Tobias Gerstenberg

I had a wonderful time visiting UC Irvine to give a talk in the cognitive science colloquium. Thank you @annaleshinskaya.bsky.social for being a fantastic host, and to all the other faculty, students, and postdocs I got to meet during my visit 🙏

A signaling theory of self-handicapping People use various strategies to bolster the perception of their competence. One strategy is self-handicapping, by which people deliberately impede th…

"A signaling theory of self-handicapping"

📢New from: @yangxiang.bsky.social @gershbrain.bsky.social @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Now out in Cognition, work with the great @gershbrain.bsky.social @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social on formalizing self-handicapping as rational signaling!
📃 authors.elsevier.com/a/1lo8f2Hx2-...

Yes, the physics engine will always simulate a full trajectory -- although we see in people's eye-movements that they sometimes only consider partial trajectories, and that they jump quickly from one critical point in the trajectory (e.g. an obstacle collision) to another point.

Simulating world models supports strong multimodal inferences. Prior work modeled multimodal inference as optimal averaging. But in the "Sound + Ball Occluded" condition each modality alone is useless (only hearing sounds, or only seeing obstacles). Combining both sources reveals what happened!

The Sequential Sampler accurately captures people's judgments and eye-movements across the three inference conditions.

The model also predicts eye-movements. It assumes that people look at visual features of the scene, but also at dynamic features that are the consequence of mentally simulating how the ball would fall and collide with the obstacles and walls if it was dropped into the different holes.

We develop a sequential sampling model which assumes that people simulate different possibilities proportional to their plausibility. The model performs Bayesian inference by conditioning on the available evidence step-by-step.

In the inference task, participants get different combinations of evidence:

(1) No Sound + Ball Visible: Only see the ball.
(2) Sound + Ball Visible: Hear collisions, then see the ball.
(3) Sound + Ball Occluded: Hear collisions, don't see the ball.

We record judgments ⚖️ and eye-movements 👀.

In the prediction task, participants click 10 times where the ball will allowing them to express their uncertainty in a structured way. Their predictions are very well explained (r=0.99) by a physics simulation model that assumes that people are unsure about how the ball drops and how it collides.

We created "Plinko" - a physics reasoning task where people:

🔮 PREDICT where a ball will land (forward reasoning)
🕵️ INFER where a ball came from using visual + auditory cues (backward reasoning)

🚨 NEW PREPRINT: Multimodal inference through mental simulation.

We examine how people figure out what happened by combining visual and auditory evidence through mental simulation.

Paper: osf.io/preprints/ps...
Code: github.com/cicl-stanfor...

This is an epic paper!

I very much enjoyed chatting with @dyamins.bsky.social about the connections between world models and counterfactual simulation.

My lab at UCLA is hiring 1-2 PhD students this cycle!

Join us to work at the intersection of cognitive science and AI applied to pressing societal challenges like climate change.

More info about me: rachit-dubey.github.io

My lab: ucla-cocopol.github.io

Please help repost/spread the word!

Flyer for the event!

*Sharing for our department’s trainees*

🧠 Looking for insight on applying to PhD programs in psychology?

✨ Apply by Sep 25th to Stanford Psychology's 9th annual Paths to a Psychology PhD info-session/workshop to have all of your questions answered!

📝 Application: tinyurl.com/pathstophd2025

congratulations 🎉

Our department is seeking applicants for an Assistant Professor position with a focus on affective science. Please apply and/or pass this along to anyone who might be interested! facultypositions.stanford.edu/en-us/job/49...

On the left is a rabbit. On the right is an elephant. But guess what: They’re the *same image*, rotated 90°!

In @currentbiology.bsky.social, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I show how these images—known as “visual anagrams”—can help solve a longstanding problem in cognitive science. bit.ly/45BVnCZ

How do we predict what others will do next? 🤔
We look for patterns. But what are the limits of this ability?
In our new paper at CCN 2025 (@cogcompneuro.bsky.social), we explore the computational constraints of human pattern recognition using the classic game of Rock, Paper, Scissors 🗿📄✂️

🚨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

🧵

Brilliant keynote by @laurennross.bsky.social at #cogsci2025 on cognitive science and its philosophy. Lauren pointed out the myriad ways in which cogsci and philosophy support and benefit one another, using explanation and causal reasoning as case studies. Thank you for a great talk!! 🙏

Josh Tenenbaum's inspiring keynote at #cogsci2025 on growing vs scaling AI, the big questions of cognitive science, and the many open questions for the field.

Last week I had the pleasure of presenting a 2.5-hour tutorial on "Counterfactuals in Minds and Machines" at UAI 2025 in Rio 🇧🇷, prepared together with @autreche.bsky.social and @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social. We've made all materials and references available here: learning.mpi-sws.org/counterfactu...

Sketchnote of Nora Newcombe's Rumelhart Prize Talk, posing three questions and case studies for cognitive science: (1) innateness (with the geometric module as a case study), (2) representations (featuring cognitive maps vs. graphs), and (3) embodiment (featuring mental rotation)

Notes from @noranewcombe.bsky.social 's beautiful Rumelhart Prize "tasting menu" - congratulations Nora!!! #CogSci2025

New #cogsci2025 paper! with @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social
In “Generics Revisited: Analyzing generalizations in children’s books and caregivers’ speech” we revisit the connection between generic use in children’s language input and psychological essentialism.

Excited to be sharing my latest work with @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social at #CogSci2025!

Learning usually occurs when we encounter new data. But we also have the capacity to reflect on our past experiences. What can we learn from simulating past experience?

📃 cicl.stanford.edu/papers/yang2...

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"36 Questions That Lead To Love" was the most viewed article in NYT Modern Love.
Excited to share new results investigating these and other “deep questions” with @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social @judithfan.bsky.social & @rdhawkins.bsky.social
Preprint: tinyurl.com/bdfx5smk
Code: tinyurl.com/3v6pws4s

Can you spot the ball? Try the task online and see how well you do: v0-new-project-9b5vt6k9ugb.vercel.app

And make sure to catch Neha Balamurugan present the work as a poster #cogsci2025 on Thursday: P1-B-8 ⚽ 👀