Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Parnian Rafei @parnianrafei.bsky.social · 13d

Great news! Congrats, Ondrej ☘️

Reposted by Parnian Rafei

TCD School of Psychology @tcdpsychology.bsky.social · 20d

Photovoice Exhibition 29th - 31st October at Trinity Business school led by Dr. Claire Howlin. ‘How Music and Arts Support Neurodiversity’ will showcase photos and stories from neurodivergent adults about how creativity helps them thrive. Join us for the LAUNCH Oct 30th @dancingresearch.bsky.social

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Reposted by Parnian Rafei

Pete Hitchcock @pf-hitchcock.bsky.social · 25d

Now out in JEP: General, "How working memory and reinforcement learning interact when avoiding punishment and pursuing reward concurrently"

psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

Preprint with final version: osf.io/preprints/ps...

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Parnian Rafei @parnianrafei.bsky.social · Sep 1

Sounds very exciting, [email protected]! 🎶🎹 (love the hashtags btw #babyrave 🪩🍼👯)

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Reposted by Parnian Rafei

David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈 @whysharksmatter.bsky.social · Aug 19

Hey everybody! @drjuliawester.bsky.social and I have a new paper!

We surveyed over 800 scientists, science communicators, and science educators who use social media.

Conclusion: Scientists no longer find Twitter useful or pleasant, and many have switched to Bluesky! 🧪🌎🦑

doi.org/10.1093/icb/...

Scientists no Longer Find Twitter Professionally Useful, and have Switched to Bluesky

Synopsis. Social media has become widely used by the scientific community for a variety of professional uses, including networking and public outreach. For

doi.org

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Parnian Rafei @parnianrafei.bsky.social · Aug 22

Many congrats @ambercopeland.bsky.social 🙌🥳

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Reposted by Parnian Rafei

Claire Gillan @clairegillan.bsky.social · Jul 28

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

Kelly Donegan @kellydonegan.bsky.social · Jul 28

🚨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 Parnian Rafei

Kelly Donegan @kellydonegan.bsky.social · Jul 28

The good news? If there’s more than one mechanism driving compulsive behaviour, there’s likely more than one way to intervene! We talk about this in our @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social review @eikekofi.bsky.social @parnianrafei.bsky.social

www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

Leveraging cognitive neuroscience for making and breaking real-world habits

Habits are the behavioral output of two brain systems. A stimulus–response (S–R) system that encourages us to efficiently repeat well-practiced actions in familiar settings, and a goal-directed system...

www.cell.com

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Reposted by Parnian Rafei

Kelly Donegan @kellydonegan.bsky.social · Jul 28

🚨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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Parnian Rafei @parnianrafei.bsky.social · Jul 28

Thanks, maybe next time! 🙌

Parnian Rafei @parnianrafei.bsky.social · Jul 24

Very interesting findings that add relevant context to our results in this recent preprint (osf.io/preprints/ps...) about outcome devaluation protocol knowledge (lack thereof), which could be easily mistaken with "habitual responding"!

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Reposted by Parnian Rafei

David Luque @davluque.bsky.social · Jul 24

New preprint! Habits should get stronger with more practice, right? Well, this crucial result has been difficult to reproduce in human labs. In an instant classic, de Wit (2018) showed 5 failures in obtaining more evidence of habits in conditions with more training -as compared to little trained

PsyArXivBot @psyarxivbot.bsky.social · Jul 23

Habits Need Time: Evidence of Habit-like Behavior After Short Training Likely Reflects Failures in Habit Testing: https://osf.io/zh39t

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Reposted by Parnian Rafei

Eiko Fried @eikofried.bsky.social · Jul 16

In February 2024, I wrote Scientific Reports about a published meta-analysis claiming that mindfulness interventions affect neural plasticity, 'cementing the neuropsychological basis of mindfulness-based interventions'.

The paper was retracted yesterday—here a little summary of the process.🧵

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Reposted by Parnian Rafei

Vanessa Teckentrup @glassybrain.bsky.social · Jul 15

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!

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Reposted by Parnian Rafei

Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · Jul 1

Experimentology is out today!!! A group of us wrote a free online textbook for experimental methods, available at experimentology.io - the idea was to integrate open science into all aspects of the experimental workflow from planning to design, analysis, and writing.

Experimentology cover: title and curves for distributions.

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Reposted by Parnian Rafei

Claire Gillan @clairegillan.bsky.social · Jul 14

@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

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Reposted by Parnian Rafei

Claire Gillan @clairegillan.bsky.social · Jul 14

@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!

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Parnian Rafei @parnianrafei.bsky.social · Jul 8

This study was shaped by a lot of persistence! 💪 Huge thanks to my brilliant co-authors and collaborators: Steph Suddell @stephsuddell.bsky.social, Gonzalo Urcelay @gurcelay.bsky.social, Eike Buabang @eikekofi.bsky.social, and my supervisor, Claire Gillan @clairegillan.bsky.social 🙌

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Parnian Rafei @parnianrafei.bsky.social · Jul 8

Our findings offer a potential explanation for why outcome devaluation studies often fail to detect habits:
✅ The paradigm may primarily probe goal-directed control, rather than reveal habits under time pressure.

Paradigm choice is important in both theory & replication 💡

Feedback highly welcome!

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Parnian Rafei @parnianrafei.bsky.social · Jul 8

We argue that these tasks probe distinct cognitive processes:
🔁 Response Remapping → automatic response preparation
🛑 Outcome Devaluation → response inhibition (& S–O knowledge!)
(lab-developed) #Habits aren’t one thing 👏 they're task-, context-, and process-dependent!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Dissociable habits of response preparation versus response initiation - Nature Human Behaviour

Du and Haith show that behaviour can become habitual in two different ways, involving response initiation and response preparation.

www.nature.com

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Parnian Rafei @parnianrafei.bsky.social · Jul 8

We observed: same S–R–O training, opposite habit expression patterns between paradigms! 🤯
habitual responses increased with more time in Outcome Devaluation – Remapping replicated classic findings: habits peaked under time pressure and faded with time 👇
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Time-dependent competition between goal-directed and habitual response preparation - Nature Human Behaviour

Hardwick et al. show that habits in human behaviour consist of automatic preparation of an action in response to a trigger. Even though we can learn to control habits to perform different action respo...

www.nature.com

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Parnian Rafei @parnianrafei.bsky.social · Jul 8

🚨 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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Parnian Rafei @parnianrafei.bsky.social · Jul 7

Thanks, Claire! 🙌

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Parnian Rafei @parnianrafei.bsky.social · Jul 2

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! 👩‍💻

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Reposted by Parnian Rafei

Claire Gillan @clairegillan.bsky.social · Jul 1

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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