Last month, I launched my lab at Ohio State. Our lab website is now live, and we're recruiting graduate students this cycle! If you're interested in the cognitive (neuro)science of learning & memory, please reach out! www.momentslab.org

How does spontaneous memory reinstatement at rest relate to episodic memory during development? And how do early experiences influence neural mechanisms of episodic memory encoding and reinstatement? New preprint! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

smh the bots are just repeating themselves at this point

I am recruiting graduate students for Fall 2026 through both the cognitive and developmental areas at Ohio State. If you are interested in spatial cognition, visual perception, and/or mental representation -- please reach out! I'd love to hear from you. www.cogdevlab.org

Very excited to have @brynnsherman.bsky.social join us for the next @timingresforum.bsky.social Virtual Journal Club! Please join us for what should be a very interesting talk on her recent work! Sign-up details below: mailchi.mp/28692b147cb0...

Great to have another paper with @chazfirestone.bsky.social @ianbphillips.bsky.social and the brilliant Hanbei Zhou out! In this paper we demonstrate that stimuli within events are perceived further apart in time — an event-based analog of “object-based warping”. psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

The human visual system has specialized modular processing for multiple distinct categories of causal events. My new paper with my lab manager Katharina Wenig in Cognitive Science, "Causal Perception(s)" Free open access: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.... #CogSci #PsychSciSky 🧵(1/22)

Visual adaptation is viewed as a test of whether a feature is represented by the visual system. In a new paper, Sam Clarke and I push the limits of this test. We show spatially selective, putatively "visual" adaptation to a clearly non-visual dimension: Value! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

On the left is a rabbit. On the right is an elephant. But guess what: They’re the *same image*, rotated 90°! In @currentbiology.bsky.social, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I show how these images—known as “visual anagrams”—can help solve a longstanding problem in cognitive science. bit.ly/45BVnCZ

I'm recruiting a lab manager for my soon-to-be-launched lab at Ohio State! If you know of any recent grads who may be interested both in helping to build the lab and in developing skills in the cognitive neuroscience of memory, please share! osu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/OSUCar...

In the latest #UndertheCortex, @brynnsherman.bsky.social from @upenn.edu shares that repeated experiences are more vividly remembered and are often perceived as having occurred further in the past than they did.

There’s something funny about saying that someone caused something to happen when they didn’t act intentionally — as if that phrasing assigns unintended agency to them. Why is that? In this new paper below, we take a linguistic approach to answering this question. Lots of interesting data here!

The first student-led paper from my lab -- from (first-year!!) undergraduate student @gabrielwaterhouse.bsky.social This is my favorite kind of project: A neat, visible illusion, with compelling data from multiple paradigms, plus some interesting theoretical implications. Check it out!

I am excited to announce my first ever paper (w/ @samiyousif.bsky.social ) about a new illusion of *number*: the “Crowd Size Illusion”. osf.io/preprints/ps...

I have noticed that many cool people are starting labs at Ohio State right now. I've decided to follow their lead. Soon, my lab will be moving to Ohio State as well. You can learn more about our recent and upcoming work here: www.cogdevlab.org

Incredibly excited and grateful to share that I’ll be starting a lab at The Ohio State University this(!) fall! My lab will study human learning and memory, with related interests in sleep, stress, and time perception. More info soon, but do get in touch if you’re interested in joining!

New preprint! How do we integrate new information into prior knowledge? We find that existing knowledge enables rapid new learning but that interleaved replay during sleep promotes integration of new and old information. Modeling suggests a sleep context suppression mechanism. osf.io/preprints/ps...

Now officially out! psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-... (Free version here: talboger.github.io/files/Boger_...)

So excited to share my *first* first-author paper, out now in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social!! In this review, we argue that even if you don’t remember being a baby, evidence that infants form episodic-like memories is actually all around us: authors.elsevier.com/c/1l82g4sIRv...

Evidence for episodic-like memory in infancy is everywhere, if you know how to look for it! It was such a pleasure to write this paper with @lillianbehm.bsky.social and Nick Turk-Browne, out now in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social. #psychscisky #cogscisky #philsky #cogdev

If you are attending #CogSci2025 I hope you will consider attending our pre-conference workshop on July 29 - "Putting it Together: Interactions Between Domains of Cognition" sites.google.com/view/cogsci2...

Looking at Van Gogh’s Starry Night, we see not only its content (a French village beneath a night sky) but also its *style*. How does that work? How do we see style? In @nathumbehav.nature.com, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I take an experimental approach to style perception! osf.io/preprints/ps...

Come see (first-year undergraduate student!) @gabrielwaterhouse.bsky.social give his first talk ever on a neat illusion of *number*!

A really thoughtful piece from @simine.com that’s worth a read: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

We’re hiring postdocs to join my lab at UNC. If you’re interested in adolescence, brain, and social development, DM me. Our work incorporates fMRI, social media, and longitudinal methods. We study risks and opportunities in adolescence. If you’re at #SRCD2025 and want to meet, please reach out!

We were blown away by the public response to our findings that the infant brain can store memories. Many people wrote to share with us their first memories. To help us capture these reports, we created a short, anonymous survey. We hope you might also consider taking it. Please share with others! 🧠🧪

Now officially out in @psychscience.bsky.social ! journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.... @samiyousif.bsky.social

Sam Clarke and I have been writing a lot about adaptation -- what it is, what it isn't, what it reveals about perception. We've just released a preprint that pushes the boundaries of adaptation even further. We document spatially selective adaptation to arbitrary *value*. philpapers.org/rec/CLACWS

Cognitive neuroscience at its best. Congrats to @tristansyates.bsky.social and team!

Why do we not remember being a baby? One idea is that the hippocampus, which is essential for episodic memory in adults, is too immature to form individual memories in infancy. We tested this using awake infant fMRI, new in @science.org #ScienceResearch www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I'm really, really excited about our recent paper on children's understanding of topological spatial relations (w/ Lily Goldstein and Liz Brannon). I've linked the paper here, but I'll summarize the thread below. direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...

Watch this video. Do you remember seeing a ball in the second half of the video? Up to 37% of our participants reported seeing a ball, even though it wasn’t there. Why? In a new paper in press @ Cognition, Brent Strickland and I ask what causes event completion. osf.io/preprints/ps...

One of the most exciting projects I've worked on in awhile. We have some really beautiful data showing a substantive distortion of time -- but we think there are still *so* many interesting questions on the table. Very excited about the next steps.

Our memories are not encoded with timestamps. How do we reconstruct the passage of time from our memories? In a new paper (accepted at Psych Science) @samiyousif.bsky.social and I demonstrate a powerful illusion of time that results from repeated experience osf.io/preprints/ps...

New paper published in Psych. Science on the perception of *topological relations*. In it, we explore how subtle differences in topological structure influence attention, perception, and even enumeration. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

When asked to act randomly, you behave in subtly different ways from other people. Using this info, we can predict from one random sequence of yours a different one that you generate one full year later. That — and more — in our recent paper!

Which is more complex: A bicycle or a car? Object complexity comes in many different kinds — such as visual, mechanistic, and more. How are these kinds related? Now out @ JEP:G, Frank Keil and I argue that mechanistic complexity is fundamental. psycnet.apa.org/record/2025-...

The start of a Number, Space, & Math Cognition Starter Pack — help add missing folks please go.bsky.app/4CXmSZM

We're hiring a tenure track Quantitative Psychologist at University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill! We are particularly (but not exclusively) seeking someone with expertise in the measurement and modeling of high-density data structures. unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/288222 Please share widely.

I am recruiting graduate students! I’ll review applications through both the Cognitive & Developmental areas. Interested students are encouraged to be on touch; I’d love to chat with you!

New paper from @samiyousif.bsky.social and myself! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Stress tends to enhance memory for emotional events. Yet stress is also thought to hurt the hippocampus (which supports episodic memory). With @evgoldfarb.bsky.social & others, we explore this paradox and demonstrate how cortisol can *enhance* hippocampal function to support emotional episodic mems!

New preprint, led by the inimitable Naser Al-Fawakhiri. Fitts' Law is one of few reliable psychophysical laws. We had a fun thought about it – the "D" term in Fitts' is underdetermined. Is D the movement distance to a goal (MD) or visual distance (VD)? ... BOTH!? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Come and join my department! Penn Linguistics invites applications for a tenure-track position in Syntax at the rank of Assistant Professor. Follow the link for details. apply.interfolio.com/131974

New paper! Do we represent remembered locations in vision and in action using the same coordinate system(s)? In work with Alex Forrence and @actlab.bsky.social, we say yes: there may be a common format for location representations across modalities. tinyurl.com/4e87u3ax

Okay I know that bluesky isn't a real thing yet, but I'm going to pretend that it is. In the final poster session at CogSci, I'll be talking about my recent work with Liz Brannon and Sam Clarke on number adaptation. Come say hi!