Very relevant for those at @CDS2026 in Montreal right now!

In exciting news, I'm rolling up to #CDS2026 recruiting a grad student for *this fall* thanks to 2 new grants!
My talks in the Metacognition preconference (AM session), and in the disagreement symposium (Fri first block) will preview the two main lines of work in my lab right now.

Well deserved! 🤩

Haha when it rains it pours ☔

Paper is open access in Developmental Psychology:
dx.doi.org/10.1037/dev0...
@apajournals.bsky.social

Experience with people justifying their beliefs seems to help this emerge: the Turkish-speaking kids (whose language involves a mandatory grammatical marker of how you know something) showed that difference a little bit younger than English-speaking kids.

Disagreement mattered: English and Turkish-speaking kids both were more likely to correctly remember they saw the contents when facing disagreement rather than agreement.
This wasn't just about heightened attention overall: they didn't remember the perceptual features of the gift box any better.

Preschoolers helped 'pack gifts' and had to remember the contents. Sometimes a partner disagreed with them about what was inside.
We asked kids to tell us how they learned the contents (by seeing themselves or by hearing from an adult) to justify their answer.

When you remember something, you can often also remember how you learned it ("I *saw* it was raining"). Why bother encoding that extra context?
Maybe it's important info to justify your beliefs to someone who disagrees (to make better group decisions).

New paper out now asks:
Why do we bother remembering *how* we learned something?
With @antoniafl.bsky.social, Dilara Keşşafoğlu, Winuss Mohtezebsade, @celestekidd.bsky.social, Aylin Küntay, @janengelmann.bsky.social, and Bahar Köymen
dx.doi.org/10.1037/dev0...

Disagreement drives metacognitive development Metacognition improves significantly over childhood, but the mechanisms underlying this development are poorly understood. We first review recent research demonstrating that disagreement prompts competent responses by young children across several metacognitive domains (confidence monitoring, information search, and source monitoring). We then propose a mechanistic model of how disagreement facilitates metacognition. We localize one main source of children’s metacognitive limitations in their still-developing capacities to reason about alternative possibilities, which manifest in an overly narrow focus on one hypothesis. Disagreement increases the child’s likelihood of representing alternative hypotheses, thereby promoting improved metacognitive reasoning. The broader proposal is that, through repeated experiences of disagreement, children become better at representing alternative possibilities even when reasoning on their own, leading to metacognitive development.

Online Now: Disagreement drives metacognitive development

An interesting discussion in writing group today has me wondering: What are people's norms for students doing *their own* study vs part of the lab's ongoing work?

Their own = they come up with the idea themselves

Curious about RA vs honours thesis vs grad students here too!

This looks great!

We're excited about this finding because it's initial evidence that kids use a rational strategy to combine old beliefs into new ones: weigh each belief according to its uncertainty.

This is an important step in their development as independent thinkers, and an essential skill in uncovering truth.

If one witness was more confident, kids trusted that witness.
But if they were both equally confident, kids 8+ tended to pick the middle option, even though no one had actually endorsed that!

Kids 5-12 years old played detective and solved a monster crime 🔍
Two witnesses gave different descriptions of the suspect, but also gave their confidence (high or low).
We then gave kids a lineup that differed veeeery slightly (this one is the # of spots), always with an option in the middle.

Children Use the Relative Confidence of People With Conflicting Perspectives to Form Their Own Beliefs We provide evidence that children sensibly integrate the judgments of different people who disagree according to their confidence. We asked children (ages 5–10 years, N = 92) to make judgments about ...

New paper! When do children trust others and when do they come up with their own ideas? Kids 8+ considered and weighed each person's confidence to decide whether to form new beliefs.
With @janengelmann.bsky.social and @celestekidd.bsky.social
Free here: dx.doi.org/10.1111/desc...

Looks so fun! So sad I won't be there to see this!

Does anyone study how kids think about existential issues? Like why do we exist, what is our purpose, etc.

I've got a thesis student interested in this area and I have this feeling like people are doing this work. I want to point her in the right direction!

I do this too, but I honestly don't think it changed much. More useful was having a clear course website and in class reminders.
That said, I'd still do it - can't hurt to be clear and easy to follow, right?

Nooo, this sucks 😞

Yay! 🥳

Oh yes, good point about not knowing citizenship.

Yeah, this is really interesting. Looking closely at the stats about % Canadians hired by uni type. <50% at the big names? 🧐

How interesting!

Good grief you're busy! How are we going to schedule shenanigans?

See you there!

Ugh I am so sorry this has happened.

Cool work!

I am teaching my phd writing workshop course this quarter, question: are there any words/phrases said to you by an advisor/mentor that stuck with you, were memorable, or particularly helpful? If so please reply below!