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adam osth

@adamosth.bsky.social
663 followers 482 following 174 posts

Associate Professor at unimelb. Episodic memory, decision making, mathematical modeling. Friend to all cats. He/him.

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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Oh god. Their announcement could overlap with the submission window for FT27…
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ARC Tracker @arc-tracker.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
ARC have postponed #FutureFellowships FT26 outcome announcements; currently can't even say when they'll be. It only last year they were bragging publicly – even to the Senate – that they were "meeting & beating" announcement windows … that they set themselves. Now they can't even do that.
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
in all of my travels I almost never look into gyms near where I'm staying because in a big city, you can often find about three gyms that are all within walking distance. instead, it looks like gyms are about a 15-20 minute *drive* from where I'm staying, which is very close to campus and downtown.
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
so I'm in Nashville for the month and one of the biggest surprises is that it is extremely difficult find a gym. virtually all of the nearby gyms just feature classes and the Vanderbilt gym is for staff/students only.
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Dan Feuerriegel @danfeuerriegel.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Interested in the neuroscience of dietary decisions? Check out our lab's latest preprint led by Violet Chae @violetchae.bsky.social ! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... w/ @tgro.bsky.social, @laurencf.bsky.social, Stefan Bode, @paulmgarrett.bsky.social Explainer thread below 1/n
biorxiv.org
The Centroparietal Positivity Traces the Path of Evidence Accumulation During Dietary Decisions
Each day we make dozens of decisions about food. These choices are informed not only by information that we receive from our senses, but also by our memories, values, cultural norms, and goals. Eviden...
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
one of the funniest things I have ever seen
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
My band got featured in a local Melbourne magazine called Human Fly. They had nice things to say about our album!
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Montreal
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
I feel like Bluesky has been pretty dead for a while. Are people on Threads?
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
I'm about 7 weeks into my sabbatical at Indiana University in Bloomington. While it's been really satisfying work-wise, being away from home, my partner, and my cats for this long has been... hard to say the least.
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
brb buying this
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Jeff Zacks @jzacks.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
New preprint from Tan Nguyen! Ever wanted to know why violating a schema sometimes helps memory but sometimes hurts? osf.io/preprints/ps...
osf.io
OSF
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
Nice review of my band's album from Thoughts Words Action! thoughtswordsaction.com/2026/05/29/s...
thoughtswordsaction.com
Snailgun - Glass Walls LP - Thoughts Words Action
If you paid attention to what’s happening on the contemporary underground music scene, you probably know how many bands deliver outstanding music, but if you
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
Alanís Morrisette walked so that Avril Lavigne could run
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
Just got word that my most recent paper in Psych Review was selected as an Editor's Choice paper! It was a really nice honor to get, especially given that it's my favorite journal! psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...
psycnet.apa.org
APA PsycNet
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
you can also find the album on Bandcamp here. we're selling it on CD and vinyl, and also have shirts and other merch for sale: snailgunband.bandcamp.com/album/glass-...
snailgunband.bandcamp.com
Glass Walls, by snailgun
8 track album
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
you can find the album on Spotify here: open.spotify.com/album/4Oo8cZ...
open.spotify.com
Glass Walls
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
today, the debut album from my band Snailgun released. it's been a lifelong dream to release an album. what was a great start to the day was getting sent this glowing review of the album by Backseat Mafia: www.backseatmafia.com/album-review...
backseatmafia.com
Album Review: Snailgun unveil their shattering debut ‘Glass Walls’ ahead of live dates.
Naarm/Melbourne band Snailgun have just delivered their debut album ‘Glass Wall’, and it’s a deliciously scabrous affair filled with blistering post punk cathartic noise. The gene…
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
depends on your accent I think? I can definitely hear midwesterners saying it as “pahn shahp”
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
Airports in Hawaii are strange places. At the Maui airport I met a TSA agent that was convinced I was Kenny Loggins and excitedly shook my hand. At the Honolulu airport in a lounge a woman was absolutely convinced I am a Twitter celebrity.
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Dan Feuerriegel @danfeuerriegel.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
What's the deal with drift rate variability in the Diffusion Model of decision-making? Find out in our newest publication in Computational Brain and Behaviour Led by @jie-sun.bsky.social + @adamosth.bsky.social Come for the slow errors, stay for the joint modelling w/ EEG rdcu.be/e85Re
rdcu.be
Can Systematic Drift Rate Variability Replace Random Variability in the Diffusion Decision Model?
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Sam Gershman @gershbrain.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
After several years of work, my lab is starting to put out our first papers on learning in a unicellular organism (Stentor coeruleus). Here we show evidence for a form of associative learning in Stentor: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Fred Callaway @fredcallaway.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
I'm excited to announce that I had my first (co-authored) book published today! "The Rational Use of Cognitive Resources" with Falk Lieder and Tom Griffiths (@cocoscilab.bsky.social ). You can read it for free! (see thread)
Book cover. A silhouette of a person's head filled with colorful geometric shapes—perhaps symbolizing cognitive resources or deployment thereof. The style is attractive and modern, if generic.

text: 
The Rational Use of Cognitive Resources
Falk Lieder, Frederick Callaway, Thomas L. Griffithts
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
it’s a pretty cool magazine and I recommend checking it out. Really cool to be featured in the same issue as some cool bands like Grinding Eyes and Gnomes
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
my band was featured in the new issue of Bad Batch Magazine, a rock magazine that focuses on the Melbourne music scene
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SAL @sarahannelloyd.com · 09/02/2026
I really need people outside of Seattle to know how much Krist Novoselic sucks
A screenshot of a Facebook post by Krist Novoselić:
A new proposal would prohibit clearing encampments unless local government provides higher levels of accommodation for shelter. Our state's ruling party is attempting to codify what appears to be a lifestyle. There's no longer any expectation of personal accountability.

Quoted post from Cascade Party Washington:
WA legislature proposal out of touch with worsening chronic addiction homelessness - read now in The Summit (independent press of Cascade Party WA).

[Link with a preview image of a person lying face down on the street next to a dumpster]
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
There are many other interesting things in the paper, but I would prefer not to write a thread that is 50 posts long! Check it out if you're interested!
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
The timing model had no good explanation of the fast low confidence subjects. Fast decisions are inextricably tied to high confidence.
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
In this case, you get decisions that are fast, but similar levels of evidence in both accumulators.
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
MTR model has a counter-intuitive explanation. When there is a strong positive correlation between the drift rates of the two responses, it can actually produce fast low confidence responses.
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
RTCON could explain these subjects being due to low thresholds on the low confidence responses. This allows them to respond quickly, despite having weak evidence. Our LBA version of the model worked in the same way.
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
Individual differences matter - Ratcliff and Starns found that some subjects produce fast low confidence responses. We replicated this pattern! These participants are quite constraining for model development and testing.
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
In short, each model passed the empirical hurdles, and differences between them were surprisingly subtle. But there were some informative patterns here that are noteworthy.
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
We subjected these models to detailed tests against individual participant data. The idea was to capture complete RT distributions associated with each confidence response. We collected large datasets in order to achieve this goal.
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
The third approach was a novel model we developed. In this model, time is measured by a separate accumulator. The timing accumulator is also partitioned into thresholds. As each threshold gets passed, confidence decreases. The state of the timer at the time of the decision determines confidence.
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
The second approach was done in some of our previous work with Angus Reynolds in the multiple threshold race (MTR) model. Confidence is determined by the losing accumulator. Thresholds on the losing accumulator partition the evidence into confidence responses.
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
The first approach was done in the RTCON models. Each of the confidence accumulators race against each other. We built an LBA version of this, which was pretty straightforward. It has an advantage in that it's very tractable - doesn't require simulation like the original RTCON models do.
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
These three models include: - Confidence as a decision among multiple alternatives: different accumulators for each confidence option - Balance of evidence - Time as the basis of confidence
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
New prerint w/ my student Haomin Chen and collaborator Andrew Heathcote! Accumulator models are well known for being able to address choice and RT. Joint accounts of confidence are much less common. In this work, we explored 3 LBA models of confidence. osf.io/preprints/ps...
osf.io
OSF
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
There's many other things we explored in this paper. If I recapped everything, the thread would be quite long!
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
Nonetheless - where our RTCON-like model struggled was that it struggled when the number of confidence options was manipulated. More confidence responses = more accumulators. This increases the noise in the decision and accuracy declines with more accumulators, even when thresholds can increase.
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
Fast low confidence responses were first discovered by Ratcliff and Starns and justified their RTCON model. Low thresholds on the low confidence responses can capture this pattern. The MTR can also capture this because high correlations between the accumulators can also produce the pattern.
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
A surprise was that all of the models are able to clear the majority of the empirical hurdles there. Where the timing model consistently failed is that it was unable to account for subjects that show fast low confidence responses.
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
We subjected each of these models to detailed tests. We fit individual participants, where the goal is to capture RT distributions associated with each confidence rating. We collected large datasets to do just this.
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
Finally - another possibility is that confidence is directly inferred from the speed of the decision. We built a model where confidence is read off of a separate timing accumulator. This accumulator doesn't terminate - instead thresholds on the timer can be used to determine confidence.
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
We also compare it to a balance of evidence model, where confidence is determined by the state of the accumulator that loses the race. We have explored this in previous work (the MTR). Thresholds on the losing accumulator determine the confidence level.
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
Probably the most detailed accumulator model of confidence is the family of RTCON models. We designed an LBA implementation where each confidence response receives its own accumulator. A single distribution scales the drift rates to each accumulator. The best part? It's tractable!
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
I have been really hurting over the news in Minnesota. I'm having a hard time finding the words for it even now. In short, I'm finding it very hard to be optimistic, and I'm very scared things could get much worse
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Andrew Perfors @perfors.net · 22/01/2026
I just created a series of seven deep-dive videos about AI, which I've posted to youtube and now here. 😊 Targeted to laypeople, they explore how LLMs work, what they can do, and what impacts they have on learning, well-being, disinformation, the workplace, the economy, and the environment.
youtube.com
Part 1: How do LLMs work?
YouTube video by Andrew Perfors
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adam osth @adamosth.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
To me, I think one of the biggest gaps in the theoretical understanding of memory is encoding. We have a lot of detailed memory models that can clarify how retrieval works, but they make minimal assumptions about encoding
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