Bill Thompson

I'm recruiting grad students!! 🎓

The CoDec Lab @ NYU (codec-lab.github.io) is looking for PhD students (Fall 2026) interested in computational approaches to social cognition & problem solving 🧠

Applications through Psych (tinyurl.com/nyucp) are due Dec 1. Reach out with Qs & please repost! 🙏

Children spontaneously discover efficient solutions to a difficult sorting task - Nature Human Behaviour Children successfully solved a challenging sorting task by spontaneously discovering efficient sorting strategies, such as selection sort and shaker sort. Older children outperformed younger ones, demonstrating developmental progress in strategic thinking and problem-solving abilities.

Children can solve a difficult sorting task by spontaneously discovering efficient sorting algorithms. Older children outperform younger children, showing developmental growth in strategy use and problem-solving. @hw-yang.bsky.social‬‬
@celestekidd.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🤖After a fantastic debut in 2025, the Theory of Mind in AI workshop at AAAI is back for 2026!

We invite submissions on ToM in artificial & biological intelligence—across comp sci, cog sci, comp psych, psychiatry & more.

CFP 👉 tom4ai.github.io/AAAI2026/cal...

2025 procs 👉 arxiv.org/abs/2505.03770

Towards Human-Like Emergent Communication via Utility, Informativeness, and Complexity Abstract. Two prominent, yet contrasting, theoretical views are available to characterize the underlying drivers of language evolution: on the one hand, task-specific utility maximization; on the othe...

Excited to share our new paper "Towards Human-Like Emergent Communication via Utility, Informativeness, and Complexity"
direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...
@rplevy.bsky.social

And looking forward to speaking about this line of work tomorrow at @nyudatascience.bsky.social!

I'm looking for a PhD Student at the intersection of Machine Learning and Developmental Psychology.

We study everyday experiences in children from 🇰🇪🇩🇪🇹🇷 and use ML models to quantify interactions.

4 years, fully funded, great team, beautiful location. Please share and apply!

tinyurl.com/2mafdyh4

We often assume that specialized roles improve performance in multi-agent systems, but when does specialization emerge based on a given task and environment? 🧵👇

⭐️ New preprint w/ Ruaridh Mon-Williams, @neilbramley.bsky.social, Chris Lucas, @natvelali.bsky.social & @cocoscilab.bsky.social

This year marks 360 years since the first edition
of #PhilosophicalTransactions, launching the world’s longest-running scientific journal. Join us as we take a 360° view of publishing, exploring its history, reflecting on its present impact, and imagining its future. royalsociety.org/journals/pub...

We are excited to advertise the Asian Cultural Evolution (ACE) seminar series! It's organized by Kenji Itao, Xinyue Pan & Wataru Toyokawa, and seminars will take place on the third Tuesday of odd-numbered months at 19:00 JST (18:00 Perth/Singapore/Beijing, 19:00 Tokyo/Seoul, 20:00 Sydney).

🚀COSMOS is BACK!!!💫 The Computational School on Modeling Social and collective behavior (COSMOS) will take place in RIKEN, Tokyo, between 29 Sept - 3 Oct, organised by me and fantastic @thecharleywu.bsky.social ! Application deadline: 25th April. For more details see 👉️ cosmossummerschool.github.io

US version. thank you very much @vikingbooks.bsky.social. I like the black cover more!

YouTube video by Cultural Evolution Society Transmissions Episode 1 with Dr Cristina Moya

We are please to release Transmissions Ep 1, featuring Dr Cristina Moya @hyperadapthyrax.bsky.social in conversation with Feryl Badiani @ferylbadiani.bsky.social

Cristina and Feryl chat about Cristina's work in Peru and discuss CE in human and non-human societies:

youtu.be/2otT0PkhPkw?...

Jobs and vacancies - Faculty of Social Sciences Read this story on the University of Oslo's website.

There are currently three open faculty positions (all levels) in my department (Psychology)
Oslo is a lovely city, modestly sized (600k) but a capital, surrounded by forest and the fjord

We're also a stable democracy with high support of and trust in science

www.sv.uio.no/english/abou...

Biology Letters early career researcher Competition | Royal Society Open for entries to early career researchers until 30 April 2025.

🚨 Calling from #RoyalSocietyPublishing! 🚨
We are excited to share that the #BiologyLetters Early Career Researcher Competition is open for submissions until April 30, 2025!
Grand prize: £1000
2 runners-up: £500 each.
🔗 More details: royalsociety.org/journals/aut...

Join us in Durham Anthropology - we’re hiring an Assistant Prof in Anthropology of Data Science. durham.taleo.net/careersectio...

String figures have been part of human culture for millennia, perhaps since the Pleistocene. But why do we find them so captivating? What explains their universal appeal?

Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, w/ @roope.bsky.social!

Listen: manyminds.libsyn.com/string-theor...

New paper in Psychological Review!

In "Causation, Meaning, and Communication" Ari Beller (cicl.stanford.edu/member/ari_b...) develops a computational model of how people use & understand expressions like "caused", "enabled", and "affected".

📃 osf.io/preprints/ps...
📎 github.com/cicl-stanfor...
🧵

BAMB! Course philosophy Our goal is​ to teach advanced techniques in model-based analysis of behavior (humans and other animals) to cognitive and computational neuroscientists at PhD and early career levels...

Our Barcelona-based summer school, BAMB! (bambschool.org) just opened applications! Come join us: 15-24th July, to learn how to model behavioral data using RL, Bayesian, latent variable models, RNNs, DDMs & more! #BAMB2025

Amazing opportunity to explore social learning and cultural evolution within a beautiful team & lab at the @ki.se in Stockholm!
You can contact me (or @bjornlindstrom.bsky.social directly) if you have any questions!

Newton International Fellowships | Royal Society This fellowship is for non-UK scientists who are at an early stage of their research career and wish to conduct research in the UK.

Fellowships for non-UK scientists who want to work in the UK for a spell:

royalsociety.org/grants/newto...

Ramon Llull AIRA Open Calls Open Calls In our inaugural call scheduled for December 2024, we aim to select up to 17 exceptional postdoctoral fellows, with an additional 16 to be chosen in Call 2 in 2025. 20  December 2024 ...

check this out: new postdoc program for AI-related research in Catalunya!

our group is looking to hire within this program, ideally to work on topics related to RL theory. in case you're interested, pls DM or email me.

(retweets appreciated!)

ramonllull-aira.eu/application

New episode!! 🎙️🎙️

A conversation w/ @tanialombrozo.bsky.social about "learning by thinking."

We often learn from others or from the outside world. But other times new understanding bubbles up from inside our own minds. When does this happen? And how does it work?

Listen: disi.org/a-paradox-of...

An incredible opportunity for the right person:

The Santa Fe Institute is seeking applications for full-time resident faculty positions at all academic levels

For me, this has been the best possible job ever.

More info here: santafe.edu/about/jobs/r...

Researchers in France! 🇫🇷

@ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social France Fund is calling for proposals for seed money! All fields are welcome to apply. There are so many opportunities for collaboration that such grants can open!

Research Scientist, Media Fusion Mountain View, California, US

If you're interested in working on multimodal understanding and generation — including things like understanding or generating figures with text — and work with my awesome collaborator Ishita Dasgupta & others, check out this job! boards.greenhouse.io/deepmind/job...

We have extended the deadline for this position to January 31st. Also, the start date is pretty flexible; if you're graduating next spring/summer and interested in the role, apply!

Even though the Social RL lab only got started ~1 year ago, I’m super excited to announce that we have 10 people from the lab presenting their work at #NeurIPS2024. Delighted to officially introduce our lab: socialrl.cs.washington.edu! Thread with all our NeurIPS work below 👇

A huge phenetic tree visualising our global string figure dataset.

I am delighted to share our latest piece of research:

‘A global cross-cultural analysis of string figures reveals evidence of deep transmission and innovation’.

This was long in the works and is by far the largest project I’ve led to date.

A thread:

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

CogSci2025 poster has landed, in both “wow the future looks bright for CogSci” mode, and also “our theories will make you think and possibly write poetry mode”. @neilbramley.bsky.social @carenwalker.bsky.social @cogscisociety.bsky.social

Cultural Evolution Society 2026 Conference Announced - Cultural Evolution Society

Announcement! The next @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social CES conference will be at UM6P in Rabat, Morocco, provisional dates 11-13th May 2026! Hosted by Mathieu Charbonneau, @sarahalami.bsky.social, @zhgarfield.com & @edseabright.bsky.social. Save the dates!

culturalevolutionsociety.org/news-and-eve...

If you want to do work at the intersection of deep learning from raw sound and linguistic theory, apply to our PhD program and be part of our lab!

Finding symbolic representations in deep learning models trained on speech is a lot of fun!

Deadline: December 1!