Jonas Dora

werkenbij.uva.nlVacancy — Postdoctoral Position in Modeling Cognitive FluctuationsCurious about why cognitive abilities fluctuate over time? Interested in using cognitive models and Bayesian hierarchical approaches to tackle complex, real-world data? Join this ERC-funded project to...

I'm super excited to share a new preprint in which @kevinmking.bsky.social and I propose an update to the affect regulation theory of alcohol use: "A mathematical and computational formalization of the affect regulation hypothesis of alcohol use" doi.org/10.31234/osf...

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Dora Matzke

@doramatzke.bsky.social

I’m hiring a postdoc in my lab at the University of Amsterdam! Interested in mathematical psychology, evidence-accumulation models & Bayesian hierarchical modeling? Join us to develop new models of cognitive fluctuations across multiple timescales. Please share! werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...

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Dr. Stephanie N. Mullins-Sweatt

@ssweatt.bsky.social

In addition to occasionally posting plants or puppies (& strong opinions on apples), I mentor students interested in personality pathology. My lab is recruiting a graduate student in clinical or personality psychology for Fall 2027 so please send folks my way. Reposts welcome. Thanks!

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moin syed

@syeducation.bsky.social

New diamond open access outlet for developmental psych. Free to publish, free to read, and led by a great team. One more step away from for-profit publishers.

Cam Hostinar, Ph.D.@camhostinar.bsky.social

I am pleased to announce the launch of our new diamond open access journal Psychology Across Development (accepting submissions starting today!). We are a lifespan developmental journal. (1/3) escholarship.org/uc/psycdev

escholarship.orgescholarship.org

Very cool new paper by @aleksakaurin.bsky.social, Mario Wenzel, @paulaphilippi.bsky.social using some of my K99 data: osf.io/preprints/ps... EMA studies often ask people how they feel several times a day. But when is a change bigger than measurement noise? And does the person actually feel change?

The average effect can still hold across many reports, and since noise shrinks it, that could mean the true effect is even larger. But it can't tell you that this person's stress actually rose right now. That matters as soon as you act on single moments, like JIT interventions.

And people's own "I feel different" reports aren't the solution: they catch real changes but often report change the ratings don't show. What could help: finer scales, multiple items per state, and acting on a single change only if it's bigger than the noise (here, 2+ points).

Big changes were rarely missed (sensitivity .77–.87), and people usually got the direction right. But they often reported change when none was reliable. Specificity was about .5, and only about 1 in 4 "I feel different" reports matched a reliable change.

My takeaway from this study: on a 0–4 scale, a 1-point change may be just noise, even though people do feel changes that small. So if a model finds that a 1-point increase in stress predicts, say, some behavior, that effect is about shifts we can't reliably detect in any single moment.

The SDC was 1.56–1.92 points on a 0–4 scale. Since ratings move in whole points, that means only a jump of 2+ points counts as reliable. About three-quarters of all consecutive changes fell within the noise.

The MIC was 1 point, the smallest change the scale can show. Even when the rating didn't move at all, people said they felt different 35–45% of the time. So the bar for feeling a change (1 point) sits below the bar for measuring one (2 points): Felt, but not detected.

First, we asked how much do ratings vary when nothing much happened? We defined "stable pairs" as two back-to-back scheduled prompts with no stressors reported. It's like stepping on a bathroom scale twice back-to-back: the difference is mostly noise.

That gives the Smallest Detectable Change (SDC): how big a change must be before you can trust it isn't noise. And we calculated the Minimal Important Change (MIC): at what change size do people start saying "yes, I feel different"?

@drandreahoward.bsky.social

In this study, 250 adults completed 2 scheduled prompts a day plus self-initiated prompts after stressful events for 14 days. Each time, people rated current stress, positive and negative affect (0–4). They also said whether each had changed since the last prompt (−2 to +2).

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Kevin M. King

@kevinmking.bsky.social

This is ridiculous. The only avenue for fellowships for international scholars has been the K99. It was already so hard to get, and now there is no way for them to come and train and build a career in the US. It will decimate our ability to recruit the best scholars around the world.

This post is unavailable.

Jonas Dora reposted

ProPublica

@propublica.org

Hey, ProPublica reporter Jake Pearson here. I’m taking over the account to tell you about my new story. For months, I posed as a problem gambler on DraftKings to test the company's "responsible gaming" safeguards. Spoiler alert: They made me a VIP — and I lost $10K. Here's how it all went down. 🧵

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Andrea Howard

18 Sept

New paper from me, out soon in Behavior Research Methods: I'm a lil bit obsessed with good online recruitment and the result is this side-quest paper that made use of data we had collected that recruited people online in three ways (met them on Zoom, validated their email, and Prolific). 🧵>>

PsyArXivBot@psyarxivbot.bsky.social

Engagement begins at recruitment: Comparing videoconference verification to passive online screening for participant retention and study engagement: https://osf.io/5qe6c

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Tom Rodebaugh

@drrodebaugh.bsky.social

15 Sept

I'll be reviewing applications for a new student or two for UNC-CH's clinical psychology PhD program! Social anxiety, pain, intensive longitudinal data, all that fun stuff. What prospective applicants get if they email me (so no need): docs.google.com/document/d/1... Lab: tarheels.live/rodelab/

tarheels.liveWelcome to the Rodebaugh Lab Website - Rodebaugh LaboratoryWelcome to the Rodebaugh lab website! Here you can learn about what Dr. Rodebaugh & colleagues are working on and what research is being conducted.

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Kevin M. King

@kevinmking.bsky.social

This a very exciting piece of work from @jonasdora.bsky.social . Jonas presents a mathematical and computational theory of affect regulation and alcohol use. This is a major advance in the field.

Jonas Dora@jonasdora.bsky.social

Jonas Dora reposted

PsyArXivBot

@psyarxivbot.bsky.social

A mathematical and computational formalization of the affect regulation hypothesis of alcohol use: https://osf.io/znsvf

Huge thanks to @kevinmking.bsky.social; this (to me at least) is the most important step in a line of research we've been working on and towards since I started my postdoc with Kevin all the way back in 2020.

Multiple of our data collections over the past years were run to inform/prepare this paper, e.g. doi.org/10.1111/add.... (lab) and doi.org/10.31234/osf... (daily life). The code for our model is here: osf.io/8hkvr/. I have been working on this for a long time, so it's so cool to finally share it :)

To be clear, should the model be thoroughly refuted within the next five or ten years, we would be thrilled, and would count it a resounding success; for that is what distinguishes a theory that participates in science from one that merely persists.

I've left out a LOT here. The paper builds the model piece by piece, with every equation, simulation, and prediction laid out in full, plus much I couldn't fit into this thread. We'd be very happy if you read it and told us what you think. All feedback is very welcome :)

It also makes novel predictions, and for each we lay out the study design that would test or refute it. We tried to say, in advance and in detail, what would prove our model wrong.

For the core predictions we didn't just state them. We simulated the proposed study AND a rival account beside it, so both the expected effect and the pattern that would count as support are derived directly from the model.

So what does the model actually claim? Most important are 3 commitments: affect reaches behavior through the urge to drink; stress biases choice by raising the value of alcohol; and context gates the path from urge to drink.

This lets us show that the laboratory–EMA paradox, the pattern verbal theory can't explain, can be an expected consequence of our model rather than an anomaly. And it doesn't only reproduce this paradox; the same architecture recreates several other established lab and EMA findings at once.

I cycled between verbal idea, math, and simulation many, many times over the past 5 years, and learned a ton doing it. A claim that sounded sensible in words couldn't be written as an equation; a simulation would refuse to align with the literature it was meant to reproduce, etc.

I cannot overstate how useful that back-and-forth between words, math, and code was for my understanding. And it doesn't stop now: the moment we observe a finding the model can't accommodate, we can point to the exact equation where it goes wrong, and we cannot avoid revising the model.

We argue this is not an issue of data, but of theory. The verbal affect regulation accounts are simply too vague; they can accommodate almost any result, so nothing ever contradicts them. What we need is theory specific enough that it CAN be wrong.

And words, we think, are simply the wrong language for that. So instead, we specified the affect regulation hypothesis as a system of equations, and implemented it as a computational model we can simulate from.

While experimentally inducing stress in the lab reliably raises both the urge to drink AND drinking, in daily life negative affect predicts the urge but NOT drinking, and positive affect predicts drinking instead.

The dominant affect regulation accounts cannot explain this, but also seem oddly untroubled by it; the field's collective belief in affect regulation appears pretty much unchanged since these daily life findings have been established.

Affect regulation, the idea that people drink to relieve stress and negative affect, is one of the central organizing frameworks in addiction science. Yet after decades of research, the field still can't say when, for whom, or why it happens. And it faces a robust empirical paradox.

statnews.comNIH plans to block international researchers on visas from accessing key funding avenueThe NIH plans to close the door on one of the few pathways available to international students on visas to forge a career in biomedical research in the U.S.

7 Aug

As an international postdoc on a temporary visa, this was the only NIH grant I was able to apply for at the time (and I was lucky enough to get it on my second attempt). I'd like to think this relatively small investment (relative to their budget) in me had a pretty decent ROI for NIH so far :)

anil oza@aniloza.bsky.social

NIH is planning on revoking eligibility for international students on visas for the K99/R00 pathway, a key program that supports postdocs in establishing their own labs www.statnews.com/2026/08/07/n...

Patrick Mulholland (He/Him)

4 July

It's insane to me how many papers I review in which a slope is plotted with no SE or CI around it. Uncertainty quantification is what statistics is all about!

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@mulhollandlab.bsky.social

22 June

Hey #RSA2026, we have open #postdoc slots on our #NIAAA T32 training grant - apply now!!! medicine.musc.edu/departments/...

medicine.musc.eduNIAAA T32 Training GrantTrainees are provided with mentorship and direct training, as well as didactic lessons that stress both clinical and basic science aspects of alcohol abuse.

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Aleksa Kaurin

@aleksakaurin.bsky.social

21 June

Thrilled (really) to share recent evidence from our READY study led by @paulaphilippi.bsky.social w/ @aidangcw.bsky.social: "Minutes that matter: A microburst approach to adolescents' resolution of affect in response to daily stressors" 🧵1/9

Aleksa Kaurin@aleksakaurin.bsky.social

Minutes that matter: A microburst approach to adolescents’ resolution of affect in response to daily stressors osf.io/preprints/ps...

osf.ioOSF

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