Justin Yang

Linking student psychological orientation, engagement & learning in intro college-level data science

New work ‪‪at @cogscisociety.bsky.social w/ @erikbrockbank.bsky.social @shawnschwartz.bsky.social, C.Bryan, D.Yeager, C.Dweck & @judithfan.bsky.social

poster 8/1 @ 10:30
tinyurl.com/solds-cogsci25

"36 Questions That Lead To Love" was the most viewed article in NYT Modern Love.
Excited to share new results investigating these and other “deep questions” with @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social @judithfan.bsky.social & @rdhawkins.bsky.social
Preprint: tinyurl.com/bdfx5smk
Code: tinyurl.com/3v6pws4s

If you’re interested in chatting, come swing by our poster at CogSci (P1-Y-220) on Thursday, July 31 from 1:00PM - 2:15PM!

Our findings give us a clearer understanding on the relation between counterfactual reasoning and learning. Going forward, @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social and I are excited to explore whether counterfactual simulation may improve people's action policies!

We found that participants who completed the counterfactual reflections did not avoid more hazardous tiles than those who did not, but improved on the task with more experience. In other words, we did not find reliable evidence that counterfactual simulation yielded a better world model.

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We tested if counterfactual simulation helps people learn a better world model. Participants navigated an environment and learned which locations were unsafe. Some then made counterfactual paths that would've improved on their previous one. Afterwards, they identified unsafe tiles in a test.

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Excited to be sharing my latest work with @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social at #CogSci2025!

Learning usually occurs when we encounter new data. But we also have the capacity to reflect on our past experiences. What can we learn from simulating past experience?

📃 cicl.stanford.edu/papers/yang2...

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Excited to share our new work at #CogSci2025!

We explore how people plan deceptive actions, and how detectives try to see through the ruse and infer what really happened based on the traces left behind. 🕵️‍♀️

Paper: osf.io/preprints/osf/vqgz5_v1
Code: github.com/cicl-stanford/recursive_deception

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The Causality in Cognition Lab is pumped for #cogsci2025 💪

Excited to be visiting Boston College today to give a talk on "Counterfactual simulation in causal cognition".

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Hello bluesky world :) excited to share a new paper on data visualization literacy 📈 🧠 w/ @judithfan.bsky.social, @arnavverma.bsky.social, Holly Huey, Hannah Lloyd, @lacepadilla.bsky.social!

📝 preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...
💻 code: github.com/cogtoolslab/...