Staying ahead of the curv[ature deviance] (with Dave Sobel)

What a jam-packed episode this was. We chatted with Professor Dave Sobel — Professor of Psychology at Brown University in the Department of Cognitive and Psychological Sciences, and Deon's former postdoc mentor — about everything from his participation in a cognitive science summer program during high school at Stanford University to early life tragedies to the inception of the world-renowned "blicket detector" to his enduring interest in poetry, among many other things. We may or may not have also chatted about his early life of crime. (It's not what you think, or maybe it is if you know Dave. Ha!)

In addition to all of this, we also spoke with Dave about his recent Psychological Review paper entitled, "Using the dynamics of children's reaching to examine the role of inhibitory control in social cognitive development". In it, Dave discusses how a rarely used method called "reach trajectory tracking" can be used in real time to elucidate the mechanisms supporting inhibitory control as well as about how inhibitory control is comprised of separate processes (rather than a single, homogenous one).

Links

Sobel, D. M. (2026). Using the dynamics of children’s reaching to examine the role of inhibitory control in social cognitive development. Psychological Review. Advance online publication. Link