New paper out in cognition with @arikahn.bsky.social, @nathanieldaw.bsky.social, Cate Hartley, and @katenuss.bsky.social !! We show that children 👶 use predictive representations (e.g. SR) to guide their choices, providing an account of how they can make flexible choices in a changing world

Children leverage predictive representations for flexible, value-guided choice

By harnessing a mental model of how the world works, learners can make flexible choices in changing environments. However, while children and adolesce…

sciencedirect.com

Does Sleeping on a idea work? Nice to see our work led by the amazing @anikaloewe.bsky.social and @maritpetzka.bsky.social featured together with other studies in the WaPo: www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/202... Our preprint www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Does sleeping on an idea work? Here’s what science says.

Scientists are finding experimental evidence that the transition between wakefulness and sleep is a portal for creative thought.

washingtonpost.com

I think about this a lot. Thanks @behrenstimb.bsky.social for the wonderfully 90s-vibe blog full of wisdom! users.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/~behrens/Sta...

my paper with max, @maxkw.bsky.social, tuomas, and @fierycushman.bsky.social out in cognition at long last www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... We explain why humans and successful AI planners both fail on a certain kind of problem that we might describe as requiring insight or creativity

Similar failures of consideration arise in human and machine planning

Humans are remarkably efficient at decision making, even in “open-ended” problems where the set of possible actions is too large for exhaustive evalua…

sciencedirect.com

I have been doing entirely too much earnest posting about deep things recently, I need to do a proper thread about hippo testicles or something just to keep myself sane. Oh by the way hippos have migratory testicles.

a statue of a hippopotamus with its mouth open and teeth showing .

Alt: A hippo being tossed a watermelon, which it crushes in its massive jaws.

media.tenor.com

New preprint 📝 - another fun collaboration with @arikahn.bsky.social, @licezhang.bsky.social, @nathanieldaw.bsky.social, @hartleylabnyu.bsky.social We ask: Why do children and adults often derive different representations of their environments from the same experiences? 🧠👶🔎 osf.io/preprints/ps...

psyarxiv.com/y3dzn preprint from the time i spent at @hartleylabnyu.bsky.social 💜 - we were puzzled by past findings suggesting that children learn about the structure of the world, but don't use this knowledge to flexibly guide their decision-making as much as adults do.