Congratulations to Prof. Maria Robinson of the University of Warwick, winner of the William K. Estes Early Career Award

Research shows that when participants view structured color distributions, their responses align closely with objective data. This suggests a more complex understanding of visual perception beyond simple averages & variances. bit.ly/4gZw2dy @timbrady.bsky.social @mmrobinson93.bsky.social #PsySci 🧠📈

The Target Confusability Competition ensemble model predicts full feature distribution reports - Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

Khvostov et al. (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 32: 2903–2912, 2025) present compelling evidence that observers have explicit access to detailed ensemble feature distributions, challenging the traditional view that only summary statistics are available. Here, we demonstrate that the Target Confusability Competition (TCC) ensemble model (Robinson & Brady, Nature Human Behaviour, 7: 1638–1651, 2023) provides a straightforward process-level account of these results. Without any parameter tuning, the model accurately predicts the observed response patterns across Gaussian, uniform, and bimodal color distributions. This alignment underscores the utility of TCC-ensemble in explaining ensemble perception and highlights the value of similarity-based encoding and integration mechanisms in supporting access to distributional structure.

bit.ly

—— Open Mind is MIT Press’s Diamond Open Access Cognitive Science journal. We now have our first Impact Factor: 2.9 as of June 2026 Submit your papers to Open Mind direct.mit.edu/opmi

I am looking for a postdoctoral researcher to join my lab at Sabancı University in Istanbul for a 2-year TÜBİTAK-funded position, with possible extension. Interested candidates can email me with a CV and a brief note about their research interests. More details on gunselilab.com soon.

Mainstream parenting science emphasizes sensitive, one-on-one attention, yet this model reflects a specific cultural ideal rather than a universal… Parenting by Heidi Keller https://doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.5fd9a464 #CognitiveScience

🚨New dataset just dropped🚨 Introducing Places in the Wild: 67,000 RAW-format photographs (45 mpix) densely sampled from 810 places (260 basic-level categories). This is 11x the number of pixels in ImageNet! Preprint is here: arxiv.org/abs/2606.02481 1/

Places in the Wild: A Large, High-Resolution RAW Photograph Dataset for Ecologically Valid Vision Research

Large image datasets have accelerated progress in cognitive neuroscience and computer vision. However, most datasets are low-resolution, internet-sourced JPEGs with unknown capture conditions and limi...

arxiv.org

Now out in Current Opinion in Neurobiology! We propose that biases in perception & memory emerge naturally from an adaptive, hierarchical human learning system. w/ @timbrady.bsky.social + sky-less et al. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Attraction and repulsion in perception and working memory as complementary outcomes of learning

Visual perception is imperfect. Fortunately, the environment contains an incredible amount of structure that observers can learn to exploit through ex…

sciencedirect.com

So excited about this new work—check it out and go see Jane’s talk on Sunday if you’re at #VSS2026!

jane-yang.bsky.social@jane-yang.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Children acquire object category representations from their everyday experiences in the first few years of life. What do the inputs to this learning process actually look like? New preprint! arxiv.org/abs/2605.14990

Hello to everyone coming to @vssmtg.bsky.social: Come see what our lab and collaborators have been working on this past year. - Lots of interesting new work on visual working memory, feature- and object-based attention, cross-modal attention, ensemble perception!

The Brady Lab (@timbrady.bsky.social) is coming to @vssmtg.bsky.social #VSS2026 ! Here's some of the work you will hear about:

New review paper on the development of friendship psychology/ cognition (w/ @zoeliberman.bsky.social): By age 6, children appear to recognize friendship as a ranking-based relationship with outstanding social expectations and obligations. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Young children's friendship expectations align with evolutionary frameworks

Across the lifespan, friends are critical social partners. Prominent evolutionary theories—such as the Banker's Paradox (Tooby & Cosmides, 1996)—propo…

sciencedirect.com

I just remembered I gave a talk on this work at the 2025 meeting of the Memory Disorders Research Society, for those interested: vimeo.com/1170041564?s...

MDRS - Joseph Saito - Oct, 16, 2025

This is "MDRS - Joseph Saito - Oct, 16, 2025" by The Neuro on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

vimeo.com

Joey Saito@jsaito25.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Many claim memory biases toward percepts reflect corruption in sensory signals. We challenge this view by showing that ppl adapt their integration rationally w/ experience. w/ @timbrady.bsky.social Humans adaptively integrate memory and perception based on stimulus history | osf.io/preprints/ps...

Many claim memory biases toward percepts reflect corruption in sensory signals. We challenge this view by showing that ppl adapt their integration rationally w/ experience. w/ @timbrady.bsky.social Humans adaptively integrate memory and perception based on stimulus history | osf.io/preprints/ps...

New paper in Child Development! When we enter others' homes, we learn about them from the placement of their belongings. This requires integrating multiple social factors (social context, pref). We find 6+yo succeed at integration & 'read the room' in this way! academic.oup.com/chidev/artic...

Reading the room: Children integrate multiple social factors to predict and interpret objects' locations

Abstract. Adults infer social information from objects' locations by integrating multiple causal factors, which is often challenging for children. To test

academic.oup.com

If you’re at CDS this weekend, stop by our posters! I’m sad to miss it this year but so proud of this fantastic group ✨

Haoyu Du@preprint.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Exciting work from the Visual Learning Lab at UCSD will be at @cogdevsoc.bsky.social #CDS2026! Come chat with us about children's drawings, visual knowledge, and leveraging computational models for developmental research. www.vislearnlab.org

I’m on-route to #CDS2026! Rodney Tompkins is presenting several streams of work across both my and Lindsey’s labs. In our poster, we find kids+adults make rich, nuanced social inferences about people from the presence of protective architecture in towns (fences, gates, walls) - P3-155, 1:15 Sat!

Lindsey Powell@lindseypowell.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Members of the SoCal lab are presenting their work at #CDS2026! Check out where to find us below

Attending CDS 2026? Consider joining us at the morning pre-conference workshop on intuitive theories of care and protection in development @cogdevsoc.bsky.social

Eye Movements by Mary Hayhoe: https://doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.a42adb11

I'm hiring a new lab manager for my lab @ UCSD! For more info on the lab, check out our website: lillab.ucsd.edu Target start date is June 1 (flexible) and application deadline is March 26. Please share with anyone you think might be a good fit! Apply here: employment.ucsd.edu/laboratory-c...

Laboratory Coordinator - 138788

Laboratory Coordinator - 138788 | Careers at UC San Diego

employment.ucsd.edu

Our department is hiring an Assistant Teaching Professor!! This is a joint-appointed position with Computational Social Sciences (css.ucsd.edu). It's 75+ degrees F and sunny today, just thought I'd mention apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF04461

Assistant Teaching Professor in Computational Social Science and Cognitive Science

University of California, San Diego is hiring. Apply now!

apol-recruit.ucsd.edu

New paper with @timbrady.bsky.social and @violastoermer.bsky.social now out in JoCN! "Real-world Objects Scaffold Visual Working Memory for Features: Increased Neural Engagement When Colors Are Remembered as Part of Meaningful Objects" doi.org/10.1162/JOCN...

Real-world Objects Scaffold Visual Working Memory for Features: Increased Neural Engagement When Colors Are Remembered as Part of Meaningful Objects

Abstract. Visual working memory is a core cognitive function that allows active storage of task-relevant visual information. Contrary to the common assumption that the capacity of this system is fixed...

doi.org

Excited that this work with @serences.bsky.social and @timbrady.bsky.social is now out! Our Gabor-wavelet model better predicted voxel responses in scene regions than 3D models. Does this mean that scene areas aren’t “for” processing 3D scene structure? NO, we argue. 1/ dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...

A 2D Gabor-wavelet baseline model out-performs a 3D surface model in scene-responsive cortex

Author summary To gain a more complete picture of human visual processing, it is critical to understand the precise format of representations of naturalistic visual scenes. Recent work has approached ...

dx.plos.org

New preprint with @SamJung @timbrady.bsky.social and @violastoermer.bsky.social: osf.io/preprints/ps.... Here we uncover what might be driving the “meaningfulness benefit” in visual working memory. Studies show that real objects are remembered better in VWM tasks than abstract stimuli. But why? 1/

The Visual Learning Lab is hiring TWO lab coordinators! Both positions are ideal for someone looking for research experience before applying to graduate school. Application deadline is Feb 10th (approaching fast!)—with flexible summer start dates.

In case you don't know already, the journal Open Mind has a Bluesky account that automatically posts new papers: @openmindjournal.bsky.social The journal is diamond open access (free to read, free to publish) thanks to the support of MIT Press, Harvard Library, & MIT Library.

Tomorrow afternoon I'll be presenting my symposium talk at #ESCoP2025 titled "Meaningful and familiar stimuli support visual working memory for simple features"! See you there!

I and my lab are happy to be at #cogsci2025! Here's a shortcut to find work from the fabulous folks in my lab (and me) 😄

New paper with LaurenWilliams, @timbrady.bsky.social, and @violastoermer.bsky.social now out in JEP: General! "Limits of verbal labels in cognition: Category labels do not improve visual working memory performance for obfuscated objects" psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

⭐ Out now in Developmental Science ⭐ "Sounds of Hidden Agents: The development of causal reasoning about musical sounds" (by Minju Kim and me) causal reasoning, music/auditory cognition, event reconstruction, kids' integration of information... onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

Curious about the visual human brain, a vibrant and collaborative lab, and pursuing a PhD in the heart of Europe? My lab is recruiting for a 3-year PhD position. More details: www.rademakerlab.com/job-add

PhD position — Rademaker lab

rademakerlab.com