It was so much fun engaging with such a rich article — we can’t wait to read the other commentaries and the authors’ reply!

We argue that a proposal for representational architecture must consider content and functional role. We highlight cases of infants’ object, number, and agent representations and conclude that core representations cannot be perceptual, as they carry conceptual content and play a conceptual role.

Is core knowledge actually core *perception*? In a forthcoming piece in BBS, @shariliu.bsky.social, Lisa Feigenson, & I comment on @daweibai.bsky.social et al.’s target article. osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/vnbep

We think this cool study we found is flawed. Help us reproduce it. Are 25 year olds really more random than 60 year olds?

A few years ago, my favorite website (@puddingviz.bsky.social) put out this great piece analyzing a study of how randomizing ability changes with age. It includes demos where readers produce sequences of random coin flips, dice rolls, and locations in a 3x3 grid. pudding.cool/2022/04/rand...

fun pre-print for your start of week reading:

"People Make Graded Judgments About The Inconceivable"

(by Hu, Sosa, and me)

doi.org/10.31234/osf...

Jobs | Psychological & Brain Sciences Tenured/Tenure-track position in Cognitive Psychology Open Date Dec 01, 2025 Salary Range or Pay Grade The expected academic base salary range for this position is $110,000- $144,500 (Assistant Profes...

Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins is inviting applications for 3 open-rank tenured/tenure-track positions in (1) Behavioral Neuroscience, (2) Cognitive Neuroscience, and (3) Cognitive Psychology.

pbs.jhu.edu/about/jobs/

How physical information is used to make sense of the psychological world - Nature Reviews Psychology Reasoning about minds and reasoning about physical objects are governed by two distinct systems. In this Perspective, Liu et al. review research from developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscienc...

New perspective paper (w/ @sedaakbiyik.bsky.social, Joseph Outa, & @minjaek.bsky.social ) in @natrevpsychol.nature.com ⚽💭🧠👶 : www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Happy to share that our BBS target article has been accepted: “Core Perception”: Re-imagining Precocious Reasoning as Sophisticated Perceiving
With Alon Hafri, @veroniqueizard.bsky.social, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & Brent Strickland
Read it here: doi.org/10.1017/S014...
A short thread [1/5]👇

Moments Lab

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

PCDL @ OSU

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

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-...

Really happy to have a new paper forthcoming at PPR!

Ever wondered if there’s any point in feeling regret? In this paper, I argue that regret is valuable because it helps us overcome temptation. Check it out: philpapers.org/rec/GOHRLA

Can we “see” value? Spatiotopic “visual” adaptation to an imperceptible dimension In much recent philosophy of mind and cognitive science, repulsive adaptation effects are considered a litmus test — a crucial marker, that distinguis…

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...

Mental representation of the locations and identities of multiple hidden agents or objects by a bonobo | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences Humans are adept at navigating the social world in part because we flexibly map the locations and identities of agents around us. While field studies suggest primates can track individual conspecifics...

When an animals' groupmates go out of sight, do they also go out of mind?

In a new paper in Proc B @royalsocietypublishing.org, Luz Carvajal and I show that a bonobo (Kanzi) can keep mental tabs on the whereabouts of multiple hidden social partners

royalsocietypublishing.org/eprint/4GI7G...

this is extremely cool;

I also think it's important for people to know Tal made coasters of these

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 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...

@sallyberson.bsky.social in action at @socphilpsych.bsky.social! #SPP2025

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...

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...

Science and DEI in the sciences and the arts is what makes America great #standupforscience

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...

Bonobo Nyota at Ape Initiative, a science and education nonprofit

Are humans the only species that communicates when a collaborator is missing information?

In @pnas.org, Luke Townrow and I show that our closest relatives, bonobos, can track when a partner is knowledgeable or ignorant, and tailor communication accordingly

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Suppose you generated a sequence of 100 random numbers. Then one year later, you did it again. Do you think we could predict one sequence from the other? It turns out, we can!

Now in press @ JEP:G with @samiyousif.bsky.social @actlab.bsky.social @robbrutledge.bsky.social; osf.io/preprints/ps...

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-...