Bella Fascendini
@bellafascendini.bsky.social
PhD student at Princeton🐯 | https://bellafascendini.github.io/
What do rubber ducks have to do with learning and AI? You can find out in my TEDx talk, released today as an Editor’s Pick at the YouTube TED Channel! www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbiy...
How you can learn in a world of information overload | Tania Lombrozo | TEDxNewEngland
YouTube video by TEDx Talks
youtube.com
New paper! w/ @cocoscilab.bsky.social🧵Can large language models reason flexibly, or have they learned what reasoning looks like? We introduce a new paradigm to test this question—the riddle riddle—and find that humans and LLMs show opposite patterns of performance. 📜
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.
It's always a treat to read Ted Chiang's thoughts on AI. www.theatlantic.com/philosophy/2...
No, Artificial Intelligence Is Not Conscious
Taken to its logical conclusion, this line of thinking is absurd—and damning.
theatlantic.com
So excited that I’ll be joining @jesssalerno.bsky.social and Nick Schweitzer as a postdoc at Cornell starting this fall! Stay tuned for work on how people assign causal and moral responsibility in legal contexts!
Congrats,Tom!! 🎉@cocoscilab.bsky.social
Princeton University@princeton.edu · 3mo agoFour faculty members will receive 2026 Graduate Mentoring Awards for their exceptional guidance of graduate students: Edward Baring, Tom Griffiths (@cocoscilab.bsky.social), Jerelle Joseph (@jerelleaj.bsky.social) and Jamie Rankin: https://bit.ly/4dmoXQR Congratulations!
A computational theory of Aha! moments! New paper explaining why Aha! moments occur & why they feel so good. TLDR: They are a form of meta-cognitive prediction errors i.e. they occur when we surprise ourselves about our own abilities! @rachitdubey.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Registration deadline tomorrow! Come join our workshop! 😃✨
Bella Fascendini@bellafascendini.bsky.social · 5mo agoAre you attending @cogdevsoc.bsky.social 2026? Come join us for an afternoon pre-conference workshop on motivation in development! We'll bring together developmental, educational, and computational perspectives to ask: Can we build a unified account of motivation across the lifespan? ✨
Are the laws of thought woven from three golden threads? Tom @cocoscilab.bsky.social and I discuss some of the history and themes in logic, probability, and neural nets, in his new book The Laws of Thought. braininspired.co/podcast/233/
Are you attending @cogdevsoc.bsky.social 2026? Come join us for an afternoon pre-conference workshop on motivation in development! We'll bring together developmental, educational, and computational perspectives to ask: Can we build a unified account of motivation across the lifespan? ✨
Are you a grad student who wants to give a talk at Princeton’s psychology department (in-person or on Zoom)? Nominate yourself or someone you know: forms.gle/WN2ybYMuZiW3... Priority given to non-Ivy and URM students. International applicants welcome. Deadline is this Friday (Feb 6)!
Emerging Scholars in Psychological Science Speaker Nominations
Nominate yourself or another late-stage PhD student to speak at Princeton's Department of Psychology this academic semester (Spring 2026). The Emerging Scholars in Psychological Science (ESPS) talk ...
forms.gle
This is an amazing book - highly recommend for experts and casual readers alike!
Griffiths Computational Cognitive Science Lab@cocoscilab.bsky.social · 8mo agoExcited to announce a new book telling the story of mathematical approaches to studying the mind, from the origins of cognitive science to modern AI! The Laws of Thought will be published in February and is available for pre-order now.
Congrats, Alex!!! 🥳
Dr. Alexandra Witt@alexthewitty.bsky.social · 8mo agoOver the moon to announce that, as of last Friday, I’m officially #PhDone! I’d like to thank everyone who supported me along the way, including, but not limited to, my amazing supervisor @thecharleywu.bsky.social, and all members (past or present) of the HMC lab and the @velezcolab.bsky.social 🎓
We are looking to hire a research assistant to help with data collection at our partner museum in Philadelphia! Share with your undergraduates or post-baccs who are looking for more experience in cog dev research! Please see the attached ad for more information: docs.google.com/document/d/1...
Yale Leonard Learning Lab - Philadelphia RA Ad
Title: Philadelphia-Area-Based Research Assistant Position in the Yale Learning Lab The Leonard Learning Lab (PI: Dr. Julia Leonard) at Yale University has an opening for a research assistant to help...
docs.google.com
Congrats, Rachit!! Super well deserved! 🥳
Rachit Dubey@rachitdubey.bsky.social · 9mo agoHonored and excited to share that I am the winner of Nomis & Science Young Explorer Award!! Also thrilled to share that my article describing my research is out now in @science.org today! The normalization of (almost) everything www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... 1/
Are you a US-based PhD student WITHOUT summer funding who is interested in adolescent development, trans youth, and/or gender? Reach out to me about applying to join my lab in Summer 2026 for the VIPS program! psych.princeton.edu/diversity/vi...
Visiting Internship for Ph.D. Students (VIPS) Program
The VIPS program is an initiative of the DEI committee of the Department of Psychology at Princeton University. VIPS will support up to 4 Ph.D. students who are full-time students at other universitie...
psych.princeton.edu
Honored to contribute a Journal Club piece to @natrevpsychol.nature.com! I explore Robert White's seminal "competence motivation" framework (1959) and why it remains relevant over 60 years later—from why toddlers insist on doing things themselves to designing intrinsically motivated AI. 🤖
Nature Reviews Psychology@natrevpsychol.nature.com · 10mo ago‘Motivation reconsidered’ reconsidered Journal Club by Bella Fascendini go.nature.com/3IwYftH
My lab at UCLA is hiring 1-2 PhD students this cycle! Join us to work at the intersection of cognitive science and AI applied to pressing societal challenges like climate change. More info about me: rachit-dubey.github.io My lab: ucla-cocopol.github.io Please help repost/spread the word!
One of the most brilliant scientists in CogSci + one of the best institutions to study CogSci. 💫 Apply!!
Bonan Zhao (赵博囡)@bonan.bsky.social · 12mo agoMy Lab at the University of Edinburgh🇬🇧 has funded PhD positions for this cycle! We study the computational principles of how people learn, reason, and communicate. It's a new lab, and you will be playing a big role in shaping its culture and foundations. Spread the words!
Excited to present at @CogSci2025 tomorrow at 1pm in Salon 6! Looking forward to presenting alongside incredible cognitive scientists @cvales.bsky.social, @elainewang.bsky.social, and @junyi.bsky.social ✨
Vélez Lab at UCSD@velezcolab.bsky.social · last yr.The CoLab is headed to #CogSci2025!! 🥳 Here's where to find us!
Congrats, @emiecz.bsky.social !! Super, super cool work! 🍞
Elizabeth Mieczkowski@emiecz.bsky.social · last yr.So excited our paper is now out in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social! Huge thanks to our editor and reviewers 🧠 Their thoughtful suggestions inspired Experiments 3 & 4, including a striking inverse correlation between idleness judgments and speed-up predictions
After a few days to fix some bugs, we will be holding another online Psych-DS tutorial on Wednesday, June 4, 12pm EDT. This is an informal workshop designed to help you convert a dataset to Psych-DS - BYO or find an open dataset at osf.io/mbvk4. Sign up here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Psych-DS Workshop signups!
Psych-DS is an open source data standard for representing datasets in the social/behavioral sciences. It is designed for use by individual researchers who are collecting data, preparing datasets for a...
docs.google.com
Melissa Kline Struhl@mekline.bsky.social · last yr.The first post-release workshop/tutorial on implementing Psych-DS for your dataset is online at #SIPS2025 tomorrow! In case 12:30CET/6:30AM EDT/3:30AM PDT is not to your liking (or you're not registered for SIPS), I may do an encore in a North American timeslot next week, would people be interested?
🚨CogSci preprint alert🚨 When you look at reviews, do you like to focus on positive or negative ones? @stepalminteri.bsky.social, @thecharleywu.bsky.social and I set out to investigate how learning rate biases differ between individual and social learning in our new study. osf.io/bcrw9_v2 🧵 below!
OSF
osf.io
Please help: Do you know a baby, less than 12 months old, who can walk? We are trying to complete a project, 7 years in the works. And all we need are 3 infants who are less than a year old and can walk, to do a short online looking-time study. 🆘
