Alison Preston

We love connecting with curious minds at UT Hot Science – Cool Talks, hosted by UT Environmental Science Institute! 🔬

We always have fun sharing the wonders of science with our community & watching their interest spark!

Are you in the Austin area? Check it out: www.esi.utexas.edu/community-en...

Looking for a nice way to build team connection before the holiday? Our lab drew names (gift exchange style) & shared aloud why we're grateful for that teammate, what makes us proud of them & how they strengthen the team. Such a sweet, grounding moment. Highly recommend 💛🧠

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Encouraging children & teens to manage their schedules independently has positive impacts for their memory!

Our new study reveals that age & independence combine to enhance memory development 🧵

Read here: osf.io/preprints/ps...

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Overall, we found that independence predicts memory abilities in ways that age alone doesn't capture.

Do you study memory development? We created a survey tool to help capture how independently kids manage their time!

Details here: osf.io/preprints/ps...

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Beyond age, independence predicts how individuals talk about their lived experience.

Children & teens who manage time more independently (getting themselves up, having their own get-ready routine) use more sophisticated time language when recalling their daily experiences.

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When asked to describe a typical day in their lives, younger children mostly describe the order of events, using words like “then” & “before.”

Older children & teens talk less about order & instead describe their experiences in terms of schedules & routines.

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Encouraging children & teens to manage their schedules independently has positive impacts for their memory!

Our new study reveals that age & independence combine to enhance memory development 🧵

Read here: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Congratulations to the recipients of the 2025 Science Education and Outreach Awards

These researchers are advancing neuroscience through groundbreaking discoveries, mentorship, & scientific excellence.

Listen to their remarks: vist.ly/4f8cn

#SfN25 #neurosky #neuroskyence

#SfN25, what a week! So proud watching lab members Omer, Nicole & Owen shine at their posters. Loved catching up with colleagues, former students & neuroscientists I deeply admire. Thank you for a fantastic event @sfn.org! 🧠

Four different colorful brain paintings

Beautiful watercolor brain paintings each one of a kind, at the Art of Neuroscience area at #sfn #sfn25

If you're at @sfn.org #SfN2025, hope you can swing by and see us today! 🧠

The Preston Lab will be at @sfn.org #SfN2025! Come see what we've been working on 🧠

We'll discuss how kids & adults remember when things happen, how memory changes impact reasoning & how we learn different actions have different consequences based on the setting.

Find us Monday & Wednesday 🤘

Happy New Preprint Friday!* Thrilled to share new results in collab with Sarah Lichenstein & @yiplab.bsky.social showing our brain's functional connections reflect the environments we grow up in!
tinyurl.com/exposomeConnectivity

#neuroskyence #PsychSciSky #DevPsy #cognition
*can this be a thing??

The Preston Lab will be at @sfn.org #SfN2025! Come see what we've been working on 🧠

We'll discuss how kids & adults remember when things happen, how memory changes impact reasoning & how we learn different actions have different consequences based on the setting.

Find us Monday & Wednesday 🤘

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Our review proposes a neurocognitive framework for understanding these differences.

Overall, we need developmentally appropriate approaches when asking children about WHEN something happened.

Learn more in our full review: osf.io/preprints/ps...

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Young children (ages 4-9) remember events like separate snapshots in isolation 🖼️🖼️

Teenagers begin to recognize patterns but struggle to apply them flexibly 🖼️🤔🖼️

It's not until early adulthood that the brain can access both specific details AND general patterns as needed.

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When children are witnesses, we ask detailed questions about when events occurred. But if we don't understand HOW kids remember time at different ages, we might misjudge their credibility when they're actually doing the best their developing brains allow.

So how is WHEN different for kids?

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🧠 Did you know that kids remember time differently than adults? Our new preprint review w/ @drjeni-mdlab.bsky.social discusses the real implications for juvenile justice & why we need to ask about timing in ways that match kids' developing brains ⚖️

Paper: osf.io/preprints/ps...

It’s grad school application season, and I wanted to give some public advice.

Caveats:
-*-*-*-*


> These are my opinions, based on my experiences, they are not secret tricks or guarantees

> They are general guidelines, not meant to cover a host of idiosyncrasies and special cases

Met a celebrity the other day! Bevo is the ultimate longhorn 🤘🐂

Big thanks to #ThinkeryATX Children's Museum for hosting us at their STEAM Sunday Halloween celebration! 🎃

We love connecting with families and future scientists while sharing what we do at the Preston Lab 🤘
#SciComm #AustinScience

It was great fun working with @alexanderhuth.bsky.social and @mujianing.bsky.social on these theoretical ideas. We are excited for everyone to check out the preprint! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New paper with @mujianing.bsky.social & @prestonlab.bsky.social! We propose a simple model for human memory of narratives: we uniformly sample incoming information at a constant rate. This explains behavioral data much better than variable-rate sampling triggered by event segmentation or surprisal.