Catarina Vales

@cvales.bsky.social

developmental scientist. not-that-kind-of-doctor. coffee lover. cat person. parent. she/her.

“It is destabilizing, frustrating and enraging to feel like my daughter, who wasn’t even 18 months old, has done more for public health than some people who are now currently in charge of it” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

A ‘war on children’: as US changes Covid vaccine rules, parents of trial volunteers push back

Frustration and anger mount as Trump administration contemplates new trials and restrictions for Covid vaccines

theguardian.com

Even accepting the premise that AI produces useful writing (which no one should), using AI in education is like using a forklift at the gym. The weights do not actually need to be moved from place to place. That is not the work. The work is what happens within you.

Developmental psychologists and statisticians team up to investigate the accuracy and reliability of research tools used to assess how children learn. Read more about how CMU researchers statistically evaluate spatial arrangement tasks with nontraditional data in this featured article! #research

Developmental Psychologists and Statisticians Come Together To Ensure Research Tools Measure Up - Neuroscience Institute - Carnegie Mellon University

Developmental Psychologists and Statisticians Come Together To Ensure Research Tools Measure Up

cmu.edu

Fellow academics, I know that it can feel like capitulation to think about focusing on your work in the face of so many attacks on us right now. Remember that knowledge is the enemy of ignorance & ignorance is the tool of tyranny. Doing our work is now a form of rebellion. Keep rebelling.

Don’t fall into the trap of normalizing any of this with this sort of language that we’ve seen from so many universities, falsely equating the current situation with other presidential transitions This is unprecedented, unconscionable, and deliberately disruptive. Have the backbone to say that.

Thinking about pros and cons of collecting data from kids online? Our meta-analysis is out today. Effects from online testing were slightly but not significantly smaller than matched in-lab effects: d = −.05 [−.17, .07]. By Aaron Chuey, Veronica Boyce, and Anjie Cao. direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...

Conducting Developmental Research Online vs. In-Person: A Meta-Analysis

Abstract. An increasing number of psychological experiments with children are being conducted using online platforms, in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Individual replications have compared the fi...

direct.mit.edu

Hey cognitive development folks - anyone tried having 5-8 year olds do online tasks with either mouse/trackpad responses or arrow key responses? Do you have an opinion on the issues with either? Trying to design tasks for kids on different platforms (inc. computer as well as tablet).

developmental folks: can you share studies looking at psychometric properties of *cognitive tasks* with children participants — any aspect of validity or reliability? extra points for participants in the 3-8y range. thanks!

I wrote an op-ed for the NYT about what reporting on long COVID has meant to me—how I approached it, the impact it had, and how it taught me to be a better journalist. This piece is sort of a manifesto for a journalism grounded in compassion, rigor, and care. www.nytimes.com/2023/12/11/o...

Opinion | Reporting on Long Covid Taught Me to Be a Better Journalist

Covering long Covid solidified my view that science is not the objective, neutral force that it is often caricatured to be.

nytimes.com

We created the standards against which we’re comparing these students, and are trying to maintain them as if social trauma hadn’t occurred. We can change the way we thinking about progress and schooling to be much more humane.