I'm thrilled to be attending #SANS2026 this week! I'll be presenting "Prospection Explains Age-Related Increases in the Use of Situation Selection for Emotion Regulation" (P1-A-f-62) on Thursday, 4/16. Catch the highlights at the 3pm spotlight or come chat at the boards from 3:30-5pm!
Congrats!!!!! 🎉💫
I am thrilled to share that I’ll be joining the University of Notre Dame (@notredame.bsky.social) as an Assistant Professor of Psychology this July!☘️🧠 Please reach out if you're interested in joining my lab! More details to follow soon.
Loved being a part of this project team! And super interested by our finding that reward-related improvements in working memory emerge during early adolescence (vs. mid- to late-adolescence in other cognitive domains).
Shout-out to Megan and Katie for leading this charge!
Our experiences have countless details, and it can be hard to know which matter.
How can we behave effectively in the future when, right now, we don't know what we'll need?
Out today in @nathumbehav.nature.com , @marcelomattar.bsky.social and I find that people solve this by using episodic memory.
** Recruiting a Postdoctoral Researcher! **
We are seeking a postdoc to help examine how brain networks might change within individuals across transitional times, such as adolescence & pregnancy!
Please share widely and apply at the link! #NeuroJobs
uva.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/UVAJobs/job/...
I'm recruiting PhD students for my lab at Northwestern! I'm reviewing applications for the Department of Psychology for the Cognitive Affective Neuroscience and Clinical areas, due 12/1. 🧠
Come join the CATS Lab: nucatslab.com
Learn about our latest research: iamh.northwestern.edu/research/res...
YAY, so excited to read this today!!! 🧠💫
📣New review 📣 Hot off the presses! This paper from a recent special issue in @fluxsociety.bsky.social was a collaborative effort between myself and co-lead author @rebeccahennessy.bsky.social with the support of our PIs Heather Brenhouse and Juliet Davidow. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
So thrilled to see this out -- reading IMMEDIATELY!!! Congrats to you and the team 🎉
So grateful for this collab with rockstar @caitlyncody.bsky.social and our mentors! Excited to share our translational take on the neurodevelopment of anxiety in adolescence (and can’t believe my first publication is live!)
My website is official 🙌 Excited to share that I am interested in reviewing applications for Harvard’s Clinical Science PhD program this fall as I look for the first student to join my lab! I appreciate it if you can share with your network :)
psychology.fas.harvard.edu/people/mark-...
Seeking WV scientists! My dad (a non-scientist who works with scientists) is leading a FABBS delegation to discuss NIH funding with Senator Capito in August and needs to build the delegation. Please reach out and I’ll put you in touch with him! CC @standupforscience.bsky.social
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Are you heading to #APS2025?! ➡️ Check out posters from my rockstar RAs! Through adolescence, they examine...
💡 Metacognition across different contexts | Waverly Huang (III-84, Fri @ 12:30pm)
⚙️ Cognitive mechanisms underpinning emotion regulation strategy use | Shuyao Wang (VII-22, Sat @ 12:30pm)
Welp. I'm a postdoc whose NIH funding source has just been cancelled in a mass grant termination targeting Harvard. We've been using these funds to study how puberty affects the brain and adolescent mental health.
Dream team!!!!! 💫
New paper with @catehartley.bsky.social
How does the reward structure of the environment influence the specificity with which children, adolescents, and adults learn and remember information?
See preprint 🧵 and paper for our efforts to answer to this!
#PsychSciSky
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Stoked to be at my 1st in-person SANS this week! I'll be presenting "Emotion 😀😨 and Reward 💰 Information Influence Choice in Age-Varying Ways" at poster P2-B-31 tomorrow afternoon. Looking forward to conversation and feedback! #SANS2025
Had so much fun collaborating on this! 💫
Thanks so much! ☺️
🧵 10/10
Huge thanks to the team for their support, & shoutout to our participants & their families for making this work possible!
📚 Journal link:
doi.org/10.1037/xge0...
📄 Free link on lab website: andl.wjh.harvard.edu/publications/
🧵 9/X
Our take-away: when some of the information about the benefits & costs of cognitive effort needs to be learned, exertion becomes more economical into adulthood. During childhood & adolescence, aims may not translate into actions.
🧵 8/X
For completeness, in our secondary experiment, both the reward & difficulty cues were instructed. We believe that the removal of learning demands made the task easier. Accordingly, we no longer found strategic cognitive effort allocation in older participants.
🧵 7/X
We also found that participants of all ages reported trying harder when there were greater rewards at stake — even though we only observed reward-boosted performance in adults.
➡️ This hints at a gap between goals & realized behavior in younger participants.
🧵 6/X
➡️ This suggests that adults, but not children & adolescents, economically exerted their cognitive effort.
🧵 5/X
In the primary experiment, the reward cue was instructed, but the difficulty cue had to be learned through experience. We found that reward-based titration of task accuracy emerged with age & difficulty-based titration of task accuracy somewhat emerged with age.
🧵 4/X
A participant who invests their cognitive effort efficiently would try hard to get trials correct in high reward & low difficulty blocks, but not in low reward & high difficulty blocks.
🧵 3/X
We tested 300 participants (ages 10–20 years) across 2 experiments using a child-friendly task-switching paradigm🌙👾🪐. The task blocks varied in rewards & difficulty, & these blocks were proactively cued.
🧵 2/X
Are children & adolescents similarly economical? TLDR: they may say that they are, but their behavior tells a different story.