Many, many thanks to the people who helped me get here, most especially past & present members of the SoCal Lab. Thrilled and grateful for the opportunity to continue doing science with them and the rest of my lovely, brilliant colleagues here!
Raising a glass to being a tenured, associate professor at UCSD, starting this July.
There was also a chance to celebrate some good news with friends: UCSD decided to give me tenure and let me stick around!
Photo credit: @carenwalker.bsky.social, Champagne credit: @adenaschachner.bsky.social
Alexis Smith-Flores giving her Early Career Symposium talk at CDS 2026.
Bill Pepe hanging out in a Montreal bar with some interesting curios in the background.
Me with Isabel Herrera-Guevara, former SoCal Lab member and current PhD student in the UC Irvine DoSC Lab.
Coxi Jiang presenting her poster at CDS 2026.
CDS 2026 was full of excellent science and good times! A big thanks to all the speakers in the intuitive theories of care preconference, organized by @rtompkins.bsky.social -- so many new ideas and findings to think about!
This is happening tomorrow! Lorenzo, Ori, Natalie, and I will be there, talking about the conferences but also just the broader benefit to developmental science of integrating knowledge and use of behavioral and neuroimaging methods.
Join us! Free registration at tinyurl.com/fitingicis
So sorry to hear about this new hurdle, Larisa, and confounded by the decision - you make so many valuable contributions to our field of all kinds. I share your optimism for your future path, and wish you peace of mind along the way
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...
a few thoughts here, premised on agreeing that a chunk of devpsych research is boring.
1) I think niche subfield conf's like CDS (and e.g. for me, BUCLD) exacerbate this, there often *is* a good reason under the hood, just not always one a trainee can quickly frame well in a 15-20' talk or poster.
My lab is presenting at #cds2026. Come check it out if you are attending!
Some great developmental science will be happening in Panama this July! Come hear more about what @infantstudies.bsky.social and @fitngin.bsky.social have planned! ☀️🇵🇦
A list of talks and poster presentations to be given by Rodney Tompkins (Thursday preconference, Friday talk in symposium on when helping backfires, poster in Saturday lunch session), Bill Pepe (poster Friday evening), Coxi Jiang (poster Friday evening), and Tori Hennessy (poster Saturday evening, to be presented by co-author Angela Liu)
Members of the SoCal lab are presenting their work at #CDS2026! Check out where to find us below
🤩😍🤩
If you’re at CDS this weekend, stop by our posters! I’m sad to miss it this year but so proud of this fantastic group ✨
Join us on March 25th (3pm GMT/11am EST) for our event on:
Open science practices and their application in FIT neuroimaging, featuring Dr. Brian Nosek and Dr. Lindsay Bowman.
We’ll discuss open science practices for fetal, infant, and toddler neuroimaging.
Register at: tinyurl.com/FITNG-OpenSc...
📢 We are honored to announce our Keynote Speaker: Takao K. Hensch!!
🧠 A leading expert on how early-life experience shapes neural circuits and critical period mechanisms (fitng.org/speakers/).
🤩 Don't miss the keynote and join us at the FIT'NG Annual Conference, July 10-11 in Panama 🌴
#FITNG2026
⏲️ 3 DAYS LEFT!!!
🏃➡️ Hurry up, submit your work now!
🌐 Posters: fitng.org/poster-oral-...
🌐 Symposium: fitng.org/symposium-su...
Deadline: February 25
#FITNG2026 #Neuroscience #Neuorimaging #MRI #Brain
Look at this great #CDS2026 preconference on the cognitive science of care that @rtompkins.bsky.social put together! If you’ll be there in Montreal, come check it out.
~2 weeks til the #FITNG2026 submission deadline! We're taking both individual abstracts and symposia again this year. And we have an exciting lineup of invited speakers, including Drs. Takao Hensch (keynote), Koraly Pérez-Edgar, Victoria Southgate, and Jonathan O'Muircheartaigh.
Join us in Panama!
~2 weeks til the #FITNG2026 submission deadline! We're taking both individual abstracts and symposia again this year. And we have an exciting lineup of invited speakers, including Drs. Takao Hensch (keynote), Koraly Pérez-Edgar, Victoria Southgate, and Jonathan O'Muircheartaigh.
Join us in Panama!
The Visual Learning Lab is hiring TWO lab coordinators!
Both positions are ideal for someone looking for research experience before applying to graduate school. Application deadline is Feb 10th (approaching fast!)—with flexible summer start dates.
New w/ @drbarner.bsky.social! We argue that children's struggle to represent the past and future in common tests of knowledge may stem from difficulties in hypothetical reasoning about imaginary timelines, rather than a lack of knowledge about time. 1/n
academic.oup.com/chidev/advan...
International Congress on Infant Studies (ICIS) abstract deadline has now been extended to Friday December 12th!
Don’t miss this opportunity to share your research, connect with leading scholars, and experience the unique setting of Panama City. ☀️ 🇵🇦 @infantstudies.bsky.social
Excited to share that my lab will be accepting applications for our very first PhD student to start in Fall 2026!
Interested applicants can learn more about the lab here: wordpress.lehigh.edu/littlelearne...
And Lehigh’s graduate program here: psychology.cas.lehigh.edu/graduate
Woman in a pink axolotl costume holding a sign that says “Ajolotes against facism”
Move over frogs, we’ve got our own spirit animal #NoKingsSanDiego
Seems like a particularly cruel change to make without warning given the stress that reviewers often put on applicants' publication record. Presumably many strong students waited based on this apparent criterion, not because they didn't already have great ideas to propose.
Extremely disappointing decision from the NSF today to exclude second-year graduate students from eligibility for the GRFP. I and many other second-year grads purposely held off from applying in our first year to be able to do so now...
Big news: FIT'NG 2026 will be held in Panama City next year, right after #ICIS2026!! Can't wait for this awesome week of infant science coming next July 👶🧠
4. Rodney Tompkins finds that 4- and 5-year-old children take risk and protection into account when evaluating caregivers who help or hinder their kids. I'll also talk about this work (& other findings) in Symposium 1 on caregiving: osf.io/preprints/ps...
3. Coxi Jiang finds that the strength of relationships, not just their valence, guides adults' predictions about vicarious emotional responses to others' experiences (i.e. empathy & counter-empathy): osf.io/preprints/ps...
2. Bill Pepe finds that infants expect helpers and hinderers to act the same way in a new context -- but only toward the same target, not a new one. This suggests they infer the actors' relationships, not their dispositions.
CogSci: osf.io/preprints/os...
Expanded manuscript: osf.io/preprints/ps...