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Wouter Kool

@wouterkool.bsky.social
1.3K followers 262 following 63 posts

Assistant Professor at WUSTL. PI of the Control and Decision Making Lab.

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Wouter Kool @wouterkool.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
Reading a children's book about the brain with my son. The endsheets (<- I had to look this up) go unreasonably hard! Fun to try to figure them all out: I don't recognize the "Lungs" one. It's not obvious why these are in the book, by the way. It looks like it's just a tribute by the illustrator.
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Wouter Kool @wouterkool.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
It was a joy to work with Merve Ileri-Tayar and Julie Bugg on this one. Not only do I think the avoidance effect is cool, but we also got to develop a neat new parametric flanker task with awesome behavioral interference results.
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Wouter Kool @wouterkool.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
We even found that people are willing to trade off these two forms of cognitive costs: people are willing to take on more incongruent trials if it means they don't have to switch between congruent and incongruent ones types as much.
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Wouter Kool @wouterkool.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
We introduce a new search task that manipulates salience (via minority & majority groups) and statistical regularities that incentivize different search strategies. In Experiment 3, we use an attention probe (à la @ngaspelin.bsky.social) to track how attention is allocated across the display.
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Wouter Kool @wouterkool.bsky.social · 01/01/2026
The dictionary feels like I'm just here for the
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Wouter Kool @wouterkool.bsky.social · 22/11/2025
Two more posters from my group at Psychonomics and SJDM. This evening, @duyguyucel.bsky.social will present some brand new work on multidimensional reinforcement learning, and tomorrow morning @ltreiman.bsky.social will present her work on choice-induced preference in the decoy effect.
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Wouter Kool @wouterkool.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
My lab members are presenting some awesome work at Psychonomics and SJDM in Denver! #psynom25 #sjdm25 We have posters and talks happening Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Come say hi!
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Wouter Kool @wouterkool.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
If you are at #SfN25, be sure to check out @davideghez.bsky.social's latest work on using EEG to decode the regulation of multidimensional control tomorrow morning. We're dropping the preprint tomorrow as well!
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Wouter Kool @wouterkool.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
Just reviewed a paper with an OSF preregistration that was mostly empty and uninformative (e.g., analysis plan just said “anova”, see image). I recommended rejection, but the editor asked for revision without addressing this issue in the decision letter. What would you do in this case?
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Wouter Kool @wouterkool.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
My group, the Control and Decision Making Lab, is at Psychonomics _and_ SJDM this year! Members of our lab will present two talks and two posters on Friday at Psychonomics, and we have two more posters at SJDM on Sunday. Come say hi! #psynom24
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Wouter Kool @wouterkool.bsky.social · 16/11/2023
My team and I are Psychonomics! I haven't been at conferences in a long time, so I'd love to say hi and show you the cool research my team has been up to. We have four posters on four different research projects involving control and decision making. Details in the pics. #psychscisky #psynom23
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Wouter Kool @wouterkool.bsky.social · 11/11/2023
If you are at #SfN23, go check out the awesome work that Ata Karagoz @atabk.bsky.social is doing with me and Zach Reagh @zreagh.bsky.social! He uses behavioral (!) and neural RSA to measure the construction of cognitive maps for planning.
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Wouter Kool @wouterkool.bsky.social · 27/09/2023
Our computational model shows that this requires a substantial revision to models of control adaptation. Instead of measuring conflict at the response level, we suggest that conflict should be measured separately for each dimension, so that control can be adapted in a dimension-specific fashion.
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Wouter Kool @wouterkool.bsky.social · 27/09/2023
This is a parametric version of the congruency sequence effect (like work by @hritz.bsky.social). But here's the kicker: we find that this adaptation only occurs within- and not between-dimensions. So, prior conflict from one dimension only affects current attentional control to that same dimension.
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Wouter Kool @wouterkool.bsky.social · 27/09/2023
Behavior tracks congruency. People respond faster and more accurate with increasing congruency. Moreover, we find that previous congruency predicts current sensitivity to the distractors. After very incongruent trials, attention becomes very focused (less susceptible to incongruent dimensions).
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Wouter Kool @wouterkool.bsky.social · 27/09/2023
The task is simple. On each trial, you see two objects that differ in four ways (shape, color, edge, motion of dots). A cue in the middle of the screen tells you to which dimension to attend. For each dimension, you have been given a target feature (e.g., if the cue is C find the blue object).
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