We updated our – free, open source, Rasch-compliant – receptive vocabulary test (oREV) to also include verbs. If you are looking for a task to measure vocabulary/language in German with children 3-8, look no further! Paper: osf.io/preprints/ps... Task: devpsy.web.leuphana.de/orev-vn/

1st published paper alert ⚠️ in which @mcxfrank.bsky.social and I ask: How robust is the “shape bias”? a phenomenon that has been central to theories of early word learning: If a child hears a new word for an object, they often extend it to other objects with the same shape. tinyurl.com/JCL-shapebias

I had just started in a new country, language, and field when I entered his language development class. With 0 background before it, I left wanting a lifelong career in it. I will always remember a brilliant scientist, an inspiring teacher, and a kind human. www.tc.columbia.edu/articles/202...

"No human musician could stay in time counting as slowly as these whales do."

We've known that socioeconomics (SES) matters for the 🧠. New & 🤯 is that SES drowns out all other brain associations, incl. IQ. If you train an algorithm to predict IQ from brain data, it's still way better at predicting SES. Science Mag: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @smarek0502.bsky.social 👀🧵👇

Nature spoke to a variety of scientists, from highly adept coders to complete beginners, who are using AI to stretch the limits of the coding they can do. Many use AI-assisted coding in their work, and some are intentionally testing its limits. #Academicsky 🧪

I just published A leap of faith, and evidence? medium.com/p/a-leap-of-...

I totally agree, science is not a simple optimization problem, or at least not in the form conceived by most existing systems. @battleday.bsky.social and I wrote about this recently from a somewhat different perspective (emphasizing the 'problem problem'): gershmanlab.com/pubs/Battled...

(1/5) The paired (sign-flip) permutation test fails under cross-validation. The swap procedure assumes fold-averaged statistics are exchangeable under the null — but they're positively correlated, not independent. The result: inflated FPR. Slide explains the mechanics. 2/N

Just wrote a new blogpost trying to summarize my thoughts on the question of how and whether to use AI for research in psychology and cognitive science: babieslearninglanguage.blogspot.com/2026/04/usin...

The Cognitive Tools Lab at Stanford (cogtoolslab.github.io) is recruiting two new research staff members to join in AY 26-27. Full-Time Lab Manager: forms.gle/UVwfx5wbY9Km.... IRiSS Predoc Researcher: iriss.stanford.edu/predoc/2026-.... Please share widely in your networks, thank you!!

In a Working Scientist profile, conservation researcher Anne Poelina speaks with Nature Careers about giving first authorship to a source with deep knowledge about water, the river itself. 🌍 🧪

I just published Allah/God: Why is he a ‘he’? medium.com/p/allah-god-...

Many of us are worried about AI. Many are also interested in what it can tell us about the human mind. Can we separate out our concerns and our scientific curiosity? A topic discussed in our latest episode, w/ @glupyan.bsky.social & @mcxfrank.bsky.social! Listen: disi.org/what-can-ai-...

"… higher education must develop students into fluent, intelligent, and ethical users of #AI and work to ensure that the benefits of AI reach broadly across communities," writes Marie Lynn Miranda in a new #ScienceEditorial. https://scim.ag/4dvOxot

Can i add, having a very informal 1-1 chat with Barbara Tversky that lasted for 2 hours, to my CV?

Full thread above, but in summary: When we imagine we re-activate brain regions used during perception, an idea called "sensory reinstatement". However, our results suggest this overlap is actually in transmodal association networks, not sensory areas. Perception culminates in transmodal networks

Media release at www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/new...

I agree. For me, at first, Academia was very much an identity and a calling. Years later, after some experience of terrible university management, it is "a job". Some other reflections (which turned out to be about workload management, and ways of working)

As Andy thoughtfully explains, certain technologies may be new, but our psychology isn't, and decades of psychology research can be used to explain questions like what goes viral online and why people enjoy sycophantic chatbots.

Honored to give the opening plenary @affectscience.bsky.social this year on AI & mental health! I shared what we’re learning at Flourish Science about bridging the gap between science and the real world. SAS has been my favorite conference since grad school, so this was especially meaningful ❤️

Language, Intelligence & Thought lab is looking for a lab manager! This is a 2-year postbac position that will allow you to gain experience in human neuroscience, cognitive science, and AI research prior to applying to PhD programs. Express interest here: forms.gle/npXEGUjGUbp5...

"Western listeners usually find music in major keys happy and in minor keys sad. By contrast, Papua New Guinean listeners felt no difference in happiness between major and minor keys, and Pakistani listeners found minor keys happier than major ones" www.nature.com/articles/d41...

“Understanding deep evolutionary origins of music & language requires inclusive & equitable collaborations across cultures & disciplines, weaving together Indigenous knowledge & the humanities with natural & social sciences.” Informative engaging essay by @patrickesavage.bsky.social in @nature.com.🧪

Beyond Self Worth: Social Worth as a Foundation of Subjective Well-being in Sub-Saharan Africa: https://osf.io/k8hwg

👩🏾‍🔬🐝🌌 Want to write popular science articles about your research for small-town newspapers in the U.S. to boost trust in science and support science literacy? Science Homecoming @sciencehomecoming.bsky.social has the information, tools, and volunteers to help you. www.sciencehomecoming.com

New article out exploring great ape name recognition! We find partial evidence that zoo-living chimps & bonobos know each other's names 👀 Huge thanks to Animal Behavior and Cognition (a great open-access journal) & co-authors for your collaboration!🎉🐵 unsvr1.com/web/abc/work...

New blogpost about a teaching experiment I'm doing this quarter: a "socratic tutor" bot to help students gain understanding of specific reading assignments. babieslearninglanguage.blogspot.com/2026/02/an-l...

Check it out🧠

Online Now: Reminders that chatbots are not human can be risky

A Nature Astronomy paper shows that Earth lies within a narrow “Goldilocks zone” that allows both nitrogen and phosphorus to be present with the right abundances in the mantle. More oxidized or reduced exoplanets may lock these elements in their cores, limiting habitability. 🔭 🧪

2026 big update to the psycholinguistic database page! If you know of corpora, lexical databases, or other resources that I've missed, please LMK. Trying to keep this thing relatively current and could use the help www.reilly-coglab.com/data

I always thought preschoolers were too egocentric to do well on communication tasks where they had to talk about novel referents. Old papers reported they'd say stuff like "this one looks like my uncle's hat." @vboyce.bsky.social shows that this is wrong! osf.io/preprints/ps...

Learn how to teach students that confidence is not equivalent to accuracy with a new Teaching Current Directions #Teaching #AI #cogpsyc

We’ve proven machines can learn to use language, but it took brute force to get there. Meanwhile, animal communication evolved over millions of years under real-world constraints, shaping systems that are adaptable and efficient. What can #AI learn from nature? 🧠 Read more: bit.ly/ai-biomimicry

“Our findings suggest the capacity to form secondary representations of pretend objects is within the cognitive potential of, at least, an enculturated ape & likely dates back 6-9 million years, to our common evolutionary ancestors.” Amalia Bastos & @chriskrupenye.bsky.social today in @science.org.🧪

Great apes may use playful teasing to learn about their social relationships. In a new paper, Erica Cartmill & I propose a bond-testing hypothesis for ape teasing. Out today in Phil Trans Biology: royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...

Could sometimes be a lack of understanding of what science is or how it works rather than a conscious anti science stance. Although it does lead to the same outcome at the end.

Publication bias is bad, sure. But has anyone studied publication bias in studies on publication bias? (They have. There isn’t.) doi.org/10.1136/bmj.... Next up: publication bias in studies on studies on studies of publication bias. #AcademicHumor #metascience #nerdhumor

Hey @andrameneganzin.bsky.social, this is such a great paper on why defining, capturing, and (most of all) analyzing the emergence of 'behavioural modernity' still is such an important topic link.springer.com/article/10.1.... Congrats.

The urgent need for African research collaboration on medicine quality " #Africa cannot regulate what it cannot see, and it cannot see what it has not studied" @sociologyoxford.bsky.social#Africa#Health #PublicHealth

Humans are using more water than the Earth can support, with many water sources already damaged beyond repair, the report found

1/7 Look, Mom, no hands! They have studied the age at which chimpanzees take the most risks (jumping and doing crazy things from tree to tree). It turns out that they have a peak in childhood, and it decreases as they grow older. This tells us something very interesting about ourselves.

𝗨𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗦𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰 𝗨𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 Great book about what understanding means in science. Highly recommend it. Amazing historical account of cases studies in physics but applies to physical sciences more broadly. Slow/repetitive at times but lots of gems if you stick with it.

Why isn’t modern AI built around principles from cognitive science or neuroscience? Starting a substack (infinitefaculty.substack.com/p/why-isnt-m...) by writing down my thoughts on that question: as part of a first series of posts giving my current thoughts on the relation between these fields. 1/3

A common problem w/ studies testing non-WEIRD groups is they compare multiple groups using the same WEIRD measure. How can we compare groups w/ apples-apples measures w/o distorting cross-cultural differences? We explore this in this new paper! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

“It is a profound gift to know that when a chimpanzee stares into a person’s eyes, they too could be reflecting on their beliefs about humans.” - Brian Hare (photo by Innocent Ampeire) www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

“Critically assessing the literature, we found it beset by conceptual & methodological flaws & limitations, undermining claims that the gut microbiome is causally involved in etiology/pathophysiology of autism” Crucial PSA from @wiringthebrain.bsky.social @statsepi.bsky.social @deevybee.bsky.social🧪

So, this marks our first 50 years. Thank you all for participating in the #BUCLD50 and for the contributions and support of our community! With all of you, we look forward to the next 50 years. Photos and other exciting materials are on the way! ##BUCLD50 #BUCLD #LanguageDevelopment