Hong Wang, who proved the three-dimensional Kakeya set conjecture, has just won the Fields Medal, making her the third woman in the award’s 90-year history to receive math’s highest honor. Read our profile: www.quantamagazine.org/hong-wang-wi...

Hong Wang Wins 2026 Fields Medal, the Third Woman Ever | Quanta Magazine

Focus, commitment, and insight resulted in a “once in a century” proof. Hong Wang is now just the third woman to win a Fields Medal.

quantamagazine.org

"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

There are not "math people" and "not math people." School math represents a sliver of mathematics as a discipline, and there is a lot more in there that the so called "not math people" could really dig and be good at.

M. Nolan Gray 🥑@mnolangray.bsky.social · 4mo ago

What's something that experts/practitioners in your field universally agree upon, but that remains a "hot take" among the general public?

⭐️ Congratulations to the newest class of APS Rising Stars ⭐️ www.psychologicalscience.org/members/awar...

Is mental imagery a single process? Our meta-analysis of 46 fMRI studies suggests not. We find a key divide between object imagery (visualizing an object in rich detail) and spatial imagery (mentally transforming objects). This split mirrors the ventral and dorsal streams of vision

Happy to share this new entry on numerical cognition for the OECS. Thanks to @hbaum.bsky.social and @mcxfrank.bsky.social for making this happen! Apologies if your work isn’t cited! Had to limit cites!!! oecs.mit.edu/pub/rek9756r...

Numerical Cognition

oecs.mit.edu

Hello #MCLS2026 !☘️ We are delighted to announce the dates for our upcoming conference in Padua, Italy! 🇮🇹 Thanks to the local organisers at Università di Padova S. Caviola, R. Rugani, M. Ranzini, and others @mcls-official.bsky.social @mclstrainee.bsky.social #neuroskyence #cogsci #edusky #devpsy

🚀 Exciting news: I’m accepting new graduate students in the McGill Faculty of Education Learning Sciences! If you’re passionate about educational technology, games, AI, and learning sciences, this is your chance to join a dynamic and interdisciplinary research program.

Such a pleasure to work with @boldinsights.bsky.social to put this piece together. Always happy to discuss the role of spatial thinking in STEM learning and beyond

BOLD@boldinsights.bsky.social · 11mo ago

“Spatial thinking is a fundamental, yet often neglected, aspect of human cognition.” @zackhawes.bsky.social tells Aisha Schnellmann how central spatial thinking is to STEM learning. #EdChat boldscience.org/the-psycholo...

Such a pleasure to work with @boldinsights.bsky.social to put this piece together. Always happy to discuss the role of spatial thinking in STEM learning and beyond

BOLD@boldinsights.bsky.social · 11mo ago

“Spatial thinking is a fundamental, yet often neglected, aspect of human cognition.” @zackhawes.bsky.social tells Aisha Schnellmann how central spatial thinking is to STEM learning. #EdChat boldscience.org/the-psycholo...

“Spatial thinking is a fundamental, yet often neglected, aspect of human cognition.” @zackhawes.bsky.social tells Aisha Schnellmann how central spatial thinking is to STEM learning. #EdChat boldscience.org/the-psycholo...

Spatial thinking in the STEM classroom

Zachary Hawes studies how spatial thinking makes abstract ideas accessible

boldscience.org

Children build math skills on a “cognitive bridge” between space & number. But where does it come from? Our new study finds monkeys transfer learning and abstractions across geometry & numerosity, revealing the evolutionary roots of basic math development. 🧪🧠 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Cognitive bridge between geometric and numerical learning in monkeys | PNAS

Educational research highlights strong developmental links between numerical and spatial cognition in humans, often shaped by cultural tools like t...

pnas.org

What a fantastic accomplishment -- and what a fantastic story! www.quantamagazine.org/at-17-hannah...

At 17, Hannah Cairo Solved a Major Math Mystery | Quanta Magazine

After finding the homeschooling life confining, the teen petitioned her way into a graduate class at Berkeley, where she ended up disproving a 40-year-old conjecture.

quantamagazine.org

Huge congratulations to the brilliant Nora Newcombe, recipient of the 2025 David E. Rumelhart Prize! 🏅#CogSci2025

🚨New article🚨 in Computers & Education We created and validated a measure of how teachers scaffold game-based learning. Turns out, teachers are great at cheering students on and keeping them on task—but need more support/resources to guide deeper thinking during games. Full study link below.

New personal record of desk rejects 🥳 I am taking a note of journals that take over a month for the desk 📖 It is also a unusual situation where pretty much everything has been already reviewed at eLife on our Neuro paper (click for open reviews), now the sample size is just substantially larger.

rogier kievit@rogierk.bsky.social · last yr.

New paper by @njudd.com shows that an additional year of education doesn't causally affect telomere length in old age, despite many (theory) accounts arguing otherwise. It's been desk rejected by 13 journals happy to publish small 'positive' telomere studies. Sigh. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

📚 At the #JRF annual meeting, our Research Fellows engaged in three days of structured exchange, sharing research, building interdisciplinary connections, and advancing ideas to improve learning outcomes for children worldwide. Meet the fellows 👥 bit.ly/4kQMPij #Education #Research #Fellows

Thrilled to see this registered report published. It's been a long time in the making and a nice little example (we think!) of how language influences mathematical cognition. How might you answer: What's 1/2 of 1/2? vs. What's 1/2 x 1/2? Does 'of' vs. 'x' make a difference? See paper below

Super fun to do! Thanks @theitsinnatepc.bsky.social

The It's Innate! Podcast@theitsinnatepc.bsky.social · last yr.

🚨 New episode! We are excited to be releasing another "A conversation with a luminary" episode.  In it, we chat with Professor Nora Newcombe (@noranewcombe.bsky.social) about her science journey, the geometric module, empiricism & nativism, among other things. Enjoy! itsinnate.fireside.fm/27

Interesting data coming out of a national survey of adults and what they think about math. www.edweek.org/teaching-lea...

What Math Learned in School Is Most Important? Adults and Their Managers Don't Agree

Americans don’t always agree about which skills are the most crucial, according to a new survey from Gallup.

edweek.org

Very honoured to be awarded the Developmental Psychology Section Impact and Engagement Award by The British Psychological Society. The award is for my work on the importance of spatial reasoning for mathematics. www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

University of Surrey on LinkedIn: #surreyshapes

Congratulations to Professor Emily Farran who has been awarded the 2024 Developmental Psychology Section Impact and Engagement Award by The British…

linkedin.com

Finally our editorial for the "What makes a good theory?" special issue is out (co-edited with @irisvanrooij.bsky.social, @jcskewes.bsky.social, Sashank Varma, and Todd Wareham). It's an interdisciplinary issue and the contents are transdisciplinary. #philsci #metasci #cogsci #ai #psych 🧪

What Makes a Good Theory? Interdisciplinary Perspectives - Computational Brain & Behavior

Computational Brain & Behavior -

link.springer.com

#TodayinHistory #dataviz #Onthisday #OTD 📊 🎂Nov 30, 1756 Ernest Florens Friedrich Chladni born in Wittenberg, Germany 🇩🇪 1787: Visualization of vibration patterns (by spreading a uniform layer of sand on a disk, and observing displacement when vibration is applied)

"Humans have an incredible ability to think and reason about things they’ve never experienced." Even very young children are capable of sophisticated reasoning and problem-solving, says @romanfeiman.bsky.social. #Reasoning #ProblemSolving boldscience.org/the-cognitiv...

The cognitive scientist asking how kids solve problems

Roman Feiman is discovering sophisticated reasoning in young children

boldscience.org

stories.surrey.ac.uk/YoungMindsFo... Spatial reasoning is the ability to understand the spatial properties of objects such as their size and location, and to visualise objects and problems in the mind. Training children to think and work spatially leads to improvement in mathematics.

gorodenkoff via Getty

stories.surrey.ac.uk

The Raincloud Quartet (new pre-print) All N = 111, M = 0.04, SD = 0.27. One-sided t-tests vs. 0 yield: t(110) = 1.67, p = .049. Only raincloud plots reveal the qualitative differences, preventing the drawing of inappropriate conclusions. How did we create the quartet? Where are data & code? 🧵👇

The strain on scientific publishing: we set out to characterise the remarkable growth of the scientific literature in the last few years, in spite of declining growth in total scientists. What is going on? direct.mit.edu/qss/article/... A 🧵 1/n #AcademicSky #PhDchat #ScientificPublishing #SciPub