iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science bot @oecs-bot.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Subjective experience challenges traditional science because it remains unclear how neural computations generate the feeling of what it is like to… Consciousness by Claire Sergent and Frédérique de Vignemont doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.0aea8c7d #CognitiveScience

Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science: "Consciousness" by Claire Sergent and Frédérique de Vignemont. Consciousness refers to our subjective experience, broadly construed. It thus embraces a wide range of phenomena from wakefulness and sentience to what it is like to have a particular experience. Seei

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Michelle Greene @mgreenephd.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

🚨New paper alert! 🚨 The visual system tunes itself to the statistics of its input. How do individual experiences differently tune vision? In this work, @bjbalas.bsky.social and I examined how one individual difference—height—changes the visual diet and how this affects perception. 1/

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Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

We've just released a new version of childes-db, my lab's interface to the CHILDES database of child language transcripts. It lets you work with CHILDES data from R through a versioned, reproducible API. A few updates 🧵 childes-db.stanford.edu/

Screenshot of the childes-db website: 'A flexible and reproducible interface to CHILDES.' childes-db 2026.1 contains 56,579 transcripts from 9,151 children across 437 corpora, with panels for an R API tutorial and interactive visualizations of mean length of utterance by child age.

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Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science bot @oecs-bot.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Philosophers treat skepticism not as stubborn denial, but as a logical trap revealing fundamental tensions in our concepts of knowledge and evidence. Skepticism by Santiago Echeverri doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.95725785 #CognitiveScience

Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science: "Skepticism" by Santiago Echeverri. In everyday life, people think of skepticism as the position of a stubborn person who rejects what other people believe in. Some skeptics may deny that climate change is real, while others claim that

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Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science bot @oecs-bot.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Distinguishing between our species and other animals requires balancing subtle quantitative differences with the unique, complex interplay of our… Uniquely Human Cognition by Daniel B. M. Haun doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.2760bd31 #CognitiveScience

Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science: "Uniquely Human Cognition" by Daniel B. M. Haun. Uniquely human cognition refers to aspects of cognition that are specific to our evolutionary lineage and distinguish us from other animals, including our closest living relatives, the nonhuman primat

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Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science bot @oecs-bot.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Brain research reveals that our neural systems treat human interaction as a distinct computational process, separate from general reasoning. Social Cognitive Neuroscience by Rebecca Saxe doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.0276fa5e #CognitiveScience

Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science: "Social Cognitive Neuroscience" by Rebecca Saxe. People spend a lot of their brain energy thinking about people. Social cognitive neuroscience is the field of research that investigates how this works. Research in this field asks questions about the

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Matt Makel @mattmakel.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

I made a mistake. And because of that mistake, I no longer have confidence that results that I reported in several research papers are an accurate reflection of replication rates. 1/

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Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

*Sharing for our department’s trainees* 🧠 Looking for insight on applying to PhD programs in psychology? ✨ Apply by Sep 21st to Stanford Psychology's 10th annual Paths to a Psychology PhD info session/workshop to have all of your questions answered! 📝 Application: forms.gle/4nujgDd3W2tx...

forms.gle

Paths to a Psychology Ph.D.: An Information Session and Workshop

Join Stanford Psychology graduate students, research assistants, and faculty for a free one-day virtual information session and workshop on applying to research positions and Ph.D. programs in psychol...

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MIT Press @mitpress.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

"[Babies] only splash about in the shallows of a fathomless ocean of language. And yet, somehow, that’s enough. From a drop, they infer the depths." To understand how children learn human language, @mcxfrank.bsky.social and colleagues studied the experience from a child's perspective.

technologyreview.com

Kids outlearn AI—and we still don’t know why

LLMs need vastly more data than children to learn language. Understanding why could help us create more efficient models—and reveal more about developing minds.

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Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science bot @oecs-bot.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

The subjective feeling of control often diverges from reality, revealing that our sense of agency is a computational inference rather than a direct… Sense of Agency by Patrick Haggard doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.7b88a436 #CognitiveScience

Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science: "Sense of Agency" by Patrick Haggard. Sense of agency refers to the subjective experience of controlling one’s own actions and, through them, events in the outside world. The subjective sense of agency should be distinguished from the obj

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Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

For you to collect good data, your participants need to have a good experience. Ch 12 of Experimentology takes that seriously, covering informed consent, how to make good online experiments, and participant compliance checks. 🧵 experimentology.io

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Elise Cutts @elisecutts.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Writing this story was so unbelievably fun. And not only bc @mcxfrank.bsky.social says quotes like this: “Kids’ experience looks really radically different than we thought ... They’ve got these little short arms, so the objects are, like, right in front of them. And they live in a forest of knees.”

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Liz Renner @lrrenner.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

AL-ways PI-lot 👏 👏 👏👏👏

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Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

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Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

"To the dismay of many(yet to the delight of afew), Nature PublishingGroup announced today that its flagship journal, Nature, will no longer accept submissions from humans (Homo sapiens)." Entertaining and prescient piece from Jordan Suchow (2011): suchow.io/assets/docs/...

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Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Doing science with Claude Code (Fable 5) is fascinating. I give it open-ended, complex tasks and it will go off for 30min and execute very successfully. Sometimes it find much better solutions to my problem than what I suggested.

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Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science bot @oecs-bot.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Reasoning evolved not as a solitary quest for truth, but as a specialized social tool for evaluating and producing arguments with others. Reasoning and Argumentation by Hugo Mercier doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.96cf440a #CognitiveScience

Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science: "Reasoning and Argumentation" by Hugo Mercier. By a common definition, reasoning is the private mental act of weighing reasons to decide whether to accept a given conclusion. In argumentation, reasons in favor of a conclusion are exchanged between

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Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Data exploration is critical, but fitting your analysis to idiosyncrasies of your dataset can also increase the risk of spurious results. Ch 11 of Experimentology walks through why preregistration can be a helpful tool for balancing these competing concerns. 🧵 experimentology.io

Tradeoff graph showing increased risk of bias without registration, but decreased sensitivity to discovery with prereg.

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Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

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Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science bot @oecs-bot.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Making scientific research transparent, reproducible, and accessible is the modern standard for ensuring that evidence survives independent scrutiny. Open Science by Tom E. Hardwicke and Simine Vazire doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.cdacaf45 #CognitiveScience

Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science: "Open Science" by Tom E. Hardwicke and Simine Vazire. Open science refers to a set of principles and practices that promote transparency in science. The core idea is to make it easy for others to access, verify, and build on scientific research, for exam

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Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Almost no psychology research is based on a true probability sample. The question is whether that undermines your research! Ch 10 of Experimentology argues that it depends on whether the effect you're studying is heterogeneous. 🧵 experimentology.io

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Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

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Tom Silver @tomssilver.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

This week's #PaperILike is "People construct simplified mental representations to plan" (Ho et al., Nature 2022). People generate ("construe") simplified task representations on-the-fly. (Robots should too!) Also: awesome first paragraph. PDF: arxiv.org/abs/2105.06948

arxiv.org

People construct simplified mental representations to plan

One of the most striking features of human cognition is the capacity to plan. Two aspects of human planning stand out: its efficiency and flexibility. Efficiency is especially impressive because plans...

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Federico Pianzola @fpianz.eurosky.social · 07/08/2026

I'm recommending more and more to my #NLProc and #ComputationalLiteraryStudies mentees this book by @mcxfrank.bsky.social Chapter 8 on measurement is mind blowing (and scary!) for many of them 😅 experimentology.io/008-measurem...

experimentology.io

8 Measurement – Experimentology

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Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science bot @oecs-bot.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Targeting the immediate mechanisms of reading—like letter-sound correspondence—proves far more effective for intervention than addressing distal… Dyslexia by Anne Castles and Genevieve McArthur doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.6ebfd2ab #CognitiveScience

Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science: "Dyslexia" by Anne Castles and Genevieve McArthur. Dyslexia is widely defined as a severe and persistent difficulty in learning to read (and often spell) words despite receiving instruction that is effective for peers. The causes of dyslexia remain un

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scienceartnews.bsky.social @scienceartnews.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

No 'bot' account/profile is as trustworthy as @oecs-bot.bsky.social. The Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science (OECS), an update to the MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, aims to provide 'open/accessible/authoritative-scientific/broad but focused/fundamentally interdisciplinary' articles. 1/2

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Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science bot @oecs-bot.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Cognitive scientists prioritize how humans process and transmit information over traditional distinctions between truth and falsity. Information and Misinformation by Andrew Perfors doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.a2555670 #CognitiveScience

Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science: "Information and Misinformation" by Andrew Perfors. For scientists whose primary interest is in policy or sociology, there is an important distinction between information (which is true), misinformation (which is false but thought by the information pr

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Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science bot @oecs-bot.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

While the subjective experience of focus feels intuitive, the scientific definition remains a subject of intense debate regarding how the mind… Attention by Wayne Wu doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.3ce3f8af #CognitiveScience

Figure from the OECS article "Attention".

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Asifa Majid @asifamajid.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

It's hard to believe that OECS has now published 200 articles!🎉 A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed to OECS—our authors, reviewers, readers, and fantastic section editors, and especially @mcxfrank.bsky.social frank.bsky.social and @hbaum.bsky.social Excited for the next chapter!

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Leah Banellis @leahbanellis.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Sensing your body (‘Interoception’) is everywhere in theories of mental health. But when we tested how well hundreds of people sensed their heart and lungs, the link to symptoms was almost nowhere to be found. 💣 🚨New @natmentalhealth.nature.com paper 🚨🎉 asks why 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s44...

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Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

If you’re at #cogsci2026, please come see presentations by some of the great folks collaborating with the Language and Cognition Lab at Stanford!

LangCog lab talks and posters at cogsci2026

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Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

And now with a newly refreshed website, just in time for #cogsci2026!

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Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Nearly four years ago we asked ourselves, "what would it look like to have a field-leading, completely free reference work for cognitive science"? It's been so fun editing OECS with @asifamajid.bsky.social and @hbaum.bsky.social. I can't believe we have published 200 (!!) articles! oecs.mit.edu

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Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

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Russ Poldrack @russpoldrack.org · 18/07/2026

I've posted a preprint of a philosophical paper I've written on the relationships between understanding, prediction, and compression, based on a talk I gave at SPAN 2025. Now in press at Synthese. philarchive.org/archive/POLUPA

philarchive.org

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Martin Zettersten @mzettersten.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Really excited about this new preprint spearheaded by @vboyce.bsky.social w/ @mcxfrank.bsky.social and the Peekbank team. It's a deep-dive into a large looking-while-listening dataset (>3000 children!), evaluating what analytic and design choices really matter for measurement osf.io/preprints/ps...

osf.io

OSF

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Matt Goldrick @mattgoldrick.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Hey #CogSci2026! Join an all-star lineup Wednesday 1-2:30 for "Creating and Sustaining Cognitive Science Higher Education Programs" underline.io/events/516/s... @cogscisociety.bsky.social

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Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Wow! I forgot about that!! I feel proud!!!

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Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science bot @oecs-bot.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Silent self-talk serves as a vital cognitive tool, allowing individuals to regulate behavior, sharpen focus, and navigate complex decision-making… Inner Speech by Charles Fernyhough doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.48614063 #CognitiveScience

Figure from the OECS article "Inner Speech".

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Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Now up at @oecs-bot.bsky.social ! Looking to wrap your head around concepts & terms (and debates) in emotion & mood research (“affective science”)? Here’s a go to. oecs.mit.edu/pub/bhn7j5s7...

Emotions, Moods, and Affective States
by Nicole C. Rust
Published on
Jul 16, 2026
Emotions, Moods, and Affective States

Contents
·

The phenomena that comprise emotions, moods, and affective states are united by their valence—their pleasantness or unpleasantness—such as the pleasure of seeing a baby laugh or the aversion to smelling feces. Beyond this broadly accepted defining characteristic, the researchers who study them have a multitude of ideas about how to best define their constructs, what shapes them, and the most promising path toward understanding them scientifically. For instance, many researchers agree that emotions should be distinguished from moods, but not all agree on the criteria that differentiate them. Similarly, some restrict the terms emotion and mood to instances in which subjective

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Khuyen Le @knle.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

How do children learn new words? Do they simply track word-object co-occurrences across contexts, or do they also use information about what speakers know and intend? With @mzettersten.bsky.social and @drbarner.bsky.social, I tackled this question in our new preprint! 1/🧵👇 osf.io/preprints/ps...

osf.io

OSF

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Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science bot @oecs-bot.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Thinking may not be a series of images or sensations, but formal computations performed on an innate, rule-governed mental language. The Language of Thought Hypothesis by Nicolas Porot and Eric Mandelbaum doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.79b53c0b #CognitiveScience

Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science: "The Language of Thought Hypothesis" by Nicolas Porot and Eric Mandelbaum. The language of thought hypothesis is a thesis about the structure of mental representations. It is an example of the computational–representational theory of mind, according to which much of cognitio

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Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

This is really great… useful context and inspiring perspective.

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Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Within-participants designs need 2-8x fewer participants than between-participants designs for the same level of precision. Ch 9 of Experimentology argues for making within your default. 🧵 experimentology.io

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Ben Ambridge @ambridge.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

100% this! I see so many between-participants studies with like N=50 when a proper power analysis would tell you you need like 500! Never between-subjects unless you have an EXTREMELY good reason. Remember, an underpowered study is often worse than no study as it can mislead!

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Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

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