Tim Ricker

My lab is recruiting a PhD student or Postdoc to join an exciting BSF project on working memory and prediction. Please RT, spread the word, and DM to apply

The final part of my PhD work is now published in JEP:LMC 🤩 Special thanks to my wonderful PhD supervisors @evievergauwe.bsky.social and @nlangerock.bsky.social 🤗 psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

As a theoretical cosmologist, I'm frequently asked "what is the benefit of the work you're doing for people's lives?" Nothing I work on makes money or cures disease.

There are a few different answers one can give, at various levels of "convincing" / "actually relevant to why the work is done."

1/🧵

New paper: the ‘Double Ring Illusion’!
Does the visual system integrate *intuitive physics*? This new illusion developed by Brent Strickland and I offers a straightforward demonstration – one that you can experience yourselves!
Demos in thread👇
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Call for collaborators! 🧵

The TL;DR: we seek collaborators on a #ManyLabs #RegisteredReport about what causes rapid forgetting.

In-principle accepted Stage 1: osf.io/ahjn5

Expressions of interest: cardiffunipsych.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Further details in the 🧵:

1/ Why are we so easily distracted? 🧠 In our new EEG preprint w/ Henry Jones, @monicarosenb.bsky.social and @edvogel.bsky.social we show that distractibility is associated w/ reduced neural connectivity — and can be predicted from EEG with ~80% accuracy using machine learning.

Simonsohn has now posted a blog response to our recent paper about the poor statistical properties of the P curve. @clintin.bsky.social and I are finishing up a less-technical paper that will serve as a response. But I wanted to address a meta-issue *around* this that may clarify some things. 1/x

I am pleased to share that "the bird study" is now accepted at Psychology and Aging! A great collaboration with visiting intern Kishen Senziani, @leabartsch.bsky.social & @edamizrak.bsky.social 😀 Check out the pre-print below and a short thread on the study design and main takeaways 🧵👇

An array of 9 purple discs on a blue background. Figure from Hinnerk Schulz-Hildebrandt.

A nice shift in perceived colour between central and peripheral vision. The fixated disc looks purple while the others look blue.

The effect presumably comes from the absence of S-cones in the fovea.

From Hinnerk Schulz-Hildebrandt:
arxiv.org/pdf/2509.115...

wow, massive illusory motion effect here

Do you want to know how or why you should preregister your next experiment? Then sign up for our next OPAM online workshop (hosted by @carohautekiet.bsky.social on October 8th) using the link below!

vu-live.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Item-based Parsing of Dynamic Scenes in a Combined Attentional Tracking and Working Memory Task Abstract. Human visual processing is limited—we can only track a few moving objects at a time and store a few items in visual working memory (WM). A shared mechanism that may underlie these performanc...

How does the visual system track moving objects while remembering the color of those objects? My latest research article (co-first with Piotr @styrkowiec.bsky.social) exploring this question using EEG is out in JoCN! @jocn.bsky.social #workingmemory #cognition #cogneuro #cogsci #neuro

Distributed and drifting signals for working memory load in human cortex Increasing working memory (WM) load incurs behavioral costs, and whether the neural constraints on behavioral costs are localized (i.e., emanating from the intraparietal sulcus) or distributed across ...

New pre-print day! Distributed and drifting signals for working memory load in human cortex 🧠 (with Ed Awh & @serences.bsky.social)

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The IfaDo sessions have become really a community staple and I am very glad to be able to chip in.

1/4 I’m really excited to share that my first PhD manuscript has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Neuroscience 🎉! Until it becomes available, don’t forget to check out our updated preprint (with some additional insights) #JNeurosci

Tomorrow afternoon at #icon2025 I will present a poster on feature extraction costs in working memory in an audiovisual context using behavioral measures and EEG based decoding analysis. I will be at the main hall, 1st floor (P2.55). I’d be happy to discuss our results further with you.

Congrats to @lauraklatt.bsky.social for being the #WomWoM research fairy of 2025! She is both a star researcher & incredibly generous and collegial with all in the field, especially the juniors! Thank you to everyone who sent in nominations & to @scannedfruits.bsky.social for making Laura's wand 🪄🧚‍♀️

The next installment (October 8th) of our OPAM Training Workshop series will feature Dr Caro Hautekiet (of Vrije Universiteit), who will be discussing pre-registration and registered reports. Visit this page for info on all our (free!) workshops: www.opamconference.com/workshops-su...

Make sure you register for this year's OPAM and join us to hear what will definitely be a great talk from Dr. Joy Geng on her research and stories from her career!

Yes, this was a really great experience! Thanks for @cvonbastian.bsky.social and @vmloaiza1.bsky.social for asking us to do this as part of #ESCOP2025! And if you are interested in having a similar workshop for your PhD Programm or similar, feel free to reach out!

Notre Dame is hiring in Psychology! We have an open-rank, tenure/TT position in Cognitive Neuroscience: apply.interfolio.com/170229

Application deadline is soon (Sept. 15)

Very excited to announce my first paper is out in @currentbiology.bsky.social! Using EEG, we identify an item-based measure of storage in working memory that generalizes across auditory and visual items.

authors.elsevier.com/a/1ljFF3QW8S...

#PsychSciSky #neuroskyence #workingmemory

Presenting my talk at #ESCOP2025 today at 4pm in the symposium "Cognitive Mastery in Play: From Board to Digital Games as Models of Expertise" in LT2 🎮🎲 Hope you see you there!

Here is the paper that @mollyadelooze.bsky.social presented this morning at #escop2025 showing source amnesia for recently presented verbal information.

Excited to share our preprint for my first project with Zane (Dr. Weizhen Xie, University of Maryland)! :) We found that semantic associations across real-world objects promotes VWM performance, but only when the encoding time was brief (0.2s). Preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps... 1/2

Resources for Research This section provides brief summaries of selected resources for research that have been published in journals of the Psychonomic Society, typically Behavior Research Methods. These resources consis…

Need to control visual similarity in your experiments? A new open database by Robbins and colleagues @michaelhout.bsky.social @haywardgodwin.bsky.social, published in #psynomBRM, maps similarity among 1,200 objects in 20 categories using MDS—validated & ready to use.

Another highly cited classic finding fails to replicate

Our PhD student Ekaterina Andriushchenko presents her poster
"Beyond the Noise: The Complex Interplay of Past and Present Uncertainty in Serial Dependence" in afternoon poster session at #ECVP2025 today. Stop by if you are around and interested in serial biases and noise!

08:40 am
Maria V. Servetnik
09:00 am
Thomas Christophel
09:20 am
Representational formats to encode context and priority in visual working memory
Brad Postle | University of Wisconsin–Madison | United States
09:40 am
Clayton Curtis | New York University | United States

We are HIRING! The Department of Psychology at NDSU is seeking a tenure-track Assistant Professor in Developmental Psychology (broadly defined) to begin August, 2026. Full details here: tinyurl.com/3sjknmxn
Questions can be directed to me.
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