.org/journals/pub...
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Bill Thompson
Cultural Evolution Society
9 months ago
We are excited to advertise the Asian Cultural Evolution (ACE) seminar series! It's organized by Kenji Itao, Xinyue Pan & Wataru Toyokawa, and seminars will take place on the third Tuesday of odd-numbered months at 19:00 JST (18:00 Perth/Singapore/Beijing, 19:00 Tokyo/Seoul, 20:00 Sydney).
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Wataru Toyokawa
8 months ago
🚀COSMOS is BACK!!!💫 The Computational School on Modeling Social and collective behavior (COSMOS) will take place in RIKEN, Tokyo, between 29 Sept - 3 Oct, organised by me and fantastic
@thecharleywu.bsky.social
! Application deadline: 25th April. For more details see 👉️
cosmossummerschool.github.io
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COSMOS
The Computational Summer school on Modeling Social and collective behavior (COSMOS)
https://cosmossummerschool.github.io
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Chris Summerfield
8 months ago
US version. thank you very much
@vikingbooks.bsky.social
. I like the black cover more!
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Cultural Evolution Society
9 months ago
We are please to release Transmissions Ep 1, featuring Dr Cristina Moya
@hyperadapthyrax.bsky.social
in conversation with Feryl Badiani
@ferylbadiani.bsky.social
Cristina and Feryl chat about Cristina's work in Peru and discuss CE in human and non-human societies:
youtu.be/2otT0PkhPkw?...
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Transmissions Episode 1 with Dr Cristina Moya
YouTube video by Cultural Evolution Society
https://youtu.be/2otT0PkhPkw?si=NVC5ZQMo45Du1t3t
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Bill Thompson
Siri Leknes
9 months ago
There are currently three open faculty positions (all levels) in my department (Psychology) Oslo is a lovely city, modestly sized (600k) but a capital, surrounded by forest and the fjord We're also a stable democracy with high support of and trust in science
www.sv.uio.no/english/abou...
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Jobs and vacancies - Faculty of Social Sciences
Read this story on the University of Oslo's website.
https://www.sv.uio.no/english/about/vacancies/index.html
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Professor John R. Hutchinson
9 months ago
🚨 Calling from
#RoyalSocietyPublishing
! 🚨 We are excited to share that the
#BiologyLetters
Early Career Researcher Competition is open for submissions until April 30, 2025! Grand prize: £1000 2 runners-up: £500 each. 🔗 More details:
royalsociety.org/journals/aut...
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Biology Letters early career researcher Competition | Royal Society
Open for entries to early career researchers until 30 April 2025.
https://royalsociety.org/journals/authors/early-career-researchers/bl-ecr-paper-prize/
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Jeremy Kendal
9 months ago
Join us in Durham Anthropology - we’re hiring an Assistant Prof in Anthropology of Data Science.
durham.taleo.net/careersectio...
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Assistant Professor in Anthropology of Data Science (Research %26 Education) (ANT_01)
Click the link provided to see the complete job description.
https://durham.taleo.net/careersection/du_ext/jobdetail.ftl?job=25000142&tz=GMT%2B00%3A00&tzname=Europe%2FLondon
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Bill Thompson
Many Minds podcast
9 months ago
String figures have been part of human culture for millennia, perhaps since the Pleistocene. But why do we find them so captivating? What explains their universal appeal? Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, w/
@roope.bsky.social
! Listen:
manyminds.libsyn.com/string-theor...
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Bill Thompson
Tobias Gerstenberg
9 months ago
New paper in Psychological Review! In "Causation, Meaning, and Communication" Ari Beller (
cicl.stanford.edu/member/ari_b...
) develops a computational model of how people use & understand expressions like "caused", "enabled", and "affected". 📃
osf.io/preprints/ps...
📎
github.com/cicl-stanfor...
🧵
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Bill Thompson
10 months ago
Our Barcelona-based summer school, BAMB! (
bambschool.org
) just opened applications! Come join us: 15-24th July, to learn how to model behavioral data using RL, Bayesian, latent variable models, RNNs, DDMs & more!
#BAMB2025
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BAMB!
Course philosophy Our goal is to teach advanced techniques in model-based analysis of behavior (humans and other animals) to cognitive and computational neuroscientists at PhD and early career levels...
http://bambschool.org
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Alexandre "Blublu" Bluet
10 months ago
Amazing opportunity to explore social learning and cultural evolution within a beautiful team & lab at the
@ki.se
in Stockholm! You can contact me (or
@bjornlindstrom.bsky.social
directly) if you have any questions!
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Siobhán Cully 🇺🇸 🐱🥼🤓🩼
10 months ago
Fellowships for non-UK scientists who want to work in the UK for a spell:
royalsociety.org/grants/newto...
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Newton International Fellowships | Royal Society
This fellowship is for non-UK scientists who are at an early stage of their research career and wish to conduct research in the UK.
https://royalsociety.org/grants/newton-international/?_cldee=ldwu44MfE6kUdSuo44ZePLgjR-m91QX2KMWVVUED6Evc-La8UVaOUrMoUf1hFhFM&recipientid=contact-c6418186ab5feb11a812000d3a7fa059-8ba1fc3eca1740a4a0805a03bc1a4b07&utm_source=ClickDimensions&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Scientists%20newsletter&esid=9090584e-71d2-ef11-a72f-7c1e522f28b7
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Gergely Neu
10 months ago
check this out: new postdoc program for AI-related research in Catalunya! our group is looking to hire within this program, ideally to work on topics related to RL theory. in case you're interested, pls DM or email me. (retweets appreciated!)
ramonllull-aira.eu/application
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Ramon Llull AIRA Open Calls
Open Calls In our inaugural call scheduled for December 2024, we aim to select up to 17 exceptional postdoctoral fellows, with an additional 16 to be chosen in Call 2 in 2025. 20 December 2024 ...
https://ramonllull-aira.eu/application
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Bill Thompson
Many Minds podcast
10 months ago
New episode!! 🎙️🎙️ A conversation w/
@tanialombrozo.bsky.social
about "learning by thinking." We often learn from others or from the outside world. But other times new understanding bubbles up from inside our own minds. When does this happen? And how does it work? Listen:
disi.org/a-paradox-of...
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Bill Thompson
Melanie Mitchell
11 months ago
An incredible opportunity for the right person: The Santa Fe Institute is seeking applications for full-time resident faculty positions at all academic levels For me, this has been the best possible job ever. More info here:
santafe.edu/about/jobs/r...
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sfiscience
SFI seeks applications for full-time, 12-month resident faculty positions at all academic levels.
https://santafe.edu/about/jobs/resident-faculty-2025
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Gasper Begus
11 months ago
Researchers in France! 🇫🇷
@ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social
France Fund is calling for proposals for seed money! All fields are welcome to apply. There are so many opportunities for collaboration that such grants can open!
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Andrew Lampinen
11 months ago
If you're interested in working on multimodal understanding and generation — including things like understanding or generating figures with text — and work with my awesome collaborator Ishita Dasgupta & others, check out this job!
boards.greenhouse.io/deepmind/job...
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Research Scientist, Media Fusion
Mountain View, California, US
https://boards.greenhouse.io/deepmind/jobs/6414627
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We have extended the deadline for this position to January 31st. Also, the start date is pretty flexible; if you're graduating next spring/summer and interested in the role, apply!
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11 months ago
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Natasha Jaques
11 months ago
Even though the Social RL lab only got started ~1 year ago, I’m super excited to announce that we have 10 people from the lab presenting their work at
#NeurIPS2024
. Delighted to officially introduce our lab:
socialrl.cs.washington.edu
! Thread with all our NeurIPS work below 👇
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SocialRL Lab
We are the Social Reinforcement Learning Lab at the University of Washington.
https://socialrl.cs.washington.edu/
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Bill Thompson
Roope Kaaronen
12 months ago
I am delighted to share our latest piece of research: ‘A global cross-cultural analysis of string figures reveals evidence of deep transmission and innovation’. This was long in the works and is by far the largest project I’ve led to date. A thread:
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
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David Barner
12 months ago
CogSci2025 poster has landed, in both “wow the future looks bright for CogSci” mode, and also “our theories will make you think and possibly write poetry mode”.
@neilbramley.bsky.social
@carenwalker.bsky.social
@cogscisociety.bsky.social
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Bill Thompson
Alex Mesoudi
about 1 year ago
Announcement! The next
@culturalevolsoc.bsky.social
CES conference will be at UM6P in Rabat, Morocco, provisional dates 11-13th May 2026! Hosted by Mathieu Charbonneau,
@sarahalami.bsky.social
,
@zhgarfield.com
&
@edseabright.bsky.social
. Save the dates!
culturalevolutionsociety.org/news-and-eve...
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Cultural Evolution Society 2026 Conference Announced - Cultural Evolution Society
https://culturalevolutionsociety.org/news-and-events/cultural-evolution-society-2026-conference-announced/
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Gasper Begus
12 months ago
If you want to do work at the intersection of deep learning from raw sound and linguistic theory, apply to our PhD program and be part of our lab! Finding symbolic representations in deep learning models trained on speech is a lot of fun! Deadline: December 1!
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We have a postdoc position available in my lab at UC Berkeley, 2 years+, flexible start date, research focus is social reasoning and cultural evolution from a computational perspective. Deadline = November 29th.
aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF04639
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Postdoctoral Scholar Employee - The Computational Cognitive Science Laboratory -Psychology
University of California, Berkeley is hiring. Apply now!
https://aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF04639
about 1 year ago
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Andrew Perfors
about 2 years ago
Hi all! We have TWO tenure track open positions in psychology available at the University of Melbourne (equivalent to assistant and associate professor). Come join us and please share widely.
jobs.unimelb.edu.au/mob/en/job/9...
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Gasper Begus
about 2 years ago
Prospective graduate students interested in biological and artificial language! 🧠🐳🤖 Apply to Berkeley PhD (Linguistics or CS program) Berkeley is awesome (see photo) Also: amazing connections with neuroscience, CS, CogSci, linguistics, great fieldwork program and much more
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Bill Thompson
Aaron Fisher
about 2 years ago
Remember, you have until 10/31 to apply to the Assistant/Associate search at Berkeley Psychology—Culture, Context, and Diversity Influences on Psychopathology and Mental Health. See link below for details (including salary range). I look forward to reviewing your app!
aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF04093
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Assistant/Associate Professor - Culture, Context, and Diversity Influences on Psychopathology and Me...
University of California, Berkeley is hiring. Apply now!
https://aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF04093
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Bill Thompson
Julie Golomb
about 2 years ago
Hi all! A bit late to the Bluesky game, but spreading the word that we have 4 open faculty positions at Ohio State University Psychology Department! Initial deadlines are today, but late applications are still welcome.
#psychscisky
#academicsky
#neuroskyence
psychology.osu.edu/current_facu...
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Current Faculty Searches | Department of Psychology
Decision Science-Open Faculty Search Diversity Science-Open Faculty Search Fellow to Faculty-Psychological Science and Racial and Health Disparities
https://psychology.osu.edu/current_faculty_searches
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Bill Thompson
Brad King
about 2 years ago
Assistant Professor position in cognitive / computational neuroscience at U of Montreal. #neurojobs #neuroskyence
fas.umontreal.ca/public/FAS/f...
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Bill Thompson
Mason Youngblood
about 2 years ago
Updated ESLR jobs board! Big highlights: 10 PhD positions in bioacoustics + AI (
bioacousticai.eu
), 6 postdocs in human/earth systems at U of Cologne, (
imfess.uni-koeln.de/hescor/posit...
), complexity fellows at SFI (
apply-sfi.smapply.org/prog/complex...
) 🦜🌍💻
bit.ly/ESLR-Jobs
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ESLR Jobs Board
Masters Deadline,Added,Topic/Dept/Title,Institution,Link NA,02-14-2023,People and Nature,University College London,<a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/biosciences/studying-ucl-people-and-nature-lab">https...
https://bit.ly/ESLR-Jobs
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