A new paper on reactive control demands
July 9, 2024

Lauren's paper on how humans change their behavior when they are training AI was just accepted at PNAS! This paper reports 5 experiments that together demonstrate that people are to instill their preferred behavioral policies into AI. Moreover, these changes in behavior persist in a secondary session where people are told they are not training AI anymore, suggesting that this adopted routine has become habitized. We will post a link to the paper as soon as it is out.

Abs joins the lab!
May 6, 2024

Today, Abhishek Dey's joins the CDML as a postdoc on the MURI. He will be jointly advised by Todd Braver and Wouter on projects addressing the neural basis of attention control.

A McDonnell grant to study the neural basis of multidimensional attention control
April 23, 2024

Davide was awarded a $100,000 grant to study the neural basis of multidimensional attentional control using our new MULTI paradigm. In the project, Davide will combine fMRI and EEG to decode conflict signals from anterior cingulate cortex.

A new paper on reactive control demands
January 10, 2024

Bettina and Jackson just published a paper with Julie Bugg and Wouter Kool in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance on how people do not seem to avoid reactively implemented cognitive control. This was long in the making! You can read the paper here.

Lauren's new paper on human-AI interactions
August 3, 2023

Lauren Treiman's paper in the Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing (together with CJ Ho and Wouter Kool) reports two experiments that show that people are willing to incur a monetary to cost to train AI to be fair, even if this does not benefit themselves! You can read it here.

Want to do a joint postdoc at WashU?
August 3, 2023

The Braver, Bugg, and Kool labs are looking to hire a joint postdoc for an ONR-funded project on attentional control. The project will be part of large multi-university collaboration with groups in the US (Brown, UC Irvine, Northeastern) as well as Australia. An ad with more details can be found here.

Ata's paper on cognitive map formation
July 16, 2023

Ata Karagoz's paper on cognitive map formation has been published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. The paper reports a novel "behavioral representational similarity analysis" approach that can be used to infer internal representations of task structure using one very simple question. This paper was written in collaboration with Zach Reagh, and you read it here.

Seed grant from the Transdiscplinary Institute in Applied Data Science
April 6, 2023

Our lab was funded a seed grant from the Transdiscplinary Institute in Applied Data Science. This grant marks a collabration between our group and CJ Ho's at WashU. Most importantly, Lauren Treiman's work is the basis for this grant. Congratulations, Lauren!

Lab funded by ONR
March 21, 2023

Big news in just now: our lab was funded through a MURI grant! We are now a part of a multi-university collaboration involving our lab, and Todd Braver’s and Julie Bugg’s labs at WashU, and many other labs in the US (Brown, and Irvine), and in Australia. Here is the announcement from the US Department of Defense.

A new batch of graduate students
September 1, 2022

Today, Cathy Zhang and Chris Ahn have started as graduate students in our lab. Welcome to the team!

Our second lab manager is here!
July 1, 2021

Today, we welcomed our new lab manager, Thea Zalabak, to the Control and Decision Making Lab. Thea joins us from Princeton University, where she was an undergraduate researcher with Jon Cohen and Diana Tamir. We are happy you are here, Thea!

McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience grant
May 1, 2021

Congratulations to Wouter and Dr. Zach Reagh, who were awarded McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience funding for a collabrative project. Together with Ata Karagoz, they will run an fMRI study to uncover the neural mechanisms underlying the interaction between representations of task structure and the use of those representations in model-based cognitive control.

Welcome, undergrad RAs!
September 10, 2020

This semester, two undergraduate student research assistants are joining the lab. Melodey Soong will be working under the supervision of Jack Dolgin, whereas Eric Gruber joins us through the Mind, Brain, and Behavior program. We are exited both of you are here!

Jack joins the lab
August 1, 2020

Today, Jack Dolgin starts as the first graduate student of our lab. Welcome to the team!

APS Rising Star
December 23, 2019

Wouter was named a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science. Congratulations to him and all the other awardees!

Our first lab manager
August 19, 2019

Today, the Control and Decision Making Lab expanded its size from one to two people. Bettina Bustos will be joining the lab as our first ever lab manager starting in November 2019. Welcome to the (still fairly small) team, Bettina!

We are hiring
July 26, 2019

We are soliciting applications for a postdoctoral research associate and a lab manager in the Control and Decision Making Lab. You can find more detailed information here. Are you interested in cognitive control, decision making, and learning? Do you want to work in a fun, rewarding, diverse, and inclusive lab environment? Join us!

You can apply for the postdoc position using Job ID 44778 at jobs.wustl.edu.

You can apply for the lab manager position using Job ID 44878 at jobs.wustl.edu.

Any questions? Get in touch via wkool@wustl.edu!

Construction has begun
July 8, 2019

As of today, the WashU Facilities Department has started construction of our lab in Somers Family Hall. The space is built from the ground up, and will feature spacious offices, and a multi-purpose lounge and meeting room that is intended to foster collaboration between our lab members. For a sneak peek, take a look at our floor plan:

A new professor
March 18, 2019

Today, Wouter officially accepted his assistant professor position at Washington University in St. Louis!