Patricia Lockwood

How does the brain decide which mental strategy to use when inferring others' beliefs?

Excited to (finally!) see my first first-author paper out @natneuro.nature.com

Summary below 🧵 #CogSci #CogNeuro

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

S4SN 2026 Join S4SN 2026, August 23-26, 2026. Learn more on Fourwaves.

Join us in beautiful Montreal for the 2026 S4SN Conference (Aug 23–26)!

Share your latest research, spark new collaborations, and engage with a vibrant social neuroscience community!

Symposium proposals and individual abstract submissions are underway: event.fourwaves.com/s4sn2026/pages

Come work with @tsawallis.bsky.social, Frank Jäkel and myself! 3 yr Postdoc on category learning w/ structured, program-like representations. Funded by the www.theadaptivemind.de Excellence Cluster! Deadline is Mar 15th, details 👇 Please share widely 🙏

a penguin is sticking his head out of a hole next to a job application ALT: a penguin is sticking his head out of a hole next to a job application

🚨 JOB alert: 📢
We are looking for a PhD student to work on our international @wellcometrust.bsky.social project on information gathering in OCD and Schizophrenia!
If you have a background in computational psychiatry / neuroimnaging and speak German, apply here: devcompsy.org/wp-content/u...

Thanks so much ☺️

Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Social Decision Neuroscience at University of Birmingham Explore an exciting academic career as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Social Decision Neuroscience. Don't miss out on other academic jobs. Click to apply and explore more opportunities.

We are recruiting! Postdoctoral research fellow at www.sdn-lab.org, studying the computational & neural basis of social decision-making. Birmingham is a fantastic & affordable place to live, with one of the youngest populations in Europe & over 600 parks. Please share!
www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQO275/p...

New @sdnl.bsky.social paper: Humans are more prosocial in poor foraging environments 👇

The Role of Memory in Temporal Discounting A widely observed phenomenon in intertemporal choice is temporal discounting; people prefer to have rewards sooner rather than later, even if the delayed rewards are larger. Despite the universality o...

So excited that this textbook, edited by @dfareri.bsky.social @dvsmith.bsky.social & @thepsychologist.bsky.social is out now! And so happy to have been invited to contribute. Here’s my chapter on the role of memory, esp. semantic memory, in temporal discounting: link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

Emotion and Choice: The Integral Role of Emotion in Constructing Value In the centuries-long history of decision-making research, emotion’s role in choice has only been investigated relatively recently. Early theories of decision-making, which conceived of emotions...

Check out @orielf.bsky.social & I's chapter "Emotion and Choice: The Integral Role of Emotion in Constructing Value" in the new volume, Neuroeconomics: Core Topics and Current Directions, edited by @dvsmith.bsky.social @thepsychologist.bsky.social & @dfareri.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1007/978-...

Attention Dynamics: Antecedents to Consumer Choice This chapter reviews four decades of research on consumer attention and decision-making, focusing on how visual information influences preferences, attitudes, and choice. It traces methodological adva...

The new book, "Neuroeconomics: Core Topics and Current Directions" is out! Here is my chapter on consumer attention. 👀Thanks to @dvsmith.bsky.social @thepsychologist.bsky.social @dfareri.bsky.social for their excellent leadership as editors.
#science #attention #eyetracking #marketing

📣 New book chapter

Excited to see my chapter "The Neural Mechanisms of Strategic Decision-Making" finally out in a new book, "Neuroeconomics: Core Topics and Current Directions", edited by @dvsmith.bsky.social, @thepsychologist.bsky.social, and Dominic Fareri.

link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

Decomposing Economic Choices with Drift-Diffusion Models Many decisions arise from a dynamic process of information accumulation and comparison. Thus, to fully understand decision-making, we must decompose the choice process into its parts. Here, we review ...

Chapter 📖 "Decomposing Economic Choices with Drift-Diffusion Models" with @krajbichlab.bsky.social and Xiaozhi (Taro) Yang is out in, "Neuroeconomics: Core Topics and Current Directions" edited by @dvsmith.bsky.social, @thepsychologist.bsky.social, @dfareri.bsky.social
tinyurl.com/yey56tup

The Neuroeconomics of Social Influence and Contagion People often adjust their behaviours and preferences to align with others, a phenomenon termed social influence or social contagion. Social influence can have a profound effect on our economic prefere...

🎉 New book chapter 🎉

Very thrilled to share our new chapter ‘The neuroeconomics of social influence and contagion’ co-authored with @thepsychologist.bsky.social, now out in the edited volume, ‘Neuroeconomics: Core topics and current directions’!

link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

Interested in applying for a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellowship (deadline September 2026) with me in decision neuroscience and economics (social and strategic decision making, cooperation, value-based choice, fMRI, computational modeling)? (1/2)

How can we encourage people to put in effort to benefit the climate? Our new task can help tell us how...

Images show effortful pro-environmental behaviours of recycling and cycling and alternatives of an overflowing bin or driving

🌎 New paper in @commspsychol.nature.com 🌍

doi.org/10.1038/s442...

There is an urgent need to choose behaviours that mitigate climate change, but these are often more effortful. Can we increase pro-environmental motivation?

Joint w/ Luis Sebastian Contreras-Huerta & amazing international team 👇🧵

Nearly ready to go! Mechanistic Basis of Foraging 2025!

How Dopamine Affects Our Motivation to Help Others New research shows patients with Parkinson's disease were more willing to help others after taking their dopamine-boosting medication.

Does dopamine modulate the willingness to help?

New Psychology Today post, "How Dopamine Affects Our Motivation to Help Others", written by me, with special thanks to @drjocutler.bsky.social and @thepsychologist.bsky.social

www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-...

The computational and neural dynamics of human motivation and cognitive control at University of Birmingham on FindAPhD.com PhD Project - The computational and neural dynamics of human motivation and cognitive control at University of Birmingham, listed on FindAPhD.com

Looking for a PhD? Interested in cognitive computational neuroscience, motivation and decision-making? See our project listed in the BBSRC MIBTP competition for funding for a 4-year PhD in the @msnlab.bsky.social in the @thechbh.bsky.social. Deadline 27/11. More info: tinyurl.com/5d5vz8m7

Great to see this out! Exciting work led by @shawnrhoadsphd.com on how we learn when actions affect ourselves and others 🧠

w/ @aa-marsh.bsky.social, @k-oconnell.com, Kathryn Berluti, & Lin Gan plus @thepsychologist.bsky.social & me @sdnl.bsky.social, @thechbh.bsky.social, @uob-sop.bsky.social

Autistic and non-autistic prosocial decision-making: The impact of recipient neurotype A body of research suggests cross-neurotype interpersonal interactions may be more challenging, and non-autistic individuals show less interest in int…

Very happy to see this published! Registered report led by the fantastic Sophie Sowden-Carvalho (and with @thepsychologist.bsky.social & @brainapps.bsky.social) looking at effort-based prosocial decision-making in autistic and non-autistic adults. tinyurl.com/3upvukt2
See thread below for more info⭐️

Thanks so much for coming and for your fantastic talk!

CSC 2025

Today's the day we welcome over 80 participants, instructors & keynote speakers from all over the world to @uob-sop.bsky.social @unibirmingham.bsky.social for the Computational Social Cognition (CSC) Summer School with @leidenpsychology.bsky.social @unileiden.bsky.social

#CSC2025
www.compsoccog.com

🚨📚 New book! I’m thrilled to share that our edited volume, Neuroeconomics: Core Topics and Current Directions (Springer Nature), will be out later this year. Co-edited with @thepsychologist.bsky.social and @dfareri.bsky.social — huge thanks to all our brilliant contributors.
🧵 (1/12)

I am delighted to announce registration and abstract submission is open for "The Mechanistic Basis of Foraging 2025" to be held at the Edgbaston Park Hotel, University of Birmingham, UK on 3-5th November 2025. uobevents.eventsair.com/the-mechanis...

Thank you! 🙂

Yes! We suggest that in addition to WEIRD, limiting research to a specific age group is under appreciated and shapes cognitive science particularly when research is shifting to asking if AI is ‘human’ but the human benchmark is young adults and there are substantial lifespan differences

Thanks ☺️

Relying on PRIME young adults limits cognitive science Cognitive science has made remarkable strides in understanding cognition and behaviour. However, a critical issue persists. Most studies focus on PRIME populations – young adults who are productive, r...

“Relying on PRIME young adults limits cognitive science” www.cell.com/trends/cogni... new @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social piece with @connectedmindslab.bsky.social we highlight how a focus on young adults as a benchmark of ‘human’ behaviour has shaped cognitive science in several ways 👇

Less than a week left to apply for this PhD studentship in my lab at @birkbeckpsychology.bsky.social !

Deadline Sun 6th July

Model-based algorithms shape automatic evaluative processing | PNAS Computational theories of reinforcement learning suggest that two families of algorithm—model-based and model-free—tightly map onto the classic dis...

A key takeaway from 20+ years of computational RL is: model-free=automatic, model-based=deliberate. My new paper w/ @benedek.bsky.social challenges this view, suggesting that MB algos are more ubiquitous, & automatic processing more sophisticated, than currently thought: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...