Publications

*: Equal contribution.   †: Joint senior authors.

Preprint

Prospective compression in human abstraction learning
L. H. Cano, I. Zareski*, L. E. Amouri*, P. Zhao*, M. Mascini, E. Sansone, Y. Pu, B. Zhao, M. Kryven

2026

Rational teachers should 'lie' to bounded students
H. Ham, D. Arumugam, C. G. Correa, B. Zhao, T. L. Griffiths, N. Velez
Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Online library learning in human visual puzzle solving
P. Zhao, E. Sansone, M. Kryven, B. Zhao
Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

An evolutionary model of recombination in social learning
E. Whitaker, T. Quillien, B. Zhao
Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

A rational model of growth mindset theory
Y. M. Zhu, B. Zhao
Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

2025

Teaching recombinable motifs through simple examples
H. Ham, B. Zhao, T. L. Griffiths, N. Velez
Cognitive Science

Discovering hidden laws in innovation by recombination
B. Zhao, E. Mieczkowski, D. Arumugam, N. Velez, T. L. Griffiths
Proceedings of the 47th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Learning a doubly-exponential number of concepts from few examples
I. Sucholutsky, B. Zhao, H. S. Hwang, A. Chen, O. Russakovsky, T. L. Griffiths
Proceedings of the 47th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Bootstrapping in geometric puzzle solving
X. He, B. Zhao, N. R. Bramley
Proceedings of the 47th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Are two-year-olds intrinsically motivated to explore their own competence?
B. Fascendini, B. Zhao, N. Velez
Proceedings of the 47th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

State sensitivity in an additive discovery game
Y. Hong, C. Wang, B. Zhao
Proceedings of the 47th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

2024

A model of conceptual bootstrapping in human cognition
B. Zhao, C. G. Lucas, N. R. Bramley
Nature Human Behaviour

A rational model of innovation by recombination
B. Zhao, N. Velez, T. L. Griffiths
Proceedings of the 46th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Using compositionality to learn many categories from few examples
I. Sucholutsky, B. Zhao, T. L. Griffiths
Proceedings of the 46th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Higher uncertainty leads to less exploration in a combinatorial discovery game
B. Zhao, N. Velez, T. L. Griffiths
NeurIPS 2024 Workshop on Bayesian Decision-making and Uncertainty

Modeling goal selection with program synthesis
J. B. Byers, B. Zhao, Y. Niv
NeurIPS 2024 Workshop on Intrinsically-Motivated and Open-Ended Learning (IMOL)

The art of knowing when to stop: analysis of optimal stopping in people and machines
F. E. Zhang, B. Zhao
NeurIPS 2024 Workshop on Mathematical Reasoning and AI (MathAI)

2023

Local search and the evolution of world models
N. R. Bramley, B. Zhao, T. Quillien, T. L. Griffiths
Topics in Cognitive Science

A rational model of spatial neglect
T. Gong, B. Zhao, R. D. McIntosh, C. G. Lucass
Proceedings of the 45th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Understanding spatial neglect: A Bayesian perspective
T. Gong, B. Zhao, R. D. McIntosh, C. G. Lucas
Proceedings of the Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Society Meeting

Bootstrapping compositional generalization with cache-and-reuse
B. Zhao, C. G. Lucas, N. R. Bramley
Proceedings of the Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Society Meeting

2022

How do people generalize causal relations over objects? A non-parametric Bayesian account
B. Zhao, C. G. Lucas, N. R. Bramley
Computational Brain & Behavior

Powering up causal generalization: A model of human conceptual bootstrapping with adaptor grammars
B. Zhao, N. R. Bramley, C. G. Lucas
Proceedings of the 44th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Dissecting causal asymmetries in inductive generalization
Z. Xia*, B. Zhao*, T. Quillien, C. G. Lucas
Proceedings of the 44th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Categorizing perceived causal events
N. Marchant, B. Zhao, N. R. Bramley, D. Morales, S. E. Chaigneau
Proceedings of the 44th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

2021

Symbolic and sub-symbolic systems in people and machines
S. Valentin, B. Zhao, C. Jiang, N. R. Bramley, C. G. Lucas
Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Building object-based causal programs for human-like generalization
B. Zhao, C. G. Lucas, N. R. Bramley
NeurIPS 2021 Workshop on Causal Inference & Machine Learning: Why Now?

2020

Order Effects in One-shot Causal Generalization
B. Zhao, N. R. Bramley
Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Before 2020

Predicting cognitive difficulty of the deductive mastermind game with dynamic epistemic logic models
B. Zhao*, I. van de Pol*, M. E. Raijmakers, J. Szymanik
Proceedings of the 40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

People making deontological judgments in the Trapdoor dilemma are perceived to be more prosocial in economic games than they actually are
V. Capraro, J. Sippel, B. Zhao, L. Hornischer, M. Savary, Z. Terzopoulou, P. Faucher, S. F. Griffioen
PLoS One