Tracey Mills
traceym.bsky.social
Tracey Mills
@traceym.bsky.social
PhD student @ MIT BCS
Reposted by Tracey Mills
Check our new paper out! 🤓
How early do children grasp mathematical patterns? In a new Cognition paper, Ciccione et al. show that 5–6-year-olds can intuitively extend lines, curves and oscillating patterns, revealing rich proto-mathematical intuitions before schooling.
November 20, 2025 at 5:21 PM
Reposted by Tracey Mills
I'm recruiting a grad student! My lab at NYU (psych dept) studies the computational basis of moral cognition and aims to build AI systems that are aligned with human values. Now admitting a PhD student for Fall 2026. Apps due 12/1. sites.google.com/corp/site/sy...
Sydney Levine - Open Positions
Graduate Students (PhD program) I will be accepting PhD students through the NYU psychology department for the current application cycle (for admission in Fall 2026). My lab is joint between the Co...
sites.google.com
November 14, 2025 at 2:18 AM
Reposted by Tracey Mills
Our next paper on comparing dynamical systems (with special interest to artificial and biological neural networks) is out!! Joint work with @annhuang42.bsky.social , as well as @satpreetsingh.bsky.social , @leokoz8.bsky.social , Ila Fiete, and @kanakarajanphd.bsky.social : arxiv.org/pdf/2510.25943
November 10, 2025 at 4:16 PM
Reposted by Tracey Mills
Do AI agents ask good questions? We built “Collaborative Battleship” to find out—and discovered that weaker LMs + Bayesian inference can beat GPT-5 at 1% of the cost.

Paper, code & demos: gabegrand.github.io/battleship

Here's what we learned about building rational information-seeking agents... 🧵🔽
October 27, 2025 at 7:17 PM
Reposted by Tracey Mills
We're excited to announce that Cognitive Science at Dartmouth is recruiting PhD students to work collaboratively with me, Steven Frankland, and Fred Callaway. Come study the principles and mechanisms that enable us to understand, plan, and act in the world! Info: sites.dartmouth.edu/cogscigrad/
Cognitive Science Graduate Admissions – Information about graduate admissions from the cognitive science faculty
sites.dartmouth.edu
October 23, 2025 at 5:30 PM
Excited to share this work on ✨program learning✨ and grateful to have worked on this with @samcheyette.bsky.social, an incredible mentor and scientist!
Very excited to share a new preprint that’s been brewing for a long time! This work was led by the exceptional @traceym.bsky.social, and made possible by a developmental + comparative + computational dream team.

osf.io/preprints/ps...
OSF
osf.io
October 14, 2025 at 5:19 PM
Reposted by Tracey Mills
Now up at #COSMOS2025: @kartikchandra.bsky.social & Lio Wong giving a tutorial on recursive social reasoning using MEMO github.com/kach/memo
Fun fact: those flowers between them and 🗻 are called "cosmos".
Collab notebook here to follow along 👉 cosmossummerschool.github.io/materials/#g...
October 1, 2025 at 2:05 AM
Reposted by Tracey Mills
New work with @samcheyette.bsky.social & Susan Carey testing the memory architecture used when learning/producing center-embedded sequences. Adults don't use Push-Down Stacks as is often assumed, instead they rely on a Queue-like memory architecture onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Do Humans Use Push‐Down Stacks When Learning or Producing Center‐Embedded Sequences?
Complex sequences are ubiquitous in human mental life, structuring representations within many different cognitive domains—natural language, music, mathematics, and logic, to name a few. However, the....
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
September 15, 2025 at 6:41 PM
If you’re applying to grad school this cycle, consider signing up for the MIT BCS application assistance program!
September 10, 2025 at 2:33 AM
If you’ll be at #CogSci2025, consider (or at least consider considering) attending our @cogscisociety.bsky.social workshop on meta reasoning
🤔🤨🧐
We’ll be discussing problem selection through various lenses represented by a great lineup of speakers!
Meta-reasoning @ CogSci
Workshop Description People are general purpose problem solvers. We obtain food and shelter, manage companies, solve moral dilemmas, spend years toiling away at thorny math problems, and even adopt a...
sites.google.com
June 24, 2025 at 2:01 AM