tal boger
@talboger.bsky.social
third-year phd student at jhu psych | perception + cognition https://talboger.github.io/
When we consider children in cultural evolution, we tend to cast them as recipients of adult culture. In our BBS target article, @sheinalew.bsky.social & I argued there's more: through 'peer cultures', children actively drive cultural adaptation. Our final paper + a rich set of responses is out now!
Children as agents of cultural adaptation | Behavioral and Brain Sciences | Cambridge Core
Children as agents of cultural adaptation - Volume 49
cambridge.org
@talboger.bsky.social’s poster-coaster experience lands in Baltimore this afternoon! Come see him present his work at the @socphilpsych.bsky.social at this evening’s poster session, then grab a coaster as a souvenir. Available while supplies last!
tal boger@talboger.bsky.social · 2mo agoCome find me at SPP (at my poster on June 18) to hear more, or even just to grab a coaster! Demo page here: www.perceptionresearch.org/anagrams_ani...
Do we perceive animacy itself, beyond its lower-level visual correlates? In @elife.bsky.social, @chazfirestone.bsky.social and I leverage “visual anagrams” — images whose interpretations change with orientation — to suggest the answer is: yes! elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...
When you look at a complex scene, you perceive various ensembles — sets of items of various sizes, numbers, etc. Are some more salient than others? In a new paper (w/ samiyousif.bsky.social), we provide an answer to this question! osf.io/preprints/ps...
OSF
osf.io
Excited to have been wrong about this! A few years ago, Tal told me he was working on intuitions about complexity. I knee-jerkily said, “but surely that’s not a natural kind! Why think that people have intuitions about complexity across domains?” Good thing this is the last time I’ll ever be wrong!
tal boger@talboger.bsky.social · 2mo agoComplexity is ubiquitous in the world around us. But different stimuli are complex for different reasons. Does the mind nevertheless represent a ‘unified’ notion of complexity across domains? In @nathumbehav.nature.com, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I show the answer is: yes! osf.io/preprints/ps...
Complexity is ubiquitous in the world around us. But different stimuli are complex for different reasons. Does the mind nevertheless represent a ‘unified’ notion of complexity across domains? In @nathumbehav.nature.com, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I show the answer is: yes! osf.io/preprints/ps...
at last, I have assembled all 4 of the Boger Coasters. The power of exactly matched low-level features is MINE
Chaz Firestone@chazfirestone.bsky.social · 3mo agoIt's #VSS2026! SO excited about the projects we've brought with us this year, and of course #phiVis to close things out. Come say hi, and don't forget to grab your lab 'merch' 👀 perception.jhu.edu/vss/
it sounds dumb but i honestly love my tal boger coaster and i'd make tal's poster a priority to ensure i got one if i were at VSS lol
tal boger@talboger.bsky.social · 3mo agono one tells you the hardest part of packing for VSS is the lab merch (come get one at my poster monday morning!)
no one tells you the hardest part of packing for VSS is the lab merch (come get one at my poster monday morning!)
Chaz Firestone@chazfirestone.bsky.social · 3mo agofresh batch of lab merch, just in time for VSS!
@noamchompers.bsky.social is right that we are right about him being right about perceived animacy. (more on this project coming soon!)
noam@noamchompers.bsky.social · 4mo agoanother new study about how right i am (this time from my buddies @talboger.bsky.social and @chazfirestone.bsky.social) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Conundrum of the day: The references section for your accepted-in-principle manuscript has an obvious typo in it ('absract' should clearly be 'abstract'). But no, the typo is in the original paper title! WHAT DO YOU DO
Is core knowledge actually core *perception*? In a forthcoming piece in BBS, @shariliu.bsky.social, Lisa Feigenson, & I comment on @daweibai.bsky.social et al.’s target article. osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/vnbep
OSF
osf.io
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...
🥁Now announcing the winner of the 2026 Stanton Prize: Congratulations, Melissa Kibbe @levelsof.bsky.social! ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ This honor will be celebrated at the upcoming meeting of the SPP
Society for Philosophy and Psychology (SPP)
socphilpsych.org
A few years ago, my favorite website (@puddingviz.bsky.social) put out this great piece analyzing a study of how randomizing ability changes with age. It includes demos where readers produce sequences of random coin flips, dice rolls, and locations in a 3x3 grid. pudding.cool/2022/04/rand...
We think this cool study we found is flawed. Help us reproduce it.
Are 25 year olds really more random than 60 year olds?
pudding.cool
I am very excited to announce that over the holidays, my first ever paper (w/ @samiyousif.bsky.social) was published in Cognitive Science! Here, we describe a new illusion of *number*: The Crowd Size Illusion! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
The “Crowd Size Illusion” and the Relativity of Number Perception
When we investigate busy visual scenes, how do we estimate the number of objects that we see? Most work on number perception answers this question by focusing on properties of the to-be-estimated set...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Gabe Waterhouse@gabrielwaterhouse.bsky.social · last yr.I am excited to announce my first ever paper (w/ @samiyousif.bsky.social ) about a new illusion of *number*: the “Crowd Size Illusion”. osf.io/preprints/ps...
Well this is exciting! The Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University (@jhu.edu) invites applications for a full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty member in Cognitive Psychology, in any area and at any rank! Application + more info: apply.interfolio.com/178146
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
apply.interfolio.com
Congratulations (and thank you) to @talboger.bsky.social, who lectured in front of nearly 500 @jhu.edu undergraduates today on the psychology of music! They didn’t see it coming, and then they loved it :)
can't believe the IRB approved this part — hope the children are ok!
What a lovely 'spotlight' of @talboger.bsky.social's work on style perception! Written by @aennebrielmann.bsky.social in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social. See Aenne's paper below, as well as Tal's original work here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The psychophysics of style - Nature Human Behaviour
Drawing on methods from psychophysics across ten experiments, Boger and Firestone examine the cognitive and computational foundations of style perception. Their findings suggest that this capacity is grounded in psychological processes for separating form from content.
nature.com
Trends in Cognitive Sciences@cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social · 10mo agoOnline Now: How do we see style?
When a butterfly becomes a bear, perception takes center stage. Research from @talboger.bsky.social, @chazfirestone.bsky.social and the Perception & Mind Lab.
Out today! www.cell.com/current-biol...
tal boger@talboger.bsky.social · 12mo agoOn the left is a rabbit. On the right is an elephant. But guess what: They’re the *same image*, rotated 90°! In @currentbiology.bsky.social, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I show how these images—known as “visual anagrams”—can help solve a longstanding problem in cognitive science. bit.ly/45BVnCZ
important question for dev people: when reporting demographics for a paper involving both kids and adults, we want some consistency in how we report that information. so do you call the kids "men" and "women", or do you call the adults "boys" and “girls"?
sami is such a creative, thoughtful, and fun mentor. anyone who gets to work with him is so lucky!
Sami Yousif@samiyousif.bsky.social · 11mo agoI am recruiting graduate students for Fall 2026 through both the cognitive and developmental areas at Ohio State. If you are interested in spatial cognition, visual perception, and/or mental representation -- please reach out! I'd love to hear from you. www.cogdevlab.org
Visual adaptation is viewed as a test of whether a feature is represented by the visual system. In a new paper, Sam Clarke and I push the limits of this test. We show spatially selective, putatively "visual" adaptation to a clearly non-visual dimension: Value! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Can we “see” value? Spatiotopic “visual” adaptation to an imperceptible dimension
In much recent philosophy of mind and cognitive science, repulsive adaptation effects are considered a litmus test — a crucial marker, that distinguis…
sciencedirect.com
It's true: This is the first project from our lab that has a "Merch" page! Get yours @ www.perceptionresearch.org/anagrams/mer...
perceptionresearch.org
Tomer Ullman@tomerullman.bsky.social · 12mo agothis is extremely cool; I also think it's important for people to know Tal made coasters of these
On the left is a rabbit. On the right is an elephant. But guess what: They’re the *same image*, rotated 90°! In @currentbiology.bsky.social, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I show how these images—known as “visual anagrams”—can help solve a longstanding problem in cognitive science. bit.ly/45BVnCZ
Out today! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
tal boger@talboger.bsky.social · last yr.Looking at Van Gogh’s Starry Night, we see not only its content (a French village beneath a night sky) but also its *style*. How does that work? How do we see style? In @nathumbehav.nature.com, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I take an experimental approach to style perception! osf.io/preprints/ps...
