'Tis the season for presenting undergraduate research...

Denise, Justine and Linnea at UROP, presenting their poster on toddlers' understanding of social hierarchies. 

This is the time of year when our students present the work they've been doing in the lab since last fall. Many of our students present at two conferences: The first is the UCI Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) conference, which took place this year on May 19.

Congratulations, Ashley!

This week we learned that the postdoctoral fellowship proposal conceived and written by our very own soon-to-be-PhD Ashley is very likely to be funded by the National Institutes of Health! It all depends on the federal budget, but things are looking good. We celebrated by decorating the room for our lab meeting with huge signs saying "Congratulations Ashley, We are So Proud of You!"

Our Work Featured on Let Grow

Let Grow is a nonprofit organization devoted to challenging the idea that

kids today are somehow more physically, emotionally and psychologically fragile than any generation before. Their projects help people see for themselves how capable kids can be.

This week the Let Grow blog featured some writing by Prof. Sarnecka, talking about what we can do to help people see reason. (Yay, Reason!)

Welcome, Village Montessori Families!

Julissa, Kelsy and Amy meeting new families at Village Montessori 

Today, research assistants Julissa, Kelsy, and Amy visited Village Montessori to tell families about our lab and sign up families who want to participate. We gave out lots of slinkies and coloring books. It was lots of fun, and we look forward to working with all of the new children!

Rejection Party!

To our rejections!

We did it! We reached 100 rejections on our shared Rejection Collection and had a party to celebrate! Apologies for the slightly blurry photos, but everyone was having too much fun to pose for a picture. Our next goal: 200 rejections! (We already have 120, so I think we'll be having another party before too long.)

Our reality has become virtual!

Recently, Kelsy and Sharmin, with help from grad student Emily, won a UROP grant which helped the lab buy an Oculus Rift and Virtual Reality (VR)-capable computer. These tools will enable us to run participants on Shima, the VR game that Emily and her team built at the Games for Change Hackathon last summer. 

We've had lots of fun this week getting to know the Oculus and piloting Shima. Here are some pics of our RAs experiencing virtual reality for the first time. 

Congratulations to all our wonderful RAs!

The undergraduate research awards were announced this week, and our lab did great! CONGRATULATIONS to Hoang, Amy, Paula, Idalhi, Fatima, Tina, Shirley, Kelly, Charlene, Vivian, Ghadeer, Elisa and Silvia! And to Ashley and Emily, our wonderful PhD students, for mentoring the undergrads so successfully.

Happy Thanksgiving

Gratitude is one of the best emotions. It's easy to fall into the habit of looking forward to things in the future, and thinking that our happiness depends on those things. We think, I'll be so happy when I finally finish this project. But when the project is finished, almost immediately we start thinking of the next project, and we imagine that we'll be happy when it is finished. Or we think that our happiness depends on getting something we don't have yet, like a bachelor's degree, or a PhD, or a job, or a partner. Sometimes I think that I would be very happy if I had a chocolate donut. But when I eat a chocolate donut, I'm usually disappointed.

Psychonomics and SJDM 2017

This past week, Emily was in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia for two conferences: Psychonomics and the The Society for Judgment and Decision Making (SJDM). She presented at both meetings, and also got some time away from the conference to see the sights and take some photos.

Cognitive Development Society (CDS) 2017

Ashley and Emily traveled to Portland this week to present at the Cognitive Development Society's biannual meeting. Ashley organized a full-day pre-conference workshop titled, "Developing Theories of Naive Sociology." Emily presented at a different pre-conference workshop, "Digital Media and Cognitive Development." And Ashley and Emily both presented posters at the main conference. Way to go!

Ashley presenting a poster titled Children See Leaders as Benevolent 

At the Erikson Institute, Chicago

The folks at the Erikson Institute in Chicago invited me to present our lab's research at the Promising Math conference. They put together a great meeting. On Friday night I had time to do the walk along the Chicago river all the way to Lake Michigan, and it was SO lovely . . .

That's What We Call 'Machine Learning' . . .

Today in lab meeting, Emily and Eden demonstrated a new task that measures children's ability to figure out probabilities based on limited data. The children interact with 'machines' that have different probabilities of spitting out balls with stickers in them. To run the task, Eden has to dress all in black, with long black gloves, and hide under a black tablecloth so that the kids can't see her manipulating the machines from the back. Ah, the indignities we suffer for the sake of science.