CCS Lab at SANS 2026

The Cognitive Communication Science Lab is heading to San Diego this week for the annual meeting of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society (SANS 2026, April 15-18). We're presenting three posters spanning high-throughput methods, media selection, and attention. Here's what we're sharing and when to find us.

Poster Session 1: Thursday, April 16

Ziyu Zhao presents work examining whether heavy TikTok use impairs attention. Drawing on a large-scale, pre-registered, multi-site study (UC Davis, Michigan State, VU Amsterdam), Ziyu uses the Attention Network Task to test effects on alerting, orienting, and executive control. The headline so far: near-null effects on executive control, but TikTok users show higher alerting efficiency than non-users consistent with a stimulus-reactive attentional profile rather than impairment.

Also in Session 1, Valerie Klein presents research using the drift-diffusion model to examine how mental health shapes media selection. In a sample of 313 undergraduates, Valerie models how anxiety, depression, and loneliness influence the evidence accumulation process underlying media choice. The findings reveal differentiated effects: anxiety and depression are linked to more adaptive, affect-regulating selection patterns, while loneliness is associated with maladaptive use. 

Poster Session 3: Saturday, April 18

Rachael Kee presents Inoxity, a modular iOS platform built to support high-throughput data collection in real-world settings. Inoxity integrates passive sleep tracking, media use capture via Apple Screen Time, and EMA surveys into a single system built to study sleep–media dynamics outside the lab. A proof-of-concept validation study demonstrates feasibility and strong agreement with Apple Health data. The platform is open-source and freely available on GitHub.

Come Say Hi!

If you're at SANS, we'd love to connect. Come find us at the poster sessions or say hello in the hallways of the La Jolla Marriott.