Stephen Ferrigno

Skyline of Madison, WI

🚨I am looking for a POSTDOC, LAB MANAGER/TECH and GRAD STUDENTS to join my new lab in beautiful Madison, WI.
We study how our brains perceive and represent the physical world around us using behavioral, computational, and neuroimaging methods.
paulunlab.psych.wisc.edu
#VisionScience #NeuroSkyence

Googling yourself is getting weird in the age of AI. Though I’m flattered Google now thinks I’m neurosurgeon David Paul (or that he is me).

Very excited to share a new preprint that’s been brewing for a long time! This work was led by the exceptional @traceym.bsky.social, and made possible by a developmental + comparative + computational dream team.

osf.io/preprints/ps...

Over the weekend ICE abducted an NIH contractor when he showed up to a courthouse for his green card hearing. He is documented. His wife is a citizen.

He is also member of the skeleton crew of animal care staff that works through a shutdown, to ensure the health and wellbeing of research animals.

Do Humans Use Push‐Down Stacks When Learning or Producing Center‐Embedded Sequences? Complex sequences are ubiquitous in human mental life, structuring representations within many different cognitive domains—natural language, music, mathematics, and logic, to name a few. However, the....

New work with @samcheyette.bsky.social & Susan Carey testing the memory architecture used when learning/producing center-embedded sequences. Adults don't use Push-Down Stacks as is often assumed, instead they rely on a Queue-like memory architecture onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Another fun #cogsci2025 in the books! Thanks to everyone who stopped by the CO-Lab grad student posters! Alessanda Silva on Number-Space mappings & @elijahtramm.bsky.social on Hierarchical grammar learning in monkeys (and humans). Posters still available through Cog. Sci. or reach out for a copy.

#cogsci2025 was a blast! Many excellent conversations about inner speech and categorical representation!

🚨 Neuro postdocs & grad students: Have a story to tell? Want to practice a talk before a conference or interview? Join our new seminar series on the Isthmus! All are welcome (from around the 🌎). Submit by Aug 20. Share your story (and this ad)!
(Ping me for Qs)
forms.gle/zpSTGWczxjqJ...

Democrats stage a science fair of canceled grants to show what’s been lost Partisan fight over Trump cuts heats up as Congress works on 2026 spending bills.

Researchers came from around the United States to showcase projects, ranging from modeling coastal hazards to teaching quantum information science, that were killed prematurely this spring by one of a half-dozen federal agencies. scim.ag/3Tv5iVC

1: Ed Yong's An Immense World (such a good read)
2: Frans de Waal's: Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? (lots of interesting points, but also some stretches)

Screen shot of a Fox News article with the headline "White men are 'walking around on eggshells at work, afraid to speak freely: Survey Poll reveals 43% of White men self-censor at work, while 25 million report losing job opportunities due to their race and gender" By Rachel del Guidice • Fox News

100% of Black people self censor at work. Its a job site not your personal safe space, snowflake.

Birds don't have capsaicin receptors... works like a charm!

CCCR logo, 100 Days Under Trump: Public Reactions to Attacks on American Governance & Institutions

🚨 CCCR has a new survey report out today! 🚨

"100 Days Under Trump: Public Reactions to Attacks on American Governance & Institutions"

The report draws on our Apr/May YouGov panel survey of US adults, following our Oct 2024 survey w/ recontacts + a sample refresh. 1/
cccr.wisc.edu/wp-content/u...

Exclusive: NIH documents reveal inconsistencies in grant terminations as agency reviews 3200 more Evidence of agency’s uneven guidance to employees and role of DOGE could play into legal case against cuts

After already killing more than 1700 active grants related to politically charged topics, the National Institutes of Health has flagged another roughly 3200 grants for review and possible termination.

Does Focusing on the Unit of Change Help Children Learn Growing Pattern Skills? Children regularly encounter growing and decreasing patterns in songs, games, and daily routines. Over development, children learn to extend and abstract (i.e., recreate the pattern using different...

📣📣 A recent paper by Nicholas A. Vest and colleagues:

Does Focusing on the Unit of Change Help Children Learn Growing Pattern Skills? www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

@nicholasvest.bsky.social
@marthaalibali.bsky.social

The original was fantastic! Can't wait for my niece & nephew to get a couple years older. Nerdy bedtime stories for days!

NIH cancels its first and largest study centered on women The Women’s Health Initiative has produced numerous influential findings

Well the NIH has cancelled the Women's Health Initiative, the largest study of women in history

It has been running continuously since 1991 and has provided massive key knowledge about diseases in women

Unreal

www.science.org/content/arti...

📣Now hiring! I'm looking to recruit a full-time Research Specialist (Lab Manager) to join the Social and Moral Learning Lab at UW Madison starting this summer! Apply here: jobs.wisc.edu/jobs/researc... (application deadline March 21, 2025)

Bonobo Nyota at Ape Initiative, a science and education nonprofit

Are humans the only species that communicates when a collaborator is missing information?

In @pnas.org, Luke Townrow and I show that our closest relatives, bonobos, can track when a partner is knowledgeable or ignorant, and tailor communication accordingly

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

Excited to be part of this Cog Sci preconference workshop on compositionality in Math & Non-linguistic reasoning next week. Virtual and free to attend! Sign up here: framaforms.org/compositiona...

Our fantastic lab manager Sydney Buffonge presented her first poster at a national conference this past weekend at #CDS2024! Congrats Sydney!

Child Development Application: jobs.wisc.edu/jobs/researc...

Research Specialist - Madison, Wisconsin, United States Job Summary: The Cognitive Origins Lab headed by Dr. Stephen Ferrigno at the University of Wisconsin, Madison is now accepting applications for a research specialist/lab coordinator working for non-...

Primate Cognition Application: jobs.wisc.edu/jobs/researc...

Come join the Cognitive Origins Lab at UW-Madison! We are hiring two full time lab managers to start this summer! One specializing in child development and one in non-human primate cognition. Application links below.

New episode!!

A conversation w/ Laura Lewis & @chriskrupenye.bsky.social about social memory in great apes.

Humans remember familiar faces for decades. But is this ability unique to our species, or is it part of our deeper primate heritage?

Listen: disi.org/social-memor...

Travis Kelce stats with and without Taylor Swift: How much better is Chiefs star with his girlfriend... Kelce has been much more productive when Swift has been in the stands, and that bodes well for the Chiefs in Super Bowl 58.

Anyone teaching 2-sample t tests in Intro Stats? Here's the dataset you've been looking for.
www.sportingnews.com/us/nfl/news/...
#stats #AcademicSky #EduSky 🧪

Came across this gem when looking for an old paper. Still one of the most memorable experiences in my grad career, but @cantlonlab.bsky.social handled it like an absolute boss!

New postdoc opportunity to work jointly with @cantlonlab.bsky.social and me to understand cognition across species, age, and culture! cmu.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/CMU/job/Pitt...

I want all of these!

DM or email me if you have any questions or would like to talk about the many research opportunities at UW-Madison! Madison is a beautiful town and the grad positions come with free boat rides on the lake!