Full list of publications

Clarke, S. & Yousif, S.R. (2025). Can we “see” value? Spatiotopic “visual” adaptation to an imperceptible dimension. Cognition.

Joo, S., Yousif, S.R., Martin, F., Keil, F.C., and Knobe, J. (2025). No privileged link between intentionality and causation: Generalizable effects of agency in language. Cognition.

Boger, T.*, Yousif, S.R.*, McDougle, S.D., and Rutledge, R.B. (2025). Random behavior is stable across tasks and time. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

Sherman, B.E. & Yousif, S.R. (2025). An illusion of time caused by repeated experience. Psychological Science.

Yousif, S. R., Goldstein, L.B., and Brannon, E.M. (2025). Children’s understanding of topological relations. Open Mind, 9, 401-417.

Yousif, S. R. & Brannon, E. M. (2025). Perceiving topological relations. Psychological Science.

Yousif, S. R., Clarke, S., & Brannon, E. M. (2024). Seven reasons to (still) doubt the existence of number adaptation: A rebuttal to Burr et al. and Durgin. Cognition.

This is a rebuttal following two replies to our initial number adaptation paper. The first reply is from David Burr, Roberto Arrighi, & Giovanni Anobile. The second reply is from Frank Durgin.

Yousif, S.R. & Clarke, S. (2024). Size adaptation: Do you know it when you see it? Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics.

Yousif, S. R., Lee, S. H., Sherman, B. E., & Papafragou, A. (2024). Event representation at the scale of ordinary experience. Cognition.

Yousif, S. R., Clarke, S., & Brannon, E. M. (2024). Number adaptation: A critical look. Cognition.

See also the reply from David Burr, Roberto Arrighi, & Giovanni Anobile, and the reply from Frank Durgin, and our rebuttal which responds to both.

Yousif, S. R. & Brannon, E. M. (2024). Intuitive network topology. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

Yousif, S. R. & McDougle, S. D. (2024). Oblique warping: A general distortion of spatial perception. Cognition.

Yousif, S. R., Forrence, A. D., & McDougle, S. D. (2024). A common format for representing spatial location in visual and motor working memory. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.

Yates, T. S., Sherman, B. E., & Yousif, S. R. (2023). More than a moment: What does it mean to call something an ‘event’? Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.

Joo, S. & Yousif, S. R. (2022). Are we teleologically essentialist? Cognitive Science, 46, e13202.

Yousif, S. R. (2022). Redundancy and reducibility in the formats of spatial representations. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 17, 1778-1793.

Yousif, S. R. & Keil, F. C. (2022). Quantity perception: The forest and the trees. Cognition.

A reply to a critique of our work on area perception from Joonkoo Park

Aboody, R., Yousif, S. R., Sheskin, M., & Keil, F. C. (2022). Says who? Children evaluate informants’ sources when deciding whom to believe. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 151, 2481-2493.

Yousif, S. R., Alexandrov, E.*, Bennette, E.*, Aslin, R. N., & Keil, F. C. (2022). Do children estimate area using an 'Additive-Area Heuristic'? Developmental Science. 25, e13235.

Joo, S., Yousif, S. R., & Keil, F. C. (2022). Understanding ‘Why’: How implicit questions shape information preferences. Cognitive Science. 46. e13091.

Yousif, S. R. (2021) Numerosity, Area-osity, Object-osity? Oh my. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 44.

Commentary on Clarke and Beck’s The Number Sense Represents (Rational) Numbers

Joo, S., Yousif, S. R., & Knobe, J. (2021). Teleology beyond explanation. Mind and Language, 38, 20-41.

Liefgreen, A., Yousif, S. R., Keil, F. C., & Lagnado, D. A. (2021). Motive on the mind: Explanatory preferences at multiple stages of the legal-investigative process. Cognition, 217, 104892.

Yousif, S. R., Rosenberg, M. D., & Keil, F. C. (2021). Using space to remember: Short-term spatial structure spontaneously improves working memory. Cognition, 214, 104748.

Lin, Q.*, Yousif, S. R.*, Chun, M. M., & Scholl, B. J. (2021). Visual memorability in the absence of semantic content. Cognition, 212, 104714.

Aulet, L., Yousif, S. R., & Lourenco, S. F. (2021). Spatial-numerical associations from a novel paradigm support the Mental Number Line account. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 74, 1829-1840.

Yousif, S. R. & Keil, F. C. (2021). How we see area and why it matters. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 25, 554-557.

Bennette, E., Keil, F. C., & Yousif, S. R. (2021). A ubiquitous illusion of volume: Are impressions of 3D volume captured by an ‘Additive Heuristic’? Perception, 50, 462-469.

Yousif, S. R. & Keil, F. C. (2021). The shape of space: Evidence for spontaneous but flexible use of polar coordinates in visuospatial representations. Psychological Science, 32, 573-586.

Yousif, S. R., Aslin, R. N., & Keil, F. C. (2020). Judgments of spatial extent are fundamentally illusory: ‘Additive-area’ provides the best explanation. Cognition, 205, 104439.

Yousif, S. R. & Keil, F. C. (2020). Area, not number, dominates estimates of visual quantities. Scientific Reports, 10, 1-13.

Yousif, S. R., Chen, Y-C., & Scholl, B. J. (2020). Systematic angular biases in the representation of visual space. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 82, 3124-3143.

Yousif, S. R., Aboody, R., & Keil, F. C. (2019). The illusion of consensus: A failure to distinguish between ‘true’ and ‘false’ consensus. Psychological Science, 30, 1195–1204.

Ayzenberg, V., Chen, Y. Yousif, S. R., & Lourenco, S. F. (2019). Skeletal representations of shape in human vision: Evidence for a pruned medial axis model. Journal of Vision, 19, 1–21. 

Yousif, S. R. & Keil, F. C. (2019). The ‘Additive-Area Heuristic’: An efficient but illusory means of visual area approximation. Psychological Science, 30, 495–503.

Yousif, S. R.  & Scholl, B. J. (2019). The one-is-more illusion: Sets of discrete objects appear less extended than equivalent continuous entities in both space and time. Cognition, 185, 121-130. 

Yousif, S. R. & Lourenco, S. F. (2017). Are all geometric cues created equal? Children’s use of distance and length for reorientation. Cognitive Development, 43, 159-169.

* Authors contributed equally.