Entering the field of Behaviour Change
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I attended the Behaviour Change Conclave hosted by CSBC, Ashoka University on 30th June 2026. It was a calm, less chaotic, more focused and relaxing kind of learning experience. I will write a bit about the people I heard and talked to there. The day began with digital lightning of lamp, which was as cool and funny as it sounds. Then Mr. Awanish Awasthi, the advisor to CM, UP talked about the kind of behaviour change work they did in Gorakhpur, UP to fight Japanese encephalitis which spreads because of unhygiene. He mentioned the goals of Viksit Bharat 2047 which included the integration of AI in the pillars of society - Education, health, agriculture. He talked about development being education outcome oriented and a related project going on in Lucknow. He focused on behavioural change through social media in the later part of his talk. He highlighted the availability of resources and huge funds for working on AI integration in any of these sectors in UP and invities young thinkers to participate. Ms. Archna, Director at Gates Foundation India gave the next talk mentioning their work with the UP government.
A more interesting aspect to behaviour change was brought out by Dr. Sharon Barnhardt who shared their recent work at CSBC titled 'Access to Agency', focused more around AI readiness. The talk highlighted these four facets to it - Compute, Connectivity, Context, Comptency, all explained with the example of AI Saheli. An interesting theme brough out by this talk was the information push and pull. Any campaign focused on behaviour change tends to push information to the targeted group, what they pull from that information is unknown, yet important. In the past few decades when technology bloomed, it gradually became less about information and more about relationships. The casual conversations with AI like tools become emotionally important to humans. The training modules shared for their AI Saheli group inspired the idea in me that every module shall be strongly rooted in principles that achieve the larger goal in whole. The groups under this programme are being trained to achieve agency to existing AI infrastructre, to build confidence and use imagination to bring it to use.
Four winter days dedicated to Cognitive Science in India
In December 2023, the Association for Cognitive Science organized a three-day event for the 10th iteration of Annual Conference of Cognitive Science at IIT Kanpur from 9th to 11th day of the month. On 12th December, the Judgment and Decision Making India conference was organized on the same campus by professors from IIT-D and IIT-K.
The conference was studded with talks and posters on various themes of Cognitive science like learning and memory, language, emotion, disorders and interventions, attention and perception, and so on. The keynote talks added flavor to the overall experience of the conference. I am excited to write an overview of all the talks and posters I found interesting and I was able to comprehend. So let's begin with my favorites: the keynote talks titled 'Splitting attention into its atomic components' by Prof. Sridharan Devarajan from IISc Bangalore and 'Dogs and their human neighbors in the urban ecosystem' by Prof. Anindita Bhadra from IISER Kolkata, a glimpse of their talks can be seen in the abstract below.
There were many other amazing talks and posters presented by faculties and scholars across the world.
My preparation experience for entrance exams
I would like to share my humble experience with entrance exams for Masters in Cognitive Science in India. I have given GATE Psychology twice, COGJET thrice, IIT Gandhinagar written exam twice, and CUET PG twice (General and Psychology categories). All I know now is that each and every thing that you decided to study and not matters when you sit in front of that screen on D-Day.
Though I am not in much of a position to say about GATE Psychology since I did not qualify it once, but I can certainly speak for other exams like COGJET and CUET. Let's get a clearer picture of each exam separately.
COGJET 2024 opens doors to MSc in Cog Sci and integrated MSc in Cog Sci at CBCS Allahabad, and PhD in Cog Sci at IIIT Hyderabad. For preparation of this exam, I mostly used AP Psychology and UGC NET Psychology book for practice,11th and 12th Psychology NCERT, IGNOU eGyankosh Psychology books for theory. For this exam, one must look into the basics of everything on the syllabus list including programming. No need to get into the complexities of it as such, but you should know the theories well. I liked the YouTube channel called CrashCourse for taking an overview of the topics before getting into readings.
Same preparation style can be used for CUET PG (Psychology) which opens doors to MA Psychology at Central University Rajasthan and several other state universities. For CUET PG (General) you should prepare and practice extensively, the exam is not difficult and easy to clear. Through this exam, you can get admission in MSc Neural systems and cognitive science at University of Hyderabad.
GATE provides entry to IIT Delhi and IIT Kanpur for MSc Cognitive Science. There could be more institutes in the list, please do your research in this regard. A friend of mine with GATE AIR 26 told me that she followed GRE Psychology book for this exam which follows the same syllabus and pattern as the exam.
Working in the most spiritually healthy environment
I belong to Agra in U.P. where more than the Taj Mahal, we appreciate the diversity the city exhibits. A part of this diversity is a small community called Dayalbagh located in the most green part of the city. The people of this community believe in simple, spiritually involved, and sustainable living. I became a part of this vibrant community as an undergrad student of this community's university which believes in spreading education at the minimal cost possible. I continued to associate myself with this community even after graduation when I joined IIT Delhi as a Project Associate. Our project there focused on studying socio-emotional learning in young children, and what better community to study than Dayalbagh when it comes to teaching in a unique way in order to cultivate values? So my team went to Dayalbagh to collect EEG data with some unique students with exceptional training in physical, mental, and spiritual, not to mention, educational aspects. It was here that I got the chance to conduct my self-designed moral cognition game and a modified self-regulation test which went on to become a unique neuromarketing study that I later presented at IIM Ahmedabad next year. There, I worked with children as young as 3 years, and those little kids were as patient as an ocean.
I have published articles online to share my work in collaboration with other talented researchers in the lab. Read them here:
Can children be taught values using game designs? Insights from a neurophysiological experimental study with children. DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/u5qrz
Jain, M., Negi, K., Sahni P., Kumar, J. (2022, December 12). Neural Underpinnings of Decoupled Ethical Behavior in Adolescents as an Interaction of Peer and Personal Values. DOI: https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.05202v1
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