Deon T. Benton

this website dying and I just didn't know it?

‘But what is the mechanism?’: Demystifying the ever elusive ‘developmental mechanism’ Few issues are more important to developmental scientists than understanding and elucidating mechanisms of developmental change. There are good reasons for this. For example, understanding how develo...

And here's a shorter piece I wrote a year later about mechanisms:

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

The elusive “Developmental Mechanism”: What they are and how to study and test them Few issues have garnered as much attention as that of understanding mechanisms of developmental change. Understanding mechanisms of developmental chan…

Scratch two developmental scientists together, and I'd wager you get two different answers about what a mechanism is. Here's a paper I wrote a few years ago to propose and answer for what "developmental mechanisms" are and how one might test them.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A bit late on the uptake but definitely looking forward to reading this paper by my good friend and colleague, Dr. pickron (@charissepickron.bsky.social)

🎉

Spent Thursday and Friday giving a talk and roundtable at the University of Iowa's DeLTA Center and chatting with the wonderful folks in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. So fun!

In other words, the model converts what begins as an SOC into a direct relation in which both features (e.g., A and C) are *directly* linked to a shared representation. A very cool, elegant solution!

Second, I show through computational modeling that such inferences may arise from the formation of a common representation that links both features of the SOC to a common, internal representation.

Second-order correlation learning in 2- to 4-year-old children, and its underlying mechanism Second-order correlation learning—or the capacity to infer an indirect relation between features based on separate direct relations—has been studied e…

New paper alert🚨

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Two takeaways. First, 2- to 4-year-olds can use a process called second-order correlation (SOC) learning -- e.g., A & B go together and B & C go together, then A and C go together -- in a category context to make causal inferences.

Children's decision to challenge themselves on a novel task relates to their metacognitive monitoring of their ability Abstract. We examined potential processes by which children decide to make hard as opposed to easy choices to accomplish a goal. Five- to 7-year olds (N =

New paper out in Child Development (@srcdorg.bsky.social) with Dave Sobel (@candmlab.bsky.social)! ✨ We investigated how 5- to 7-year-old children decide to take on easy versus hard tasks while pursuing a goal. doi.org/10.1093/chid...

sometimes I write sentences just for myself, that probably won't make it to the final draft.

"That’s why there’s a decent chance your favorite 20th-century statistician authored a book chapter titled “The obvious inferiority of Negroes” or something ridiculous like that. "

On top of it all, this man is just incredibly stupid and blissfully unaware of that fact.

Very much looking forward to my talk at the DeLTA Center at the University of Iowa.

Crisis averted. Found a copy.

Long shot no doubt but anyone have a PDF version of this edited book?

Ellis, B. J., & Bjorklund, D. F. (Eds.). (2005). Origins of the social mind: Evolutionary psychology and child development. Guilford Press.

But the best revision is no revision. Paper accepted! Can't wait to share

giving a talk at the DeLTA Center at University of Iowa next week and finally get to the chance to incorporate braitenberg vehicles into it

minor revisions are the best revisions

but surely only because you're used to singing it one way, no?

It does feel like "w" gets to double (triple?) dip

I don't know why but 'v' should come *after* 'w'

A universe without entropy

Idk but I'd bet that I'm the only person who exclusively uses base R and never learned to use tidyverse or any of the derivatives (if there are any)

Being excited to go into the lab on a Saturday to set up a new infant experiment is reason #29856211 I know I've chosen the right career.

Indeed to the second part!

Grad student sent me this photo of her doing very serious, very hardcore science.

decided to jump on the naming-one's-model train. better late than never.

a blurry picture of a city street with a lot of cars ALT: a blurry picture of a city street with a lot of cars

[opening Google Authenticator for the code]

the code:

That little kid holding the grammy is the real winner

Nothing is scarier than forgetting to tell your wife before leaving for work not to turn off your computer because you have simulations running