Allie Sinclair

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1 Sept

#PsychJobs We’re hiring an Assistant Professor in Cognitive Neuroscience/Psychology here at Rice! This is such an exciting and supportive place, especially for exploring ways to bridge basic science with real-world impact. Please spread the word! @ricesocsci.bsky.social apply.interfolio.com/192080

Thanks to Rice News for featuring my recent paper! We developed an intervention & useful tool to help people understand their protection against COVID-19 and encourage vaccination. @ricesocsci.bsky.social @riceihri.bsky.social Story: tinyurl.com/ricenewsimmest Full paper: doi.org/10.1093/pnas...

tinyurl.comtinyurl.com

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.govNo evidence for sleep-dependent memory generalization in a large online sample - PubMedMemory generalization allows individuals to extract and apply information from prior experiences to novel situations, supporting flexible learning and efficient decision-making. Theoretical models suggest that sleep should facilitate generalization, yet the literature examining its role in promoting …

Thanks to co-authors on the paper, @gregoryrsl.bsky.social, @joshuasweitz.bsky.social, @beckettstephen.bsky.social, Morgan Taylor, and Aroon Chande

Allie Sinclair reposted

Eitan Schechtman

@eitans.bsky.social

18 Aug

Now out in Learning and Memory! pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42608289/ Fun collaboration with @alexatompary.bsky.social, led by then-undergrad Tiange (Summer) Lu, who just started grad school at Rice, working with @asinclair.bsky.social!

Eitan Schechtman@eitans.bsky.social

In yet another preprint, Tiange (Summer) Lu collaborated with @alexatompary.bsky.social to examine whether sleep promotes generalization in a large online cohort (N=137). Not only did she not find a benefit of sleep, but some evidence also suggested that wakefulness promotes generalization. 3/12

biorxiv.orgbiorxiv.org

Allie Sinclair reposted

Scientist Network for Advancing Policy

@snapcoalition.org

29 July

Starting a science policy group on campus? SNAP wants to help! 🙋 SNAPStart mini-grants offer up to $1,000 to help new or relaunched student #SciPol orgs get off the ground. Apply now through August 31st! Learn more: snapcoalition.org/initiatives/... (please apply and take our money 🫱💵🫲)

Allie Sinclair reposted

PNAS Nexus

@pnasnexus.org

A study finds that reminding people that protection against COVID-19 weakens over time—either through a flyer or an interactive tool—is more effective at motivating people to get vaccinated than existing CDC messaging. In PNAS Nexus: https://ow.ly/TJ9u50Znxht

Allie Sinclair reposted

academic.oup.comPersonalized feedback about immunity corrects risk misestimation and motivates vaccinationAbstract. Beliefs about immunity may have important consequences for health behaviors. For instance, people who overestimate their protection against a dis

📣New paper in @pnasnexus.org! We find that giving people personalized feedback about immunity effectively changes perceived risk & motivates vaccination. 🧵⤵️ academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar... @gregoryrsl.bsky.social, @joshuasweitz.bsky.social, @beckettstephen.bsky.social, Morgan Taylor, Aroon Chande

To scale up our intervention, we created an Immunity Estimator website (in English + Spanish). We replicated our findings in a new, nationally-rep sample of people who used the website. Although no longer actively maintained, the website offered immunity estimates and vaccination guidance for years!

Takeaway: Beliefs about immunity & risk shape health behaviors—not just vaccination, but risk-taking, diagnostic testing, etc. Personalized immunity feedback recalibrates risk perception & motivates vaccination. Beyond COVID, insights are relevant to flu + future pandemics. Open access paper ⬇️

Politically liberal participants showed greater changes to perceived risk in response to the intervention, but there were still significant effects for conservatives. However, the intervention did not change perceived risk for individuals who had never received any COVID-19 vaccine doses.

But are there any lasting effects? Yes! 2 months later, changes to risk perception stuck. Participants who got info about waning immunity were substantially more likely to report getting a vaccine dose post-intervention, relative to a national benchmark (>7% vs. 1%).

At baseline, people were poor judges of their own immunity. Our Immunity Estimator intervention effectively recalibrated perceived risk of infection & severe disease. Non-personalized information about waning immunity (Alt-Flyer) helped somewhat, but the CDC Flyer did not change perceived risk.

nature.comImagining a personalized scenario selectively increases perceived risk of viral transmission for older adults - Nature AgingA cognitive intervention study for communicating information about COVID-19 transmission risk found that older adults tended to forget numerical information but reported increased perceived risk after...

The Immunity Estimator intervention was particularly effective for older adults, who especially benefit from maintaining immunity. In contrast, younger adults responded to waning immunity info whether or not it was personalized. This aligns w/ our prior findings: Personalization helps older adults.

cdc.govReasons for Receiving or Not Receiving Bivalent COVID ...This report describes an online survey of previously vaccinated residents and their reasons for not getting a bivalent COVID-19 booster dose.

The problem: Few people stay up-to-date on routine vaccinations (~21% for COVID-19, ~47% for flu). In prior work, we found that a key barrier is overconfidence in immunity. If you believe you're still protected, you don't expect to benefit much from a booster vaccine. www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes...

@joshuasweitz.bsky.social

So, we targeted beliefs about immunity. Our Immunity Estimator intervention gave personalized feedback about estimated protection against COVID-19, based on personal vaccine/infection history. We tested this against a CDC vaccine flyer and a modified flyer that added info about waning immunity.

Allie Sinclair reposted

Joshua Weitz

New Science & Community Impacts Mapping Project (#SCIMaP) analysis on the impact of the WH plan to eliminate NSF's Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences directorate. @malar0ne.bsky.social @asinclair.bsky.social @cl10.bsky.social @alexmusicwrites.bsky.social scienceimpacts.org/insights/SBE...

14 July

Interested in memory updating, exploration, structure learning, & reward? @hannahtarder-stoll.bsky.social & I are looking for candidates to apply for a Connected Minds Postdoctoral Fellowship at York University, with the opportunity to work at Rice too. Contact Hannah or me for details! #PsychJobs

14 July

If awarded the fellowship, the postdoc would contribute to a planned project that uses a naturalistic, gamified task to investigate memory, prediction, and choice in evolving/uncertain environments. There will also be opportunities to conduct other behavioural and fMRI studies.

sinclairlab.rice.eduSinclair LabThe Learning & Behavior Change Lab at Rice University, directed by Dr. Sinclair

14 July

A PhD in Psychology or Neuroscience (or upcoming defense) is required. Preference for candidates w/ fMRI experience. Visa sponsorship is available for applicants outside Canada! Interested candidates can check out my lab website here and reach me at as667@rice.edu. sinclairlab.rice.edu

Allie Sinclair reposted

Hannah Tarder-Stoll

@hannahtarder-stoll.bsky.social

9 July

New work out today w/ @mariamaly.bsky.social & @chrisbaldassano.bsky.social! When learning a new link between two sequences (like a new transfer point on the subway), the hippocampus rapidly integrates representations to support flexible predictions. royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...

royalsocietypublishing.orgThe hippocampus rapidly integrates sequence representations during novel multistep predictionsAbstract. Memories for temporally extended sequences can be used adaptively to predict future events on multiple timescales, a function that relies on the

2 July

Excited to share this work on moral reframing of climate change, led by @diegoreinero.bsky.social! Against common assumptions, liberals & conservatives often choose the same top moral value. Personalizing messaging to one’s top value works, but misassuming based on partisan assumptions backfires!

Diego Reinero, Ph.D.@diegoreinero.bsky.social

🚨 New preprint out! 🚨 We’ve spent years assuming liberals and conservatives prioritize fundamentally different moral values—and designing persuasive messages based on that assumption. Our data suggest there's more to the story, and that making that assumption can backfire.

Allie Sinclair reposted

Prof Gavin Yamey MD MPH

@gavinyamey.bsky.social

23 Apr

Jay Bhattacharya just censored a study that was about to be published cuz it showed the effectiveness of COVID vaccines, contradicting everything that his MAHA movement believes in He pulled it from the journal it was going to be published in (MMWR) But he gets to lecture us on, um, integrity 🙃

Katy Milkman@katymilkman.bsky.social

I'm co-organizing a free, 2-day Zoom workshop from the NAS & hope you'll consider attending! 📅 April 23-24: Discuss how we can enhance scientific integrity in the social and behavioral sciences REGISTER: www.nationalacademies.org/projects/DBA... PROGRAM: www.nationalacademies.org/cdn/material...

youtube.comFact, fiction and future for U.S. scientific and medical research | Studio 2 from WHYY | 04/22/26YouTube video by WHYY

Thank you to @whyy.org for casting a spotlight on the impacts of science funding cuts in our conversation today with @maxkozlov.bsky.social. Check out the recording below ⬇️

Max Kozlov@maxkozlov.bsky.social

I'll be on @whyy.org with @asinclair.bsky.social at 12:15p ET to talk about how US labs have tightened budgets, clinical trials have been scaled back or delayed, and how a generation of young scientists faces an increasingly uncertain future. Tune in here!

scienceimpacts.orgSCIMaP - Impacts of Federal Cuts to Science and Medical ResearchView Projected Impact of the FY2027 Budget Cuts to the NIH and NSF

The White House is again proposing big budget cuts to NIH and NSF. Last year, Congress rejected the proposal to slash science funding— but it's happening again, and we need to fight back. Explore our interactive map to see how the budget cuts will impact your local area. 🧵 scienceimpacts.org/fy27

Select a region and click "View Full Scorecard" to get a shareable, downloadable fact sheet about how NIH and NSF funding cuts would impact your area. Share with your representatives! Here's my new home, Houston.

scienceimpacts.orgSCIMaP - Impacts of Federal Cuts to Science and Medical ResearchDeveloped by an interdisciplinary research team, this website shows how funding cuts reduce economic activity and employment nationwide

📣 MAJOR website update at scienceimpacts.org! New interactive maps show the local impacts of science funding cuts, including the White House FY2027 budget proposal, which would reduce NSF funding by 55% and NIH by 10%. We estimate $35B in economic losses and 150k lost jobs nationwide if enacted.

Joshua Weitz@joshuasweitz.bsky.social

Today, our #SCIMaP team released an impact analysis of the White House proposed FY 2027 NIH and NSF budgets. Bottom-line: if enacted, cuts to science and medical research would lead to $35B in economic losses and 150,000 lost jobs in communities all across the US. scienceimpacts.org 🧵

sinclairlab-rice.comSinclair LabThe Learning & Behavior Change Lab at Rice University, directed by Dr. Sinclair

I'm thrilled to introduce the inaugural cohort of my lab, the Learning & Behavior Change Lab at Rice!! 🤩 I'm so excited to have the opportunity to work with these stellar budding scientists. As a team, we'll bridge basic cognitive neuroscience with real-world applications. 🧵 www.sinclairlab-rice.com

Lorena Nunes: Lab Manager. Lorena (she/her) earned a B.S. in Psychological Sciences and MS in Neuroscience at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Her interests focus on health psychology and effects of stress on biopsychosocial health. She also works in the SWEL Lab at Rice w/ @erinstanden.bsky.social.

The mission of the lab is broad—We explore cognitive and neural mechanisms of learning, memory, and motivation. We apply those insights to support effective learning & behavior change across contexts: 🫀 health, 🌎 climate change, and 📚 education. I can't imagine a better team to build these bridges!

sinclairlab-rice.comSinclair LabThe Learning & Behavior Change Lab at Rice University, directed by Dr. Sinclair

Rachael Veldman: PhD student. Rachael (she/her) earned her B.A. in Psychology from the University of St. Thomas and previously worked as a research assistant and lab manager in Dr. Bryan Denny’s T-SCAN Lab at Rice. She is interested in behavior change interventions, especially for climate change.

grant-witness.usJob Opening: Data Scientist – Grant WitnessGrant Witness seeks a data scientist for a full-time position on our team tracking changes to U.S. federal grantmaking. We are also hiring for part-time/contract positions. Join us!

Summer (Tiange) Lu: PhD student. Summer (she/her) earned her B.S. in Neurobiology from UC Irvine, where she did research w/ @eitans.bsky.social. She is interested in the neural mechanisms of memory transformation, especially how sleep, emotion, & prior knowledge influence consolidation and updating.

Allie Sinclair reposted

Noam Ross

@noamross.net

6 Mar

Grant Witness is hiring! We're seeking a full-time data scientist to join our team building data resources to support journalism, litigation, and activism protecting science, public health, and the rule of law. grant-witness.us/apply.html #rstats

elizabethginexi.substack.comI Wrote Research Funding Announcements for NIH for 22 Years. This Year They’ve Published 14How NIH went from 756 funding announcements to 14 in two years — and what it means for every disease that depends on federal research

18 Mar

‼️ We are on track for a staggering 98% reduction in posted NIH funding opportunities this year relative to historical norms. Political review and red tape are blocking approval of funding announcements across the board. See Elizabeth Ginexi’s analysis: elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/i-wrote-re...

13 Mar

Abruptly switching to multiyear funding means the same annual budget gets allocated to far fewer projects, making it even harder to get grants. Congress may have shot down the drastic budget cuts proposed by the White House, but the NIH is finding other ways to award fewer grants. Fight’s not over.

Jeremy Berg@jeremymberg.bsky.social

Working on a NIH multiyear funding tracker... This looks at the amount of multiyear funding (grants having a budget period 366 days or longer) for new and competitive renewal awards divided by the total amount of new and competitive renewal award funding over the same period. 1/5

9 Mar

#CNS2026 Join our workshop TODAY and bring a free “Brain Box” lunch from the foyer! In the face of threats to science funding + higher ed, we share exciting science advocacy and communication efforts. We hope it will be actionable and energizing despite the challenges we face. @cnsmtg.bsky.social

9 Mar

Featuring @erinmorrow.bsky.social, @snapcoalition.bsky.social, and Bradley Voytek!

8 Mar

#CNS2026 I’m presenting at board C17 in the poster session today (w/ ice cream social!) from 5-7 PM! Come chat about how the affective framing of info shapes decision making and memory, and harnessing these insights to support engagement with news about climate change + health. @cnsmtg.bsky.social

@joshuasweitz.bsky.social

8 Mar

Board 17 is a hidden gem in the room where the coffee and food is— look behind the exhibitor row on the right!

Allie Sinclair reposted

Joshua Weitz

22 Dec 2025

Many thanks to cofounder @asinclair.bsky.social & the entire SCIMaP team (scienceimpacts.org) for collaborative work to confront federal cuts to science and medical research; together, our effort was recognized as a 2025 Public Health Hero in @thenation.com. a 🧵 www.thenation.com/article/soci...

thenation.comThe Public Health Heroes of 2025The Trump administration wants to destroy our health infrastructure. These warriors aren't letting that happen without a fight.

Allie Sinclair reposted

Communication Neuroscience Lab

@falklab.bsky.social

11 Nov 2025

🚨📣 We’re recruiting a postdoc! 📣🚨 Are you curious about how the environments in which people spend time influence their health? Are you motivated by research that promotes climate action, resilience, and wellbeing? Read more and apply here: www.asc.upenn.edu/node/5905

asc.upenn.eduPostdoctoral Researcher

10 Nov 2025

Check out our new preprint, led by @dcosme.bsky.social, highlighting evidence-based strategies to motivate youth to vote!

Dani Cosme@dcosme.bsky.social

Young voters played a key role in elections across the country last week. It’s fantastic to see record turnout in so many communities AND we still have so much room to grow! For ideas on how to motivate and support youth to vote check out our new commentary: osf.io/kyzh9_v1 Key points in 🧵

osf.ioOSF

theacademicdesigner.comWinners of the Best Personal Academic Websites Contest 2025The best examples of academic websites of faculty, researchers, scientists, graduate students, research labs. A contest highlighting scholarly websites.

6 Nov 2025

The Sinclair Lab website won an award for Best Research Lab or Group Website! Check out the website and the other winners here: theacademicdesigner.com/2025/winners... www.sinclairlab-rice.com

Jennifer van Alstyne@jenvanalstyne.bsky.social

Winners of the Best Personal Academic Websites Contest have just been announced! 🏆 We hope these websites inspire you to create your own space as a faculty, researcher, or grad student. Hosted by @jenvanalstyne.bsky.social, @owlstown.com, and Brittany Trinh theacademicdesigner.com/2025/winners...

Allie Sinclair reposted

Communication Neuroscience Lab

@falklab.bsky.social

4 Nov 2025

🗳️📣Happy election day!! What motivates young people to vote? In a new preprint, we share key findings from our collaboration with undergraduate students where we developed and tested a theory-guided GOTV messaging campaign doi.org/10.31234/osf... (1/5)

doi.orgOSF

Allie Sinclair reposted

Kendra Seaman

@kendraseaman.bsky.social

28 Oct 2025

Great talk from @asinclair.bsky.social! Definitely check it out if you missed it.

Motivated Cognition Meetings@motcogmeet.bsky.social

ICYMI: Here's the link from today's talk on Motivational States Bias Choices, Information Consumption, and Memory by Dr. Alissa Sinclair @asinclair.bsky.social: youtu.be/WnEy3f3fn8g

youtu.beAllie SinclairYouTube video by motcogmeet