Marc Malmdorf Andersen

Collecting Children's Lore! February is going to be all about Children's Lore, which is defined as the folklore created, shared, and maintained by children. So it's not folklore about children, but rather spread by them! A lot...

I'm still collecting children's folklore for my next podcast theme, and I'm getting some amazing responses - monsters, urban legends, games, even a Tin God! Still time to add yours to this Google Form: forms.gle/D8mLW7q2um5Z...

Children culture @sheinalew.bsky.social @dorsaamir.bsky.social 🥳

The relationship between childhood exploration and population-level innovation in cultural evolution Abstract. The societal effects of children’s learning in cultural evolution have been underexplored. Here, we investigate using agent-based models how a pr

Really great new paper using agent-based modelling to show how an exploratory childhood can lead to innovation in the population at large.
royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

"Combat both US tech capitulation and Enshittification at once."

Thanks for these overviews @hansonmark.bsky.social and @parismarx.com 🙏

Very nice modeling work by a great team: @drelenamiu.bsky.social @ndersen.bsky.social @sheinalew.bsky.social @felixthehauskat.bsky.social 👇

The relationship between childhood exploration and population-level innovation in cultural evolution Abstract. The societal effects of children’s learning in cultural evolution have been underexplored. Here, we investigate using agent-based models how a pr

"The relationship between childhood exploration and population-level innovation in cultural evolution" with @ndersen.bsky.social @sheinalew.bsky.social @felixthehauskat.bsky.social out in Proc B

royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

The relationship between childhood exploration and population-level innovation in cultural evolution Abstract. The societal effects of children’s learning in cultural evolution have been underexplored. Here, we investigate using agent-based models how a pr

🚨 🚨 Publication alert🚨 🚨
Great work led by the brilliant @drelenamiu.bsky.social.
Using agent-based models, we show that age-structured learning (kids explore broadly; adults refine/exploit) boosts long-term cultural payoffs vs. using the same strategies in random order. shorturl.at/rdlhv

Thanks for the share, Ellen 🙏

Scared together: heart rate synchrony and social closeness in a high-intensity horror setting.

New study from @ndersen.bsky.social and colleagues combines two of my favorite things - haunted houses and physiological synchrony research. "Scared together: heart rate synchrony and social closeness in a high-intensity horror setting." 👻❤️⚡❤️🧟

@stinuslindgreen.bsky.social

We missed you, Neil! Your work came up several times! Next year!

Jarred Lorusso brings the workshop to a close with a fantastic talk on the relationship between individual uncertainty and horror preference 🥳

Now up, Botond László Kiss! Botond is persuading us that in horror studies, the predictors of excitement and enjoyment seem to be slightly different and they should be considered distinct emotional responses to horror.

Now, @madisonlasaga.bsky.social is up, telling us all about her fascinating approach to using horror to investigate intrusive memories in PTSD.

We continue with the fascinating work by Sabrina Schneider, who delves into research on psychopathy and fear enjoyment. Sabrina’s work explores patterns in how psychopaths process fear stimuli, and how this may differ from people with no psychopathic traits.

Aaand, we're off! The annual Recreational Fear workshop “When Fear Is Fun 2025” kicks off with Corinna Perchtold-Stefan. Corinna is enlightening us on why the true crime genre has such a massive gender difference, in favour of women consumers. Stay tuned! @aiasdk.bsky.social @au.dk

Representational Momentum Transcends Motion Dillon Plunkett & Jorge Morales (2025) Psychological Science

When we see something that's moving, our memories about it end up projected forward in time: We remember it further along than it was. In a new paper in 𝘗𝘴𝘺𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘚𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦, out today and led by @dillonplunkett.bsky.social, we demonstrate that this happens even when there is 𝙣𝙤 𝙢𝙤𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩𝙨𝙤𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧.🧵

Rapid computation of high-level visual surprise Health sciences

High-level visual surprise is rapidly integrated during perceptual inference!

🚨 New paper 🚨 out now in @cp-iscience.bsky.social with @paulapena.bsky.social and @mruz.bsky.social

www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

Summary 🧵 below 👇

Physical proximity, social familiarity, and acoustic environment modulate heart rate synchrony in real-world social interactions Human social behaviour unfolds in complex real-world environments shaped by social and acoustic factors, yet markers of social engagement and connection remain elusive. Interpersonal physiological syn...

🫀 New preprint alert! 🌆
Thrilled to share the first paper of my PhD on heart-rate synchrony during social interactions in urban environments. @sinelabdtu.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Shaping bodily self-awareness through thermosensory signals Skin temperature and the ability to perceive warm and cold thermal stimuli (i.e., thermoception) are fundamental to human survival, influencing both our evolutionary history and early individual development. Interestingly, recent research has also started to uncover the role of these thermosensory signals in cognition. Such signals may contribute to the construction of our bodily self-awareness, and specifically the sense of body ownership, which is defined as the feeling that the body and its parts belong to us. This review examines how thermosensory signals travel from the skin to the brain and their impact on body ownership in both healthy and clinical populations. Furthermore, we propose mechanisms that may underlie this interaction and highlight potential clinical and societal applications.

Online Now: Shaping bodily self-awareness through thermosensory signals

Beyond the Adult Mind: A Developmental Framework for Predictive Processing in Infancy In this paper, we argue that Predictive Processing cannot be a unifying account of cognition until it can explain infant development. We show why development is crucial for understanding human cognit...

New paper alert: Beyond the Adult Mind: A Developmental Framework for Predictive Processing in Infancy!

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

#PsychSciSky #DevPsyc #CogPsyc #neuroskyence

Not only many adults, but the vast majority of children too, from infancy through the teenage years, enjoy “recreational fear”—activities that are both scary and fun—new Danish study finds, with the nature and context of the activities evolving with age:

buff.ly/AAfh2mt

Assistant Professor, Associate Professor or Full Professor of Cognitive Science - Vacancy at Aarhus University Vacancy at School of Communication and Culture - Linguistics, Cognitive Science and Semiotics, Dept. of, Aarhus University

Come join the wonderful CogSci dep at Aarhus Uni, Denmark! Fantastic students, wonderful colleagues, and great work/life balance! We are looking for applicants with teaching experience in the field of computational modelling of cognitive and/or social processes.
international.au.dk/about/profil...

Vicarious body maps bridge vision and touch in the human brain - Nature A mode of brain organization that connects visual and bodily reference frames may translate raw sensory impressions into more abstract formats that are useful for action, social cognition and semantic...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Come join the workshop on Recreational Fear at @aiasdk.bsky.social, @au.dk!

** Recruiting a postdoc ** We are looking for a postdoc to work on emotion, mental health, and interoception, based in London at @ucl.ac.uk in my lab (Clinical and Affective Neuroscience). Part of a large Wellcome Grant (co-led with the brilliant @camillanord.bsky.social)

🎃👻 When Fear Is Fun 2025 🎃👻
Our 5th annual workshop on recreational fear is happening in Aarhus on Dec 12!

Free participation, registration required.
🔗 Speakers + program: cc.au.dk/en/recreatio...
🔗 Register: event.au.dk/events/when-...

In need of horror-based scholarship? I re-FEAR you to the workshop below....

@felixthehauskat.bsky.social

The Recreational Fear Workshop explores why humans sometimes enjoy fear—and what it does to our minds and bodies.

This year, we have a fantastic lineup of speakers, covering everything from PTSD, psychopaths, true crime consumption and the Paradox of Horror.

Come join us at @aiasdk.bsky.social !