What helps friendships form and thrive? This International Day of Friendship, discover how ERC grantee Antonia Hamilton @ucl.ac.uk is investigating the science of #friendship and how curiosity-driven research could help tackle loneliness. 🔗 buff.ly/5tNYptB @antoniahamilton.bsky.social

Super excited to share new preprint from our amazing PhD student @ale-dabr.bsky.social, showing that people’s social network properties are embodied in low-level social interaction dynamics, modulating who leads, who follows, & who encodes another’s movements more! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Personal network features are embodied in real-time social interaction dynamics

People navigate dozens of social interactions daily. Through these, they construct and maintain diverse social networks. While personal dispositions drive how people interact and connect others, the r...

biorxiv.org

A bit late (social media aren't my thing), but... It was a pleasure to co-chair a symposium on Multimodal Coordination in Naturalistic Social Interactions with @antoniahamilton.bsky.social , @judithholler.bsky.social and Simon Wehrle @ifl-phonetik.bsky.social at #ESCAN2026 @escaneu.bsky.social!

*New preprint*: "1Learning about ‘Inflation’: Mapping Caregivers’ Mentalizing and Pedagogical Strategies that Support 8-9-year-old Children’s Learning of Abstract Concepts" by @galrozic.bsky.social, Dora Szegedi, @antoniahamilton.bsky.social, Peter Fonagy and myself. doi.org/10.31234/osf...

1/ I’m excited to share our new @NatureHumBehav paper “Social Functioning in Autism: A Systematic Review & Meta-analysis” 🧵We synthesized 35 yrs of autism research to ask a fundamental Question: How is social functioning organized, developed, and altered in autism? Free link: rdcu.be/figGl

Social functioning in autism: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Nature Human Behaviour - Impaired social functioning is a core feature of autism spectrum disorders. This systematic review and meta-analysis synthesizes the evidence for this across studies...

rdcu.be

New preprint out!✨ Let me tell you about ‘inflation’… We introduce MAPS: a framework to code caregivers’ Mentalizing + Pedagogical Strategies when explaining abstract concepts to their child💬 Only some strategies were associated with learning. Perspective-taking may be key ➡️ osf.io/preprints/ps...

📣 So happy to share with you the results of my main PhD study, where two human predators worked together to hunt a human prey in Minecraft, and had their brains scanned simultaneously using fNIRS 🎮🧠 We find that the brains of the predators are synchronised in the prefrontal cortex during hunting! 💡

Our new paper is out! @antoniahamilton.bsky.social

Royal Society Publishing@royalsocietypublishing.org · 5mo ago

During social interactions, people’s heart rates can synchronise, but we know little about the mechanisms that contribute to this. This #RSOS paper tested whether mimicry is sufficient to elicit #HeartRate synchrony: royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article...

🧠 New paper alert! 🌆 Excited to share the first paper out of my PhD, now published in Psychological Research: rdcu.be/e6zEc. The joint outcome of work with Natalie Sebanz and Günther Knoblich. @sombylab.bsky.social

An exciting advance in developmental psychology! Toddlers expect ingroup loyalty to override personal preferences when outgroups are present | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Toddlers expect ingroup loyalty to override personal preferences when outgroups are present | PNAS

When outgroups are present, adults may endorse ingroup choices that are at odds with their personal preferences, in an outward show of ingroup loya...

pnas.org

BBS article on mechanisms of group cohesion in primates (Robin Dunbar), with our commentary proposing facial expression as one of those key mechanisms! @eithnekavanagh.bsky.social @jamiewhitehouse.bsky.social www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Check out our brilliant PhD student Hanlu He's @hanluhe.bsky.social 1st paper on heart-rate synchrony in real-world urban environments, replicated across 3 datasets recorded in NYC! HR sync is enhanced by social proximity, familiarity, social context, and better acoustic conditions. 🧵👇

Hanlu He@hanluhe.bsky.social · 8mo ago

🫀 New preprint alert! 🌆 Thrilled to share the first paper of my PhD on heart-rate synchrony during social interactions in urban environments. @sinelabdtu.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

No-one writes a paper like Polly Wiessner. Here's her on conversations among the Ju/'Hoansi, contrasting daytime and nighttime talk. Proper quant research. Proper anthropology. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

This is now out in Cerebral Cortex. Open Access: academic.oup.com/cercor/artic... @antoniahamilton.bsky.social @gabriellavigliocco.bsky.social Uzair Hakim @paola182.bsky.social Danny Thompkings @fdi55.bsky.social

Learning with others: teacher–learner brain synchrony depends on mutual gaze and joint attention

Abstract. Successful learning often emerges through social interaction: what are the neural and behavioral systems that support this process? This ecologic

academic.oup.com

Sara De Felice@saradefelice.bsky.social · last yr.

How do our brains and bodies support social learning in real time? We take an ecological and multimodal neuroscience approach to study mutual prediction and social coordination when learning with others. It took 5 full years for this one! Full open-access pre-print: osf.io/preprints/ps...

In 2021 we reported that live learning outperformed recorded learning. In a new preregistered analysis, my first senior-author paper led by Stan de Visser (pre-print), we find that this benefit does not increase with interactivity. The potential to interact may be enough to boost learning. A thread:

Haven’t read the full article yet, but this is a big deal if true! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This study shows that human pairs adopt stable cooperative, competitive, or mixed strategies. A computational model predicts dyadic choices and links these strategies to interaction dynamics, payoffs, and cost of cooperation. @violapriesemann.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Continuous dynamics of cooperation and competition in social decision-making - Communications Psychology

Using a continuous social foraging game, this study shows that human pairs adopt stable cooperative, competitive, or mixed strategies. A computational model predicts dyadic choices and links these str...

nature.com

Team science (all shared authorship), pre-registered, diamond open access paper now accepted at Open Mind: "Foreign Language Learners Show a Kinematic Accent in Their Co-speech Hand Movements". with Bosker, Marieke Hoetjes, Doenja Hustin, Lieke van Maastricht www.wimpouw.com/files/POSTPR...

New preprint ! Baby steps in conscious experiences - I explain why every single step matters when we climb the mountain of our embodied conscious life Check it out : it involves also drinking red wine versus seeing red wine 🍷 And thomas Nagel versus my grandma 😎😅 osf.io/preprints/ps...

Dynamic neural processing of self-other synchronisation error in interpersonal coordination sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Dynamic neural processing of self-other synchronisation error in interpersonal coordination

The human capacity to produce precisely synchronised actions with others is critical for everyday cooperative activities. Such interpersonal coordinat…

sciencedirect.com

We replicated one of the oldest experiments in Psychology (Triplett, 1898) as a registered report. Children completed a task faster in pairs than when they were alone. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A replication of Triplett’s ‘social facilitation experiment’ - Scientific Reports

Scientific Reports - A replication of Triplett’s ‘social facilitation experiment’

nature.com

Siobhán M. Griffin@siobhangriffin.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Arising out of discussions in @csi-research.bsky.social we conducted a Registered Report replicating Triplett’s (1898) experiment with over 400 children, showing children completed the task faster when paired with a coactor, compared to competing the task alone rdcu.be/eQwAE 1/3

"Our findings point to previously unknown strengths in autistic children who are minimally speaking across statistical learning and social attention, suggesting that spoken language differences in this population might be unrelated to these domains" www.nature.com/articles/s41... free

Visual statistical learning and social attention in neurotypical, minimally speaking and speaking autistic preschoolers - Scientific Reports

Scientific Reports - Visual statistical learning and social attention in neurotypical, minimally speaking and speaking autistic preschoolers

nature.com

Here's the link

Reformation of science publishing: the Stockholm Declaration | Royal Society Open Science

Science relies on integrity and trustworthiness. But scientists under career pressure are lured to purchase fake publications from ‘paper mills’ that use AI-generated data, text and image fabrication....

royalsocietypublishing.org

nice work but would the results be the same if this was a live social interaction (rather than watching a video)?

🚨new article with C. Galusca & L. Bonatti @springernature.com Learning is best when a teacher engages directly with the learner, e.g., by routinely gazing toward them. Is social engagement always beneficial for learning? If not, when? Full story in open access 👉 link.springer.com/article/10.3...

The effect of ostensive communication on immediate and delayed memory of novel and familiar action patterns - Memory & Cognition

Actions are often learnt incidentally by observing other individuals. How aspects inherent to the social context in which an action is seen affect action learning remains poorly understood. Here we st...

link.springer.com

I found this article super-interesting: Why more social interactions lead to more polarization in societies | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Preserved spontaneous mentalizing amid reduced intersubject variability in autism during a movie narrative. Paper by Margot Mangnus & al. with Peter Hagoort doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsc.2024.10.007

New blogpost on @elife.bsky.social's new Replication study type deevybee.blogspot.com/2025/10/prob.... tldr = I think it's doomed. #Replication #Publishing #Reproducibility

🫀🖼️🫀What can 732 co-created drawings and heart rates from 61 dyads teach us about intergenerational relationship development and collaboration? doi.org/10.1101/2025... @escross.bsky.social @lucanaudszus.bsky.social

Cardiac synchrony remains stable across repeated intergenerational encounters but is enhanced during high stakes collaboration

Intergenerational social programs provide opportunities for people of all ages to form new relationships. Furthermore, existing qualitative and behavioural evidence from such programs points to health...

doi.org

Fundamental features of social environments determine rate of social affiliation www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...