Looking forward to meeting you #ECVP2025 Mainz this week, including collaborative work with @tobnie.bsky.social @dominikstrb.bsky.social @ookenfooken.bsky.social @fatatai.bsky.social @tsawallis.bsky.social @mamassian.bsky.social @guidomaiello.bsky.social @mariaeckstein.bsky.social and many others

Happy to announce that I am presenting a poster today at #CogSci25: Physical reasoning during motor learning aids people at transferring mass, but not motor control mappings.

This is joint work with Dominik Ürüm, @mariaeckstein.bsky.social and @c-rothkopf.bsky.social

Find out more at P3-T-192!

Our latest work on understanding the behavior of bounded agents in more naturalistic tasks accepted at #ICLR2025: Inverse decision-making using neural amortized Bayesian actors, with @dominikstrb.bsky.social @tobnie.bsky.social and @jan-peters.bsky.social based on @tobnie.bsky.social MSc thesis

Finally, we conducted a systematic model comparison to show that our data can not be accounted for with simpler explanations, implying that participants really accounted for how the friction impacts the puck's sliding behavior.

Find this and more in our pre-print:

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

We fitted the data with a generative model of sliding based on statistical decision theory, and participants even seem to account for their personal variability. Subjects with higher variability undershoot more:

Statistical decision theory predicts that if people maximize their task outcome but also account for how the friction impacts the puck, they should undershoot the target more the higher the penalty but also the larger the distance. This is also what we find in the data:

Participants controlled the puck's initial velocity, to hit the green area to receive a positive score but avoid a penalty from hitting the red area. This process is subject to signal dependent noise, which is further transformed by the physics of friction, determining the final puck position.

To study whether people can do this, we built this fun setup, where people get to slide a real standard hockey puck at targets, while viewing the scene through virtual reality. This offers a natural way of interacting with objects for the participants, but still allows for experimental control.

1. Sensorimotor-control, subject to inherent uncertainty and variability;
2. Intuitive physical reasoning as object manipulations are subject to physical dynamics;
3. Economic decision-making when actions have outcomes with monetary consequences.

Humans are exceptionally proficient at manipulating objects in natural tasks. This skill requires integrating three cognitive faculties:

Hello Bluesky,
with my first post, I would like to announce that my first first-author paper is out now!

Have you ever wondered whether people account for Newtonian physics when interacting with objects?

Together with @dominikstrb.bsky.social and @c-rothkopf.bsky.social we show that they do!

Thanks, for your effort, I would really like to be added as well!

Great list! Could you please add me as well?