Research

Skill

Skill acquisition represents an ideal model system for the adaptive mind. Acquiring complex skills (e.g., sports) involves extensive practice, which elicits manifold changes of body and mind to enable stable and ever-higher levels of performance. Here we investigate some of the most advanced mechanisms of adaptation—learning and practice. This allows us to test how the other Key Areas are integrated into highly optimized performance.

New project-related publications

Aizenman, A. M., Gegenfurtner, K. R., & Goettker, A. (2024).
Oculomotor routines for perceptual judgments.
Journal of Vision, 24(5), 3-3.

Aubret, A., Ernst, M.R., Teulière, C., & Triesch, J. (2023).
Time to Augment Contrastive Learning.
IEEE Int. Conf. on Learning Representations (ICLR).

Aubret, A., Teulière, C., & Triesch, J. (2022).
Toddler-inspired embodied vision for learning object representations.
IEEE Int. Conf. on Development and Learning (ICDL).

Augustat, N., Chuang, L. C., Panitz, C., Stolz, C., Mueller, E. M., & Endres, D. M. (2022).
Modeling Reward Learning Under Placebo Expectancies: A Q-Learning Approach.
In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.

Baltaretu, B. R., Schuetz, I., Võ, M. L. H., & Fiehler, K. (2024).
Scene semantics affects allocentric spatial coding for action in naturalistic (virtual) environments.
Scientific Reports, 14(1), 15549.

Baykan, C., & Schütz, A. C. (2025).
Electroencephalographic Responses to the Number of Objects in Partially Occluded and Uncovered Scenes.
Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 37(1), 227-238.

Beitner, J., Helbing, J., David, E. J., & Võ, M. L. H. (2024).
Using a flashlight-contingent window paradigm to investigate visual search and object memory in virtual reality and on computer screens.
Scientific Reports, 14(1), 8596.

Bellagente, M., Brack, M., Teufel, H., Friedrich, F., Deiseroth, B., Eichenberg, C., Kersting, K., ... & Weinbach, S. (2024).
Multifusion: Fusing pre-trained models for multi-lingual, multi-modal image generation.
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 36.

Böhm, A., Schneider, T., Belousov, B., Kshirsagar, A., Lin, L., Doerschner, K., ... & Peters, J. (2024).
What matters for active texture recognition with vision-based tactile sensors.
arXiv preprint 2403, 13701.

Brack, M., Friedrich, F., Hintersdorf, D., Struppek, L., Schramowski, P., & Kersting, K. (2024).
SEGA: Instructing text-to-image models using semantic guidance.
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 36.

Brack, M., Schramowski, P., Deiseroth, B., & Kersting, K. (2023).
Illume: Rationalizing vision-language models through human interactions.

Brand, T. K., Schütz, A. C., Müller, H., Maurer, H., Hegele, M., & Maurer, L. K. (2024).
Sensorimotor prediction is used to direct gaze toward task-relevant locations in a goal-directed throwing task.
Journal of Neurophysiology, 132(2), 485-500.

Carter, A. A., & Kaiser, D. (2024).
An object numbering task reveals an underestimation of complexity for typically structured scenes.
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 1-10.

David, E., Gutiérrez, J., Võ, M. L. H., Coutrot, A., Da Silva, M. P., & Le Callet, P. (2024).
The Salient360! toolbox: Handling gaze data in 3D made easy.
Computers & Graphics, 103890.

Davidson, C., Shing, Y. L., McKay, C., Rafetseder, E., & Wijeakumar, S. (2023).
The first year in formal schooling improves working memory and academic abilities.
Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 60, 101205.

Davidson, Ch., Shing, Y. L., McKay, C. Rafetseder, E., & Wijeakumar, S. (2023).
The first year in formal schooling improves working memory and academic abilities.
Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 60, 101205.

Deiseroth, B., Deb, M., Weinbach, S., Brack, M., Schramowski, P., & Kersting, K. (2024).
Atman: Understanding transformer predictions through memory efficient attention manipulation.
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 36.

Dillmann, J.*, Sensoy, Ö.*, & Schwarzer, G. (2022). *shared first authorship
Parental perceived stress and its consequences on early social-emotional child development during COVID-19 pandemic.
Journal of Early Childhood Research, 1476718X221083423.

Eckert, A. L., Pabst, K., & Endres, D. M. (2022).
A Bayesian model for chronic pain.
Frontiers in Pain Research, 152.

Eckert, A. L., Pawlowski, J., Rief, W., Endres, D., & Kirchner, L. (2023).
Simulating Active Inference of Interpersonal Context Within and Across Mental Disorders.
PsyArXiv Preprints

Eckert, A., Blume, J. S., Knopp, B., Schütz, A. C., & Endres, D. (2024).
Distinct Biases Shape Perceptual Inference Dynamics Along the Autism-Psychosis Spectra.

Eckert, A., Fuehrer, E., Schmitter, C., Straube, B., Fiehler, K., & Endres, D. (2024).
Modelling Sensory Attenuation as Bayesian Causal Inference across two Datasets.

Engel, D., Greulich, R. S., Parola, A., Vinehout, K., Dowiasch, S., Waldthaler, J., ... & Bremmer, F. (2023).
Convolutional neural network reveals frequency content of medio-lateral COM body sway to be highly predictive of Parkinson's disease.
medRxiv, 2023-05.

Falck, J., Zhang, L., Raffington, L., Mohn, J. J., Triesch, J., Heim, C., & Shing, Y. L. (2023).
Longitudinal Changes in Value-based Learning in Middle Childhood: Distinct Contributions of Hippocampus and Striatum.
bioRxiv preprint

Faßbender, L., Falck, J., López, F. M., Shing, Y. L.,Triesch, J., Schwarzer, G. (2025).
A comparison of force adaptation in toddlers and adults during a drawer opening task.
Scientific Reports, 15(1), 3699.

Flachot, A., Akbarinia, A., Schütt, H. H., Fleming, R. W., Wichmann, F. A., & Gegenfurtner, K. R. (2022).
Deep neural models for color classification and color constancy.
Journal of vision, 22(4), 17-17.

Friedrich, F., Stammer, W., Schramowski, P., & Kersting, K. (2023).
A typology for exploring the mitigation of shortcut behaviour.
Nature Machine Intelligence, 5(3), 319-330.

Friedrich, F., Stammer, W., Schramowski, P., Kersting, K. (2023).
Revision Transformers: Instructing Language Models to Change their Values. In
Proceedings of the 26th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI).

Gehb, G., Vesker, M., Jovanovic, B., Bahn, D., Kauschke, C., & Schwarzer, G. (2022).
The Relationship between Crawling and Emotion Discrimination in 9- to 10-Month-Old Infants.
Brain Sciences, 12(4), 479.

Goettker, A., & Gegenfurtner, K. R. (2024).
Individual differences link sensory processing and motor control.
Psychological Review.

Göksu, Y., De Almeida Correia, A., Prasad, V., Kshirsagar, A., Koert, D., Peters, J., & Chalvatzaki, G. (2024).
Kinematically Constrained Human-like Bimanual Robot-to-Human Handovers.
Companion of the 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 497-501.

Goktepe, N., & Schütz, A. C. (2023).
Familiar objects benefit more from transsaccadic feature predictions.
Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 1-13.

Goktepe, N., & Schütz, A. C. (2023).
Familiar objects benefit more from transsaccadic feature predictions.
Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 1-13.

Goktepe, N., & Schütz, A. C. (2024).
Frequency-specific and periodic masking of peripheral characters by delayed foveal input.
In Scientific Reports 14(1), 4642.

Gregorova, K., Turini, J., Gagl, B., & Vo, M. L. H. (2021).
Access to meaning from visual input: Object and word frequency effects in categorization behavior.
PsyArXiv Preprints

Grössle, I. M., Schubö, A., & Tünnermann, J. (2023).
Testing a relational account of search templates in visual foraging.
Scientific Reports, 13(1) ,12541

Hahne, F., Prasad, V., Kshirsagar, A., Koert, D., Stock-Homburg, R. M., Peters, J., & Chalvatzaki, G. (2024).
Transition State Clustering for Interaction Segmentation and Learning.
Companion of the 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 512-516.

Helbing, J., Draschkow*, D., & Võ*, M. L.-H. (2022).
Auxiliary scene-context information provided by anchor objects guides attention and locomotion in natural search behavior.
Psychological science, 33(9), 1463–1476.

Kadner, F., Thomas, T., Hoppe, D., & Rothkopf, C. A. (2023).
Improving saliency models' predictions of the next fixation with humans' intrinsic cost of gaze shifts.
In Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (pp. 2104-2114).

Kallmayer, A., Võ, M. L. H., & Draschkow, D. (2023).
R Viewpoint dependence and scene context effects generalize to depth rotated three-dimensional objects.
Journal of Vision, 23 (10), 9.

Kessler, F., Frankenstein, J., & Rothkopf, C. A. (2022).
A Dynamic Bayesian Actor Model explains Endpoint Variability in Homing Tasks.
bioRxiv

Kessler, F., Frankenstein, J., & Rothkopf, C. A. (2024).
Human navigation strategies and their errors result from dynamic interactions of spatial uncertainties.
Nature Communications, 15(1), 5677.

Kirchner, L., Eckert, A., Berg, M., Endres, D., Straube, B., & Rief, W. (2022).
Better safe than sorry? - An active inference approach to biased inference on social contexts in depression.
PsyArXiv Preprints

Kirchner, L., Kube, T., Berg, M., Eckert, A. L., Straube, B., Endres, D., & Rief, W. (2024).
Social expectations in depression.
Nature Reviews Psychology, 1-15.

Krugliak, A., Draschkow, D., Võ, M. L. H., & Clarke, A. (2023).
Semantic object processing is modulated by prior scene context.
Language, Cognition and Neuroscience,1-10.

Lin, L. P. Y., Böhm, A., Belousov, B., Kshirsagar, A., Schneider, T., Peters, J., Doerschner, K., & Drewing, K. (2024).
Task-Adapted Single-Finger Explorations of Complex Objects.
EuroHaptics

Linka, M., Sensoy, Ö., Karimpur, H., Schwarzer, G., de Haas, B. (2022).
Attentional biases in free viewing of complex scenes in preschoolers and adults.
PsyArXiv Preprints

Linka, M., Sensoy, Ö., Karimpur, H., Schwarzer, G., de Haas, B. (2023).
Free viewing biases for complex scenes in preschoolers and adults.
Sci Rep, 13, 11803.

López, F. M., & Triesch, J. (2025).
Hierarchical Residuals Exploit Brain-Inspired Compositionality.
arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.16003.

López, F. M., Shi, B. E., & Triesch, J. (2023).
Eye-Hand Coordination Develops from Active Multimodal Compression.
2023 IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL) ,437-442.

Lopez, F. M., Shi, B. E., & Triesch, J. (2024).
Prioritizing Compression Explains Human Perceptual Preferences.
Intrinsically-Motivated and Open-Ended Learning Workshop@ NeurIPS2024.

Mattern, D., López, F.M., Ernst, M.R., Aubret, A., & Triesch, J. (2022).
MIMo: A Multi-Modal Infant Model for Studying Cognitive Development in Humans and AIs.
IEEE Int. Conf. on Development and Learning (ICDL), accepted.

Mattern, D., Schumacher, P., López, F. M., Raabe, M. C., Ernst, M. R., Aubret, A., & Triesch, J. (2024).
MIMo: A Multi-Modal Infant Model for Studying Cognitive Development.
IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems.

McKay, C., Wijeakumar, S., Rafetseder, E., & Shing, Y. L. (2021).
Disentangling Age and Schooling Effects on Inhibitory Control Development: An fNIRS Investigation.
bioRxiv

McKay, C., Wijeakumar, S., Rafetseder, E., & Shing, Y. L. (2021).
Disentangling age and schooling effects on inhibitory control development: An fNIRS investigation.
Developmental Science: e13205. 205, 102117.

Meibodi, N., Abbasi, H., Schubö, A., & Endres, D. (2024).
Distracted by Previous Experience: Integrating Selection History, Current Task Demands and Saliency in an Algorithmic Model.
Computational Brain & Behavior, 1-18.

Meibodi, N., Abbasi, H., Schubö, A., & Endres, D. M. (2021).
A model of selection history in visual attention.
In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society 43(43), 707-713.

Meibodi, N., Schubö, A., & Endres, D. (2022).
Sensorimotor processes are not a source of much noise: sensorimotor and decision components of reaction times.
In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.

Men, H., Altin, A., & Schütz, A. C. (2023).
Underestimation of the number of hidden objects.
Journal of Vision, 23(2):1, 1–20.

Niehaus, H.,Stroth, S., Kamp-Becker, I., Endres, D. (2022).
Modeling aberrant volatility estimates in Autism Spectrum Disorder.
In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.

Ortiz-Tudela, J., Bergmann, J., Bennett, M., Ehrlich, I., Muckli, L., & Shing, Y. L. (2023).
Concurrent contextual and time-distant mnemonic information co-exist as feedback in the human visual cortex.
NeuroImage, 265, 119778.

Pabst, K., Zittrell, F., Homberg, U., Endres, D. (2022).
A Model for Optic Flow Integration in Locust Central-Complex Neurons Tuned to Head Direction.
In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.

Prasad, V., Kshirsagar, A., Stock-Homburg, D. K. R., Peters, J., & Chalvatzaki, G. (2024).
MoVEInt: Mixture of Variational Experts for Learning Human-Robot Interactions from Demonstrations.
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.

Preißler, L., Jovanovic, B., Munzert, J., Schmidt, F., Fleming, R.W., & Schwarzer, G. (2021).
Effects of visual and visual-haptic perception of material rigidity on reaching and grasping in the course of development.
Acta Psychologica, 221, November, 103457.

Preißler, L., Keck, J., Krüger, B., Munzert, J., & Schwarzer, G. (2023).
Recognition of emotional body language from dyadic and monadic point-light displays in 5-year-old children and adults.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 235, 105713.

Raabe, M. C., López, F. M., Yu, Z., Caplan, S., Yu, C., Shi, B. E., & Triesch, J. (2023).
Saccade Amplitude Statistics are Explained by Cortical Magnification.
2023 IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL) ,300-305.

Rodríguez, R. G., Hedjar, L., Toscani, M., Guarnera, D. Y., Guarnera, G. C., & Gegenfurtner, K. R. (2024).
Color constancy mechanisms in virtual reality environments.
Journal of Vision, 24(5) ,6-6.

Rothkopf, C., Bremmer, F., Fiehler, K., Dobs, K., & Triesch, J. (2023).
Models of vision need some action.
Behavioral Brain Science, 46:e405.

Schaumlöffel, T., Aubret, A., Roig, G., & Triesch, J. (2023).
Caregiver Talk Shapes Toddler Vision: A Computational Study of Dyadic Play.
2023 IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL) ,67-72.

Schneider, F., Xu, X., Ernst, M. R., Yu, Z., & Triesch, J. (2021).
Contrastive Learning Through Time.
In SVRHM 2021 Workshop@ NeurIPS.

Schommartz, I., Kaindl, A. M., Buss, C., & Shing, Y. L. (2024).
Short- and long-delay consolidation of memory accessibility and precision across childhood and young adulthood.
Developmental psychology.

Schommartz, I., Lembcke, P. F., Ortiz-Tudela, J., Bauer, M., Kaindl, A. M., Buss, C., & Shing, Y. L. (2023).
Neural correlates and reinstatement of recent and remote memory: A comparison between children and young adults.
bioRxiv

Schommartz, I., Lembcke, P. F., Pupillo, F., Schuetz, H., de Chamorro, N. W., Bauer, M., ... & Shing, Y. L. (2023).
Distinct multivariate structural brain profiles are related to variations in short-and long-delay memory consolidation across children and young adults.
Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 59, 101192.

Schommartz, I., Lembcke, Ph. F., Pupillo, F., Schuetz, H., Wald de Chamorro, N., Bauer, M., Kaindl, A. M., Buss, C., & Shing, Y. L. (2023).
Distinct multivariate structural brain profiles are related to variations in short- and long-delay memory consolidation across children and young adults.
Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 59, 101192.

Schramowski, P., Brack, M., Deiseroth, B., & Kersting, K. (2023).
Safe latent diffusion: Mitigating inappropriate degeneration in diffusion models. In
Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition(pp. 22522-22531).

Schramowski, P., Turan, C., Andersen, N., Rothkopf, C. A., & Kersting, K. (2022).
Large pre-trained language models contain human-like biases of what is right and wrong to do.
Nature Machine Intelligence, 4(3), 258-268.

Schultheis, M., Rothkopf. C. A., Koeppl, H. (2022).
Reinforcement learning with non-exponential discounting.
Neural Information Processing Systems.

Schultheis, M., Straub, D., & Rothkopf, C. A. (2021).
Inverse optimal control adapted to the noise characteristics of the human sensorimotor system.
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 34, 9429-9442.

Schwarzer, G., Gehb, G., Kelch, A., Gerhard-Samunda, T., Jovanovic, B. (2022).
Locomotion training contributes to 6-month-old infants' mental rotation ability.
Human Movement Science, Volume 85, October 2022, 102979.

Shindo, H., Pfanschilling, V., Dhami, D. S., & Kersting, K. (2023).
α ILP: thinking visual scenes as differentiable logic programs.
Machine Learning, 112(5), 1465-1497.

Skryagin, A., Ochs, D., Dhami, D. S., & Kersting, K. (2023).
Scalable Neural-Probabilistic Answer Set Programming.
Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR) 78:579–617.

Spartakov, R., Kshirsagar, A., Mühl, D., Schween, R., Endres, D. M., Bremmer, F., ... & Peters, J. (2024).
Balancing on the Edge: Review and Computational Framework on the Dynamics of Fear of Falling and Fear of Heights in Postural Control.
Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (46).

Stewart, E. E., Fleming, R. W., & Schütz, A. C. (2024).
A simple optical flow model explains why certain object viewpoints are special.
bioRxiv,2023-10.

Straub, D., & Rothkopf, C. A (2022).
Putting perception into action with inverse optimal control for continuous psychophysics.
Elife 11,e76635.

Straub, D., Schultheis, M., Koeppl, H., & Rothkopf, C. A. (2024).
Probabilistic inverse optimal control for non-linear partially observable systems disentangles perceptual uncertainty and behavioral costs.
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 36.

Stroth, S., Niehaus, H., Wolff, N., Poustka, L., Roessner, V., Kamp‐Becker, I., & Endres, D. (2022).
Subdimensions of social‐communication behavior in autism—A replication study.
JCPP Advances, e12077.

Tatai, F., Straub, D., & Rothkopf, C. (2023).
People use Newtonian physics in intuitive sensorimotor decisions under risk. In
Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (Vol. 45, No. 45).

Thoma, N., Yu, Z., Ventola, F., & Kersting, K. (2021).
RECOWNs: Probabilistic Circuits for Trustworthy Time Series Forecasting.
Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Tractable Probabilistic Modeling (TPM 2021).

Thomas, T., Straub, D., Tatai, F., Shene, M., Tosik, T., Kersting, K., & Rothkopf, C. A. (2024).
Modelling dataset bias in machine-learned theories of economic decision-making.
Nature Human Behaviour, 1-13.

Trick, S., & Rothkopf, C. A. (2022).
Bayesian Classifier Fusion with an Explicit Model of Correlation.
In International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (pp. 2282-2310). PMLR.

Turini, J., & Võ, M. L. H. (2022).
Hierarchical organization of objects in scenes is reflected in mental representations of objects.
Scientific Reports, 12(1), 20068.

Ventola, F., Dhami, D. S., & Kersting, K. (2021).
Generative Clausal Networks: Relational Decision Trees as Probabilistic Circuits.
Proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Inductive Logic Programming (ILP).

Wagner, I., & Schütz, A. C. (2023).
Interaction of dynamic error signals in saccade adaptation.
Journal of Neurophysiology, 129, 717-723.

Wiesmann, S. L., & Võ, M. L. H. (2022).
What makes a scene? Fast scene categorization as a function of global scene information at different resolutions.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 48(8), 871.

Wiesmann, S. L., & Võ, M. L.-H. (2023).
Disentangling diagnostic object properties for human scene categorization.
Sci Rep 13, 5912.

Wroblewski, A., Hollandt, M., Yang, Y., Ridderbusch, I. C., Pietzner, A., Szeska, C., ... & Richter, J. (2022).
Sometimes I feel the fear of uncertainty stinging clear: How Intolerance of Uncertainty and Trait Anxiety impact fear acquisition, extinction and the return of fear.

Wroblewski, A., Hollandt, M., Yang, Y., Ridderbusch, I.C., Pietzner, A., Szeska, C., Lotze, M., Wittchen, H.-U., Heinig, I., Pittig, A., Arolt, V., Koelkebeck, K., Rothkopf, C.A., Adolph, D., Margraf, J., Lueken, U., Pauli, P., Herrmann, M.J., Winkler, M.H., Ströhle, A., Dannlowski, U., Kircher, T., Hamm, A.O., Straube, B.* & Richter, J.* (2022). *contributed equally
Sometimes I feel the fear of uncertainty stinging clear: How Intolerance of Uncertainty and Trait Anxiety impact fear acquisition, extinction and the return of fear.
PsyArXiv Preprints

Xu, X., & Triesch, J. (2023).
CIPER: Combining Invariant and Equivariant Representations Using Contrastive and Predictive Learning.
arXiv preprint

Yu, Z., Dhami, D. S., & Kersting, K. (2021).
Sum-Product-Attention Networks: Leveraging Self-Attention in Probabilistic Circuits.
arXiv preprint

Yu, Z., Trapp, M., & Kersting, K. (2024).
Characteristic Circuits.
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 36.

Yu, Z., Ventola, F. G., & Kersting, K. (2021).
Whittle networks: A deep likelihood model for time series.
International Conference on Machine Learning (PMLR), 12177-12186.

Yu, Z., Zhu, M., Trapp, M., Skryagin, A., & Kersting, K. (2021).
Leveraging Probabilistic Circuits for Nonparametric Multi-Output Regression.
Proceedings of the 37th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI 2021).