Susan Carey mic-drop at #cogsci2025. "There are no innate concepts: Discuss"

We found three main results: (1) that the size of a base had little effect on learning, (2) that learners struggled to acquire multiplicative rules while learning additive rules more easily, (3) learning numbers in a count routine improved memory for words, but impaired map them to meanings.

So, we trained adults on a bunch of bases, with and without counting structure, and tested both their recall of trained words, and their ability to "guess" the labels for untrained words (e.g., they were trained up to 10 and tested up to 20).

Historically, many base systems have existed, in addition to just base-10, but most empirical work is on base-10, raising the question of whether attested stages of learning are specific to the oddities of base-10.

Was just reminded of this very amusing and ironic response to our 2016 quest for Fair Open Access at Cognition.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

CogSci2025 poster has landed, in both “wow the future looks bright for CogSci” mode, and also “our theories will make you think and possibly write poetry mode”. @neilbramley.bsky.social @carenwalker.bsky.social @cogscisociety.bsky.social

😐

I stared at this for about 5 solid minutes before finding the circles, then texted it to my daughter, who sent the image below in about 30 seconds, making me feel exactly as old as I am.

Every morning my Mom sends me photos of her morning walk (and some emojis). Here are her pics from this morning. Still lots of beauty in this world!

This costume ATE the other one.

Zoom-specific Halloween costume. Lab costume photo coming soon!

We're seeking meta-reviewers for CogSci 2025. If you have a PhD, have reviewed for CogSci before, and have previously submitted, send me a DM with your full name & email address to express your interest in meta-reviewing.
cognitivesciencesociety.org/cogsci-2025/

w/ @simultagnosia.bsky.social : Why do kids struggle to learn number words like "three"? Turns out they can use # to pick "Mr. Three" in a lineup, but can't encode the same info to learn the word "three". We argue # isn't kids' first guess when selecting word meanings. direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...

For sure. Kinda reminds me of this paper.

Your pours are impressive Sam. Here’s mine this morning.

By my math this should get us to 81 years of marriage. And that’s my last bread post or my students will print this post on a blanket or something.

For our 27th anniversary I figured out how to bake gf bread, and I think I just unlocked another 27 years.

Oh, I get it...