New paper finally out in @NatureComms with E. Leib, D. O’Shaughnessy, C. Gallardo, @sferrigno.bsky.social, and @spiantado.bsky.social. 📝Children across cultures discover the latent algorithms that structure what they see, even without instruction, feedback, or formal schooling.🧵 tinyurl.com/4a238m2d

Geometry is not something humans invented from scratch —congratulations to Jialin Li on her first, first author paper. More to come from this team… @spiantado.bsky.social @wenjieli.bsky.social @jialin21.bsky.social @emilymsanford.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

"There won’t be more discoveries, and we’ll just stop at what we already know." @cantlonlab.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/07/10/c...

She Studied Ways to Make People Smarter. Then Her Grant Was Cut.

Jessica Cantlon had a grant with the U.S. Navy to explore whether people could improve spatial problem-solving skills through training. Then the program was cut.

nytimes.com

New ep! 🚨 We chatted with Dr. Shari Liu (shariliu.bsky.social) about her recent Nature Reviews Psychology paper. How do infants make sense of other people's minds? According to Shari, part of the answer lies in understanding the physical world. itsinnate.fireside.fm/40

Mind o̶v̶e̶r̶ Matter? (with Shari Liu)

itsinnate.fireside.fm

#FeatureSession Alert! #EarlyCareerAwardWinner Stephen Ferrigno Stephen Ferrigno presents his work showing that monkeys and humans use similar, queue-like memory systems for hierarchical sequences, challenging traditional models of how structured information is represented #CO32026 🧪

A big #Congratulations to our Early Career Award Winner, Stephen Ferrigno! His work with #memory systems suggests that #monkeys not only have the ability to represent recursive sequences but do so like #humans. #CO32026

Excited for #CDS2026! The Cognitive Origins Lab will be there in force, showing our work on number cognition and sequencing development with presentations by @alessandra-silva.bsky.social @zellergracie.bsky.social and @elijahtramm.bsky.social (presented by an outstanding undergrad Maimoona Abdaal)

"the two sides reached a collective bargaining agreement that gave Women’s National Basketball Association players a nearly 400% raise...It isn’t just the biggest pay increase in U.S. league history. It is, as far as Goldin is aware, the biggest increase any union anywhere has ever negotiated."

Rachel Bachman, WSJ sports reporter@realbachscore.bsky.social · 4mo ago

After Claudia Goldin became the first woman to win a solo Nobel in economics, she got hundreds of invitations. She accepted three. One was advising WNBA players on a labor deal. She helped players land the biggest % raise in US sports history. www.wsj.com/economy/wnba...

The Cognitive Origins Lab @uwpsych.bsky.social is hiring! We are looking for a full-time Research Specialist (postbac) to work on non-invasive primate + child cognition research. Full-time, 2 years, starts June 2026. Apply here: wisconsin.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/UW_Madison/j...

What does it mean for culture to “shape” cognition? In our new TiCS paper, @benjaminpitt.bsky.social & I offer a typology of four possible effects: culture can Privilege one cognitive process over others, Prune out disfavored ones, Produce new ones, or have no effect. www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

New article out exploring great ape name recognition! We find partial evidence that zoo-living chimps & bonobos know each other's names 👀 Huge thanks to Animal Behavior and Cognition (a great open-access journal) & co-authors for your collaboration!🎉🐵 unsvr1.com/web/abc/work...

Do Great Apes Know Each Other's Names? Probing Great Ape Comprehension of Social Vocal Labels — Animal Behavior and Cognition

unsvr1.com

Imagination in bonobos! I am thrilled to share a new paper w/ Amalia Bastos, out now in @science.org We provide the first experimental evidence that a nonhuman animal can follow along a pretend scenario & track imaginary objects. Work w/ Kanzi, the bonobo, at Ape Initiative youtu.be/NUSHcQQz2Ko

Apes Share Human Ability to Imagine

YouTube video by Johns Hopkins University

youtu.be

First they came for DEI and I said nothing for I hoped my success rates would improve. Then they came for gender identity research and I said nothing for I hoped my success rates would improve. Then they came for the NPRCs, and I said nothing for I hoped my success rates would improve.

1/2 Ai, the chimpanzee who revolutionized science from Kyoto, has died at the age of 49. She was the first chimpanzee to learn Arabic numerals. Here you can see her in action in Tetsuro Matsuzawa's laboratory.

🚨I am looking for a POSTDOC, LAB MANAGER/TECH and GRAD STUDENTS to join my new lab in beautiful Madison, WI. We study how our brains perceive and represent the physical world around us using behavioral, computational, and neuroimaging methods. paulunlab.psych.wisc.edu #VisionScience #NeuroSkyence

Very excited to share a new preprint that’s been brewing for a long time! This work was led by the exceptional @traceym.bsky.social, and made possible by a developmental + comparative + computational dream team. osf.io/preprints/ps...

Over the weekend ICE abducted an NIH contractor when he showed up to a courthouse for his green card hearing. He is documented. His wife is a citizen. He is also member of the skeleton crew of animal care staff that works through a shutdown, to ensure the health and wellbeing of research animals.

New work with @samcheyette.bsky.social & Susan Carey testing the memory architecture used when learning/producing center-embedded sequences. Adults don't use Push-Down Stacks as is often assumed, instead they rely on a Queue-like memory architecture onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Do Humans Use Push‐Down Stacks When Learning or Producing Center‐Embedded Sequences?

Complex sequences are ubiquitous in human mental life, structuring representations within many different cognitive domains—natural language, music, mathematics, and logic, to name a few. However, the....

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Another fun #cogsci2025 in the books! Thanks to everyone who stopped by the CO-Lab grad student posters! Alessanda Silva on Number-Space mappings & @elijahtramm.bsky.social on Hierarchical grammar learning in monkeys (and humans). Posters still available through Cog. Sci. or reach out for a copy.

#cogsci2025 was a blast! Many excellent conversations about inner speech and categorical representation!

🚨 Neuro postdocs & grad students: Have a story to tell? Want to practice a talk before a conference or interview? Join our new seminar series on the Isthmus! All are welcome (from around the 🌎). Submit by Aug 20. Share your story (and this ad)! (Ping me for Qs) forms.gle/zpSTGWczxjqJ...

Researchers came from around the United States to showcase projects, ranging from modeling coastal hazards to teaching quantum information science, that were killed prematurely this spring by one of a half-dozen federal agencies. scim.ag/3Tv5iVC

Democrats stage a science fair of canceled grants to show what’s been lost

Partisan fight over Trump cuts heats up as Congress works on 2026 spending bills.

scim.ag

100% of Black people self censor at work. Its a job site not your personal safe space, snowflake.

🚨 CCCR has a new survey report out today! 🚨 "100 Days Under Trump: Public Reactions to Attacks on American Governance & Institutions" The report draws on our Apr/May YouGov panel survey of US adults, following our Oct 2024 survey w/ recontacts + a sample refresh. 1/ cccr.wisc.edu/wp-content/u...

After already killing more than 1700 active grants related to politically charged topics, the National Institutes of Health has flagged another roughly 3200 grants for review and possible termination.

Exclusive: NIH documents reveal inconsistencies in grant terminations as agency reviews 3200 more

Evidence of agency’s uneven guidance to employees and role of DOGE could play into legal case against cuts

scim.ag

📣📣 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

The original was fantastic! Can't wait for my niece & nephew to get a couple years older. Nerdy bedtime stories for days!

Ed Yong@edyong209.bsky.social · last yr.

AN IMMENSE WORLD: YOUNG READERS EDITION is out today! 🥳 I’m really grateful to AnnMarie Anderson for adapting it, Rebecca Mills for illustrating, Tom Russell for shepherding, and Rose Eveleth for reading the audiobook. (And it’s dedicated to Typo.) bookshop.org/p/books/an-i...

Well the NIH has cancelled the Women's Health Initiative, the largest study of women in history It has been running continuously since 1991 and has provided massive key knowledge about diseases in women Unreal www.science.org/content/arti...

NIH cancels its first and largest study centered on women

The Women’s Health Initiative has produced numerous influential findings

science.org

📣Now hiring! I'm looking to recruit a full-time Research Specialist (Lab Manager) to join the Social and Moral Learning Lab at UW Madison starting this summer! Apply here: jobs.wisc.edu/jobs/researc... (application deadline March 21, 2025)