🚨 We’re hiring! The Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at Virginia Tech is looking for a postdoc to join our team studying the neural + computational mechanisms of structure learning and flexible cognition: ccnvt.github.io#positions

📣📣 A recent paper by Nicholas A. Vest and colleagues: Does Focusing on the Unit of Change Help Children Learn Growing Pattern Skills? www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... @nicholasvest.bsky.social @marthaalibali.bsky.social

Does Focusing on the Unit of Change Help Children Learn Growing Pattern Skills?

Children regularly encounter growing and decreasing patterns in songs, games, and daily routines. Over development, children learn to extend and abstract (i.e., recreate the pattern using different...

tandfonline.com

So excited to be at #MCLS2025 🌟🔢🐒

Do you know of any recent papers reporting good data showing that group "averages" may not capture what's going on at the individual level? If so, please share here. Example 1: Miller et al.'s 2002 imaging study showing reliable indiv. diffs in brain activation patterns vs. group average. (1/2)

Wow. Look at how rapidly preregistration has become the norm in experimental economics.

NSF just cancelled ALL grants to Harvard researchers. That’s right - physics, astronomy, bio, CAREER - ALL. Professors won’t get paid. Postdocs won’t get paid. PhD students won’t get paid. This is insane! If they can do this to Harvard, they can do this to your school.

“It found 90% of respondents think federal investment in STEM education is important for future economic prosperity, and the majority of respondents from both parties are concerned about policy changes that might make it harder for the U.S. to attract and retain top scientists.”

NPR@npr.org · last yr.

Most Americans frequently use federal science information. But few are concerned that cuts to federal science spending could affect their access to such information, a new poll finds.

Thinking about devastating cuts to NSF: US gov-funded science has been the engine upon which most of the tech wealth was generated. But the oligarchs (currently hoarding much of that $) think it’s their own brilliance & not the accident of standing close to the scientific engine that made them rich.

Spencer is stepping in at the best time-- if you need bridge funding for your research after losing NSF, look into this!

Dr. Suzanne Le Menestrel@drsl.bsky.social · last yr.

The Spencer Foundation is offering rapid response bridge funding for those who lost NSF research grants. www.spencer.org/grant_types/...

Jisun Kim is presenting work in collaboration with @gilliangrose.bsky.social, Tess Levinson, and @lkfazio.bsky.social. We received exciting news this week that the manuscript on this work was accepted - Congrats, Jisun! @mcls-official.bsky.social #PsychSciSky #Devpsych #Cogsci

Hello #SCRD!☘️ Join our roundtable Friday on May 2 at 1:20 PM (Room 200E, level 2) “Contributions of Research in majority world countries to the understanding of child development” 🇿🇦🇨🇱🇺🇸🇬🇧🇧🇷🇮🇪 #DevPsyc #CogSci @srcdorg.bsky.social

Excited to see everyone at #SRCD2025! Come check out our symposium on children's books as a tool for parent-child ethnic-racial socialization on Friday at 11:30AM (Room 101E).

If you're at SRCD please consider checking out these talks and posters featuring members of the CoCoDev lab and our awesome collaborators. #SRCD2025

Come check out the UChicago Social Kids Lab (PIs Katherine Kinzler and Alex Shaw) at #SRCD2025. My labmates have lots of exciting projects I can't wait to watch them present.

Current NIH funding slump represents: - Research labs closing - PhD students abandoning their dreams. - Trial participants left to their own devices mid study. - A halt to scientific progress and innovation for cancer, chronic and infectious diseases. - Minority health research terminated. Etc.

BTW. If you’re a scientist and are feeling hollowed out, depressed, fried, frustrated, confused, and simply exhausted by everything, I understand you. You are perfectly sane and you are not alone.

Attending a conference where researchers in my field (studying online misinformation and manipulation) are commiserating over all of our canceled grants, all in service of this: so this man and his regime of propagandists and conspiracy theorists can dictate (un)reality without challenge.

Justin Baragona@justinbaragona.bsky.social · last yr.

This exchange is so very telling. Trump repeatedly claims the photoshopped MS-13 on Kilmar Abrego Garcia's knuckles is real, Terry Moran keeps telling him it isn't, prompting Trump to say this: "I never heard of you. I picked you. You’re not being very nice. He had MS-13 tattooed... Just say yes!"

If you study numerical cognition/math education or teach math to children, check out the latest issue of "Psychological Science in the Public Interest," written by @nicolemmcneil.bsky.social, @numcog.bsky.social, & colleagues. This piece offers useful evidence-based teaching/policy recommendations.

Science Explains How Children Best Learn Math—And Yes, Timed Practice Helps

A new report shows that children learn arithmetic most effectively when instruction combines conceptual understanding and timed practice.

psychologicalscience.org

All NIDA F31 diversity scholars officially losing their funding... I barely have words. Expected at this point but so so disappointing and unfair. We are effectively punishing some of America's best science students for telling the government they are from an underrepresented community.

Interested in numerical cognitive development, school readiness, STEM education? Be sure to check out our work at #SRCD2025! 😀

Reminder: If you're interested in being a speaker in our MCLS Trainee virtual session on participatory design in math cognition and learning research, applications are due in 2 weeks (on April 1)!

MCLS trainee@mclstrainee.bsky.social · last yr.

#2: We are excited to announce a special virtual session on Participatory Design in math cognition and learning research! We are looking for trainees (undergraduate, graduate, or postdoctoral scholars) to give lightning talks (short, 5-7 minute presentations) about participatory design.

I sincerely think that universities should suspend their productivity standards for scientists and ask them instead to hold town halls in schools, public libraries, museums, shopping malls, and anywhere else and communicate what is being lost with the collapse of the research ecosystem.

James Sims@simsjames.bsky.social · last yr.

“The ecosystem of research and the creation of new knowledge in universities has been so powerful for American prosperity, American freedom, American ingenuity. To have that disrupted by government overreach is a disaster for this country.” —Wesleyan University President Michael Roth on @msnbc.com

I'll share what I conveyed to a grad student recently: There is much that remains unknown and out of our control right now. The future is extremely uncertain. Multiple job markets have already imploded. Focus on what you can control. Can you finish the dissertation? Then finish the dissertation.

Last year, I was overjoyed to receive an NIH NRSA fellowship to study toddler brains and caregiving effects on memory at Columbia. Last night, my grant was terminated.

The platform I run, Children Helping Science, is supported almost entirely by US government science funding, both directly and in collaboration with CHS researchers. Here's the note we sent to users today - we need help gathering your stories and citations! Submit here: forms.gle/zFnzrVURntdZ...

In unsettling times, we set PRs! 🏃‍♂️

NSF's CAREER program is almost 200 awards behind where it was this time last year. This program had its deadline almost 8 months ago (July 2024). It's often the first NSF award for many early-career researchers starting their career as PIs (e.g., asst profs). Brief thread 🧵

Scientists make solutions 💙 Madison, WI standing up for science today!

DOGE is directly involved in the NIH grant terminations. Metadata on one of the grant termination letters says that someone named Joshua Hanley authored it. Hanley is listed on an alleged list of DOGE employees leaked yesterday.

Alejandra Caraballo@esqueer.net · last yr.

It's the entire email list for all DOGE employees. Have fun!