Urvi Maheshwari (she/her)
@urvi.bsky.social
Psych PhD student in overdrive at UCSD • studying conceptual change 🌎 📚
Pinned
Exact numerical reasoning in blind children and adults
What is the origin of exact numerical reasoning in humans? Previous studies report that innumerate humans are unable to recognize that two sets placed…
www.sciencedirect.com
Just in: @drbarner.bsky.social & I find that blind adults and children who have symbols for large numbers, and use 1:1 correspondence to count, do not extend a similar 1:1 strategy to a set-matching task, which assesses their knowledge of Hume’s principle. A 🧵:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Reposted by Urvi Maheshwari (she/her)
Past events exist, after all, only in memory, which is a form of imagination. The event is real now, but once it’s then, its continuing reality is entirely up to us, dependent on our energy and honesty.
November 7, 2025 at 12:10 AM
Past events exist, after all, only in memory, which is a form of imagination. The event is real now, but once it’s then, its continuing reality is entirely up to us, dependent on our energy and honesty.
Reposted by Urvi Maheshwari (she/her)
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 Urvi Maheshwari (she/her)
Super fun paper on the role of sensorI-motor procedures in 1-to-1 set matching in blind children and adults, with the effulgent @urvi.bsky.social . Procedures that blind kids use for counting 1-1 don’t help set matching 1-1 unlike in sighted kids!
Just in: @drbarner.bsky.social & I find that blind adults and children who have symbols for large numbers, and use 1:1 correspondence to count, do not extend a similar 1:1 strategy to a set-matching task, which assesses their knowledge of Hume’s principle. A 🧵:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Exact numerical reasoning in blind children and adults
What is the origin of exact numerical reasoning in humans? Previous studies report that innumerate humans are unable to recognize that two sets placed…
www.sciencedirect.com
October 26, 2025 at 12:56 AM
Super fun paper on the role of sensorI-motor procedures in 1-to-1 set matching in blind children and adults, with the effulgent @urvi.bsky.social . Procedures that blind kids use for counting 1-1 don’t help set matching 1-1 unlike in sighted kids!
Just in: @drbarner.bsky.social & I find that blind adults and children who have symbols for large numbers, and use 1:1 correspondence to count, do not extend a similar 1:1 strategy to a set-matching task, which assesses their knowledge of Hume’s principle. A 🧵:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Exact numerical reasoning in blind children and adults
What is the origin of exact numerical reasoning in humans? Previous studies report that innumerate humans are unable to recognize that two sets placed…
www.sciencedirect.com
October 26, 2025 at 12:48 AM
Just in: @drbarner.bsky.social & I find that blind adults and children who have symbols for large numbers, and use 1:1 correspondence to count, do not extend a similar 1:1 strategy to a set-matching task, which assesses their knowledge of Hume’s principle. A 🧵:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Reposted by Urvi Maheshwari (she/her)
My paper "Base structures across lexical and notational numeral modalities" (PhilTransB) addresses a whole class of questions around the role that semiotic modality, and specifically number words vs. number symbols, plays in the structure of numerical systems.
Base structures across lexical and notational numeral modalities | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
The base concept in number systems is realized differently across multiple representational modalities—frameworks that incorporate sensory channel, medium of expression and semantic structures into integrated semiotic systems. Because these three factors ...
royalsocietypublishing.org
October 20, 2025 at 3:22 PM
My paper "Base structures across lexical and notational numeral modalities" (PhilTransB) addresses a whole class of questions around the role that semiotic modality, and specifically number words vs. number symbols, plays in the structure of numerical systems.
Reposted by Urvi Maheshwari (she/her)
Very excited to announce my student Andreas Arslan's first paper, "Causal coherence improves episodic memory of dynamic events" in Cognition!
Out now open access: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Andreas isn't on bsky, but he very kindly wrote a summary thread for me to share.
🧵 (1/24)
Out now open access: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Andreas isn't on bsky, but he very kindly wrote a summary thread for me to share.
🧵 (1/24)
Causal coherence improves episodic memory of dynamic events
“Episodes” in memory are formed by the experience of dynamic events that unfold over time. However, just because a series of events unfold sequentiall…
www.sciencedirect.com
September 16, 2025 at 7:28 PM
Very excited to announce my student Andreas Arslan's first paper, "Causal coherence improves episodic memory of dynamic events" in Cognition!
Out now open access: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Andreas isn't on bsky, but he very kindly wrote a summary thread for me to share.
🧵 (1/24)
Out now open access: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Andreas isn't on bsky, but he very kindly wrote a summary thread for me to share.
🧵 (1/24)
Reposted by Urvi Maheshwari (she/her)
Now out in Open Mind!
@drbarner.bsky.social and I find that when people hear a conditional statement like “If you mow the lawn, you’ll get $5,” they often interpret it as “only if you mow the lawn”, a pragmatic, perfected meaning.
doi.org/10.1162/opmi...
@drbarner.bsky.social and I find that when people hear a conditional statement like “If you mow the lawn, you’ll get $5,” they often interpret it as “only if you mow the lawn”, a pragmatic, perfected meaning.
doi.org/10.1162/opmi...
Already Perfect: Language Users Access the Pragmatic Meanings of Conditionals First
Abstract. Conditional statements often have two interpretations. For instance, the statement, “If you mow the lawn, you will receive $5”, might be understood to mean that mowing the lawn is just one p...
doi.org
September 12, 2025 at 8:00 PM
Now out in Open Mind!
@drbarner.bsky.social and I find that when people hear a conditional statement like “If you mow the lawn, you’ll get $5,” they often interpret it as “only if you mow the lawn”, a pragmatic, perfected meaning.
doi.org/10.1162/opmi...
@drbarner.bsky.social and I find that when people hear a conditional statement like “If you mow the lawn, you’ll get $5,” they often interpret it as “only if you mow the lawn”, a pragmatic, perfected meaning.
doi.org/10.1162/opmi...
Reposted by Urvi Maheshwari (she/her)
A new way of looking at some debates in the Philosophy of Time. Now published. www.tandfonline.com/eprint/3MSIW...
The Flow of time: Rationalism vs. empiricism
I distinguish between empiricist and rationalist approaches to the idea of the flow of time. The former trace back the idea of the flow of time to the deliverances of our sensory or introspective c...
www.tandfonline.com
August 29, 2025 at 6:14 AM
A new way of looking at some debates in the Philosophy of Time. Now published. www.tandfonline.com/eprint/3MSIW...
Reposted by Urvi Maheshwari (she/her)
New from me and @esranur.bsky.social! In two exps with 3-4-year-olds, we find no differences in kids' reasoning about possible outcomes of an event in different temporal contexts; kids perform the same under physical and epistemic uncertainty psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-... #devpsy #psychscisky
APA PsycNet
psycnet.apa.org
July 21, 2025 at 4:17 PM
New from me and @esranur.bsky.social! In two exps with 3-4-year-olds, we find no differences in kids' reasoning about possible outcomes of an event in different temporal contexts; kids perform the same under physical and epistemic uncertainty psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-... #devpsy #psychscisky
Reposted by Urvi Maheshwari (she/her)
Fun new paper led by Sebastian Holt, training adults on artificial number systems. Most work tests only base-10 learning; we trained adults on a range of base systems & manipulated whether numbers were learned as part of a counting system, or unordered words. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Learning a Novel Number System: The Role of Compositional Rules and Counting Procedures
Humans count to indefinitely large numbers by recycling words from a finite list, and combining them using rules—for example, combining sixty with unit labels to generate sixty-one, sixty-two, and so...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
June 6, 2025 at 4:44 PM
Fun new paper led by Sebastian Holt, training adults on artificial number systems. Most work tests only base-10 learning; we trained adults on a range of base systems & manipulated whether numbers were learned as part of a counting system, or unordered words. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Reposted by Urvi Maheshwari (she/her)
If you haven't been looking recently at the Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science (oecs.mit.edu), here's your reminder that we are a free, open access resource for learning about the science of mind.
Today we are launching our new Thematic Collections to organize our growing set of articles!
Today we are launching our new Thematic Collections to organize our growing set of articles!
May 30, 2025 at 12:18 AM
If you haven't been looking recently at the Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science (oecs.mit.edu), here's your reminder that we are a free, open access resource for learning about the science of mind.
Today we are launching our new Thematic Collections to organize our growing set of articles!
Today we are launching our new Thematic Collections to organize our growing set of articles!
Reposted by Urvi Maheshwari (she/her)
So excited to share my *first* first-author paper, out now in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social!! In this review, we argue that even if you don’t remember being a baby, evidence that infants form episodic-like memories is actually all around us: authors.elsevier.com/c/1l82g4sIRv...
authors.elsevier.com
May 21, 2025 at 10:33 PM
So excited to share my *first* first-author paper, out now in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social!! In this review, we argue that even if you don’t remember being a baby, evidence that infants form episodic-like memories is actually all around us: authors.elsevier.com/c/1l82g4sIRv...
Reposted by Urvi Maheshwari (she/her)
UC San Diego Psychology hosted the first Southern California Meeting for Investigations in Developmental Science (SoCal MInDS) this Saturday. We were joined by wonderful folks from the southernmost UC campuses, SDSU, CSULA, Occidental College, and USC.
May 21, 2025 at 12:49 AM
UC San Diego Psychology hosted the first Southern California Meeting for Investigations in Developmental Science (SoCal MInDS) this Saturday. We were joined by wonderful folks from the southernmost UC campuses, SDSU, CSULA, Occidental College, and USC.
Reposted by Urvi Maheshwari (she/her)
How are humans able to make sense of time? Not with special biology but with “time tools”—ideas, practices, and artifacts that render time more concrete.
My new paper explores this vast, varied toolkit—one that makes use of knots, nuts, hands, flowers, mountains, shadows, and much more.
(link 👇)
My new paper explores this vast, varied toolkit—one that makes use of knots, nuts, hands, flowers, mountains, shadows, and much more.
(link 👇)
May 2, 2025 at 4:51 PM
How are humans able to make sense of time? Not with special biology but with “time tools”—ideas, practices, and artifacts that render time more concrete.
My new paper explores this vast, varied toolkit—one that makes use of knots, nuts, hands, flowers, mountains, shadows, and much more.
(link 👇)
My new paper explores this vast, varied toolkit—one that makes use of knots, nuts, hands, flowers, mountains, shadows, and much more.
(link 👇)
Out now! @drbarner.bsky.social & I find that Hindi kids learn yesterday & tomorrow earlier than English kids, despite having only word 'kal' to reference both the past and future. We argue that kids rely on tense info (over associations w/ events) to learn.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Twice Upon a Time: Children Use Syntax to Learn the Meanings of Yesterday and Tomorrow
Time words like “yesterday” and “tomorrow” are abstract, and are interpreted relative to the context in which they are produced: the word “tomorrow” refers to a different point in time now than in 24....
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
December 31, 2024 at 4:03 PM
Out now! @drbarner.bsky.social & I find that Hindi kids learn yesterday & tomorrow earlier than English kids, despite having only word 'kal' to reference both the past and future. We argue that kids rely on tense info (over associations w/ events) to learn.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Reposted by Urvi Maheshwari (she/her)
Honored that a piece I wrote made it to NYTimes. It’s about how my mom’s stroke changed my connection to time, science, and nature. What a privilege to honor my mom in Modern Love.
Below is a gift link. Let me know your thoughts 🙏🏼
www.nytimes.com/2024/12/20/s...
Below is a gift link. Let me know your thoughts 🙏🏼
www.nytimes.com/2024/12/20/s...
Grief Makes Us Time Travelers (Gift Article)
A neuroscientist studying memory, I used to believe time was linear. Then my mother had a stroke.
www.nytimes.com
December 20, 2024 at 3:04 PM
Honored that a piece I wrote made it to NYTimes. It’s about how my mom’s stroke changed my connection to time, science, and nature. What a privilege to honor my mom in Modern Love.
Below is a gift link. Let me know your thoughts 🙏🏼
www.nytimes.com/2024/12/20/s...
Below is a gift link. Let me know your thoughts 🙏🏼
www.nytimes.com/2024/12/20/s...
Reposted by Urvi Maheshwari (she/her)
Three ManyBabies projects - big collaborative replications of infancy phenomena - wrapped up this year. The first paper came out this fall. I thought I'd take this chance to comment on what I make of the non-replication result. 🧵
bsky.app/profile/laur...
bsky.app/profile/laur...
The Manybabies4 paper is out! Infants' Social Evaluation of Helpers and Hinderers: A Large-Scale, Multi-Lab, Coordinated Replication Study onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1... 1000 babies tested in 37 labs; "Overall, 49.34% of infants preferred Helpers over Hinderers in the social condition"
Infants’ Social Evaluation of Helpers and Hinderers: A Large‐Scale, Multi‐Lab, Coordinated Replication Study
Evaluating whether someone's behavior is praiseworthy or blameworthy is a fundamental human trait. A seminal study by Hamlin and colleagues in 2007 suggested that the ability to form social evaluatio...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
December 3, 2024 at 11:56 PM
Three ManyBabies projects - big collaborative replications of infancy phenomena - wrapped up this year. The first paper came out this fall. I thought I'd take this chance to comment on what I make of the non-replication result. 🧵
bsky.app/profile/laur...
bsky.app/profile/laur...
New preprint w @drbarner.bsky.social!TL;DR: even 3yos comprehend yesterday & tomorrow when tested on consecutive days, 1-2 years earlier than in other studies! BUT still struggle w hypothetical events. Tasks in which time actually passes maybe more sensitive to early time concepts! osf.io/gs3r4/
OSF
osf.io
April 30, 2024 at 2:54 PM
New preprint w @drbarner.bsky.social!TL;DR: even 3yos comprehend yesterday & tomorrow when tested on consecutive days, 1-2 years earlier than in other studies! BUT still struggle w hypothetical events. Tasks in which time actually passes maybe more sensitive to early time concepts! osf.io/gs3r4/
Reposted by Urvi Maheshwari (she/her)
We're launching Devstart, a website to help anyone getting started with developmental science methods and programming. Here's the website with the first tutorials: tommasoghilardi.github.io/DevStart/
Please share widely! 1/4
Please share widely! 1/4
January 8, 2024 at 5:00 PM
We're launching Devstart, a website to help anyone getting started with developmental science methods and programming. Here's the website with the first tutorials: tommasoghilardi.github.io/DevStart/
Please share widely! 1/4
Please share widely! 1/4
Reposted by Urvi Maheshwari (she/her)
We wrote this paper to address that very concern (among others). doi.org/10.1525/coll...
Easing Into Open Science: A Guide for Graduate Students and Their Advisors
This article provides a roadmap to assist graduate students and their advisors to engage in open science practices. We suggest eight open science practices that novice graduate students could begin ad...
doi.org
December 28, 2023 at 2:10 AM
We wrote this paper to address that very concern (among others). doi.org/10.1525/coll...
Reposted by Urvi Maheshwari (she/her)
Super cool work by Sebastian Holt, @judithfan.bsky.social, and Dave Barner! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Creating ad hoc graphical representations of number
The ability to communicate about exact number is critical to many modern human practices spanning science, industry, and politics. Although some early…
www.sciencedirect.com
November 25, 2023 at 5:17 PM
Super cool work by Sebastian Holt, @judithfan.bsky.social, and Dave Barner! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...