iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

📣 New paper in Open Mind! How do our concepts of others’ minds connect to language and to where we expect others to look? 🤔 We link phenomenal vs. intentional mental states to gaze, one of our earliest social cues from infancy. Led by Mohit Mukherji! 🎉 direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...

direct.mit.edu

Descriptions of Phenomenal Versus Intentional Mental States Are Differentially Associated With Gaze Direction

Abstract. Across cultures, humans reason about others’ mental states as being either phenomenal, reflecting shareable experiences, or intentional, reflecting agentive goals. Might our dissociated judg...

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I think yes! I also think there are some cross-cultural universals.

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Thrilled to share my article—and cover!—for this month’s Trends in Cognitive Sciences: “The Cognitive Origins of Geometry.” From wandering in the world to triangles in the mind! 🔺 www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

I put forward an alternative to the language-of-thought hypothesis for geometry, the Wanderers Hypothesis for Geometry: Human geometry may originate from the interaction between ancient, navigation-like mental processes that approximate Euclidean geometry and our human capacity for natural language.

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Reposted by Moira (Molly) Dillon

Stanislas Dehaene @standehaene.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

Il est arrivé… « Le Rectangle de Lascaux »rencontre le triangle des Éditions Odile Jacob ! Sortie en librairie mercredi 28 janvier. @editionsodilejacob.bsky.social @cnrs.fr @inserm.fr @college-de-france.fr @cedricvillani.bsky.social @davidbessis.bsky.social

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Kempner Institute at Harvard University @kempnerinstitute.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

In the first Kempner Seminar Series talk of the semester @moiradillon.bsky.social of New York University discusses the cognitive origins of spatial and social intelligence. Watch the talk: youtu.be/YcgOj1wZVkg #psychology #cogsci #KempnerInstitute

youtu.be

Developing Intelligence: Insights from Spatial and Social Cognition with Moira Dillon

YouTube video by Kempner Institute at Harvard University

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Reposted by Moira (Molly) Dillon

MIT Press @mitpress.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

The Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science (OECS) now features over 100 published articles! Editors-in-Chief @mcxfrank.bsky.social & @asifamajid.bsky.social share their vision for this open, online reference developed to guide the next generation of exploration in cognition & intelligence:

mitpress.mit.edu

A conversation with the editors of the Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science

Editors-in-Chief Michael C. Frank and Asifa Majid share their vision for the Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science as it surpasses 100 published articles.

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Reposted by Moira (Molly) Dillon

Nature @nature.com · 11/06/2025

When do girls fall behind in maths? Gigantic study pinpoints the moment go.nature.com/4l1nC4g

Watch the mathematics gender gap emerge. The school environment triggers a gender gap in mathematics. Line charts showing test results from all children in France who started school in 2018 reveal the trend. At the start of first year of school boys and girls similar on average with slightly more boys in highest and lowest percentiles. At the start of second year of school the gender gap becomes more exaggerated.

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

I could not be more thrilled! 🧠 That the award is named in Lila Gleitman's honor makes it all the more meaningful. Thanks to the prize committee and to my lab @ldm-nyu.bsky.social, my colleagues, my mentors, and the NSF for their support. Thanks especially to all the infant and child participants! 👶

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Congratulations 🎉 to Shannon, for whom this is her first, first-author paper 📕, and to Deisy, who was an ICIS Founding Generation Fellow in the lab and then our lab manager 👩‍💻! Finally, thank you to the NSF and DARPA for funding our work and to all of the families 👩‍👦 who volunteered to participate!

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

A systematic evaluation of a set of scenarios like these is possible and promises to inform our understanding of the foundational knowledge on which human social learning is built 👩‍🏫, as well as to aid the building of human-like artificial intelligence 🤖.

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Infants expected an imitating agent to approach a target agent only when the imitator did not also have an object goal. Infants’ attribution of social value to imitation only in the absence of such intentional cues may be a signature of humans’ early understanding of imitation.

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

We used highly minimal, procedurally generated displays to challenge infants' capacities for abstraction and to tightly match the displays across conditions. These displays can also be easily adapted to test computational models 💻 (keep an eye out for our future work!).

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

To do so, we tested 15-month-olds' expectations about whether an imitator would approach the agent it imitated when that imitation occurred in the presence vs. absence of intentional cues like obstacles, object goals, and efficient, causally effective action.

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

From early in development, humans use imitation to express social engagement, to understand social affiliations, and to learn from others. 👯‍♀️ In this paper, we asked what cues infants 👶 might use to infer that a social goal is driving an act of imitation.

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 13/01/2025

Happy to share that I've taken on the role of Associate Editor 📝 for the relaunch of 🧠 Perspectives on Psychological Science 🧠 under the wonderful leadership of @draehernandez.bsky.social! Please send along your work in Developmental and/or Cognitive Psychology! @psychscience.bsky.social

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

Are you curious about the latest on what infants know about geometry? 👶 📐Check out the preprint of my forthcoming chapter, "Infant Geometry," for the @oxunipress.bsky.social Handbook on Perceptual Development! osf.io/preprints/ps...

osf.io

OSF

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 19/12/2024

Great! Please add me as well, thanks!

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 26/08/2024

Thanks to the National Science Foundation, @ldm-nyu.bsky.social, and the participating families! 🚸

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 26/08/2024

These results expand the symbolic scope of prior studies on object biases in drawing 🖼️ to object biases in language 💬 (see psycnet.apa.org/buy/2020-807...), and they expand the spatial domains of prior studies characterizing the language of objects and places.

psycnet.apa.org

APA PsycNet

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 26/08/2024

Spatial domain may thus confer specific and foundational biases for word learning that may change through development in a way that is similar to that of other word-learning biases about objects, like the shape bias.

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 26/08/2024

While adults showed a specific object-over-place bias in both extending novel noun labels and matching, they did not show this bias in extending novel nouns following prepositions. Young children showed this bias in extending novel noun labels only.

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 26/08/2024

We predicted that participants would think a novel noun label referred to object over place information. 🤔 In the place condition, this would mean the block in the front of the scene, but in the object condition, this would mean either the container or the block inside of it.

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 26/08/2024

To dissociate specific object and place information from more general figure and ground information, moreover, participants either saw scenes with both place information (a room) and object information (a block in the room), or scenes with two kinds of object information.

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 26/08/2024

Critically, our "places" were navigable 🌄🏙️🏜️, not just locations on objects, a definition of place used in prior studies.

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 26/08/2024

Across six experiments, adults and 3- and 4-year-old children were asked either to extend a novel noun in a labeling phrase, to extend a novel noun in a prepositional phrase, or to simply match pictures. They were assigned to either an object or place condition.

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 26/08/2024

Young children rely on various intuitions and biases when learning new words. 💬 But most word-learning studies focus only on objects and/or object properties. Here we probed word-learning biases across domains: Are novel nouns more likely to refer to objects or places?

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 26/08/2024

📢 Paper published📢 "Seeing the Forest but Naming the Trees: An Object-Over-Place Bias in Learning Noun Labels" is now out in Open Mind w/ Yi Lin! t.co/UIL5Qq10CF

t.co

https://direct.mit.edu/opmi/article/doi/10.1162/opmi_a_00154/124074/Seeing-the-Forest-but-Naming-the-Trees-An-Object

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Reposted by Moira (Molly) Dillon

Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 28/06/2024

Thinking about pros and cons of collecting data from kids online? Our meta-analysis is out today. Effects from online testing were slightly but not significantly smaller than matched in-lab effects: d = −.05 [−.17, .07]. By Aaron Chuey, Veronica Boyce, and Anjie Cao. direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...

direct.mit.edu

Conducting Developmental Research Online vs. In-Person: A Meta-Analysis

Abstract. An increasing number of psychological experiments with children are being conducted using online platforms, in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Individual replications have compared the fi...

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 28/06/2024

Paper published! 📜 Check out my longer-format commentary, "Divisive language" in BBS. I explore the relation between core knowledge 👶🧠 and language 💬 in response to Elizabeth Spelke's spectacular book 📘, "What babies know" bit.ly/4cCN0co

bit.ly

Divisive language | Behavioral and Brain Sciences | Cambridge Core

Divisive language - Volume 47

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 24/06/2024

Thanks to the families who participated and to DARPA MCS for supporting our research! Please feel free to reach out with any comments or questions: We'd love to hear your feedback! 💬 6/6

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 24/06/2024

When obstacles and goals are present, toddlers interpret imitative actions as instrumental rather than social, revealing early limits in understanding the social goals of imitation. Insights like these shape our understanding of human social learning 👩‍🏫 and AI development 🤖. 5/6

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 24/06/2024

Toddlers were shown silent, animated videos presenting simple shapes interacting in a grid world. They were tested on their expectations of agents' affiliations after imitative actions with or without obstacles and goals. 4/6

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 24/06/2024

How do young toddlers evaluate imitative actions as social 👥or instrumental 🛠️? 3/6

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 24/06/2024

From early in development, humans use imitation to express social engagement, to understand social affiliations, and to learn from others. But, the social and instrumental goals driving imitation make them hard to pinpoint when observing actions alone. 2/6

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 24/06/2024

🔔 Preprint alert! 🔔 "15-month-olds’ understanding of imitation in social and instrumental contexts" by Shannon Yasuda, Wenjie Li, Deisy Martinez, Brenden Lake, and me! osf.io/preprints/ps... 1/6

osf.io

OSF

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 23/02/2024

Join us! 🧠💭👶 My lab @ldm-nyu.bsky.social is looking for a new lab manager! Use the Interfolio link for more details and to apply (for full consideration, please apply by March 1): apply.interfolio.com/140778

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 21/12/2023

Thanks to NSF and NYU’s IHDSC for supporting our efforts and to all of those who have contributed to our joint experiments, talks, and events!

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 21/12/2023

Here we describe innovations for building thriving collaborations 🤝 between cognitive science labs and museums through common content, philosophy, and programming that impact both scientific theory development and museum practice.

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 21/12/2023

University research labs have been collaborating with informal learning institutions more and more. Cognitive science labs 🧠, which focus on basic as opposed to applied research, can also benefit from such partnerships! But how can such partnerships start, grow, and thrive?

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 21/12/2023

🚨 Publication Alert! 🚨 Now out in Mind, Brain, and Education: "Common Content, Philosophy, and Programming Support Thriving Collaborations Between Cognitive Science Labs and Museums" by me and MoMath Director, Cindy Lawrence! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Common Content, Philosophy, and Programming Support Thriving Collaborations Between Cognitive Scienc...

University research labs focusing on education, psychology, and cognitive development have been collaborating with museums more and more over the past decade. Cognitive science labs, which focus more....

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 28/11/2023

Thanks to the National Science Foundation for supporting our work!

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Moira (Molly) Dillon @moiradillon.bsky.social · 28/11/2023

We suggest language 💬 may effectively isolate phylogenetically ancient geometric representations used for navigating the physical world and recognizing the objects in it. Also, the cognitive origins of abstract geometry 📐 may lie in representations used for navigation 🌎!

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