Rodney Tompkins
Psychology PhD student at UC San Diego, interested in what younger and older humans think about care and protection. Also a meerkat enthusiast.
sites.google.com/view/rtompkins/
- Reposted by Rodney Tompkins💥New paper alert! Dyadic Decisions About Effort: How Caregivers Shape Young Children’s Persistence (with @reutshachnai.bsky.social) One of my favorites! If you’re curious about what we’ve been up to in @leonardlearnlab.bsky.social, take a look! journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsThe Visual Learning Lab is hiring TWO lab coordinators! Both positions are ideal for someone looking for research experience before applying to graduate school. Application deadline is Feb 10th (approaching fast!)—with flexible summer start dates.
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsNew w/ @drbarner.bsky.social! We argue that children's struggle to represent the past and future in common tests of knowledge may stem from difficulties in hypothetical reasoning about imaginary timelines, rather than a lack of knowledge about time. 1/n academic.oup.com/chidev/advan...
- Reposted by Rodney Tompkins#AcademicSky #PrejudiceResearch New paper out by Paolini et al. on habit-ruptures in intergroup contact www.nature.com/articles/s44... (If you like that, our also team has a related paper in press at American Psychologist, led by Rose Meleady) psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...
- Reposted by Rodney Tompkins🧵 New preprint with my advisor, Alex Shaw! We asked: What does “popularity” actually mean? Is it a distinct status category with specific features? We turned to elementary-schoolers, who have just begun to experience their own "popularity hierarchies," for some answers. osf.io/preprints/ps...
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsIn a new paper, my colleagues and I set out to demonstrate how method biases can create spurious findings in relationship science, by using a seemingly meaningless scale (e.g., "My relationship has very good Saturn") to predict relationship outcomes. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
- Reposted by Rodney Tompkins🚨DEADLINE EXTENDED🚨 The extended submission deadline is January 30, 2026. Submit your work here:
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsA fascinating new paper by Amanda Royka and colleagues explores why monkeys fail false belief tasks. A natural explanation would be that monkeys wrongly assume that other agents share their own knowledge. Royka et al. find that this is NOT the case... www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsA thread on our recent paper (w/Raihan Alam @raihanalam) in PNAS on why punishment often fails and what it means for crime, cooperation, democracy, and the rule of law. I’m super excited for it, it’s the lab’s most extensive experimental work to date. Check it out! 1/ www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....
- Reposted by Rodney Tompkins📣 #CogSci2026 submissions now OPEN! 🔍 Review the submission guidelines ⬇️ Download the required templates 📅 Make note of key deadline dates cognitivesciencesociety.org/submissions/
- Reposted by Rodney Tompkinssome parents, esp white parents, fail to answer their children's questions about race or provide colorblind messages ("race is not important"). but are these effective? 🗣️ we find they aren't! structural explanations seem to be more constructive (1/5) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsIn the running for greatest human accomplishment.
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsExcited to share our new paper in Cognitive Development! We replicate that children punish for both retributive and consequentialist reasons — and, surprisingly, intergroup context doesn’t change these effects. tinyurl.com/ycyhcn5a Check in out! ✨
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsNew perspective paper (w/ @sedaakbiyik.bsky.social, Joseph Outa, & @minjaek.bsky.social ) in @natrevpsychol.nature.com ⚽💭🧠👶 : www.nature.com/articles/s44...
- Reposted by Rodney Tompkins👉 Our new paper uses daily mobility data to show that spatial isolation is much more common today among those living in advantaged neighborhoods than the converse. 👩🏻💻 Lots of massive data wrangling and careful assumptions about mobility data needed - but check it out here! doi.org/10.1177/0042...
- Reposted by Rodney Tompkins🚨🚨🚨 Our 52nd Annual Meeting will be held from June 18–20, 2026 at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, with a pre-conference on Mental Control and Agency held at JHU on June 17 🚨🚨🚨 We are currently inviting submissions of papers (talks and posters)!
- Reposted by Rodney Tompkins
Are you a US-based PhD student WITHOUT summer funding who is interested in adolescent development, trans youth, and/or gender? Reach out to me about applying to join my lab in Summer 2026 for the VIPS program! psych.princeton.edu/diversity/vi... - Reposted by Rodney TompkinsWe are recruiting a lab manager/research assistant to start in early 2026! The successful candidate will conduct awake infant fMRI, meet cute babies, and join a fun team! More details (e.g. responsibilities): soc.stanford.edu/people/#join... Apply here: careersearch.stanford.edu/jobs/social-...
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsHappy to share this new entry on numerical cognition for the OECS. Thanks to @hbaum.bsky.social and @mcxfrank.bsky.social for making this happen! Apologies if your work isn’t cited! Had to limit cites!!! oecs.mit.edu/pub/rek9756r...
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- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsJust in: @drbarner.bsky.social & I find that blind adults and children who have symbols for large numbers, and use 1:1 correspondence to count, do not extend a similar 1:1 strategy to a set-matching task, which assesses their knowledge of Hume’s principle. A 🧵: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsAre humans really the only rational animals? Our NEW PAPER 🎉 out in @science.org suggests otherwise! In a large collaboration led with my joint first author @hanna-schleihauf.bsky.social, we show that “Chimpanzees rationally revise their beliefs” 🧵
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsNew article w/ M Pabla & @orifriedman.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... When children claim an unexpected event is impossible they also claim it's never happened, even for immoral events, suggesting their judgments reflect beliefs about what could happen & not merely what should.
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsExcited to announce DID lab's first paper! psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-... We find that children as young as 6 show political ingroup preference! First paper of very talented @annie-schw.bsky.social! In JEP: General's special issue on political development (1/3)
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsWe’re recruiting a postdoctoral fellow to join our team! 🎉 I’m happy to share that I’ve opened back up the search for this position (it was temporarily closed due to funding uncertainty). See lab page and doc below for details!
- The Visual Learning Lab at UC San Diego is looking for a postdoctoral research fellow to join our lab! Read more about our lab at www.vislearnlab.org
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsSpread the word: I'm looking to recruit a PhD student for Fall 2026 to @ucsb.bsky.social! Reach out if you are applying this cycle and hoping to study infant and child social cognition, specifically expectations about friendship and/or groups. Bonus: live in paradise! And.. 1/3
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- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsExcited to share a new paper in Current Directions on the theme of merging in close relationships, with @emmamcgorray.bsky.social, @erinhughes.bsky.social , and @abdoe.bsky.social! In the paper, we discuss merging in the domains of selves, goals, processing, and reality. tinyurl.com/ynbedzys (1/4)
- Reposted by Rodney Tompkins📣 new paper! people use some categories to generalize (e.g., we generalize something we learn about one tiger 🐯 to other tigers 🐅), but not others (e.g., we don't generalize from one pedestrian 🚶 to other pedestrians 🚶♂️). how do people learn what categories allow for generalization? 🧵
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsI and my lab are happy to be at #cogsci2025! Here's a shortcut to find work from the fabulous folks in my lab (and me) 😄
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsThe SoCal Lab is headed to #cogsci2025 this week! Here's where you can find us:
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsA new piece - well, almost a whole book! - by our team, reflecting more than a decade of work.
- 💙 SRCD is pleased to announce the latest Monograph on gender identities and sexual orientation across childhood and adolescence. Read the full issue here: srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsNew preprint! Led by Bill Pepe, with @brandonwoo.bsky.social and @ashleyjthomas.bsky.social. We asked if infants think helping and hindering stem from actors' dispositions (i.e. good/nice v bad/mean) or their social relationships, by testing expectations for future behavior: osf.io/preprints/ps...
- Reposted by Rodney Tompkins⭐ Out now in Developmental Science ⭐ "Sounds of Hidden Agents: The development of causal reasoning about musical sounds" (by Minju Kim and me) causal reasoning, music/auditory cognition, event reconstruction, kids' integration of information... onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1...
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsI'm hiring a full-time #labmanager for my new Lab for Infant Learning and Cognition (LILAC) at UCSB! The start date is flexible, but could be as early as August 1, 2025. Application review begins July 17th and will continue until the position is filled 👶🪴 recruit.ap.ucsb.edu/JPF02992 #academicjobs
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsExperimentology is out today!!! A group of us wrote a free online textbook for experimental methods, available at experimentology.io - the idea was to integrate open science into all aspects of the experimental workflow from planning to design, analysis, and writing.
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsExcited that this paper is finally out (in collaboration with @zoeliberman.bsky.social @saraburke.bsky.social & Brenda Major) in PSPB! journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
- New paper with past honors student Vanessa Chao and @zoeliberman.bsky.social in press at JECP: “Children can consider social relationships when evaluating liars” By the early elementary school years, people judge it as worse and meaner for a friend (vs. classmate) to lie. doi.org/10.1016/j.je...
- Past work shows that older children and adults (but not younger children) expect and judge friends as obligated to help, and evaluate a friend (vs. classmate) as meaner for failing to do so.
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- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsNew paper from Laura Lewis and Jan Engelmann et al. (including me) with a clever new method. Chimps and kids will forgo reward to get a chance to look at social interactions royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....
- Reposted by Rodney Tompkins🥳🥳 New paper in @nathumbehav.nature.com: “When development constricts our moral circle." Contrary to popular belief, younger kids may start out with broader moral circles than older ones. Check it out here 👉 rdcu.be/eoaSe w/ @mattiwilks.bsky.social @karrineldner.bsky.social & Lucius Caviola
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsNSF Physics was cut by 85%, basically wiping out most of its capacity for supporting research. NSF Astronomy was cut by 53% Undergrad education was cut by 71% and research on learning by 79% Graduate education was cut by 100% to ZERO. #GiftLink ⚛️🔭 www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
- UC San Diego Psychology hosted the first Southern California Meeting for Investigations in Developmental Science (SoCal MInDS) this Saturday. We were joined by wonderful folks from the southernmost UC campuses, SDSU, CSULA, Occidental College, and USC.
- Planning started in October 2024, and I had a very different idea of the context/circumstances this meeting would take place in.
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsIf you are attending #CogSci2025 I hope you will consider attending our pre-conference workshop on July 29 - "Putting it Together: Interactions Between Domains of Cognition" sites.google.com/view/cogsci2...
- Reposted by Rodney Tompkinsbit of good news: approved technical staff position! link below. please be in touch if this matches your skills & interests! drive.google.com/file/d/16J2J... (hr listing posted harvard-internal now; external soon, per guidelines), happy for ?s & plan on quick turnaround! #CogSciSky #PsychSciSky 🐦🐦
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsNew preprint! Despite ongoing efforts to combat gender bias in education, our work reveals a striking and under-explored challenge: By the time children enter elementary school, children already expect adults to hold gender stereotypes and approve when adults act on them. osf.io/preprints/ps...
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsWanted to share a handy little resource with you all (especially those in dev psych) — my lab & I made a "journal submission cheat sheet" that summarizes article types, word limits, & other requirements for the journals we typically submit to. Link below 👇🏼 docs.google.com/spreadsheets...
- Reposted by Rodney Tompkins#SRCD25, I and my lab are here! Come see @rtompkins.bsky.social on social reasoning from sleep arrangements-Th 10-11:20am talk 3, room 200B; R Santiago on how children use objects’ placements to learn about people-Fri 10:50 Poster 90; & K Han on the origins of dance in infancy-Sat 10:30, Poster 52!
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsI'm sad to miss #SRCD2025 but @rtompkins.bsky.social is there and one of his presentations is on work we've been doing together: osf.io/preprints/ps.... Ever wonder what children think about caregivers who stop kids from doing dangerous things? Go to his talk (Thurs 11:50 am session) to find out!
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsCheck out our symposium on *parents' lay theories of cognitive development* at #SRCD2025! Ft. work by @reutshachnai.bsky.social, @julia-a-leonard.bsky.social, @dominicgibson.bsky.social, and yours truly, discussed by @andrewshtulman.bsky.social !
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsCome check out our symposium at #SRCD2025: "Navigating social groups and relationships"! There'll be talks by Sarah Ramsey, Rongzhi Liu, @rtompkins.bsky.social, and me. Thursday at 10 am.
- Reposted by Rodney TompkinsCome check out the UChicago Social Kids Lab (PIs Katherine Kinzler and Alex Shaw) at #SRCD2025. My labmates have lots of exciting projects I can't wait to watch them present.
