Thérèse Collins

Collectif Cognitif

New academic year, new series of seminars from the francophone #cogpsych community Le Collectif Cognitif.

Join us en ligne à partir de novembre:

A blackboard with keywords related to psychology generated by beginner students

The usual “what is psychology?” to a new cohort of Psych 101 students. (With the cover of James’ Principles of Psychology” on the slide!)
Just goes to show that everyone thinks they know what #psychology is, but no one can really define it … (yet!)

cog-SUP students and directors

Around 80 M1 across the 6 tracks and 65 M2 students, we are proud to welcome the new 2025-2026 #cog-SUP cohort!

Master in Cognitive Science from @upcite.bsky.social and @sorbonne-universite.fr

@lauradugue.bsky.social @mamassian.bsky.social @claudialunghi.bsky.social @tarrynbalsdon.bsky.social

A Mucha-style painting showing the Eiffel Tower at sunset with ECVP 50 2028 Paris written

As #ECVP2025 wraps up, I’m delighted that #ECVP2028 in Paris was accepted at the Business Meeting! ECVP will meet again before but the Parisian organizing committee is already planning an unforgettable 50th anniversary!

« a philosopher in 18th-century portrait style. His head is cut open like in anatomical art, revealing not a brain but the Earth, incl. objects (house, farmland, people, railroad, etc., symbolizing detailed human activity. »

a philosopher in 18th century portrait style. His head is open like in anatomical art, revealing not a brain but the Earth, incl. detailed objects symbolizing human activity

I am having waaaaay too much fun preparing a class on representation in #cogsci
Talking about the shift from 1st-to 2nd-order isomorphism from Aristotle et al to Berkeley et al.; what is represented is not external objects but internal relations…
Here is a chatGPT image made from this prompt:

On dirait bien. Il y en a le long du canal Saint-Martin, bassin de la Villette, canal de l’Ourcq, ce n’est pas inhabituel!

Group photo of Collectif Cognitif 2025

2nd annual meeting of the French #cogpsych community in Dieppe, Normandy.
Great fun to co-organize with @gaenplancher.bsky.social and François Maquestiaux!
#collectifcognitif2025

EP #10 | @theresecollins.bsky.social recommends viewing some cool visual illusions (and illusion contests) and Moby Dick - we leave it to you to find out the link between cognitive science and Moby Dick

www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/in... ; illusionoftheyear.com

If you teach cognitive psychology or related topics & are willing to share your favorite teaching resources (e.g., demos, videos), please reply to/quote this post, tag me in a new post, or send me email. I'll compile them, share the list, & keep updating it this summer. Let's inspire each other!

Using AI for peer reviewing is like using a microwave to reheat an old meal - Pascal Mamassian, 2025

"As appealing as they can be, Large Language Models are as useful to scientific research as microwaves are to fine
cuisine."

doi.org/10.1177/0301...

Had a great time participating in this event on AI & Psychology - great cross-talk between clinical psych & #CogPsych

I need more time to think

a screenshot of the preprint first page, with the text: Between repulsion and attraction in serial biases: Replication of Chen & Bae, 2024 Juni B. Akselberg, Sara B. Cardona, Mikkel Dybvad, Lise Martine Karlstad, Malin Langemyr, Ingrid A. Mellingsæter-Jokic, Mats K. K. Moe, Amalie C. Solvang, and Andrey Chetverikov 1 Faculty of Psychology, University of Bergen 2 Department of Psychosocial Science, Faculty of Psychology, University of Bergen Abstract What you see depends on what you have seen before, and commonly your perception is drawn toward the past. Such attractive biases, known as serial dependence, are well established for many visual features. Interestingly, Chen and Bae (2024, Cognition) recently reported a repulsive serial bias in a pointing direction estimation task that switched to an attractive one in the presence of a distracting task. At the same time, an analysis of response trajectories revealed a repulsive bias during response execution, irrespective of the condition. These surprising findings prompted us to attempt a replication. We confirmed the main findings of Chen and Bae. However, we also demonstrated that the overall direction and magnitude of the bias are relatively stable for a given observer, regardless of the condition. Furthermore, we found that already the very first moment in the response trajectory differed between conditions, showing a predominantly attractive bias for trials that ended with attraction. The results confirm the robustness of the original findings and pose a challenge for a simple Bayesian model of serial dependence, highlighting the need for computational models that can explain both attractive and repulsive biases. Keywords: serial dependence, bias, direction estimation, orientation, visual working memory, Stroop, attraction, repulsion, mouse tracking, stimulus history effect, perceptual decision-making, replication

New preprint! Serial dependence is assumed to be attractive, but some studies consistently show repulsion. We tried to replicate a surprising repulsive serial bias that switches to an attractive one when people get distracted during the memory maintenance. It worked! osf.io/preprints/ps... 🧵

Thanks for your input, Andrey! It is (somewhat) possible to disentangle stimulus and response around the reference (many error trials), esp when resp is categorical (CW/CCW) and stimulus has multiple levels. Then model weights are informative.

Josh Wallman with grey parrot

Pelican at Saint Pete’s beach

#vss2025 is about science and networking and meeting up with friends, old and new.
I always enjoyed the birds, they bring back fond memories of birding with Josh Wallman. I was an amateur birder to his exquisite expertise…
He is sorely missed!

Repulsion, attraction, serial dependence, adaptation…
Confused?
Good thing @canmertdoit.bsky.social cleared that up for us at #vss2025 with his awesome poster.

You can also find his preprint here:

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

Serial dependence is feature-tuned to object categories

PhD candidate Pierre Costa presenting our work at #vss2025

Collectif Cognitif

Prochain séminaire en ligne du Collectif Cognitif:

Mardi 6 mai 12h15-13h15 (h de Paris)
François Quesque (Univ Paris Nanterre)

Variations interculturelles de la cognition sociale

Infos & lien visio:

Traveling waves in the human visual cortex: An MEG-EEG model-based approach Author summary Brain oscillations, thought to be crucial for many cognitive processes, might actually be waves that travel across the brain’s surface. Understanding these traveling waves is notoriousl...

🚨New article from the #DuguéLab in #PLOS_Computational_Biology, led by @lgrabot.bsky.social! We developed a new model-based neuroimaging approach to study Traveling Waves in visual cortex using MEG-EEG.
@erc.europa.eu

journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

The Trump budget cuts to Harvard are ~= the total budget the French government gives to ALL universities & higher Ed in France…

cog-SUP is a Masters program in Cognitive Science jointly offered by… | cog-SUP cog-SUP is a Masters program in Cognitive Science jointly offered by Université Paris Cité and Sorbonne Université! Jérôme Iste, Talia Sander and Joaquín Schlotthauer from the first cog-SUP class is t...

#cog-SUP is a Masters program in Cognitive Science jointly offered by @upcite.bsky.social and @sorbonne-universite.fr! Jérôme Iste, Talia Sander and Joaquín Schlotthauer from the first cog-SUP class is telling you all about it!

More info: cog-sup.fr

www.linkedin.com/posts/cog-su...

This guy is speaking at 'legendary Piano Vache bar 🍺' this Friday at 5pm (one free drink included!)

That doesn’t work for this year for which fees have already been paid.

NIH/NSF funding cuts would mostly affect student travel grants. This revision may thus look like complying in advance but may actually be protecting international students in advance.
Would be nice if the #VSS2025 Board could explain, but given their track record I lean towards good intentions.

Writing is thinking. We get students to write so that they learn how to think and use their brains. Using LLMs to do your work is like trying to be an athlete by getting someone else to do your training for you.

Collectif Cognitif

Prochain séminaire en ligne du Collectif Cognitif:

Jeudi 27 mars 12h15-13h15 (h de Paris)
Josselin Baumard (Univ de Rouen)

Outils, Action, Contexte: de la cognition motrice à la cognition sociale

Infos & lien visio:

The whole book is worth (re)reading!