I checked 4 preprints servers on Saturday, July 18, 2026 using the Open Science Foundation API. For the period July 11 to July 17, I found 345 new paper(s).

MediArxiv

The Transactional High Risk High Reward Make-Believe Storying Exchange
Christopher Lance Spain
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Implausible though it might seem, despite numerous and ongoing attempts, there has never been a falsifiable and comprehensive description of fictional storytelling. This has left fundamental attributes unnoticed, none more significant than the apprehension that fictional storytelling is an ensemble of two distinct asymmetrically costly but interdependent behaviors, either one nonsensical without the other. Here I provide the first falsifiable and comprehensive description of fictional storytelling, re-conceptualized as a bartering mechanism, not metaphorically but literally, with a fictional story the teller’s boundless asset on one side of the exchange, and audience attention, bound individually but collectively boundless, the asset on the other side. Additionally I describe the singular attribute of teller behavior that motivates audience behavior, conspicuous in artifacts of the exchange known as novels, novellas, short stories, dramatic films, graphic novels, epic Greek poems, Greek tragedy manuscripts, Elizabethan drama manuscripts, sitcoms, comics, animated cartoons, and children’s picture books. Meant as a tractable introduction to previously unremarked observations, at the intersection of culture and human evolution, this initial paper brings into question doctrine in both areas of study, highlighting that what is commonly named theme is an inessential, as well as laying the groundwork for an explication of fictional storytelling as adaptive for teller, audience, and, most unusually, the storytelling ensemble (teller + audience). Companion papers elaborate on the dynamics of the exchange, in both its Public Commons and Consanguineous forms, examining the fitness logic for all participants, revealing fictional storytelling to be an extraordinary and anomalous system of cooperative behaviors which is of considerable cultural and biological interest.

PsyArxiv

SAVi-M: A Standardised Auditory-Visual Database to Investigate Affective Response to Trigger Events
Paris Arizona Ash; Timothy Griffiths; Quoc Vuong
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Objectives: This study presents a publicly available standardised set of auditory-visual stimuli specifically designed for misophonia research. This was done with the purpose of addressing some of the main limitations of current databases available, namely the lack of standardised, lab-curated, and ecologically valid auditory-visual databases. Method: The database is comprised of 250 videos categorised into six categories, according to the Sussex Misophonia Scale (SMS; Simner et al., 2024): 1) eating, 2) repetitive tapping, 3) rustling, 4) mouth/nose, 5) throat, and 6) neutral (non-triggers). Four non-professional actors (2 males and 2 females) were filmed preforming scripted main events (e.g., eating an apple). To gather further information regarding the emotional responses our database videos elicited, we conducted an online study where 96 participants (32 with misophonia, 31 with misophonia-misokinesia (combined), and 33 control participants) rated each database video on their arousal (emotional intensity), valence (pleasantness), and dominance (sense of control). Results: Participants with misophonia and those with both misophonia and misokinesia exhibited significantly higher arousal, lower valence, and reduced dominance compared to controls when attending to the database videos. These differences were most profound in the eating category. Examining pairwise correlations between the affective dimensions revealed across all groups that arousal was negatively correlated with both valence and dominance, while valence and dominance were positively correlated. Conclusion: The SAVi-M database provides researchers with a standardised, ecologically valid, and behaviourally rated set of auditory-visual stimuli. Using affective response ratings based on the Pleasure-Arousal-Dominance (PAD) model, the database offers a new approach of quantifying the behavioural/emotional response in misophonia. The SAVi-M database can be utilised to enhance exploration of misophonia from a multisensory approach.
High socioeconomic status as a risk context for anxiety and alcohol use in youth: A scoping review
Linda Marchesano
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Abstract Socioeconomic status (SES) has traditionally been treated as a protective factor in mental health research, guiding attention toward low-SES populations who face documented structural barriers and mental health burdens. Yet this assumption is increasingly difficult to sustain. SES is a marker of the environments people inhabit, making environmental change inseparable from mental health risk. The shifting distribution of anorexia nervosa illustrates this: once concentrated among the affluent, it spread across SES levels as environments driving it became widely accessible. Similar shifts may now be underway as social media, social comparison cultures, and changing substance use norms alter the risk environments SES groups encounter. This scoping review examines anxiety and alcohol use in high-SES populations, with attention to how high SES is operationalized and how these outcomes manifest independently and jointly in affluent contexts. Searches of PubMed, PsycINFO, and Embase identified 38 studies published through May 2025, spanning children, adolescents, and adults across five continents. Higher SES was consistently associated with elevated anxiety and increased alcohol use, particularly among children and adolescents, with symptoms documented as early as grade six. Anxiety and alcohol use showed co-occurrence across studies, extending from adolescence into adulthood. Chronic performance pressure, social comparison, and normative drinking cultures emerged as salient mechanisms, with alcohol use shaped by stress-related coping and permissive social norms in affluent peer environments. These findings suggest that understanding mental health requires examining risk across the socioeconomic spectrum. An exclusive focus on deprivation leaves pathways unmapped and may constrain models as risk environments continue to shift. Keywords: Socioeconomic status; affluence; anxiety; alcohol use; adolescents; youth mental health
EVALUATION OF OPEN SCIENCE IN THE PEER REVIEW PROCESS
Kylie Rochford; Amelia Stillwell; Coco Liu; Elizabeth R. Tenney
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Open science practices are increasingly recognized as helpful for improving the rigor and robustness of empirical evidence. Yet reviewers in management and organizational psychology receive little guidance or training on how to evaluate and credit the use of these practices in the peer review process. To support consideration of open science practices during peer review, we identify journals’ current expectations regarding open science and synthesize the existing literature, including editorials, research papers, and open science blogs and websites, into best-practice guidance for reviewers. We organize recommendations into three sections: supplementary files, in-text transparency, and preregistration. In each section, we explain the purpose of the practice and provide a checklist with actionable steps and resources to aid reviewers in their evaluation. We then acknowledge the limitations of our checklists. Our aim is to reduce uncertainty surrounding open science practices and empower and assist reviewers who choose to consider open science during the peer review process.
High socioeconomic status as a risk context for anxiety and alcohol use in youth: A scoping review
Linda Marchesano
Full text
Abstract Socioeconomic status (SES) has traditionally been treated as a protective factor in mental health research, guiding attention toward low-SES populations who face documented structural barriers and mental health burdens. Yet this assumption is increasingly difficult to sustain. SES is a marker of the environments people inhabit, making environmental change inseparable from mental health risk. The shifting distribution of anorexia nervosa illustrates this: once concentrated among the affluent, it spread across SES levels as environments driving it became widely accessible. Similar shifts may now be underway as social media, social comparison cultures, and changing substance use norms alter the risk environments SES groups encounter. This scoping review examines anxiety and alcohol use in high-SES populations, with attention to how high SES is operationalized and how these outcomes manifest independently and jointly in affluent contexts. Searches of PubMed, PsycINFO, and Embase identified 38 studies published through May 2025, spanning children, adolescents, and adults across five continents. Higher SES was consistently associated with elevated anxiety and increased alcohol use, particularly among children and adolescents, with symptoms documented as early as grade six. Anxiety and alcohol use showed co-occurrence across studies, extending from adolescence into adulthood. Chronic performance pressure, social comparison, and normative drinking cultures emerged as salient mechanisms, with alcohol use shaped by stress-related coping and permissive social norms in affluent peer environments. These findings suggest that understanding mental health requires examining risk across the socioeconomic spectrum. An exclusive focus on deprivation leaves pathways unmapped and may constrain models as risk environments continue to shift. Keywords: Socioeconomic status; affluence; anxiety; alcohol use; adolescents; youth mental health
Exploring Unusual Moments in Daily Life: Phantom Phone Signals, psychosis-like experiences and wellbeing
Emma Claire Palmer-Cooper; Kaelyn Dias; Katie Burke
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Phantom phone signals (PPS) describe hearing or feeling a phone notification when there was none. These benign hallucinatory perceptions are common in the general population, and are associated with phone use, wellbeing, and psychosis-like experiences (PLEs). Most research has studied younger adult samples; this study assessed PPS prevalence and correlates in a representative UK adult sample. Our online questionnaire included 344 participants (mean age: 47.36 years [SD = 15.71], 52.6% female, 83.4% white, no experience of psychosis, and measured PPS (PPEAS), resilience (RS-14), quality of life (MQLI), stress mindset (SMQ) hallucination-proneness (MUSEQ), delusional ideation (PDI-21), and metacognitive awareness (MSAS). PPS was experienced by 52.6% of our sample, infrequently with minimal, distress or disruption (mean PPEAS Impact = 1.87, SD = 2.69). PPEAS impact correlated with hallucination-proneness (rs = .43), delusional ideation, (rs = .27), quality of life (rs = −.19), metacognitive self-reflectivity (rs = −.25) mastery (rs = −.18), and age (rs = −.33). Greater hallucination-proneness and younger age predicted increased phantom phone experiences in ordinal regression (Nagelkerke pseudo-R2=.27). Binary logistic regression showed that hallucination-proneness, younger age, and lower self-reflectivity predicted PPS presence, explaining 25.2% of variance. Reporting a mental health problem was not associated with PPS. Results indicate that PPS is common across the lifespan, and are primarily associated with hallucination-proneness and younger age, with potential contributions from self-reflectivity. The absence of associations with mental health problems supports the interpretation of PPS as non-clinical and broadly normative, aligning with a continuum account of hallucinations in the general population.
Publication bias in randomized trials of psilocybin for depression: a Robust Bayesian Meta-Analysis
Çağrı Özkurt
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A recent living systematic review in Nature Mental Health found psilocybin reduced depression symptoms across 12 randomized controlled trials, with pooled effect g = 0.90. The original analysis assessed publication bias using Egger’s test, non-significant — but this test has limited power with few studies and cannot produce a bias-corrected estimate. We re-analysed the same open dataset using Robust Bayesian Meta-Analysis (RoBMA), which simultaneously estimates evidence for a treatment effect, heterogeneity, and publication bias. We find moderate evidence for publication bias (Bayes Factor = 3.89). After accounting for selective reporting, the bias-corrected effect (g ≈ 0.53) is ~41% smaller than published, with a credible interval spanning to zero. This evidence dissipates when open-label studies are excluded, suggesting expectancy-driven artefacts rather than file-drawer suppression. These findings do not overturn the original conclusions but indicate greater uncertainty than the frequentist analysis implies.
A normative account of procrastination and its correlates, consequences, and interventions
Peiyuan Zhang; Wei Ji Ma
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Procrastination often gets in the way of pursuing goals that require consistent effort over extended periods. While existing theories explain isolated aspects of procrastination, the field lacks a unifying theory. We present a normative theory in which procrastination emerges as the outcome of a dynamic decision-making process: at each time point, an individual chooses between making an effort and postponing work. Using dynamic programming, we derive the time course of work. Our theory accounts for a wide range of empirical observations while making new predictions. First, the rational agent exhibits three temporal patterns of procrastination: a delay before ramping up, working at the last minute, and not working at all. Second, we predict that temporal discounting rate, reward magnitude, task aversiveness, and the utility of alternative activities correlate with the severity of procrastination. Third, we predict that the relationship between perfectionism and procrastination is contingent on moderating factors such as temporal discounting rate, rather than being a simple direct association. We provide empirical validation of the component of our theory that represents perfectionism. Fourth, we identify underexplored factors: the shape of the effort-cost function and the total allotted time. Fifth, we predict the effects of interventions that modify incentive structures: immediate rewards and intermediate deadlines. Throughout, we examine not only the severity of procrastination but also its downstream consequences in terms of task performance, reward obtained, and level of exhaustion. Overall, our framework captures the multifaceted nature of procrastination and sets the stage for new experimental directions.
The Effect of Exposure Frequency and Talker Variability on the Formation of New Phonolexical Representations in an Unfamiliar Language
Jens Schmidtke; Denisa Bordag; Andreas Opitz
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Phonolexical representations in a second language are often described as fuzzy or less precise compared to the native language. This study set out to characterize more precisely what these terms mean empirically. We used eye tracking during cross-situational word learning to track how word–referent mappings develop online as native German speakers learned Hebrew labels over multiple exposures. Exposure frequency (5 vs. 12 exposures) and talker variability (1 vs. 5 talkers) were experimentally manipulated during training. With each additional exposure, target fixations rose above chance earlier within the trial and reached a higher peak, with talker variability further improving mapping strength. Testing with the visual-world paradigm revealed that phonolexical precision can be characterized along multiple dimensions: how much input is required before a representation is reliably activated, how strongly it is activated, how selectively it is distinguished from phonologically similar competitors, and whether the native (task-irrelevant) lexicon is co-activated.
Binaural-beat hype fails scientific scrutiny again
Michal Klichowski; Andrzej Wicher; Lukasz Szoszkiewicz; Agnieszka Rosciszewska; Anna Klichowska; Tomasz Gorecki; Bartosz Naskrecki; RafaƂ JoƄczyk; Maciej Behnke
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Binaural beats are widely promoted by influencers and neurohackers as an accessible, do-it-yourself form of acoustic brain stimulation that is supposed to enhance cognition through neural entrainment. It remains to be tested, however, whether these claimed benefits occur under conditions in which they are typically recommended—at home, during demanding cognitive work. Our previous study challenged these claims, showing that home-use binaural beats impaired rather than boosted cognitive performance with substantial, unexplained interindividual variability. Here we replicate and extend that work in a sample of nearly 2,000 adults. In a randomised, single-blind design, we measured fluid-intelligence performance (reasoning and problem-solving ability) first in silence and then in one of three acoustic conditions: 15 Hz binaural beats, 20 Hz binaural beats or a pure-tone control. Both binaural-beat groups showed a small decline from baseline, an effect not observed in the control group. At the individual level, only a minority of participants showed reliable deterioration in performance, which was not explained by psychodemographic variables. Home-use binaural beats therefore do not enhance, and may slightly impair, cognition, while the sources of individual variability—who is affected and why—remain unclear. These findings indicate that the hype around these consumer neurotechnologies outstrips the evidence.
Discriminability of sound contrasts in the face of speaker variation quantified
Christina Bergmann; Alejandrina Cristia; Emmanuel Dupoux; Alex Eguiluz
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How does a naive language learner deal with speaker variation irrelevant to distinguishing word meanings? Experimental data is contradictory, and incompatible models have been proposed. Here, we examine basic assumptions regarding the acoustic signal the learner deals with: Is speaker variability a hurdle in discriminating sounds or can it easily be ignored? To this end, we summarize existing infant data. We then present machinebased discriminability scores of sound pairs obtained without any language knowledge. Our results show that speaker variability decreases sound contrast discriminability, and that some contrasts are affected more than others. However, chance performance is rare; most contrasts remain discriminable in the face of speaker variation. We take our results to mean that speaker variation is not a uniform hurdle to discriminating sound contrasts, and careful examination is necessary when planning and interpreting studies testing whether and to what extent infants (and adults) are sensitive to speaker differences. Keywords: language acquisition; speech; acoustics; machine classification
Cognitive Biases Implicated in Alien Abduction Beliefs
Jim Davies
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Many people believe that they have been abducted by aliens, and still more believe in the alien abduction of other people. Although the scientific community rejects the truth of alien abduction, the persistence of the belief in abduction requires explanation. What makes the alien abduction narrative so compelling to people? In this theoretical paper, I describe how we can use known theories from psychology and other sciences to provide preliminary explanation.
The Role Of Confidence In Prevalence-Induced Concept Change
Artur Ammalainen; Ben Eppinger
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The prevalence-induced concept change (PICC) effect demonstrates the malleability of people’s mental concepts, as they can change due to mere shifts in the prevalence of events in the environment. People differ in their sensitivity to the PICC effect. We hypothesised that variability in the PICC effect might reflect the level of confidence with which judgements about concepts are made. That is, the more confident people are in their original concepts, the less likely they are to adapt their concepts to changes in the environment. In a preregistered study (N = 81), we found that confidence indeed modulates the PICC effect, but in a way opposite to our prediction. Higher self-reported confidence before the prevalence shift is associated with a higher probability of changing concepts after the prevalence shift. We used the decision boundary parameter from the drift-diffusion modelling approach as an alternative measure of confidence and found the same pattern of results. We argue that in complex environments, where people do not explicitly process changes, higher confidence triggers an intuitive decision strategy and makes people more sensitive to the external environmental cues, while lower confidence leads to more deliberate choices and sticking to the old concepts.
How Society Understands the Developing Brain: Neuromyths and Their Potential Implications for Development and Learning
Elena Federici; Lena Götz; Gian Andri Bamert; Nora Maria Raschle
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Neuromyths are widespread misconceptions about the brain and learning. Often based on oversimplified or misinterpreted scientific findings, they may influence educational practices, expectations, and understanding of learning and brain development. We assessed neuroscience-related knowledge and neuromyth endorsement in a population-based sample from Switzerland. A total of 1006 adults aged 18–90 years completed a survey comprising 25 statements on brain development, learning, and mental health, including eight neuromyths and 17 factual statements. Participants correctly classified an average of 18.87 of the 25 statements, indicating generally high levels of neuroscience-related knowledge. Neuromyths were identified less accurately than factual statements. The prevalent misconceptions concerned learning styles, hemispheric dominance, and the Mozart effect, which were incorrectly classified by the majority of the participants. Younger adults showed higher overall accuracy and recognition of neuromyths and factual statements than older age groups. In contrast educators and non-educators did not differ in overall performance, neuromyth identification, or recognition of factual statements. These findings indicate that neuromyths remain widespread despite high levels of neuroscience-related knowledge and are not limited to non-educators. Together, the results suggest that misconceptions about the brain may reflect challenges in interpreting neuroscientific information rather than a simple lack of knowledge, highlighting the importance of fostering critical evaluation of neuroscience-related claims.
Data Report: An Examination of the Refreshing Frequency Effect and Test-Display Interference Effect in Visual Working Memory
Caro Hautekiet; Klaus Oberauer
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When attention is directed to an item in visual working memory during the retention interval by a retro-cue, memory for it is improved. When several successive cues direct attention to items, a refreshing-frequency effect is observed: Items cued more often are remembered better. This report presents six behavioural experiments in which we examined whether the refreshing frequency effect can be explained by protection from test-display interference (Experiments 1-3) and whether information in working memory is impacted by test-display interference, as previously assumed (Experiments 4-6). Our findings show some support for the refreshing frequency effect, though less convincing than in previous reports. In the experiments including refreshing cues, we did not observe any evidence for test-display interference and were therefore unable to determine whether the refreshing frequency effect can be explained by protection from test-display interference. Without refreshing cues, we did observe an effect of test-display interference. Furthermore, we observed that test-display interference is mitigated by a single retro-cue, replicating Souza et al. (2016; Experiment 6). This dataset provides a basis for further investigation of the refreshing frequency effect and the impact of test-display interference on working memory performance.
Predicting Bilinguals' End-of-year Reading Using A Best-Language Approach: Efficacy Depends on Grade and Outcome Language
Julian M Siebert; MĂłnica Zegers; Rachel L. Eggleston; Lillian DurĂĄn; Gorno Tempini Maria Luisa
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Spanish-English bilinguals are the largest bilingual group in U.S. schools, yet the frameworks used to predict their reading from early screening data were developed on largely monolingual samples, leaving open the question of which language(s) to assess. This study compared three approaches to predicting end-of-year (EOY) reading from beginning-of-year (BOY) early-literacy and language skills in 553 Spanish-English bilingual kindergarten and first-grade students: English-only, Spanish-only, and a derived best-language score (the higher of a child's two single-language scores per task). Linear mixed-effects models, controlling for school clustering, compared these approaches separately by grade, outcome language (English/Spanish), and instructional context (bilingual vs. English-only). Best-language scoring did not uniformly improve prediction; benefits diminished with grade. In kindergarten, it matched or modestly exceeded the best single-language approach (marginal RÂČ = .35 for English outcomes, .35 for Spanish outcomes) and explained the most variance for Spanish outcomes. By first grade, once target-language word reading emerged as a dominant proximal predictor, best-language scores offered no advantage over English-only assessment for English outcomes (RÂČ = .57 vs. .43). English-only assessment predicted Spanish reading poorly, especially in kindergarten, while Spanish and best-language approaches predicted both outcome languages reasonably well throughout. Findings align with a distributed-knowledge account: decoding-related skills transfer across languages and benefit from best-language scoring, while language-comprehension skills are language-specific and gain little from it. Practically, assessment language should be matched to the skill, grade, and outcome of interest rather than defaulting to one language for all children.
Inconclusive intergenerational transmission of posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms: A comment on Geng et al. (2026)
Kimmo Sorjonen; Bo Melin; Marika Melin
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Based on longitudinal associations, Geng et al. concluded that parental PTSD symptoms may impact children’s PTSD symptoms and the effect may be mediated by parenting style and children’s emotion regulation abilities. However, correlations do not prove causality. Here, we show that the same covariance structure could be due to a correlation between children’s latent general negativity and parental PTSD symptoms and this correlation could, for example, be due to common genetic vulnerability. Hence, the conclusions by Geng et al. should not be taken at face value.
Color cues, developmental coupling, and the limits of the late-sighted model: A commentary on Vogelsang et al. (2024)
David Henry Peterzell
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Vogelsang et al. (2024) report in Science that congenitally blind individuals who gain sight late in life rely disproportionately on color cues for object recognition, unlike normally sighted controls. They propose that this pattern reflects the adaptive value of neonatal color immaturity: because typical infants experience a period of degraded chromatic input, they develop object representations grounded in luminance rather than color. The theoretical account, however, rests on an incomplete engagement with the developmental literature. Decades of research indicate that color and luminance sensitivity are developmentally coupled through shared photoreceptor immaturity: the same front-end bottleneck that degrades chromatic input in neonates simultaneously degrades luminance and spatial processing. If this coupling is real, there is no luminance-first window, because the bottleneck lifts for both dimensions together. The account's central premise is therefore undermined not by arguing independence, but by showing that color and luminance do not develop in the sequence the account requires. I further identify methodological concerns: a small and unusual sample, a fixed order confound in the primary behavioral task, a computational model implementing a binary switch rather than the gradual chromatic cascade of normal development, and a color sensitivity test using non-equiluminant stimuli, leaving open the possibility that luminance rather than chromatic contrast sensitivity drove performance. Together, these issues require qualification of the conclusions of Vogelsang et al. and reconciliation of the proposed account with classical findings in infant visual development. This broader question remains important, but the answer is unlikely to hinge on color alone.
Time Aggregation and Missing Time Frames in Causal Research With Panel Data
Jeroen Mulder; Manuel Voelkle; Ellen Hamaker
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A common goal in psychological and behavioral research is the study of causal mechanisms underlying a particular process of interest. These research questions are commonly investigated using panel data obtained at relatively large time intervals of months or years and with measurements referring to the past week, month, or year. In this article, we investigate to what extend panel data can be used to study a causal mechanism when the causal process is assumed to play out at a (much) faster timescale than that at which the panel data were obtained. Specifically, we used simulations to study the impact of time aggregation (i.e., aggregating scores over multiple occasions) and systematic (under)sampling (i.e., when parts of the ongoing process are not covered with the measurements) on the ability of popular dynamic models to approximate the effects of a time-varying exposure on a time-varying outcome in three different scenarios. The results show that time aggregation and systematic (under)sampling can lead to severe over- and underestimation of the causal effect, implying that wrong (and potentially harmful) conclusions can be draw. We discuss the implications of these findings for applied researchers.
Encoding models in functional magnetic resonance imaging: the Voxelwise Encoding Model framework
Matteo Visconti di Oleggio Castello; Fatma Deniz; Tom Dupré la Tour; Jack L. Gallant
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One of the major goals of cognitive neuroscience is understanding how the brain represents information about its own internal states and about the external world. This goal can be addressed by creating encoding models that reveal the information represented explicitly in measured brain activity. Here we describe the Voxelwise Encoding Model (VEM) framework for creating encoding models with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data. The VEM framework provides several key advantages over traditional neuroimaging approaches. First, the VEM framework is applicable to most experimental designs, from classic factorial designs to complex naturalistic experiments such as movie watching or video games. This flexibility enables researchers to study brain function across multiple domains with the same analytical approach. Second, hypotheses about functional representations are defined and tested quantitatively by extracting feature spaces from experimental stimuli or tasks. These feature spaces quantify specific types of information potentially represented in brain activity and can range from simple human-derived labels to complex features generated by deep neural networks. If a feature space can be used to linearly predict brain activity, the brain is considered to explicitly represent features within that feature space. This prediction approach provides a systematic way to test hypotheses about functional representations. Third, the VEM framework implements robust data science methods to improve model estimation and minimize false positive results. Encoding models are estimated on a training set and validated on an independent test set. Testing in an independent dataset provides direct evidence that experimental findings generalize beyond the dataset used for model estimation. Finally, voxelwise encoding models can be created in each participant's native brain space without unnecessary information loss due to spatial averaging or template resampling required by conventional group analyses. This enables the VEM approach to reveal fine-grained functional organization in individual participants that might otherwise be ignored. In this article, we provide a comprehensive guide to the Voxelwise Encoding Model framework through all phases of research, from experimental design and data collection to the estimation and interpretation of voxelwise encoding models.
Beyond Stressors and Outcomes A Qualitative Study of Unwanted Behaviors and Their Contexts in Flemish Correctional Officers
Tilia Linthout; Fouke Switzynck; Anna Wasil; Pieter Van Dessel
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Correctional officers work in demanding environments, yet research has mainly examined occupational stressors and distal outcomes such as burnout, rather than the concrete unwanted actions, thoughts, and feelings officers experience in daily prison work. This qualitative study mapped self-reported unwanted overt and covert behavior among 13 experienced Flemish correctional officers. Semi-structured interviews examined unwanted responses, their contexts, the goals they conflicted with, and alternative behaviors officers identified. Reflexive thematic analysis identified work-related goals including safety, humanity and respect, rehabilitation, satisfaction, and daily order. Unwanted overt behaviors included abrupt communication, acting against one's preferred response, and reduced supportiveness toward specific individuals. Unwanted covert responses included judgmental thoughts, demotivation, and frustration, linked to workload, repeated requests, threatening situations, imposed decisions, and difficult interactions. Participants identified preventive, reflective, and recovery-based strategies, though many struggled to formulate alternatives spontaneously. Findings offer a descriptive basis for training and reflective-practice approaches addressing unwanted behavior in context. Keywords: correctional staff; prison work; unwanted behavior; occupational stress; qualitative research
Friendship Quality, Personality Traits, and Mental Health: Quantitative Study of Pakistani University Students
Misbah Saleem; Irsa Shakeel; Muznah Arshad; Hadia Bibi
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The present study investigated the interrelationships among Big Five personality traits, friendship quality, and mental health indicators among Pakistani university students. We used a cross-sectional survey design, and 133 participants (aged 18-25; 75.2% female) completed the Big Five Inventory-15, McGill Friendship Questionnaire, and Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21. Pearson correlations showed that none of the five personality traits (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism) was significantly related to friendship quality. On the other hand, friendship quality showed a significant negative relationship with stress and depression, supporting its role as a protective psychosocial factor. Gender comparisons using independent-samples t-tests indicated that female participants scored significantly higher on neuroticism and anxiety than male participants. The low internal consistency of the personality subscales (alpha = .582) is acknowledged as a key limitation that may have weakened the observed correlations. These findings are important for educational and clinical practice in collectivist settings, suggesting that interventions promoting friendship quality may help reduce psychological distress among university students. Future research should employ longer, more reliable personality inventories and longitudinal designs to clarify causal pathways.
Vaccination to Protect Others: Mixed Evidence for Authentic Prosociality and Impression Management
Mitchell Matthijssen; Florian van Leeuwen; Mariëlle Cloin; Ien van de Goor; peter achterberg
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Vaccination entails a social benefit, the reduced risk of infecting other individuals. Reminding people about the collective interest in vaccination and calling upon their prosocial motivations to help others might increase vaccination uptake. We tested two accounts that might explain why people get vaccinated to protect other people. On the one hand, an authentic prosociality account proposes that intentions to vaccinate to protect other people might be due to authentic prosocial motivations. On the other hand, an impression management account proposes that intentions to vaccinate to protect other people might be due to motivations for impression management. We used cross-sectional data (Study 1, n = 2,355) and a between-subject experiment (Study 2, n = 2,225) to test hypotheses derived from both accounts. We show that vaccination intentions were associated with individual differences in prosociality and were positively influenced by communicating the social benefit of vaccination. The association between prosociality and vaccination intentions did not depend on the vaccine's safety and vulnerability to the disease. The association was stronger for existing diseases, which could not be explained by individual differences in social desirability. The evidence is equivocal, neither the authentic prosociality, nor the impression management account is consistently supported by our findings. Overall, the findings show that vaccination intentions are associated with prosocial motivations and that reminding people is effective in increasing vaccination intentions.
A Comparison Of Latent & Network Modelling In ADHD Using sMRI & Psychometric Assessment
Shannon John Fernandes
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Latent models are ubiquitous in psychopathology research, particularly in discussions of statistical boundaries and assessment. The present study compares classical latent models with network modelling approaches to examine the insights they provide when latent models are limited. Study 1 used the ADHD-200 dataset to analyse sMRI data (n = 170) for individuals with ADHD and control participants across four preprocessing conditions: normalised and non-normalised images resampled to 128^3 and 224^3 voxel resolutions. Global voxel-level features were extracted, latent summaries were derived, and networks were estimated. Study 2 assessed ADHD symptom ratings using the CDC National Survey data (N = 2878) with latent and network models. Findings from study 1 showed that preprocessing method accounted for greater variance than individual differences (F_representation = 287, F_subject = 6.4). Network models demonstrated moderate edge-correlation between representations (rho = 0.53). Study 2 found three distinct factors with acceptable model fit, while differential item functioning (DIF) showed gender differences for impulsivity. Network analysis found gender differences in bridge strength between core ADHD symptoms and academics and relationships. The present study demonstrates the combined utility of latent and network models for neuroimaging and behavioural ratings.
High socioeconomic status as a risk context for anxiety and alcohol use in youth: A scoping review
Linda Marchesano
Full text
Abstract Socioeconomic status (SES) has traditionally been treated as a protective factor in mental health research, guiding attention toward low-SES populations who face documented structural barriers and mental health burdens. Yet this assumption is increasingly difficult to sustain. SES is a marker of the environments people inhabit, making environmental change inseparable from mental health risk. The shifting distribution of anorexia nervosa illustrates this: once concentrated among the affluent, it spread across SES levels as environments driving it became widely accessible. Similar shifts may now be underway as social media, social comparison cultures, and changing substance use norms alter the risk environments SES groups encounter. This scoping review examines anxiety and alcohol use in high-SES populations, with attention to how high SES is operationalized and how these outcomes manifest independently and jointly in affluent contexts. Searches of PubMed, PsycINFO, and Embase identified 38 studies published through May 2025, spanning children, adolescents, and adults across five continents. Higher SES was consistently associated with elevated anxiety and increased alcohol use, particularly among children and adolescents, with symptoms documented as early as grade six. Anxiety and alcohol use showed co-occurrence across studies, extending from adolescence into adulthood. Chronic performance pressure, social comparison, and normative drinking cultures emerged as salient mechanisms, with alcohol use shaped by stress-related coping and permissive social norms in affluent peer environments. These findings suggest that understanding mental health requires examining risk across the socioeconomic spectrum. An exclusive focus on deprivation leaves pathways unmapped and may constrain models as risk environments continue to shift. Keywords: Socioeconomic status; affluence; anxiety; alcohol use; adolescents; youth mental health
Ecology of curiosity framework for adaptive and maladaptive human–AI ecosystems
Ilya E Monosov
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Human intrinsic curiosity evolved under constraints of time, effort, and risk. Understanding how it is regulated, and harnessing it for well-being and for adaptive agentic artificial intelligence (AI), requires considering the environments in which uncertainty-resolving inquiry evolved and now occurs, including interactions among people and artificial agents. Digital technologies now make obtaining answers to many questions feel easy and nearly costless, changing how we experience uncertainty and our motivation to resolve it. In this article, I discuss how human--technology interactions might reshape curiosity preferences employing constructs from neuroscience, reinforcement learning, and economics. I argue that this approach can help us obtain principles for designing adaptive inquiry in human groups and agentic AIs.
Fitting RI-CLPM Is Not Enough: Diagnostic Sensitivity and Reporting Practices in Within-Person Longitudinal Research
Junhua Dang; Zhihao Ma
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The random-intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) is widely used to separate stable between-person differences from within-person dynamics. Yet fitting an RI-CLPM does not guarantee that the data can support meaningful within-person inference. We introduce the concept of RI-CLPM readiness, defined by measurement comparability and diagnostic sensitivity. Using Monte Carlo simulations with powRICLPM, we show that power to detect within-person cross-lagged effects depends jointly on reliability, ICC, number of waves, sample size, and target effect size; high ICC, modest reliability, and few waves can substantially reduce power even in large samples. We then review reporting practices in 186 empirical RI-CLPM applications. Many studies reported sample size, wave count, and reliability, but longitudinal measurement invariance, ICC or within-person variance, and sensitivity analyses were reported much less consistently. Null within-person paths were common but often interpreted without sufficient attention to diagnostic sensitivity. We argue that RI-CLPM results should be interpreted conditionally on data readiness and offer practical reporting recommendations.
Deception-Enabling Cognitive Capabilities in AI Systems
Eyas Ayesh; Dobromir Rahnev; N Apurva Ratan Murty; Anna Aleksandrovna Ivanova
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To guarantee safe deployment of existing and future AI systems, we must be able to identify, understand, and mitigate deceptive AI behaviors. Here, we draw on decades of interdisciplinary deception research to discuss a set of cognitive capabilities that enable explicit deception—deliberate attempts to induce a false belief in another agent. These capabilities include intentionality, theory of mind, world modeling, and language fluency. Our framework provides a principled way to differentiate explicit deception from implicit deceptive behaviors, which may rely on a different set of capabilities and therefore require their own identification and mitigation strategies. Thus, a capability-focused approach provides a promising avenue for designing effective, case-specific monitoring and intervention strategies for AI systems.
Color Cues, Developmental Coupling, and the Limits of the Late-Sighted Model: A Commentary on Vogelsang et al. (2024)
David Henry Peterzell
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Vogelsang et al. (2024) report in Science that congenitally blind individuals who gain sight late in life rely disproportionately on color cues for object recognition, unlike normally sighted controls. They propose that this reflects the adaptive value of neonatal color immaturity: because typical infants experience a period of degraded chromatic input, they develop object representations grounded in luminance rather than color. The developmental literature does not merely fail to support this account; it predicts the opposite. Decades of research show that color and luminance sensitivity are coupled through shared photoreceptor immaturity: the same front-end bottleneck that degrades chromatic input in neonates simultaneously degrades luminance and spatial processing. No luminance-first window exists, because the bottleneck lifts for both dimensions together. The account’s central premise is undermined not by arguing independence, but by showing that color and luminance do not develop in the sequence it requires. I further identify methodological concerns: a small and unusual sample, an order confound in the primary task, a computational model implementing a binary switch rather than the gradual chromatic cascade of normal development, and a color sensitivity test using non-equiluminant stimuli. Each of these problems alone would require serious qualification; together, they leave the account in need of stronger empirical and mechanistic foundations.
Evaluating an In Person Depolarization Program and Testing a Light Touch Enhancement
Mark John Brandt; Jerad Morey
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We evaluated whether an in-person, multi-hour conversation intervention reduced animosity toward people with different (political) attitudes. We also experimentally tested whether stacking a brief video intervention highlighting sympathetic narratives onto the intensive intervention boosted its ability to reduce animosity. Across events (N= 209, Events k= 10), participants reported less animosity and more empathy following the events. In a preregistered pre-test/post-test experimental design, the video intervention showed some evidence of improving liking and respect for people with different opinions, but effects were not typically significantly different from zero. In summary, although the program improved intergroup relations, we were unable to significantly boost the intensive treatment's effects with a light-touch video treatment. Suggestions for future research are discussed.
Consequences of “Strong” Emotions: Longitudinal Stability and Predictive Validity of Continuous Time Affect Affect Attractor Parameters
Elizabeth Long; Anne K. Reitz; Emorie D Beck
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Positive and negative affect are linked to long-term physical and mental health. Beyond average affect levels, people also differ in how their emotions fluctuate over time. Prior research has examined discrete-time summary measures of affective dynamics (e.g., inertia, instability) and their associations with long-term outcomes. However, these measures are biased (e.g., by unequal measurement intervals) and overlook core processes, such as emotional recovery. Following classic theories in emotion, the present work resituates this problem within a dynamical systems framework, conceptualizing affect as defined by an affective “home base” (attractor location) and the speed of return to this base following perturbation (attractor strength). Using a modern, continuous time estimation framework, we test whether individual differences in these parameters constitute stable, consequential individual differences. Across three measurement burst datasets (N=472; 66,405 observations), we assess the one-year longitudinal stability of these parameters and their predictive validity of distal wellbeing outcomes. We find evidence for moderate stability of these parameters over one year, as well as replicable prediction of wellbeing outcomes by positive and negative affect attractor location and negative affect attractor strength. However, incremental validity over aggregate measures was limited. Implications for future study of affect as a dynamical system are discussed.
Spoken sentence comprehension and production in children with prelingual hearing loss: A systematic review
AnalĂ­ Taboh; Camila Sperman; Diego Shalom; Carolina Gattei
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Purpose. Spoken language development of children with prelingual hearing loss (CHL) who use hearing devices usually lags behind that of children with typical hearing (CTH), with sentence-level syntactic abilities being particularly vulnerable. Aims. This work systematically reviewed the evidence on CHL’s sentence-level syntactic performance across structures and evaluated its relation to modulating demographic, clinical, and cognitive factors to offer a robust empirical foundation that informs evidence-based clinical practices. Methods. Following PRISMA guidelines, we conducted a systematic review of studies reporting spoken sentence-level syntactic abilities (comprehension, production, or repetition) in CHL, with separate results for different syntactic structures. The protocol was registered in PROSPERO. Six databases were searched (last search: February 2026) for published and unpublished works written in five languages. Reports were grouped by ability and structure, focusing on simple sentences, topicalization, passives, relative clauses, and wh-questions. Main Contribution. Sixty-seven studies reported in 47 records were retained. Simple active sentences with canonical order were generally preserved. Passive sentences were understudied, with findings ranging from age-appropriate performance to delayed acquisition. Abundant evidence shows that topicalization, relative clauses and wh-questions are especially difficult for CHL. Their performance on object relatives and object questions often fell below that of younger CTH; findings for subject relatives and subject questions were mixed. Marked interindividual variability was recurrently reported, but findings regarding the modulating role of age, hearing experience, age at device fitting, and memory resources in performance on these specific syntactic structures remain inconsistent. This structure-specific characterisation pinpoints precise linguistic weaknesses, offering actionable insights for speech and language therapists designing targeted remediation protocols and evaluating service delivery. Conclusions. Variability across studies and limitations in methodology and reporting currently hinder robust cross-study comparability. Findings underscore the critical need for longitudinal designs and online processing research. Pinpointing specific syntactic difficulties in CHL is essential for developing tailored speech and language therapy alongside educational interventions.
Inter- and intra- individual variability in audiovisual multisensory processes in healthy ageing
Naomi K. Middelmann; Lauriane Ecabert; Eduardo Villar Ortega; Alessandra Griffa; Andrea Brioschi Guevara; Gilles Allali; James Edward Bartlett; Micah M. Murray
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With an increasingly large segment of the population facing age-related cognitive impairment, understanding subtle changes before cognitive decline is crucial. Typically, sensory processing in ageing has been studied in isolation, and studies of multisensory processes have yielded mixed results. Furthermore, studies of reaction times (RTs) have often focused on aggregate measures, while a growing body of work shows the relevance of characterising intra-individual variability as a precursor to cognitive decline and fall risk. Lastly, changes in auditory processing of pitch have also been linked to cognitive decline. There is thus an imperative to identify cost-effective and accessible screening tools for assessing sensory and cognitive (dys)functions, particularly with ageing populations that may be reluctant to visit clinics or undergo brain imaging or extensive cognitive testing. Here, 55 cognitively healthy, older participants (aged 60-84 years) completed a simple detection task with auditory, visual, and simultaneous audiovisual multisensory stimuli. RTs to multisensory stimuli were significantly faster and less variable than those to either visual or auditory stimuli, and those to auditory stimuli were slowest and most variable. This speeding exceeded predictions based on probability summation, suggestive of integration prior to initiating motor responses. Further analyses revealed RT differences between auditory stimuli according to their pitch. On the one hand, the results underscore how multisensory contexts can improve stimulus processing during healthy ageing. On the other hand, the results highlight sensitivity to age-related changes in auditory sensory processing. Collectively, the results support detection tasks as a promising assessment of age-related changes in sensory processing.
Predictors and clinically significant outcomes of multi-dimensional latent trajectory classes of adolescent mental health symptoms
Samantha J Lynch; Natalie Castellanos-Ryan; Patricia J. Conrod
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Adolescent mental health problems commonly co-occur and follow heterogeneous developmental courses, yet most longitudinal studies examine symptom domains in isolation. Here we identified joint developmental trajectories of internalizing and externalizing symptoms and psychotic-like experiences (PLEs) in a population-representative Canadian longitudinal cohort (N = 2,167; mean baseline age 12.82 years) assessed annually over five waves. Latent class growth analysis revealed five trajectories: low/normative (41.5%), increasing internalizing (22.2%), externalizing-dominant (18.7%), high internalizing/externalizing with declining PLEs (10.9%) and very high PLEs with rising internalizing and externalizing symptoms (6.7%). Personality traits, peer victimization, hostile thoughts, and sex consistently differentiated trajectory membership, with females more likely to follow internalizing trajectories and males the externalizing-dominant trajectory. Elevated and comorbid trajectories were associated with substantially higher rates of depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and substance use disorder at age 17. These findings highlight domain-specific and transdiagnostic developmental pathways and potential targets for early intervention.
Confirmatory psychological network analysis: Evaluating fit indices and hypothesis tests
NA; Martin Schultze
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Network analysis has become increasingly popular among psychologists. Recognizing that psychological research requires substantive theory has prompted a critical development from descriptively mapping network structures towards testing specific hypotheses. While confirmatory approaches are becoming more accessible to applied researchers, the broader set of available statistical tools for this purpose has not yet been fully utilized by network psychometrics. The present work aims to reduce this gap in two steps: First, we review existing approaches for confirmatory network testing, spanning from classical SEM goodness-of-fit indices to covariance- and resampling-based tests. Next, in a simulation study, we evaluate how effective they are in determining whether a theoretical network aligns with empirical data given varying degrees of network (dis)similarity, number of variables (p), sample size (N), and network estimation methods. Performance is assessed regarding Type I error rates and power, thus providing insights into their applicability and robustness across various data scenarios.
Color preferences in dogs: A replication study
Jeffrey R Stevens; Anwyn Gatesy-Davis; Susannah Couture; Yasmin Worth
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Free-ranging dogs (Canis familiaris) in India have been shown to strongly prefer the color yellow over blue and grey (Roy et al. (2025). Animal Cognition, 28(1), 1–9). However, it is not clear if this finding is specific to free-ranging dogs in India or whether it generalizes to other dog populations. We conducted a replication of the Roy et al. study to assess whether pet dogs in the United States show similar preferences by measuring whether they approached yellow, blue, or grey bowls first. We conducted two experiments and found that pet dogs younger than seven years old first approached yellow bowls most often, replicating Roy et al.'s findings. To test if brightness rather than color accounted for this preference, we conducted a third preference experiment with light, medium, and dark grey bowls. The dogs did not prefer the light grey bowl, indicating that there was not an overall preference for brighter colors. Therefore, a preference for the color yellow could be a characteristic of dogs in general. Understanding dog color preferences is important for guiding the design of dog products and environments but also is critical for canine behavioral scientists who must make decisions about colors for experimental stimuli.
Normative Data for False Memory Research: A New Set of French Semantically Associated Word Lists
MarlĂšne Abadie; Christelle Guette; Nolwenn HĂ©rault
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The Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm is one of the most widely used procedures for studying false memories. Although normative DRM materials are available in several languages, no such database currently exists in French. The present study developed and normed 200 French DRM lists, including 100 human-generated lists based on a free association test and 100 lists generated using a large language model (LLM). Normative measures of backward associative strength (BAS, only for human lists), cosine similarity (CS), gist strength (GS), recognition performance, and confidence ratings were obtained for each list. The ability of human- and AI-generated lists to elicit false memories was then compared. Results showed that both types of lists produced robust DRM effects, characterized by high levels of false recognition and confidence for critical lures. False recognition rates for critical lures were comparable across list types, demonstrating that AI-generated lists can induce memory illusions as effectively as traditional human-generated materials. Further analyses revealed that GS was the strongest predictor of false recognition for both human-generated and AI-generated lists, outperforming BAS and CS. These findings provide the first large-scale database of validated French DRM lists, demonstrate the utility of AI-generated materials for false memory research, and provide further support for theoretical accounts emphasizing the role of gist-based semantic representations in the production of false memories.
Can monkeys and apes use sequence order to resolve perceptual ambiguity? A lack of evidence in two rhesus macaques and one language trained bonobo
Angelle Antoun; Rohini Murugan; Amanda J. Epping; Jared Taglialatela; Benjamin Wilson
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In human language, word order impacts how words are categorized and understood (as nouns, verbs, etc.). We have demonstrated that this effect extends to non-linguistic stimuli, suggesting that the impact of sequence order on stimulus categorization is a domain-general, rather than language-specific cognitive process. Here we ask if this process is evolutionarily conserved in other nonhuman primates. We developed a non-linguistic experiment and tested rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) and bonobos (Pan paniscus). Participants first learned to categorize shapes (as rounded, squared, or pointed). We next assessed how they categorized ambiguous morph shapes by combining exemplars from each category. We provided sequential information by training the animals to select shapes in a specified order: rounded, then squared, then pointed. Finally, we assessed whether presentation in specific positions in this learned sequence would impact subsequent categorization of ambiguous morph shapes. In humans, an ambiguous morph was more likely to be categorized as the shape it replaced in a sequence. Non-human primates, however, showed no such effect, categorizing stimuli independent of their position in a sequence. This suggests that the tendency to infer category membership from sequence order is not shared across primates, and may have evolved more recently in the human lineage.
Sensory Saturation and Cognitive Surrender: A Theoretical Framework for Altered Perceptual States in Immersive Neurogastronomic Dining
Federico Rottigni; Stelios Kiosses
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This paper proposes a theoretical framework for interpreting immersive neurogastronomic experiences as a form of ambient cognitive modulation. The framework originates in the direct, informal observation of approximately 6,000 guests conducted by the first author over more than six years of operation at Sensorium — an eleven-seat neurogastronomic restaurant with a controlled multisensory architecture. The recurrence of consistent behavioural and experiential patterns across this substantial case base motivated a search for a systematic neurological and psychological interpretation, developed in collaboration with the second author drawing on his clinical expertise and the Emotional Flavour Profiles framework (Kiosses, 2026). We propose that intentional, layered sensory overstimulation may selectively inhibit dominant analytical processing — in the sense described by McGilchrist's account of hemispheric functional dominance — and reduce Default Mode Network (DMN) activity, favouring a shift in brain oscillatory states from alpha toward theta. This hypothesised neurobiological shift, potentially observable within the span of a single dining session, may correspond to a subjective experience of heightened presence, reduced critical self-monitoring, and access to ordinarily unavailable inner states. We introduce a three-stage model — Saturation, Analytical Surrender, and Incorporeal Immersion — and discuss its implications for experiential design, clinical psychology, and wellbeing research.
Cross-linguistic Semantic Stability as a Driving Force of Diachronic Semantic Evolution across Lexica
Liu Yufeng; xingyu yang
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Word meanings change over time, yet the rate of this change varies systematically within each lexicon. While frequency, age of acquisition, and concreteness have been identified as within-language predictors of semantic change rate, a language-general account of why some concepts resist diachronic drift more persistently than others worldwide has remained elusive. Here, we propose that cross-linguistic semantic stability — the degree to which a concept’s semantic neighborhood is conserved across languages — functions as a fundamental, conceptual-level constraint on diachronic semantic evolution across lexica. We operationalized semantic stability as neighborhood overlap between a target concept’s nearest neighbors in English and the back-translated neighbors of its translation equivalents across 10-to-41 languages, and quantified diachronic semantic change as neighborhood turnover in historical embeddings spanning up to 100 years in English, French, German, and Chinese. Concepts with higher cross-linguistic stability exhibited significantly slower diachronic semantic change within each language and, critically, across lexica when datasets were aggregated cross-linguistically to derive concepts’ change rates. This constraining effect dominated all other predictors for shared concepts; survived controls for well-established psycholinguistic predictors; was structurally confirmed through partial-correlation networks as a direct, unmediated constraint; remained robust under iterative sample expansion of cross-lingual concept sets; and was replicated using historically derived stability estimates. Altogether, our findings reveal that the topological consistency of a concept’s semantic neighborhood across the world’s languages reflects a temporally durable cognitive-communicative constraint that actively governs the pace of meaning change, bridging synchronic cross-linguistic aligned conceptual structure with the diachronic dynamics of lexical evolution across lexica.
Theoretical Foundations of AI-Sycophancy: Linking Ingratiation and Flattery Research to Conversational AI
Noel Hagen; Michelle Habenicht; Lea Schönfelder; Astrid Carolus
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The emergence of conversational AI has raised concerns regarding how these systems “communicate” with their users, particularly regarding \textit{sycophancy}, the tendency to prioritize user approval over correct outputs. This alignment risks reinforcing biases, facilitating manipulation, and contributing to misinformation. Although the term has gained significant traction in both academic and public discourse, rigorous conceptualizations of sycophancy and its components remain sparse. Established frameworks from interpersonal communication (ingratiation) and human-computer interaction (flattery) offer a robust theoretical foundation for strategic alignment behaviors, serving as a conceptual bridge. Grounded in a systematic literature review (\textit{n} = 418), this paper demonstrates conceptual overlaps among ingratiation, flattery, and sycophancy and identifies flattery as identical to other-enhancement, a subconstruct of ingratiation. Consequently, the term “AI-sycophancy” is introduced to provide a unified definition and conceptual foundation for future research. Ultimately, this paper illustrates how grounding in research on interpersonal communication enables more profound theoretical (and methodological) approaches to analyze AI-mediated communication.
Oral Microbiome Dynamics in Health and Disease: Mechanisms and Microecological Therapeutic Strategies
èąæ·‘èŠŹ; ć§šäžœć§—; èƒĄæąæ–Œ; ćœ­ć§ç‘ž; 莫攷珍
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AbstractThe oral microbiome is a highly dynamic ecosystem where microecological equilibrium is fundamental to host health. This narrative review systematically synthesizes current knowledge on the composition and regulatory networks governing oral homeostasis and dysbiosis. We highlight how commensal microbiota maintain eubiosis through sophisticated pH regulation, nutrient competition, and immune modulation. Conversely, dysbiosis involving key species such as Streptococcus mutans, Porphyromonas gingivalis, and Candida albicans—characterized by the yeast-to-hyphae transition—drives pathogenesis via virulent biofilm formation, acid-mediated demineralization and host immune evasion. Drawing on quantitative insights from meta-analyses, we evaluate conventional prevention measures alongside emerging microecological interventions, including next-generation probiotics, phage therapy, and microbiome engineering. Furthermore, we address current computational frontiers, particularly the integration of multi-omics, artificial intelligence (AI), and metagenomics precision sequencing to identify individualized dysbiosis patterns. The convergence of these technologies is poised to shift oral medicine from reactive disease treatment toward predictive, microbiome centric health management.
Modulation of gastric activity using appetizing and disgusting images
Ilan Oseran; Matan Dahan; Yoav Livneh; Galia Avidan
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Interoception is the nervous system’s integration of internal bodily signals, including gastrointestinal inputs. This process is crucial for regulating homeostasis, cognition and emotion, and depends on bidirectional brain-body communication. Given recent evidence of brain-stomach synchronization, determining whether emotional images (e.g., appetizing and disgusting) alter gastric activity is important for characterizing gut-brain interactions. Using an electrogastrogram (EGG), we recorded the gastric myoelectric activity (i.e., stomach’s intrinsic rhythmicity) of 46 subjects (mostly undergraduate students, 37 females), while viewing 3 randomized blocks of appetizing, disgusting, or neutral images (70 per block, totaling 13 minutes), between 2024-2025. Participants then rated the appetite/disgust elicited by each image, completed a recall test, and answered psychological and interoception questionnaires. Linear mixed-effects models revealed significantly lower EGG power in the normogastric range (i.e., signal centered around 0.05 Hz) for disgusting compared to appetizing images. Additionally, a significantly higher proportion of normogastric power (i.e., normogastric activity) was found in the appetizing compared to the neutral condition. These differences were not accounted for by BMI, hours since last meal, hunger level, interoception/psychological questionnaire measures, or recall performance. These findings provide evidence that gastric activity can be modulated in a top-down manner, possibly reflecting a preparatory physiological response. The reduced EGG power in the disgusting condition may be interpreted as preparation for rejection of food, whereas the increased normogastric activity in the appetizing condition may be interpreted as preparation for digestion. Our study provides a methodological foundation for assessing this manipulation's effect on gut-brain synchronization using simultaneous EGG and neural recordings.
Population-level prediction from neural responses to naturalistic video advertisements: A preregistered comparison of fixed and outcome-trained representations
Keise Izuma; Ryuta Aoki; Ayahito Ito
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Neuroimaging research increasingly seeks to predict population-level behavior from neural responses measured in small laboratory samples. This preregistered functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study tested whether neural responses to 40 television advertisements in 35 participants predicted two independently measured population-level outcomes: panel-based recognition rates and age-adjusted online viewing rates. We compared three analytic approaches: (1) a univariate region-of-interest (ROI) approach based on mean activation in predefined regions, (2) a neural signature approach based on expression of externally defined whole-brain affective and valuation-related patterns, and (3) a machine learning-based multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) approach using support vector regression to predict outcomes from distributed reward- and memory-related activation patterns. The univariate ROI and neural signature approaches did not reliably predict either outcome. In the machine learning-based MVPA approach, reward- and memory-related patterns did not significantly predict recognition rates. For online viewing rate, reward-related patterns significantly predicted the outcome and remained significant after controlling for self-reported positive and negative arousal and campaign exposure, indexed by gross rating points; memory-related patterns reached significance only after this adjustment. These findings show that population-level neural prediction depended on both the external outcome and the analytic approach: online viewing, but not recognition, was predictable from distributed reward-related activation patterns. More broadly, the results suggest that neural prediction from responses to naturalistic media depends jointly on how the external outcome is defined and how neural responses are represented.
Multiple routes of semantic transparency reveal lexical superstate in Chinese compound processing: Behavioral and computational approaches
Liu Yufeng; Cheng-Yu Hsieh
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Recognizing compounds requires the cognitive system to coordinate the meanings of embedded constituents with those of the compounds. Semantic transparency, the semantic relationship between constituents and compounds, is widely held to support this coordination, yet decades of research have yielded facilitative, inhibitory, and null effects. We propose that these inconsistencies arise because semantic transparency is not a unitary construct but comprises multiple semantic routes that may exert distinct influences on word recognition. To test this possibility, we simultaneously examined eight transparency measures in Chinese two-character compounds from the MELD-SCH lexical decision dataset (Tsang et al., 2018). Transparency measures were derived by crossing constituent position (first vs. second character), constituent representation (free-standing vs. position-dependent), and compound representation (lexicalized vs. compositional) using compositional distributional semantics. The findings show that composition-based transparency, indexing the ease of integrating constituent meanings into a coherent compound meaning, consistently facilitated recognition, whereas relatedness-based transparency, indexing semantic overlap between constituents and lexicalized whole-word meanings produced interference. This dissociation reflects two distinct mechanisms in Chinese compound recognition: a composition-based route integrates constituent meanings into a plausible compound meaning without requiring access to whole-word compound representations; a relatedness-based route activates lexicalized compound semantics, increasing discrimination cost when constituents and compound meanings are highly similar. Together, the present study provides a mechanistic explanation for the long-standing inconsistencies in the transparency literature and supports a lexical superstate account—multiple representations are co-activated but contribute differently over time during compound processing.
The Influence of Age on the Effectiveness of Misinformation Retractions
Paul McIlhiney; Toby Prike; Ullrich K. H. Ecker
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Misinformation has become a prescient issue in public and academic domains. One pernicious aspect of misinformation is that it can persistently influence people’s judgements after clear and credible correction—a phenomenon dubbed the continued influence effect. There has been speculation that age may affect people’s susceptibility to the continued influence effect, but previous research has produced inconclusive evidence. In an attempt to reconcile conflicting findings, the current study used a continued-influence paradigm in which causal event misinformation was retracted. Two samples were analysed with correlation analyses and linear mixed-effects modelling: an online sample aged 21-79 (online sample; N = 259) and an in-person sample aged 56-92 (in-person sample; N = 143). Results showed that, when controlling for poor encoding of experimental materials in the online sample, age had no significant effect on the effectiveness of misinformation retractions, though declining effectiveness was observed with advanced older age in the in-person sample.
Development and Initial Validation of a Brief, Transdiagnostic Measure of Conflict Resolution Difficulties and Ineffective Relational Strategies
Kasey Stanton; Nicholas J. Brewster; Kayla Michelle Brown; Helena Towne; Jack D Burke; Isabella Whitesides; Christina G McDonnell; Corinne Carlton; Holly Frances Levin-Aspenson
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Considerable research in recent decades has focused on developing measures assessing transdiagnostic dimensions, including measures that target dimensional symptoms rather than traditional diagnostic categories. Furthermore, a sizeable literature has focused on assessing social-cognitive vulnerabilities (e.g., experiential avoidance) thought to be linked to an array of symptoms and functioning difficulties, and a range of measures of transdiagnostic, social-cognitive vulnerabilities have been developed. However, few of them include item content directly assessing conflict resolution difficulties and ineffective interpersonal relational strategies, which also are linked to a range of psychopathology and are targeted in cognitive-behavioral and third-wave treatments. We address this gap in the transdiagnostic assessment literature by presenting initial validation data for a measure of ineffective interpersonal strategies across three studies and four samples of participants (N = 301 adults; N = 808 adults self-identifying a mental health diagnosis; N = 368 undergraduate students; N = 226 community adults). Analyses based on these samples spanned evaluation of participant perspectives on item face validity, quantitative examinations of internal structure, test-retest stability, and evaluating validity associations with a range of self-report and interview measures. Results collectively support the initial validation of an efficient interpersonal measure, the Transdiagnostic Ineffective Relational Strategies Scale (TIRSS), which can be incorporated into a range of study formats due to its brevity. We discuss future validation steps to build from this work, as well as ideas for sharpening interpersonal and transdiagnostic assessment research more broadly.
Semantic alignment between clients and therapists predicts therapeutic alliance and treatment outcomes in message-based psychotherapy
Dan-Mircea Mirea; Thomas Derrick Hull; Erik C Nook
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Theories of psychotherapy emphasize the importance of being aligned with one’s therapist, and ‘therapeutic alliance’ is widely associated with therapeutic outcomes. Although studies have linked treatment outcomes to client-therapist alignment at neural, physiological, and behavioral levels, a particularly important medium through which alignment manifests might be language, given that psychotherapy unfolds through conversation. In particular, semantic alignment during therapy (i.e., how close in meaning clients and therapists stay to each other) might reflect shared mental representations between clients and their therapists, which could underlie alliance and treatment success. Here we show evidence of semantic alignment as a marker of perceived alliance and predictor of outcomes in a large dataset of psychotherapy messages from a teletherapy platform (6,229 clients and their therapists). Using language models to embed sentences into a high-dimensional semantic space, we computed the semantic similarity (the cosine similarity of the embedding vectors) between clients’ and therapists’ successive messages. We found that client-therapist dyads with higher semantic similarity during just the first 3 weeks of treatment showed significantly lower symptoms ~9 weeks from the start of treatment, above and beyond baseline symptom severity. Semantic similarity also predicted higher client ratings of the therapeutic alliance, which partially mediated symptom improvement. These findings reveal that semantic alignment predicts both stronger therapeutic relationships and more effective therapy. The results highlight the potential of using language models for predicting future treatment response and alliance from early conversations between clients and their therapists.
“It’s Okay Not to Be Okay”? Awareness Fatigue and the Critique of Mental Health Campaigns in Lived-Experience Communities on Reddit
Rita Tang; Wenwen Cao; Yuming Fang
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Mental health campaigns increasingly saturate public discourse, yet how people with lived experience receive them remains to be further understood. We analyzed over 13,000 campaign-related posts from ten Reddit mental health communities (2009 to 2026), combining validated computational classification, dictionary-based affective analysis (LIWC), structural topic modeling, and negative binomial engagement models to examine the tone, themes, temporal dynamics, and engagement of campaign-related discussion. Discussion was predominantly negative, marked by sadness, anxiety, and anger; over time, positivity and sadness declined while anxiety and anger rose. The most prevalent theme was cynicism toward inspirational or performative messaging, alongside crisis-line distrust and accounts of being dismissed when disclosing mental health concerns. Using the Reasoned Action Approach (RAA), we mapped themes onto behavioral, normative, and control beliefs about campaign-promoted behaviors while identifying emergent, campaign-specific practices that belief models do not anticipate. Anxiety and sadness predicted lower engagement, whereas critical, access-oriented, advocacy, and observance themes attracted greater visibility. Theoretically, the study extends the RAA from controlled message design to naturalistic, community-level reception, showing that online discourse functions as spontaneous belief elicitation and revealing a boundary condition we term awareness fatigue, in which repeated performative appeals become objects of critique rather than sources of support. Practically, the findings caution that engagement can signal disillusionment rather than persuasion, and that safeguarding mental health messaging requires treating lived-experience communities as formative partners and testing whether appeals are specific, emotionally tolerable, and responsive to material barriers rather than symbolic.
Measuring Social Attitudes with a Best-Worst Multidimensional Unfolding Model: Separating Proximity from Statement Selectability
Hiroshi Shimizu; Keiko Mizuno; Kazuya Iwata
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This study develops a multidimensional unfolding model for measuring social attitudes from preference data collected through Best-Worst proximity judgments. The model locates respondents and statements in a common multidimensional attitude space and represents choices of the statements closest to and farthest from a respondent’s opinion through utility differences based on Euclidean distance. It also includes a statement-level distance-independent selectability parameter that captures a statement-specific tendency to be selected as closest more often and as farthest less often after respondent-statement distance is controlled. All parameters are estimated jointly in a Bayesian framework. Simulation results showed accurate recovery of statement configurations and the selectability parameter across the examined conditions. Recovery of respondent-statement distances was also generally strong but depended more on dimensionality and the amount of comparison information. Omitting the selectability parameter systematically displaced statement locations and degraded recovery of interstatement and respondent-statement distances. In an application to attitudes toward an optional separate-surname system for married couples in Japan, respondent coordinates on the first principal axis correlated strongly with a single seven-point Likert-type item (Spearman’s ρ = .848), whereas the second axis differentiated rationales among statements expressing similar levels of support or opposition. In a second application to consumption attitudes, the model produced an exploratory map of multiple value criteria without prespecifying a single support-opposition dimension. These findings show that the model can both refine the interpretation of a known attitude dimension and support exploratory mapping when the dimensional structure is not specified in advance, while separating semantic location from distance-independent selectability.
Development and Initial Validation of the Violence Desensitization Scale
Miguel Landa-Blanco; Eduardo Cårcamo-Zepeda; Alejandra Hernåndez-Fiallos; Raquel Mejía-Sånchez; Suany Pineda-Sandoval; Denis Javier-Muñoz
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Desensitization to violence is the reduced emotional response resulting from repeated exposure to violent events. This study aims to develop and determine the psychometric properties of the Violence Desensitization Scale (VDS). The total sample consisted of 452 Honduran adults, divided into two groups. Using non-random sampling, the first group (n = 236) completed the Short Dark Tetrad Scale, the Light Triad Scale, the Attitudes Toward Violence Scale, the Empathy Quotient, and the original version of the VDS, while the second group (n = 216) completed only the VDS. The initial version of the scale included 47 items. However, due to redundancies and cross-loadings, a progressive refinement process was carried out. Factor analyses supported a final structure of 20 items distributed across four factors: Emotional Habituation (ω = .86), Social Normalization (ω = .89), Justification of Violence (ω = .79), and Indifference toward Victims (ω = .79). This model demonstrated adequate fit indices, factorial invariance across men and women, and satisfactory internal consistency. The test–retest analysis over a one-month interval demonstrated strong temporal stability for the VDS (r = .898; p < .001). Item Response Theory analyses confirmed good item functioning, and a bifactor model further supported the calculation of a total score. The VDS showed positive associations with attitudes toward violence and psychopathy, as well as negative associations with emotional reactivity and prosocial traits. The results indicate that the VDS demonstrates valid psychometric properties, suggesting that it could be valuable in research, as well as in preventive and intervention contexts.
Rewind and Recall: Examining the Effects of Self-regulated Learning and Off-task Thought in Video-based Learning
Daniel Ebbert; Aaron Wong; Natasha Wilson; Srecko Joksimovic; Negin Mirriahi; Shane Dawson; Caitlin Mills
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Task-unrelated thought, commonly known as mind wandering, occurs frequently during learning and can negatively affect learning outcomes. In video-based learning environments, learners have the opportunity to mitigate the negative effect of task-unrelated thoughts by rewinding the video to review missed content. This study investigated whether rewinding following self-caught off-task thoughts (task-unrelated thoughts or task-related interference) affects learning outcomes. The study explores the types of off-task thoughts that co-occur with rewinding behaviour and how self-regulated learning aptitudes relate to awareness of off-task thoughts and learning outcomes. The study employed an experiment, with 222 participants watching a 15-minute video and reporting their off-task thoughts. Task-unrelated thoughts were more often followed by rewinding compared to other thought types. However, no significant difference in knowledge test scores was observed between participants who reviewed previous video segments after off-task thoughts and those who did not. To explore what underpins awareness of off-task thoughts and reactionary tactics such as rewinding, self-regulated learning aptitudes were examined. A piecewise structural equation model showed that higher scores on the Metacognition and Online Effort Regulation scales were associated with fewer reported off-task thoughts. These findings suggest a relationship between self-regulated learning aptitudes and meta-awareness that warrants further investigation to determine whether self-regulated learners experience fewer off-task thoughts or habitually regulate their learning in response to them.
Supporting fidelity of implementation: Evidence from Pathways-to-Success replications
Daphna Oyserman; Alysia Burbidge; Yahan Huang; Nicholas Sorensen
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Research shows that when teachers implement Pathways-to-Success with fidelity, their students experience more identity-based motivation and hence better academic trajectories. Implementing teachers receive implementation support; we asked if with this support, first-time implementing teachers can attain fidelity across time, training, teachers, and variations in school contexts across four states, ten years, and 8,456 students (N=122 schools trained, 116 of these implemented Pathways-to-Success, n=92 schools with video-based fidelity data). We review the implementation fidelity literature, distinguish fidelity from implementation support and institutional climate, operationalize our state-of-the-art fidelity assessment and the supports we provided, describe results, and scaling implications. Results reveal first, that on average, first-time implementing teachers implemented with above-threshold fidelity. Second, across years, teachers engaged with training, preparation, and delivery aids despite planned variability in teacher-trainers and teacher-training method (in-person, virtual) and natural variation in school climate; urbanicity; classroom size; and student features (English learner, free-or-reduced-priced lunch, standardized test proficiency, racial-ethnic composition). Third, implementation support matters. Continuous fidelity evaluation makes dynamic investment in implementation support possible; implying that scaling and sustainability require ongoing rather than proof of concept initial fidelity assessment. At the same time, new tools are required to contain costs. We are exploring use of artificial-intelligence-based fidelity coding to address this issue.
Pupillometry reveals a non-directional benefit of accent adaptation
Drew Jordan McLaughlin; Arthur G. Samuel
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Accommodating the variation present in second language (L2) accented speech can pose a challenge for listeners. Extensive research has revealed that exposure to acoustically-atypical phonemes presented in a lexical context can prompt rapid recalibration of phonemic category representations. Accumulating evidence suggests that, in addition to these boundary shifts, more nuanced changes in category “flexibility” may also occur. We investigate these two phenomena and their effects on identification of sound categories and recognition of lexical items. First language (L1) Spanish listeners were exposed to an L1 French speaker producing accented L2 Spanish. We randomly assigned participants to one of three conditions, manipulating the primary acoustic cue that supports recognition of the /a/ vowel: (1) a control group (i.e., the on-target primary cue to /a/ as “central”), (2) a “fronted” group (more /e/-like than normal), and (3) a “backed” group (more /o/-like). Using pupillometry, a measure of cognitive processing load, a benefit of prior exposure to an atypical /a/ vowel was detected for recognition of words containing the same vowel manipulation. Critically, this benefit was non-directional: Listeners exposed to a backed /a/ during training, for example, showed reductions in cognitive load for recognition of both backed and fronted /a/ exemplars. In combination with behavioral responses from a vowel identification task, the results suggest that two separate mechanisms may support adaptation to accent in parallel: (1) a recalibration mechanism that adjusts phonemic category representations (i.e., boundary shifts), and (2) a criterion relaxation mechanism that adjusts how atypical phonemes facilitate lexical activation.
The Hidden Architecture of Stereotypes
Qiawen Liu; Gary Lupyan; Xuechunzi Bai
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Social stereotypes are traditionally understood as direct associations between groups and traits. We propose that stereotypes are also embedded in rich associative networks linking social groups to seemingly unrelated everyday objects, such as women to wine and harps, or men to beer and drums. Using cross-domain prompts (''If X were a Y, what would it be?''), we mapped 100 social groups across eight semantic domains and found that stereotypical warmth and competence were recoverable from these object networks. We then asked a separate group of participants to reason through specific cross-domain mappings of the form ''if X were a Y, it would be y.'' Relative to participants who reasoned through stereotype-consistent mappings, those who reasoned through counter-stereotypical mappings went on to describe the target groups as warmer and more competent. These findings suggest that first, stereotype-relevant information is broadly distributed across networks linking social groups to everyday objects. Second, manipulating everyday object associations alone is sufficient to temporarily change the traits people infer about a group.
Irresistibly Logical: Automatic Logical Inferences in Visual Scene Processing
Nathaniel Braswell; Chaz Firestone; NicolĂČ Cesana-Arlotti
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The human capacity for logical thought underpins pivotal scientific and technological achievements, yet it also pervades everyday intuitive reasoning. Previous work shows that basic disjunctive inference is deployed by infants to infer a hidden object's identity. Here, in five experiments, we ask whether this developmentally primitive logical operation arises automatically and irresistibly while adults process visual events. Experiment 1 found that participants responded faster when outcomes matched a logical prediction, even when it was statistically unlikely. This effect disappeared in Experiment 2, which suppressed the logical inference to rule out priming effects from associative learning. Experiment 3 showed that the disjunctive inference facilitates visual object classification by anticipating scene outcomes. Experiments 4 and 5 demonstrated that this inference is impervious to counterevidence—supporting statistically likely and unlikely conclusions alike—and is functionally distinct from non-logical object tracking. Taken together, these findings reveal a logical inference outside the processing of language, generated automatically and irresistibly in the processing of visual scenes.
Mental health changes in different adolescent groups from before to throughout the COVID-19 pandemic
Robin Achterhof; Olivia J Kirtley; Ginette Lafit; Zeynep Akcaoglu; Eva Bamps; Anu Pauliina Hiekkaranta; Noëmi Hagemann; Karlijn Susanna Francisca Maria Hermans; Julie Janssens; Aleksandra Lecei
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Background: The COVID-19 pandemic is assumed to have had a large impact on the mental health of adolescents. Finding out for which youth the mental health impact was largest is imperative for strengthening future crisis responses. In this study, we aimed to assess the impact of the pandemic on the mental health of different sociodemographic groups of general population adolescents in Flanders, Belgium. Methods: Adolescents were tested for the SIGMA study, at W1 (n=1913; mean age=13.8; 63.1% female; 2018/2019); W2 (n=272; mean age=16.5; 74.0% female; 2020); and W3 (n=227; mean age=18.0; 78.4% female; 2022/2023). Subclinical anxiety, depression, psychoticism, and general psychopathology were measured with the Brief Symptom Inventory-53. Multilevel linear regression models with imputed data sets were used to test cross-wave differences in each psychopathology outcome (controlling for age-related increases), effects of time since the beginning of the pandemic and stringency of pandemic-related measures, and effects of several sociodemographic predictors on levels and changes in psychopathology (from W1 to W2, and from W1 to W3). Results: Results indicated limited overall early increases in psychopathology (only for depression from W1 to W2), and some decreases in psychopathology levels from W1 to W3 (for anxiety and general psychopathology). Girls and those reporting same-gender attraction reported higher levels of nearly all symptoms. Conclusion: Although most youth in this sample were resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic, some groups consistently showed high psychopathology levels. Attention is still needed for groups that were at risk before the pandemic, notably, LGTBQIA+ youth.
Testing the Utility of Using Large Language Models to Create Personalized Networks From Therapy Session Transcripts: A Proof of Concept Study
Clarissa W. Ong; Hiba Arnaout; Kate Sheehan; Estella Fox; Eugen Owtscharow; Iryna Gurevych
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Recent advances in psychotherapy have focused on treatment personalization, such as by selecting treatment modules based on individual networks. However, estimating personalized networks typically requires intensive longitudinal data, which is not always feasible to collect. A solution to increase scalability of network-driven treatment personalization is leveraging large language models (LLMs). In this study, we developed an end-to-end pipeline for automatically generating client networks to support case conceptualization and treatment planning. We annotated 8,028 utterances from 77 therapy transcripts (N = 6). In the first stage of the pipeline, we identified clinically relevant processes (binary classification) and their corresponding dimensions (multi-label classification). Then, we introduced a two-step method that grouped the processes into clinically meaningful clusters and generated labels for the clusters. Finally, we generated connections between clusters. Evaluation results generally supported model utility, however, interrater agreement on model performance metrics was inconsistent, ranging from poor to substantial. Qualitative examination of the networks indicated consistency with original study data. Given coherence and interpretability of the generated networks, developing networks from therapy transcripts using LLMs appears to be feasible. Nonetheless, more research is needed to examine whether these networks improve treatment outcomes, including relative to other methods of treatment personalization, such as statistically estimated networks. Potential use cases and limitations of our pipeline are discussed.
Time-Based Cognition and Working Memory Explain Changes in Delay Discounting Through Adolescence
Camille Phaneuf-Hadd; Leah Somerville
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Individuals of all ages face choices between immediate but smaller and delayed but larger rewards. In a decision process known as delay discounting, people tend to devalue options that are realized farther into the future. Several candidate cognitive mechanisms have been proposed to underpin such choices: inhibition (overriding a prepotent response), prospection (orienting to the future), working memory (manipulating information held in mind), reward motivation (activating behavior for reward), and time perception (subjectively judging time horizons). These mechanisms change through adolescence, in tandem with delay discounting decisions becoming more patient from childhood to adulthood. However, the cognitive mechanisms principally responsible for developmental increases in patience remain contested. By measuring delay discounting alongside indices of inhibition, prospection, working memory, reward motivation, and time perception in the same participants (N = 159, 10-20 years, collected in the United States), the present study examined whether these mechanisms – alone or in combination – explained age variability in reward- and time-based choice in different stakes contexts. Mixed- effects modeling revealed that patience indeed increased with age, especially for higher- than lower-magnitude decisions. Dependency modeling identified dissociable and overlapping drivers of age-related changes in delay discounting: prospection mediated patience in lower-magnitude decisions whereas working memory mediated patience in higher-magnitude decisions; time perception mediated patience in both. Although compressed time perception supported older participants’ more patient choices overall, distinct cognitive mechanisms may become available during adolescence to underscore willingness to wait for larger later rewards, depending on decision stakes. These findings advance understanding of how multiple constituent processes scaffold the development of value-based choice.
American liberals and conservatives have different cognitive styles, but (mostly) respond the same to party cues
Aymin Triki; Abigail Cassario; Mark John Brandt
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How do people with different political ideologies process political information? Party cues are an effect where people are more likely to support a policy position if they learn their party also supports it, shifting their judgement in accordance with cues from their inparty and against their outparty. This effect has been at the center of the debate over the psychological differences between liberals and conservatives, with some scholars suggesting that differences in cognitive styles between liberals and conservatives (e.g., rigidity, cognitive reflection) should result in differences in party cue susceptibility. We advance this debate by measuring rigid cognitive styles and applying a stimuli sampling approach to party cues across four preregistered experiments (N’s per study > 1200). We found convincing evidence for ideological symmetries in party cues in quota matched samples of Americans (Studies 1 & 2). In Studies 3 and 4, across four measures of ideology and three self-report measures of cognitive rigidity, we found ideological differences in self-reported rigidity in line with previous research. In Study 3, a convenience sample, we found that conservatives were more likely to follow party cues. However, Study 4, using a quota matched sample, found no ideological differences in cue susceptibility, except with respect to right-wing authoritarianism. Exploratory analyses found that when one group has greater prior awareness or stronger initial views on a topic, they show smaller cueing effects. We conclude that while liberals and conservatives differ in cognitive style, they largely share similar cognitive processes for interpreting and integrating political information.
Can the Best Items Rescue Ryff’s Six Factors? Evidence That Item Selection Drives the Dimensionality of Psychological Wellbeing
Jason W. Payne; Ulrich Schimmack
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Ryff's Psychological Wellbeing (PWB) scales measure six theoretically derived dimensions of eudaemonic wellbeing. Despite widespread use, empirical support for six distinct factors has been inconsistent, with several studies reporting high inter-factor correlations or fewer underlying dimensions. We provide the first systematic comparison of item-selection approaches across multiple datasets. Using the MIDUS dataset originally used to support the six-factor structure, we show that the commonly used 42-item version and the shorter 18-item version both fail to capture six distinct factors: four dimensions (environmental mastery, self-acceptance, purpose in life, and personal growth) show high inter- correlations even after removing poorly performing items. However, we demonstrate that much of this overlap is attributable to evaluative item wording that is shared across factors rather than genuine construct overlap. A theory-driven subset of 24 items selected from the 84-item version to match theoretical definitions yielded six distinguishable factors with no inter-correlation exceeding .74. The six- factor structure has more empirical support than previously recognized, but commonly used scale versions poorly operationalize the distinctions between constructs.
HOW SOUND HACKS THE SLEEPING BRAIN
Cecilia Forcato; MarĂ­a Cecilia GonzĂĄlez
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Closed-loop acoustic stimulation (CLAS) strengthens non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep slow oscillations when brief sounds are timed to favorable phases of ongoing activity. Most mechanistic accounts focus on state-dependent cortical excitability and sound-evoked slow-wave responses. We ask whether this phase sensitivity may also have a developmental history. Before birth, the brain is exposed to maternal cardiac, respiratory, motor, and vocal rhythms embedded within a shared physiological environment. We propose that repeated exposure to these temporal relationships may tune a pre-existing sensitivity to weak external signals that coincide with endogenous activity. This developmental hypothesis connects findings from adult brain-heart dynamics, maternal-fetal coupling, fetal auditory processing, and neonatal interventions. It also suggests new experiments combining neural and peripheral signals during adult sleep and adapting maternal stimulation to the physiological state of preterm infants.
Who Emerges as a Leader in Adolescent Social Interactions? The Role of Gender and Personality Group Composition
Eva Bleckmann; Zirong Li; Jennifer L. Tackett; Jenny Wagner
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This study examined how individual characteristics and group composition of gender and personality relate to leadership emergence during adolescents’ initial interactions with unfamiliar peers (N = 299, MAge = 15.76, 61% female). Observers coded leadership behaviors from group interactions without assigned roles which covaried across three dimensions: leadership emergence, task contribution, and social engagement. Individual and group gender composition showed no associations with leadership behaviors. In contrast, extraversion was linked to leadership emergence, whereas agreeableness showed no associations with leadership behaviors. Distinct personality group composition patterns also surfaced regarding contribution and emergence. These findings underscore the importance of individual and group characteristics in early leadership displays, suggesting that gendered leadership patterns frequently observed in adulthood may not characterize adolescent peer interactions.
The Role of Mathematical Activities in the Classroom for Executive Function Development in Elementary School
Jenna Elizabeth Finch; Kimia Akhavein
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This study examined whether time spent on specific mathematics activities in elementary classrooms supports the development of executive function (EF) skills during the transition to middle childhood. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort of 2010–2011, a nationally representative sample of U.S. children, we analyzed reports from second- and third-grade teachers on the frequency of math learning activities. A panel of EF experts identified which activities were cognitively demanding. Multilevel regression models tested whether time spent on these “EF-demanding” math activities predicted gains in EF skills, controlling for prior EF, general math time, and a robust set of demographic covariates. The analytic sample included 14,850 children (49% female; 51% male), with racial/ethnic representation of 49% White, 24% Hispanic/Latine, 13% Black/African American, 8% Asian/Pacific Islander, and 6% multiracial/other. Results indicated that time spent on EF-demanding math activities in third grade, but not second grade, was significantly associated with improvements in both working memory and cognitive flexibility. These associations held after accounting for prior EF skills and overall math instructional time. Findings suggest that cognitively demanding math instruction may serve as a dual pathway for academic and cognitive development, particularly during periods of increased academic expectations.
Differences in Gender Identity Centrality Across Cultural Contexts: A Systematic Test of Theoretical Explanations
Nelly Lipowska; Sarah E. Martiny; Katharina Block
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A growing body of literature examines how the roles that men and women take on (e.g. careers, childcare, etc.) differ between cultures. Less is known about whether the extent to which people think of themselves in terms of gender also varies cross-culturally. Gender identity centrality (GIC) reflects the extent to which individuals view their gender as a core aspect of themselves. Because stronger gender identification can shape the internalization of gender stereotypes, understanding cross-cultural GIC differences is important. The current, preregistered study (N = 19,220 participants, 49 countries) tested how theoretically derived country-level factors – gender equality, grammatical gender in languages, and collectivism – relate to country-level differences in GIC. Results showed that higher structural gender equality predicted lower GIC, while collectivism predicted higher GIC. Contrary to predictions, participants from countries with grammatically gendered languages (e.g., Polish) reported lower GIC than those speaking natural gender languages (e.g. English). When comparing predictors against each other, only collectivism and language, not gender equality, predicted GIC. Importantly, these country-level effects also varied depending on gender. Women consistently reported higher GIC than men. Exploratory analyses further suggested that cultural factors may differentially predict “gender importance” and “gender salience”. These findings highlight the role of sociocultural and linguistic environments in shaping gender’s personal importance.
Preactivation and probabilistic inference coexist during sentence comprehension
Stephanie Cho; Ryan Buggy; Adrian Staub; Cory Shain
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Human language comprehension is sensitive to predictability: words that are less predictable in context evoke larger responses in diverse measures of cognitive effort. Debate currently exists as to whether these effects reflect a linear facilitation due to preactivation of highly predictable words or a logarithmic cost due to probabilistic inference about the sentence’s interpretation in response to new information, with apparently contradictory empirical results supporting each position. Here we advance the hypothesis that preactivation and probabilistic inference coexist as distinguishable processes with distinct influences on processing demand, resulting in a superposition of linear and logarithmic predictability effects. We support this position by both reanalyzing and replicating at scale a prior study that supported the linear preactivation account (Brothers & Kuperberg, 2021). We show that, both in the original data and in our replication, the evidence is most consistent with a mixture of linear and logarithmic effects, suggesting distinct coexisting mechanisms. We further support the existence of a distinct effect of preactivation by using the size of the internal state transitions of a statistical language model as a proxy for preactivation, showing that these state transitions explain unique variance in our data. Together, our results reveal a comprehension system that both updates beliefs about the interpretation of the unfolding sentence bottom-up (inference) and proactively attempts to enter likely future processing states when they have strong contextual support (preactivation), thus shedding light simultaneously on the problem faced by the system (computational level) and the procedure used to solve it (algorithmic level).
Not always in sync: Affective context moderates mother-child cortisol synchrony in daily life
Lennart Seizer; Johanna Löchner
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Parent-child cortisol synchrony has been investigated in many studies, but its moderation has mostly been examined at the between-dyad level, asking which dyads show stronger or weaker synchrony. Less is known about within-dyad moderation: whether the same dyad becomes more or less physiologically synchronized over time across changing everyday contexts. This is particularly important within the first 1000 days of a child, where co-regulation and bonding takes place. This intensive longitudinal study examined mother-child cortisol synchrony in daily life and tested whether momentary affect moderated this synchrony within dyads. Twenty-six mother-infant dyads provided saliva samples and ecological momentary assessment reports each morning and evening across two weeks. Mothers reported their own perceived stress, positive affect, and negative affect, as well as their child’s positive and negative affect. Linear mixed-effects models showed that children’s cortisol levels were higher at timepoints when their own mother’s cortisol was higher than usual, indicating within-dyad cortisol synchrony. This synchrony was moderated by positive affect: higher-than-usual maternal positive affect attenuated synchrony, whereas higher-than-usual child positive affect strengthened it. Maternal stress, maternal negative affect, and child negative affect did not significantly moderate synchrony. These findings suggest that mother-child cortisol synchrony is not only a marker of stable dyadic differences but also a dynamic process that varies within dyads across affective contexts.
Mentalizing from self and friend perspectives: Relations between neural similarity, affective similarity and social anxiety symptoms
Alicia Vallorani; Kathryn A. McNaughton; Marisa N. Lytle; Michael Hallquist; Elizabeth Redcay; Koraly Perez-Edgar
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Social interactions are dynamic and complex, relying on tracking variation in your own and your partner’s affective and mental states. Being “in-sync” neurally and building a shared consensus can mark successful social interactions. In addition, social anxiety can impact social experiences. We used a novel, naturalistic paradigm to investigate relations between inter-brain neural similarity within mentalizing regions, affective similarity and social anxiety symptoms. Undergraduate student friend pairs (N = 34, 85% White, 65% Women) engaged in a social interaction while videos previously captured from their individual perspectives were recorded. Participants watched clips of the social interaction from both their own perspective (their personal view of the social interaction) and their friend’s perspective (their friend’s personal view of the social interaction) while fMRI data were collected. They rated their affect after each clip. Inter-brain neural similarity was computed across three conditions: 1) Same-Stimuli: both participants viewed identical visual stimuli as in a traditional neural similarity paradigm, 2) Self-Perspective: both participants viewed the clip from their own perspective like the originally experienced social interaction and 3) Friend-Perspective: both participants viewed the clip from their friend’s perspective, a novel perspective. Participants self-reported their social anxiety symptoms and affective similarity captured affect rating concordance within dyads. In contrast to the Same-Stimuli condition, when participants viewed the clips like they originally experienced social interaction (Self-Perspective), greater affective similarity was associated with greater inter-brain neural similarity. When participants viewed the clips from a novel perspective (Friend-Perspective), participants lower in social anxiety symptoms exhibited greater inter-brain neural similarity with greater affective similarity; whereas, participants higher in social anxiety symptoms exhibited greater inter-brain neural similarity with less affective similarity. The results suggest stimuli from socially relevant perspectives, rather than identical stimuli, may reveal more nuanced brain-behavior dynamics, allowing for a better understanding of individual differences in socioemotional experience.
Event Centrality and Post-Traumatic Stress Symptoms in Sexual Assault Survivors: A Longitudinal Cross-Lagged Analysis
Isabel Kreis; Marianne Skogbrott Birkeland; Siri Thoresen; Ask Elklit; Ines Blix
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Objective: To clarify the longitudinal, directional relationship between event centrality and post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS), this study examined their cross-lagged associations over time in a sample of sexual assault survivors. Method: In total, 423 participants who had experienced a sexual assault were included in this study (98% female, age M = 26.68). PTSS and event centrality were assessed 3-, 6-, and 12-months post-study inclusion. A cross-lagged panel model (CLPM) and a random intercept CLPM (RI-CLPM) were fitted to the data across the three time points to capture both between- and within-person effects. Results: Significant cross-lagged effects were observed only from PTSS to centrality and not vice versa, both in the CLPM (ÎČ = 0.12, 95% CI [0.05,0.18]) and the RI-CLPM (ÎČ = 0.23, 95% CI [0.04,0.42]). That is, higher early levels of PTSS were predictive of higher subsequent levels of event centrality both at the between- and within-person level. Exploratory findings tentatively suggest that the cross-lagged dynamics between centrality and PTSS may vary as a function of the temporal distance from the index trauma, though results were not statistically significant. Generalizability of the findings is limited by the low diversity of the sample regarding demographic characteristics. Conclusions: These findings indicate that the longitudinal association between post-traumatic stress and event centrality is predominantly symptom-driven, with centrality functioning primarily as a consequence and not a driving force of ongoing distress. Exploratory results suggest a potential temporal dependence of these dynamics, highlighting the need for research with early-recruited cohorts.
What Race Means for Health among Black Americans: How Microaggressions Shape Self-Efficacy and Readiness for Behavior Change
Amanda Almond
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Abstract Objectives: Persistent racial disparities in cardiovascular health among Black Americans reflect not only structural inequities in the United States, but also the racialized meanings of cardiovascular disease reproduced through public and private health communication. Drawing on ecological systems theory, this research examines how beliefs linking race and cardiovascular disease are reinforced through routine clinical interactions and how these meanings shape health behavior change. Method: Across two experimental mixed-methods studies, a model integrating ecological, social–cognitive, and behavior-change frameworks was tested. In Study 1 (N = 374), health-message framing was experimentally manipulated to examine effects on self-efficacy and decisional balance while controlling for prior experiences of racial microaggression in medical contexts. Study 2 (N = 589) extended this work by testing whether conceptualizations of race as biological/genetic and social/political moderated these effects. A subset of participants (n = 57) voluntarily provided narratives of racially charged healthcare experiences, which were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis to contextualize quantitative findings. Results: Racial microaggressions from health professionals disrupted self-efficacy and decisional balance for cardiovascular health behaviors. Endorsement of biological versus social race beliefs moderated these effects, shaping both their magnitude and direction. Qualitative findings revealed how everyday clinical interactions reproduce racialized meanings of disease risk and personal control. Conclusions: These findings identify clinical communication as a consequential site where racial meanings of disease are constructed and psychologically internalized, influencing motivation for health behavior change. Addressing biologically essentialist framing in healthcare may therefore be critical for strengthening self-regulation and reducing cardiovascular disparities among Black Americans. Keywords: racial microaggressions; health communication; self-efficacy; decisional balance; Transtheoretical Model; ecological systems theory; racial essentialism; cardiovascular health disparities Public significance statement: How health professionals and public campaigns talk about race matters for behavior change. This research shows that subtle racialized cues in medicine can weaken Black patients’ sense of control and readiness to take preventive action. Training clinicians to avoid biological essentialist framing may improve patient engagement and help reduce cardiovascular health disparities.
Gambling venues and their association with incidence of help-seeking gambling disorder: a Bayesian spatial analysis
Konstantinos Ioannidis; Jeremy Solly; Luke Simcoe; Ibrahim H Aslan; Sujoy Ray; Mohammed Elsankary; Dianna Smith; Sam Chamberlain
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Introduction and background: While the association between physical accessibility to gambling venues and problematic gambling has been demonstrated in previous research, there are no published data from UK NHS-led gambling services exploring such relationships. The aim of this study was to identify associations between referrals to an NHS gambling service and local access to gambling venues, while adjusting for area characteristics. Methods: Data for referrals per Lower layer Super Output Areas (UK LSOAs) to the NHS Southern Gambling Service (SGS) were merged with large national datasets for gambling accessibility and area characteristics (deprivation, health assets accessibility, rurality). We conducted Bayesian hierarchical Poisson regression using Integrated Nested Laplace Approximation (INLA) to estimate associations between referrals and area-level predictors. Results: Self-referrals to the gambling treatment service (excluding those who gambled exclusively online) were associated with a higher number of local gambling venues (ÎČ = 0.070, 95%CrI: -0.003 to 0.143), and a shorter driving time to the nearest venue (ÎČ = -0.025, 95%CrI: -0.045 to -0.006). The residual spatial autocorrelation (φ = 0.45) was moderate. The addition of deprivation rank, access to health assets and rurality added complexity to the model but led to poorer fitting. Conclusion: Gambling venue density plus proximity were positively associated with the number of self-referrals to a large regional gambling treatment service, likely due to those venues contributing to the occurrence of help-seeking for gambling difficulties. The approaches used herein could be scaled up nationally to inform strategic planning of healthcare provision for gambling disorder, by predicting rates of likely referrals based on geographical and other contextual data.
Respect and Disrespect in Political Disagreement: Divergent Effects of Personalized Information and Intellectual Humility
Solange Vega Yanez; Cornelia Sindermann
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The link between personalized information environments and detrimental outcomes for democratic processes, such as increased political polarization, has received growing attention. However, empirical findings on this relationship have been mixed. In this study, we focus on a more specific outcome of exposure to personalized political content: respectful attributions for disagreement. We also examine whether intellectual humility, moderates this relationship. In a preregistered online experiment, N = 217 participants were presented with 30 statements that were either congruent or incongruent with their pre-existing attitudes toward the introduction of an unconditional basic income in Germany. They were randomly assigned to one of 31 personalization levels ranging from 100% attitude-incongruent to 100% attitude-congruent statements. Respectful attributions for disagreement and intellectual humility were assessed following exposure. While the preregistered analysis using a composite measure of respectful attributions for disagreement showed no significant effect of personalization, post-hoc analyses revealed distinct patterns for positively and negatively worded items. Higher degrees of personalization were marginally associated with more disrespectful attributions, whereas intellectual humility was positively associated with respectful attributions. No significant interaction effect was observed. These results suggest that personalized political content may foster greater disrespect toward those with opposing views, while intellectual humility is related to increased respect. The absence of an interaction effect may reflect that these two influences affect different facets of political judgment. Overall our findings suggest that future research should consider distinguishing between positive and negative aspects of interpersonal political judgments when investigating the consequences of personalized political information.
The contribution of retrieval processes to behavioural markers of event segmentation
Qiying Liu; Jordan Gunn; Tobias Sommer; Deborah Talmi
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Event segmentation divides continuous experience into discrete events. Previous research suggests that poorer temporal order memory and higher temporal distance ratings for pairs of items that were encoded across a boundary, compared to those encoded within the same event, serve as behavioural markers of event boundary perception. Four pre-registered experiments challenge the widely accepted interpretation that these effects depend solely on processes that occur during the encoding of event boundaries. We found that temporal order memory and temporal distance judgments depend critically on associative and reconstructive memory at retrieval, specifically memory for each item's event-defining source and for the order of those sources. Retrieval processes determined both the magnitude and direction of effects typically attributed solely to encoding processes. We outline a new retrieved-context model variant that distinguishes object- and event-based contextual evidence for temporal judgments. Our findings suggest that greater caution is required when interpreting behavioural markers of event segmentation.
A Clinical Focus Article: A Practice-Guided Reflection on 120 Combined Years of Clinical Education Experience in Speech-Language Pathology
Brielle C Stark; Taylor Sustarsic; Rebecca Eberle; Laura Karcher; Mary Gospel
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Purpose: Clinical education is the bridge between academic preparation and safe, effective clinical practice in speech-language pathology. This Clinical Focus article offers an expert reflection on clinical education drawn from 120 combined years of experience among three clinical educators. Although the featured contributors’ clinical expertise is primarily in adult neurogenic communication disorders, the article aims to translate their practice-based perspectives into guidance that may be useful across clinical populations, settings, and service-delivery models. Approach: This article is an expert reflection, not a systematic review, narrative review, or formal qualitative study. It was informed by guided interviews, written reflections, professional materials and portfolios developed across the contributors’ clinical education careers, collaborative author synthesis, and selected literature related to clinical education, feedback, learner development, telepractice, and artificial intelligence. The contributors’ reflections are interpreted in relation to foundational concepts from Anderson’s developmental continuum and McCrea and Brasseur’s facilitative conditions. Expert Reflections: The article highlights several recurring areas of emphasis in the contributors’ clinical education practices, including individualized feedback, evidence-based and client-centered decision making, difficult but necessary conversations, the use of case-based learning, and the evolving role of technology in clinical education. Direct quotations and practical take-away points are used to illustrate how these experienced clinical educators approach learner development, clinical reasoning, and ethical practice in contemporary training contexts. Conclusions: Rather than presenting empirically validated best practices, this article translates long-standing clinical education experience into practical, expert-informed guidance. The reflections presented here suggest that clinical education benefits from intentional design, relational skill, developmental flexibility, and ongoing adaptation to changing educational and clinical contexts.
Orienting selective attention within long-term contextual memories
Melinda Sabo; William Narhi-Martinez; Nahid Zokaei; Nora RoĂŒast; Anna C. Nobre
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Selective attention is central to long-term memory retrieval, yet how attention selects and prioritizes relevant memory contents remains underexplored. Well-controlled experimental designs aimed at isolating and systematically manipulating attentional orienting in long-term memory would greatly advance this cause. The current study addresses this gap. Building on retrocue designs from working-memory research, we introduce procedures to investigate how selective attention operates within contextual long-term memory. Across three pre-registered experiments (n = 235), participants learned associations between scenes and the identities and locations of two objects. In a subsequent Selective Retrieval task, participants viewed the studied scenes and later identified scene-associated objects from an array. Spatial cues directed internal attention to the learned location of the object to be probed, or neutral cues offered no spatial information. Informative cues yielded significant retrieval benefits and costs relative to neutral cues. Benefits emerged regardless of whether cues appeared before or after scene presentation and were fully expressed even with very short retrieval intervals. The approach offers a flexible method for isolating and manipulating attention functions in long-term memory, enabling future investigation of the psychological and neural mechanisms governing selective memory access.
Do Researchers Claim Their Findings Are Applicable to the Real World? An Empirical Study of Social and Personality Psychology Articles
Beth Clarke; Abdullah Sajjad; Nicholas Moodie; Simine Vazire
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The topics and questions that social and personality psychologists study attract a great deal of public interest. The level of evidence required to make an application claim should be high, in our opinion, to avoid misapplying evidence that could be harmful or ineffective, which could erode the public’s trust in the field. Our field’s challenges with reproducibility, common threats to construct, internal, external, and statistical conclusion validity, and the dearth of independent replications in the field, suggest that application claims should be rare. To investigate how often social and personality psychologists make application claims in their published articles, we extracted and categorized application claims from 669 original empirical social and personality psychology articles published from 2010 to 2020 across sevens. Just over one quarter of articles contained at least one application claim, and 1 in 20 articles contained an application claim in the Abstract. We did not find a significant association between having an application claim, and articles’ i) citation count or ii) Altmetric score, however, we did not have sufficient evidence to conclude that there is no association. The extent to which published application claims are warranted, and are actually applied, are open question for future research.
GPT outperforms BERT and LIWC for stance and anger detection in German news articles and user comments
Lukas Mayrhofer; Markus Foramitti; Simon Fassnacht; Jana Katharina Köhler; Boryana Todorova; Claus Lamm; Mauricio Martins
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We live in an era of abundant qualitative language data that allows insights into societal trends and public attitudes, such as social media posts and news articles. Natural language processing (NLP) has become essential for analyzing this data, with recent advances in Large Language Models (LLMs) driving rapid progress. These models show strong potential for psychological research, though their validity in detecting attitudes varies across domains. This study evaluates GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 Turbo for identifying stances and expressions of anger in texts about climate activism, comparing them with traditional methods. The dataset included news articles and user comments from eight German outlets. A subset of 320 articles and 330 comments was manually annotated by three human raters for (1) stance toward Fridays for Future and (2) anger expression. GPT models out- performed BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) in stance detection and LIWC (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count) in anger detection. Moreover, GPT achieved higher agreement with the human majority vote than individual raters agreed with each other. GPT-4 Turbo performed slightly better than GPT-3.5, though differences were minor and domain-specific. Overall, GPT models proved reliable and efficient for annotating nuanced German texts where conventional NLP tools often struggle.
Navigating the Barkley Marathons
Doug Hardman; James A. Ainge; Alexander Easton; Aidan J Horner; Jeremy Kendal; John Sutton; Jan Wiener
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The Barkley Marathons is a uniquely difficult ultramarathon race held yearly in the United States. The exceptional physical demands of the race notwithstanding, its difficulty is notably amplified by its distinctive navigational challenges, including exacting environmental conditions and the prohibition of advanced navigational aids. Given the lack of research into these important navigational challenges, we conducted an exploratory qualitative study to investigate how runners navigate the race. We collected and analysed data – collating eight publicly available online race reports and conducting three interviews – from three participants who have taken part in the race. Our findings highlight how navigation is entangled with the environment, other people and task demands. In particular: the physical environment affords runners certain navigational behaviours and strategies; runners perceive landmarks and other navigational cues multimodally, dependent on various situational factors; and the, largely unwritten, rules of the race open up and close down particular navigational possibilities. Importantly, although the Barkley Marathons is a distinctive setting, we argue that this distinctiveness does not set it apart from everyday navigation. Rather, it serves to emphasise aspects and practices of navigation routinely overlooked in everyday life, precisely because we experience them so regularly and thus do not pay close attention. We conclude by discussing the conceptual and methodological consequences of this for wider navigation research. In particular, our findings support an embodied and situated approach to navigation research that embraces the dynamic and relational importance of the environment, other people and cultural knowledge systems in how we find our way.
Unpleasant mind, deactivated body – A distinct somatic signature of boredom through bodily sensation mapping
Matthias Hartmann; Wanja Wolff; Corinna Martarelli
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Boredom is a common yet complex state linked to low arousal and negative valence, but its bodily signature remains poorly understood. We used Bodily Sensation Mapping (BSM)—a self-report technique that visualizes where and how emotions are felt in the body—to investigate boredom’s somatic pattern. In an online study, 292 participants colored body silhouettes to indicate regions of increased or decreased activation and pleasantness for boredom, anger, anxiety, happiness, sadness, and curiosity. When immersed in boredom, participants reported a localized unpleasantness in the head alongside mild bodily deactivation. Linear discriminant analysis confirmed that this somatotopic valence/activity- pattern was distinct from other emotions, supporting the idea that boredom is a unique state with characteristic arousal and valence experiences. Despite this consistent group-level pattern, individual differences emerged with regards to valence sensations in the body, yet these were not linked with boredom proneness and adaptive dealing with boredom. In contrast, these traits variables correlated with distinct body and head activity patterns, particularly among individuals with heightened interoceptive accuracy. Our results underscore the utility of BSM for nuanced mapping of complex emotional states and advance our understanding of how bodily sensations interact with trait factors to shape the subjective experience of boredom.
Early readers know letter shapes without knowing letter names
Jhilik Das; Sonali Nag; Usha MN; SP Arun
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Since learning to read involves associating letter shapes with how they sound, it is widely believed that children become familiar with letter shapes when they start learning their sounds or start writing them down. However, since printed letters are often available in the environment, it is possible that children are already familiar with letter shapes. Here, we provide evidence for this intriguing possibility. We tested 300 children at the beginning of formal reading instruction of the Indian language Kannada. Each child performed four tasks: (1) a letter familiarity task in which they saw upright and inverted versions of each letter, and had to identify the more familiar orientation; (2) a letter recognition task where they had to name letters shown sequentially; (3) a visual search task where they had to find an oddball letter among identical other letters, with letters either all upright or inverted; and (4) a rapid automatized naming task where they had to name digits. Our main finding is that, despite showing wide variation in letter naming, children were highly familiar with letter orientation. This effect was present even on letters that children did not recognize at all. This familiarity with letter orientation also gave them a letter processing advantage: children searched faster when letters were upright than when they were inverted. Our findings reveal a far deeper knowledge of print among early readers than previously observed, and provide empirical support for early exposure to print as a strategy to jump-start reading acquisition.
Interventions to support healthy movement behaviours among preschool children in early childhood education and care settings: A realist synthesis protocol
Hollie Miller; Jessica John; Caterina Pesce; Marion Henderson; Farid Bardid
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Background: A paradigm shift towards a broader view of movement behaviours emphasises the importance of physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and sleep across the 24-hr day. Despite these behaviours being positively associated with important health and development outcomes, research suggests many preschool children worldwide fail to meet the World Health Organisation 24-hr movement behaviour guidelines. In order to improve adherence, interventions have often targeted Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) settings, a key environment where children spend a substantial proportion of their day. However, evidence regarding the effectiveness of these interventions and their components is inconsistent. These inconsistencies highlight the complexity of movement behaviour interventions, as movement behaviours are interdependent and influenced by multiple contextual factors. Considering this, a theory-driven approach is best suited to develop a deeper understanding for what works for whom, under which circumstances, and how, to ultimately improve policy development. Objectives: The aim of this protocol is to investigate under which contextual circumstances do interventions most effectively improve preschool children’s 24-hr movement behaviours in ECEC setting through developing and an evidence-informed initial programme theory which outline for whom these interventions work, under what contexts, and through which mechanisms. Methods: Findings of the synthesis will be reported following the RAMESES (Realist and Meta-Narrative Evidence Synthesis: Evolving Standards) publication standards. A literature search will be conducted to identify relevant peer-reviewed movement behaviour intervention studies. Identified studies will be considered for inclusion based on pre-determined inclusion criteria. Study screening, data extraction, and quality assessment will be independently conducted by two reviewers. The realist synthesis will apply a combined conceptual framework to develop potential Context-Mechanism-Outcome configurations and develop and initial programme theory which will be developed and refined–by means of piecemeal confirmation and/or disconfirmation–throughout the evidence synthesis. Results: This protocol was registered in PROSPERO (CRD420261449684). Duplicate screening, quality assessment, data extraction, relevance and rigour appraisal, and iterative programme theory testing is planned for mid-2026. The primary review manuscript is targeted for submission by 2027. Conclusions: This review moves away from current literature focus on intervention effectiveness and instead develops a more nuanced understanding of intervention implementation and effectiveness through applying theory-driven processes. Results of the synthesis intends to identify appropriate strategies to promote healthy 24-hr movement behaviours in the early years to inform the development, adaptation, and implementation of current and future interventions.
Letter in response to Shakibaei et al. “Fluoxetine Use for Very Young Children with Major Depression Disorder: A Pilot Randomized Clinical Trial,” Adv Biomed Res. 2026 Mar;15(1). doi:10.4103/abr.abr_78_24
Martin Plöderl; Richard John Lyus; Florian Naudet
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Letter to the editor
Stable Worldviews or Context-Sensitive Systems? Longitudinal Evidence on the Development of Epistemically Suspect Beliefs Across Two Sociopolitical Contexts
Sinan Alper; Kıvanç Konukoğlu; Fatih Bayrak; Ceyhun Yener; Ece Sezen Bağcı; Burak Doğruyol; Onurcan Yilmaz
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Are epistemically suspect beliefs (ESBs)—including conspiracy, paranormal, and pseudoscientific beliefs—stable worldviews, or do they shift alongside changes in the sociopolitical context? Although often treated as enduring dispositions, little is known about their within-person development or sensitivity to sociopolitical conditions. We address this question using two five-wave panel studies conducted over two years in TĂŒrkiye (N = 595-2,077) and the UK (N = 350-959). Latent growth models show modest mean-level declines in ESBs alongside strong cross-domain coupling in both levels and trajectories. However, co-development patterns were context-sensitive. In TĂŒrkiye, within-person increases in perceived corruption covaried with increases in conspiracy beliefs, whereas this pattern did not consistently emerge in the UK. These findings indicate that ESBs are neither purely static dispositions nor fully context-driven reactions but exhibit durable cross-domain structure with bounded sensitivity to sociopolitical conditions.
Cultivating Flourishing through Yoga Nidra Practice in Students: A Longitudinal Randomised Waitlist-Controlled Study
Vicky Kachera; Neha Shekhawat; Saurabh Mishra; Alka Mishra; James Gomes; Rahul Garg
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Background: University students globally face an escalating mental health crisis (Paiva et al., 2025), yet interventions often overlook the active cultivation of complete well-being (flourishing). Objective: This randomized, waitlist-controlled study evaluated the impact of a 14-week Yoga Nidra Practice (YNP) module on mental distress and complete well-being at a premier technical institute in India. Methods: One hundred and forty students (N=140) were randomized 1:1 to either a structured YNP intervention or a waitlist control (WC) group. Primary outcomes included depression, anxiety, perceived stress, sleep quality, flourishing, life satisfaction, mood and peace of mind. Secondary outcomes assessed cognitive flexibility, visual scanning, processing speed and academic performance. Results: The YNP group demonstrated significantly greater improvements than the WC group across six primary outcomes: depression (p < .001, r = -0.35), anxiety (p < .001, r = -0.34), life satisfaction (p < .001, r = 0.34), perceived stress (p = .003, r = -0.29), flourishing (p = .004, r = 0.28), and peace of mind (p = .001, r = 0.32). Furthermore, while sleep quality significantly deteriorated in the WC group compared to baseline (p = .003), it remained same in the YNP group (p = .817) resulting in a significant between-group difference (p = .010, r = -0.25). YNP group also achieved significantly greater gains in cognitive flexibility compared to the WC group (TMTB: p = .001, r = -0.32). Reflexive thematic analysis revealed that effective coping practices facilitated a foundational shift from reactivity to response, cultivating an inner calm that drove holistic restoration. This central mechanism resulted in significant physical restoration, cognitive enhancement, and the integration of mindful living into students' daily academic routines. Conclusion: This YNP module is a potent, scalable intervention that reduces psychological distress, and educators may consider including it in their curriculum to support students' holistic well-being, particularly those in high-stress environments. Keywords: Yoga Nidra, Psychological Distress, Sleep Quality, Cognitive Flexibility, Mental Well-being, Students.
Beyond Burden and Resources: Regulatory Flexibility as a Predictor of Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms in Occupational Trauma
Roxanne Sopp; Tanja Michael; Michael Knoll
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Objective: Exposure to potentially traumatic events is common in high-risk occupations, yet only a minority of individuals develops persistent posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. Building on the regulatory flexibility framework, the present study examined whether trauma-related coping flexibility predicts PTSD symptoms beyond burden and ressources in an occupational context. Moreover, we tested whether the predictive value of this flexibility model is superior to a model that includes separate indices of forward-focused and trauma-focused coping. Method: Railway personnel with exposure to critical railway-related incidents (N = 444) completed measures of trauma-related burden (occupational and non-occupational trauma exposure, peritraumatic distress), social and organizational resources (e.g., social support, support availability), and trauma-related coping. PTSD symptoms as well as depressive symptoms were assessed as outcomes. Results: Trauma-related coping explained significant additional variance in PTSD symptoms beyond burden and ressources. However, model comparisons indicated that forward-focused coping was a stronger predictor than the derived flexibility index. Moreover, forward-focused coping additionally emerged as the strongest predictor across all investigated predictors. Contrary to our hypotheses, trauma-focused coping was positively associated with PTSD symptoms. A similar pattern was observed for depressive symptoms. Conclusions: Findings highlight the central role of trauma-related coping processes in occupational mental health. While results partially support the regulatory flexibility framework, they suggest that forward-focused coping may be particularly relevant for maintaining psychological functioning following occupational trauma.
When Music Feels Different Than It Sounds: Felt–Expressed Emotional Divergence in a Naturalistic Music Setting
Ioanna Zioga; Charalampos Papageorgiou; Christina Anagnostopoulou
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Music possesses a profound capacity to both communicate and elicit emotion, yet internally felt emotions often diverge from those expressed by the music. Understanding the relationship between these two perspectives is central in music psychology, as recognizing an emotion does not necessarily entail experiencing it. Such divergence can occur in two distinct directions: inhibition, when felt emotion is weaker than expressed emotion, and amplification, when felt emotion exceeds expressed emotion. In this study, 74 participants (37 performer-listener dyads) rated felt and expressed arousal and valence following live musical improvisations. We found no evidence that social context, situational states, personality traits, or affective traits influenced the magnitude of felt-expressed divergence. However, the direction of divergence showed an interesting pattern. Although felt–expressed alignment was most common overall, non-aligned cases differed by dimension: arousal showed more inhibition than amplification, whereas valence showed more amplification than inhibition. Critically, arousal amplification was more likely among performers than listeners, which may reflect active sensorimotor engagement. It was also more likely in individuals high in openness to experience and emotional contagion, possibly reflecting greater receptivity to novelty, uncertainty, and the performer’s expressive state. Conversely, valence amplification was associated with more positive mood and faster perceived passage of time, suggesting mood-congruent processing and aesthetic absorption. These findings establish the felt-expressed relationship as a useful framework for understanding how affective communication shapes live musical experiences.
Referring Effectively to a Group of Objects
Emilia Ellsiepen; Alexandra Mayn; Natalia Bila; Vera Demberg
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In communication, we often need to refer to multiple objects. We have several possibilities: enumerating the objects one by one or referring to a shared feature. This is the first study to systematically compare different ways of referring to groups of objects in terms of response times, accuracy, and memory encoding. In a within-subjects design, participants listened to instructions either using a shared feature or enumerating coordinates of individual objects We find that there is no one way of referring that is universally more effective, but that the optimal way of referring depends on the type of common feature and the number of objects. When the shared feature is prominent, such as color, and multiple objects need to be identified, referring to it results in shorter identification times and fewer errors. In contrast, when the shared feature is less salient, such as pattern, referring by location tends to be better.
Developmental changes in the weighting of prosodic cues
Amanda Seidl; Alejandrina Cristia
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Previous research has shown that the weighting of, or attention to, acoustic cues at the level of the segment changes over the course of development (Nittrouer & Miller, 1997; Nittrouer, Manning, & Meyer, 1993). In this paper we examined changes over the course of development in weighting of acoustic cues at the suprasegmental level. Specifically, we tested English-learning 4-month-olds’ performance on a clause segmentation task when each of three acoustic cues to clausal units was neutralized and contrasted it with performance on a Baseline condition where no cues were manipulated. Comparison with the reported performance of 6-month-olds on the same task (Seidl, 2007) reveals that 4-month-olds weight prosodic cues to clausal boundaries differently than 6-month-olds, relying more heavily on all three correlates of clausal boundaries (pause, pitch and vowel duration) than 6-month-olds do, who rely primarily on pitch. We interpret this as evidence that 4-month-olds use a holistic processing strategy, while 6-month-olds may already be able to attend separately to isolated cues in the input stream and may, furthermore, be able to exploit a language-specific cue weighting. Thus, in a way similar to that in other cognitive domains, infants begin as global auditory scene processors and are only later able to process local auditory cues.
The Evaluation of Devaluation: Deficient outcome devaluation leads to wrongly considering goal-directed actions as habits
Antonio Våzquez-Millån; Pablo Martínez-López; María Rueda Romero; José Juan León; David Luque
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Habits are stimulus-driven responses that are produced independently of the current outcome value. They enable efficient actions in familiar contexts while freeing up cognitive resources. Habits are expected to influence behavior after substantial experience, whereas limited training leaves behavior under goal-directed control. This transition from goal-directed to habitual control is well-documented in animal research but remains challenging to replicate in humans. Using a free-operant task, recent studies have suggested that human habits can be fully learned even after short training. This would produce a ceiling effect, explaining null results when the amount of training is manipulated. Here, we propose an alternative explanation: the devaluation protocol was ineffective for a subset of participants who appeared ‘habitual’. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a pre-registered conceptual replication of the free-operant task with improved devaluation. As in previous research, we found no difference in habitual responses between short and extended training. In contrast to prior reports, most participants were sensitive to outcome devaluation. Habitual responding was strongly correlated with the effectiveness of the outcome devaluation protocol; habit-like responses were mostly produced by the few participants for whom the devaluation did not work. We further supported our hypothesis by reanalyzing previous datasets, finding that, across all studies, participants who showed more habit-like responses were those for whom the devaluation was less effective. Taken together, our findings suggest that suboptimal outcome-devaluation protocols may have biased previous results, leading to habit-like goal-directed responses regardless of the amount of previous instrumental training.
Affective Nonverbal Vocalizations and Implications for Cochlear Implants: A Scoping Review
Beatrice Fumagalli; Katarzyna Pisanski; Yue Zhang; gloria araiza-illan; Adrien DANIEL; David Reby; Deniz BaƟkent
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Abstract Background: Nonverbal vocalizations (NVVs) like laughs, cries and screams are powerful carriers of affective meaning and trigger rapid attentional responses. Evidence linking specific acoustic cues of adult NVVs to affective perception remains fragmented across heterogeneous studies in typically-hearing listeners, and largely absent in cochlear‑implant users. Objective: To map empirical evidence linking acoustic cues of adult NVVs to emotion and salience perception in typically‑hearing listeners, and to determine whether comparable evidence exists for cochlear implant users. Methods: Following PRISMA‑ScR guidelines, peer‑reviewed studies were included that quantified acoustic features of NVVs and related them to perceived affect or salience in typically-hearing or cochlear implant listeners. Twenty-seven studies (44 experiments, 2010-2025) met inclusion criteria. Results: In typically-hearing listeners, multiple acoustic cues show consistent associations with affective dimensions, but do not map onto affective meaning in a one-to-one manner. Overall, affective perception depends on combinations of acoustic cues and is systematically modulated by call type (e.g., laugh, cry). Amplitude‑modulation in the 30-150 Hz range most robustly explained salience perception, mainly in screams. Few studies compared cue-perception associations across NVV types. Evidence for cochlear implant users was extremely limited: only one study provided acoustic analyses, indicating compressed affective spaces and reliance on envelope‑based cues. Conclusion: NVV perception depends on integrated cues whose perceptual roles vary across call types, with more convergent evidence for salience than for affect perception. Major gaps include NVV salience beyond screams, differences across call types, and cue‑level investigations in cochlear implant listeners.
Teaching for creativity: What is the role of creativity knowledge? A study on Italian pre-service and in-service teachers
Gerardo Pellegrino; Mathias Benedek; Marco Giancola
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Creativity is considered one of the most important skills of the 21st century. For this reason, an increasing emphasis has been placed on incorporating teaching for creativity into educational curricula at all levels. However, teaching for creativity is no simple task. Among the individual factors hindering teachers, limited knowledge of creativity might play a key role. In the present study, we examined creativity knowledge (measured as the endorsement of creativity myths vs facts) in a sample of 233 Italian teachers (Mage = 42.32 years; SDage = 8.73; 204 females). We investigated differences between pre-service and in-service teachers, finding that in-service teachers reported higher endorsement of creativity myths, but also higher teaching for creativity self-efficacy. Finally, we tested whether knowledge about creativity was associated with teaching self-efficacy and beliefs in student creative potential. Regression analyses showed that endorsement of facts was positively associated with teaching self-efficacy. These findings highlight the importance of fostering creativity knowledge among teachers and equipping them with the skills and competencies needed to integrate teaching for creativity into their instructional practices effectively.
AI advice suppresses people’s willingness to say “I don’t know”, even when the advice is wrong and accuracy is incentivized
Chiara Marcoccia; Walter Quattrociocchi; Valerio Capraro
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Knowing when to say “I don’t know” is fundamental to human judgment, yet AI assistants offer a fluent answer to almost any question. In five experiments (N = 3,132; four preregistered, one direct replication), participants answered difficult questions and could always decline to respond. We engineered the questions so that AI advice was wrong, separating AI use from its accuracy. Merely having access to AI nearly eliminated participants’ willingness to suspend judgment, and this held whether the advice was actively requested or simply displayed. Consequently, participants answered more questions but were correct about a third as often as when AI was unavailable—yet their confidence nearly doubled. Incentivizing accuracy and penalizing inaccuracy led participants to seek and follow AI advice less, answer more accurately, and suspend judgment more often, though still far less than when AI was unavailable. As AI suggestions grow ubiquitous and unsolicited, they may not simply affect answer accuracy; they may even alter the metacognitive threshold at which people decide whether they know enough to answer.
How to Account for Unobserved Baseline Confounders with Time-Invariant and Time-Varying Effects in Cross-Lagged Panel Research
Pepijn Anthony Vink; Jeroen Mulder; Julien Patrick Irmer; Ellen Hamaker
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In the psychological literature, a multitude of longitudinal structural equation models for panel data have been described to study reciprocal causal effects between variables over time. Many of these, including the dynamic panel model (DPM) and the random intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM), include latent variables for each of the repeatedly-measured constructs. This article studies the use of such latent factors to control for unobserved time-invariant confounders, of which there are potentially many in practice, some with time-varying effects, and with different distributions. We use graphical causal model theory to discuss expected bias in the DPM, RI-CLPM, as well as that of the traditional cross-lagged panel model (CLPM) and the CLPM with lag-2 effects, in various scenarios with many time-invariant confounders. Next, we derive analytically the proportionality assumption under which freeing up the loadings of the latent factors can control for time-invariant confounders with time-varying effects. Population analyses and simulations are performed to study the asymptotic and finite-sample performance of the models, respectively. While the DPM with free factor loadings is theoretically the most appealing model—it is unbiased for the lagged effects across the widest range of scenarios with many unobserved time-invariant confounders—in finite samples (especially when N < 1000) the model is instable, with large standard errors and finite-sample bias. The DPM with fixed factor loadings appears a robust compromise for lower sample sizes.
Interpolated Prequestioning, Focused Attention, Mind Wandering, and Learning During Pre-Recorded Video Lectures
Steven C. Pan; Elisya Tung; Luke Chiang; Alyssa Indrajaya; Michelle Kaku
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Interpolated prequestioning is a learning technique in which practice questions targeting yet-to-be-learned information (i.e., prequestions) are interspersed throughout a set of learning materials. As learners view those materials, they make guesses for each question, then have the opportunity to discover the correct answers in subsequently viewed materials. Emerging evidence suggests that this technique can cause learners to pay closer attention during lectures, yielding better learning outcomes. That possibility has yet to be investigated, however, relative to a competitive non-testing technique, using categorical experience sampling methods, and without the contaminating influence of other, non-lecture learning activities. In each of three experiments, undergraduate students (Experiment 1) or online adult learners (Experiments 2-3) watched a pre-recorded video lecture with prequestions or statements containing learning objectives interpolated throughout, responded to categorical thought probes, and then took a criterial test assessing memory and comprehension of lecture content. Across experiments, regardless of question format, interpolated prequestioning yielded higher rates of lecture-related on-task thoughts than studying interpolated statements. Prequestioning also improved test scores significantly in two of the three experiments, which mediation analyses attributed to higher rates of on-task thoughts. Furthermore, although rates of off-task thinking were relatively low, there were indications that prequestioning dampened comprehension-related off-task and task-unrelated thoughts. Together, these findings suggest that interpolated prequestioning can strengthen focused attention and facilitate learning from lectures. Keywords: Prequestioning, pretesting, attention, mind wandering
Computational Models Gone Rogue
Boaz Rosenberg; Eran Eldar
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Computational models are powerful tools in cognitive science. They provide formal, testable accounts of human behavior and allow for nuanced interpretations of data that go beyond raw behavioral metrics. Yet, in recent years, there has been a growing concern about the validity of modeling results, as cases of model misspecification have been shown to create artifacts that undermine the conclusions drawn. In this article, we present a route by which misspecification may cause these artifacts by demonstrating that models can “go rogue”: break out of intended constraints, generate unintended behaviors, and produce misleading results. We present simulations of two simple cases in which this occurs, illustrate how and why failures arise, and discuss implications for modeling practice and interpretation. We conclude that unless researchers adjust current modeling interpretation conventions, computational modeling risks systematically producing false conclusions.
Generative Feedback Processing Strengthens Errorful Learning
Thet Hnin Khin Khin; Steven C. Pan
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Errorful generation—making (often) incorrect guesses about unfamiliar information—can enhance learning if accompanied by correct answer feedback. Across four experiments, we investigated whether the way that learners engage with such feedback influences retention. Participants learned definitions of obscure English words through errorful generation with feedback, then completed a posttest. Crucially, they processed feedback for incorrect guesses in a manner that was non-generative (passive reading, verbatim copying), elaborative (studying provided examples; using a provided keyword mnemonic), or generative (rephrasing, example generation)—that is, requiring the production of novel responses. In Experiments 1, 2 and 4, rephrasing correct answer feedback consistently yielded better learning than reading or copying feedback. In Experiment 3, both rephrasing and example generation outperformed use of the keyword mnemonic. Experiment 4 additionally demonstrated that rephrasing improved learning even without errorful generation. Evidence for the benefits of studying provided examples in feedback was mixed. Overall, these findings demonstrate that generative processing can play a uniquely facilitative role in errorful and non-errorful learning. Importantly, with respect to errorful learning, the effectiveness of corrective feedback depends not just on its presence, but on how it is engaged with.
What Do Undergraduate Students Know and Believe About Distributed Practice and Interleaved Practice?
Steven C. Pan; Eduardo Gonzålez Cabañes; Andy Z. J. Teo; Inez Zung; Faria Sana; James Cooke
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Do undergraduate students know and use distributed practice, the strategy of spacing apart learning opportunities over time, and interleaved practice, the strategy of alternating between topics during learning? What beliefs do students hold about how learning should be scheduled, and how are common learning activities—such as using flashcards and completing problem sets—actually scheduled? To explore these questions, we surveyed students at two major universities in North America and Southeast Asia respectively. We found that distributed practice is unfamiliar to many students, whereas interleaved practice is virtually unknown. Both strategies are often underutilized and perceived with mixed effectiveness. Instructors, meanwhile, reportedly use various scheduling approaches in lectures and assignments. Additionally, distributed practice was associated with better academic performance. These findings, which showed relative consistency across culturally diverse samples, underscore significant gaps in student awareness and adoption of distributed and interleaved practice, highlighting the need to improve their integration into educational settings.
Revisiting Gino, Ayal, et al.’s (2009) Contagion and Differentiation in Unethical Behavior: A Registered Conceptual Replication and Extension
Jareef Martuza; Esra Aslan
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Individual behavior is often shaped by observing others’ actions. The seminal Gino, Ayal, et al.'s (2009) study found that individuals behave more dishonestly after witnessing blatant dishonesty by an ingroup member than by an outgroup member. However, because there was no group-irrelevant baseline condition, it remains unclear whether ingroup contagion, outgroup differentiation, or both drive the effect. Furthermore, using natural groups of university students leaves it unclear whether distinct properties of natural groups are necessary, or if mere categorization into arbitrary groups suffices. In this registered report, we tested Gino, Ayal, et al.'s (2009) general hypothesis that exposure to ingroup dishonesty norms increases individual dishonest behavior more than exposure to outgroup dishonesty norms. We conducted a conceptual replication and extension of their Experiment 1 with 3,323 U.S. Americans using both minimal and natural groups. Participants were exposed to standardized information about others' dishonest behavior, where we systematically varied the group identities of dishonest others. Then, they completed an incentivized coin-flip task where participants could double their earnings by lying. Despite manipulation checks suggesting that participants processed norm information and strongly identified with natural groups, the pre-registered ingroup-outgroup hypotheses were not supported. Bayesian analyses provided moderate to strong evidence for null effects across comparisons (BF₀₁ = 3.15-14.71). The core ingroup-versus-outgroup prediction received particularly strong null evidence (BF₀₁ > 14). We conclude that exposure to ingroup versus outgroup dishonesty norms, delivered through descriptive statistics in online settings, might not differentially affect individual dishonest behavior, revealing a boundary condition of the original finding.
Cosmetocracy: A Proposed Sociocultural Framework for Understanding Appearance-Based Value, Pressure, and Inequality
Alberto Stefana
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Beauty has always shaped social perception, desirability, status, and opportunity. Contemporary digital and commercial environments have intensified this social power by making bodies, faces, and skin continuously visible, comparable, modifiable, and measurable. This article proposes the concept of cosmetocracy to describe a sociocultural order in which personal, relational, and social value is increasingly mediated by aesthetic appearance, the capacity to modify appearance, and the public visibility of such modification. The article integrates evidence from attractiveness research, sociocultural and objectification models of body image, social comparison theory, social media studies, influencer marketing, adolescent development, dating app research, psychodermatology, body dysmorphic disorder, and emerging concerns about compulsive skincare. The Cosmetocracy Model identifies interacting domains: beauty ideals, digital and commercial infrastructures, internalization and appearance comparison, embodied self-experience, appearance-management practices, relational feedback, clinical outcomes, and resistance. Special attention is given to adolescence, filters, pediatric skincare, dating apps, cosmetic procedure desire, body dysmorphic disorder, and cosmeticorexia-like presentations. The article argues that appearance-related distress should not be reduced to individual vanity or vulnerability. It emerges within a broader ecology of visibility, comparison, consumption, social reward, and appearance-based inequality. At the same time, the framework avoids pathologizing aesthetic practices per se, recognizing that skincare, makeup, clothing, body modification, and cosmetic procedures may also express identity, pleasure, culture, gender, sexuality, and agency. The article concludes by outlining implications for prevention, clinical care, digital policy, and future research.
Seeing Brilliance as Masculine: Visual Stereotypes of Exceptional Intelligence
Uliana Solovieva; Daniel N Albohn; Alexander Todorov; Lin Bian
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First impressions play a powerful role in shaping judgments and decisions, yet little is known about what makes someone appear brilliant. To examine visual stereotypes, or physical appearance attributes that drive impressions of brilliance, we applied a data-driven reverse correlation method that uses generative AI to visualize mental representations of brilliant and smart individuals. In Study 1, adult participants categorized 300 synthetic faces. Based on these categorizations, we generated individual and group-level visual models of “brilliance” and “smartness.” These models allow for parametric manipulations of perceived brilliance and smartness and revealed a high degree of heterogeneity. However, for the majority of participants, brilliance was more masculinized than smartness, and perceived masculinity predicted visual models of brilliance even when controlling for other theoretically relevant attributes (i.e., perceived dominance, privilege, affect). Study 2 replicated this masculinity bias using only female-appearing faces, demonstrating a broader visual stereotype based on physical features rather than perceived gender. Study 3 validated participants’ visual models in a job hiring context, where faces manipulated to look more brilliant were judged as more fit for a job requiring genius-level but not average-level intelligence. Together, these findings reveal a robust “masculine = brilliant” visual stereotype that emerges despite individual variability in mental representations, demonstrate that impressions of brilliance are visually distinct from smartness, and identify how these visual biases can shape consequential real-world outcomes.
Addressing Common Problems in Autism Research: cohort development and sample description for a participatory, real-world, longitudinal study of outcomes in autistic adults.
Christina Nicolaidis; Ian Moura; Mary Baker-Ericzén; Mirah Scharer; Joelle Maslak; Rachel Kripke-Ludwig; Willi Horner-Johnson; Julia Love; Dora M Raymaker; Andrea Joyce
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Adult autism services research is plagued by methodological challenges, including difficulty obtaining representative or heterogeneous samples and a frequent mismatch between experimental methodologies and real-world settings. The AASPIRE Outcomes Project used a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach to 1) create the AASPIRE Measurement Toolkit - a set of self- and caregiver-reported accessible outcome measures to evaluate health and social services, and 2) explore factors predicting changes in outcomes. We previously used a CBPR-nested Delphi process to identify high-priority outcomes and adapted or created instruments to measure them. We conducted a longitudinal survey to validate these measures in a pragmatic sample of autistic adults from two healthcare systems, two disability service systems, and the larger autistic community in the United States. This paper describes our study methods and the sample’s baseline characteristics. We collected baseline data from 870 participants. Follow-up response rates were >80% for the 2nd and 3rd timepoints. The sample includes strong heterogeneity. As expected, sample characteristics differed markedly between the 3 subcohorts. Lessons from our experience may help other researchers devise strategies to effectively recruit heterogeneous samples of autistic adults across various settings. This cohort may allow researchers to better understand what influences outcomes in autistic adults.
Linking Fluctuations in Working Memory and Inhibitory Control to Daily Alcohol Use: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Study
Gezelle Dali; Cindy Chew; Ryan Tran; Hajo Floris van der Tang; Hannah Wertiechowski; Robert Hester; Antoinette Poulton
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Inhibitory control and working memory comprise core executive functions which have been implicated in hazardous alcohol consumption. Yet, there is a dearth of research examining whether daily fluctuations in these cognitive domains predict alcohol use. The current study implemented an ecological momentary assessment design to determine whether day-to-day changes in inhibitory control and working memory predict the likelihood and quantity of alcohol consumption. One hundred and forty-five participants who reported regular alcohol use (Mage = 21.48 years; female = 73%) were prompted daily to complete Stop-Signal and n-Back tasks via the CheckCog app over 14 days. Participants also recorded their alcohol consumption using the Alcohol Capture app. Generalised linear mixed modelling demonstrated a significant effect of working memory on daily consumption (IRR = 0.72, 95% CI 0.54, 0.97), with greater accuracy predicting a reduced number of standard drinks consumed. No effect of inhibitory control on daily consumption was found (IRR = 0.98, 95% CI 0.64, 1.50). Neither inhibitory control nor working memory were found to predict the likelihood of drinking. Exploratory analyses conducted on a sub-sample of participants indicated significant effects of within-day change in inhibitory control (IRR = 2.19, 95% CI 1.07, 4.50) and working memory (IRR = 0.56, 95% CI 0.32, 0.96) on consumption, such that deterioration in performance predicted greater consumption. These results support further examination of cognitive markers as real-time predictors of alcohol use which may inform the development of just-in-time interventions targeting hazardous drinking.
Sustainably Reducing Prejudice through Brief Real-life Contact with the Living Library Intervention
Afreen Khalid; Gijsbert Bijlstra; Tjits van Lent; Maximilian Primbs; Rob Holland
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To tackle inequality perpetuated by discrimination, interventions that sustainably change how people respond to underrepresented groups are needed. We evaluated the Living Library – a contact intervention where participants engage in brief conversations with different outgroups. We conducted two field studies – within four public libraries (Study 1; N = 79) and nine organizations (Study 2; N = 305). Across studies, we measured attitudes and anxiety at three time points (before, immediately after, and a week following the intervention). Results indicated improved attitudes and reduced anxiety towards the outgroup that persisted for at least one week. Notably, both participants who were mandated to attend the event by their organization and those who attended voluntarily showed improvements in attitudes. Our project offers insights into the effects of the intervention across distinct contexts and shows that these effects endure beyond the immediate intervention context, re-affirming the contact hypothesis in a field setting. Keywords: prejudice reduction, intervention, intergroup contact, Living Library, attitudes
The ANCHOR Framework for Psychedelic Accompaniment
Ron Joseph Shore
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Abstract Psychedelic-assisted interventions are complex, context-sensitive interventions in which pharmacological, psychological, relational, environmental, cultural, and temporal processes interact. Trials of psilocybin and related compounds have reported promising but heterogeneous findings across psychiatric, substance-use, and existential indications, while also revealing challenges related to functional unmasking, expectancy, under-specified psychological support, incomplete reporting of extra-pharmacological variables, facilitator training, and altered-state suggestibility. Contemporary neuroscience suggests that classic psychedelics acutely perturb large-scale brain dynamics, alter functional connectivity, expand dynamical repertoire, and may transiently relax high-level predictive constraints. These effects may create windows of enhanced plasticity, learning, psychological flexibility, and context sensitivity, but neither destabilization nor plasticity is inherently therapeutic. This article introduces ANCHOR, a complex-systems and mechanism-informed framework for psychedelic preparation, support, and integration. ANCHOR comprises six interdependent domains: Approach, Non-imposition, Context, Holism, Openness, and Relationality. It conceptualizes psychedelic support as therapeutic accompaniment: the deliberate shaping of safe, ethical, and participant-centred boundary conditions around a transiently destabilized brain-mind-body-relationship-environment system. Building on transition-state modelling, ANCHOR contributes a framework for complex-systems care, temporal transition-state support, active non-imposition, bounded openness, grounded self-trust, and threshold-state accompaniment. ANCHOR is not proposed as a stand-alone psychotherapy, certification standard, clinical indication, or empirically validated treatment. Its immediate contribution is educational, operational, and methodological, providing a process-based language for facilitator stance, observable competencies, fidelity assessment, and research reporting. Future research should evaluate feasibility, reliability, training effects, participant experience, safety, cultural adaptation, and associations with therapeutic alliance, integration quality, adverse events, and clinical or educational outcomes. Keywords: psychedelics; psilocybin; complex systems; threshold states; transition state; set and setting; therapeutic alliance; integration; psychedelic-assisted therapy; facilitator competencies; ethics; ANCHOR
Large language models infer hidden preferences from eye movements but fail to exploit response times
Mrugsen Gopnarayan; Liis Harjo; Jaan Aru; Sebastian Gluth
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Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in interactive settings, in which they must infer human preferences not only from explicit instructions but also from observed behaviour. To test their relevant capabilities, we evaluated three LLMs (Llama 3.1, the cognition-tuned Centaur , and GPT-5 ) as interaction partners in a multi-round negotiation task where human preferences must be inferred from choices, eye movements, and response times (RT). The frontier model GPT-5 substantially outperformed both open-source models, suggesting that Centaur ’s cognitive-specific training does not generalise to social inferences. However, none of the models exploited RT as effectively as humans did, highlighting a gap in LLM social cognition. Furthermore, humans remained superior at recovering true preference weights, though models translated imperfect estimates into competitive offers, pointing to their better quantitative abilities. Traces of decision processes therefore help LLMs only selectively: whereas eye movements improve preference inference, RTs are so far of limited use.
When We Act (or Don’t): The Topography of Momentary Impulsive Action and Inaction
Janan Mostajabi; Colin Vize; Aidan G.C. Wright
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Impulsivity is a dynamic phenomenon shaped by situational context, yet it has historically been studied using static, trait-based measures. Moreover, impulsivity has been predominantly conceptualized as rash action, despite theoretical work suggesting that it may also be expressed as rash inaction, or the failure to act despite negative consequences. Using intensive ecological momentary assessment, the present study mapped the topography of daily impulsivity in a clinically enriched sample of 540 adults. Participants reported momentary impulsive behaviors and contextual information up to eight times per day over 15 days. Higher trait impulsivity was associated with greater within-person variability and instability in both impulsive action and inaction, and momentary impulsivity showed temporal dependency. Contextual factors differentially shaped impulsivity: action was more likely and intense later in the day, in public, and in social contexts, whereas inaction was more likely in the morning, at home, and during less structured activities.
Neural Dynamics of Action-Effect Predictions within Effect-Related Regions Diverge Between Stimulus-Driven and Voluntary Actions
Zhengting Cai; Alexander Jones; Qing Yang; Florian Waszak
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The brain acts as a prediction machine, generating action-effect predictions that contribute to action control. However, the neural dynamics of these predictive representations within effect-related regions, particularly how they diverge or converge between stimulus-driven (exogenous) and voluntary (endogenous) actions, remain elusive. Using scalp electroencephalography (EEG) with current source density transformation (CSD) followed by univariate and multivariate analyses, the spatiotemporal evolution of action-effect predictions based on visual and auditory stimuli was tracked, especially prior to keypresses in stimulus-driven and voluntary conditions. In stimulus-driven actions, predictive representations were sustained throughout motor preparation. This dynamic sequence originated in frontocentral networks and cascaded to sensory-specific effect-related cortices, serving as pre-action prediction references that would attenuate as contingencies stabilized. Conversely, voluntary actions in the study exhibited a compressed temporal profile with no predictive representations during early movement preparation. Effect-related cortices came online immediately preceding execution, transitioning to a vulnerable pedestal state that was only captured by multivariate predictive power indices (quantifying channel-wise decoding contributions) without the phase-locked predictions detectable in univariate CSD analyses. This noise-driven pattern aligns with the stochastic accumulator model, revealing an ecological limitation in classic voluntary action paradigms: lacking goal-directed reasons (the 'Why' dimension) results in arbitrary responding. Furthermore, post-action omission-evoked prediction errors mirrored these pre-action neural dynamics, appearing robust in stimulus-driven actions but weaker in voluntary actions. Together, these findings demonstrate that action-effect predictions fundamentally diverge between cued and voluntary control, with continuous, orderly transformations occurring exclusively in stimulus-driven actions, highlighting the critical need to incorporate goal-directedness into future volition research.
Cognitive Reserve as Adaptive Resilience: A Cross-Species Framework for Neuropsychology and Cognitive Aging
Yunier Broche-PĂ©rez
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Why do some aging adults maintain effective reasoning despite substantial Alzheimer-related neuropathology, whereas others with comparable neural burden show marked impairment? Why do some nonhuman primates exposed to mild, manageable early stress later show stronger prefrontal regulation and adaptive stress responses? Although usually studied separately, these questions reflect a shared adaptive problem: how organisms maintain, recover, or reorganize function in response to biological or environmental challenges. We propose that resilience is a dynamic, evolutionarily conserved process expressed across species through stress regulation, behavioral flexibility, social buffering, environmental engagement, and functional preservation. In humans, the cumulative development of these capacities may contribute to cognitive reserve. This does not imply that nonhuman animals possess cognitive reserve in the clinical human sense; rather, several behavioral and neurobiological processes supporting human reserve may have comparative precursors in nonhuman resilience systems. Cognitive reserve is reframed as more than a neural endowment or discrepancy between pathology and performance. It is also an active behavioral and regulatory repertoire, including flexible strategy use, compensatory reorganization, sustained engagement, and social resource mobilization. The manuscript proposes a five-level framework linking biological regulation, behavioral flexibility, social regulation, environmental enrichment, and functional preservation, offering testable hypotheses for cognitive aging and translational resilience research.
Measuring Psychotic Experiences at Scale: An Item Response Theory Analysis of the Adolescent Psychotic-like Symptom Screener (APSS)
Joshua B Gilbert; Zachary Himmelsbach; Nicole R. DeTore; Randi M. Schuster
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The Adolescent Psychotic-like Symptom Screener (APSS) is widely used to screen adolescents for psychotic experiences (PEs), but there are few rigorous psychometric analyses of the instrument. In this study, we apply Item Response Theory (IRT) to APSS responses from a large sample of middle and high school students in Massachusetts (N = 17,315, 49\% male, mean age 15.6 years). We compare several polytomous IRT models, evaluate item and test functioning, test for differential item functioning (DIF) by age and sex, and examine demographic predictors of PEs. We find that the data are consistent with a unidimensional interpretation of the APSS, and a graded response model fits the data well. All items have high discrimination parameters, but thresholds are concentrated above the population mean. As a result, reliability is maximized about 1.5 standard deviations above the mean and is poor at low trait levels. We identify eight non-zero DIF terms across age and sex, although most effects are small in magnitude. Latent regression analyses show that older students and male students report slightly lower levels of PEs, with a modest sex-by-age interaction. To facilitate practical application, we include R code to generate IRT-based APSS scores in new data based on our calibrated item parameters. Our results support the use of the APSS as an efficient screener for identifying adolescents with elevated PEs who may benefit from further assessment, while cautioning that it is not well suited to distinguish participants with low PEs.
Emotion regulation strategy use, associations with depressive and anxious symptomatology, and sex-based differences in two independent samples of autistic adults
Goldie McQuaid; Allison Jack; Gregory Wallace
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Autistic adults experience elevated rates of depression and anxiety relative to neurotypical adults. Reasons for these elevated rates are not well understood. One possible factor is differences in emotion regulation (ER). ER has been studied largely in autistic youth samples and has not typically investigated sex differences in ER and its associations with depression and anxiety. This preregistered study examined associations between cognitive reappraisal (CR) and expressive suppression (ES) and depressive and anxious symptomatology, and the potential modulations of these associations by sex in autistic adults without co-occurring intellectual disability. Two independent samples of autistic adults (Sample 1: N=225, 18.6-31.5y; 70.7% female; Sample 2: N=267, 18-83y, 71.9% female) self-reported ER strategy use (CR in both samples; ES in Sample 1 only), and depressive and anxious symptomatology. No significant differences between male and female autistic adults in CR or ES use was found. Greater use of ES was significantly associated with higher levels of depressive and anxious symptomatology, and female sex was significantly associated with higher levels of these symptoms after accounting for ER strategy use in Sample 1. In Sample 2, no effect of sex was observed. We suggest ES may overlap with autistic masking and may have particular impacts on autistic people's wellbeing.
Validating the Chinese Version of the Manifestation Scale (CVMS): Translation, Cultural Adaptation and Psychometric Evaluation
Jiaqi Guo; Kehan Mei; Mei Shi; Lucas J Dixon
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The Manifestation Scale is a novel instrument for assessing individual differences in manifestation beliefs. However, a rigorously cross-culturally adapted and validated Chinese version is currently unavailable. This study translated the scale in accordance with standardized cross-cultural guidelines and completed a systematic psychometric validation to address this gap. We systematically evaluated the psychometric properties of the Chinese version scale through item analysis, factor analyses, exploratory graph analysis, and invariance testing in an analytic sample of 1,901 Chinese adults, with 201 participants completing a 3-month test-retest assessment. The results indicated the final 10-item scale had a clear two-factor structure, strong model fit, high reliability, coherent convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity, along with broad measurement invariance evidence across key demographic groups. These findings extend the psychology of manifestation by showing how unsupported success-related causal beliefs are organized in a non-Western cultural context and by distinguishing self-directed magical agency from adaptive positive expectancy and broader metaphysical belief.
Spanish Validation of the PBAT and Cross-Country Mapping of Process-Outcome Networks Using Link Community Analysis
Carmen Goicoechea; Amie Wallman-Jones; Joseph Ciarrochi; Steven C. Hayes; Stefan G. Hofmann; Pandelis Perakakis
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The Process-Based Assessment Tool (PBAT) was developed within the framework of process-based therapy, an alternative to symptom-focused diagnostic models, to monitor biopsychosocial change processes and support personalized therapeutic interventions. This cross-sectional study validated the Spanish PBAT by replicating the original U.S. study protocol in 602 Spanish adults. We also aimed to compare predictive process-outcome networks across Spain, the U.S., Sweden, and Poland using link community network analysis. Structural validity was assessed through inter-item correlations, and criterion validity through associations between PBAT items and clinical outcomes and need satisfaction/frustration. The Boruta algorithm identified the most predictive items for each outcome. Results confirmed the structural and criterion validity of the Spanish PBAT. Link community network analysis revealed country-specific differences in which processes most strongly predicted distress: difficulties finding appropriate emotional outlets were most central in Spain, perceived inability to change ineffective was relatively prominent in the U.S., and cognitive interference and attentional difficulties were most prominent in Sweden, while Poland showed a more distributed pattern across these three processes. Future research could extend this approach to individual longitudinal data, potentially enabling clinicians to identify and target core psychological processes based on a person's unique profile.
Developing the Intersecting Social Identities Inventory: How Young Adults View Harmony and Blendedness among Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Social Class
Dulce Wilkinson Westberg; Travis J Miller; Moin Syed; Aerika Loyd; Richard M. Lee; VERONICA BENET-MARTINEZ
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Empirical research on intersectionality remains limited, with many studies relying on intensive qualitative methods or on quantitative methods that do not fully capture how identities are integrated within systems of power. In this mixed-methods study, we developed and assessed the validity of the Intersecting Social Identities Inventory (ISII), a self-report measure assessing the integration of race/ethnicity, gender, and social class. Findings supported a two-factor structure: harmony, reflecting compatibility versus conflict, and blendedness, reflecting connection versus compartmentalization. Across three samples, individuals in structurally minoritized positions tended to report lower harmony but higher blendedness. Harmony was associated with lower discrimination and racial/ethnic exploration, whereas associations with blendedness varied across samples, suggesting greater context-dependence. Qualitative themes converged with quantitative findings by showing that participants often described their intersecting identities as simultaneously connected and in tension. Overall, the ISII provides a tool for examining how intersecting identities are experienced within unequal systems.
Bias by Variance: How Common Parameter Transformations in Hierarchical Modeling Distort Group-Level Estimates
Sebastian Hellmann; Nuno Busch; Linus Hof; Thorsten Pachur
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Hierarchical modeling is widely used to simultaneously estimate group- and individual-level parameters in computational models of cognitive processes. When model parameters are bounded within a particular range, it is common practice to estimate the group-level parameters on the unbounded real line and then map the estimated mean onto the desired bounded parameter range using a nonlinear transformation. We point out that the way group-level means are commonly computed in this context does not yield the actual group-level mean because it ignores within-group variability, and we provide expressions for computing the group-level mean that take within-group variability into account. Using formal derivation, simulation, and reanalyses of empirical data, we demonstrate (using cumulative prospect theory and the drift diffusion model as examples) how the commonly used approach distorts parameter estimates. Our reanalyses of two empirical group comparisons - one between age groups and one comparison between patients and healthy controls - show that using the incorrect approach can affect the size of estimated group differences and lead to different psychological interpretations of the groups' behavior and qualitative conclusions about group differences. We elaborate that the underlying issue is general and can arise in a wide range of approaches of hierarchical modeling. Our results highlight a subtle but consequential issue in hierarchical modeling and we provide concrete solutions for ensuring the validity of group-level inferences about behavior.
Understanding the morality of unbelievers: Secular beliefs about right and wrong in ten countries
Roosa Haimila; Tiina A M Parkkinen; Eva KundtovĂĄ KlocovĂĄ; Everton de Oliveira Maraldi; Hugh Turpin; Miguel Farias; Valerie van Mulukom
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Many people around the world believe that to be moral, one must believe in God. However, individuals who do not believe in God also hold distinct ethical beliefs. Similar to theists, non-theists in different cultures may share overarching narratives about morality and what it is founded upon—a possibility that remains understudied. In the present research, we utilised open-ended survey data to explore what non-theists from ten countries (N = 996) described as the basis of their views on right and wrong. We also investigated how different beliefs about morality clustered together. The findings show diversity but also point towards cross-culturally recurring patterns in non-theistic beliefs and belief clusters concerning 1) important moral principles and 2) perceived sources of morality. We furthermore discuss country-specific findings, such as the importance of ‘conscience’ for Turkish and Czech participants and ‘cultural Christianity’ in the Danish sample. Altogether, the results support research indicating that a lack of belief in God does not entail moral relativism and question views on non-theists primarily seeing morality as self-constructed. Instead, our findings point towards a more prominent role of social interaction and ‘social contract’ in views about the basis of right and wrong. In light of the results, we suggest that predominant ways of measurement in moral psychology may currently obscure diversity in non-theistic moral outlooks, such as more communal secular ethics. The main limitation of the research is convenience sampling. We therefore encourage future work to utilise representative samples to explore differing secular moralities and their predictors.
Testing the Hypothesis of Habenula Hyperactivity in Depression: A Study Using Fractional Amplitude of Low-Frequency Fluctuation (fALFF)
Jean-Simon Fortin; Charles Parisien; Catherine Parent; SĂ©bastien HĂ©tu
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Background: The habenula, a key regulator of aversive processing, has been consistently implicated in animal models of depression, where elevated baseline activity is a robust and reproducible finding. This has led to the widely discussed hypothesis that habenula hyperactivity contributes to the pathophysiology of major depressive disorder (MDD). However, whether this hyperactivity is present in human depression remains unclear. Here, we directly tested the habenula hyperactivity hypothesis in MDD using resting-state fMRI data from the Human Connectome Project–Perturbation of the Depression Connectome (HCP-PDC). Methods: The final sample included 153 individuals with MDD and 48 healthy controls (HCs). Subject-specific left and right habenula masks were generated using a deep learning–based segmentation approach and transformed into functional space. Spontaneous neural activity was quantified using fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (fALFF), a widely used index of intrinsic resting-state activity. Group differences in habenula fALFF were assessed while accounting for age effects. Results: No significant differences in left habenula fALFF were observed between MDD and HCs. For the right habenula, analyses revealed age-dependent effects, with increased fALFF observed in older individuals with MDD relative to age-matched controls, but no differences in younger participants. Conclusions: Overall, these findings do not support a generalized increase in baseline habenula activity in MDD. Instead, they suggest that intrinsic habenula activity may be modulated by age and may not exist uniformly, as observed in preclinical models.
Evaluating Stability Assessment Methods for Decision Trees
Constantin Tobias Alexander Wiegand; Florian Scharf; Mirka Henninger
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Decision trees can model complex relationships while maintaining a high degree of interpretability. However, they are often criticized for their instability, as small changes in the data may substantially alter the resulting tree structure. Resampling-based methods, including bootstrapping, subsampling, and split-half sampling, have been proposed to assess this instability. We evaluated these approaches for assessing variable selection stability and prediction stability in Decision Trees (RPART) and Conditional Inference Trees (CTREE). In a simulation study, we compared resampling-based stability estimates with reference estimates obtained from independent samples drawn directly from the data-generating process. For prediction stability, we additionally used a sample-size-adjusted reference estimate to separate the effects of learning sample size and overlap between learning samples. For variable selection stability, bootstrapping substantially inflated false-positive selection rates, particularly for CTREE, where rates reached up to 50%. For prediction stability, no resampling method consistently recovered the corresponding reference estimate because learning sample size, learning overlap, and repeated observations introduced competing sources of bias. These findings demonstrate that the accuracy of resampling-based stability assessments depends critically on both the learning algorithm and the resampling method. We discuss implications for applied researchers and provide recommendations for stability assessment in psychological research.
Expert perceptions of digital cognitive assessment
Andrea Maria Suazo Rivas; David Lopatto; Kristin Trautman; stan colcombe; Anna MacKay-Brandt
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Digital cognitive assessment (DCA) tools are rapidly proliferating and have the potential to dramatically change clinical and research practices. With this innovation, there is excitement about potential advances and concerns about how DCA may negatively influence the cognitive evaluation process. The input of experts in cognitive assessment to evaluate the utility, validity, and feasibility of DCA is key to maximizing their benefits and navigating obstacles. Via an online questionnaire, we solicited the opinions of neuropsychologists and other cognitive assessment experts on this emerging technology. We developed an online survey to assess the perceived advantages and disadvantages of DCA relative to paper-and-pencil methods. We recruited seventy-two professionals with expertise in cognitive assessment, representing a range of experience with digital technologies. Compared to traditional paper-and-pencil methods, DCA was perceived to enhance overall assessment quality, increase precision and data depth, streamline administration, expand patient access, improve feedback efficiency, and reduce data management burdens. Respondents noted concern about increased costs, data and test security, validity, and reliability. Key priorities for future development included normative data, customizable test batteries, and insurance reimbursement. These findings identify consensus priorities and aim to motivate dialogue among experts in cognitive assessment regarding the broad implementation of DCA. Open and frequent discussion about how to effectively leverage DCA, acknowledging their strengths, limitations, and impact on clinical and research practice will support shared understanding of this emerging and heterogeneous technology as well as the active engagement of neuropsychologists in guiding its development.
From Thought to Senses: Assessing the Relationship Between the Generation Effect and Multisensory Facilitation
Michaela Ritchie; Jonathan Wilbiks
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The current study investigated whether the generation effect, a memory advantage for self-generated verbal information, is enhanced in multisensory conditions. Such a finding would be consistent with the multisensory facilitation effect, a phenomenon wherein multiple sensory inputs may reduce the cognitive load required to process and respond to co-occurring stimuli from multiple senses. Although extensive research has explored the generation effect, the multisensory aspect of this task has been overlooked. In the current study, we aimed to determine if the generation effect is modulated by the multisensory facilitation effect. Multisensory facilitation involves the brain’s ability to efficiently process information from diverse sensory sources simultaneously, enhancing cognitive performance. We employed a 2 (Task Type: generate, read) X 3 (Sensory Modality: auditory, visual, multisensory) factorial design, utilizing word pair lists and a cued recall test. A generation effect emerged for the auditory and audiovisual condition, but not for the visual condition. The hypothesis that the magnitude of the generation effect would be greater for the multisensory encoding condition was not supported. Overall, the hypothesis that generation effect will be enhanced for multisensory learning was not supported. The current study addresses a gap in existing literature by examining the multisensory component of generation tasks and extends the current understanding of multisensory learning by incorporating verbal stimuli as the visual component.
Changes in scene distance automatically drive scaling of object representations
Giacomo Aldegheri; Surya Gayet; Marius Peelen
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As we navigate our visual environment, our viewpoint shifts, causing predictable changes in object appearance. Moving forward, for instance, increases the retinal size of objects in a scene, proportionally with the distance travelled. Such regularities can be exploited to predict visual object transformations, thereby facilitating object perception. Previous research showed that observers automatically predict the orientation of an object from the rotation of the surrounding scene. It remains unknown, however, whether this is a ubiquitous property of human vision that generalizes to other transformations. In three behavioral experiments (N=151), we investigated whether observers automatically predict the retinal size of temporarily occluded objects during forward motion. Participants performed a perceptual discrimination task on the objects that reappeared in a size that either matched or mismatched the change in viewing distance conveyed by the scene context. We found that scene-driven size expectations strongly influenced task performance. This effect remained consistent even when size expectations were violated on a majority of trials, suggesting that scene context elicits automatic predictions that cannot easily be overruled by short- term evidence. We conclude that scenes drive predictions of object transformations, capitalizing on the predictable ways in which visual input is altered when our viewpoint changes.
Corrective Focus in Interactive Settings: From Prosodic Enhancement to Prosodic Mitigation
Paula Ginesa SĂĄnchez-RamĂłn; Frank KĂŒgler; Pilar Prieto
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In stress-based languages, corrective focus has typically been reported to be expressed through increased prosodic prominence, particularly in studies relying on written prompts and read speech. However, recent studies using interactional and semi-spontaneous methodologies report less consistent findings. Since corrections are potentially face-threatening acts, speakers may adopt politeness strategies to soften disagreement, including both discourse-level devices (e.g., expressions of alignment and indirect formulations) and prosodic attenuation (i.e., reduced acoustic prominence). This study examines the prosodic realization of corrective focus in comparison with contrastive and information focus while taking discourse-level politeness into account. Thirty-five native speakers of Catalan completed a semi-spontaneous interactive task, producing 654 utterances across the three focus conditions. The results show that, in the corrective focus condition, speakers make greater use of discourse-level politeness strategies and that words under corrective focus exhibit reduced prosodic prominence, as reflected in lower intensity, shorter duration, and a reduced pitch range compared to the other conditions. These findings suggest that the increased prosodic prominence traditionally reported in corrective focus may not generalize to more spontaneous interactional contexts, highlighting the importance of pragmatic and interpersonal constraints in shaping prosodic realization.
A motor basis for a foreign accent? Linguistic context constrains the generalization of second language speech motor plans
Lindsay Heyland; Samantha Palatinus; Douglas M Shiller; Daniel Robert Lametti
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Most second-language learners never achieve native-like speech, even after years of immersion. Contemporary models of second language speech attribute a foreign accent to interference between first and second language speech-sound representations. But difficulties in second language speech may also relate to limits on the adaptability of second language speech motor plans. Here, we test this hypothesis using sensorimotor adaptation to altered auditory feedback. Forty-five first-language English, second-language French bilinguals adapted their vowel production to compensate for a real-time formant alteration during the fluid production of English and French sentences. Critically, the formant alteration was equal in magnitude but opposite in direction between languages; to compensate for the opposing alterations, bilinguals acquired distinct sensorimotor adaptations in each language. We then examined the extent to which these language-specific adaptations might generalize to new linguistic contexts that systematically varied in their degree of syntactic similarity with the adapted sentences. Despite equivalent initial adaptation in English and French, second language (French) motor adaptations showed less generalization to new syntactic contexts than their first language (English) counterparts. The results reveal a motor constraint on second language speech. Compared to speech in one’s first language, second language speech motor representations generalize poorly beyond the linguistic context in which they are acquired—a deficit in motor control that may contribute to the persistence of a foreign accent.
From Individual Perception to Collective Cooperation: A Synthetic Society of Kuramoto Oscillators
Fatemeh Ebrahimi; Khatereh Borhani; Fatemeh Bakouie
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Synchronization in non-linear social dynamics has been proposed as a facilitative mechanism for learning and evolution, helping to enable humans to overcome cooperation difficulties. This study introduces an agent-based model to explore how synchronization influences cooperation evolution by shaping perceived cooperation in large-scale, complex networks. To this aim, the Kuramoto model was implemented to reproduce agents' oscillatory behavior. This approach allowed us to address how such behavior dynamics shape agents' attitudes towards one another when deciding whether to cooperate in an economic game or act selfishly and defect. The results demonstrate that synchronization non-linearly promotes cooperation through generating perceived cooperation. This effect is particularly pronounced in limited interaction settings (e.g., dyadic or small-world networks), where agents rely chiefly on their perception of peers' cooperation levels to guide their decisions. However, factors such as cooperation barriers and prediction errors can significantly moderate synchronization effects, often leading to a prevalence of defection as these challenges intensify. Moreover, memory strengthens synchronization’s effects. It enables individuals to refine cooperative strategies over repeated interactions, particularly when synchronization is continuously integrated into their decision-making processes. The findings provide new insights into fostering sustainable prosocial behavior in a synthetic community of self-interested agents, highlighting the complex interplay between synchronization, perception, memory, and environmental conditions in thriving positive social dynamics while mitigating the negativity of wrong predictions and adverse experiences in social decision-making. These insights can be applied to real-world scenarios, such as designing effective social interventions or improving cooperation in organizational settings.
Interpersonal coordination in unstructured conversation: Different modalities are linked with inter-partner relationship and the perceived quality of the interaction
Luca Béres; Péter Nagy; Orsolya Putz; Ágnes Lukåcs; Béla Weiss; Adam Boncz; Istvån Winkler
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Previous research has established that interpersonal coordination (IC) - the temporal alignment of behavior, neural activity, or physiology between individuals - is a ubiquitous feature of everyday social interaction. However, most studies have examined individual coordination modalities in isolation and linked them to either social or cognitive aspects of communication. Therefore, little is known about how multiple forms of coordination jointly contribute to different dimensions of communicative success. We adopted an integrative approach by simultaneously assessing verbal (linguistic, prosodic, and structural) and non-verbal (gaze direction, head, and upper-body movement) forms of IC during unconstrained conversations within same-sex dyads. Participants' evaluation of the interaction and their relationship with their partner were complemented by ratings from trained external observers, enabling comparison between internal and external views of communication outcomes. We also investigated three contextual factors potentially influencing IC: communication without visual access, absence of prior face-to-face interaction, and competitive vs. cooperative interaction history between the partners. We found evidence of coordination across all measured behavioral domains. Overall, external evaluations were better predicted by coordination measures than the participants' own assessments: linguistic and structural coordination predicted conversation quality and relational outcomes, whereas motion coordination was positively associated with conversation quality. In contrast, contextual manipulations and prior interaction history had only limited effects on IC. These findings demonstrate that different forms of interpersonal coordination make distinct contributions to successful social interaction.
Wordle – A Game-Based Assessment of Verbal Ability?
Priscilla Achaa-Amankwaa; Jonas Walter; Ulrich Schroeders
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There is a long and successful tradition of incorporating games into cognitive ability assessment, with recent research exploring the potential of online games as engaging and valid measures of cognitive ability. Building on this work, we examined the popular word puzzle game Wordle as a possible measure of verbal ability in a sample of N = 370 German-speaking adults in this Registered Report. First, we investigated the psychometric properties of the game (e.g., dimensionality, reliability) within an item response theory (IRT) framework. Second, we located Wordle proficiency within a nomological network of cognitive abilities, including vocabulary, declarative knowledge, verbal fluency, and figural reasoning. Third, we examined the correlations between Wordle proficiency and individual differences in age, gender, education, daily reading time, game experience, self-reported strategy use, and an entropy-based measure of strategy efficiency. The findings supported a unidimensional model of Wordle proficiency with moderate reliability (rxx = .68). In a multidimensional IRT model, Wordle proficiency showed its strongest correlations with figural reasoning (r = .50) and verbal fluency (r = .31), a smaller correlation with vocabulary (r = .22), and no meaningful correlation with declarative knowledge (r = .06). Additionally, Wordle proficiency was positively correlated with education, prior experience with the game, and both strategy use and strategy efficiency, and it was negatively correlated with age. This correlational pattern and a response time analysis at the attempt level suggest that Wordle can be understood as a multifaceted problem-solving task that integrates heuristic word retrieval and lexical access with reasoning processes.
Detecting facial signals in conversational corpora using OpenFace compared to manual annotation: Challenges and recommendations
Naomi Nota; James Trujillo; JUDITH HOLLER
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There has been an increased interest in studying language in a more ecologically valid context over the last years. This includes an increase in investigations of language in its natural home, namely, in multimodal face-to-face social interaction, where visual behaviour, such as facial signals, contribute to the meaning of an utterance. An approach that is often used to investigate the contribution of visual signals in language is to manually annotate visual behaviour. However, this process is extremely laborious, therefore requiring considerable resources for the creation and analysis of a large multimodal corpus. One way to overcome this problem is to use software for the automatic detection of visual behaviour. For instance, OpenFace is a popular tool for extracting facial signals from video recordings. However, many studies using OpenFace do not perform any form of quality checking, and surprisingly few peer-reviewed publications are based on validated algorithms when applying automatic facial signal analysis using OpenFace. In this paper, we point towards potential challenges and provide recommendations for using OpenFace for automatically detecting facial signals in conversational corpora, based on a direct comparison with an annotation manual for facial signals applied by trained annotators. We give potential suggestions for making use of OpenFace data while minimizing the negative impact of detection noise. This paper therefore offers additional tools for improving reliability of multimodal annotations when using OpenFace, as well as an annotation manual for coding facial signals by hand, which often still is the most reliable method in many research contexts.
Do Habits Moderate the Intention-Behavior Link? Statistical Analyses of the Interaction Effect Are Inadequate for Testing the Underlying Cognitive Mechanism
Chao Zhang
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The habit-intention interaction effect tested in behavior prediction studies is a prominent example of statistical moderation analysis in health psychology. Motivated by the mixed empirical findings concerning the effect and long-standing criticisms on estimating and interpreting interaction effects, I used a computational modeling approach to evaluate whether the habit-intention interaction effect estimated from statistical analysis is adequate for inferring the underlying cognitive mechanism assumed by contemporary habit theories. By manipulating the presence or absence of a habit-moderating mechanism in the data-generating model, statistical analyses were performed on the simulated data to examine the correspondence of the estimated interaction effect to the manipulation. Results suggest that while the conventional statistical approach can be indicative of the underlying mechanism, the direction and size of the estimated effect are often misleading in relation to the substantive theory. I identified the cause of the problem from a causal perspective (i.e., intention as a common cause of habit strength and behavior) and discussed potential remedies.
Sex, Parent Education, and Birth Month predict ADHD Diagnosis beyond Symptoms and Genetic Propensity
Britt Min; Elsje van Bergen; Mathias Valstad; Alexandra Havdahl; Eivind Ystrom; monica melby-lervÄg; Fartein Ask Torvik
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Importance: Although boys, children of parents with low education, and children younger than their classmates have higher rates of ADHD, it is unclear to what extent this reflects underlying risk for ADHD. Clarifying this question is important for equitable identification. Objective: To examine whether sex, parental educational attainment (EA), and birth month were associated with ADHD diagnosis after accounting for symptom severity and polygenic index (PGI). Design: Data from the population-based Norwegian Mother, Father, and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) linked with demographic and health register data. Recruitment from 1999 to 2008. Diagnostic follow-up available from 2008 to 2023. Data were analyzed from May 2025 to April 2026. Setting: Nationwide pregnancy cohort study in Norway. Participants: 110,905 children, of whom 85,424 had valid ADHD symptoms and/or ADHD PGI data before multiple imputation. Exposures: ADHD symptom scores based on 12 maternal-reported items from the Conners Parent Rating Scale-Revised: Short Form at age 5; ADHD-PGIs; Sex; Parental EA; and birth month. Main outcomes and Measures: Age at ADHD diagnosis based on International Classification of Diseases, code F90 in the Norwegian Patient Registry. Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate the relationships of time to diagnosis with symptoms, PGI, and demographic variables. Results: Boys were more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD in childhood (<13 years; HR, 0.42 [95% CI, 0.39-0.45]), whereas girls were more likely to be diagnosed in adolescence (=>13 years; HR, 1.48 [95% CI, 1.38-1.59]). Children were also more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD if they were born into families with low education (HR, 0.30 [95% CI, 0.27-0.33] comparing a Master’s degree with basic education) or if they were relatively younger than their classmates (HR, 1.50 [95% CI, 1.34-1.68] comparing birth month December with January). These group differences persisted even if children had the same level of symptoms or genetic predisposition for ADHD. Conclusions and Relevance: Sex, parental EA, and birth month were related to ADHD diagnosis beyond symptom severity and genetic predisposition, which may indicate the influence of demographic factors in how children are referred and diagnosed.
Promoting mental health using a mobile Health application in adolescents with a chronic somatic illness: A randomised waitlist controlled trial
Marije van Dalen; Jeroen Legerstee; Hanneke Scholten; Arend van Deutekom; Sinika Timme; Suzanne Pasmans; Loes Keijsers; Manon H.J. Hillegers
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Background: Over 17% of children in the Netherlands live with a chronic illness. They are at risk of developing mental health problems, affecting quality of life and health outcomes. This study evaluates a preventive, transdiagnostic mobile health intervention, the Grow It! app, aiming to enhance overall well being by creating emotional insight and reflection, whilst encouraging the use of adaptive coping strategies. Methods: Using a randomised waitlist controlled design, adolescents aged 10–18 years with a chronic somatic illness were recruited through a university medical hospital and randomised to a waitlist control group or an intervention group that used the Grow It! app. Follow up assessments were conducted immediately after the four week intervention period and three months later. After the final follow-up, the waitlist control group also used the Grow It! app and completed questionnaires immediately after and three months later. Primary outcome measures were symptoms of anxiety and depression. Data were analysed with linear mixed models on an intention-to-treat basis. Findings: Between August 2021 and September 2023, 208 participants were enrolled (Mage=13.96, SD=2.20, 57.69% female), with 105 randomised to the Grow It! intervention group and 103 to the waitlist control group. At the overall group level, symptoms of anxiety (χ2(3, 497.01)=2.08, p=.1021) and depression (χÂČ(3, 497.01)=0.71, p=.5459) remained stable over time, indicating no significant change across the full sample. However, among adolescents who used the Grow It! app, adolescents with elevated anxiety/depressive at baseline demonstrated the greatest benefit, showing larger symptom reductions than those who initially reported low symptom levels.. Interpretation: These findings suggest that the Grow It! app may offer meaningful benefits for adolescents with a chronic somatic illness experiencing elevated mood and anxiety symptoms, highlighting its potential value as a preventive and supportive tool in paediatric healthcare.
Errors as signals: generative practice improves programming performance, metacognition, and motivation
Gillian Gold; Paulo F. Carvalho
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Introductory programming instruction is typically designed to prevent errors: learners watch demonstrations before attempting problems. Across two experiments, our findings suggest that this assumption may be misplaced. Compared to watching videos, practice-based instruction reduced distraction, promoted transfer to programming performance, and increased interest. Code writing practice with elaborated feedback produced the largest gains in performance and greatest reductions in overconfidence, despite more opportunities for errors. Errors do not necessarily undermine motivation. Instead, the process of generating, detecting, and correcting errors may support improved performance and sustained engagement. In the context of programming education — and increasingly AI-assisted learning environments — these results suggest that the challenge for instruction is not how to eliminate errors, but how to design practice environments where errors become informative signals for learning.
Personality as attribution: Report-based traits and the problem of what personality research measures
Sergei Shchebetenko
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Personality psychology relies heavily on self- and informant-reports, yet surprisingly little theory explains what psychological process produces these reports. This paper proposes the Attributional Model of Personality Reporting, according to which personality reports are not direct readouts of recurrent behaviour but attributional judgements constructed through memory, semantic knowledge, social comparison, identity, evaluation, reputation, and culturally shared trait meanings. The paper distinguishes distributional regularities—recurrent patterns of behaviour, affect, cognition, motivation, and experience—from personality attributions, the trait-language descriptions people apply to themselves and others. Reported traits may reflect behavioural regularities, but they also reflect how those regularities are interpreted, organised, and communicated. This distinction offers a new perspective on familiar findings concerning self–observer agreement, criterion validity, personality change, biological and genetic studies, semantic structure, and recent machine-learning approaches to personality assessment. Rather than treating personality reports simply as imperfect measures of underlying traits, the paper argues that personality attribution is itself a psychologically meaningful phenomenon deserving its own theory. It concludes by outlining a research programme comprising seven testable propositions designed to distinguish personality attributions from distributional regularities and to clarify how the two levels are related.
Relationships amongst cognition, speech execution and social participation in typical aging
Laura Manderson; Anja Kuschmann; Anja Lowit; Louise A. Brown Nicholls
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Typical aging is accompanied by changes in cognitive and motor speech functioning, yet the relationship between these, and the extent to which they predict social participation, a lifestyle factor protective of brain health, is under-explored. This study aimed to investigate potential relationships between fluid and crystallised cognition, and the speech subsystems of respiration/phonation and articulation, as well as their combined role in social participation. Older adults (N = 87, M = 71.48, SD = 6.71) completed the NIH toolbox cognition and sensation domains, two maximum performance tasks assessing phonation (a sustained ‘a’ vowel task) and articulation (a trisyllabic syllable repetition task) and two connected speech tasks (passage reading & monologue). Participants also completed self-report measures of social participation (activity engagement & social network size) and communicative participation. Fluid and crystallised cognition predicted articulatory speed during syllable repetition but not during connected speech. Objective measures of cognition and articulation rate did not predict older adults’ social participation. However, self-reported speech difficulty, a measured covariate, was associated with less communicative participation. While everyday communication is generally well maintained, there are subtle relationships between cognition and articulation identifiable via tasks assessing maximum articulatory capacity. Self-perception of speech appears to be the best predictor of communicative participation, regardless of objective ability, showing the importance of subjective everyday functioning. These findings extend cognitive ageing and motor speech theories by showing that speech execution is a sensorimotor domain relevant to the common cause hypothesis, and that cognition in ageing is more closely associated with articulatory than laryngeal speech motor control.
Adolescents in the Age of Generative AI: A Half-Decade Systematic Review
Anne J. Maheux; Chelly Maes; Rhetta Power; Caitlin Mbuakoto; Anthony G Vaccaro
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Generative AI is the most rapidly adopted technology in human history, with adolescents among its earliest and most active users. This systematic review synthesized 82 peer-reviewed empirical studies on adolescent (defined as mean age between 10–20) AI use published between 2020 and 2025. The literature is characterized by a focus on education, attitudes towards AI adoption, and frequency of AI use, with little attention to diverse use cases of AI (e.g., as a companion, for health information or advice) or diverse socioemotional outcomes (e.g., mental health, peer relationships). Methodologically, the field is characterized by mostly cross-sectional self-report designs (61% of published studies). Only two studies used longitudinal designs, 5 used experimental designs, and 8 focused on scale development and psychometrics. Participant recruitment has been geographically concentrated in Asia (66% of published studies), yet relatively diverse in terms of age within adolescence (29% of studies include early adolescents ages ~14 and younger, 54% include middle adolescents ages ~14–18; 49% include older adolescents ages ~18 and older). Findings were heterogeneous across topics, limiting cumulative conclusions. We synthesize the themes and methods across studies and outline a research agenda to advance a more theoretically grounded, methodologically rigorous, and developmentally informed science of adolescent AI use.
“Already Outdated and Still Under Review”: Mapping the Landscape of Research on Adolescent Development and AI Chatbot Use
Anne J. Maheux; Caitlin Mbuakoto; Madeline Valentino; Jana Haritatos; Anthony G Vaccaro; Kaitlyn Burnell
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Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots are increasingly embedded in adolescents’ daily lives, yet developmental science research struggles to keep pace with adoption. This mixed-methods study gathered developmental expert perspectives via a survey (n = 141 researchers and adjacent professionals working on issues related to youth and technology) and semi-structured interviews with a purposive subsample (n = 15) to inform a coordinated research and policy agenda on adolescent AI use. The study aims were to (1) identify priority AI use cases for future study, (2) identify priority research questions and methods, as well as barriers to future research, and (3) identify societal guardrails that developmental professionals recommend enacting now, while research is underway. Experts cautioned against vague "screen time" measures and agreed that nearly all use cases merit study but prioritized those with severe or irreversible immediate-term harms, AI literacy, AI as a social/relational actor, AI-generated (mis)information, and overreliance. No single methodological consensus emerged; participants advocated broadly for methodological pluralism and triangulation. Key barriers included the rapid pace of change in AI technology and use relative to academic timelines, limited industry transparency, funding gaps, and misaligned academic incentives. Proposed solutions included shared infrastructure, interdisciplinary consortia, and community partnerships. Experts underscored that responsibility for safe AI should not rest primarily on adolescents and families and identified three immediate guardrails: enforceable youth-centered regulation, developmentally informed product design, and multidimensional AI literacy. Findings clarify a preliminary direction for future research and advocacy and emphasize that coordination among researchers and between sectors is needed.
No attentional control in working memory? A systematic re-analysis of latent-variable studies
Alodie Rey-Mermet; Nicolas Rothen
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Attentional control - also called executive functions or cognitive control - refers to our ability to maintain and implement a goal and goal-relevant information in the face of distraction. There is growing evidence that attentional control cannot be established as a psychometric construct with the measures used so far. This asks for other ways of measuring attentional control. Early research has used structural equation modeling to extract attentional control from working-memory tasks (i.e., tasks used to measure the temporary maintenance and manipulation of information) and short-term memory tasks (i.e., tasks used to measure the temporary maintenance of information). Attentional control was first modeled as the residual variance of working memory after controlling for short-term memory. Second, it was modeled as the common factor across working-memory and short-term memory measures, with higher loadings for working-memory measures. After a systematic search, we found three datasets in which both models could be systematically tested. Moreover, we determined the robustness of the results by bootstrapping 5000 correlation matrices from the original correlation matrix and by estimating both models using these simulated correlation matrices. Across the datasets, the models could be successfully estimated, but they were not fully and exactly replicated. Moreover, all these model estimations were not robustly observed when the 5000 simulated correlation matrices were used. Therefore, extracting attentional control from working-memory and short-term memory tasks did not resolve the difficulty of establishing attentional control as a psychometric construct.
Anchored in Truth but Driven by Grandiosity: A Process Account of Narcissistic Self-Enhancemen
Christoph Heine; Constantine Sedikides; Michael Dufner
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Self-enhancement is considered a hallmark of grandiose narcissism, yet recent applications of Condition-Based Regression Analysis have questioned whether narcissistic admiration, the dimension of grandiose narcissism reflecting assertive self-enhancement, is reliably linked to self-views that overestimate one’s attributes. We reconcile these divergent accounts by integrating a process-oriented perspective on self-view formation with Condition-Based Regression Analysis, which we use as a diagnostic tool to differentiate two distinct forms of self-enhancement: unanchored self-enhancement (i.e., generally positive self-views) and anchored self-enhancement (i.e., overestimation of self-views relative to objective benchmarks). Across four studies, we examined how actual cognitive ability (truth force) and narcissistic admiration (bias force) jointly influence self-views through cue-based inference, and how these processes generate the distinct forms of self-enhancement effects in Condition-Based Regression Analysis. In Study 1, a simulation, we illustrated that the relation between narcissistic admiration and anchored inflation effects depends on degree of self-knowledge: paradoxically, some accuracy is required for anchored self-enhancement to emerge. In Study 2 (N = 1,035), we experimentally manipulated self-knowledge, showing that greater accuracy strengthens the association between narcissistic admiration and self-enhancement. In Study 3 (N = 454), we longitudinally demonstrated that narcissists’ self-views rise over time through biased cue-based inference. Finally, in Study 4 (N = 4,950), an individual participant data meta-analysis, we found that, under typical levels of self-knowledge, narcissistic admiration is related to anchored self-enhancement of cognitive ability. Cumulatively, these findings reestablish narcissism as the prototypical self-enhancing trait while clarifying the cognitive conditions under which the distinct forms of self-enhancement are detectable.
Experiences of Social Adversity and Functioning Preceding Psychosis A Qualitative Phenomenological Study
Grace Kiernan; Anneke Sools; Tim Alber; Lena Liedtke; Mar Rus-Calafell
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Objective: This study explores experiences of social adversity and changes in social functioning from the perspectives of individuals with early psychosis. Method: Interviews were conducted with N=14 individuals with early psychosis and analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Results: Four overarching themes reflecting varying experiences of social adversity and functioning were identified: 1. Always feeling different, 2. Early losses and relational instability: “Bottling everything up”, 3. Hiding the self out of shame, and 4. Demands becoming overwhelming: shutting down under pressure. These themes spanned different life periods, from early childhood to adulthood. Social withdrawal, along with not speaking about distress, was identified as an overarching experience across the four themes. Conclusions: The findings highlight that social withdrawal prior to psychosis is a heterogeneous and meaningful response to social adversity, rather than merely an indicator of functional decline. Attending to the subjective meanings and developmental pathways underlying these experiences may improve early identification and support more personalised intervention strategies in clinical high-risk populations.
Processes of change in cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy for procrastination: moderation and longitudinal mediation analyses of randomized controlled trial data
Magdalena Pietruch; Joachim Kowalski; Weronika Maria Browarczyk; JarosƂaw M. MichaƂowski; Marek Wypych
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Objective. Procrastination is a common self-regulatory difficulty leading to impaired well-being. Although cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is considered the most promising intervention for procrastination, it remains unclear whether outcomes vary across individuals and which mechanisms drive therapeutic change. To address these gaps, we synthesized key mechanistic accounts of procrastination in an integrative cognitive-behavioral (ICB-P) model outlining processes involved in development and persistence of procrastination. We then comprehensively examined the processes of change in CBT for procrastination. Methods. Candidate moderators and mechanisms of therapeutic change were examined in secondary analyses of pooled data (N = 459) from two randomized controlled trials comparing CBT for academic procrastination with a wait-list control. Procrastination severity and a wide set of candidate mechanisms were assessed at pre-, mid-, and post-intervention. Moderation analyses and longitudinal structural equation models with contemporaneous (within-wave) and lagged (cross-wave) mediation paths were applied. Results. Participants with greater baseline emotion regulation difficulties benefited more from the intervention, whereas dysfunctional beliefs associated with some cluster B personality disorders were linked to lower improvements. Baseline depression, anxiety, or ADHD symptoms did not moderate outcomes. Regarding mechanisms of change, increased task value and proactive control mediated both contemporaneous and lagged reductions in procrastination. Contemporaneous effects were mediated through increased positive and decreased negative task-related affect, improved perseverance, emotional clarity, and internal attributions of success. Conclusions. Findings suggest broad applicability of CBT for procrastination. Optimized interventions could enhance the implicated mechanisms, i.e. target task-related affect and self-regulation, or incorporate additional components. Directions for future research are discussed.
Beneath the Floor: Censored DSEM Models for Analyzing ESM Data with Floor Effects
Kenneth Koslowski; Jana Holtmann
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The distribution of responses to negative affect items collected via experience sampling methods (ESM) often exhibit floor effects. When analyzed via multilevel models, such floor effects may induce dependencies between individual means and variances. Measurement-related censoring processes offer one explanation for the occurrence of floor effects. In this study, we investigated the consequences of ignoring floor effects in the estimation of Dynamic Structural Equation Models (DSEM) with censored variables. We examined three common modeling scenarios: (1) a two-level AR(1) model with an external criterion, (2) a two-level bivariate VAR(1) model, and (3) a three-indicator AR(1) factor model. Using simulations as well as an empirical application, standard DSEM models were compared to censored DSEM variants, as implemented in the `mlts` R-package. Ignoring censoring led to substantial bias in random-effect correlations, particularly between individual mean levels and innovation variances. These correlations were consistently overestimated with low coverage and inflated Type I error rates, even when floor effects were as small as 5%. In scenario (3), the presence of a single censored indicator was sufficient to bias random-effect correlations when censoring was ignored. When random effects are used jointly to predict time-invariant outcomes, this bias introduces (spurious) redundancy between the random-effect predictors. Notably, censoring also adversely affected standard AR(1) models fitted to composite scores (i.e., averages across indicators). Overall, our findings highlight the importance of explicitly modeling floor effects in DSEM. We strongly recommend selecting modeling approaches that align with substantive assumptions about the origin of floor effects and briefly discuss alternative strategies.
Beyond Human–AI Agreement: Evaluating Large Language Models for Content Validity Evidence
Jaime García-Fernåndez; Álvaro Postigo; Javier Suårez-Álvarez
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Background: While Artificial Intelligence transforms scale development, content validity evidence remains overlooked, hindering comprehensive psychometric workflows. Large Language Models (LLMs) can address this by acting as co-evaluators, providing explicit reasoning and systematic analysis while mitigating Subject-Matter Experts’ (SMEs) limitations like fatigue. Aim: To determine the optimal configurations for decoders to reliably assist SMEs in assessing the content validity of 80 vulnerable personality items. Method: The judgment of 10 SMEs was compared with Llama and OSS decoders using different prompting strategies. We analyzed intra- and inter-panel consistency for item classifications and relevance scores. Score frequency distribution were compared (χÂČ). Data were modelled using Item Response Theory (IRT), estimating the discrimination parameters (a) and "severity" thresholds (bk) for all experts. Finally, experts' and decoders' relevance scores were correlated (Spearman) with empirical discrimination indices from 200 individuals. Results: Decoders showed intra-panel consistencies superior to SMEs. In classification, all decoders showed high agreement with SMEs (Îș = .63–.78). In relevance, smaller models outperformed larger ones, highlighting Llama 8B in the aggregated few-shot condition (ICC2,1 = .68). LLMs polarized relevance scores as size increased, particularly OSS models. IRT discrimination parameters (a) for decoders exceeded SMEs, with prompt severity impacting bk thresholds. Decoders’ predictive validity correlations (ρ = .41–.66) matched SMEs (ρ = .62), highlighting Llama 8B (ρ = .65). Conclusions: Decoders are highly systematic, scalable co-evaluators that enrich content validation beyond logistical efficiency. Augmented validity is best achieved using small models, few-shot examples, Chain-of-Thought prompting, and moderate temperatures.
CogniCart: A Virtual Supermarket Task for Ecologically Valid Assessment of Executive Functions and Examination of Cognitive Support Effects
Farhad Aghayev; Manisha Dubey; Emanuele De Pellegrin; Jonathan Evans; Gnanathusharan Rajendran; Subramanian Ramamoorthy
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Traditional executive function (EF) assessments rely predominantly on paper-and-pencil tests that arguably lack ecological validity and fail to capture the complexity of real-world cognitive demands. Recent advances in game development offer an opportunity to address this through interactive virtual environments that assess cognitive performance in naturalistic settings. Here, we present CogniCart, a virtual supermarket task that 1) combines automatically logged behavioural measures with 2) eye tracking data to assess EF in an ecologically valid context and examine the effect of cognitive support on participants' performance. The task was implemented in two versions: 1) a prompted intervention condition providing external cognitive support features designed to assist executive functioning during the task, targeting planning, working memory, and inhibitory control, and 2) an unprompted control condition without any such support. This between-subjects design allows CogniCart to serve dual purposes, as an ecologically valid assessment tool for executive function and as a platform for examining the behavioural effects of targeted cognitive support. Twenty-four healthy university students were recruited to this study, in which they self-reported cognitive failures measured alongside their in-game behavioural data. Results suggested that CogniCart behavioural features correlated with external cognitive assessments, with regression models explaining up to 86.6% of the variance in shopping list completion rate and classification models distinguishing between the two prompt conditions with up to 87.5% accuracy, validated through permutation testing and Bayesian posterior inference. These findings suggest that CogniCart shows early promise as a scalable and ecologically valid framework for the quantitative assessment and modelling of executive functions in neurodiverse populations.
Do Control Input Metrics Capture Game Feel and Skill-Challenge Balance?
Roosa Piitulainen; Daniel Thomas Bennett; Elisa D Mekler
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Game feel - virtual sensation during the real-time control of virtual objects - is considered a central element of game design. A growing body of research investigates its impact on player experience. However, questions remain regarding how to study and analyse game feel, complicating evaluation and impeding our understanding of this phenomenon. Drawing from ecological psychology, we report on an experimental study to understand whether measures used in the study of skilled movement have potential in characterising game feel. We find that metrics derived from player control input distinguish between player skill levels and different kinds of game-feel in the same game. Among these, multifractality - a measure of complex nesting in player control movements - shows sensitivity to skill-challenge balance. We discuss the relationship of these measures to player experience and game feel experience. Collectively, our findings point to more fine-grained approaches to capturing game feel related to real-time control.
Unmasking Unconscious Working Memory using a Bias-Free Face Ensemble Paradigm
Nirmitee Nitin Mulay; Itziar de Castro Urquiola; Najemeddine Abdennour; Patxi Elosegi; David Soto
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The extent to which visual working memory (VWM) operates on unconscious input remains a matter of debate, with no definitive evidence confirming or refuting its existence. A central challenge in this inquiry lies in methodological constraints, particularly criterion biases in measuring conscious awareness. To overcome these limitations, we conducted two experiments that combined a bias-free two-interval forced-choice (2IFC) task with an ensemble perception paradigm, minimising content-related criterion confounds. Participants were briefly presented with visual ensembles of emotional faces and were assessed for both perceptual processing and WM maintenance using a delayed response task. Visual awareness and unawareness were objectively quantified using detection sensitivity derived from signal detection theory. Results showed a dissociation between awareness and perceptual sensitivity: participants could not explicitly detect task-relevant ensemble features, yet they discriminated them above chance level, even after a delay and in the presence of distractors, thereby providing evidence for the maintenance of unconscious information in VWM. To address potential detection inefficiencies in the 2IFC design, we conducted a follow-up single-interval task with an added distractor interval to disrupt VWM maintenance. Together, these results corroborate our findings demonstrating that WM can operate on information in the absence of conscious awareness. Ensemble-based paradigms thus provide a promising framework for probing the boundaries of conscious and unconscious processing in visual WM.
Stacked Domain Learning: A structured framework for integrating disciplinary perspectives through predictive modeling
Zino David Brystowski; Marjolein Fokkema; Hilde M. Huizenga; Jalmar Teeuw; M.J. de Rooij
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Large-scale studies increasingly collect data across multiple disciplines such as neuroscience, psychology, and genetics. Combining these data offers new opportunities for understanding human behavior, but it also presents substantial analytical challenges. Traditional statistical approaches can struggle to handle the complexity of large numbers of diverse measurements. To address these challenges, we propose Stacked Domain Learning (SDL), a framework for integrating and evaluating disciplinary perspectives. In SDL, theories from different disciplines are translated into statistical models that generate out-of-sample predictions. These predictions are then combined in a meta-model, where the coefficients quantify the unique predictive contribution of each perspective beyond the others, while the overall predictive performance represents their combined contribution. The resulting coefficients provide a basis for comparing disciplinary perspectives and developing multidisciplinary theories grounded in both theory and empirical evidence. We demonstrate SDL with an empirical example using data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD Âź ) Study to predict delay discounting behavior in adolescents. The results underline the relevance of cognitive abilities and sociodemographic factors and partially support the role of brain systems in predicting delay discounting. The application to the ABCD data illustrates how SDL integrates and evaluates disciplinary perspectives within a single framework and supports the development of new research questions.
Stronger Coupling of Accuracy, Confidence, and Response Time in Multi-Alternative Decisions
Yunxuan Zheng; Bogeng Song; Nadia Haddara; Dobromir Rahnev
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Accuracy, confidence, and reaction time (RT) are robustly coupled: confidence is higher, and responses are faster for correct than error trials. However, the magnitude of these relationships is typically modest in standard two-choice tasks. Here we show that the strength of these relationships depends on choice-set size, increasing substantially when decisions involve multiple alternatives. We first re-analyzed 10 large datasets from the Confidence Database, which demonstrated that the associations between accuracy, confidence, and RT are modest in two-choice lab tasks. We then performed simulations using signal detection theory and evidence accumulation models, both of which reveal that increasing the number of response alternatives strengthens the trial-by-trial associations among these variables when overall performance is equated across conditions. Critically, we observed the same pattern empirically in a large behavioral dataset (N = 200) using a noisy digit-identification task with 2-, 4-, and 8-choice conditions in which accuracy was held near the same target level. Multiple control analyses indicated that the stronger associations were not explained by distributional width, target-digit identity, stimulus-noise differences, or session-specific practice effects. Overall, our findings demonstrate that the magnitude of behavioral coupling among accuracy, confidence, and RT depends on the number of choices available and may therefore be particularly strong in real-world settings where multiple alternatives are the norm.
Empowered by a bot? The influence of anthropomorphic traits in AI chatbots on self-efficacy and technology acceptance in professional writing tasks
Teresa Luther; Juliane Reuter; Joachim Kimmerle
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Anthropomorphic design features in AI chatbots have been linked to greater technological acceptance and more positive social perceptions. However, their impact on task-specific self-efficacy remains unclear. The present experimental study employed a between-groups design to investigate how highly versus minimally anthropomorphic AI chatbots influence perceived self-efficacy, technology acceptance, and social perception in a work-related writing context. In an online experiment, employees (N = 310) were exposed to a screenshot-based chat interaction featuring either an anthropomorphic chatbot (personified agent, human name, and social communication style) or a functionally designed chatbot. Results showed that the anthropomorphic chatbot significantly increased task-specific self-efficacy (d = 0.52), perceived usefulness (d = 0.38), perceived ease of use (d = 0.36), behavioral intention to use (d = 0.37), and perception of the chatbot as a social actor (d = 0.38). No significant effects were found for trust or interpersonal closeness. Contrary to expectations, AI experience and writing experience did not moderate these effects. Exploratory mediation analyses revealed that social perception mediated the effect of anthropomorphism on self-efficacy, which in turn mediated its effect on technology acceptance. These findings identify self-efficacy as a novel outcome of anthropomorphic design, extend prior research to organizational writing contexts, and contribute to Social Cognitive Theory by highlighting psychological mechanisms underlying human-AI interaction.
A method for studying the contextual similarity of characters in Cyrillic, Devanagari, and Latin scripts and exploration of the effects of typeface design and expertise
David Bƙezina
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Although perceptual similarity is highly contextual, visual similarity of characters (letters) is typically investigated using stimuli that do not control for contextual effects, e.g., comparison of pairs, identification of single characters. Moreover, most character similarity studies focus on a single typeface (font) or study under conditions that are detrimental to the quality of the designs (e.g., low resolution or low contrast), which makes it challenging to generalize their findings. To obtain data that permit a more detailed and realistic enquiry of character similarity relationships, the study reported in this paper used a contextual similarity task. Participants were presented with character triplets and asked to pick the odd one out, thus judging the remaining characters as more similar. To demonstrate the method’s robustness and transferability across scripts, this cognitively simple yet challenging task was used with a diverse selection of typefaces, world scripts, and participants (n = 1721). The results showed that the contextual similarity task is sensitive to the effects of typeface design and elicits similarity judgements that are hard to predict using pairwise data. Comparisons across groups of participants showed effects of design expertise, nativity, and fluency in relevant scripts.
SIMP2L: A template for SIMulation Preregistration, Piloting documentation and transparency over the entire simulation Life-cycle
Carolin Strobl; Robert Philip Chalmers; Mirka Henninger
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A growing body of methodological literature suggests that simulation studies are affected by issues similar to those underlying the replication crisis in empirical research, including inadequate reporting practices and the exploitation of researcher degrees of freedom (RDF). Open Science practices originally developed for empirical research have therefore been proposed as potential remedies. In this paper, we propose a template for transparently documenting the entire life-cycle of a simulation study. It is structured in three parts: (1) a Statement of Intent that can be used to specify and preregister hypotheses and core design choices early in the process; (2) a Piloting Documentation that records all explored simulation settings, including any choices not selected for the final study; and (3) a Final Documentation that supports honest reporting and reproducibility of the published results. Together, these components aim to improve the planning, documentation, and reporting of simulation studies. We motivate the template by discussing parallels and differences between empirical and simulation research. We argue that while exploitable RDF in empirical studies arise primarily during data analysis, simulation study RDF appear primarily during the design and piloting stages. Documenting all explored conditions therefore helps to make decisions in simulation research more transparent.
Beyond Behaviour: Autistic Students’ Self-Reported Experiences and Expression of Well‑Being at School
Annette Carroll; Kate Simpson; Kathryn Ambrose; Dawn Adams
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Autistic students are increasingly represented in mainstream classrooms, yet for many, school remains a source of stress and misunderstanding. While existing research has largely focused on adverse outcomes for autistic students, less attention has been given to identifying indicators of well-being and understanding how it is experienced in everyday school settings. This study addresses this gap by centring autistic students’ perspectives through a flexible, multi‑modal qualitative design. Twelve autistic primary and secondary students shared their experiences through interviews, drawings, written responses, and photovoice methods tailored to their communication preferences and strengths. Data were analysed using inductive content and reflexive thematic analysis. Students described diverse indicators of well‑being across emotional, social, sensory‑physical, and academic domains. High well‑being was often reflected in engagement in learning, access to effective self‑regulation strategies, and expressions of joy, while low well‑being often led to withdrawal, reduced communication, tense posture, and expressions of sadness. Thematic analysis of student experiences highlighted how autistic student well‑being is frequently misunderstood or overlooked. Overall, autistic student well‑being emerged as relational, context‑dependent, and individually patterned, drawing attention to the ways it may be variably expressed, recognised, and responded to in school settings.
‘I can’t imagine life without music’: reflections on lifetimes with music from a survey of over-60 year olds in the United Kingdom
Stephanie E. Pitts; Landon S. L. Peck; Judith Okely; Katie Overy
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This project builds upon a study with the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 (LBC1936), in which quantitative research on the association between lifetime musical experience and cognitive ageing has suggested long-term benefits of musical instrument learning (Okely, Overy and Deary, 2022; Okely et al., 2023). In this follow-up study with a new cohort, we investigated the perceived impact of musical engagement through the lifespan, taking a qualitative approach in order to provide context for those quantitative findings. We asked a cohort of self-selecting respondents (n = 327), aged over-60 and educated mainly in the UK, to complete an online survey which, in addition to gathering data on the extent and nature of their musical involvement, invited participants to reflect on the contribution of music to their lives and what they would have missed if it had not been there. We also asked about the relative importance of music, and found that while some respondents could not imagine life without music, for others it was one amongst several valued leisure pursuits, with distinctive qualities that are explored in our analysis. We identified key themes around mental challenge, emotional fulfilment, social connection, and sense of purpose, which are explored in this first article from the project, adding participants’ voices and perspectives to an area of research that often favours the measurable over the felt and experienced. We propose that this approach offers an enhanced understanding of what it means to be involved with music throughout life and into retirement, and so contributes to research on music and ageing by foregrounding the ‘everyday’ interactions with music that can shape older adults’ sense of self as they navigate the opportunities and challenges of ageing.
Adolescents’ experiences of social media content types and wellbeing: A photo-elicitation interview study
Lizzy Winstone; James Parsonage; Cassey Muir; Amie Randhawa; Lauren Cross; Georgie MacArthur; Evangelina Asiedu-Addo; Emma Garavini
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Background: Research on social media and adolescent mental health has often focused on screen time, with less attention to the types of content encountered within algorithmically curated feeds. Different forms of content may have distinct implications for wellbeing, yet adolescents’ own perspectives remain underexplored. Methods: We conducted semi-structured photo-elicitation interviews in 2025 with 27 adolescents aged 14-19 years in the United Kingdom (mean age = 17.15 years, SD = 1.49; 70% self-described female). Participants shared screenshots from their TikTok For You or Instagram Explore pages to support discussion of recommended content. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Results: Participants described diverse content types, including entertainment, consumerism, identity-related, mental health, news and activism, body image, and AI-generated content. Across themes, content was experienced as double-edged. Perceived impacts were shaped by recurrence of exposure and by developmental and personal contexts, including mood, age, and literacy. Repeated exposure could transform initially neutral or beneficial content into experiences of excessive scrolling, pressure, distress, or emotional burden. Conclusions: Adolescents’ experiences of social media and their perceived implications for wellbeing appear to depend on the content repeatedly encountered and how it is interpreted in context. Interventions should move beyond screen time alone to address the quality and emotional consequences of content exposure. Key words: Algorithmic recommendation; Adolescents; Social media content; Wellbeing; Mental health; Photo-elicitation; Qualitative research
The Role of School Context in Children's Well-Being and Executive Function: Exploring Child- and Adult-Centered Approaches
Laura GonzĂĄlez; Marina Oliva Lozano; MarĂ­a JesĂșs Pardo-Guijarro; Silvia Guerrero
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Children’s socioemotional and cognitive development is shaped by the contexts in which they grow, with school playing a key role in both well-being and executive function (EF). This study examined whether the association between EF and perceived school well-being differed across school contexts aligned with Lillard’s (2023) Child–Environment Interplay (CEI) and Teacher–Text–Centered (TTC) models. 105 preschool and primary school children participated (NCEI = 70; NTTC = 35). EF was assessed through inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility tasks. Perceived school well-being was explored through a structured interview addressing engagement, environment and support, and aggression-related experiences. No overall differences emerged in EF or interview-based well-being. However, higher well-being was associated with lower EF in TTC, but not CEI, schools, while higher perceived aggression was associated with lower EF across both approaches. Qualitative responses from a subsample provided insight into how young children interpreted their school experiences. These findings suggest that the association between cognitive skills and perceived school well-being may vary across educational contexts and highlight the value of incorporating young children’s perspectives into research on school life.
Objective Measurement of Energy Behavior in Theory of Planned Behavior Research: A Scoping Review
Anastasia Gkargkavouzi; George Halkos
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The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) is the dominant psychological framework for explaining individual energy behavior, yet its predictive validity in this domain rests almost entirely on intentions or self-reported behavior, which correlate only modestly with objective measures. This exploratory scoping review, informed by the PRISMA extension for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR), maps how behavior has been measured in quantitative TPB research on energy use, saving, and curtailment, and detects the specific studies that measured behavior objectively, through meters, sensors, billing or consumption records, monitored devices, or direct observation. Searches of Scopus and Web of Science identified 773 records, 467 unique records remained after deduplication, and full-text assessment confirmed four eligible studies. Studies measuring energy behaviour through objective outcomes are therefore rare in the TPB literature, and where they exist, they rely either on consumption traces (records, meters, or sensors) or on coding by trained observers. A common design weakness is the inconsistency between constructs measured at the individual level and outcomes measured at the household, dormitory, or office level. Across the eligible studies, TPB constructs show weak and varying associations with objectively measured energy behavior; intention is often non-significant, while prediction improves when behavior is verified in real time against consumption traces. These findings are preliminary, as screening of the records whose abstracts did not state the measurement method is ongoing. Testing whether the theory explains energy behavior, rather than self-reports, requires designs that pair person-attributable objective outcomes with full TPB measurement.
Psychometric properties of the German Binge Eating Scale (G-BES): A cross-sectional validation study
Helena Althammer; Jessica Freiherr
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Background: Binge Eating Disorder (BED) is the most prevalent eating disorder, characterized by recurrent episodes of overeating accompanied by a feeling of loss of control and profound emotional distress. Despite its high prevalence and associated burden, a psychometrically sound tool to measure the severity of binge-eating symptoms in the German-speaking population is lacking. This study aimed to validate the German version of the Binge Eating Scale (G-BES). Methods: A cross-sectional online convenience sample of 1,148 German-speaking adults (predominantly female) was recruited between May and August 2025. Psychometric assessment included construct validity testing using the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q; convergent validity) and the Intuitive Eating Scale-2 (IES-2; divergent validity), exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis (EFA/CFA) using a split-sample approach (N = 574 each), internal consistency, and Item Response Theory (IRT) modeling. Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve analyses were performed against both self-reported formal BED diagnosis and an EDE-Q threshold for the German population. Finally, correlates of binge eating severity were investigated. Results: The G-BES demonstrated excellent convergent (ρ = 0.79) and divergent validity (ρ = -0.83). The CFA confirmed a robust unidimensional structure (EFA variance explained: 57%; CFA fit: CFI = 0.993, TLI = 0.992). The scale exhibited excellent internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.91, McDonald's ω = 0.92) and high discrimination power across all 16 items in the IRT analysis. ROC analyses revealed good screening accuracy for self-reported BED (AUC = 0.81), yielding a preliminary screening cut-off of ≄ 22 (72.2% sensitivity, 80.0% specificity). A secondary sensitivity analysis against the EDE-Q threshold (AUC = 0.89) suggested a potential lower screening threshold of ≄13 (80.9% sensitivity, 81.4% specificity). Subthreshold binge eating was highly prevalent across the entire weight spectrum, including individuals with low-to-medium BMI. Binge-eating severity correlated with dieting history, lower intuitive eating, weight concerns, and depression. Conclusions: The G-BES shows promising psychometric properties as a cross-sectional screening tool. However, establishing definitive clinical cut-offs requires replicating these convenience-sample findings using structured interviews in representative, gender-balanced populations using structured clinical interviews. Keywords Binge eating disorder, Binge Eating Scale, psychometric properties, internal consistency, factor analysis, construct validity, dietary restraint
From Biological Motion to Real-World Interaction: Rethinking the Action Perception System
Burcu A. Urgen
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Action perception is one of the most extensively studied domains of social cognition. Over the last five decades, research employing point-light biological motion displays, animated agents, and videos of human actions has generated a sophisticated understanding of how actions are recognized and represented in the brain. However, most of this knowledge derives from studies that rely on depictions of actions rather than on actions performed by physically present individuals. Recent developments in naturalistic and real-world neuroscience provide an opportunity to revisit this longstanding assumption. The history of action perception research can be viewed as a progression from increasingly abstract representations of actions toward actions that are physically present, occur here and now, and can directly influence future behavior. Physical presence may be important not simply because it increases realism, but because it transforms observed actions into potentially actable events. This distinction may fundamentally differentiate real-world action perception from traditional screen-based paradigms and reveal mechanisms that remain difficult to observe when actions are studied as detached visual events. Drawing on perspectives from action perception, naturalistic neuroscience, and sensorimotor control, we suggest that understanding action perception may require moving beyond questions of representation to how perceived actions influence future behavior and are integrated into perception–action loops that guide behavior in the real world.
Redundancy Repartitions Capacity and Enhances Recall in Visual Working Memory: The Sample-Size Model of Neural Activation
Paul Michael Garrett; Yu Liu; Daniel R. Little; Philip L. Smith
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Visual working memory (VWM) has a limited capacity of around four items, yet recall is also improved by structure in the memory array. We reconcile these views by testing how color redundancy – a low-level structural regularity – alters recall precision in a continuous color-reproduction task using a between-subjects (21 participants) and small-N within-subjects design (5 participants). We model precision by combining the attention-weighted sample-size model of Smith et al. (2018) with Oberauer's (2023) signal discrimination model. This sample-size model of neural activation describes baseline predictions for how capacity limits and recall sensitivity should theoretically improve with redundancy, and can be used as a diagnostic process model of VWM and attention. Our model shows that array regularities enhance overall item capacity by storing redundant items as unitary objects and that redundant items often benefit from probability summation. Our model also identifies nuanced individual attentional strategies: trade-offs in redundant and non-redundant item recall, redundant-item neural summation, and Gestalt-like encoding strategies across redundant and non-redundant items. These individual differences would be masked by data aggregation. Our results motivate the use of individual-level modeling when theorizing about nuanced relationships, such as exists between attention and VWM.
Intergenerational Transmission of Mathematical Anxiety and Skills: Latent Profile Analysis Integrated with the Familiar Control Method
Daria Khanolainen; Anne van Hoogmoed; Jenni Salminen; Asko Tolvanen; Jo Van Hoof; Tuire Koponen; Minna Torppa
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The link between math skills and math anxiety is well-established, with parental homework support potentially acting as a contributing factor to both. This study used repeated measures latent profile analysis (N = 534) to identify children’s math and anxiety profiles across Grades 2–4 and examine their associations with parental support and homework-related emotions, while controlling for parental math skills and anxiety. We identified four profiles: average skills/low anxiety (47.2%), low skills/low anxiety (28.8%), high skills/low anxiety (15.3%), and low skills/high anxiety (8.7%). Frequent parental support and negative homework-related emotions predicted higher odds of membership in low-skill profiles. However, most associations were attenuated when accounting for parental math skills. These results underscore the complexity of intergenerational transmission. While prior literature argued that support from math-anxious parents exacerbates child math anxiety, our findings provide a more nuanced perspective. We demonstrate that accounting for parental math skills is critical, as the link between support and child anxiety may not represent a purely environmental pathway. Instead, it likely reflects a shared vulnerability, where skills and anxiety are transmitted through overlapping genetic and environmental factors.
Children and adults monitor speaker ignorance to learn words cross-situationally
Khuyen N. Le; Martin Zettersten; David Barner
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On some accounts, children learn words by associating them with referents and tracking associations cross-situationally to converge upon likely meanings. Other accounts argue that purely associative mechanisms fail to capture children’s sensitivity to speakers’ mental states, what they know about words, and how they direct attention to objects. In the present study, we asked how statistical and epistemic cues might act in concert during word learning, and whether sensitivity to speakers’ knowledge states help children restrict cross-situational associations between words and objects. We presented adults and children aged 3.5 to 6 years with a cross-situational word learning task in which we manipulated speakers’ knowledge states. We found that adults and children from 3.5 years of age used speaker knowledge to resolve referential ambiguities. Participants excluded what the speaker claimed they did not know from their calculation of cross-situational statistics. This effect was unrelated to children’s performance on a measure of theory of mind ability. These findings suggest that from an early age, language learners consider possible meanings of words under constraints derived from a speaker’s mental states, including what a speaker knows.
Ageing Wisely Online: co-design and randomised controlled trial of a therapist-supported internet-delivered cognitive behaviour therapy (iCBT) program for older adults with anxiety and depression.
Carly Johnco; Jessamine T.-H. Chen; Ron Rapee; Michael Jones; Brian Draper; Henry Brodaty; Jonas Fooken; Lauren McLellan; Viviana Wuthrich
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Objectives: Internet-delivered cognitive behavioural therapy (iCBT) shows promise for treating anxiety and depression in older adults; however, existing trials have relied on programs developed for younger users that require high-level technological proficiency. This study: (1) co-designed an iCBT intervention for anxiety/depression in older adults, based on an established program; and (2) evaluated its efficacy and acceptability in a randomised controlled trial (RCT). Methods: Study 1 (Co-design): Ageing Wisely Online (AW Online) was co-designed with older people (N = 6) and clinicians (N = 7) using an iterative participatory design with focus groups, followed by user testing and refinement of a prototype. Study 2 (RCT): In a parallel-group RCT, 68 older adults (aged 65–89 years) with a diagnosed anxiety and/or depressive disorder were randomly allocated to AW Online or waitlist control. Results: Compared to waitlist, participants receiving AW Online showed significantly greater reductions in primary disorder severity, anxiety and depression severity on diagnostic and self-report measures, diagnostic remission, as well as improvements in quality of life, psychosocial functioning and overall mental health. AW Online demonstrated high acceptability (completion rates and satisfaction ratings). Conclusions: Ageing Wisely Online is an effective and acceptable iCBT intervention for anxiety and depression in older adults.
Detecting Alzheimer’s Disease through Chinese Speech: A Contrast of Manual and Automatic Linguistic Feature Extraction
Yi-Hsuan Wang; Chia-Fang Cheng; Chia-Ju Chou; Yi-Chien Liu; Ya-Ning Chang
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Recent research has revealed that linguistic features are effective digital markers for the early detection of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). An increasing number of studies has developed automatic methods for feature extraction; however, most of them focused on alphabetical languages and lacked direct and multifaceted comparisons between the linguistic features derived from automatic versus manual transcriptions, particularly in evaluating their effectiveness in early patient screening. To bridge this gap, the present study develops an automatic pipeline for linguistic feature extraction using a self-collected Chinese speech dataset and, critically, we conduct comprehensive comparisons through correlation analysis, machine learning classifiers and feature importance ratings. The correlation results suggested moderate to strong agreement between features extracted from the two approaches. Classifiers trained on manual and automatic transcriptions yielded statistically comparable results. Manual transcriptions demonstrated a slight numerical advantage, achieving a peak accuracy of 0.825 compared to 0.800 for their automated counterparts. Important features contributing to the classifiers also demonstrated considerable overlap across the two transcription approaches, including type-to-token ratio (TTR), long pause ratio (LPR) and number of unique words (UW) as key indicators. Overall, the results demonstrated parallel effectiveness of linguistic features from automatic and manual transcriptions, indicating the clinical feasibility of this automatic feature extraction pipeline for early AD detection in Chinese populations.
The art of boredom regulation: Associations with personality traits, boredom experience, and well-being
Katy Yuen Yan Tam; Wijnand A. P. van Tilburg; Christian Shaunlyn Chan
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Boredom is on the rise, and chronically experiencing it undermines well-being. Yet, little is known about how to regulate it adaptively. The current research examined individual differences in boredom regulation and their associations with personality traits, boredom experience, and well-being across four studies (total N = 1,469): a three-wave longitudinal study with four-month intervals (Study 1), a one-week experience-sampling study (Study 2), and two cross-sectional studies (Studies 3 & 4). We found that people habitually regulate boredom through four recurring strategies: digital coping (using smartphones, social media and the internet), disengagement coping (mind-wandering and attentional withdrawal), proactive coping (actively seeking interest, meaning, or change), and refocusing coping (reappraising task significance). Results showed that each strategy featured a distinct Big Five personality profile and differential associations with boredom experience and well-being (meaning in life, life satisfaction, and psychological distress). Across four studies, disengagement coping consistently predicted higher boredom proneness and poorer well-being. Digital coping was associated with higher boredom proneness, whereas its associations with well-being indicators were inconsistent. In contrast, proactive and refocusing coping predicted lower boredom proneness and better well-being. Our research provides novel insights into how people can regulate boredom adaptively in everyday life.
Text Psychometrics: Assessing Psychological Constructs in Text Using Natural Language Processing
Daniel Mark Low; Patrick Mair; Matthew Nock; Satrajit S Ghosh
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Large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized natural language processing (NLP). Yet when used to assess psychological constructs in text, they are generally not evaluated for the types of validity, reliability, and standardization typically expected from traditional questionnaires with rating scales. This study bridges that gap by demonstrating how to evaluate the psychometric properties of text-based models, which we call Text Psychometrics. We first review different NLP methods, compare their ability to address key challenges in psychological research such as explainability, and outline methods for evaluating them on many desirable psychometric properties. We then demonstrate this through two empirical studies. Study 1 classifies thousands of crisis counseling conversations and Reddit posts into different types of mental health issues and introduces a novel method to evaluate text models for content validity —the extent to which a test captures the full range of expressions of a construct. Study 2 examines prospective criterion validity by estimating how 49 known suicide risk factors predict imminent risk in crisis counseling conversations. In sum, NLP studies in psychology often rely on only a few validation metrics; here, we demonstrate the need for broader psychometric evaluation and provide a practical blueprint and future directions for achieving it.
No evidence that post-experiment beliefs about deception cause participants to overreport suspicion
Shaheed Azaad; Gerald Echterhoff
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Many experiments in psychology involve deceiving participants about aspects of the study. Researchers who employ deception sometimes administer post-experiment suspicion probes and exclude participants from analysis if their responses indicate that they were not successfully deceived. However, several studies have found that their suspicious participants behave as if they were deceived as intended. One explanation is that participants infer that they were deceived upon being presented with a suspicion probe, which biases them to overreport being suspicious. We tested whether post-experiment beliefs about deception can indeed induce such biases by manipulating whether we admitted to using deception before administering suspicion probes. Admitting to deception did not increase the amount of suspicion reported (Experiment 1), nor did the content of participants’ suspicions reflect the content of our admission (Experiment 2). Results suggest that it is unlikely that suspicion probes ‘tip off’ participants in a way that causes them to overreport suspicion.
Young Children Spontaneously Appreciate the Perspectives of their Social Partners
Anushka Laha; Amelia Chen; Zoe A Gipson; Brandon Matthew Woo
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Human cooperation depends on our ability to reason about other people’s minds. When we face our social partners, what is upright to one person might be upside down to the other, and what is on one’s left would be the other’s right. In four experiments (N = 318), we investigated whether 3- to 4-year-old children appreciate others’ distinct visual experiences when engaged in social actions. Specifically, we presented children with pictures and books that were initially upright to them, and we asked children to show those pictures and books to people who faced the children (i.e., whose perspectives on the pictures and books were opposite those of the children). Across experiments, we found that young children spontaneously oriented pictures and books so that those objects appeared upright to their social partners. Whereas classic research suggests that young children are egocentric, these findings suggest that young children are sensitive to the visual experiences of their social partners. These findings support the possibility that, from early in development, children engage in mental state reasoning to better cooperate with and communicate to their social partners.
Bridging population-level and person-specific approaches to understanding sexual and gender minority (SGM) well-being
Adam Taylor Nissen; Emorie D Beck
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One goal of well-being science is identifying determinants that foster sexual and gender minority (SGM) wellness. Common population-level analyses (between-person and within-person) may obscure important heterogeneity in these determinants. Person-specific approaches instead examine the unique kinds and influences of determinants for a single person. Combining them with population-level approaches ensures determinant measures contain relevant content for SGMs and informs what is added and lost across levels. We applied both approaches to SGM subjective well-being by examining associations with minority stress and social safety in a sample of college students attending an American university (N = 373). At the between- and within-person level, less minority stress and greater social safety were generally associated with greater subjective well-being. Exploratory person-specific analyses instead revealed that those significant associations may not reflect how these determinants are modeled for a person, as minority stress and social safety items were generally poor predictors of momentary subjective well-being across participants. Overall, this suggests that despite differentiating happier people, these determinant measures may lack representative content that truly captures subjective well-being for a single person, requiring further consideration to ensure the wellness of all SGMs.
Utilizing Sequential Methods to Infer About Examinees’ Cognitive Process on Coding Tasks
Kefan Yu; Min Li; Mo Zhang; Chen Li; Amy J. Ko; Benjamin Zhou; Hongwen Guo; Janet Jiang; Jingzhang Mu
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This study investigates action logs from Python coding tasks to infer cognitive patterns among 160 undergraduate students with varying levels of programming proficiency. While prior studies have examined students’ learning patterns using isolated behavioral indicators, these approaches overlook the broader structure of students’ thinking processes, such as how individual actions are connected across different proficiency groups. To address this gap, this study applies chi-square feature selection and Hidden Markov Models to analyze programming actions sequentially and identify action patterns and transitions that distinguish proficiency groups. Results show that high-performing students approached coding tasks more systematically and strategically, reflected in patterns of local navigation and revision. In contrast, lower-performing students were more likely to pause frequently and execute code repeatedly, possibly indicating uncertainty and reliance on trial-and-error strategies.
The Cost of Coordination: Why Multi-Agent LLMs Explore More But Discover Less
Shirley Shimin Qiu; Mable Mantong Zhou; Jonathan Schooler
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Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in multi-agent teams (MAS), yet recent works have shown that unstructured multi-agent collaboration often degrades performance in noninsight problems. We examined whether previous findings can be generalized to an insight problem solving paradigm and identified process-level signatures that may explain the performance gap. We compared performance between solo versus two-agent ChatGPT-4o teams to solve situation puzzles in a 2 (Agent Configuration) × 2 (Solving time) experiment (N = 82). Teams were significantly less accurate than solo agents despite asking questions across broad categories. However, question quality was equivalent between conditions. A multilevel mediation analysis controlling for time decomposed the coordination cost into two components: a protocol failure component (47%), in which inter-agent discussion reduced host-directed questioning, and a residual coordination cost (53%) consistent with impaired convergent integration that persisted after controlling for question volume and quality. Doubling the time budget proportionally increased question volume in both conditions but preserved the team to solo ratio, indicating that the cost is structural rather than driven by limited time. These findings extend multi-agent coordination costs to insight problem solving and suggest that unstructured multi-agent interaction supports the divergent phase but disrupts the convergent phase.
‘Not on GamStop’: Mapping unlicensed gambling websites' user journeys from social media advertisements to unsuccessful withdrawals
Jamie Torrance; Simon Wright; Maira ANDRADE; Philip Newall
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Objectives: This audit mapped the user journey from social media adverts for unlicensed 'not on GamStop' operators (which evade Great Britain's national self-exclusion scheme) to the gambling sites they lead to. Study design: Cross-sectional, online digital-risk audit. Methods: 'Not on GamStop' advertisements were recorded from the Meta Ad Library, yielding ten linked unlicensed gambling operators. Advertisement metadata were extracted. A researcher registered with GamStop using genuine details, then presented identical details to each operator to test websites’ circumvention of self-exclusion blocks. Operators were audited across account registration, safer gambling provision, deposits, and attempted withdrawals. Their terms and conditions (T&Cs) were also analysed for provisions that may disadvantage consumers. Results: The ten advertisements reached 42,718 UK users (69% male). No operator held a UK licence, recognised the user's GamStop registration, or verified identity at sign-up. Age assurance rested solely on self-declaration. None offered deposit or loss limits, and an email disclosing loss of control prompted account closure without support. All but one of the completed deposits carried inaccurate merchant category codes on bank statements (n=8), concealing their gambling nature. All withdrawal attempts failed, largely due to funds being purportedly released only on supply of identity verification, despite no such checks at registration. T&Cs required users to disavow self-exclusion and permitted discretionary confiscation of funds. Conclusions: These unlicensed operators target self-excluded consumers, extract deposits while inhibiting withdrawals, and evade harm-prevention infrastructure. Countering them will likely require payment restrictions and stronger intervention by the platforms hosting the associated advertising.
Stress Intelligence: A Novel Framework for Understanding Adaptive Stress Regulation and Resilience Trajectories
Lydia Genevieve Roos; Ashley Whillans; Reeva Misra; Masha Remskar; Kelsey Julian
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Individuals who are exposed to comparable levels of stress routinely diverge in health, performance, and psychological outcomes, yet no existing theory integrates the regulatory processes that explain this divergence. We propose stress intelligence (SI) as a theoretical framework describing a signal-informed regulatory capacity that operates through three integrated processes: (1) detecting stress signals across physiological, psychological, and behavioural domains, (2) interpreting their meaning in terms of demands and resources, and (3) deploying adaptive responses matched to context and goals. We argue that these capacities produce consistent adaptive outcomes only when they operate as an integrated process, such that detection informs interpretation and interpretation guides response. We build on the concept of skin-deep resilience to describe a pattern in which individuals maintain outward functioning while accumulating hidden physiological costs, and argue that SI differentiates sustainable resilience from skin-deep resilience in ways that existing frameworks do not. We derive testable predictions, including the proposition that an individual’s stress quotient (SQ; i.e., measurable individual-difference operationalisation of SI) can prospectively differentiate sustainable from skin-deep resilience among individuals maintaining equivalent levels of outward functioning at the time of assessment. We outline a research agenda spanning measurement development, longitudinal panel data, and clinical trial designs of SI interventions.
Comparing different frontal processes as predictors of older individuals’ false memory in a “cage match” between neuropsychological assessments, cortical thickness, neural activation, and representational distinctiveness
John Thomas West; Rebecca L Wagner; Megan Broderick; Min Sung Seo; Nancy Dennis
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Because older adults are at an increased risk of falsely remembering past events as having happened differently than they occurred, identifying factors which protect against false memory in later life is a pressing concern. Prior research suggests that differences in frontally mediated processes related to retrieval monitoring and metacognition account for some of the variance in older individuals’ false memory susceptibility, with investigations demonstrating significant correlations between rates of false memory and various measures of frontal functioning and structure defined using neuropsychological assessments, structural brain scans, and functional neuroimaging methods. In the current investigation, we compared the predictive validity of five such frontal measures derived from both behavioral and neuroimaging methods within a single sample of older adults who completed tests of both semantic and perceptual false recognition (n = 71). When false memory was defined in terms of a bias-corrected measure which subtracts false alarm rates for unrelated foils from false alarm rates for related lures, frontal factors did not predict either semantic or perceptual false memory. Strikingly, Bayesian analyses indicated that the observed data were between five and seven times more likely under models including only demographic covariates compared to those that added frontal factors. Even so, some associations between frontal factors and false memory were observed in exploratory analyses which defined false memory in terms of the more frequently used, uncorrected measure of related lure false alarm rate. Implications regarding the science and measurement of false memory in aging are discussed.
Inclusion Bayes Factors for Conditional Independence in Latent Network Modeling
Fatih Ozkan
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The latent network model (LNM) embeds a Gaussian graphical model on the latent variables of a confirmatory factor model, which allows exploratory analysis of conditional independence relations among constructs while accounting for measurement error. Current LNM practice recovers the latent network by penalized estimation or stepwise significance testing, procedures that cannot distinguish absence of evidence from evidence of absence. We develop a Bayesian latent network model (BLNM) that places a prior on the latent network structure and quantifies the evidence for each edge with inclusion Bayes factors. Because latent systems are small, the full structure space (2^(M(M-1)/2) structures for M latent variables) can be enumerated, so posterior structure probabilities and inclusion Bayes factors are computed exactly from per-structure marginal likelihoods, with an analytically marginalized likelihood and a validated Laplace-screening scheme for larger M. Two empirical illustrations recover graded evidence in both directions: in the Holzinger–Swineford data, the textual–speed latent edge receives positive evidence of conditional independence (BF_01=2.5) where the likelihood-ratio test is merely nonsignificant (p=.32); in the Big Five (bfi) data, Openness is conditionally independent of Agreeableness and Neuroticism (BF_01=7.4 and 6.0) given the remaining traits. A simulation study shows that posterior inclusion probabilities are calibrated, evidence for truly absent edges accumulates at the √N rate, and a naive two-step alternative in which a Bayesian graphical model is fitted to factor scores produces decisive false evidence for truly absent edges at rates that fail to diminish with sample size and that approach 50% when measurement is unreliable.
Between Law and Conscience: Act Legality Shapes Moral Evaluation
Mane Kara-Yakoubian; Jonathan Albert Fugelsang; Alexander C. Walker
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Can legality shape moral judgment? Across four experiments (N = 1,559), participants judged identical actions as more morally wrong when they were described as illegal rather than “not illegal.” This effect extended to judgments of moral character: individuals who performed illegal actions were evaluated more negatively than those who performed otherwise identical legal actions. The influence of legality was robust across several contexts, emerging even when agents violated the law unintentionally, when laws were imposed by a totalitarian government, and when actions were described as socially accepted by the majority of local residents. At the same time, legality exerted a stronger influence when it aligned with prevailing social norms and among participants who more strongly endorsed respect for authority as a moral good. We propose that people commonly use legality as a heuristic cue when evaluating the morality of actions and actors. Together, these findings suggest that legal frameworks not only reflect public opinion but also shape how people judge the morality of actions and those who perform them.
Distinct patterns of syntactic errors doubly dissociate in chronic post-stroke aphasia
Jeremy Yeaton; Danielle Fahey; Michelle Gomez; Brielle C Stark; Julius Fridriksson; Dirk den Ouden; Gregory Hickok; William Matchin
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Background: The lesion correlates of syntactic deficits in aphasia remain poorly understood. Previous studies have suggested that distinct error types in expressive syntax, such as paragrammatic and agrammatic speech, may be associated with damage to different brain regions, but the specific lesion correlates of these errors have not been fully delineated. Objective: To identify the lesion correlates associated with distinct expressive syntactic error types in individuals with chronic post-stroke aphasia, using a novel utterance-level analysis of spontaneous speech errors. Methods: We analyzed spontaneous speech samples from individuals with chronic aphasia, categorizing errors into hierarchical (paragrammatic-like) and linearization (agrammatic-like) errors. Lesion-symptom mapping was conducted to identify brain regions associated with these error types. The analysis was based on a two-stage model of sentence production, with hierarchical processing and linearization analyzed as distinct stages. Results: Lesion clusters in the medial superior temporal sulcus and inferior parietal lobe were associated with hierarchical errors, while large frontal lesions, including those in the inferior and middle frontal lobe, were associated with linearization errors. These results provide support for a two-stage model of syntactic encoding, with distinct neural correlates for hierarchical and linearization processes. Conclusion: Our findings suggest a dichotomy of the lesion basis for syntactic deficits in aphasia, suggesting that distinct brain regions contribute to different stages of syntactic encoding. Hierarchical processing seems to be supported by posterior temporal-parietal regions, while linearization seems to be supported by frontal regions. These results suggest that the diagnosis and treatment of aphasia should take into account the existence of distinct syntactic production deficits resulting from different patterns of brain damage.
Waiting Spaces as Mental Health 'Gyms': A Research through Design Framework for the Situated Activation of Brief Wellbeing Practices Where People, Time, and Infrastructure Converge
Carolina Andrea CĂĄrdenas FernĂĄndez
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In a context of a global mental health crisis and persistent inequalities in access to care, this study explores the potential of waiting spaces to expand everyday opportunities to engage in wellbeing practices without requiring additional time, financial cost, or deliberate search. Inspired by how cities have expanded access to physical wellbeing through freely accessible infrastructure, such as outdoor exercise equipment, it proposes the Wellbeing Practices in Waiting Spaces (WPWS) framework, which reconceptualizes waiting as latent infrastructure for the situated activation of brief wellbeing practices. Using a Research through Design (RtD) approach, the framework was developed across four phases: qualitative clinical exploration using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (N = 8); urban prototyping in Amsterdam, Milan, and Barcelona; exploration of everyday appropriation across seven countries (N = 41); and comparative analysis of public space interventions. Findings suggest that situated activation depends on three interdependent components: (1) spatio-temporal conditions modulating attentional availability, particularly during waiting (when); (2) inner human capacities — mindfulness, appreciation, and compassion — understood as potentially activatable resources (what); and (3) visual mediating devices introducing legible, voluntary invitations to wellbeing micropractices into the urban environment (how). Flow-interruption rates of 1–5% were observed across the urban prototypes, while 85.4% of participants reported mentally repeating the phrase and 60.9% shared it with others. The study identifies socio-spatial conditions that may increase the probability of activating wellbeing practices, without establishing causal or clinical effects. WPWS offers a transferable framework for expanding low-threshold access to wellbeing practices where people, time, and infrastructure already converge. Keywords: Urban wellbeing; Waiting spaces; Latent infrastructure; Situated activation; Mental health equity; Trauma-informed design; Wellbeing micropractices.
An Idiographic Dynamical Framework for the Study of Self-Experience
Sjoerd Ebisch; Simone Di Plinio
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This article proposes a heuristic framework for the empirical study of selfhood that integrates phenomenological accounts with idiographic and dynamical approaches. The self is conceptualized as a dynamical organization of experiential dimensions. We distinguish between inter-individual differences and within-person dynamics, emphasizing that psychological relational structure cannot be fully captured by between-person models, time-invariant measures, or approaches that assume a shared structure across individuals. Whereas such frameworks generally prioritize population-level regularities, static representations or parameter-level variation, idiographic approaches allow the study of how relational patterns vary and reorganize across time and context within individuals. Building on network theory and state-space modeling, we propose that self-experience can be analyzed in terms of evolving patterns of relations among experiential dimensions spanning pre-reflective and reflective levels, including agency, ownership, affective integration, and narrative. Importantly, variability concerns not only the strength of relations but also their overall configuration. We illustrate this perspective through heuristic examples of coherent, transiently destabilized, and clinically disturbed self-patterns associated with self-disorders. The framework is consistent with non-ergodic accounts of psychological processes and treats within-person dynamics as a primary level of analysis, enabling a more fine-grained understanding of individual self-organization over time.
Estimating Latent Vector Autoregressive Models in a Stepwise Manner With the R Package ezLVAR
Manuel T. Rein; Kim De Roover; Jeroen Vermunt; Leonie V. D. E. Vogelsmeier
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Psychologists often study dynamic processes in daily life, for instance, how individuals’ emotional states fluctuate and influence one another from one moment to the next. Typically, psychological constructs like emotions cannot be measured directly (i.e., they are “latent”) and are instead assessed indirectly with multiple questionnaire items. Researchers analyzing such data thus need to consider both the measurement model, which describes how the items measure the latent constructs at each time-point, and the structural model, which describes the dynamic process. The recently proposed Three-Step Latent Vector Autoregression method provides an intuitive and straightforward way to estimate these models by separating the measurement and structural parts of the analysis. However, until now, no ready-to-use software implementation of the method was available. In this article, we close this gap by presenting the user-friendly package ezLVAR, which allows researchers to apply the method in the freely available software R. We demonstrate the package’s workflow with a step-by-step demonstration of the core functions and selected advanced modeling choices, such as including random intercepts or modeling observed or latent groups.
Ageing reduces access to the body structural representations both for the glabrous and hairy skin surfaces
Carmen Lenatti; Desirée Lopis; Rafaela Stanciu Martinez; Heather Jane Ferguson; Luigi TamÚ
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The body structural representation (BSR) refers to a map of the body in which the spatial configuration of different body parts is defined. Recent evidence demonstrates that multiple BSRs are defined by the stimulated skin surface (glabrous vs. hairy skin). Although body representations express a vulnerability with increasing age, it remains unclear to what extent the dissociation between skin types in the higher-order body representation is affected by the ageing process. To investigate this, we replicated a version of the in-between test, comparing the performance of younger adults and healthy older adults. Participants received simultaneous tactile stimulation on pairs of fingers and were asked to estimate the number of unstimulated fingers located between the two stimulated digits. When comparing performance between the age groups across skin types, older adults underestimated finger numerosity and showed decreased accuracy compared to young adults. These results suggest that the higher-level maps required to identify the structural composition of the body become less accessible with increasing age. Higher finger numerosity estimation and accuracy were observed when tactile stimulations were delivered on the glabrous skin compared to the hairy skin, but only when non-adjacent fingers were stimulated. This pattern was not modulated by age group, suggesting that the distinct structural maps associated with the skin type are preserved in older age. Despite this age-related vulnerability, the intrinsic distinction between glabrous and hairy skin representations remains preserved.
Towards clear construct definitions: Applying an iterative approach to constructs of the Health Action Process Approach (HAPA).
Annick De Paepe; Olga Perski; Emma Tack; Maité Van Alboom; Marie De Bruecker; Van Overbeke Marthe; Eleana Pinto; Maya Braun
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The psychological and behavioural sciences have long struggled with issues of replicability and reproducibility, often attributed to poorly defined psychological constructs. Clear and precise construct definitions are essential for advancing theory development, improving measurement validity, and fostering scientific communication. This study aimed to develop comprehensive definitions for key constructs within the Health Action Process Approach (HAPA), a widely used model in health psychology. Using a structured, iterative methodology adapted from Podsakoff et al. (2016), we focused on refining definitions for action planning, coping planning, self-efficacy, and action control—core constructs in the model’s post-motivational phase. The resulting definitions are intended for inclusion in the Decentralised Construct Taxonomy (DCT), promoting transparency and consistency in construct usage. This work offers a replicable framework for construct definition development, with implications extending beyond the HAPA model to the broader behavioural sciences.
Contrasting the classic effect of reward on attentional priority maps: Behavioral evidence for an attentional gating of spatially-specific reward signals
Bertrand Beffara; Fadila Hadj-Bouziane; Suliann Ben Hamed; Irene Cristofori; Leslie Tricoche; C. Nico Boehler; Leonardo Chelazzi; Elisa Santandrea; Emiliano Macaluso
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The control of selective visuo-spatial attention is known to rely on multiple signals, including reward. While most attention control signals are well acknowledged to interact with each other, the case of reward has led to mixed findings supporting either its interaction with, or its independence from other signals. We addressed this issue using a 4-item search task that entailed spatially biased reward contingencies, with one of the four locations associated with high rewards for correct target discriminations. In different conditions, the target, a distractor or neither of them could be physically salient. Targets at the high-reward location did not enhance search performance. In contrast, and contrary to our initial expectations, salient distractors at the high-reward location interfered less with the discrimination of the task-relevant targets, reflecting gating mechanisms at the high-reward location. Exploratory analyses showed that, across participants, the degree of target and salient distractor gating at the high-reward location correlated with each other. In contrast to previous findings supporting attention capture by reward signals, we evidenced gating by reward.
Single case analysis in neuropsychology: an Empirical Bayesian perspective
Michele Scandola; Sylia Makhloufi
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Single cases in neuropsychology remain a valid and vital resource for scientific enquiry. However, the statistical analysis of single-case data is still limited, not only because of the specific nature of single-case observations, but also because available methods are not always suited to complex experimental designs. Bayesian Multilevel Single Case models provided a tool that introduced the flexibility of linear mixed-model designs into single-case analysis. Moreover, their Bayesian framework naturally allowed the possibility to test evidence in favour of both the null and the alternative hypothesis. However, this proposal also presents some criticalities. In particular, within this methodology, probability has a subjective interpretation, and the results are therefore not only dependent on the observed differences between the single case and the control group, but also on the prior beliefs of the researcher. Here, we propose a novel tool that, using an empirical-Bayesian approach, derives the prior distributions from the control sample and uses them to test the single case. In this way, with the Empirical Bayesian Multilevel Single Case (EBMSC) model the interpretation of probability is directly linked to the differences between the control group and the single case, making the inferential procedure more closely aligned with the classical logic of single-case neuropsychology.
Auditory Cue-weighting in BaYaka Forest-Foragers and Western Listeners
Jiaxin Li; Coen C. van Baalen; David John Baker; John Ashley Burgoyne; Han Han; Noah Henry; Vincent Lostanlen; Makiko Sadakata; Matthias Melchior Chanan van der Vlist; Frans T. M. van Schaik
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Music recognition depends on both spectral and temporal informaZon, but how listeners weight these cues across cultures remains poorly understood. Here, we tested cue-weighting between Mbendjele BaYaka forest-foragers and Western listeners. Across three experiments using TuneTwins, a tablet-based auditory matching-pairs paradigm, spectral degradation impaired Western listeners’ performance for both familiar and unfamiliar music, whereas recognition of familiar music was largely preserved in BaYaka listeners. Temporal degradation, by contrast, impaired all groups except Western listeners tested on familiar music. Our findings suggest that music recognition can be supported by multiple acoustic cues, that familiarity shapes listeners’ resilience to acoustic degradation, and that the weighting of spectral and temporal information varies across populations. Together, these results challenge the assumption that pitch is the dominant cue for music recognition. In addition, the study illustrates how field-compatible, game- based paradigms can facilitate rigorous cognitive research in populations that remain largely absent from experimental music cognition.
Peacocks Don't Carry Tote Bags: Cheap Signals and the Relocation of Honesty in the "Performative Male"
Doğa Keçe
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Over 2024 and 2025 a folk category consolidated in Anglophone online culture. It is the "performative male," a young man accused of assembling feminine-coded and progressive tastes, among them matcha, tote bags, and feminist paperbacks, to appear desirable. The reflexive evolutionary reading files this under courtship display and moves on. That reading is not wrong so much as inert. The signals cost almost nothing to produce, and under the cost-based account of honesty a near-free advertisement of quality should be overrun by mimics and lose meaning at once. It has not, and the natural resolution is the strand of signalling theory in which honesty requires no production cost when detected deception is punished socially (Lachmann, SzĂĄmadĂł, & Bergstrom, 2001; SzĂĄmadĂł & Penn, 2015). On this account the "performative" label is not commentary but enforcement, a receiver- and rival-side deception-detection response. Yet the hardest case complicates that resolution rather than confirming it. Pressed against a quality that cannot be verified in time, social cost does not restore honesty to the cheap token; it taxes the counterfeit and relocates honesty onto hard-to-fake channels, so display drifts toward under-advertisement (Owens & Hartley, 1991). I organize the comparative material by honesty-maintenance regime, develop the worthless nuptial gift of the nursery-web spider as the closest structural homology (Albo et al., 2011), and argue that the human case, being legible, fast, and self-documenting, is a natural experiment on whether social cost can hold a cheap signal honest at all. The paper closes with falsifiable predictions.
Supporting oral language and participation with “Talk Moves”: A case study on classroom implementation
Theresa Pham; Lisa M.D. Archibald
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Purpose: Although class discussions offer opportune moments for student’s language and learning development, getting students to talk can be challenging. One way to promote class talk is through conversational tools called talk moves. Method: The current study evaluated the effectiveness of a Talk Moves intervention implemented in a Grade 2/3 classroom (n = 1 teacher and 13 students, 7 female students, English as first language). Results: Post-intervention, the teacher and students used more talk moves, coinciding with students talking more and feeling more comfortable participating in class. There were also improvements on students’ use of academic vocabulary and language scores, but not sentence length and complexity, nor reading scores. Conclusion: Results indicate that teachers – and students themselves – could implement talk moves in class to support all students’ engagement in academic discussions.
The Influence of Parental Cultural Values on Preschool Children's Over-Imitation
Esmee Miron Aalders; Moritz M. Daum; Joanna Maria Rutkowska
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Over-imitation, the copying of irrelevant actions, is driven by causal, affiliative, and normative processes. Because these processes develop in the environments in which children grow up, parental values likely shape them through cultural practices and interaction patterns. Yet, how children's environments shape their over-imitation remains unexplored. Following the dual-process perspective \parencite{schleihauf_dual-process_2020}, this study examined whether three variables from children's environments are associated with their over-imitation of pseudo-instrumental and noncontact actions: parental cultural values, cultural diversity, and language status. We tested 133 monolingual, bilingual, and bidialectal 4-year-old children. Parents completed questionnaires on 9 dimensions of cultural values, and their child's language exposure. Two parental cultural values were associated with children’s over-imitation, but in opposite directions: Higher parental institutional collectivism was associated with less over-imitation; higher parental in-group collectivism was associated with more over-imitation. Children's language status was not associated with their over-imitation, but the distance between parents' cultural values was. Children whose parents had similar cultural values over-imitated pseudo-instrumental actions more than children whose parents' cultural values differed. Notably, cultural values were more consistently related to over-imitation of pseudo-instrumental than to noncontact actions, suggesting that preschool children do not yet apply blanket copying to pseudo-instrumental actions, or that culture has an effect above and beyond children's normative motivation to over-imitate. Overall, the results indicate that children’s over-imitation reflects both action properties and cultural environments, emphasising the importance of cultural context in theories of social learning.
Predicting career outcomes from a single working memory task: evidence from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC)
Katie Allen; John Nicholas Towse; Brian Francis; Michelle St Clair; Amy Louise Atkinson
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Working memory (WM) is a core cognitive ability that is strongly associated with academic performance in childhood, even after controlling for IQ. Meanwhile, the real-world correlates of WM in adulthood have not been established. It is therefore unclear whether the relationships between WM and real-world outcomes changes across the lifespan. Using data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (N=15,368), our preregistered study examined whether an experimental WM task (n-back) completed at age 24 predicted categorical life outcomes and inattentive behaviours. WM predicted Not in Employment, Education or Training status, receipt of means tested benefits, and inattentive behaviours even after controlling for demographic factors. However, WM was not a unique predictor of any of these outcomes once IQ was controlled for. Thus, the relationships between WM and real-world outcomes appear to change over time, with WM playing a less central role in adulthood.
Affective Signal in Everyday Digital Language Across Communication Contexts and Timescales
Timo Kevin Koch; johannes Christopher Eichstaedt; Florian Bemmann; Ramona Schoedel; Markus BĂŒhner; Clemens Stachl
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Digital language is treated as a window into how people feel, but the conditions under which it reflects subjective affect remain unclear. We examined communication context and timescale as boundary conditions using smartphone keyboard logs, ecological momentary assessments, and surveys from 410 participants followed for up to six months. Across 3.45 million words, we tested whether word use, emoji use, and typing dynamics carried affective signal in private and public communication at trait, daily, and momentary timescales using predictive modeling. Prediction was modest (up to median r = .28), strongest for trait affect, and generally higher in private communication. This context difference was largely attenuated after matching trait-level text volume. Theory-guided associations were clearer for between-person differences in trait affect than for within-person daily or momentary fluctuations. These findings suggest that affective signal in digital language varies across communication contexts and timescales, with implications for using technology to study affect.
Assessing Depressive Symptoms from In-App Language in a Digital Mental Health App
Judith N. Mildner; Alison Darcy; Claire Gillan
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Tracking depressive symptoms in users of digital mental health apps is essential not just to ensure effective care, but to update, optimise and potentially personalise content. However, structured questionnaires can be burdensome for users of these services and that limits their uptake. Language produced during app use may carry insights about current symptom levels, representing a low burden alternative to survey data. To test this, we analysed text data from users of Woebot, a smartphone-based cognitive behavioural therapy chatbot, to predict self-report depression symptom severity. Using dictionary-based linguistic features (LIWC) and large language model (LLM) text embeddings, we first trained and validated XGBoost models on data from users’ first week on the app (N = 26,565). Model performance was modest, but the embeddings model outperformed the LIWC model (RÂČ = 0.17 vs. 0.09, respectively) and generalised well to data from weeks 1-8 (N = 10,540; predictions vs actual scores r = 0.42, p < 0.001). Importantly, applying the embeddings model to users who did not complete any self-report surveys (N = 240,043 texts from 143,371 users) yielded group-level depression estimates consistent with questionnaire-based trajectories from a separate group (N = 71,162 surveys from 59,478 users). These findings demonstrate that in-app language can serve as a scalable, passive indicator of group-level depressive symptoms in real-world digital mental health settings. While performance at the individual level was modest, group-level estimates suggest these approaches might help digital health providers monitor efficacy and optimise their content.
Misleading Questions Influence Eyewitness Reports Only When Memory Has Faded
Lars Köchling; Danna Oomen; Teresa Nguyen; Valerie Ferrari; Oliver Genschow
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Based on a foundational study conducted in 1974 by Loftus and Palmer, it is widely accepted that subtle differences in question wording can influence eyewitness reports. Despite this study's broad influence across disciplines, close replications have been sparse, and existing evidence is inconclusive. We conducted six high-powered, preregistered experiments (total N = 7,357) to closely replicate and extend the original research. We found a small overall effect of question wording on speed estimates and related judgments (Hedges' g = 0.09). Notably, this effect was concentrated among participants with no active memory of the accident (e.g., when being asked a month after they witnessed an accident), where more drastic wording shifted severity estimates of car accidents upward. This suggests that eyewitness accounts given soon after events are less likely to be distorted by suggestive questions than those given later. This has important theoretical and practical implications for interviews in legal settings.
Self-Perceptions on Social Media vs. Offline Contrast With Those Perceived in Generalized but not Close Others
Cameron James Bunker
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Self-perception varies across contexts. Do perceptions of others across contexts vary in the same way? Here, a multi-study mapping of context-framed person perception addressed this question. Participants (N = 1748) reported perceptions of the Big Five personality traits specifying two contexts that dominate daily life (offline and social media) regarding three targets: self, the typical person (Studies 1-3, 5), and peers (Studies 4 and 5). The perceptions were examined both within-person via profile agreements and normatively via mean levels. Profile agreement analyses suggested that the similarity between offline and social media contexts was strong in self-perceptions (and perceptions of peers) but moderate in perceptions of the typical person. Mean level analyses further suggested generally lower trait levels on social media vs. offline in self-perceptions (and perceptions of peers). However, perceptions of the typical person showed the opposite or attenuated effects in terms of 3/5 traits (openness, extraversion, and neuroticism). Perceptions of all three targets showed lower levels of agreeableness on social media than offline. Conscientiousness was the only trait to show inconclusive patterns across the studies. Together, the findings suggest that self-perceptions on social media vs. offline contexts contrast with those perceived in generalized (but not close) others.
Functional Connectivity Pathways Providing Neural Support for Fear-Avoidance Processes in Pain Catastrophizing
Xiaoqian Chang; Yi Ding; Kohei Sakaki; Yuko Okamoto; Chong Shao; Denilson Brilliant T; Lingfei Guan; Xinyu Peng; Yozo Taniyama; Taira Nakajima
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Background Pain catastrophizing is a cognitive–affective trait associated with heightened pain experience. Within the fear-avoidance model, it promotes fear, hypervigilance, and avoidance. Although neuroimaging studies have implicated sensory–affective and default mode networks in catastrophizing, existing evidence is limited by heterogeneity across clinical pain populations, making it difficult to isolate the intrinsic neural correlates of catastrophizing as a trait. Methods Sixty healthy adults underwent resting-state fMRI during capsaicin-induced sustained pain. Seed-to-voxel functional connectivity was analyzed using four seeds: primary somatosensory cortex (S1), secondary somatosensory cortex (S2), posterior insula, and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). Group-level effects of the Pain Catastrophizing Scale (PCS) and its interaction with subjective pain intensity on whole-brain connectivity were examined using voxel-wise multiple regression. Results Higher PCS was associated with increased S2–anterior cingulate cortex/medial prefrontal cortex (ACC/mPFC) connectivity and reduced PCC–visual association cortex (BA19) connectivity. A significant PCS × pain intensity interaction emerged in PCC–supplementary motor area (SMA) connectivity, with reduced coupling at higher pain intensity in high catastrophizers but increased coupling in low catastrophizers. Conclusions Our findings indicate that pain catastrophizing is not a unitary affective amplification but rather a multidimensional cognitive–affective configuration distributed across multiple intrinsic networks, corresponding to three functional levels: sensory–affective appraisal, self-referential processing, and context-dependent behavioral regulation. By isolating these patterns from the qualitative heterogeneity of prior clinical pain samples, our findings delineate a neural configuration more likely to reflect trait-like features of catastrophizing itself rather than confounds of specific pain conditions. Significance Statement To clarify the intrinsic neural mechanisms of pain catastrophizing in a controlled experimental setting, we examined resting-state functional connectivity in healthy individuals under a standardized pain model. The analysis revealed three connectivity pathways: increased S2–ACC/mPFC coupling, reduced PCC–visual association cortex coupling, and a pain-dependent reversal of PCC–SMA coupling between high and low catastrophizers. These pathways converge onto the core components of the fear-avoidance model, offering neural correlates for a framework previously characterized at the cognitive–behavioral level.
Experience modulates how actions are represented: a comparison between gymnasts and non-gymnasts
Ellen Burkhardt; Leonardo Jost; Petra Jansen; Angelika Lingnau; Marius Zimmermann
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A growing body of theoretical and experimental accounts suggest that observed actions are represented in multidimensional representational spaces. So far there is little evidence how these representations are shaped by experience. Here we investigate whether and how action spaces are modulated by long-term experience with particular action domains by comparing action spaces of gymnast actions in action experts, i.e. gymnasts, and non-experts. The similarity structure of gymnast actions was characterized in N = 40 experts and non-experts using multi-arrangement tasks on short videos of gymnast actions. Within-group leave-one-out correlations suggested that experts’ similarity structures are more consistent than those of non-experts. Furthermore, hierarchical clustering and representational similarity analyses suggest that, whereas non-experts are more strongly driven by visually salient features of actions, experts’ similarity ratings are based more strongly on functionally and possibly conceptually relevant movement features of the same actions. These results provide first evidence that action spaces are not static entities but subject to long-term experience with action domains.
How Does Social Media Make Adolescents Lonely? Social Capital and Social Comparison as Heterogeneous Within-Person Mediators
Rebecca Godard; Amber van der Wal; Ine Beyens
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Social media is often blamed for the “epidemic” of loneliness facing today’s adolescents, yet evidence remains mixed. Drawing on the extended active–passive social media use model, the current study tested two potential mechanisms linking social media use to adolescent loneliness—social capital and social comparison. Using a three-week experience-sampling study of 387 adolescents (Nobs = 35,356), we employed dynamic structural equation modelling to conduct longitudinal, within-person, and person-specific mediation analyses. Contrary to theoretical predictions, when adolescents engaged in more active social media use (e.g., messaging) than usual, they reported greater loneliness, and this effect was mediated by lower social capital. Supporting theoretical predictions, when adolescents engaged in more passive social media use (e.g., scrolling) than usual, they reported greater loneliness, and this effect was mediated by greater social comparison. Both indirect effects displayed significant heterogeneity across adolescents, and meaningful effects were concentrated among a subset of adolescents. Exploratory analyses also revealed that indirect effects varied over time within adolescents. Given the prevalence of adolescent loneliness, it is highly concerning that both active and passive social media use may contribute to this pressing issue. The mediating roles of social capital and social comparison suggest avenues for interventions to promote healthy social media use. Finally, between-person and across-time heterogeneity in effects highlights the need to avoid one-size-fits-all conclusions about social media and adolescent loneliness, and to consider individual difference and contextual factors that drive social media effects.
Social Comparison Threat and Coping: Affective, Cognitive and Behavioral Outcomes in Response to False Performance-Related Feedback
Thomas Meyer; Ann-Kathrin Zenses; Nexhmedin Morina
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Background: Social comparisons shape our behavior. The general comparative processing model (gComp) suggests that evaluating one’s attributes against salient upward social standards elicits motivational appraisal ranging from threat to challenge, each typically associated with corresponding pessimistic or optimistic coping responses. This, in turn, manifests in specific affective, cognitive, and behavioral responses. To our knowledge, this is the first study to provide an initial experimental test of gComp assumptions. Methods: Participants completed a 2-back task framed as indicative of academic performance. They were randomly assigned to high-threat (n = 67) or low-threat (n = 62) conditions, receiving false social comparison feedback on their performance relative to that of previous participants. Outcome measures included affect, cognitive responses (i.e., rededication, distraction, reconstrual, commitment), and a behavioral choice (i.e., task repetition). Results: Participants in the high-threat condition reported significantly higher increases in negative affect (p < .001), greater rededication (i.e., downplaying the task's importance; p = .011), and lower commitment (p < .001) compared to those in the low-threat condition. However, no significant differences were found for the behavioral outcome measure (p = .149). Conclusions: The findings underscore the potential of a process-based approach to social comparison to advance our understanding of how comparative feedback shapes affective, cognitive, and behavioral responses.
How to measure my sense of “volition” or “obligation” toward the environment: Validation of the Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration Scale adapted to the environment.
Kelly Fraguela Glarner; Margaux Bugnon; Julien Chanal
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Despite a recent interest in need satisfaction in environmental literature, no validated tool adapted to the environment that includes both need satisfaction and need frustration exists yet. However, measuring autonomy, competence and relatedness satisfaction and frustration as conceptualized by the Self-Determination Theory would allow for a more integrative understanding. The present research aims to develop and validate the Basic and Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration Scale adapted to the environment (BPNSFS-E). In Study 1 (N = 205), the Confirmatory Factor Analysis supported a six-factor structure (composed of the satisfaction and frustration of each of the three needs). The analysis demonstrated an acceptable construct of validity. Through Study 2, composed of two measurement times (NT1 = 306, NT2 = 294), we observed adequate measurement invariance and temporal stability. The results observed in Study 1 and 2 provided evidence for the validity of the scale and its relevance for environmental literature. In addition to the methodological addition to the literature, the results also displayed unique relationships between the BPNSFS-E and the behavioral and affective outcomes, thus supporting the distinction between the two constructs. In future research, this scale will enable an integrative understanding of the motivational process, environmental engagement and wellbeing in the context of climate change.
Predicting Bilinguals' End-of-year Reading Using A Best-Language Approach: Efficacy Depends on Grade and Outcome Language
Julian M Siebert; MĂłnica Zegers; Rachel L. Eggleston; Lillian DurĂĄn; Gorno Tempini Maria Luisa
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Spanish-English bilinguals are the largest bilingual group in U.S. schools, yet the frameworks used to predict their reading from early screening data were developed on largely monolingual samples, leaving open the question of which language(s) to assess. This study compared three approaches to predicting end-of-year (EOY) reading from beginning-of-year (BOY) early-literacy and language skills in 553 Spanish-English bilingual kindergarten and first-grade students: English-only, Spanish-only, and a derived best-language score (the higher of a child's two single-language scores per task). Linear mixed-effects models, controlling for school clustering, compared these approaches separately by grade, outcome language (English/Spanish), and instructional context (bilingual vs. English-only). Best-language scoring did not uniformly improve prediction; benefits diminished with grade. In kindergarten, it matched or modestly exceeded the best single-language approach (marginal RÂČ = .35 for English outcomes, .35 for Spanish outcomes) and explained the most variance for Spanish outcomes. By first grade, once target-language word reading emerged as a dominant proximal predictor, best-language scores offered no advantage over English-only assessment for English outcomes (RÂČ = .57 vs. .43). English-only assessment predicted Spanish reading poorly, especially in kindergarten, while Spanish and best-language approaches predicted both outcome languages reasonably well throughout. Findings align with a distributed-knowledge account: decoding-related skills transfer across languages and benefit from best-language scoring, while language-comprehension skills are language-specific and gain little from it. Practically, assessment language should be matched to the skill, grade, and outcome of interest rather than defaulting to one language for all children.
Dynamic and Image Variation Archive (DIVA-Face): A novel controlled facial stimuli set
Wenrui Li; Raphaël Legrand; William Daro; Christel Devue
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Understanding how humans learn, recognize or otherwise process unfamiliar faces requires stimulus materials that balance experimental control with ecological validity. Although face learning research has highlighted the importance of within-person variability, most existing studies rely on static ambient images or do not systematically disentangle appearance-based variability from other display-related factors. Here, we introduce the Dynamic and Image Variation Archive (DIVA-Face), a video-based face database designed to fill this gap. The database comprises 8,064 video clips and 2,016 still images of eight actresses recorded under tightly controlled conditions. Each identity is presented across orthogonally manipulated appearance dimensions, including hairstyle (via six distinct wigs—hair down or up—and one balaclava), makeup (lipstick present or absent), and accessory (glasses present or absent), giving 28 distinct combinations. Each appearance combination was captured under three lighting directions, while performing twelve dynamic facial actions for videos, or posing with three head orientations for photographs. All recordings were made against a uniform green-screen background, allowing flexible manipulation of contextual information for future applications. To validate the usability of the database, we conducted a preregistered proof-of-concept experiment using an incidental face learning paradigm with a subset of the stimuli. Results show reliable effects of appearance manipulations on recognition performance, even under online testing conditions. These findings confirm that the database supports controlled behavioral investigations of unfamiliar face learning. The database is also suited for behavioral, social-cognitive, and computational investigations beyond face learning, and is openly available to promote reproducibility and cross-disciplinary integration.
Tangled within the psychotherapy process: A panel network analysis of clients' session reactions
Petra Hubatka; Tomáơ Ƙiháček; Adam Klocek
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Objective: The network approach offers a novel framework for dynamic, complex phenomena such as the therapeutic process. Method: This study applies a cross-lagged and autoregressive panel network analysis to session-by-session psychotherapy data from 5,312 clients (Mage = 33.68; 77% women) treated by 517 therapists (Mage = 44.21; 59% women), the majority of whom (34%) identified with the humanistic tradition. Using items from the Session Reactions Scale-3-Brief as nodes, two panel network analyses were conducted: the first covering sessions 1–5 and the second covering sessions 6–10. Results: The results suggest that promoting and maintaining a client’s positive self-image throughout the first ten sessions is crucial. Notably, while skills strengthening played a significant role in the first five sessions, its central importance diminished in the subsequent five sessions. Conversely, while feeling distanced was of little significance at the start of therapy, its importance increased over the second set of five sessions. Interestingly, while the temporal dynamics differed between the two periods, the contemporaneous within-person relationships maintained similar structures. Conclusion: Future research should utilize intensive, within-session data to further validate these patterns.
Real-time interaction and the signalling value of voluntary early cooperation in humans
Ryutaro Mori; Nobuyuki HANAKI; Tatsuya Kameda
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Cooperative interaction often unfolds in real time, with individuals choosing not only what to do but also when to commit. This temporal feature gives rise to an endogenous decision order and can fundamentally alter the dynamics of social dilemmas. Here, we examine how endogenous decision timing shapes human cooperation by comparing two-player social dilemmas across three timing structures: simultaneous, assigned-order sequential, and real-time choices. Across two experiments (N = 718), pairs achieved mutual cooperation most often when they interacted in real time. This advantage was not explained by greater cooperation among first movers. Instead, second movers reciprocated cooperation more reliably when the move order emerged endogenously. A belief-dependent reciprocity model captured these patterns, suggesting that real-time interaction can change the meaning of early cooperation for humans. Because players can strategically wait and observe whether the other player acts first, choosing to cooperate early in real time is more demanding than cooperating as an assigned first mover. Voluntary early cooperation thus provides a stronger signal of the first mover’s cooperative intent and increases second movers’ willingness to reciprocate. Real-time interaction facilitates mutual cooperation not by increasing prosociality per se, but by changing the signalling value of actions under strategic uncertainty.
Learning Dynamic Neural Evidence Representations for Time-Adaptive Brain--Computer Interfaces
Beining Cao; Ziyi Zhao; Xiaowei Jiang; Daniel Leong; Yingtao Ren; Thomas Do; Yu-Cheng Chang; Chin-Teng Lin
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Brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) decode neural activity into commands, yet most existing systems rely on fixed-window decoding that may result in redundant observation or unreliable predictions due to insufficient evidence. Adaptive temporal decision-making (ATDM) addresses this accuracy–time trade-off by progressively accumulating EEG evidence and deciding when to stop. However, existing EEG encoders are mainly designed for fixed-window decoding and may not provide reliable state representations under variable observation lengths. In addition, current ATDM-oriented encoders are typically tailored to specific EEG paradigms, limiting their applicability across different BCI tasks. To address these limitations, we propose ProtoTrigger, a two-stage prototype learning-based EEG state encoder for ATDM. ProtoTrigger uses prototype matching to extract stable local EEG embeddings and prototype-based attention to aggregate decision-relevant temporal evidence during progressive observation. Offline evaluations across three EEG paradigms demonstrated state-of-the-art accuracy-time trade-offs and strong generalizability across different EEG paradigms. An online human-in-the-loop augmented reality-based BCI experiment further demonstrated its real-time feasibility. These results suggest that ProtoTrigger provides a general EEG state encoding framework for efficient ATDM-based BCI systems.
Radical Ideas for Radical Self-Importance? Exploring the Links Between Narcissism, Extreme Political Views, and Negative Attitudes towards Political Opponents
Dominika Adamczyk; Adam Karakula; Dominika Maison; Zuzanna Molenda; Marta Marchlewska; Marta Rogoza
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In three studies (Study 1; U.K., N = 402; Study 2; U.S., N = 511; Study 3; Poland, N = 1143), we examined links between narcissism and extreme left- and right-wing political views. Across studies, grandiose narcissism consistently predicted stronger support for political extremes. Study 1 showed that grandiose (but not vulnerable) narcissism was linked to support for extreme right-wing views, while Study 2 and 3 that grandiose narcissism was linked to support for right-wing and left-wing political views. In Study 2 and 3, we found that grandiose narcissism link to extreme political views was related to negative attitudes toward political out-group members. The results indicate that grandiose narcissists do not prefer one extreme; they are drawn to extreme views.
Mindscapes of Second Language Acquisition: A New Perspective on the Cognitive Inquiry of Language
Junya Fukuta
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This volume repositions second language acquisition (SLA) not as a peripheral concern, but as a central domain of cognitive science. It establishes the epistemological foundations required for SLA to function as a genuinely cognitive science, and on this basis develops a new Causal-Mechanistic Systems Approach. Through a series of specific models, the book offers fresh resolutions to long-standing theoretical debates in the field. A distinctive feature of the volume is its attempt to bridge classical cognitivism and complex systems theory while advancing a new form of realist cognitivism. It also brings probabilistic inference, embodiment, and linguistic relativity together within a single integrated explanatory framework. Departing from approaches that treat pedagogical outcomes in isolation, the book situates SLA within a broader account of cognition and the human mind. In doing so, it connects questions traditionally addressed in second language research with debates across cognitive science, linguistics, and the philosophy of mind. This ambitious and interdisciplinary volume will be essential reading for researchers in SLA, cognitive scientists, linguists, and graduate students seeking a deeper understanding of language, cognition, and the architecture of the human mind.
The Kia TÄ«mata Pai Randomized Controlled Trial: ENRICH Early Childhood Teacher Training Improves Toddlers' Oral Language and Self-Regulation
Elaine Reese; Tugce Bakir-Demir; Louis J Moses; Sean Marshall; Elizabeth Schaughency; Karen Salmon; Mele Taumoepeau; Jimmy McLauchlan; Clair Edgeler; Hayley Guiney
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Children’s oral language and self-regulation skills are critical for healthy development and life trajectories. ENRICH is a preventive intervention developed for early childhood teachers to enhance these skills in toddlers. Kia TÄ«mata Pai (Best Start study) is a longitudinal cluster randomized controlled trial in 136 New Zealand early childhood education centers testing the impact of ENRICH with 1875 teachers on 1481 toddlers’ ( M = 20.6 months at recruitment; 72% European, 24% MĂŁori, 23% Asian, 9% Pacific using a total response method; 7% low-SES, 40% middle-SES, 53% high-SES) oral language and self-regulation skills. After 18 months, ENRICH produced benefits for children’s oral language and self-regulation skills (parent and teacher ratings) and for early literacy and social skills (teacher ratings) compared to an active control condition. Oral language benefits (parent ratings) emerged earlier for children from low- and mid-socioeconomic (SES) families and whose mothers had lower educational qualifications. Benefits for oral language and self-regulation skills at age 3 held regardless of children’s SES, ethnicity, bilingual status, initial language level, age, and maternal education. Benefits for oral language at age 3 were moderated by child sex and differed by informant, with teachers perceiving greater ENRICH benefits for boys, and parents for girls. The likely mechanism of ENRICH’s effects is through sensitive serve-and-return interactions that support children’s oral language and attention skills. ENRICH is a potentially powerful tool for supporting toddlers’ language, cognitive, and socioemotional development with possible downstream effects for academic achievement, health, and well-being. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/iIV1l0-cKIo .
Bowed air columns and blown plates: Odd combinations of excitation mechanisms and resonant structures impact perception
Erica Ying Huynh; Joël Bensoam; Stephen McAdams
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The current study examines how interactions between excitation mechanisms and resonant structures influence the perception of these mechanical components. Nine interactions between three excitations (bowing, blowing, striking) and three resonators (string, air column, plate) were simulated with Modalys, a digital physically inspired modeling platform. Interactions were either typical (e.g., bowed string) or atypical (e.g., bowed air column) of acoustic musical instruments. Two experiments were conducted using three exemplars of each interaction. Exemplars were created by manipulating two parameters that aïŹ€ect the resulting timbres for each excitation type. Two groups of listeners rated how well the exemplars resembled each excitation type (Experiment 1) or each resonator type (Experiment 2). Listeners assigned the highest resemblance ratings to the correct excitations and resonators that produced the typical interactions. For the atypical interactions, listeners assigned the highest resemblance ratings to either the correct excitation or resonator but not both. The mechanical component they correctly perceived biased perception toward the complementary component that it most typically interacts with in acoustic musical instruments. Mental models for sound source components seem to be limited by listeners’ familiarity with them.
Blend in space: Effect of spatial separation on instrumental blend
Erica Ying Huynh; Catherine Guastavino
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Blend describes the perceptual fusion of separate sound sources into a single unity. Previous studies on blend perception presented sounds over headphones or stereo speakers without considering whether spatial positions influence blend. In the current study, musicians and nonmusicians sat at the centre of a circular array of 16 speakers. Four sound pairs with low (flute–bell), medium (clarinet–tuba, violin–bassoon), and high (oboe–trumpet) levels of blend were presented in various speaker configurations: one sound was presented at the front or right speaker, while the other sound was concurrently presented at any one of the 16 speakers. Spatial separation influenced blend ratings mainly for medium blend pairs. Musicians were more sensitive to spatial separation than nonmusicians, especially for the high blend pair. These findings show that blend depends on both timbral and spatial cues and provide the first empirical evidence for an effect of spatial separation on blend.
Optimism as naturalistic behaviour
Elizabeth L Fisher; Jakob Hohwy; Claire O'Callaghan
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Biases present a central puzzle for understanding adaptive behaviour, particularly those observed across species such as optimism bias. Optimism bias has been studied across human psychology and cognitive neuroscience, as well as ethology and ecology. Human work on optimism has largely relied on deliberative, self-report measures, whereas animal work has focused on the behavioural expression of judgment bias. Here, we propose that reconceptualising optimism bias as a naturalistic behaviour can unify these cross-species approaches. We situate human optimism bias within a broader ecological framework, integrating perspectives from psychology, systems neuroscience, and ethology. We advance the idea that optimism should be understood not only as a subjective judgement, but as a naturally occurring and evolutionarily conserved behaviour that leads to increased engagement. By foregrounding optimism as a naturalistic behaviour, we provide a conceptual framework for understanding its adaptive function, opening new avenues for investigating optimism—and other biases—in both humans and animals.
Realistic deepfakes are detected better from a single glance than deliberate inspection
Dalia Israel; Timothy Cottier; Genevieve Quek; Manuel Varlet; Tijl Grootswagers
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The rapidly increasing realism of AI-generated faces threatens trust in digital media, as observers often fail to reliably distinguish AI-generated faces from real faces under prolonged viewing. Across three experiments, participants (N = 300) classified faces varying in realism, exposure duration, and feature availability as real or AI-generated. Observers detected AI-generated faces above chance based on 83 ms when external features, such as hair and background, were present, whereas unlimited viewing did not improve detection of realistic AI-generated faces. These findings suggest observers can extract gist-based authenticity-related signals from a single glimpse, but these may be overridden during prolonged evaluative face processing.
Shared Neurobiological and Computational Mechanisms of Psychedelic, Contemplative, and Fasting-Induced Mystical Experience
Alex Jinich-Diamant
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Psychedelics, contemplative practice, and fasting are physiologically unrelated interventions that nevertheless converge, across cultures and centuries, on a common experiential endpoint: the mystical state. Here I propose that this convergence reflects shared disruption of a single computational architecture, the precision-weighted predictive hierarchy, through three mechanistically distinct but functionally equivalent routes. Serotonergic psychedelics sensitize layer 5 pyramidal neurons and disinhibit higher-order thalamic nuclei, relaxing the gain on top-down priors; open-monitoring meditation shifts thalamocortical coupling geometry toward diffuse, matrix-type connectivity, elevating cortical entropy; and caloric restriction attenuates the metabolic machinery sustaining high-level attractor states, destabilizing the default mode network from below. All three routes terminate in a transient near-critical regime characterized by relaxed priors, scale-free cortical dynamics, and expanded degrees of freedom in the brain's generative model, conditions I identify as the neurobiological substrate of mystical experience. Critically, the depth of this state, not its pharmacological or procedural occasion, is the primary predictor of lasting therapeutic benefit, implicating conscious experience itself as the mechanistic agent of change. I further argue that near-critical dynamics may constitute the conditions under which field-theoretic and quantum-coherent contributions to consciousness become empirically detectable. This framework generates testable predictions across molecular, circuit, and phenomenological levels, and positions the neuroscience of mystical states as a tractable frontier for understanding how the brain constructs, maintains, and fundamentally reorganizes its model of reality.
Neurodivergence, Physical Activity and Sport: Challenging Neuro-Normativity and Advancing the Field
Patrick Jachyra; Robert Townsend
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Neurodivergence is fast emerging area of interest in sport and physical activity (PA), yet research remains dominated by biomedical assumptions and deficit-based framings. This chapter outlines two contrasting perspectives on neurodivergence - the medical model and the neurodiversity paradigm - and examines how these shape understandings of participation across the lifespan. We illustrate how sensory, social, structural, and socioeconomic barriers restrict neurodivergent people’s engagement in sport and PA and argue that these exclusions reflect broader systems of ableism, disablism, and neuro-normativity embedded within sport. We reflexively interrogate how neuro normative assumptions are reproduced in sport and PA arenas by drawing on our research experience. We conclude by outlining a research agenda grounded in neurodivergent justice, calling for neurodivergent led methodologies, critical interrogation of sport’s normative environments, challenging neuro-ableism and a shift from individualised interventions to structural transformation. We ask, what if barriers are not individual shortcomings, but limits of the human imagination.
Children predict physical, social, and psychological traits from perceived age
Kosta Boskovic; David Barner
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Age is a richly informative trait for reasoning about other people, as our minds, bodies, and behaviors change with age. However, while much research has asked whether children use other observable characteristics of people such as gender and race to make predictions about them, much less work has asked whether children do so based on perceived age. In the present study, we conducted a broad investigation of this ability, asking whether children understand how people’s physical capacities, emotions, intellectual ability, authority, and preferences change with age. Across two pre-registered studies, we showed pairs of figures of people differing in age to 185 4- to 6-year-old children and 182 adults and asked them to predict traits in each of these domains (e.g., “Who needs more help?”). We found that, like adults, children systematically associated traits in each of these domains with the younger or older figures, not only when making judgments about a child vs. an adult but also a younger vs. older child. These results suggest that, as for gender and race, children form expectations early in development on how people differ physically, socially, and psychologically with age.
Does Stress Matter? No Evidence for Age Differences in Inference Generation Under Acute Stress
Ekaterina Varkentin; Irina R Brich; Mariana Popova; Philipp Mock; Markus Huff
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Narrative comprehension involves deriving meaning from information and constructing a mental representation of a narrative's components. It conveys knowledge, information, and explanations, playing a crucial role in everyday life. Inferencing – is one of the key processes in narrative comprehension. While cognitive changes associated with aging are well-documented, research on narrative comprehension and inferencing in older adults remains inconclusive, highlighting the need for further study. Despite being ever-present in modern life, the role of stress in this process also remains largely unexplored. This online study involved 298 participants, who were randomly assigned to either a stress group, which underwent stress induction, or a control group. Participants viewed picture-based narratives and were tasked with filling in missing elements by describing the middle part of the story in their own words. This approach differs from previous studies that primarily assessed inferences using comprehension questions or true-false statements, enabling us to capture the inference generation process as it unfolds. The findings show that narrative comprehension, including inference generation, remains stable across age and education groups and is unaffected by acute stress. This highlights the resilience of these abilities, even under challenging conditions. The implications for cognitive theories and directions for future research are discussed.
Customer Behavior in the Presence of Algorithmic Marketing Agents: The Role of Hedonic Values
Alvaro Chacon; Carolina Martinez; Edgar Kausel
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Artificial intelligence (AI) marketing agents have increasingly emerged as a viable alternative to human representatives for direct customer interactions. In this research, we investigated customer behaviors in response to sales scenarios managed by AI agents considering individual customers’ values. In three pre-registered studies, we examined the willingness of 1,417 participants to engage in promotional activities related to purchasing real estate and vehicles. Using regression and simple slope analyses, we examined how the interaction among agents (human or algorithm), response types (negative or positive), and customers’ hedonic values influence the likelihood of becoming promoters. Our results revealed a moderation effect in which the relationship between the type of marketing agent and the response type was influenced by customers’ hedonic values. We found a positive relationship between hedonic values and promotion behavior when negative feedback was delivered by a human agent and when positive feedback came from an algorithmic agent. In contrast, algorithmic agents tend to elicit flatter responses across hedonic levels when delivering negative feedback, indicating reduced emotional engagement but also less potential for dissatisfaction. These insights emphasize the importance of aligning the source of communication with individual consumer characteristics to enhance customer promotion.
Collectively Negotiating Trust and Mistrust in Generative AI: Evidence from Reddit Discussions of ChatGPT and Claude
Rita Tang; Zhihuai Lin; Jiahui Liu
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As generative AI systems become embedded in everyday work, learning, creativity, information seeking, and emotional support, understanding how users construct trust and mistrust is increasingly important. Prior research often treats trust in AI as an individual-level perception; less is known about how trust and mistrust are negotiated in online communities. This study analyzes 301,498 Reddit posts from r/ChatGPT and r/ClaudeAI using structural topic modeling, a theory-guided trust/mistrust dictionary, and human interpretation. We identified nine trust-relevant topics: one trust topic, four mistrust topics, and four ambivalent topics. Trust centered on AI companionship and therapy-like support, whereas mistrust concerned jailbreaks, model degradation, app bugs and outages, and inaccurate answers. Ambivalent discourse involved AI ethics, sycophancy, writing detection, and knowledge limits. Cross-community and temporal analyses showed shifting patterns across systems and events. Regression analyses showed emotional trust predicted higher scores and comments, while most mistrust topics predicted lower engagement.
Successful Automatic Model Discovery Can Produce False Mechanisms
Hanbo Xie; Robert C Wilson
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Automatic model discovery is appealing because it seems to offer what black-box prediction cannot: symbolic, executable accounts that can be read as candidate theories. That apparent advantage also creates a distinctive failure mode. When a predictive surrogate is expressed in familiar scientific language, it may be mistaken for the mechanism that generated the data. We tested this risk in a controlled risky-choice benchmark where the true mechanisms were known by construction but intentionally alien relative to standard human-facing theory space. An LLM-driven discovery loop observed only trial stimuli and noisy choices, proposed executable symbolic candidate models, and selected candidates by predictive fit. By ordinary criteria, the loop appeared successful: across 60 synthetic subjects from three ground-truth rule families, it generated 2,401 runnable candidates, improved validation likelihood during search, predicted noisy held-out choices with 79.3% accuracy, predicted deterministic rule choices with 84.1% accuracy, exceeded simple visible heuristics, and preserved family-level behavioral structure. Yet none of the 60 endpoint models recovered the true generative mechanism. Oracle controls showed that the true mechanisms were behaviorally recoverable and would have been favored if proposed. The failure was therefore not prediction or model selection, but hypothesis generation. Successful automatic model discovery can produce theory-shaped objects that are useful, interpretable, predictive, and false.
Client-Identified Outcomes of Individual Psychotherapy: A Meta-Method Study
Michaela Ladmannova; Tomáơ Ƙiháček; Ladislav Timulak
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A recent qualitative meta-analysis of client-reported psychotherapy outcomes (Ladmanová et al., 2025) identified 10 clusters of outcome meta-categories, including self-awareness/self-understanding and emotional or behavioural functioning. The extent to which these client-identified outcome clusters are shaped by characteristics of the primary studies, such as clients’ presenting issues or therapy type, however, remains unclear. This meta-method study examined whether psychotherapy outcome clusters identified in that meta-analysis were associated with key characteristics of the primary studies. Data from 177 qualitative studies were analyzed in relation to clients’ presenting issues, psychotherapy approach, researchers’ theoretical orientation, timing of data collection, publication year, and sample size. Frequencies of the ten outcome clusters were compared across study characteristics. Outcome clusters were largely stable across presenting issues, therapeutic approaches, researchers’ theoretical orientations, publication year, and timing of assessment. The only notable, though small, difference was found for behavioral functioning, which was reported less frequently in studies collecting data soon after treatment termination. Sample size showed small to moderate associations with the number of outcome clusters identified. These findings suggest that client-reported psychotherapy outcomes are relatively stable across research and clinical contexts and are not strongly influenced by presenting issues or therapeutic models.
Is Religion Necessary for Morality? Reframing an Old Hilbert Problem
Onurcan Yilmaz; Ozan Isler
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We revisit a Hilbert Question first posed a decade ago: Is religion necessary for morality? The question was originally framed at three levels: phylogenetic (whether nonhuman primates display rudimentary moral capacities), historical (how moralizing religions reshaped moral life), and ontogenetic (how socialization and ritual affect moral cognition). Empirical findings over the past decade render the strong necessity thesis untenable: moral capacities emerge in infancy, precursors exist without religion, and secular institutions can sustain moral order. Yet religion remains consequential—not as the source of morality but as a recurrent pathway for stabilizing moral expectations across contexts. Religious systems sustain compliance through mechanisms such as supernatural monitoring, ritual practices, peer conformity, and meta-ethical commitments, thereby reducing variability in moral judgment and behavior. Longitudinal evidence indicates that religiosity is not reliably associated with higher average prosociality but with greater behavioral stability in social decisions—what we term moral consistency. Complementing these findings, historical datasets suggest that moralizing deities consolidated rather than initiated large-scale cooperation. Shifting focus from necessity to stability clarifies how shared belief systems—religious or secular—regulate social life and scale cooperation. Addressing these questions advances a cumulative, interdisciplinary science of religion and morality as dual-encoded in biology and culture.
Real-time interaction and the signalling value of voluntary early cooperation in humans
Ryutaro Mori; Nobuyuki HANAKI; Tatsuya Kameda
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Cooperative interaction often unfolds in real time, with individuals choosing not only what to do but also when to commit. This temporal feature gives rise to an endogenous decision order and can fundamentally alter the dynamics of social dilemmas. Here, we examine how endogenous decision timing shapes human cooperation by comparing two-player social dilemmas across three timing structures: simultaneous, assigned-order sequential, and real-time choices. Across two experiments (N = 718), pairs achieved mutual cooperation most often when they interacted in real time. This advantage was not explained by greater cooperation among first movers. Instead, second movers reciprocated cooperation more reliably when the move order emerged endogenously. A belief-dependent reciprocity model captured these patterns, suggesting that real-time interaction can change the meaning of early cooperation for humans. Because players can strategically wait and observe whether the other player acts first, choosing to cooperate early in real time is more demanding than cooperating as an assigned first mover. Voluntary early cooperation thus provides a stronger signal of the first mover’s cooperative intent and increases second movers’ willingness to reciprocate. Real-time interaction facilitates mutual cooperation not by increasing prosociality per se, but by changing the signalling value of actions under strategic uncertainty.
Reassessing longitudinal links between meaning in life and internalizing symptoms: Commentary on Wang et al. (2026)
Kimmo Sorjonen; Bo Melin; Marika Melin
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Wang et al. reported significant associations in a cross-lagged panel network (CLPN) model and interpreted these findings as evidence that meaning in life and internalizing symptoms may mutually diminish one another over time. Because cross-lagged coefficients obtained from observational data can arise from statistical artifacts rather than genuine prospective processes, we revisited this conclusion using a multiverse analytic framework. Applying several alternative longitudinal models to data simulated from the correlation structure reported by Wang et al., we observed patterns that varied substantially across specifications. Some models suggested protective effects, others indicated adverse effects, and several yielded negligible associations. When estimates were synthesized using meta-analytic aggregation, the resulting effects did not differ from zero. These findings imply that the reported CLPN effects may not provide robust evidence for reciprocal longitudinal influences between meaning in life and internalizing symptoms. More broadly, the results highlight the need for caution when interpreting cross-lagged associations from non-experimental data and underscore the value of evaluating conclusions across multiple analytic specifications.
Get What You Need: Need Fulfillment as Implicit Emotion Regulation for Conflict Resolution
Neta Raz; Anna Dorfman; Maayan Katzir
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Anger constitutes a barrier to conflict resolution, often leading to escalation and hindering reconciliation. Accordingly, examining reconciliation through the lens of emotion regulation is crucial. Two prominent approaches to the study of reconciliation have focused either solely on emotion regulation or solely on need fulfillment. By integrating these theoretical frameworks, we extend existing conflict resolution approaches and suggest that need fulfillment functions as a form of implicit emotion regulation. In five preregistered experiments (total N = 1,877), we induced unfulfilled needs associated with anger across a workplace conflict scenario (Experiments 1–2 and 5), a close relationship conflict scenario (Experiment 3), and a real-time experience (Experiment 4). Fulfilling the need for status (Experiments 1–2 and 5) and justice (Experiments 3–5) decreased anger and increased willingness to reconcile with the offender. These effects emerged both when the need was fulfilled by the offender (Experiments 1–4) and by a third party (Experiment 5). We discuss the theoretical and practical implications, as well as the benefits and challenges of need fulfillment as a form of interpersonal emotion regulation for conflict resolution.
Form-meaning mapping in the Italian lexicon: iconicity norms for more than 11,000 words
José Antonio Hinojosa; Gianmarco Convertino; Mara Stockner; Silvia Francesca Maria Pizzoli; Luca Rinaldi; Celia Martínez Tomås; Daniele Gatti
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The traditional assumption that associations between word forms and meanings are arbitrary has been increasingly challenged by evidence for non-arbitrary form-meaning mappings in language. Iconic words are terms whose form is perceived to resemble aspects of their meaning, and a growing body of research indicates that iconicity influences language acquisition, comprehension, and production. In the present normative study, we collected perceived iconicity ratings for a large set of Italian words. A total of 790 native Italian speakers rated more than 11,000 words by judging the extent to which each word’s form resembled its meaning. The resulting norms showed good reliability and convergent validity; they were also associated with several lexical-semantic and affective variables. Finally, representational content analyses showed that iconicity can be predicted from both form-based and distributional semantic representations, with the best performance obtained by models combining these sources of information. In contrast, representational similarity analyses showed that words with similar iconicity ratings were only weakly similar to one another in their form-based or semantic representations. These findings suggest that Italian iconicity is shaped by a combination of semantic and surface-form cues, rather than by a single uniform mapping between form and meaning.
Sensory Psycholinguistics
Norbert Vanek
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Are words special in shaping how we perceive the world, or can nonverbal cues such as shape, colour or sound activate knowledge about sensory perceptions in similar ways? A growing body of psycholinguistic research suggests that language labels provide a uniquely powerful boost to perception, supporting discrimination, pattern recognition and category learning across complex multisensory input types. This Element surveys recent advances in sensory psycholinguistics, the study of how language influences perception through vision, hearing, touch, smell and taste. It introduces core concepts, reviews landmark experiments across each sensory modality and contextualises innovative methods together with a variety of related measures. Designed for both new and experienced researchers, the Element invites critical reflection on how linguistic cues influence perceptual processing and meaning-making. The five senses are examined in a reversed hierarchical order (smell, taste, touch, hearing, vision) to underscore that commonly assumed sensory hierarchies are neither universal nor cross-culturally uniform.
Starting and stopping to volunteer is related to 2-year personality development in a population-based sample of older German adults
Georg Henning; Nadiya Kelle
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Personality traits are known to develop even in older age, but predictors of change apart from health are still largely unknown. One potential driver of personality development may be volunteering, as it profoundly changes the contexts older adults find themselves in and the activities they do. In the present study, based on the TESSERA framework, we used two waves of the German Ageing Survey in a subsample of older adults aged 65 and older (N = 2,542) and tested if starting to volunteer or stopping to volunteer was associated with change in big five personality traits. Latent change score models showed mainly stability but small mean-level declines in openness and conscientiousness in the sample. Compared to those not volunteering, starting to volunteer was associated with increases in openness but declines in conscientiousness. Stopping to volunteer was associated with increases in agreeableness and declines in neuroticism. Effects were small (ÎČs ~.1). We discuss possible reasons for the partly unexpected results and call for more research on the role of lifestyle for personality development in older age.
Collectively Negotiating Trust and Mistrust in Generative AI: Evidence from Reddit Discussions of ChatGPT and Claude
Rita Tang; Zhihuai Lin; Jiahui Liu
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As generative AI systems become embedded in everyday work, learning, creativity, information seeking, and emotional support, understanding how users construct trust and mistrust is increasingly important. Prior research often treats trust in AI as an individual-level perception; less is known about how trust and mistrust are negotiated in online communities. This study analyzes 301,498 Reddit posts from r/ChatGPT and r/ClaudeAI using structural topic modeling, a theory-guided trust/mistrust dictionary, and human interpretation. We identified nine trust-relevant topics: one trust topic, four mistrust topics, and four ambivalent topics. Trust centered on AI companionship and therapy-like support, whereas mistrust concerned jailbreaks, model degradation, app bugs and outages, and inaccurate answers. Ambivalent discourse involved AI ethics, sycophancy, writing detection, and knowledge limits. Cross-community and temporal analyses showed shifting patterns across systems and events. Regression analyses showed emotional trust predicted higher scores and comments, while most mistrust topics predicted lower engagement.
Divine Verification: Introducing a CAPTCHA-based Religious Priming Technique
Firat Seker; Ensar Acem; Rozelin Vurgun; Burak Doğruyol; Ozan Isler; Onurcan Yilmaz
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Previous research on religious priming has predominantly relied on implicit and explicit approaches, both of which face critical limitations. Implicit primes often lack construct validity, while explicit primes are vulnerable to demand effects and social desirability biases. Moreover, the effectiveness of these methods has rarely been systematically validated. Addressing these gaps, we introduce and validate a novel technique—allusive priming—designed to minimize demand characteristics while reliably activating targeted constructs. Using allusive primes, religious themes (punitive, rewarding, forgiving, and neutral conceptions of God) were subtly embedded within CAPTCHA-like tasks. Following a preliminary calibration study (n = 104) to select materials, we conducted a preregistered online experiment (n = 2,770 U.S. participants) comparing the effectiveness of two different allusive priming conditions with a standard explicit prime in how effectively they increase religious thought saliency. Participants completed a Word Completion Task to assess religious thought accessibility and a dictator game to explore prosocial outcomes. Results demonstrated that one of our two allusive primes significantly increased religious word completions. Critically, participants exposed to allusive primes exhibited lower awareness of the manipulation’s purpose compared to those exposed to explicit primes, suggesting reduced demand effects. However, despite successful activation of religious thoughts, religious priming did not significantly influence generosity in the dictator game. These findings position allusive priming as a promising alternative to traditional methods, offering greater flexibility and ecological validity for priming diverse psychological constructs, while mitigating common validity threats.
Preactivation and probabilistic inference coexist during sentence comprehension
Stephanie Cho; Ryan Buggy; Adrian Staub; Cory Shain
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Human language comprehension is sensitive to predictability: words that are less predictable in context evoke larger responses in diverse measures of cognitive effort. Debate currently exists as to whether these effects reflect a linear facilitation due to preactivation of highly predictable words or a logarithmic cost due to probabilistic inference about the sentence’s interpretation in response to new information, with apparently contradictory empirical results supporting each position. Here we advance the hypothesis that preactivation and probabilistic inference coexist as distinguishable processes with distinct influences on processing demand, resulting in a superposition of linear and logarithmic predictability effects. We support this position by both reanalyzing and replicating at scale a prior study that supported the linear preactivation account (Brothers & Kuperberg, 2021). We show that, both in the original data and in our replication, the evidence is most consistent with a mixture of linear and logarithmic effects, suggesting distinct coexisting mechanisms. We further support the existence of a distinct effect of preactivation by using the size of the internal state transitions of a statistical language model as a proxy for preactivation, showing that these state transitions explain unique variance in our data. Together, our results reveal a comprehension system that both updates beliefs about the interpretation of the unfolding sentence bottom-up (inference) and proactively attempts to enter likely future processing states when they have strong contextual support (preactivation), thus shedding light simultaneously on the problem faced by the system (computational level) and the procedure used to solve it (algorithmic level).
Analyses of Naturalistic MEG Data using Multivariate Temporal Response Function Modeling: Findings from Time and Time-Frequency Investigations with Disambiguation and Memory Retrieval Metrics derived from a Transformer Language Model
Donald Dunagan
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Magnetoencephalography (MEG) can be used to probe cortical activity with millisecond-level temporal resolution. In the domains of psycho- and neurolinguistics, MEG data is classically analyzed in an event-related fashion following the presentation of carefully designed stimuli of different experimental conditions. While sentence comprehension is rarely given a second thought during our day-to-day lives, investigating such a phenomenon: 1) in a naturalistic manner; while 2) performing neuroimaging, involves particular technical methodology. This paper describes in detail the multivariate temporal response function modeling approach to analyzing naturalistic — e.g., in response to an audio storybook — MEG data from multiple different perspective including: 1) sensor vs. source space; 2) model comparison vs. analyzing individual predictor beta coefficients; 3) time domain vs. time-frequency domain; and 4) spatio-temporal cluster-based permutation testing vs. threshold-free cluster enhancement. Further, it does so focusing on word-by-word annotation metrics for two topical, well-established types of cognitive demand during sentence processing: 1) disambiguation — calculated as surprisal; and 2) memory retrieval — calculated as normalized attention entropy (NAE), both derived from GPT-2. While surprisal, NAE, and their interaction all pattern similarly in the time domain — correlating with bilateral temporal and temporoparietal activity ∌400–600 ms — in the time-frequency domain, surprisal and NAE are associated with a decrease in beta band power in the left superior temporal gyrus ∌600 ms, while their interaction is associated with an increase in theta band power in the left superior temporal gyrus ∌500 ms. These results affirm that surprisal indexes disambiguation during incremental sentence processing. More interesting, however, is the temporal overlap of effects for NAE and surprisal in the time domain, combined with the finding that NAE correlates with beta rather than theta band power. This paints a picture in which NAE — at least as derived as an aggregate metric over all final layer attention heads from GPT-2 — fails to index the hypothesized memory retrieval.
Patterns of fatal polysubstance overdose: Exploratory data analysis of a convenience sample of decedents in Harris County, Texas, 2016-2025
Dan Petrovitch; Kendall Farrell; Bruno Kluwe-Schiavon; Laura Stertz; Nikky Tran; Michael F. Weaver; Scott D. Lane; Angela M. Heads; Samuel J. Leonard; Thomas D. Meyer
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Aims. The current “fourth wave” of the U.S. opioid crisis is defined by increased polysubstance use, particularly fentanyl combined with stimulants, conferring greater risk of fatal overdose. This study characterized patterns of polysubstance use at time of death in a convenience sample of fatal overdose decedents. Methods. Cases were drawn from The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston Brain Collection. Toxicology reports were obtained from the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences. Deaths occurred between 2016 and 2025. Metabolites were attributed to parent drugs as appropriate. Drugs were collapsed into 25 classes. Exploratory data analysis characterized the extent and heterogeneity of polysubstance use at time of death. The Gini-Simpson index quantified the diversity of the combinations (GSI = probability that two randomly selected decedents have different observed combinations). Results. Data from 73 overdose decedents were analyzed (mean age = 41.1 years; 72.6% male; 71.2% White, 19.2% Black, 8.2% Hispanic). Decedents had M = 3.5 parent drugs detected and M = 2.5 implicated as cause of death (COD), representing M = 2.8 drug classes detected and M = 2.2 implicated as COD. At least four drugs were detected in 43.8% of cases (26.0% for COD). Of 51 drug-class combinations in COD determinations, 86.3% were only observed in single cases (GSI = .96). Conclusions. Polysubstance use was pervasive, and specific combinations were heterogeneous. The simplifying assumptions required to make this complexity tractable for epidemiological or pharmacogenomic modeling may involve substantial tradeoffs between parsimony and granularity, even in much larger samples.
A measurement framework of concept change in categorization tasks
Rebecca Albrecht; Mikhail S. Spektor
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In many categorization paradigms, category membership is ambiguous or internally defined, so that concept changes must be inferred from behavioral shifts rather than evaluated against an external criterion. The core challenge is localization: theories often describe concept change as an effect that happens close to the category boundary, yet existing analytical approaches cannot distinguish between such changes and alternative plausible explanations. We introduce a principled measurement framework for concept change that anchors all contrasts to individuals' own decision boundaries estimated from baseline behavior. Our approach defines regions of interest around these boundaries and provides a standardized within-subject effect size that can readily be interpreted as percentage-point shifts. Using prevalence-induced concept change as a case study, we calibrate the framework's region-width parameter, reanalyze a broad set of published datasets spanning various categorization domains, and provide a power analysis linking detectability to the density of observations near the boundary. The framework reproduces most previously reported effects, revises a small number of conclusions, and shows no inflated false-positive rate when no manipulation is present. An open-source R package (concept) provides a reproducible implementation applicable to any binary categorization task with at least two within-subject conditions.
The Integrative/Psychological Mediation Framework of Minority Stress in Asexual-Spectrum Individuals
Nora McKellar; Gaia Steinberg; Liadh Timmins
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Research suggests that prejudice events are associated with negative mental health outcomes in asexual-spectrum individuals, but little work has examined the roles of general and asexual-specific psychological processes in these relationships. We investigated indirect associations between minority stressors and psychological distress as a first test of the Integrative/Psychological Mediation Framework of Minority Stress in asexual-spectrum people. We recruited n=261 asexual-spectrum individuals (n=49 men, n=128 women, n=83 another gender) to complete an online cross-sectional survey including measures of acephobic discrimination, outness-as-asexual (identity disclosure), internalized acephobia, rumination, expressive suppression, cognitive reappraisal, and psychological distress (anxiety/depression). We performed statistical mediation analysis, using PROCESS (5,000 percentile bootstraps) to generate 95% confidence intervals to test paths from discrimination and outness to distress via internalized acephobia, rumination, suppression, and reappraisal. We also tested the path from outness to distress via discrimination. All analyses controlled for gender and age. We found significant indirect effects from outness to distress via internalized acephobia, ab=−.05, 95% CI [−.10, −.01], from outness to distress via suppression, ab=−.05, 95% CI [−.09, −.01], from discrimination to distress via internalized acephobia, ab=.06, 95% CI [.02, .11], and from discrimination to distress via suppression, ab=.03, 95% CI [.005, .07]. These relationships held in a path analysis model, including all significant indirect effects. All other indirect effects were non-significant. Results show that the Integrative/Psychological Mediation Framework is promising for understanding the link between minority stressors and mental health in asexual-spectrum people. Clinical and public health interventions could potentially be tailored to asexual individuals using this framework.
Tone, stress, quantity, and quality: prosodic patterns and tonal wug-tests in Ćœiri Slovenian
Gasper Begus; Peter Jurgec
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In this paper, we report on the prosodic system of Ćœiri Slovenian, which displays an intricate set of interactions between tone, stress, quantity, and vowel quality. The prosodic restrictions are complex, exceeding the patterns observed in most other pitch-accented languages. Some of the patterns are well-motivated (e.g. the preference of High tone syllables to be stressed; the requirement for long vowels to have High tone) while others lack phonetic or phonological motivation (e.g. the requirement of long vowels to be footed). Ćœiri also displays a rare case of inter- action of prosody with vowel quality: long [ɛɛ] must always be stressed and prefers the High tone on the second mora, which is not the case for any other vowel. To confirm the productivity of the observed patterns, we conduct a tonal wug experiment that tests the dependence of stress on vowel quality, word length, and tone. This paper brings forth a new instance of a phonetically unmotivated phonological process at the suprasegmental level, which appears to be less discussed than at the segmental level. We also discuss methodological issues arising from arti- ficial experiments on tonal processes.
Towards a Behavioural Systems Map of the University System in Relation to Student Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour: An Exploratory Study
Hannah Clare Wood; Benjamin Gardner; Myanna Duncan; Eleanor Dommett
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University students often exhibit high levels of sedentary behaviour (SB) and low levels of physical activity (PA). Previous efforts to increase students’ movement have focused on leisure-time PA or overlooked the university environment and the education system. Embedding PA into university education offers one potentially fruitful avenue for increasing student movement, yet understanding is needed of how and why the university education system influences students’ movement before effective interventions can be developed. This study used a novel behavioural systems mapping method to explore the perceived behaviours, actors, and influences affecting students’ PA and SB during university education. The aim of this exploratory study was to develop a preliminary behavioural systems map based on a combined dataset of interviews with 20 university students and 38 staff in a variety of roles. Data were qualitatively analysed to construct a map of the perceived actors, behaviours, and influences affecting students’ movement behaviours, as well as perceived causal links between them. Influences were further analysed using the capability, opportunity, and motivation model of behaviour (COM-B). The resulting map would need further data input and corroboration to be considered a comprehensive map, yet the results presented in this study provide a useful starting point in this regard. The final map had over 100 elements and connections in total, with 31 different behaviours performed by various actors identified, demonstrating the system complexity as described by participants. Three clusters of behaviours and influences were identified: student movement in classes, student movement in private study time, and wider system influences and behaviours. Across all clusters, a key behaviour perceived as influential by participants was policy makers prioritising student movement in decision making, suggesting policy-level change is essential for long-term impact. Many identified barriers were related to physical or social opportunities, suggesting environmental restructuring may be key to embedding PA into university education. Many reflective motivation influences that may need addressing in future intervention research were also identified, such as believing that PA is worthwhile to implement. Overall, while policy-level change is needed to catalyse some of the environmental changes needed, this study suggests opportunities may exist to support students to increase movement during private study time, where fewest barriers were identified.
Counterclockwise pedestrian motion: An unexamined neuropsychological explanation
Sergio Della Sala; Robert D McIntosh
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EcheverrĂ­a-Huarte and colleagues (2024, Nature Communications) present an elegant series of experiments demonstrating that counterclockwise (CCW) motion in roaming pedestrians is robust, reproducible across cultures, and attributable to individual rather than collective tendencies. The authors state that this CCW tendency is without a clear explanation, but we would like to propose an explanatory account in terms of a well-established construct within the experimental psychological literature: pseudoneglect.
We don't care how much you sweat: An epistemic framework for behavioral and brain science laboratory infrastructure
Wanja Wolff; Sebastian Gluth; Johannes Keyser
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For decades, behavioral and brain research has advanced by isolating single variables or brain regions to study behavior and performance. However, it has become increasingly clear that reductionist methods struggle to capture the complex, dynamic, and context-dependent nature of human behavior. Developments in data analysis and artificial intelligence now enable unprecedented insights into complex datasets. Yet, while different strands of reform literatures have advanced how we theorize, measure, and analyze, the infrastructural conditions under which data are generated, the laboratory, have received comparatively little conceptual attention. Here, devices are often siloed, proprietary, or limited to aggregat-ed outputs, thereby constraining the questions that can be addressed. In this paper, we offer an epistemic framework for reasoning about laboratory infrastructure at the scale of the whole laboratory, understood not as a collection of individ-ual instruments but as an integrated infrastructure in which multiple hardware systems co-exist, communicate, and jointly support the questions a research group can ask. Conceptually, we think of measurements in three epistemic layers: the surface layer (raw numeric outputs, e.g., from an electrodermal sensor), the proxy layer (physiological or behavioral subsystems, e.g., sweat gland activity), and the target layer (emergent phenomena or constructs such as working memory capacity, arousal or effort). These layers are epistemic in that they describe how meaning is inferred from signals and the type of losses and mismatches that can occur at or between them; e.g., when we study arousal or effort, we don’t care about sweat gland activity per se, but rather as an imperfect intermediate proxy. We derive from these layers a practical rating scheme across seven infrastructure properties: signal digitization, signal fidelity, temporal alignment, real-time access, interoperability, transparency, and flexibility. Researchers can use these to evaluate and optimize their laboratory across modalities. Our framework complements existing modality-specific standards and community-developed integra-tion tools by providing a shared decision logic at the scale of the lab as a whole.
Controllable Progress as an Intrinsic Value Signal in Cognitive Control
Sharon Machado Sanchez; Vincent de Gardelle; Bastien Blain
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Why do people persist in demanding activities even when immediate rewards are modest? Dominant accounts of cognitive control frame engagement as a trade-off between effort costs and expected benefits, yet they leave open what makes an activity intrinsically rewarding. We propose that one possible answer lies in the interaction between progress (i.e. improvement in performance) and controllability (i.e. how much efforts and actions shape the course of events). Specifically, we hypothesize that controllability amplifies the intrinsic value of progress by enabling individuals to attribute improvement to their own effort. Progress experienced as self-caused should be particularly rewarding, whereas progress occurring by chance should carry less motivational value. Here, we test this gating hypothesis in two experiments (a pilot and a preregistered replication), where people experience different levels of progress and controllability, while also indicating subjective enjoyment and task preference. Across both studies, results confirmed that progress increased task enjoyment, led to more effort, and drove task preferences exclusively when controllability was high. These findings show that intrinsic motivation depends not only on whether outcomes improve, but on whether improvement is experienced as self-generated. Controllability therefore gates the motivational value of progress, providing a computational principle for understanding why people remain engaged in challenging activities.
Studying the Best Can Mislead: Selection Bias in Expertise Research
Merim Bilalić; Nemanja Vaci; Johannes Hönekopp; Thomas Victor Pollet
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Much of what we think we know about how people reach exceptional performance could be distorted by who gets studied. Studying elite performers has been highly informative for understanding the cognitive mechanisms of expertise, but less so for explaining how expertise develops. Elite samples are filtered on the very success researchers want to explain. Predictors that appear beneficial early in development often weaken or reverse among world-class adults. These findings are commonly interpreted as evidence that the route to excellence changes at higher performance levels. We show that they can also arise from selection alone. Outstanding adult performance is rare, depends on many factors, and can be reached in more than one way. Focusing exclusively on those who succeed can create misleading trade-offs, make relationships look smaller, and make weak positive and weak negative effects look the same. Simulations and longitudinal data from chess and athletics confirm these patterns and show that they depend strongly on who remains in the sample and how narrowly elite performance is defined. We propose a framework for separating prediction within selected groups from explanations of how excellence develops more broadly. This helps researchers study excellence without mistaking selected-sample patterns for evidence about development.
Consciousness, Mind Perceptions, and Emotional Reactions to AI: A Mixed-Methods Study Across Five Countries
Bianca Nowak; Nicole KrÀmer; Nils Köbis
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AI systems are becoming more advanced and increasingly filling in human-like social roles with potential consequences for trust, ethics, and governance. Yet, little is known about how these beliefs are structured beyond exclusively Western samples. In a preregistered cross-national study (Australia, India, South Africa, the UK, and the USA, total N = 2,470), we examined the relationships among mind perceptions (agency and experience), current and future consciousness attributions, and emotionality of descriptions of AI. The results showed that perceiving AI as having agency and experience predicted consciousness attributions: experience perceptions were the dominant predictor of current consciousness, whereas agency was a slightly stronger predictor of future consciousness attributions. While samples from the five studied countries differed in how much they currently ascribe consciousness to AI, these differences narrow in future ascriptions, with respondents across all countries converging toward the belief that AI will be conscious in five years. Furthermore, higher levels of mind perception correlate with more emotionally charged descriptions of AI. The emotionality of individual descriptions correlates weakly with that of societal descriptions, and significant differences across countries (particularly pronounced in India and South Africa) are observed. Overall, the results suggest that the belief in an AI mind may be a key driver of its social classification, highlighting the relevance of these beliefs for how societies may approach AI governance.
Religiosity and Prosocial Behavior in Collectivistic Indonesia: A Conversation of Resources Perspective
Ni Made Taganing Kurniati
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How prosocial behavior conserves resources within Indonesia's collectivist culture is explored, drawing on Conservation of Resources (COR) theory and Saraglou’s Big Four religious dimensions. It suggests prosocial behavior helps individuals preserve and gain resources through four pathways: (1) Believing, to align actions with the benevolent nature of the sacred (e.g., preserving faith integrity, gaining meaning); (2) Bonding, to maintain a relationship with the sacred through helping as devotion (e.g., preserving closeness to the sacred, gaining secure attachment); (3) Behaving, to obey the sacred, seek supernatural favor, and avoid punishment (e.g., avoiding guilty feelings, gaining moral identity); (4) Belonging, to sustain belonging and cooperation with community members (e.g., preserving social support, gaining religious identity). Further resources, such as positive affect, are gained, and feedback loops involving prosocial behavior may create resource-gain spirals that reinforce prosocial behavior and resource accumulation. Prosocial behaviors originating from the behaving, bonding, and belonging pathways—grounded in the sacred image as omniscient, omnipotent, and omni-benevolent (supernatural principle)—appear to operate similarly in both the United States and Indonesia. Conversely, prosocial behavior linked to religious affiliation (religious principle) explains differences in interpersonal connections due to cultural contrasts. Future studies should examine the current conceptual framework, evaluate the resource-gain spiral with longitudinal research, and compare religion and prosocial behavior across cultures.
Group Bonds, Leadership Preferences, and Support for Religious Freedom: Evidence from a Seven-Country Survey
Christopher Michael Kavanagh; Jack Klein; Gagan Atreya; Sadiq Hussain; Christine Mbabazi Mpyangu; Harvey Whitehouse
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Freedom of religious belief is usually approached as a legal or institutional issue, yet public support for it may also be shaped by group commitments, memorable group experiences, and ideas about leadership. We analysed survey data from 1,593 respondents in Bangladesh, Ghana, Malawi, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and Uganda. We examined how emotionally significant group experiences related to identity fusion and group identification, how these bonds were associated with preferences for barrier-crossing and barrier-bound leadership, and which factors best predicted support for freedom of religious belief. Vivid and reflective ingroup experiences were associated with stronger ingroup fusion and identification. Support for freedom of religious belief was most consistently associated with perspective-taking, empathetic concern, ingroup identification, and vivid recall and reflection. Strong ingroup identification was also associated with greater endorsement of barrier-crossing leadership. Taken together, the findings show that strong ingroup bonds can coexist with intergroup openness and support for religious freedom across diverse cultural settings.
Understanding the effects of exposure to TikTok content related to ME/CFS and Long COVID on associated illness perceptions and stigma: An experimental study
Andre Mason; Reenu Jose; Grace Johnstone; Stefana D Huma; Amanda E. Clifford; Gareth J. Treharne
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The rapid rise and algorithm-curated nature of TikTok has revolutionized the way people consume information and access health information. While studies have previously examined the content of these videos, there is a lack of evidence about how this content shapes consumers’ beliefs. We address this gap using two fatigue-related conditions, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS) and Long COVID. We hypothesized that consumption of TikTok media would be associated with changes in illness perceptions, stigma, and prejudice. We recruited 796 participants (Community: 278, University Students: 518) and invited them to complete an online survey to understand the effects of TikTok content related to ME/CFS and Long COVID on illness perceptions, prejudice, and stigma. Participants provided basic sociodemographic information and baseline responses before being randomly assigned to one of four blocks, each containing one video related to ME/CFS and one about Long COVID, both on a similar theme. Each video was followed by repeated items assessing illness perceptions and stigma about the condition in question. Participants had the option to complete up to four blocks. Using a series of Linear Mixed Models, we derived estimated marginal means and pre/post contrasts within and between the two conditions. Exposure to any of the four blocks of videos was generally associated with statistically significant changes in perceptions of illness severity. Scores related to illness prejudice and stigma were typically observed to decrease or remain comparable to baseline. The findings suggest that exposure to TikTok content may influence consumers’ perceptions about illness severity, prejudice, and stigma for these two conditions. Future research should examine how TikTok content can be utilized to reduce negative stereotypes and perceptions related to chronic health conditions.
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy for Career Decision Regret among Muslim University Students: A Systematic Literature Review
Nengsih Nengsih
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Background: Career decision regret a negative cognitive-emotional state that arises when individuals compare an already-made career choice with a perceived superior alternative has been linked to reduced career adaptability, emotional exhaustion, and poorer psychological well-being. Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) offers an established framework for restructuring the irrational beliefs that sustain such regret, yet existing applications have rarely engaged with the cultural and religious contexts of Muslim university students. Purpose: This review synthesises evidence on REBT, career decision-making, career decision regret, and Islamic psychology to examine how these bodies of literature can inform a culturally responsive counselling approach for Muslim university students. Methods: Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, records were identified through Scopus and Google Scholar and screened against predefined eligibility criteria. Of 486 records identified, 52 studies met the inclusion criteria and were appraised for methodological quality using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT). Results: Five themes were identified: (1) the psychological determinants of career decision regret; (2) the effectiveness of REBT and cognitive restructuring in career counselling; (3) the contribution of Islamic psychology and religious coping; (4) the role of áž„ifáș“ al-Ê»aql (the preservation and development of human intellect) as a philosophical foundation for rational thinking; and (5) contextual and cultural considerations in career development among Muslim students. Building on these themes, the review proposes a កifáș“ al-Ê»Aql-Based REBT Framework that integrates REBT's cognitive disputation techniques with the Islamic principles of reflective thinking (tafakkur), self-evaluation (muងāsabah), and wise judgement (áž„ikmah). Implications: The proposed framework offers a theoretically grounded, culturally responsive foundation for career counselling interventions addressing career decision regret among Muslim university students, particularly those studying away from their home communities. Empirical and longitudinal validation of the framework is recommended as a priority for future research.

SocArxiv

Networked Rivalries, Enemy Image, and Public Resistance to Peace: Evidence from East Asia
Jungmin Han
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Under what international conditions do citizens support or resist peace with a foreign adversary? Existing research emphasizes reciprocal cooperation between rival states and the dyad-specific conditions that shape how citizens interpret cooperative signals. Yet peace initiatives unfold within a broader security environment in which publics also observe allies and other adversaries as politically relevant actors. This article argues that third-party rivalries involving allied and adversarial states shape attitudes toward peace by altering the enemy image of the focal rival. Intensified hostility in these rivalries heightens perceptions of intergroup confrontation, reinforces ally-enemy boundaries, and increases resistance to rapprochement. I test this argument using original observational and experimental data from East Asian rivalry contexts. First, text analysis of over one million tweets from South Korea and Japan shows that U.S.-North Korea conflict is associated with stronger anti-North Korean sentiment in South Korea and more negative views of China in Japan. Second, a survey experiment demonstrates that exposure to conflicts in the Japan-China and inter-Korean rivalries reinforces Americans’ hostility toward China and reduces support for cooperation. Together, these findings demonstrate that public perceptions of adversaries and peace are embedded in networked rivalries in East Asia.
Exposure to Firearm Violence: Multilevel Harms Beyond Physical Victimization
Deanna Marie Giraldi
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This chapter examines the multilevel harms of gun violence in the United States, with particular attention to those who are not physically injured but who are nonetheless profoundly affected: witnesses, bereaved family members, and residents of communities marked by chronic violence exposure. It argues that the gap in research and policy attention to non-physical and community-level harm has direct practical consequences for how the aftermath of firearm violence is understood and responded to. The chapter further considers the conceptual vocabulary through which those affected are described, including the terms victim, survivor, and survivorship, and argues that these require nuance before they can adequately capture experiences shaped by chronic exposure, trauma, and racialized disadvantage. It also examines the temporal and structural barriers that determine whose harm is recognized and whose recovery is supported. The chapter concludes with specific directions for research, policy, and practice, including the expansion of definitional frameworks beyond physical injury, investment in longitudinal and community-based intervention, and greater engagement with bereavement and community violence as distinct and consequential forms of harm.
Suppressing the State: Visibility, Competition, and Deforestation Politics in the Amazon
Anthony Calacino
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Do competitive local elections impact environmental protections in consolidating democracies? Existing research on protections, and public goods more generally, remains divided. Also, past research tends to overlook how local politicians rarely control environmental stringency unilaterally. This paper contributes on both fronts. First, it argues the effect of competition depends on politicians' expectations of a voter backlash. In competitive contexts, incumbents face demands for private goods from special interests, which often requires limiting environmental protections. Politicians are more likely to give into these demands when the consequences are unlikely to become salient to voters. The second point is that even when local politicians lack complete control over protections, they can turn to a strategy this paper calls ``suppressing the state'', whereby mayors interrupt other authorities' attempts to provide public goods. The theory is tested by studying forest protections in the Brazilian Amazon. I leverage the unpredictability of El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and effects on smoke from fires as plausibly exogenous variation in visibility of degradation for causal identification. The analysis shows competition decreases deforestation when weather conditions exacerbate fires and smoke, but it increases deforestation when weather conditions render externalities of deforestation less visible. Qualitative analysis of over 100 expert interviews complements the quantitative results, supporting the idea that mayors suppress federal enforcement officials when fires from deforestation are set to be mild. The findings clarify local electoral dynamics and environmental governance with wider implications for the study of the politics of public goods.
Nationalist Attitudes and Far-Right Voting: Evidence from Europe and Latin America
Daphne Halikiopoulou; Carlos Meléndez; Lisa Zanotti; Jose Javier Olivas Osuna
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Nationalism is a widely accepted yet rarely systematically tested driver of far-right party support. Studies often reduce nationalism to immigration skepticism and focus on European cases. This article develops a framework distinguishing three types of nationalist attitudes, relating to the preservation of the nation (continuity), the criteria of belonging (in-group), and the criteria for exclusion (out-group), each expressed in ethnic or civic terms. We test our hypotheses using original surveys employing trade-off questions, fielded in six countries across Europe and Latin America: Spain, Italy, France, Poland, Brazil and Argentina. Our findings confirm the centrality of nationalism to far-right mobilization but reveal a regionally asymmetric pattern. In Europe, nationalist drivers of far-right support are significant and multidimensional. In Latin America, the association is weaker and expressed through civic rather than ethnic attitudes. Our contribution lies in theorizing, systematically measuring, and testing the nationalist drivers of far-right party support across world regions.
Perceived Industry Resilience to AI: A Two-Wave Survey of Employees Across 15 Sectors
Marco LĂŒnich; Birte Keller; Frank Marcinkowski
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Artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to transform industries unevenly, yet little is known about how employees themselves evaluate the capacity of their industries to adapt. This study introduces perceived industry resilience to AI as a meso-level construct linking individual perceptions to sectoral conditions, and examines its level, sectoral differences, short-term change, and individual-level correlates. We draw on a two-wave repeated cross-sectional survey of employed respondents in Germany (T1: July 2025; T2: January/February 2026; pooled N = 1,707) covering 15 industry sectors, with research questions and hypothesis preregistered between the two waves. Measurement invariance testing established the cross-wave comparability of the outcome. Survey-weighted models and cluster-robust regressions with equivalence tests were used for inference. Perceived AI resilience was generally low and showed no evidence of overall change between waves. Industries differed markedly: employees in information technology and data processing reported the highest resilience perceptions, employees in administration and public service as well as social services the lowest, and these differences showed no evidence of change across waves. Employees who saw the benefits of AI for their own profession as outweighing its risks, and who regarded political institutions as responsive, reported higher perceived resilience in both waves. The findings suggest that resilience perceptions are anchored in these occupational and political evaluations, with implications for sector-specific workforce policy and communication.
Triple Trouble: Rethinking the Framing of Problematic Information
Enes Altuncu
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Purpose. This paper proposes a unifying conceptual framework for analysing problematic information in order to address persistent terminological fragmentation across disciplines and improve conceptual clarity in research, policy, and practice. Design/methodology/approach. The study synthesises interdisciplinary literature from information science, communication, philosophy, computer science, and policy studies to identify common conceptual gaps. It develops a multidimensional framework structured around three core dimensions, veracity, misleadingness, and harmfulness, complemented by optional contextual attributes such as intent, timeliness, contextuality, provenance, and ambiguity. Findings. The framework demonstrates that many existing terms, including misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, rumours, satire, conspiracy theories, and deepfakes, can be more precisely characterised through explicit dimensional combinations rather than fixed categorical labels. This approach clarifies conceptual boundaries, explains overlaps and disagreements in prior definitions, and provides a systematic method for generating consistent terminology across analytical contexts. The framework also highlights how different dimensions become salient in tasks such as detection, moderation, fact-checking, and regulation. Originality. Unlike prior typologies that emphasise single criteria such as falsity or intent, this framework introduces a structured, extensible dimensional model that separates core properties of information from context-dependent attributes. It contributes a generalisable conceptual architecture designed to support interdisciplinary research and improve definitional precision in the study of problematic information.
Far-Right Speeches and Emotional Contagion in Parliament: Sequential and Multimodal Evidence from Germany
Christian Arnold; Andreas Kuepfer; Christian Stecker
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Does the parliamentary presence of far-right parties make democratic debate more negative? Existing text-based evidence suggests a more nuanced answer: after the entry of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) into German parliaments, established parties respond with more positive emotional language. We replicate this average textual pattern, but argue that it masks two theoretically important dynamics. First, parliamentary debate is sequential: speeches respond to prior speeches. Second, parliamentary speech is multimodal: affect is expressed not only through words, but also through voice and body. We theorise three mechanisms that link far-right speeches to the responses they provoke-- emotional contagion, boundary drawing, and the competition for attention-- and test them with an original collection of more than 30,000 hours of parliamentary video from German state parliaments and the Bundestag. We find that after AfD speeches, established parties use more negative emotional language, especially anger, and less positive emotional language. They also become visibly more activated in posture, gesticulation, head movement, and audience interaction, while average vocal pitch remains flat. Responses track the character of the concrete AfD intervention: textually negative AfD speeches are followed by more negative language, vocally intense and gesturally active AfD speeches are followed by more activated responses across channels, and AfD anger is the discrete emotion most strongly linked to subsequent activation. Across the emotional spectrum, the direction of transmission is consistent: negative AfD emotions predict negative responses, positive AfD emotions predict positive or reduced-negative responses. These findings reconcile average semantic distancing with immediate sequential mirroring, and they show that textual negativity and non-verbal activation are distinct, non-interchangeable emotional signals. The paper contributes to research on far-right success, emotional rhetoric, and multimodal political communication by showing that the affective consequences of far-right parliamentary presence depend on when, how, and in response to whom politicians speak.
Measuring the Informal Economy: An Approach from Angola informal Economy
Nerhum Sandambi
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On this approach, some techniques to measure the informal economy, has been analysed, in particular, was used for example the direct methods to measure informal economy, using in particular the Informal GDP as reference, many techniques proposed in this approach, are relative with the reality of the Angola informal economy. In general the informal economy represents the most incapacities of institutions to guarantee a strong regulation of economy and other consequences are related with inexistence of industrial capacity and productivity, which impulses, for example, the informal economy to grow up, the inexistence of appropriate government institutions, that can collect in particular the data, constitute a strong incapacity of informal economy. The majority informal economy, means for example, existence of loss taxes on taxes system, in this approach proposed a significant method to measure the percentage of taxes are losses, it's, considering that, high presence of informal economy promote naturally high level of loss taxes, in particular, aligned with high Inefficiency of economic institutions for example. The methods relative to the proportion of informal workers in the economy are evidenced, that can provide the percentage of workers are naturally in informal economy and practices the many informal activities, in Angola for example, more than 60% of workers are from informal economy.
Comparative Public Trust in Courts
Michal Ovadek; Umut YĂŒksel
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Over the past two decades, scholars have warned that the global expansion of judicial power and the growing judicialization of politics could provoke a backlash against courts, eroding their public legitimacy. We reassess this expectation by estimating public trust in courts across 168 countries over several decades using millions of survey responses. We combine diverse survey instruments into comparable country-year estimates using a Bayesian item-response model and find that public trust in courts has not experienced a widespread global decline. Instead, trust is broadly stable or increasing in most parts of the world and regime types. Regional trajectories differ appreciably, however, with Northern and Western Europe exhibiting the most consistent increases in trust since the 1990s. Across countries and over time, lower levels of public sector corruption are robustly associated with higher trust in courts. Applying the same framework to trust in parliament reveals that, while trust in the two institutions is highly correlated at the country-year level, trust in courts is substantially less volatile within countries than trust in parliament. Finally, we use our new dataset to revisit the literature on the effects of court curbing on public trust in the judiciary.
El oficio sin ley: el verdadero estatuto jurĂ­dico del corretaje de propiedades en Chile (la comisiĂłn, el cliente que puentea al corredor y el registro que viene)
Andrés Gabriel Varas Quijón
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MĂĄs de quince mil corredores de propiedades intermedian cada año cientos de miles de operaciones inmobiliarias en Chile, y lo hacen sin ley especial que regule su oficio: el registro habilitante creado en 1943 fue demolido por la liberalizaciĂłn de fines de los setenta y derogado definitivamente en 1986, y los proyectos que buscan restablecerlo duermen en el Congreso desde hace mĂĄs de una dĂ©cada. Pero un oficio sin ley especial no es un oficio sin Derecho. Este trabajo reconstruye el estatuto jurĂ­dico real del corretaje de propiedades, ese que decide pleitos todos los dĂ­as: la naturaleza del contrato —mediaciĂłn atĂ­pica y consensual, cuya esencia, ha dicho la Corte Suprema, estriba en el quehacer mediador destinado a concretar el negocio encargado—; el rĂ©gimen completo de la comisiĂłn —cuĂĄndo nace (con la celebraciĂłn del negocio mediando intermediaciĂłn decisiva, no con las tratativas), cuĂĄnto vale (libertad de honorarios desde 1977, con el 2% histĂłrico sobreviviendo como uso), cĂłmo se prueba (la escrituraciĂłn como carga prĂĄctica ante los lĂ­mites de la prueba testimonial) y cuĂĄndo prescribe (dos años, por tratarse de una actividad de predominio intelectual asimilada a las profesiones liberales)—; y la joya prĂĄctica del conjunto: la sentencia de la Corte Suprema rol N° 37.135-2017, que ejecutĂł una clĂĄusula anti-elusiĂłn pactada en una orden de venta —doble comisiĂłn si el propietario cierra el negocio, sin intervenciĂłn del corredor, con un cliente presentado por este, hasta un año despuĂ©s de expirado el encargo—, dotando al corredor puenteado de la herramienta contractual que la ley no le dio. Se examinan ademĂĄs las leyes que sĂ­ lo obligan (deberes ante la Unidad de AnĂĄlisis Financiero, declaraciones al Servicio de Impuestos Internos, estatuto del consumidor), el contenido verificado de los proyectos de Registro Nacional en tramitaciĂłn, y se cierra con un decĂĄlogo operativo. La tesis de fondo es ciceroniana y estoica a la vez: el corredor vende confianza, y la fides —hacer lo que se dice— solo se cobra cuando se escribiĂł.
Cognitive Biases as Enactive Efficiency: Metabolic Cost and the Embodied Foundations of Cognitive Economics
Pier Luigi Sacco
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For half a century the catalogue of cognitive biases has served as the empirical backbone of behavioral economics, where each documented departure from formal rationality is read as evidence that human judgment is defective. This chapter proposes a different foundation, drawn from cognitive economics, and argues that it dissolves much of the apparent pathology while preserving what the bias literature has discovered. The organizing claim is that metabolic cost is the currency in which the fit between a cognitive agent and its environment is paid for, and that it is what Simon’s pivot, the body that lets the two blades of his scissors close, is made of. Because exact, representational inference is far more costly than the approximate strategies that can replace it, and because offloading computation onto the body and the environment is cheap, cognition is enactive before it is deliberative, and the strategies traditionally filed as biases are the visible signature of a system built to solve problems at a price it can afford. The chapter develops this thesis by rebuilding the decision-theoretic frame as enactive problem-solving, recovering ecological rationality as the fit between an agent’s metabolically affordable Umwelt and the structure of its environment, treating biases as mismatches between cheap strategies and novel environments, defending a qualified position on which cognitive primitives may be innate while their composition and arbitration are culturally shaped, and reading predictive processing enactively so that precision becomes the control parameter whose metabolic optimization the whole account turns on. It closes with the policy consequences, favoring interventions that build cheaper competence over those that exploit the expensive default, and with the contribution to cognitive economics as a discipline distinct from behavioral economics.
Los herederos del vivo: la expectativa sucesoria y el interés para pedir la nulidad absoluta (Corte Suprema, 14 de julio de 2026, rol N° 30.841-2026)
Andrés Gabriel Varas Quijón
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Nadie es heredero de un vivo. El viejo brocardo acaba de recibir consagraciĂłn procesal: la sentencia de la Corte Suprema de 14 de julio de 2026 (rol N° 30.841-2026) declarĂł inadmisible la casaciĂłn en la forma y rechazĂł —por manifiesta falta de fundamento— la casaciĂłn en el fondo de unos eventuales herederos que, en vida de la causante, demandaron la simulaciĂłn y la nulidad absoluta de un contrato de cesiĂłn y compraventa de derechos con reserva de usufructo vitalicio celebrado por aquella. La regla que queda fijada es lĂ­mpida: el «interĂ©s» que el artĂ­culo 1683 del CĂłdigo Civil exige para pedir la nulidad absoluta debe ser real, actual y jurĂ­dicamente tutelado, y la sola expectativa de heredar a una persona que aĂșn vive no lo satisface. El comentario diseca las cuatro capas del fallo. Primera, el interĂ©s del artĂ­culo 1683 y su coherencia sistemĂĄtica con el artĂ­culo 1463: el mismo principio que prohĂ­be contratar sobre la sucesiĂłn de una persona viva niega tutela procesal a quien litiga sobre ella. Segunda, la simulaciĂłn y su requisito de engaño a terceros, que la instancia tuvo por no configurado, absorbiendo con la falta de legitimaciĂłn las alegaciones sobre desproporciĂłn del precio y efectividad del pago. Tercera, el frente procesal, donde el fallo deja dos piezas de valor desigual: la doctrina de la «casaciĂłn de casaciĂłn» —que motivĂł una disidencia de las ministras Repetto y LĂłpez que merece atenciĂłn— y la trampa letal de la norma decisoria de la litis: el recurso de fondo pereciĂł, «a mayor abundamiento», por no haber extendido la denuncia de infracciĂłn al artĂ­culo 1681. Cuarta, la reiteraciĂłn —al dĂ­a siguiente y por la misma sala— de la fĂłrmula que sustrae la sana crĂ­tica pericial del control de casaciĂłn. Se cierran las consecuencias prĂĄcticas para planificadores patrimoniales, herederos impacientes y casacionistas, y las cuestiones abiertas: en especial, si la acciĂłn que hoy es prematura renacerĂĄ limpia a la muerte de la causante o si los herederos heredarĂĄn, junto con los derechos, la inhabilidad del «sabiendas» del artĂ­culo 1683.
Infrastructural Solastalgia During Ecuador's 2024 Blackouts: An Automated Discourse Analysis of X
Oscar Molina-Bailon
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Purpose: This study examines the association between the daily duration of power outages and discursive markers of psychosocial distress in posts published on X during Ecuador’s 2024 electricity crisis. Methodology: A total of 3,953 Spanish-language posts collected between September 23 and December 19, 2024, were analyzed. Transformer models based on Spanish-language BERT were trained and evaluated using five-fold stratified cross-validation to classify the primary emotion and detect markers of solastalgia and anxiety. Calibrated probabilities were averaged by day and related to daily outage duration through Pearson and Spearman correlations, linear regressions, and robustness analyses. Results: Both markers showed positive and statistically significant associations with outage duration. Solastalgia exhibited the steepest linear slope, whereas anxiety showed the strongest monotonic correlation. Although the models had limited explanatory power, the positive direction of the associations remained consistent across robustness analyses using the primary exposure measure. Conclusions: The findings are compatible with solastalgia as an interpretive framework for discursive distress associated with prolonged power outages and provide a starting point for examining infrastructural solastalgia as an emerging conceptual category.
A Conceptual K-means Framework for Interpretable Multidimensional Housing-Market Segmentation
Ammar Almiaza
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Prices, rents and affordability ratios are the usual starting point for any housing market analysis, but they seldom tell the whole story. Two cities may be equally unaffordable but may differ greatly in construction activity, vacancy, tenure structure, provision of public housing, access to mortgages and spatial connectivity to employment. In this paper, we develop a conceptual and methodological framework for the use of K-means clustering as a theory-guided tool for housing-market segmentation. The framework treats each housing market as: X_i=[D_i,S_i,A_i,P_i,E_i], where D_idenotes demand conditions, S_isupply capacity, A_iaffordability and market outcomes, P_ispatial accessibility, and E_isocioeconomic and tenure-system characteristics. In this paper K-means is not presented as the most sophisticated clustering algorithm, but it is valuable for the practical visibility of centroid profiles. Where the input variables are continuous, standardised and substantively meaningful in Euclidean space, centroids can assist researchers and planners to inspect whether a cluster corresponds to a recognisable housing market condition. Where categorical or ordinal variables are introduced in the analysis in the form of tenure regimes, rent-regulation categories or planning-system types, k-means should be compared with mixed-data alternatives such as k-prototypes and PAM with Gower distance. The proposed typology identifies constrained high-pressure markets, expensive but supply-active markets, broadly balanced markets, stagnant oversupplied areas, declining low-demand markets, and low-cost areas where affordability is undermined by poor access to jobs and services. The paper does not present empirical results, but explains how a European pilot could be implemented, using harmonised data at the city or functional urban area level. Its contribution is thus pre-empirical: it provides the conceptual and methodological architecture that a subsequent empirical study would have to test.
Breaking Symmetry, Not Choosing Direction: A Model of Hierarchy as a Position Amplifier, and What It Can and Cannot Recover
Kristian Sestak
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Hierarchies form even among near-equals. Their inequality is usually read as meritocracy sorting on ability, as a coordination device a group needs, or as cumulative advantage in which leads compound. We give a falsifiable normal form for one further route, a symmetry-breaking amplifier of position. This is a multiplicative cascade that turns tiny, often capability-irrelevant differences into a large positional dispersion Var(ln rho_eff) >> Var(ln k), where k is capability and rho_eff the density of favourable possibilities the environment makes accessible. On top of the normal form we draw the line the title names, between what such a hierarchy's trajectory can and cannot recover about its own origin. The dynamics (question A, whether the process amplifies or merely diffuses) are identifiable from a trajectory. We fix them with three results: a necessity theorem, a non-monotone dispersion-maximising gain that plain cumulative advantage does not produce, and a sqrt(tau) early-lead law that separates amplification from diffusion on a homogeneous population, and, where entities differ, does so through a contrast rather than the magnitude of the excess. Cumulative advantage is told apart not by the magnitude of early-lead persistence, which it can match, but by the non-monotone gain and by the collapse of that persistence under revocation. The seed (question B, whether what got inflated was capability or position, real skill or amplified noise) is not identifiable. We prove a non-identifiability theorem: the map depends on capability and position only through their sum, and it carries an early fluctuation and an inherited head start through one identical term, so no statistic of the trajectory recovers the split. The informal statement that the amplifier keeps no signature of what it amplified is therefore a theorem rather than a metaphor, and it cannot be refuted by data. Identifying B requires an exogenous handle on capability that does not pass through the amplifier, such as quality fixed by construction, randomised, or a convergent later estimate. That handle returns not a verdict but a manufactured share R = 1 - corr^2. We demonstrate the boundary on one large public dataset. An online-chess cohort of near-equal entry ratings shows an order that looks manufactured: it is decoupled from entry and locks in faster than diffusion, though neither signature establishes as much once the cohort's underlying heterogeneity is acknowledged. Once a convergent skill estimate is admitted, that order is found to be about 60% revealed skill (R ~ 0.4). The remaining behaviours of the model follow. Development requires the feedback, since at zero gain the process is a martingale, and the motion is non-ergodic, with the ensemble advancing while the typical trajectory peaks and declines. The contribution is not that hierarchy is noise. It is a precise account of what a hierarchy's own trajectory can, and cannot, tell us about where it came from.
Digital Decoupling and Technological Inequality in Europe: Social Hyperconnectivity versus Artificial Intelligence-Based Productive Transformation
Antonio Aguilar
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This study analyses the relationship between artificial intelligence-based productive transformation, digital social penetration, and socioeconomic inequality across the 27 Member States of the European Union. Drawing on harmonised indicators for 2025, standardised indices were constructed for productive transformation comprising business adoption of AI, the functional application of AI, and telework and for digital social penetration comprising instant messaging, video calls, social networks, online news, searches for goods and services, and digital civic participation. Principal component analysis, Ward’s hierarchical clustering, K-means clustering, and regression models with HC3 robust standard errors were applied. The results show that productive transformation and digital social penetration are related but empirically distinct dimensions. The four-cluster solution identified profiles of integrated digitalisation, functional productive transformation, peripheral hyperconnectivity, and structural digital lag. Productive transformation was positively associated with material well-being, particularly equivalised median income, and negatively associated with involuntary part-time employment. By contrast, digital social penetration showed no significant independent associations with the well-being dimensions examined. Digital decoupling, defined as social penetration exceeding the relative level of productive transformation, showed a negative association with material well-being, although this relationship was close to the threshold of statistical significance. No robust associations were observed with labour well-being or subjective and social well-being. Sensitivity analyses confirmed the overall stability of the findings. Taken together, the evidence indicates that high levels of social connectivity do not necessarily imply an equivalent capacity to integrate AI into the productive structure, capture its economic value, or improve socioeconomic conditions. The study interprets this divergence as a form of technological inequality among European countries. Digital policies should complement expanded access and digital use with measures aimed at strengthening business capabilities, workforce skills, organisational innovation, and data infrastructures.
The dissociative mechanism of change in wilderness and adventure therapy; Psychological harm and possible malpractice
Graham Pringle; Soren Dubon; Jamie Mater; Catherine Keech; Lynette Danylchuk; Will Dobud
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Wilderness therapy (WT) programming in the US has employed involuntary treatment using cognitive or adaptive dissonance for decades. Cognitive dissonance occurs when people face situations that do not confirm their expectations. Past WT participants have protested that involuntary, inescapable, and harsh conditions harmed them through PTSD and subsequent dissociation. This argumentative study compares dissonance and dissociation using a critical realist and argumentative research process using publicly available information and scholarly literature. Using the confronting coercive WT model to illuminate these concerns, we argue that dissociation is a response recorded in the design of these WT practices and participant statements and is often mistaken for dissonance. Deliberate use of forced cognitive dissonance during involuntary treatments aligns with the conditions that may cause dissociation. Therefore, planning to enforce cognitive dissonance during WT is likely to be harmful and, given this potential, may be regarded as malpractice.
Governing Artificial Intelligence: Public Preferences and Regulatory Options
Magnus Lundgren; Jonas Tallberg
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Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming economies, societies, and polities, raising fundamental questions about how it should be regulated. Policymakers face choices over whether to prioritize innovation or safety, rely on public oversight or private self-regulation, and govern nationally or internationally. Yet little is known about how citizens evaluate these competing priorities. Here we report a conjoint survey experiment conducted in seven countries with diverse political and economic profiles. We find that citizens strongly support regulating AI and generally prioritize safety over innovation, public governance over private self-regulation, and international over national approaches. The preference for safety is strongest among those who perceive AI as risky, unpredictable, and personally consequential. These findings reveal a systematic misalignment between dominant regulatory approaches and citizen preferences.
Uncertainties in Architectural Production: Between Apparatus and Actor-Network Theory
Dewei Zhai
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This paper reconsiders the relationship between the concept of the apparatus (dispositif) and Actor-Network Theory (ANT) through an analysis of architectural production in contemporary China. While both approaches emphasise heterogeneous relations, architectural research has commonly interpreted the apparatus as a stable state-centred explanatory framework closely associated with state and politics. This reified understanding has produced an apparent opposition between the apparatus and ANT, reinforcing the divide between external social explanation and the relational processes through which architecture is produced. Drawing on two case studies—Beijing Daxing International Airport and the Shanghai World Financial Centre—this paper demonstrates that interpreting architecture through a pre-given apparatus prematurely stabilises socio-material uncertainties by reducing architectural production to the expression of political intention. Instead, by tracing the relational processes through which architecture is produced, as well as returning to Foucault's original formulation together with its subsequent interpretations by Deleuze and Agamben, this paper argues that the apparatus should be understood as a relational configuration continuously constituted through heterogeneous associations. It further contends that the apparatus and ANT are not conceptually opposed but rather illuminate different dimensions of the same socio-material process. Therefore, recovering the relational ontology of the apparatus not only narrows the conceptual divide between the two approaches but also restores uncertainties as an intrinsic condition of architectural production and socio-material life.
Are We Modeling but Not Measuring VMT for AVs? Reframing the AV–VMT Debate Through Operational Evidence
William Riggs
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A growing body of literature argues that autonomous vehicles (AVs) will substantially increase vehicle miles traveled (VMT), contributing to congestion, induced demand, and environmental externalities. Recent work by Naz and Mattingly (2026) synthesizes 25 studies and concludes that AV deployment is associated with an average increase in VMT across both shared and non-shared AV scenarios. However, the underlying literature remains dominated by simulation-based approaches, synthetic demand modeling, and legacy travel survey data collected prior to widespread rideshare adoption and operational AV deployment. This paper critically reassesses the methodological foundations of the AV–VMT literature through a structured inventory and classification of the studies included in Naz and Mattingly’s meta-analysis. The analysis identifies recurring endogenous mechanisms embedded within the literature, including reductions in generalized travel cost, travel burden, and value of travel time (VOTT), which structurally privilege AV adoption and systematically inflate projected VMT outcomes. At the same time, few studies incorporate observed AV rider behavior, empirical occupancy rates, operational pricing dynamics, or adaptive fleet learning. Drawing on emerging evidence from operational AV systems, including Waymo fleet data, shows that he share of empty VMT declined from ~63% to ~44% since 2023 for real world deployments while passenger serving VMT increased from 37% to 56%. This underscores an argument that AVs should be understood not as static hypothetical vehicles, but as adaptive operational mobility systems embedded within platform, pricing, and fleet management constraints. The paper concludes by proposing a minimum operational data standard for future AV–VMT research and argues that the field must transition from hypothetical scenario modeling toward empirically grounded operational evaluation.
Algorithmic Reality as a Psychological Ecology: Epistemic Destabilization, Significance Threat, and Regressive Meaning Making in Digital Environments
Mitchell Sanders
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Human belief formation serves not only epistemic functions but also regulatory ones, helping individuals manage uncertainty, identity coherence, and affective distress (Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000; Kunda, 1990). Contemporary digital environments increasingly mediate these processes through algorithmically curated information streams optimized for engagement rather than epistemic coherence (Praiser, 2011; Gillespie, 2018; Zuboff, 2019). This paper argues that such environments function as psychological ecologies that systematically destabilize epistemic conditions while amplifying motivational and affective pressures toward belief rigidity. Within these ecologies, epistemic destabilization is converted to motivational urgency, and rigid belief adoption functions as a regulatory solution rather than as an epistemic failure. Drawing on cognitive psychology, moral psychology, and clinical science, the paper advances an amplification model in which chronic uncertainty, narrative saturation, moral salience, and algorithmic reinforcement interact with individual differences in curiosity, intolerance of uncertainty, and identity stability (Kruglanski, 2004; Carleton, 2016; Baird et al., 2012). Under such conditions, belief adoption serves a regulatory function by restoring coherence, significance, and moral orientation, even when epistemic accuracy is compromised. Algorithmic reinforcement dynamics such as repetition, attentional salience, processing fluency, and identity affirming feedback further consolidate these beliefs, increasing resistance to correction and revision (Hasher et al., 1977; Dechene et al., 2010; Pennycook & Rand, 2019). The framework calls on Significance Quest Theory to explain why epistemic destabilization becomes motivationally urgent for some individuals, highlighting how algorithmic environments can both generate significance threat and supply readily available restoration pathways grounded in moralization, oppositional identity, and narrative certainty (Haidt, 2001; Kruglanski et al., 2014, 2022). These pathways may provide a subjective sense of autonomy while simultaneously constraining reflective agency, creating self reinforcing regulatory loops. Importantly, this work does not claim that digital environments directly cause psychopathology. Instead, it adopts an amplification perspective in which algorithmic contexts intensify latent vulnerabilities ranging from normative cognitive biases to belief rigidity and subclinical disturbance (Bentall et al., 2001; Vorontsova et al., 2013). By conceptualizing algorithmic media as psychological ecologies, this paper offers a unifying theoretical account linking digital reinforcement structures to belief rigidity, identity fixation, and epistemic closure. The framework delineates scope conditions, specifies underlying psychological mechanisms, and generates testable claims, providing a coherent basis for future empirical research and clinically informed preventative reflection.
What is a father’s role? Men’s perspectives on their contributions to raising children in four countries
Laure Spake; Anushé Hassan; Albert Dube; Lusako Mwalwanda; Shekinah Munthali; Jainaba Badjie; Fatema tuz Zohora; Eliezer Harawa; Glory Mawelera; Inijesu Taiwo
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Objective: Human fathering encompasses a wide range of behaviors that are highly variable across socioecological contexts. Variation in fathering complicates attempts to understand relationships between paternal investment and child wellbeing, as existing measures may not fully capture culturally-meaningful paternal investment. In this paper, we contribute to research on paternal investment by exploring men’s perceptions of their roles as fathers in four societies. Methods: Data stem from focus group discussions (FGDs) conducted with men with at least one living child in Bangladesh (n = 2), The Gambia (n = 4), Malawi (n = 7), and Tanzania (n = 2). In all focus groups, men discussed which childrearing tasks are considered a father’s responsibility. Transcripts were analyzed in NVivo 13 using a combination of framework and thematic analysis. Results: Analyses revealed four themes: 1) responsibility for resource provisioning rather than performing direct childcare or household tasks; 2) flexibility in gendered divisions of labor to support mothers, even though performing “women’s” tasks could result in reputational harm; 3) responsibility for cultural, moral, religious, and formal education of children; and 4) variation in fathering roles in response to children’s age and sex. Conclusion: Results suggest that direct care measures may not be good measures of paternal investment in these societies, although men do sometimes support their wives with these tasks. Teaching cultural norms, a form of paternal investment ubiquitous across our study settings, may be a key mechanism through which fathers invest in their children’s embodied and social capital, potentially affecting later-life wellbeing.
Analysis of Hierarchical Structures in Concept Cafe Culture: An Empirical Study Based on Popularity Concentration Structures and Multidimensional Cultural Classification
Yutaro Okano; Kazunori D Yamada
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This study investigates the cultural structure of Japanese concept cafes (ConCafes). Despite the widespread presence of hybrid concept configurations, existing classifications remain largely limited to single-concept categorization. To address this limitation, this study constructed a concept co-occurrence network based on nationwide ConCafe data and applied Louvain community detection to identify semantic concept clusters. Furthermore, drawing on the multidimensional framework of cultural classification proposed by a previous study, this study operationalized four structural dimensions (differentiation, ritual strength, universality, and hierarchy) as quantitative indicators for each community. The results revealed that ConCafe culture consists of multiple interconnected cultural clusters and that regional distributions can be reconstructed into higher-order regional cultural spheres. In addition, Ordinary Least Squares regression analysis suggested that these structural dimensions may interact multidimensionally rather than functioning independently. Overall, this study presents an integrated framework for understanding cultural structure as a continuous and multilayered system combining network structure, spatial distribution, and popularity hierarchy.
Treatment Effect Heterogeneity, Propensity Score Methods, and Generalizing Experimental Results
Betsy Alafoginis; Yu Xie; Junming Huang; Xiang Zhou; Jennie E. Brand
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This paper evaluates the propensity score as a tool for summarizing treatment effect heterogeneity and facilitating extrapolation from experimental settings to broader populations. We argue that propensity score methods capture the most consequential treatment effect heterogeneity for population-level inference, achieving high accuracy at the aggregate level and enabling extrapolation. Using benchmark data from the National Supported Work (NSW) Demonstration and a comparison group derived from the Current Population Survey (CPS) and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), we assess the utility of propensity score methods for recovering heterogeneous effects and population-level estimates. The results indicate that a simple propensity score approach substantially reduces confounding and produces average treatment effect estimates close to those obtained experimentally, while also enabling extrapolation to target populations.
A New Probabilistic Method for Forecasting Mortality: A Case Study of Estonia
Betsy Alafoginis; David Swanson; Jeff Tayman
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A new probabilistic mortality forecasting approach is introduced that unlike the Lee-Carter Method (and its variants) is directly linked to the fundamental demographic equation, the cornerstone of demographic theory. This is an important consideration in developing accurate forecasts. Because it forecasts “years lived,” this new approach directly yields life expectancy and a corresponding future life table (an example is provided in the Appendix with a description of the steps needed to construct it), which is not the case with the Lee-Carter Method and its variants. In an ex post facto evaluation using Estonian data from the Human Mortality Database, the new approach was found to provide accurate forecasts of “years lived by age” (nLx) both in terms of point and interval measures over a 15 year period. Putting the results for Estonia into a broader context, the accuracy of its point nLx forecasts are then compared to the accuracy of point forecasts for Algeria, Australia, Japan, and the United States, which represent, respectively, countries in the other four of the five regions of the world defined by the United Nations (Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania). Probabilistic nLx forecasts for 2029 to 2039 for Estonia are then provided, the results are discussed, and the next steps in evaluating this approach are suggested.
The Price of Principles and the Value of Excuses
Mariana Blanco; Francesco Bogliacino; Salvatore Nunnari; Pietro Ortoleva
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People make pro-social choices, yet researchers still lack tools to quantify how much moral wiggle room individuals exploit or how strongly they trade off money against normative principles. We introduce a within-subject design that measures both. We employ three variants of the Modified Dictator Game: a Self-Other allocation, an Other-Other allocation, and a Plausible Deniability allocation. Each variant elicits a switching point x, where higher values signal greater self-interest. Comparing switching points across variants yields the extensive and intensive margins of moral wiggle room, the money-principle trade-off, and a choice-based taxonomy of types requiring no assumptions about utility functions. We run the experiment in Colombia (N=376) and the US (N=274), with conceptual replications in both countries (N=288 and N=353). A sizable share of participants exploit plausible deniability, though not a majority. The intensive margin remains small in dollar terms, especially in the US. The money-principle trade-off is economically meaningful, yet over 40% of subjects keep their allocation unchanged between the Self-Other and Other-Other settings. Our taxonomy classifies between 60 and 90% of subjects into four robust types. The ordering x(PD)>x(SO)>x(OO) that would characterize our representative agent represents only 8% of subjects. Roughly one-third exhibit x(PD)=x(SO)=x(OO), a deontological pattern that survives the inclusion of filler tasks. The remaining two types split between genuine social preferences and subjects who posture as deontological.
A Feminist Political Economy Analysis of Temporal Inequalities
Odile Mackett
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Studies of inequality have become more popular in recent decades as the incidence of inequality and its consequences have become problematised. Alongside these studies, an interest in time use and temporal inequalities have also grown. Time use studies have primarily focussed on women’s unpaid work, specifically as debates about the care economy, and the growing care crisis accompanied by population ageing have entered policy debates. Time and its availability is embedded in every process of our lives, having important implications for economic outcomes, social interactions, health status, and the resources we have with which to mediate these outcomes. Time thus acts as a master variable that connects phenomena usually treated as separate, such as health, fertility, wealth, accumulation and environmental degradation. This paper develops a multidimensional framework for analysing temporal inequality built around three dimensions: temporal resources (time poverty), temporal autonomy (time dispossession), and temporal horizons (time foreshortening). While existing concepts such as time poverty capture important aspects of temporal inequality they provide only a partial understanding of how temporal resources, autonomy and future horizons are structured. The framework is illustrated through examples drawn from social reproduction and the care economy, demonstrating how temporal inequalities shape outcomes across health, work and wellbeing. The paper highlights that understanding temporal inequalities requires attention not only to how much time individuals possess, but also to who controls that time and whose present time can be converted into future security, wellbeing and accumulation.
Exploring the conceptual boundaries of “geoengineering” and its relationship to intentionality
Eduarda Calado Barbosa; Timothy Daly; Ignacio Mastroleo
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Geoengineering, a term which introduced the notion that large-scale interventions in the Earth system could alleviate the negative impacts of climate change independently of emissions reductions and adaptation, has acquired negative connotations. Here, we focus on its conceptual boundaries to argue that abandoning the term will not resolve the problems haunting the field, and argue for reclaiming a neutral use of the term to different practical ends.
The (Minimal) Effect of Immigrant Enfranchisement: Evidence from Local Elections in Spain
Tarek Jaziri-Arjona; Simon Hix
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Does extending voting rights to immigrants change election outcomes? We answer this question using two natural experiments in Spain: the 2007 EU enlargement, which granted municipal voting rights to Romanians and Bulgarians, and bilateral agreements in 2011 that extended municipal voting rights to immigrants from six Latin American countries. Using electoral section-level data, we compare neighborhoods that received newly enfranchised immigrant voters to neighborhoods that did not within the same municipality and the same election. Enfranchisement moved no party's votes: the estimates are precise zeros in both experiments, robust to entropy balancing, first differencing, and a shift-share instrument. Equivalence tests bound every estimate below the vote shift required to change a single council seat under Spain's D'Hondt allocation rule. These findings suggest that fears that extending voting rights to immigrants could have significant distributional consequences are unfounded.
Does Disadvantage Matter? An Experimental Assessment of Public Judgments about the Punishment of Disadvantaged Offenders
Honorata Mazepus; Andrei Poama
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Does bias towards disadvantaged offenders drive their over-punishment? This article offers an experimental assessment of individual judgments about how socio-economically disadvantaged offenders should be punished in the context of unequal societies. Based on two experimental studies carried out in the US and the Netherlands (N = 3696), we found that citizens (1) tend to think disadvantaged offenders should be punished less than advantaged ones, (2) believe that the state has less right to punish disadvantaged offenders, and (3) differ cross-culturally in their penal judgments at a baseline level. Importantly, these results are robust when accounting for the race of the offender. Building on this, we argue that the over-punishment of disadvantaged offenders is not currently driven by pervasive social prejudice, at least in the presence of information about existing inequalities. The implication of these findings is that the over-punishment might occur among the public that is not aware of socio-economic inequalities or due to inadequate or otherwise wanting legal defense.
The shape of the cultural transmission of shapes
Peter Kutsos; Petr Chlup; Robert Mbe Akoko; Petr Tureček
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Cultural evolutionary theory has long modeled offspring trait variance as constant across generations, an assumption borrowed from quantitative genetics that has remained largely untested. We examine this by comparing a Parental Variability-Dependent Inheritance (PVDI) model, in which offspring variance scales with parental variance, against the classic Galton-Pearson model, using physical artifacts transmitted across three generations in a cross-cultural experiment spanning Prague and two communities in Cameroon. The PVDI model outperformed alternatives in all tasks, though its expression was modulated by learner background rather than task domain. Cumulative improvement emerged in the engineering but not the aesthetic task, driven by individual-level innovation rather than performance-biased selection. These findings challenge a foundational assumption of the field, make a strong case for cross-cultural designs in cultural evolution research, and introduce a novel framework for the parametrization of the cultural transmission process.
Mapping Diplomatic Representation in Europe, 1648–1715: New Data from the Repertorium der diplomatischen Vertreter
Magnus Lundgren
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This paper introduces new data on diplomatic representation in Europe between 1648 and 1715, drawn from Band I of the Repertorium der diplomatischen Vertreter aller LĂ€nder. The data comprise 13,344 diplomatic missions, exchanged among 141 sending and 201 receiving polities, and 8,852 individual representatives. The paper describes the source and coding procedure, assesses the quality and limits of the data, and reports patterns in participation, rank, and mission duration. In an illustrative application, I use the data to examine diplomatic continuity across ruler successions, with findings suggesting that individual appointments remained tied to the person of the ruler even as the relationships they served proved durable. The dataset will be useful for research on recognition and membership in the states system, status and hierarchy among polities, and the formation of the early modern state. Data collection will continue, and Bands II and III will extend the series to 1815.
Mapping Controversies in the French Advertising Press: An LLM Pipeline from Claims to Corporate Actors
GaĆĄper Azinovic; Christophe Benavent
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Topic models say what a corpus is about; keyword search says who is mentioned. Neither says which positions are contested, nor who stands where. We describe a three-stage pipeline that turns 5,816 French press articles on advertising and media (2010–2025, 294 outlets) into a map of industry controversies and the corporate actors inside them. Stage 1 prompts an instruction-tuned LLM – with a 256K-token context, so articles are never truncated – to extract debatable claims with supporting quotations, yielding 34,866 claim–evidence pairs. Stage 2 embeds the 34,649 unique claims and clusters them (UMAP + HDBSCAN) into 180 controversies, covering 51.6% of the claims. Stage 3 takes six industry disputes – greenwashing, tracking and privacy, generative AI, sexism, social vs. traditional media, and the obsolescence of the traditional agency model – and assigns every named company a cluster-specific role, producing 6,658 company–role mentions across 1,223 articles. The resulting maps recover expected alignments (TotalEnergies accused of greenwashing; Google accused and Apple praised on tracking) and surface less obvious structure (an anti-AI camp amounting to 5.2% of mentions). We state precisely what these maps do and do not establish: the pipeline has face validity, but its extractions have not yet been audited against human annotation.
Media, Inequality and Ethnic Competition: Rethinking the Role of Sport in Urban Social Cohesion
Louis Moustakas
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Cities across Europe are facing growing tensions around migration and diversifying populations, often inflamed by political and media rhetoric that frames newcomers as an illegitimate burden on strained resources. Dublin is no exception. Emerging from an applied project commissioned by Dublin City Council, in which a local sport-focused NGO sought to assess social cohesion across two deprived districts and the role sport might play in fostering it, this paper moves beyond that initial mandate to explore how inequality, ethnic competition and media discourses shape cohesion. Drawing on twelve interviews, an open-ended survey and site observations, the findings show how media narratives displace blame onto migrants and obscure the resources allocated to for-profit interests; how sport can offer an equalising, low-threshold space for exchanging stories and countering misleading narratives; and how the scarcity of sporting provision does not merely limit this potential but actively accelerates conflict. I conclude by reflecting on the implications of these results connected to sport, social cohesion and ethnic competition. Further, I also theoretically consider how media discourses and perceived inequality intertwine to undermine broader social cohesion.
Fraud Detection Without Specificity: A Null-Calibration Evaluation of the eforensics Model on Two Decades of Korean Elections
Minseong Kim
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Bayesian finite-mixture election-forensics models in the tradition of Mebane (2016) classify vote-counting units as clean or fraudulent from aggregate turnout and vote-share data alone, without independent evidence of manipulation. We evaluate the eforensics quasi-binomial-logistic (qbl) model against 20 years of Korean elections (2002-2025), fitting 228 separate model runs spanning general and presidential elections, two aggregation levels, up to five vote-counting channels, and, critically, two independently constructed fraud-free synthetic controls calibrated to match each real dataset's turnout and vote-share marginals without any fraud-generating mechanism. We find that the model reports substantial "fraud" (5-31% of units, up to 8.7 million "fraudulent" votes) on data that is fraud-free by construction; that real-data fraud-share estimates correlate at r=0.98 with their fraud-free null counterparts across 58 paired cells; that the model's largest real-data estimates fall on presidential elections held before Korea had early voting or any fraud allegations (2002-2012), exceeding what it reports for the actually contested 2020 election; and that recoding the model to test fraud in the opposite (conservative-favoring) direction reproduces the identical pathology, including assigning more false-positive fraud to the one pre-2014 election with a genuine historical manipulation allegation than to the allegation's own claimed direction. We conclude that the model's output depends on the shape of the (turnout, vote-share) distribution, not on fraud, and that this failure is not fixable by post-hoc recalibration, since recalibrating for validity would remove essentially all detected signal in the corpus.
How Do Ecological Restoration Programs Shape Grain Production? Evidence from China’s Three-North Shelter Forest Program
Xiaomeng Liang; Chenyujing Yang; Yongji Xue
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Balancing ecological restoration and grain production is a core challenge for land management in arid and semi-arid regions. Large-scale ecological engineering programs are often assumed to constrain agricultural output through land-use competition, yet rigorous causal evidence on their long-term effects and underlying mechanisms remains scarce. This study investigates whether and how China’s Three-North Shelter Forest Program (TNSFP) affects grain production. Guided by the social–ecological systems framework and ecosystem services theory, we hypothesize that large-scale ecological restoration can enhance agricultural output through improvements in ecosystem services rather than crowding out cropland. Using county-level panel data from China covering 2000–2022, we estimate the causal impact of TNSFP on grain production employing a two-way fixed effects model, complemented by the Callaway and Sant’Anna difference-in-differences approach (CSDID), event-study analysis, placebo tests, and multiple robustness checks. Grain production data are combined with satellite-derived vegetation indices, air quality indicators, and ecosystem quality measures to identify mechanism pathways. The results show that TNSFP significantly increases county-level grain production, with baseline estimates indicating an average rise of approximately 3.4 units and larger effects after controlling for agricultural inputs, climate, and socioeconomic conditions. CSDID estimates confirm robust positive effects,. Event-study results reveal negligible pre-treatment trends and gradually accumulating post-treatment effects. Mechanism analysis demonstrates that improved vegetation cover, enhanced air quality, and overall ecosystem quality jointly promote grain production, with ecosystem quality playing a dominant role. Significant regional and land endowment heterogeneity is observed, with stronger effects in cropland-abundant counties and limited impacts in Northwest China. These findings provide new causal evidence that ecological restoration can generate synergistic benefits for land restoration and food production, offering important implications for sustainable land management in dryland regions.
The evolution, regional heterogeneity, goal imbalance, and socio-economic-ecological coupling coordination of sustainable development in China: 2000–2021
Xiaomeng Liang; KuoRayMao; Qiong Wu; Jiaxu Ling; Yongji Xue
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Since the 21st century, China has actively responded to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, growing regional disparities and imbalances across goals call for a systematic assessment of their evolution and underlying mechanisms. Using panel data for 31 provincial-level regions from 2000 to 2021, this study constructs a comprehensive indicator system covering all 17 SDGs and develops an integrated economic-social-ecological analytical framework combined with a coupling coordination model to examine the spatiotemporal dynamics and systemic interactions of sustainable development in China. The results show that: (1) China’s overall SDG performance has steadily improved, with the national average score increasing from 0.39 to 0.50, though it remains far from a high-level convergence stage; (2) significant spatial disparities persist, characterized by an “east – west gradient,” with interregional differences constituting the primary source of overall inequality; (3) substantial imbalance exists across goal dimensions, as economic and social goals have progressed more rapidly, while ecological goals lag behind and exhibit higher volatility, emerging as the key constraint on system-wide coordination; and (4) the economic-social-ecological system exhibits a “high-coupling, low-coordination” pattern, with improvements in coupling coordination driven mainly by gains in coordination rather than coupling strength, indicating that the principal challenge lies in imbalanced subsystem development rather than weak inter-system linkages. Based on these findings, this study suggests shifting from uniform policy approaches to region-specific and tiered governance strategies, strengthening constraint-oriented ecological governance, and promoting balanced, multi-dimensional development through institutional integration and regional coordination. The results provide empirical evidence for optimizing China’s sustainable development pathway and offer broader implications for developing countries seeking to achieve coordinated progress across multiple development goals.
Information Limits in Quantitative Research
Jeffrey Joseph Harden; Rachel Porter
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When is a research design as informative as it can plausibly be in a given setting? Social science commonly features small populations, rare treatments, fixed institutions, or other constraints that limit precise and stable inference. Power analysis specifies the data requirements for detecting meaningful effects, yet many empirical settings constrain the units that can be feasibly collected. We develop a framework for evaluating research designs against the plausible data frontier of a given study's setting---the Best Plausible Dataset (BPD). This approach evaluates whether plausibly recoverable data would destabilize estimated effects, improve precision, or alter substantive conclusions. We demonstrate, both formally and empirically, that increasing sample size does not necessarily decrease uncertainty. We introduce study-specific diagnostics enabling these assessments in researchers' work. Our framework identifies the structural limits of applied data environments and clarifies the leverage that unrealized yet feasible data collection may have for robust substantive inference.
La inscripción de papel: inscripciones paralelas, posesión material y los límites de la ficción registral (Corte Suprema, 13 de julio de 2026, rol N° 22.945-2025)
Andrés Gabriel Varas Quijón
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ÂżQuĂ© ocurre cuando el Registro habla dos veces? La sentencia de la Corte Suprema de 13 de julio de 2026 (rol N° 22.945-2025) rechazĂł los recursos de casaciĂłn en la forma y en el fondo deducidos contra el fallo que negĂł una acciĂłn reivindicatoria fundada en inscripciones paralelas sobre un mismo retazo de terreno rural, ambas derivadas de regularizaciones administrativas del Decreto Ley N° 2.695. El rechazo se construye en dos tiempos. Primero, la muralla probatoria: las alegaciones del recurrente atacaban hechos soberanamente fijados por los jueces del fondo, sin infracciĂłn de leyes reguladoras de la prueba; la apreciaciĂłn del informe pericial conforme a la sana crĂ­tica es, para la mayorĂ­a, un proceso «eminentemente subjetivo» ajeno al control de casaciĂłn —calificaciĂłn que el ministro Silva, en prevenciĂłn, no comparte—. Segundo, y aun «prescindiendo» de lo anterior, la Corte quiso fijar doctrina: ante inscripciones paralelas no ligadas entre sĂ­, la preferencia corresponde a quien, ademĂĄs de figurar como titular registral, detenta materialmente el inmueble, porque la posesiĂłn inscrita «no puede ser apreciada en tĂ©rminos puramente formales cuando se encuentra desprovista de una realidad posesoria subyacente». La inscripciĂłn del actor era, en la expresiĂłn que da tĂ­tulo a este comentario, una inscripciĂłn «de papel». El trabajo reconstruye el caso y su origen en el Decreto Ley N° 2.695; sitĂșa la decisiĂłn en la centenaria querella entre la inscripciĂłn-ficciĂłn de Trucco (1910) y la inscripciĂłn-garantĂ­a de Urrutia (1934), cuya fĂłrmula —«inscripciones de cosas que nunca se han poseĂ­do»— es el ancestro directo de la «inscripciĂłn de papel»; precisa los lĂ­mites de la doctrina —que no destrona la posesiĂłn inscrita del artĂ­culo 728 en la hipĂłtesis normal de inscripciĂłn Ășnica, sino que opera solo en la patologĂ­a de la duplicidad registral—; y extrae las consecuencias prĂĄcticas para reivindicantes, adquirentes de predios rurales y litigantes, junto con las cuestiones abiertas.
From visibility to vulnerability: how women scientists face gendered hostility in science communication
Maider Eizmendi-Iraola; Simón Peña-Fernåndez
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Public communication of science has become a central component in the relationship between science and society. However, the media exposure of research staff has given rise to new forms of hostility, especially in digital environments. The study Experiences of researchers who interact with the media and social networks in Spain [Science Media Centre Spain, 2024] investigates — via a survey (N=237) — the incidence and typology of these attacks in the Spanish context. More than half of the research staff (51.05%) reported experiencing negative incidents, with a higher prevalence among women (56.9%) than men (46.2%). The attacks differ by gender: women face more challenges regarding their scientific capacity and sexist remarks, whereas men are more frequently targeted over their professional integrity. These dynamics reveal structural gender biases that affect the wellbeing and legitimacy of female scientists, emphasising the need for institutional policies with a gender perspective.
Who Belongs to the Nation?
Tak-Huen Chau
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Who counts as 'truly' American, French, or Japanese? Why do dominant groups sometimes make national membership depend on traits minorities can acquire, such as language, and sometimes on traits they cannot, such as ancestry? I develop a formal model in which the dominant group has political power over the content of national identity, but minority responses determine which identity rules are worth imposing. The model yields a non-monotonic prediction: attainable national identities do not emerge when minority shares are very small, and they arise only in demographic windows where making membership attainable changes minority behavior enough to offset the dominant group's loss from weakening a sharply bounded national prototype. In societies with many potential membership traits, later attainable identities become thinner, shedding more burdensome requirements as minority shares rise. The model shows why inclusion and exclusion can arise from the same strategic logic.
Institutional logics in China's rural solar transition and their impacts on energy justice for vulnerable communities
Zhaoyang Xu; Lei Zhu; KuoRayMao; Yongji Xue
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In the context of global climate mitigation, low carbon energy transitions have become central to sustainable development. However, while pursuing environmental objectives, such transitions may also reshape patterns of resource distribution and participation through institutional arrangements, generating new forms of inequality across distributive, procedural, and recognition dimensions. China, as the world's largest developing country and a major carbon emitter, provides an analytically rich context for examining how low carbon transitions intersect with equity concerns. This study investigates three photovoltaic projects in China: the Tengger Desert New Energy Base in Ningxia, the Dezhou Rooftop PV Program in Shandong, and the Yancheng Solar-Fishery Integration Project in Jiangsu. Drawing on field interviews and policy document analysis, the study employs a thematic grounded coding approach to develop a four dimensional analytical framework covering spatial entitlements, revenue distribution, technological adaptation, and policy design. The findings show that vulnerable rural communities often face constrained spatial rights, limited benefit sharing, uneven adaptive capacity, and restricted participation in top down governance processes. Based on this analysis, the paper develops policy recommendations to enhance institutional inclusiveness, optimize benefit-sharing mechanisms, and strengthen local governance capacity. These insights provide both theoretical contributions to the study of energy justice and practical references for promoting equitable and sustainable energy transitions in the Global South.
Anatomy of a Collaboration: The Compositional Relationship between R. K. Merton’s “Oscillations in Scientific Theories” (1933) and Chapter 12 of Pitirim A. Sorokin’s Social and Cultural Dynamics, Vol. II
Dmytro Mykhailychenko; Vladimir Moskovkin
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Chapter 12 of the second volume of Pitirim A. Sorokin's Social and Cultural Dynamics (1937), "Fluctuation of General and Special Scientific Theories," incorporates material from a typescript prepared for Sorokin by Robert K. Merton, "Oscillations in Scientific Theories," submitted under a cover letter dated 8 June 1933. The collaboration is acknowledged in the chapter itself (Sorokin's notes 1 and 127); this report accordingly characterizes the compositional division of labour within an acknowledged collaboration rather than adjudicating impropriety. Both documents were transcribed by independent OCR of their page scans and compared by order-independent exact-token collation, a windowed fuzzy pass, citation-apparatus cross-reference, and a framework-vocabulary differential; all overlap figures are lower bounds. The chapter divides into two zones. Its natural-science core — atomism, mechanism/vitalism, abiogenesis, light, and Prout's hypothesis — reproduces Merton's typescript closely (62 % of the core at light paraphrase, 69 % at moderate; longest verbatim run 141 words), in the same sequence and with the same quotations and citation apparatus; two conjunctive citations fix the direction of dependence as Merton → Sorokin. The interpretive framework — the typology of the three systems of truth and its correlation with culture-type — together with the sections on cosmogony, the general law of fluctuation, the social sciences, and the conclusion, is Sorokin's own and absent from Merton. The relation is one of embedding: Merton supplied the historical material and its apparatus, Sorokin the theory and its application.
Against the Sovereign User: Fundamental Rights, Technology and the Case for Relational Rights
Mark Leiser
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Fundamental rights discourse remains too attached to the figure of the autonomous, self-directing individual who asserts rights against interference. Digital technology reveals the inadequacy of that figure. In networked environments, the exercise of one person’s rights can expose, limit, chill, profile, manipulate or empower others. A relational approach would not abandon individuality, nor collapse rights into collective welfare. It would ask how rights are constituted, exercised, limited and protected through relationships, infrastructures, groups, dependencies and design. This article develops that claim through EU and ECHR digital rights law. It distinguishes formal relationality, in which rights correlate with duties; constitutive relationality, in which social conditions shape autonomy; distributive relationality, in which technical architectures allocate visibility, opportunity and risk; and institutional relationality, in which legal regimes and public authorities divide responsibility for those effects. Privacy, data protection, expression, dignity and AI governance become distorted when law reduces those relations to a possessive grammar of my data, my privacy, my speech, my consent and my control. That grammar remains indispensable against domination. It becomes inadequate when inference, aggregation, platform design, predictive grouping and automated decision-making produce rights-effects that no individual act of choice can settle. The article therefore criticises informational self-determination when it becomes a complete theory of digital governance, and it rejects the elevation of consent from a limited legal technique into a general source of legitimacy. Consent can authorise a discrete, intelligible and reversible choice. It cannot govern an ecosystem on behalf of absent persons and emergent groups. The alternative is institutional justification: lawfully assigned purposes, necessity, rights-sensitive design, safeguards, representative participation where practicable, audit, contestability and review. Relational fundamental rights use those disciplines to improve proportionality, allocate responsibility across the EU digital rulebook and support rights-preserving innovation. The central claim is not less rights, but better rights: a move from the sovereign user clicking alone to a legal order capable of asking how one person’s exercise of rights shapes the conditions under which others can exercise theirs.
Proportionality
Mark Leiser
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Proportionality is often invoked as if the word itself supplies judgement. It does not. In EU law, the principle performs a harder task: it converts lawful power into a public account of the justification for interference. This article reconstructs proportionality as the constitutional law of technological architecture. It argues that proportionality integrates competence, market freedoms, administrative discretion, fundamental rights, privacy, data protection and technology regulation by asking a single disciplined question: Does the design of the interference remain within the limits of the reason that justifies it? The argument proceeds in four stages. 1. It traces the principle from older ideas of measured authority, through German administrative and constitutional law, Strasbourg's fair-balance reasoning, the Court of Justice's general principles, and the Charter. 2. It develops proportionality as a judicial method and distinguishes several modes of review: deferential legislative review, strict rights review, remedial proportionality, infrastructure proportionality, lawful-basis proportionality, safeguards proportionality and explanation proportionality. 3. It reads the hard technology cases as conflicts among rights and legally protected freedoms rather than as privacy against nothing. 4. It proposes a doctrinally grounded protocol for GDPR and AI Act practice. The protocol starts with interference intensity, specifies aims operationally, tests suitability with evidence, treats necessity as a design comparison, makes safeguards constitutive, requires a residual burden review, and insists on a temporal review. The article rejects both privacy absolutism, including the anti-proportionality rhetoric associated with Max Schrems, and managerial balancing, which treats rights as a source of friction in a business plan. Properly understood, proportionality does neither. It supplies the legal discipline by which public authorities, supervisory bodies, platforms, controllers and AI deployers must explain why the rights burden of a technological design does not exceed its justification.
Change, Change Agents and Gender Dynamics in Public Organizations: Challenges and Opportunities
Jessica Breaugh; Caroline Fischer
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This chapter explores how gender dynamics shape the experiences, expectations, and effectiveness of change agents in public organizations during policy implementation. Drawing on a three-wave survey and a conjoint experiment from two German local administrations undergoing digital transformation, the study examines gender differences in stress, resilience, perceived uncertainty, and leadership behaviors. The findings reveal that stress and resilience fluctuate differently across genders over time, with female change agents demonstrating steadier resilience and a heightened sensitivity to structural constraints. Furthermore, while employees generally prioritize competence and relational leadership over surface-level characteristics, those with prior experience in digitalization initiatives exhibit a significant preference for female change agents. Ultimately, the authors argue that recognizing these gendered experiences is essential for overcoming bureaucratic resistance, legitimizing women’s leadership, and ensuring the sustainable implementation of public sector reforms.
Is Income Inequality on the Rise Everywhere?
Facundo Alvaredo; François Bourguignon; Francisco H. G. Ferreira; Christoph Lakner; Nora Lustig; Carolyn Fisher
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This paper reviews the evidence on the levels and trends of income and consumption inequality around the world during 2000–2019. It examines how inequality levels vary across countries, whether inequality has been rising more often than declining, and how conclusions depend on the underlying income concept and data source. The analysis draws on two types of evidence: inequality estimates derived from household surveys and contained in harmonized databases such as WIID, PIP, and LIS, and estimates based on distributional national accounts from WID. The analysis pays particular attention to differences between income- and consumption-based measures, the under-coverage of top incomes in household surveys, and the assumptions underlying distributional national accounts. Two findings emerge. First, inequality levels differ substantially not only across countries, but also across concepts and data sources within countries. Measures based on national income generally show higher inequality than those based on household surveys, while consumption-based measures tend to yield lower inequality than income-based ones. Second, trends prove more robust than levels: across sources, inequality was more often declining or stable than increasing during the two decades preceding the pandemic. There is also some evidence of convergence, with declines more common among initially high-inequality countries and increases more frequent among initially low-inequality countries. (Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality Working Paper)
A Guinada Conservadora da Maçonaria Brasileira: Do Estado Novo ao Bolsonarismo
Hugo Barbosa de Paulo
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O artigo analisa a guinada conservadora das lideranças da maçonaria brasileira desde a dĂ©cada de 1930 atĂ© o bolsonarismo, evidenciada por consistente revisĂŁo bibliogrĂĄfica e rigorosa anĂĄlise histĂłrica. O Decreto nĂșmero 1.579 de 1938 do GOB Ă© identificado como marco fundamental da institucionalização do anticomunismo, postura ideolĂłgica consolidada no apoio ao golpe civil-militar de 1964 e, recentemente, ao bolsonarismo. Sustenta-se uma evidente continuidade histĂłrica na defesa da ordem, da propriedade privada e do combate ao comunismo, evidenciando o alinhamento das elites maçÎnicas com o conservadorismo. O estudo contribui academicamente para o debate sobre cultura polĂ­tica e elites no Brasil contemporĂąneo.
Intersecting Realities: Gender, Healthcare, and Policy in Context
Tafadzwa Shanon Karuma; Tanja Klenk; Caroline Fischer
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While gender is increasingly acknowledged as a powerful determinant of health and healthcare access, contemporary societies remain riddled by the prevalence of gendered healthcare disparities. By contrasting existing research from the Global North and the Global South, this chapter conceptualises the complexity of the interplay between gender, healthcare systems, and public policy as a policy paradox. The chapter reveals how multi-level policy approaches targeted at gender health equality can contradict institutional structures, ultimately influencing the formulation and implementation of gender health policy that shape health outcomes and access to healthcare.
The Politics of Black Classification: Sociopolitical Cues and Racial Perception
Lauren D. Davenport; Hakeem Jefferson; Hunter Rendleman
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What makes someone Black in American society today? From Donald Trump questioning Kamala Harris's racial identity to Joe Biden's claim that hesitant Black voters "ain't Black," American politics frequently brings questions of racial authenticity and belonging to the surface. Yet political science often approaches race as a fixed attribute rather than a social construction. Here, we seek to understand how Americans define blackness in social and political life. Using a conjoint experiment with a racially diverse sample that includes Black, white, and mixed race Black-white respondents, we evaluate how ascribed and acquired traits influence perceptions of blackness. The results show that inherited characteristics---particularly parentage and skin tone, which are the strongest determinants of racial classification---play a central role, while sociopolitical cues such as partisanship, neighborhood context, and spousal race also influence racial classification. Using a continuous measure, we also show that respondents make graded assessments of blackness rather than purely binary classifications, with some individuals perceived as more Black than others. Black respondents are more likely than white respondents to classify a broader set of profiles as Black, consistent with a more inclusive understanding of racial membership, yet they also place greater emphasis on shared political identity. These findings clarify how racial categories are socially constructed and why that construction carries real political and social consequences.
Learning by Transacting: A General Theory of Bidirectional Knowledge Flows in Market Exchange
Babu George
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Arrow (1962b) identified a fundamental paradox in markets for information: a buyer cannot value knowledge without possessing it, and a seller cannot demonstrate knowledge without surrendering it. Six decades of institutional design, from patent law to trade secret doctrine, answer that problem. This paper argues that Arrow’s paradox is a limiting case of a more general phenomenon. Every market transaction occurs across an interaction surface through which knowledge flows in both directions, and the classical analysis holds only under four restrictive assumptions: that knowledge is an artifact, that disclosure is one-shot, that it runs from seller to buyer alone, and that absorption is automatic. Relaxing these assumptions yields a general theory of epistemic flux in which the direction of payment and the direction of net knowledge flow are independent. The framework recovers the classical paradox, the economics of consulting, the theory of the firm’s knowledge boundary, and the platform economy as parameter settings of a single model, and it is closed with an equilibrium: buyers choose usage and absorption, a hub prices access, and welfare is evaluated against a planner. Three results follow for markets in machine intelligence. First, an inverse information paradox: consumption of intelligence requires disclosure of context, and the discloser cannot value what she surrenders, because its value is realized only in aggregation with disclosures she cannot observe. Second, a two-sided welfare theorem: where the positional harm of rival access dominates, decentralized adoption over-discloses and under-absorbs relative to the planner; where the level benefit of better models dominates, it under-discloses, so the externality’s sign is an empirical object rather than an assumption. Third, an epistemic subsidy: a hub that values aggregate flux prices inference below marginal cost, which reinterprets free tiers and zero-retention premiums as the subsidy returned. The paper unifies Arrow’s two 1962 contributions, learning by doing and the information paradox, into one apparatus; explains why vendor competition cannot dissipate the asymmetry, since money can rebate a subsidy but cannot restore relative position; and specifies the institutions the new regime will require.
Migrant Age Profiles Reconciling Digital Trace and Survey Data: An Example of the United Kingdom in 2018 and 2019
Francesco Rampazzo; Jakub Bijak; Agnese Vitali; Ingmar Weber; Emilio Zagheni
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Accurate and timely estimates of migrant population stocks, disaggregated by age and sex, are critical for population projections and for understanding migration dynamics. This study proposes a hierarchical Bayesian model that extends previous work by incorporating age and sex disaggregation, using data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and digital traces from the Facebook Advertising Platform. A Bayesian multinomial–Dirichlet–Dirichlet model harmonizes age and sex profiles from the two sources, leveraging the Rogers–Castro framework to characterize migration age schedules and utilizing the conjugate nature of Dirichlet priors to ensure computational efficiency. We illustrate the framework using data on migrant populations in the United Kingdom for 2018 and 2019, based on the two sources: the Labour Force Survey and Facebook. The analysis identifies three distinct migrant groups with differing age and sex profiles: younger Western and Southern European migrants, slightly older Central and Eastern Europeans, and a predominantly older Irish migrant population. Facebook data enhances the coverage of younger migrants, who are often underrepresented in traditional surveys, while the LFS provides broader demographic context and helps benchmark the estimates to standard population definitions. The findings highlight the utility of integrating traditional and digital data sources to address gaps in migration statistics. This framework enables more accurate disaggregation of migrant population stock data and offers a scalable, computationally efficient methodology for improving migration estimates, particularly in contexts lacking ground-truth data. The approach also yields insights into migration patterns and demographic structures, with potential applications in policy planning and demographic research.
Selective Economic Generality: Generality and Coalition Durability in Majoritarian Regimes
Shuja Shakir
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What explains the persistence of majoritarian regimes beyond their initial populist phase? While existing theories often highlight institutional manipulation, this alone does not fully account for the durability of such coalitions. This paper introduces the concept of selective economic generality: the provision of material benefits through ostensibly universal policies that, in practice, result in uneven incorporation across social groups. Drawing on the Buchanan–Congleton generality principle, the paper posits that majoritarian regimes may maintain the institutional appearance of generality while altering its substantive outcomes. This argument is explored through a focused case study of India, examining how patterns of mob lynching and prosecutorial asymmetry reveal the interaction between welfare provision and the uneven application of state protection, leading to differentiated political incorporation. The findings indicate that formally universal institutions can coexist with varied experiences of citizenship, thereby sustaining majoritarian governance while upholding the constitutional principle of equal citizenship.
Framework from International Markets on GDP growth: evidences for Angola Economy and Equatorial Guinea and determination of economic policies
Nerhum Sandambi
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The interference from internacional Markets, are quantified on this approach, particularly analysed, how the domestic economy are influenced with strongest from international markets, where in fact exist a strong capacity to define for example on the other hand, the respective economy. This evidence are naturally comprovavated from some others economy such as Guinea Equatorial, Angola, with strong relevance where naturally the price of oil and gas on international markets, are strongly enough to generate for example a strong capacity of domestic economy. Angola in particular, this evidence is strong plausible and relevance to contributed from a weak economy for example, in context of Angola economy, the existence of incapacities of work economy are naturally evidence. The Angolan authorities not are capable to guarantee and generated the a strong domestic economy, this characteristics and aspects are naturally aligned with a weak working economy and weak working institutions, such as economic institutions. The decreases from international markets help for example to create a weak capacity of economy. Reinforced from incapacities of infrastructures level that existed, in particular.
Addressing Workforce Training Gaps in Domestic and Family Violence in Primary Healthcare Settings: A Scoping Review
Shauna Fjaagesund; Bibek Chauhan; ryan fraser; Sara Richards; Chrystie Myketiak; Sara Chayani; Kellie Townshend; Diana Dulf; Gregory Nash; Florin Oprescu
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Background: Domestic and family violence (DFV) is a persistent and complex challenge in primary healthcare, particularly in general practice, where care is continuous and patient-practitioner relationships are long-standing. Although doctors and nurses are well positioned to support patients affected by DFV, training gaps remain. These are compounded by inconsistent screening, limited referral pathways, and a lack of structured education. This is especially true for receptionists, who are often the first point of contact. Aim: To explore and synthesise DFV knowledge and training gaps in primary healthcare reported in the literature. Method: A scoping review guided by the PRISMA-ScR framework was conducted. Literature published between November 2014 and April 2026 was searched in PubMed, Web of Science, CINAHL, and Scopus. Search terms included variations of "domestic violence", "general practice", and "training". Following eligibility screening, data were extracted and analysed thematically. Results: Fifteen studies were included. Only two explored the training needs of administrative staff, despite evidence supporting their role in DFV response. Three categories of barriers were identified: (1) patient (victim-survivor)-level factors, including economic barriers, cultural dynamics, and fear of disclosure; (2) professional-level challenges, including inadequate training, low confidence, emotional burden, and safety concerns; and (3) organisational/system-level limitations, including inconsistent protocols, limited referral pathways, and time constraints. Discussion: The literature highlights a clinical-centric bias in DFV training, with administrative staff often excluded from policy and protocol development despite their role in practice processes and first contact with victim-survivors. Effective DFV responses require a whole-practice model that includes administrative staff. Cultural and organisational barriers affect disclosure and staff readiness. Trauma-informed care, cultural competency training, and clear procedural frameworks were identified as priorities. Sustained funding, policy reform, and ongoing evaluation are needed to strengthen training. Conclusion: To improve identification and support of victim-survivors, this review recommends interdisciplinary DFV training that integrates non-clinical and clinical staff. Training should address emotional preparedness, cultural sensitivity, and organisational capacity while supporting the needs of other family members. Future research should evaluate collaborative, trauma-informed approaches across general practice and primary healthcare teams.
Judicial Recognition of Communicative Knowledge Production: From the Munich AI Overview Judgment to the Sextuple Helix Innovation Model
Lutz Peschke; Seldağ GĂŒneƟ Peschke; Rodrigo Cetina Presuel
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Generative artificial intelligence is increasingly transforming the communicative conditions under which knowledge is produced, interpreted and circulated. Yet scholarly and policy debates continue to approach AI primarily as an enabling technology, focusing on regulation, accuracy or ethical risks rather than on its changing epistemic role. This article argues that the judgment of the Landgericht MĂŒnchen I (Regional Court Munich) concerning Google’s AI Overview (Az. 26 O 869/26) marks an unexpected conceptual turning point. Rather than treating AI-generated responses as a mere extension of conventional search results, the court recognised them as communicative content attributable to the provider. The article interprets this judicial distinction as an early recognition of a broader epistemic transformation. It develops the concept of Communicative Knowledge Production to explain how generative AI differs fundamentally from classical information retrieval and introduces Judicial Epistemology as an analytical perspective for examining how legal reasoning reconstructs changing assumptions about knowledge production. Building upon these concepts, the article proposes Epistemic Participation as the theoretical mechanism through which generative AI becomes integrated into innovation processes and argues that this development provides an innovation-theoretical justification for extending the Quintuple Helix into a Sextuple Helix Innovation Model incorporating an epistemic subsystem. Finally, the article develops the concept of Epistemic Governance to explain why governing generative AI increasingly requires governing hybrid processes of communicative knowledge production. By connecting jurisprudence, communication theory, social epistemology and innovation studies, the article contributes a conceptual framework for understanding the emerging epistemic transformation of contemporary knowledge societies.
To be or not to be a worker: Legal uncertainty and precarious employment in the European Union.
MOBILE - Center of Excellence for Global Mobility Law; Dorte Sindbjerg Martinsen; LucĂ­a LĂłpez Zurita; UrĆĄka Ć adl
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Precarious employment has gradually moved onto the EU policy agenda, so far culminating in the proclamation of the European Pillar of Social Rights (the Pillar). However, the effectiveness of these renewed social ambitions is challenged by legal uncertainty and entangled in ongoing political and legal disputes over the definition of ‘worker’ under EU law. This article examines how EU political and legal dynamics respond to the legal uncertainty faced by those in precarious employment and how these responses condition effective protection for those at the margins of the labour market. It explores the contested definition of ‘worker’ and analyses two recent legislative initiatives: the Directive on Transparent and Predictable Working Conditions and the Platform Work Directive. The article finds that persistent political and legal disagreements continue to fuel legal uncertainty for precarious workers. Access to labour rights and social protection remains tied to worker status — a status that is still primarily defined at the national level.
Vulnerabilities of Outdoor Workers in the Unorganized Sector Due to Heat Stress: A Study in Delhi
SIMRAN GOSWAMI
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Heat stress is a condition in which the higher temperature which affects the health and performance of individuals. When temperature reaches beyond a certain level, it creates discomfort, distress and at times deaths due to health problems. Discomfort like headaches, dizziness, excessive sweating, dehydration etc. This problem is prominent in urban as well as rural areas. The effects of heat stress are largely seen amongst the population who work outdoors. Because the greater exposure to sun increases the intensity of heat stress. The paper talks about the urban vulnerabilities due to heat stress in urban area. The paper includes three vulnerable groups, that is, construction workers, street vendors and auto drivers. The paper assesses how different factors like risks, exposure, health, impacts etc make them vulnerable to heat stress. Also, how socio-economic factors affect the level of vulnerability to heat stress. The study is based on Delhi’s outdoor workers in unorganized sector. Gender perspective is also taken care of while assessing vulnerabilities. A relation between income and vulnerability to heat stress has been established through this study. This study aims to contribute towards the existing literature on heat stress in urban areas.
“I don’t make fantastic plans”: Hopes and dreams among residents with migratory experience in Czechia
Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky
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How do people with a migration background hope and dream (or not)? What do they envision as their present and their future in the state of mobility and/or settlement? Research has examined mobility as a function of “aspirations” and “capabilities” within certain perceived geographical opportunity structures. This model reveals a great deal about how macro-structural changes shape migration patterns. What’s lacking as a complement to this approach, is the view from the bottom up, an in-depth cultural sociological exploration of meaning. In other words, how do individuals make sense of and understand their hopes and dreams? To explore this question, we call upon the tools of cultural sociology, including narratives, and symbolic boundaries. We base our analysis on data collected from 29 in-depth, semi-structured interviews among Roma with a migration background, settled Ukrainian immigrants, and Ukrainian refugees, living in the city of Brno in Czechia. Our study is part of a larger project in which the overarching goal is to carry out interdisciplinary research on the opportunities and risks related to individualization. In our work package, we focus on how individual “hopes” and “dreams” are formed, looking for the underlying mechanisms of fragmentation and polarization in the context of individualization. Our choice of research participants reflects the Czech context of fragmentation within groups (the Romani and Ukrainian communities) and polarization (between groups and at a societal level). Our preliminary findings reveal different forms of hopes and dreams both within-group and between groups. In some cases, we can recognize the typical “immigrant dream,” namely, the hope for a better life economically and in terms of safety and security. However, in many cases, there is considerable ambivalence and hesitation to hope, and even thwarted and unrealized dreams.
From Counts to Meaning: Embeddings and Transformers
Johannes B. Gruber
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In computational communication research, text embeddings, especially ones generated through transformer-based models, have emerged as a pivotal technology with the potential to improve many existing research designs. Historically, language representation for supervised as well as unsupervised machine learning techniques relied on sparse document-feature matrices, which treated text as a collection of independent features. The advent of embeddings has revolutionized this approach by enabling the creation of models that take into account the contextual relationships between words in sentences and documents. This development has yielded a more nuanced and meaningful dense representation of language. The evolution of embeddings has been significantly influenced by advancements in deep learning techniques, most recently the introduction of transformer technology. Transformers have thus accelerated the creation of larger, more sophisticated language models. This chapter discusses the history, functionality and significance of embeddings for computational communication research up until the current generation of transformer based Large Language Models. It highlights key technologies, pre-trained models, and their applications in various areas of communication research.
The landscape and characteristics of LGBTQ+ community-controlled organisations delivering mental health and alcohol or other drug services in Australia
Jack Farrugia; Adam Bourne; G.J. Melendez-Torres; Shane Worrell; Graham Brown; Nicky Bath; Ruth McNair; Julie Mooney-Somers; Penelope Strauss; Natalie Amos
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Objective: LGBTQ+ people experience disproportionate mental health and alcohol and other drug (AOD) burdens and have distinct care needs, yet limited evidence on the characteristics of LGBTQ+ community-controlled organisations constrains optimal service design and delivery. This study aimed to map the landscape of LGBTQ+ community-controlled mental health and AOD organisations that provide mental health and AOD services across Australia. Methods: A mixed-methods study involved 16 LGBTQ+ community-controlled organisations, using an online cross-sectional survey and semi-structured interviews. Descriptive and content analyses examined organisational characteristics and service provision. A common practice elements approach integrated both data sources to identify shared organisational and service elements. Results: Organisations varied substantially in size, workforce composition, and service models. All organisations provided mental health services, and nine provided AOD services. Eight common practice elements were identified: LGBTQ+ governance and infrastructure, embedded community responsiveness, integrated holistic services, collaborative partnerships, community building, foundational knowledge, relational practice, and safety-oriented approaches. Conclusions: LGBTQ+ community-controlled organisations provide essential, contextually safe mental health and AOD services and operate through distinctive yet commonly shared practices. Implications for Public Health: Workforce development, and integration with mainstream systems is critical to sustain LGBTQ+ community-controlled organisations and meet growing community demand for inclusive care.
Beating the Heat: Understanding Heat-Protective Behavior in Older Adults during the 2023 Heatwave in Limburg, the Netherlands
Eline van de Kamp; Francine Schneider; Bob Mulder; Maud Huynen
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Although heat-protective behaviors are recommended during extreme heat, their actual adoption remains variable and poorly understood. This study applied the Capability, Opportunity, Motivation-Behavior (COM-B) model to explore determinants of heat-protective behaviors among adults aged ≄50 years in Limburg, the Netherlands, during a 2023 heatwave. An online cross-sectional survey (n=514) assessed the adoption of 25 heat-protective behaviors. Low-effort behaviors (e.g., staying indoors) were frequently adopted, whereas self-cooling (e.g., self-dousing) and equipment-dependent behaviors (e.g., air-conditioning) were less common. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses subsequently examined the relative contributions of COM-B constructs to the adoption of three selected heat-protective behaviors: self-dousing, fan use, and adjusting daily activities. Motivation was the most consistent determinant across behaviors, explaining 9.4-12.9% of variance, primarily driven by perceived effort, perceived costs, and expected benefits. Opportunity played a major role in fan use (51.0% of explained variance), mainly driven by fan availability. Capability contributed relatively little to variance in adoption (0.5-5.5%). These findings suggest that heat-protective behaviors are influenced more by structural constraints and motivational factors than by knowledge and risk perception alone, and that the relative importance of COM-B constructs varies across behaviors. Interventions should therefore be behavior-specific and grounded in behavioral theory to effectively increase adoption.
How Conspiratorial Predispositions Amplify Winner–Loser Polarization in Perceived Electoral Legitimacy
Yixiao Sun; David Matthew Markowitz
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This study examines how conspiratorial predispositions shape winner–loser polarization in perceived electoral legitimacy following the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Using two-panel survey datasets collected before and after the election, we analyze within-individual changes in legitimacy perceptions among election winners and losers. Consistent with prior research, the winner–loser gap in perceived electoral legitimacy widened after the election, with winners showing a clear increase in perceived legitimacy and losers exhibiting a comparatively more negative pattern of updating. Importantly, fraud beliefs did not robustly amplify the winner–loser divergence. By contrast, conspiratorial predispositions significantly widened the winner–loser gap, primarily because winners with stronger conspiratorial thinking showed greater increases in perceived legitimacy after the election, whereas the corresponding effects among losers were small and inconsistent. This pattern remained robust after accounting for fraud beliefs. Further subgroup analyses showed that this winner-driven pattern appeared across partisan-strength subgroups, although its magnitude varied across samples. These findings suggest that post-election legitimacy polarization is driven less by specific suspicions of fraud than by a broader conspiratorial interpretive framework that asymmetrically shapes how citizens make sense of favorable and unfavorable political outcomes.
Structural Economy: the effect of economic destruction from international Markets on selected underdevelopment countries
Nerhum Sandambi
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On this approach, analyse particularly the strong influence from International markets in particular, it's naturally to analyse for example the relationship between shocks from international markets and domestic economy. The main results show naturally that, many developing Countries, have naturally strong influence from international markets, derived from some commodities, such as oil, gas and diamonds. This tree commodities, have strong influence on developing economy such as Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Democratic Republic of Congo and other relevant economies that have strong dependency from this commodities. Particularly for Angola Economy, exist strong dependency, that was verified during pandemic shocks, and during the decreases on international markets derived from oil prices. On the other hand, the diamonds prices, in fact translate a significant dependency. In majority countries, exist for example the destruction effect on economy, the destruction economy from international markets, normally are evidenced when exited the strongest incapacity from domestic economy to guarantee a strong response on presence of the exogenous shocks. The quantified of the economy are evidenced, when the economy not are naturally capable to create a strong response on the presence of the exogenous shocks, in particular. Many exogenous shocks show that the inexistence of a strong structure of economy, transform naturally, on the other hand, the respective economy in a weak economy. On the other hand, the exogenous shocks show for example that, the countries with a weak economy institutions and politics institutions drive yours respective economy and respective institutions to a strong stagnation in particular.
Fairness Perception Collapse and Silent Exit in the Context of Low Fertility: A Diagnostic Exploration Based on the Squeeze Model
Tian WANG
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[Objective] To examine the actual relationship between structural pressure and fertility exit intention, and to identify the core psychological mechanisms driving fertility exit, based on the Squeeze Model (v2). [Methods] Using both cross-sectional data (CFPS 2020 and 2022) and four-wave panel data (CFPS 2016–2022), this study employs exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, logistic and multinomial logistic regression, cross-lagged analysis, and fixed-effects models for empirical testing. [Results] The collapse of fairness perception comprises two independent dimensions—distributive fairness denial and rule fairness denial—with only the former significantly driving fertility exit intention. The total effect of structural pressure on exit intention is negative, suggesting that it functions more as a catalyst (rather than a direct driver) that accelerates the translation of collapsed fairness perceptions into exit intentions; this effect requires long-term accumulation, is amplified by institutional exclusion, is suppressed by time pressure, and peaks within 2–4 years before declining. The exit decision is based on a cognitive judgment of the distributive order, rather than emotional distress. Multiple trust deficits constitute an independent pathway to exit, separate from structural pressure. [Conclusions] The collapse of the distributive order is the core driving force of fertility exit, with structural pressure acting merely as a catalyst. Trust vacuum constitutes an independent exit pathway, and the exit decision is essentially a cognitive judgment rather than an emotional reaction.
Advice Regarding Sign Language Usage to Hearing Families of Deaf Children
Erin Elizabeth Campbell; Kaj Kraus; Josiah Shaffer; Shayna Dash; Amelia Ann Becker; Endre Olsvik Elvestad; Amy Lieberman; Jennie Pyers; Naomi Kenney Caselli
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Purpose: Hearing caregivers of deaf children must make time-sensitive decisions about which language(s) to use to support their children’s development. Caregivers often receive advice on this decision from multiple sources (including teachers, speech-language pathologists, pediatricians, inter alia), but the content of this advice has not been well characterized. Methods: This study examined the prevalence, sources, effects, and experiences of clinical advice about sign language. We conducted a survey of hearing caregivers of deaf or hard-of-hearing children (N=118), who were recruited from a sign language learning app. We used a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative survey analyses with qualitative analyses of caregivers' open-ended responses about their experiences. Results: Roughly 40% of caregivers reported receiving advice from a professional discouraging sign language, and many caregivers encountered advice they saw as conflicting, biased, or outdated. Caregivers who received anti-sign advice held more negative attitudes toward signing than those given positive advice. Many caregivers expressed regret regarding their family’s language decisions, wishing that their children had more sign language exposure earlier. Conclusions: Even though such anti-sign advice is not well supported by existing evidence, many parents had received recommendations discouraging sign language. These findings underscore the need for more evidence-based guidance from educators and clinicians for families navigating early communication decisions for deaf children.
El deudor que gobernaba el contrato: el fin del pago enervante de la acción resolutoria y la opción del contratante diligente (Corte Suprema, 8 de julio de 2026, rol N° 13.766-2025)
Andrés Gabriel Varas Quijón
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ÂżPuede el deudor demandado de resoluciĂłn enervar la acciĂłn pagando durante el juicio? La postura tradicional, apoyada en el artĂ­culo 310 del CĂłdigo de Procedimiento Civil, lo admitĂ­a hasta la citaciĂłn para oĂ­r sentencia en primera instancia y hasta la vista de la causa en segunda. La sentencia de la Corte Suprema de 8 de julio de 2026 (rol N° 13.766-2025) la desecha sobre una distinciĂłn tan simple como decisiva: el artĂ­culo 310 regula cuĂĄndo puede oponerse la excepciĂłn de pago, no cuĂĄndo puede pagarse. La ventana procesal protege un hecho pasado —el pago ya efectuado antes de la notificaciĂłn de la demanda—; no crea una facultad futura de cumplir pendente lite. Admitir lo contrario invertirĂ­a el artĂ­culo 1489 del CĂłdigo Civil: la opciĂłn entre cumplimiento y resoluciĂłn, que la ley confiere al contratante diligente, pasarĂ­a de hecho al incumplidor, quien «gobernarĂ­a» la suerte del contrato hasta la Ășltima hora del pleito. Este comentario reconstruye el caso y su recorrido procesal; diseca la separaciĂłn entre el plano procesal de la excepciĂłn y el plano sustantivo del pago; examina la titularidad, el ejercicio y el momento de consumaciĂłn de la opciĂłn; refuta, con el argumento a contrario, la lectura sistemĂĄtica construida sobre los artĂ­culos 1598 a 1601 y 1879 del CĂłdigo Civil y el artĂ­culo 10 de la Ley N° 18.101; sitĂșa el fallo en la lĂ­nea jurisprudencial que consolida (roles N° 6.676-2009, 291-2013 y 3956-2015); conecta la soluciĂłn con el derecho del deudor a subsanar y sus lĂ­mites de buena fe objetiva; y extrae las consecuencias prĂĄcticas para acreedores, deudores y redactores de contratos. DOI/enlace del trabajo: 10.5281/zenodo.21347337
Benchmarking parallel trends violations in regression imputation difference-in-differences
Zikai Li; Anton Strezhnev
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Difference-in-differences (DiD) studies increasingly use regression imputation methods as an alternative to the conventional two-way fixed effects (TWFE) estimator, fitting a TWFE regression on the controls to impute treated counterfactuals. A common method for obtaining pre-trend placebo estimates uses the same model to impute outcomes for control units -- the default in the popular fect R package. We decompose this ``in-sample imputation" estimator into its component 2 x 2 differences-in-differences to show two biases: an attenuation bias driven by redundant differences-in-differences that are zero by construction and a contamination bias resulting from the use of ``early adopters" as controls under staggered adoption. These distort both the magnitude and the apparent shape of the pre-treatment trends. We show that both biases are addressed by a simple correction computed from the in-sample imputations. To illustrate, we re-analyze a study of the political effects of the 2008 ``shale shock" on Republican vote share in U.S. coal counties (Gazmararian, 2025). While the original analysis used in-sample imputation and concluded pre-trends were small, corrected placebo estimates of pre-trends are comparable in magnitude to the estimated treatment effects. The observed post-2008 Republican gains in coal counties are likely artifacts of longer-running regional trends.
Changing governments, stable elites? Executive personnel continuity in global perspective
Marco Improta
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In political science, government change is typically understood as a shift in who holds power, even though new cabinets may formally include many members of the previous governing elite. In this study, I differentiate institutional turnover from personnel turnover by reconstructing transitions between successive governments using the WhoGov dataset. I introduce an Executive Personnel Continuity Index (EPCI) that measures the similarity between outgoing and incoming ministerial rosters. I argue that leader succession functions as an executive reset: new leaders have incentives to establish control, reward loyalists, and signal political change. Party organizations, however, can insulate incumbent ministers from replacement. I test these expectations using descriptive evidence, country and transition-year fixed effects, equal-country weighting, entropy balancing and a transition-centered comparison with the outgoing government's own pre-transition continuity. Across the principal specifications, leader replacement is associated with a decline of approximately one-third in executive personnel continuity. The decline is limited under same-party succession, substantially larger across party boundaries and greatest under complete partisan alternation. The findings therefore indicate that a change in government translates into a substantive transformation of the elite mainly when it also unsettles the leadership and party bases of executive power, and this has significant consequences for political systems worldwide.
The AI Visibility Gap: A Technical Readiness Audit of 173 UK Local Service Business Websites
Eddie Eastwood
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This paper reports a technical readiness audit of 173 UK local service business websites across plumbers, solicitors, dental practices and accountants in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Bristol. Successfully fetched websites were assessed against 10 binary signals connected with machine-readable structure, answer-oriented content, crawlability, internal linking and mobile rendering. Error rows were retained in the dataset and reported separately. Of the 173 audited sites, 165 fetched successfully and 8 returned audit errors. Counting all audited rows, 120 sites (69.4%) were classified as Ready, 41 (23.7%) as Partially Ready, 4 (2.3%) as Not Ready and 8 (4.6%) were unclassified because the page could not be fetched. The strongest signals were crawlability, mobile rendering and entity consistency. The weakest were llms.txt, FAQ content and process explanation. The findings suggest that many UK local service websites meet basic technical criteria but often lack explicit answer-ready content.
What do we want from a theory of transport poverty?
Camila Ramos; Dick Timmer
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Transport poverty is an important pillar of contemporary transport research. Yet, it remains a contested concept that lacks a clear and unified theoretical foundation. This makes it difficult to determine under which conditions an individual can be considered transport poor, or how competing policy priorities should be balanced when allocating often scarce transport resources. In this paper, we identify five key elements that transport researchers and policymakers should consider in developing a theory of transport poverty, including the metric of transport poverty, its threshold, and the allocative implications that follow from a commitment to reducing transport poverty. In doing so, we provide a common language for conceptualising transport poverty, informing policy, and structuring ongoing debate. At the end of this paper, we examine how existing strands of transport literature engaging with the discussion on transport poverty could constitute a promising foundation for developing a fuller theory of transport poverty.
Mapping national incident reporting systems for high-containment laboratories across Europe and selected North American jurisdictions
Julia Bator
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Objective: To map how incident reporting for high-containment laboratories is organised across Europe and selected North American jurisdictions and to assess whether reporting duties function as national reporting-and-learning systems. Methods: Comparative qualitative mapping using the Framework for Assessing Incident Reporting Systems (FAIRS) assessed 31 jurisdictions: the 27 EU member states, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada, plus the European Union as a separate supranational layer. Six dimensions covered legal authority, governance, reporting scope, reporting pathway, data infrastructure, analysis and shared learning, assurance and continuous improvement. Data came from official legal and institutional sources collected between January and May 2026, supplemented by targeted expert consultation. Results: Across 32 assessed entities, legal authority for incident reporting was common, but learning functions were much weaker. Mean scores were highest for legal authority (3.0) and assurance (2.5), and lowest for reporting pathway and data infrastructure (1.9) and analysis and shared learning (1.5). Thirty-one entities scored maturity level (ML) 3 on legal authority. Only two scored above ML2 on data infrastructure, and Canada alone reached ML4 on analysis and shared learning. Three system types emerged: one operational exemplar (Canada), 11 coordinated partial systems, and 20 regulated but weakly operationalised systems. The EU layer contributed legal duties without an EU-level reporting-and-learning chain. Conclusions: Formal reporting duties are more widespread than functioning national learning systems. The main governance divide is not legal authority alone, but whether reports are aggregated, analysed, and translated into feedback and system improvement.
From Status Symbol to Polysemous Sign: Interpreting the Meaning of Artificially Extended Fingernails
JĂŒrgen Beyer; Lea Kirn
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The study analyses how German-language press coverage interprets the trend toward artificially elongated fingernails and relates it to Veblen’s concept of conspicuous leisure. Drawing on a qualitative-interpretive analysis of 45 newspaper articles, it reconstructs eight interpretive frames that locate long nails at the intersection of status display, consumer aesthetics, feminist gesture, self-care ritual, migrant-coded service economies, and scenes of cultural appropriation. The press does invoke Veblen’s reading but simultaneously marks it as anachronistic, replacing univocal status semantics with a polysemous structure that links long nails to heterogeneous problem constellations (capitalist innovation, digital visibility, gender politics, self-care). This polysemy becomes the driving force of the trend’s appeal, turning a marginal bodily detail into a medium through which the contradictory imperatives of late-modern subjectivation are materially negotiated.
The Political Economy of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Nolan McCarty; Reilly Steel
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We analyze the text of 1,694,664 securities disclosures for 15,105 publicly traded companies to understand the political forces behind the rise and fall of corporate commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the United States. Starting with the rise, we find that the ideological composition of corporate leadership was a strong and persistent predictor of DEI commitments, which we argue reflects a plausible causal relationship. Ownership by the "Big Three" asset managers was also associated with corporate DEI commitments, both within and across firms, during the era when these investors vocally supported DEI. Presidential politics appears to have contributed to the fall: federal contractors pulled back more in 2025, consistent with the new administration targeting contractor DEI programs. However, the retreat was broad, suggesting the importance of larger political, legal, and social forces. Our results underscore the importance of corporate governance for the study of political economy.
Ambivalent perception of “tojisha group” and tolerance of the group: Toward a sustainable space for cooperation among individuals to whom need belong and who possess the potential for agency
Takazumi Ono; Hiroko Costantini; Misato Nihei
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Summary: In context emphasizing well-being of people with vulnerabilities and minority status, the term tojisha has gained widespread usage in Japan. The term tojisha refers to “an individual to whom needs belong and who possesses the potential for agency in relation to those needs,” and spaces designed for interaction among fellow tojisha are referred to as “tojisha groups” and such spaces are becoming increasingly common across various settings. While the importance of tojisha groups has been widely recognized, their potential negative aspects are rarely addressed. Therefore, we conducted an online questionnaire survey in two stages to examine the distribution of positive and negative perceptions of tojisha groups and to test the hypothesis that group tolerance is associated with these perceptions of the group. Findings: The results showed that many participants reported positive perceptions of tojisha groups. However, 40–60% also indicated negative perceptions, including feelings of not being able to understand each other or an inability to speak openly—even among fellow tojisha. K-means clustering identified four distinct clusters, including one cluster characterized by high scores on both positive and negative perceptions. In addition, group tolerance was associated with both positive and negative perceptions of the group. Applications: These findings suggest that while tojisha groups can offer meaningful and supportive experiences, they may also function as ambivalent spaces. Enhancing group-level tolerance may be crucial for ensuring that tojisha groups remain inclusive, supportive, and responsive to the diverse needs of their members.
A Guinada Conservadora da Maçonaria Brasileira: Do Estado Novo ao Bolsonarismo
Hugo Barbosa de Paulo
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O artigo analisa a guinada conservadora das lideranças da maçonaria brasileira desde a dĂ©cada de 1930 atĂ© o bolsonarismo, evidenciada por consistente revisĂŁo bibliogrĂĄfica e rigorosa anĂĄlise histĂłrica. O Decreto nĂșmero 1.579 de 1938 do GOB Ă© identificado como marco fundamental da institucionalização do anticomunismo, postura ideolĂłgica consolidada no apoio ao golpe civil-militar de 1964 e, recentemente, ao bolsonarismo. Sustenta-se uma evidente continuidade histĂłrica na defesa da ordem, da propriedade privada e do combate ao comunismo, evidenciando o alinhamento das elites maçÎnicas com o conservadorismo. O estudo contribui academicamente para o debate sobre cultura polĂ­tica e elites no Brasil contemporĂąneo.
Youth Public Gatherings: A Working Definition and Sociological Framework
Almethia C. Franklin
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This document advances a research-grounded working definition and conceptual framework for understanding youth public gatherings — events commonly labeled "teen takeovers" in media and policy discourse. Existing descriptions of these gatherings tend to be descriptive, institutional, or event-specific, defined by the outcomes that occur within them rather than by the social conditions that make them gatherings in the first place. Drawing on two years of field research including direct observation at gathering sites and in-the-moment field conversations with young people attending gatherings across Chicago between 2024 and 2026, this framework proposes that youth public gatherings are defined by three necessary conditions: Collective Presence, Public Occupation, and Informal Organization. The framework also identifies observable characteristics and a pattern of conditions that allow practitioners and researchers to recognize a gathering as forming — without relying on numeric thresholds or outcome-based definitions. A core finding is that these gatherings resist fixed definition by their nature, and that resistance is itself analytically significant. Young people consistently describe their attendance in terms of presence and belonging, not disruption. This document is intended for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners working to understand youth public gatherings on their own terms.
Slopification, mon amour: How I stopped hating the algorithm and became a sloppy research persona
Elena Pilipets
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A multimedia contribution built around the equation “vibes + memes + algorithms = AI slop”, this research explores how algorithmic cultures increasingly target ambiguous affect. Based on empirical analyses of For You Pages across TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and X, it challenges what has come to be known as the "dead internet theory" by framing AI slop as a platform-mediated product of human–machine co-creation. Speculative research personas, embedded video walkthroughs, and digital methods provide a novel framework for studying the affective dynamics of synthetic social media. This preprint is a version of a longform produced for and published by the Institute of Network Cultures at https://networkcultures.org/longform/2026/07/01/slopification/
The Self-Destruction Mechanism of Legitimacy-Dependent Institutions: A Model of Disguised Frames and Trust Capital Consumption
Masahiro Fujita
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Institutions that operate primarily on the basis of public legitimacy exhibit a structural mechanism whereby, when subjected to short-term metric pressure, they self-destructively degrade by consuming their very legitimacy as fuel. This paper formalizes this mechanism through two concepts—the Disguised Frame (DF) and Trust Capital Consumption (TCC)—and presents them as a simplified dynamic model. A Disguised Frame is a content frame that retains the outward form of public discourse while being effectively optimized for emotional consumption or short-term attention capture. TrustCapital refers to the accumulated social trust that an institution has built over time, functioning as a renewable resource stock. We show that when metric dominance, competitive pressure, and audience feedback loops operate jointly, institutions—through the repeated accumulation of individually rational decisions—irreversibly deplete this trust capital. Although the analysis proceeds primarily with news media as the illustrative case, Section 6 argues that the model is applicable to institutions that depend on public legitimacy more broadly, including academic journals, science journalism, think tanks, and public broadcasters. The contribution of this paper lies in providing a framework that explains institutional degradation not as a failure of individual actors’ intentions or values, but as the intrinsic logic of incentive structures.
Exploring Public Expenditure on FIFA World Cup Hosting: An Approach of Empirical Analyses
Nerhum Sandambi
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On this approach, explore the public expenditure on the FIFA World Cup hosting, countries naturally have high and strong challenges to host a tournament, for example, considering particularly on the year when Country hosting the event, exist for example strong investments in infrastructures, with strong relevant on sportive infrastructures. On majority Countries, exist naturally high implications with the hosting event, for example the successful of the tournament are naturally translated from existence on Country hosting the tournament, sportive culture, social organisation, strong political capacity of majority institutions, such as economic institutions and politics institutions. On the other hand, necessary exist for example high coordination of the public policy and work institutions, when not exist efficiency on working institutions, Countries have particularly unsuccessful with the tournament. On the other hand, majority Countries without good institutions and without good economic performance, show particularly that the respective tournament can have for example the decreases on the most important growth provided from revenues, such as the taxes revenue that are very important to guarantee good economic performance in particular. For example, other relevant policies can naturally translate high implications on year of realization of tournament, this implications are naturally based on the existence of the incapacities in large case of the economic institutions that existed in these respective Countries. The approach, show on the other hand, that the existence of the institutions incapacities are naturally the most and high important reason for increasing of public expenditure, for example, this evidence are confirmed on FIFA World Cup, Qatar 2022. Where Country was had naturally high costs of realization, representing for example, 373,83%. On the other hand, the explosion of the costs of tournament are naturally relatively with the inexistence of the infrastructures on the Country, in lign with the inexistence of the good working institutions, such as politic and economic institutions.
MATERIALISMO INFORMACIONAL: UNA PROPUESTA ONTOLÓGICA PARA PENSAR LA INFORMACION
K Ramos-Guasca
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Este trabajo propone y justifica una hipĂłtesis ontolĂłgica a la que llamamos materialismo informacional. La tesis sostiene que la informaciĂłn no es un recurso derivado ni un simple epĂ­fenomeno de lo material, sino una dimensiĂłn constitutiva de la realidad que organiza sus estados posibles en los niveles fĂ­sico, quĂ­mico, biolĂłgico y social. El argumento se construye en diĂĄlogo con la tradiciĂłn materialista, desde el atomismo de Epicuro y el mecanicismo de Hobbes hasta el materialismo histĂłrico de Marx, y con la filosofĂ­a de la informaciĂłn de Floridi. A partir de ahĂ­ se defiende un reduccionismo moderado que reconoce la primacĂ­a estructurante de lo informacional sin clausurar otras perspectivas epistĂ©micas. En su tramo crĂ­tico, el trabajo examina el capitalismo informacional, el fetichismo de los datos y el colonialismo de datos, y sitĂșa la discusiĂłn desde AmĂ©rica Latina apoyĂĄndose en el pensamiento latinoamericano sobre ciencia, tecnologĂ­a y dependencia. El texto cierra con una secciĂłn de objeciones y respuestas y con un programa de investigaciĂłn abierto sobre la descolonizaciĂłn de los regĂ­menes informacionales.
How Do Researchers Define Hierarchy Within the Social Sciences? A Systematic Review
Stan Rhodes; Stefani Crabtree; Jacob Freeman
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Social science does not use the word hierarchy consistently. The term may be used to describe qualitatively different social relations and systems such as rank and prestige, nested organizational structures, and top-down control structures; placing all of these meanings under one term causes misunderstandings and misinterpretations. We use a computer-aided systematic quantitative literature review to identify social science papers that define hierarchy, then analyze that set of definitions (n = 1,121) to identify whether they fall within a pre-existing control-nest-rank ontology of hierarchy or some other type. We find that the control-nest-rank typology provides valid coverage for definitions of hierarchy across the social sciences, but is better seen as three different dimensions of hierarchical structure. Few definitions (1%) lay outside these dimensions—mostly network measures. We also find that in most fields the majority of definitions of hierarchy are unclear, obscuring what authors are emphasizing and leaving uncertain foundations for further inquiries. Nearly all the definitions of hierarchy we extracted referred to one or more distinct dimensions of social relationship—rank, nested, or control relations—that have specific meanings. Analysis of words that co-occur with particular definitions of hierarchy shows that different sets of terms support control, nest, and rank as distinct dimensions of hierarchy even when they are mixed in particular definitions. Thus, we recommend that researchers use the control-nest-rank ontology to explicitly identify the hierarchical relations of interest in their work and increase the consistency and clarity of their work within and between social science fields.
Government Expenditure Composition and Human Capital Development in Nigeria
Adriel Ekozin; Francis Oti Okoro; Daniel C. Onyejiuwa
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The study examined the impact of government expenditure composition on human capital development in Nigeria from 1985–2025. Annual time series data were obtained from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Statistical Bulletin, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), and the World Development Indicators (WDI). The Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) technique was employed to estimate both the short-run and long-run relationships between government expenditure composition and human capital development. The ARDL bounds test confirmed the existence of a long-run relationship among the variables. The long-run estimates revealed that government expenditure on education exerted a negative and statistically significant effect on human capital development, while expenditure on health and gross capital formation had positive and significant effects. Inflation exhibited a negative but statistically insignificant effect. The estimated error correction term indicated a high speed of adjustment toward long-run equilibrium, implying that short-run disequilibria were corrected rapidly. The findings established that the composition and efficiency of government expenditure, rather than its aggregate size, are crucial for promoting human capital development in Nigeria. The study recommends improving expenditure efficiency, increasing budgetary allocations to the education and health sectors, and strengthening institutional frameworks to ensure prudent management of public expenditure.
Different missions linked with different structures, yet similar hierarchies: Factors Differentiating U.S. Agency Organizational Structures from 2004-2021
Stan Rhodes; Stefani Crabtree; Jacob Freeman
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Organizational structure matters in all organizations, but we have little empirical understanding of how organizational mission relates to structure, how structure varies among organizations, and which structural factors are important to measure to answer these questions. To address this gap, we assembled a rich dataset including 1) Fedscope workforce data for 83 federal agency organizational structures from 2004 to 2021; 2) agency mission statements categorized as either regulatory, distributive, redistributive, foreign/defense, or staff agency types of policy power; 3) counts of federal rules applying to each agency. We then aggregated our dataset to create per-agency measures of six dimensions of organizational structure: spatial centralization, distinct occupations, formal rules, management levels, and upper and middle management spans of control. This enabled us to test whether measures of agency organizational structure were related to agency mission types. Random forest and agglomerative hierarchical cluster analyses revealed that organizational structure relates strongly to mission types, and variable importance measures showed that the most important differentiating factors are spatial centralization, distinct occupations, and rule count. Management spans of control and levels of management—traditional measures of organizational hierarchy—demonstrate low importance for differentiating types of agency. However, the typology ignores that agencies with high numbers of regional or local offices or centers do have taller and broader hierarchies. While this study was limited to US federal agencies, these measures of organizational structure could be used for any type of organization, and hold promise as a tool for developing a broader understanding of how and why organizational structures vary.
Digital Market Access and Women’s Economic Agency in Pakistan: A Social Science Review of Gendered Constraints and Entrepreneurship Pathways
Hiba Syeda Asad Wasti
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Women’s entrepreneurship in Pakistan is shaped by intersecting social, institutional, and economic constraints, including gender norms, household bargaining structures, mobility restrictions, limited access to finance, unequal digital access, and low participation in formal labor markets. As digital platforms, mobile payments, social commerce, and online marketplaces expand across emerging economies, they create new opportunities for women’s enterprise participation while also reproducing existing inequalities in skills, visibility, trust, and institutional support. This paper reviews social-science literature on women’s economic agency, entrepreneurship, digital inclusion, and gendered labor-market barriers, using Pakistan as a country case. Rather than treating digital market access only as a business-growth opportunity, the paper examines how digital access interacts with social norms, family expectations, market institutions, and women’s ability to exercise economic choice. The paper proposes a conceptual framework linking five dimensions of women’s enterprise participation: digital capability, financial inclusion, market access, social legitimacy, and institutional trust. It argues that women-led enterprise development in Pakistan requires attention not only to platforms and markets but also to the social conditions that shape women’s agency, mobility, and legitimacy as economic actors.
Gene Editing and Assisted Reproduction: A Theological Exploration of the Moral Boundaries of Human Intervention in the African Context
Adriel Ekozin; Samuel Oluwasegun Kolade; Oluwasanmi Gabriel Oguntomi
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The ethical implications of gene editing and Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) remain insufficiently explored within African Christian theology despite the rapid advancement of these biotechnologies. Existing scholarship is largely shaped by Western bioethical perspectives and provides limited engagement with African theological understandings of personhood, community, human dignity, and divine sovereignty. This study examined the moral limits of gene editing and ART through the lens of African Christian theology. Using a qualitative, desk-based theological-ethical methodology, the study analysed biblical, theological, bioethical, and scientific literature on biotechnology. The investigation was guided by the doctrines of creation, imago Dei, divine providence, and African communal conceptions of personhood. The study found that therapeutic applications of gene editing and ART aimed at preventing disease and alleviating suffering may be ethically justified as expressions of stewardship and participation in God's healing work. However, enhancement-oriented interventions, germline modifications for non-therapeutic purposes, and reproductive practices that commodify human life raised significant concerns regarding human dignity, communal responsibility, and the sanctity of life. The study contributed to scholarship by proposing an African Christian theological framework for evaluating emerging reproductive and genetic technologies, integrating biblical principles with African communal values to guide ethical reflection and pastoral engagement in contemporary biotechnology.
What Kind of Thing Is Your Construct: Reflective, Formative, or Fiction?
Jonathan R. Brauer; Jacob C. Day; Amanda Graham
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What kind of thing is your construct? We rarely ask, even while certifying its measures reliable and predictive. Measurement theory gives three structurally distinct answers: reflective, a real entity generating interchangeable indicators; formative, an emergent composite of distinct components; and measurement fiction, a label for correlated phenomena with no unified cause. Socioeconomic status, collective efficacy, and social capital, among others, could be any of the three, because all three can produce comparable aggregate signatures (adequate loadings, good fit, significant prediction); the standard validation toolkit, built to assume reflective structure, cannot reliably tell which. We interrogate that assumption at escalating stringency on self-control across 30 countries (ISRD-2), culminating in a predictive concordance test of whether supposedly interchangeable items identify the same individuals. Evidence rules out a unidimensional reflective trait yet cannot separate formative from fiction. We offer a three-question diagnostic and four research designs to avoid reifying indices as unified traits.
The Institutionally-Embedded Pedagogical Agent (IEPA): Architecture and Field Experience of a Single-Operator, In-Situ, Multi-Model Educational AI
Zeki Göksal
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Most AI tools in educational technology are third-party services integrated into an institution from the outside and observed externally. This report documents a structurally different deployment model: a pedagogical agent built as an embedded, in-situ component of a private exam-preparation institution owned and solely developed by the author. We name this the Institutionally-Embedded Pedagogical Agent (IEPA) and give a formal definition (a tuple of agent core, live institutional integration, domain knowledge base, pedagogical model, governance/safety, and ownership relation), the defining components being live institutional integration and in-house ownership. Crucially, the system (working name FermatAI, in live use by ~125 students) is not a passive question-answering chatbot but an agentic, always-on system: it plans, decomposes tasks, and calls tools; it navigates the institution's systems and acts on live records; and it maintains pedagogical state continuously in the background. It rests on a multi-model hybrid routing architecture and operationalises retrieval-augmented generation with cross-encoder re-ranking, Bayesian Knowledge Tracing, and spaced repetition (FSRS/Ebbinghaus). We report the architecture, engineering evaluations (+10 percentage-point hit@1 from RAG re-ranking; 0.024 vs 0.190 word-error rate in speech recognition; ~58% of production queries served by non-cloud models), safety and privacy layers (a deterministic crisis safety net, defence-in-depth compliance with Turkish data-protection law, and an automated-outreach guardrail), and lessons from single-operator in-situ deployment. This is a systems/experience report and makes no causal-efficacy claim; single-site scope, the absence of a control group, and the developer-owner identity are discussed as explicit limitations. Companion records: DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21203519 and DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21309306.
When Father-Child and Mother-Child Associations Diverge: Intergenerational Educational Mobility in 20th-Century Japan
Ryota Mugiyama; Aguru Ishibashi
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Most research on intergenerational mobility finds no detectable increase in the association between mothers’ socioeconomic status and children’s educational attainment, despite women’s substantial economic advancement over the 20th century. Under what conditions do parent-child educational associations change? We argue that parent-child educational associations change when the educational gradient in resources among fathers or among mothers shifts. Leveraging the case of Japan, in which the economic equalization around WWII is expected to have compressed the father’s educational gradient in economic resources, we examine how the father-child and mother-child educational associations have shifted across cohorts born between 1916 and 1995 in Japan. We find that the mother-child educational association has been stable across all cohorts, while the father-child association declined substantially for cohorts born around 1936–45. The stability of the mother-child association likely reflects the structural resistance of cultural resource differentials to the kind of macro-economic disruption that compressed fathers’ economic gradient during the WWII period. Supplementary analyses corroborate that the father-child decline reflects reduced educational gradient in fathers’ economic resources. These results demonstrate how separating father-child and mother-child educational associations reveals patterns of asymmetric change that aggregate measures of intergenerational mobility cannot detect.
A Portrait of the Unhoused Population of Seattle, WA 2023
Nathalie Williams; Mingze Li; Brandon Morande; Yuanxi Li; Hugo Aguas; Caroline Teague; Aryaa Rajouria; Justin Simpson; Man-Lin Chen; ihsan kahveci
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Surveys of people experiencing homelessness traditionally focus on questions related to their housing statuses, often excluding broader topics asked of the general population. As a result, research frequently fails to capture the full humanity and lived experiences of this diverse community. Our Sound Data project seeks to address this gap by conducting a survey on a representative sample of unhoused respondents on a variety of subjects about social life and well-being. This report presents the results from our survey collected during Spring 2023 in Seattle, WA. To launch this study, researchers from the University of Washington (UW) Department of Sociology fielded a multidisciplinary questionnaire in person at local public libraries. This comprehensive survey covered individual demographics, family structures, social support, residential situations, shelter use, employment, health, substance use, religion, politics, languages, and nativity. Importantly, the questionnaire is intended for a general population and closely mirrors that which will be fielded on a survey of housed residents in the future, to facilitate direct comparison. Results in this report portray Seattle’s unhoused people as a complex population, with varied lives, experiences, and perspectives. All of this has important policy implications. For example, this report clarifies the community’s demographic composition, allowing service providers to better tailor their support. We highlight patterns in homelessness duration, eviction histories, forced displacement, and resource access. Furthermore, the paper broadens our understanding of employment statuses, complicating common conceptions about earnings and financial situations. We also uncover trends in physical, mental, and behavioral health conditions that might help inform medical care. Lastly, the study provides insight into the diversity of respondents’ religious, political, and national backgrounds, all of which could influence the efficacy of interventions designed to reduce inequity and build community.
“The Guardian is credible but leans towards opinion”: Shadow mechanisms in GPT-5’s web search and the politics of credibility
Petros Terzis; Kehan Sheng; Marijn Sax; David Moats; Max van Drunen; Rebecca Sokol-Snyder; Ernesto de LeĂłn; Asia Bega
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Large Language Models (LLMs) are rapidly replacing traditional search engines as people’s primary gateways to information. Yet, despite their growing significance and the increasingly central role of LLMs in political communication and participation, legal frameworks provide limited opportunities for transparency, let alone changes, over how politically sensitive prompts are handled. At the same time, scholarly debates about LLM objectivity remain fixated on statistical formulas for measuring political bias that presuppose a neutral ‘centre’ for contested issues (e.g. abortion), the deviation from which can be measured following traditional mental maps of bias analysis; an assumption, however, that lacks foundation in political and legal philosophy. This paper proposes an epistemic shift in how neutrality is framed and dealt with in LLM research and practice. First, we systematically critique the dominant ‘political bias’ paradigm, showing how scholars as well as government and industry actors frame neutrality in ways that entrench methodological limitations. Then, we conduct a multi-stage, mixed-methods pilot study to illuminate aspects of GPT-5’s web search that are core to the processes of information retrieval. To do so, we prompted GPT-5 API with a corpus of binary and politically loaded prompts focusing on the human rights stances of no table political figures (US, UK, EU). For each prompt, we retrieve all URLs (n= 22,500), search queries, and reasoning traces, paying close attention to the logic and parameters disclosed by GPT-5’s web search. After that, we deployed qualitative and quantitative methods to map how the model assesses the credibility of sources and to measure discrepancies between domain retrieval and citation frequencies, respectively. Departing from output-focused bias studies, our work reveals the infrastructural terrain where ‘LLM neutrality’ materialises. In particular, we: 1) identify misconceptions about how political bias is manifested and understood in practice; 2) pinpoint architectural details, operational gaps, and double standards in GPT-5’s web search functions; and 3) offer interdisciplinary recommendations for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers in the field.
Jurisprudential Drift in International Investment Law: From the Minimum Standard to Fair and Equitable Treatment
Barry Hashimoto; Kevin W. Gray; Kabir Duggal
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The meaning of the fair and equitable treatment standard in international investment law remains unsettled. One interpretation ties it to the customary minimum standard of treatment associated with Neer; another treats it as an autonomous and more demanding source of investor protection. States have repeatedly sought to tether FET to the minimum standard, most notably the United States, a principal architect of the investment regime and a major capital exporter. Yet arbitral jurisprudence has tended toward broader interpretations. This Article asks why. It argues that the shift cannot be explained by doctrine, state power, credible commitment, firm pressure, or arbitrator discretion alone. The better explanation is jurisprudential drift: interpretive movement produced within a specialized field of arbitrators, elite counsel, arbitral institutions, and commentators. Open-textured treaty language and arbitral autonomy create interpretive space; investor demand supplies background pressure for capacious protection; and legal counsel and arbitrators benefit, generally but unevenly, from a more complex and protective legal regime. Symbolic capital helps make some broader interpretations focal; reputational enforcement keeps arbitrators and counsel aligned with those interpretations; and secrecy, judicial economy, and peer review supply flexibility, allowing tribunals to manage difficult cases without turning exceptions into a new doctrinal baseline. The Article develops this theory, compares it with existing and reconstructed accounts from law, international political economy, and the social sciences, and evaluates it against the historical, doctrinal, and arbitral record surrounding the rise of the investment regime, the minimum standard, and FET. It concludes that the drift toward autonomous FET reflects a form of transnational legal authority generated through ordinary legal reasoning and coordination within the field of investment arbitration.
Peer Socialization as Organizational Infrastructure in Local Court Appointed Special Advocate Programs: A Conceptual Literature Review and Applied Sociological Framework
Tara Robin Robin Kim
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Court Appointed Special Advocate and guardian ad litem (CASA/GAL) programs rely on trained community volunteers to provide advocacy in the best interests of children involved in abuse, neglect, dependency, and child welfare proceedings. Although the CASA/GAL model is organized through a collective institution, the everyday structure of advocacy is individualized. Volunteers are assigned to particular children and sibling groups via cases, and they perform their role through case-specific interactions with courts, caregivers, child welfare personnel, schools, attorneys, and service providers. This structure creates a theoretically significant organizational tension in which volunteers are formally affiliated with the same local CASA program while remaining weakly integrated into a peer community of advocates. This paper develops a conceptual sociological framework for understanding peer socialization as organizational infrastructure in local CASA programs. Drawing on organizational identification theory, role identity theory, perceived organizational support, social exchange theory, social capital theory, communities of practice, emotional labor, recognition theory, interaction ritual theory, and nonprofit volunteer-management literature, this review argues that peer socialization performs organizational functions that exceed informal recreation. Structured peer interaction can strengthen role identity, increase bonding social capital, support case-neutral learning, improve perceived organizational support, make invisible volunteer labor publicly recognizable, and transform individualized civic labor into collective organizational participation. The paper does not claim that social events alone resolve volunteer turnover, burnout, or organizational capacity constraints. Rather, it argues that peer socialization should be consolidated into a broader volunteer-support ecology that involves training, supervision, recognition, mentorship, and ethical confidentiality practices. The paper concludes by proposing an applied framework through which local CASA offices can institutionalize belonging-oriented events, recognition events, mentorship structures, case-neutral learning opportunities, and cross-level organizational gatherings.
A Guinada Conservadora da Maçonaria Brasileira: Do Estado Novo ao Bolsonarismo
Hugo Barbosa de Paulo
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O artigo analisa a guinada conservadora das lideranças da maçonaria brasileira desde a dĂ©cada de 1930 atĂ© o bolsonarismo, evidenciada por consistente revisĂŁo bibliogrĂĄfica e rigorosa anĂĄlise histĂłrica. O Decreto nĂșmero 1.579 de 1938 do GOB Ă© identificado como marco fundamental da institucionalização do anticomunismo, postura ideolĂłgica consolidada no apoio ao golpe civil-militar de 1964 e, recentemente, ao bolsonarismo. Sustenta-se uma evidente continuidade histĂłrica na defesa da ordem, da propriedade privada e do combate ao comunismo, evidenciando o alinhamento das elites maçÎnicas com o conservadorismo. O estudo contribui academicamente para o debate sobre cultura polĂ­tica e elites no Brasil contemporĂąneo.
Economically Foreclosed-Choice Flexibility: How Maternal Remote Work is Miscounted as Voluntary
Maha Jehanzeb
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The existing literature on flexible and remote work treats ‘voluntariness’ as a condition that separates arrangements which protect employee wellbeing from those that harm it. The concept of voluntariness, itself, is traditionally measured as a worker’s reported choice over the practice; this measure cannot clearly distinguish a choice which is made freely from a choice which is made because no other option was financially possible. This article focuses on advancing a theory adaptation. Drawing from self-determination theory (SDT), more specifically the difference it establishes between autonomy as volition rather than mere independence, and between autonomous and controlled motivation, it re-specifies voluntariness in the field of flexible work. The paper introduces the concept of economically foreclosed-choice flexibility, which is defined as an objective condition of the household option set rather than by how a worker feels, and goes on to propose that economic foreclosure transforms a formally chosen arrangement into a controlled one. Thus, it breaks the autonomy mechanism with which voluntary remote work is said to confer its benefits. The paper will follow three propositions, with the last one stating that protective effect estimates of voluntary remote work are biased upwards because the results combine a benefitting volitional group with a non-benefitting foreclosed group. The core argument of the paper identifies a population that the current measure cannot see, and it points out where, and for whom, the field’s headline conclusions require qualification.
Breaking Symmetry, Not Choosing Direction: A Model of Hierarchy as a Position Amplifier, and What It Can and Cannot Recover
Kristian Sestak
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Hierarchies form even among near-equals. Their inequality is usually read as meritocracy sorting on ability, as a coordination device a group needs, or as cumulative advantage in which leads compound. We give a falsifiable normal form for one further route, a symmetry-breaking amplifier of position. This is a multiplicative cascade that turns tiny, often capability-irrelevant differences into a large positional dispersion, Var(ln rho_eff) >> Var(ln k), where k is capability and rho_eff the density of favourable possibilities the environment makes accessible. On top of the normal form we draw the line the title names, between what such a hierarchy's trajectory can and cannot recover about its own origin. The dynamics (question A, whether the process amplifies or merely diffuses) are identifiable from a trajectory. We fix them with three results: a necessity theorem, a non-monotone dispersion-maximising gain that plain cumulative advantage does not produce, and a sqrt(tau) early-lead law that separates amplification from diffusion. Cumulative advantage is told apart not by the magnitude of early-lead persistence, which it can match, but by the non-monotone gain and by the collapse of that persistence under revocation. The seed (question B, whether what got inflated was capability or position, real skill or amplified noise) is not identifiable. We prove a non-identifiability theorem: the map depends on capability and position only through their sum, and it weights an early fluctuation almost like an inherited head start, so no statistic of the trajectory recovers the split. The informal statement that the amplifier keeps no signature of what it amplified is therefore a theorem rather than a metaphor, and it cannot be refuted by data. Identifying B requires an exogenous handle on capability that does not pass through the amplifier, such as quality fixed by construction, randomised, or a convergent later estimate. That handle returns not a verdict but a manufactured share, R = 1 - corr^2. We demonstrate the boundary on one large public dataset. A near-equal online-chess cohort whose order looks manufactured, in that it is decoupled from entry and locks in faster than diffusion, is found to be about 60% revealed skill (R approx 0.4) once a convergent skill estimate is admitted. The remaining behaviours of the model follow. Development requires the feedback, since at zero gain the process is a martingale, and the motion is non-ergodic, with the ensemble advancing while the typical trajectory peaks and declines. The contribution is not that hierarchy is noise. It is a precise account of what a hierarchy's own trajectory can, and cannot, tell us about where it came from.
Who Appears, For What Purpose, and to Whom: Rethinking Deepfake Reception as Relational Configuration
MarĂ­a T. Soto-Sanfiel
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Research on deepfake reception has expanded rapidly, yet its findings remain theoretically fragmented. Effects vary across genres, modalities, purposes, disclosure conditions, and receiver characteristics, while explanations often focus on isolated properties of synthetic artifacts or specific research traditions. This article argues that six structural biases—malignancy, stimulus, cognitive-declarative, universal receiver, modality, and narrative processing—have shaped not only what deepfake reception research has primarily examined, but also how the phenomenon itself has been conceptualized. To address this problem, the article proposes the Relational Deepfake Reception Framework (RDRF), which conceptualizes reception as emerging from the relationship between the depicted subject, the perceived purpose of the encounter, and the receiver, within a broader contextual envelope. Drawing on evidence across diverse empirical contexts, it further shows that findings often treated as inconsistent can be interpreted more coherently when viewed configurationally rather than through artifact-centered explanations. The framework generates testable propositions, identifies methodological implications for future research, and extends its relational logic to audio deepfakes. More broadly, it argues that explaining deepfake reception requires shifting the unit of analysis from the synthetic artifact to the relational encounter through which it acquires meaning.
Teacher Shortage, Workload, and Retention Strategies in Rural Primary Schools in Agbor, Delta State, Nigeria
Adriel Ekozin; Helen Ihieonyemolor Ajudeonu
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The study investigated teacher shortage, workload, and retention strategies in rural primary schools in Delta State. A descriptive survey design was employed with a purposive sample of 335 teachers from 67 rural primary schools. Data were collected using a validated Teacher Shortage, Workload and Retention Questionnaire (TSWRQ) and analysed using descriptive statistics, independent samples 𝑡-tests, and binary logistic regression. Findings revealed that poor remuneration, excessive workload, inadequate infrastructure, and lack of career advancement were the leading causes of teacher shortage (grand mean = 3.30 on a 4-point scale). Remote rural teachers carried significantly higher workloads than rural fringe counterparts across all indicators, including teaching periods per week (38.4 versus 32.6), class sizes (74.2 versus 62.8 pupils), and burnout scores (7.6 versus 5.9 on a 10-point scale). Logistic regression identified housing provision (OR = 3.61), accelerated career promotion (OR = 2.40), and rural allowances (OR = 2.84) as the strongest predictors of teacher intention to remain in rural postings (Nagelkerke 𝑅2 = .512, 𝑝 < .001). The study recommends urgent, multi-pronged retention frameworks incorporating financial incentives, workload rationalisation, and career development pathways tailored to rural contexts.
Information Management by Political Parties During the 2023 Gubernatorial Elections in Cross River State, Nigeria
Adriel Ekozin; Ekwo Gilbert Otu
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This paper examines how political parties managed political information during the 2023 gubernatorial elections in Cross River State, Nigeria. The objectives of the study were to examine the information management strategies adopted by the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and to assess the effectiveness of these strategies in achieving electoral goals. Data were collected through survey instruments and analysed using descriptive statistics and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) at the 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed that both the APC and PDP deployed multi-channel information strategies, including social media campaigns, traditional media messaging, grassroots mobilisation, and data-driven targeting of specific voter blocs. Although these strategies improved message speed, visibility, and engagement among some demographic groups, their overall persuasive effect on undecided voters and their capacity to drive voter turnout were perceived as moderate rather than strong. The ANOVA results further indicated no statistically significant difference between the APC and PDP in the strategies adopted or in the perceived effectiveness of those strategies for achieving electoral goals. The study concludes that while both parties have modernised their communication architectures, the effectiveness of information management still depends on local networks, credibility, and the ability to bridge the digital divide between urban and rural audiences. The study recommends that political parties should continue to strengthen digital communication teams for rapid message dissemination while sustaining ward-level grassroots structures and town-hall engagements, since face-to-face interaction remains essential for building trust, particularly in rural communities and among older voters.
Rethinking Poverty in Today's Developing World: A Reflexive Essay
Bui Thi Thao Trinh
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This reflexive essay explores the multifaceted nature of poverty in the contemporary developing world, moving beyond the traditional economic reductionism of the poverty line. Grounded in the context of post-Đổi Mới in Vietnam and the broader Southeast Asian region, the paper intertwines academic frameworks with personal narratives to challenge mainstream development discourses. Utilizing Jonathan Rigg's multidimensional typology, the essay critically examines four distinct faces of poverty: the residual poor lacking basic needs (Poverty 1.0), the unequal poor left behind by distributional gaps (Poverty 2.0), the produced poor marginalized by development processes such as dispossession, displacement, and casualization (Poverty 3.0), and the invisible unrecognized migrant workers (Poverty 4.0). By contrasting the lived experiences of the precariat, such as tech drivers working under heatwaves and informal workers, with the structural inequalities of market-led growth, the paper argues that modern poverty is continuously produced and reproduced by capitalist development processes. Finally, this essay highlights the necessity of a “wholeness of being” perspective, suggesting that addressing contemporary poverty requires not only economic growth, but inclusive policies, politicization, and a profound recognition of marginalized voices stemming from an empathetic understanding of reality from within.
Already Living Inside It: A Reflexive Note on Development
Bui Thi Thao Trinh
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This reflexive note explores the contested and shifting understandings of development through lived experience in contemporary Vietnam. Moving through personal experiences - rural transformation in a farming village, urban inequality, work in a local social enterprise grounded in ecological values, and a visit to a K'ho ethnic minority community facing dispossession in the Central Highlands - the essay illustrates how the concept of development shifted: from modernity and economic growth, to human well-being, sustainable development, ethnodevelopment, and finally to something unresolved. Instead of arriving at an ultimate definition, the essay proposes that holding the question open, and being honest about its contradictions, is itself an intellectual and human commitment. Written before formal academic instruction began, this note documents what it looks like when theory meets a life that has already been living within it.
The Grammar of Fear in Journalism
MarĂ­a T. Soto-Sanfiel
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This study conceptualizes fear as both emotional grammar and an institutional regime that structure and constrain journalistic practice. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with Venezuelan journalists, it maps how fear is experienced across physical, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral dimensions to produce a refined typology of journalistic fears. Grounded in empirical evidence, it identifies five dynamic processes—anticipation, internalization, manifestation, management, and narrativization—through which fear permeates professional life and becomes routinized in news production. These processes generate an emotional grammar that organizes how fear is felt, expressed, and legitimized within journalistic culture, and an emotional regime through which such norms are institutionalized across individual, organizational, and societal levels. The resulting structure governs professional conduct, regulates the boundaries of speech, and shapes journalism’s role in society. The article advances a middle-range theory of communicative affect in journalism, offering a transferable framework for analyzing how emotions function as infrastructures of power and meaning.
“Some of it’s fucked, some of it’s useful”: Young Men’s Experiences Navigating Masculinity Content on TikTok
Krista Fisher; Lauren Powell; Emily C. Lewis; Jasleen Chhabra; Vivian Gerrand; Zac E. Seidler
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Masculinity content on TikTok is rapidly reshaping young men's identities, health behaviours and relationships, yet how young men perceive and navigate this content remains poorly understood. This qualitative study (using data drawn from a larger mixed-methods survey) explored the perspectives of 142 young men aged 16–25 (Mage = 18.85, SD = 2.64) from Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Thematic analysis of open-text responses generated two themes: A Blueprint for Masculine Self-Development, capturing young men's simultaneous aspiration toward, and critique of, masculinity self-improvement narratives; and Navigating Manosphere Ideologies, reflecting how young men engage with, interrogate or reject misogynistic ideologies embedded within mainstream content. Findings reveal a dynamic process of critical appraisal, weighing perceived benefits against ideological harm. This carries significant implications for health promotion and digital policy: Evidence-informed approaches are needed which leverage young men's desire for self-improvement, address unmet psychosocial needs, encourage accountability and embed digital literacy and ideological safeguarding into digital places of meaning.
Ambivalent perception of “tojisha group” and tolerance of the group: Toward a sustainable space for cooperation among individuals to whom need belong and who possess the potential for agency
Takazumi Ono; Hiroko Costantini; Misato Nihei
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Summary: In context emphasizing well-being of people with vulnerabilities and minority status, the term tojisha has gained widespread usage in Japan. The term tojisha refers to “an individual to whom needs belong and who possesses the potential for agency in relation to those needs,” and spaces designed for interaction among fellow tojisha are referred to as “tojisha groups” and such spaces are becoming increasingly common across various settings. While the importance of tojisha groups has been widely recognized, their potential negative aspects are rarely addressed. Therefore, we conducted an online questionnaire survey in two stages to examine the distribution of positive and negative perceptions of tojisha groups and to test the hypothesis that group tolerance is associated with these perceptions of the group. Findings: The results showed that many participants reported positive perceptions of tojisha groups. However, 40–60% also indicated negative perceptions, including feelings of not being able to understand each other or an inability to speak openly—even among fellow tojisha. K-means clustering identified four distinct clusters, including one cluster characterized by high scores on both positive and negative perceptions. In addition, group tolerance was associated with both positive and negative perceptions of the group. Applications: These findings suggest that while tojisha groups can offer meaningful and supportive experiences, they may also function as ambivalent spaces. Enhancing group-level tolerance may be crucial for ensuring that tojisha groups remain inclusive, supportive, and responsive to the diverse needs of their members.
Equivocation and Erosion: How LLMs Undermine Catholic Religious Discourse
Jonathan Alan Karr; Matthew P. Lad; Demetrius Hernandez; Louisa Conwill; Walter Scheirer; Nitesh Chawla
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Large Language Models (LLMs) offer opportunities for information dissemination, yet present challenges with upholding the distinct theological practices of the Catholic faith. By training on vast datasets, LLMs can generate responses that equivocate or blend together diverse perspectives. While this tendency can be beneficial for providing broad access to information, it can dilute the distinct theological tenets foundational to Catholicism. While these challenges may affect various faiths, we conduct a case study to investigate them within the Catholic tradition. Unlike human religious authorities who may offer definitive interpretations based on Scripture, Tradition, and Magisterial teaching, LLMs present information in a flattened, generalized manner by smoothing over specific religious claims. This can weaken the emphasis on singular revelations or unique covenants. For instance, an LLM might present the concept of `God' in a way that blurs the distinct attributes of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as articulated in the Nicene Creed, into a generalized deity, thereby eroding particular theological distinctions. Conversely, when prompted on matters of right or wrong within an ethical dilemma, an LLM might present a spectrum of opinions from secular frameworks. This can occur without distinguishing or prioritising the specific moral decrees found within Canon Law or the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC). This synthesis of diverse ethical views, rather than a clear affirmation of distinct religious injunctions, exemplifies how LLMs can equivocate on matters of moral truth, potentially diluting authoritative guidance. We examine how the outputs of general-purpose LLMs (e.g., ChatGPT, Llama, Gemini) and theological LLMs from differing religious traditions (e.g., Magisterium AI, Hyder.ai, RavChat) align with Catholic teaching. LLMs may inadvertently marginalize minority viewpoints within the Catholic Church or prioritise interpretations that align with cultural norms rather than traditional stances. Additionally, LLMs can shift interpretations in their outputs based on current events or political news. This can lead to a homogenization of religious discourse, obscuring the rich diversity and nuanced debates. However, when thoughtfully developed, these technologies can also provide valuable information that fosters understanding and encourages deeper engagement with religious texts and orthodox perspectives. In light of this, our study evaluates how LLMs align with the principles of Catholic Social Teaching, such as those found in the Rome Call for AI Ethics and Antiqua et nova. These frameworks underscore how technology should be used to foster human flourishing in alignment with divine wisdom while upholding religious truth.
L'AUTONOMIE CONTEXTUELLE : VERS UNE THÉORIE NORMATIVE DE LA DÉLIBÉRATION CLINIQUE EN BIOÉTHIQUE
Hyacinthe Amour Gnahy
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L'autonomie constitue un principe fondamental de la bioĂ©thique contemporaine, mais les modĂšles existants peinent Ă  guider la dĂ©cision mĂ©dicale dans des contextes oĂč interviennent simultanĂ©ment le patient, les proches, les professionnels de santĂ© et les contraintes institutionnelles. À partir d'une analyse philosophique comparative du principlisme, de l'autonomie relationnelle, des philosophies africaines de la personne et de l'Ă©thique mĂ©dicale confucĂ©enne, cet article met en Ă©vidence l'absence d'un cadre normatif intĂ©grateur de la dĂ©libĂ©ration clinique. Il propose le concept d'autonomie contextuelle comme fondement d'une thĂ©orie normative articulant la volontĂ© authentique du patient, les relations significatives, les dĂ©terminants contextuels et les responsabilitĂ©s partagĂ©es. StructurĂ©e autour de cinq principes et illustrĂ©e par un cas clinique, cette approche offre un modĂšle de dĂ©libĂ©ration permettant de lĂ©gitimer les dĂ©cisions mĂ©dicales dans les sociĂ©tĂ©s pluralistes. L'autonomie contextuelle contribue ainsi au renouvellement de la bioĂ©thique en proposant un cadre conceptuel conciliant exigences universelles et diversitĂ© des contextes de soin.