Cognitive Science | Nick Byrd, Ph.D.

New Paper — Causal Network Accounts of Ill-being: Depression & Digital Well-being

Philosophers are stereotyped as studying things like, “What is a good life?” To break this stereotype, I’ve spent some time studying a different question, “What is a bad life?” More seriously, I have applied causal network accounts of well-being to ill-being, particularly depression and digital ill-being. My latest paper on this has now been accepted for publication in The Ethics of Digital Well-being (2020). So now I can share it. You you check out the abstract and acknowledgments (below), listen to the free audiopaper, and/or read the free preprint.

How Questions Can Enhance Teaching & Learning

I’m rereading James Lang’s Small Teaching (2016). The first time I read it, I found it to be outstandingly helpful for thinking about course design, lesson planning, assignments, and more. In this post, I want to share my notes from Lang’s chapter on “The Retrieval Effect” (Chapter 1).

New Talk: Great Minds Do Not Think Alike

I’ll be presenting new data from a pre-registered replication at some conferences in the next few months. The study replicated findings that those with a Ph.D. in philosophy are more reflective, that less reflective philosophers tended towards certain philosophical views, and that some of these reflection-philosophy correlations are partly confoudned with culture, education, gender, or personality.

March 2022 update: these data are in a paper that was accepted by Review of Philosophy & Psychology.

The meaning of ‘statistical significance’ and of p-values

A 2019 paper in the Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science found that most psychology textbooks, instructors, and students misinterpret ‘statistical significance’ and p-values. Talk about a headline! More important than the headline, however, are the right interpretations and what we can do to correct widespread misinterpretations. In this post, I explain the authors’ findings and the three solutions they propose.

Upon Reflection, Ep. 2: Not All Who Ponder Count Costs – Reflection & Moral Dilemmas

In this podcast episode , I’ll be reading Paul Conway’s and my recent paper about moral dilemmas entitled, “Not all who ponder count costs: Arithmetic reflection predicts utilitarian tendencies, but logical reflection predicts both deontological and utilitarian tendencies“. In this paper we find that—contrary to some dual process theories’ claims—consequentialist responses to moral dilemmas may not be more reflective per se, but rather more influenced by mathematical information. As with all of my papers, the free preprint of the paper can be found on my CV at byrdnick.com/cv under “Publications“.

A screen shot of Nick Byrd and Paul Conway's 2019 paper "Not All Who Ponder Count Costs"

If this sounds like the kind of research that you want to hear more about, you can subscribe to Upon Reflection wherever you find podcasts. You can also find out more about me and my research on Twitter via @byrd_nick, or on Facebook via @byrdnick. If you end up enjoying the Upon Reflection podcast, then feel free to tell people about it, online, in person, or in your ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:19:35 — 72.9MB)

Upon Reflection Podcast Ep. 1: What We Can Infer About Implicit Bias

Welcome to the first episode of Upon Reflection, a podcast about what we think as well as how and why we think it.

A screenshot of the first page of the paper "What We Can (And Can't) Infer About Implicit Bias From Debiasing Experiments".

In this podcast, I’ll be reading my paper entitled, “What We Can (And Can’t) Infer About Implicit Bias From Debiasing Experiments“. I argue that implicit bias is not entirely unconscious or involuntary, but it probably is associative. As with all of my papers, the free preprint of the paper can be found on my CV at byrdnick.com/cv under “Publications“.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 53:23 — 48.9MB)

The Upon Reflection Podcast, Ep. 0 – Introduction

Welcome to the first, introductory episode of Upon Reflection, a podcast about the philosophy of cognitive science and the cognitive science of philosophy.

The artwork for the Upon Reflection Podcast: a functional magnetic resonance image of the thinker.

In this podcast I’ll be sharing my own and others’ research with you. For instance, I’ll talk about the differences between intuition and reflection and how intuitive reasoning predicts different philosophical beliefs than reflective reasoning. I’ll also discuss topics like implicit bias and how—contrary to what you may have heard—implicit bias may not be entirely unconscious and involuntary. Of course, cognitive science is an interdisciplinary research community. So there will be much more to talk about.

If this sounds like the kind of research that you want to hear more about, you can subscribe to Upon Reflection wherever you find podcasts. You can also find out more about me and my research at @byrd_nick on Twitter, or @byrdnick on Facebook. If you end up enjoying the Upon Reflection podcast, then feel free to tell people about it, online, in person, or in your ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:22 — 2.6MB)

4 Free DIY Data Analysis & Statistics Tools

One of the questions I get a lot these days is, “How can I learn data analysis without actually taking a statistics course?” In this post, I will relay my answers to that question.

Continue reading 4 Free DIY Data Analysis & Statistics Tools

Debiasing in Administration, Advising, & Teaching

I recently published a paper about implicit bias and debiasing. The paper argues that implicit bias is probably associative, but that debiasing is not fully unconscious or involuntary. As with all of my papers, you can find the free preprint of the paper on my CV. Anyway, while I was working on that paper, it occurred to me that my views about implicit bias and debiasing had implications for institutions like universities. Specifically, my views implied that it should be relatively easy for education administrators, advisors, and teachers to incorporate debiasing into what they do—and no: I’m not talking about diversity trainings. I tested my prediction in my own classroom and the results were promising. Nonetheless, I wanted to hear my colleagues’ ideas about debiasing. So, I created a workshop about it. In this post, I’ll share the materials for the workshop. If your employer or your organization would like me to host this workshop, they can contact me.

New Paper: What We Can (And Can’t) Infer About Implicit Bias From Debiasing Experiments

Synthese has just published one of my papers on implicit bias. As with all of my papers, you can find a link to the free preprint on my CV: byrdnick.com/cv. The final, corrected, and typeset version is on Synthese’s website and the audio version is on my podcast. In this post, you will find a non-technical overview of the paper’s main point and then the TLDR explainer.

Continue reading New Paper: What We Can (And Can’t) Infer About Implicit Bias From Debiasing Experiments

Category: Cognitive Science