Dr. Sobana Wijeakumar

<em>Child Development</em> | SRCD Journal | Wiley Online Library Cognitive development is associated with how predictable caregivers are, but the mechanisms driving this are unclear. One possibility is caregiver predictability initially shapes how infants gather i...

Happy to share "The Dynamics of Caregiver Unpredictability Shape Moment-to-Moment Infant Looking During Dyadic Interaction," out now in Child Development thanks to a large team of people I worked on this with! srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirec...

Late breaking poster abstracts | fitng.org

🔊 Final Call for Late Breaking Abstracts
▶️ Due to the extenuating circumstances of the current uncertainties surrounding travel and funding this year, FIT’NG is offering a final extension for abstract submissions.
🗓️ Submission deadline: July 24
fitng.org/late-breakin...

Trends in US Children’s Mortality, Chronic Conditions, Obesity, Functional Status, and Symptoms This study aims to determine how US children’s health has been changing from 2007 to 2023 using multiple data collection methods and a comprehensive set of health indicators.

A new paper shows that pediatric deaths in the US are significantly higher than in comparable countries, but what is driving this?

“Premature births, sudden unexpected infant deaths, congenital anomalies for infants; firearms, motor vehicle crashes, substance use, and homicide for ages 1-19”.

Abstract rule learning promotes cognitive flexibility in complex environments across species - Nature Communications Whether neurocomputational mechanisms that speed up human learning in changing environments also exist in other species remains unclear. Here, the authors show that both rats and humans sequentially t...

Abstract rule learning promotes cognitive flexibility in complex environments across species
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#neuroscience

Want a summary of our new paper on the impact of delayed ADHD diagnosis in women?

Well I have just the ticket! Perfect for people who don't have an academic background, or those looking for a lighter read :)

otherprimates.wordpress.com/2025/07/04/u...

#ADHD #DelayedDiagnosis #WomensHealth

Often autistic kids are put in challenging social situations where it's noisy & there's too many people

They struggle & then are reprimanded for not "behaving"

They shouldn't be punished for an adult's error in judgment

Support them by understanding & accommodating their sensory needs

#autism

Enjoyed being at #ECP2025. Got some really thoughtful questions at our talks on caregiver-infant interactions, cross-cultural findings in UK and India and computational modelling of caregiver and infant visual cognition.

Help me name a thing!

I wrote an in-house #Python package for recording and analysing data from #OpenBCI boards. Primarily electrogastrography, but useful for all human electrophysiology. I’d like to open-source it for a tutorial, but it there are MANY "openbci"-named packages. Suggestions please!

Abstract rule learning promotes cognitive flexibility in complex environments across species - Nature Communications Whether neurocomputational mechanisms that speed up human learning in changing environments also exist in other species remains unclear. Here, the authors show that both rats and humans sequentially t...

Abstract rule learning promotes cognitive flexibility in complex environments across species
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#neuroscience

Volatility-driven learning in human infants Infants estimate environmental volatility to learn optimally, with early individual differences linked to temperament.

Out now in Science Advances! We find that infants estimate environmental volatility to learn optimally, with early individual differences linked to temperament. This has be so much fun to work on and ended up being my favourite personal paper! So excited it's out!

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Cash Transfers and Maternal and Young Children’s Health This randomized clinical trial investigates the effect of income support on both the mental health of mothers and the physical health of mothers and their young children.

Cash Transfers and Their Effect on Maternal and Young Children’s Health: A Randomized Clinical Trial jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

"Cash transfer [...] did not improve measures of maternal physical or mental health or the physical health of their 4-year-old children."

Well done to @davidsonchri.bsky.social for passing her PhD viva today! Her work looked at longitudinal changes in different types of caregiver-infant play interactions and links to infant visual working memory.

Adorable little muffin.

Proud supervisor day. @aimeetheyer.bsky.social successfully defended her viva today. Her work focussed on infant visual neurocognition and caregiver-infant interactions.

🚨 Calling all colleagues who work on #workingmemory and #aging 🚨 Do you have any unpublished data on age differences in WM? 👴 👵 🧠 🌨️ We're working on a BIG meta-analysis, and I'd love any and all data that are currently not "out there" for us to find! 🔬 🤓 Please repost for reach, thanks! 🔁 😁

Delighted to share this new open access article which presents four amazing case studies showcasing coproduction methods in neurodevelopmental research

Lots of people have published theory and there are some useful toolkits too, but its still rare to actually read what people did...

rdcu.be/ebbgu

title of paper (in text) plus author list

Time course of word recognition for kids at different ages.

Super excited to submit a big sabbatical project this year: "Continuous developmental changes in word
recognition support language learning across early
childhood": osf.io/preprints/ps...

Thanks @lksamuel.bsky.social

🚀 Exciting News! 🚀
🎙️ We’re bringing the best minds to the FIT’NG Annual Conference, Sep 7—8, 2025!
✨ Join us in Dublin, Ireland as our invited speakers share their groundbreaking research on early brain development 🧠
🔗 Read their full bios at: fitng.org/speakers/
#FITNG2025

Theory: Whtat to read The role of theory in cognitive science Or: my guide to what to read if you really want to understand how to do good, robust , theory-driven cognitive science. (disclaimer: this is an aspirational gu...

Inspired by my reading this week, I wrote a list of the resources I think every cognitive science researcher should read/listen to about theory development. It's in this google.doc (feel free to add your own suggestions) and in the thread below. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Sara Mosteller, Sobanawartiny Wijeakumar, and Sam Wass:

Neural signatures of word learning during adult-child interactions

direct.mit.edu/imag/article...

Thanks @aneezapervez.bsky.social ☺️

Thanks @nadegeroche.bsky.social ☺️

Thank you 🥰

Thanks @dalmaijer.bsky.social ☺️☺️

What a lovely end to the week - I have been promoted to Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham, effective 1st August🎉🎉🥳. I look forward to this next stage of academic growth and many thanks to everyone at all stages who contributed to this journey!

White matter connections of human ventral temporal cortex are organized by cytoarchitecture, eccentricity and category-selectivity from birth Nature Human Behaviour - Kubota et al. find that white matter connections of ventral temporal cortex are innately organized by cytoarchitecture, category and eccentricity from birth, and also...

The latest paper from my PhD is now out in Nature Human Behavior! rdcu.be/edRwQ

Nice throwback and first message here :-).

Babies form fleeting memories The human hippocampus constructs short-lived memories from around 1 year of age

We have no memories for events from our earliest childhood years (aka infantile amnesia). Is it because we can't form them or can't keep them? Our Perspective on exciting new work from @tristansyates.bsky.social and colleagues.

Babies form fleeting memories | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...