New season, new desktop backgrounds david.tompkins.computer/read/pirate-...

Not a popular opinion, but I think there are good uses for AI in research. Here are some. david.tompkins.computer/read/ways-i-...

I think I figured out exactly how the “AI used a bottle of water per prompt” miscalculation happened open.substack.com/pub/andymasl...

What is a psychological theory? Here's our take on this tricky and controversial question in this week's Experimentology chapter summary. Many things called "theories" in psychology aren't actually theories — they're frameworks. 🧵 experimentology.io

ManuscriptManager keeps track of how often you log in??!

- @skucker.bsky.social & Schneider (2026): most prominent source of media exposure early in life is not children's personal use of devices, but indirect exposure thru background media use ➡️ need to consider broader media envt, not just screen in front of child #infancypapers doi.org/10.1111/infa...

We're excited to be attending CDS 2026 in Montreal! Visit our posters to learn more about the research happening at the Infant Cognition Lab! 🌸 #cds2026 #cognitivedevelopment #ucdavis #conference #cognitivedevelopmentsociety

The Play and Learning Lab is off to CDS 2026 with 3 posters! P1-109— How does historical time limit our understanding of development? P4-62— Assessing toddlers' puzzle-solving with Bayesian item response models P2-36— A new 3D block test for measuring mental rotation in 3-5 year olds Come say hi 👋

Are tropical birds prettier because of a need for conceptual camouflage? Like does being ugly among beauty jump out at some level of visual processing?

Deeply perverse that R uses install.packages() instead of packages.install()

Mediation with cross-sectional data is still a no-no right? Seems to be appearing more and more often lately

I made a really good but very damp pie this weekend. david.tompkins.computer/read/award-w...

Got 3 acceptances and 2 rejections for the same talk - looking forward to seeing folks in Ottawa with 60% certainty!

Disaster. Soup from scratch. Left out all night. Chicken Soup for the Sink.

meta analyses and scoping/systematic reviews should include a zotero import file

Historical time is sometimes about history and other times about time

There is no hotdog like a Denver Airport hotdog

Found them!

Submitted my first first author paper, now it’s time to reopen the doc and find the typos

I know it would be hard, but shouldn’t we have better ways to compare manipulation sizes? Effect sizes without manipulation sizes seem suboptimal

A reminder to talk to your family about AI scams this winter holiday! Set up a code word, so even if a scammer sounds like you on the phone, they won’t be fooled

For something that is so clearly slop, stew isn’t.

Yes, Neon Genesis Evangelion is an appropriate aesthetic for an academic talk. Surely

Finally had this moment from the teaching side

Quick, someone who’s good at computers - is this good??

Has anyone seen any running lists of replication attempts in developmental psychology? Surprisingly hard to find!

A master student and an undergrad in the lab told me that I remind them of their dads. They must have very young and extremely cool dads!

Came back to my computer after a long weekend away - this image is up in Google search. No recollection of what i was working on.

I got an inter-library book to read up on historical changes in childhood - and a flyer on pandemic era book sanitation practices fell out. Really on the nose

The most ominous door in the Ithaca Mall

Learning about IRT is like finding a hammer and suddenly everything looks like nails

Hate to say it, but the older i get, the more i like kebab-case

Last call before it returns to storage!

Anyone need some old MiniDV tapes digitized? I’ve been digitizing an old dataset and have a whole setup ready to go. Will do for free if it’s research or planned for open access!

Digitizing old camcorder tapes, eating doritos, and drinking a monster. 2008 all over again

🧠How “old” is your model? Put it to the test with the KiVA Challenge: a new benchmark for abstract visual reasoning, grounded in real developmental data from children and adults. 🏆 Prizes: 🥇$1K to the top model 🥈🥉$500 📅 Deadline: 10/7/25 🔗 kiva-challenge.github.io @iccv.bsky.social

They don’t want you to know this, but if you use computational methods, you’re allowed to get a little snack while the computer thinks for you

It’s nice how local news still looks like it was filmed in 2004. A simpler time

Reading papers while listening to brainrot; balance in all things

I’m making a new remote touchscreen task for 2-6 year olds - any platform recommendations? It needs the ability to do an adaptive staircase and open source is preferred! Should i just build it out in js?

I’m trying to learn about topic modeling but the paper keeps summoning ghosts

Been reading bibliometric analysis, and it’s weird, every method seems to be entirely bottom up with almost no interpretation from the theory or knowledge base of the field. Seems like a good way to miss something.

Whoever came up with the word ‘synthetic’ nailed it. What a fun word

Now officially out with nice formatting and all 🥳 "Thinking clearly about age, period, and cohort effects" -- a gentle introduction to the age-period-cohort problem and how to "solve" it through various types of assumptions. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Why is it supposedly hard to write Superman since he’s ‘too strong’, but it works seamlessly for every isekai?

This is shameful and should be rejected in the strongest terms. This is suffering by another name. The authors mean well but advocate tragedy. Economists do not support degrowth. Should psychologists study how to encourage raw milk drinking? Or cigarette smoking? www.nature.com/articles/s41...

80% power is such a weirdly low target and completely at odds with our general significance obsession. Wherefore 80%??

My favorite part of this app is when I come across a paper notice for a different field and they’re so excited for terms I’ve never heard of. New paper shows flarmbic system predicts ionic backglow in wichen!! Like heck yeah brother