Fiery Cushman

I'm recruiting grad students!! 🎓

The CoDec Lab @ NYU (codec-lab.github.io) is looking for PhD students (Fall 2026) interested in computational approaches to social cognition & problem solving 🧠

Applications through Psych (tinyurl.com/nyucp) are due Dec 1. Reach out with Qs & please repost! 🙏

Seeking New Information With Old Questions: Children and Adults Reuse and Recombine Concepts From Prior Questions Abstract. Question asking is a key tool for learning about the world, especially in childhood. However, formulating good questions is challenging. In any given situation, many questions are possible b...

📣Recent work by Emily G. Liquin, Marjorie Rhodes & Todd M. Gureckis:

Seeking new information with old questions: Children and adults reuse and recombine concepts from prior questions

The computational psych preconference is back @spspnews.bsky.social for a full day! This year's lineup:

👉theory-driven modeling: Hyowon Gweon
👉data-driven discovery: @clemensstachl.bsky.social
👉application: me
👉 panel: @steveread.bsky.social Sandra Matz, @markthornton.bsky.social Wil Cunningham

Mikayla Kelley, The Normative Function of Intentional Action - PhilPapers This essay identifies a normative function of the concept of intentional action. Specifically, I argue that the concept of intentional action functions to focus our evaluative concern on some doings r...

Mikayla Kelley has an important new paper on why human beings even have a concept of intentional action

The key question: What does this concept do in our lives?

Her answer: Since we can't possibly evaluate all actions, it helps us choose which ones to evaluate

philpapers.org/rec/KELTNF-3

Mark Chen | Department of Psychology

My website is official 🙌 Excited to share that I am interested in reviewing applications for Harvard’s Clinical Science PhD program this fall as I look for the first student to join my lab! I appreciate it if you can share with your network :)
psychology.fas.harvard.edu/people/mark-...

This was such a fun project! Dozens of philosophers wrote philosophical arguments trying to get people to donate more to charity, and we ask: Do any of these work? Which ones work best? Why?

🚨New paper out w/ @gershbrain.bsky.social & @fierycushman.bsky.social from my time @Harvard!

Humans are capable of sophisticated theory of mind, but when do we use it?

We formalize & document a new cognitive shortcut: belief neglect — inferring others' preferences, as if their beliefs are correct🧵

This project took a very unexpected path that was super helpful in updating the way my lab thinks about experimental design -- so we're sharing it with the world!

Transmission networks of long-term and short-term knowledge in a foraging society Abstract. Cultural transmission across generations is key to cumulative cultural evolution. While several mechanisms—such as vertical, horizontal, and obli

💙New paper!💙

How is knowledge transmitted across generations in a foraging society?

With @danielredhead.bsky.social
we found: In BaYaka foragers, long-term skills pass in smaller, sparser networks, while short-term food info circulates broadly & reciprocally

academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

Logical Concepts of (Im)possibility Guide Young Children's Decision‐Making The human capacity for rational decisions hinges on modal judgment: the discernment of what could, has to, or cannot happen. This ability was proposed to be a late outcome of human cognitive develop.....

🌟From Nicolò Cesana-Arlotti, Sofia Jáuregui, Peter Mazalik, Shaun Nichols & Justin Halberda:

Logical concepts of (im)possibility guide young children's decision-making

📣 🚨 Yale Psychology has 3 searches this year!

Links below:

Quantitative link: apply.interfolio.com/171903
Social link: apply.interfolio.com/171989
Clinical link: apply.interfolio.com/171970

Studying philosophy does make people better thinkers, according to new research on more than 600,000 college grads Philosophers are fond of saying that their field boosts critical thinking. Two of them decided to put that claim to the test.

Studying philosophy does make people better thinkers, according to new research on more than 600,000 college grads theconversation.com/studying-phi...

Profitable third-party punishment destabilizes cooperation | PNAS Third-party punishment is theorized by some scholars to be essential to the evolution of large-scale cooperation, but empirically, it often fails t...

I’ll have more to say about this paper in a bit, but very excited about it. Helps to explain why punishment doesn’t work to improve cooperation, why people still punish anyway, and what it implies about the evolution of cooperation and criminal justice policy www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

We're hiring!!! Princeton Psych has an Assistant Prof search in cog neuro (joint with @princetonneuro.bsky.social). Apply apply apply! puwebp.princeton.edu/AcadHire/app...

Open‐Ended Technological Evolution: The Co‐Evolution of Invention and Cognitive Technologies Open-ended technological evolution is the result of the co-evolution of invention and cognitive technologies that enhances our cognitive capabilities and generates a feedback loop of ever-expanding t....

New paper out in Topics in Cognitive Science! "Open-Ended Technological Evolution: The Co-Evolution of Invention and Cognitive Technologies" 🧵
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

When development constricts our moral circle - Nature Human Behaviour Although many believe our moral circles expand with age, this Perspective discusses an early-emerging tendency to care for others.

When development constricts our moral circle

‼️From Julia Marshall, Matti Wilks, Lucius Caviola & Karri Neldner

🚨Out in PNAS🚨
with @joshtenenbaum.bsky.social & @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social

Punishment, even when intended to teach norms and change minds for the good, may backfire.

Our computational cognitive model explains why!

Paper: tinyurl.com/yc7fs4x7
News: tinyurl.com/3h3446wu

🧵

After many years of anticipation (mainly by me), @drlarisa.bsky.social and I have a paper on the way people understand two mental state terms used in the criminal law -- "knowingly" and "recklessly" -- forthcoming in JEP:Applied. 1/

📣 Heads-up that our amazing dept (Berkeley Psych) is anticipating hiring *two* TT Asst Profs this Fall, under the themes of (1) Social & Personality Psychology, and (2) Biological Basis of Behavior.

Official job ads coming soon...

Send qs for (1) to Iris Mauss/Serena Chen, (2) to Linda Wilbrecht

Thrilled that our paper on the mechanisms underlying social learning strategies is out! First big paper from my @erc.europa.eu & @kawresearch.bsky.social funded group. More to come! I'm currently looking to recruit two post docs, get in touch if you find this line of research interesting.

Counterfactual models predict that normality should influence causal judgments in a different way depending on causal structure.

A fascinating paper by Ozdemir and Walker finds some hints of this pattern in 5- to 7-year old children.

static1.squarespace.com/static/5615d...

Evolving general cooperation with a Bayesian theory of mind | PNAS Theories of the evolution of cooperation through reciprocity explain how unrelated self-interested individuals can accomplish more together than th...

Our new paper is out in PNAS: "Evolving general cooperation with a Bayesian theory of mind"!

Humans are the ultimate cooperators. We coordinate on a scale and scope no other species (nor AI) can match. What makes this possible? 🧵

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

A popular and very old argument for the value of philosophy claims that studying philosophy cultivates important intellectual abilities and dispositions. But empirical evidence for that claim has been hard to come by. Until now!
1/4

Contractualist Moral Cognition: From the Normative to the Descriptive at Three Levels of Analysis Visual summary of the paper. Taking inspiration from the contractualist tradition in moral philosophy is helpful to better understand morality at three interrelated levels of analysis: Its evolutiona...

Arthur has written a wonderful, clear, super helpful introduction to contractualism as a foundation for moral psychology. Perfect for getting up to speed, teaching, a desk reference, or a sunny day at the beach. wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

The cultural construction of “executive function” | PNAS In cognitive science, the term “executive function” (EF) refers to universal features of the mind. Yet, almost all results described as measuring E...

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

🚨We're hiring! The Mind & Morality Lab is seeking a Lab Manager to start this September. Excited about research on social cognitive development? Apply here: forms.gle/4rKXD2x1vmkD.... Learn more about us: sites.brown.edu/mindmorality....
⏳ We’re reviewing applications on a rolling basis—apply early!

Paper in @pnas.org in which @d-melnikoff.bsky.social and I provide evidence for model-based effects on automatic evaluation. This was a super fun “adversarial” collaboration with 0 adversariality. It may have been nice to be right, but getting it right is nearly as nice: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Pleased to announce my new open access paper out in Developmental Psychology:
The Development of the “First Thing That Comes to Mind”

with @xphilosopher.bsky.social and @ebonawitz.bsky.social

psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2026-25569-001.html

#CogSci #PsychSciSki #DevSci

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Quite pleased with this paper. Usually in #culturalevolution experiments, people choose who to copy. We flipped it so that people chose with whom to share their information. Sharers got reputation increases for sharing, which we expected would allow partner choice, i.e. people share with sharers.

New preprint! 🔔

We apply computational text analysis to over 2000 years of historical corpora in Classical Chinese. Beyond descriptives, we test the hypothesis that kin-based institutions shape important aspects of socio-cooperative psychology.