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Reposted by David Barner

Ebru Evcen @ebruevcen.bsky.social · Sep 12

Now out in Open Mind!
@drbarner.bsky.social and I find that when people hear a conditional statement like “If you mow the lawn, you’ll get $5,” they often interpret it as “only if you mow the lawn”, a pragmatic, perfected meaning.
doi.org/10.1162/opmi...

Already Perfect: Language Users Access the Pragmatic Meanings of Conditionals First

Abstract. Conditional statements often have two interpretations. For instance, the statement, “If you mow the lawn, you will receive $5”, might be understood to mean that mowing the lawn is just one p...

doi.org

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David Barner @drbarner.bsky.social · Sep 11

But it’s not just psych. It also predates the recent AI boom, driven by computer science being impacted at the UG level. Deans want to redirect students from compsci to linguistics, psych, cogsci - wherever they can. It’s not ending well for UGs in compsci & probably won’t end well elsewhere.

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David Barner @drbarner.bsky.social · Sep 11

Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like the most important pure research in this area happened 20 years ago, and what’s new now are scaling and applications. So it seems like anyone wanting to hire in this area maybe should have done so in the 80s.

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Reposted by David Barner

Martin Hebart @martinhebart.bsky.social · Sep 4

Today I had a curious encounter with my 4-yo son. He told me he discovered that his Batman action figure could switch the Batman logo to something else. He showed me, touched its arm, shook it and said: “there, it changed.”
The thing is: the logo is fixed and cannot change. So what had happened?

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Reposted by David Barner

Larisa Heiphetz Solomon @drlarisa.bsky.social · Sep 8

My lab is hiring a lab manager! Application deadline = 11/1, start date sometime between June & September 2026 (to be arranged with finalist). Please spread the word & apply here: opportunities.columbia.edu/jobs/a3f80f7....
#AcademicSky #PhdSky #PsychSciSky #SocialPsyc #DevPsyc #psychjobs

Research Staff Assistant - Morningside, New York, United States

Job Type: Support Staff - Non-Union Regular/Temporary: Regular Hours Per Week: 35 Salary Range: $41,000- $41,000 The salary of the finalist selected for this role will be set based on a variety of fa...

opportunities.columbia.edu

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Reposted by David Barner

Alisa Bokulich @alisabokulich.bsky.social · Aug 21

Philosophy Dept @ U of Toronto invites applications for 7 #philjobs incl

Asst Prof – Metaphysics & Epistemology, St. George Campus (deadline: Nov 3): jobs.utoronto.ca/job/Toronto-...

Asst Prof – Philosophy & Statistics, St. George Campus (deadline: Nov 4): jobs.utoronto.ca/job/Toronto-...
#philsci

Assistant Professor - Metaphysics and Epistemology

jobs.utoronto.ca

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Reposted by David Barner

Kosta Boskovic @kostaboskovic.bsky.social · Aug 20

Thrilled to have another CogSci in the books!

Curious about how children learn what age is? Check out my poster with @drbarner.bsky.social here: qr.codes/yjFi54

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Reposted by David Barner

Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS) @improvingpsych.org · Aug 15

PsyArXiv is seeking new moderators to help combat an increase in AI submissions! If you've ever posted a preprint to PsyArXiv, please consider joining. Minimum commitment 1h/month, there's a training session this Monday @ 1pm ET. More info here: forms.gle/9LB1rEtxHAeZ... #PsychSciSky

Expression of Interest in Serving as a PsyArXiv Moderator

As you might have heard, PsyArXiv is having some issues with an increase in low-quality submissions, ranging from AI generated manuscripts to inflate citation metrics, incoherent or nonsensical docume...

forms.gle

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David Barner @drbarner.bsky.social · Aug 10

4/ If you're wanting to try this and have troubles let me know and I can try to help.

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David Barner @drbarner.bsky.social · Aug 10

4/ I can't recommend one particular video (& I can tell you that the video I'll share leaves out critical info at critical steps), but here's one: www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7W1...

How to Supervise an iPhone with Apple Configurator in 2025

YouTube video by Gertrude App

www.youtube.com

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David Barner @drbarner.bsky.social · Aug 10

3/ This thing is powerful: You can exclude apps, including the app store, & create whatever kind of device you want. IMO it's what the screentime app SHOULD be (& easily could be if Apple really wanted to allow you to limit screentime for kids).

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David Barner @drbarner.bsky.social · Aug 10

2/ The solution is Apple Configurator. It's meant for industry control over employee devices but works very well for parental controls or creating a dumb phone for adults. Configurator isn't super user friendly, but a day on Youtube did the trick, & my phone no longer dominates my consciousness.

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David Barner @drbarner.bsky.social · Aug 10

1/ Dunno if anyone else cares about this, but a few years ago it became impossible to dumb-phone your iPhone using screentime settings (e.g., to remove web browser, etc.) b/c Safari just reappears in the App library. I recently discovered a way around this that cut my screen time by 2-3 hours a day.

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David Barner @drbarner.bsky.social · Aug 2

She does think there are innate conceptual resources - proto-concepts. Just no innate concepts!

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David Barner @drbarner.bsky.social · Aug 2

Susan Carey mic-drop at #cogsci2025. "There are no innate concepts: Discuss"

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Reposted by David Barner

Junyi Chu @junyi.bsky.social · Jun 26

Next Monday 6/30, join us for session 3 on 🛠️Problem Solving🧠 !

Register here for Zoom link: stanford.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Attending CogSci in person this July? Submit an abstract to showcase your work at our poster session! forms.gle/SHFChMAAReto...

Junyi Chu @junyi.bsky.social · Jun 6

🧩 On problem solving (6/30, 2-3pm PT): Kelsey Allen, @bonan.bsky.social @ranjaykrishna.bsky.social

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Reposted by David Barner

MCLS trainee @mclstrainee.bsky.social · Jun 9

Welcome to #MCLS2025!

MCLS 2025 organizing committee standing in front of MCLS 2025 welcome slides

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Reposted by David Barner

Cognitive Science Society @cogscisociety.bsky.social · Jun 8

🚨 5 days left!

Submit your proposal for the ✨Broadening Participation in Cognitive Science✨ initiative.
Grants up to $5,000 to support projects that advance accessibility & inclusion in #CogSci

🗓️Deadline: June 13
🔗 cognitivesciencesociety.org/broadening-p...

Cognitive Science Society @cogscisociety.bsky.social · Apr 13

We're inviting proposals for the ✨Broadening Participation in Cognitive Science initiative✨, with grants of up to $5,000 to support events or projects that increase accessibility and inclusion in #CogSci

Deadline: June 13 🗓️

Learn more and apply at cognitivesciencesociety.org/broadening-p...

Broadening Participation in Cognitive Science. Apply Today!

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David Barner @drbarner.bsky.social · Jun 7

(Small bases)

Reposted by David Barner

Junyi Chu @junyi.bsky.social · Jun 6

Delighted to announce our CogSci '25 workshop at the interface between cognitive science and design 🧠🖌️!

We're calling it: 🏺Minds in the Making🏺
🔗 minds-making.github.io

June – July 2024, free & open to the public
(all career stages, all disciplines)

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David Barner @drbarner.bsky.social · Jun 6

We conclude that smaller bases may be just as easy to learn as larger ones despite the more complex rule structure & therefore that if kids were trained on smaller bases they might learn rules earlier in development. Stay tuned for a study by Sebastian in Phil.Transactions RSB that explores this!

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David Barner @drbarner.bsky.social · Jun 6

We found three main results: (1) that the size of a base had little effect on learning, (2) that learners struggled to acquire multiplicative rules while learning additive rules more easily, (3) learning numbers in a count routine improved memory for words, but impaired map them to meanings.

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David Barner @drbarner.bsky.social · Jun 6

So, we trained adults on a bunch of bases, with and without counting structure, and tested both their recall of trained words, and their ability to "guess" the labels for untrained words (e.g., they were trained up to 10 and tested up to 20).

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David Barner @drbarner.bsky.social · Jun 6

Second, studies find that kids are slow to notice rules for combining numbers. But rules only become apparent in base-10 systems once you count past ~30 when structures begin to repeat. This raises the possibility rules might emerge earlier in systems that require rules for smaller numbers

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David Barner @drbarner.bsky.social · Jun 6

Two things are interesting: First, children learning base-10 typically learn number words as part of a counting system, though historically this has not always been the case, and some number systems - especially those with bases - do not.

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