Professor Caleb Lack

06/19/2026

Really intriguing new study on and how - despite the underlying model - it can be reliably discerned from human writing through an analysis of the narrative, not just the style:

"AI stories over-explain themes and favor tidy, single-track plots while human stories frame protagonist' choices as more morally ambiguous and have increased temporal complexity."

I would be very curious to see how this might apply to scientific writing, which is much more rigid in it's "narrative" (having certain sections of papers, citations, etc.). Could be a nice tool to w**d out all the AI-generated slop being firehosed onto our journal editors!

Link:

As AI-generated fiction becomes increasingly prevalent, questions of authorship and originality are becoming central to how written work is evaluated. While most existing work in this space focuses on identifying surface-level signatures of AI writing, we ask instead whether AI-generated stories can...

06/16/2026

It’s what day? Thirsty (for trainings) Tuesday? Well prepare to drink!

If you know me, you know that I love ERP. I love doing it, I love training folks in it, I love writing about it. “If you love ERP so much why don’t you marry it?!?” the kids on the grad school playground would say to tease me.

And I tell ya, if ERP was a lady I WOULD have asked her to marry me years ago, and been deeply hurt as she rejected me for other, better suitors (probably Jon Abramowitz, with his guitar skills and fancy head of hair).

What I’m saying is that ERP is amazing, and I want to share my love of it with you. So next month I’m doing a special 2-day live webinar with PESI. First we will learn all about ERP, then I will show you what ERP looks like applied to various problems (OCD, PTSD, social anxiety, and so on). I’ve even got a video of me treating a snake phobia that we will see.

Go here to register, you won’t regret it (especially because it’s 50% off): https://www.pesi.com/item/2day-exposure-response-prevention-erp-training-171078

Or if you would rather, we already have plans for in person trainings next January in Baltimore and April in Nashville, so you can come see me face to face! We can compare beards! Or swap stories about how many different animals we have a) eaten and b) been bitten by!

Dr. Lack will show you how to deliver ERP in a way that’s safe, manageable and compassionate – so you’ll be guiding clients at a pace that helps them without overwhelming them.

06/15/2026

It’s not an illusion - your kid’s attention span has gotten shorter (yours probably has too). This article profiles some really great studies showing how deliberately engaging in focused and challenging tasks (that get more challenging across time) can help to improve your cognitive endurance. Try it with your kids…and probably yourself!

The ability to run “mental marathons” is a skill children can learn through simple, but dedicated, practice

06/11/2026

Studies like this are why I repeatedly have said that reducing inequality (via strong social safety nets such as universal basic income and healthcare) is key to producing a mentally healthier society.

"Brain function and structure are known to be affected by environmental conditions. Marek et al. mapped brain-wide association studies (BWAS) of 649 phenotypes and exposures to brain function and structure using imaging data from many sources (see the Perspective by Sisk and Satterthwaite). Across adolescents, neighborhood-level socioeconomics showed the strongest brain-wide association, representing a single exposome pattern that explains 34% of all BWAS variance. In their datasets, the classic brain-IQ association largely disappeared when socioeconomic status was properly accounted for. These results provide valuable insights for understanding the effects of the environment on brain development"

Full study - https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aee6213

06/04/2026

When you’re an exposure therapist and your graduating master’s student is crafty, you might get an awesome award from her.

That’s right folks, I have been officially given the “Number 1 Toilet Cracker Expert” award! I’ve been working for 20 years to get here!

Thanks Savanna!

06/02/2026

I am excited to be guest expert speaker in The Child Therapist Hub this month. Come see some of my shenanigans while we talk about how to help anxious kids who present with aggression and other more challenging behaviors.

www.childtherapisthub.com

05/29/2026

If you’ve followed me much or talked to me about it at all, you know I don’t have much love for EMDR. Part of that is certainly due to the fact that it’s just imaginal exposure with response prevention plus some nonsense. But another is due to the constant shifting stories on its origin by Francine Shapiro.

In this article (taken from a larger exposé), we see yet again how Shapiro lied about another aspect of her development of EMDR:

“We cited evidence that Shapiro’s interest in eye movements did not emerge from her alleged walk in the park. Rather, she had an earlier devotion to a pseudoscientific approach called neurolinguistic programming (NLP), which has a strong emphasis on observing eye-movements for clues about mental states.”

And they have the receipts (as the kids say), in the form of a newly uncovered newspaper article and photograph. Read more here:

https://skepticalinquirer.org/2026/04/a-photograph-exposes-emdrs-true-origins/

05/28/2026

My colleague Dr Marla Diebler has a great new blog over on Psych Today, with this entry on helping kids who have BFRBs (hair and skin picking) even if they might not want to be helped.

Read it here - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/from-surviving-to-thriving/202605/bfrb-treatment-does-a-child-have-to-want-to-stop