Scholar

Bill Thompson

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H-index: 17
Psychology 27%
Computer science 18%
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Reposted by: Bill Thompson, Hugo Mercier, Todd M. Gureckis

markkho.bsky.social
I'm recruiting grad students!! 🎓

The CoDec Lab @ NYU (codec-lab.github.io) is looking for PhD students (Fall 2026) interested in computational approaches to social cognition & problem solving 🧠

Applications through Psych (tinyurl.com/nyucp) are due Dec 1. Reach out with Qs & please repost! 🙏
codec lab
codec-lab.github.io
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Reposted by: Bill Thompson

nathumbehav.nature.com
Children can solve a difficult sorting task by spontaneously discovering efficient sorting algorithms. Older children outperform younger children, showing developmental growth in strategy use and problem-solving. @hw-yang.bsky.social‬‬
@celestekidd.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Children spontaneously discover efficient solutions to a difficult sorting task - Nature Human Behaviour
Children successfully solved a challenging sorting task by spontaneously discovering efficient sorting strategies, such as selection sort and shaker sort. Older children outperformed younger ones, demonstrating developmental progress in strategic thinking and problem-solving abilities.
www.nature.com
5 22

Reposted by: Bill Thompson

joebarnby.com
🤖After a fantastic debut in 2025, the Theory of Mind in AI workshop at AAAI is back for 2026!

We invite submissions on ToM in artificial & biological intelligence—across comp sci, cog sci, comp psych, psychiatry & more.

CFP 👉 tom4ai.github.io/AAAI2026/cal...

2025 procs 👉 arxiv.org/abs/2505.03770
Call for Papers - ToM4AI Workshop@AAAI 2026
tom4ai.github.io
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Reposted by: Bill Thompson, Alex Mesoudi

culturalevolsoc.bsky.social
We are excited to advertise the Asian Cultural Evolution (ACE) seminar series! It's organized by Kenji Itao, Xinyue Pan & Wataru Toyokawa, and seminars will take place on the third Tuesday of odd-numbered months at 19:00 JST (18:00 Perth/Singapore/Beijing, 19:00 Tokyo/Seoul, 20:00 Sydney).
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Reposted by: Bill Thompson

nogazs.bsky.social
Excited to share our new paper "Towards Human-Like Emergent Communication via Utility, Informativeness, and Complexity"
direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...
@rplevy.bsky.social

And looking forward to speaking about this line of work tomorrow at @nyudatascience.bsky.social!
Towards Human-Like Emergent Communication via Utility, Informativeness, and Complexity
Abstract. Two prominent, yet contrasting, theoretical views are available to characterize the underlying drivers of language evolution: on the one hand, task-specific utility maximization; on the othe...
direct.mit.edu
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Reposted by: Bill Thompson

elmanubohn.bsky.social
I'm looking for a PhD Student at the intersection of Machine Learning and Developmental Psychology.

We study everyday experiences in children from 🇰🇪🇩🇪🇹🇷 and use ML models to quantify interactions.

4 years, fully funded, great team, beautiful location. Please share and apply!

tinyurl.com/2mafdyh4
Research Associate (m/f/d) Applying Machine Learning to Developmental Psychology
www.leuphana.de
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Reposted by: Bill Thompson

emiecz.bsky.social
We often assume that specialized roles improve performance in multi-agent systems, but when does specialization emerge based on a given task and environment? 🧵👇

⭐️ New preprint w/ Ruaridh Mon-Williams, @neilbramley.bsky.social, Chris Lucas, @natvelali.bsky.social & @cocoscilab.bsky.social
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Reposted by: Bill Thompson, Alex Mesoudi, David W. Lawson

watarutoyokawa.bsky.social
🚀COSMOS is BACK!!!💫 The Computational School on Modeling Social and collective behavior (COSMOS) will take place in RIKEN, Tokyo, between 29 Sept - 3 Oct, organised by me and fantastic @thecharleywu.bsky.social ! Application deadline: 25th April. For more details see 👉️ cosmossummerschool.github.io
COSMOS
The Computational Summer school on Modeling Social and collective behavior (COSMOS)
cosmossummerschool.github.io
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Reposted by: Bill Thompson

vikingbooks.bsky.social
ON SALE TODAY! 🧠💻

Christopher Summerfield's (@summerfieldlab.bsky.social) "brilliant" (@mustafasuleymanai.bsky.social) THESE STRANGE NEW MINDS charts the evolution of intelligent talking machines and helps us understand how they work and how we can use them.

Start reading now 👉 bit.ly/41WoPTB
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Reposted by: Bill Thompson, Maurice R. Elphick

royalsocietypublishing.org
This year marks 360 years since the first edition
of #PhilosophicalTransactions, launching the world’s longest-running scientific journal. Join us as we take a 360° view of publishing, exploring its history, reflecting on its present impact, and imagining its future. royalsociety.org/journals/pub...
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Reposted by: Bill Thompson, Nathan Nunn, Alex Mesoudi

culturalevolsoc.bsky.social
We are please to release Transmissions Ep 1, featuring Dr Cristina Moya @hyperadapthyrax.bsky.social in conversation with Feryl Badiani @ferylbadiani.bsky.social

Cristina and Feryl chat about Cristina's work in Peru and discuss CE in human and non-human societies:

youtu.be/2otT0PkhPkw?...
Transmissions Episode 1 with Dr Cristina Moya
YouTube video by Cultural Evolution Society
youtu.be
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by John R. Hutchinson — Reposted by: Bill Thompson

johnrhutchinson.bsky.social
🚨 Calling from #RoyalSocietyPublishing! 🚨
We are excited to share that the #BiologyLetters Early Career Researcher Competition is open for submissions until April 30, 2025!
Grand prize: £1000
2 runners-up: £500 each.
🔗 More details: royalsociety.org/journals/aut...
Biology Letters early career researcher Competition | Royal Society
Open for entries to early career researchers until 30 April 2025.
royalsociety.org
12 9

Reposted by: Bill Thompson, Nathan Nunn, Jonas R. Kunst , and 1 more

sirileknes.bsky.social
There are currently three open faculty positions (all levels) in my department (Psychology)
Oslo is a lovely city, modestly sized (600k) but a capital, surrounded by forest and the fjord

We're also a stable democracy with high support of and trust in science

www.sv.uio.no/english/abou...
Jobs and vacancies - Faculty of Social Sciences
Read this story on the University of Oslo's website.
www.sv.uio.no
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Reposted by: Bill Thompson

manymindspod.bsky.social
String figures have been part of human culture for millennia, perhaps since the Pleistocene. But why do we find them so captivating? What explains their universal appeal?

Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, w/ @roope.bsky.social!

Listen: manyminds.libsyn.com/string-theor...
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Reposted by: Bill Thompson, Olivier Morin, Daniel Wilson

jeremykendal.bsky.social
Join us in Durham Anthropology - we’re hiring an Assistant Prof in Anthropology of Data Science. durham.taleo.net/careersectio...
Assistant Professor in Anthropology of Data Science (Research %26 Education) (ANT_01)
Click the link provided to see the complete job description.
durham.taleo.net
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Reposted by: Bill Thompson

tobigerstenberg.bsky.social
New paper in Psychological Review!

In "Causation, Meaning, and Communication" Ari Beller (cicl.stanford.edu/member/ari_b...) develops a computational model of how people use & understand expressions like "caused", "enabled", and "affected".

📃 osf.io/preprints/ps...
📎 github.com/cicl-stanfor...
🧵
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Reposted by: Bill Thompson

alexhyafil.bsky.social
Our Barcelona-based summer school, BAMB! (bambschool.org) just opened applications! Come join us: 15-24th July, to learn how to model behavioral data using RL, Bayesian, latent variable models, RNNs, DDMs & more! #BAMB2025
BAMB!
Course philosophy Our goal is​ to teach advanced techniques in model-based analysis of behavior (humans and other animals) to cognitive and computational neuroscientists at PhD and early career levels...
bambschool.org
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Reposted by: Bill Thompson, Alex Mesoudi

bjornlindstrom.bsky.social
💥Postdoc Opening! 💥We (@lucasmolleman.bsky.social & Piet van den Berg) seek a postdoc to study social learning and cultural evolution. We are looking for someone with math/computational modeling skills & interest in human behavior. Get in touch if you have any questions! shorturl.at/W6Qsb
Postdoktor i beräkningspsykologi/kognitionsvetenskap med fokus på social inlärning och kulturell evolution
Vill du bidra till medicinsk forskning av toppkvalitet? Gruppen Mechanisms of Social Behavior vid Karolinska Institutet i Stockholm söker en högt kvalificerad postdoktoral forskare för att ingå i
ki.varbi.com
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Reposted by: Bill Thompson

siobhancully.bsky.social
Fellowships for non-UK scientists who want to work in the UK for a spell:

royalsociety.org/grants/newto...
Newton International Fellowships | Royal Society
This fellowship is for non-UK scientists who are at an early stage of their research career and wish to conduct research in the UK.
royalsociety.org
12 14

Reposted by: Bill Thompson

neu-rips.bsky.social
check this out: new postdoc program for AI-related research in Catalunya!

our group is looking to hire within this program, ideally to work on topics related to RL theory. in case you're interested, pls DM or email me.

(retweets appreciated!)

ramonllull-aira.eu/application
Ramon Llull AIRA Open Calls
Open Calls In our inaugural call scheduled for December 2024, we aim to select up to 17 exceptional postdoctoral fellows, with an additional 16 to be chosen in Call 2 in 2025. 20  December 2024 ...
ramonllull-aira.eu
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Reposted by: Bill Thompson

manymindspod.bsky.social
New episode!! 🎙️🎙️

A conversation w/ @tanialombrozo.bsky.social about "learning by thinking."

We often learn from others or from the outside world. But other times new understanding bubbles up from inside our own minds. When does this happen? And how does it work?

Listen: disi.org/a-paradox-of...
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Reposted by: Bill Thompson, Sendhil Mullainathan, David Lusseau , and 2 more

melaniemitchell.bsky.social
An incredible opportunity for the right person:

The Santa Fe Institute is seeking applications for full-time resident faculty positions at all academic levels

For me, this has been the best possible job ever.

More info here: santafe.edu/about/jobs/r...
sfiscience
SFI seeks applications for full-time, 12-month resident faculty positions at all academic levels.
santafe.edu
9 210 380

Reposted by: Bill Thompson

begus.bsky.social
Researchers in France! 🇫🇷

@ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social France Fund is calling for proposals for seed money! All fields are welcome to apply. There are so many opportunities for collaboration that such grants can open!
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Reposted by: Bill Thompson

lampinen.bsky.social
If you're interested in working on multimodal understanding and generation — including things like understanding or generating figures with text — and work with my awesome collaborator Ishita Dasgupta & others, check out this job! boards.greenhouse.io/deepmind/job...
Research Scientist, Media Fusion
Mountain View, California, US
boards.greenhouse.io
5 30

by Bill Thompson

wdt.bsky.social
We have extended the deadline for this position to January 31st. Also, the start date is pretty flexible; if you're graduating next spring/summer and interested in the role, apply!
wdt.bsky.social
Bill Thompson @wdt.bsky.social · Nov 19
We have a postdoc position available in my lab at UC Berkeley, 2 years+, flexible start date, research focus is social reasoning and cultural evolution from a computational perspective. Deadline = November 29th. aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF04639
Postdoctoral Scholar Employee - The Computational Cognitive Science Laboratory -Psychology
University of California, Berkeley is hiring. Apply now!
aprecruit.berkeley.edu
2 23 34

Reposted by: Bill Thompson

natashajaques.bsky.social
Even though the Social RL lab only got started ~1 year ago, I’m super excited to announce that we have 10 people from the lab presenting their work at #NeurIPS2024. Delighted to officially introduce our lab: socialrl.cs.washington.edu! Thread with all our NeurIPS work below 👇
SocialRL Lab
We are the Social Reinforcement Learning Lab at the University of Washington.
socialrl.cs.washington.edu
1 10 52

Reposted by: Bill Thompson, Janne Hukkinen, Rebecca Bliege Bird

roopekaaronen.net
I am delighted to share our latest piece of research:

‘A global cross-cultural analysis of string figures reveals evidence of deep transmission and innovation’.

This was long in the works and is by far the largest project I’ve led to date.

A thread:

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
A huge phenetic tree visualising our global string figure dataset.
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Reposted by: Bill Thompson

drbarner.bsky.social
CogSci2025 poster has landed, in both “wow the future looks bright for CogSci” mode, and also “our theories will make you think and possibly write poetry mode”. @neilbramley.bsky.social @carenwalker.bsky.social @cogscisociety.bsky.social
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Reposted by: Bill Thompson

begus.bsky.social
Symbolic operations (such as Merge) can self-emerge in connectionist models!

Our models take single words and start spontaneously concatenating words with at least partial compositionality.

We propose a neural mechanism behind compositional concatenation: disinhibition.
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by Bill Thompson

wdt.bsky.social
We have a postdoc position available in my lab at UC Berkeley, 2 years+, flexible start date, research focus is social reasoning and cultural evolution from a computational perspective. Deadline = November 29th. aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF04639
Postdoctoral Scholar Employee - The Computational Cognitive Science Laboratory -Psychology
University of California, Berkeley is hiring. Apply now!
aprecruit.berkeley.edu
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