Jonathan F Kominsky
Biographic Data
| ID | 3473653 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jonathan F Kominsky |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jonathan F |
| FAMILY NAME | Kominsky |
| SIGNATURE | KOMINSKY J F |
| AFFILIATIONS | Central European University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3236-4787 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 6 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Remembering times ahead: The effect of linguistic framing on representational momentum in state-change events
When people remember scenes, they can draw from different sources to reconstruct their memory, such as what they saw, and linguistic descriptions of what they saw. How human memory for events is impacted by linguistic encoding has been a long-standing question in cognitive science. Here, we ask whether language permeates memory of state-change events. We use the visual phenomenon of Representational Momentum, in which people misremember an event …
Causal coherence improves episodic memory of dynamic events
"Episodes" in memory are formed by the experience of dynamic events that unfold over time. However, just because a series of events unfold sequentially does not mean that they are related. Sequences can have a high degree of causal coherence, each event connecting to the next through a cause-and-effect relationship, or be a fragmented series of unrelated occurrences. Are causally coherent events remembered better? And if coherence leads to better…
The development of the “first thing that comes to mind”
When children encounter information about the world that is descriptive (e.g., frequency distributions) or prescriptive (e.g., value judgments), can they keep track of both types of information together? Do they, like adults, integrate these two kinds of information to come up with the "first thing that comes to mind"? Can children separate these types of information when needed? In two experiments, we examined how children ( N = 397, ages 4-9 ye…
Causal Perception(s)
In addition to detecting “low‐level” features like shape, color, and movement, the human visual system perceives certain “higher‐level” properties of the environment, like cause‐and‐effect interactions. The strongest evidence that we have true causal perception and not just inference comes from the phenomenon of retinotopically specific visual adaptation to launching, which shows that launching events have specialized processing at a point in the…
Infants' representations of michottean triggering events
The classic Michottean 'launching' event is consistent with a real-world Newtonian elastic collision. Previous research has shown that adult humans distinguish launching events that obey some of the physical constraints on Newtonian elastic collisions from events that do not do so early in visual processing, and that infants do so early in development (< 9 months of age). These include that in a launching event, the speed of the agent can be 3 ti…
An interaction effect of norm violations on causal judgment
The trajectory of counterfactual simulation in development
Young children often struggle to answer the question "what would have happened?" particularly in cases where the adult-like "correct" answer has the same outcome as the event that actually occurred. Previous work has assumed that children fail because they cannot engage in accurate counterfactual simulations. Children have trouble considering what to change and what to keep fixed when comparing counterfactual alternatives to reality. However, mos…
Retinotopic adaptation reveals distinct categories of causal perception
Quantifying Sources of Variability in Infancy Research Using the Infant-Directed-Speech Preference
Psychological scientists have become increasingly concerned with issues related to methodology and replicability, and infancy researchers in particular face specific challenges related to replicability: For example, high-powered studies are difficult to conduct, testing conditions vary across labs, and different labs have access to different infant populations. Addressing these concerns, we report on a large-scale, multisite study aimed at (a) as…
The better part of not knowing: Virtuous ignorance
Suppose you are presented with 2 informants who have provided answers to the same question. One provides a precise and confident answer, and the other says that they do not know. If you were asked which of these 2 informants was more of an expert, intuitively you would select the informant who provided the certain answer over the ignorant informant. However, for cases in which precise information is practically or actually unknowable (e.g., the n…
Figuring out function: Children’s and adults’ use of ownership information in judgments of artifact function
Across 3 experiments, we found evidence that information about who owns an artifact influenced 5- to 10-year-old children's and adults' judgments about that artifact's primary function. Children's and adults' use of ownership information was underpinned by their inference that owners are typically familiar with owned artifacts and are therefore likely to know their primary functions. Accordingly, when this inference was undermined-when an artifac…
Repetition in infant-directed action depends on the goal structure of the object: Evidence for statistical regularities
Adults automatically adjust their speech and actions in a way that may facilitate infants’ processing (e.g., Brand, Baldwin, & Ashburn, 2002). This research examined whether mothers’ use of repetition for infants depended on whether the object being demonstrated required a series of actions in sequence in order to reach a salient goal (called an “enabling” sequence). Mothers (n = 39) demonstrated six objects, three with an enabling sequence and t…
The better part of not knowing: Virtuous ignorance
Suppose you are presented with 2 informants who have provided answers to the same question. One provides a precise and confident answer, and the other says that they do not know. If you were asked which of these 2 informants was more of an expert, intuitively you would select the informant who provided the certain answer over the ignorant informant. However, for cases in which precise information is practically or actually unknowable (e.g., the n…
The trajectory of counterfactual simulation in development
Young children often struggle to answer the question "what would have happened?" particularly in cases where the adult-like "correct" answer has the same outcome as the event that actually occurred. Previous work has assumed that children fail because they cannot engage in accurate counterfactual simulations. Children have trouble considering what to change and what to keep fixed when comparing counterfactual alternatives to reality. However, mos…
Figuring out function: Children’s and adults’ use of ownership information in judgments of artifact function
Across 3 experiments, we found evidence that information about who owns an artifact influenced 5- to 10-year-old children's and adults' judgments about that artifact's primary function. Children's and adults' use of ownership information was underpinned by their inference that owners are typically familiar with owned artifacts and are therefore likely to know their primary functions. Accordingly, when this inference was undermined-when an artifac…
Repetition in infant-directed action depends on the goal structure of the object: Evidence for statistical regularities
Adults automatically adjust their speech and actions in a way that may facilitate infants’ processing (e.g., Brand, Baldwin, & Ashburn, 2002). This research examined whether mothers’ use of repetition for infants depended on whether the object being demonstrated required a series of actions in sequence in order to reach a salient goal (called an “enabling” sequence). Mothers (n = 39) demonstrated six objects, three with an enabling sequence and t…
Figuring out function: Children’s and adults’ use of ownership information in judgments of artifact function
Across 3 experiments, we found evidence that information about who owns an artifact influenced 5- to 10-year-old children's and adults' judgments about that artifact's primary function. Children's and adults' use of ownership information was underpinned by their inference that owners are typically familiar with owned artifacts and are therefore likely to know their primary functions. Accordingly, when this inference was undermined-when an artifac…
The better part of not knowing: Virtuous ignorance
Suppose you are presented with 2 informants who have provided answers to the same question. One provides a precise and confident answer, and the other says that they do not know. If you were asked which of these 2 informants was more of an expert, intuitively you would select the informant who provided the certain answer over the ignorant informant. However, for cases in which precise information is practically or actually unknowable (e.g., the n…
Retinotopic adaptation reveals distinct categories of causal perception
Quantifying Sources of Variability in Infancy Research Using the Infant-Directed-Speech Preference
Psychological scientists have become increasingly concerned with issues related to methodology and replicability, and infancy researchers in particular face specific challenges related to replicability: For example, high-powered studies are difficult to conduct, testing conditions vary across labs, and different labs have access to different infant populations. Addressing these concerns, we report on a large-scale, multisite study aimed at (a) as…
The trajectory of counterfactual simulation in development
Young children often struggle to answer the question "what would have happened?" particularly in cases where the adult-like "correct" answer has the same outcome as the event that actually occurred. Previous work has assumed that children fail because they cannot engage in accurate counterfactual simulations. Children have trouble considering what to change and what to keep fixed when comparing counterfactual alternatives to reality. However, mos…
An interaction effect of norm violations on causal judgment
Infants' representations of michottean triggering events
The classic Michottean 'launching' event is consistent with a real-world Newtonian elastic collision. Previous research has shown that adult humans distinguish launching events that obey some of the physical constraints on Newtonian elastic collisions from events that do not do so early in visual processing, and that infants do so early in development (< 9 months of age). These include that in a launching event, the speed of the agent can be 3 ti…
The development of the “first thing that comes to mind”
When children encounter information about the world that is descriptive (e.g., frequency distributions) or prescriptive (e.g., value judgments), can they keep track of both types of information together? Do they, like adults, integrate these two kinds of information to come up with the "first thing that comes to mind"? Can children separate these types of information when needed? In two experiments, we examined how children ( N = 397, ages 4-9 ye…
Causal Perception(s)
In addition to detecting “low‐level” features like shape, color, and movement, the human visual system perceives certain “higher‐level” properties of the environment, like cause‐and‐effect interactions. The strongest evidence that we have true causal perception and not just inference comes from the phenomenon of retinotopically specific visual adaptation to launching, which shows that launching events have specialized processing at a point in the…
Remembering times ahead: The effect of linguistic framing on representational momentum in state-change events
When people remember scenes, they can draw from different sources to reconstruct their memory, such as what they saw, and linguistic descriptions of what they saw. How human memory for events is impacted by linguistic encoding has been a long-standing question in cognitive science. Here, we ask whether language permeates memory of state-change events. We use the visual phenomenon of Representational Momentum, in which people misremember an event …
Causal coherence improves episodic memory of dynamic events
"Episodes" in memory are formed by the experience of dynamic events that unfold over time. However, just because a series of events unfold sequentially does not mean that they are related. Sequences can have a high degree of causal coherence, each event connecting to the next through a cause-and-effect relationship, or be a fragmented series of unrelated occurrences. Are causally coherent events remembered better? And if coherence leads to better…
Psychology (10 works) · Child and Animal Learning Development (9 works) · Cognitive psychology (9 works) · Developmental psychology (7 works) · Cognition (4 works) · Social Psychology (4 works) · Cognitive science (3 works) · Epistemology (3 works) · Neuroscience (3 works) · PsycINFO (3 works)