Kevin O’Neill
@kevingoneill.github.io
Postdoc @ UCL studying causal judgment, counterfactual thinking, and metacognition
https://kevingoneill.github.io
https://kevingoneill.github.io
Pinned
Kevin O’Neill
@kevingoneill.github.io
· Aug 6
APA PsycNet
psycnet.apa.org
I'm happy to share that my main dissertation project on confidence in causal judgments (w/Paul Henne, John Pearson, and @felipedebrigard.bsky.social) has been published @ JEP:G!
psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/...
thread below ⬇️
psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/...
thread below ⬇️
Reposted by Kevin O’Neill
super excited to say that the first paper from my PhD has been published in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 🧠!!
“I could have done otherwise”: the neural bases of counterfactual representations -> doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...
“I could have done otherwise”: the neural bases of counterfactual representations -> doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...
Redirecting
doi.org
November 11, 2025 at 1:12 PM
super excited to say that the first paper from my PhD has been published in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 🧠!!
“I could have done otherwise”: the neural bases of counterfactual representations -> doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...
“I could have done otherwise”: the neural bases of counterfactual representations -> doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...
Reposted by Kevin O’Neill
New paper from our lab by Ricardo Morales-Torres (@rmt93.bsky.social) on the visual and semantic properties that shape the vividness of mental representations for events past.
psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...
The short answer to the title, "What Makes Memories Vivid?" is ... meaning!
psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...
The short answer to the title, "What Makes Memories Vivid?" is ... meaning!
November 10, 2025 at 3:51 PM
New paper from our lab by Ricardo Morales-Torres (@rmt93.bsky.social) on the visual and semantic properties that shape the vividness of mental representations for events past.
psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...
The short answer to the title, "What Makes Memories Vivid?" is ... meaning!
psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...
The short answer to the title, "What Makes Memories Vivid?" is ... meaning!
Reposted by Kevin O’Neill
Good news everyone: #Duke Summer Seminars in Neuroscience and Philosophy (SSNAP) are back!! We are now accepting applications for SSNAP 2026, which will take place from May 26 to June 6, 2026. #neuroscience #philosophy #brain Please spread the word! ssnap.submittable.com/submit
SSNAP Applications Manager
SSNAP Applications Manager Powered By Submittable - Accept and Curate Digital Content
ssnap.submittable.com
November 7, 2025 at 11:58 AM
Good news everyone: #Duke Summer Seminars in Neuroscience and Philosophy (SSNAP) are back!! We are now accepting applications for SSNAP 2026, which will take place from May 26 to June 6, 2026. #neuroscience #philosophy #brain Please spread the word! ssnap.submittable.com/submit
Reposted by Kevin O’Neill
Do you teach #rstats? Do your students complain about how lame and old-fashioned dplyr is? Don't worry: I have the solution for you: github.com/hadley/genzp....
genzplyr is dplyr, but bussin fr fr no cap.
genzplyr is dplyr, but bussin fr fr no cap.
GitHub - hadley/genzplyr: dplyr but make it bussin fr fr no cap
dplyr but make it bussin fr fr no cap. Contribute to hadley/genzplyr development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
November 6, 2025 at 11:25 PM
Do you teach #rstats? Do your students complain about how lame and old-fashioned dplyr is? Don't worry: I have the solution for you: github.com/hadley/genzp....
genzplyr is dplyr, but bussin fr fr no cap.
genzplyr is dplyr, but bussin fr fr no cap.
Reposted by Kevin O’Neill
Now I'm also looking for a research software engineer to implement a pile of research results to R packages loo, posterior, bayesplot, projpred, priorsense, brms or/and Python packages ArviZ, Bambi and Kulprit. Apply by email with no specific deadline (see contact info at users.aalto.fi/~ave/)
I'm now also looking for a postdoc with strong Bayesian background and interest in developing Bayesian cross-validation theory, methods and software. Apply by email with no specific deadline (see contact information at users.aalto.fi/~ave/).
Others, please share
Others, please share
I'm looking for a doctoral student with Bayesian background to work on Bayesian workflow and cross-validation (see my publication list users.aalto.fi/~ave/publica... for my recent work) at Aalto University.
Apply through the ELLIS PhD program (dl October 31) ellis.eu/news/ellis-p...
Apply through the ELLIS PhD program (dl October 31) ellis.eu/news/ellis-p...
November 3, 2025 at 11:13 AM
Now I'm also looking for a research software engineer to implement a pile of research results to R packages loo, posterior, bayesplot, projpred, priorsense, brms or/and Python packages ArviZ, Bambi and Kulprit. Apply by email with no specific deadline (see contact info at users.aalto.fi/~ave/)
Reposted by Kevin O’Neill
I am hiring PhD candidates to study the psychology of attention & technology use at @tilburg-university.bsky.social.
We're looking for motivated & curious scholars with expertise in cognitive psychology and statistics, and offer a friendly work environment with great terms & benefits.
tiu.nu/22989
We're looking for motivated & curious scholars with expertise in cognitive psychology and statistics, and offer a friendly work environment with great terms & benefits.
tiu.nu/22989
October 23, 2025 at 3:04 PM
I am hiring PhD candidates to study the psychology of attention & technology use at @tilburg-university.bsky.social.
We're looking for motivated & curious scholars with expertise in cognitive psychology and statistics, and offer a friendly work environment with great terms & benefits.
tiu.nu/22989
We're looking for motivated & curious scholars with expertise in cognitive psychology and statistics, and offer a friendly work environment with great terms & benefits.
tiu.nu/22989
one of the best parts about working in the MetaLab!
Philosophy-science collaborations as rare chances to adjust the normal focus of the lens- zooming in and out to examine different levels of analysis
🧠 Steve Fleming (@smfleming.bsky.social), professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London on why collaborating with philosophers helps science ask better questions—and find better answers.
#PLPEXPeditions
@ucl.ac.uk @uclpals.bsky.social @uclbrainscience.bsky.social
#PLPEXPeditions
@ucl.ac.uk @uclpals.bsky.social @uclbrainscience.bsky.social
October 21, 2025 at 6:46 AM
one of the best parts about working in the MetaLab!
Reposted by Kevin O’Neill
Consciousness science as a marketplace of rationalizations
my commentary on @smfleming.bsky.social and @matthiasmichel.bsky.social's thought-provoking BBS paper, and more generally about the field.
osf.io/preprints/ps...
my commentary on @smfleming.bsky.social and @matthiasmichel.bsky.social's thought-provoking BBS paper, and more generally about the field.
osf.io/preprints/ps...
OSF
osf.io
October 10, 2025 at 6:05 PM
Consciousness science as a marketplace of rationalizations
my commentary on @smfleming.bsky.social and @matthiasmichel.bsky.social's thought-provoking BBS paper, and more generally about the field.
osf.io/preprints/ps...
my commentary on @smfleming.bsky.social and @matthiasmichel.bsky.social's thought-provoking BBS paper, and more generally about the field.
osf.io/preprints/ps...
Reposted by Kevin O’Neill
People who coax chatbots into sensible answers are basically opening and closing the fridge until it contains something you wanna eat, yes, eventually you get hungrier & eat the stuff in there. But what changed was your cognition. The fridge stayed the same. You changed your mind about the contents.
October 1, 2025 at 9:55 PM
People who coax chatbots into sensible answers are basically opening and closing the fridge until it contains something you wanna eat, yes, eventually you get hungrier & eat the stuff in there. But what changed was your cognition. The fridge stayed the same. You changed your mind about the contents.
Reposted by Kevin O’Neill
Nothing. I use it for nothing at all because AI is good at zero of the tasks I do regularly
Honestly I don't even know what its web address is, is it like a 2000s style ChatGPT.com or something funkier like chat.g.pt
Honestly I don't even know what its web address is, is it like a 2000s style ChatGPT.com or something funkier like chat.g.pt
September 17, 2025 at 4:37 AM
Nothing. I use it for nothing at all because AI is good at zero of the tasks I do regularly
Honestly I don't even know what its web address is, is it like a 2000s style ChatGPT.com or something funkier like chat.g.pt
Honestly I don't even know what its web address is, is it like a 2000s style ChatGPT.com or something funkier like chat.g.pt
Reposted by Kevin O’Neill
psych departments post a faculty job that has nothing to do with AI challenge
September 10, 2025 at 11:02 AM
psych departments post a faculty job that has nothing to do with AI challenge
Reposted by Kevin O’Neill
🚨The first paper of my postdoc is out now in @elife.bsky.social! 🚨 We explored the role of attention in planning. Thank you 🙏 to the reviewers for their helpful comments & suggestions. Keep your 👀 peeled for additional analyses and our response. elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...
How attention simplifies mental representations for planning
elifesciences.org
September 10, 2025 at 8:51 AM
🚨The first paper of my postdoc is out now in @elife.bsky.social! 🚨 We explored the role of attention in planning. Thank you 🙏 to the reviewers for their helpful comments & suggestions. Keep your 👀 peeled for additional analyses and our response. elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...
Reposted by Kevin O’Neill
🌟 Excited to share that I'm recruiting PhD students in Psychology for my new lab at Rice University this cycle (Signal boost appreciated!)
To learn more, check out the Learning & Behavior Change Lab website:
www.sinclairlab-rice.com
Applications are due Dec 1st: psychology.rice.edu/graduate/pro...
To learn more, check out the Learning & Behavior Change Lab website:
www.sinclairlab-rice.com
Applications are due Dec 1st: psychology.rice.edu/graduate/pro...
Sinclair Lab
The Learning & Behavior Change Lab at Rice University, directed by Dr. Sinclair
www.sinclairlab-rice.com
September 8, 2025 at 3:45 PM
🌟 Excited to share that I'm recruiting PhD students in Psychology for my new lab at Rice University this cycle (Signal boost appreciated!)
To learn more, check out the Learning & Behavior Change Lab website:
www.sinclairlab-rice.com
Applications are due Dec 1st: psychology.rice.edu/graduate/pro...
To learn more, check out the Learning & Behavior Change Lab website:
www.sinclairlab-rice.com
Applications are due Dec 1st: psychology.rice.edu/graduate/pro...
really love this ingenious set of experiments by @jfkominsky.bsky.social & looking forward to reading up on the final one (not to mention that I *highly* recommend seeing him present this for the causal illusion magic)!
The human visual system has specialized modular processing for multiple distinct categories of causal events.
My new paper with my lab manager Katharina Wenig in Cognitive Science, "Causal Perception(s)"
Free open access: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
#CogSci #PsychSciSky
🧵(1/22)
My new paper with my lab manager Katharina Wenig in Cognitive Science, "Causal Perception(s)"
Free open access: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
#CogSci #PsychSciSky
🧵(1/22)
Causal Perception(s)
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
August 31, 2025 at 7:36 AM
really love this ingenious set of experiments by @jfkominsky.bsky.social & looking forward to reading up on the final one (not to mention that I *highly* recommend seeing him present this for the causal illusion magic)!
Reposted by Kevin O’Neill
My Lab at the University of Edinburgh🇬🇧 has funded PhD positions for this cycle!
We study the computational principles of how people learn, reason, and communicate.
It's a new lab, and you will be playing a big role in shaping its culture and foundations.
Spread the words!
We study the computational principles of how people learn, reason, and communicate.
It's a new lab, and you will be playing a big role in shaping its culture and foundations.
Spread the words!
August 17, 2025 at 11:52 AM
My Lab at the University of Edinburgh🇬🇧 has funded PhD positions for this cycle!
We study the computational principles of how people learn, reason, and communicate.
It's a new lab, and you will be playing a big role in shaping its culture and foundations.
Spread the words!
We study the computational principles of how people learn, reason, and communicate.
It's a new lab, and you will be playing a big role in shaping its culture and foundations.
Spread the words!
Reposted by Kevin O’Neill
generating examples for my fall undergrad Perception students on why they should not use LLMs as study aides...
August 15, 2025 at 4:12 PM
generating examples for my fall undergrad Perception students on why they should not use LLMs as study aides...
Reposted by Kevin O’Neill
Looking for a postdoc? Apply for Cornell’s Klarman Fellowship with me! I’m interested in rules, rule-breakers, and curiosity, broadly construed.
Link for more info here: as.cornell.edu/research/kla... (3 years, $80K/yr; Oct 15th deadline)
Email me directly if you’re interested!
Link for more info here: as.cornell.edu/research/kla... (3 years, $80K/yr; Oct 15th deadline)
Email me directly if you’re interested!
Klarman Fellowships
The Klarman Fellowships in the College of Arts & Sciences provide postdoctoral opportunities to early-career scholars of outstanding talent, initiative and promise. Among the most selective of its kin...
as.cornell.edu
August 15, 2025 at 4:25 PM
Looking for a postdoc? Apply for Cornell’s Klarman Fellowship with me! I’m interested in rules, rule-breakers, and curiosity, broadly construed.
Link for more info here: as.cornell.edu/research/kla... (3 years, $80K/yr; Oct 15th deadline)
Email me directly if you’re interested!
Link for more info here: as.cornell.edu/research/kla... (3 years, $80K/yr; Oct 15th deadline)
Email me directly if you’re interested!
Reposted by Kevin O’Neill
My new university's logo is a PSI! How frickin cool is that!
Help me grow a new lab at in IU Bloomington! We're seeking brilliant young scientists interested in memory representations, neuromodulation & aging.
Coordinator: bit.ly/3Hu3UzT
Postdoc: bit.ly/4oBZF6j
Accepting GS apps in the Fall!
Help me grow a new lab at in IU Bloomington! We're seeking brilliant young scientists interested in memory representations, neuromodulation & aging.
Coordinator: bit.ly/3Hu3UzT
Postdoc: bit.ly/4oBZF6j
Accepting GS apps in the Fall!
August 15, 2025 at 12:32 PM
My new university's logo is a PSI! How frickin cool is that!
Help me grow a new lab at in IU Bloomington! We're seeking brilliant young scientists interested in memory representations, neuromodulation & aging.
Coordinator: bit.ly/3Hu3UzT
Postdoc: bit.ly/4oBZF6j
Accepting GS apps in the Fall!
Help me grow a new lab at in IU Bloomington! We're seeking brilliant young scientists interested in memory representations, neuromodulation & aging.
Coordinator: bit.ly/3Hu3UzT
Postdoc: bit.ly/4oBZF6j
Accepting GS apps in the Fall!
Reposted by Kevin O’Neill
📢 Job announcement: Two (!) 3-year postdoc jobs in our lab at UCL 📢
🧠💫🔊 We are looking for postdocs interested in the abstract mechanisms underlying social cognition. Modelling, fMRI and non-invasive ultrasound, a new deep-brain stimulation method.
Please RT
www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...
🧠💫🔊 We are looking for postdocs interested in the abstract mechanisms underlying social cognition. Modelling, fMRI and non-invasive ultrasound, a new deep-brain stimulation method.
Please RT
www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...
UCL – University College London
UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).
www.ucl.ac.uk
August 7, 2025 at 2:25 PM
📢 Job announcement: Two (!) 3-year postdoc jobs in our lab at UCL 📢
🧠💫🔊 We are looking for postdocs interested in the abstract mechanisms underlying social cognition. Modelling, fMRI and non-invasive ultrasound, a new deep-brain stimulation method.
Please RT
www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...
🧠💫🔊 We are looking for postdocs interested in the abstract mechanisms underlying social cognition. Modelling, fMRI and non-invasive ultrasound, a new deep-brain stimulation method.
Please RT
www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...
Reposted by Kevin O’Neill
super excited that the first paper from my PhD is now out! we develop a "philosophical toolkit" for computational cognitive modeling & use it to conceptually re-analyze a long-standing debate about evidence accumulation models of decision making 🧠📈 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Reasoning Goals and Representational Decisions in Computational Cognitive Neuroscience: Lessons From the Drift Diffusion Model
The appropriate form of the drift diffusion model depends on how one wishes to reason about their target with the model. If the goal is to parsimoniously explain the speed-accuracy tradeoff, the appr...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
May 20, 2025 at 11:00 PM
super excited that the first paper from my PhD is now out! we develop a "philosophical toolkit" for computational cognitive modeling & use it to conceptually re-analyze a long-standing debate about evidence accumulation models of decision making 🧠📈 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Reposted by Kevin O’Neill
Really loving this kind of engagement between the psychology and philosophy of causation.
So much better than psychologists re-explaining how people are just oh so irrational and philosophers examining their intuitions about increasingly elaborate tales of rock throwing and firing squads 😉
So much better than psychologists re-explaining how people are just oh so irrational and philosophers examining their intuitions about increasingly elaborate tales of rock throwing and firing squads 😉
New short paper with @kevingoneill.github.io and Paul Henne: We re-analyse data from a recent study on causal judgment, and find that a counterfactual model explains why temporal order influences people's intuitions.
🧵
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
🧵
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
A counterfactual explanation for recency effects in double prevention scenarios: Commentary on Thanawala and Erb (2024)
Many cognitive scientists and philosophers take cases of double prevention to be one of the primary motivations for accepting causal pluralism, the vi…
www.sciencedirect.com
July 29, 2025 at 1:50 PM
Really loving this kind of engagement between the psychology and philosophy of causation.
So much better than psychologists re-explaining how people are just oh so irrational and philosophers examining their intuitions about increasingly elaborate tales of rock throwing and firing squads 😉
So much better than psychologists re-explaining how people are just oh so irrational and philosophers examining their intuitions about increasingly elaborate tales of rock throwing and firing squads 😉
Reposted by Kevin O’Neill
A ✨bittersweet✨ moment – after 5 years at UCL, my final first-author project with @smfleming.bsky.social is ready to read as a preprint! 🥲
Distinct neural representations of perceptual and numerical absence in the human brain: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/zyrdk_v1
July 25, 2025 at 9:23 AM
A ✨bittersweet✨ moment – after 5 years at UCL, my final first-author project with @smfleming.bsky.social is ready to read as a preprint! 🥲
lovely thread describing our new paper on why temporal order affects people's causal judgments!
beyond finding the research cool, I also hope you'll appreciate our pretty plots (courtesy of ggdist / @mjskay.com)
beyond finding the research cool, I also hope you'll appreciate our pretty plots (courtesy of ggdist / @mjskay.com)
New short paper with @kevingoneill.github.io and Paul Henne: We re-analyse data from a recent study on causal judgment, and find that a counterfactual model explains why temporal order influences people's intuitions.
🧵
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
🧵
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
A counterfactual explanation for recency effects in double prevention scenarios: Commentary on Thanawala and Erb (2024)
Many cognitive scientists and philosophers take cases of double prevention to be one of the primary motivations for accepting causal pluralism, the vi…
www.sciencedirect.com
July 29, 2025 at 1:31 PM
lovely thread describing our new paper on why temporal order affects people's causal judgments!
beyond finding the research cool, I also hope you'll appreciate our pretty plots (courtesy of ggdist / @mjskay.com)
beyond finding the research cool, I also hope you'll appreciate our pretty plots (courtesy of ggdist / @mjskay.com)
Reposted by Kevin O’Neill
Ok, reinforcement learning fans: RL is great, but what do we do when there's no obvious reward from the environment? What about perfecting a golf swing or a foxtrot or a musical performance? We may have an answer. A tale of 🐦 🎶 + 🧠. 🧵1/ #bioacoustics #prattle 💬 #neuroai #compneuro
I am happy to share our new preprint! In this work, we proposed a theory about how zebra finches bootstrap their error signals for self-guided RL via predictive coding 👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Correctness is its own reward: bootstrapping error signals in self-guided reinforcement learning
Reinforcement learning (RL) offers a compelling account of how agents learn complex behaviors by trial and error, yet RL is predicated on the existence of a reward function provided by the agent's env...
www.biorxiv.org
July 24, 2025 at 2:29 PM
Ok, reinforcement learning fans: RL is great, but what do we do when there's no obvious reward from the environment? What about perfecting a golf swing or a foxtrot or a musical performance? We may have an answer. A tale of 🐦 🎶 + 🧠. 🧵1/ #bioacoustics #prattle 💬 #neuroai #compneuro