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tal boger

@talboger.bsky.social

280 followers 46 following 51 posts

third-year phd student at jhu psych | perception + cognition https://talboger.github.io/

talboger.github.io

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Reposted by tal boger

Johns Hopkins University @jhu.edu · 1d

When a butterfly becomes a bear, perception takes center stage.

Research from @talboger.bsky.social, @chazfirestone.bsky.social and the Perception & Mind Lab.

Reposted by tal boger

Chaz Firestone @chazfirestone.bsky.social · 2d

Out today!

www.cell.com/current-biol...

Screenshot of the PDF of:

Boger, T., & Firestone, C. (2025). Visual anagrams reveal high-level effects with 'identical' stimuli. Current Biology, 35, PR910–R912.

tal boger @talboger.bsky.social · 6d

important question for dev people: when reporting demographics for a paper involving both kids and adults, we want some consistency in how we report that information. so do you call the kids "men" and "women", or do you call the adults "boys" and “girls"?

tal boger @talboger.bsky.social · 22d

sami is such a creative, thoughtful, and fun mentor. anyone who gets to work with him is so lucky!

Sami Yousif @samiyousif.bsky.social · 22d

I am recruiting graduate students for Fall 2026 through both the cognitive and developmental areas at Ohio State. If you are interested in spatial cognition, visual perception, and/or mental representation -- please reach out! I'd love to hear from you.

www.cogdevlab.org

www.cogdevlab.org

Reposted by tal boger

Sami Yousif @samiyousif.bsky.social · Aug 28

Visual adaptation is viewed as a test of whether a feature is represented by the visual system.

In a new paper, Sam Clarke and I push the limits of this test. We show spatially selective, putatively "visual" adaptation to a clearly non-visual dimension: Value!

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Can we “see” value? Spatiotopic “visual” adaptation to an imperceptible dimension

In much recent philosophy of mind and cognitive science, repulsive adaptation effects are considered a litmus test — a crucial marker, that distinguis…

www.sciencedirect.com

Reposted by tal boger

Chaz Firestone @chazfirestone.bsky.social · Aug 19

It's true: This is the first project from our lab that has a "Merch" page!

Get yours @ www.perceptionresearch.org/anagrams/mer...

tal boger @talboger.bsky.social · Aug 19

The present work thus serves as a ‘case study’ of sorts. It yields concrete discoveries about real-world size, and it also validates a broadly applicable tool for psychology and neuroscience. We hope it catches on!

tal boger @talboger.bsky.social · Aug 19

Though we manipulated real-world size, you could generate anagrams of happy faces and sad faces, tools and non-tools, or animate and inanimate objects, overcoming low-level confounds associated with such stimuli. Our approach is perfectly general.

tal boger @talboger.bsky.social · Aug 19

Overall, our work confronts the longstanding challenge of disentangling high-level properties from their lower-level covariates. We found that, once you do so, most (but not all) of the relevant effects remain.

tal boger @talboger.bsky.social · Aug 19

(Never fear, though: As we say in our paper, that last result is consistent with the original work, which suggested that mid-level features — the sort preserved in ‘texform’ stimuli — may well explain these search advantages.)

tal boger @talboger.bsky.social · Aug 19

Finally, visual search. Previous work shows targets are easier to find when they differ from distractors in their real-world size. However, in our experiments with anagrams, this was not the case (even though we easily replicated this effect with ordinary, non-anagram images).

whereas previous work shows efficient visual search for real-world size, we did not find a similar effect with anagrams. our study included a successful replication of these previous findings with ordinary objects (i.e., non-anagram images).

tal boger @talboger.bsky.social · Aug 19

Next, aesthetic preferences. People think real-world large objects look better when displayed large, and vice versa for small objects. Our experiments show that this is true with anagrams too!

people prefer to view real-world large objects as larger than real-world small objects, even with visual anagrams.

tal boger @talboger.bsky.social · Aug 19

First, the “real-world size Stroop effect”. If you have to say which of two images is larger (on the screen, not in real life), it’s easier if displayed size is congruent with real-world size. We found this to be true even when the images were perfect anagrams of one another!

results from the real-world size Stroop effect with anagrams. performance is better when displayed size is congruent with real-world size.

tal boger @talboger.bsky.social · Aug 19

Then, we placed these images in classic experiments on real-world size, to see if observed effects arise even under such highly controlled conditions.

(Spoiler: Most of these effects *did* arise with anagrams, confirming that real-world size per se drives many of these effects!)

tal boger @talboger.bsky.social · Aug 19

We generated images using this technique (see examples). Each pair differs in real-world size but are otherwise identical* in lower-level features, because they’re the same image down to the last pixel.

(*avg orientation, aspect-ratio, etc, may still vary. ask me about this!)

anagrams we generated, where rotating the object changes its real-world size.

tal boger @talboger.bsky.social · Aug 19

This challenge may seem insurmountable. But maybe it isn’t! To overcome it, we used a new technique from Geng et al. called “visual anagrams”, which allows you to generate images whose interpretations vary as a function of orientation.

depiction of the "visual anagrams" model by Geng et al.

tal boger @talboger.bsky.social · Aug 19

Take real-world size. Tons of cool work shows that it’s encoded automatically, drives aesthetic judgments, and organizes neural responses. But there’s an interpretive challenge: Real-world size covaries with other features that may cause these effects independently.

the mind encodes differences in real-world size. but differences in size also carry differences in shape, spatial frequency, and contrast.

tal boger @talboger.bsky.social · Aug 19

The problem: We often study “high-level” image features (animacy, emotion, real-world size) and find cool effects. But high-level properties covary with lower-level features, like shape or spatial frequency. So what seem like high-level effects may have low-level explanations.

tal boger @talboger.bsky.social · Aug 19

On the left is a rabbit. On the right is an elephant. But guess what: They’re the *same image*, rotated 90°!

In @currentbiology.bsky.social, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I show how these images—known as “visual anagrams”—can help solve a longstanding problem in cognitive science. bit.ly/45BVnCZ

Reposted by tal boger

Chaz Firestone @chazfirestone.bsky.social · Aug 5

Out today! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Screenshot of the first page of Tal and Chaz's paper, "The psychophysics of style"

Reposted by tal boger

noam chompers @noamchompers.bsky.social · Jul 24

Lab-mate got my ass on the lab when2meet

tal boger @talboger.bsky.social · Jun 26

Amazing new work from @gabrielwaterhouse.bsky.social and @samiyousif.bsky.social! I'm convinced the crowd size illusion is real, but the rooms full of people watching Gabe give awesome talks at @socphilpsych.bsky.social and @vssmtg.bsky.social were no illusion!

Gabe Waterhouse @gabrielwaterhouse.bsky.social · Jun 26

I am excited to announce my first ever paper (w/ @samiyousif.bsky.social ) about a new illusion of *number*: the “Crowd Size Illusion”. osf.io/preprints/ps...

Reposted by tal boger

Chaz Firestone @chazfirestone.bsky.social · Jun 21

@sallyberson.bsky.social in action at @socphilpsych.bsky.social! #SPP2025

Reposted by tal boger

Chaz Firestone @chazfirestone.bsky.social · Jun 19

Susan Carey sitting in the front row of a grad student talk (by @talboger.bsky.social) and going back and forth during Q&A is what makes the @socphilpsych.bsky.social so special! Loved this interaction 🤗

tal boger @talboger.bsky.social · Jun 3

Now officially out! psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

(Free version here: talboger.github.io/files/Boger_...)