annaithoma.bsky.social
Anna Thoma
@annaithoma.bsky.social
160 followers 310 following 19 posts
Postdoc @ Center for Adaptive Rationality | Max Planck Institute for Human Development | learning, decision making, development
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annaithoma.bsky.social
Anna Thoma @annaithoma.bsky.social · Apr 10
1/n 🆕📄: How do children learn to adapt to different environments when making repeated choices? And what do cognitive immaturity and probability matching have to do with it? Our new article explores how kids & adults differ in probability learning across statistical task structures: mpib.berlin/R3RFy
APA PsycNet
psycnet.apa.org
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Reposted by Anna Thoma
charlesdriver.bsky.social
Charles Driver @charlesdriver.bsky.social · May 28
Postdoc position open in Zurich -- Prof. Martin Tomasik and I have a joint SNF project on interpretable neural network approaches for large scale, complex item / temporal structure, online learning / cognitive development data.

Please retweet.

tinyurl.com/PostdocGNNSNF
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Reposted by Anna Thoma
thecharleywu.bsky.social
Charley Wu | hiring PhDs/Postdocs @thecharleywu.bsky.social · Jun 11
🚀Join our team @tuda.bsky.social ! 🚀
I'm looking for 3 PhDs & 1 Postdoc for my @erc.europa.eu project “C4: Compositional Compression in Cognition and Culture” to study learning across individuals, teams, and cultural timescales
👉 PhD: hmc-lab.com/ERC_PhDs.html
👉 Postdoc: hmc-lab.com/ERC_Postdoc....
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anasofiamorais.bsky.social
Ana Sofia Morais @anasofiamorais.bsky.social · May 20
Nudging has shaped behavioral policy for years—but what are its downsides? In our latest episode, 𝐑𝐚𝐥𝐩𝐡 𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐰𝐢𝐠 makes the case for shifting from nudging to 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠—an alternative behavioral science approach that fosters people’s agency, self-control, and decision-making skills. tinyurl.com/3yvfwxc8
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Reposted by Anna Thoma
thecharleywu.bsky.social
Charley Wu | hiring PhDs/Postdocs @thecharleywu.bsky.social · Apr 25
🙌 Hot off the presses @natcomms.nature.com! We created a custom #Minecraft environment to study a long-standing puzzle in cognitive science:
How do humans flexibly adapt their individual and social learning strategies in dynamic, realistic situations? Check it out 👉 www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧵👇
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annaithoma.bsky.social
Anna Thoma @annaithoma.bsky.social · Apr 10
8/n Freely accessible, pre-formatted version of the manuscript: mpib.berlin/zWaGS
Thank you to my PhD advisor Christin Schulze & co-author Ben Newell for their support in this project. Happy to see it out now 💐!
mpib.berlin
annaithoma.bsky.social
Anna Thoma @annaithoma.bsky.social · Apr 10
7/n We argue to more strongly consider the structure of real-world learning environments (where rewards may not be random but rather clumped or autocorrelated) when examining the development of learning and decision-making strategies.
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Anna Thoma @annaithoma.bsky.social · Apr 10
6/n Our work connects to research on the benefits of cognitive immaturity: For instance, perseveration tendencies in early childhood may hold advantages when repetition fosters learning. Similarly, exploring a lot (maybe too much) helps older kids to adapt to changing environments.
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annaithoma.bsky.social
Anna Thoma @annaithoma.bsky.social · Apr 10
5/n Computational modeling results reinforce behavioral analyses: Children's exploratory behavior and adaptivity increase with age, but adults seem better able to balance exploration and exploitation.
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annaithoma.bsky.social
Anna Thoma @annaithoma.bsky.social · Apr 10
4/n By age 6, children increasingly diversify choices, for instance, through probability matching. They explore widely (sometimes more than adults) and are quickly able to adapt to an ecologically plausible statistical task structure.
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annaithoma.bsky.social
Anna Thoma @annaithoma.bsky.social · Apr 10
3/n 3–4-year-olds showed strong perseveration tendencies: They often stick with one option, even if switching would be beneficial. Our findings integrate into previous research showing increased maximization in young kids; however, we suggest that low implementation effort is key.
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annaithoma.bsky.social
Anna Thoma @annaithoma.bsky.social · Apr 10
2/n Children (3–11 years, N = 362) & adults (N = 121) repeatedly chose between two options with different reward probabilities. We tested three between-subjects conditions: two static (50% vs. 50% and 70 vs. 30%) and one ecologically plausible environment (initially 70% vs. 30%).
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annaithoma.bsky.social
Anna Thoma @annaithoma.bsky.social · Apr 10
1/n 🆕📄: How do children learn to adapt to different environments when making repeated choices? And what do cognitive immaturity and probability matching have to do with it? Our new article explores how kids & adults differ in probability learning across statistical task structures: mpib.berlin/R3RFy
APA PsycNet
psycnet.apa.org
1 11 19
Reposted by Anna Thoma
watarutoyokawa.bsky.social
Wataru Toyokawa @watarutoyokawa.bsky.social · Mar 12
🚀COSMOS is BACK!!!💫 The Computational School on Modeling Social and collective behavior (COSMOS) will take place in RIKEN, Tokyo, between 29 Sept - 3 Oct, organised by me and fantastic @thecharleywu.bsky.social ! Application deadline: 25th April. For more details see 👉️ cosmossummerschool.github.io
COSMOS
The Computational Summer school on Modeling Social and collective behavior (COSMOS)
cosmossummerschool.github.io
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Reposted by Anna Thoma
arc-mpib.bsky.social
Center for Adaptive Rationality (MPIB, Berlin) @arc-mpib.bsky.social · Feb 4
🚨 Applications for the 22nd Summer Institute on Bounded Rationality are now open!

🌐 Join us in Berlin @mpib-berlin.bsky.social from June 17–25, 2025 to explore "Decision Making in a Digital World".

✏️ Application deadline is March 9 - more info at 👇!!

www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/research/res...
Summer Institute
www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de
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Reposted by Anna Thoma
arc-mpib.bsky.social
Center for Adaptive Rationality (MPIB, Berlin) @arc-mpib.bsky.social · Jan 6
🎙️ New Episode!

ARC's Shahar Hechtlinger talks about transformative life decisions—becoming a parent, changing careers, or moving abroad. This episode gives you simple strategies and real-life examples to navigate the decisions.

#Podcast #UnravBehavior

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKEK...
Shahar Hechtlinger: The Psychology of Life's Most Important Decisions
YouTube video by Unraveling Behavior
www.youtube.com
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dgarcia.eu
David Garcia @dgarcia.eu · Dec 10
Job announcement: Junior Professorship in Computational Social Science at the University of Konstanz.
Join us at the Center for Data and Methods! Feel free to reach out if you have questions.
stellen.uni-konstanz.de/jobposting/2...
Junior Professorship (W1, non tenured) in Computational Social Science
Deadline: 7th of January 2025
stellen.uni-konstanz.de
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annaithoma.bsky.social
Anna Thoma @annaithoma.bsky.social · Dec 9
In sum, our findings integrate into literature showing that probabilistic inferences in childhood may be highly context-dependent, that previous findings may not easily generalize to a new task, and that the learning format is an important aspect to consider in future work.11/n
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annaithoma.bsky.social
Anna Thoma @annaithoma.bsky.social · Dec 9
Open questions: Does thinking about causal relationships affect repeated risky choices in childhood? And what is the role of first-hand observing the randomization process (i.e., a shuffling animation mixing the colored items during our task)?10/n
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annaithoma.bsky.social
Anna Thoma @annaithoma.bsky.social · Dec 9
Differences to consider with respect to previous research with adults: performance-based incentivization and the child-friendly paradigm with mnemonic aid may have prompted adults to make “single best guesses” rather than thinking about possible dependencies in the outcome sequence.9/n
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annaithoma.bsky.social
Anna Thoma @annaithoma.bsky.social · Dec 9
Did children’s preference for specific colors affect high-probability choices? Also unlikely. We asked children for their favorite colors and there was no evidence for children choosing their favored color more frequently when it was also the majority-color.8/n
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annaithoma.bsky.social
Anna Thoma @annaithoma.bsky.social · Dec 9
Did attentional constraints affect children’s choices (e.g., more low-probability choices as the task proceeds)? Unlikely; analyzing choices separately for the first and second half of the experiment did not reveal support for this possibility.7/n
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annaithoma.bsky.social
Anna Thoma @annaithoma.bsky.social · Dec 9
Yet, the predictions derived from the literature did not generalize to our task. Unexpectedly, children broadly diversified choices. Switching between options dominated older children’s choices. Moreover, there was no effect of the dependency manipulation. Adults mostly maximized probability.6/n
Choice proportions by sum of majority color choices. (A) Proportion of majority color choices predicted by the sampling hypothesis. (B–D) Observed proportions of participants allocating 0 to 10 choices to the majority color by age group and condition.
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annaithoma.bsky.social
Anna Thoma @annaithoma.bsky.social · Dec 9
Participants played 10 trials of the same game (= high dependency) or different games (= low dependency). We expected children to probability match; in particular, when the perceived dependency between choices was high. Additionally, we aimed to replicate results for adults (from the literature).5/n
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annaithoma.bsky.social
Anna Thoma @annaithoma.bsky.social · Dec 9
We investigated if children aged 3–7 years (n = 201) and adults (n = 100) match their choices to options’ underlying outcome probabilities over ten trials. Participants learned about probabilities before making a choice via graphical representations, e.g., colored bingo balls.4/n
Fig. 1. Overview of the trial procedure. (A) Introduction of the type of game. (B) Display and counting of the frequency of each colored object. (C) Animated randomization process with switched-off light. (D) Sampling of one object. (E) Choice screen. (F) Feedback screen after completing all trials.
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annaithoma.bsky.social
Anna Thoma @annaithoma.bsky.social · Dec 9
Both examine repeated choices (children vs. adults) when outcome probabilities are learned from description (graphical vs. text); both identify the perceived dependency in a sequence as a moderator of choice behavior. However, empirical tests for children on an individual level were yet missing.3/n
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