(standard disclaimer: PDFs are available for non-commercial information purposes only.)

If a link is broken, or you have trouble interpreting the data / reproducing an analysis / running a model, please feel free to reach out to tadeg.quillien AT gmail.com.

Preprints

Productive causation and compositionality
T. Quillien, N. Bramley, C. Lucas
Pre-print, 2025
[pdf] [code_and_data] [thread]

Journal publications

Luck and intentional action: a causal account
T. Quillien
Open Mind, forthcoming
[pdf] [code_and_data]

Children seek out observations that can reveal a partner’s generosity
L. Schlingloff-Nemecz, T. Quillien, A. Ruggeri
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
[pdf] [code_and_data]

Who knows what? Bayesian competence inference guides knowledge attribution and information search
M. Mercier, O. Morin, H. Mercier, T. Quillien
Cognition, forthcoming
[pdf] [SI] [code_and_data]

Factive mindreading reflects the optimal use of limited cognitive resources
T. Quillien, M. Taylor-Davies
Proceedings of the Royal Society B, forthcoming
[pdf] [SI] [code_and_data] [thread]

Plural causes
C. Konuk, T. Quillien, S. Mascarenhas
Open Mind, forthcoming
[pdf] [code_and_data] [cogsci] [thread]

Lossy encoding of distributions in judgment under uncertainty
T. Quillien, N. Bramley, C. Lucas
Cognitive Psychology, 2025
[pdf] [blog] [code_and_data] [cogsci] [thread]

Religious signaling and prosociality: a review of the literature
S. Northover, T. Quillien, D. Conroy-Beam, A. Cohen
Evolution and Human Behavior, 2024
[pdf]

Local search and the evolution of world models
N. Bramley, B. Zhao, T. Quillien, C. Lucas
Topics in Cognitive Science, 2023
[pdf] [thread]

Rational inferences about social valuation
T. Quillien, J. Tooby, L. Cosmides
Cognition, 2023
[pdf] [SI] [code_and_data] [thread]

Counterfactuals and the logic of causal selection
T. Quillien, C. Lucas
Psychological Review, 2023
[pdf] [SI] [code_and_data] [thread]

A context-dependent Bayesian account for causal-based categorization
N. Marchant, T. Quillien, S. Chaigneau
Cognitive Science, 2023
[pdf] [SI] [code_and_data] [thread]

Rational information search in welfare-tradeoff cognition
T. Quillien
Cognition, 2023
[pdf] [code_and_data] [thread]

Causal judgment in the wild: evidence from the 2020 US presidential election
T. Quillien, M. Barlev
Cognitive Science, 2022
[pdf] [SI] [code] [data] [thread]

A simple definition of 'intentionally'
T. Quillien, T. German
Cognition, 2021
[pdf] [SI] [code_and_data] [thread]

When do we think that X caused Y?
T. Quillien
Cognition, 2020
[pdf] [SI] [code] [media]

Evolution of conditional and unconditional commitment
T. Quillien
Journal of Theoretical Biology, 2020
[pdf] [SI] [code] [data] [media] [thread]

Universal modesty in signal-burying games
T. Quillien
Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2019
[pdf] [code] [data] [media]

Psychological essentialism from first principles
T. Quillien
Evolution & Human Behavior, 2018
[pdf]

Are multiple minimal outgroup males readily associated with threat?
F. Van Leeuwen, T. Quillien, P. Boyer
Letters on Evolutionary Behavioral Science, 2017
[pdf] [data]

Cross-cultural regularities in the cognitive architecture of pride
D. Sznycer, L. Al-Shawaf, Y. Bereby-Meyer, O. S. Curry, D. De Smet, E. Ermer, S. Kim, S. Kim, N. P. Li, M. F. Lopez Seal, J. McClung, J. O, Y. Ohtsubo, T. Quillien, M. Schaub, A. Sell, F. van Leeuwen, L. Cosmides, J. Tooby
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2017
[pdf] [media_1] [media_2] [media_3]

Peer-reviewed conference proceedings

(Conference papers that have been superseded by a journal paper are available here)

An evolutionary model of recombination in social learning
E. Whitaker, T. Quillien, B. Zhao
Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society, forthcoming
[pdf]

When giving more makes you look worse: paradoxical inferences in a Bayesian model of social evaluation
M. Horner, V. Btesh, A. Moore, T. Quillien
Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society, forthcoming
[pdf] [code_and_data]

Inferring Arithmetic Skill from Speed and Accuracy
M. Mercier, R. de Lanerolle, O. Morin, T. Quillien, H. Mercier
Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society, forthcoming
[pdf] [code_and_data]

Explaining order effects in counterfactual reasoning
N. Navarre, T. Quillien, D. Lassiter, T. Gerstenberg, N. Bramley
Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society, forthcoming
[pdf] [code]

Assessing alternative models of counterfactual reasoning
B. Rehder, S. Zheng, A. Cao, N. Bramley, T. Quillien
Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society, forthcoming
[pdf]

Norms moderate causal judgments in cases of double prevention
K. O'Neill, P. Henne, T. Quillien, T. Icard, F. De Brigard
Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society, 2025
[pdf] [code_and_data]

An information-bottleneck view of social stereotype use
M. Taylor-Davies, T. Quillien
Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society, 2025
[pdf] [code]

Exploring the intuitive theory of empathy
M. Horner, T. Quillien, A. Moore
Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society, 2025
[pdf] [code_and_data] [thread]

Unifying inference and selection in singular causal explanation
S. Droop, T. Quillien, N. Bramley
Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society, 2025
[pdf] [code_and_data]

People attribute purpose to autonomous vehicles when explaining their behavior
B. Gyevnar, S. Droop, T. Quillien, S. Cohen, N. Bramley, C. Lucas, S. Albrecht
Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2025
[pdf] [code_and_data] [thread]

Rationally uncertain: investigating deviations from Explaining Away and Screening Off in causal reasoning
N. Marchant, G. Puebla, T. Quillien, S. Chaigneau
Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society, 2024
[pdf] [code]

Uncertainty can explain apparent mistakes in causal reasoning
N. Marchant, T. Quillien, S. Chaigneau
Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society, 2023
[pdf] [thread]

Causal inference shapes counterfactual plausibility
T. Quillien, A. Szollosi, N. Bramley, C. Lucas
Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society, 2023
[pdf] [code_and_data] [thread]

How do instructions, examples, and testing shape task representations?
A. Szollosi, V. Grigoras, T. Quillien, C. Lucas, N. Bramley
Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society, 2023
[pdf] [demo]

A counterfactual model of causal judgments in double prevention
K. O'Neill, T. Quillien, P. Henne
Conference on Computational Cognitive Neuroscience, 2022
[pdf]

Dissecting causal asymmetries in inductive generalization
Z. Xia, B. Zhao, T. Quillien, C. Lucas
Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society, 2022
[pdf] [code] [data]

Commentaries

Intention judgments are not a reliable measure of intuitive preferences (comment on Gervais et al. 2025)
T. Quillien
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2025
[pdf] [target] [reply]

A counterfactual explanation for recency effects in double prevention scenarios: commentary on Thanawala & Erb (2024)
T. Quillien, K. O'Neill, P. Henne
Cognition, 2025
[pdf] [target] [reply]

The social sciences need more than integrative experimental design; we need better theories
M. Hoffman, T. Quillien, B. Burum
Behavioral and Brain Sciences (commentary), 2024
[pdf] [target] [reply]

Population finiteness is not a concern for null hypothesis significance testing when studying human behavior
T. Quillien
Frontiers in Neuroscience, 2015
[pdf] [target] [reply]

Posters

Price fairness judgments are selectively sensitive to information about marginal profit
T. Quillien
HBES Vancouver, 2016
[pdf]

Popular science writing

The mathematics and psychology of 'virtue signalling' (editor's title: 'Is virtue signaling a vice?')
T. Quillien
Aeon Magazine, 2022
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