Declan Devlin

Well, Francesco deserves credit sometimes I guess… 😉

Presenter Francesco Sella next to his conclusion slide

Francesco Sella reversing the reverse distance effect. #MCLS2025

Fully-funded PhD studentship to work on children’s financial literacy. Deadline end of June. https://ufncollaboratory.ac.uk/childrens-financial-literacy/

Very cool!!

Reliability paradox. It is not a paradox. osf.io/mu896_v1

My first Bluesky post is a plea for participants! Teachers of Year 3 and Year 4 (UK) children's mathematics needed! Please spare 20 minutes to complete our survey (tinyurl.com/2ebyxubw) looking at arithmetic flexibility. You will have a 1 in 4 chance of winning a £20 Amazon voucher as a thank you!

How do early years educators engage with research?

I recently spoke with some early years educators to find out 💡

Read my blogpost for a summary of my findings ⤵️

blog.lboro.ac.uk/cmc/2025/04/...

Which of these sequences are in order?
1 2 3 ✅
3 1 2 ❌

What affects how you judge whether a number sequence is in order?

Memory Retrieval? 🧠
Familiarity? 🤝

Want to find out?

Read the newest CMC blogpost by @declankdevlin.bsky.social

Linked here:
blog.lboro.ac.uk/cmc/2025/03/...

How to opt out of "Would you like to opt out of Mother's Day emails?" emails

New paper with some colleagues.

Open access: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Review of Education | BERA Educational Research Journal | Wiley Online Library For educational research findings to impact educational practice, effective communication is essential. One communication device is a summary that consolidates research literature and presents it in ...

"Effective research communication in education: Early years practitioners' views of research summaries"

In my newest paper, I discuss the importance of understanding how early years practitioners engage with research & what I learnt from speaking to them.💡

Free access here: doi.org/10.1002/rev3...

Really enjoyed reading this thoughtful and insightful piece on tips for school-based data collection by @natashacguy.bsky.social. It's clear, practical, and packed with great advice. A must-read for anyone planning research projects in schools!

In our new paper, we identify six key phases for success in bridging the gap between research and practice, drawing together findings from a range of disciplines:

Engage 📢
Understand 💡
Value 💛
Commit 🤝
Adapt 🛠️
Sustain ♻️

Linked below ⬇️ 1/2

My favourite order processing paper from my PhD was just published in Cognitive Science. ENJOY 💙

w/ K. Moeller, I. Xenidou-Dervou, B. Reynvoet, and F. Sella.

Open Access: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Do you plan to measure Approximate Number System in children? Check recommendations at doi.org/10.1016/j.dr... by @krajcsi.bsky.social D Chesney @krzysztofcipora.bsky.social @coolenilse.bsky.social @camillakgilmore.bsky.social @mjinglis.bsky.social M Libertus @tuebang.bsky.social V Simms, B Reynvoet

If you like non-significant findings, you will LOVE our latest order processing paper!

We tested whether presenting consecutive & non-consecutive sequences separately improves order verification performance & found ✨no effect whatsoever✨.

doi/10.1177/17470218231220912

#DevPsy #PsychSciSky #CogSci

See our new resources for educators and policymakers about spatial reasoning and maths ⬇️

New from the lab: on the importance of conceptual knowledge for children's (adaptive) strategy use in arithmetic link.springer.com/article/10.1... - resonates with pleas for basic (but adaptive!) knowledge in (math) education in view of latest PISA results.

Please send me your suggestions of what to read. Self-promotion welcome! Doesn’t have to be math cog related. #PsychSciSky

Are you or do you know a person that posts about numerical cognition? Please suggest them to us so we can add them to the numerical cognition list!

Also, pin the numerical cognition list so you don't miss anything: bsky.app/profile/did:...

Numerical/mathematical cognition list ⬇️

My fantastic PhD @lillyroth.bsky.social got her first Reigstered Report in PCI accepted (stage 1) in a collaboration with @krzysztofcipora.bsky.social Ulf Reips and John Caffier. "One and only SNARC? A Registered Report on the SNARC Effect’s Range Dependency"

rr.peercommunityin.org/articles/rec...

Inhibitory control and visuospatial working memory contribute to 5-year-old children's use of quanti... This study examined the hypothesis that general cognitive resources moderated 5-year-old children's performance differences between the Concrete Ident…

4th Dec.
Returning to my roots with a paper on children’s understanding of inverse relation between + and -
Ching replicates previous work showing some 5 yr olds use inverse principle in true quantitative sense and show quant use only related to VSWM and inhib. Suggest it could be related to SFON.

This term I have been overwhelmed by admin, management and meetings. It has sucked all the joy out of my job. In an attempt to improve things I’m doing a paper reading advent calendar. I’ll read and share one paper a day* from now until Christmas. See ⬇️

(*sometimes a skim read and not weekends!)

Spread our flyer to make the MCLS Trainee Community larger! Send it to trainees in the field of numerical cognition and math education who might not know us yet :)

(Flyer in different languages: drive.google.com/drive/folder...)

My favourite* thing about doing a postdoc is getting to spend the entire postdoc applying for other postdocs

*I hate it

Great workshop on using #PsychoPy to study rodent decision making today at UCL!

We created a task based on this paper elifesciences.org/articles/63711

Materials are open, please download, share and reuse 😊🔓 tinyurl.com/yttzfuf8

Spurious correlations

maybe tylervigen.com/spurious-cor... ?

Putting aside the introspection disputes, I am wondering how many similar phenomena we are missing out by just not asking proper questions....