I have news! After 4 fabulous years at Northeastern, this July I will be moving to Duke—with tenure! It’s hard to convey how grateful I am to everyone who has made this possible: from old professors in Mexico and mentors in the US to students, colleagues, and, of course, my amazing wife and family.

Imagination in bonobos! I am thrilled to share a new paper w/ Amalia Bastos, out now in @science.org We provide the first experimental evidence that a nonhuman animal can follow along a pretend scenario & track imaginary objects. Work w/ Kanzi, the bonobo, at Ape Initiative youtu.be/NUSHcQQz2Ko

Anyway my nous paper just came out properly if you wanna read way too much about perceptual category representations onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

New w/ @drbarner.bsky.social! We argue that children's struggle to represent the past and future in common tests of knowledge may stem from difficulties in hypothetical reasoning about imaginary timelines, rather than a lack of knowledge about time. 1/n academic.oup.com/chidev/advan...

I just created a series of seven deep-dive videos about AI, which I've posted to youtube and now here. 😊 Targeted to laypeople, they explore how LLMs work, what they can do, and what impacts they have on learning, well-being, disinformation, the workplace, the economy, and the environment.

Dear infant scientist friends, What's the latest in infant eye tracking in terms of hardware? What are you using, are you happy, is there something I should consider, has there been some development in the last 10 years that I might not know about, etc etc? Thanks! #devpsy #PsychSciSky

Remember a true pre-storm French Toast run includes: Milk Eggs Bread A nice beverage as a treat from Page & Leaf cafe A beefy book or two recommended by a libromancer Candles A journal to finally start your novel Ingredients for the hex Anything less is just screwin' around at Market Basket

Great new initiative from the editors of Perception: Philosophy Corner. A forum for "accessible reflections on the conceptual foundations of sensory/perception science where empirical insight meets philosophical inquiry". journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

The 52nd annual meeting of the SPP will be at JHU, June 17-20 📣 Submit your work by January 16! 📣

no they do not, thanks for coming to my tedtalk.

a project I really like, now officially out! "Shape Guides Visual Pretense" by Qian and me paper link: direct.mit.edu/opmi/article... I'll walk through a quick version here To get a sense of it, first consider: Would it make more sense to pretend that this block is a car, or a strawberry?

And Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, but rather underwent fission into two separate streams of consciousness which we may, for convenience, dub Lefty and Righty...

somebody at UChicago is feeding preprints to LLMs without authors' consent, in a research study they have the gall to suggest to authors they've opted-in that they volunteer to evaluate the LLMs' suggestions regarding their own work. lol, lmao even. here is the invite and my reply

18 DEGREES

Beautiful experimental philosophy paper on what people ordinarily mean when they say that a statement is “true” Turns out it’s not always about corresponding correctly to the facts. Sometimes it’s more closely related to a moral ideal of “truthfulness” philarchive.org/archive/ZYGTJN

Publication day! It’s been a long journey to get to this point, and I’m grateful to everyone who’s supported that, and to @routledgebooks.bsky.social for publishing it.

He sees you when you’re sleeping. Hmmm. He knows when you’re awake. Okay. He knows if you've been bad or good. Interesting... What else does Santa Claus know, and how does he know it?

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (seems accurate)

A theoretical physics answer to the age old question of whether God could make a rock so heavy he himself could not lift it: "The physical universe when pushed far past its natural limits does allow the creation of an unliftable rock" #philosophy #philpapers philpapers.org/rec/ANDCGM

I know of some work vaguely in this direction (e.g., studies on how non-human primates don't learn language) but wanted to ask: does anyone know studies/literature on whether non-human animals ask questions? (My understanding is they don't but want to read the lit before I form a strong view.)

A new project to digitize the complete works of Rudolf Carnap will be getting underway...

This platform is so important! It allows researchers regardless of their university prestige to do research! So important for leveling the playing field for many developmental psychologist scientist from under resourced institutions. Please consider donating - donations will be matched!

/ UH OH / FROM COMMUNICATION #1 @ communication.weatherishappening.com/weather-is-h... (SUBSCREYEB) / UR NEW ENGLAND IS WARMING DRAMATICALLY FASTER THAN THE REST OF UR EMPIRE / THAN THE REST OF UR WHOLE PLANET / "WILL WE EVER GET REAL SNOWBLOBS AGAIN?" / IDK / U NEED 2 REPENT 2 UR WEATHER LORDS

When we see something that's moving, our memories about it end up projected forward in time: We remember it further along than it was. In a new paper in 𝘗𝘴𝘺𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘚𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦, out today and led by @dillonplunkett.bsky.social, we demonstrate that this happens even when there is 𝙣𝙤 𝙢𝙤𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩𝙨𝙤𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧.🧵

This is a fundraising post! An anonymous donor is matching contributions to Children Helping Science up to 100K through the end of the year - if it's in your giving budget, please consider supporting open science infrastructure! giving.mit.edu/search/node/... Details below...

DONT DO IT open.substack.com/pub/backofmi...

There's no rationale, no theory, no evidence that connects chasing replicability to actual scientific progress or discovery. We're looking for ways to bypass the laborious scientific process of exploration. It's a pity that we waste our increasingly limited research resources on futile searches.

🚨🚨🚨 Our 52nd Annual Meeting will be held from June 18–20, 2026 at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, with a pre-conference on Mental Control and Agency held at JHU on June 17 🚨🚨🚨 We are currently inviting submissions of papers (talks and posters)!

Notre Dame has three *open-rank* faculty positions in the Institute for Educational Initiatives. These positions are part of a strategic initiative to build on our excellence in educational research and action--both within education and across associated disciplines. Details in thread.

My typos making the concepts I write about so diminutive and cute - representinos. functinos. computatinos

If I've done my sums right, the book is available to pre-order on Tuesday, and Tuesday is also the final day of Routledge's 'Black Friday' sale which means everything is 25% off. So if anyone was thinking about pre-ordering, Tuesday might be a good day for it.

My lab at USC is recruiting! 1) research coordinator: perfect for a recent graduate looking for research experience before applying to PhD programs: usccareers.usc.edu REQ20167829 2) PhD students: see FAQs on lab website dornsife.usc.edu/hklab/faq/

We know that, for a ton of reasons, a lot of folks don't have as much to spend as they'd like this holiday season. Sooooooo, here's a thread of things you can do that will support your local indie bookstore or other business WITHOUT spending any more than you intended...

My Visual Attention in Crisis paper has finally appeared, along with 30 commentaries and response. I argue that it’s time to rethink attention from the ground up, and suggest key phenomena and possible directions. Requires access, alas. doi.org/10.1017/S014...

New paper from @tashaunalb.bsky.social, Roger Strong, and me! We find that the ability to split attention between non-contiguous locations develops quite late - between 6 and 8 years of age! Now out in APP. #visionscience #psychscisky #devpsych link.springer.com/epdf/10.3758...

📣📣 A recent paper by Michelle A. Hurst et al. in JCD: "Children’s Interpretation of “Before” And “After” For Consecutive and Non-Consecutive Numbers and Events" www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

compensated online study opportunity for parents of 11-13mo! (for this one babies need to be: full term (>37wks), in the u.s., primarily learning English). i'm part of the broader study team but not driving the bus, just helping spread the word! childrenhelpingscience.com/studies/900e...

"Does our plastic actually get recycled?" The #CamberVille newsletter is always excellent, but this one is truly a must-read: a deep dive into the recycling processing plant where all of Somerville's recycling winds up: mailchi.mp/bostonglobe....

Excited to head north this week for some talks! Come say hi if you're nearby :) Wednesday (11/12) @ Brown: events.brown.edu/copsy/event/... Thursday (11/13) @ MIT: bcs.mit.edu/events/collo...

if you’ve had Szechuan peppercorns do you experience them more as a) tingly (like a vibration) or b) numbing (like super weak lidocaine) ~And~ are you colorblind (we‘d need to correct for base rates but let’s just try to crank the anecdata knob first; @elenatenenbaum.bsky.social this is for you)

I had a fantastic conversation recently with the 10 Seconds to Air podcast. We tried to think about parenting, the philosophy of parenting, and how to know if you are doing a good job at it--or is that even the right question. www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1sE...

Gee, thanks for this "clarifying" diagram~

Now out in an issue! ~~ www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

THE MOON

Had the incredible opportunity to discuss impacts of federal research funding cuts on @fluxsociety.bsky.social Sensitive Periods podcast with @tcheng.bsky.social @scott-delaney.bsky.social and Gabriel León. Listen and share! sensitiveperiods.buzzsprout.com/2024695/epis... #sciencecuts #NIH #NSF

On election day, I wanna announce that I am recruiting social psych PhD students for my lab at UIC. My lab focuses on racial identities (esp Asian, Latino, MENA Americans) and intra-minority conflict/ coalition. So please tell your students to pick me! All details on my website: www.pbandjlab.com

🗳️It's Election Day in Massachusetts! Polls are open until 8pm, so grab your loved ones and neighbors, and make a plan to vote. Find your polling location at WhereDoIVoteMA.com.

📣📣 A recent paper by Léa Tân Combette et al. in JCD: "Cats, Bats, and People: Cultivating Children’s Understanding of Genes and Trait Inheritance" www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Excited to share that my lab will be accepting applications for our very first PhD student to start in Fall 2026! Interested applicants can learn more about the lab here: wordpress.lehigh.edu/littlelearne... And Lehigh’s graduate program here: psychology.cas.lehigh.edu/graduate