I'm a developmental psychologist & mom of three (running my own twin study: the youngest two are fraternal twins!). I often get asked what it's like to both raise & study kids, so I thought I'd share some assorted thoughts below.

New Opinion in TiCS on what babies "know"! Some argue for innate concepts of objects, number, and morality. I offer an alternative perspective: attentional biases + perceptual prediction. No less impressive, but importantly different! www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

Selection-for-prediction: rethinking early cognitive development

For decades, core knowledge accounts have proposed that early cognition is organized by innate, domain-specific conceptual or concept-like representations of objects, physical events, number, and agen...

cell.com

We are hiring! The Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science at NYU are seeking applicants with an outstanding record of research in human neuroscience for an open tenure-track assistant professor position. Potential applicants can apply here by 11/15: apply.interfolio.com/195772

I’m honored to be part of the #PackardFellows class of 2026! With the help of funding from @packardfdn.bsky.social, I look forward to developing new ways to understand the architecture of the human mind and brain at @jhu.edu

Packard Foundation@packardfdn.bsky.social · 2w ago

We’re thrilled to introduce the 2026 class of Packard Fellows for Science and Engineering — 20 innovative early-career scientists, mathematicians, and engineers whose bold ideas have the potential to deepen our understanding of the world and improve people’s lives. 🔗 www.packard.org/2026fellows

So excited to share that I will be starting my research group at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology! 🥳 My lab will study curiosity and exploration across biological (and artificial) minds. I will recruit a PhD, a postdoc and an RA in the coming months, so please spread the word!

New paper! Accepted at Perspectives on Psychological Science. A textbook finding in infant psychology is that newborns - within ~1 hour of birth - visually track a simplified 'three blob' facelike stimulus further than its inverted control (see picture). This suggested inborn knowledge of faces!

Dr Nick@nmwilkinson.eurosky.social · 3w ago

ok the editorial and publication process is taking too long, so here is link to the accepted manuscript for our systematic review of the newborn face preference literature. it unearths a rather strange tale. check it out, any thoughts much appreciated www.researchgate.net/publication/...

New tutorial finally in press with @rmkubinec.bsky.social @chelseaparlett.bsky.social and @matti.vuorre.com. It has everything you could possible want: Quippy headings, a whole lot of beta, bayesian analyses and frequentist analyses side by side in harmony. link.springer.com/article/10.3...

Our lab is growing! We're looking for a graduate student to start next fall (applications due on Dec 1) and a postdoctoral researcher to start soon (ad coming soon; starting date is flexible, probably some time next year). subjectivitylab.org

The Subjectivity Lab · Duke University · Jorge Morales, PhD

Duke interdisciplinary research group led by Dr. Jorge Morales studying vision, mental imagery, consciousness, and introspection.

subjectivitylab.org

Many strong Elman Prize candidates are never nominated simply because no one thought to do it. Please repost! Your share might reach the colleague who writes the letter. Deadline: Nov 18 👇

Cognitive Science Society@cogscisociety.bsky.social · last mo.

Nominations are open for the Jeffrey L. Elman Prize! The prize honors mid-career cognitive scientists whose work shows scientific excellence and a real commitment to community building. Deadline: Nov 18 🗓️ Details and how to nominate: cognitivesciencesociety.org/elman-prize/ #CogSci #Award

Glad to see this large-scale replication attempt of rule learning in infants finally out. Bottom line: we find no evidence for an effect (650 infants from 30 labs) in a close conceptual replication of Marcus et al. 1999; no effect of potential moderators (e.g., age, method). 1/2

This was a fantastic team effort across 30+ labs 🌍 Paper (open access), data & code all public. > 📄 doi.org/10.1111/desc... > 💻 github.com/manybabies/m... > #ManyBabies #InfantCognition #OpenScience #DevSci, lead team: Andreea Geambaşu, Melanie Soderstrom, and Claartje Levelt

New paper 🍼📄 ManyBabies 3 is out (open access, registered report in Developmental Science). 30 labs, 33 languages, 839 infants set out to replicate a textbook finding: 7-month-olds learn abstract rules from speech (@garymarcus.bsky.social et al., 1999). We didn’t find it. 🧵

DataPipe (pipe.jspsych.org) is ready for its post-OSF life. You can use it as before to save data from online experiments, but now the data can be sent to Zenodo, Google Drive, or a Dataverse instance. Existing OSF connections work until 11/16 I took this opportunity to do some major updates...

Our department at UC San Diego is hiring a new tenure-track Assistant Professor. Open area, research addressing foundational issues in cogsci using modern computational methods. I love my department, and you will too. Apply!! apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF04633 #cogscisci #cogsci #DevPsyc #PsychSciSky

Assistant Professor in Cognitive Science

University of California, San Diego is hiring. Apply now!

apol-recruit.ucsd.edu

New blog post: "Cluster analysis: A skeptic’s guide". In which I ask a few questions that social scientists wishing to identify hidden classes in their data ought to address. janhove.github.io/posts/2026-0...

The US President's new proposal to tax international students has been approved by the White House for release this week. It's an unprecedented $100,000 tax on int'l grads who stay to work after graduation on Optional Practical Training (most grads do), a crucial bridge to remaining by any channel.

This is a real photo from 1913. It hasn’t been colorized. It was made using a technique called the Autochrome Lumière which captured true color using microscopic dyed starch grains as color filters, decades before color film existed. Pretty incredible, no? More below 👇

UCSD Psychology is hiring!! We’re seeking a new assistant professor colleague who studies high-level human cognition, broadly construed. Please share and/or apply! apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF04646

Assistant Professor in High-level Human Cognition

University of California, San Diego is hiring. Apply now!

apol-recruit.ucsd.edu

Saffran et al. (1996) were so close to coining labubu way before its time!

New paper out in @openmindjournal.bsky.social! "Large Language Models as Distributional Baselines for Language Tasks". With @jamichaelov.bsky.social , @camrobjones.bsky.social , Tyler Chang, and Ben Bergen. direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...

Large Language Models as Distributional Baselines for Language Tasks

Abstract. In order to ask questions about the mechanisms underpinning human cognition, researchers must control for properties of stimuli that could confound detected effects. In experiments involving...

direct.mit.edu

@damianblasi.bsky.social on the science of linguistic diversity is a must-listen: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/m...

The natural history of linguistic diversity

Podcast Episode · Many Minds · 28 August · 1hr 33min

podcasts.apple.com

Over the next several months, we will phase out some popular OSF features. These changes do not affect current public content, which remains safe and accessible. We have prepared support material to help users adapt. I am very sorry for the disruption to your work. Please read this post for details.

OSF Changes | Center for Open Science

We are preparing substantial changes to OSF that will reduce its functionality, focus OSF on its unique strengths, and move toward an integrated model with complementary services. As part of that shif...

cos.io

With the upcoming changes to OSF, DataPipe (pipe.jspsych.org) is migrating to a multi-backend model. We're currently developing support for Zenodo, Dataverse, and Google Drive. If there are other providers that you'd like to see as options please get in touch.

Center for Open Science@cos.io · 3mo ago

COS is announcing important changes to the Open Science Framework (OSF). OSF Projects—used for project collaboration, file mgmt, & storage—is being phased out as an active workspace over the next 6 months. This change does not affect persistence & accessibility of existing public projects. (🧵1/2)

Special issue at Psych Science on psychological science in the real world! Send us your best work looking at whether effects from the lab (or from theories) hold up in ecologically valid settings. Submission deadline: 15 January 2027 www.psychologicalscience.org/publications...

Special Issue Call for Submissions: “From Lab to Life: Psychological Science in the Real World”

Editors: Roni Porat and Vishnu SreekumarPsychological Science invites submissions presenting innovative research that brings psychological science “into the wild,” whether to strengthen its ecological...

psychologicalscience.org

Can kids track how unfamiliar speakers use grammatical patterns to guess who is speaking? Yes they can, at least when the speakers are groups of nifty-looking aliens! Exciting new work on early sociolinguistic development by Yiran Chen and Lynna Tran in my lab. academic.oup.com/chidev/advan...

Children infer speaker groups from variation in morphosyntactic patterns

Abstract. Variation in how people use language provides powerful cues to social identity. As children join a language community, they must acquire such soc

academic.oup.com

New paper! We found basic scene selectivity arises across the scene network early in infancy (i.e., by ~3.5 months old), prior to independent navigation experience www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The cortical scene processing network emerges in infancy, prior to independent navigation experience | PNAS

Sighted people rely on vision to recognize and navigate the local environment. By adulthood, human cortex contains at least three regions that resp...

pnas.org

Why being born helpless may be one of humanity’s greatest strengths: Human infants are born helpless and remain dependent for an unusually long time compared to other mammals, a trait that developmental psychologists are now rethinking as a feature rather than a limi… https://ranked.news/1214392?u=b

Hello world! 👋 We’re Minds, Machines, and Brains (MMB) 👤🤖🧠 a new open access journal from @mitpress.bsky.social exploring the principles of intelligence and cognition across natural and artificial minds. Submissions open this Fall! 🔗 direct.mit.edu/mmb

Response duration tracking is now an option in jsPsych 8.3.0. Decide whether to trigger responses on key press (current default) or wait for key release to get both initial response time and response duration. We handle edge cases like multiple keys being pressed and tabbing away from the browser.

Chaz Firestone@chazfirestone.bsky.social · 4mo ago

out today! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

How many languages have existed over the Holocene—and what does that reveal about the design space of languages and cultures? Now out in @science.org www.science.org/eprint/QDZNY....

The rise and fall of language diversity through the Holocene

Characterizing the factors that have shaped linguistic diversity is fundamental for understanding human history, culture, and cognition. In this study, we combined statistical and social computational...

science.org

good morning!! it's day 2 of #cogsci2026, and we're so excited to hear about new work from Seo-young Lee, Jess Mankewitz, Polina Tvilodub, Jinyi Kuang, and Karla Perez!