Mapping Extreme Deviations in Cognition to Transdiagnostic Compulsivity: A Normative Modelling Approach: https://osf.io/9bt4u

Spent my Saturday with a “32km” (more like 36km/7 hour) 1:1 meeting with my supervisor @alexandrapike.bsky.social 🚶‍♀️~ all for a good cause for the Mentally Fit York Fund 🧠 though our physical health was definitely questionned 👣🩹

New preprint from the work of my placement and final year of undergrad! 🚨 We investigated the applicability of normative modelling to large-scale, gamified cognitive data, and explored how corresponding extreme deviations from the norm relate to transdiagnostic compulsivity. osf.io/preprints/ps...

New preprint! How do threat beliefs drive avoidance & what happens when avoidance prevents us from verifying them? New work showing a bidirectional link between beliefs and avoidance! Lucky to work w @ondrejzika.bsky.social @nicoschuck.bsky.social @tobywise.bsky.social osf.io/preprints/ps...

So exciting to see @lucysta02475610.bsky.social present the results of her mammoth, multi-year project to develop a questionnaire measuring the Negative Appraisal of Gastric Sensations (NAGS): it differentiates between people with eating disorders and gastric disorders! @yorkpsychology.bsky.social

💥New paper out! Why do some people generalise threat more than others? We show that anxious people generalise more strongly, even after accounting for perceptual mistakes. A huge (!) thanks to @ondrejzika.bsky.social @nicoschuck.bsky.social and @bernhardspitzer.bsky.social

Excited to receive the @britishacademy.bsky.social's Early Career Researcher Seed Grant for our project “Understanding the dynamics of control in eating disorders” 🌀🌱 with @alexandrapike.bsky.social #BAECRNSeedFund

Thoroughly enjoyed writing a commentary on a great paper by @hugofleming.bsky.social et al for @biologicalpsych.bsky.social:GOS, focusing on how to further explore metabolic contributions to learning and feeling using real-time data and interventional designs: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

In factor analysis, why does the commonly used CNG method nearly always land at 3 factors when applied to anx/depr/ocd scales? TLDR: There tends to be one factor/component with a large eigenvalue. In these cases, almost inevitably and somewhat arbitrarily, the procedure selects 3 factors 👇

Thrilled to have our new scoping review examining the longitudinal effects of social media on sleep in youth in Computers in Human Behavior Reports www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Why do some people feel a “not-quite-right” sensation before they pick their skin? The first ever systematic review on interoception and skin-picking disorder explores how bodily cues and affective touch might help explain the urge. #SkinPickingDisorder #Interoception 🧵 THREAD

Very happy that this is out www.nature.com/articles/s44.... Together with @stefankiebel.bsky.social we show that decision biases in context-dependent decision making, previously attributed to different forms of value normalization, are very well explained by habit-like action repetition.

Out now in Translational Psychiatry! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Sookud and colleagues found that individuals with higher compulsivity and intrusive thoughts develop a less certain internal understanding of the external world, and this mediates the link between symptoms and goal-directed behaviors.

Really excited to have had the opportunity to write this article ! IU is one of my main research areas so I really enjoyed writing about this paper 😊

JOB ALERT: I am offering a 4-year funded PhD opportunity. The position is specifically linked to the project “Assessing the balance between goal-directed and habitual processing through the course of learning". The project is about learning habits and include eye tracking and pupillometry...

This article is now published in @plosone.org. journals.plos.org/plosone/arti... New analysis added: seemingly habitual responses are explained because contingency deg didn't work for some participants (in line with recent outcome dev results in our lab and in @clairegillan.bsky.social lab)

Taken together, our results advance our understanding of the dynamics of fun in realistic environments. They also emphasize the importance of using realistic, game-like environments together with highly-controlled experiments to advance our theories of human motivation & learning. 4/4

🚨 I am over the moon 🌓 to announce that I am joining University College Dublin @ucddublin.bsky.social as an Assistant Professor this fall to start the Uncertain Mind (UMI) lab 💫 I am looking for PhD/Postdoc candidates to join (more below 👇 ). Please RT as the deadline is pretty soon 🙏

New qualitative paper! A foray into gastric interception. @lucysta02475610.bsky.social ran a LOT of focus groups, across groups with eating disorders, gastric disorders and neither, to understand how people experience the sensations from their GI system. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

B2B Cognition & Mental Health Lab talks, with unintention twinning titles 🎭 Me: The promise and pitfalls of 📱/ real-life data Alex: The promise and pitfalls of computational modelling 🧮 📍Centre for Decision Science Summer School @alexandrapike.bsky.social

🚨New pre-print out! 🍂 Using daily gamified smartphone 📱 tracking, we found that reductions in both self- and decision-making confidence precede when people are likely to report experiencing symptoms of OCD. www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-7...

I'm looking for ~25 more people with a gastrointestinal disorder to complete an online survey on interoception. You can find this survey here: sites.google.com/york.ac.uk/l... 🙏

🚨PREPRINT ALERT🚨 Why do some people get stuck doing things that no longer make sense, or are even harmful? Our new study shows compulsivity isn’t just about weakened goal-directed control; people high in compulsivity also form stronger habits 📄: osf.io/preprints/ps... #PaperFairy #Habits #CogSci

New preprint! Habits should get stronger with more practice, right? Well, this crucial result has been difficult to reproduce in human labs. In an instant classic, de Wit (2018) showed 5 failures in obtaining more evidence of habits in conditions with more training -as compared to little trained

I promise I missed the #CPConf2025 Travel Award photo because I was boarding my ✈️ and NOT due to punting 🛶 .. Grateful for the opportunity to present my work 📱, met up with friends & eat delicious german apple cake

Come to my fan-tastic poster at #CPConf2025 🪭 Poster 35 to find out all things habits, gamification or to get a quick cool down 🥵

What does this tell us? At least some of the implicit assumptions when advocating for the use of computational models in psychiatry are not met for these popular tasks and computational models -> limiting utility.

🚨 New paper alert! Do time constraints reveal habitual behaviour? 🤔 We directly compared two major paradigms in the habit research field (Outcome Devaluation vs Response Remapping) under identical training and forced-response conditions 🧠 ⏲️ ⌨️ preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Me: "What did you learn at journal club today?" Intern: "That one day I'm going to publish a paper, and a bunch of people are going to sit around a table and rip it apart."

The way we feel affects the way we think. Can we find evidence for this in real-world mood and cognitive performance? For a few weeks, we followed people through their daily lives on their smartphones to answer this question! 📱🌍🧠 #neuroskyence osf.io/preprints/ps...

Very happy to see this published open-access in Behavior Research Methods now 🤗 #neuroskyence doi.org/10.3758/s134...

Touched down in the motherland 🇮🇪 for #RLDM2025 Excited to be apart of this explosive line-up 💥 My 🎯? To cram in as many 👾-related puns as possible

If you’re at @rldmdublin2025.bsky.social next week, consider joining our workshop on real-world RL! You can sign up to our mailing list for updates here, even if you don’t attend: sites.google.com/view/rlinthe...

& that’s a wrap! 💫 4 amazing years done at this wonderful lab 🧠📱 Ending on a high having passed my PhD-viva 👩🏻‍🎓 Endless thank yous to (AWOL) @clairegillan.bsky.social & the lab for all their support (& attention to detail 🎈💞🎀🌸) and to @tobiasuhauser.bsky.social & Sonia Bishop for examining

Two days left for contributed talks submissions 🤖💫 sites.google.com/view/game-on...

#HELP anyone know of any external travel grants supporting ECR to attend a european-based conference ? 🥺🤞🏻 (in that awkward phase between PhD & postdoc with no 💸😓) #ECR #travelgrant #psych #comppsych #cogpsych

A super review paper about variability in decision-making, by an even super human 🥹 👏🏼 @jduffy9.bsky.social

A *really* important piece of work - if anxiety-provoking - on biases in questionnaire-filling behaviour and how they can relate to our cognitive measures of interest in large crowdsourced samples. 1/3

Paper out in PLOS Mental Health 2 weeks ago 🙈 but better late than never! Collab with @smfleming.bsky.social and @tobiasuhauser.bsky.social. We investigated how confidence is altered in transdiagnostic compulsivity across memory and perception, as memory confidence is typically lowered in OCD. (1/4)

Finally coming down to earth after some very big and exciting academic/personal wins recently ✨☁️ … First, last Friday I submitted my PhD thesis 🥳 which used 📱 games to explore the cognitive mechanisms underlying repetitive behaviours in psychiatry 🧠☄️⚙️ Yes, I did wear a tiara 👸🏻

One to save 💾 ~ especially with New Years Resolutions around the corner, wanting to either make or break habits with neuroscience-backed tricks! 🧠 Happy to have co-authored this review out now in TiCS, with more to come from Team Habit 🫂

Null findings are important ‼️ Excited to share my latest work finding model-based planning does NOT improve following ketamine 💉, antidepressant 💊, or iCBT 👩‍💻 treatments 🧵👇🏻

why is that effortful task SO unappealing today? v happy to share a BIG effort from my PhD! Real-world fluctuations in motivation drive effort-based choices https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/w3x7d with incredible co-authors Dr Agnes Norbury, Prof Quentin Huys & @tobiasuhauser.bsky.social

Are you interested in gamified smartphone assessments or in ApoE-e4 effects on cognition? Come visit my poster 722 at #AAIC2024 to chat! 😊🧠 So excited to present more of PhD work with Neureka in Philadelphia this year!

Interested in the structure of psychopathology? We have a new preprint for you osf.io/preprints/ps... led by @celinef.bsky.social "Mechanistic arbitration between candidate dimensions of psychopathology"

Proud day in the lab yesterday! Dr Sharon Chi Tak Lee @ctlee.bsky.social passed her viva with NO CORRECTIONS 🙌 Big thanks to examiners Clare Kelly clarekelly.bsky.social and Adam Chekroud for what I gather was a thoughtful and challenging viva. Way to go, Sharon!

Vagal signals are classically seen as inhibitory but there is lots of evidence suggesting they are way more adaptive than that. @nbkroemer.bsky.social and I packed them into an easily digestible TiCS review for you to feast on 🔥 50 day free access, and a little appetizer 👇 🧠🟦 tinyurl.com/bdh279jv

📢 Delighted to share the second preprint of my PhD work! 🎉   Across 2️⃣ experiments (N=3410 unpaid citizen scientists, N=52 paid participants), we developed a new smartphone game 📱👾 to measure metacognition 🧠 reliably, rapidly and remotely over time   osf.io/preprints/ps... … 1/10

📢 Excited to share the first preprint of my PhD!🧠 doi.org/10.31234/osf... Do you feel you have memory problems? And would an objective test detect any? Both subjective & objective insights can help in early detection of cognitive decline. Here, we used the Neureka app📱 to study both! 1/8