The Cognitive Tools Lab at Stanford (cogtoolslab.github.io) is recruiting two new research staff members to join in AY 26-27.
Full-Time Lab Manager: forms.gle/UVwfx5wbY9Km....
IRiSS Predoc Researcher: iriss.stanford.edu/predoc/2026-....
Please share widely in your networks, thank you!!
🚨 NSF is already quietly eliminating the SBE Directorate, despite Congress’ mandate that NSF support the behavioral & social sciences.
Steps to counter this are in motion.
If you
- have an SBE proposal under review
- serve on an SBE grant panel
You can help! Fill out this form: shorturl.at/xuKw2
Nobel Laureate Jack Szostak “This country has given me endless opportunities…: The America we inhabit today bears almost no resemblance to the country I chose all those years ago” newsletter.ofthebrave.org/p/im-a-nobel...
The Cognitive Tools Lab at Stanford (cogtoolslab.github.io) is recruiting two new research staff members to join in AY 26-27.
Full-Time Lab Manager: forms.gle/UVwfx5wbY9Km....
IRiSS Predoc Researcher: iriss.stanford.edu/predoc/2026-....
Please share widely in your networks, thank you!!
New paper in press at Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts w/ @aaronhertzmann.com interrogating the information bottlenecks that make the drawing of objects & scenes from observation so difficult. This was a really fun paper to write together--we hope it'll be a fun read, too!
New paper out in Current Directions in Psychological Science making the case for studying generative behaviors in humans and machines: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/.... (version without a paywall: cogtoolslab.github.io/pdf/fan_cdps...)
This collaboration with @parastooabtahi.bsky.social @rdhawkins.bsky.social & colleagues has been such a treat! Super excited about this line of work on how people use both words and gestures to coordinate on shared understanding of multi-step assembly tasks—check it out at #CHI2026!
CAIC has been hard at work creating an interdisciplinary hub for pursuing big questions in cognitive science. This spring we are excited to officially launch the Cognition, Agency, Intelligence Conference featuring talks by an amazing lineup of interdisciplinary researchers. See you on April 2-3! 🥳
🎉 Re-Align is back for its 4th edition at ICLR 2026!
📣 We invite submissions on representational alignment, spanning ML, Neuroscience, CogSci, and related fields.
📝 Tracks: Short (≤5p), Long (≤10p), Challenge (blog)
⏰ Deadline: Feb 5, 2026 for papers
🔗 representational-alignment.github.io/2026/
What a pleasure speaking with Chris Piech, Denise Pope, and Dan Schwartz about AI & Education on "School's In," (youtube.com/watch?v=lL07...) recorded live at Stanford Open Minds in LA (openminds.stanford.edu/los-angeles)!
I’m hiring!! 🎉 Looking for a full-time Lab Manager to help launch the Minds, Experiences, and Language Lab at Stanford. We’ll use all-day language recording, eye tracking, & neuroimaging to study how kids & families navigate unequal structural constraints. Please share:
phxc1b.rfer.us/STANFORDWcqUYo
If you're heading to @cogscisociety.bsky.social, come to our symposium “Perception as a Foundation for Common‑Sense Theories of the World”
📅 August 1 • 9 AM
📍 Salon 2
With
@thiskevinsmith.bsky.social
@shariliu.bsky.social
@judithfan.bsky.social
@ardeeb.bsky.social
— See you there! #CogSci2025
Linking student psychological orientation, engagement & learning in intro college-level data science
New work at @cogscisociety.bsky.social w/ @erikbrockbank.bsky.social @shawnschwartz.bsky.social, C.Bryan, D.Yeager, C.Dweck & @judithfan.bsky.social
poster 8/1 @ 10:30
tinyurl.com/solds-cogsci25
"36 Questions That Lead To Love" was the most viewed article in NYT Modern Love.
Excited to share new results investigating these and other “deep questions” with @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social @judithfan.bsky.social & @rdhawkins.bsky.social
Preprint: tinyurl.com/bdfx5smk
Code: tinyurl.com/3v6pws4s
The National Institutes of Health is responsible for more than 80% of the world’s grant investment in biomedical research and Trump is destroying it projects.propublica.org/nih-cuts-res...
THIS WEEK the @cogscisociety.bsky.social Minds in the Making workshop brings you Vanessa Bermudez and @togelius.bsky.social in conversation about LEARNING 🧠💪 x DESIGN 🛠️! And what makes GAMES awesome for learning. Wednesday July 16th, 12pm-1pm PT. Register here: stanford.zoom.us/meeting/regi....
Next up is the CREATIVITY session in our
@cogscisociety.bsky.social Minds in the Making workshop ft.
@aaronhertzmann.com @manishsaggar.bsky.social & Aaron Kozbelt! Thursday June 19th, 11am-12pm PT. Register here: stanford.zoom.us/meeting/regi...!
Super stoked for our Minds in the Making workshop at @cogscisociety.bsky.social 2025! If you are at all interested in the intersection between cognitive science and design, you won’t want to miss it!! 🧠🛠️
Super stoked for our Minds in the Making workshop at @cogscisociety.bsky.social 2025! If you are at all interested in the intersection between cognitive science and design, you won’t want to miss it!! 🧠🛠️
Out today, the Academic Council of the University of California issues the following statement:
“Higher education is under direct and sustained attack.
1/
senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/repor...
NEW: Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.)& Trump's former NatSec Advisor Matt Pottinger make the case that funding for scientific R&D isn't a gift to academia. It's vital to U.S. national security, as China, the United States' primary strategic adversary, is already investing heavily in R&D.
shorturl.at/PgUK0
Every one of you involved in higher education – student, faculty, alumni, staff – needs to get in touch with your leadership (president and trustees) and local media to make it clear what’s at stake and get them to band together.
Example message: www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2025...
I'm writing today with a big request during a difficult time for all of us. Together, we've grown Children Helping Science into a cornerstone for online developmental research. Researchers from roughly 150 institutions have conducted remote studies with over 15,000 families since 2020, with many of those families returning to participate in multiple studies across labs. The CHS team and infrastructure is currently supported almost entirely by the United States government (NSF and NIH). Like many US researchers, we're facing substantial uncertainty about what this means for our financial stability over the coming months and years, and we are hard at work pursuing every angle to keep this platform available to the community. This includes exploring new funding strategies we have previously not considered, like possibly allowing some carefully vetted companies to display ads to families. Researchers will continue to be able to use the CHS platform for free, but your support right now is critical. At the same time, we know that many of you, especially those of you in the United States, are facing the same instability to present and future funding as we are. Today, we are asking for three FREE actions from all of you to support our immediate fundraising efforts:
**Send us your citations.** If you have publications that collected data or advertised studies through CHS or Lookit, please share those references. These citations are essential for demonstrating CHS’s impact to funders. A list of all the citations we're aware of is linked here, in case you're not sure whether we have your recent articles. **Send us publicly shareable materials and press coverage.** If you have cute study designs, engaging visuals, or images of adorable kids (with the necessary permissions) we’d love to use them in presentations to potential funders. Similarly, if your research has been covered in any public media (university publications, podcasts, news articles), please send these to us. **Share your funding applications and ideas.** If you are preparing a grant proposal (to any funding source), please reach out to discuss how you can include a budget line to support CHS. If you have ideas for joint projects, or even of funders you think we should reach out to - we're all ears! And if you have ever received funding to conduct studies using CHS/Lookit, please also make sure we know about it.
You can do all of these things right now at this link (https://forms.gle/zFnzrVURntdZizMK8). Please also feel free to email us (best address: mekline@mit.edu) with any other questions or ideas. We are committed to keeping CHS running and serving this community, and we will do everything in our power to keep the lights on. Thank you for helping to make CHS such a wonderful community resource and for helping us in whatever ways you can! With appreciation, Melissa Kline Struhl Executive Director Laura Schulz Scientific Director
The platform I run, Children Helping Science, is supported almost entirely by US government science funding, both directly and in collaboration with CHS researchers.
Here's the note we sent to users today - we need help gathering your stories and citations! Submit here: forms.gle/zFnzrVURntdZ...
Hello bluesky world :) excited to share a new paper on data visualization literacy 📈 🧠 w/ @judithfan.bsky.social, @arnavverma.bsky.social, Holly Huey, Hannah Lloyd, @lacepadilla.bsky.social!
📝 preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...
💻 code: github.com/cogtoolslab/...
SO proud of this work on data visualization literacy getting out into the world — especially when our tools for figuring out what is true are as vital as they have ever been!!! #StandUpForScience today and always!
Table 1 from paper: recognition and reference evidence for perception of different types of visual media by infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.
Do children understand all types of visual media in the same way?
"Cross-contextual diversity in children’s early understanding of visual media" - a new review paper led by Rebecca Zhu: osf.io/preprints/ps...
Happy New Year everyone! Jim and I just put up our January 2025 release of Speech and Language Processing! Check it out here: web.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/sl...
I have recently launched the relational cognition lab at UC Irvine: relcoglab.org!
We study learning and memory in mind, brains and machines. I am open to collaborations and hiring a lab technician (lab manager/junior specialist). Job ad & application here: recruit.ap.uci.edu/JPF09400.
The most creative technology I’ve ever used is a pencil. Sketching, brainstorming, communicating, writing, art… this thing can do it all.
