so lucky to have worked with @drbarner.bsky.social and everyone in the lab and beyond @urvi.bsky.social @kostaboskovic.bsky.social @knle.bsky.social. You've always inspired me with your super cool work, and I've grown so much with you all 🧡

I'm very happy to share that I'll be joining @bergelsonlab.bsky.social at Harvard as a postdoc in September!! We'll work on how babies learn word meanings, and tons more!

📚By Sandeep Prasada: Conceptual Form: The hidden structure of commonsense concepts

Conceptual Form

In Conceptual Form, Sandeep Prasada develops a new and original approach to the study of commonsense concepts. He argues that lexically expressible concepts ...

mitpress.mit.edu

​New article!: The Origins and Evolution of Writing www.annualreviews.org/content/jour... 🧵1/

The Origins and Evolution of Writing

For centuries, scholars have debated the etiology and evolution of writing. The most persistent concerns relate to the relationship between writing and social organization, linguistic structure, and c...

annualreviews.org

One year down at Lehigh! 🎉 This year we built the lab, did some cool science, and sent out our very first newsletter (tinyurl.com/5n978emu). I'm also excited to share that I'll be recruiting a PhD student this cycle! If you know any trainees who might be a great fit, please send them my way!

1/ New paper with Stephanie Alderete, Fei Xu and Melissa Kibbe @levelsof.bsky.social!! osf.io/preprints/ps...

free download for 2 weeks #phisci h

The Philosophy of Time Reversal

Cambridge Core - Philosophy: General Interest - The Philosophy of Time Reversal

cambridge.org

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

New paper w/Alan Bale & @drbarner.bsky.social in Journal of Semantics!🎉 We show in 3 studies that conditionals get strengthened to "only if" depending on listeners' access to alternatives, constrained by QUD & speaker knowledge, paralleling other forms of pragmatic inference. doi.org/10.1093/jos/...

Conditional inference and access to alternatives: the role of QUD and speaker knowledge in conditional perfection

Abstract. Conditional statements often imply meanings that extend beyond their literal content, influenced by contextual factors such as the Question Under

doi.org

New paper with @drbarner.bsky.social out now in Developmental Psychology! Despite the importance of age in our social world, little is known about how children reason about it. Do children understand age as something distinct from size from an early age? 1/10 psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?d...

Can infants or other animals represent "mutually exclusive possibilities"? In a new paper in JEP:G, we argue for specifying: in thinking or seeing? We show that in object perception (shared with infants and many animals), the answer is yes. (w Peter Mazalik & Roman Feiman) osf.io/preprints/ps... /1

gonna try something different and start joy baiting people

Researchers learn about the world in part by randomly deciding to do things to their participants. Why is randomization — the move at the heart of the experimental method — even allowed? Ch 4 of Experimentology is about research ethics. 🧵 experimentology.io

New preprint w/ @drbarner.bsky.social, and probably the most fun project I've worked on!! Past studies find kids fail to compute scalar implicatures. Do those tasks test spontaneous interpretation, or do they proffer worlds kids would never consider? 🧵 osf.io/preprints/ps...

Aside from testing the MR view, we offer a new theoretical take on why kids fail. Kids conceptualize the goal of object retrieval tasks exactly as adults do betting. When we bet on horses, we don't spread bets across all options, but try to pick a winner. When FORCED to spread bets, kids succeed.

Urvi Maheshwari ツ@urvi.bsky.social · 3mo ago

New preprint w @carenwalker.bsky.social & @drbarner.bsky.social! We test the "minimal representations" hypothesis that explains gaps in 3yos modal reasoning. Against it, we find that even 2½yos reason about mutually exclusive possibilities... when goals are clear to them. osf.io/preprints/ps... 1/6

New preprint w @carenwalker.bsky.social & @drbarner.bsky.social! We test the "minimal representations" hypothesis that explains gaps in 3yos modal reasoning. Against it, we find that even 2½yos reason about mutually exclusive possibilities... when goals are clear to them. osf.io/preprints/ps... 1/6

Fun little review paper w/ @drbarner.bsky.social, in which we discuss the role of language in the development of exact number concepts! 1/5 osf.io/preprints/ps...

New pre-print alert! How do children learn magnitude words like "long" and "high", which often denote multiple domains? With @urvi.bsky.social and @drbarner.bsky.social, we find that children start with narrow meanings restricted to the labeled domain, before analogically extending osf.io/ucxra_v1

New paper in Child Development! When we enter others' homes, we learn about them from the placement of their belongings. This requires integrating multiple social factors (social context, pref). We find 6+yo succeed at integration & 'read the room' in this way! academic.oup.com/chidev/artic...

Reading the room: Children integrate multiple social factors to predict and interpret objects' locations

Abstract. Adults infer social information from objects' locations by integrating multiple causal factors, which is often challenging for children. To test

academic.oup.com

This book has just been published, open access, edited by Ken Cheng and me. It contains multiple chapters originating in a wonderful Strungmann Forum held in Frankfurt around a year ago. link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

Challenges in Navigation Research

This open access book explores navigation across species using a multidisciplinary approach to address challenges in research and clinical applications.

link.springer.com

A short history of time - and why we have 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hour days and a seven day week. fascinating piece on how everything about time is a human construct www.bbc.com/future/artic...

The ancient reason there are 60 minutes in an hour

A mysterious 5,000-year-old decision led directly to how we still count time today.

bbc.com

🎉Our paper was just accepted in Cognition!🎉 Title: Training “Zero” in Preschoolers: Fast Referential Learning, Slow Relational Integration Authors: Yanfei Yu, Marianna Thorne, David Barner @cognitionjournal.bsky.social @drbarner.bsky.social

I'm hiring a new lab manager for my lab @ UCSD! For more info on the lab, check out our website: lillab.ucsd.edu Target start date is June 1 (flexible) and application deadline is March 26. Please share with anyone you think might be a good fit! Apply here: employment.ucsd.edu/laboratory-c...

Laboratory Coordinator - 138788

Laboratory Coordinator - 138788 | Careers at UC San Diego

employment.ucsd.edu

Some calendar systems really are transparent in this way!!!

Tea Berry-Blue@teaberryblue.net · 6mo ago

KIDDO: I know all the days, Onesday, Twosday, Threesday, Foursday, Fivesday, Sixday…and…Sevensday!

My book is now published! 🌏🎶🧪
 You can download it for free at academic.oup.com/book/62353 - I’d be grateful if you do! I also published an accessible summary with audio/video today in @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/d41... Try reading that first, then give the whole book a read if you like it!

Research plug: we're currently seeking (bilateraly, congenitally) blind adults & Deaf adults for a *paid* online research study (screen reader compatible) on how individuals experience words across perceptual modalities. Ping bergelsonlab@fas.harvard.edu if interested! Reposts welcome! #Blind #Deaf

📚 Reading Women in Cognitive Science 📚 “Recommendations for readings are welcome, especially in the history of cognitive science (prior to 1950s, and the older the better).” irisvanrooijcogsci.com/2026/02/15/%...

📚 Reading Women in Cognitive Science 📚

Occasionally, I make threads on social media about papers and books that I read. It helps me focus and process deeper when I share highlights and thoughts with others. In this blogpost, I compile a…

irisvanrooijcogsci.com

Very cool new article by @urvi.bsky.social, Jessica Sullivan and @drbarner.bsky.social comparing English and Hindi speaking kids' ideas about infinity, showing a subtly more complicated view of how numerical morphological opacity relates to infinity beliefs. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Counting without end: A cross-linguistic exploration of infinity beliefs in English and Hindi learners

Recent studies (Cheung et al., 2017; Chu et al., 2020; Sullivan et al., 2023) argue that children may infer the existence of infinite magnitudes throu…

sciencedirect.com

We're starting a PhD programme in Philosophy at Ashoka! Anyone can apply by April 15 for admission this year, and we will ensure that admitted applicants receive enough funding to support them for the 5 year programme. More info here: www.ashoka.edu.in/programme/ph...

Ph.D. Programme in Philosophy - Ashoka University

The PhD in Philosophy programme conforms to all Ashoka PhD programme guidelines. Additional guidelines specific to the Philosophy PhD programme […]

ashoka.edu.in

It never ends (you’ll see): another paper from @urvi.bsky.social this time on how language structure impacts children’s intuition that numbers are infinite (see?)!

Urvi Maheshwari ツ@urvi.bsky.social · 7mo ago

By age 6, many children in the US believe that numbers are infinite, despite initially representing counting as a meaningless & finite chain of words. In a new paper w/ Jess Sullivan & @drbarner.bsky.social, we explored the basis for this conceptual change. 1/n www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...