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Alex Mackiel

@amackiel

PhD student in Developmental Psychology at The University of Chicago studying social cognitive development: relationships and morality.

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24.05.2025
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Latest posts by Alex Mackiel @amackiel

I’m excited to present my research on how kids (Thursday) and adults (Saturday) reason about help requests as diagnostic cues of friendship strength at #SPSP2026 with the DIBS Lab (PI: Alex Shaw)

26.02.2026 12:33 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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⭐ 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...

03.07.2025 21:12 πŸ‘ 30 πŸ” 7 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0
APA PsycNet

Pleased to announce my new open access paper out in Developmental Psychology:
The Development of the β€œFirst Thing That Comes to Mind”

with @xphilosopher.bsky.social and @ebonawitz.bsky.social

psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2026-25569-001.html

#CogSci #PsychSciSki #DevSci

(1/10)

17.06.2025 08:35 πŸ‘ 53 πŸ” 19 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1

1. New paper first-authored by former post-doc Young-eun Lee (currently at MIT with @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social) now in press at JECP! More info in thread below, full text here: columbiasamclab.weebly.com/uploads/5/9/....
πŸ§ͺ #PsychSciSky #SocialPsyc #DevPsyc #CogPsyc @socphilpsych.bsky.social

09.06.2025 19:29 πŸ‘ 15 πŸ” 6 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 1
Preview
Trump’s Attacks Threaten Much More Than Harvard If the government succeeds in bullying the richest university into submission, what institutions will be safe?

β€œConservatism once warned against the dangers of unilateral executive power. But today’s Republican White House happily wields that very power to crush its cultural rivals.”
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

30.05.2025 19:50 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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"Shamanism" by @manvir.bsky.social is now out. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/730339.... It's a deep, original, and fun bookβ€”highly recommended. My blurb:

20.05.2025 18:06 πŸ‘ 21 πŸ” 9 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Sometimes people say its fair for those with advantage to get more (best office to the CEO...); other times, the opposite seems more fair (... charity to the needy). In this new work, Arthur and Xavier try to explain why. See the preprint link and explainer thread below:

osf.io/preprints/ps...

20.05.2025 16:59 πŸ‘ 13 πŸ” 5 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
OSF

Preprint of data from my first project as a postdoc with With @rebeccasaxe.bsky.social and Liz Spelke. Data and writing from 2019, figures are new :) osf.io/preprints/ps...

First, we replicate @lindseypowell.bsky.social 's finding that infants reach for imitators using a very different setup.

23.05.2025 21:05 πŸ‘ 23 πŸ” 6 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Thank you to Alex Mackiel and Amanda Woodward, who also wondered about the social availability hyp. in their forthcoming commentary on my paper a bout relationships (my paper here, www.cambridge.org/core/service...) not yet their commentary).

23.05.2025 21:05 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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It was a great time giving the moral development lecture to the Developmental Psychology class I'm a teaching assistant for this academic term.

24.05.2025 23:46 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0