Good morning, scholars! It's time to put the noise of the world away and (say it with me!) Hit! The! Mother! Fucking! Tomes! Let's rise and cite!! 😤😤😤 To the scholarship!
Melissa Kibbe
@levelsof.bsky.social
Cognitive Scientist, Associate Professor at Boston University, Director of the Developing Minds Lab https://www.bu.edu/cdl/developing-minds-lab/
Now out in an issue! Children find it easier to represent uncertainty about *what* an object is than *where* an object is, with interesting implications for both early possibility reasoning and object representations ~~ Check it out 👉 direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...
Children’s Representations of Possibility: Uncertainty About “What” Is Easier Than Uncertainty About “Where”
Abstract. Young children struggle in situations involving mere possibility, such as when a target object could be in one of two possible locations. This difficulty is often interpreted as a general li...
direct.mit.edu
Esra Nur Turan-Küçük@esranur.bsky.social · 3mo agoNew paper in Open Mind! 2-to-4-year-olds find it easier to reason about an object's possible identity than its possible location, and we argue this asymmetry traces back to the architecture of early object representations. 🧵
Now out in an issue! Children find it easier to represent uncertainty about *what* an object is than *where* an object is, with interesting implications for both early possibility reasoning and object representations ~~ Check it out 👉 direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...
Children’s Representations of Possibility: Uncertainty About “What” Is Easier Than Uncertainty About “Where”
Abstract. Young children struggle in situations involving mere possibility, such as when a target object could be in one of two possible locations. This difficulty is often interpreted as a general li...
direct.mit.edu
Esra Nur Turan-Küçük@esranur.bsky.social · 3mo agoNew paper in Open Mind! 2-to-4-year-olds find it easier to reason about an object's possible identity than its possible location, and we argue this asymmetry traces back to the architecture of early object representations. 🧵
New from me and Alan Leslie! We got the band back together to lay out our view on object representations in the infant mind: non-discursive indexes that operate within a language of thought, & which get development of a more complex object concept off the ground www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
I’m excited to announce that I will be giving a talk at #CogSci2026 this week! Friday, July 24 Concepts II Session “Similarity Ratings Reveal Expert-Novice Differences in Knowledge Organization “ Brazil East: 15:45 EDT: 14:45 PDT: 11:45am Where: Ipanema room and online
Congratulations to Dr. Meltem Yucel on being elected as a Fellow of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology! psychology.msu.edu/news-events/... @drmeltemyucel.bsky.social @moralmindslab.bsky.social
Honored and thrilled to receive the Early Career Award from @infantstudies.bsky.social! Thanks to my mentees and collaborators for making my research possible and to @nataliebrito.bsky.social for the very kind nomination and @drkoraly.bsky.social and Chuck Nelson for their letters of support!
Natalie Brito@nataliebrito.bsky.social · 4w agoCongrats Laurel Gabard-Durnam on the @infantstudies.bsky.social Early Career Award!! ⭐️⭐️⭐️ @laurelgd.bsky.social #ICIS2026
How do ancillary cognitive demands systematically shape young children's behaviors in a range of possibility reasoning tasks? Find out in our new paper, now in press at Developmental Psychology!
Esra Nur Turan-Küçük@esranur.bsky.social · 4w ago1/ New paper with Stephanie Alderete, Fei Xu and Melissa Kibbe @levelsof.bsky.social!! osf.io/preprints/ps...
You press ‘send’ on a high-stakes email but hesitate when lifting your finger. You make a chess move but linger on the piece before letting go. Familiar? In @pnas.org, Hanbei Zhou @ruizhegoh.bsky.social @ianbphillips.bsky.social & I show that response *duration* tracks confidence! shorturl.at/A9NVe
YESSSSSSSSSS 🔥
Elizabeth Bonawitz @ebonawitz.bsky.social · last mo.As of today, I am officially a Full Professor. I would not wish pursuing the tenure-race twice on even my greatest enemies (you know who you are), but I am profoundly grateful to the mentors, colleagues, trainees, & incredible friends that have helped me along the way. share.google/QcorDYWiI5OI...
As of today, I am officially a Full Professor. I would not wish pursuing the tenure-race twice on even my greatest enemies (you know who you are), but I am profoundly grateful to the mentors, colleagues, trainees, & incredible friends that have helped me along the way. share.google/QcorDYWiI5OI...
Shoutout to my former undergrad Jane Singman (now @pearlhanli.bsky.social's lab manager), who helped me launch this project when I first started my own lab in 2021. She will soon be applying to PhD programs! 👀
Now out in Child Dev: "If moms do it, it can't be that important: Children's reasoning about gender disparities in domestic work" academic.oup.com/chidev/advan... Kids' awareness that moms do most housework + their intrinsic explanations for this jointly predict their devaluing domestic work 🧵
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.
The 2026 #HOPOS conference is underway! Hosted by The Ohio State University. A full roster of talks begins today with sessions on logical empiricism, Aristotle, the life sciences, sociology, and neo-Kantianism. Download the full program here: hopos2026.dryfta.com/81-program
Program Booklet
81 program
hopos2026.dryfta.com
Adding this sticker to the slides describing my thought experiments
looking forward to reading the hell out of this paper!
Jake Quilty-Dunn@quiltydunn.bsky.social · 2mo agoA new paper, forthcoming in PPR: Visual Icons This paper took me more than 5 years to write. It argues that the visual system constructs imagistic representations ("visual icons") and sketches a theory of how visual icons, and iconic representations generally, are compositionally structured.
‘Abstract contents? Hell yeah’— @levelsof.bsky.social, Stanton prize lecture
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s…another creative & impactful project from the rocket-fueled @talboger.bsky.social, applying the wickedly cool “visual anagrams” method to animacy! Read the paper in @elife.bsky.social today, then attend his presentation at @socphilpsych.bsky.social later this week. 🦆✈️
tal boger@talboger.bsky.social · 2mo agoDo we perceive animacy itself, beyond its lower-level visual correlates? In @elife.bsky.social, @chazfirestone.bsky.social and I leverage “visual anagrams” — images whose interpretations change with orientation — to suggest the answer is: yes! elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...
Come find me at SPP (at my poster on June 18) to hear more, or even just to grab a coaster! Demo page here: www.perceptionresearch.org/anagrams_ani...
Do we perceive animacy itself, beyond its lower-level visual correlates? In @elife.bsky.social, @chazfirestone.bsky.social and I leverage “visual anagrams” — images whose interpretations change with orientation — to suggest the answer is: yes! elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...
Yessssss such a great paper, I'm so happy this is officially out!
Gabor Brody@gaborbrody.bsky.social · 2mo agoCan 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
Huh, apparently there was never an S at the end of Caldor, Lechmere, or JC Penney...
Sadly I will not be at VSS this year, but here's what our lab is up to! (In solidarity with many VSS attendees, however, I may be foregoing many hours of sleep -- not for long walks on the beach but due to the anticipated arrival of a second child any day now...)
New work from my lab! Young children find it easier to represent mutually-exclusive possible identities of an object than possible locations of an object - an early object-rep-architecture limitation on possibility reasoning! Work led by @esranur.bsky.social recently accepted in Open Mind ✨
Esra Nur Turan-Küçük@esranur.bsky.social · 3mo agoNew paper in Open Mind! 2-to-4-year-olds find it easier to reason about an object's possible identity than its possible location, and we argue this asymmetry traces back to the architecture of early object representations. 🧵
New work from my lab! Young children find it easier to represent mutually-exclusive possible identities of an object than possible locations of an object - an early object-rep-architecture limitation on possibility reasoning! Work led by @esranur.bsky.social recently accepted in Open Mind ✨
Esra Nur Turan-Küçük@esranur.bsky.social · 3mo agoNew paper in Open Mind! 2-to-4-year-olds find it easier to reason about an object's possible identity than its possible location, and we argue this asymmetry traces back to the architecture of early object representations. 🧵
📣 The difference between replicable and not replicable is not itself scientifically replicable. 📣 New work with Erkan Buzbas, showing that verdicts such as "X% of results replicated" are based on an inferential machinery that doesn't work. arxiv.org/abs/2604.26268
How much does it matter whether children think science is about stereotypical tools like microscopes and beakers—or about seeking evidence and building explanations for how the world works? New paper w/ @debkelemen.bsky.social suggests these ideas shape how children learn science.🧵 bit.ly/4u5FsYi
Had a great time sharing my work with @levelsof.bsky.social on visual imagery variability in children at CDS in Montreal! So excited to get this measure out soon so it can be put to use! And… can’t wait to see what we (with @jorge-morales.bsky.social, Sam Ling, and Michaela Klimova) find in the 🧠.
