Michael W. McHale (He/Him)

In undergrad, I thought that TAKING an exam at ~7 A.M. was the worst, but PROCTORING my early morning exam this semester has SWIFTLY updated my belief system.

Heartbreaking. The University of Nebraska will terminate its entire Earth science department.

One of the country's most successful and respected geology & climate programs: gone.

When ideologues & politicians are threatened by the very act of studying climate change, I wonder: who of us is next?

Presenting my research at #Psychonomics is always a great time. This year was no different: great conversations and insightful research presentations, looking forward to next year!

Andrew R. A. Conway

Michael J. Kane

PS is excited to announce the launch of "Individual Differences in Cognition” (IDIC), an open-access journal on research in cognitive psychology, science, and neuroscience. Co-Editors-in-Chief are Andrew R.A. Conway & Michael J. Kane. Manuscripts accepted this spring. More information coming soon!

Obituary – Jonathan Smallwood

Jonny Smallwood @themindwanders.bsky.social was a beloved friend and mentor. He was taken from us too soon. His was a beautiful mind who understood the beauty of minds. As ever before, his kind voice guides me and his work will continue. We miss you Jonny. www.cbs.mpg.de/news/obituar...

Fantastic work, thank you for putting this together!!

Collaborate with us!! #workingmemory

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.

ANSWER: 0 (yes, ZERO!)

This is a result of an analysis done by a student in my grad seminar, using a large dataset (N=307,313).

What this result might mean: Nobody's personality is truly "average," and people's personality profiles (at least Big 5) might be more "jagged" than we think.

(🧵 1/5)

Excited to share my first publication! TLDR; mind-wandering is contagious & classmate behavior can cause an increase in task-unrelated thoughts! Thank you to my collaborator, @michaeljkane.bsky.social for guidance throughout this project.

You can read it here - online.ucpress.edu/collabra/art...

Hey Blake, great post & article. Given your area of interest (and the topic of this blog post), you may find this manuscript of interest: online.ucpress.edu/collabra/art...

Thank you, Levi!

Thanks, Mike! Thrilled for us to get this out there.

Congrats to @michaelwmchale.bsky.social on his UNCG MA thesis ms on "attention contagion" being accepted at Collabra (he's now in PhD pgm at Kent State)! TLDR: People watching a online lecture mind-wander more if other visible attendees (confed's) look inattentive. drive.google.com/file/d/1UF2m...

This is now published in the Journal of Mathematical Psychology!

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

with @annalschubert.bsky.social, @gidon-frischkorn.bsky.social, and Klaus Oberauer

Ahh, the irony. I feel that something else might be contributing to the fragmentation of scientific knowledge, but can't put my finger on it? Any ideas, lol /s?

Great news! For the past 7 months I have been applying for internships. I am proud to announce that I will be a program evaluation intern with the Smithsonian this summer! I am excited to contribute and make a difference. Attached is a plot that visualizes the process - hard, but worth it.

Troops on campus? We have experience with that. It's bad. Very, very, very bad. Some of us are very aware. To those that are not, here you go:

www.kent.edu/may-4-1970

Disgusted and disheartened.

“Another unknown is whether NIH researchers will still be allowed to submit papers to peer-reviewed journals.” This is insanity, and could have major impact on entire fields of research worldwide (we all collaborate with one another)

Entropy is one of those formulas that many of us learn, swallow whole, and even use regularly without really understanding.

(E.g., where does that “log” come from? Are there other possible formulas?)

Yet there's an intuitive & almost inevitable way to arrive at this expression.

Thank you to everyone that visited my poster at Psychonomics this year! It is always a joy to have great conversations and in-depth discussions about research! Here is to next year🎉.