Congratulations @judithfan.bsky.social on winning the Lila R. Gleitman Prize for early-career contributions to Cognitive Science š„³ Amazing!!
cognitivesciencesociety.org/gleitman-pri...
1\ Can you make this Roman-numeral equation true by moving exactly one matchstick?
This work could not have been done without my amazing co-authors Lio Wong, @judithfan.bsky.social, and @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social!
If you're interested in chatting more, come find us at CogSci 2026!
Linking student psychological orientation, engagement & learning in intro college-level data science
New work āŖāŖat @cogscisociety.bsky.social w/ @erikbrockbank.bsky.social @shawnschwartz.bsky.social, C.Bryan, D.Yeager, C.Dweck & @judithfan.bsky.social
poster 8/1 @ 10:30
tinyurl.com/solds-cogsci25
"36 Questions That Lead To Love" was the most viewed article in NYT Modern Love.
Excited to share new results investigating these and other ādeep questionsā with @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social @judithfan.bsky.social & @rdhawkins.bsky.social
Preprint: tinyurl.com/bdfx5smk
Code: tinyurl.com/3v6pws4s
Design and inference about design appear to be complementary processes, both grounded in our capacity to reason about goal-directed action. In future work, weāre excited to extend this to explain notions of legible designāthat designers consider the usersā cognitive effort when making designs.
Tobias Gerstenberg
To explore this, we used kitchens inspired by the video game Overcooked, where cooks navigate gridworlds to prepare salads in as few steps as possible.
We ran two studies: one on how people infer what a kitchen was designed for, and one on how people design kitchens for others to use.
In Study 1, participants judged what different kitchen layouts were designed for. Some were designed for tomato vs. onion salad; others for one vs. two cooks.
Their inferences tracked a simulation-based model, suggesting that observers recover design intent by simulating efficient task completion.
Thrilled to be sharing my latest work at #CogSci2026!
Many of the spaces we move through, from kitchens to airports, were designed with specific uses in mind. How do people create such environments, and how do users figure out what they were designed for?
š osf.io/preprints/ps...
In Study 2, participants designed kitchens themselves, dragging furniture to help a cook prepare a particular dish.
Their placements made the target dish efficient to complete. Designers also adjusted their layouts depending on whether the cook knew which dish to make.
