Yay!!

Information about the posters from the members of the lab Poster Session 2on Friday, April 10 5:45 to 7:00 pm Children’s understanding of common ground in relationships Raissa Cheng | P2-111 Children expect emotional consolation to occur in close relationships Emma Yu | P2-148 Infants track the social targets of their parents’ gaze Brandon Woo | P2-155

Looking forward to #CDS2026! Come learn about the work that my students and I are doing

@emmayu23.bsky.social @cogdevsoc.bsky.social

Come see the Thomas Lab's work at @cogdevsoc.bsky.social conference! #CDS2026

Research Assistant II Company Description: By working at Harvard University, you join a vibrant community that advances Harvard's world-changing mission in meaningful ways, inspires innovation and collaboration, and builds...

🚨🚨 My lab is hiring a Pre-doc Researcher/Lab Manager! 🚨🚨

Full-time pre-doc research opening in my lab at Harvard Psych (start: Summer/Fall 2026).

Review begins April 10
Apply: jobs.smartrecruiters.com/HarvardUnive...

Please repost + tag folks who might be a good fit! 👇

Laboratory Coordinator - 138788 Laboratory Coordinator - 138788 | Careers at UC San Diego

I'm hiring a new lab manager for my lab @ UCSD! For more info on the lab, check out our website: lillab.ucsd.edu

Target start date is June 1 (flexible) and application deadline is March 26. Please share with anyone you think might be a good fit!

Apply here: employment.ucsd.edu/laboratory-c...

Yay congrats!!

Children in ICE Detention Skyrocket in Trump’s Second Term With a six-fold jump in children in detention, advocates allege harrowing conditions are putting kids’ lives at risk.

The number of children in ICE detention on an average day has skyrocketed 6x since Trump took an office. Families complain of poor medical care and worm-infested food.

"It’s only a matter of time before we see a child die," one advocate said.

www.themarshallproject.org/2026/01/29/i...

Food Delivered With Dignity In the current environment we need to raise a $7,000 a day to sustain our operations

One small thing you can do today: ICE is ramping up in Maine. Food For All is delivering meals to 300 families that can't leave their homes. They need $7k a day to continue operations. The Culture Study community is raising enough to cover a day—join us?

Donate directly: givebutter.com/Scx87A

or

U.S. government has lost more than 10,000 STEM Ph.D.s since Trump took office A Science analysis reveals how many were fired, retired, or quit across 14 agencies

Wow. This is devastating.

www.science.org/content/arti...

Oops -- we should have included a pre-print, but here it is! osf.io/preprints/ps... Abstract core knowledge may shape the basins of cultural attraction: romantic kissing as a case study

Yale Psychology is accepting applications for the Susan Nolen-Hoeksema postdoctoral fellowship! Open to a broad range of areas in psychology, and applicants should identify 1 or more potential faculty mentors.

Apply by Feb 1, 2026: apply.interfolio.com/178435

Hossein was supposed to come to my lab as a grad student but couldn’t because of the travel ban. I had a blast writing this paper with him, but it was bittersweet knowing he should have been in person with us. ❤️ check out 🧵below. part of a special issue on kissing led by Deb Lieberman.

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...

Thank you to Christina Steele for sharing her work with @ashleyjthomas.bsky.social in lab meeting today! Christina shared neat findings on implicit attitudes toward interracial couples, building on her prior work on development of understanding about relationships. Interesting & important project!

Positions available - Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Fully funded #PhDposition in Comparative Cultural Psychology @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social.
We will use touchscreen experiments & eyetracking to study mental simulations in nonhuman apes & human children across different cultures.

All info here: www.eva.mpg.de/career/posit...
Please share / apply!🙏

Interested in understanding how young humans think about social relationships? I am reading PhD applications this year! **Please note**, that Harvard now requires the GRE. More information here: www.ashleyjthomas.com/workwithme

Three robot costumes, large medium and small

A family one child frowning a small child in a robot costume not looking

Chimpanzees rationally revise their beliefs The selective revision of beliefs in light of new evidence has been considered one of the hallmarks of human-level rationality. However, tests of this ability in other species are lacking. We examined...

Are humans really the only rational animals? Our NEW PAPER 🎉 out in @science.org suggests otherwise! In a large collaboration led with my joint first author @hanna-schleihauf.bsky.social, we show that “Chimpanzees rationally revise their beliefs” 🧵

Interested in understanding how young humans think about social relationships? I am reading PhD applications this year! **Please note**, that Harvard now requires the GRE. More information here: www.ashleyjthomas.com/workwithme

Interested in applying to graduate programs or research positions in psychology? Want more information and feedback on your submission materials? Then Harvard’s Prospective Ph.D. & RA Event in Psychology (PPREP) Is for you!! psychology.fas.harvard.edu/pprep
More info in the link!! Please retweet!

No worries at all! I'm glad to know your paper. I think these results imply they could -- if the proposition is correct that they're able to represent the faces as distinct entities based on their facial features, then they should be able to!

Social Engagement Leads Infants to Represent People as Individuals Author(s): Woo, Brandon Matthew; Peng, Haowei; Steele, Christina; Thomas, Ashley J | Abstract: How do infants come to represent people's identities? In two experiments (N = 86), we investigated 7- to ...

So cool! Check out @brandonwoo.bsky.social ’s recent cog sci paper where we find convergent results! escholarship.org/uc/item/4db7...

All Sound so cool! @qinwenshuo.bsky.social would love to see your poster!

🚨Out in PNAS🚨
with @joshtenenbaum.bsky.social & @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social

Punishment, even when intended to teach norms and change minds for the good, may backfire.

Our computational cognitive model explains why!

Paper: tinyurl.com/yc7fs4x7
News: tinyurl.com/3h3446wu

🧵

The lab feels so empty without our summer interns!

On Wednesday: Adena Schachner, talk: "Intuitive Archeology: Social reasoning from the physical world”, W ~10 am, Fourth Level (Pacific) Room A. Chaolan Lin & Adena Schachner, poster: "How children explore and detect augmented reality filters", W 10-11 am, Fourth level (Pacific) Room E. On Thursday: Amy Nguyễn, Rodney Tompkins & Adena Schachner, poster, "When walls talk: People make social inferences from towns’ protective features", Th 1:00-2:15, P1-T-194 On Saturday: Chaolan Lin & Adena Schachner, poster, "Perceived musicality in an android increases positive social attributions", Sat 1:00-2:15, P3-L-113 Shirley Liu, Craig McKenzie & Adena Schachner, poster, "When Default Options Explain Away Preferences: A Causal Reasoning Account of Mental State Reasoning from Default Options ", Sat 1:00-2:15, P3-L-11

I and my lab are happy to be at #cogsci2025! Here's a shortcut to find work from the fabulous folks in my lab (and me) 😄

The Learning Lab is heading to CogSci 2025 (@cogscisociety.bsky.social) to share our latest research! Come say hello!

Schedule for the LIU LAB at CogSci 2025 conference, featuring a variety of workshops and presentations. Wednesday, July 30 Workshop 1: "Putting it together: Interactions between domains of cognition" at 8:30 AM, presented by Shari Liu and Joseph Outa. Thursday, July 31 P1-C-24: "Surprise isn’t symmetrical: Adults’ looking suggests non-perceptual considerations during dishabituation" from 1:00 PM to 2:15 PM, presented by Qiong Cao, Anjie Cao, Gal Raz, Josh Tenenbaum, and Shari Liu. Friday, August 1 Lecture in Symposium 4: "Perceiving and reasoning jointly about the social and physical world" at 9:40 AM, presented by Shari Liu. P2-O-146: "Adults hold two parallel causal frameworks for reasoning about people’s minds, actions, and bodies" from 10:30 AM to 12:00 PM, presented by Joseph Outa and Shari Liu. Saturday, August 2 P3-B-15: "Who drew this? Children appreciate visual style differently than adults" from 1:00 PM to 2:15 PM, presented by Tal Boger, Chaz Firestone, and Shari Liu. P3-K-95: "Pushing people: the neural basis of social interaction perception" from 1:00 PM to 2:15 PM, presented by Minjae Kim, Miriam Hauptman, and Shari Liu. Talks 49: "Learning and Development 5" from 3:21 PM to 3:45 PM, presenting findings on individual differences in habituation and dishabituation, by Anjie Cao, Qiong Cao, Michael Frank, and Shari Liu. The schedule includes a call to attendees to "Come and say hi!" at the event.

Who's excited for #CogSci2025? 💭

A list of the SoCal Lab's presentations at CogSci. In brief: Lindsey Powell is giving talks in Workshop 1 on July 30 at 9:30 am and in Symposium 1 on July 31. Tori Hennessy is giving a talk in the Development of Social Cognition 1 session on July 31. Bill Pepe is giving a talk in the Development of Social Cognition session on August 1. Coxi Jiang is giving a talk in the Emotion session on August 1. Rodney Tompkins is presenting a poster in Session 2 on August 1.

The SoCal Lab is headed to #cogsci2025 this week! Here's where you can find us: