Andrew Shtulman
@andrewshtulman.bsky.social
Professor, cognitive developmental psychologist, and author of SCIENCEBLIND (Basic) and LEARNING TO IMAGINE (Harvard). I love academic bureaucracy and sarcasm.
Why do children claim unusual events are impossible? In a new paper with Goulding, Ronfard (@samuelronfard.bsky.social), and Friedman (@orifriedman.bsky.social), we synthesize two decades of research on children's possibility judgments and propose some answers. www.sciencedirect.com/science/chap...
Another successful summer research session. Thank you Riley, Nathan, Alejandro, Amelia, and Lucy for recruiting and testing scores of children!
Seeking out the simplest, most elegant explanations has served scientists well for centuries, but cognitive scientist Marina Dubova’s experiments are revealing better ways to uncover reality
Occam’s razor has lost its edge. Can we sharpen our search for truth?
Seeking out the simplest, most elegant explanations has served scientists well for centuries, but cognitive scientist Marina Dubova’s experiments are revealing better ways to uncover reality
newscientist.com
They had me at “Too much whimsy!”
Tomer Ullman@tomerullman.bsky.social · last mo.Now out (for realz) in Cognition: "People Make Graded Judgments About The Inconceivable" (by Hu, Sosa, & me) Free preprint: www.tomerullman.org/papers/grade... Journal link: bit.ly/gradedInconCog @jennhu.bsky.social @cognitionjournal.bsky.social
I wrote a book! It's called WHY WE ASK WHY, and it's about the human drive to explain, combining psychology, philosophy, and stories. It will be released on October 6, but it's currently available for pre-order from Barnes & Noble at 25% off with code PREORDER25.
Congratulations, Melissa Kibbe (@levelsof.bsky.social), on winning the Society for Philosophy and Psychology’s 2026 Stanton Prize and, more generally, for your rich research program demonstrating the origins of abstract, generative thought in human infants.
In this SFI Seminar, @andrewshtulman.bsky.social of Occidental College challenges the idea that imagination is strongest in childhood. He argues that children’s imaginations are constrained by what they know, and that learning something new is key to expanding the imagination.
The Development of Imagination
YouTube video by Santa Fe Institute
youtube.com
Thank you @cogdevsoc.bsky.social for honoring me and my book, Learning to Imagine, with your 2023 Book Award!
Thank you Marina Dubova (@mdubova.bsky.social) and the Santa Fe Institute (@sfiscience.bsky.social) for hosting me this week. I was particularly touched that Newton attended my talk.
This bio of Susan Carey, broadcast on the CDS listserv, is super weird.
The 52nd annual meeting of the SPP will be at JHU, June 17-20 📣 Submit your work by January 16! 📣
Congratulations, Dr. Francisco Cruz (@cruzf.bsky.social), on on an incredibly clear and comprehensive PhD dissertation on "The psychology of lay beliefs about science" as well as an engaging and thoughtful defense. And thank you for inviting me to be on your jury; I learned so much from your work!
New resource on helping elementary-school-aged children navigate the internet. www.childrenandscreens.org/learn-explor...
The Children and Screens Guide for Child Development and Media Use: Middle Childhood Ages 6-11 - Children and Screens
childrenandscreens.org
New article w/ M Pabla & @orifriedman.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... When children claim an unexpected event is impossible they also claim it's never happened, even for immoral events, suggesting their judgments reflect beliefs about what could happen & not merely what should.
New paper! 🚨 Does studying psychology change how people think about psychology (even at an intuitive level)? 🤔 We tracked students across their degree and found shifts in their beliefs about the bases of psychological phenomena and their scientific explainability. 1/5
Submit your work to Origins of the Social Mind at #SPSP2026! Our morning timeslot is compatible with a variety of fantastic afternoon preconferences (e.g., Social Cognition, Gender). Deadline is 10/13! (Talks/posters can focus on any topic related to the origins of social cognition). See you there!
Nice piece by @paulbloomatyale.bsky.social where he implies that the only interdisciplinary conversations worth having are those at SPP (@socphilpsych.bsky.social). I agree! A big shoutout to @levelsof.bsky.social & @oldjerryfodor.bsky.social for putting together a conversation-inspiring SPP 2025!
Paul Bloom @paulbloomatyale.bsky.social · 11mo agoNew article in Cognition! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Children are able to differentiate fake news from real news even before exposure to fake news on social media. This ability improves with age & even more so with cognitive reflection or the disposition to question an initial intuition.
Oooh, the Spanish translation of Learning to Imagine is pretty!
I’m honored to be a keynote speaker at the 5th Jean Piaget Conference at the University of Geneva. A highlight of the conference waa a tour of the Jean Piaget archives, which includes 80,000 documents currently being organized and systemized. 10,000 of those documents are experimental protocols!
Watched a presentation today delivered in French but translated into English at the bottom of the PPT slides using AI. "Translated" is a generous description. I'm pretty sure the speaker did not say "I've got some bananas for you after I've exploded my talk."
A colleague asked if I've read Arisotle's Poetics recently. I'm flattered he thought I had read it at all.
Ithaca airport keeps playing a message about TSA prefaced with “due to the increased situation.” I hate it when situations increase.
The @socphilpsych.bsky.social presidential banquet begins with the (attempted) roast by John Doris of the (seemingly unroastable) @andrewshtulman.bsky.social #SPP2025
Day 3 of #SPP2025. Marina Bedny shares fascinating evidence that congenitally blind people use the same intuitive theories of color as sighted people to predict and explain object coloration even when they disagree about what color an object tends to be.
Day 2 of #SPP2025 begins with a fascinating talk by @chriskrupenye.bsky.social on whether chimpanzees and bonobos have a theory of mind. Krupenye’s studies show that our ape cousins track others’ knowledge not just to obtain food but also for a seemingly intrinsic love of drama!
#SPP2025 is here! So excited to kick things off with the preconference on Possibilities: Near and Far and a talk by Laurie Paul.
US News & World Report sent me a survey to rate the quality of undergrad Psychology programs for their 2026 rankings. It includes over 600 programs! How would anyone's ratings be meaningful? I don't think I'll participate in this popularity contest.
