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Tom Wallis

@tsawallis.bsky.social

4.5K followers 1.4K following 250 posts

Vision scientist. Professor at the Centre for Cognitive Science, Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany. 🇦🇺🇩🇪. pronoun.is/he https://www.psychologie.tu-darmstadt.de/perception

www.psychologie.tu-darmstadt.de

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Tom Wallis @tsawallis.bsky.social · Nov 10

Welcome new followers (X-iles, Swifties, ... all except Nazis are welcome on my timeline)!

I'm a vision / cognitive scientist studying visual perception in humans and sometimes machines. You can find out more about my lab's work here: www.psychologie.tu-darmstadt.de/perception/h...

#visionscience

Perception

Perception – Somehow, our minds make sense of sensory data in a way that eludes current machine vision systems. We study visual perception in humans using psychophysics and computational models. A sec...

www.psychologie.tu-darmstadt.de

Reposted by Tom Wallis

JoCNForum @jocnforum.bsky.social · 2d

New post in @jocnforum.bsky.social by Early Miller @earlkmiller.bsky.social: "Principles for proper peer review"

doi.org/10.21428/8e6...

Principles for proper peer review

doi.org

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Shahan Ali Memon @shahanmemon.bsky.social · 3d

The future of peer review is here.

Introducing Nature Instant!

We've automated rejection so you can get disappointed faster. Because why wait 6 months for reviewer 2 when you can get roasted by an #AI in seconds?

Here is how it works.

#AI4Science #PeerReview #FictionScience #FiSci #AAAI #ScAISci

Showing a fictitious system for submitting manuscripts called "Nature Instant" showing bot choices for authors to choose from as initial AI-based peer reviewers. The bots are trained on real human reviewer data.

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Reposted by Tom Wallis

Bria Long @brialong.bsky.social · 1d

We’re recruiting a postdoctoral fellow to join our team! 🎉

I’m happy to share that I’ve opened back up the search for this position (it was temporarily closed due to funding uncertainty).

See lab page and doc below for details!

Bria Long @brialong.bsky.social · Nov 18

The Visual Learning Lab at UC San Diego is looking for a postdoctoral research fellow to join our lab!

Read more about our lab at www.vislearnlab.org

Home | The Visual Learning Lab at UCSD

Lab webpage for the Visual Learning Lab at UCSD, lead by Dr. Bria Long, Ph.D. Launching in July 2024!

www.vislearnlab.org

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Reposted by Tom Wallis

William Ngiam | 严祥全 @williamngiam.github.io · 2d

What annotations / metadata do you wish was included with every #cogsci dataset (especially #workingmemory folks 👀)? My current list includes the experiment task, stimulus, level of data (trial-, subject-, or group-level), format, and whether analysis code is provided. Any more?

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Charley Wu | hiring PhDs/Postdocs @thecharleywu.bsky.social · 2d

Me and @watarutoyokawa.bsky.social want to thank everyone who attended, presented at, and helped organize #COSMOS2025! If you weren't able to make it, all teaching materials are already online and we'll be uploading videos of all talks soon cosmossummerschool.github.io/materials/

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Reposted by Tom Wallis

Sam Schwarzkopf @sampendu.bsky.social · 6d

Long time in the making: our preprint of survey study on the diversity with how people seem to experience #mentalimagery. Suggests #aphantasia should be redefined as absence of depictive thought, not merely "not seeing". Some more take home msg:
#psychskysci #neuroscience

doi.org/10.1101/2025...

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Reposted by Tom Wallis

Drew Harwell @drewharwell.com · 8d

OpenAI employees are very excited about how well their new AI tool can create fake videos of people doing crimes and have definitely thought through all the implications of this

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TU Darmstadt @tuda.bsky.social · 7d

👋 Herzlich willkommen an der TU, Prof. Charley Wu!
Der Kognitionswissenschaftler verstärkt die Humanwissenschaften und im Bereich Computational Cognitive Science. Zum Start haben wir ihm ein paar Fragen gestellt 👉 www.tu-darmstadt.de/universitaet... @thecharleywu.bsky.social @hessianai.bsky.social

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Reposted by Tom Wallis

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @aoc.bsky.social · 7d

Most of the power authoritarians have is freely given. We should not comply with them in advance.

Trump is far weaker than he looks. So is the GOP. We should draw them out, drain them at every opportunity, and fight for people’s wellbeing at every turn.

We have been sent here to fight for people.

Acyn @acyn.bsky.social · 8d

AOC: I think there's two things that are happening at once: One, there absolutely is an unprecedented abuse of power, destruction of norms, erosion of our government and our democracy in order to prop up an authoritarian style of governance

However, they are weaker than they look…

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Gary Lupyan @glupyan.bsky.social · 7d

A wild exchange with Gemini Pro 2.5. In preparing some examples for my seminar (cogsci-llms.netlify.app) I remembered @randomwalker.bsky.social old tweet about playing Rock paper scissors with LLMs. Decided to see what it's like now ....

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Reposted by Tom Wallis

Constantin Rothkopf @c-rothkopf.bsky.social · 8d

If neuroscience needs behavior, then it also needs control theory ... but that's not the only reason: check out the workshop at #Bernsteinconference
bernstein-network.de/bernstein-co...

(SW2025) Control theory approaches for analysing, modeling, and manipulating brain activity and cognitive function – Bernstein Netzwerk Computational Neuroscience

bernstein-network.de

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Reposted by Tom Wallis

Vincent Arel-Bundock @vincentab.bsky.social · 9d

{tinytable} 0.14.0 for #RStats makes it super easy to draw tables in html, tex, docx, typ, md & png.

There are only a few functions to learn, but don't be fooled! Small 📦s can still be powerful.

Check out the new gallery page for fun case studies.

vincentarelbundock.github.io/tinytable/vi...

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Reposted by Tom Wallis

Joanna Bryson @j2bryson.bsky.social · 9d

This is a video summary of www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... about what has halted collapses of Democracy before. Via @bwyble.bsky.social by @marinanord.bsky.social (of @hertieschool.bsky.social, coincidentally!) @fabioangiolillo.bsky.social @silindberg.bsky.social & al.

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Tom Wallis @tsawallis.bsky.social · 11d

Tessa is great; go work with Tessa!

Tessa Dekker @tessamdekker.bsky.social · 11d

We’re hiring! We’re looking for two RAs to study neuroplasticity in sight loss, sight rescue and development in children and adults @ucl.ac.uk using a wide range of neuroimaging and behavioral methods. Please help spread the word! Apply by 16 Oct! t.ly/q3aYe #neurojobs #NeuroSkyence

Research Assistant at UCL

Recruiting now: Research Assistant on jobs.ac.uk. Click for details and explore more academic job opportunities on the top job board

t.ly

Reposted by Tom Wallis

BWJones @bwjones.bsky.social · 12d

It’s @laurensr.bsky.social telling us about her verrry cool work in evolutionary diversity in vision science at #Visionarium2025

It’s Lauren Sumner-Rooney talking at the lectern about evolutionary diversity in vision.

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Reposted by Tom Wallis

hakwan lau @hakwan.bsky.social · 13d

paper is up~

This study examines performance evaluation in perceptual detection tasks using response-time-based signal detection theory (SDT) analysis. A defining feature of detection tasks is the asymmetry between trials with stimulus presence and absence, often reflected in ....

hakwan lau @hakwan.bsky.social · 13d

detection d' is generally overestimated, coz we tend to be too lazy to collect the necessary data in order to correct for the unequal variance between target present vs absent distributions. turns out we can do this for free - using reaction times data. so, let's do it~

osf.io/preprints/ps...

🧠📈

OSF

osf.io

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Reposted by Tom Wallis

Aaron Hertzmann @aaronhertzmann.com · 12d

Here is my commentary on @ruthrosenholtz.bsky.social's BBS paper. I point out deep parallels between topics in 2D and 3D human vision that are usually studied separately: summary statistics and attention in 2D, and 3D vision. This suggests studying them together. psyarxiv.com/dz3rx_v2

OSF

psyarxiv.com

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Reposted by Tom Wallis

Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · 14d

Link to HHMI preprint mandate hhmicdn.blob.core.windows.net/policies/Imm...

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Pascal Mamassian @mamassian.bsky.social · 14d

A nice shift in perceived colour between central and peripheral vision. The fixated disc looks purple while the others look blue.

The effect presumably comes from the absence of S-cones in the fovea.

From Hinnerk Schulz-Hildebrandt:
arxiv.org/pdf/2509.115...

An array of 9 purple discs on a blue background. Figure from Hinnerk Schulz-Hildebrandt.

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Rafe Meager (they/them) @economeager.bsky.social · 13d

I fear somebody in the Australian government may have misunderstood the meaning of pull requests

Jan Kabatek 🇺🇦 @jankabatek.com · 14d

The list of social media platforms that Australia is considering to ban (under the new restrictions for Aussie teenagers) includes—yes, you read that right—GitHub.

www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09...

Not just 'big fish': eSafety reveals new platforms may be forced to ban teens

WhatsApp, Roblox, Reddit and Discord are among an expanded list of platforms which may be covered by the teen social media ban, the ABC can reveal.

www.abc.net.au

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Tom Wallis @tsawallis.bsky.social · 15d

Perhaps of interest:

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Ten principles for reliable, efficient, and adaptable coding in psychology and cognitive neuroscience - Communications Psychology

Programming is essential for modern research in neuroscience and psychology, but it can quickly become a source of frustration and error. This Primer introduces ten practical principles guiding researchers toward writing clear, adaptable, and easily shareable code, ultimately supporting reproducible science.

www.nature.com

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Tom Wallis @tsawallis.bsky.social · 16d

If you're paid to collect the data (e.g. as an RA) and you *also* sign on to be (partly) responsible for the manuscript content and its veracity, then authorship may be warranted. More so if you also made any kind of design or analysis contribution.

Tom Wallis @tsawallis.bsky.social · 16d

Should an undergraduate RA be accountable for inaccuracies? imo: if they're not an author, then absolutely not. (see e.g. Gino case -- the "it was the RA" defence). In other words:

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Tom Wallis @tsawallis.bsky.social · 16d

Thanks for your thoughts here Alex. I think detailed contribution statements are great and should be mandatory. For me, one thing that differentiates contributorship from authorship is a certain level of responsibility for the content of the manuscript...

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