Comeback moment: I ran the LA marathon yesterday and had a great time! Last year’s LA was my first marathon, and I dealt with stomach issues that derailed the run. Easy pacing and fueling tweaks helped me manage the unexpected heat and my stomach yesterday. The crowd support was phenomenal too.

I consistently have the best insights when writing or presenting work... writing is thinking, y'all!

I was an undergraduate intern in @cognition-zurich.bsky.social and can attest that it is such a warm and intellectually-stimulating research environment. I still miss lingering chats over coffee/tea after lunch. Definitely apply!

I came to Minneapolis to report on what's going on, and one of the main questions I showed up with is "just what is the scale of the resistance?" After all, we're all used to the news calling Portland a "war zone" or whatever when it's just some protests in one part of town.

🎉 New preprint 🎉 with Olya Bulatova, @drmack.bsky.social & @keisukefukuda.bsky.social! We decode shapes in working memory from EEG and show that representations are task-dependent, flexibly integrating information about category and task during the memory delay

“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.”—James Baldwin

Nasra Ahmed, a 23-year-old US citizen, was arrested and detained by ICE. She was held for TWO DAYS. ICE agents handcuffed her, called her a racial slur, and she was knocked to the ground so hard she got a concussion. This cannot continue happening. ICE needs to leave.

Beyond cruel.

ICE shot out a young trans man's eyes for the crime of caring about his neighbors.

Second this! I really like Owlstown for easy & effective academic websites.

My husband @jordancahn.bsky.social and I frequently do ranked choice voting when picking movies. Follow me for more marriage tips.

New in cognitive psychology 👉 "Impaired Performance in Noise: Disentangling Listening Effort From the Irrelevant Speech Effect." #RegisteredReport from @jannawennberg.bsky.social, @naseemdh.com, @violetsarebrown.bsky.social, and @juliafstrand.bsky.social doi.org/10.1525/coll...

If you have money to spare these holidays but you & your loved ones don’t want more things, consider sending some items to the Philly Community Legal Services donation drive. Items are for clients fighting to keep their families together. My sister works at CLS! www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/...

And it is a truth universally acknowledged that sometimes you should use passive voice.

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.

Metadata matters! If you submit a preprint to PsyArXiv, to ensure smooth acceptance, don't forget to fill out the metadata correctly. Below you will find a few tips, but detailed guidelines are at 👉 buff.ly/M3cRBW2

Young Janna approves

I typically say that I study visual memory because that prompts cool questions even if they’re not exactly related. When I say “psychology,” I get questions like “Can I send my mother-in-law to you?” Which is not only misunderstanding my job but also just rude.

Absolute debasement of academic standards *student submits opinion in psych class *gets bad grade *instructor says she can make whatever arguments she wants but must draw on empirical sources *student & Turning Point says her religious freedom & first amendment rights violated *professor suspended

While waiting for a piano lesson (age 11), I flipped through my teacher’s stack of NatGeo magazines and found a piece about human memory (profile of a famous patient with anterograde amnesia and another with hyperthymnesia). I re-read the article before every lesson from then on.

The Kiyonaga Cognitive Neuroscience lab @ UCSD has four posters this year at #sfn2025 ! Come say hi!

Update: My eight-legged carpool buddy has been nonviolently removed!

I’m not particularly afraid of spiders, but it *is* a bit disconcerting to have a spider with the legspan of a ping-pong ball hanging out on the inside windshield for your entire commute…

The Computational and Cognitive Neural Sciences lab (ballardlab.org) at UC Riverside is recruiting psychology PhD students to join our team! Check out the flyer to learn about the lab and our stellar research community at UCR. Apply by 12/1! drive.google.com/file/d/19m8i...

Really excellent piece. I‘m proud to call @ravmike.bsky.social my rabbi! forward.com/opinion/7804...

Do these people know what THE GREAT GATSBY is even about?

One tactic these data guys use online is to dismiss academic work they don’t like by calling it “overly complex” or “disconnected from reality.” I call this anti-rigor propaganda. It’s a move to sour people on serious scholarship when you don’t have better evidence. Adam addresses it in the piece.

NYT pushed its “Dems must go moderate” take again yesterday. In a new piece out today, @adambonica.bsky.social shows even more clearly why the data don’t support it. It also shows what a skilled empiricist and teacher Adam is. Very proud of my pal’s public work. open.substack.com/pub/data4dem...

Monty Python understood p-hacking

My postdoc and PhD advisors co-wrote a truly excellent paper!!!

As long as I am noting cognitive psychologists who took important stands against the repression of science and academics, let me highlight someone else. George Miller. For cognitive sorts, the famous 7 plus or minus two guy. Also in my academic family. In the magical number seven paper. 1/2

Wonderful work from my new labmates: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

This is arbitrary and seems intentionally cruel to announce this late in the cycle, especially without grandfathering in last year's cohort. Maybe they will change it back? In the meantime, spread the word.

What does it mean for objects to be a color? Turns out it’s a super hard question to answer! In my TEDx talk, I discuss the science (and wonder!!) of color perception, including bird vision, #TheDress, and how there aren’t “right” answers about what we perceive. youtu.be/gc9ydhNgt6U?...

I had a preprint approved recently* AND I am happy to have joined the moderation team! *I did not approve my own preprint

Checked off the ESSENTIAL first step before wading back into some fMRI data analysis

I gave a talk in 2009 about feature-based attention and a famous vision scientist asked how top down signals from PFC could possibly target the right sensory neurons. The best I could do was "uh, dunno". sunyoungp.bsky.social has a much more thoughtful answer journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

I am pleased to report that my first day as a postdoc (yesterday) STILL had excellent "first day of school energy."

I'm recruiting a lab manager for my soon-to-be-launched lab at Ohio State! If you know of any recent grads who may be interested both in helping to build the lab and in developing skills in the cognitive neuroscience of memory, please share! osu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/OSUCar...

Why are folks mad at the working mom with kids on Medicaid and SNAP rather than companies like Walmart that refuse to pay her a living wage and provide health insurance?

I got to use this book as the teaching assistant for grad stats (while working for @brialong.bsky.social !!). SUCH an awesome resource.

Nazi Germany did literally ban Nature: "Articles are often published in the London weekly scientific journal Nature containing outrageous and vile attacks on German science and the national socialist state. The journal must therefore be excluded from general use in the scientific libraries."

#workingmemory researchers! It's time to nominate all of our brilliant and wonderful female colleagues for the 2025 #WomWoM research fairy award! 🧚‍♀️🪄 Please share widely -- deadline 2nd August! bit.ly/2025womwomfa...

Mass deportation IS family separation. With colleagues @jordancfoster.bsky.social and @profdfhesq.bsky.social www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...

just had someone flag my writing for "chatGPT style" because i use m-dashes, and for the way i use commas. y'all, i've been using m-dashes since i was in like 5th grade and i have the 1995 word docs to prove it. see also: oxford commas and why you should use them.

Washington post continues its slide into state run media with this framing. It was millions not thousands. They don't deserve your money, instead find an independent source.

San Diego is full of dancing and amazing signs and families. Huge diverse coalition has come together for this. So much love and protection energy for our border community is here

San Diego SHOWED UP! I’ve been here for 30 years and have NEVER seen anything like this! #NOKINGS

Padilla: If this is how DHS responds to a senator with a question you can only imagine what they're doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California.

My spouse winds down after a stressful day by watching math-related YouTube videos. This is what I mean when I say that I’m (somehow) the *less* nerdy one in the relationship.