Alex investigates how humans learn socially, blending cognitive science with machine learning. Her PNAS publication challenges conventional models, showing that people adapt social information based on goals. She also earned a scholarship to conduct research at Princeton.
We are thrilled to feature Alexandra Witt as our next IMPRS-IS Scholar Spotlight!
Since joining IMPRS-IS in 2022, Alex has been working under the guidance of Dr. Charley Wu at the Human and Machine Cognition Lab at the Tübingen AI Center. Her research focuses on how humans learn from one another, with a particular emphasis on creating computational models that explain the underlying mechanisms of social learning. Her work bridges cognitive science and machine learning by examining the ways in which individuals acquire and share knowledge.
Alex’s most recent research, which was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), introduces a novel framework for understanding human social learning through the lens of reward and goal discrepancies. Her study, titled "Humans flexibly integrate social information despite interindividual differences in reward," presents a socially correlated bandit task that accounts for payoff differences between participants, reflecting real-world social dynamics. Alex’s findings challenge conventional models by demonstrating that humans do not just imitate blindly; instead, they flexibly adjust their learning strategies to integrate social information, even when the goals and preferences of others are not perfectly aligned with their own.
Beyond her research, Alex has built an impressive academic profile. She has delivered talks and presented posters at conferences, including Cognitive Science Society (CogSci) and Cognitive Computational Neuroscience (CCN). In 2023, she was awarded a prestigious Cluster of Excellence scholarship which granted her a three-month research stay at Princeton University. Alex has been actively involved in teaching, serving as a teaching assistant for the Computational Summer School on Modeling Social and Collective Behavior. She also volunteers her time helping to plan and organize professional development workshops for IMPRS-IS as part of the program’s Soft Skills Seminar Series (S4) organizing team.
In her free time, Alex loves exploring the great outdoors. One of her favorite pastimes is hiking to waterfalls, and Aber Falls in Wales holds a special place in her heart. When staying in, Alex enjoys playing video games or baking treats for her lab’s game nights. If anyone wants to get or stay in touch, they can follow her on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/alexthewitty.bsky.social
Congratulations to Alex on her many accomplishments! We are proud to have her as a part of IMPRS-IS!
Alex by her favorite waterfall, Aber Falls in Wales
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