Preprint alert (link below)! @maxencepajot.bsky.social, @standehaene.bsky.social, and I show that human adults, but not convolutional or transformer networks, encode geometric shapes in hierarchically structured representations. TL;DR: Geometric-shape representations have internal syntax! 1/8

Paper w/ Gergely Csibra now out in Psych Review! Work in CogDev often assumes that infant object representations are perceptual/spatial in origin. There is a ton of beautiful work showing that this is not always the case — e.g. they represent objects that they are only told about (1/4) (links below)

New paper in Open Mind! What does it mean to help? What is the goal of a helping action? We wanted to probe infants' & preschoolers' helping concept - specifically, whether they think helpers reduce others' action costs. direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...

New paper from my dissertation out in Psych Review! I argue that early pretend play reflects a human-specific, general capacity to interpret objects as symbols. Preprint below. psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/...