@mikolajhernik.bsky.social
Cognitive Scientist. Infant perception and cognition. Associate professor at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. Also into: birding, modular synths, vinyl and other physical music media, field recordings.
But I complained only AFTER publication. We just could not risk further unfair delays for an ECR co-author. So the paper includes unnecessary references forced upon us. Cited in a way that makes it clear that we consider them beyond the scope and that they were brought up by the reviewer.
12.11.2025 13:29 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Happened to me: anonymous reviewer requested (the only comment!) some not-directly-relevant refs co-authored by ... the editor. The same was visible in several *publicly available* anonymous reviews under the same editor. After raising this with the publisher's ethics team the editor lost the gig.
12.11.2025 13:29 — 👍 4 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0Well, it's official. After our paper last year (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....), the Slender-billed Curlew is officially declared Extinct today.
Scientists dream of describing new species, not writing their obituary and epitaph, knowing that they are gone forever #ornithology
My colleague at UiT Monika Abels (not on Bsky) recruits a postdoc. Details and contact in the link.
www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...
Sharing our new paper published today in Nature Communications. In my view, this is our clearest demonstration to date that something profoundly changes in how infants encode the world around them before and after the emergence of self-representation. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
09.07.2025 15:59 — 👍 64 🔁 21 💬 1 📌 1New paper! Here (in Nature Communications) we (Ale Geraci, Luca Surian, Lucia Gabriella Tina, & I; work led/run by Ale) show that 5-day-old newborns selectively attend to two distinct forms of prosocial over antisocial action: approaching versus avoiding and helping versus hindering.
rdcu.be/evorW
Common cuckoo calling from a tree top
Common cuckoo. Heard them a thousand times, saw only twice. And first time I got to take a pic. Good day #birding at Håkøya, Tromsø yesterday.
30.05.2025 09:45 — 👍 20 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0Thank you for sharing this personal account, Thom.
-With best wishes.
New Substack post
It's very personal: my story of a 20-year academic career, and the many challenges of theoretical and cross-disciplinary work
As I put it in the subtitle: There is a lot of success and a lot of pain here, and no happy ending
thomscottphillips.substack.com/p/happy-in-t...
Snow goose in flight.
Psyched to see today this snow goose (a north-american species) in Tromsø, Northern Norway. #birding
11.05.2025 12:01 — 👍 44 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0I've just discovered that Proceedings B stopped hosting the movie stimuli from supplementary materials of my paper published in 2014. There is no sign that they were ever there, except for references to them in text.
Did anyone else experience this?
Bar-tailed godwit resting today evening in Tromsø, Norway, on the way further north-east. #birding
03.05.2025 18:01 — 👍 6 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0Adult white-tailed eagle in flight.
Easter Sunday #birding: adult white-tailed eagle, Rakkfjord, Kvaløya. Not uncommon in Troms, but always a highlight.
20.04.2025 15:51 — 👍 14 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0Today I learned how I am going to loose my hearing. It will be by playing with feedback on E560 Deflector shield
16.04.2025 20:08 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0📌
15.04.2025 20:44 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0I'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
Male Steller's eider.
It's been 6 years today since I moved to the Arctic. On Sunday I finally saw Steller's eider - a rare bird in Tromsø. If I saw that, will I see the end of data collection(s), I wonder.
01.04.2025 17:54 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0According to the director, it was relatively easy to get the money because the backers could assume that if things go wrong he is able to finish it all by himself. In Blender, BTW - a freeware!
29.03.2025 15:00 — 👍 10 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0Flow is a very beautiful movie.
23.03.2025 19:50 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0It is snowing.
17.03.2025 08:05 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Re-upping this summer school: Cognitive & evolutionary foundations of politics, with a great faculty list!
Deadline is at the end of next week: 14th February
Any questions, feel free to get in touch!
Directory of free, open psychological datasets
docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
Very proud of Laura and collabs for this one!
There's nothing as stimulating in dev science than being confronted with selective patterns of "failures", and this paper is no exception. The question of HOW infants set up a representation of helping as a second-order goal is far from being answered.
New paper in Open Mind! What does it mean to help? What is the goal of a helping action? We wanted to probe infants' & preschoolers' helping concept - specifically, whether they think helpers reduce others' action costs. direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...
31.01.2025 17:55 — 👍 34 🔁 11 💬 3 📌 3European Society for Philosophy and Psychology (ESPP) 2025, September 2–5, 2025
Submit abstracts by March 3, 2025
Venue: Staszic Palace, Polish Academy of Sciences
Keynote Speakers:
Emma Borg
@cameronbuckner.bsky.social
@noranewcombe.bsky.social
Petra Schumacher
1/2
Attn #CogSci #PsychSci colleagues: What textbook would you recommend for an introduction to cognitive science course for students who will not have taken any related intro courses (psychology, linguistics, compsci) beforehand?
24.01.2025 07:43 — 👍 2 🔁 2 💬 2 📌 0Interested in applying for an MSCA-PF grant to come for a postdoc with me to Tromsø, Norway? Get in touch by 16 Feb to participate in a program offered by UiT to support applications. Candidates within Europe can visit Tromsø in June (online event for the rest).
euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/309681
The archives of the International Cognition and Culture Institute (active 2008-2021) are now freely online with past blogs, webinars, and discussions from anthropologists, biologists, cognitive scientists, historians, linguists, and philosophers: cognitionandculture.net/index.html
11.09.2024 16:26 — 👍 37 🔁 19 💬 0 📌 0📌
03.01.2025 08:16 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0