Publications

Cognitive development // Computational modeling // Cross-cultural study // Behavioral data with adults

Representative publications

  • Jara-Ettinger, J., & Dunham, Y., (in prep). The Institutional Stance.

  • Jara-Ettinger, J., & Rubio-Fernandez, P. (2021). Quantitative mental-state attributions from linguistic events. Science Advances.

  • Royka, A., Chen, A., Aboody, R., Huanca, T., & Jara-Ettinger, J. (2022). People infer communicative action through an expectation for efficient communication. Nature Communications.

  • Jara-Ettinger, J., (2019). Theory of mind as inverse reinforcement learning. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences.

  • Jara-Ettinger, J., Gweon, H., Schulz, L. E., & Tenenbaum, J.B. (2016). The naive utility calculus: Computational principles underlying commonsense psychology. Trends in Cognitive Sciences (TiCS).

  • Jara-Ettinger, J., & Rubio-Fernandez, P. (2024) Demonstratives as attention tools: Evidence of mentalistic representations within language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

    • Under review / pre-prints

    1. Jara-Ettinger, J., & Dunham, Y., (in prep). The Institutional Stance.

    2. Asaba, M., Davis, I., Leonard, J., & Jara-Ettinger, J., (under review). Detecting social biases using mental state inference.

    3. Horschler, D., Berke, M., Santos, L., & Jara-Ettinger, J., (under review). Differences Between Human and Non-Human Primate Theory of Mind: Evidence from Computational Modeling.

    4. Jacobs, C., Briscoe, M., Aboody, R., & Jara-Ettinger, J., (under review). Social inference in an empty room: children use indirect evidence to infer an agent's past actions.[ Email ]

    5. Aboody, R., Davis, I., Dunham, Y., & Jara-Ettinger, J., (under review). People can infer the magnitude of other people's knowledge, even when they cannot infer its contents.

    6. Aboody, R., Zhou, C., & Jara-Ettinger, J., (under review). Children's understanding of how past experience shapes future expectations.

    7. Aboody, R., Lu, J., Denison, S., & Jara-Ettinger, J., (under review). An ability to integrate probability and epistemic reasoning is later-developing than either in isolation.

      8. 2024

    8. Rubio-Fernandez, P., Berke, M., & Jara-Ettinger, J. (in press). Tracking Minds in Communication. Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

    9. Asaba, M., Santos, M., Jara-Ettinger, J., & Leonard, J. (in press). Adolescents report being most motivated by encouragement from people who know their abilities and the domain. Developmental Psychology.

    10. Tompkins, R., Jara-Ettinger, J., & Schachner, A., (in press). Societal inferences from the physical world. Commentary on Moffett. Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

    11. Ronderos, C. R., Aparicio, H., Long, M., Shukla, V., Jara-Ettinger, J., & Rubio-Fernandez, P. (2024). Perceptual, Semantic, and Pragmatic Factors Affect the Derivation of Contrastive Inferences. Open Mind.

    12. Ongchoco, J., Davis, I., Jara-Ettinger, J., & Paul, L. (2024). When new experience leads to new knowledge: A computational framework for formalizing epistemically transformative experiences. Open Mind.

    13. Jara-Ettinger, J., Baker, C., Ullman, T,. & Tenenbaum, J. Theory of Mind and Inverse Decision Making. In Griffiths, T.L., Chater, N, & Tenenbaum, J.B. (2024). Bayesian models of cognition: Reverse-engineering the mind. MIT Press. [Full book]

    14. Jara-Ettinger, J., & Rubio-Fernandez, P. (2024) Demonstratives as attention tools: Evidence of mentalistic representations within language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

    15. Goel, S., Jara-Ettinger, J., Ong, D., & Gendron, M. (2024) Face and context integration in emotion inference is limited and variable across categories and individuals. Nature Communications.

    16. Zhang, F., Bloom, P., Jara-Ettinger, J. (2024) People have systematically different ownership intuitions in seemingly simple cases. Psychological Science.

    17. Berke, M., Azerbayev, Z., Belledonne, M., Tavares, Z., & Jara-Ettinger, J., (2024). MetaCOG: A Hierarchical Probabilistic Model for Learning Meta-Cognitive Visual Representations. Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence.

    18. Jara-Ettinger, J., & Schachner, A., (2024). Traces of our past: the social representation of the physical world. Current Directions in Psychological Science.

    19. Ongchoco, J., Knobe, J., & Jara-Ettinger, J. (2024). People's thinking plans adapt to the problem they're trying to solve. Cognition.

    20. Berke, M., & Jara-Ettinger, J. (2024). Core knowledge, visual illusions, and the discovery of the self. Commentary to Spelke's What Babies Know. Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

    21. Berke, M., Sterling, B., Tenenbaum, A., & Jara-Ettinger, J. (2024) No signatures of first-person biases in Theory of Mind judgments about thinking. Proceedings of the 46th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    22. Tan, Z. Y., Jara-Ettinger, J., & Berke, M. (2024) Reasoning about knowledge in lie production. Proceedings of the 46th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    23. Briscoe, M., Zhang, R., & Jara-Ettinger, J. (2024) Children's Expectations About Epistemic Change. Proceedings of the 46th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    24. Baker, A., Dunham, Y., & Jara-Ettinger, J. (2024) Roles guide rapid inferences about agent knowledge and behavior. Proceedings of the 46th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

      25. 2023

    25. Davis, I., Carlson, R., Dunham, Y., & Jara-Ettinger, J. (2023). Identifying social partners through indirect prosociality: a computational account. Cognition.

    26. Lopez-Brau, M., & Jara-Ettinger, J. (2023). People can use the placement of objects to infer communicative goals. Cognition.

    27. O'Shaughnessy, D., Cruz Cordero, T., Mollica, F., Boni, I., Jara-Ettinger, J., Gibson, E., & Piantadosi, S. (2023). Diverse mathematical knowledge among indigenous Amazonians. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

    28. Aboody, R., Velez-Ginorio, J., Santos, L., & Jara-Ettinger, J. (2023). When naïve pedagogy breaks down: Adults rationally decide how to teach, but misrepresent learners’ beliefs. Cognitive Science.

    29. Berke M., & Tenenbaum, A., & Sterling, B., & Jara-Ettinger, J. (2023). Thinking about Thinking as Rational Computation. Proceedings of the 45th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    30. Royka, A., & Török, G., & Jara-Ettinger, J. (2023). Guiding Inference: Signaling intentions using efficient action. Proceedings of the 45th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    31. Asaba, M., & Davis, I., & Leonard, J., & Jara-Ettinger, J. (2023). Detecting social biases using mental state inference. Proceedings of the 45th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    32. Chuey, A., & Jara-Ettinger, J., & Gweon, H., (2023). Violation of epistemic expectations: Children monitor what others know and recognize unexpected sources of knowledge. Proceedings of the 45th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

      33. 2022

    33. Berke, M., Walter-Terril, R., Jara-Ettinger, J., & Scholl, B. (2022). Flexible goals require that inflexible perceptual systems produce veridical representations: Implications for realism as revealed by evolutionary simulations. Cognitive Science.

    34. Royka, A., Chen, A., Aboody, R., Huanca, T., & Jara-Ettinger, J. (2022). People infer communicative action through an expectation for efficient communication. Nature Communications.

    35. Aboody, R., Huey, H., & Jara-Ettinger, J. (2022). Preschoolers decide who is knowledgeable, who to inform, and who to trust via a causal understanding of how knowledge relates to action. Cognition.

    36. Lopez-Brau, M., Kwon, J., & Jara-Ettinger, J. (2022). Social inferences from physical evidence via Bayesian event reconstruction. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

    37. Jacobs, C., Flowers, M., Aboody, R., & Jara-Ettinger, J. (2022). Not just what you did, but how: Children see distributions that count as more fair than distributors who don't. Cognition.

    38. Jara-Ettinger, J., Levy, R., Sakel, J., Huanca, T., & Gibson, E. (2022). The origins of the shape bias: Evidence from the Tsimane'. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

    39. Boni, I., Jara-Ettinger, J. Sackstein, S., & Piantadosi, S.T., (2022). Verbal counting and the timing of number acquisition in an indigenous Amazonian group. PLOS One.

    40. Chang, S., Jara-Ettinger, J., & Baskin-Sommers, A. (2022). Resource scarcity compromises explore-exploit decision-making. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

    41. Jara-Ettinger, J., & Rubio-Fernandez, P. (2022). The social basis of referential communication: Speakers construct reference based on listeners' expected visual search. Psychological Review.

    42. Davis, I., & Jara-Ettinger, J., (2022). Hierarchical task knowledge constrains and simplifies action understanding. Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    43. Davis, I., Jara-Ettinger, J., & Dunham, Y. (2022). Inferring the internal structure of social collectives. Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    44. Goel, S., Jara-Ettinger, J., & Gendron, M. (2022). Modeling cue-integration in emotion inferences. Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    45. Berke, M., & Jara-Ettinger, J. (2022). Integrating experience into Bayesian Theory of Mind. Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    46. Asaba, M., Santos, M., Jara-Ettinger, J., & Leonard, J. (2022). Adolescents are most motivated by encouragement from someone who knows their abilities and the domain. Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    47. Woensdregt, M., Jara-Ettinger, J., & Rubio-Fernandez, P., (2022). Language universals rely on social cognition: Computational models of the use of this and that to redirect the receiver's attention. Proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

      48. 2021

    48. Jara-Ettinger, J., & Rubio-Fernandez, P. (2021). Quantitative mental-state attributions from linguistic events. Science Advances.

    49. Royka, A., & Jara-Ettinger, J. (2021). Ignorance matters. Commentary on Philips et al. Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

    50. Jacobs, C., Flowers, M., & Jara-Ettinger, J. (2021). Children's understanding of the abstract logic of counting. Cognition.

    51. Aboody, R., Zhou, Q., & Jara-Ettinger, J. (2021). In pursuit of knowledge: Preschoolers expect agents to weigh information gain and information's cost when deciding whether to explore. Child Development.

    52. Berke, M., & Jara-Ettinger, J., (2021). Thinking about thinking through inverse reasoning. Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    53. Aboody, R., Davis, I., Dunham, Y., & Jara-Ettinger, J., (2021). I can tell you know a lot, although I'm not sure what: Modeling broad epistemic inference from minimal action. Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    54. Aboody, R., Denison, S., & Jara-Ettinger, J., (2021). Children consider the probability of random success when evaluating knowledge. Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    55. Jacobs, C., Lopez-Brau, M., & Jara-Ettinger, J., (2021). What happened here? Children integrate physical reasoning to infer actions from indirect evidence. Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    56. Davis, I., Carlson, R., Dunham, Y., & Jara-Ettinger, J., (2021). Reasoning about social preferences with uncertain beliefs. Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    57. Royka, A., Schouwstra, M., Kirby, S., & Jara-Ettinger, J., (2021). I Know You Know I'm Signaling: Novel gestures are designed to guide observers' inferences about communicative goals. Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

      58. 2020

    58. Rubio-Fernandez, P., & Jara-Ettinger, J. (2020). Incrementality and efficiency shape pragmatics across languages. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

    59. Berke, M., Belledonne, M., & Jara-Ettinger, J. (2020). Learning a metacognition for object perception. NeurIPS SVRHM workshop.

    60. Rubio-Fernandez, P., Mollica, F., & Jara-Ettinger, J. (2020). Speakers and Listeners Exploit Word Order for Communicative Efficiency: A Cross-Linguistic Investigation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

    61. Sheskin, M., Scott, K., Mills, C., Bergelson, E., Bonawitz, E., Spelke, E., Li, F., Keil,F., Gweon, H., Tenenbaum, J., Jara-Ettinger, J., Adolph, K., Rhodes, M., Frank,M., Mehr, S., & Schulz, L. (2020). Online developmental science to foster innovation,access, and impact. Trends in Cognitive Sciences (TiCS).

    62. Jara-Ettinger, J., Schulz, L. E., & Tenenbaum, J.B. (2020). The naive utility calculus as unified, quantitative framework for action understanding.Cognitive Psychology.

    63. Ongchoco, J., & Jara-Ettinger, J., (2020). Beyond rationality: We infer other people's goals by learning agent-variable expectations of efficient action. Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    64. Lopez-Brau, M., Kwon, J., & Jara-Ettinger, J., (2020). Mental state inference from indirect evidence through Bayesian event reconstruction. Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    65. Burger, L., & Jara-Ettinger, J., (2020). Mental inference: Mind perception as Bayesian model selection. Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    66. Pelz, M., Schulz, L., & Jara-Ettinger, J., (2020). The Signature of All Things: Children Infer Knowledge States from Static Images. Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

      67. 2019

    67. Bridgers, S., Jara-Ettinger, J., & Gweon, H. (2019). Young children consider others’ expected costs and rewards when deciding what to teach. Nature Human Behaviour.

    68. Jara-Ettinger, J., Floyd, S., Huey, H., Tenenbaum, J.B, & Schulz, L. E. (2019). Social pragmatics: four and five-year-olds rely on commonsense psychology to resolve referential Underspecification. Child Development.

    69. Jara-Ettinger, J., (2019). Theory of mind as inverse reinforcement learning. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences.

    70. Bear, A., Bensinger, S., Jara-Ettinger, J., Knobe, J., & Cushman, F. (2019). What comes to mind?. Cognition.

    71. Conway, B., Ratnasingma, S., Jara-Ettinger, J., Futrell, R., & Gibson, E. (2019). Communication efficiency of color naming across languages provides a new framework for the evolution of color terms. Cognition.

    72. Aboody, R., Flowers, M., Zhou, C., & Jara-Ettinger, J., (2019). Ignorance = doing what is reasonable: Children expect ignorant agents to act based on prior knowledge. Proceedings of the 41st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    73. Ongchoco, J., Jara-Ettinger, J., & Knobe, J., (2019). Imagining the good: An offline tendency to simulate good options even when no decision has to be made. Proceedings of the 41st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    74. Flowers, M., Stoner, L., & Jara-Ettinger, J., (2019). Children master the cardinal significance of counting after they learn to count. Proceedings of the 41st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

      75. 2018

    75. Jara-Ettinger, J., Sun, F., Schulz, L. E., & Tenenbaum, J. B. (2018). Sensitivity to the sampling process emerges from the principle of efficiency. Cognitive Science. Supporting information. Stimuli, data, and analyses.

    76. Gibson, E., Jara-Ettinger, J., Levy. R., & Piantadosi, S.T. (2018). The Use of a Computer Display Exaggerates the Connection Between Education and Approximate Number Ability in Remote Populations. Open mind.

    77. Rubio-Fernandez, P., & Jara-Ettinger, J., (2018). Joint inferences of speakers' knowledge and referents based on how they speak. Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    78. Royka, A., Aboody, R., & Jara-Ettinger, J., (2018). Movement as a message: inferring communicative intent from actions. Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    79. Aboody, R., Huey, H., & Jara-Ettinger, J., (2018). Success does not imply knowledge: Preschoolers believe that accurate predictions reveal prior knowledge, but accurate observations do not. Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    80. Flowers, M., Aboody, R., & Jara-Ettinger, J., (2018). Beyond Principles: Children Determine Fairness Based on Attention and Exactness. Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    81. Bear, A., Besinger,S., Jara-Ettinger, J., & Knobe, J. (2018). What Comes to Mind? A Mix of What's Likely and What's Good. Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    82. Aboody, R., Velez-Ginorio, J., Santos, L., & Jara-Ettinger, J., (2018). When teaching breaks down: Teachers rationally select what information to share, but misrepresent learners' hypothesis spaces. Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

      83. 2017

    83. Jara-Ettinger, J., Floyd, S., Tenenbaum, J. B., & Schulz, L. (2017). Children understand that agents maximize expected utilities. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Supporting information. Methods and data.

    84. Gibson, E., Futrell, R., Jara-Ettinger, J., Mahowald, K., Bergen, L., Sivalogeswaran, R., Gibson, M., Piantadosi, S.T., & Conway, J. B. R. (2017). Color naming across languages reflects color use. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

    85. Baker, C.L., Jara-Ettinger, J., Saxe, R., & Tenenbaum, J. B. (2017). Rational quantitative attribution of beliefs, desires, and percepts in human mentalizing. Nature Human Behaviour.

    86. Ferrigno, S., Jara-Ettinger, J., Piantadosi, S. T., & Cantlon, J. (2017). Universal and uniquely human factors in spontaneous number perception. Nature Communications.

    87. Rubio-Fernandez, P, Jara-Ettinger, J., & Gibson, E. (2017). Can processing demands explain toddlers' performance in false-belief tasks? Response to Setoh et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Original paper. Their response to our response.

    88. Jara-Ettinger, J., & Gweon, H. (2017). Minimal covariation data support future one-shot inferences about unobservable properties of novel agents. Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    89. Velez-Ginorio, J., Siegel, M., Tenenbaum, J.B., & Jara-Ettinger, J. (2017). Interpreting actions by attributing compositional desires. Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

      90. 2016

    90. Jara-Ettinger, J., Gweon, H., Schulz, L. E., & Tenenbaum, J.B. (2016). The naive utility calculus: Computational principles underlying commonsense psychology. Trends in Cognitive Sciences (TiCS).

    91. Jara-Ettinger, J., Piantadosi, S.T., Spelke, E., Levy, R., & Gibson, E. (2016). Mastery of the logic of natural numbers is not the result of mastery of counting: Evidence from late counters. Developmental Science. Supporting information. Methods and data.

    92. Jara-Ettinger*, J., Sun*, F., Schulz, L. E. & Tenenbaum, J. B. (2016). The naive utility calculus unifies spatial and statistical routes to preference. Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    93. Bridgers, S., Jara-Ettinger, J., & Gweon, H. (2016). Children consider others' expected costs and rewards when deciding what to teach. Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    94. Jara-Ettinger, J. (2016). The inner life of goals: costs, rewards, and commonsense psychology. PhD dissertation. [ Email ]

      95. 2015

    95. Jara-Ettinger, J., Gibson, E., Kidd, C., & Piantadosi, S. T. (2015). Native Amazonian children forego egalitarianism in merit based tasks when they learn to count. Developmental Science. Data and analyses.

    96. Jara-Ettinger, J., Tenenbaum, J. B., & Schulz, L. E. (2015). Not so innocent: Toddlers' reasoning about costs, competence, and culpability. Psychological Science. Supporting information. Methods and data.

    97. Jara-Ettinger, J., Gweon, H., Tenenbaum, J. B., & Schulz, L. E. (2015). Children's understanding of the costs and rewards underlying rational action. Cognition. Supporting information.

    98. Allen, K., Jara-Ettinger, J., Gerstenberg, T., Kleiman-Weiner, M. & Tenenbaum, J. B. (2015). Go fishing! Responsibility judgments when cooperation breaks down. Proceedings of the 37th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    99. Jara-Ettinger, J. Schulz, L. E. & Tenenbaum, J. B. (2015). The naive utility calculus: Joint inferences about the costs and rewards of actions. Proceedings of the 37th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    100. Jara-Ettinger, J., Lydic, E., Tenenbaum, J., & Schulz, L. E. (2015). Beliefs about desires: Children's understanding of how knowledge and preference influence choice. Proceedings of the 37th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

      101. 2014

    101. Piantadosi, S.T., Jara-Ettinger, J., & Gibson, E. (2014). Children's learning of number words in an indigenous farming-foraging group. Developmental Science.

    102. Jara-Ettinger, J.*, Kim, N.*, Muentener, P., & Schulz, L. E. (2014). Running to do evil: Costs incurred by perpetrators affect moral judgment. In Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

    103. Jara-Ettinger, J., Gweon, H., Tenenbaum, J. B., & Schulz, L. E. (2014). I'd do anything for a cookie (but I won't do that): Children's understanding of the costs and rewards underlying rational action. In Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

      104. 2013

    104. Jara-Ettinger, J., Tenenbaum, J.B., & Schulz, L. E. (2013). Not so innocent: Reasoning about costs, competence, and culpability in very early childhood. In Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

      105. 2012

    105. Jara-Ettinger, J., Baker, C.L., & Tenenbaum, J.B. (2012). Learning What is Where from Social Observations. In Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Model code.

      Icons by Lui Monts, Adrien Coquet, Grego Cresnar, and Éléonore Sabaté.