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Posts by Alex Mackiel

Our paper finding that infants infer helpers’ relationships, and not their dispositions, is now out in PNAS! Sharing in case anyone needs something to read on the way home from #CDS2026 ;)

doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

1 week ago 60 17 2 0

I’m excited to present my research on how kids (Thursday) and adults (Saturday) reason about help requests as diagnostic cues of friendship strength at #SPSP2026 with the DIBS Lab (PI: Alex Shaw)

1 month ago 2 1 0 0
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⭐ Out now in Developmental Science ⭐

"Sounds of Hidden Agents: The development of causal reasoning about musical sounds"

(by Minju Kim and me)

causal reasoning, music/auditory cognition, event reconstruction, kids' integration of information...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

9 months ago 31 7 2 0
APA PsycNet

Pleased to announce my new open access paper out in Developmental Psychology:
The Development of the “First Thing That Comes to Mind”

with @xphilosopher.bsky.social and @ebonawitz.bsky.social

psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2026-25569-001.html

#CogSci #PsychSciSki #DevSci

(1/10)

10 months ago 53 19 1 1

1. New paper first-authored by former post-doc Young-eun Lee (currently at MIT with @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social) now in press at JECP! More info in thread below, full text here: columbiasamclab.weebly.com/uploads/5/9/....
🧪 #PsychSciSky #SocialPsyc #DevPsyc #CogPsyc @socphilpsych.bsky.social

10 months ago 15 6 2 1
Preview
Trump’s Attacks Threaten Much More Than Harvard If the government succeeds in bullying the richest university into submission, what institutions will be safe?

“Conservatism once warned against the dangers of unilateral executive power. But today’s Republican White House happily wields that very power to crush its cultural rivals.”
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

10 months ago 1 0 0 0
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"Shamanism" by @manvir.bsky.social is now out. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/730339.... It's a deep, original, and fun book—highly recommended. My blurb:

11 months ago 21 9 0 0

Sometimes people say its fair for those with advantage to get more (best office to the CEO...); other times, the opposite seems more fair (... charity to the needy). In this new work, Arthur and Xavier try to explain why. See the preprint link and explainer thread below:

osf.io/preprints/ps...

11 months ago 13 5 0 0
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Preprint of data from my first project as a postdoc with With @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social and Liz Spelke. Data and writing from 2019, figures are new :) osf.io/preprints/ps...

First, we replicate @lindseypowell.bsky.social 's finding that infants reach for imitators using a very different setup.

10 months ago 23 6 1 0

Thank you to Alex Mackiel and Amanda Woodward, who also wondered about the social availability hyp. in their forthcoming commentary on my paper a bout relationships (my paper here, www.cambridge.org/core/service...) not yet their commentary).

10 months ago 2 1 1 0
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It was a great time giving the moral development lecture to the Developmental Psychology class I'm a teaching assistant for this academic term.

10 months ago 3 0 0 0