Claire Gillan
@clairegillan.bsky.social
3.8K followers 420 following 160 posts
Professor in Psychology at Trinity College Dublin. Here for less gross twitter, less boring mastodon. www.gillanlab.com
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clairegillan.bsky.social
We @smfleming.bsky.social, Marion Rouault and @seowxft.bsky.social and I) have posted a reply osf.io/preprints/ps... to a preprint that recently raised concerns about the validity of associations between mental health and metacognition from online studies. I hope you can take the time to read it.
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clairegillan.bsky.social
Looks interesting! We have been facing this exact issue - finding big inconsistencies across different LLMs rating the same text.
joachimbaumann.bsky.social
🚨 New paper alert 🚨 Using LLMs as data annotators, you can produce any scientific result you want. We call this **LLM Hacking**.

Paper: arxiv.org/pdf/2509.08825
We present our new preprint titled "Large Language Model Hacking: Quantifying the Hidden Risks of Using LLMs for Text Annotation".
We quantify LLM hacking risk through systematic replication of 37 diverse computational social science annotation tasks.
For these tasks, we use a combined set of 2,361 realistic hypotheses that researchers might test using these annotations.
Then, we collect 13 million LLM annotations across plausible LLM configurations.
These annotations feed into 1.4 million regressions testing the hypotheses. 
For a hypothesis with no true effect (ground truth $p > 0.05$), different LLM configurations yield conflicting conclusions.
Checkmarks indicate correct statistical conclusions matching ground truth; crosses indicate LLM hacking -- incorrect conclusions due to annotation errors.
Across all experiments, LLM hacking occurs in 31-50\% of cases even with highly capable models.
Since minor configuration changes can flip scientific conclusions, from correct to incorrect, LLM hacking can be exploited to present anything as statistically significant.
clairegillan.bsky.social
New preprint from the lab on habit learning in compulsivity from the fantastic @kellydonegan.bsky.social! ✅ N=1000, ✅ pre-registered, ✅ within-person crossover design...we study individual differences in habit learning using the Neureka App
kellydonegan.bsky.social
🚨PREPRINT ALERT🚨

Why do some people get stuck doing things that no longer make sense, or are even harmful? Our new study shows compulsivity isn’t just about weakened goal-directed control; people high in compulsivity also form stronger habits

📄: osf.io/preprints/ps...

#PaperFairy #Habits #CogSci
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Reposted by Claire Gillan
kellydonegan.bsky.social
🚨PREPRINT ALERT🚨

Why do some people get stuck doing things that no longer make sense, or are even harmful? Our new study shows compulsivity isn’t just about weakened goal-directed control; people high in compulsivity also form stronger habits

📄: osf.io/preprints/ps...

#PaperFairy #Habits #CogSci
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clairegillan.bsky.social
have not read it - will take a look!
Reposted by Claire Gillan
orbenamy.bsky.social
I'm hiring 2+ 2.5-year postdocs over the next few months.

Job 1: looking for someone with deep expertise in computational modelling (reinforcement learning, agent based modelling) on real-world/complex data (closing: 18 August, starting: October-December), www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/52059/
Reposted by Claire Gillan
glassybrain.bsky.social
You happen to be at #CPConf2025 and interested in habitual processes and how they contribute to compulsivity? We've gathered data from 180 individuals across three different compulsion types including phone-checking (not reflected in the DSM!). Come visit me at poster 2.46!
Reposted by Claire Gillan
kellydonegan.bsky.social
Come to my fan-tastic poster at #CPConf2025 🪭 Poster 35 to find out all things habits, gamification or to get a quick cool down 🥵
clairegillan.bsky.social
I'd say we're talking 2 weeks to preprint... and all will be revealed
Reposted by Claire Gillan
annikaboldt.bsky.social
Our new study published in eLife (collaboration with @clairegillan.bsky.social, @celinef.bsky.social and @samgilbert.bsky.social) explores the complex relationship between metacognition, compulsivity and the utilization of external reminders. (1/8)
AI generated image of a wall of post-it notes.
clairegillan.bsky.social
Finally, Paveen Phon-Amnuaisuk will present unpublished data examining within-person fluctuations of metacognition over 8 weeks via... you guessed it... the neureka app again 📱
clairegillan.bsky.social
@glassybrain.bsky.social (Vanessa Teckentrup) will present "Understanding habitual properties of compulsivity using moment-to-moment experience sampling in daily life" with 6 weeks of EMA data tracking OCD, Binge-Eating and Phone-checking compulsions!📱https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/yvhua_v1
clairegillan.bsky.social
@kellydonegan.bsky.social will present "Compulsivity is associated with an increase in stimulus- response habit learning"📱,which we are 🤏 close to pre-printing. So 🙏 give us your thoughts and ideas!
clairegillan.bsky.social
Sad to be missing #CPConf2025 but there is spirit and via posters from @kellydonegan.bsky.social (TUES) @glassybrain.bsky.social (TUES) and Paveen Phon-Amnuaisuk (WED)
clairegillan.bsky.social
Serious FOMO here #CPConf2025
tobiasuhauser.bsky.social
Here we go - #CPConf2025 is on! Fabulous to see so many people attending,n 🥳🥨
Reposted by Claire Gillan
parnianrafei.bsky.social
🚨 New paper alert!
Do time constraints reveal habitual behaviour? 🤔 We directly compared two major paradigms in the habit research field (Outcome Devaluation vs Response Remapping) under identical training and forced-response conditions 🧠 ⏲️ ⌨️

preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...
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Reposted by Claire Gillan
parnianrafei.bsky.social
Hello #Bluesky!👋 I’m late to the party, but excited to join! 🥳Sharing a recent moment at #RLDM2025: presented a poster on my recent PhD project on measuring time-dependent habits in the lab 🧠 – shared fresh findings, and discovered brilliant research while helping the organisers behind the scenes! 👩‍💻
Reposted by Claire Gillan
matanmazor.bsky.social
Claire and team did a remarkable job here, and you should read their reply. An updated preprint from us will be out shortly, reflecting our revised understanding of these issues.
clairegillan.bsky.social
We @smfleming.bsky.social, Marion Rouault and @seowxft.bsky.social and I) have posted a reply osf.io/preprints/ps... to a preprint that recently raised concerns about the validity of associations between mental health and metacognition from online studies. I hope you can take the time to read it.
OSF
osf.io
clairegillan.bsky.social
and by published - i mean pre-printed!! 🙃
clairegillan.bsky.social
We have now published a formal reply to this preprint. Please do check it out to hear our perspective on these findings and see new analyses that we believe speak to the robustness of the phenomenon osf.io/preprints/ps...
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clairegillan.bsky.social
We want to thank @noamsarna.bsky.social @matanmazor.bsky.social and @ruvidar.bsky.social for their feedback on this reply and their productive discussions throughout. I think they've raised an important issue, but I hope we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
clairegillan.bsky.social
So what about those patient studies showing lower confidence in OCD that started this whole conversation? We think the issue is not between online versus in-lab studies, but between having a diagnosis of OCD and scoring high on a dimension of CIT. We unpack this in the paper.
clairegillan.bsky.social
In our reply, we show that the FA solution is replicated in symptomatic patients with a different pattern of skew to m-turkers. We also show a near identical FA solution for two samples that differ in attentiveness... mturk vs. unpaid citizen scientists from the Neureka app (below).