Mike Frank

The dependence of children’s generalization on episodic memory varies with age and level of abstraction - Nature Communications Children’s ability to generalize from episodic memories varies by both age and the level of abstraction. Here, the authors show that lower level generalization increasingly depends on episodic memory with age, whereas higher level generalization shows no such relationship.

Thrilled to see this paper out! It's the culmination of a project begun in the depths of the pandemic with Sabrina Karjack and @zoengo.bsky.social . We continue our exploration of how children generalize when their episodic memory is not yet mature.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A key hypothesis in the history of linguistics is that different constructions share underlying structure. We take advantage of recent advances in mechanistic interpretability to test this hypothesis in Language Models.

New work with @kmahowald.bsky.social and @cgpotts.bsky.social!

🧵👇!

One big question is, start with songs or start with rudiments/scales/exercises! Holistic top down or bottom up foundations.

In college teaching, we have to figure out whether we want to start with the history/foundations/principles compared with compelling examples (“songs”).

In contrast, the worst have learning goals like “expose to X” or “show Y”… they’re a bit like pedagogical concerts but not like real teaching.

For example, I loved a class on playing clawhammer guitar. It was an hour long and the teacher made you do the basic clawhammer motion on the guitar literally for the entire hour to solidify a complicated motor routine. All the rest was gravy because you left having put in that practice…

The best have really clear and immediate learning goals. I liked your AC/DC example because some of the best classes I’ve taken define a learning goal that matters and take immediate steps to get you moving on it in class time.

At various times I’ve studied mandolin, guitar, bass, cello, and voice. Right now mostly mando and voice. Bluegrass and folk music has a very robust group teaching tradition (eg in camps and festivals). Often these have very uneven pedagogy.

I play music a lot and study with many music teachers. :)

Great analogy! I think a lot about transfer between music teaching and university teaching (and vice versa).

oh great - thank you!!

Bonus: full text of the paper "The Yerkes-Dodson Law Repealed" pasted below:

There is a flaw
In the evidence for the Yerkes-Dodson Law.
To call it “ubiquitous”
Is pretty iniquitous.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2...

Anyone know what the best recent evidence on the Yerkes-Dodson law is? Thanks in advance!

Thank you!!

Totally agree with Mikes description of this project as a wild journey, utterly joyous true collaboration, and satisfying first step for quantitative predictive rational model of habituation.

Not the first time I’ve suggested a “first step” in research that required a whole PhD to complete. 😉

This project used literally every trick I know about measurement, experimental design, and modeling (and I learned many more along the way by following Anjie Gal and Rebecca). I hope it looks clear and obvious from the paper but it was a wild voyage of discovery!

Featuring:
- our best attempt at a within-subjects habituation design in young infants!
- a Bayesian model fit to neural net representations
- a shocking amount of GPU compute to do approximate inference in what should be a simple multi-level model

infant data from experiment 1

conceptual schema for different habituation models

title page

results from experiment 2 with adults

Ever wonder how habituation works? Here's our attempt to understand:

A stimulus-computable rational model of visual habituation in infants and adults doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

This is the thesis of two wonderful students: @anjiecao.bsky.social @galraz.bsky.social, w/ @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social

GPT or BERT, why not both? arxiv.org/pdf/2410.24159

Winner of second BabyLM competition uses a clever and hilariously simple hack - align BERT and GPT so you can use both. Seems to be very efficient for learning from child-scale data.

Research Coordinator, Minds, Experiences, and Language Lab in Graduate School of Education, Stanford, California, United States The Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE) seeks a full-time Research Coordinator (acting lab manager) to help launch and coordinate the Minds,.....

I’m hiring!! 🎉 Looking for a full-time Lab Manager to help launch the Minds, Experiences, and Language Lab at Stanford. We’ll use all-day language recording, eye tracking, & neuroimaging to study how kids & families navigate unequal structural constraints. Please share:
phxc1b.rfer.us/STANFORDWcqUYo

Global Collaboration to Capture Variability in Child Development - Levante Ensuring that children around the world can flourish is one of the most important goals of our time. Developmental science has made major strides in understanding how children grow, learn, and thrive ...

A first blogpost from the LEVANTE team, introducing our global project perspective.

A good intro if you're interested in learning more about cross-cultural developmental data collection using LEVANTE.

levante-network.org/global-colla...

No, AI isn’t going to kill us all, despite what this new book says The arguments made by AI safety researchers Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares in If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies are superficially appealing but fatally flawed, says Jacob Aron

I reviewed If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, a new book with an old argument for why AI will kill us all. To put it mildly, I didn't like it www.newscientist.com/article/2495...

Abstract of the paper.

Title page of the paper.

The Item Response Warehouse is a new data resource for psychometricians interested in developing methods using bigger and more diverse sets of instruments: itemresponsewarehouse.org

New paper out now at BRM: doi.org/10.3758/s134...

thanks for curating and share this database! looks amazing!

Abstract of the paper.

Title page of the paper.

The Item Response Warehouse is a new data resource for psychometricians interested in developing methods using bigger and more diverse sets of instruments: itemresponsewarehouse.org

New paper out now at BRM: doi.org/10.3758/s134...

Flyer for the event!

*Sharing for our department’s trainees*

🧠 Looking for insight on applying to PhD programs in psychology?

✨ Apply by Sep 25th to Stanford Psychology's 9th annual Paths to a Psychology PhD info-session/workshop to have all of your questions answered!

📝 Application: tinyurl.com/pathstophd2025

Donna Brook Shards I. I do the first readings of unsolicited manuscripts, mostly poetry, for a literary magazine, and one day I noticed how often the word shards appeared in poems, both good and bad, and I thought how I'd never heard anybody actually say shards; it seemed hard to pronounce anyway. So I thought it was my whim of the week, and I let shards go. II. suddenly Evel Knievel lookalikes were smashing through the front door and roses tumbled from Waterford crystal vases knocked accidently to the polished floor little girls in pinafores were dropping their dolls whose porcelain heads shattered and yesterday the St Louis airport was struck by a tornado: “The ceiling was falling,” she said. “The glass was hitting us in the face. Hail and rain were coming in. The wind was blowing debris all over the place. It was like being in a horror movie. Grown men were crying. It was horrible.” III. I had no use for that unspeakable unsaid unsayable word until grown men were crying when Paul Violi died. Now it's shards shards shards shards shards every day.

love this Donna Brook poem

A pika sits on a mossy rock.

Tighter crop of the same pika, focusing on its head.

An even tighter crop, focusing more on the pika's eye.

An extremely tight crop of the pika's eye, emphasizing their reflection of an early morning mountain scene.

"Pat, why do you carry that ridiculous 600mm lens on long hikes?"

Buddy, I can see mountains reflected in the eyes of a trailside pika.

Thanks so much @dorsaamir.bsky.social and @chazfirestone.bsky.social, along with @mcxfrank.bsky.social, for your input on this! And ofc @sarahexplains.bsky.social and @parshallison.bsky.social for your editing!

Why a Classic Psychology Theory about Vision Has Fallen Apart The downfall of a long-standing theory in psychology raises a question: How much does the environment we’re raised in change how we literally see the world?

How much does the environment we’re raised in change how we see the world? Wonderful piece in @sciam.bsky.social by @norabradford.bsky.social, ft. an interview with @dorsaamir.bsky.social about our work on the 'cultural byproduct hypothesis'.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/does...

A Month‐Long Parent‐Led Spatial Intervention Failed to Improve Children's Spatial Skills Eighty 4- and 5-year-olds and their parents were randomly assigned to a spatial or narrative activity condition. For a month, parents engaged their children in these activities and learned about the ...

Sad but true. Lessons here though. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...