Lauren Aulet
@laurenaulet.bsky.social
Assistant Professor at UMass Amherst
www.auletlab.com
she/her 🧠🏳️🌈
www.auletlab.com
she/her 🧠🏳️🌈
Pinned
Lauren Aulet
@laurenaulet.bsky.social
· Aug 21
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience Graduate Program : Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences : UMass Amherst
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience Graduate Program
www.umass.edu
I'm accepting a phd student for this upcoming cycle! Happy to chat with anyone interested in numerical cognition, spatial cognition, mental rotation, intuitive physics, etc. Behavior and/or fMRI. You can find my contact info and more info about the lab at www.auletlab.com
Reposted by Lauren Aulet
We are recruiting a lab manager/research assistant to start in early 2026! The successful candidate will conduct awake infant fMRI, meet cute babies, and join a fun team!
More details (e.g. responsibilities): soc.stanford.edu/people/#join...
Apply here: careersearch.stanford.edu/jobs/social-...
More details (e.g. responsibilities): soc.stanford.edu/people/#join...
Apply here: careersearch.stanford.edu/jobs/social-...
People – Scaffolding of Cognition Team
soc.stanford.edu
November 21, 2025 at 12:16 AM
We are recruiting a lab manager/research assistant to start in early 2026! The successful candidate will conduct awake infant fMRI, meet cute babies, and join a fun team!
More details (e.g. responsibilities): soc.stanford.edu/people/#join...
Apply here: careersearch.stanford.edu/jobs/social-...
More details (e.g. responsibilities): soc.stanford.edu/people/#join...
Apply here: careersearch.stanford.edu/jobs/social-...
Reposted by Lauren Aulet
Officially out in the current issue of Trends in Cognitive Sciences:
"Physics versus graphics as an organizing dichotomy in cognition"
www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
"Physics versus graphics as an organizing dichotomy in cognition"
www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
November 17, 2025 at 1:55 PM
Officially out in the current issue of Trends in Cognitive Sciences:
"Physics versus graphics as an organizing dichotomy in cognition"
www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
"Physics versus graphics as an organizing dichotomy in cognition"
www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
Reposted by Lauren Aulet
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
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
November 6, 2025 at 2:55 PM
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
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
Reposted by Lauren Aulet
I’m delighted to announce that I’ll be joining the faculty at @umassamherst.bsky.social next year as an assistant professor in Psychological & Brain Sciences! 🥳
a cartoon of homer simpson says whoo-hoo in front of a stone wall
ALT: a cartoon of homer simpson says whoo-hoo in front of a stone wall
media.tenor.com
October 27, 2025 at 2:36 PM
I’m delighted to announce that I’ll be joining the faculty at @umassamherst.bsky.social next year as an assistant professor in Psychological & Brain Sciences! 🥳
Reposted by Lauren Aulet
Judy DeLoache passed away yesterday. She was a brilliant scientist and giant in the field of developmental psychology. She will be missed dearly.
October 24, 2025 at 3:21 PM
Judy DeLoache passed away yesterday. She was a brilliant scientist and giant in the field of developmental psychology. She will be missed dearly.
Reposted by Lauren Aulet
Join us for our student workshop by the founders of Science Homecoming at #BUCLD50!
Dr. Cantlon will give the presentation “Writing to Defend American Science” at the student workshop on Thursday, November 6th, 2025, 6:30 PM - 7:30 PM.
#ScienceHomecoming #BostonUniversity #LanguageDevelopment
Dr. Cantlon will give the presentation “Writing to Defend American Science” at the student workshop on Thursday, November 6th, 2025, 6:30 PM - 7:30 PM.
#ScienceHomecoming #BostonUniversity #LanguageDevelopment
October 14, 2025 at 4:14 PM
Join us for our student workshop by the founders of Science Homecoming at #BUCLD50!
Dr. Cantlon will give the presentation “Writing to Defend American Science” at the student workshop on Thursday, November 6th, 2025, 6:30 PM - 7:30 PM.
#ScienceHomecoming #BostonUniversity #LanguageDevelopment
Dr. Cantlon will give the presentation “Writing to Defend American Science” at the student workshop on Thursday, November 6th, 2025, 6:30 PM - 7:30 PM.
#ScienceHomecoming #BostonUniversity #LanguageDevelopment
Reposted by Lauren Aulet
Happy to share that our BBS target article has been accepted: “Core Perception”: Re-imagining Precocious Reasoning as Sophisticated Perceiving
With Alon Hafri, @veroniqueizard.bsky.social, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & Brent Strickland
Read it here: doi.org/10.1017/S014...
A short thread [1/5]👇
With Alon Hafri, @veroniqueizard.bsky.social, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & Brent Strickland
Read it here: doi.org/10.1017/S014...
A short thread [1/5]👇
October 9, 2025 at 3:51 PM
Happy to share that our BBS target article has been accepted: “Core Perception”: Re-imagining Precocious Reasoning as Sophisticated Perceiving
With Alon Hafri, @veroniqueizard.bsky.social, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & Brent Strickland
Read it here: doi.org/10.1017/S014...
A short thread [1/5]👇
With Alon Hafri, @veroniqueizard.bsky.social, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & Brent Strickland
Read it here: doi.org/10.1017/S014...
A short thread [1/5]👇
Reposted by Lauren Aulet
Dense longitudinal neuroimaging reveals individual brain change trajectories: Trends in Cognitive Sciences www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
Dense longitudinal neuroimaging reveals individual brain change trajectories
Longitudinal measurements of brain structure and function are critical for understanding
how humans change over time. Traditional longitudinal approaches sample sparsely across
large windows of time t...
www.cell.com
October 7, 2025 at 10:50 AM
Dense longitudinal neuroimaging reveals individual brain change trajectories: Trends in Cognitive Sciences www.cell.com/trends/cogni...
Reposted by Lauren Aulet
Breaking News: Jane Goodall, one of the world’s most revered conservationists, died at 91. Her discoveries in the 1960s about how chimpanzees behaved in the wild broke new ground and represented what was called “one of the Western world’s great scientific achievements.” nyti.ms/42kpGxt
October 1, 2025 at 6:26 PM
Breaking News: Jane Goodall, one of the world’s most revered conservationists, died at 91. Her discoveries in the 1960s about how chimpanzees behaved in the wild broke new ground and represented what was called “one of the Western world’s great scientific achievements.” nyti.ms/42kpGxt
Reposted by Lauren Aulet
Jane Goodall, ethologist and conservationist, has died. She was 91
October 1, 2025 at 6:02 PM
Jane Goodall, ethologist and conservationist, has died. She was 91
Reposted by Lauren Aulet
Imagine an apple 🍎. Is your mental image more like a picture or more like a thought? In a new preprint led by Morgan McCarty—our lab's wonderful RA—we develop a new approach to this old cognitive science question and find that LLMs excel at tasks thought to be solvable only via visual imagery. 🧵
Artificial Phantasia: Evidence for Propositional Reasoning-Based Mental Imagery in Large Language Models
This study offers a novel approach for benchmarking complex cognitive behavior in artificial systems. Almost universally, Large Language Models (LLMs) perform best on tasks which may be included in th...
arxiv.org
October 1, 2025 at 1:27 AM
Imagine an apple 🍎. Is your mental image more like a picture or more like a thought? In a new preprint led by Morgan McCarty—our lab's wonderful RA—we develop a new approach to this old cognitive science question and find that LLMs excel at tasks thought to be solvable only via visual imagery. 🧵
Reposted by Lauren Aulet
@arthurpr4t.bsky.social has written another tour de force, showing how efficient coding reshapes numerosity representations in parietal cortex.
Distributed range adaptation in human parietal encoding of numbers https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.25.675916v1
September 28, 2025 at 8:43 AM
@arthurpr4t.bsky.social has written another tour de force, showing how efficient coding reshapes numerosity representations in parietal cortex.
Reposted by Lauren Aulet
I’m starting a suicide prevention research lab at UMass Amherst! I’ll be reviewing applications for our clinical psychology PhD program. Come to our virtual open house to learn more about the program and speak with faculty accepting students.
www.umass.edu/psychologica...
www.umass.edu/psychologica...
September 26, 2025 at 3:57 PM
I’m starting a suicide prevention research lab at UMass Amherst! I’ll be reviewing applications for our clinical psychology PhD program. Come to our virtual open house to learn more about the program and speak with faculty accepting students.
www.umass.edu/psychologica...
www.umass.edu/psychologica...
Reposted by Lauren Aulet
Functional organization of the human visual system at birth and across late gestation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.22.677834v1
September 22, 2025 at 11:16 PM
Functional organization of the human visual system at birth and across late gestation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.22.677834v1
Reposted by Lauren Aulet
I am recruiting graduate students for Fall 2026 through both the cognitive and developmental areas at Ohio State. If you are interested in spatial cognition, visual perception, and/or mental representation -- please reach out! I'd love to hear from you.
www.cogdevlab.org
www.cogdevlab.org
PCDL @ OSU
www.cogdevlab.org
September 15, 2025 at 5:56 PM
I am recruiting graduate students for Fall 2026 through both the cognitive and developmental areas at Ohio State. If you are interested in spatial cognition, visual perception, and/or mental representation -- please reach out! I'd love to hear from you.
www.cogdevlab.org
www.cogdevlab.org
Reposted by Lauren Aulet
The GRFP lives!! (due end of October)
www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...
www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)
www.nsf.gov
September 8, 2025 at 6:23 PM
The GRFP lives!! (due end of October)
www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...
www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...
Reposted by Lauren Aulet
Emory University just closed all our DEI offices and programs.
This is egregious.
This is egregious.
September 3, 2025 at 7:11 PM
Emory University just closed all our DEI offices and programs.
This is egregious.
This is egregious.
Reposted by Lauren Aulet
Visual adaptation is viewed as a test of whether a feature is represented by the visual system.
In a new paper, Sam Clarke and I push the limits of this test. We show spatially selective, putatively "visual" adaptation to a clearly non-visual dimension: Value!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
In a new paper, Sam Clarke and I push the limits of this test. We show spatially selective, putatively "visual" adaptation to a clearly non-visual dimension: Value!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Can we “see” value? Spatiotopic “visual” adaptation to an imperceptible dimension
In much recent philosophy of mind and cognitive science, repulsive adaptation effects are considered a litmus test — a crucial marker, that distinguis…
www.sciencedirect.com
August 28, 2025 at 8:18 PM
Visual adaptation is viewed as a test of whether a feature is represented by the visual system.
In a new paper, Sam Clarke and I push the limits of this test. We show spatially selective, putatively "visual" adaptation to a clearly non-visual dimension: Value!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
In a new paper, Sam Clarke and I push the limits of this test. We show spatially selective, putatively "visual" adaptation to a clearly non-visual dimension: Value!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Reposted by Lauren Aulet
BREAKING: A divided Supreme Court ALLOWS the National Institutes of Health to withhold $783 million in funding for research related to "gender ideology," DEI & other disfavored topics with complicated reasoning. Roberts & liberals dissent. #SCOTUS
www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...
www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...
August 21, 2025 at 8:56 PM
BREAKING: A divided Supreme Court ALLOWS the National Institutes of Health to withhold $783 million in funding for research related to "gender ideology," DEI & other disfavored topics with complicated reasoning. Roberts & liberals dissent. #SCOTUS
www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...
www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...
Reposted by Lauren Aulet
Authoritarian madness.
In a divided decision, the Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration allowing it to eliminate NIH grants to any organization that doesn't follow administration priorities by not eliminating DEI or not eliminating recognition of trans people.
www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...
www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...
www.supremecourt.gov
August 21, 2025 at 9:17 PM
Authoritarian madness.
I'm accepting a phd student for this upcoming cycle! Happy to chat with anyone interested in numerical cognition, spatial cognition, mental rotation, intuitive physics, etc. Behavior and/or fMRI. You can find my contact info and more info about the lab at www.auletlab.com
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience Graduate Program : Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences : UMass Amherst
Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience Graduate Program
www.umass.edu
August 21, 2025 at 2:41 PM
I'm accepting a phd student for this upcoming cycle! Happy to chat with anyone interested in numerical cognition, spatial cognition, mental rotation, intuitive physics, etc. Behavior and/or fMRI. You can find my contact info and more info about the lab at www.auletlab.com
Reposted by Lauren Aulet
Children build math skills on a “cognitive bridge” between space & number. But where does it come from? Our new study finds monkeys transfer learning and abstractions across geometry & numerosity, revealing the evolutionary roots of basic math development. 🧪🧠
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Cognitive bridge between geometric and numerical learning in monkeys | PNAS
Educational research highlights strong developmental links between numerical and spatial
cognition in humans, often shaped by cultural tools like t...
www.pnas.org
August 20, 2025 at 12:39 PM
Children build math skills on a “cognitive bridge” between space & number. But where does it come from? Our new study finds monkeys transfer learning and abstractions across geometry & numerosity, revealing the evolutionary roots of basic math development. 🧪🧠
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Reposted by Lauren Aulet
🚨 New postdoc alert with @dchyde.bsky.social! Come join us at the Brain and Cognitive Development lab to work on a fantastic project! @mclstrainee.bsky.social
Looking for another postdoc to work on preschool longitudinal fNIRS and ERP data-details here: publish.illinois.edu/danielchyde/...
Postdoctoral Scholar – Brain and Cognitive Development Lab
publish.illinois.edu
August 14, 2025 at 9:03 PM
🚨 New postdoc alert with @dchyde.bsky.social! Come join us at the Brain and Cognitive Development lab to work on a fantastic project! @mclstrainee.bsky.social
Reposted by Lauren Aulet
Our position paper is now out: "Learning Variability Network Exchange (LEVANTE): A Global Framework for Measuring Children's Learning Variability Through Collaborative Data Sharing".
srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
(preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...)
What is LEVANTE? 🧵
srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
(preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...)
What is LEVANTE? 🧵
August 13, 2025 at 6:09 PM
Our position paper is now out: "Learning Variability Network Exchange (LEVANTE): A Global Framework for Measuring Children's Learning Variability Through Collaborative Data Sharing".
srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
(preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...)
What is LEVANTE? 🧵
srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
(preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...)
What is LEVANTE? 🧵
Reposted by Lauren Aulet
Excited to be at my first @cogscisociety.bsky.social meeting!
Come check out my talk tomorrow morning on the organization of the human visual system at birth in @noranewcombe.bsky.social Rumelhart award symposium
#CogSci2025
Come check out my talk tomorrow morning on the organization of the human visual system at birth in @noranewcombe.bsky.social Rumelhart award symposium
#CogSci2025
July 31, 2025 at 5:06 PM
Excited to be at my first @cogscisociety.bsky.social meeting!
Come check out my talk tomorrow morning on the organization of the human visual system at birth in @noranewcombe.bsky.social Rumelhart award symposium
#CogSci2025
Come check out my talk tomorrow morning on the organization of the human visual system at birth in @noranewcombe.bsky.social Rumelhart award symposium
#CogSci2025