Amitai Shenhav

Empowerment Gain and Causal Model Construction: Children and adults are sensitive to controllability and variability in their causal interventions Learning about the causal structure of the world is a fundamental problem for human cognition. Causal models and especially causal learning have proved to be difficult for large pretrained models usin...

New preprint in advance of a Phil Trans paper. Outlining a theoretical argument bridging Bayesian causal learning and empowerment in reinforcement learning. And empirical data that kids do too!
arxiv.org/abs/2512.08230

We are hiring a new Ph. D. student on neuroimaging and/or computational modeling on motivation and emotion. Tübingen is a great place to pursue work on these topics!!

uni-tuebingen.de/fakultaeten/...

Professors Launch PAC to Fight Back Against Trump’s Attacks The American Association of University Professors, a union whose members are fighting policies from the Trump administration and GOP Congress, launched a PAC this week to spend in federal elections.

We launched a PAC!

“This PAC is an extension of our fight to ensure a future for American higher ed through bipartisan legislation that recognizes that college can be tuition-free, debt-free, welcoming to all, conducive to academic freedom & offer jobs with dignity.”

- Todd Wolfson, AAUP President

Well this is exciting!

The Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University (@jhu.edu) invites applications for a full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty member in Cognitive Psychology, in any area and at any rank!

Application + more info: apply.interfolio.com/178146

Had a great time at superlab!

Honoured to be invited — it’s an awesome series. Loved the talks by Schimel, Gallego, Trach, & Churchland.

Our preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🚨New article just dropped!🚨 As we head into the holiday season, it’s a great time to reflect on how we connect with others! Check out this new article from Affective Science on the variation in function of different emotions by relationship context. doi.org/10.1007/s427...

“Why Are We Funding This?” Long-standing myths about “silly science” have contributed to the reckless slashing of government-supported research.

Every year around Thanksgiving, I see tons of grad students post heartbreaking messages on social media about how their loved ones don’t understand or support their decision to study what seems like something pointless or silly.

Perhaps my American Scientist essay can help!

🧪🌎🦑 #SciComm

Just a quick reminder that applications for our new cross-lab PhD training model in cognitive science at Dartmouth are due Dec. 1. We're quite excited about this new approach, so please reach out if you have any questions!!

New paper from the lab, "Perceiving Event Structure in Brief Actions," now out in Cognitive Psychology :)

Led by the inimitable Zekun Sun

This was my lab's first foray into event cognition

gift link: sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

a drawing of a boat heating torwads an iceberg - lower temps still collide with ice but not as badly.

This, by @giacgrassi.bsky.social, remains one of the simplest and best climate visuals

Attending @abctnow.bsky.social and interested in learning about how age at onset of menstruation in adolescents is associated with self-injurious thoughts and behaviors? I will be presenting a poster on this topic with data from the Nock Lab—you can find me at PS8-23 on 11/22 at 4:30 pm!

PSA to academics posting threads about your paper here: you can (and should) post the link to the paper in the first post. Your X/Twitter brain rot have have you thinking otherwise, but please free yourself of that. (Also you can call them 'blue-prints' if you want).

We just launched Fast Fingers 👌🏼—a quick 3 min tapping game that uses your phone/laptop camera to measure hand dexterity.

I got 54 taps in 10s. Can you beat me? 😏

Game link: actioncensus.org

#Sensorimotor #PsychSciSky #Neuroscience #Psychology

A habit and working memory model as an alternative account of human reward-based learning Nature Human Behaviour - In this study, Collins proposes an alternative dual-process (working memory and habit) model of reinforcement learning in humans.

My paper is out!
Computational modeling of error patterns during reward-based learning show evidence that habit learning (value free!) supplements working memory in 7 human data sets.
rdcu.be/eQjLN

Lee lab posters at SFN. LL20 on Monday afternoon and OO4 on Tuesday afternoon

Good morning SFN! CoCoA lab posters today and tomorrow afternoon. Come by LL20 to chat with @jacobsellers.bsky.social about using fMRI and our forced response task to examine the dynamics of control

#SfN2025 Poster 2 of 6
Today! Sunday 11/16 8a-12p
@khoudary.bsky.social
TKP05.05SU / WW13 Philosophical tools for evaluating computational models of cognition, with
@aaronbornstein.bsky.social
www.abstractsonline....

🚨 New and ongoing work from my lab will be at #SfN25! If you’re attending, come by our posters to talk social decision making, reward, and mood — details in the thread 👇

🧠 The LEAP Neuro Lab is headed to #SfN25! Check out our new work on intrinsic temporal tracking in the brain, emotion-temporal memory interactions, and the neural correlates of sympathetic activity during threat using a new MRI-compatible measure w/ high temporal resolution. Hope to see you there!

Come check out my SFN nano talk @ 4:15 on Sunday, especially if you’re interested in:

- spicy debates in task switching
- using control theory to compare latent dynamical systems fit to RNNs and EEG

eppro02.ativ.me/appinfo.php?...

Stay for the whole ‘Adaptive Choice’ symposium!

Our group has SIX posters at SfN! 🧵👇 links below in thread:

heading to @sfn.org? Check out our group's posters -->

2️⃣ PSTR293.21: “Distinct neurocomputational signatures of mental effort when motivated by success versus failure” by Ziwei Cheng (11/18, 8:00 AM)

Come see our lab’s presentations at #SFN2025! 🧠

1️⃣ NANO018.12: “Neural dynamics underlying divergent influences of reward and punishment on control allocation” (11/16, 3:45 PM) by @jasonleng.bsky.social

Postdoctoral Researcher

🚨📣 We’re recruiting a postdoc! 📣🚨
Are you curious about how the environments in which people spend time influence their health? Are you motivated by research that promotes climate action, resilience, and wellbeing?
Read more and apply here: www.asc.upenn.edu/node/5905

Looking for a post-bac RA position focused on the brain bases of affective and psychotic illness?
@holmeslab-bhi.bsky.social is hiring!
@cahbir.bsky.social @rutgersbhi.bsky.social @rutgersu.bsky.social @sobp-org.bsky.social @hitop-system.bsky.social @ohbmofficial.bsky.social

SAS will hold FIVE different preconferences this year🤩 Of note, each will be a half-day event, so you could even go to 2 if you want! Catch them on March 12th, 2025. For more info: society-for-affective-science.org/2026-sas-ann...

It’s grad school application season, and I wanted to give some public advice.

Caveats:
-*-*-*-*


> These are my opinions, based on my experiences, they are not secret tricks or guarantees

> They are general guidelines, not meant to cover a host of idiosyncrasies and special cases

The Publications and Communications Board of the American Psychological Association and the Society for the Science of Motivation has opened nominations for the editorship of Motivation Science, a multidisciplinary journal that publishes significant contributions to the study of motivation.

My lab at Boston University has open positions for a postdoc and PhD students. We study visual perception, attention, and decision making with a focus on temporal dynamics. Check out our recent work here sites.bu.edu/denisonlab/ and email me if you're interested in learning more

I am accepting graduate students for the UCI Cognitive Sciences PhD program for Fall 2026. Check out my lab website - www.relcoglab.org for our recent themes. Our funded work focuses on combinatorial reasoning, moral decision-making, and conceptual cognition in humans and large language models.