iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Justin Yang

Linas Nasvytis @linasnasvytis.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

1\ Can you make this Roman-numeral equation true by moving exactly one matchstick?

Justin Yang @justintheyang.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

This work could not have been done without my amazing co-authors Lio Wong, @judithfan.bsky.social, and @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social! If you're interested in chatting more, come find us at CogSci 2026!

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Justin Yang @justintheyang.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Design and inference about design appear to be complementary processes, both grounded in our capacity to reason about goal-directed action. In future work, we’re excited to extend this to explain notions of legible design—that designers consider the users’ cognitive effort when making designs.

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Justin Yang @justintheyang.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

In Study 2, participants designed kitchens themselves, dragging furniture to help a cook prepare a particular dish. Their placements made the target dish efficient to complete. Designers also adjusted their layouts depending on whether the cook knew which dish to make.

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Justin Yang @justintheyang.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

In Study 1, participants judged what different kitchen layouts were designed for. Some were designed for tomato vs. onion salad; others for one vs. two cooks. Their inferences tracked a simulation-based model, suggesting that observers recover design intent by simulating efficient task completion.

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Justin Yang @justintheyang.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

To explore this, we used kitchens inspired by the video game Overcooked, where cooks navigate gridworlds to prepare salads in as few steps as possible. We ran two studies: one on how people infer what a kitchen was designed for, and one on how people design kitchens for others to use.

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Justin Yang @justintheyang.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Thrilled to be sharing my latest work at #CogSci2026! Many of the spaces we move through, from kitchens to airports, were designed with specific uses in mind. How do people create such environments, and how do users figure out what they were designed for? 📃 osf.io/preprints/ps...

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Tobias Gerstenberg @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Congratulations @judithfan.bsky.social on winning the Lila R. Gleitman Prize for early-career contributions to Cognitive Science 🥳 Amazing!! cognitivesciencesociety.org/gleitman-pri...

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Kristine Zheng @kristinezheng.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

Linking student psychological orientation, engagement & learning in intro college-level data science New work ‪‪at @cogscisociety.bsky.social w/ @erikbrockbank.bsky.social @shawnschwartz.bsky.social, C.Bryan, D.Yeager, C.Dweck & @judithfan.bsky.social poster 8/1 @ 10:30 tinyurl.com/solds-cogsci25

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Erik Brockbank @erikbrockbank.bsky.social · 29/07/2025

"36 Questions That Lead To Love" was the most viewed article in NYT Modern Love. Excited to share new results investigating these and other “deep questions” with @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social @judithfan.bsky.social & @rdhawkins.bsky.social Preprint: tinyurl.com/bdfx5smk Code: tinyurl.com/3v6pws4s

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Justin Yang @justintheyang.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

If you’re interested in chatting, come swing by our poster at CogSci (P1-Y-220) on Thursday, July 31 from 1:00PM - 2:15PM!

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Justin Yang @justintheyang.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

Our findings give us a clearer understanding on the relation between counterfactual reasoning and learning. Going forward, @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social and I are excited to explore whether counterfactual simulation may improve people's action policies!

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Justin Yang @justintheyang.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

We found that participants who completed the counterfactual reflections did not avoid more hazardous tiles than those who did not, but improved on the task with more experience. In other words, we did not find reliable evidence that counterfactual simulation yielded a better world model. 3/

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Justin Yang @justintheyang.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

We tested if counterfactual simulation helps people learn a better world model. Participants navigated an environment and learned which locations were unsafe. Some then made counterfactual paths that would've improved on their previous one. Afterwards, they identified unsafe tiles in a test. 2/

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Justin Yang @justintheyang.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

Excited to be sharing my latest work with @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social at #CogSci2025! Learning usually occurs when we encounter new data. But we also have the capacity to reflect on our past experiences. What can we learn from simulating past experience? 📃 cicl.stanford.edu/papers/yang2... 1/

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Verona Teo @veronateo.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

Excited to share our new work at #CogSci2025! We explore how people plan deceptive actions, and how detectives try to see through the ruse and infer what really happened based on the traces left behind. 🕵️‍♀️ Paper: osf.io/preprints/osf/vqgz5_v1 Code: github.com/cicl-stanford/recursive_deception 1/

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Tobias Gerstenberg @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

The Causality in Cognition Lab is pumped for #cogsci2025 💪

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Tobias Gerstenberg @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

Excited to be visiting Boston College today to give a talk on "Counterfactual simulation in causal cognition".

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Erik Brockbank @erikbrockbank.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

Hello bluesky world :) excited to share a new paper on data visualization literacy 📈 🧠 w/ @judithfan.bsky.social, @arnavverma.bsky.social, Holly Huey, Hannah Lloyd, @lacepadilla.bsky.social! 📝 preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps... 💻 code: github.com/cogtoolslab/...

osf.io

OSF

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