@matishalin.bsky.social @martahalina.bsky.social

We find that recurrence confers a significant advantage for learning more complex grammars, but lamination does not.

This work would not have been possible without Matishalin Patel, Colin Klein, Marta Halina, and Andrew Barron. You can check out our preprint here: arxiv.org/abs/2509.13968.

2) The evolution of lamination, in which information is processed by independent sub-components.

We test these networks on artificial grammar learning tasks, for which the complexity of the problem can be precisely stated.

We focus on two transitions

1) The evolution of recurrent systems, in which information feeds back to earlier parts of the network.

In a new preprint, we explore this hypothesis with a computational approach. By systematically evolving neural nets with different structures, we measure whether key structural transitions improve performance on more complex problems, while controlling for the resources available to the network.

The arrangement of neurons is adjusted, using similar resources but opening up the possibility for more complex behaviour. This helps to explain the huge diversity of cognition we see across our planet: from nematodes 🪱 and box jellyfish 🪼 , to bees 🐝 , octopus 🐙 , chimpanzees 🐵 , and us 🙋 .

What if the same is true for the evolution of cognition?

It has recently been argued that the evolution of brains across the animal kingdom can be characterised in terms of just a few major structural changes.

That's certainly a hard part too, I can't deny that!

Thanks @dmoralesp.bsky.social, I'm interested to hear your thoughts!

You can check out the published article here (doi.org/10.1007/s105...) and a pre-print here (philsci-archive.pitt.edu/26165/).

This gives rise to an apparent, but ineffable, distinction between hypotheses. Crucially, this apparent distinction does not necessarily imply a distinction at the level of behavioural processes.

For decades, this distinction has been tacitly assumed but impossible to accurately define. I argue that the apparent distinction is actually an artefact of widespread analogical reasoning based on theories in human psychology and classic behaviourist associative learning theory.

I suggest that the widespread use of analogies explains away one of the most controversial debates in this field: whether associative learning and cognition are distinct behavioural processes.

In my latest thriller, published today in Biology and Philosophy, I argue that one useful hypothesis generation strategy in comparative psychology is analogical reasoning.

The hypothesis space is so large and it requires us to eschew our human-centred expectations about behaviour and cognition.

Many thanks to my coauthors @martahalina.bsky.social , @lucycheke.bsky.social, and Ben Farrar for working with me on this project.

You can check out the open-access paper here: psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

We found that comparative psychologists have incredibly diverse attitudes to these methodological challenges. This suggests that there is still a lot of work for both psychologists and philosophers of science to do to clarify fundamental debates at the heart of comparative psychology research.