More thoughts about the normal prior vs the student's t prior dpananos.github.io/posts/2026-0...
Adaptive Shrinkage and the Student’s t Prior – Demetri Pananos Ph.D
dpananos.github.io
Sam Forbes
@samhforbes.bsky.social
Assoc Prof in Psych at Durham Uni. Infancy, word learning and cognition. Sometime cellist and conductor.
Great apes reassure one another to maintain the peace Our new study shows that friendly touch before stressful events, like embracing, patting and even kissing, promotes tolerance and peace in chimpanzees and bonobos. Some BBC coverage 🙂 open-access paper below! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Great Apes kiss and cuddle to keep the peace, says study
Hugging before stressful events may be an ancient way of building trust, say scientists studying apes.
bbc.co.uk
🔺Psychology Job 🔺 Assistant Professor in Psychology (Grade 8) at Durham Uni to support our new MSc Psychology (Conversion) You should use computational approaches, incl machine learning and artificial intelligence Closing date 30th Aug Please share! #Psychology #AcademicSky #PhDSky More info 👇
Assistant Professor (Research %26 Education)
Click the link provided to see the complete job description.
durham.taleo.net
Are our phones stealing more than our attention? BBC Bitesize Parenting explored this with Dr Samuel Forbes, from @durhampsych.bsky.social, and Pete Etchells, author of Unlocked: The Real Science of Screen Time (and How to Spend It Better). Discover more 👉 www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/art...
How parents’ phone use affects children’s feelings and safety - BBC Bitesize
As parents, what message do we send to children when we lock in on our screens? Bitesize Parenting investigates.
bbc.co.uk
By the way @olivia.science is just the coolest person and if you want to follow someone who very much knows what they're talking about with "AI" criticism they're the person to follow!
If you're interested in these EXACT same dynamics, see my work with @samhforbes.bsky.social (bsky.app/profile/oliv...) on programming and gender: Guest, O. & Forbes, S. H. (2024). Teaching coding inclusively: if this, then what?. Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies. doi.org/10.5117/TVGN...
Teaching coding inclusively | Amsterdam University Press Journals Online
Abstract We present our stance on teaching programming with the aim of increasing reflexivity amongst university educators through dissecting and destroying pervasive anti-pedagogical gendered framing...
doi.org
Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ@olivia.science · 3y agoExcited to share this short & sweet article I wrote with @samhforbes.bsky.social! Teaching coding inclusively: if this, then what? doi.org/10.31235/osf... The title perhaps says it all; we show through arguments and examples what women experience in programming class and what to do to remedy it.
Nature reports on how labs are teaming up to run a host of huge projects that aim to bring rigour to cognitive science. #cogpsyc 🧪
Can an army of babies and dogs rescue psychology from its reproducibility crisis?
Labs are teaming up to run a host of huge projects that aim to bring rigour to cognitive science.
go.nature.com
We recently asked for members to send us professional associations around the world which are dedicated to child language. After sorting through the many responses, we've started an initial list on our website to provide as a resource for researchers: www.childlanguage.org/resources-fo...
"However, the education system alone cannot eradicate the attainment gap, so a true strategy would include a plan to reduce and ultimately to end child poverty in the UK"
The Sutton Trust@suttontrust.bsky.social · 3mo ago✍️ "The attainment gap is cause by a variety of factors in the home and at schools – many made worse by the Covid pandemic and cost of living crises. Poverty undeniably plays a major role." Learn more about the attainment gap in our breakdown ⤵️
Research led by Dr Sam Forbes and Prof John Spencer shows that young children who experience richer, face to face interaction develop stronger neural pathways for language processing than those primarily exposed to screens www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... @samhforbes.bsky.social
The parents using play to stop children getting 'trapped' by screens
Researchers say more speech and interaction around children can aid the development of young brains.
bbc.co.uk
> LLMs are labor intensive, are economically infeasible, and pollute the environment, and these properties may outweigh any proposed benefits. For example, poor quality air directly harms human cognition, and thus has compounding effects on educators' and pupils' ability to teach and learn.
Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ@olivia.science · 4mo ago@samhforbes.bsky.social and I wrote about this exact thing with air pollution and iirc back when we were all on twitter more than a few bros got upset we said it To Improve Literacy, Improve Equality in Education, Not Large Language Models doi.org/10.1111/cogs... pdf: philpapers.org/archive/FORT...
🚨🚨JOB ALERT🚨🚨 I'm hiring a cogsci/philosophy/compneuro postdoc at @ucl.ac.uk @uclbrainscience.bsky.social @uclpals.bsky.social! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DRH486/p... Come to London & work on frameworks for "testing" for consciousness using Bayesian belief updating & latent variable modeling. Pls share!
Postdoctoral Research Fellow at UCL
Discover Postdoctoral Research Fellow jobs and more in higher education on jobs.ac.uk. Apply for further details on the top job board.
jobs.ac.uk
For a year and a half, @carorowland.bsky.social, @lehersingh.bsky.social, Marisa Casillas, Shanley Allen, and I have been meeting to discuss whether innateness is still a useful concept to think about in studying language acquisition. Here's our take: osf.io/preprints/ps...
Excited to share our new paper in Child Dev! 🎉 We taught children names for 'monster' toys. Some names matched the sounds they made, some didn't. Children, especially 3-yr-olds, learned matching names more easily. Iconic words support word learning. Read here: track.smtpsendmail.com/9032119/c?p=...
Young children benefit from iconicity when learning novel onomatopoeia
Abstract. Iconic words, especially animal onomatopoeia, are more prevalent in infant- than adult-directed speech, possibly because iconicity bootstraps wor
track.smtpsendmail.com
Are you a #secondaryschool teacher or school leader? We're looking to hear from educators across all areas of the curriculum about how #vocabulary is being supported in your school. Please share, thanks! ⏱ 15–20 minutes (can leave & return) 🎁 Chance to win a £20 voucher tinyurl.com/UoYVocabular...
As always, clear thinking from @mcxfrank.bsky.social but I’d emphasise two things that he implies: 1. If you are going to use it make sure you check everything (and that may not save you any time by the end) 2. You don’t have to use it. You aren’t going to miss the boat.
Mike Frank@mcxfrank.bsky.social · 4mo agoJust wrote a new blogpost trying to summarize my thoughts on the question of how and whether to use AI for research in psychology and cognitive science: babieslearninglanguage.blogspot.com/2026/04/usin...
@samhforbes.bsky.social and I wrote about this exact thing with air pollution and iirc back when we were all on twitter more than a few bros got upset we said it To Improve Literacy, Improve Equality in Education, Not Large Language Models doi.org/10.1111/cogs... pdf: philpapers.org/archive/FORT...
To Improve Literacy, Improve Equality in Education, Not Large Language Models
Huettig and Christiansen in an earlier issue argue that large language models (LLMs) are beneficial to address declining cognitive skills, such as literacy, through combating imbalances in educationa...
doi.org
New pre-print alert! How do children learn magnitude words like "long" and "high", which often denote multiple domains? With @urvi.bsky.social and @drbarner.bsky.social, we find that children start with narrow meanings restricted to the labeled domain, before analogically extending osf.io/ucxra_v1
Why do kids learn better from gestures than visually similar actions with objects? In our new paper out in JoCN, we looked at how the brain responds to both. Check out the full paper here: doi.org/10.1162/JOCN... Thanks to @ycleong.bsky.social Susan Goldin-Meadow, Marc Berman and all collaborators!
Gesture-based Instruction Enhances Neural Synchrony and Predicts Children's Mathematical Learning
Abstract. Teachers' hand movements during instruction can influence how children learn mathematics, but not all movements are equally effective. Gesture-based instruction on problems such as 4 + 2 + 5...
doi.org
Only a few more days left to apply for a 5 year postdoc with me and Sergio on the neurobiology of child language development. Apply via the MPG postdoc program portal www.mpg.de/en/max-planc... Deadline 13th April
Max Planck Postdoc Program
Launching in April 2025, the Max Planck Postdoc Program features structured application calls and a comprehensive support system for researchers.
mpg.de
lingthusiasm is always fun, but this episode is *extremely* fun
Lingthusiasm@lingthusiasm.com · 5mo agobegonia: a deep pink that is bluer, lighter, and stronger than average coral (see ‘coral’ 3B), bluer than fiesta, and bluer and stronger than sweet William, called also ‘gaiety’ In our latest ep we get enthusiastic about colour terms with @korystamper.bsky.social, author of the new book TRUE COLOR!
dplyr 1.2.0 is out now and we are SO excited! - `filter_out()` for dropping rows - `recode_values()`, `replace_values()`, and `replace_when()` that join `case_when()` as a complete family of recoding/replacing tools These are huge quality of life wins for #rstats! tidyverse.org/blog/2026/02...
dplyr 1.2.0
dplyr 1.2.0 fills in some important gaps in dplyr's API: we've added a new complement to `filter()` focused on dropping rows, and we've expanded the `case_when()` family with three new recoding and re...
tidyverse.org
Recurring Crises in Psychology "The current responses to the replication crisis, although valuable, are not ultimate solutions because they deflect fundamental questions and postpone the reconsideration of the ideals of psychology as a science." Open Access: doi.org/10.1177/1089...
In case you are unaware of this. @olivia.science is great!
Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ@olivia.science · 10mo agoCAIL = prerequisite knowledge for a critical perspective, such as to tell apart nonsense hype from true theoretical computer scientific claims. For example, the idea that human-like systems are a sensible or possible goal is the result of circular reasoning and anthropomorphism. olivia.science/ai 🧵
There are a few good books and guides, my (biased) suggestion is the text I wrote for this very purpose engra.me/books/matlab/
Madan Lab | An Introduction to MATLAB for Behavioral Researchers
engra.me
Critically, we also need the public to support actions that enable older people to live great lives without having to drive for when they fail the eye tests. So the public need to get onboard with no pavement parking, pedestrian priority, denser housing, fewer out-of-town shopping centres, etc etc
YouGov@yougov.co.uk · 7mo ago90% of Britons support government proposals to require drivers over the age of 70 to have their vision checked every three years - including 89% of the over-65s yougov.co.uk/topics/trave...
For people using the @ukbiobank.bsky.social UKB RAP cloud system for brain imaging analyses: In order to make RAP much easier to use, we have created a Docker which is easy to install and gives you a graphical desktop, FSLeyes and the HCP wb_view. docs.google.com/document/d/1...
Imaging-friendly docker for UK Biobank RAP
An Easy Docker for Brain Imaging Visualisation on UKB RAP Paul McCarthy1 Stephen Smith1 1FMRIB, OxCIN, NDCN, Oxford University, UK Queries: email paul.mccarthy@ndcn.ox.ac.uk and stephen.smith@ndcn....
docs.google.com
Seems like a genuinely horrible idea that will only serve to amplify existing biases in selection
Research Professional News@resprofnews.bsky.social · 7mo agoUKRI to get advice on speeding up grant reviews with AI l. Researchers given access to funding applications to assess how large language models might reduce burden. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-r...
