Mike Frank
@mcxfrank.bsky.social
Cognitive scientist at Stanford. Open science advocate. Symbolic Systems Program director. Bluegrass picker, slow runner, dad. http://langcog.stanford.edu
No 'bot' account/profile is as trustworthy as @oecs-bot.bsky.social. The Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science (OECS), an update to the MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, aims to provide 'open/accessible/authoritative-scientific/broad but focused/fundamentally interdisciplinary' articles. 1/2
Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science bot@oecs-bot.bsky.social · 5d agoCognitive scientists prioritize how humans process and transmit information over traditional distinctions between truth and falsity. Information and Misinformation by Andrew Perfors https://doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.a2555670 #CognitiveScience
Cognitive scientists prioritize how humans process and transmit information over traditional distinctions between truth and falsity. Information and Misinformation by Andrew Perfors https://doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.a2555670 #CognitiveScience
While the subjective experience of focus feels intuitive, the scientific definition remains a subject of intense debate regarding how the mind… Attention by Wayne Wu https://doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.3ce3f8af #CognitiveScience
It's hard to believe that OECS has now published 200 articles!🎉 A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed to OECS—our authors, reviewers, readers, and fantastic section editors, and especially @mcxfrank.bsky.social frank.bsky.social and @hbaum.bsky.social Excited for the next chapter!
Philip Laughlin@philiplaughlin.bsky.social · 2w agoToday's #OA spotlight is extra special. Just this week, @mitpress.bsky.social published the 200th article in our OPEN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COGNITIVE SCIENCE. Congrats to @mcxfrank.bsky.social & @asifamajid.bsky.social! We've come far since the 2023 @cogscisociety.bsky.social in Rotterdam! oecs.mit.edu
Sensing your body (‘Interoception’) is everywhere in theories of mental health. But when we tested how well hundreds of people sensed their heart and lungs, the link to symptoms was almost nowhere to be found. 💣 🚨New @natmentalhealth.nature.com paper 🚨🎉 asks why 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s44...
If you’re at #cogsci2026, please come see presentations by some of the great folks collaborating with the Language and Cognition Lab at Stanford!
And now with a newly refreshed website, just in time for #cogsci2026!
Mike Frank@mcxfrank.bsky.social · 2w agoNearly four years ago we asked ourselves, "what would it look like to have a field-leading, completely free reference work for cognitive science"? It's been so fun editing OECS with @asifamajid.bsky.social and @hbaum.bsky.social. I can't believe we have published 200 (!!) articles! oecs.mit.edu
Nearly four years ago we asked ourselves, "what would it look like to have a field-leading, completely free reference work for cognitive science"? It's been so fun editing OECS with @asifamajid.bsky.social and @hbaum.bsky.social. I can't believe we have published 200 (!!) articles! oecs.mit.edu
Philip Laughlin@philiplaughlin.bsky.social · 2w agoToday's #OA spotlight is extra special. Just this week, @mitpress.bsky.social published the 200th article in our OPEN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COGNITIVE SCIENCE. Congrats to @mcxfrank.bsky.social & @asifamajid.bsky.social! We've come far since the 2023 @cogscisociety.bsky.social in Rotterdam! oecs.mit.edu
Nearly four years ago we asked ourselves, "what would it look like to have a field-leading, completely free reference work for cognitive science"? It's been so fun editing OECS with @asifamajid.bsky.social and @hbaum.bsky.social. I can't believe we have published 200 (!!) articles! oecs.mit.edu
Philip Laughlin@philiplaughlin.bsky.social · 2w agoToday's #OA spotlight is extra special. Just this week, @mitpress.bsky.social published the 200th article in our OPEN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COGNITIVE SCIENCE. Congrats to @mcxfrank.bsky.social & @asifamajid.bsky.social! We've come far since the 2023 @cogscisociety.bsky.social in Rotterdam! oecs.mit.edu
Today's #OA spotlight is extra special. Just this week, @mitpress.bsky.social published the 200th article in our OPEN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COGNITIVE SCIENCE. Congrats to @mcxfrank.bsky.social & @asifamajid.bsky.social! We've come far since the 2023 @cogscisociety.bsky.social in Rotterdam! oecs.mit.edu
Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science
The Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science is a new, multidisciplinary guide to understanding the mind: a freely-available, growing collection of peer-reviewed articles introducing key topics to a bro...
oecs.mit.edu
Philip Laughlin@philiplaughlin.bsky.social · 2w agoThe July 21 #OA spotlight comes to you live from beautiful Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where the @cogscisociety.bsky.social will be holding court for the next few days. Today's @mitpress.bsky.social publication is DEFLATING MENTAL REPRESENTATION by Frances Egan. direct.mit.edu/books/oa-mon...
I've posted a preprint of a philosophical paper I've written on the relationships between understanding, prediction, and compression, based on a talk I gave at SPAN 2025. Now in press at Synthese. philarchive.org/archive/POLUPA
philarchive.org
Really excited about this new preprint spearheaded by @vboyce.bsky.social w/ @mcxfrank.bsky.social and the Peekbank team. It's a deep-dive into a large looking-while-listening dataset (>3000 children!), evaluating what analytic and design choices really matter for measurement osf.io/preprints/ps...
OSF
osf.io
Hey #CogSci2026! Join an all-star lineup Wednesday 1-2:30 for "Creating and Sustaining Cognitive Science Higher Education Programs" underline.io/events/516/s... @cogscisociety.bsky.social
Silent self-talk serves as a vital cognitive tool, allowing individuals to regulate behavior, sharpen focus, and navigate complex decision-making… Inner Speech by Charles Fernyhough https://doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.48614063 #CognitiveScience
Now up at @oecs-bot.bsky.social ! Looking to wrap your head around concepts & terms (and debates) in emotion & mood research (“affective science”)? Here’s a go to. oecs.mit.edu/pub/bhn7j5s7...
How do children learn new words? Do they simply track word-object co-occurrences across contexts, or do they also use information about what speakers know and intend? With @mzettersten.bsky.social and @drbarner.bsky.social, I tackled this question in our new preprint! 1/🧵👇 osf.io/preprints/ps...
OSF
osf.io
Thinking may not be a series of images or sensations, but formal computations performed on an innate, rule-governed mental language. The Language of Thought Hypothesis by Nicolas Porot and Eric Mandelbaum https://doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.79b53c0b #CognitiveScience
This is really great… useful context and inspiring perspective.
Arvind Narayanan@randomwalker.bsky.social · 3w agoI had the honor of giving a keynote at the International Conference on Machine Learning last week. I addressed the widespread anxiety about how we should adapt as AI capabilities increase. I was thrilled by the talk’s reception, so I have made my slides available www.cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/tal...
Within-participants designs need 2-8x fewer participants than between-participants designs for the same level of precision. Ch 9 of Experimentology argues for making within your default. 🧵 experimentology.io
100% this! I see so many between-participants studies with like N=50 when a proper power analysis would tell you you need like 500! Never between-subjects unless you have an EXTREMELY good reason. Remember, an underpowered study is often worse than no study as it can mislead!
Mike Frank@mcxfrank.bsky.social · 3w agoWithin-participants designs need 2-8x fewer participants than between-participants designs for the same level of precision. Ch 9 of Experimentology argues for making within your default. 🧵 experimentology.io
Within-participants designs need 2-8x fewer participants than between-participants designs for the same level of precision. Ch 9 of Experimentology argues for making within your default. 🧵 experimentology.io
Happy to share our new preprint exploring the everyday social ecology of preschoolers! We applied an automated multimodal pipeline to 267 hours of naturalistic egocentric video from 107 children (ages 3–5) to capture the changing natural statistics of everyday interactions: doi.org/10.31234/osf...
OSF
doi.org
Evolutionary biologists and psychologists remain divided over whether play serves a developmental function or exists merely as a byproduct of… Play by Laura Schulz https://doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.454c0c20 #CognitiveScience
🚨 Publication alert! Exploring Variation in Infants' Preference for Infant-directed Speech: Evidence From a Multi-Site Study in Africa Congrats to the entire MB1-Africa team! manybabies.org/MB1A/ doi.org/10.1111/desc...
Exploring Variation in Infants' Preference for Infant‐directed Speech: Evidence From a Multi‐Site Study in Africa
Infants show a preference for infant-directed speech (IDS) over adult-directed speech (ADS). This preference has been linked to infants' language processing and word learning in experimental setting...
doi.org
Biggest experimental study of Africa infant cognition! I’m very proud that we were able to get this project finished, despite COVID restrictions starting a month after our kickoff.
ManyBabies@manybabies.org · 4w ago🚨 Publication alert! Exploring Variation in Infants' Preference for Infant-directed Speech: Evidence From a Multi-Site Study in Africa Congrats to the entire MB1-Africa team! manybabies.org/MB1A/ doi.org/10.1111/desc...
This is a great intro to experimental methods: experimentology.io I think NLP has a lot to learn from psychology in this respect, especially as evaluation becomes more and more important these days.
Mike Frank@mcxfrank.bsky.social · 4w agoIf you don't know how reliable your measure is, you're wasting your participants' time. Ch 8 of Experimentology argues that measurement reliability and validity deserve more attention than most experimentalists give them. 🧵 experimentology.io
Great chapter on a very important topic. Construct validity continues to be one of the biggest challenges in research characterizing the behavior of LLMs as well.
Mike Frank@mcxfrank.bsky.social · 4w agoIf you don't know how reliable your measure is, you're wasting your participants' time. Ch 8 of Experimentology argues that measurement reliability and validity deserve more attention than most experimentalists give them. 🧵 experimentology.io