New preprint! AI agents have shown impressive scientific automation capabilities. Can we apply them to psychology research, *including* human data collection? We introduce auto-psych, a framework that proposes cognitive models and uses them to design and run human experiments. 1/

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

1/ 🚨 New opinion piece: "Can we automatize scientific discovery in the cognitive sciences?" We lay out a vision for a fully automated, in-silico science of the mind, where modern AI systems run every stage of the scientific discovery cycle in cognitive science 🧵 #AutomatedDiscovery #AI4Science

How do human minds make sense of big, messy problems? 😵‍💫🌀 How do we distill complexity into something simple enough to solve? 🤔💡 We’ll be tackling these questions (and more!) at two workshops on task representations, abstractions, and construals #CogSci2026 #CCN2026 🧵 framing-the-problem.github.io

One of the first studies from my PhD is out now in JEP:G 🥳We tested whether people can infer the truth from teachers who were either helpful, misleading, or randomly sampling. With Keith Ransom and @perfors.net psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

1/ New preprint! Reasoning models often require hundreds of task examples and thousands of rollouts to improve on a task. How can they learn more from much less? Introducing CORE: contrastive self-reflection for rapid, sample-efficient, and interpretable self-improvement 🧵

1\ Can you make this Roman-numeral equation true by moving exactly one matchstick?

Excited to share our new publication, “Measuring Naturalistic Speech Comprehension in Real Time”! ➡️ rdcu.be/fa3hk #psynomBRM w/ @kriesjill.bsky.social, Shiven Gupta, Maria Papworth Burrel, & @lauragwilliams.bsky.social 🧵1/11

Now up as a reviewed @elife.bsky.social preprint: "Continuous developmental changes in word recognition support language learning across early childhood" elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre... Using data from ~2000 kids ages 1-6, we quantify links between word recognition and early vocabulary growth!

Now out in Cognition, work with the great @gershbrain.bsky.social @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social on formalizing self-handicapping as rational signaling! 📃 authors.elsevier.com/a/1lo8f2Hx2-...

How do we predict what others will do next? 🤔 We look for patterns. But what are the limits of this ability? In our new paper at CCN 2025 (@cogcompneuro.bsky.social), we explore the computational constraints of human pattern recognition using the classic game of Rock, Paper, Scissors 🗿📄✂️

My final project from grad school is out now in Dev Psych! Mombasa County preschoolers were more accurate on object-based than picture-based vocabulary assessments, whereas Bay Area preschoolers were equally accurate on object-based and picture-based assessments. psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?d...

In neuroscience, we often try to understand systems by analyzing their representations — using tools like regression or RSA. But are these analyses biased towards discovering a subset of what a system represents? If you're interested in this question, check out our new commentary! Thread:

When people form conventions in reference games, how easy are they for outsiders to interpret? (for values of "outsider" that include naïve humans and vision-language models) Check out @vboyce.bsky.social's poster today at #CogSci2025 to find out. paper: escholarship.org/uc/item/16c4...

How can we use modern NLP methods to get lots of granular data from think-aloud experiments? Watch @danielwurgaft.bsky.social explain how in the Reasoning session at 4pm this afternoon at #CogSci2025 paper: arxiv.org/abs/2505.23931

How do people trade off between speed and accuracy in reasoning tasks without easy heuristics? Come to my talk, "Thinking fast, slow, and everywhere in between in humans and language models," in the Reasoning session this afternoon #CogSci2025 to find out! paper: escholarship.org/uc/item/5td9...

🚨New paper! We know models learn distinct in-context learning strategies, but *why*? Why generalize instead of memorize to lower loss? And why is generalization transient? Our work explains this & *predicts Transformer behavior throughout training* without its weights! 🧵 1/

How can we combine the process-level insight that think-aloud studies give us with the large scale that modern online experiments permit? In our new CogSci paper, we show that speech-to-text models and LLMs enable us to scale up the think-aloud method to large experiments!

Delighted to announce our CogSci '25 workshop at the interface between cognitive science and design 🧠🖌️! We're calling it: 🏺Minds in the Making🏺 🔗 minds-making.github.io June – July 2024, free & open to the public (all career stages, all disciplines)

the functional form of moral judgment is (sometimes) the nash bargaining solution new preprint👇

Despite the world being on fire, I can't help but be thrilled to announce that I'll be starting as an Assistant Professor in the Cognitive Science Program at Dartmouth in Fall '26. I'll be recruiting grad students this upcoming cycle—get in touch if you're interested!

Super excited to submit a big sabbatical project this year: "Continuous developmental changes in word recognition support language learning across early childhood": osf.io/preprints/ps...

Hello bluesky world :) excited to share a new paper on data visualization literacy 📈 🧠 w/ @judithfan.bsky.social, @arnavverma.bsky.social, Holly Huey, Hannah Lloyd, @lacepadilla.bsky.social! 📝 preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps... 💻 code: github.com/cogtoolslab/...

AI models are fascinating, impressive, and sometimes problematic. But what can they tell us about the human mind? In a new review paper, @noahdgoodman.bsky.social and I discuss how modern AI can be used for cognitive modeling: osf.io/preprints/ps...

1/13 New Paper!! We try to understand why some LMs self-improve their reasoning while others hit a wall. The key? Cognitive behaviors! Read our paper on how the right cognitive behaviors can make all the difference in a model's ability to improve with RL! 🧵

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... 🧵

What counts as in-context learning (ICL)? Typically, you might think of it as learning a task from a few examples. However, we’ve just written a perspective (arxiv.org/abs/2412.03782) suggesting interpreting a much broader spectrum of behaviors as ICL! Quick summary thread: 1/7

Do you want to understand how language models work, and how they can change language science? I'm recruiting PhD students at UBC Linguistics! The research will be fun, and Vancouver is lovely. So much cool NLP happening at UBC across both Ling and CS! linguistics.ubc.ca/graduate/adm...

If you try to replicate a finding so you can build on it, but your study fails, what should you do? Should you follow up and try to "rescue" the failed rep, or should you move on? Boyce et al. tried to answer this question; in our sample, 5 of 17 rescue projects succeeded. osf.io/preprints/ps...

Preprint alert! After 4 years, I’m super excited to share work with @thecharleywu.bsky.social @gershbrain.bsky.social and Eric Schulz on the rise and fall of technological development in virtual communities in #OneHourOneLife #ohol doi.org/10.31234/osf...

How well can we understand an LLM by interpreting its representations? What can we learn by comparing brain and model representations? Our new paper highlights intriguing biases in learned feature representations that make interpreting them more challenging! 1/

When a replication fails, researchers have to decide whether to make another attempt or move on. How should we think about this decision? Here's a new paper trying to answer this question, led by Veronica Boyce and featuring student authors from my class! osf.io/preprints/ps...