Stefano Palminteri
@stepalminteri.bsky.social
Computational cognitive scientist interested in learning and decision-making in human and machiches Research director of the Human Reinforcement Learning team Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) Institut National de la Santé et Recherche Médicale (INSERM)
You do not know what to read? 📖🤔 Below is a quick digest of this year's papers from the HRL team. The range is a little unusual: from reinforcement learning in rats, to the philosophy of AI, by way of eye-tracking and social-media behaviour. Seven papers, each with a short teaser 👇
Are debates about LLMs driven by evidence—or by our own biases? With @giadapistilli.com, we examine how wishful thinking, cognitive dissonance and explanatory overconfidence fuel both hype and dismissal. Part of a AI & Psychology special issue: more soon! doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2026.101670
You do not know what to read? 📖🤔 Below is a quick digest of this year's papers from the HRL team. The range is a little unusual: from reinforcement learning in rats, to the philosophy of AI, by way of eye-tracking and social-media behaviour. Seven papers, each with a short teaser 👇
#3 of #booksIveRead: Walden Two by BF Skinner. Thanks @stepalminteri.bsky.social for the tip!
Anne Urai@anne-urai.bsky.social · 2mo agoday 2 of #booksIveRead: The Light Eaters by Zoë Schlanger www.goodreads.com/book/show/19... Not only shows a beautiful tour of work at the intersection of botany and cognitive science, but also an exciting portrait of science changing its mind and implications for big questions about the mind 🌿
New paper in Nature Communications 🎉 Led by @romanececchi.bsky.social, with @sgluth.bsky.social, we show that attention shapes value normalization in human reinforcement learning. Eye-tracking models explain nonlinear reward scaling better than an ad hoc parameter. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Attention modulates value normalization in human reinforcement learning by shaping reward encoding - Nature Communications
People’s reward learning is shaped by context, but the cognitive origins of this bias remain poorly understood. Here, the authors provide evidence that attention may underlie these distortions by shap...
nature.com
New paper in Nature Communications 🎉 Led by @romanececchi.bsky.social, with @sgluth.bsky.social, we show that attention shapes value normalization in human reinforcement learning. Eye-tracking models explain nonlinear reward scaling better than an ad hoc parameter. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Attention modulates value normalization in human reinforcement learning by shaping reward encoding - Nature Communications
People’s reward learning is shaped by context, but the cognitive origins of this bias remain poorly understood. Here, the authors provide evidence that attention may underlie these distortions by shap...
nature.com
Open post-doc position in the study of perceptual fluctuations Position: post-doctoral (2 years) Locations: Paris, France (Ecole Normale Supérieure / CNRS) and Lausanne, Switzerland (University of Lausanne / CHUV) Deadline: September 4th, 2026 Start Date: Fall 2026 (with some flexibility) (1/8)
Merci à @cnrsbiologie.bsky.social pour le partage de notre récent article publié dans Nature Communications, dans lequel nous montrons que les rats et les humains partagent des biais cognitifs similaires lors d’une tâche de prise de décision 👇 @stepalminteri.bsky.social @neurobordeaux.bsky.social
CNRS Biologie@cnrsbiologie.bsky.social · 2mo ago#ResultatScientifique🔎| Une étude publiée dans @natcomms.nature.com montre que le biais d’évaluation relative est partagé par l’humain et le rat et repose sur un même mécanisme d’apprentissage ! ✍️ @shaunaparkes.bsky.social @stepalminteri.bsky.social À lire sur notre site internet : buff.ly/QTlV0EB
RECHERCHE I Une étude publiée dans @natcomms.nature.com montre que le biais d’évaluation relative est partagé par l’humain et le rat et repose sur un même mécanisme d’apprentissage ! @shaunaparkes.bsky.social @stepalminteri.bsky.social 👇
CNRS Biologie@cnrsbiologie.bsky.social · 2mo ago#ResultatScientifique🔎| Une étude publiée dans @natcomms.nature.com montre que le biais d’évaluation relative est partagé par l’humain et le rat et repose sur un même mécanisme d’apprentissage ! ✍️ @shaunaparkes.bsky.social @stepalminteri.bsky.social À lire sur notre site internet : buff.ly/QTlV0EB
Have you ever felt a little guilty about using an LLM to power up your research? If so, I'd argue that it comes from having internalized a wrong model of what science is and what it is for. I develop the argument in my latest Medium piece: medium.com/@stefano.pal...
LLMs Are Not Doping, Because Science Is Not a Sport
On why rhe intuition that using AI in research is a form of cheating rests on a wrong picture of how Science works and of what it is for.
medium.com
Have you ever felt a little guilty about using an LLM to power up your research? If so, I'd argue that it comes from having internalized a wrong model of what science is and what it is for. I develop the argument in my latest Medium piece: medium.com/@stefano.pal...
LLMs Are Not Doping, Because Science Is Not a Sport
On why rhe intuition that using AI in research is a form of cheating rests on a wrong picture of how Science works and of what it is for.
medium.com
As someone "mildly" obsessed with books, finally holding the physical copy of our own is quite moving. Thanks to everyone who sent me photos before our copies arrived: it warmed my heart 🙂 Now no more excuses to procrastinate on the next one. Guess the topic from the books serving as bibliography😉
As someone "mildly" obsessed with books, finally holding the physical copy of our own is quite moving. Thanks to everyone who sent me photos before our copies arrived: it warmed my heart 🙂 Now no more excuses to procrastinate on the next one. Guess the topic from the books serving as bibliography😉
New article out in @natcomms.nature.com Reference-point dependent reinforcement learning in humans and rats By Lachlan Ferguson, Magda Soukupova (co-first), Seb Bouret, me and Shauna Parkes. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
New article out in @natcomms.nature.com Reference-point dependent reinforcement learning in humans and rats By Lachlan Ferguson, Magda Soukupova (co-first), Seb Bouret, me and Shauna Parkes. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
New article out in @natcomms.nature.com : Context induces distortions in value representations across multiple elicitation methods and learning modalities, with Magda Soukupova (first author) and @bsgarcia.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Our book is officially out and there is even an audiobook version! Unfortunately, it’s not narrated by us, so you’ll miss out on our lovely Italian/French accents (a tragic loss for audiobook history). Apparently, Amazon.fr has only three copies left: THANK YOU! www.amazon.fr/Decision-Mak...
#SBDM2026 @fabiencerrotti.bsky.social Correcting mis-conceptions and shaping preferences about energy sources @maevalhotellier.bsky.social The Nature of Contextual Information Shapes Strategic Decisions @carolinepioger.bsky.social Experential value neglect is robust across representations
@alishiravand.bsky.social : "NORMARL: A Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Framework for Adaptive Social Norms in Resource Sustainability" @ #SBDM2026
Stefano Palminteri@stepalminteri.bsky.social · 2mo agoMy lab will be present en masse at #sbdm2026 Paris. Here is a first sample of the posters, presented by @romanececchi.bsky.social "Dynamic range adaptation in vast decision spaces" and @fabiencerrotti.bsky.social "Correcting mis-conceptions and shaping preferences about energy sources with RL"
My lab will be present en masse at #sbdm2026 Paris. Here is a first sample of the posters, presented by @romanececchi.bsky.social "Dynamic range adaptation in vast decision spaces" and @fabiencerrotti.bsky.social "Correcting mis-conceptions and shaping preferences about energy sources with RL"
My lab will be present en masse at #sbdm2026 Paris. Here is a first sample of the posters, presented by @romanececchi.bsky.social "Dynamic range adaptation in vast decision spaces" and @fabiencerrotti.bsky.social "Correcting mis-conceptions and shaping preferences about energy sources with RL"
Before the main meeting, we kicked off yesterday with a satellite on cognitive science and sustainability, organized with @magdalenasabat.bsky.social @alishiravand.bsky.social and @stepalminteri.bsky.social magdalenasabat.github.io/pre-sbdm
Magdalena Sabat
magdalenasabat.github.io
Hot take: AI should be involved in reviewing We've read this many times Manuscripts under review should not be shared with artificial intelligence, as these tools may not be able to assure confidentiality. AI-generated reviews can contain inaccurate information and biased language I'll push back
Summer school: Reasoning and agency in AI, 15-19 June, Venice. This week-long programme co-organised by Mi3 brings together leading philosophers and the next generation of researchers. On the programme: discussions of agency on AI and the philosophy of agency, and political implications.
Hot take: AI should be involved in reviewing We've read this many times Manuscripts under review should not be shared with artificial intelligence, as these tools may not be able to assure confidentiality. AI-generated reviews can contain inaccurate information and biased language I'll push back
🚨 New preprint! 🚨 Building on our Nature Comms framework, we show that feedback shapes risk preferences across the lifespan—not always improving decisions, but sometimes inducing age-specific biases, including gambler’s fallacy in adults. osf.io/preprints/ps...
[Pint of Science] Rendez-vous le 20 mai à partir de18h au bar Ces Années-là, 18 rue Laplace dans le 5e, pour une soirée autour du cerveau 🧠, avec la participation de @stepalminteri.bsky.social @normalesup.bsky.social "Etudier l'IA comme on étudie... un cerveau !"👉 pintofscience.fr/event/le-cer...
Le cerveau, terrain de jeu
Notre cerveau reste un domaine d'exploration infini : à imager toujours à plus petite échelle, mais aussi source d'inspiration pour étudier les modèles IA …
pintofscience.fr
Pint of Science FR@pintofscience.fr · 3mo ago✨ Ça y est, #pint26 commence aujourd’hui ! ✨ 3 soirées de science décontractée, pour toutes et tous, dans des bars : venez rencontrer des scientifiques et découvrir leurs recherches. 🗓️ 18-20 mai 2026 📍 64 villes et villages en France 👓 370 événements Programme et places ici 🎟️ pintofscience.fr
🚨 New preprint! 🚨 Building on our Nature Comms framework, we show that feedback shapes risk preferences across the lifespan—not always improving decisions, but sometimes inducing age-specific biases, including gambler’s fallacy in adults. osf.io/preprints/ps...
A presentation on the role of AI in research. The goal was not to provide definitive answers. Rather, I tried to share a personal and necessarily partial perspective, based on my own experience as a researcher, supervisor, and cautious user of these tools 👇 www.linkedin.com/posts/stefan...
My presentation about AI and research. | Stefano Palminteri
Today I had the opportunity to give a presentation on the role of AI (especially generative and agentic LLMs) in research and the IReSP - Institut pour la Recherche en Santé Publique (thanks to Kevin...
linkedin.com
If LLMs are increasingly used for data analysis, should we worry that they might encourage p-hacking? A recent preprint suggests that the answer may be yes, at least in relatively complex analytical pipelines. I share some personal experience here 👇 www.linkedin.com/posts/stefan...
LLM p-hacking | Stefano Palminteri
If LLMs are increasingly used for data analysis, should we worry that they might encourage p-hacking? A recent preprint, also featured in Science Magazine, suggests that the answer may be yes, at lea...
linkedin.com