mcxfrank.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Always interesting when you come across a new paper that devotes an entire section (!) to describing why one of your projects is ill-conceived. I guess any attention is good attention... I'm flattered you paid attention enough to hate my idea!

submitted 19 hours ago • 4 comments

In @nature.com we show that humans lived in rainforests ~150,000 years ago – over double the previous oldest estimate. Their presence in West Africa’s rainforests demonstrates the spread of early humans and places ecological diversity at the heart of our species. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

submitted 1 day ago • 12 comments

Is it just me? When I click on a link to APA psychnet, I get their search page. Then if I close the window and click the link AGAIN, I get the actual paper....

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

Ever looked at LLM skill emergence and thought 70B parameters was a magic number? Our new paper shows sudden breakthroughs are samples from bimodal performance distributions across seeds. Observed accuracy jumps abruptly while the underlying accuracy DISTRIBUTION changes slowly!

submitted 1 day ago • 3 comments

This is a great paper. Elegant model and interesting conclusion! Thanks for the rec.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

📃Pragmatics as Social Inference About Intentional Action New paper with @mcxfrank.bsky.social in Open Mind We show that pragmatic inferences - work w/o language - take into account senders' epistemic states - are conditional on intentional production of signals direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

Do children understand all types of visual media in the same way? "Cross-contextual diversity in children’s early understanding of visual media" - a new review paper led by Rebecca Zhu: osf.io/preprints/ps...

submitted 12 days ago • 1 comment

Have you checked out the Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science?

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

🚨Paper alert 🚨 Need a social cognition task for measuring individual- and community-level variation? We are excited to share the TANGO-CC with you! 👀 Paper: doi.org/10.1177/2515... w/ @mcxfrank.bsky.social @patkanngiesser.bsky.social @kirstensutherland.bsky.social @elmanubohn.bsky.social...

submitted 14 days ago • 1 comment

My first and second research home(s)! Both incredible labs to grow in and do exciting work with before grad school. Apply to be lab manager with Mike or Hyo!!

submitted 17 days ago • 0 comments

Now hiring for two lab manager positions at Stanford! Hyo Gweon and I are coordinating joint searches since our labs collaborate frequently. Please join us! careersearch.stanford.edu/jobs/researc... and careersearch.stanford.edu/jobs/lab-coo...

submitted 17 days ago • 1 comment

Really interesting review of statistical techniques for assessing generalizability of estimates and transporting them from one population to another. I wish we thought about this stuff more - and in this more sophisticated way - in dev psych/cognitive science. www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

Thoughtful discussion article describing different perspectives on how to make decisions about replication: www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

submitted 26 days ago • 0 comments

I'm on the Ed-Technical podcast today, talking about "Babies & AI: what can AI tell us about how babies learn language?" www.buzzsprout.com/2241345/epis...

submitted 31 days ago • 0 comments

So I just read this yesterday. Wonderful study that robustly explores the relationship between what language kids hear and what they learn. My take homes 1/

submitted 33 days ago • 1 comment

Why does Western paleolithic cave art strongly prefer animal side views and often abbreviations? Our new #eSymb preprint (osf.io/preprints/ps... w Pagnotta, Psujek, Mendoza Straffon and Tylén ) challenges long-held assumptions about these artistic choices based on cogsci experiments. 1/

submitted 39 days ago • 5 comments

Massive congratulations to my friend and @jhu.edu colleague, @chazfirestone.bsky.social! Chaz will receive the 2025 APA Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology, in the area of perception and motor performance. A well-earned honor for a superstar!

submitted 42 days ago • 1 comment

Now powering LEVANTE tasks as well!

submitted 43 days ago • 0 comments

Tour de force from @anyawma.bsky.social developing a new, computer-adaptive approach to reading assessment at scale for use in research and educational practice! link.springer.com/article/10.3...

submitted 43 days ago • 0 comments

How strong is the relationship between caregiver speech and language development? A meta-analysis (Coffey & Snedeker) - important attempt to try and estimate input-uptake relationships across studies www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

submitted 44 days ago • 0 comments

In a dynamic reinforcement learning task, human players adaptively employ a mix of decision strategies, including model-based learning but also the successor representation. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

submitted 49 days ago • 0 comments

Is grammar different from the lexicon? I've long thought that they are intimately related in children's development (a "lexicalist" view), based on analyses by Liz Bates and repeated by us: langcog.github.io/wordbank-boo... A cool new paper by Donnelly et al. questions this: doi.org/10.1016/j.jm...

submitted 50 days ago • 1 comment

Eugenic Thinking and the Cognitive Sciences by Robert A. Wilson: https://doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.c9a5f080

submitted 66 days ago • 0 comments

Compositionality by Christopher Potts: https://doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.494deacd

submitted 62 days ago • 0 comments

Word Learning by Michael C. Frank: https://doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.5e3f2bda

submitted 56 days ago • 0 comments

Cultural Attractors by Dan Sperber: https://doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.61e20c82

submitted 53 days ago • 0 comments

Well that’s an awfully nice start to 2025! @bergelsonlab.bsky.social @mcxfrank.bsky.social @caitlingstone.bsky.social @juliemarkant.bsky.social @jkileyhamlin.bsky.social @mekline.bsky.social @shafalijeste.bsky.social

submitted 57 days ago • 2 comments

Honored that a piece I wrote made it to NYTimes. It’s about how my mom’s stroke changed my connection to time, science, and nature. What a privilege to honor my mom in Modern Love. Below is a gift link. Let me know your thoughts 🙏🏼 www.nytimes.com/2024/12/20/s...

submitted 69 days ago • 49 comments

Check out the IRW, a huge data repository for psychometrics research!!

submitted 73 days ago • 1 comment

1/ What might data-rich #psychometrics research look like? As a first example, consider @jbgilbert.bsky.social on heterogeneous treatment effects (HTE). Josh uses #irt to examine item-level HTE, with insights drawn from 75 datasets across 48 randomized trials (arxiv.org/abs/2405.00161).

submitted 76 days ago • 1 comment

Great list of development and education folks!

submitted 73 days ago • 0 comments

Parent earnings and the returns to universal pre-K - big benefits to parent income from having free childcare! www.nber.org/system/files... H/t @emilyoster.bsky.social

submitted 73 days ago • 0 comments

Ever seen a young child keep talking to you even when it's too noisy to hear? When do they learn that this doesn't work? "Children’s understanding of how noise disrupts verbal communication" - new paper by Aaron Chuey, Rondeline Williams, me, and Hyo Gweon. osf.io/preprints/ps...

submitted 77 days ago • 1 comment

What counts as in-context learning (ICL)? Typically, you might think of it as learning a task from a few examples. However, we’ve just written a perspective (arxiv.org/abs/2412.03782) suggesting interpreting a much broader spectrum of behaviors as ICL! Quick summary thread: 1/7

submitted 79 days ago • 2 comments

Do you need educational and psychological item response data to do your research? The IRW has 600 item response datasets (more coming!), distributed in a standardized format and ready for analysis.

submitted 79 days ago • 2 comments

Studying curiosity and social behavior in real and virtual fish! Pretty cool. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

submitted 80 days ago • 0 comments