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Rochelle Kaper

@rochellekaper.bsky.social
693 followers 408 following 109 posts

phd student @ UCL experimental psych w/ Megan Peters (prev uc-irvine) 🧠 structure learning, metacognition, temporal dynamics, comp cog neuro. www.rochellekaper.com she/her

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Reposted by Rochelle Kaper
Alish Dipani @alishdipani.bsky.social · 18h
Finding a "face neuron" in an ANN doesn't mean it encodes faces like we do. 🧵 In my first project with @apurvaratan.bsky.social, we show that category selectivity in ANNs ≠ category selectivity in brains. Details in thread + preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Feedback or questions welcome!
biorxiv.org
Category selectivity observed in the human brain is distinct from category selectivity observed in artificial neural networks
Category selectivity for images of faces, scenes, and bodies is among the most striking and reproducible findings in vision neuroscience. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) trained on visual tasks also...
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Dr Anna Leshinskaya @annaleshinskaya.bsky.social · 23h
I am recruiting graduate students for UCI's PhD in Cognitive Sciences - www.cogsci.uci.edu/graduate/pro... The lab's focus is on how relational structure and combinatorial reasoning is implemented in human brains and large language models--and if they are similar.
cogsci.uci.edu
GRADUATE PROGRAM
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Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science bot @oecs-bot.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
The human mind instinctively extracts order from chaos, tracking probabilities across sounds and scenes to build complex knowledge from raw input. Statistical Learning by Jenny Saffran doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.7a74eed8 #CognitiveScience
Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science: "Statistical Learning" by Jenny Saffran. Statistical learning refers to the ability to track patterns in the environment. These patterns occur in a wide array of domains (e.g., speech, scenes, melodies). Humans track statistics over stimuli
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Henrik Singmann @singmann.bsky.social · 23h
New preprint: When should you use linear mixed models (LMMs), and when is repeated-measures (RM) ANOVA enough? LMMs offer greater flexibility. But does that make them a better default? My paper argues for statistical parsimony: use RM-ANOVA when both methods are appropriate. osf.io/preprints/ps...
osf.io
When to Use Mixed Models and When RM-ANOVA - An Argument for Statistical Parsimony
When should researchers use linear mixed-effects models (LMMs) versus repeated-measures analysis of variance (RM-ANOVA) for analysing repeated-measures data? I first outline the conceptual and statist...
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Ari Kahn @arikahn.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
This was an incredibly fun paper to collaborate on the modeling for, thrilled to see it finally out in Neuron!
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Rochelle Kaper @rochellekaper.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
go work with Jorge🧠!!
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Nature Human Behaviour @nathumbehav.nature.com · 01/10/2026
Intrinsic rewards guide visual resource allocation via reinforcement learning
dlvr.it
Intrinsic rewards guide visual resource allocation via reinforcement learning
Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 01 October 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02573-7Tangible rewards are known to sharpen visual processing of associated objects. Tomić et al. show that an internal sense of confidence—acting as an intrinsic reward—similarly biases attention, revealing how the brain prioritizes limited resources.
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Caroline Pioger @carolinepioger.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
🚨 New preprint! Public debate on decarbonization often rests on inaccurate beliefs about energy sources. We tested whether a reinforcement-learning-based intervention can correct them. 🧵👇 📄 Preprint: zenodo.org/records/2303...
zenodo.org
Correcting misconceptions and shaping preferences about energy with reinforcement learning
Addressing the climate crisis requires citizens to make informed choices about sustainable energy policy, yet public debates are often shaped by inaccurate beliefs about the environmental and health i...
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Reposted by Rochelle Kaper
Ziyao Zhang @bulezz.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
a fun collaboration with yanni and the self-regulation lab. We tested neural distinctions between anticipating social and monetary reward in a large sample study
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Neuromatch @neuromatch.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
⏰ Reminder: Impact Scholars Supervisor applications close this Sunday, 4 October 2026! We're especially interested in hearing from Supervisors for these two projects: 🧠 A #CompNeuro project: airtable.com/app7MJ7encL0... 🤖 A #NeuroAI project: airtable.com/app7MJ7encL0...
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Reposted by Rochelle Kaper
ari ☀️ @khoudary.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
how does memory support perceptual decisions made under uncertainty? this question has scaffolded my entire PhD, and I'm so excited to share part of it in this ✨new preprint ✨ w/ @meganakpeters.bsky.social and @aaronbornstein.bsky.social! link: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Memory retrieval explains dynamic effects of expectations on perceptual decisions
Expectations—prior knowledge of environmental statistics—support adaptive behavior by reducing uncertainty during inference. However, the questions of where expectations come from and how that ought t...
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Reposted by Rochelle Kaper
Kobe Desender @kobedesender.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
"Adaptive Regulation of Confidence Following Metacognitive Conflict: Evidence From Behavior and Computational Modeling"! Now out in #JEPGeneral led by @jintaoxing.bsky.social @stefherregods.bsky.social @lucvermeylen.bsky.social and me. PDF: desenderlab.com/wp-content/u.... "Conflicting" Thread ↓↓↓
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RLDM @rldmparis2027.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
📣 Save the date! RLDM 2027, the Multi-disciplinary Conference on Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making, is coming to Paris, July 6-9, 2027 🎉 Stay tuned for submission deadlines and more updates on our website rldm.org 👀
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Sandra Romero Pinto @sromeropinto.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Happy to have this finally out! TL;DR: The evolution of beliefs over time can be formulated as a dynamical system, and OFC neural activity appears to implement this system with its own dynamics. These emerge without explicit supervision—when animals learn to predict value in simple Pavlovian tasks
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Ryszard Auksztulewicz @auksz.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
What can DNNs tell us about how the brain learns? Our new results show that predictive local learning better captures changes in brain representations during statistical learning than supervised or contrastive approaches. Excellent work by @denisekittelmann.bsky.social and @gutlin.bsky.social
biorxiv.org
Predictive coding networks capture human neural representations missing in supervised DNNs
Neuroscientific learning theories propose that the brain acquires knowledge by constructing internal world models. Supervised learning, the dominant approach in deep neural networks (DNN), relies on e...
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Reposted by Rochelle Kaper
Mustafa Alperen Ekinci @alpekinci.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
The first paper of my PhD work! We show that our aesthetic experiences while watching movies can be partly explained by shared perceptual mechanisms: a combination of image-based visual features predicts our moment-to-moment aesthetic experiences, even across different movies.
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Alex Hyafil @alexhyafil.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
📣2 postdoc and 1 phD positions on computational mechanisms of human perception in Barcelona. One postdoc position (2-y) is joint w Chris Summerfield ( @summerfieldlab.bsky.social) on visual scene perception, mixing modelling w ANN and behavioral experiments.
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Neuromatch @neuromatch.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
📣 Neuromatch is looking for Impact Scholars Supervisors for our 2026-2027 cohort. Apply by 4 Oct 2026 or share with someone who'd be great at it! ➡️ Learn more: neuromatch.io/impact-schol..., docs.neuromatch.io/p/NiH1Z1N6bB... ➡️ Apply here: airtable.com/app7MJ7encL0...
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Kevin O’Neill @kevingoneill.github.io · 17/09/2026
New commentary! Are scientists and laypeople alike under persistent illusions of understanding? Shiffrin, Stigler, & Keil (2026) seem to think so. I argue this isn't the case w/ @sharonchungsl.bsky.social, Adam Harris, @davidlagnado.bsky.social & @singmann.bsky.social: rdcu.be/3swzbgH3ePva
rdcu.be
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Pascal Mamassian @mamassian.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Congratulations to Dr Tarryn Balsdon for beautifully defending her “Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches”, i.e. autorisation to officially supervise her own PhD students!!!
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Rochelle Kaper @rochellekaper.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
PREPRINT UPDATE🥳👇: 🧠learning under uncertainty & metacognitive processes are not as generalizable as previously thought! both evolve differently depending on structure & stimulus set osf.io/preprints/ps...
osf.io
OSF
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Steve Fleming @smfleming.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
📖 New review out today in @natrevneuro.nature.com: Towards an integrative neuroscience of metacognition 🧠🧪 Full-text link to the paper is here: rdcu.be/9YK3mF7dYhFa
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Kevin O’Neill @kevingoneill.github.io · 15/09/2026
delighted to have been able to chip in on this newly published paper by @wiktoriakozyra.bsky.social & @smfleming.bsky.social on how confidence “biases” arise from normative Bayesian models!
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ARC ETHOS @arcethos.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Meet the Team: @rochellekaper.bsky.social is a PhD student in Experimental Psychology at the University College London. She is interested in applying computational cognitive neuroscience approaches to study adaptive learning, metacognition, and (meta)-representational processes.
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Renzo Lanfranco @renzolanfranco.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
How much information about a stimulus is available to a perceptual system, and how much of that information becomes consciously accessible? In this new Perspective, “Perceptual awareness as an information-distribution problem,” I propose an information-theoretic framework. 🧵Preprint: osf.io/zmf5h
osf.io
OSF
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Steve Fleming @smfleming.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Our paper “Confidence is detection-like in high-dimensional spaces” is now published in Open Mind, led by @wiktoriakozyra.bsky.social and @kevingoneill.github.io direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...
direct.mit.edu
Confidence Is Detection-Like in High-Dimensional Spaces
Abstract. Confidence estimates are often “detection-like”—driven by positive evidence in favour of a decision. This empirical observation has been interpreted as showing that human metacognition is li...
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Steve Fleming @smfleming.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
and... our paper with @nicoschuck.bsky.social and Marit Petzka on the relationship between replay and conscious thought! www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
cell.com
What can we learn from studying replay in humans?
Noninvasive methods are making it possible to study neural replay in humans. Although focused on alignment with rodent findings, human research often tacitly assumes that replay is linked to conscious, deliberate thought. This assumption represents a missed opportunity to investigate the links between replay and consciousness, as well as cross-species differences more broadly.
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Steve Fleming @smfleming.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Glad to be part of this elegant study that is reshaping the way I think about metacognition. Confidence is strikingly goal-sensitive, with supposedly sensory biases such as PEB being readily flipped through instruction. Led by Prady Sepulveda and Benedetto De Martino www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Goals shape human confidence
Confidence guides our decisions: it determines when we commit to a choice, gather more information, or change our minds. Prominent models treat confidence as a readout of the evidence in support of a ...
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Reposted by Rochelle Kaper
Ido Ben-Artzi @idoba.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Excited to share our recent publication in @natcomms.nature.com We started by trying to make people stop associating the money rewards they obtain with irrelevant features of their behavior. In the first experiment, we used clear instructions framed as a story, and it didn't help...
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Rochelle Kaper @rochellekaper.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
finalllly in london🇬🇧🤩 super pumped & ready to get started at @uclpals.bsky.social 🤓!
UCLUCL student centreBig Ben
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Reposted by Rochelle Kaper
Zihan Bai @zihanbai.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Excited to share the first first-author preprint of my PhD at NYU with @s-michelmann.bsky.social andDaryl Fougnie. Using eye-tracking in a novel behavioral paradigm, we reveal the mechanisms by which episodic memory (EM) and working memory (WM) interact. 🧠 doi: doi.org/10.64898/202...
doi.org
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Harrison Ritz @hritz.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Our task-switching paper is now out at Current Biology! www.cell.com/current-biol... We find that that our brains reset to a task-neutral state between trials, providing flexibility when the upcoming task is uncertain. RNNs also learn this strategy, but only when trained to switch tasks.
schematic of how a brain might reset to a neutral state between trials
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Rochelle Kaper @rochellekaper.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
hey nyc🗽thank you to the Ma lab @weijima.bsky.social for having me & the great convos about modeling😊🧩!
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Russell Epstein @russellepstein.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
New paper! @samiyousif.bsky.social and I opine on Cognitive Maps as a Medium for Thought....now out in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social We discuss what cog maps are and how they might interact with a Language of Thought. This was a fun one, spanning philosophy, cog sci, and rodent neurophysiology!
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megan peters 🧠 @meganakpeters.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉So proud of *newly minted DOCTOR ANGELA SHEN @angelashen.bsky.social* who has just defended her brilliant dissertation work on vision, metacognition, and more! Just a gorgeous tour de force, massive datasets, beautiful psychophysics, sophisticated and clever analyses. CONGRATULATIONS!!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
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Rochelle Kaper @rochellekaper.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
huge thank you to the Schapiro Lab @annaschapiro.bsky.social for having me share my work (w/ @meganakpeters.bsky.social)! additional thank you to @tylerbonnen.bsky.social & @brockkirwan.com! very grateful for the super fruitful discussion🤓🤩
Penn Neural and Behavioral Sciences
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Ida Momennejad @neuroai.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
📣Algorithmic Grammar of Flexible Cognition: A Walk through Latent Operations osf.io/preprints/ps... Flexible behavior moves adaptively btwn cognitive modes. But units of analysis remain representations & few operations. Proposal: formalize open-ended cognition as walk over latent operations 1/n
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MindCORE at the University of Pennsylvania @pennmindcore.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
We are thrilled to have @khoudary.bsky.social continue their scholarly journey with us next month and are also excited to see what they will do here @upenn.edu! But for now, celebrations are in order for Dr. Khoudary! 🎉
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Rochelle Kaper @rochellekaper.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
DR @khoudary.bsky.social !!! so incredibly well deserved💗 so proud of you and cannot wait to continue to watch you soar✨
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Tianyuan Teng @tyteng.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
You'd think people prefer the simplest explanation of an uncertain world — Occam's razor. Our data says no, across 2 modalities, 2 tasks, 8 experiments: people often perceive illusory structure that isn't there and prefer moderate complexity. Out now in Nature Comms! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Human learning of probability distributions is biased toward moderate structural complexity - Nature Communications
Humans build internal models from online observations to adapt to new environments. Here, the authors show that individuals are biased towards building models with moderate structural complexity, rega...
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Dermot Lynott @dermotlynott.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
For reassurance, the changes to OSF have no impact on PsyArXiv (and other preprint communities hosted by the Center for Open Science), which will continue to operate as normal blog.psyarxiv.com/2026/08/11/w...
blog.psyarxiv.com
What Researchers Need to Know about PsyArXiv Given Upcoming Changes to OSF Projects – PsyArXiv Blog
In just a few short days (August 15th, 2026), PsyArXiv – the community preprint server for psychology – turns 10! 🥳 Over the past decade, our community has published over 58,000 preprints, allowing re...
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Lynn Schmittwilken @lschmittwilken.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
So happy to see this published! 🎉 Meet **deadleaves**, an #OpenScience Python package for generating Dead Leaves images to study #vision, segmentation, natural image statistics, and beyond. 📄 Paper (JOSS): doi.org/10.21105/jos... 📚 Documentation: deadleaves.readthedocs.io For more info 🧵
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Soroush Mirjalili @soroushmirjalili.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
🧠🚨 How can we measure the latent cognitive processes that work together during complex behavior? In our new Perspective, we propose cross-domain transfer: learning a neural signature of a cognitive process in one task and using it to track that process in another. 🧵 osf.io/preprints/ps...
osf.io
OSF
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Nora Harhen @noraharhen.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
How do we make good decisions with little experience? Adults can rely on memories of past choices. In our new study in @pnas.org we show kids & teens do something similar–but what they remember turns out to be quite different! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
pnas.org
Developmental changes in memory structure and precision alter the use of retrieved episodes during decisions for reward | PNAS
Most widely studied option evaluation strategies rely on knowledge accumulated across repeated experiences. But how should options be evaluated in ...
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Akram Bakkour @akrambakkour.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
📢New paper out today in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social led by Seoyoung Lee! Does reward spread across multiple links in memory organized in a cognitive graph? Yes! We see graded spread through a recalled (even if incorrect) learned graph. Reward preserves proximal structure to support decisions.
authors.elsevier.com
Reward selectively preserves relational structure in memory
Memories tend to form networks that reflect relationships between experiences. These networks, or cognitive graphs, have been used to study how struct…
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Saurabh @saurabhr.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
There are 17 different methods to measure whether confidence tracks accuracy, and these do not include Bayesian or Information Theory based measurements. We present MetaSignal with @makwana.bsky.social @lazyneuron.bsky.social and @brianodegaard.bsky.social to have common platform to access them.
metasignal logo
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Claire Sturgill @clairesturgill.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
I'm very excited to present a poster (C-18, Wednesday 9:30) at #CCN2026, describing neural signatures of internal decision-making in the monkey vlPFC. If you want to learn more about how sensory value influences percept selection, come check it out!
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luciecharlesneuro.bsky.social @luciecharlesneuro.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
If you're at #CCN2026 in NYC, come see my student's poster! Imogen will present her work on Prior Beliefs and Information reliability from 2pm - poster B58 :)
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Rochelle Kaper @rochellekaper.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
👇presenting POSTER TMRW @ #CCN2026: *Metacognitive sensitivity governs adaptive representational compactness in hierarchical structure learning🧠* 📍C59 🕐 wed aug 5 9:30 - 11:15 AM w/ @meganakpeters.bsky.social 😊 tinyurl.com/mv2zpbch @cogcompneuro.bsky.social
tinyurl.com
Metacognitive sensitivity governs adaptive representational compactness in hierarchical structure learning.pdf
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megan peters 🧠 @meganakpeters.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
the #ReflexionLab 's posters at @cogcompneuro.bsky.social #CCN2026!! presented by @aliekhlasi.bsky.social @yuzhengwu2329.bsky.social @rochellekaper.bsky.social and @emilwolsson.bsky.social!
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