iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Hyowon (Hyo) Gweon @hyogweon.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Side note: The video stimuli used in these experiments are some of the funniest among all the projects out of my lab (osf.io/6ue43)! All thanks to my coauthors Aaron and Bobby -- so excited to see this paper finally out!

e.bsky.social

Bluesky

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Hyowon (Hyo) Gweon @hyogweon.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

This suggests young children do have a concept of communication as a causal process, but more nuanced inferences that require counterfactual-like reasoning follow a more protracted development. Thinking about communication feels intuitive for adults, but involves a host of cognitive capacities!

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Hyowon (Hyo) Gweon @hyogweon.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Across 3 experiments, we systematically investigate the development of such reasoning. Even at age 3, children infer "B knows" when communication immediately precedes success. However, even 5-yr-olds struggled when they had to consider whether A would have succeeded even without communication.

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Hyowon (Hyo) Gweon @hyogweon.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

If A fails to activate a toy but succeeds after hearing something from B, you can infer "B knew" even without knowing what B told A. By thinking about communication as a process by which a speaker causally affects the listener, we can infer that the change in A's actions is due to B's knowledge.

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Hyowon (Hyo) Gweon @hyogweon.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

The preconferences were a huge success! Looking forward to Day 1 at #CDS2026. Of course all our talks are in the same Friday PM slot but you can catch most of them if you hop strategically between rooms ;-)

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Hyowon (Hyo) Gweon @hyogweon.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

What I like about this paper: The results make us think twice about what looks like "suboptimal" learning decisions (e.g., avoiding challenges, perseverating on impossible tasks rather than ask for help). If your environment isn't supportive & help isn't available, that's a reasonable thing to do.

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Hyowon (Hyo) Gweon @hyogweon.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

Officially out TODAY in Child Development! It's good to try challenging tasks and explore on your own, but not when it might be too hard and help isn't available. Children get that. w/ Kat Shannon, Aneesa Conine-Nakano, Willem Frankenhuis, @mcxfrank.bsky.social academic.oup.com/chidev/advan...

academic.oup.com

Young children strategically adapt to unreliable social partners

Abstract. The effectiveness of social learning depends on whether learners receive help when they need it. In four preregistered studies, U.S. 4–6-year-old

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Hyowon (Hyo) Gweon @hyogweon.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

In sum, these findings suggest that even 4- and 5-yr-olds have a theory-like understanding of how "insider knowledge" about people is shared through (or contained within) certain social connections. For more details, take a look at the paper!

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Hyowon (Hyo) Gweon @hyogweon.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

(3) Converging measures: Beyond self-reported surprise, we found consistent patterns of changes in facial expressions and memory error depending on who knew what. Children can also "explain away" these anomalies by appealing to plausible communication ("Maybe she heard from my mom") :-)

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Hyowon (Hyo) Gweon @hyogweon.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

(2) Fun method: Aaron hopped on a Zoom call to chat with kids, but this "casual convo" was actually a controlled experiment. He'd mention things like: "Your mom said your fav food is pizza" or "My mom said your fav show is Bluey" Children were surprised when Aaron's mom knew their favorite things!

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Hyowon (Hyo) Gweon @hyogweon.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

What I love about it: (1) We’ve all felt it—it’s a little creepy when someone unexpected knows something personal about us. While intuitive, detecting this requires knowing that some information is shared only within close relationships. Children already have a surprisingly early grasp of this!

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Hyowon (Hyo) Gweon @hyogweon.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Out today in PNAS: Young children are surprised when a stranger has “insider knowledge” about them—and even make on-the-fly inferences about how that person could have learned it. So much fun working on this with Aaron Chuey and @julianje.bsky.social! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2525150123

pnas.org

PNAS

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

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Hyowon (Hyo) Gweon @hyogweon.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

Officially out! In this review, Aaron Chuey and I discuss how existing work on ToM mostly focused on a single individual’s mental states (e.g., what Sally thinks). Extending ToM, we argue for ToMS—an understanding of how multiple individuals communicate and influence each others’ minds. t.ly/u4rtb

annualreviews.org

Theory of Minds: Early Understanding of Interacting Minds

The idea that we understand others’ actions in terms of their underlying mental states has shaped decades of developmental research on social cognition. Existing work, however, has primarily focused o...

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Hyowon (Hyo) Gweon @hyogweon.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

Hello bsky! Excited to share this paper as my very first post / repost :-) We show that children are sensitive to whether an adult offered promised help, and strategically consider this to decide what task to pursue (easy or hard?) and whether to explore vs. seek help!

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