Benjamin Pitt

New paper finally out in @NatureComms with E. Leib, D. O’Shaughnessy, C. Gallardo, @sferrigno.bsky.social, and @spiantado.bsky.social. 📝Children across cultures discover the latent algorithms that structure what they see, even without instruction, feedback, or formal schooling.🧵 tinyurl.com/4a238m2d

This algorithm induction ability did not evolve in humans for decoding patterns of colored blocks. Rather, it may have evolved as a general-purpose learning mechanism for decoding almost any real-world pattern, whether it's how to play tag, use chopsticks, or build a canoe, just by watching.

New paper finally out in @NatureComms with E. Leib, D. O’Shaughnessy, C. Gallardo, @sferrigno.bsky.social, and @spiantado.bsky.social. 📝Children across cultures discover the latent algorithms that structure what they see, even without instruction, feedback, or formal schooling.🧵 tinyurl.com/4a238m2d

This is very smart, especially when you realize how wildly underdetermined the data were – the sample patterns were short (i.e. 4-6 items) and could in principle reflect an enormous variety of possible algorithms. It’s an incredibly hard problem to solve!

New paper finally out in @NatureComms with E. Leib, D. O’Shaughnessy, C. Gallardo, @sferrigno.bsky.social, and @spiantado.bsky.social. 📝Children across cultures discover the latent algorithms that structure what they see, even without instruction, feedback, or formal schooling.🧵 tinyurl.com/4a238m2d

Instead, they generalized. Even though the response patterns looked different physically from the sample patterns, they were similar logically – far more similar than you’d expect by chance. The kids saw through the superficial features and discovered the underlying rule.

New paper finally out in @NatureComms with E. Leib, D. O’Shaughnessy, C. Gallardo, @sferrigno.bsky.social, and @spiantado.bsky.social. 📝Children across cultures discover the latent algorithms that structure what they see, even without instruction, feedback, or formal schooling.🧵 tinyurl.com/4a238m2d

Do people remember where things are relative to their body (e.g. my left side) or relative to the environment (the North/uphill side)? The answer is both at once, according to my new paper now out in Psychological Science! 🧵 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Do people remember where things are relative to their body (e.g. my left side) or relative to the environment (the North/uphill side)? The answer is both at once, according to my new paper now out in Psychological Science! 🧵 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

This shows people are not limited to using one reference frame at a time, even in the very same action. Instead, people across cultures may habitually use compound cognitive maps composed of multiple reference frames to represent the multidimensional spatial relations of their environment.

Do people remember where things are relative to their body (e.g. my left side) or relative to the environment (the North/uphill side)? The answer is both at once, according to my new paper now out in Psychological Science! 🧵 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Here’s a canoncal response. She finds an object in her far right cup, turns around, and places it in her far LEFT cup. This preserves the object’s EGOcentric position in front-back space (i.e. far, far) but preserves its ALLOcentric position in left-right space (e.g. window-side, window-side).

Do people remember where things are relative to their body (e.g. my left side) or relative to the environment (the North/uphill side)? The answer is both at once, according to my new paper now out in Psychological Science! 🧵 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

The trick is that the cup you choose reveals which reference frame you were using to remember the object’s position. And because of the layout of the cups, choosing a cup actually means choosing a position on both the left-right axis and the front-back axis.

Do people remember where things are relative to their body (e.g. my left side) or relative to the environment (the North/uphill side)? The answer is both at once, according to my new paper now out in Psychological Science! 🧵 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

The question here is whether they would not only switch quickly between reference frames, but actually mix them together, using one frame on one axis and a different frame on the other axis *at the same time*. To find out, we designed a new, 2-dimensional test of spatial memory, the 4Quads task.

Do people remember where things are relative to their body (e.g. my left side) or relative to the environment (the North/uphill side)? The answer is both at once, according to my new paper now out in Psychological Science! 🧵 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

We addressed this question with the Tsimane’, an indigenous group of farmer-foragers living in the Bolivian Amazon.

Do people remember where things are relative to their body (e.g. my left side) or relative to the environment (the North/uphill side)? The answer is both at once, according to my new paper now out in Psychological Science! 🧵 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

We know people can flexibly switch between egocentric and allocentric reference frames. But on some psycholinguistic accounts, they are limited to using one at a time like in language – you can say “The spoon is on the right” or “The spoon is North” but not both at once.

Do people remember where things are relative to their body (e.g. my left side) or relative to the environment (the North/uphill side)? The answer is both at once, according to my new paper now out in Psychological Science! 🧵 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Like other animals, humans depend on spatial memory to navigate, coordinate the movement of our bodies, and keep track of the hundreds of objects that compose our environment. But there are two fundamentally different ways to remember where things are: body-centered and environment-centered

I’m delighted to announce that I’ll be joining the faculty at @umassamherst.bsky.social next year as an assistant professor in Psychological & Brain Sciences! 🥳

I’ll be considering graduate school applications for Fall 2026 – positions are fully funded, typically for 5 years. Deadline to apply to the Cognition program is December 1. Come do science with me in beautiful Amherst, Massachusetts! www.umass.edu/natural-scie...

I’m delighted to announce that I’ll be joining the faculty at @umassamherst.bsky.social next year as an assistant professor in Psychological & Brain Sciences! 🥳