I checked 4 preprints servers on Tuesday, September 01, 2026 using the Open Science Foundation API. For the period August 25 to August 31, I found 170 new paper(s).

MetaArxiv

An item bank of reporting items and concepts in evidence synthesis reporting guidelines
Kyle Morrison; Edward R. Ivimey-Cook; Malgorzata Lagisz; Ayumi Mizuno; Manuela Santos Santana; Eduardo S. A. Santos; Alfredo SĂĄnchez-TĂłjar; Zachary P. Simpson; Matthew James Grainger; Biljana Macura
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Evidence synthesis integrates findings from multiple research studies, and its value for decision making depends on complete, transparent reporting. Authors often rely on reporting guidelines, checklists, flow diagrams, or structured text guiding manuscript reporting, but they still struggle to implement what counts as clear, complete reporting. A central issue is that many guidelines address the same underlying concepts using different wording, making it unclear whether differences between guidelines are meaningful or merely semantic. To address this, we compiled an item bank of 2,249 reporting items from 59 unique evidence synthesis reporting guidelines (from 83 studies, 68 checklists), using a six-step process: literature searching and screening, item collation, readability analysis, concept extraction, and overlap assessment. Compiled items were relatively verbose (mean words/item = 19.9) and linguistically complex (Moving-Average Type-Token Ratio = 0.959), indicating limited reuse of consistent wording—likely making items harder to interpret and compare. Because items can contain multiple concepts, and concepts can recur across items and guidelines, we identified 403 unique reporting concepts. Guidelines also showed modest conceptual overlap (Jaccard Similarity Index = 0.166, n = 1,830 pairwise comparisons), suggesting some concepts were widely shared across reporting guidelines for different methodologies and disciplines, pointing to clear potential to harmonise reporting guidance and reduce duplicated effort. We provide all reporting items and concepts in the supplementary files. We further discuss trends and gaps in item use and wording across guidelines, outline applications of the collated item bank, and note limitations that point to future research. Together, our findings offer much-needed direction for developing and harmonising future reporting guidelines, an essential step toward more consistent and transparent reporting across evidence synthesis.
The NF Data Portal: A Community-Driven Resource to Accelerate Neurofibromatosis and Schwannomatosis Research and Drug Development
Kara Quaid; Belinda B. Garana; Chang In Moon; Aditya Nath; Christina Parry; Efren Munoz; Jineta Banerjee; Alexandra J. Scott; Milen Nikolov; Sang Y. Lee
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The NF Data Portal (nf.synapse.org) is a free, open-science platform that centralizes data and resources related to neurofibromatosis (NF) and schwannomatosis (SWN), a group of rare genetic tumor predisposition syndromes. The portal hosts a growing collection of NF and SWN multimodal datasets including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and imaging with links to resources such as patient-derived tumor tissue collections, cell lines and preclinical models. The goal of the portal is to provide the broader academic and commercial research community with well-annotated, trusted datasets that can be used in a variety of ways, including asking new scientific questions, benchmarking new methods or tools, and combining datasets across studies. Ultimately, our mission is to accelerate the discovery of treatments and cures for NF and SWN through maximizing the global usability of high-quality data. . The NF Data Portal has a cross-institutional backbone of supporters composed of funding organizations, a data coordination center, and a community of clinicians and scientists. Together, this community has developed reusable building blocks for open science, including shared infrastructure, governance frameworks, metadata standards, and a structured data contribution lifecycle. In this publication, we reflect on over a decade of effort to support the data contributor and data user journeys. We share recent platform features and integrations and highlight newly available datasets. Whether longtime NF scientists or those encountering this resource for the first time, the NF Data Portal provides access to one of the largest NF datasets available to advance academic research, industry-driven discovery and therapeutic development. For industry users, the portal serves as a strategic translational research asset that supports target validation, biomarker discovery, patient stratification and data-driven decision making, helping to de-risk development programs and inform clinical strategy. As AI-driven analytical methods transform biomedical research, richly annotated, disease-specific datasets like those housed in the NF Data Portal, will be essential raw material for developing and validating new tools and novel treatments.
Reconstruction of individual patient data from Kaplan-Meier curves is widely used in oncology and cardiology: 211 oncology studies and 137 cardiology studies (preprint)
Andrea Messori
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Table 1 of this preprint shows a PubMed search that has selected 290 studies based on the method of "reconstructed" patients.
The NF Data Portal: A Community-Driven Resource to Accelerate Neurofibromatosis and Schwannomatosis Research and Drug Development
Kara Quaid; Belinda B. Garana; Chang In Moon; Aditya Nath; Christina Parry; Efren Munoz; Jineta Banerjee; Alexandra J. Scott; Milen Nikolov; Sang Y. Lee
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The NF Data Portal (nf.synapse.org) is a free, open-science platform that centralizes data and resources related to neurofibromatosis (NF) and schwannomatosis (SWN), a group of rare genetic tumor predisposition syndromes. The portal hosts a growing collection of NF and SWN multimodal datasets including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and imaging with links to resources such as patient-derived tumor tissue collections, cell lines and preclinical models. The goal of the portal is to provide the broader academic and commercial research community with well-annotated, trusted datasets that can be used in a variety of ways, including asking new scientific questions, benchmarking new methods or tools, and combining datasets across studies. Ultimately, our mission is to accelerate the discovery of treatments and cures for NF and SWN through maximizing the global usability of high-quality data. . The NF Data Portal has a cross-institutional backbone of supporters composed of funding organizations, a data coordination center, and a community of clinicians and scientists. Together, this community has developed reusable building blocks for open science, including shared infrastructure, governance frameworks, metadata standards, and a structured data contribution lifecycle. In this publication, we reflect on over a decade of effort to support the data contributor and data user journeys. We share recent platform features and integrations and highlight newly available datasets. Whether longtime NF scientists or those encountering this resource for the first time, the NF Data Portal provides access to one of the largest NF datasets available to advance academic research, industry-driven discovery and therapeutic development. For industry users, the portal serves as a strategic translational research asset that supports target validation, biomarker discovery, patient stratification and data-driven decision making, helping to de-risk development programs and inform clinical strategy. As AI-driven analytical methods transform biomedical research, richly annotated, disease-specific datasets like those housed in the NF Data Portal, will be essential raw material for developing and validating new tools and novel treatments.
Time for Journals to Claim a Sustainable Future in Scientific Publishing
yong sik ok
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Scientific publishing depends on trust, fairness, and transparency. This article argues that publishers should take greater responsibility for how research integrity concerns, investigations, and retractions are handled. It calls for clearer procedures, fair opportunities for authors to respond, stronger editorial involvement, and proportionate decisions based on scientific judgment. Greater accountability and cooperation among publishers, editors, researchers, and institutions are essential for building a more trustworthy and sustainable scientific publishing system.
The NF Data Portal: A Community-Driven Resource to Accelerate Neurofibromatosis and Schwannomatosis Research and Drug Development
Kara Quaid; Belinda B. Garana; Chang In Moon; Aditya Nath; Christina Parry; Efren Munoz; Jineta Banerjee; Alexandra J. Scott; Milen Nikolov; Sang Y. Lee
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The NF Data Portal (nf.synapse.org) is a free, open-science platform that centralizes data and resources related to neurofibromatosis (NF) and schwannomatosis (SWN), a group of rare genetic tumor predisposition syndromes. The portal hosts a growing collection of NF and SWN multimodal datasets including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and imaging with links to resources such as patient-derived tumor tissue collections, cell lines and preclinical models. The goal of the portal is to provide the broader academic and commercial research community with well-annotated, trusted datasets that can be used in a variety of ways, including asking new scientific questions, benchmarking new methods or tools, and combining datasets across studies. Ultimately, our mission is to accelerate the discovery of treatments and cures for NF and SWN through maximizing the global usability of high-quality data. . The NF Data Portal has a cross-institutional backbone of supporters composed of funding organizations, a data coordination center, and a community of clinicians and scientists. Together, this community has developed reusable building blocks for open science, including shared infrastructure, governance frameworks, metadata standards, and a structured data contribution lifecycle. In this publication, we reflect on over a decade of effort to support the data contributor and data user journeys. We share recent platform features and integrations and highlight newly available datasets. Whether longtime NF scientists or those encountering this resource for the first time, the NF Data Portal provides access to one of the largest NF datasets available to advance academic research, industry-driven discovery and therapeutic development. For industry users, the portal serves as a strategic translational research asset that supports target validation, biomarker discovery, patient stratification and data-driven decision making, helping to de-risk development programs and inform clinical strategy. As AI-driven analytical methods transform biomedical research, richly annotated, disease-specific datasets like those housed in the NF Data Portal, will be essential raw material for developing and validating new tools and novel treatments.
How Much Replication Is Enough? Balancing Novelty and Replication in a Truth-Driven Evolutionary Simulation
Kaitlyn Harper; Felix D. Schönbrodt
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Scientific progress relies on a balance of original research, which furthers the boundaries of knowledge, and replication, which assures the quality of existing knowledge. In recent years, calls for increased replication have gained momentum, but replication requires resources that could otherwise support novel research. Here, we take a cultural-evolutionary approach to answer the question: what share of limited scientific resources should be allocated to original versus replication studies? We simulated a scientific ecosystem with a “utopian” selection criterion: whether research moves beliefs closer to the truth. Within this ecosystem, researchers differ in their tendency to pursue original or replication work, and more successful strategies (i.e., those which contribute most to truthful Bayesian information gain) are selected for over time. Under broadly realistic parameter assumptions, the model suggests an optimal replicator share of 5-32%, with 7-21% of published studies being replications, and replication success rates of 20-30% (all replications) and 72-88% (only published replications). Stronger publication bias, greater base null rates, and smaller original study sample sizes all increase the optimal replicator share. Our model may underestimate the optimal replicator share, because the model omits biases such as p-hacking that additional replication could help correct, or overestimate, because our model’s simplistic choice of replication targets may be less efficient than more strategic ones. Ultimately, our simulations suggest that replication primarily evolves as a compensatory mechanism in response to distorted research environments, and that overall scientific progress is maximised when underlying issues such as publication bias are resolved, which would largely eliminate the need for replications.

PsyArxiv

Humanlike representation of social networks in large language models
Jae-Young Son; Daniel Carstensen; Serra Elizabeth Favila
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Although large language models (LLMs) have made great progress in their general reasoning capabilities, reasoning about social relationships has remained a challenge. In contrast, humans are naturally skilled at reasoning about how people are connected to one another, even in large, complex social networks. Recent research in cognitive science suggests that a key component of human social intelligence is the ability to represent social networks using multistep abstraction, which integrates knowledge of both direct and indirect social connections, and therefore supports inferences about network members’ social proximity to one another. Here, we test whether LLMs represent social networks using similar computational principles. In Study 1, we converted an existing human social navigation task into text and recorded LLM responses to the same problems humans were tasked with solving. LLMs’ behaviors closely mirrored those of human participants, and were best-explained by Katz communicability, a model of multistep abstraction that captures how humans represent and navigate social networks. In Study 2, we tested whether these multistep representations persisted in a task where they offered no benefit—and were in fact detrimental to task accuracy—and found that LLMs continued to show a multistep signature even in this context. These findings suggest that multistep abstraction may be a core property of how LLMs represent relational information, closely paralleling accounts of human cognitive maps.
Leveraging Word Knowledge from Everyday Language
Layla Unger; Emma James
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Within the first few years of life, children go from nonverbal infants to fluent users of hundreds of words. This feat unfolds as children are immersed in a sea of words in conversations, stories and other language contexts. In principle, word contexts might support word learning because words similar in meaning tend to occur in similar contexts. Thus, a child who knows some fruit words and has heard them in the context of "juicy" might learn that a "juicy mango" is also a fruit even without ever seeing a mango. Indeed, cutting-edge large language models leverage just these context cues to form rich representations of words. Yet we do not know whether these cues are an important driver of real-world word learning. We quantified context cues in children’s everyday English language input and found that they did reliably predict real-world word learning, above and beyond other established predictors. These findings illuminate how everyday language scaffolds word learning.
Complex systems methods in ageing research: An overview of emerging approaches
Gabriela Lunansky; Lotte P. Brinkhof; Ingrid A. van de Leemput; René J Melis; Marcel Olde Rikkert; Geeske Peeters; Rick Quax; Jeroen Uleman; Almar Andreas Leonardus Kok
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The application of complex systems science is gaining traction in the field of ageing research. A complex system is a large collection of components whose dynamic interactions lead to 'emergent properties' that cannot be understood or predicted based on knowledge of the components in isolation. Here we conceptualise human ageing as resulting from integrated, multi-scale systems characterised by dynamic interactions within and between biological, behavioural, functional and environmental domains. Complexity science provides tools to study these joint dynamics, allowing researchers to address research questions that examine (1) interactions across levels or domains, (2) dynamic processes over time, or (3) emergent behaviour of the system as a whole, which is not reducible to individual components. Studying complex systems can benefit from these methodological tools, which are still underexplored in gerontology and geriatrics. With this article, we intend to inspire and support researchers in the field of ageing to explore the potential of complexity science methods for their own research. We explain four different methodological approaches to study complex systems: causal loop diagrams, system dynamics modelling, psychometric network analysis, and dynamical indicators of resilience and complexity. For each of these approaches, we explain their purpose and theoretical assumptions, provide examples from the scientific literature, and discuss their strengths and limitations. As it remains challenging to operationalise complexity-driven research questions and select appropriate methods from the growing range of available methodological approaches, particularly for researchers unfamiliar with them, we hope to have lowered this threshold.
Beyond WEIRD and White: Building a Globally Inclusive Science of Sport Leadership
Radhika Butalia; Filip Boen; Nicholas de Cruz; S. Alexander Haslam; Rolf van Dick; Katrien Fransen
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Research in the social sciences overwhelmingly relies on participants drawn from Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies despite the fact that these populations represent about 12% of the world’s population. Moreover, these samples are disproportionately White. Although this limitation has been widely discussed in the social sciences, its implications for sport science remain underexamined. In this expert statement, we use sport leadership research as a test case to illustrate why moving beyond WEIRD and White dominance is critical to building a more inclusive and representative science of sport. First, we discuss how cultural and social contexts shape leadership expectations, perceptions, and effectiveness, thereby calling into question the appropriateness of applying theories developed in WEIRD samples to other contexts. Second, we synthesise the current state of the literature and highlight recent advances, particularly insights from the Cross-Cultural Research on Leadership in Sport (CROLIS) programme. Drawing on these insights, we provide practical and methodological recommendations and identify priorities for future research that together offer a roadmap for building a science of sport leadership in which diverse populations, cultural contexts, and knowledge systems shape equitable knowledge production.
Memories that remain: Image memorability transfers to scene descriptions
Diana Kollenda; Yee Lee Shing; Katharina Dobs; Benjamin de Haas
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Some images remain in memory while others fade quickly. Memorability reflects an observer-independent, intrinsic property of an image, which can be predicted by computational models. While semantic content has been proposed as the critical determinant of memorability, it is challenging to disentangle image content from visual features on display. Here, we find that the memorability of scene images transfers to short textual descriptions of those scenes, whether generated by humans or multimodal large language models. Furthermore, new images produced with generative AI from descriptions alone reproduce the memorability of original images. Together, these findings show that semantic content, including interrelations captured in scene descriptions, accounts for a meaningful portion of the variation in scene memorability, and that language serves as an efficient compression of memory-relevant visual content.
Seeking and integrating social information under uncertainty: the role of high stakes and risky others
Caroline J Charpentier; Xiaodi Hu
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When making decisions under risk and ambiguity, we often have the opportunity to know what other people did and adjust our decisions. Yet, the cognitive mechanisms underlying how people actively seek social information, and how such information is integrated into choice, remain poorly understood. We addressed this question using a new social risk-ambiguity task in which participants first made baseline decisions under risk and ambiguity, then, in a social block, actively chose whether to view the decisions of two other players before deciding again. Across two large online samples (Ndiscovery=394, Nreplication=378), we found that social information-seeking increased with reward magnitude and reward probability, but was not affected by ambiguity. Individual differences further showed that participants who were more sensitive to reward probability during baseline choice were also more driven by reward probability when seeking information. Social information influenced both risky and ambiguous choices, even though participants weighed their own prior preferences more strongly. Critically, influence was asymmetric: the risky player exerted stronger influence than the safe player, with more risk/ambiguity-averse individuals exhibiting relatively weaker influence from the risky player. Computational modelling revealed a dissociation between two key processes captured by separable parameters: egocentric discounting (weight of individual vs social information) and asymmetry between risky and safe social influence. Together, these findings provide more integrated insights into the cognitive mechanisms underlying baseline choice, social information-seeking, and social influence under uncertainty, as well as the heterogeneity linking them.
Social cure goes global: Socioeconomic and cultural factors shape social identifications’ effects on wellbeing across 56 countries.
Radhika Butalia; Tegan Cruwys; Jolanda Jetten; Catherine Haslam; Katrien Fransen; Stef Van Puyenbroeck; Rolf van Dick; Lies Bongaerts; Filip Boen
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Social identification has been robustly linked to wellbeing. However, most of this evidence relies on samples from White and WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic) nations. In this study, we tested the association between social identification and wellbeing in a global sample (46,156 participants in 56 countries), and assessed whether socioeconomic and cultural factors could explain variation between countries. Across this sample, social identification was positively associated with wellbeing, but these benefits were not uniform. Identification with family and friends (ÎČ = 0.24) showed stronger and more consistent associations with wellbeing than national identification (ÎČ = 0.07). While associations between national identification and wellbeing were positive in 93% of countries, they were reliable (i.e., confidence intervals did not cross zero) in fewer than half. The positive association between social identification and wellbeing was stronger in settings characterised by greater wealth and inequality, and varied systematically with cultural values: in less secular and less emancipative societies, national identification was more strongly associated with wellbeing whereas identification with family and friends was less strongly associated with wellbeing. These findings show that promoting wellbeing globally requires attention to the strength and nature of people’s social identifications, and the socioeconomic and cultural conditions in which they are embedded.
A Qualitative Investigation of Emotion Dysregulation in Perinatal Mental Health
Emily Barrett; Danielle Rice; Talia Tissera; Benicio Frey; Arela Agako; David L. Streiner; Sheryl Green
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Background: Mood and anxiety disorders are common during the perinatal period, impacting both parental health and infant development. Understanding the core symptoms and processes that underlie these conditions is essential for improving screening and intervention. Emotion dysregulation (ED) is a key transdiagnostic factor, yet research has largely relied on questionnaires and physiological measures of ED that offer limited insight into individuals’ lived experiences. This study aimed to qualitatively explore how individuals with heightened ED understand, experience, and regulate their emotions during pregnancy and the postpartum, and how these experiences differ from pre-pregnancy. Methods: Perinatal participants (N = 16) were recruited within the Women’s Health Concerns Clinic at St. Joseph’s Healthcare, Hamilton. Participants who endorsed experiencing ED were invited to complete a semi-structured qualitative interview related to their experience with ED. Interview data was analysed using a directed content analysis. Themes: Participants described heightened emotion reactivity during the perinatal period, characterized by rapid mood changes and heightened intensity of anger, shame, guilt, anxiety, sadness, hopelessness, and joy. Participants described feeling unprepared to manage the increased intensity of negative emotions, particularly anger, compounded by reduced access to activities that had previously supported emotion regulation (e.g., self-care or social activities). Factors that contributed to vulnerability included life stressors, sleep disruption, and unmet expectations of both others (e.g., support) and oneself (e.g., coping ability). Conclusions: These findings enrich our understanding of perinatal-specific ED and highlight processes that may inform tailored interventions, that could be preventative in nature, for this vulnerable and understudied population.
Recovery activities and workplace well-being among people with intellectual disabilities: Exploration of the mediating effect of recovery experiences
Elodie Leclerc; Clément Ginoux; Sandrine Isoard-Gautheur
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Background. Workplace well-being is a key determinant of job retention among people with intellectual disability, a population that faces particularly high levels of labour-market discrimination. Although this group is vulnerable to work-related exhaustion, recovery from work, a process shown to be critical for employee well-being in the general working population, has not yet been examined among these workers. Drawing on recovery theory, the present study explores the role of recovery processes in the workplace well-being of employees with intellectual disability. Method. A cross-sectional questionnaire assessing leisure activities (i.e., physical, social, creative, mental, virtual, outdoor), off-job recovery experiences (i.e., psychological detachment, relaxation, mastery, control, affiliation, affect) and workplace well-being (i.e., burnout, vigor, need for recovery, job satisfaction) was administered to employees with intellectual disability working in sheltered employment settings in France. Mediation analyses were conducted on 169 valid responses. Results. Of the six recovery experiences assessed, only affiliation and affect significantly mediated the associations between active leisure activities (physical, social, and outdoor) and workplace well-being. Conclusion. These findings provide preliminary evidence that relational and affective recovery experiences constitute a pathway through which leisure engagement supports workplace well-being in this population. Given their exploratory nature, they require confirmation in larger, more diverse samples using longitudinal designs.
Idiographic Item Response Theory: Modeling Person-Specific Differential Item Functioning in Intensive Longitudinal Data
Joshua B Gilbert; Edward J. Kim; Zachary Himmelsbach; Esther Ulitzsch; Lijin Zhang
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Idiographic theories of psychological measurement emphasize that the relationships between item responses and a latent trait may vary across individuals, yet typical item response theory (IRT) models assume item parameters are constant across persons. We propose an IRT approach for modeling person-specific (idiographic) heterogeneity in item functioning in intensive longitudinal data. We extend the two-parameter logistic IRT model to allow item location parameters to vary across individuals through person-by-item interaction random effects. We apply a Bayesian estimator to estimate item-specific interaction variances and use a regularizing spike-and-slab likelihood mixture to identify items with non-negligible heterogeneity. A simulation study indicates that the model recovers such heterogeneity reasonably well when person sample sizes and the number of repeated measurements are at least moderate. We then apply our approach to empirical data from a depression study and find substantial variation across items in the degree of person-specific item functioning. The proposed model and estimator contribute to emerging work on idiographic measurement by extending IRT to settings where repeated observations can be used to estimate individual departures from group-level item parameters, providing a new tool for studying differential item functioning, measurement invariance, and broader forms of individual variation in intensive longitudinal data.
Acoustic cue weighting in voice discrimination varies across words and sentences and by speaker gender
Tianze Xu; Xiaoming Jiang; Volker Dellwo
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Voice perception is often described as relying on several acoustic dimensions, but whether the relative importance of these dimensions stays stable across contexts remains an open question. This study examined how two fundamental contextual factors—the linguistic level of the speech (words vs. sentences) and speaker gender—affect the acoustic cues listeners use to discriminate between voices. We analyzed behavioral data from Mandarin-speaking listeners who judged whether pairs of speech recordings were produced by the same speaker. Interpretable machine learning classifiers, including both linear and tree-based models, were used as analytical tools to predict two types of labels from acoustic differences between speech pairs: ground-truth and perceived-identity labels (same- vs. different-speaker), with the latter based on listeners’ judgments. The models performed well when trained and tested on the same linguistic level but exhibited asymmetric declines in cross-level generalization: sentence-trained models over-classified word pairs as different-speaker, while word-trained models showed the opposite bias. Feature importance extracted from the classifiers revealed a shared acoustic scaffold (including pitch, formant structure, harmonic shape, spectral balance), alongside adaptations specific to linguistic level and speaker gender. At the sentence level, tempo cues (especially for male voices) and variability-based spectral-balance cues (especially for female voices) became more prominent in voice discrimination. These changes likely reflected greater prosodic modulation in sentences and contributed to the asymmetric cross-level generalization. Overall, our findings that cue weighting flexibly adapts to linguistic level and speaker gender highlight the dynamic and context-dependent nature of voice identity perception, extending prototype-based models in which acoustic dimensions are often treated as fixed.
Mindscapes of Second Language Acquisition: A New Perspective on the Cognitive Inquiry of Language
Junya Fukuta
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This book repositions second language acquisition (SLA) within cognitive science by developing a new epistemological framework for explaining language learning. Grounded in functional realism and contemporary mechanistic explanation, it advances the Causal-Mechanistic Systems Research Programme that retains a commitment to organised cognitive systems while incorporating complexity, embodiment, and sociality. From this perspective, the book reconsiders how L2 knowledge should be conceptualised, how language interacts with other dimensions of cognition, and how linguistic knowledge emerges and develops. Rather than treating descriptive categories, correlations, or task-dependent effects as explanations in themselves, it asks what underlying mechanisms generate the observable phenomena of SLA. By applying this perspective across major theoretical domains of second language research, the book presents SLA as a distinctive empirical arena for investigating the organisation, development, and adaptability of human cognition.
What difference do cash transfers make? Understanding impacts and mechanisms from cash transfer recipients and communities in Malawi and Lesotho.
Mirela Zaneva; Josphine Hapazari; Theodora Khofi; Christopher James Graham; Eunbi Han; Shruti; Aswathi Surendran; Rizwana Amin; Roseline Dzekem Dine; Hangala Siachiwena
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Cash transfers are a common poverty alleviation intervention, yet qualitative reports of recipients’ lived experiences are limited. Without these perspectives, policy frameworks risk reducing beneficiaries to passive inputs in programmatic equations. This means potentially overlooking the social meanings, moral negotiations, and relational dynamics through which transfers are actually received, used, perceived, and redistributed. To address this gap, we analyzed 74 in-depth interviews with cash transfer recipients and their household members in rural Malawi and Lesotho. Using reflexive thematic analysis, we created four themes: 1) “With my poverty it can’t work”: Enough to survive, not enough to change, 2) “I can’t be eating in my house while my children are hungry next door”: Grandmothers and the obligation to share, 3) “I am already worried as to what I will be doing”: Psychological relief and stress intertwine, 4) “Sky-falling” and “satanic” money: Notions of deservingness produce stigma and jealousy. Recipients consistently noted improvement in food security, while effects on mental health and social relationships were more mixed. We argue that recipient-centered reports complement and strengthen quantitative evidence about the impacts and mechanisms of cash transfers. We discuss specific policy recommendations, such as larger and more predictable payments, better communication, and sensitive disbursement options, gender-sensitive support, and more active monitoring of psychosocial and community effects in order to mitigate potential negative impacts. Finally, we argue there is a need for a more ambitious focus on development as the key path to poverty eradication.
Social influence and information cascades in experience-based decisions
Kiri Kuroda; Simon Kai Ciranka; Dirk U. Wulff; Ralf Kurvers
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Many consequential decisions are made in environments where outcome probabilities are not explicitly described but must be inferred from experience. In most modern environments, this information search takes place in the presence of others. Yet, the role of social influence in experience-based decisions has been largely overlooked, leaving it unclear how personal and social information combine to shape what people sample, when they stop searching, and what they finally choose. Here, we address all three decision stages. In a preregistered study, participants could freely sample two options before making a final choice, either alone (solo condition) or while observing the final choices of their group members (group condition). We developed a modeling framework and show that social influence left sampling unaffected but altered stopping and choice. Participants searched longer when the group was more divided and stopped earlier when the majority choice agreed with their own personal sampling information. Consequently, they drew fewer samples and encountered fewer rare events than solo participants. When choosing, group members copied others' choices only when their personal information was ambiguous. Comparing decision sequences in groups with a solo baseline, complemented with agent-based simulations, showed that this strategy gave rise to mild information cascades, with decisions in groups being more similar to each other than in a solo baseline. Our results reveal how social influence shapes search, stopping, and choice, and how these individual-level decision rules scale up to collective dynamics.
(Im)moral autobiographical memory: the role of morality in past and future personal events
Mara Stockner; Jessica Talbot; Gianmarco Convertino; Giuliana Mazzoni
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Autobiographical memory can be distorted, supporting the maintenance of a positive self-image (e.g., self-enhancement concept. In this line, evidence has shown that memories of immoral actions can be characterized by distortions (e.g., less details or blurry) and elicit a so-called “immoral amnesia” (e.g., Kouchaki & Gino, 2016). In the present study, we aimed at replicating the phenomenological characteristics of ABMs regarding moral and immoral actions participants performed in their past and aimed at verifying, for the first time, if analogous phenomenological characteristics of immoral vs. moral actions can also be found for personal future events. 68 participants recalled subjectively perceived moral and immoral past events, imagined moral and immoral personal future events and evaluated the retrieved events based on a series of phenomenological characteristics. Our results replicate the so-called “immoral amnesia” both for past and future events, showing that immoral (vs. moral) events were objectively and subjectively perceived more distant in time, less vivid, contained subjectively fewer visual and sensorial details, and involved people were less clearly represented. However, our results also show some differences between past and future mental representations: future immoral (vs. moral) events were, for instance, evaluated as less immoral and as less important compared to past immoral events. Overall, our findings suggest that morality moderates aspects of both past and future autobiographical processing, and humans appear to adopt a self-enhancement approach to evaluating their own past and future transgressions.
Social and Neurobiological Mechanisms of Risk and Resilience in Young People: The Longitudinal THRIVE-study
Elizabeth E. L. Buimer; Maximilian König; Pauline Wessels; Hannah Dorsman; Antoinette Haverhals; THRIVE consortium; Peter Bos; Geert-Jan Will; Anne-Laura Van Harmelen
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More than half of the children and adolescents worldwide experience at least one form of childhood adversity (e.g., abuse, neglect or bullying) whilst growing up. Childhood adversity is among the strongest predictors of mental health problems in adolescence and adulthood. Yet, some individuals show resilient functioning, meaning they have good mental health and well-being despite their exposure to childhood adversity. Childhood adversity is thought to affect mental health through its impact on neurocognitive functioning, for example through blunted social feedback learning and biased emotion and threat processing. The neurocognitive social transactional model suggests that such childhood adversity related neurocognitive functioning may ultimately lead to reductions in the quality and quantity of social relations and increases in stressful experiences with peers over time, increasing the risk for mental health problems. However, empirical evidence to support this theoretical framework is scarce. Therefore, the longitudinal Towards Health and Resilience in Volatile Environments (THRIVE) study is set out to investigate the dynamics of psychological, social, and neurobiological mechanisms underlying mental health functioning in adolescents aged 18-24 years with a history of childhood adversity. The ongoing THRIVE study aims to recruit 288 participants aged 18-24 years who retrospectively self-report childhood adversity (current N=220). This longitudinal neuroimaging study consists of 6 sessions including an in-unit session, during which participants undergo extensive testing including salivary cortisol measures, emotion labelling measures, as well as functional neuroimaging (whilst completing the Montreal Imaging Stress Task and the Social Feedback Learning Task). In the longitudinal part of the study, participants fill out online questionnaires at 5 time points (i.e. every three months) to map the dynamics and associations of social support, mental health, and stressful events, over time. Using the data collected at the in-unit session, we aim to test whether childhood adversity is associated with biased emotion processing, blunted feedback learning and enhanced stress responses, while social support may moderate these effects (i.e. ‘social stress buffering’). The longitudinal component of the THRIVE study allows us to test our hypothesis that mental health problems arise because childhood adversity shapes neurocognitive functioning in a way that, over time, reduces social support and increases social stress. By unravelling how social functioning contributes to resilient functioning after childhood adversity, the THRIVE study will aid crucial knowledge and ultimately help intervention and prevention efforts. The THRIVE study has been approved by The Medical Ethics Committee Leiden - The Hague - Delft (NL80017.058.21) on July 5th, 2022 and has been co-created with the Augeo Youth Task Force (a panel of young adults with childhood adversity, https://www.augeo.nl/jongerentaskforce). The Augeo Youth Task Force is involved in every step of the empirical cycle to make sure the perspective and knowledge of young people with childhood adversity are incorporated. The results of the THRIVE study will be disseminated through preprints, peer-reviewed scientific publications, scientific presentations, media and public outreach.
Nothing “Evaluative“ about Evaluative Priming? Semantic Relatedness Beyond Evaluation Is Not Necessary for a Facilitation of Evaluative Judgements
Manuel Becker; Marie Jakob; Karl Christoph Klauer
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Ever since Zajonc proposed that preferences need no inferences, psychologists have debated whether evaluations can be conceptualized and measured independently of co-activated semantic content. One prominent arena for this debate has been the Evaluative Priming Task, which tracks the effects of conflicting or congruent evaluative relationships between stimuli. Surprisingly, two prior lines of research found that effects of evaluative congruency in the task do not emerge in the absence of additional semantic relationships. This not only conflicts with other findings, but also challenges dominant theoretical accounts of the task, whose assumptions entail that congruency effects should arise irrespectively. In Studies 1 and 2 (Ns=81, 85), we re-examine these two lines of research and show that when vulnerabilities in the original experimental and analytical designs are rectified, evaluative congruency effects do reliably occur (even in the absence of strong semantic relationships). A third study (N=80), that implements strong semantic relationships under especially controlled conditions, also yields reliable congruency effects. In Study 4 (N=81), the trials with low semantic relatedness from the first three studies are combined, replicating consistent and reliable, but small congruency effects. Our results thereby strengthen models that accommodate an independent role of evaluations, and we illustrate how these models might be modified to account for an augmenting influence of semantic relatedness. Currently, in domains for which evaluations and their measurement are integral (like the measurement of race-based evaluations, consumer or health behavior), the pronounced and potentially biasing effects of semantic relatedness remain largely unrecognized as a serious confound.
A low-dimensional hypothesis for cognition and the human brain
Leonardo Bonneti; Barbara A. P. Grosjean; Chiara Malvaso; Nikita Kudriavtsev; Gemma Fernandez-Rubio; Mattia Rosso
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The human brain is among the most complex biological systems known, yet a growing body of evidence suggests that its activity consistently exhibits low-dimensional organisation. Across behavioural states, recording modalities, spatial scales, and analytical approaches, large-scale neural dynamics can often be described by a surprisingly limited number of latent processes expressed through coordinated large-scale spatiotemporal patterns. This observation presents a fundamental paradox: how can a system capable of remarkably flexible cognition operate within such constrained dynamical structure? Here, we propose a low-dimensional hypothesis for cognition. We argue that cognition depends on the emergence of low-dimensional latent processes from complex neural activity, their reconfiguration according to internal and external demands, and the interactions among them. Within this framework, cognition arises not from unconstrained high-dimensional neural activity, but from the efficient organisation of neural dynamics into latent processes and their interactions. We review converging evidence for low-dimensional organisation across brain activity and cognition and outline a set of falsifiable predictions concerning cognitive demands, learning, development, aging, neurological and psychiatric disorders, pharmacological interventions, and social interaction. Finally, we consider whether this principle extends across spatial scales and whether analogous organisation emerges in artificial neural networks. Altogether, we propose low-dimensional organisation as a candidate principle for understanding the neural substrate of cognition.
Development and Validation of Home Factors for Critical Reading Scale
Jenni Ruotsalainen; Leena Paakkari; Mari Manu; Emmi Ulvinen; Jenni Salminen; Kamil Kuracki; Minna Palmu; Minna Torppa
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Today, children need critical reading skills from an early age, making it essential to explore how these skills can be supported in the home environment. Since no measure currently exists for examining home factors that may affect critical reading development, this study aimed to develop and validate scale for families with children aged 7–16 years. The study included three phases in Finland: 1) item generation, 2) item selection through two pilot studies (n=260; n=280), and 3) validation of the scale with two separate datasets from Finland (n=11,090; n=328). External validity was examined in a Polish sample (n=120). Initially, 178 items were generated, 82 of which were selected for piloting. Through the pilot studies, the 14 best-performing items were selected for validation. A six-factor structure was identified for the scale, referred to as the Home Factors for Critical Reading (home-CR) scale: 1) Critical reading practices, 2) Attention to child initiatives, 3) Control of media use, 4) Reading interest and expectations, 5) Valuing knowledge, and 6) Rigid thinking patterns. The consistency of the factor structure across samples and its alignment with theoretical constructs supported the construct validity of the scale. Criterion validity was examined in relation to the number of books at home, parental reading frequency, and digital parenting, and the home-CR scale was found to be related to—yet distinct from—these constructs. The confirmatory factor analysis loading structure and test–retest results supported the reliability of the scale. The iterative, validity-driven development process yielded a brief, multidimensional home-CR scale.
Behavioral effects of anti-pandemic preventive measures: a VR study
Serena DeStefani; Sam S. Sohn; Mathew Schartz; Yash Sharma; Fred Roberts; Karin Stromswold; Mubbasir Kapadia; Jacob Feldman
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During the COVID-19 pandemic, a variety of public health measures aimed at decreasing transmission between people sharing public spaces, including social distancing and the use of face masks. However the behavioral consequences of these policies on human navigation are mostly unknown. Using virtual reality, we investigated how some common preventive measures influenced how people navigate near other people. Participants (N=29) traversed virtual rooms containing virtual people (“agents”) while we manipulated their mask status, the mask status of the agents, and the perceived environmental safety (high/low community vaccination rates). We found that initial path selection was primarily determined by agent mask-wearing, with participants more likely to pass in front of masked than unmasked agents. The perception of environmental safety predominantly governed subsequent interpersonal distance, with closer proximity maintained in high-vaccination contexts. The participants’ own mask status was the least influential, suggesting that navigational choices were driven by external risk assessment rather than personal protection. We observed clear risk compensation: subjects generally reduced interpersonal distance in safer conditions (whether environmental, agent masking, or personal masking). Bayesian model comparisons favored a three-factor additive model, indicating independent rather than interactive influences on behavior. These findings reveal the interplay of decisions underlying pandemic-era social navigation, and highlight the importance of accounting for risk compensation in public health interventions.
Beyond the empathogen label: the social-affective profile of MDMA
Makaela Weeda; Valeria Gazzola; Monique Smith; Josjan Zijlmans; Christian Keysers; Ákos Babiczky
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3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) is widely described as an “empathogen”, yet empathy is not a unitary process. Here we review MDMA’s social effects by decomposing them into social perception and emotion discrimination, sociability and social reward, affective sharing, cognitive empathy and mentalizing, and prosocial behaviour. Available evidence gathered in humans and other mammals demonstrate that MDMA has distinct effects across these domains, although research coverage remains uneven across domains. We argue that MDMA is best understood not as a global empathy enhancer, but as a domain-specific modulator of social reward, threat perception, positive-valence affective sharing, and interpersonal appraisal. Moving beyond this simplified empathy enhancer concept is essential for understanding both the therapeutic promise and the interpersonal risks of MDMA.
Directional Asymmetry in Reasoning About National and Religious Identity Is Category-Specific: Evidence From Palestine, Israel, and the United States
Mostafa Salari Rad; Jeremy Ginges
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Judgments about whether a person can gain or lose a group identity may depend both on which category is at stake and on the direction of transfer. For national identity, people judge that an outgroup-born child raised by the ingroup becomes one of us more readily than an ingroup-born child raised by the outgroup becomes one of them (Rad & Ginges, 2018). That work varied which outgroup was named but never which category, leaving open whether the asymmetry is a general property of reasoning about ingroups, is specific to nationality, or varies with how membership in a category is represented, which differs across populations. We tested these alternatives in settings where religion and nationality pick out nearly the same adversary, using switched-at-birth tasks with Muslim-Palestinians (N = 1,205), Americans (N = 989), and religious Israeli Jews (N = 280). The asymmetry appeared for national identity in all three samples and did not depend on the outgroup being the adversary. For religious identity it was absent among Palestinians and Americans, but present among Israeli Jews and not reliably different from nationality's. Across conditions and studies, directional asymmetry appeared only where membership was treated as substantially fixed at birth, and where it appeared it was carried almost entirely by judgments of what ingroup upbringing confers rather than of what birth transmits. The asymmetry is therefore neither a general feature of group boundaries nor a property of nationality in particular, but emerges where membership is understood as substantially fixed at birth.
Toward Personalizing a Digital Intervention for Co-Occurring Cannabis Use and Binge Eating: An Idiographic Network Analysis
Elizabeth Webb Lampe; Sukriti Ghosh; Benjamin Kaveladze; Jacob Borodovsky; Alan Budney; Nicholas C. Jacobson
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Cannabis use (CU) and binge eating (BE) frequently co-occur, yet existing interventions treat each behavior in isolation. This pilot study evaluated whether individually tailored (idiographic) symptom network models better characterize momentary risk for CU and BE than a single group-level (nomothetic) model, as a first step toward a personalized just-in-time adaptive intervention (JITAI) for co-occurring cannabis use disorder and binge-spectrum eating disorders. Thirty adults with clinically significant CU and BE completed 28 days of ecological momentary assessment surveys four times daily, assessing CU, BE, and shared risk factors (e.g., emotion dysregulation, distress intolerance). Nomothetic and idiographic networks were estimated using multilevel and graphical vector autoregression, respectively, and compared on model fit and structural similarity. Idiographic models fit participants' own data better than the nomothetic model for every participant with an estimable person-specific network (n = 29) and for every symptom node. Correspondence between idiographic and nomothetic temporal pathways was, on average, weak (Mean r = .06; range: −.17 to .37). The nomothetic model nonetheless identified plausible bridge pathways linking urges for CU, loss-of-control over CU, and cognitive restraint over CU to subsequent BE. Person-to-person variability was greatest for pathways connecting shared regulatory processes to eating-disorder-specific outcomes. These findings support a personalized, network-informed approach to intervention development for co-occurring CU and BE, suggesting that idiographic assessment may be most valuable at the specific junctures where transdiagnostic risk factors intersect with disorder-specific behavior.
Prospective associations between depressive symptoms and cognitive function remain uncertain: A reanalysis of Wang et al. (2026)
Kimmo Sorjonen; Bo Melin; Marika Melin
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Wang et al. reported longitudinal findings that were interpreted as evidence that depressive symptoms contribute to subsequent deterioration in cognitive function. However, statistically significant cross-lagged coefficients are not, by themselves, sufficient evidence for a genuine prospective effect because similar estimates can arise through alternative statistical processes. Using simulated data constructed to reproduce the sample size and correlation structure reported by Wang et al., we assessed the stability of the reported conclusions across several defensible analytical specifications. Results differed markedly depending on the model employed. Some specifications suggested positive prospective associations, whereas others indicated negative or statistically non-significant relationships. When estimates from all specifications were synthesized using meta-analytic procedures, no significant overall effects emerged. These findings indicate that the evidence presented by Wang et al. does not provide a stable foundation for concluding that depressive symptoms prospectively influence cognitive function. Consistent with recommendations from the multiverse-analysis literature, conclusions should be based on evidence aggregated across reasonable analytical alternatives rather than on the results of a single model.
Longitudinal Associations Between Narrative Identity and Life Satisfaction: A Mixed-Method Approach on Identity Process and Content
Liselotte den Boer; Elisabeth Louise de Moor; Vinicius Coscioni
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Adolescence is a crucial period for identity formation. Narrative identity is constructed through the process of integrating important life events into one’s life story. Despite the significance of narrative identity for well-being, research on longitudinal associations is lagging behind. Moreover, identity processes and content are interdependent, but are rarely examined in tandem. In this pre-registered, 3-wave, one-year interval, longitudinal study, we examined associations between narrative identity content, process, and life satisfaction in a sample of 207 Dutch adolescents (Mage = 15.73, SD = 0.68). First, we tested whether changes in narrative agency and redemption explained changes in life satisfaction across the same period. Results showed that increases in agency explained increases in life satisfaction. However, changes in redemption did not explain changes in life satisfaction. Second, a reflective thematic analysis of 412 turning point narratives across the three waves revealed five identity content themes related to (a) adversity and social injustice, (b) overcoming challenges and conflict, (c) resignation and self-blame, (d) expressing the true self, and (e) future goals. These themes illustrate the meanings ascribed to narrative turning points, offering insight into the what, why, and how of identity development. The content themes did not explain changes in life satisfaction, but the third content theme was linked to lower life satisfaction within time. Overall, the findings emphasize the idiosyncratic nature of identity development and illustrate the value of combining quantitative and qualitative approaches to deepen our knowledge of adolescents’ identity development and its link to well-being.
Neuroscience-Informed Psychoeducation for Substance Use Prevention
Jasmin Vassileva; Tara Rezapour; Tara Rezapour; Elena Psederska; Hamed Ekhtiari; Lindsay Squeglia
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Substance use disorders (SUD) are chronic, relapsing brain conditions with substantial health-related and economic consequences, constituting a major public health challenge worldwide. There is an urgent need to strengthen prevention efforts and improve access to effective treatment to mitigate the long-term health, social, and economic adversities associated with SUD. This chapter highlights the utility of Neuroscience-Informed PsychoEducation (NIPE) interventions for substance use prevention in adolescents and young adults. Prevention interventions are most effective when implemented early, as they can delay or prevent the onset of substance use and reduce the risk of subsequent substance-related problems. Adolescence is a critical developmental period for brain maturation, providing a strategic window for prevention and early interventions, which may harness the heightened neuroplasticity and “social plasticity” of this neurodevelopmental period. The chapter reviews the neuroscience of addiction in adolescence along with key limitations of early prevention approaches. The emergence of neuroscience-informed perspectives in prevention science and the role of neuroscience-informed psychoeducation as a mechanism of preventive change are discussed and neuroscience-informed frameworks for SUDs prevention based on research domain criteria (RDoC) are presented. Finally, the evidence-base and effectiveness of existing neuroscience-informed psychoeducational pro-grams for substance use prevention are reviewed. Together, these emerging approaches open important new possibilities and directions for future developments in neuroscience-informed prevention science.
Interactions between working memory and attention depend on remembered feature dimension
Daniel Thayer; Thomas C Sprague
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Prominent theories of visual search state that goal-relevant information is maintained in working memory (WM) to guide attention to relevant, searched-for items. Prioritization from WM is sufficiently strong to direct attention towards items that are irrelevant to current search goals. These ‘incidental capture’ results have typically been observed when remembering color or shape stimuli, but, in principle, should similarly occur using other strong guiding features such as motion. However, recent work suggests that neural representations of remembered motion directions are transformed into spatial coordinates. If so, then remembered stimuli which can easily be spatially recoded (e.g., remembered motion direction) should not interfere with visual search when feature-matching distractors are present any more than interference caused by a salient distractor that does not match the contents of WM. We replicated the traditional incidental capture finding for color: distractors matching the remembered color captured attention more than feature singletons. In contrast, when participants were required to remember a motion direction, capture was equal across distractor conditions: salient distractors captured attention, but no additional capture was observed when the remembered motion direction matched the distracting motion direction. Intriguingly, responses were faster when the search target was at a location that neural studies predict would be prioritized if remembered motion was spatially recoded. Our results indicate that some features in WM are more likely to impact attentional processing than others and that this difference in attentional capture between feature dimensions may emerge due to the ability to reformat memory representations.
Using Text Embedding Models to Quantify Strategies in Multilingual Verbal Fluency: Evidence from Young and Older Adults
Huitian Chen; Chin Tung Wu; Zhengyuan Liu; Haoyun Zhang
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Verbal fluency tasks, particularly semantic fluency, assess language and executive functions, yet conventional measures may not fully capture cross-language retrieval dynamics or their cognitive correlates in multilingual speakers. We developed an automated approach that represents consecutive responses as vectors and derives Mean Semantic Distance (MSD), the average distance between adjacent responses, and the Standard Deviation of Semantic Distance (SD), reflecting variability in those distances. Experiment 1 evaluated four candidate models. BGE-M3 was selected for strong agreement with human semantic judgments, convergence with another psychologically plausible model, and less compressed distance geometry. Experiment 2 examined 45 young Cantonese, Mandarin, and English multilingual adults. Conventional fluency measures showed the strongest performance in Cantonese and the weakest in English. In contrast, MSD was highest in Mandarin and lowest in English, whereas SD was lower in English than in Cantonese and Mandarin. Proactive control was differentially associated with Mean Cluster Size across languages, while processing speed–MSD associations differed between Cantonese and Mandarin. Stroop interference showed no reliable language-specific modulation. Experiment 3 compared the young adults with 26 older Cantonese and Mandarin bilingual adults. Older adults produced fewer words, but the cross-language MSD and SD patterns were broadly similar across age groups. Proactive control showed selective age- and language-dependent associations with Total Number of Words and Mean Cluster Size, whereas processing speed showed no reliable three-way interaction with MSD. Together, these findings show that continuous semantic distance measures complement traditional fluency scores by revealing retrieval patterns and cognitive associations that conventional measures may miss.
Adults’ Experiences of Mathematical Learning Difficulties and Anxiety: Links to Math Self-efficacy, Self-concept, and Learning
Anni Savikuja; Riikka Sirkko; Pinja TĂ€hti; Riikka Mononen
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Mathematical skills are valued and required in a rapidly technologically advancing society. At the same time, many adults struggle with their mathematical skills and experience math anxiety. This qualitative study focuses on examining how adults' mathematical learning difficulties and math anxiety have affected their self-concept, self-efficacy, and learning in mathematics. Nine female adults were interviewed, and reflexive thematic analysis was performed on the data. Three main themes were found that described how mathematical learning difficulties and math anxiety are linked to math self-efficacy, self-concept, and learning: 1) self-doubt in mathematics, 2) lack of support in learning mathematics, and 3) avoidance of mathematics. Implications of math teacher education and adults' basic math skill training are discussed.
Idiosyncratic Event Segmentation as a Neural Marker of Loneliness
Chang Lu; Clara Sava-Segal; Elisa C Baek
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Loneliness negatively affects both mental and physical health, yet the cognitive mechanisms that give rise to feelings of social disconnection remain poorly understood. A hallmark of loneliness is the feeling of being “out of sync” with others. What contributes to these feelings of misalignment with others? Using functional MRI data from two independent datasets (N = 65 and N = 43), in which participants watched naturalistic videos while their brain activity was recorded, we tested whether lonely individuals display atypical event segmentation patterns—a core component of human perception that shapes how people structure, remember, and understand continuous experiences. Using a Hidden Markov Model–based approach, we found that while non-lonely individuals exhibited similarity, lonely individuals’ neural event segmentation patterns were dissimilar to others, particularly in high-order brain regions (e.g., the default mode network). Furthermore, we found that loneliness was also linked to greater deviations from the group’s normative neural segmentation patterns in certain videos, as indicated by poorer model fit to the group’s average model. These findings suggest that loneliness is linked to unique neural organizations of continuous experiences, revealing a potential cognitive mechanism through which loneliness is characterized by divergent structuring of experience.
Load-Dependent Parameter Scaling in Visual Working Memory Models Reveals the Role of Decoding in Retrieval
Hang Qian; Paul Michael Garrett; Yi Liu; Philip L. Smith
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We examined how recent models of continuous visual working memory (VWM) retrieval express capacity limitations through fitted parameters, and whether these expressions follow the inverse square-root scaling predicted by the sample-size model. Through simulations, we generated response errors from a Poisson population-coding model in which increased memory load was implemented as reduced neural population size per item. We then fitted three continuous VWM models that differed in their noise assumptions and decision rules, comparing model-variants in which load affected either representational dispersion or signal amplitude. The parameter that captured capacity-related change depended systematically on the decoder used to transform population activity into a response estimate. Under maximum-likelihood decoding, reduced population size was expressed primarily through changes in dispersion. Under maximum-output decoding, the same manipulation was expressed primarily through changes in amplitude. We then applied the same model-comparison logic to empirical data from a post-cue continuous memory-reproduction task, in which participants reported either color or orientation of a stimulus after encoding both features. Although the two feature domains produced markedly different error distributions, they both favored scaling of the amplitude parameter with set size. These findings show that parameters in continuous VWM models do not merely summarize response-error distributions; they also reflect assumptions about how population-level representations are decoded into behavior. Set-size related parameter changes should therefore be interpreted with consideration of the assumed decoding process, rather than as decoder-independent measures of memory precision or signal strength.
Behaviour Change Strategies for Reducing Meat Consumption: A Multi-Level Meta-Analysis
Sarah A. E. Chamberlain; Andreas K Jaeger; Xiaoxiao Chen; Don Hine
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Dietary change can help to reduce the food-sector contributions to climate change, with reduced meat consumption being an environmentally impactful behaviour that can be promoted using behavioural interventions. While research supports that interventions can reduce meat consumption, substantial variation in outcomes has limited our understanding of which intervention approaches are most effective and how their effects relate to the behavioural determinants they are designed to influence. With previous reviews generally being restricted to specific intervention approaches, settings, or types of outcome assessment, it remains unclear for whom and under what conditions interventions are most effective. This multi-level meta-analysis sought to address this gap through synthesising a broad range of meat reduction interventions (66 studies, 121 effect sizes, 72,832 participants), which were classified using a determinant-based integrative framework. Moderator analyses were used to identify influential intervention, participant, and methodological characteristics. Overall, interventions were found to have a small-to-moderate effect on reducing meat intake (Hedges’ g = -0.39, 95% CI [-0.50, -0.28]). Intervention approach was a significant moderator, with combination approaches followed by choice architecture having the strongest effects on reducing consumption. Gender significantly moderated intervention effectiveness, with interventions being less effective when samples contained a higher proportion of men. Outcome measure also significantly moderated intervention effectiveness, with larger effects observed for objective measures than subjective or hypothetical assessments. These findings suggest that combining intervention approaches to address multiple behavioural determinants may be particularly effective for promoting environmentally impactful dietary behaviour change, while highlighting the need for interventions targeting male populations.
Conceptual maps of social knowledge support trait generalization
Gavin Mullin; Leor M Hackel; Peter Mende-Siedlecki
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People rapidly infer traits from the social behavior of others, supporting predictions about their future behavior. How do people use this learning flexibly in novel social situations in which they have no direct experience with someone? We propose people use maps of social knowledge (representing similarity between traits) to generalize impressions and predict behavior in new domains and contexts—a prediction we tested across four experiments. In Experiment 1, participants learned about targets (either humans or non-human slot machines) whose behavior in a task revealed sociability, and later, chose which partners to engage with in new tasks associated with other traits. Trait similarity (i.e., between original and novel domains) shaped partner choice, but critically, this relationship was socially specific: participants generalized social learning based on trait similarity when interacting with other humans but not with slot machines. In Experiment 2, participants were given explicit trait labels describing potential partners. Trait similarity continued to influence generalization across an expanded set of traits and task contexts, above and beyond the mere valence similarity of traits. Next, Experiment 3 demonstrated that this similarity-based generalization occurs spontaneously: in a false recognition task, participants were more likely to misremember conceptually-similar traits as having been used to describe a person’s behavior. Experiment 4 extended these findings by demonstrating that similarity-based generalization persists even under cognitive load, suggesting it operates efficiently and with minimal cognitive resources. In sum, these findings illuminate how people flexibly navigate social contexts by efficiently drawing on structured representations of social knowledge.
Places Shape the Expression of Extraversion States: Evidence from an Ecological Momentary Intervention Targeting Physical Environments
Gabriella M. Harari; Sumer Sumeet Vaid; Sanaz Talaifar; Yikun Chi; Serena Jimyn Soh; Heinrich Peters; Sandra Matz
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People and their environments continually shape one another through ongoing transactions. Despite the physical environment being known to shape behavior and psychological states, previous research on personality change primarily focuses on the social environment. To examine whether changes to the physical environment shape personality expression, here we report on findings from a brief ecological momentary intervention (N = 334) testing whether changing one’s physical environment causes increases in momentary extraversion states. Using a counterbalanced within-person design delivered via a mobile sensing app over two days, we experimentally manipulated the places people spend time during the day (i.e., home vs. public places). Findings from intent-to-treat and per-protocol analyses showed that the intervention was effective – when participants were instructed to spend time in public places and when they complied, they reported a significant increase in extraversion states at the momentary level. Within-person 2-1-1 mediation models provide suggestive evidence that perceptions of situations being more social explained the relationship between public places and state extraversion. The findings suggests that changes to one’s physical environment can support change in personality states, presenting a novel intervention strategy for personality change and offering new avenues for future research on the environmental determinants of personality expression.
The pitfalls of pay-to-play morality
Ryan W. Carlson; Molly Crockett
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Morality is often measured in dollars and cents. Economic games and charitable giving tasks frame giving money to strangers as moral and keeping money as selfish. This ‘pay-to-play’ paradigm has grown popular with the rise of online experiments, yet its underlying assumptions often go untested. Here, we present data that complicate the interpretation of this paradigm. We invited US crowdworkers (N=1384) to make charitable decisions and measured not just their choices, but the motives and meanings they ascribed to those choices. We found that crowdworkers’ most common motive for keeping money was acute financial need (e.g., struggling to pay for medical care or groceries). These individuals reported significantly lower incomes, and did not view their decisions to keep money as selfish. Third-party judges (N=140) agreed that keeping money in economic tasks out of financial need was not selfish, and considered such tasks to be an unreasonable measure of altruism and selfishness. Finally, we found that crowdworkers reporting financial need were unresponsive to standard interventions designed to motivate generosity. Overall, these findings challenge the assumption that keeping money uniformly reflects selfishness, and raise ethical and practical questions about how experimenters should define, measure, and motivate moral behavior.
Word Familiarity Norms as a Test Case: Improving Methodological Standards in Word Norming Research
Maria Montefinese; Erin Michelle Buchanan; Irene Di Pietro; Giada Viviani; Begum Ulku; Silvia Benavides-Varela; Ettore Ambrosini
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Normative databases of word properties are essential for experimental psycholinguistics, yet methodological heterogeneity limits their reproducibility and comparability. Subjective word experience, particularly familiarity and subjective frequency, is inconsistently operationalized across studies. Here, we reviewed 61 studies spanning 15 languages, analyzing construct definitions, rating instructions, sampling, data cleaning, validation, and data accessibility. We found substantial conceptual and methodological inconsistencies, including frequent use of familiarity labels for frequency-based judgments, reliance on homogeneous student samples, and limited data transparency. At the same time, recent studies show improvements in methodological rigor and open science practices. Building on these findings, we propose evidence-based recommendations and a practical checklist for improving transparency, comparability, and representativeness in word norming research. We also introduce a scalable framework integrating AI-generated estimates with targeted human validation to enhance lexical coverage while preserving interpretability. These contributions support more cumulative, reproducible, and methodologically transparent advances in psycholinguistics.
Correlates of Attitudes Towards Non-Consensual Sharing of Intimate Images (NCSII) Perpetration and Bystander Intentions Among LGB+ Adults
Robyn Mooney; Kai Jonas
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Non-consensual sharing of intimate images (NCSII) represents a rapidly growing form of abuse with severe consequences for victims. Although NCSII occurs at elevated rates in the LGB+ community, little is known about the factors shaping their evaluations and responses. This study investigated individual and situational predictors of LGB+ young adults’ NCSII judgements and bystander intentions. A UK sample of n = 748 LGB+ emerging adults (Mage = 24.25, 69.4% female) completed measures of Dark Tetrad traits, moral disengagement, and self-efficacy, then responded to three vignettes depicting NCSII against victims varying in social normativity (graphic designer, OnlyFans creator, non-monogamous individual). A MANOVA revealed that victim characteristics substantially influenced responses, with the graphic designer receiving less blame and greater support. Moderated hierarchical regressions showed that traits and attitudes predicted judgements and bystander intentions in a vignette-specific manner, with Machiavellianism most consistently associated with victim blaming and reduced supportive intentions. Sadism and narcissism showed selective associations with non-supportive responses, while psychopathy predicted non-supportive intentions only for the non-monogamous victim. Neither perpetration nor victimisation experience moderated any associations. Men demonstrated greater victim blaming and less supportive intentions across all scenarios. These findings suggest that responses are shaped by both bystander and victim characteristics, with sexual norm violations triggering stigmatising reactions to victims even among sexual minority individuals. Tailored interventions should address victim-blaming attitudes and gender-specific peer norms within LGB+ communities.
Shared research materials in psychology are widely downloaded but often difficult to reuse
Daniel S Quintana
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Open science reforms have made posting data and code common, but are shared materials actually used, and easily reused? Treating download counts of Open Science Framework (OSF) supplements as a usage index, I analysed 1,660 articles from four psychology journals (Cognition, Psychological Science, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Journal of Memory and Language) across three years (2015, 2020, 2025). OSF sharing rose from 9% in 2015 to 52% in 2025. Among 392 papers with download data, materials were downloaded a median of 152 times; only 1% went undownloaded. Download volume was associated with citation count and altmetric attention. Availability did not ensure easy reuse: only 40% of repositories provided documentation, 34% were flagged for a hard-coded file path, and 42% referenced a missing file — shortcomings that did not improve as sharing grew. Altogether, shared materials are being used, but often not easily reusable.
Beauty Care as a Self-Compassion Intervention for Family Caregivers of Care Recipients with Dementia: A Preliminary Community-Based Study
Hana Sakurai; Tomoko Wakui; Fumiko Miyamae; Riko Nakayama; Mutsuko Okamura; Kumiko Fukasawa; Chiaki Ura; Tsuyoshi Okamura
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Background: Family caregivers of care recipients with dementia often experience substantial stress. Self-compassion and self-efficacy have been identified as modifiable factors that may help caregivers cope with stress more adaptively. Beauty care, which encourages self-attention, may offer a practical and accessible approach to fostering self-compassion and self-efficacy; however, empirical evidence in caregiving contexts remains limited. Objective: This preliminary study examined the psychological effects of a community-based beauty care programme on self-compassion and caregiving self-efficacy and subjective health status among family caregivers of care recipients with dementia. Methods: A single-group pre–post design was employed. The programme consisted of a single-session beauty care intervention, including stretching, facial massage, skin care, and makeup, delivered collaboratively by Shiseido, Urban Renaissance Agency, and Tokyo Metropolitan Institute for Geriatrics and Gerontology. Self-compassion was assessed using the Self-Kindness subscale of the Japanese version of the Self-Compassion Scale, and caregiving self-efficacy was measured using the Self-Efficacy for Obtaining Respite subscale of the Revised Scale for Caregiving Self-Efficacy. Subjective health status was measured with a single item. Pre- and post-intervention scores were compared using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Results: The final analysis included 8 participants. A marginally significant increase in self-kindness was observed after programme participation. No significant change was found in caregiving self-efficacy for obtaining respite and subjective health status. Discussion: The absence of significant change in caregiving self-efficacy and subjective health status may reflect the brief, single-session nature of the programme, which may be insufficient to affect skill- or health-based outcomes. In contrast, the marginally significant increase in self-kindness suggests that emotionally oriented outcomes may be more responsive to short-term interventions. Future programmes might incorporate more targeted, skill-based components alongside beauty care to address both the emotional and practical dimensions of caregiver well-being.
Rethinking Group Differences in Psychopathology Networks: A Slow–Fast Perspective on Context and Symptom Activation
Kyuri Park; Denny Borsboom; Michael Lees; Leonie Elsenburg; Gabriela Lunansky; Karien Stronks; Johan Bollen; Mary Nicolaou; VĂ­tor V. Vasconcelos
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Groups differing in social and economic circumstances often differ markedly in depressive symptom levels while their estimated symptom-network structures show few clear differences. Null results in network comparisons are interpreted as if indicating that the two groups' symptom systems are the same. However, it only indicates that no difference is detected in the interactions between symptoms. How readily symptoms become present, and how that may depend on the contextual conditions under which symptoms are observed, is rarely compared. Building on a slow--fast perspective, we conceptualize depressive symptoms as a relatively fast-changing system embedded in more persistent social, economic, psychosocial, health, and lifestyle conditions that shape symptom activation. Using a cohort of 23,689 adults from Amsterdam, we illustrate this perspective with depressive symptoms measured by the PHQ-9 and a composite index of slow-layer contextual conditions, which we call {\em Slow Risk Load} (SRL), capturing persistent socioeconomic, psychosocial, and health-related conditions. Participants with High SRL showed substantially higher depressive symptom levels than those with Low SRL. A standard Network Comparison Test did not detect an overall difference in network structure between the groups, although global strength was modestly higher in the High SRL group. Ising models, which separate how symptoms co-occur from how readily each becomes present, indicate that activation is higher under high SRL for eight of nine symptoms, and model comparison consistently favored group-specific activation over group-specific interactions. The slow--fast perspective reframes group network comparisons as a problem spanning multiple time scales in which symptom-network structure, symptom activation, and contextual conditions should be considered jointly. It places symptom-focused and context-focused interventions at different layers of the same coupled system rather than in competition.
Shared Dimensions, Divergent Patterns: Multidimensional Well-Being Among Cultural Majority and Minoritized Adolescents
Ceren Su Abacioglu; Jozefien De Leersnyder
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Adolescents adapt constantly to their social environments, which can support certain functions while limiting others. In intercultural contexts, adolescents share institutions but hold different social positions and cultural references. Consequently, similar overall well-being scores can mask entirely different combinations of health, relationships, and material conditions—a limitation of single total scores. Well-being and acculturation research approach this problem differently. Well-being research provides broad theories but typically focuses on global indicators within Western majority samples, while acculturation research studies adaptation in intercultural contexts but primarily examines minorities and separates psychological adjustment from sociocultural competence. Researchers currently lack a common multidimensional framework to capture well-being variations among adolescents sharing an intercultural environment. We addressed this gap in 1,385 Belgian-majority and Turkish–Moroccan minoritized adolescents using exploratory and multigroup factor analyses, which supported a broadly comparable five-domain structure. This demonstrates that a common framework can apply across groups while accommodating meaningful differences in how well-being is experienced and organized. Item-level differences formed a mixed profile rather than a consistent advantage for either group. Cross-sectional Gaussian graphical models revealed differences in overall edge-weight structure and global strength, with greater aggregate connectivity in the Turkish–Moroccan network, though no individual edge difference survived correction. Across both groups, the strongest associations clustered within domains alongside cross-domain links. These findings suggest that adolescent well-being is better understood as a multidimensional system than as a single score: shared dimensions can coexist with different profiles and relational organization. Longitudinal research is needed to determine whether these patterns reflect contextual conditions, cultural orientations, or their interplay.
Anticipating the risks and benefits of counterfactual world simulation models
Lara Kirfel; Robert J. MacCoun; Thomas Icard; Tobias Gerstenberg
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This paper examines the transformative potential of Counterfactual World Simulation Models (CWSMs). CWSMs use pieces of multi-modal evidence, such as the CCTV footage or sound recordings of a road accident, to build a high-fidelity 3D reconstruction of the scene. They can also answer causal questions, such as whether the accident happened because the driver was speeding, by simulating what would have happened in relevant counterfactual situations. CWSMs will enhance our capacity to envision alternate realities and investigate the outcomes of counterfactual alterations to how events unfold. This also, however, raises questions about what alternative scenarios we should be considering and what to do with that knowledge. We present a normative and ethical framework that guides and constrains the simulation of counterfactuals. We address the challenge of ensuring fidelity in reconstructions while simultaneously preventing stereotype perpetuation during counterfactual simulations. We anticipate different modes of how users will interact with CWSMs and discuss how their outputs may be presented. Finally, we address the prospective applications of CWSMs in the legal domain, recognizing both their potential to revolutionize legal proceedings as well as the ethical concerns they engender. Anticipating a new type of AI, this paper seeks to illuminate a path forward for responsible and effective use of CWSMs.
Numerical resolution can exceed measurement precision in psychometric score reporting
Takenari Fujio; Hiromi Fujio
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Scores are routinely reported at a numerical resolution finer than the precision supported by the underlying measurement process. We develop a framework linking this display–measurement mismatch to the psychometric conditions required to sustain fine distinctions and to a testable behavioural account of overadaptation to uncertain evaluation metrics. Using classical test theory and item response theory, we quantify the conditions under which distinctions at the 0.01-standard-deviation scale—equivalent to 0.1 points on the Japanese hensachi scale—could be measured rather than merely printed. Under classical test theory, reliability must approach unity: about 0.9999 for the standard error of measurement to equal 0.1 hensachi points, and about 0.999993 for the full 95% interval width to fall within 0.1 points. Idealized item-response calculations require thousands of highly informative, locally targeted items, while finite-bank simulations show that 0.01-SD precision, where attained at all, is strongly ability-dependent. These results distinguish numerical resolution from psychometric precision and motivate a preregistered behavioural programme, supported by formal operating characteristics, to test whether fine display resolution inflates perceived certainty and alters decisions. The framework provides a quantitative basis both for score reporting and for studying how people adapt to uncertain scores.
Perceptual adaptation to human-likeness in voices
Christine Nussbaum; Sebastian Goerke; Ibrahim Vefa Arslan; Stefan R. Schweinberger
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With synthetic voices now being a part of everyday life, it is important to understand how the perception of synthetic voices is shaped and modified through exposure. Therefore, we employed an adaptation paradigm to test whether perception of human-likeness is amenable to short-term perceptual encounters. In three experiments, we presented morphed target voices on a human-synthetic-continuum in three conditions: without prior adaptation, and after repeated exposure to adaptor voices that all were either synthetic or human. Experiment 1 (N = 26) was conducted online, Experiment 2 (N = 31) was a full replication in the lab, and Experiment 3 (N = 36) employed an adjusted procedure with blocked and reduced adaptor exposure to test the robustness of effects. In all experiments, we observed consistent contrastive aftereffects: After adaptation to synthetic voices, ambiguous voices were more often classified as human. After adaptation to human voices, the same ambiguous voices were more often classified as synthetic. Intriguingly, in Experiment 1 and 2, contrastive aftereffects were even larger in trials which employed digital caricatures (i.e., 25%-exaggerated human or synthetic voices) as adaptors, even though caricatures themselves were not consistently rated as more human (or synthetic, respectively) compared to original voices. While the adaptation effect survived the adjusted procedure (Experiment 3), substantial modulations by caricatured adaptors were no longer observed. Together, these findings provide robust evidence that impressions of vocal human-likeness are not only determined by the acoustic features but are the result of a complex interplay with listeners and their recent perceptual experiences.
Best practices for crosslinguistic masked priming: A tutorial using jsPsych
Kelly Kendro
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The masked priming paradigm (Forster & Davis, 1984) investigates whether a target item can be cued via a prime that is shown quickly to mitigate conscious awareness during processing. In the decades since the task’s inception, researchers have used this task to probe both automatic lexical retrieval processes as well as how task parameter manipulation affects priming patterns. This paper serves a dual role. First, it functions as a tutorial for implementing a masked priming task using jsPsych (De Leeuw et al., 2023), a free and open source framework for creating web-based behavioral tasks. Second, it synthesizes information from prior research about several task parameters: masking techniques, task type, outcome variables, prime–mask language directionality, stimulus-onset asynchrony, inter-stimulus intervals, prime duration, prime type, presentation duration, and visibility tests. Materials for implementing a masked priming task, including an editable .js template for use with jsPsych 8, are included in an external repository. The tutorial also demonstrates how researchers can compare expected and observed prime duration and incorporate a visibility measure to provide an additional evaluation of prime awareness. Ultimately, the goal of this paper is to help researchers make empirically informed decisions about masked priming task design and implement this task using the jsPsych ecosystem.
Bidirectional Interaction Between Working Memory and Long-Term Memory Representations
Jingyao Cheng; Yiheng Qiu; Keisuke Fukuda; Yingtao Fu; mowed shen; HUI CHEN
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Humans routinely coordinate distinct representations from working memory (WM) and long-term memory (LTM) to construct and update internal models of the world. However, the nature of cross-system interaction between these representations remains poorly understood. To address this, we developed a novel visual memory task in which participants maintained a briefly presented color in WM while retrieving a color from LTM, testing how representations from different systems influence one another. Across three experiments (N = 120) and computational modeling, we demonstrate that interaction between WM and LTM is bidirectional yet asymmetric: LTM representation is attracted toward WM, whereas WM representation is repelled from LTM. These opposing biases reveal distinct representational mechanisms underlying WM and LTM, and we further discuss their implications for the prevailing account of memory distortions and a potential explanation.
Stimulus selection and sample-size calculation for statistical test of hierarchical cognitive model
Kazuya Fujita
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Sample-size calculations are essential for ensuring adequate statistical power. However, these calculations are rarely performed in elaborate models, specifically hierarchical cognitive models in which Bayesian cognitive models for human data are used. We used a population-level Fisher information matrix (PFIM) proposed in the field of pharmacology to develop and demonstrate experimental stimulus selection and sample-size calculations within a hierarchical cognitive model. In Simulation Study 1, we confirmed that PFIM could accurately predict statistical power. Further, a high correlation was observed between the logarithm of the Bayes Factor and the predicted statistical power. In Simulation Study 2, we outlined the process of determining the number of participants and trials after the selection of the optimal experimental stimulus in that the statistical power is maximized. Despite the time-intensive nature of parameter estimation, the sample-size calculation was achievable within a realistic timeframe (e.g., to 2–3 days). The proposed method has low computational load and enables sample-size calculations for elaborate hierarchical cognitive models. Further this method can be applied to a wide range of models.
When Mood Turns Attention Inward: Affective and Cognitive Pathways Linking Negative Mind Wandering and Attentional Control
Nicholaus P. Brosowsky; Emma Dueck; Stephanie Lauren Souliere; Nicholas Daniel Evans; Liam Yeo; Josephine Nicholson
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Negative mood is associated with both attentional failures and increased mind wandering, but the mechanisms linking mood, thought, and performance remain unclear. In particular, it is unknown whether mood-related performance costs arise primarily from changes in attentional control or from changes in the content of thought. We examined these possibilities in 585 undergraduate participants who completed positive, neutral, or negative mood inductions followed by a sustained attention task with intermittent thought probes. Probes assessed both the intentionality (intentional vs. unintentional) and emotional valence (positive, neutral, or negative) of off-task thought. Structural equation models were used to examine pathways linking mood induction, post-induction affect, mind wandering, task performance, and post-task mood. Negative mood was associated with poorer task performance both directly through post-induction affect and indirectly through increases in negatively valenced mind wandering. These indirect effects were observed for both intentional and unintentional negative mind wandering and generalized across measures of perceptual sensitivity, commission errors, and reaction-time variability. Negative mind wandering also predicted poorer subsequent mood, whereas positive and neutral mind wandering did not. These findings identify negatively valenced thought as a common mechanism linking mood to both sustained-attention performance and subsequent affect.
Negative Urgency, Not Negative Affect, Mediates the Association Between Sleep Problems and Eating Disorder Symptoms
Victoria Franco; Emily R. Linn; Noa A. Bregmann; Stacey M. Schaefer; Richard Davidson; James I. Hudson; Kristin Javaras
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Objective: There is increasing evidence suggesting that sleep problems may cause alterations in eating behavior (e.g., poor sleep quality is linked to eating disorders (EDs) and ED symptoms). However, little is known about the mechanisms by which sleep problems may increase ED symptoms. Sleep deprivation has been linked to elevated negative urgency (NU; the tendency to act rashly in response to extreme negative affect [NA]), and NA. Both are consistently linked to higher ED symptoms and potentially mediate the association between sleep problems and ED symptoms. This study examined whether NU and NA mediate the relationship between sleep problems and ED symptoms. Method: Female-identifying introductory psychology students at a midwestern university (n = 119) completed self-report measures of impulsivity (UPPS-P), ED symptoms (Eating Disorder Diagnostic Scale), and sleep problems (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index), and a task-based measure of NU (total commission errors for negatively-valenced distractors in the CANTAB Affective Go/No-go Task). Mediation analyses included bias- corrected and accelerated confidence intervals estimated via non-parametric bootstrap. Results: Sleep problems were significantly associated with (Box-Cox-transformed) ED symptoms (B=0.26, p<0.01). Self-reported NU mediated a significant proportion of the association between PSQI sleep problems and transformed ED symptoms (Proportion = 61%; p<0.01), but task-based NU (Proportion = 4%; p=0.73) and NA (Proportion = 23%; p=0.74) did not. Discussion: Poor sleep may increase ED symptoms partly due to increasing trait-like NU, but not via task-based NU nor NA. Trait-like NU may be an important mechanism linking sleep problems and eating disturbances.
Auswirkungen von KĂŒnstlicher Intelligenz auf psychische Belastung in der Arbeitswelt – ein Überblick
Markus Langer; Annette Kluge
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Der vorliegende Beitrag arbeitet den Forschungsstand zu den Auswirkungen des KI-Einsatzes auf psychische Belastungen und Ressourcen am Arbeitsplatz auf. Ein Leitgedanke ist die Ambivalenz: KI-Systeme können auf nahezu jeder Dimension gleichzeitig als Ressource und als Belastung wirken – als ProduktivitĂ€tsgewinn und Überforderung, als Autonomiezuwachs und Kontrollverlust, als Kompetenzerweiterung und Dequalifizierung. Ob im Einzelfall das eine oder das andere ĂŒberwiegt, hĂ€ngt maßgeblich davon ab, wie ein KI-System gestaltet ist und genutzt wird und wie es in Arbeitsprozesse eingebettet und organisational begleitet wird. Im Beitrag bestimmen wir den Neuheitswert aktueller KI-Systeme. Vieles ist eine quantitative Fortschreibung bekannter Automatisierungstechnologien; qualitativ neu sind jedoch Eigenschaften wie die eigenstĂ€ndige Generierung von Inhalten, die Einsetzbarkeit als Allzweck-Werkzeug, nahezu autonome Aufgabenbearbeitung, probabilistisches und lernendes Verhalten, menschenĂ€hnliche Interaktion, engmaschige Entscheidungen ĂŒber Menschen, schnelle Update-Zyklen sowie die verbreitete informelle Nutzung. FĂŒr jede dieser Eigenschaften lassen sich konkrete Chancen und Risiken fĂŒr die psychische Gesundheit ableiten. Die empirische Synopse (Stand FrĂŒhjahr 2026) ordnet die Befunde in einer soziotechnischen Kontext ein: Einflussfaktoren auf organisationaler, arbeits- und technologiegestalterischer sowie personenbezogener Ebene wirken – vermittelt ĂŒber Moderatoren und Mediatoren auf verschiedene ErgebnisgrĂ¶ĂŸen. Als belastungskritisch erweisen sich beispielsweise unrealistische Erwartungen und fehlendes Change Management, algorithmisches Management mit Autonomie- und Kontrollverlust, Arbeitsverdichtung statt Entlastung, der Verlust sozialer Einbindung sowie Sorgen um Arbeitsplatz und berufliche IdentitĂ€t. Als Gelingensbedingungen werden beispielsweise KI-Kompetenzen und ausreichende Zeit- und Trainingsressourcen beschrieben. Daraus leiten wir Handlungsempfehlungen auf drei Ebenen ab. Organisational sollte beispielsweise die KI-EinfĂŒhrung konsequent als menschzentrierter VerĂ€nderungsprozess verstanden werden;. Auf der Arbeits- und Technologiegestaltungsebene sind Autonomie und Kontrolle zu sichern, Arbeitsverdichtung zu ĂŒberwachen, TĂ€tigkeitszuschnitte im Sinne der SMART-Kriterien zu prĂŒfen und Technologien so zu gestalten, dass menschliche Aufsicht gelingt. Auf Personenebene rĂŒcken KI- und metakognitive Kompetenzen, der Erhalt arbeitsfachlicher Fertigkeiten sowie die neue Kernaufgabe der effektiven menschlichen Aufsicht von KI-Systemen in den Vordergrund. Dieser Beitrag zeigt, dass eine menschzentrierte, soziotechnisch gedachte Gestaltung und EinfĂŒhrung von KI-Systemen den technischen Fortschritt nicht ausbremst, sondern Arbeit reichhaltiger, gesĂŒnder und nachhaltiger macht – und ist die entscheidende Stellschraube dafĂŒr, dass KI zur Ressource statt zur Belastung wird.
Evaluating Open-Weight Large Language Models for Structured Depression Assessment from Clinical Interviews
Jeffrey M. Girard; Gaossou Youssouf Kebe; Louis-Philippe Morency; Fernando De la Torre; Einat Liebenthal; Justin T. Baker
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The administration of semi-structured clinical interviews for depression assessment is resource-intensive and susceptible to rater drift. While large language models (LLMs) offer potential for automated quality assurance, reliance on proprietary models creates data privacy barriers incompatible with secure clinical workflows. This study evaluates a privacy-preserving pipeline using open-weight LLMs to perform item-level scoring of the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) directly from interview transcripts. The sample included 541 video-recorded English-language interviews with 277 psychiatric inpatients diagnosed with diverse affective and psychotic disorders. Benchmarking 25 architectures, we found that an indirect scoring strategy, where models predict individual item scores that are subsequently summed, significantly outperformed direct total score prediction. This suggests that decomposing the assessment into intermediate reasoning steps improves performance. The best-performing models achieved “good” error rates and “excellent” correlations with trusted human labels, approaching established benchmarks for human inter-rater reliability. To determine the active ingredients of effective prompting, we conducted an ablation study. Results revealed that descriptive cues (scoring criteria) were the primary driver of performance, whereas few-shot examples provided negligible additional benefit, suggesting that zero-shot prompting is a viable, efficient strategy. However, error analysis identified a multimodal gap, where text-only models struggled more with items dependent on nonverbal behavior. We conclude that open-weight LLMs demonstrate strong potential to serve as secure “digital second opinions,” representing a promising step toward augmenting clinical decision-making without compromising patient privacy.
Monocular stereopsis, pinholes, and the perils of classroom theorizing: A response to McIntosh (2025).
Dhanraj Vishwanath
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Monocular stereopsis is a compelling perceptual effect wherein viewing a picture of a 3-dimensional scene with one eye through an aperture generates a perceptual impression of depth similar to binocular stereopsis. Here I provide a critique of a recently published report on the topic in the journal i-Perception (McIntosh, 2025). In the report, the author claims to adjudicate on explanations of the monocular stereopsis effect and the phenomenology of stereopsis more broadly construed. The author suggests, based on an informal test comparing pinhole and aperture viewing of a picture during a fifteen-minute classroom lecture break, that the monocular-aperture effect is best explained by a 100-year-old description of the phenomenon. I show that McIntosh’s report reveals a lack of understanding of the modern empirical facts and theoretical concepts relevant to this scientific debate and neglects the rudimentary demands of conducting an interpretable perceptual test.
Agency enhances episodic memory across the broader experience
Tej Bhoga; Zachariah Reagh; Angelique I. Delarazan
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Agency, the ability to exert control over one’s own experience, enhances memory relative to passive observation. However, it remains unclear whether agency only benefits information that one directly acts on, or if its benefits extend to the fidelity that the broad experience is represented in memory. Across two experiments, participants encoded objects and their locations while exploring a series of rooms, either controlling object placements themselves (Active) or observing the same sequence of events without control (Passive). Memory was assessed using the Mnemonic Similarity Task (MST), along with tests of object-spatial placement and descriptive recall. Critically, mnemonic discrimination required retaining perceptual details beyond what the object-spatial placement task demanded. In Experiment 1, agency enhanced basic object recognition, mnemonic discrimination, and object description recall, but not object-spatial placement. Experiment 2 used a within-subjects design, a recognition-based spatial test with lower retrieval demands, and attention ratings collected throughout encoding. Agency again enhanced mnemonic discrimination, and its benefits extended to object-spatial placement and recall of both object and room descriptions. These effects remained after accounting for self-reported attention during encoding. Together, the findings show that agency enhances mnemonic discrimination on the MST and suggests that its benefits extend beyond information falling within the scope of participants’ direct control, influencing both the detail of individual object representations and memory for the broader context in which they were encountered.
Understanding the Impact of Psychological Interventions for Psychosis in Daily Life: Experience Sampling Methodology as an Adjunct Outcome Measure in Clinical Trials
Clementine Jane Edwards; Ginette Lafit; Joanne R Beames; Morwenna Rickard; Simone Burger; Alyssa Jongeneel; Elise van der Stouwe; Wim Veling; Eric Granholm; Anita Schick
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Retrospective outcome measures are widely used in mental health clinical trials. Yet, these gold-standard measures may not capture fully how subjective experiences and behaviours unfold and relate to each other in everyday life context. Experience Sampling Methodology (ESM) offers a complementary approach by collecting repeated assessments in daily life. The ESM allows the measurement of proximal, dynamic and context-dependent outcomes while interventions are being delivered, while classical scales administered in clinics capture retrospective aggregates of experiences over a defined period of time. In this paper, we draw on learnings from psychological therapy trials in psychosis that applied ESM as an outcome measure to support the wider adoption of this approach in intervention studies. We offer practical suggestions for incorporating ESM into clinical trial design and conduct, including the development of specific momentary research questions, selection and adaptation of questionnaire items, sampling schedules, participant briefing and debriefing, and approaches to maximising compliance and data quality. We also discuss key analytic and conceptual issues, including the interpretation of ESM findings alongside traditional retrospective interviews and self-report measures. ESM assessments can provide unique insights into mechanisms, variability, context and timing of change in daily life, helping to clarify not only whether an intervention works, but how and when it has an impact. Used to address these research questions through questionnaires and schedules that harness the value of assessments during daily life, ESM can strengthen the evaluation and subsequent development of mental health treatments by capturing meaningful change in the settings in which people live their lives.
Parenting sense of competence and dynamic physiological self-regulation before and during parent-child conflict
Prakash Thambipillai; Salome Vanwoerden; Amy Byrd; J. Richard Jennings; Stephanie Stepp; Vera Vine
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Parenting sense of competence encompasses both parenting self-efficacy, or parent’s appraisal of their parenting skills, and parenting satisfaction, the affective feelings of gratification from parenting. Parents’ sense of competence may be linked to psychophysiological self-regulation during challenges, which for parents of adolescents with emotion dysregulation difficulties may begin during the anticipation of conflict. 162 clinically-referred, parent-adolescent dyads (adolescents: Mage = 12.59, SD = .59, range 10-14 yrs, 47% girls, 41% African American, 60% minoritized race/ethnicity; caregivers: Mage = 40.35, SD = 7.23, 94% female, 40% African American, 48% minoritized race/ethnicity) completed an ecologically valid, conflict protocol, including a 2-minute conflict anticipation and 8-minute conflict discussion, during which their respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) was recorded. Results of dynamic growth curve models indicated that parenting satisfaction, but not self-efficacy, was associated with parents’ RSA trajectories, ïą = .33, SE = .12, p = .005, and this effect was robust to respiration adjustment and relevant behavioral confounds. Lower satisfaction was associated with greater anticipatory RSA withdrawal followed by sharp RSA augmentation at conflict onset; higher parenting satisfaction was associated with a more flexible RSA trajectory, beginning with anticipatory augmentation followed by modest, theoretically appropriate withdrawal at conflict onset. Parents’ self-regulation before and during conflict may be especially relevant to the experience of parenting.
How Childhood Adversity Alters Social Information Processing and its Effect on Social Functioning: A Systematic Review
Hannah Dorsman; Elizabeth E. L. Buimer; Antoinette Haverhals; Pauline Wessels; Peter Bos; Eamon McCrory; Anne-Laura Van Harmelen
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Background: Childhood adversity (CA) affects millions of children worldwide and may change how children perceive and respond to social cues in ways that are adaptive in adverse environments but maladaptive later in life. These maladaptive effects may be particularly pronounced during adolescence, a sensitive period of social reorientation and neurodevelopment. This pre-registered systematic review examined whether CA shapes the way young people process social information, and whether these changes are linked to difficulties in social functioning during adolescence. Methods: We searched Web of Science, PsycINFO, and PubMed for studies assessing CA before age 18, social information processing across five domains, and social functioning in youth aged 10-24. Results: Although 6657 studies were identified, only 11 met inclusion criteria. These examined threat-related processing (n=5), emotional reactivity and regulation (n=5), and reward processing and learning (n=3). CA was associated with alterations in social information processing across most domains. If associations between social information processing and social functioning were directly tested, they were generally supported. Evidence spanned different stages of adolescence, but associations with social functioning were tested almost exclusively in early-to-mid adolescent samples. Conclusions: We find preliminary support for a model where CA is associated with alterations in social information processing which then leads to poorer social functioning. These findings were based mostly on longitudinal samples in early-to-mid adolescent samples, however, prospective examinations of this model were rare. These findings suggest that interventions targeting social information processing may be a promising avenue for supporting adolescents with experiences of CA.
Validation of a German Version of the Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire (BMRQ)
Kim Meyer; Charlotte Jolmes; Madita Jodes; Willi Moxter; Lena Rölz; Maël Roth; Lars Rogenmoser
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The Barcelona Music Reward Questionnaire (BMRQ) is a widely used self-report measure of individual differences in music reward sensitivity. Although the instrument has been adapted into several languages, no validated German version has previously been available. The present study translated and psychometrically evaluated a German adaptation of the BMRQ in a sample of 471 German-speaking adults. A split-sample approach was used to conduct confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the original five-factor structure comprising Musical Seeking, Emotional Evocation, Mood Regulation, Sensory-Motor, and Social Reward. Exploratory analyses broadly reproduced this structure, although overlap emerged between Musical Seeking and Social Reward. Internal consistency estimates for the BMRQ dimension scores and overall score ranged from acceptable to good. Associations with reward-related motivational tendencies provided evidence for convergent validity. Scores were distributed across a broad range of the scale and showed moderate negative skewness, reflecting a tendency toward higher levels of music reward. Overall, the present findings support the German BMRQ as a psychometrically sound instrument for assessing individual differences in music reward sensitivity in German speaking populations.
Socialization in the Spotlight: Early Parent-Infant Synchrony, Mind-Mindedness, and Children’s Later Expressions of Shyness
Christopher Riddell; Milica Nikolic; Agneta Fischer; Itir Onal Ertugrul; Moniek Zeegers; Susan Bögels; Cristina Colonnesi
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Owing to their burgeoning understanding of the social world, the early childhood years represent a critical developmental period in which children's first expressions of shyness take shape. Nonverbal expressions of shyness have been argued to take two forms: positive shyness, characterized by smiling with a gaze and/or head aversion, and negative shyness, characterized by negative affect with a gaze and/or head aversion. Although early parental socialization practices are known to shape children’s emotions, few studies have examined how these influence shyness expressions beyond infancy. In a sample of 120 Dutch children and their parents, we examined two potential socialization mechanisms of preschool children’s expressions of shyness: positive affective synchrony (measured at 4-months) and mind-mindedness (measured at 12- and 30-months). We assessed these facets separately with both mothers and fathers during free-play tasks, and children’s expressions shyness during a public performance. Mothers’, but not fathers’, positive affective synchrony was associated with lower levels of negative shyness in childhood, consistent with a potentially protective role of early synchrony. Fathers' appropriate mind-mindedness, however, was unexpectedly associated with less positive and more negative shyness, while mothers' non-attuned mind-mindedness was associated with more positive shyness. Together, our results highlight the importance of early parent-child socialization practices in infancy for later expressions of shyness in childhood but suggest that these operate in context dependent ways.
Humans learn to distinguish imagination from reality with age
Andre Sahakian; Stefan van der Stigchel; Nadine Dijkstra; Surya Gayet; Christoph Strauch
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Telling apart what is the product of one's imagination and what is a true sensory experience (i.e., reality monitoring) might feel trivial to most. Yet it remains unclear whether reality monitoring is an innate ability (like breathing, or aversion to pain) or whether it is a learned skill (like speaking, or walking). Here we extend the age range of participants tested by Dijkstra and Fleming (2023) with young children from the age of 5. In a close replication we tested how likely participants were to report actually seeing a faint left or right tilted grating in dynamic noise, depending on whether they were concurrently imagining the same or an orthogonal grating. We found clear evidence that confusion of imagery and perception steadily declined to none with age - independent of perceptual ability or (subjective) imagery vividness. We empirically show that the ability to tell apart imagination from reality develops over age. These findings provide new insights on how we learn to keep apart imagination from reality, which has important implications for the development of psychopathology.
From team rationality to morality: Implicit joint plans carry moral force
Arthur Le Pargneux; Fiery Andrews Cushman; Hossam Zeitoun; Nick Chater
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Collaboration is essential to social life. Sometimes teams, families, companies, and other organizations agree on explicit rules governing such collaboration, and these are backed by moral force: To violate the rule is wrong. Other times, however, we find ways to collaborate on the fly, without rules or norms, or even explicit communication. This often requires inferring a joint plan — imagining “what coordination would we agree to, if we could?” — and playing our surmised role. Is it also considered morally wrong to violate an implicit or inferred joint plan? In five preregistered experiments (n = 1,506), we show that deviating from an inferred joint plan is perceived as morally problematic, even without prior communication or agreement. In other words, just as the agreements we actually make are morally binding, so too are the patterns of conduct that we infer our social partners would agree upon.
Dyadic JITAIs in Health Behavior Change: Key Components and Design Principles
Inbal Nahum-Shani; Lex Hurley; Ziping Xu; Carolyn Yoon; Jean-Philippe Laurenceau; Susan A Murphy
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Purpose: The widespread adoption of digital technologies offers unprecedented opportunities for delivering accessible and affordable health behavior interventions. Advances in mobile and wireless technologies have the capacity to collect rich and granular data about people’s states and contexts and utilize this information to intervene in (near) real-time in everyday life. Just-in-time adaptive interventions (JITAIs) can realize these opportunities by guiding how rapidly changing information about the person should be used in practice to decide whether, when and how to intervene. However, promoting health behavior change often requires interventions that harness and/or modify existing dyadic relationships, such as those involving parents, partners, care partners, or peers. To date, most JITAIs have been designed around a single individual rather than the coordinated delivery of support across two interdependent individuals. Methods: This manuscript establishes a common terminology to guide the development of dyadic JITAIs and advance innovation in the field of dyadic health behavior change. By synthesizing literature on JITAIs and dyadic interventions, we define dyadic JITAIs, clarify their scientific rationale, and describe their key components. We also offer guidelines for designing effective, resource-efficient dyadic JITAIs and identify directions for future research. Conclusion: Dyadic JITAIs have substantial potential to support health behavior change through shaping and harnessing close relationships. Realizing this potential will require new theories, experimental designs, and data analytic approaches to empirically inform their development.
Somewhere Over the Rainbow: Introducing the EHPS LGBTQIA+ Research Special Interest Group
Thomas GĂŒltzow; Udi Davidovich; Chantal den Daas; Siobhan Thomas; Hanne Zimmermann; Anne van Dongen
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The pursuit of health and well-being remains a fundamental priority for populations with diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, and sex characteristics (LGBTQIA+). Despite the unique position of health psychology to address these needs, LGBTQIA+ perspectives have historically been underrepresented within the European Health Psychology Society (EHPS). Following a series of roundtables and a formal launch meeting at the 2025 EHPS conference in Groningen, this article signifies the official launch of the LGBTQIA+ Research Special Interest Group (SIG). We outline the SIG’s foundational mission and strategic agenda, structured around three core pillars: (1) Visibility and Institutional Advocacy, (2) Conference Inclusivity and Best Practice, and (3) Community Building and Knowledge Translation. This article serves as the definitive record of the SIG’s launch and provides a roadmap for advancing inclusive, evidence-based health psychology in Europe and beyond.
Substitution, addition, or stepping-stone? Exploring the temporal associations between the consumption of alcoholic and alcohol-free beverages among Dutch university students
Kirsten van Hooijdonk; Lise Dams; Tirza van Noorden; Jacqueline Vink
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Background and aim. Stimulating the use of alcohol-free beverages is portrayed as one strategy to reduce excessive alcohol use and alcohol-related harm among students in higher education. This strategy relies on the assumption that students drink alcohol-free to substitute alcohol (i.e. “substitution effect”), while other possibilities like drinking alcohol-free in addition to alcohol (i.e. “addition effect”) or alcohol-free acting as a step-up to consume (more) alcohol (i.e. “stepping-stone” effect) have largely been neglected. Consequently, this preregistered study aimed to examine bi-directional temporal associations between the quantity of alcohol and alcohol-free use among university students (Aim 1). Next, these bi-directional temporal associations were examined in subgroups: females vs. males (Aim 2) and members vs. non-members of student associations (Aim 3). Design. Observational study, utilizing Wave 2, Wave 3, and Wave 4 of Radboud University’s Healthy Student Life study. Data were collected May-July 2022, 2023, and 2024. Setting. The Netherlands. Participants. 9,951 university students of which 6,790 students had only cross-sectional data, while 2,383 and 778 students participated in 2 and 3 surveys, respectively. At Wave 2, participants’ mean age was 23 (SD = 4.0). 70% were female, 17% were members of a student association, 13% were international students, and 57% were enrolled in a bachelor programme. Measurements. At all waves, participants self-reported the frequency and quantity of alcohol and alcohol-free beverage consumption, using two (adapted) items of the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test – Consumption (AUDIT-C). Additionally, participants self-reported on: gender, student association membership, living situation, relationship status, and other substance use. Last, information on biological sex, age, educational programme, and (inter)national status were received from the university administrative records. Random Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Models were utilized to study reciprocal effects between the quantity of alcohol and alcohol-free use, by decomposing observed scores in between-person differences and within-person dynamics. Findings. None of the analyses, in the total sample (Aim 1; b between .02 and .03, p between .414 and .779) nor in subgroups (Aims 2-3; b between -.001 and .12, p between .192 and .988), provided support for within-person cross-lagged effects between the quantity of alcohol and alcohol-free use. Conclusions. No evidence was found for substitution or stepping-stone effects, which (indirectly) suggests that students generally drink alcohol-free as an additive to alcohol, rather than as a substitute or stepping-stone. Additional research is needed to strengthen the evidence on the effects of consuming alcohol-free beverages on alcohol use and health in general.
Index-Dependent Detection of Insufficient Effort Responding Under Repeated Administration in a Large-Scale Assessment System
Victor Vasconcelos de Souza
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Screening for insufficient effort responding (IER) using response matrix data rests on a small family of indices—longstring, intra-individual response variability, even–odd consistency, and multivariate outlyingness—which are known to identify different respondents and are therefore combined into a composite flag. Whether they also disagree about conditions, rather than about cases, has not been examined. It matters more, because a composite can be robust to disagreement over which respondents are flagged while remaining unable to recover a direction of association on which its components differ. The test case is a burden condition created by assessment design: large-scale assessments may require teachers to complete an identical questionnaire once per sampled class, so that burden is the number of questionnaires rather than the length of one. In the SAEB 2023 teacher file the indices associate with burden in opposite directions, and no aggregation of them—union, intersection, or count—recovers an association: an analyst screening with response variability concludes that quality improves with burden, one screening with multivariate outlyingness concludes that it deteriorates, and one screening with the composite concludes that burden is irrelevant. The divergence is sharper on a homogeneous same-valence block, where the multivariate flag rate roughly doubles across the burden range while run-length flagging falls. Decomposition shows where the divergence lives: the outlyingness gradient is carried by between-school composition and is absorbed or reversed under school fixed effects, so the contradictory verdicts are a property of the file as it would operationally be screened, not of a within-teacher degradation process. A separate consequence of repeated administration is that a teacher's questionnaires are near-duplicates of one another, agreeing on about 98% of responses against roughly 67% for two teachers in the same school, so records in such files are far from independent. The screening verdict therefore depends on the index and the cutoff, and composition alone can manufacture a disagreement that no aggregation rule survives.
Long-Term Outcomes of Childhood ADHD Stimulant Use Trajectories
N.E. van der Plas; Siri Noordermeer; Catharina Hartman; Pieter Hoekstra; Nanda Rommelse; Emma Sprooten; Jaap Oosterlaan; Marjolein Luman
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Stimulant medication is the first-line pharmacological treatment option for children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, long-term effects remain unclear. Therefore, we explored long-term (>12 years) outcomes of childhood stimulant medication use, using data from the Dutch NeuroIMAGE cohort. Childhood (up to Mage=16.14, SDage=3.48) stimulant treatment trajectories were detected using K-means clustering based on age at initiation, stop age, total and maximum daily dose, and duration and variability of stimulant use in 324 children. The trajectories were compared across seven domains of adult outcomes (controlling for multiple testing) including psychiatric status, behavioral and emotional functioning, academic and professional functioning, adaptive functioning, neurocognitive functioning, physical health, and healthcare service use. At follow-up, 143 adults with childhood ADHD (Mage=28.34, SDage=3.74, 65% males) were part of three stimulant treatment trajectory groups: early-and-intense (n=46), late-and-moderate (n=63), and stimulant-naĂŻve (n=34). The three groups did not differ on any of the 51 adult outcomes and findings did not change after controlling for age and sex, except that a significant group difference emerged for callous and unemotional traits (behavioral and emotional functioning domain). More specifically, the early-and-intense and late-and-moderate groups had more favorable scores compared to stimulant-naĂŻve group, although this may partly reflect pre-existing group differences. The main findings did not change after controlling for ADHD medication use at wave IV. Overall, stimulant medication use in childhood did not predict long-term outcomes in those with childhood ADHD in our sample, suggesting that there may be no lasting effects of stimulants on many long-term functional outcomes.
Men report lower perceived social support and a stronger association between childhood adversity and internalising problems than women in young adulthood
Elizabeth E. L. Buimer; Zenna Liekens; Peter Prinzie
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Mental health problems show marked sex/gender differences in young adulthood, with women reporting higher levels of internalising problems and men higher levels of externalising problems. Childhood adversity is one of the strongest predictors of later mental health problems, whereas social support is an important protective factor following childhood adversity. However, it remains unclear whether associations among childhood adversity, perceived social support, and internalising and externalising problems differ between men and women during young adulthood. Using data from 331 young adults from the Flemish Study on Parenting, Personality and Development (aged 22–27 years; Mage = 24.8, 58% women), we examined whether childhood adversity was associated with internalising and externalising problems, whether these associations were moderated by social support, and whether these patterns differed by sex/gender. Next, we compared perceived social support across different support sources (friends, romantic partners, mother, father, and siblings) while again testing for sex/gender effects. Childhood adversity was positively associated with externalising problems and internalising problems. When adjusting for perceived social support, the positive association between childhood adversity and internalising problems was stronger for men compared to women. Social support had a main effect on internalising and externalising problems but did not moderate the association between childhood adversity and mental health outcomes. Perceived social support was highest among romantic partners, followed by friends, mothers, fathers, and siblings. Men reported lower levels of perceived social support than women across all support sources, but no significant sex/gender differences were found on cumulative childhood adversity or internalising/externalising problems. Together, these findings suggest lower levels of perceived social support and a stronger association between childhood adversity and internalising problems for men compared to women. Furthermore, we show that social support may function as an independent protective factor for mental health in young adulthood rather than as a buffer against the effects of childhood adversity.
Model Checking for Vector Autoregressive Models
Jonas M B Haslbeck; Joran Jongerling; Björn S. Siepe; Sacha Epskamp; Lourens Waldorp
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Time series have become pervasive in psychological science, and Vector Autoregressive (VAR) models are now among the most popular tools for studying within-person dynamics in such data. However, researchers rarely check systematically how well a VAR model fits their data. This is problematic because model misfit can lead both to incorrect interpretations of model parameters and to missed structure in the data that would be theoretically interesting. We provide a tutorial that explains the theory behind model checking, discusses the most common types of VAR model misspecification in psychological time series, and introduces diagnostics for detecting them using plots and simulations. In addition, we provide code to extract predictions and residuals from popular software packages, along with the new R-package VARcheck, which allows researchers to create extensive diagnostic plots with only a few lines of code. We then apply these tools to assess the fit of a multilevel VAR model estimated on a typical empirical dataset of emotion measurements from 179 people over three weeks. We conclude by discussing three complementary ways in which model checking can advance psychological science using time series.
The Missing Quadrant: Population Health in the Conversation About AI and Mental Health
Emily E Haroz; Peter P. Zandi; Roy Adams
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Artificial intelligence now occupies two roles in mental health that call for different sciences. As an intervention it is deliberately deployed to improve care or to improve understanding. As an exposure it is not deployed for those purposes at all but encountered, largely through consumer products outside any clinical setting. Crossing these two roles with a clinical lens focused on individual patients and a population lens focused on whole communities yields four domains of work, three of which have active research, while the fourth, the population view of AI as an exposure, has comparatively little attention. Public health's tools are the natural starting point for that fourth domain: measurement, surveillance, epidemiologic design, and the study of social, structural, and commercial determinants. But this exposure has features that mean those methods cannot simply be imported, and adapting them is the work now in front of the field. The exposure is already at population scale, but the science that would study it as one is not.
When Real Danger Lowers Anxiety: A Test of Phantom Anxiety Theory
Marcin Florkowski
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One paradox of contemporary anxiety psychopathology is that gains in safety and quality of life do not yield proportional decreases in anxiety-related problems at the population level. This paper introduces Phantom Anxiety Theory (PAT), according to which the human anxiety system includes both a reactive component and an endogenous vigilance component. This yields a counterintuitive prediction: genuine danger may reduce anxiety-related indicators, whereas safer periods may be associated with greater search interest in anxiety-related content. This prediction was tested by analysing 56 flood and 13 earthquake events across five highly developed countries with a combined population of 289 million. For each event, Google Trends search interest in the Topic “Anxiety” was compared in the most affected region with analogous periods one and two years earlier. Consistent with PAT’s differential predictions, “Anxiety” search interest declined after floods but rose after earthquakes. The two disaster types differed significantly in the direction of change, while control topics failed to replicate this pattern. These findings support the hypothesis that the human anxiety system may operate in two complementary modes and remain active without an adequate threat object. They may help explain why reductions in objective stressors do not necessarily reduce anxiety-related phenomena.
Consciousness and emotions in non-human animals: Are laypeople more or less skeptical than experts?
Bastian Jaeger; Stefan Leach; Matthew Zipple
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Consciousness and the capacity to experience affective states, such as pain, pleasure, fear, and hunger (i.e., sentience) are seen as key determinants of an individual’s moral status, a view that is shared by scientists, philosophers, and laypeople. Whether (and which) non-human animals are believed to possess these capacities can therefore have important consequences for how they are treated. In this registered report (study design registration: https://doi.org/10.71240/lcyc.238674), we measured people’s attributions of consciousness and emotions to a diverse set of animals, testing whether laypeople overattribute (as suggested by research on anthropomorphizing) or underattribute these mental capacities to animals (as suggested by research on motivated mind denial). Animal consciousness and emotions are famously challenging to study. In the absence of an unambiguous benchmark against which people’s beliefs could be compared, we tested whether laypeople, a nationally representative sample of 600 U.S. participants, are more or less skeptical about animal consciousness and emotions than scientific experts, a sample of 100 behavioral ecologists, evolutionary biologists, and other animal researchers. We find that, compared to scientific experts, laypeople were less likely to attribute consciousness (-8 percentage points), and substantially less likely to attribute emotions (-21 percentage points) to non-human animals. Laypeople were on average more confident in their beliefs than scientific experts.
Making Room for Autistic Identity: An Experimental Investigation of Self-as-Context with Autistic Adults
Lauren Lawson; Olivia Corda; Miranda Mirabile; Laura Therese Broadbent; Simon Bury
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Background: Autistic adults experience higher rates of mental health difficulties than non-autistic adults, driven in part by marginalisation, minority stress and internalised stigma. Self-as-context, a core process of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, may offer a way to loosen the grip of identity-related distress, but it has not previously been tested experimentally in an autistic sample. Method: In a preregistered online randomised experiment, 101 UK-based autistic adults recruited via Prolific were allocated to an 8-minute self-as-context skills video or a time-matched neutral video control (final N = 93). Participants completed baseline measures, wrote about a time they felt out of place due to being autistic, viewed the intervention or control video, re-read their account, and then viewed a calming video, completing momentary state measures after each of five phases. Data were analysed using 2 (condition) × 5 (phase) mixed ANOVAs. Results: After re-reading their account, the self-as-context condition reported significantly lower state shame than controls (Mdiff = −1.52, p = .036, ηpÂČ = .048). The between-condition difference in state self-compassion at that point was non-significant (Mdiff = 0.34, p = .062), although the self-as-context condition scored higher immediately after the intervention (p = .046) and at the end of the study (p = .030). Significant condition × phase interactions emerged for state self-compassion, F(3.04, 276.84) = 6.14, p < .001, ηpÂČ = .063, and state experiential avoidance, F(3.40, 309.14) = 5.22, p = .001, ηpÂČ = .054, with the self-as-context condition reporting lower experiential avoidance from the intervention onwards (ps ≀ .010). No effects were found for state self-as-context. Conclusions: A single brief, self-paced self-as-context exercise reduced state shame and showed promise for improving self-compassion and reducing experiential avoidance in autistic adults reflecting on identity-related distress. These first experimental data support self-as-context as a therapeutic target for this population and brief online delivery as feasible; replication with larger samples and validated self-as-context measures is needed.
Loneliness and Perceived Cognitive Function: Evidence from a Large-Scale Daily Study
Martina Luchetti; Antonio Terracciano; Selin Karakose; Justin Brown; Hannah Lovett; Samia C. Akhter-Khan; Damaris Aschwanden; André Hajek; STEPHAN; Angelina Sutin
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Background and Objectives: Loneliness is linked to poor cognition and dementia risk. Yet, little is known about how loneliness relates to perceptions of cognitive functioning in daily life, particularly among individuals at-risk for dementia. We examined within-person and between-person associations between daily loneliness and subjective cognition and tested moderation by cognitive status, dispositional loneliness, and sociodemographic characteristics. Research Design and Methods: Data were from 2,540 adults aged 40 years and older (Mage= 63; 59.6% female; 32.7% with subjective cognitive decline [SCD]; 7.3% with cognitive impairment, no dementia [CIND]), who completed 8 daily assessments of loneliness, subjective cognitive functioning, forgetting, and forgetting-related irritation and interference. Results: Participants with higher mean daily loneliness reported worse cognitive functioning and greater odds of forgetting over the study period. On days when participants felt lonelier than their average, they reported poorer cognition. Daily loneliness was not associated with forgetting on a given day but was associated with greater forgetting-related irritation and interference. While participants with SCD or CIND reported higher daily loneliness, associations did not differ by cognitive status, dispositional loneliness, or socio-demographic factors. There was limited evidence of lagged associations. Discussion and Implications: Loneliness was negatively associated with subjective cognition between persons and within persons. Associations were consistent across normal cognition, SCD, and CIND, suggesting loneliness may be relevant to subjective cognition regardless of clinical stage. The higher daily loneliness among SCD and CIND participants underscores the need to address psychosocial well-being in efforts to promote cognitive health and support dementia prevention strategies.
To Be a Mental Disorder: Revisiting Behavioral Addictions
Joshua B. Grubbs; Nicholas Borgogna; Beáta BƑthe; Hyoun Soo Kim; Rory A Pfund; Shane Winfield Kraus
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Behavioral addictions have been recognized in various forms for centuries, yet only three—Gambling Disorder, Gaming Disorder, and Compulsive Sexual Behavior Disorder—are currently included in formal diagnostic systems. In the past decade, research on these conditions has expanded dramatically in both volume and methodological rigor, drawing on longitudinal, neurobiological, and cross-cultural designs and evolving into a truly global science. Even so, the field remains beset by unresolved controversies. Chief among these is a persistent tendency to import substance use disorder concepts—tolerance, withdrawal, and dependence—that lack conceptual and empirical support when applied to behavior. Related challenges concern the over-pathologizing of normal engagement and a reliance on confirmatory, self-report measurement of uncertain validity. We argue that advancing the field requires sustained funding, theory grounded in the disorders themselves, objective and intensive-longitudinal methods, greater diversity, and public health and regulatory attention to increasingly technological environments.
Mapping United States Federal Funding for Mental Health Difficulties from 2020-2024 to the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology: A Registered Report
Nathaniel Luke Phillips; Eli Berman; Courtland Hyatt; Leigha Rose; Thomas M Olino; Donald R Lynam; Josh Miller
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Psychopathology is a major public health concern, which is why the U.S. government invests billions of dollars annually to investigate its etiology, assessment, course, and treatment. To date, however, there is no empirical mechanism for evaluating how federal research funding is allocated across dimensions of psychopathology. This Registered Report used the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) as a framework to classify funded research grants from 2020 through 2024 across four psychopathology-focused institutes within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) according to higher-order dimensions of psychopathology. We first present a pilot study supporting the feasibility of using a large language model (LLM) for this task. In the main study, we quantified the allocation of federal funding across HiTOP spectra, examining differences across funding agencies, grant mechanisms, and time. Results indicated that the Disinhibited Externalizing spectrum received more funding in this time period than all other spectra combined, and this funding was almost entirely driven by substance-use-related research funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). Internalizing, Autism, Thought Disorder, and Detachment spectra received substantial allocations of federal funding, all of which were predominantly administered by the National Institute on Mental Health (NIMH). Finally, Antagonistic Externalizing and Somatoform spectra received comparatively little federal funding. This work provides the first systematic characterization of U.S. research priorities grounded in a contemporary, dimensional model of psychopathology.
Predicting memory distortions in hundreds of verbal recalls
Phoebe Chen; Omri Raccah; Vy Vo; David Poeppel; Todd Matthew Gureckis
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Memory distortions emerge from a complex interplay between prior knowledge and ongoing experience—dynamics which are not readily provoked in controlled laboratory experiments. Here we investigate naturally occurring memory distortions using the largest known dataset of narrative recall, comprising hundreds of spoken recollections. Using large language models (LLMs), we developed an automated pipeline to detect and classify spontaneous false memories. Across several validation experiments, we demonstrate that human-AI agreement matches inter-human reliability in detecting memory distortions. We found that similarity to prototypical narrative segments — how closely narrative events in our dataset resembled text from thousands of other narratives – predicted overall false memory rates. Furthermore, we provide initial evidence that these false memories may separate into two distinct phenomena with distinct drivers: similarity to prototypical narrative segments drives factual conflicts (distortions of actual content), whereas contextual surprise drives confabulations (entirely fabricated details). Through this combination of large-scale naturalistic data and AI-powered automation tools, we reveal memory processes that controlled laboratory paradigms cannot easily capture and illuminate the complex dynamics of human (mis)remembering in real-world contexts.
Adversity sum scores: A causal perspective on studying adverse life events
Milan Zarchev; Natalie Slopen; Charlotte Cecil; Henning Tiemeier
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In adversity research, a widely adopted approach to studying poor health outcomes is to create sum scores of adversities, rather than examine individual adverse experiences. Using simplified causal scenarios, we argue that sum scores often oversimplify the complex causal structure among co-occurring adversities. Summing adversities can increase rather than decrease bias due to omitted common causes and among adversities causing each other. We also consider well-defined hypothetical interventions to better inform intervention and prevention efforts. We demonstrate these points by revisiting the original Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study from a causal perspective. We also discuss sum scores in relation to multicollinearity concerns, the development of prediction models, and improving measurement models of adversity. We provide concrete recommendations about using directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) to visually map out common causes of adversities and their temporal sequence, to inform decisions about when adversity sum scores can be used without introducing bias. Furthermore, we advocate for well-defined adversity exposures that can be connected to real-world interventions to guide decision-making.
A Matter of Time? The Impact of Time Frames on the Self-Report Assessment of Personality Pathology
Kristin Jankowsky; Maybrit Filiz Fuhrmann; Ulrich Schroeders; Johannes Zimmermann
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Diagnosing a personality disorder requires that impairments in personality functioning have persisted over an extended period—at least 2 years according to the ICD-11, with an onset traceable to adolescence or early adulthood according to the Alternative DSM-5 Model for Personality Disorders. Common self-report measures of personality pathology, however, specify no time frame in their instructions, leaving unclear which reference periods respondents adopt and whether instructed time frames alter their responses. In a preregistered experiment, N = 1,447 U.S. adults currently receiving or awaiting treatment for a mental health condition completed the Level of Personality Functioning Scale-Brief Form 2.0 (LPFS-BF 2.0), the modified Personality Inventory for DSM-5-Brief Form (PID5BF+M), and the Personality Disorder Severity ICD-11 scale (PDS-ICD-11) after random assignment to one of three instruction conditions: the original instructions (no specific time frame), a short time frame (“in the last 2 weeks”), or a time frame matching diagnostic criteria (“in the last 2 years”/“since early adulthood”). Multigroup confirmatory factor analyses supported strict measurement invariance across conditions for all three instruments. Correlations with depressive symptoms (Patient Health Questionnaire-9) and factor means did not differ systematically between conditions, a pattern that replicated in two sensitivity analyses (one of them including only participants correctly recalling the time frame). Notably, only 45% of participants recalled the instructed time frame correctly. Time frame instructions thus appear to have little impact on self-reported personality pathology, possibly because respondents disregard them or because trait-like item content elicits semanticized self-knowledge irrespective of the instructed reference period.
Out-of-Context and In-Context Environmental Effects on Exploratory Reinforcement Learning and Decision-Making
Mianzhi Hu; Emma Dennin; Ben D. Ulicnik; Darrell A. Worthy
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Physical environments can shape behavior, yet how they influence the latent cognitive processes underlying experiential, feedback-based learning remains largely unknown. Across two experiments with 486 participants, we examined how visual exposure to natural, urban or control images influenced performance in a non-stationary reinforcement learning task. In Experiment 1, lasting, out-of-context effects of exposure to natural or urban scenes between two task runs increased reward and decision quality while reducing stochastic switching and exploration relative to control images. Urban exposure further promoted exploitation at the cost of poorer exploration quality, whereas natural exposure was associated with higher-quality exploration. In Experiment 2, when the same images were embedded as task backgrounds, in-context exposure produced a different pattern. Natural scenes increased switching, while both natural and urban scenes increased lose-shift behavior. Semantic segmentation combined with computational modeling further suggested that in-context effects were more strongly associated with features that could promote immediate information seeking, whereas out-of-context effects were linked to broader features reflecting the gist of the environment. Together, these findings show that environmental influences on experiential reinforcement learning are dynamic, context-dependent and feature-specific, beyond a general natural-urban contrast.
Dynamic attribute activation explains gaze biases in choice.
Xiaozhi Taro Yang; Sudeep Bhatia
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People tend to choose the options they look at more. Prior work explains this effect by assuming that visual attention increases preference for the attended option. However, it remains unclear why looking at an option increases its preference and when this relationship is weakened. Using an experimental paradigm that combines eye-tracking and a think-aloud protocol, we provide evidence that visual attention shapes preference by activating attributes associated with the attended option. Critically, the content of these activated attributes depends on contextual factors such as stimulus desirability and behavioral goals. In standard choice settings, where the goal is to choose the preferred option, visual attention primarily activates positive attributes. In contrast, when these contextual factors are incongruent, activated attributes become less positive, reducing the influence of visual attention on choice. To account for these patterns, we propose a new computational model of gaze-driven attribute activation. Our model subsumes existing theories as special cases, and uniquely predicts which attributes are brought to mind by gaze and how they shape downstream decisions. Together, our work offers a mechanistic explanation of a fundamental driver of choice as well as its boundary conditions.
Validation of the Alcohol Induced Blackout Measure-2 (ABOM-2) among Young Adults Who Experience Blackout
Cassandra L. Boness; Angelo DiBello; Emily Herberholz; Kara Link; Richard Neil Greene; Jennifer Merrill; Kate Carey; Mary Beth Miller
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Memory loss from alcohol (“blackout”) is common among young adults who drink and associated with significant alcohol-related harm. Despite longstanding evidence distinguishing fragmentary (transient) and en bloc (permanent) blackouts, a measure distinguishing these two forms of blackout (the Alcohol-Induced Blackout Measure-2 [ABOM-2]) was only recently developed and has not been psychometrically evaluated among young adults with a history of alcohol-induced blackouts. The present study evaluated the psychometric properties of the ABOM-2, particularly its longitudinal measurement invariance and prospective predictive validity, among 169 heavy-drinking young adults (ages 18–30) with a history of blackout. Confirmatory factor analyses at baseline (T1) and one-month follow-up (T2) supported previous research showing the ABOM-2 items are best represented by two correlated factors. Both factors, en bloc and fragmentary, demonstrated convergent validity, showing significant associations with hazardous drinking, alcohol consumption, and alcohol-related consequences. In concurrent convergent and prospective predictive regression models that accounted for relevant covariates and included both types of blackouts, en bloc (but not fragmentary) blackouts significantly predicted hazardous drinking, alcohol consumption, and consequences across time. Longitudinal measurement invariance testing provided evidence for configural, metric, and scalar invariance across T1 and T2, supporting the measurement equivalence of ABOM-2 over time. Findings reinforce the distinction between en bloc and fragmentary blackouts, support the convergent and predictive validity of the ABOM-2, and highlight the clinical and research utility of the ABOM-2 as a reliable tool for assessing blackout across time. En bloc blackouts, in particular, serve as a robust marker of alcohol-related risk among young adults.
“More research being done is so validating”: Insights from transgender and gender-diverse participants on a psychophysiological study with deception
Nina Micanovic; Camden Trepanier; Maddie Katz; Vera Vine
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Laboratory-based research methods (e.g., psychophysiology, stress induction paradigms) are insightful for understanding the mechanisms underlying health disparities experienced by transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) people. Among this population, fear and mistrust of research remain due to historical mistreatment, and TGD people remain under-represented in experimental research. Researchers sensitive to these issues may hesitate to recruit TGD participants in fear of causing discomfort associated with more invasive laboratory-based research methods. Inclusive study design efforts exist, but it is unclear how they are received by TGD people. We explored TGD participants’ experiences in a study involving social exclusion and psychophysiological measurements (electrocardiogram and impedance cardiography) to understand how inclusive study design efforts were perceived. We conducted interviews with the first 10 TGD participants in a study where participants completed a social exclusion manipulation involving deception (i.e., Cyberball; Williams, 2000) while providing psychophysiological data (larger study N = 105). Informed by interpretive description (Thorne, 2016), we coded interview transcriptions to identify commonalities and patterns of participant experiences across each study phase. Overall, participants appreciated research efforts to increase transparency and encourage participant agency. Despite some discomforts, participants report that inclusive efforts fostered a sense of trust and safety throughout the study. During deception (and debriefing) and psychophysiological measurement, participant experiences in the study were positive or neutral. Participants provided constructive feedback about several study design elements. These findings provide researchers with tangible recommendations for inclusive experimental research for TGD participants that may help build trust and mutual respect between minoritized groups and researchers.
Directional Asymmetry in Reasoning About National and Religious Identity Is Category-Specific: Evidence From Palestine, Israel, and the United States
Mostafa Salari Rad; Jeremy Ginges
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Judgments about whether a person can gain or lose a group identity may depend both on which category is at stake and on the direction of transfer. For national identity, people judge that an outgroup-born child raised by the ingroup becomes one of us more readily than an ingroup-born child raised by the outgroup becomes one of them (Rad & Ginges, 2018). That work varied which outgroup was named but never which category, leaving open whether the asymmetry is a general property of reasoning about ingroups, is specific to nationality, or varies with how membership in a category is represented, which differs across populations. We tested these alternatives in settings where religion and nationality pick out nearly the same adversary, using switched-at-birth tasks with Muslim-Palestinians (N = 1,205), Americans (N = 989), and religious Israeli Jews (N = 280). The asymmetry appeared for national identity in all three samples and did not depend on the outgroup being the adversary. For religious identity it was absent among Palestinians and Americans, but present among Israeli Jews and not reliably different from nationality's. Across conditions and studies, directional asymmetry appeared only where membership was treated as substantially fixed at birth, and where it appeared it was carried almost entirely by judgments of what ingroup upbringing confers rather than of what birth transmits. The asymmetry is therefore neither a general feature of group boundaries nor a property of nationality in particular, but emerges where membership is understood as substantially fixed at birth.
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.
Boghossian et al.’s (2026) critique of humanistic scholarship is itself bad scholarship and should be corrected or retracted
Patrick E. Savage
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Boghossian et al.’s (2026) “Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and the Humanistic Social Sciences” argues that humanistic scholarship has experienced “a deterioration in scholarly standards fueled by the substitution of political criteria for properly scholarly criteria”. I argue that their report itself represents low scholarly standards. Specifically: 1) it is primarily based on unpublished, unverifiable data; 2) the limited data that have been published (largely from unvalidated LLM categorisations) do not support the main claims of a “deterioriation in scholary standards”; and 3) the report unjustifiably generalises from a narrow set of examples (e.g., the cancelation of a panel on sex and gender by the American Anthropological Association) to make sweeping conclusions about global humanities scholarship. I describe counter-examples from past and present research in the humanities and the sciences by myself and others to show that biased and low-quality scholarship is not a new or unique problem for progressive humanistic research. While I agree with the authors that critical evaluation of the quality of academic scholarship (both humanistic and scientific) is urgently needed in today’s global political climate, the report’s strongest conclusions are not justified by their data and thus are not of sufficient quality to achieve their intended goal of helping university leaders to make policy decisions. I recommend it be corrected or retracted to resolve these issues.
Language supports the emergence of abstract relational reasoning in early childhood
Emilie Serraille; Jean-RĂ©my Hochmann
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Young children demonstrate sensitivity to abstract relations such as same and different, yet they typically fail analogical reasoning tasks such as the Relational Match-to-Sample (RMTS) until four to five years of age. We investigate whether this developmental discontinuity reflects general task demands or a qualitative change in the representational format of thought. Specifically, we contrast accounts according to which young children have the competence to solve RMTS but fall victim of an induction problem, with accounts proposing that early cognition lacks the discrete representations of relations necessary to solve RMTS. Across three experiments involving 3- to 6-year-old children, we progressively reduced the inductive demands of RMTS tasks by priming relational content and constraining the hypothesis space. Although these manipulations improved performance, success consistently depended on children’s knowledge of the relational terms “same” and “different.” Children lacking evidence of relational vocabulary continued to perform at chance despite succeeding in simpler relational tasks. These findings suggest that early relational cognition does not rely on discrete relational symbols and that lexical acquisition plays a critical role in enabling abstract relational reasoning. More broadly, the results favor the hypothesis that developmental changes in language contribute to transformations in the format, structure and flexibility of human thought.
UK-Adaptation of the Dutch PET@home Toolkit for Clients Receiving Home Care with Pets (SAFEpet@home): A Participatory Adaptation Study
Peter Reniers; Ine J.N. Declercq; Marie-Jose Enders-Slegers; Karin Hediger; Elizabeth Ormerod; Ruslan Leontjevas
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Background: Pets can contribute to the wellbeing of people receiving home care but may also present practical challenges for clients, family caregivers, and professional caregivers. The Dutch PET@home Toolkit was developed to support stakeholders in addressing pet-related issues in home care. Differences in care practices and support infrastructure mean that the toolkit cannot simply be transferred to other national contexts. Objective: To adapt the Dutch PET@home Toolkit for use in the United Kingdom. Design: Participatory adaptation study using qualitative interviews and focus groups. Setting(s): Interviews and focus groups were conducted online with participants based in the United Kingdom. Participants: Twelve participants with backgrounds in social care, veterinary practice, animal welfare, and related fields contributed through individual interviews, focus groups, and/or member checking. Methods: The Dutch PET@home materials were translated into English and reviewed with UK-based stakeholders. Information relevant to adaptation was identified through a pragmatic and iterative analysis of interviews and focus groups. Suggested adaptations were incorporated into the materials and reviewed within the research team. Revised materials were subsequently returned to participants for member checking and review of UK English. Results: The adaptation resulted in the SAFEpet@home Toolkit. Key changes included greater emphasis on collaboration with veterinary practices, replacement of the Five Freedoms with the Five Domains Model, increased diversity in visual materials and represented companion animal species, and inclusion of UK-specific organisations and support resources. Other adaptations addressed practical issues such as planning for multiple pets and veterinary decision-making. Conclusions: The Dutch PET@home Toolkit was adapted to reflect UK care practices, animal welfare guidance, and support infrastructure while retaining the core principles of the original toolkit. The findings suggest that a participatory adaptation process is a feasible approach for adapting toolkits to different national contexts.
The Dutch D70: Psychometric validation of the Dark Factor of Personality
Ann De Buck; Lieven Pauwels
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The Dark Factor of Personality (D) represents a common dispositional core underlying socially and morally aversive traits (Moshagen et al., 2018, 2020). This study provides the first psychometric evaluation of the Dutch 70-item D factor scale (Dutch D70) across two independent samples: an online community sample (n = 978) and a student sample (n = 1,806). Using confirmatory factor analysis, we compared a unidimensional model, a hierarchical second-order model, and a bifactor model. In both samples, the bifactor structure demonstrated the best overall fit. It indicated a dominant general Dark Factor accounting for the vast majority of the common variance with high reliability. The specific residual factors contributed minimal unique variance. Multi-group analyses supported full scalar invariance across self-reported sex, showing that the scale functions equivalently for men and women. Construct and nomological validity were supported through consistent associations of D with lower empathic concern and higher levels of low morality and ethnocentrism. Significant relations between D and self-reported out-group aggression further supported criterion-related validity. Overall, the findings show that the Dutch D70 is a reliable and valid instrument for assessing a strong general Dark Factor, with structural and validity evidence replicated across both community and student samples.
Weak language abilities are associated with increased within-individual variability in both response times and rhythm tapping: Support for the intra-individual variability hypothesis from the Steps Study
Anna Kautto; Mira Karrasch; Viveka Lyberg Åhlander; Annette Nylund
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First language acquisition varies substantially between children. A recent hypothesis suggests that intra-individual variability (IIV) in cognitive processing, which is reflected by response time (RT) IIV, underlies individual differences in language acquisition. In this study, we test this hypothesis by investigating associations between different measures of short-time IIV and language abilities in 15-year-old adolescents. The participants (n=239) were recruited from the Steps cohort study. Our aim was to investigate whether IIV would be associated with language abilities, and whether the possible association is observed in different IIV measures. The participants completed three different tasks measuring IIV: a simple RT task, as well as externally paced metronome tapping and self-paced rhythm tapping. We were interested in whether IIV in tasks that require aligning to temporal patterns of external, sensory information (metronome tapping) or producing temporal patterns without external cues (self-paced tapping) would be differentially associated with language abilities. In line with the IIV hypothesis of language, we found that pronounced IIV in all task types (metronome and self-paced rhythm tapping, as well as RTs) was related to weak language abilities. Some differences in the associations between task types and language abilities emerged; RT IIV was a stronger predictor for language abilities than IIV in rhythm tapping tasks. Our sample consisted of adolescents, at which age language abilities are no longer in an active stage of development. If we assume that IIV reflects cognitive instability that underlies individual differences in language acquisition, this instability seems to be a persistent individual trait and could thus potentially be a helpful marker for identifying children at-risk for language learning difficulties.
Stable tendencies in spontaneous working memory usage during flexible behaviour
Levi Kumle; Amy Xiangjin Li; Joel Kovoor; Amelia G. Rock; Emily Hesselink; Ellen Jones; Meadhbh Brosnan; Anna C Nobre; Dejan Draschkow
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Unlike standard working memory (WM) tasks, real-world settings allow individuals to spontaneously adapt how much information to use from WM before resampling the environment. Here, we considered whether individuals exhibit distinct, trait-like tendencies in their spontaneous use of WM. Across three studies (N = 220) using an Object Copying Task, we show that some participants consistently exhibited greater WM usage than others. These tendencies were reliable, stable across time, and predicted individuals’ task efficiency and responses to changing task demands. Finally, spontaneous WM usage could only partially be explained by established measures of WM capacity and attentional control – two plausible predictors of natural WM usage. In summary, we find stable tendencies in individuals’ spontaneous WM usage, despite the variable nature of self-structured natural behaviour. Our results position inter-individual variability as an important dimension in understanding natural, memory-guided behaviour, highlighting the need to investigate its broader determinants and behavioural consequences.
Screening for DLD: Reliability and validity of the Screening Tool for Adults with Non-Diagnosed DLD (STAND).
Michelle St Clair; Jenny Louise Gibson; Suze Leitao; Emily Jackson; Ellie Barker; Mia Travlos; Jiayi Liang; Amy Bennett; Iris Edwards; Nicola Botting
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Interest in diagnosis of neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD) in adulthood is increasing, but there is no validated screening tool to identify adulthood Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). DLD affects 7% of the population with lifelong impacts on education, employment, and mental-health. This paper evaluates a new screening tool to identify undiagnosed DLD in adulthood: the Screening Tool for Adults with Non-Diagnosed DLD (STAND). Study 1 investigated endorsement rate for STAND items, internal reliability, and test-retest reliability in adults with no NDD and with self-identified DLD. Study 2 (general population sample) and 3 (Student sample) evaluated internal reliability and validity. Study 4 evaluated the STAND’s acceptability by consulting adults with DLD. Internal reliability ranged from excellent to acceptable for current, lifetime, and total scores, and test-retest reliability was good. Adults self-identifying as having DLD endorsed all items more frequently, with significantly higher STAND scores. Studies 2 and 3 demonstrated good construct validity, with family history of language/literacy difficulties and personal NDD history associated with higher scores. The Language Structure subscale on the Communication Checklist-Self Report (CC-SR) related to more Current and Total Difficulties in Study 2, establishing convergent validity. Study 3 further established convergent validity with the CC-SR Language Structure and Social Engagement subscales predicting STAND scores and the CELF-5 Core Language Score predicting lifetime language difficulties. Study 4 demonstrated broad acceptability of the STAND, leading to minor changes to create a revised STAND. The STAND offers a first step in creating an acceptable, reliable, and valid tool for DLD diagnosis in adults.
How Restorative Justice may Create Social Change: A Contact-to-Change Model
Kimberley Aspinall; Michael Wenzel; Blake Quinney
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Restorative justice is a legal philosophy and practice focused on the repair of harm resulting from wrongdoing; as such, it has the transformative potential to facilitate change at individual, interpersonal and societal levels. Yet, restorative justice practices have diverged from their original social justice goals towards an individual-focused model of repair. The question is: how can we return restorative justice processes to their roots of addressing social injustices that underlie crime, and harness their power to mobilise communities for change? How can restorative justice processes speak to the wider community and promote their support for, or engagement in, collective action to address social injustices? To answer these questions, we propose the Restorative Contact-to-Change (RC2C) model, which draws from collective action, allyship and intergroup contact and dialogue literatures. The RC2C model proposes that community involvement in or, at a minimum, observation of restorative justice can be analysed as an instance of indirect intergroup contact, which—through perspective-taking, problem abstraction, and value consensus—can promote collective action and allyship behaviours for social change. The RC2C model may help understand how restorative justice processes can be transformative for individuals and society.
The Neural Bases of Prediction in Music and Speech: An Integrative Theoretical Approach to Understanding Content and Timing Interactions
Lu Lucuța; Anne Kösem; Peter E. Keller; Anna Fiveash
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Predictions of content (“what”) and timing (“when”) have been widely investigated in both music and speech research. Considering that music and speech serve distinct communicative functions, predictions of content and timing, as well as their interplay, are likely to exhibit domain-specific characteristics. However, because these domains have largely been studied in isolation, the neural bases of content–timing interactions remain poorly understood. This review sets multiple objectives. The first is to provide an overview of how the neural correlates of content and timing predictions in music and speech have been investigated through the lenses of Predictive Coding and Dynamic Attending Theory. The second is to evaluate the extent to which these frameworks account for the interaction between content and timing predictions, particularly at a neurophysiological level. The third is to highlight points of convergence between the two frameworks that are often difficult to identify due to differences in nomenclature and research design. The fourth is to propose an integrative perspective through which methodological strengths from both research traditions can be complementarily implemented to further our understanding of the neural bases of content and timing predictions in music and speech, by considering different decisions that must be taken when investigating prediction in music and speech (stimulus, analysis, and interpretation decisions). Reconciling key aspects of these theoretical frameworks across multiple levels of description (i.e., computational, algorithmic, implementational) within music and speech processing can provide insights into prediction as a fundamental aspect of cognition.
Do Youth Offending Labels Matter? The Impact of the Label “Young Serious Offender” on Public Attitudes Toward Youth Justice
Julia Yesberg; Clare-Ann Fortune; Hasi Kolongahapitiya
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Research on the impact of crime-first labels on public attitudes has focused almost exclusively on sexual offending. This pre-registered conceptual replication of Harris and Socia (2016) examined the effect of the label 'young serious offender' on support for punitive youth justice policies and beliefs about rehabilitation. Using an experimental design, 393 adult residents of New Zealand and Australia were randomly allocated to receive statements using either 'young serious offender' or the person-first alternative 'young people who have committed serious offences'. Contrary to our hypotheses, we found no evidence the label influenced attitudes relative to the person-first alternative, and no consistent moderation effects were observed. Exploratory analyses identified political orientation, ethnicity, and educational attainment as significant predictors of both punitive attitudes and belief in rehabilitation. These findings suggest crime-first labelling effects may only appear where strong stigma and well-established stereotypes already exist (e.g., sexual offending). However, this null result reflects only a single, one-off exposure in a survey context. The introduction of the Young Serious Offender designation in New Zealand embeds crime-first language into policy, with potentially cumulative effects that a one-off exposure cannot capture. Future research should use longitudinal designs to examine repeated exposure to labels over time.
Understanding and Avoiding Construct Redundancy Fallacies in Environmental Psychology
Taciano L Milfont; Gordon Hodson
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Construct proliferation and measurement redundancy can undermine conceptual clarity and cumulative scientific progress. We examine these challenges in environmental psychology, a rapidly growing field characterised by an expanding number of constructs and measures. After reviewing the historical problem of construct redundancy fallacies in psychological science, we illustrate its relevance to environmental psychology with two examples based on re-analysis of published data. We first examine multiple connection-to-nature constructs and measures that may represent alternative operationalisations of the same underlying latent construct. We then consider strong associations among environmentalism-related constructs typically regarded as theoretically distinct. Building on this evidence, we advance consideration of a generalised common factor (g-environmentalism) underlying diverse environmentalism-related measures. We conclude with recommendations for improving conceptual clarity, measurement practices, parsimony, and cumulative progress in environmental psychology.
Developing a Neuroimaging Training Framework and Certificate Program
Dianne Karen Patterson; Thomas Hicks; Aneta Kielar
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As neuroimaging workflows grow increasingly reliant on complex computational ecosystems, cloud and cluster computing, and open science standards, academic training programs must evolve to provide relevant instruction and practice. This paper describes the design, implementation, and evolution of a fully asynchronous neuroimaging education framework at the University of Arizona. Designed to support the rapidly expanding computational ecosystems demanded by modern neuroimaging workflows, the curriculum targets a diverse trainee cohort; including graduate and undergraduate students, research staff, and faculty. In addition to teaching experimental design, data processing, and statistical analysis, the program provides practical competencies in modern computational skills, such as the Brain Imaging Data Structure (BIDS) specification, Unix command-line navigation, High-Performance Computing (HPC), notebooks (JupyterLab), basic programming (MATLAB, Bash), and containerization (Docker/Apptainer). A key contribution of the framework is its focus on pedagogical adaptability: we've found that many modern learners seek flexibility, in support of active laboratory research, over certification. To this end, our framework provides online, a la carte lessons and individual course access in addition to a complete neuroimaging certificate path. The granularity of the offerings facilitates expanding and updating materials to accommodate community requirements and feedback. Recognizing the challenges that Artificial Intelligence (AI) presents to traditional testing, we are exploring new assessment techniques that are both more resilient to AI's disruptions and incorporate AI into the evaluation process. Our AI-ready framework replaces easily exploitable multiple-choice questions with interactive matching questions and traditional testing with structured generative AI workflows, while retaining hands-on practicals. Ultimately, this case study provides a template for institutions seeking to deliver targeted, cutting-edge, on-demand training in computational neuroimaging and demonstrates how curricular flexibility can reach a broad audience but still be tailored to individual learners.
“What we found was
” Syntactic prominence cues to information structure affect semantic prediction.
Eleonora Beier; Adrian Zhou; Fernanda Ferreira
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While predicting the content of upcoming words facilitates comprehension, it is often what cannot be predicted that conveys the most novel, important information. We address the cognitive mechanisms underlying the interplay between predictions for upcoming content and expectations about its novelty. In Experiment 1, we used eye-tracking to measure reading times to sentences containing a target word that was either predictable or unpredictable (but plausible). Expected novelty was manipulated through syntactic prominence: the target was either narrowly focused through a wh- cleft (“What he made was
”; high prominence), marked as presupposed through a subordinate clause (“After he made
”; low prominence), or presented through a “neutral” structure (“He made
”; intermediate prominence). We found that the facilitatory effect of predictability on reading times was eliminated for words in high prominence, while it was enhanced for words in low prominence. In Experiment 2, we addressed whether this interaction was due to a direct effect of prominence cues on semantic pre-activation, or an indirect effect on ease of integration of unpredictable content, using the visual world paradigm with auditory stimuli. Compared to the neutral baseline condition, we found that while hearing the focusing construction, listeners made fewer fixations towards the predictable item and more towards the unpredictable alternative; while hearing the subordinate clause, they made fewer fixations towards both predictable and unpredictable items. Overall, we show that syntactic prominence affects semantic prediction through multiple cognitive mechanisms: wh- clefts lead listeners to expect the unexpected, while subordinate clauses lead to shallow processing and less prediction.
The respiratory cycle shapes perceived and self-generated time
Carlotta Lega; Maaike Weevers; Federica Biondi; Luigi Cattaneo
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Bodily rhythms are increasingly recognized as active organizers of brain function. Respiration, in particular, rhythmically modulates cortical excitability, perceptual sensitivity, memory, and action well beyond its homeostatic role. Whether breathing also shapes the brain's representation and generation of time, however, remains poorly understood. Here, we asked whether respiratory phase modulates two complementary domains of human timing, temporal perception and temporal production. Across two experiments in healthy adults (N = 40 each), respiration was continuously recorded and instantaneous respiratory phase reconstructed using Hilbert-transform-based analyses. In Experiment 1, participants performed an auditory temporal bisection task, judging intervals as “short” or “long” relative to previously learned anchors. Stimulus presentation was prospectively triggered at different phases of the respiratory cycle. Temporal judgments varied systematically with respiratory phase, particularly for perceptually ambiguous intervals: identical durations were judged as longer around peak inhalation/early expiration and shorter near peak exhalation. This modulation was specific to respiratory phase during stimulus presentation and was absent when phase was measured at the subsequent manual response, supporting a perceptual rather than response-related locus. In Experiment 2, participants synchronized finger taps to auditory metronomes at three tempi (75, 100, and 125 bpm) and subsequently continued tapping at the same tempo without external pacing. During self-paced continuation, the respiratory phases associated with slowest tapping clustered consistently across participants, particularly at the slowest tempo, with shorter inter-tap intervals occurring around inspiration. No corresponding respiratory modulation emerged during externally paced synchronization. Together, these findings suggest that respiration rhythmically shapes both perceived and self-generated time, consistent with a transient acceleration of internal timing around inspiration. Thus, the brain’s sense of time may fluctuate with each breath, suggesting that temporal processing is dynamically embedded within the ongoing physiological rhythms of the body.
Environmental Exposures and Brain Health Outcomes in Healthy Ageing: A Systematic Review
Kelly E Perry; Breanna Watterson; Jenna Louise Merenstein
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Background: Air pollution and built environment features are increasingly associated with negative health outcomes, yet their relation to brain health in older adults without dementia remains unclear. Methods: To synthesise the extant literature, we conducted a systematic review, searching MEDLINE (PubMed) and Web of Science (Core Collection) from inception to February 23, 2026. Eligible studies assessed a natural or built environmental exposure against brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measures in cognitively healthy older adults (ages 65+ without dementia). Reviewers screened and extracted summary data from published reports in Covidence; no individual patient data were sought. The main outcome was brain health; findings were synthesised narratively using an effect-direction approach, as heterogeneous exposures, outcomes, and effect metrics precluded pooling. Findings: Of 2,496 records screened, 26 studies met eligibility, comprising >84,000 older adults across 10 countries: United States, South Korea, United Kingdom, France, Spain, Sweden, Netherlands, Taiwan, Germany, and Japan. Thirteen studies were cross-sectional and 13 were cohort studies (eight observational and five longitudinal). Higher air pollution exposure—particularly PM2·5, NO2, and PM10—was associated with altered brain structure: smaller total, grey matter, and white matter volumes, greater white matter hyperintensities, cortical thinning, and medial temporal and hippocampal atrophy; greenspace was generally protective. 13 studies met criteria for high methodological quality and low risk of bias, though outcome assessment was a recurring source of bias (12 of 26 studies), and four of the five longitudinal studies did not meet criterion for follow-up adequacy. Interpretation: This novel review synthesises compelling evidence that brain structure is susceptible to air pollution in healthy ageing, supporting the notion that this modifiable environmental exposure may serve as a potential target for physicians and policymakers aiming to protect brain health in the fastest growing segment of the global population.
Executive Function and Affective State Recognition Show Distinct Associations with Empathic Choice Across Socioeconomic Contexts
Fiorella Macchiavello; Huepe David; Valentina Vallejo-Correa; F. Rojas-Thomas; José Javier Bórquez Henríquez; Consuelo Ruiz; Luis Sebastian Contreras-Huerta
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Abstract: Empathy research has traditionally emphasised the capacities and dispositions that enable people to understand and respond to others’ affective states. Motivational accounts, however, have highlighted that empathy also depends on whether individuals choose to engage with those states when engagement is optional. Building on this distinction, we examined how social-specific affective state recognition and domain-general executive function relate to empathic choice, and whether these associations vary with socioeconomic vulnerability (SV). 96 Chilean adults participated (50 High SV; 46 comparison). High SV participants showed lower affective state recognition and executive function, yet the groups did not differ in mean empathic choice. Across participants, better affective state recognition was associated with less frequent empathic choice, whereas dispositional empathy was positively associated with choice. Executive function was associated with more frequent empathic choice in High SV but not comparison participants, and this association differed significantly between groups. In contrast, the association between affective state recognition and empathic choice did not differ by socioeconomic group. Better affective state recognition was also associated with greater relative cognitive effort during empathic engagement. These findings show that distinct cognitive capacities relate differently to empathic motivation and that their behavioural relevance can depend on socioeconomic context. Keywords: empathy; executive function; motivation; affective state recognition; empathic choice; socioeconomic vulnerability.
Bilateral continuous theta-burst stimulation of the anterior prefrontal cortex impairs emotional change detection and facial mimicry while enhancing metacognition of facial identity: a TMS–EMG study.
Luis Carlo Bulnes; Axel Cleeremans; Chotiga Pattamadilok; carmen De Vos; Marie Vandekerckhove
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The anterior prefrontal cortex (aPFC/BA10) is causally implicated in visual metacognition, including low-level perceptual judgments about faces. Whether it similarly contributes to the perception and metacognition of facial emotion, and also contributes to embodied facial responses, remains unclear. Facial electromyography (EMG) and skin conductance level responses were recorded while participants performed a change detection task of gradually evolving emotional (anger, happiness) facial changes from neutral (ON condition). A non-emotional change (identity) served as control. Subsequently, participants performed the reverse condition on emotional changes only, by reporting the end of an emotional expression (OFF condition). Confidence was assessed on each trial. Inhibitory continuous theta burst transcranial magnetic stimulation (cTB) was delivered bilaterally over the anterior prefrontal cortex (aPFC) using a pre-post treatment design, with Sham and NoTMS (no-stimulation) control groups. cTB did not alter confidence ratings for emotional changes. Instead, it enhanced relative metacognitive accuracy for changes in facial identity. Crucially, Sham and NoTMS groups became faster at detecting facial changes overall, as expected, whereas the cTB group did not, most clearly for happiness in the ON condition. In the OFF condition, cTB increased reaction times for anger offset detection. EMG results converged with behavioral data and showed reduced happiness-related zygomaticus activity, indicating disrupted congruent facial mimicry. These results suggest that aPFC causally contributes to distinct processing of emotional and non-emotional facial changes and exerts a downstream regulatory effect on embodied responses.
Do Large Language Models see the world with rose-colored glasses? Prompting GPT-4o to associate color terms with emotion terms in Spanish and Chinese
Mingshan Xu; Antonio BenĂ­tez-Burraco
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Color terms and emotion terms frequently intertwine in language. In this paper, we compare the performance of humans and GPT-4o in an association task involving 13 color terms and 20 emotion terms (and 5 intensities of emotion) in two languages, Spanish and Chinese. Overall, we found that GPT-4o associates color terms with emotion terms similarly to humans. This is true for several main dimensions of emotions: valence, arousal, and power. At the same time, in cases where responses by human subjects differ cross-linguistically (such as intensity of emotion in our study with Spanish vs Chinese speakers), GPT-4o tends to reduce the differences between languages. In conclusion, although GPT-4o is a reliable model of human emotional language, it can contribute to eroding its diversity.
Gratitude Towards Our Past Self and General Gratitude Enhance Self-Continuity
Zoe Fowler; Kyle Fiore Law; Liane Young; Madeleine Gross; Jonathan Schooler; Stylianos Syropoulos
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Does gratitude for the past strengthen our connection to our past and future selves? Across three pre-registered studies (N=1,779 US participants), we explored the relationship between gratitude and self-continuity–our sense of self-similarity across time. In Study 1, higher general gratitude and past-self gratitude (PSG) were associated with increased self-continuity 10 years into the past and future, with the association between gratitude and future self-continuity (FSC) significant when controlling for demographic variables and the alternative temporal dimension of self-continuity. Study 2 replicated these results in a representative US sample, finding that gratitude is linked to FSC up to 25 years ahead. Study 3 demonstrates that expressing PSG causally increases past and future self-continuity, effects not observed for gratitude towards others. Our findings suggest that individuals with higher general gratitude feel more connected to their intertemporal selves, and that promoting PSG could strengthen self-continuity, with the potential to benefit future-oriented decision-making.
Assessing Common-Cause Implications of Reflective Models: A Simulation Study of the Tetrad Fit Index
Ellie Bastos Degobi; Víthor Rosa Franco; Marcos Jiménez
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Conventional factor-analytic fit indices such as the CFI, TLI, RMSEA, and SRMR summarize discrepancies between observed and model-implied association structures, but they do not directly target the vanishing-tetrad constraints entailed by pure linear common-factor models. We evaluated a revised Tetrad Fit Index (TFI), which quantifies discrepancy between tetrads computed from the observed correlation matrix and from a purified model-implied correlation matrix. Across two simulation scenarios, we manipulated items per factor (8 or 16), factor-loading magnitude (low or medium), and sample size (200, 500, or 1,000). In the multidimensional scenario, the TFI selected the data-generating model in at least 99.1% of replications when compared with underfactored or overfactored alternatives. CFI, TLI, RMSEA, and SRMR performed well against the underfactored model but were substantially less accurate against the overfactored model. In the bifactor scenario, TFI accuracy ranged from 67.4% to 99.3%, whereas conventional indices rarely selected the generating correlated-factor model. The TFI was only weakly to moderately associated with the other indices, which were highly intercorrelated. An empirical illustration with the Antinatalism Scale showed that the TFI favored the one-factor solution selected in the original study, whereas conventional indices favored a four-factor alternative. These findings support the TFI as a complementary index for comparing reflective factor models when researchers wish to evaluate common-cause covariance implications in addition to conventional global fit.
Beyond Diagnosis: Shared and Distinct Cognitive Mechanisms Across Developmental Coordination Disorder, Autism, ADHD, and Dyslexia
Joanna Greer; Lucy H Eddy
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Background: Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) is a neurodevelopmental condition affecting sensorimotor skills in around 5% of the population. Increasingly, research recognises that DCD also impacts cognition and executive functioning (EF). Despite this, cognition in DCD is rarely studied alongside the neurodevelopmental conditions with which it most commonly co-occurs (autism, ADHD, and Dyslexia), despite each also showing cognitive challenges. Much of the literature also relies on binary diagnosed/typically developing comparisons, which cannot capture natural variability within and across these conditions. Methods: This cross-sectional online study used a trait-based approach to explore shared and distinct cognitive profiles across these conditions. Participants (342 adults aged 18–76 years) completed trait questionnaires for autism, ADHD, DCD, and Dyslexia, four cognitive measures (related to executive function and everyday memory), and two mental health and wellbeing questionnaires. Results: K-means cluster analysis and exploratory factor analysis both identified a profile in which DCD traits aligned closely with ADHD and Dyslexia traits, while autism traits remained relatively distinct. Linear regressions showed that DCD traits made small but consistent independent contributions to EF outcomes after accounting for ADHD, autism, and mental health, although ADHD traits typically explained more variance. Critically, difficulties rarely stemmed from a single trait profile - they were more often predicted by a combination of trait profiles. Conclusion: These findings suggest that the cognitive profile of DCD is best understood alongside ADHD and Dyslexia, with executive functioning difficulties frequently mapping onto multiple trait profiles. This has two implications for support: (i) DCD diagnostic criteria do not include cognitive difficulties, thus a diagnosis-led model risks missing additional support needs; and (ii) individuals whose difficulties span multiple trait profiles but do meet diagnostic thresholds, risk being excluded from support altogether.
Adaptation and Validation of the Real Relationship Inventory–Therapist Form into Brazilian Portuguese
Lucas RemiĂŁo Sampaio; Eduarda Rossatto de Bona; Manuela Bizzi Schvartzman; Amanda Pacini Teixeira C. Preta; Marcela Alves Sanseverino; Mirian PorciĂșncula Moreira Cuchiara; Christian Haag Kristensen
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The real relationship is a relevant component of the therapeutic relationship, yet validated instruments for assessing this construct remain scarce across cultural contexts. This study aimed to translate, culturally adapt, and validate the Real Relationship Inventory–Therapist Form (RRI-T) for use in Brazilian Portuguese, based on data from online psychotherapy. Participants were 142 therapists from different Brazilian states. The study included procedures for cross-cultural adaptation, content validity analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, internal consistency assessment, and convergent validity analysis with the Working Alliance Inventory–Short Revised–Therapist Version (WAI-SR-T). Results indicated satisfactory internal consistency for the total scale and for the realism and genuineness dimensions. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the theoretical two-factor model, with adequate fit indices. Moderate to strong positive correlations were observed between the RRI-T and the WAI-SR-T, suggesting partial convergence between related but distinct constructs. These findings provide satisfactory evidence of validity and reliability for the Brazilian Portuguese version of the RRI-T, particularly in the context of online psychotherapy.
Protective Parenthood Factors in the Context of Sex Chromosome Trisomy: Supporting Social Behavioral Development through Reflective Functioning and Parental Behavior
Nienke Bouw; Hanna Swaab; Sophie van Rijn
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Purpose. Children with Sex Chromosome Trisomies (SCT) are at elevated risk for early social and behavioral difficulties, which can place additional demands on parents. This prospective study examined behavioral development in young children with SCT, alongside parental reflective functioning and observed caregiving, to inform early family-centered support. Methods. Participants included 107 children with SCT (1-7 years; M = 3.76, SD = 1.92) and 102 population-based controls (58 girls, 44 boys; M = 3.60, SD = 1.62). The SCT group comprised 33 girls with 47,XXX, 50 boys with 47,XXY, and 24 boys with 47,XYY. Most participants were White (83.7%), with others reporting Black/African American, Asian, Latino/Hispanic, Brazilian, or mixed ethnicity. Child social behavioral functioning was assessed via parent-report questionnaires (CBCL, SRS-2) and structured observations (ASIEP-3), while parental reflective functioning and behavior were measured with the Parent Development Interview and an observed Teaching Task. Results. Children with SCT exhibited persistent social and behavioral vulnerabilities. Parental reflective functioning was comparable to controls, but parents of SCT children showed lower sensitivity and emotional regulation (ηÂČ = .06). Better parental regulation and positive affect predicted improved child outcomes (RÂČ = .08 / 07). Conclusion. Early interventions should support parents in providing sensitive, well-regulated caregiving to promote resilience.
Consciousness and emotions in non-human animals: Are laypeople more or less skeptical than experts?
Bastian Jaeger; Stefan Leach; Matthew Zipple
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Consciousness and the capacity to experience affective states, such as pain, pleasure, fear, and hunger (i.e., sentience) are seen as key determinants of an individual’s moral status, a view that is shared by scientists, philosophers, and laypeople. Whether (and which) non-human animals are believed to possess these capacities can therefore have important consequences for how they are treated. In this registered report (study design registration: https://doi.org/10.71240/lcyc.238674), we measured people’s attributions of consciousness and emotions to a diverse set of animals, testing whether laypeople overattribute (as suggested by research on anthropomorphizing) or underattribute these mental capacities to animals (as suggested by research on motivated mind denial). Animal consciousness and emotions are famously challenging to study. In the absence of an unambiguous benchmark against which people’s beliefs could be compared, we tested whether laypeople, a nationally representative sample of 600 U.S. participants, are more or less skeptical about animal consciousness and emotions than scientific experts, a sample of 100 behavioral ecologists, evolutionary biologists, and other animal researchers. We find that, compared to scientific experts, laypeople were less likely to attribute consciousness (-8 percentage points), and substantially less likely to attribute emotions (-21 percentage points) to non-human animals. Laypeople were on average more confident in their beliefs than scientific experts.
ZĂŒrich Voice Super-Recognizer Test (ZVSRT): Normative Data from Law Enforcement Personnel on Voice Discrimination and Sorting
Andrea Fröhlich; Volker Dellwo; John Peter French; Meike Ramon
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In 2009, Russell et al. identified four “Super-Recognizers” (SRs) with exceptional face processing abilities. The potential existence of voice Super-Recognizers (VSRs) has been discussed both scientifically and related to high-stakes areas like law enforcement, which they could in principle support. Existing methods to formally assess voice identity processing (VIP) are both limited, and oftentimes lack the sensitivity required to reveal superior performance. Moreover, their de facto applied value, e.g. for forensic speaker comparison remains empirically unaddressed. To fill this gap, and drawing on findings from research on (face) SRs, we propose a preliminary working definition for VSRs and report normative data for a novel test battery designed to assess superior VIP: the ZĂŒrich Voice Super-Recognizer Test (ZVSRT). Modelling potential VSR deployment scenarios, the ZVSRT involves three difficult perceptual tasks. Its stimuli – derived from a forensic corpus – were selected using a deep learning–based open-source automatic speaker recognition system to ensure the creation of challenging trials befitting its intended purpose. The reported ZVSRT normative data was obtained from a cohort of Swiss law enforcement personnel (N = 204), who completed its constituent components: a voice discrimination, and two voice sorting tasks. These data demonstrate the ZVSRT sensitivity towards capturing the full range of VIP ability – from very low to high performance levels. We discuss future directions, including the utility of the ZVSRT and VSRs’ potential relevance for forensic applications.
Vocabulary depth, vocabulary breadth, and speechreading as predictors of reading comprehension and inference accuracy in deaf adolescents
Fiona Elizabeth Kyle; Roxy Cosma; Kyi Aye
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The current study examined the contributions of vocabulary breadth, vocabulary depth, and speechreading to reading ability in 37 severely and profoundly deaf adolescents aged 14 to 16 years. Participants completed assessments of nonverbal cognitive ability, vocabulary breadth, vocabulary depth, speechreading, word reading, sentence comprehension, and passage comprehension. Vocabulary depth was the most consistent predictor across all reading outcomes, whereas vocabulary breadth was not significantly associated with any reading measure. Nonverbal cognitive ability, vocabulary depth, and speechreading together accounted for 77% of the variance in word reading accuracy and 86% of the variance in sentence-level comprehension. Vocabulary depth and nonverbal cognitive ability were significant predictors of passage comprehension (explaining 67% of variance), as well as performance on both literal and inferential comprehension questions. These findings underscore the importance of rich and precise word knowledge for reading development and suggest that interventions targeting vocabulary depth may enhance reading comprehension in deaf adolescents.
Protocol of the CHILL 2.0 Study: Optimizing, Explaining, and Sustaining Neuroticism Change
Wiebke Bleidorn; Rosalie Andrae; Peter Haehner; Christopher James Hopwood; Lina Hungerbuehler; Robert Tobias; Amanda Jo Wright
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This article describes the protocol of the Changing How I Live Life (CHILL) 2.0 project, a large-scale smartphone-based intervention program designed to optimize neuroticism-change interventions, test mechanisms of personality change, and examine the long-term consequences of intervention-induced neuroticism change. Building on findings from CHILL 1.0, CHILL 2.0 employs a fractional factorial randomized design. In this design, 1,020 participants are assigned to combinations of six theoretically derived strategy blocks comprising 16 evidence-informed intervention strategies and one attention-matched placebo control group. Participants complete repeated assessments of personality traits, neurotic affects, behaviors, and cognitions (ABCs), consequential life outcomes, peer reports, and mobile sensing before, during, and after a 6-week smartphone intervention, with follow-up extending to 1 year. An independent zero-intervention comparison cohort provides benchmark estimates of natural personality change, while a randomized booster substudy examines whether brief booster sessions enhance the long-term maintenance of intervention effects. By integrating intervention optimization, intensive longitudinal assessment, rigorous comparison groups, and long-term follow-up within a single research program, CHILL 2.0 is designed to identify the active ingredients of neuroticism interventions, test competing theories of personality change, and inform the development of more effective and personalized interventions to promote emotional stability.
Capturing the temporal dynamics of personality in daily life: The Personality and Contextualized Experiences (PACE) Study
Anabel BĂŒchner; Friedrich Martin Götz; Emorie D Beck; Lisa Shi Yun Li; Andrew Kwok Leung Yeung; Jessie Sun; Benjamin Hardin; Kai Tobias Horstmann
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Thoughts, feelings, and behaviors constantly change in everyday life. Dynamic personality approaches emphasize that these short-term changes are not only relevant for understanding how enduring personality patterns arise but are themselves central to what personality is. Although the growing use of the experience sampling method (ESM) has made it more feasible to apply such approaches, methodological challenges limit the inferences that can be drawn about temporal personality dynamics. This paper describes the rationale, procedure, and dataset of the Personality and Contextualized Experiences (PACE) Study, a large, multi- site ESM study that comprises 1,908 undergraduates (130,402 observations) across Canada, Germany, and the United States. Of these, 714 participants completed the entire study (baseline survey, ≄ 100 ESM surveys, and follow-up survey). The PACE Study aims to advance the study of personality dynamics by combining a large sample with several methodological features targeting key design and measurement aspects for accurately capturing and interpreting these dynamics. The features encompass an experimental comparison of two sampling designs, retrospective assessments of missed states, and a personalized assessment of situational information. The study further includes a newly developed global self-report questionnaire intended to capture aspects of people’s dynamic patterns of states without requiring ESM data.
Construct Continuity With Limited Cross-Modal Agreement: Attention Networks in Immersive Virtual Reality
David Levi Tekampe; Anxhela Sulaj; Angelica Mendes; Philip Samuel Santangelo
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Immersive virtual reality (VR) is increasingly used in cognitive assessment, yet it remains unclear whether established attention paradigms retain their interpretability when translated from desktop presentation to head-mounted delivery. The present study examined whether atten- tional effects measured with the Attention Network Test-Revised (ANT-R) are preserved in immersive VR when task-defining properties are held constant across modalities. Seventy-nine adults (N = 79) completed a within-subject comparison of a desktop ANT-R and a task-matched immersive VR implementation (ANT-VR; Meta Quest 3). Across modalities, stimuli, cueing logic, trial timing, conflict manipulations, and scoring were matched. Trial-level reaction time (RT) and accuracy data were analysed using pre-specified mixed-effects models, and sec- ondary psychometric analyses examined cross-modal agreement of participant-level effect scores. Canonical ANT-R effects were reproduced across both modalities, especially in RT, including alerting benefits, orienting and validity effects, flanker conflict, location conflict, and dual- conflict (flanker-by-location) integration. However, VR was associated with slower responses and slightly lower accuracy than desktop ad- ministration, and modality moderated selected orienting-related and conflict-related contrasts. Secondary agreement analyses showed selec- tive participant-level agreement between desktop and VR, with the strongest cross-modal agreement observed for flanker conflict, whereas equivalence was not supported. These findings indicate that immersive VR preserves the major canonical ANT-R contrast pattern under task- matched implementation while shifting baseline performance and moderating selected effect magnitudes. Immersive VR therefore supports construct continuity of ANT-R performance but should be treated as a distinct measurement context rather than as psychometrically inter- changeable with desktop administration.
On the importance of effort perception in stroke care: From evidence to an ideal care pathway – An opinion paper
Maëlle Charonitis; Fabienne Collette; Benjamin Pageaux
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Post-stroke rehabilitation has traditionally relied on objective assessments of motor and cognitive abilities. However, one crucial factor remains underestimated in current practice: the perception of effort, that is, the conscious experience of task intensity and difficulty. Effort perception is strongly influenced by internal states such as fatigue and pain, two symptoms frequently reported after stroke, even without major neurological deficits. While these symptoms are often treated separately, they converge into a shared experience: heightened perceived effort. Recent literature suggests that both physical and mental fatigue, along with pain, increase perceived effort by impacting available resources and motivation to engage and persist in cognitive and physical tasks. This modulation can directly affect patient engagement and adherence to rehabilitation. When effort is perceived as disproportionate—even for a simple task—it may lead to reduced participation or withdrawal from the care plan. Conversely, a better understanding of effort perception could pave the way for personalized interventions that consider not only patients’ actual capacities but also their subjective experiences. It is therefore urgent to consider the perception of effort as a clinical indicator in its own right—one that sits at the intersection of body, brain and lived experience. By integrating this dimension, research could better explain why some patients disengage from post-stroke care, despite good recovery potential and clinical practice could refine motivational strategies and therapeutic adherence models. The stakes are twofold: improving the understanding of the mechanisms underlying effort perception and harnessing it as a lever for optimizing post-stroke care trajectories.
PTSD risk detection from trauma narratives using natural language processing
Giuliano Groer; Laurin Plank; Armin Zlomuzica
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Objective: Natural language processing shows promise for detection of trauma-related disorders through the analysis of trauma-related narratives. We developed a classifier detecting high or low PTSD symptoms from "PTSD Checklist for DSM-5" (PCL-5) scores using semantic embeddings derived from autobiographical narratives of participants’ most traumatic life events. Methods: Participants (N=150) provided narratives about a traumatic, negative, and neutral life event, and completing the PCL-5 and the "Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale" (DASS-21). Semantic embedding models were used to represent narrative content numerically. These semantic representations were used to train classification models via nested cross-validation procedures, and model performance was evaluated using permutation testing. Results: The best performing classifier family trained on trauma narratives achieved significant PTSD symptom detection performance (pooled AUC = .734, p < .002) and significantly outperformed a word-frequency baseline (pooled AUC difference = .152, 95% CI [.070, .202]). They significantly outperformed classifiers trained on negative or neutral narratives, which themselves did not achieve significant detection, highlighting the unique role of traumatic memories in PTSD symptom detection. Classifiers trained on trauma narratives showed no significant detection of DASS-21 subscales, despite strong correlations of PCL-5 and DASS-21 values. Conclusion: Our findings support the potential of language-based assessment of trauma narratives for the detection of concurrent PTSD symptomatology.
Forecasting next-day urge to drink without craving’s own history: an individualized analysis of responsive EMA in residential alcohol-use-disorder recovery
Bilal Khan; Dennis McChargue; Kimberly Tyler; Arthur Andrews; Lucy E. Napper; Therese Wang; Tzeyu Michaud; Kaeli Samson
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Background: Just-in-time adaptive interventions (JITAIs) for substance-use recovery need decision inputs that anticipate risk, yet deployed systems rely largely on static rules. A published 30-day responsive ecological momentary assessment (rEMA) study followed adults recovering from severe alcohol use disorder in residential treatment. It collected five daily self-report items: urge to drink, affect intensity, stress, alcohol use, and importance of Alcoholics Anonymous engagement. Adherence and interest in prompt-based support were high. Whether these sparse reports carry a short-horizon forecasting signal was untested. Methods: We ran a retrospective, individualized forecasting analysis of that cohort (61 enrolled; 53 analytic). Each forecast answers one question: issued daily at 15:30, will the participant’s next 24 hours contain any reported urge to drink (a positive day), or remain urge-free (a negative day)? Rolling-origin ordinary least squares models were fit within each participant, on data available at forecast time, after a burn-in of 10 days. Three pre-specified feature sets decompose the signal: FULL (all five items plus time structure), CONTEXT (urge history withheld), and AR (urge history alone). Forecasts were scored against a per-participant base-rate baseline, with participant-level bootstrap intervals and Wilcoxon tests. Results: We scored 1,013 participant-days. The cohort summary curves gave mean AUCs of 0.66 (95% CI 0.589 to 0.730) for CONTEXT and 0.62 (0.560 to 0.673) for FULL. Per-participant AUCs exceeded chance in both arms (p = 0.0018 and 0.0077). AR’s cohort summary curve gave 0.56 (0.504 to 0.630); its per-participant AUCs did not exceed chance (p = 0.24). At the operating point, CONTEXT raised recall to 0.619 against the baseline’s 0.366; the false-positive rate did not differ (0.351 versus 0.355). No between-arm difference was significant within participants. Conclusion: In this cohort, next-day urge to drink was forecastable above chance from sparse rEMA, even with the urge item’s own history withheld. We found no evidence that this history adds signal beyond the other items. These results indicate which items a JITAI trigger model should monitor, groundwork for prospective validation. We do not model drinking or relapse.
Embodied visitor experience in a festival attraction: A mixed-methods evaluation of Art of Perception in Pune, India
Kohinoor Monish Darda; Hansika Mangwani; Sanjana Edwankar; Sakina Bharmal; Tanvi Raghuram; Siyona Varghese; Samrddhee Pathare; Amisha Keshan; Ritika Deshpande; Sakshi Kharbanda
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This study evaluates Art of Perception, a seven-zone attraction presented at Creative Lab Festival 2026 in Pune, India. A convergent mixed-methods design combined matched pre-post surveys from 200 visitors (166 complete cases) with learning statements, 1,339 face-judgment votes, and 65 post-workshop drawings. Five of six self-report outcomes showed positive paired differences after Holm correction. Bodily relaxation showed the largest difference (22.9 points on a 0-100 scale; standardised difference = 0.69); trust in perception did not differ reliably. Data indicated learning about perception, neuroplasticity, art-brain relations, and nature connection. The observational, immediate, and self-reported design does not establish causation or durability. The paper proposes a public laboratory of perception as a provisional framework for construct-aligned attraction design and evaluation.
Factors Influencing Attitudes Towards Help-Seeking Behavior In Individuals Identifying As Affected By Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder
Giovanni Foglia; Wendy Ross
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This mixed method study examined factors influencing attitudes towards help-seeking behavior in individuals identifying as affected by Depersonalization/Derealization disorder (DDD). Participants (N= 140) completed online questionnaires, including the Cambridge Depersonalization Scale, the Attitudes Towards Help-Seeking Professional Psychological Help scale, and the Self-Stigma of Seeking Help scale.58.9% of participants lacked a formal DDD diagnosis. While participants demonstrated positive attitudes towards help-seeking behaviour, this was coupled with high levels of self-stigma. However, there was no significant difference in scores between those with a formal diagnosis and those without, suggesting that structural rather than psychological factors may lie behind the underdiagnosis of DDD. Free text answers indicated that for 45% of participants, the reasons for not having a diagnosis were related to lack of knowledge or belief from medical professionals, indicating that targeted training may be more effective than psychological support.
An Expressivist Account of Moral Responsibility
Kiichi INARIMORI; Yugo MAEDA; Shintaro Takahashi; Kengo Miyazono
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Moral expressivism holds that moral statements fundamentally express non-doxastic attitudes (e.g., emotions or desires) rather than doxastic attitudes (e.g., beliefs) that correspond to objective and descriptive contents. This paper applies expressivism to responsibility statements and proposes Retributive Responsibility Expressivism. According to this account, responsibility statements such as “X deserves to be punished for doing Y” fundamentally express a non-doxastic attitude—specifically, our retributive desire for X to be punished. Across two empirical studies focusing on laypeople’s linguistic intuitions, we adopt the methodology of Moorean absurdities to evaluate this expressivist account. In line with expressivist predictions, participants systematically judged first-person Moorean responsibility sentences (e.g., “X deserves to be punished, but I do not want X to be punished”) as semantically infelicitous, whereas third-person versions were judged as making sense. Furthermore, restricting sentences to an autocentric interpretation markedly strengthened this perceived infelicity. These results provide novel empirical support for an expressivist semantics of moral responsibility. Finally, we argue that accepting an expressivist account of moral responsibility—depending on the specific version (e.g., pure vs. hybrid)—calls for reconsidering the traditional role of responsibility judgments in the free will debate.
Before There Is a Tool: Using Early-Stage Co-Design to Examine the Legitimacy of Digital Pathways for Youth Social Prescribing
Simone Minett; Nikki Rickard
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Young people experience high levels of loneliness and social disconnection, yet they often make limited use of formal mental health services. Social prescribing aims to support wellbeing through connection to community-based activities, including arts and cultural participation. In practice, however, prevailing social prescribing models are commonly organised around practitioner-mediated pathways that may be poorly aligned with how many young people seek and negotiate support. This Commentary offers a critical reflection on an early-stage youth social prescribing project that explored the possibility of an AI-enabled digital pathway for young people as a complement to existing models. Rather than assuming the value or necessity of such an approach, the project treated the proposed digital pathway as provisional and used exploratory co-design, informed by participatory action research principles, to support reflection on its purpose, role, and boundaries. Drawing on our experience of this process and relevant published literature, we argue that early-stage co-design should attend not only to technological functionality but also to questions of legitimacy, discovery, identity and social fit, feasibility, readiness, trust, and system positioning. We offer eight practice-oriented recommendations for using early-stage co-design to support informed judgement about whether, how, and under what conditions digital pathways to offline social connection for young people should proceed within health and community systems, before tools are built.
Locating Gambling Severity Within Polysubstance Involvement: The Specific Role of Methamphetamine in 9,421 Adults Entering Treatment
Georgia Murphy; Matthew Browne; Alex M T Russell
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Gambling problems are common among people entering alcohol and other drug (AOD) treatment, yet they are easily missed and the substance-use patterns that mark them are poorly understood. Population research ties gambling to alcohol, a framing that may not hold in treatment populations where involvement is severe and mixed, and evidence points more consistently to stimulants. Using intake data from 9,421 adults entering Australian AOD treatment who reported past-year gambling, we asked whether gambling severity (PGSI) tracks broader non-alcohol polysubstance involvement, particular substances within it, or alcohol. Confirmatory factor analysis of ten WHO-ASSIST severity indicators identified a single non-alcohol polysubstance dimension, with alcohol loading only weakly and standing apart. Gambling severity was modelled on that dimension, substance-specific severity, and alcohol severity together, using ordinal logistic regression. The clearest and most specific association was with high-severity methamphetamine use (OR ≈ 3.7), which held across gambling-severity thresholds in non-proportional odds models. The polysubstance dimension was independently but more modestly associated; high-severity alcohol was not once other involvement was accounted for. Patterns beyond methamphetamine largely reflected general polysubstance load rather than distinct effects. Gambling severity in this cohort was not primarily alcohol-centred, and was not explained uniformly by polysubstance involvement. It concentrated around high-severity methamphetamine use within a broader non-alcohol context. Routine gambling screening remains warranted, with particular attention to clients presenting with high-severity methamphetamine use and complex polysubstance profiles.
Non-normal Latent Traits and Parameter Estimation in the Bifactor Graded Response Model
Jujia Li; Chunhua Cao; Nana Kim; Wenchao Ma
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Item response theory (IRT) models usually assume that latent traits follow normal distributions. Nonetheless, violations of the normality assumption are not uncommon in psychology and psychiatry. While several studies have investigated the impact of non-normality on parameter estimation for some IRT models, bifactor models for polytomous data have been largely excluded despite their increasing popularity in psychology and education. Existing findings on other IRT models may not apply to bifactor models because of their unique characteristics. In this study, we examined the impact of latent trait non-normality on parameter estimation in the bifactor graded response model using a simulation study. The results indicate that (1) general-factor non-normality primarily affected item parameter estimates associated with the general factor but not specific factors, (2) specific-factor non-normality showed smaller and more localized effects, primarily on bias in specific-factor discrimination and intercept estimates; and (3) despite the misspecification of latent trait priors, maximum a posteriori estimates of latent traits tend to be more stable than the maximum likelihood estimates. Implications of the findings are discussed.
Beyond Diagnosis: A Scoping Review of Machine Learning and NLP for Multilevel Mental Health Factors in Population Crises
Ridwan Monjur; NUR NASUHA BINTI MOHD DAUD; Siti Hafiza Hafiza Abd Hamid
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Background: Natural disasters, pandemics, armed conflict, and economic upheaval inflict lasting harm on mental wellbeing, yet what determines who recovers and who deteriorates remains poorly understood across crisis types. Objectives: This review maps how crisis exposure shapes wellbeing across four crisis typologies, two surveillance modes (NLP-based and survey/administrative), and three impact directions (favorable, adverse, or mixed). Eligibility criteria: Peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers published in English between 2016 and 2026, applying machine learning, NLP, or deep learning methods to a population exposed to one of the four crisis typologies, and reporting at least one measurable mental health outcome. Sources of evidence: PubMed/MEDLINE, Web of Science, Scopus, and IEEE Xplore, supplemented by forward and backward citation searching and targeted keyword searches. Charting methods: Factors were charted using the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health framework, adapted for the health system where the framework’s coverage is thinnest. They were sorted into tiers, subgroups, and subdimensions with maximum possible fidelity to the original framework. Results: Across 338 codeable determinants, Intermediary Determinants, particularly psychosocial and behavioral-biological factors, accounted for two-thirds of coded determinants, while NLP-based methods proved most effective at capturing structural and contextual signals (e.g., governance, discourse-based constructs) rather than the clinical burden measures that dominate closer to the individual. Favorable, protective constructs were both rarer and less computationally detected than adverse ones, concentrating almost entirely in mastery, self-concept, coping, and social capital. Forty-five factors were set aside as Outcome Measures because they described prior symptoms, diagnoses, or the study's own outcome construct, with 8 being circular with the study's stated target. Fewer studies examined economic downturns, and conflict studies had almost no NLP presence. Conclusions: These findings demonstrate this field has matured methodologically in adverse detection but remains structurally limited in reach. This is most evident in armed conflict contexts and in the surveillance of protective, resilience-oriented signals, highlighting the need for digital phenotyping, expanded NLP coverage, and wider adoption of explainable AI methods.
Can a Fine-Tuned Language Model Assess Personality Equitably Across Race in Older Adults?
Tu Do; Tong Li; Patrick Hill; Seanna Leath; Mehak Gupta; Joshua R. Oltmanns
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Artificial intelligence (AI) enables large-scale personality assessment from language. Differential performance across racial groups should be evaluated before applied use. The present study systematically examines bias in language-based personality prediction from life narrative interviews across Black and White American community older adults. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), BERTopic, and fine-tuned RoBERTa language model predictions of FFM traits were evaluated in a sample of n = 450 Black and n = 450 White older adults matched on education and income. LIWC and BERTopic associations differed little across race, with the few significant differences near chance levels. Fine-tuned RoBERTa predictive accuracy differed significantly for extraversion: the model performed well for White and near chance for Black participants (r = .41 vs. .17). Calibration likewise differed significantly across race only for extraversion. Openness showed significant directional bias, underpredicting scores for Black participants relative to White participants, without a significant calibration difference. These findings indicate that strong aggregate performance across race can mask differential subgroup performance. Keywords: language, natural language processing (NLP), artificial intelligence (AI), personality, five-factor model, big five, racial differences
From Concept to Classroom: Teachers Implementing Mindfulness-based Interventions
Mary L. Phan; Tyler L Renshaw; Melanie M. Domenech RodrĂ­guez; Maggie Chan; Erik J. Reinbergs; Christopher Liang; Stephanie M. Hernandez; Natascha Meyer-PĂ©rez; Amanda Paur; Ginny Watts
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Objectives: This study evaluated a collaboratively developed, teacher-implemented mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) targeting teacher stress and coping and students’ prosocial behavior. The study also examined implementation fidelity, social validity, and sustainment. Methods: Six elementary school teachers in grades 1–3 participated in a single-case multiple-baseline design across participants. Teachers implemented a four-week MBI consisting of daily teacher self-practice and twice-daily classroom mindfulness exercises. Daily measures assessed teacher stress and coping and classroom academic engagement, respectful behavior, and disruptive behavior. Outcomes were evaluated through visual analysis, descriptive statistics, and Non-overlap of All Pairs (NAP) and Improvement Rate Difference (IRD). Fidelity, social validity, and follow-up outcomes through two months post-intervention were also assessed. Results: Functional relations were not consistently demonstrated across teachers. However, several teachers showed reduced stress and improved coping, while several classrooms showed increased academic engagement and respectful behavior and reduced disruptive behavior. Across outcomes, NAP ranged from .36 to 1.00 and IRD from .28 to 1.00. Teachers reported high social validity, and fidelity was high (self-report: M = 98.33%; observed: M = 93.33%). Conclusions: Findings support the feasibility and acceptability of brief, teacher-implemented MBIs. Although functional relations were inconsistent, individual patterns suggest potential benefits for teacher coping and classroom behavior. Flexible, context-responsive implementation may support sustained use in schools.
How Many Factors Underlie the WAIS-5? Evidence From the Australian and New Zealand Standardization Sample.
Paul Skirrow
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The latent structure of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Fifth Edition (WAIS-5) is the subject of recent psychometric debate. Although the publisher's initial confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) supported a theoretically derived five-factor model, a recent independent evaluation of the US standardisation sample found that complementary exploratory and confirmatory analyses favoured a hierarchical four-factor representation. The present study examined whether these findings could be independently replicated using the published WAIS-5 Australasian standardisation sample (N = 677). Exploratory factor analyses were conducted using principal axis factoring with Promax rotation, followed by Schmid-Leiman transformation and model-based reliability and dimensionality analyses. Confirmatory analyses compared competing oblique, higher-order, and bifactor models evaluated in the US sample. Factor-retention procedures did not support the proposed five-factor structure. Exploratory analyses consistently recovered four interpretable factors corresponding to Verbal Comprehension, Perceptual Reasoning, Working Memory, and Processing Speed, with Visual Spatial and Fluid Reasoning failing to emerge as distinct latent constructs. Confirmatory analyses identified the same higher-order (4h3) and bifactor (4b3) models as the preferred representations of the data. Model-based reliability analyses indicated a dominant general factor with smaller contributions from the broad cognitive abilities. Despite modest differences in model parameters, the central conclusions closely replicated those of the US sample.
Protocol for a Multi-method Investigation of Moderators of Emotion Regulation in Youth
Ian Matthew Raugh; Kaitlyn Capano; Diep Nguyen; Gabrielle Reynolds; Allison H. MacNeil; Tovah M Cowan; Jai Shah; Manuela Ferrari
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Background A wide range of psychiatric populations experience difficulties with emotion regulation, including knowing when to regulate, choosing adaptive strategies, and applying selected strategies effectively. To address these challenges, it is important to identify moderators of emotion regulation processes that can be targeted in therapeutic interventions. Although certain moderators, such as mindfulness and cognitive functioning, are relatively well established in the psychiatric literature, cultural background and psychosocial context can be important avenues for investigation. Aims This planned project aims to investigate mindfulness, cognitive functioning, cultural background, and context as moderators of emotion regulation processes. Methods Data will be collected in two samples, a pilot study (completed April 2026) to validate a novel emotion regulation task and a sample of 100 community members. The full study procedures will include a spontaneous emotion regulation task, ecological momentary assessment, brief mindfulness practices, and a cognitive task across a three-week protocol. The task will assess when people choose to regulate, what strategies they select, and how effectively they implement those strategies. Ecological momentary assessment will be used to assess regulatory processes and relevant moderators in daily life. Optional qualitative interviews will be conducted with a subset of participants. Results Results are expected to specify how mindfulness components, cognitive domains, cultural background, and other contextual variables influence specific emotion regulation processes. Conclusions The planned research adopts an innovative approach consisting of multiple complementary methods. Through doing so, we aim to offer valuable insights into moderators of emotion regulation that can be targeted in clinical interventions.
Knowing what to look for strengthens memory associations in contextual cuing
Feifei Zhao; Markus Conci
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In visual search, attentional guidance towards a target can be improved by learning the association between the target location and its surrounding, repeatedly encountered search context, which in turn expedites target detection (contextual cuing). But can these learned contextual cues also predict specific target identities? The current study explored this question using real-world images of objects as search items. Experiment 1 established a baseline for contextual cuing by specifying one single, to-be-detected target object throughout the entire experiment, which resulted in a small but reliable contextual cuing benefit in search latencies. Experiment 2 then introduced 24 possible target objects that would all appear within a given block on separate trials. The results showed enhanced contextual cuing with multiple, variable targets, and an even larger cuing effect when the repeated contexts were consistently associated with specific target identities. Experiment 3 replicated these findings both in behavioral and oculomotor measures: Contextual cuing was expedited both during early visual search associated with attentional guidance (i.e. before target detection) and at later stages of processing during target identification (i.e. after locating the target). These results suggest that repeated contexts can cue not only where to look but also what to look for – with knowledge about both the target location and its identity enhancing visual search by guiding attention more efficiently while also facilitating the subsequent identification of the target.
Questionable prospective effects between maternal health literacy, psychological empowerment, and health-promoting behaviors among pregnant women: A reanalysis of Chen et al. (2026)
Kimmo Sorjonen; Bo Melin; Marika Melin
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Chen et al. examined temporal relations among maternal health literacy, psychological empowerment, and health-promoting behaviors and interpreted their findings as evidence of reciprocal longitudinal influences. However, significant cross-lagged coefficients do not necessarily demonstrate true prospective effects, as such estimates may arise from methodological and statistical artifacts. Using simulated data constructed to match the sample size and correlation matrix reported by Chen et al., we assessed the stability of the reported findings across several analytically plausible models. The results differed markedly depending on the specification employed. Some models suggested positive longitudinal effects, whereas others indicated negative or non-significant associations. After combining all estimates using meta-analytic methods, no overall effect reached statistical significance. These findings indicate that the conclusions drawn by Chen et al. should be interpreted with caution and that the reported cross-lagged associations may not reflect genuine prospective influence. In accordance with multiverse analytic principles, researchers should routinely evaluate multiple reasonable model specifications and synthesize evidence across models before drawing substantive conclusions.
Joint Peer Victimization–Perpetration Trajectories and Cortical Thinning in Early Adolescence
Hamshitha Sasidhar; Alva Tang; Leehyun Yoon
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Importance: Peer victimization and perpetration often co-occur and are associated with adverse psychosocial outcomes, but whether their joint temporal patterns are associated with adolescent brain development is unknown. Objective: To examine whether joint developmental trajectories of peer victimization and perpetration are associated with cortical thinning in social-affective brain regions during early adolescence. Design: Longitudinal cohort study using 2 years of follow-up data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, collected from 2018 to 2022 and analyzed from 2024 to 2026. Setting: The ABCD Study across 21 US research sites. Participants: Trajectory analyses included 8792 adolescents with peer experience data from at least 2 assessments; cortical thickness analyses included 2308 adolescents with MRI data at both visits. Exposures: Joint trajectories of self-reported peer victimization and perpetration assessed at the 2-, 3-, and 4-year follow-ups, spanning ages 11 to 14 years. Main Outcomes and Measures: Two-year change in MRI-derived cortical thickness across 7 prespecified social-affective brain regions between the 2- and 4-year follow-ups. Results: Longitudinal clustering (mean [SD] age, 12.08 [0.66] years; 4250 girls [48.3%]) identified 4 joint trajectories: stably low (62%), increasing (24%), decreasing (10%), and persistently high (4%) in both victimization and perpetration. In cortical thickness analyses (mean [SD] age, 11.98 [0.64] years; 1067 girls [46.2%]), no trajectory-group differences survived correction. Exploratory sex-moderation analyses identified persistently high versus stably low differences in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and lateral orbitofrontal cortex. Compared with the stably low group, the persistently high group showed little to no dorsal anterior cingulate cortex thinning among boys (ÎČ = 0.030; 95% CI, 0.012 to 0.048; P = .001) and greater lateral orbitofrontal cortex thinning among girls (ÎČ = −0.029; 95% CI, −0.055 to −0.002; P = .033). Conclusions and Relevance: Peer victimization and perpetration generally co-occurred and changed together over time in this US adolescent cohort. Exploratory findings suggested that persistently high, co-occurring victimization and perpetration may be neurodevelopmentally relevant, with sex-specific patterns in cortical regions implicated in threat detection, behavioral adaptation, and learning from negative consequences. These findings may inform prevention and early intervention efforts for adolescents persistently embedded in negative peer environments.
Where Attention Goes When Rules Change: Eye-Tracking Signatures of Feedback-Driven Rule Reconfiguration and Attentional-Set Stabilisation
David Levi Tekampe; Angelica Mendes; Katarzyna Bobrowicz; Christine Schiltz; Philip Samuel Santangelo
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Cognitive flexibility requires the formation, maintenance, and updating of attentional sets as task contingencies change. Prior Wisconsin-style eye-tracking studies have primarily examined area-of-interest measures or pupillometry, leaving unclear whether global trial-level gaze in- dices capture feedback-informed rule reconfiguration and subsequent attentional-set stabilisation. We examined fixation count, total fixation duration, saccade count, and gaze dispersion in a computerised Wisconsin-style card-sorting task. Eye-tracking analyses included 84 adults contributing up to 4,711 trials. Participants completed 60 trials organised into deterministic 10-trial blocks defined by colour, shape, or num- ber, and trial-level gaze and behavioural outcomes were analysed using mixed-effects models. Feedback-driven reconfiguration was examined by comparing the first trial following change-signalling negative feedback with the immediately preceding pre-feedback objective-change trial, restricted to transitions in which the objective-change response was incorrect. Following negative feedback, participants showed more fixations, longer total fixation duration, more saccades, and greater gaze dispersion. Across positions 3–10 of each rule block, later positions were characterised by fewer fixations, fewer saccades, lower gaze dispersion, and faster correct responses, whereas total fixation duration did not decrease reliably. Greater whole-decision-period visual sampling was associated with slower correct responses, while higher saccade count, greater gaze dispersion, and longer total fixation duration were associated with lower accuracy. These findings indicate that global eye- movement indices distinguish feedback-informed rule reconfiguration from subsequent attentional-set stabilisation while providing process- level information beyond behavioural performance alone.
Monocular stereopsis, pinholes, and the perils of classroom theorizing: A response to McIntosh (2025).
Dhanraj Vishwanath
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Monocular stereopsis is a compelling perceptual effect wherein viewing a picture of a 3-dimensional scene with one eye through an aperture generates a perceptual impression of depth similar to binocular stereopsis. Here I provide a critique of a recently published report on the topic in the journal i-Perception (McIntosh, 2025). In the report, the author claims to adjudicate on explanations of the monocular stereopsis effect and the phenomenology of stereopsis more broadly construed. The author suggests, based on an informal test comparing pinhole and aperture viewing of a picture during a fifteen-minute classroom lecture break, that the monocular-aperture effect is best explained by a 100-year-old description of the phenomenon. I show that McIntosh’s report reveals a lack of understanding of the modern empirical facts and theoretical concepts relevant to this scientific debate and neglects the rudimentary demands of conducting an interpretable perceptual test.
Changes in passion among baseball fans during and between seasons: A closer look at the seasonal attenuation of passion (SAP) hypothesis
Benjamin J. I. Schellenberg; Jeremie Verner-Filion; Patrick Gaudreau; Nicole Robak
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People often feel passionate toward meaningful activities in their lives, but this passion can change over time by increasing, decreasing or, in extreme cases, disappearing entirely. Recently, the seasonal attenuation of passion (SAP) hypothesis was proposed to help explain the dynamic nature of passion. The SAP hypothesis predicts that, with seasonal activities, passion tends to decrease within a season but increase between seasons. In this research, we tested this hypothesis and examined several mechanisms that may explain fluctuations in passion over time. Baseball fans (N = 1,254) completed four online surveys throughout the 2023 Major League Baseball season (Times 1-3) and at the start of the 2024 season (Time 4). Each survey assessed indices of passion (harmonious passion, obsessive passion, passion criteria) along with potential mechanisms of change, such as savoring, perceptions of team performance, fan experiences, and team satisfaction. Using piecewise growth modeling, our results showed that (a) average levels of all indices of passion declined throughout the 2023 season, (b) there was very little change in passion between the end of the 2023 MLB season and the start of the 2024 MLB season, and (c) savoring was the most consistent predictor of passion at each time point, such that fans who reported greater savoring also reported greater passion. These results partially support the SAP hypothesis and revealed that people may be able to keep their passion alive by savoring positive experiences in their activity.
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.
Retained Activity and Psychological Capital in Ukrainian Academic Populations, 2024
Volodymyr Evheniiovych Momot; Viktoriia Sokolova
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Research on Ukrainian higher education under war has documented institutional adaptation in detail, but individual psychological resources remain largely unmeasured, and where activity appears as a coping factor, its content is rarely distinguished from its presence. This study reports psychological capital (PCQ-24) across three independent Ukrainian academic collections in 2024 (N = 240): faculty at a private university in Dnipro (N = 76), students at the same university (N = 61), and students at two state universities in front-line Zaporizhzhia (N = 103). Retained activity predicted psychological capital in every sample; geography and demography did not. The employment contrast replicated in two independent student collections under different assignment procedures (g = +0.62, 95% CI [+0.05,+1.23]; g = +1.43). Among faculty, self-rated research activity predicted psychological capital (b = +0.40, p < .0001, RÂČ = 0.31). Location, displacement, gender and age showed no large effects, with Bayes factors weakly supporting the null (BF₀₁ = 2.4–2.9); displacement, available here at individual level, replicated a null reported in earlier work on this population. Four structural analyses characterise the construct. Profile analysis shows samples differing in elevation rather than shape (variance ratio 58:1). Clustering, blind to all covariates, yields a stable partition (88%) falling along research activity (p = .0006) rather than demography. Network modelling identifies Hope as most central — robustly among students (96–99% of resamples), contested with self-efficacy among faculty (52%). Mokken scaling reveals a reproducible difficulty gradient (ρ = .67–.82) in which Resilience is retained longest and Optimism relinquished first, a possible early depletion marker. A further claim, more tentative, concerns which activity qualifies. Conservation of Resources holds that investment implies return, predicting that only activity reproducing what was invested generates resource. Two contrasts support this: volunteering dropped out when controlled against research activity (p = .20), and among equally employed students those working in their field scored higher (g = 0.64, p = .023), though this did not survive multivariate control at n = 58. Students holding employment and a merit stipend scored lower than employed non-stipend holders (g = −0.48; BF₀₁ = 0.96), an effect absent among non-working students. These contrasts were formulated after inspecting the data and rest on the weakest links in the chain. At the institutional level, a single case documents a university resuming teaching eighteen days after suspension in February 2022, enabled by organisational competence built for a different crisis. We propose a refinement to Hobfoll's resource caravan passageways: a passageway defines what is possible but does not itself produce passage through it. Magnitudes varied across replications (g = 0.62–1.43); the pooled value should not be interpreted.
Construct Continuity With Limited Cross-Modal Agreement: Attention Networks in Immersive Virtual Reality
David Levi Tekampe; Anxhela Sulaj; Angelica Mendes; Philip Samuel Santangelo
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Immersive virtual reality (VR) is increasingly used in cognitive assessment, yet it remains unclear whether established attention paradigms retain their interpretability when translated from desktop presentation to head-mounted delivery. The present study examined whether atten- tional effects measured with the Attention Network Test-Revised (ANT-R) are preserved in immersive VR when task-defining properties are held constant across modalities. Seventy-nine adults (N = 79) completed a within-subject comparison of a desktop ANT-R and a task-matched immersive VR implementation (ANT-VR; Meta Quest 3). Across modalities, stimuli, cueing logic, trial timing, conflict manipulations, and scoring were matched. Trial-level reaction time (RT) and accuracy data were analysed using pre-specified mixed-effects models, and sec- ondary psychometric analyses examined cross-modal agreement of participant-level effect scores. Canonical ANT-R effects were reproduced across both modalities, especially in RT, including alerting benefits, orienting and validity effects, flanker conflict, location conflict, and dual- conflict (flanker-by-location) integration. However, VR was associated with slower responses and slightly lower accuracy than desktop ad- ministration, and modality moderated selected orienting-related and conflict-related contrasts. Secondary agreement analyses showed selec- tive participant-level agreement between desktop and VR, with the strongest cross-modal agreement observed for flanker conflict, whereas equivalence was not supported. These findings indicate that immersive VR preserves the major canonical ANT-R contrast pattern under task- matched implementation while shifting baseline performance and moderating selected effect magnitudes. Immersive VR therefore supports construct continuity of ANT-R performance but should be treated as a distinct measurement context rather than as psychometrically inter- changeable with desktop administration.
Effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences on Severe Mental Health Conditions in Early Adulthood: A Twin Study
Xinyu Meng; Giacomo Bignardi; Jessie Baldwin; Andrea Danese; Thalia Catherine Eley; Chloe Chung Yi Wong; Tom McAdams
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Importance Adverse childhood experiences are associated with later severe mental health conditions, but the extent to which these associations reflect a causal effect of adversity rather than confounding remains unclear. Objective To test whether within-twin-pair differences in reported adverse childhood experiences predict differences in severe mental health conditions in early adulthood, and to decompose covariation between adverse childhood experiences and severe mental health conditions into genetic and environmental components. Design Setting and Participants This study used data from the Twins Early Development Study, a population-based cohort of twins born in England and Wales (1994-1996), with assessments at ages 12, 14, 16, 21, and 26. Within-twin-pair regression and bivariate biometric twin models were used to distinguish potential causal effects from familial confounding. Exposures Childhood maltreatment (abuse and neglect, retrospective, ages 21 and 26) and peer victimization (bullying, prospective, ages 12, 14, 16). Main Outcomes and Measures Seventeen measures of severe mental health conditions spanning psychosis-spectrum symptoms, (hypo)manic symptoms, self-harm and suicidal behaviour, and reported diagnoses. Results Outcomes were assessed at ages 21 (13,794 individuals) and 26 (11,436 individuals). After false discovery rate correction, childhood maltreatment was associated with all 17 outcomes at the population level and peer victimization with 16. Monozygotic within-pair models were estimable for 14 outcomes. All 14 maltreatment associations remained significant, with pooled symptom estimates attenuating by 21% (0.30 to 0.24) and pooled odds ratios of 1.85 vs 1.95 at the population level. Only 2 peer victimization associations remained (paranoia and hallucinations at age 21), with attenuation of 53% (0.20 to 0.09) and pooled odds ratios of 1.18 vs 1.59. Bivariate biometric twin models supported the within-pair findings while also demonstrating that all covariances were partially attributable to shared genetic liability. Conclusions and Relevance Associations between adverse childhood experiences and severe mental health conditions in young adulthood reflected both shared genetic liability and potential causal effects. Childhood maltreatment showed more persistent within-pair associations than peer victimization, consistent with a greater contribution of non-shared environmental effects. Findings highlight childhood maltreatment as a potentially modifiable pathway to severe psychopathology, supporting the importance of trauma-informed care.
I-ROAR-Word: Validity and reliability of an Italian online screener for single-word reading
Elisa Bassoli; Giuditta Smith; Yagmur Ozturk; Emily ARTEAGA GARCIA; Wanjing Anya Ma; Jason D. Yeatman; Marilina Mastrogiuseppe; Sendy Caffarra
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Large-scale screening of reading abilities is crucial to track learning trajectories and identify learning difficulties early on, but resource constraints and heterogeneity of training make successful implementation challenging. For the present study, we validated an online, self-administered, automated, and open-access screener for Italian single-word reading (I-ROAR-Word). I-ROAR-Word and standardized measures of Italian reading ability, vocabulary, and non-verbal intelligence were administered to 1045 children aged 6-11 (females = 543, mean age = 8.81) recruited in northern Italy (30% bilinguals, of which 85% born in Italy). The most represented ethnicities were White, Arab, and Black/African. The main I-ROAR-Word outcome measures are Response Time (RT) and accuracy. After selecting the list of stimuli based on item response theory, we found that I-ROAR-Word well approximates standardized reading score DDE-2 word after correcting for age, cognitive measures, and vocabulary measures (concurrent validity), it replicates known lexical effects (theoretical consistency), and it successfully differentiates between struggling readers and typical readers of the same age (construct validity). We conclude that I-ROAR-Word is a valid and reliable screener for Italian single-word reading in elementary school.
Dissociating motion adaptation and action expectation effects when viewing another's gaze
Christian Renet; Ronja Löfström; Arvid Guterstam
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Recent publications have reported that brief exposure to static images depicting an agent actively gazing at an object produces a motion adaptation effect congruent with the direction of the gaze, suggesting that encoding of an implied motion in that direction occurs. Three accounts can explain this finding: either the agent’s attentive gaze (attention-motion hypothesis) or an expectation that the agent will perform an action toward the target of gaze (action-expectation hypothesis) is encoded as implied motion, or both. We directly contrasted these hypotheses by replicating the original experiment with one key change: the static image was replaced with one in which the directions of attentive gaze and action expectation were dissociated. A significant motion adaption effect in the agent-to-object direction was detected, which disappeared when the agent was blindfolded. This finding supports the attention-motion hypothesis and rules out action-expectations as an (exclusive) explanation of the previously reported effect.
People remember dot patterns during numerosity estimation tasks
Declan Devlin; Eivind Kaspersen; Trygve Solstad
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People are able to rapidly estimate the numerosity of visually presented quantities (e.g., arrays of dots), but precisely how they do so remains debated. One recent proposal is that people may estimate quantities by comparing currently presented arrays with previously presented ones. However, such proposals implicitly assume that people can retain sufficiently detailed information about briefly presented and relatively nondescript arrays. The present study directly investigated this assumption. Specifically, participants completed a quantity estimation task followed by a surprise memory task in which they were asked to identify which of three patterns with identical numerosities but different dot arrangements they had estimated before. Despite each array being presented for only 500 ms, participants recognised previously presented patterns at greater-than-chance levels across two experiments. Moreover, recognition accuracy was associated with participants’ self-reported confidence in their responses across both experiments, suggesting that participants possessed some degree of conscious access to their visual memories. Overall, these findings provide direct evidence that people spontaneously retain visual information about previously presented dot patterns during numerosity estimation tasks. Although these findings do not demonstrate that people actively use such information during estimation, they nevertheless strengthen a foundational assumption underlying visual comparison accounts of numerosity estimation.
The Utilities of Beauty and Money are Largely Additive
Youjing Luo; Anna Bruns; Laurence T. Maloney; Olivia S. Cheung; Denis G. Pelli
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Beauty is typically excluded from quantitative models of economic value. We use BDM-auction and 2AFC tasks to find instead that the feeling of beauty increases willingness to pay, and its utility combines with that of money in a largely additive way. The contribution of beauty to utility is nearly independent of money’s contribution, with only a small interaction effect. These results show that incorporating beauty as a component of utility can greatly enhance prediction of choice and valuation.
Does Outcome Utility Bias the Mental Simulations of Risky Events?
Yun-Xiao Li; Johanna Falben; Lucas Castillo; Jake Spicer; Jian-Qiao Zhu; Stella Qian; Nick Chater; Adam N Sanborn
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Does the utility of an outcome influence people's assessment of risk and uncertainty? Prominent theories propose that people rely on mental simulation to evaluate probabilities and risky events, yet prior empirical findings is mixed as to whether and how utility biases this process. Across four experiments (total N=206, with Experiment 4 pre-registered), we tested this question using a random generation paradigm, in which participants mentally simulated gamble outcomes and said them out loud. Then we compared these responses with probability judgments and predictions. While we identified individual differences, the majority of participants exhibited neutrality, with no systematic impact of utility on their sampling distributions. Nevertheless, an optimism subgroup emerged, with a larger proportion of optimistic participants when the monetary context was more salient. Additionally, outcome utilities have similar effects on probability judgments, predictions, and random generation tasks, consistent with the proposal that these tasks are related to each other and may all rely on mental simulation. These findings indicate that utility does not uniformly distort mental simulation, but can do so for a stable subgroup under particular motivational contexts, and they motivate cognitive models that capture both unbiased and optimistic forms of mental sampling.
Maternal Stress and Mother-Child Interaction Dynamics: The Roles of Child Age and Maternal Emotion Regulation
Julia Folz; Trinh Nguyen; Stefanie Hoehl; Vanessa Anna van Ast; Milica Nikolic
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Caregivers often face stressful multi-tasking situations in which household- or work-related tasks compete with engaging with their young child. Caregivers’ experiences of stress can affect how they interact with their children and may also be transmitted to the child. This “stress contagion” may be particularly pronounced with caregivers who have difficulties in regulating stress responses. In the current study, we examined how inducing stress in 62 mothers shaped the dyadic interaction (expression of facial affect and cardiovascular activity) with their 6-38 months-old children, and how stress-induced changes varied depending on self-reported maternal emotion regulation difficulties and child age. Mothers’ and children’s positive and negative facial affect, inter-beat intervals (IBIs) and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), as well as synchrony in each measure, were compared between two-minute face-to-face interactions before and after a stress induction in the mother (pre- and post-stress). Maternal stress impacted the dyad differently depending on the child’s age. In interactions with younger children, both mothers and children showed less positive facial expressions and were less synchronized in their expressions post- versus pre-stress. Older children, in contrast, showed stronger physiological arousal (i.e., decrease in IBIs and RSA), but more positive facial expressions post-stress. In addition, mothers with more emotion regulation difficulties expressed more negative affect, and their heart rates were less synchronized with their children’s post- versus pre-stress. Both child age and mothers’ regulatory abilities are thus shaping the impact of acute maternal stress on mother-child interaction quality and should be considered in interventions on parental stress
Generics and stereotypes: A cognitive account
Jérémie Lafraire; Adoracion Guzman Garcia
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Generic statements about social categories (e.g., “Women are nurturing”, “Boys don’t cry”) are a pervasive vehicle for expressing stereotypes. Although descriptively framed, they often generate normative expectations about how members of social groups should think, feel, or behave. Drawing on philosophy of language, developmental psychology, and social cognition, this chapter argues that such normativity does not arise from linguistic meaning alone, but from the interaction between generic language and two cognitive mechanisms: psychological essentialism and the inherence heuristic. By highlighting category-level regularities, generics can encourage socially produced patterns to be interpreted as reflecting deep, stable, and inherent properties of groups, thereby making stereotypes appear natural and normatively appropriate. At the same time, these effects are neither inevitable nor uniform: different linguistic framings and explanatory contexts can substantially alter how social generalizations are interpreted. We conclude by reviewing linguistic and explanatory strategies that can constrain essentialist interpretations and help negotiate or counteract stereotypical norms.
Affect, Social Support and Gratitude among Ukrainian University Students in the Acute Phase of War, November 2022
Volodymyr Evheniiovych Momot
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Research on the psychological impact of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been dominated by distress instruments and by data collected retrospectively or through online snowball recruitment. Comparatively little is known about the resource side of the acute phase: what remained intact, and in what form. This study reports data collected in a single session on 15 November 2022, three weeks after the first sustained Russian strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, from second- and fourth-year students at a private university in Dnipro (aged approximately 17-18 and 19-20). Four instruments were administered consecutively in a 20-minute window following a deliberately non-reassuring reflective framing: SoZU-14 (N = 146), PANAS (N = 103), GQ-6 (N = 117) and a 15-item proactive-position scale (N = 114). The affective profile did not correspond to acute distress. Negative affect was indistinguishable from the published normative mean (18.0 vs. 17.4, d = +0.10, p = .43), whereas positive affect was reduced (30.7 vs 33.3, d = -0.36, p = .001). Within negative affect the elevated items were those of chronic friction, while acute-threat and self-blame items sat at the floor (scared 1.40, ashamed 1.37); within positive affect, engagement was preserved (interested 3.47, active 3.44) while peak states were suppressed (proud 2.83, excited 2.47). The relational instruments showed a parallel asymmetry along an unexpected line. SoZU-14 items did not separate close from distant ties; they separated the presence of supportive relationships (4.39) from turning to them for help (3.83; dz = 1.00, 82% of respondents). The three items shared with the F-SozU K-3, near-identical in a German representative sample (4.29, 4.30, 4.21; range 0.09), spread across 0.63 here, with the presence item above the German mean and both mobilisation items below it, while the three-item total matched the German norm (12.27 vs 12.33). Support was normal in volume and atypical in structure. Gratitude fell below undergraduate norms (d = -0.52 to -0.62) and attached to life in general (6.27) rather than to a wide range of people (4.80; dz = 0.90). The three comparisons form a gradient ordered by how much outward investment each construct presupposes. No cohort difference appeared on any instrument. The dissociation was graded by resource state: the presence-mobilisation gap fell to near the German value in the highest quintile of support and followed an inverted-U, peaking not among the most deprived but among those with substantial close ties and limited overall resource (quadratic R2 = .205 vs .055 linear, p < .0001; replicated on gratitude). We interpret this configuration as resource conservation rather than depletion: the stock of affective and relational resources is intact while its expenditure is restricted. Conservation of Resources theory accounts for rationing of a preserved stock; Socioemotional Selectivity Theory for which states and network layers were retained.
Evaluation of replication success: A statistical perspective and extended analysis of the SCORE data
Robbie Cornelis Maria van Aert; Marcel A. L. M. van Assen; Ruben Lopez-Nicolas
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Replications are more and more conducted in multiple research fields. A recent large-scale replication project, Systematizing Confidence in Open Research and Evidence (SCORE) project, replicated 274 effects from research on business, economics, education, political science, psychology, and sociology. An open question remains how replication success can best be assessed. Thirteen methods for assessing replication success were applied in the SCORE project. The first goal of this paper is studying the statistical properties of replication success methods by a numerical study tailored to the characteristics of the SCORE data. The results of the numerical study show that replication success methods are unable to reliably draw a conclusion about replication success for typical sample sizes of the original study and replication. Hence, there is often insufficient information in one original study and one replication for drawing definite conclusions. The second goal of this paper is taking a novel perspective on the SCORE data by estimating the effect size of an original study and replication. Meta-analysis methods that correct for potential bias in the original study yielded close to unbiased estimates when synthesizing the original study and replication. The reanalysis of the SCORE data revealed that meta-analytic estimates were substantially closer to the effect size of the replication compared to the original study. The null hypothesis of no effect was rejected by the meta-analysis methods in 59.2% to 81.3% of the pairs of an original study and replication. We recommend researchers to make sure that methods for analyzing replicability have favorable statistical properties for the data at hand before applying these methods.
The Current State of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy in Sport and Exercise Psychology
Adrian Hase; Michael Hase
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Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is a tried-andtested treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder but has also established its efficacy in other fields where psychological problems can be associated with stressful memories. This article proposes EMDR therapy as a potential tool for treating the harmful effects of stressful sport-related experiences and their associated memories on both high-level and recreational athletes. We review the literature on the efficacy of EMDR therapy interventions for treating such stressful sport-related memories and propose a foundational conceptual model for understanding the effects of stressful sport-related memories on psychology, physiology, sport performance, sport participation, and health outcomes. The model also identifies targets for, mechanisms of, and focal outcomes of successful EMDR treatment of stressful sport-related memories. We also discuss three possible applied use cases focused on the outcomes of sport performance, sport participation, and emotional responses to sport; and point to avenues for future EMDR therapy research in sport and exercise science.
Visual hemifield dominance during interocular conflict and why it matters
Chris Paffen; David Alais; Andre Sahakian
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Due to the eyes being separated about six centimeters horizontally, the visual system is often confronted with non-overlapping visual input, especially in the visual periphery. Apart from supporting stereovision, non-overlapping – conflicting – visual input can potentially hinder perception of distant, fixated objects of interest. Here we review, on first sight conflicting, studies on interocular conflict in the visual periphery that reported either nasal or temporal visual field preferences during interocular competition. While these studies interpreted hemifield preferences mainly in terms of neuro-anatomical aspects of the visual system, we here argue that they have a functional goal: to suppress information that hinders perception of distant fixated objects of interest. Optimizing hemifield preferences towards this goal leads to a temporal visual field preference at around fixation, a nasal visual field preference in the near periphery, and a temporal visual advantage in the far periphery. Our functional account of hemifield preference during interocular competition thereby reconciles inconsistencies in the literature by analyzing at what eccentricities the interocular conflict in the studies was evoked. Finally, our proposal once more shows that interocular conflict in general, as well as binocular rivalry specifically, are not merely a laboratory curiosity.
Discrete Indexing of Graded Sensory Codes in Working Memory
Hyung-Bum Park
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Working memory (WM) research has long debated whether storage is limited by discrete slots or distributed resources. Recent neuroscientific findings suggest that neither account alone captures the joint presence of stable item limits and graded variability in representational fidelity. The present study proposes a context-content hierarchical framework that integrates these properties within a two level architecture. A capacity limited “context” system maintains discrete spatiotemporal pointers that individuate and prioritize items, whereas a precision limited “content” system represents detailed sensory information in modality-specific population codes whose fidelity varies with task demands. The framework further posits that pointer states can bias access to content representations and, when needed, support cue-dependent reinstatement of latent sensory traces. This architecture provides a principled interpretation of capacity-like and precision-like measures, accommodates activity-silent storage and retro-cue benefits, and clarifies when contextual retrieval protects performance under proactive interference. The framework also yields falsifiable predictions for neural population geometry, cross domain generalization of load signals, and dissociations between capacity and fidelity under targeted manipulations. By integrating discrete control signals with continuous sensory representations, the context-content framework reconceptualizes WM as a dynamic, generative system that balances sparse indexing with on-demand reconstruction to guide adaptive behavior.
Neural responses to conditioned threat during extinction predict concurrent and future anxiety in late adolescence
Kubra Ulusoy; Liat Levita
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Adolescence is a critical developmental period characterised by heightened anxiety and increased risk for anxiety disorders, potentially reflecting developmental differences in threat learning and extinction processes. Although previous research suggests that early adolescents show enhanced visual event-related potential (ERP) responses to conditioned threat cues, it remains unclear whether these neural patterns persist into late adolescence or predict anxiety vulnerability. This study examined neural responses to conditioned threat cues during threat acquisition and extinction in late adolescence and investigated their association with current and future anxiety. Sixty-eight late adolescents (aged 18-19) completed a Pavlovian threat conditioning task in which a conditioned stimulus (CS+) was paired with an aversive sound on 50% of trials, whereas a second cue (CS-) was never reinforced. An immediate extinction phase followed, during which both cues were presented without reinforcement. Behavioural and physiological measures indicated successful threat acquisition and extinction. ERP analyses revealed no evidence of differential conditioning in P1 amplitudes. In contrast, N1 amplitudes were significantly larger to the CS- than the CS+ across both acquisition and extinction. The late positive potential (LPP) showed the opposite pattern, with larger amplitudes to the CS+ than the CS- during both phases. Logistic regression analyses controlling for depressive symptoms and gender indicated that P1 and N1 responses were unrelated to current or future anxiety caseness. Whereas greater LPP differentiation (CS+ > CS-) during extinction was associated with increased odds of belonging to the high-anxiety group both concurrently and six months later. Together, these findings suggest that differences between high- and low-anxiety adolescents are reflected in later neural responses to conditioned threat during extinction, but not in early visual sensory-attentional processing. Extinction-related LPP responses may therefore represent a promising neural marker of current and future anxiety in late adolescence.
Affective benefits of daily life activity and experiential diversity are associated with catecholamine systems across the adult life span
Jennifer Lee Crawford; Johanna Matulonis; Mariah Lewis; Hsiang-Yu Chen; Jacob M. Hooker; Heidi I. L. Jacobs; Aaron S Heller; Anne S. Berry
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Engaging in varied behaviors promotes well-being in both humans and non-human animals. The current study tested whether the diversity of daily life activities and experiences are associated with affect and cognition across adulthood. Additional analyses explored the role of the catecholamine systems in sustaining the benefits of daily life diversity. Participants (N=184) ages 18-87 completed three weeks of daily life sampling that included repeated measurements of activities, affect, and geolocation. In a subset of these participants, we used MRI (N=72) and PET (N=35) to measure catecholamine systems. Both activity and experiential diversity were independently associated with affect, but not cognition. Interestingly, the coupling between affect and activity diversity was related to the dopaminergic system, whereas the coupling between affect and experiential diversity was associated with the noradrenergic system. These findings suggest that catecholamine systems play complementary roles in supporting the affective benefits of activity and experiential diversity across adulthood.
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.
Change by Compassion: Introducing moralistic versus compassionate evaluation as a bridge between do-gooder derogation, nonviolent communication, and self-compassion
Daniel Florian Dorji Gratzer; Jana Katharina Köhler
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We introduce the construct of moralistic evaluation—contrasted with compassionate evaluation—as a bridging concept linking do-gooder derogation (DGD) with frameworks of self-compassion and nonviolent communication. We further provide exploratory evidence that moralistic evaluation increases DGD, thereby reducing persuasiveness relative to compassionate evaluation. In a preregistered within-participants online experiment (N = 458 non-vegan German speakers), participants viewed two short videos of a vegan advocating a plant-based diet, presented in moralistic or compassionate evaluation. Manipulation checks confirmed higher perceived judgment in the moralistic condition. Compassionate framing increased likability (reverse DGD) and persuasiveness (r(rb) = .88 and .74, respectively). In a mediation model, likability statistically accounted for the association between framing and persuasiveness (ÎČ = 0.69); no direct path was detectable. Interpreted through the lens of self-compassion and nonviolent communication, these findings provide exploratory support for the proposed bridging construct and invite further study.
Similarity or Cumulative Load? A Response Surface Analysis of Autistic Traits and Parental Stress in Mother-Child Dyads
Jan ƁabędĆș; Julia; Alicja NiedĆșwiecka; Joanna Ludwika Beck; Ewa Pisula; Gianluca Esposito; Agnieszka Pluta
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Phenotypic overlap in autistic traits between parents and children may have contrasting implications for caregiving. Greater similarity may promote mutual understanding, predictability, and shared communication styles, potentially facilitating parent–child interactions. Conversely, when both parent and child show elevated autistic traits, their combined characteristics may increase caregiving demands and reduce the parent's capacity to respond effectively to the child's needs.We examined 115 mother-child dyads to determine whether congruence or mismatch in autistic trait levels was associated with maternal parenting stress. Mothers’ and children’s autistic traits were assessed using age-appropriate forms of the Social Responsiveness Scale, Second Edition (SRS-2). Response surface analysis was used to evaluate two competing hypotheses. The Congruence Hypothesis proposed that maternal parenting stress would be lower when mothers and children showed similar levels of autistic traits, whereas the Discrepancy Hypothesis proposed that parenting stress would increase as the difference in autistic trait levels between mothers and children became greater. Finally, the Directionality of Mismatch Hypothesis predicted higher parenting stress when children’s autistic trait levels exceeded those of their mothers. None of these hypotheses was supported. Instead, higher autistic trait levels in both dyad members were associated with greater maternal parenting stress, with children’s traits showing the stronger association.
Tracing uncertainty in mind perception: Examining the role of affirming versus denying mental capacities in robots.
Yasmina Giebeler; Nueud Kassaye; Basil Wahn; Eva Wiese
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Mind perception, the capacity to infer others’ intentions and affective states, is central to social cognition. Its two dimensions, agency (act and plan) and experience (sense and feel), shape perceived responsibility and empathy, structure moral behavior, and determine perceived social relevance. Robots are less readily perceived as “having a mind”, which can negatively impact human-robot interaction. Although it is well established that an agent’s appearance impacts mind perception, it remains unclear how body and face cues selectively promote perceptions of agency and experience. Moreover, prior research strongly relies on explicit ratings, offering limited insight into decision-making processes and potential uncertainties associated with judging a robot’s mind. Mouse-tracking provides a promising approach capturing both explicit mind perception judgments and associated uncertainties. As uncertainty is linked to negative affective responses and cognitive conflict, the present study uses mouse tracking to examine whether explicit agency and experience ratings, associated with robotic face and body features variations, trigger uncertainty. Explicit ratings showed distinct effects of appearance: body features were associated with variations in agency perception, whereas facial features explained variations in both agency and experience. Mouse-tracking parameters did not differ as a function of physical features (body vs. face) or mind perception dimensions (agency vs. experience). Interestingly though, overall greater uncertainty was observed when participants affirmed versus denied mental capacities, which was particularly pronounced for agency assessments. These findings demonstrate that face and body cues reliably shape mind perception, while also being linked to intrinsic uncertainty associated with affirming mental capacities in artificial agents.
Reducing belief in conspiracy theories as they unfold using large language models
Thomas H Costello; Nathaniel Rabb; Michael Nicholas Stagnaro; Gordon Pennycook; David Gertler Rand
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The emergence of conspiracy theories in the wake of major events is a significant societal challenge. Here we test whether conversational dialogues with a large language model (LLM) can reduce belief in immediately unfolding conspiracies. In experiments conducted in the days following the July 2024 assassination attempt on Donald Trump and the September 2025 assassination of Charlie Kirk, U.S. adults (Experiment 1: N = 472; Experiment 2: N = 1035) holding conspiratorial views about the crisis event engaged in a multi-turn conversation with an LLM prompted to reduce their conspiracy belief. Compared to control participants who either discussed an irrelevant topic with an LLM or viewed a static fact sheet, participants in the LLM treatment showed significantly reduced conspiracy beliefs in both experiments. We also found evidence of downstream effects of the LLM treatment, observing reduced belief in different conspiracies one to two months later in the wake of subsequent crisis events. These results shed light on the psychology of emerging conspiracies and highlight the potential for scalable, cognitively-focused interventions to counteract misinformation in the immediate aftermath of high-profile societal events.
The Morality-Effectiveness Disconnect of Pro-environmental Behaviors
Jareef Martuza; Hege Landsvik
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Not all pro-environmental behaviors are created equal—some are vastly more effective at mitigating climate change than others. Do people judge the more effective behaviors as proportionally more moral? Five main and six supplemental studies (N = 9,247) across five countries reveal a robust morality-effectiveness disconnect: pro-environmental behaviors that rank better on objective climate-mitigation potential rank worse on individual moral judgments. Laypeople fail to predict this pattern, believing that a positive relationship exists. Further, labeling behaviors by climate impact category reduces the morality-effectiveness disconnect, and detailed impact information reverses it and increases policy endorsement of more effective behaviors over less effective behaviors. While the disconnect primarily stems from effectiveness misperceptions that accurate information can mitigate, we find that personal support for less effective behaviors plays an additional role. Thus, people's moral intuition for climate action appears miscalibrated: moral cognition can undermine the collective welfare that such cognition should presumably promote.
Insomnia and Emotion Dysregulation Across the Perinatal Period: Daily and Longitudinal Associations with Anxiety and Depression
Emily Barrett; Benicio Frey; David L. Streiner; Sheryl Green
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Background: Insomnia is prevalent during pregnancy and the postpartum period and contributes to vulnerability for anxiety and depressive disorders during this time. However, the mechanisms linking sleep disturbance to depressive and anxiety symptoms remain unclear. Emotion dysregulation (ED) and pre-sleep arousal have been proposed as key transdiagnostic processes. This is the first study to integrate daily and longitudinal methods to examine these mechanisms across the perinatal period. Methods: Data were drawn from a randomized controlled trial evaluating two brief interventions for insomnia during pregnancy and the postpartum. Seventy-five pregnant individuals were assessed across pregnancy and the postpartum using trait measures and 7-day daily surveys at three timepoints. Regression models examined whether prenatal insomnia, ED, and their interaction predicted postpartum depression, anxiety, and worry. Multilevel models tested within-person associations between daily sleep and next-day symptoms, with ED as a moderator, and cluster bootstrap mediation analyses examined pre-sleep arousal as a mediator of sleep–symptom associations. Results: For postpartum anxiety symptoms, higher prenatal insomnia and ED independently predicted symptoms, with a significant interaction (ÎČ = .28, p = .003). For postpartum depressive symptoms, only the insomnia × ED interaction was significant (ÎČ = .23, p = .045). For postpartum worry, only baseline worry predicted outcomes. At the within-person level, sleep quality and sleep onset latency predicted next-day anxiety and depression; ED did not moderate these associations. Mediation analyses indicated that daytime anxiety and depressive symptoms predicted poorer sleep quality, sleep onset latency, and sleep efficiency through increased pre-sleep arousal. Conclusions: Findings support a pathway linking insomnia and ED to perinatal anxiety and depression. Results suggest that prenatal ED is associated with heightened vulnerability to the mental health consequences of insomnia and identify pre-sleep arousal as a key mechanism linking daytime affect to sleep disruption. Clinical implications for perinatal mental health are discussed.
Anxious avoidance as disrupted exploration
Vanessa M Brown; Alexandre Dombrovski
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Avoidance is a hallmark of anxiety. Exposure treatments often help overcome avoidance, yet why avoidance persists without external reinforcement remains unclear. We propose that one contributing factor is a failure to adaptively use uncertainty when deciding whether to explore choices with unknown outcomes. Using reinforcement learning and explore/exploit paradigms, we examined whether anxious individuals misestimate the value of exploration. We tested this hypothesis against alternatives— uncertainty intolerance, punishment sensitivity, and stochastic choice—in a task where optimal behavior required both increasing and decreasing exploration. Consistent with our hypothesis, people high in anxiety failed to adjust exploration based on uncertainty, instead either under-exploring or over-exploring. This deficit was distinct from intolerance of uncertainty and remained after controlling for other internalizing symptoms. These findings suggest that anxious avoidance may stem from misestimating uncertainty and the value of exploration, pointing to new treatment targets focused on improving adaptive use of uncertainty.
Developmental changes in the weighting of prosodic cues
Alex Eguiluz; 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.
Identifying effective misperception correction messages to increase public support for biodiversity policies
Sandra Jeanette Geiger; Jeffrey Martin Lees; Mathew P. White
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People often underestimate support for pro-environmental policies. While correcting such misperceptions should, in theory, boost policy support, the evidence remains mixed. To improve message effectiveness, we develop and test a systematic process titration approach based on three stepwise, theoretically informed criteria: messages that target (1) substantial misperceptions of (2) majority positions, which are (3) conceptually close (statistically related) to policy support. Across three preregistered studies in the US (n = 21,600)—a survey, single-message experiments, and a tournament of ten corrective messages—we apply this approach to 32 perceptions of others’ beliefs, emotions, values, policy preferences, and behaviors, to increase support for the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. Criteria 1 and 2 most reliably distinguish effective from ineffective messages (ή = 0.24, 95% CrI [0.11, 0.36]). Contrary to theory and existing research practices, Criterion 3—statistical associations between misperceptions and the outcome—provides no predictive value in identifying effective interventions beyond Criteria 1 and 2. Overall, a two-step titration process approach offers a practical and effective way to identify misperception targets before large-scale implementations.
Digital mental health interventions for anxiety: An umbrella review and multiverse meta- analysis
Constantin Yves Plessen; Olga-Maria Panagiotopoulou; Clara Miguel; Marketa Ciharova; Davide Papola; Darin Pauley; Eirini Karyotaki; Pim Cuijpers
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Several meta-analyses and meta-reviews have yielded inconclusive results on the efficacy of digital mental health interventions for anxiety disorders. To address this discrepancy, we conducted an umbrella review and multiverse meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials with no restrictions on intervention type, target group, format, control condition, or diagnosis. Studies focusing on comorbid anxiety were excluded. We screened 10.942 records and retrieved 1.263 full texts, identifying 10 meta-analyses and 81 randomized controlled trials meeting inclusion criteria. Unfortunately, the majority of included meta-analyses and primary investigations were of suboptimal quality, with possible conflicts of interest. Only two meta-analyses provided suggestive evidence, and the majority yielded weak evidence. Digital interventions demonstrated stronger evidence for the treatment of generalized anxiety disorder than other anxiety disorders. The multiverse meta-analysis calculated 2.220 additional meta-analyses, with an average effect size of Hedges’ g = 0.65 with 79% of the meta-analyses reaching at least a small effect size. Results suggest the overall robustness of digital interventions, with larger effect sizes observed for guided interventions, internet-based interventions, and comparisons with waitlist control groups. Nonetheless, we caution against overinterpreting findings given the overall low quality of evidence.
The perceived role of consciousness in moral status attributions
Rony Hirschhorn; Niccolo Negro; Liad Mudrik
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Determining which entities deserve moral consideration is crucial to policy debates about animal welfare and artificial intelligence regulation. A common assumption is that consciousness is a key criterion for moral status, often considered to be necessary or sufficient for it. However, it is unclear whether public attitudes also share this assumption. In a large, preregistered study (N=1493), we tested the perceived relationship between consciousness and moral status by triangulating direct questions, moral dilemmas, and attribution questions across diverse entities. Although consciousness was strongly associated with moral status, it was neither perceived as necessary nor sufficient: participants attributed moral status without consciousness, and denied moral status despite its presence. Moreover, respondents clustered into distinct decision profiles, which were predicted by their individual background. Therefore, moral decisions did not depend solely on the properties of the target entity, but also on those of the person making the judgment. These results have implications for how ethical and policy decisions are framed.
Context Matters: Within-Person Effects of Smartphone Use on Momentary Well-Being
Katherine Roehrick; Mahnaz Roshanaei; Serena Jimyn Soh; Sumer Sumeet Vaid; Joanne M. Chung; Joseph Bayer; Gabriella M. Harari
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We adopt a contextual framework to examine the within-person associations between smartphone use and subsequent momentary well-being. In a large intensive mobile sensing and experience sampling study (N = 1,003 young adult; 36,949 observations), we examined the relationship between five broad indicators of well-being (loneliness, stress, sadness, contentment, and energy level), two indicators of smartphone use (frequency and duration of use), and two contextual factors (social and spatial). We found that frequent “check-ins” had a small positive association with momentary well-being: when people unlocked their phones more often than usual, they reported feeling less lonely, less sad, more content, and more energetic. On the other hand, long sessions had a small negative association with momentary well-being: when people spent longer periods of time on their phones than usual, they reported feeling more lonely and more sad, while also feeling less content and less energetic. Moreover, we found that contextual factors were (a) a more important predictor of momentary well-being, and (b) moderated the within-person associations between smartphone use and well-being. Frequent and prolonged smartphone use was more detrimental to momentary well-being when occurring in social settings (around strong or weak ties vs. when alone) and in public or work environments (vs. at home). Overall, we find a relationship between smartphone use and momentary well-being exists, but the direction of this effect is sensitive to context—underscoring the value of a situational approach to media effects research.
Too Much, Too Little, or Just Right? Identity Processes and Motivations Explain Everyday Perceptions of Time Spent on Social Media
Gabriella M. Harari; Serena Jimyn Soh; Zhenchao Hu; Sanaz Talaifar; Alan Meca; Noah Vinoya; Rui Pei; Samantha Jo Grayson; Sumer Sumeet Vaid; Nilam Ram
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Emerging adults use social media—and evaluate their use—while navigating the critical task of identity development. We investigate how evaluations of time spent on social media are associated with (a) individual differences in identity development and (b) situational fluctuations in identity-relevant social media motivations. In our longitudinal field study (N = 2,251; 87,283 observations), emerging adults forming their identity tended to evaluate their social media time as balanced (i.e., the right amount), whereas those evaluating their identity tended to perceive imbalance (i.e., too much or too little time spent). Using social media to connect with others was associated with momentary perceptions of balanced use, whereas doing so to explore personal and professional goals was associated with imbalance. These findings suggest that emerging adults’ evaluations of their time spent on social media may depend on how well use aligns with identity-relevant needs. We discuss implications for psychological and digital well-being.
Change in Adaptive Identity Processes and Well-Being Supported by Self-Reflection and AI-Mediated Reflection in Digital Intervention
Serena Jimyn Soh; Subigya Nepal; Noah Vinoya; Gabriella M. Harari
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Young people are increasingly turning to conversational AI agents for support in figuring out what they want to do with their lives. Reflecting on career goals is characteristic of emerging adulthood (ages 18 to late twenties), a critical time for exploration and commitment to one’s personal and vocational identity. Yet it is unclear whether and how conversational AI agents benefit or hinder the development of positive and coherent identities, which has potential consequences for well-being. Our two pre-registered field experiments (Study 1: N= 165; Study 2: N = 248) tested the efficacy of digital intervention treatments designed to promote adaptive identity processes via career-focused reflection activities. Using an active-controlled RCT design, we assigned participants to either a Self-Reflection or an AI-Mediated Reflection condition. We found that both conditions promoted within-person adaptive change in daily identity exploration and commitment processes on treatment days, compared to no treatment days. However, when comparing the relative efficacy of the two treatments, we found that self-reflection may better facilitate adaptive changes (e.g., increasing identity commitment, decreasing ruminative exploration), compared to AI-mediated reflection. Exploratory analyses also showed that the intervention had positive effects on daily affect and post-intervention eudaimonic well-being, although AI-mediated reflection was less beneficial. Linguistic analysis of the reflection content suggest that the conditions may shape the cognitive and affective experience of reflection in meaningfully different ways. Our discussion contextualizes these findings within the literature on conversational AI agents as a tool for self-development and highlights future directions for research on human-AI interactions.
Computational and neural signatures of volatility learning in infancy: Links with temperament and the early caregiving environment
Dimana V. Atanassova; Nemes Zsuzsanna; Marlene Meyer; Sabine Hunnius
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Infants demonstrate a remarkable ability to learn from statistical patterns. Yet, in probabilistic environments, successful learning requires distinguishing random variability from true changes in the underlying contingency (i.e. volatility). However, the extent to which successful volatility learning in infancy is modulated by environmental and temperamental differences is still unclear, as well as the extent to which infant neural processing reflects learning from changes. To answer these questions, we investigated the computational and neural basis of volatility learning in 11-month-old infants and examined how temperament (Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised; Very Short Form) and features of the early caregiving environment (Comprehensive Early Childhood Parenting Questionnaire) shape individual differences in this process. Infants (N=77, Mage=331.13±15.25 days; 32 girls, 45 boys) observed a probabilistic environment in which the most likely location of a target periodically changed. Infants learned these contingencies, as reflected in their anticipatory looking, demonstrating sensitivity to environmental volatility. To characterize the computational processes underlying this learning, we used a Hierarchical Gaussian Filter model, which captures how learners update their beliefs about both the current state of the environment and its volatility. Prediction errors derived from this model, in combination with anticipation accuracy, predicted EEG activity 588–714 ms after feedback across a broad fronto-central region, providing evidence that the cognitive mechanisms captured by the model are represented in the infant brain. Additionally, we found that individual differences in volatility learning were primarily captured by model-derived change sensitivity: infants with a stronger change sensitivity detected reversals in the volatile environment better and adapted their behavior more rapidly. Change sensitivity was positively related to IBQ Effortful Control, suggesting infants with stronger regulatory capacities also updated their beliefs about volatility in a more optimal fashion. infants with higher Effortful Control detected environmental reversals more rapidly and showed more optimal belief updating. Finally, Positive Discipline was associated with higher Effortful Control, although its indirect association with change sensitivity was not significant. Finally, in a Structural Equation Model, we found that higher Effortful Control was predicted by stronger Positive Discipline, although the indirect pathway to change sensitivity was not significant. Together, these findings identify early computational and neural signatures of hierarchical volatility learning and highlight emerging temperament and caregiving influences on adaptive learning in infancy.
Virtual Empathy Scale (VES): Development and Psychometric Validation Among Indian Young Adults
Aishu S Gowda; Akash Nethravathi Raju; Dhiksha J
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This research was targeted at constructing and testing the virtual empathy scale (VES) that is intended to assess the empathy that is realized in the online communication between young college-going adults. It is based on multidimensional empathy models and is composed of three: empathic expression, cognitive empathy, and affective empathy. There was a generation of a pool of 49 items, and it underwent the face and content validity examination by experts reducing the pool to 41 items. Then we performed EFA on a sample of 421 college going students. This gave a 32-item scale, and good factor loading. We subsequently applied CFA to another sample of 331 students, and this supported the three-factor model, with reasonable fit statistics (CFI= .90, TLI=.899, RMSEA=.061). To conduct the reliability analysis, it was demonstrated that the results had high internal consistency (α > 0.87, ω > 0.87) in all three factors. The scale demonstrated convergent validity as demonstrated in high factor loading and composite reliability, however, the average variance extracted was a little below the optimal thresholds. And lastly, discriminant validity with some factor correlation approaching upper limits was determined with the use of HTMT. This scale has demonstrated high psychometric characteristics and is a potentially useful instrument to measure empathy in digital communication and can be used in a variety of psychological studies, online learning, and digital wellbeing intervention. Keywords: virtual empathy, digital communication, psychometric validation, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, young adults.
Lowering the Barrier Without Lowering the Bar: Generative AI, Scientific Judgment, and Responsibility in Behavioral Health
Albert Feliu
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Introduction: Within minutes, generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) can turn a rough question into a plausible study plan, teaching activity, analytic approach, or behavioral-health prototype. That is genuinely useful, but it also makes it possible to generate more possibilities than can be responsibly evaluated or carried through. Methods: Drawing on academic use of GenAI and selected literature, this commentary develops the argument through three tensions and a virtual-patient example. Findings: GenAI can make outputs multiply faster than they can be evaluated, fluent form outpace evidential support, and projects become easier to initiate than to deliver. These asymmetries also raise questions about cognitive offloading, motivation, ownership, and what happens when plausible products reach real people. Conclusions: The question is not simply whether to use GenAI, but what to ask it to do. Speed can widen exploration and reduce avoidable work, but it does not decide which ideas are worth pursuing, what evidence is enough, or who should take responsibility for the result.
The Conflict Device: A Control Theory Model of Problematic Digital Media Use
Warren mansell; Amy Mowle; Louis Trouchet; Mehdi Zemestani; Jason Sharbanee; Tauseef Gulrez; Danielle Einstein
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Digital media refers to smartphone use, social media, video-gaming and artificial intelligence among other forms, which are becoming increasingly integrated across platforms. Whilst there are widely recognised benefits, their documented harms, especially pre-adulthood, are leading to statutory restrictions across the world. For most adult users exempt from any bans, it is critical to understand the contexts and vulnerabilities within which digital media use is experienced as problematic, to inform individual, community and device-focused interventions. We critically review contemporary research and theories to develop an integrative model across digital media based on perceptual control theory. Through conceptualising digital media as a closed-loop extension of the self via hyper-efficient, dynamically adaptive and digitally amplified feedback pathways, we illustrate the mechanisms through which restricted attention utilises neural reorganisation to entrench habitual control. This entails a range of additional vicious cycles maintaining distress. As an exit from this state, we specify the factors that support the development and maintenance of a mindset of metacontrol flexibility (MCF) associated with tolerance of goal conflict and the effective use of fringe consciousness. The seeds of the MCF are the diverse opportunities to attend to, and meet, basic needs via restorative factors in the offline world.
From TikTok Keeps Me Going to TikTok Keeps Me Unknowing: Profiling Adolescents Based on Their Online Short Video Use for Mental Health Information and Support
Marie Geertrude Oldeman; Bram Orobio de Castro; Melanie de Looper; Eva van Reijmersdal; Eline Suzanne Smit
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Introduction: There is much debate on how online short videos (OSVs) on social media (e.g. TikToks) may interact with adolescent mental health. For example, there is concern about adolescents using these videos for mental health information and support. The goal of this study was to identify groups of adolescents based on their OSV use for mental health information and support, and to examine differences between these groups. Methods: We conducted an online cross-sectional survey in 2024 among Dutch adolescents with and without mental health complaints (general sample: N = 1532; Mage = 14.20; 53.92% female, 44.97% male, .85% other; clinical subsample: N = 239; Mage = 15.70; 65.69% female, 34.31% male, 0.00% other). We inquired them about their OSV use, mental health, mental health literacy and attachment representations. Results: In both samples, we identified three profiles: Regular users, Occasional users, and Non-users. In the clinical subsample, we additionally identified two groups: Intermittent users and Support seekers. In both samples, profiles characterized by higher consumption of mental health information and/or support via OSVs experienced more severe mental health concerns, more insecure attachment representations, and greater mental health literacy. Conclusions: These results show that different adolescents use online short videos differently. There is a need for targeted research and interventions, as not all adolescents use OSVs equally and may thus ultimately experience different positive and negative effects.
A Bayesian Psychometric Item-Level Resource for Korean Early Vocabulary and Developmental Measurement
Jun Ho Chai; Eon-Suk Ko
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Purpose: Parent-report vocabulary measures are widely used to study early language development, but CDI-based analyses typically summarize children’s responses using total vocabulary scores. This approach provides limited information about how individual words differ in developmental timing and psychometric function. This study develops a Korean item-level vocabulary resource that jointly characterizes developmental emergence, item response theory parameters, and input frequency. Method: Using Korean Words & Gestures comprehension and Words & Sentences production data from Wordbank, we estimated Bayesian age of acquisition (AoA) at the 50% response threshold. We then examined associations between Bayesian AoA estimates, Bayesian two-parameter item response theory item difficulty and discrimination parameters, and corpus-derived Korean input frequency. The stability of Bayesian AoA and item response theory estimates was evaluated through repeated child-level resampling. Results: Bayesian AoA and item response theory estimates were stable across repeated resampling. Words that emerged earlier also tended to be psychometrically easier, and more frequent words tended to emerge earlier and show lower latent difficulty. However, AoA and input frequency were only weakly associated with item discrimination, indicating that developmental timing and input frequency do not fully explain how informative a word is for distinguishing children along the latent vocabulary scale. Conclusion: Early Korean vocabulary items vary along partially distinct developmental and psychometric dimensions. The resource characterizes Korean CDI words by AoA, latent difficulty, discrimination, and input frequency, providing a foundation for item-level analyses of Korean early vocabulary development to relate measurement properties to theories of lexical development.
Measuring the effective polarity and level along the excitation patterns produced by focussed cochlear-implant stimulation
Robert P. Carlyon; Francois Guerit; John M. Deeks
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Three experiments estimated the effective polarity and level of neural activation produced by trains of “baseline” symmetric biphasic pulses, where the order of the phases of each pulse was anodic-cathodic (AC) or cathodic-anodic (CA). Detection thresholds were measured for trains of quadrupolar-mode anodic-leading pseudomonophasic probe pulses, where each pulse was presented immediately after a baseline pulse or in quiet. Thresholds were substantially lower in the presence than in the absence of the baseline in several conditions, including for monopolar baselines in CA order. This unmasking was also observed with wide-bipolar (BP+10) and wide-tripolar (TP=3, TP+5) baselines, whenever the probe was presented to an electrode where the second phases of the baseline pulses were anodic. Because the polarity of the baseline varied across the electrode array for BP and TP stimuli, this allowed us to measure reversals in the effective polarity of the baseline stimulus along its excitation pattern. The unmasking is attributed to constructive charge interactions between the first (anodic) phase of each probe pulse with the second phase of the preceding baseline pulse. The results are compared to voltage profiles for each baseline measured along the electrode array, and are discussed in terms of potential implications for the development of improved cochlear-implant stimulation methods.
Acculturation as a Situated Transactional Process
Ceren Su Abacioglu
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Acculturation research commonly links broad preferences for heritage-culture maintenance and participation in the receiving society to psychological and sociocultural adjustment. Yet meta-analytic and longitudinal evidence shows that these associations are often weak, heterogeneous, and limited over time, suggesting that broad preferences alone cannot explain why cultural engagement leads to different outcomes across situations. This conceptual article develops a situated transactional framework within a broader complex dynamic systems account. Building on established work showing that acculturation is contextual, domain-specific, and interactional, the framework specifies how these influences come together within concrete encounters. It proposes a process in which locally relevant conditions shape appraisal, the mobilization of culturally patterned resources, response, relational and institutional reception, multidimensional outcomes, and feedback into later encounters. The article also distinguishes the adaptation process, understood as the continuing person-environment transaction, from adaptation outcomes, including psychological, sociocultural, relational, and externally observed consequences. By organizing these elements into an explicit recursive architecture, the framework generates testable predictions about context-specific responses, reception, multidimensional outcomes, learned response patterns, and structural change. It thereby provides a concrete empirical agenda for testing whether these mechanisms improve explanation and prediction beyond broad-orientation and contextual-moderation accounts.
Reframing Acculturation: When (and Why) Acculturation Science Warrants a Systems Explanation
Ceren Su Abacioglu; Karen Phalet
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Acculturation has always been understood as a process of change, and contemporary research examines that change from several complementary perspectives, including developmental trajectories, reciprocal intergroup relations, ecological contexts, situated cultural processes, and multilevel social change. The field therefore contains many elements of a systems account without a shared architecture for relating them. This article offers a selective integrative review and metatheoretical synthesis using complex dynamic systems theory (CDST). CDST provides a coordinating framework that complements existing acculturation theories and encounter-level models of adaptation. It distinguishes five explanatory questions distributed across different traditions: what form change takes, who or what influences whom, how change moves across levels of organisation, where broader conditions become relevant, and how processes unfolding at different rates become linked. We organise these questions through five dimensions: nonlinear dynamism, relational reciprocity, multilevel emergence, situated adaptation, and multiscale temporality. Together, they provide a way to examine how patterns of acculturative change depend on prior experience, relationships, local conditions, levels of organisation, and processes unfolding at different rates. For each type of systems claim, we specify a linear-additive alternative and the evidence needed to distinguish between them. Power differences and prior history are treated as conditions that can shape how the system operates and changes. The framework therefore shifts attention from average associations between acculturation variables and outcomes toward explaining how acculturative change is organised, when different processes become connected, and when a systems explanation adds value beyond conventional models.
Apparent kindling in a washboard potential model of mood dynamics
Jihwan Myung
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The kindling hypothesis proposes that repeated stressors or mood episodes leave persistent sensitizing traces that lower the threshold for subsequent episodes. Evidence in bipolar disorder is mixed, and recurrence alone does not establish such persistent change. Here I propose a phenomenological landscape in which progression can appear causally linked without being so. Mood state moves on a multi-well washboard potential landscape. Kindling would persistently change the geometry of the landscape, and circadian and sleep-related inputs reversibly tilt it. In an illustrative four-well landscape, two inner wells represent normal daily mood variation, while two outer wells represent depression-like and mania-like states. The circadian phase then changes the accessibility of existing states without altering the landscape itself. This distinction provides a complementary account of two clinical observations: the diurnal direction of mood switches reported in rapid-cycling bipolar disorder, and the rapid but transient remission of depression during wake therapy. Circadian organization should add predictive information beyond episode history, and the tilted washboard model suggests chronotherapeutic interventions timed to internal circadian phase.
Interactional dynamics in online spoken conversations with people who do and do not stutter
Lotte Eijk; Emilia Horn; Buhan Guo; Sophie Meekings
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Everyday conversation involves precise co-ordination between speakers as they take turns, a collaborative effort that is necessarily affected by motor speech difficulties such as stuttering. People who stutter (PWS) report difficulties in conversational interaction that have a significant impact on quality of life. However, relatively little research exists on turn-taking in this population. This study examines sixty conversations between ten pairs of people who do not stutter (PWNS), and ten PWNS-PWS pairs. Conversations were analysed for turn-taking speed, utterance length, number of backchannels, interruptions and completions - factoring in speaker disfluency and the fluency of the utterance being responded to. The pitch profile of interruptions and completions was also analysed. Across groups, talkers responded most to disfluent utterances and more disfluent speakers had conversations with longer gap durations. PWNS with a higher stuttering severity score had conversations with longer turns, and PWS with a higher stuttering severity score had conversations with more interruptions compared to more fluent speakers. Interruptions were produced with higher pitch than completions, but this difference narrowed as stuttering severity increased. Overall, results suggest that disfluency affects interactional dynamics regardless of whether talkers have a motor speech disability, but there are additional challenges in interaction for PWS.
Care Versus Friction: Water Sustainability Attitudes, Conservation Behaviour and the Intention–Action Gap Among Young Singaporeans
Gemma Anne Calvert; Krishnan Menon; Steven Graham; James Breeze; Zakhran Khan; Ganesh Honnur
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Singapore is among the most water-stressed nations in the world, yet has engineered a resilient supply through its Four National Taps strategy and its reclaimed water programme, NEWater. That system depends not only on infrastructure but on a population willing to value, conserve and accept unconventional water. Using an artificial-intelligence powered conversational interviewing platform, we conducted 498 semi-structured interviews with Singapore residents aged 15 to 35, of which 497 were analysable, covering conservation habits, tap and recycled water attitudes, smart monitoring technology, shopping behaviour, embodied water footprints, and the ethics of transboundary water consumption. Pro-environmental belief approached saturation: 92% reported a recent water-saving action, 64% were comfortable drinking recycled water, and 77% were interested in smart water meters. What constrained further action was not indifference but the accumulation of small frictions: an unfamiliar word, an inconvenient routine, an unclear price differential, a perceived trade-off with comfort. The pattern was sharpest in the ethical domain, where 78% judged overseas water shortages unfair yet only 34% said this would definitely change their purchasing. Coding cost, environmental value and comfort independently, we find these considerations co-occur within individuals rather than distinguishing between them: 322 of 497 respondents held all three, and only 30 held one alone. Message targeting therefore cannot resolve a tension respondents hold within themselves. We further identify a sequencing effect, whereby household effort is judged negligible until larger consumers act, and a verification gap, in which willingness to credit environmental claims is limited by the absence of checkable evidence rather than by distrust. We propose that the operative tension for this cohort is care versus friction rather than care versus apathy, and derive design principles accordingly.
Teaching about the Reproducibility Problem and Open Science Efforts in A Psychology Research Methods Course: Initial Results from A Quasi-Experiment
P. Priscilla Lui; Takakuni Suzuki
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Background: Psychology continues to increase the reproducibility and credibility of its science. Yet, little is known about the value of teaching undergraduate students about these and about open science (OS) practices. Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine whether classroom instruction on the reproducibility problem and OS practices shifted students’ knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. Method: We designed a between-groups, quasi-experimental study with 132 students in an introductory Research Methods in Psychology course. Classes received either OS instruction (experimental condition) or cultural diversity instruction (control condition) for a total of about two hours. Results: Students’ appraised importance of OS increased with explicit instruction on the topic, but we did not find changes in their general skepticism of the state of OS in psychology or improvement in their written evaluation of reproducibility and research transparency. Conclusion: Despite small dose of OS instruction and sample size, the study demonstrated the feasibility of incorporating OS in undergraduate teaching and its promotion of favorable attitudes toward OS. Teaching Implications: To promote a transparency and openness mindset, instructors of introductory method courses should incorporate topics related to the reproducibility and credibility problems and expose students to OS principles and practices.
Updating rigor in psychological mixed methods research: A systematic methodological guidance review
Tamarinde Laura Haven; Martina S Isaksen Duque; Amirali Rezazadeh; Adira Daniel
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Mixed methods research (MMR) is increasingly used in psychology, yet strengthening rigor remains challenging because of fragmented guidance and new approaches in MMR practice such as co-creation, open science, and emerging technologies. We conducted a preregistered systematic methodological review to investigate (1) how rigor is defined and conceptualised in the context of MMR and (2) what strategies are used to ensure or demonstrate rigor in MMR? Searches of databases, preprint archives, leading mixed methods journals, citation networks, reporting guidelines, journal instructions to authors, empirical psychology articles, and methodological textbooks yielded 345 included sources. From these sources, we extracted 236 interpretations of rigor definitions and 1,698 rigor strategies. The definitions were synthesized into four interdependent components: critical reflection, consistent set-up within and across study strands, grounding in paradigmatic and theoretical foundations, and meaningful integration. The extracted strategies were consolidated into 90 unique practices organized across 10 research-lifecycle categories: assembling, framing, reflecting, co-creating, designing, collecting, analysing, integrating, concluding, and reporting. Findings indicate that rigor in MMR cannot be reduced to applying separate quantitative and qualitative quality criteria or to compliance with a universal checklist. Instead, rigor depends on coherent, context-sensitive methodological decision-making. The definition and strategies provide psychologists with a flexible blueprint for designing, conducting, evaluating, and reporting rigorous MMR.
We Misunderstood the Nature of Anxiety: Paradoxical Responses to Natural Disasters and Phantom Anxiety Theory
Marcin Florkowski
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Existing psychological theories predict that real threats increase anxiety indicators. Data from 123 catastrophic floods across 18 high- and low-SDI countries, with a combined population of approximately 1.7 billion, contradict this prediction. Following floods, anxiety indicators increased in low-SDI countries but decreased in high-SDI countries, even though attention to the disaster surged in both groups. Phantom Anxiety Theory, formulated before the analyses, predicted this pattern. It posits that the anxiety system endogenously generates an objectless alarm and then binds it to substitute objects. The findings reveal a broader principle: the human mind can generate regulatory objects, misidentify them as the causes of its own tension, and act upon them in search of relief.
The Reproducible Open Coding Kit: A Human and Machine Readable Standard for Coding Qualitative Data
Gjalt - Jorn Peters; Szilvia ZörgƑ
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The Reproducible Open Coding Kit (the ROCK) is a standard for human- and machine-readable qualitative (coded) data. It was designed to be accessible to researchers without dedicated software, while simultaneously offering enough structure to enable programmatic processing. Through this combination and a number of features tailored to these ends, the ROCK lends itself well to facilitate application of open science principles in qualitative research, to catalyse methodological innovation in qualitative research, and to progress towards machine-readability and interoperability of (coded) qualitative data, to ultimately enable truly Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) qualitative data. In this canonical reference, we lay out the ROCK standard v1.0. We hope this allows developers to implement the ROCK in existing free and open software, stimulates the development of additional applications, and ultimately, democratizes methodological innovation in qualitative research.
Thinking comparatively: How contextual processing of information in choice problems affects loss aversion
Alessandro Ganoulis
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The empirical results in this paper suggest that people contextualise the information of a choice problem even when such contextualisation does not seem to have any efficiency or simplification advantage. In an online experiment, lottery choices are systematically and significantly affected by the presence of decoy lotteries by what appears to be a sequential contrast effect. Such an effect means that choices are systematically context specific and path dependent. Gains and losses are over- or underweighted depending on whether previously observed decoy lotteries had relatively low or high gains and losses. Given the presumed ubiquity of such comparative thinking, the paper suggests the integration of comparative processing of information into an otherwise canonical model of cumulative prospect theory (CPT). The thus derived empirical model nests the hypotheses of comparative thinking and loss aversion. The empirical results show that the decoy lotteries had a statistically significant and quantitatively important impact on the revealed loss sensitivity of the participants in the experiment. The results highlight the importance of testing the CPT model in a setting that allows for the existence of comparative processing of information.
Inequality and the fragility of trust: A multi-lab registered report of social, normative, and structural moderators
Leon Paul Hilbert; Dianna Amasino; Laura Carlotta Hoenig; Christoph Kogler; Ćœiga Puklavec; Angelo Romano; Alan Sanfey; Giuliana Spadaro; Mirre Stallen; Tycho van Tartwijk
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Economic inequality is widely argued to undermine trust, yet evidence remains inconsistent, suggesting that its effects depend on contextual and psychological moderators. We aim to comprehensively examine whether inequality lowers trust and reciprocity, including which factors can mitigate or intensify its impact. To do so, we will conduct a multi-lab registered report study (N = 1,080 across five different laboratories), in which participants play a series of Trust Games under equal and unequal conditions. Critically, for each laboratory, we test the effectiveness of one hypothesized moderator drawn from three conceptual families: interpersonal factors (shared identity, perspective taking), normative factors (reciprocity norms), and structural factors (merit-based inequality, centralized punishment). Results can advance the literature on inequality and social cohesion as well as potentially inform policies aimed at reducing inequality and its negative societal consequences.
Sport for Flourishing: Challenges, Considerations, and Calls to Action
Richard Alastair Cameron Simpson; Richard Cowden; Constantine Psimopoulos; Tim Lomas; Matthew J. Moore; Arabella Ashfield; Tyler J. VanderWeele; Todd Barrett Kashdan; Patrick McKnight
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Sport has often been recognized as a microcosm of broader society. Such acknowledgement demonstrates the potential of sport to shape, and be shaped by, individuals and communities. Indeed, across its many socioecological contexts (e.g., youth, recreational, developmental, educational, organizational, elite), scholars and practitioners from a range of disciplines have shared ways in which sport can contribute to, or undermine, health and well-being. To bridge the chasm between knowledge within sport (e.g., sport psychology, sociology, philosophy) and broader flourishing scholarship, we present a dual conceptual model of sport and flourishing to help align collective efforts and to centralize attention for researchers, practitioners, decision-makers, and sport professionals. First, we discuss the empirical and conceptual challenges that are apparent within sport and why this has limited progress concerning its relations to human flourishing. We also discuss broader contentions about flourishing and how sport could help address these challenges. Second, we discuss the elements of the model pertaining to flourishing within sport (e.g., sport as a sphere for flourishing: comprising embeddedness, purview and scope of well-being, quality of the sport environment) and pertaining to sport for flourishing (e.g., sport as a conduit for flourishing: promoting individual flourishing, communal and relational flourishing, and flourishing of humanity). Third, we conclude with various implications and ‘calls to action’ for methodological (e.g., qualitative and quantitative work), applied (e.g., developing guidelines and interventions for promoting flourishing in sport), and research (e.g., Global Flourishing in Sport Study) advancement to realize a more unified sport and flourishing community.
Carrier-Weighted Networks: Separating Coherent Minority Structure from Incoherent Edges with Matched Pooled Correlations
Yong-Wook Shin
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In networks built from questionnaire data, a pooled edge correlation — the correlation of one item pair — is an average over respondents: the same value can arise from weak coupling in everyone, strong coupling in a coherent minority, or accidental co-endorsement by scattered, mutually unrelated subsets. Pooled network pipelines cannot tell these apart. We introduce an edge-level estimator of carrier coherence that requires no prespecified respondent groups, w*_e = |ρ_e|(1 − G_e)·max(ƌ_e, 0): the product of the pooled correlation magnitude |ρ_e|, an evenness-of-support factor (1 − G_e), and a coherence factor max(ƌ_e, 0) measuring whether the respondents who carry an edge also carry the neighbouring edges that share an item with it. In a preregistered simulation with pooled correlations matched by calibrated design, the estimator separated minority-carried community edges from planted incoherent edges ("distractors") with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) of .985 versus .469 for raw correlations (paired difference +.516, 95% confidence interval [+.506, +.526]). A concentration-only variant of the estimator remained at chance while a coherence-only variant matched the full estimator — the separation is due to the coherence factor alone. Community recovery by the full pipeline showed no improvement at n = 600: by design, both pipelines drew their candidate edges from the same raw-correlation filter, so reweighting could not restore true edges that the selection step had already discarded.
Cracking the Code: Grant Writing for Health Psychology Scholars
Tugce Varol; Thomas GĂŒltzow; Sanne Raghoebar; Kristina Pfeffer; Patrick Stefan Höhener; Rory Coyne; James A Green; Katie Newby; Benjamin SchĂŒz; Eline Suzanne Smit
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Research grants form a cornerstone for enabling research, providing researchers with the funding and support necessary to perform research, purchase tools, and form teams. Most post-PhD early- and mid-career scholars will be required to develop research grant writing as a core professional competency, and will be — at least partly — evaluated on their ability to successfully obtain research funding by employers and academic promotion committees. Drawing on insights from an EHPS EMPOWER 2025 pre-conference workshop and a subsequent webinar on the topic, this piece serves as a practical guide designed to help health psychology scholars navigate the funding landscape and write highly competitive research proposals, covering key areas such as idea generation, aligning ideas with funding opportunities and grant writing.
Partisans are more likely to entrench their beliefs in misinformation when political outgroup members correct claims
Diego A. Reinero; Elizabeth Ann Harris; Steve Rathje; Annie Duke; Jay Joseph Van Bavel
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Misinformation has become a global issue with potentially dire consequences (e.g., election results, COVID-19 vaccines, international conflicts). The most common strategy to reduce beliefs in misinformation is to issue corrections or fact-checks. However, fact-checks are often ineffective for polarized issues and there has been debate over whether misinformation corrections sometimes "backfire," causing people to become more entrenched in misinformation. Across three experiments (N = 1,217) we identify a key feature – the partisan identity of the source – that explains when corrections will be effective and when they will be most likely to backfire. We found that while corrections work on average, backfires still occurred 23% of the time and were 52% more likely to occur when the correction came from a political outgroup vs. ingroup member – leaving people with more entrenched beliefs in misinformation. Indeed, the effect of partisan bias on initial belief in misinformation was 5x larger than the effect of corrections. Partisan bias was most prominent and corrections were least effective when famous politicians were involved. In sum, corrections have small effects compared to partisan identity congruence, and sometimes backfire–especially if they come from a political outgroup member.
Learners’ beliefs about teachers’ social characteristics influence their pronunciation preferences: A replication and extension of Hayes-Harb, Barrios & Tripp (2022)
Shannon Barrios; Rachel Hayes-Harb
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Learners’ beliefs about language and language users impact the inferences they make about linguistic structure as well as their learning outcomes (Ballard & Winke 2017; Falkert 2016; Hayes-Harb, Barrios & Tripp 2022). Hayes-Harb et al. (2022) demonstrated that participants preferred speech samples exhibiting a pronunciation pattern that was associated with a “teacher” over that of a “student” in a simulated language classroom context, indicating that language learners differentially weight their input based on characteristics of the speaker. We first replicated this study with a new pronunciation pattern (Experiment 1), and then extended the work by investigating whether preferences for the teacher’s pronunciation can be modulated by attributing “favorable” versus “unfavorable” social characteristics to the teacher regarding their teaching experience, teaching effectiveness, and linguistic background (Experiment 2). We found that participants still tended to prefer the teacher’s pronunciation, but that the degree of preference was reduced when the teacher had been characterized unfavorably. We thus provide evidence that preferences for speech input from teachers are modulated by beliefs about the social characteristics of the teacher, presenting a challenge for asocial models of pronunciation learning and contributing to our understanding of linguistic stereotyping and its impact on language teaching and learning.
Failure Feedback: Vehicle for the Transmission of Stereotypes About Intellectual Ability
Grace Huang Murphy; Uliana Solovieva; Lin Bian
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Stereotypes linking intellectual ability to particular social groups (e.g., boys) emerge early in childhood, constraining the aspirations of certain groups such as girls. Yet little is known about how children acquire these stereotypes. The present research investigated whether parental responses to children’s failure serve as a pathway through which stereotypes about intellectual ability are communicated. In Experiment 1 (N = 312; 54% women), parents responded to a child, identified as either a boy or a girl, who repeatedly failed a challenging intellectual task. Parents most frequently provided two types of feedback: persistence (which encouraged continued effort) and redirection (which suggested pursuing alternative activities). Following the initial failure, parents were more likely to encourage persistence for the boy but to redirect the girl. Across repeated failures, parents also continued to provide more redirection to the girl than to the boy. In Experiments 2 and 3 (N = 96 and 124 children, respectively), 5- to 10-year-old children watched videos in which unfamiliar individuals or members of novel groups received either persistence or redirection feedback after failure. Across both experiments, children inferred that recipients of redirection feedback were less smart than recipients of persistence feedback. Moreover, children extended these inferences to groups, suggesting that differential failure feedback could contribute to the acquisition of group-based intelligence stereotypes. Together, these findings highlight failure as an important socialization context in which behavioral guidance can carry implicit evaluations of intellectual ability, providing a potential pathway through which intelligence stereotypes are transmitted.
Does Person-First Language Reduce Stigma? Evidence Across Health Condition Labels From Two Experimental Studies
Elizabeth Kruse; Paige Amormino; David Dodell-Feder
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The stigmatization of mental health conditions remains a widespread problem. One proposed intervention involves reforming the language used to describe people with mental health conditions by using terminology that separates the individual from the label (i.e., person-first language) rather than language that defines the individual by the label (i.e., identity-first or identity-only language). Across two studies, we tested whether manipulating the language used to describe an individual alters multiple dimensions of stigma, including attitudinal stigma, trait-based stereotype judgments, and dehumanization, across a broad and intentionally heterogeneous set of labels spanning mental health and related conditions. In Study 1, language framing did not consistently influence attitudinal stigma across labels, with the exception of responses to psychopathy. In Study 2, language framing did not significantly influence perceived stereotype judgments or dehumanization for any label examined. Instead, the specific label used and, to a lesser extent, personal familiarity with mental health conditions showed the most consistent associations with stigma across both studies. These findings suggest that individual labels are embedded in distinct social schemas that shape perceptions independent of language framing, and that social or personal contact may be a more reliable pathway to reducing stigma than terminology reform.
Changing Contributions of Emotion and Reward Information to Learning Through Adolescence
Camille Phaneuf-Hadd; Elizabeth A. Phelps; Leah Somerville
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From childhood to adulthood, individuals’ learning and decision-making may be differentially impacted by two salient value signals for adolescents: emotions and rewards. This study superimposed these information sources to assess their independent and joint influences on learning and choice processes. Participants ages 8-22 years completed a reinforcement learning task, in which monetary rewards conveyed information integral to making reward-maximizing choices, while emotional expressions conveyed information incidental to this goal. In some conditions, emotion and reward invoked congruent approach-avoid tendencies; following either information source promoted making reward-maximizing (“correct”) choices. In other conditions, emotion and reward invoked incongruent approach-avoid tendencies; following the emotion cue impeded reward capture. Participants completed several measures indexing the persistence of emotion and reward information on choice and evaluations of these signals. Statistical and computational models revealed that emotion-reward incongruence hampered early learning through an incidental emotion bias on value estimates. The emotion bias decayed as reward learning progressed in adolescents and adults but endured in children. Moreover, reward-based choice increased with age across the additional measures. Although participants of all ages were initially hindered by incidental emotion cues, adults’ shift toward prioritizing integral reward outcomes indicates that goal-relevant information comes to dominate choice with age.
Media Selectivity Research in Light of Self-Defeating Tendencies: Towards a Novel Understanding of Media Effects on Well-Being
Nicole Bizzotto; Tobias Dienlin; Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick
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A critical gap persists in media uses and effects research: while existing work has predominantly focused on self-serving motivations for media selection, an expanding body of evidence suggests that individuals—including those with psychological vulnerabilities—may seek out online content that aggravates, rather than alleviates, distress. Drawing on scholarship on self-defeating tendencies in offline contexts, we argue that the same process may unfold in mediated environments, especially on social media: when negative self-concepts are salient, users may gravitate toward content that validates these self-views, even at the expense of their well-being. We focus on mental health content as an illustrative case in which these dynamics become particularly visible and harmful, while arguing that similar processes apply to other domains. To guide this line of inquiry and offer a more comprehensive account of media selection processes and their implications for well-being, we extend the established Selective Exposure Self- and Affect-Management (SESAM) model by incorporating self-defeating motivations and outline a research agenda.
Dyadic Social Dynamics in Separation-Related Anxiety: Multimodal Arousal Synchrony Between 4-Year-Olds and Their Mothers
Leonard Konstantin Kulisch; Laurin Plank; Anna Exner; Silvia Schneider; Sabine Seehagen; Armin Zlomuzica; Babett Voigt
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Separation anxiety disorder (SAD) is an early-onset disorder linked to adverse outcomes into adulthood. To advance SAD etiology, this study examined how parental risk factors relate to dyadic social dynamics. Seventy-two four-year-olds (50% girls, 93% primarily German-speaking) and their mothers (74% holding a Bachelor’s degree) participated in a standardized separation paradigm. Parental reports, heart rate, and machine-learning-based measures of facial and vocal arousal were assessed. The announcement of separation increased children’s physiological (ꞔ=.17) and vocal arousal (ꞔ=.13). Within individuals, physiological and vocal arousal were coordinated (r=.18–.20), while across dyads, facial (r=.15) and vocal arousal (r=.09) showed consistent synchrony. Physiological synchrony emerged selectively in dyads with higher maternal anxiety (r=.31) but was unrelated to absolute arousal or SAD symptoms. Anticipatory physiological synchrony was negatively associated with child vocal arousal during separation (r=-.44). Early separation-related anxiety appears embedded in dyadic processes, shaped by vocal arousal transmission and maternal anxiety symptoms.
Attitudinal, Experiential, and Trait-based Correlates of Inceldom
Robyn Mooney; Millie Hargreaves; Brandon Sparks
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To prevent radicalisation into the involuntary celibate (‘incel’) community, it is critical to understand individual differences underlying inceldom. This exploratory research aimed to examine relationships between inceldom and attitudinal and trait-based risk factors for extremism. Study 1 explored relationships between misogyny, right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), social dominance orientation (SDO), and incel ideology endorsement in a male community sample (n = 65). Using another male community sample (n = 282), Study 2 examined associations between autistic traits (social-sensory sensitivity and monotropic processing), childhood traumatic experiences (CTEs), misogyny, and incel traits. Results showed that in Study 1, misogyny and RWA positively predicted incel ideology endorsement, while SDO was negatively predictive. In Study 2, CTEs and both aspects of autistic traits were positively associated with incel traits, and these associations were mediated by higher levels of misogyny. Self-identified incels also scored higher than non-incels on incel traits, misogyny, CTEs, and social-sensory sensitivity, but they did not differ on monotropic processing. The findings from these studies can help inform effective, tailored prevention programs and deradicalisation support systems for those wishing to leave the incel community.
Linguistic Affiliation and the Structure of Cultural Values: Evidence from the World Values Survey
Meriem Boukhris; Farah Benzarti; Peter Wad Sackett; Montassar Ben Messaoud; Gabriel Renaud
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The values of a society are determined by a plethora of factors, including history, geography and culture. A resource to monitor such values is the World Values Survey, a survey about the predispositions of individuals across 66 societies from various geographic regions. While some analyses have been conducted on this dataset, several questions dealing with circumstances rather than values were not filtered out e.g. ”I feel unsafe at night” and the types of analyses conducted were limited. We removed such situational questions and kept the 199 questions related solely to values, and submitted the resulting data to several supervised and unsupervised numerical analyses. We find that linguistic affiliation provides a strong organizing dimension of cultural-value similarity. We observe a split primarily along morality and religion, accounting for 23.9% of the variance, and in second place along confidence in institutions, accounting for a further 13.5%. We analyzed bilingual countries like Kazakhstan and Canada. We find that English-speaking Canadians are closer to other English-speaking countries than they are to French-speaking Canadians. While the USA initially appeared as an outlier within the English-speaking world, stratifying respondents by Democratic and Republican affiliation revealed deep internal divisions. Strikingly, Americans identifying as Democrats were closer, in terms of values, to other English-speaking nations, especially English-speaking Canadians, than they were to US Republicans.
KUAI-Kids: Developing a Measurement Instrument for Children’s Knowledge, Use, and Attitudes Toward Generative AI Chatbots
Sarah Malone; Carmen Koehler; Kristin Altmeyer; Dominik ThĂŒs; Marina Dombrovskaia; Johannes Hartig
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The increasing presence of generative artificial intelligence in children’s lives highlights the need for age-appropriate measurement instruments to assess their knowledge, use, and atti-tudes toward these technologies. This study introduces and validates KUAI-Kids, a question-naire on ChatGPT knowledge, use, and attitudes for children in middle childhood and early adolescence (ages 7 to 14; N = 310), based on a previously validated adult scale but with sub-stantially revised and extended items for children. Confirmatory factor analyses supported uni-dimensional structures for the Knowledge and Use scales, both showing good model fit and internal consistency. For the Attitude scale, the originally assumed unidimensional structure was not supported. Instead, factor analyses identified two distinct dimensions, Enthusiastic and Cautious Attitudes toward ChatGPT. Both Attitude subscales demonstrated good model fit and reliability. Latent correlations revealed expected associations: Knowledge and Use were mod-erately positively correlated; Enthusiastic Attitudes were strongly associated with Use, while a moderately strong correlation was observed between Cautious Attitudes and Knowledge. Ex-ploratory analyses indicated higher Enthusiastic Attitudes in boys and higher Knowledge, Use, and Cautious Attitudes scores in older students. The KUAI-Kids offers a psychometrically sound tool to study children’s engagement with AI chatbots and to support AI literacy assess-ment, the evaluation of educational interventions, and evidence-based development of AI-related educational policies. Limitations include the rapidly evolving nature of generative AI technologies and the fact that many children in the sample had little or no direct experience with ChatGPT.
Navigating Divorce and Partner Bereavement: Personality and Trajectories of Change in Life Satisfaction and Mental Health
Thao Kieu; Liselotte den Boer; Wiebke Bleidorn; Yu Xie; Jaap J. A. Denissen
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Dissolutions of romantic relationships can elicit diverse reactions across various aspects of well-being, but they also offer an opportunity to examine which factors promote resilience and identify individuals at risk. In this preregistered multi-sample longitudinal study, we examined the heterogeneity in life satisfaction and mental health changes around and during divorce or partner bereavement, and whether personality (i.e., traits and resilient versus nonresilient personality profiles) may explain individual differences in change trajectories. Data from 1,306 divorcees and 1,150 bereaved partners were drawn from nationally representative panel studies in the Netherlands (N = 12,551), Germany (N = 10,830), and China (N = 28,628), and analyzed using growth mixture modeling. Four life satisfaction trajectories and three mental health trajectories were identified for each event. Recovery and resilience emerged as the most common trajectories across events, outcomes, and samples. Among personality factors, neuroticism was the most consistent predictor of a lower likelihood of belonging to a resilience trajectory. This study advanced the generalizability of findings across diverse loss-based events, populations, and aspects of well-being. The findings further underscore the influence of neuroticism in shaping, and potentially complicating, psychological adjustment surrounding divorce and partner bereavement.
Dynamic coordination of speech and gesture in the brain
Jiachen Yao; Cecilia Husta; Linda Drijvers
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Face-to-face communication relies on the continuous integration of auditory signals, such as speech, and visual signals, such as co-speech gestures. Rather than serving as an add-on to spoken language, gestural information has been shown to actively shape how the brain constructs meaning. A central question is how the brain achieves integrating gestures with speech. This is not a trivial problem, as auditory and visual signals are often noisy, temporally misaligned, variable in length, and ambiguous, yet interlocutors still seem to understand each other effortlessly. This chapter will review evidence from neuroimaging (e.g., fMRI, MEG, (dual-)EEG, fNIRS) and brain stimulation (e.g., TMS, tDCS, tACS) methods, both from a within- and a between-brain perspective. Together, these methods have begun to outline a distributed and flexible brain network that supports the integration of speech and gestures. We will discuss how these brain networks coordinate the integration of speech and gestures, and how speech-gesture integration unfolds over time, in both clear and adverse listening conditions.
ChirPing: A Social Media Simulation Platform Developed for Scientific Research
Nadia Said; Lena Plötz; Nicole Antes
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Experimental research on behavior on social media platforms typically relies on two methodological approaches, each with advantages but also limitations. Experimental studies, while having the advantage of giving researchers full control over the content presented and allowing for direct assessment of other variables of interest, often lack ecological validity, as behavioral intentions are only weakly predictive of actual sharing behavior. Studies conducted directly on live platforms, by contrast, offer ecological validity. However, the lack of control over the experimental environment makes it difficult to draw causal inferences. To address those issues, social media simulation platforms have gained increasing popularity in research. However, these platforms vary widely in usability and flexibility: some require more advanced programming skills, while others are fairly easy to use but may be limited in their use cases. Here we present our social media simulation platform, ChirPing, a new tool embedded within the widely used experimental research platform SoSci Survey. The main advantage of our platform is that it is part of an established platform; thus, researchers can easily integrate it into their surveys and adjust it within a familiar tool environment. Furthermore, our platform is highly customizable, allowing researchers to systematically manipulate experimental parameters (e.g., content presentation and post order). Allowing researchers to examine, for example, causal effects on behavioral outcomes such as sharing, engagement, and decision-making.
Displacement, Parenting, and Self-Development in Syrian Refugee Children: A Longitudinal Analysis
Hend Eltanamly; Fiona McEwen; Elie Karam; Sander Thomaes; Michael Pluess
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Millions of children worldwide endure forced displacement, with profound implications for their psychological well-being. This study examines how forced displacement impacts self-development (i.e., self-esteem and self-efficacy) among Syrian refugee children (N=1576; Mage=11.00; SD=2.30) and their mothers (Mage=38.28; SD=8.97), in Lebanon. Over a one-year follow-up with N=1000 children linear-mixed analyses show that a relatively well-resourced refugee environment is associated with higher self-esteem and self-efficacy cross-sectionally, but does not predict changes in self-development over time. Parenting, however, has distinct effects on self-esteem over time: maternal acceptance buffers against the adverse effects of poor refugee environments on self-esteem, whereas psychological control and abuse at home exacerbate these negative impacts. No such longitudinal effects were found for self-efficacy.
Do trait and state empathy facilitate interpersonal synchrony in musical interactions?
Persefoni Tzanaki; Lieke Perik; Cagri Erdem; Jonna Katariina Vuoskoski
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Recent research suggests that cognitive empathy facilitates interpersonal synchrony, yet the role of affective empathy and its impact when experimentally induced remain less explored. We investigated how empathy, both as a trait characteristic and the result of induction, influences synchrony in a musical context. Thirty-three dyads completed two synchrony tasks, one before and one after an empathy induction session. In Task 1, participants tapped in time with a metronome before synchronising with their partner’s tapping, whereas in Task 2, they synchronised melodic sequences. To induce empathy, participants shared personal events while their partners were instructed either to empathise (empathy induction) or memorise factual details (control condition). Trait empathy was measured using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI). Emotional engagement and behavioural mirroring during empathy induction were assessed using self-report and motion-capture measures. Results showed that both cognitive and affective trait empathy contributed to synchrony: higher Empathic Concern (an affective IRI subscale) predicted better alignment with a metronome in Task 1, while higher Fantasy (cognitive IRI) predicted greater synchrony in Task 2, suggesting that empathy’s role may rely on the type of coordination required by the task. Induced empathy showed no main effects; however, high-Fantasy participants who reported greater emotional engagement with partners’ stories synchronised better in Task 2 than those who engaged less. Moreover, high-Fantasy dyads showed greater mirroring of narrators’ head movements in the control condition, whereas this association became weakly negative when empathy was induced. The findings indicate a multifaceted role of empathy in joint action, and future directions to fully understand this role are discussed.
Shared research materials in psychology are widely downloaded but often difficult to reuse
Daniel S Quintana
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Open science reforms have made posting data and code common, but are shared materials actually used, and easily reused? Treating download counts of Open Science Framework (OSF) supplements as a usage index, I analysed 1,660 articles from four psychology journals (Cognition, Psychological Science, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Journal of Memory and Language) across three years (2015, 2020, 2025). OSF sharing rose from 9% in 2015 to 52% in 2025. Among 392 papers with download data, materials were downloaded a median of 152 times; only 1% went undownloaded. Download volume was associated with citation count and altmetric attention. Availability did not ensure easy reuse: only 40% of repositories provided documentation, 34% were flagged for a hard-coded file path, and 42% referenced a missing file — shortcomings that did not improve as sharing grew. Altogether, shared materials are being used, but often not easily reusable.
Developmental Trajectories of Pro-Environmental Behavior in Adolescence: A Cross-National Longitudinal Study
Stathis Grapsas; Andrik Becht; Lukas Baumann; Sander Thomaes
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Adolescence is a critical period for the formation of sustainable lifestyles. However, evidence on the development of pro-environmental behavior in adolescence is limited and inconsistent, suggesting either an inverted U-shaped developmental dip or a developmental increase. In the present longitudinal study, we pitted against each other the dip and increase hypotheses in early to mid-adolescent samples across three countries (four annual measurements in the Netherlands, three in China and Colombia) and two behavior types (private and public sphere). We also examined the potential presence of youth subgroups with different trajectories of pro-environmental behavior and how these youth subgroups differed in levels of baseline sustainability motive-alignment (perceptions of pro-environmental behavior as granting autonomy and peer status). Findings provide a more nuanced picture than either hypothesis alone predicts. Latent growth models mostly revealed developmental stability, except for a linear increase in private behavior in Colombia. Latent class growth models revealed no subgroups in China and Colombia. In the Netherlands, these analyses revealed, for both behaviors, a subgroup of engaged youth with higher, stable levels, and a subgroup of temporarily disengaged youth showing a dip towards mid-adolescence. Baseline motive-alignment positively predicted pro-environmental behavior across waves and characterized the pro-environmentally engaged subgroups of youth. Together, these findings show relative developmental heterogeneity across youth subgroups and call for tailored interventions that align pro-environmental behavior with adolescents’ developmentally salient motives.
Alpha Oscillations Reflect Curiosity During Information-Seeking
Hanna Julku; Sebastian Österman; Caitlin Dawson; Kaisa Elovaara; Jaana Simola
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Curiosity is a fundamental driver of information-seeking, but its electrophysiological correlates are poorly understood. To investigate how curiosity and information quality affected neural activity during information-seeking, we recorded electroencephalography (EEG) while participants collected information in a multi-armed bandit task. Participants (N=60) read statements of varying scientific quality to decide their stance on health-related topics. After reading each statement, participants rated their state curiosity level, the usefulness and clarity of the statements, and their confidence of the usefulness rating. We also measured participants’ trait curiosity (N=53) with a questionnaire and asked whether they had searched for more information about the topics after the experiment. The EEG analyses included a cluster-based permutation analysis (N=60), which indicated two clusters where alpha power differed between information quality categories: frontal and parietal. Then, by using generalized linear mixed effects modeling (N=53), we tested whether information quality, trait and state curiosity, other statement related ratings, and thinking about or searching for more information about the topics after the laboratory experiment predicted alpha power in these clusters. A decrease in frontal alpha power was associated with an increase in state curiosity and deprivation sensitivity dimension of trait curiosity. A decrease in parietal alpha was related to an increase in deprivation sensitivity and searching for more information about the topics. These results show that lower alpha power reflects higher curiosity and the strength of cognitive engagement during information-seeking.
Embodied Emotions in Natural Language
Lauri Nummenmaa; Aatu Liimatta; Eleanor Bennett; Birgitta Paranko; Heidi Jauhiainen; Mikko Sams; Saana SvÀrd; Juha M. Lahnakoski
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Emotions are often felt in the body, and embodiment is a prominent mechanism supporting language processing. Here we utilized computational linguistics to map embodied representations of emotions in an English text corpus. The data revealed consistent embodied patterns for emotion categories. Comparison between semantics-derived and self-reported bodily maps of emotions revealed similar, discrete bodily representations of different emotions in texts and self-reports. Hierarchical clustering revealed three clusters: positive emotions within the head and chest, negative emotions within the torso and legs, and negative social emotions mostly within the head. Replication in a Finnish corpus yielded consistent results. These findings show that the bodily organization of emotional experience is reflected in the statistical structure of language, linking linguistic meaning to the subjective bodily experience of emotion.
On A Theory of Self-structure II: The Theoretical Dimensions of Self-Structure
Jie Zhong
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This paper, rooted in psychoanalytic traditions including Freud’s libido theory and Kohut’s self psychology and extending the author’s prior work, proposes the Bidimensional Self-Structure Theory. Defining self-structure as an innate, coherent subjective organization shaping psychological experience, the theory identifies two statistically orthogonal core dimensions: self-cathexis (libidinal self-investment, metaphorical "existence-weight") and self-space need (subjective developmental space demand, metaphorical "existence-volume"). Their ratio forms self-structure density, the essence of narcissism, which distinguishes solid narcissism (high density) and void narcissism (low density) and categorizes self-structures into four quadrants. Two clinical cases—Celia (16-year-old with BPD, low self-cathexis + high self-space need) and Zoe (22-year-old with emotional deprivation, low self-cathexis + low self-space need), both typifying void narcissism—validate the model’s efficacy in explaining pathological self-structural heterogeneity. The theory bridges the theoretical gap between Freud’s (1914) classical psychoanalytic model of narcissism and Kohut’s (1971, 1977) self psychology model, synthesizes insights from major psychoanalytic schools, and clarifies that pathological diagnoses (symptom clusters) and self-structure (the deep organizational framework of the self) pertain to distinct dimensional systems. It outlines future research directions: identifying falsifiable clinical cases to test theoretical boundaries, conducting quantitative research to operationalize core constructs, and exploring cross-cultural perspectives on selfhood via Chinese philosophical thoughts.
No convincing evidence of longitudinal effects linking neuroticism, gaming disorder, and future time perspective: A reanalysis of Guo et al. (2026)
Kimmo Sorjonen; Bo Melin; Marika Melin
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Guo et al. investigated longitudinal associations among neuroticism, internet gaming disorder, and future time perspective, concluding that the findings supported reciprocal influences over time. However, statistically significant cross-lagged parameters do not necessarily indicate genuine prospective effects because such estimates can emerge from alternative statistical mechanisms. Using simulated data that reproduced the sample size and correlation structure reported by Guo et al., we evaluated the consistency of the reported findings across several plausible analytic approaches. The conclusions varied considerably across model specifications. Some approaches yielded positive longitudinal associations, whereas others produced negative or non-significant estimates. When all results were integrated using meta-analytic methods, none of the overall effects reached statistical significance. These findings suggest that the evidence presented by Guo et al. does not provide a robust basis for claims of prospective influence. In line with recommendations from the multiverse-analysis framework, investigators should examine multiple defensible analytic specifications and base conclusions on the aggregated evidence rather than on a single model.
The partner as reader: recognition, disclosure risk, and the unit of analysis in dyadic reflexive thematic analysis
Vince Jacques de Blauwe; Alina Gheorghita; Antonio Fidalgo
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Thirty widening-participation students in 15 stranger dyads wrote five probe re-sponses after a 14-minute belonging encounter. Reflexive thematic analysis of 150 im-mediate written micro-accounts generated four interpretive themes: calm-as-distance, vocabulary-as-bridge, masking under instruction, and provisional we-ness. A subse-quent dialogue-informed dyad-level configurational reading of paired texts extended, complicated, and bounded selected individual-level interpretations; it was not used as independent corroboration. Participants sometimes described calm or competent partici-pation alongside relational distance, evaluative effort, or uncertainty about mutuality; composure was therefore not treated as evidence of relational arrival. This methodological case study develops the Partner-Recognition Framework for dyad-ic qualitative research. The framework addresses a risk that conventional de-identification may leave unresolved: a partner who shared an encounter may recognise an account from shared memory even when external identifiers have been removed. The four substantive themes provide the empirical case through which the framework is de-veloped; the disclosure-cost and recursive-risk analyses show what implementation re-quires. Four rules follow: naming partner recognition in consent, prospective specifica-tion of dyadic provenance, default pair separation in public reporting, and screening of derived artefacts. These are prospective design and reporting rules, not a validated risk-assessment instrument, a guarantee of anonymity, or a substitute for case-specific ethi-cal and legal review.
Revisiting Assurance: Theoretical Refinement, Scale Development, and Future Research
Atsuki Ito; Matthias S Gobel; Kosuke TAKEMURA
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Expectations that others will cooperate are critical for sustaining intragroup cooperation. Although extensive research has emphasized trust—expectations of cooperation based on others’ traits and intentions—as a strong predictor of cooperation, assurance—expectations grounded in incentive structures—has received little empirical attention. The present research aims to establish a theoretical and methodological foundation for assurance research. First, we propose that assurance can be understood as a process through which perceived incentive structure gives rise to expectations of others’ cooperation and ultimately promotes cooperation. Second, across three studies using American and Japanese samples (total N = 1,589), we developed the Perceived Assurability Scale, a reliable measure of perceived incentive structure underlying assurance and demonstrated that perceived assurability predicts workplace cooperation independently of perceived trustworthiness. Third, we propose future research directions regarding how group contexts are translated into cooperation through psychological processes captured by the concepts of trust and assurance.
State of Social Cognition Research: Challenges, Future Directions, and Efforts Toward Consensus Building
Niklas BĂŒrgi; Anabela Cantiani; Beatriz Catoira; Mado Gautier; Ilenia Gori; Annika Konrad; Lara Maliske; Annabel Nijhof; Arthur Pabst; Ekaterina Pronizius
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Social cognition research has become a key area of cognitive science, producing a wealth of theories, methods, and empirical findings. However, the field faces significant challenges that constrain further progress and broader impact. As a group of social cognition researchers from various theoretical and methodological backgrounds, we came together to identify issues we consensually consider most pressing, highlight their negative consequences, and suggest ways forward. We thus offer a synthesis of core issues that are typically treated separately in the literature,and translate them into a shared agenda for the field. Major conceptual challenges include substantial variation in how social cognition is defined, subdivided, and labeled, alongside a limited understanding of its basic structure. Methodologically, shortcomings include inadequate assessment and reporting of psychometric properties of measurement tools. Furthermore, ecologically valid interactive paradigms are still scarce, and the clarification and experimental control over the processes underlying measurement scores remain insufficient. We argue that progress requires both humility and courage: acknowledging our field’s theoretical fragmentation and methodological limitations, and embracing complexity through multimethod, interactive, and computational approaches. We further introduce our community building initiative as a facilitating step toward achieving these objectives through consensus initiatives, open science practices, and large-scale collaborative research.
Allocation bias in past and future words
Noa Uchikawa; Kayo Miura; Kyoshiro Sasaki
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The mental timeline (MTL) refers to the conceptual association between time and horizontal space, such that past and future are linked to left and right, respectively. The present study investigated whether the MTL metaphor-congruency effect would be observed using a word allocation task (WAT), in which participants freely positioned past- and future-related words within a rectangular frame. The results showed that future words were placed significantly further to the right than past words, supporting the presence of the MTL metaphor-congruency effect in a voluntary, unconstrained task. Additionally, handedness did not significantly modulate this effect; it is possible that the MTL operates through a mechanism distinct from the body-specificity hypothesis. These findings suggest that the WAT is a viable paradigm for investigating spatial metaphors and that the MTL may be more readily involved with voluntary and controlled processing than automatic processing.
Cultural Currents of Mindfulness: Tracing Mindfulness’s Use and Influence in Japan
Takeshi Hamamura; Min Maung; Anuradha Baminiwatta; Jun Chih; Suzanne Gilbey; Monica Gumulya; Masaru Kanetsuki; Trevor Mazzucchelli
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Objectives: Mindfulness is now widely studied and applied in psychology, yet its use and adaptation in non-Western contexts remain underexplored. This study examines how mindfulness is discussed and studied within Japanese scholarly literature. Methods: A two-pronged approach was employed: a scoping review of English-language publications to identify prevailing research patterns (Study 1), and a topic modelling analysis of Japanese-language literature to explore themes (Study 2). Results: Findings from both analyses indicate that mindfulness in Japan is predominantly framed within therapeutic and wellness-oriented contexts in clinical, educational, and occupational settings. At the same time, culturally grounded adaptations were observed, including the incorporation of practices such as Naikan, Zen meditation, and martial arts, alongside thematic emphases on relational and psychosomatic processes. However, explicit engagement with cultural adaptation was relatively limited, raising questions about the extent to which local cultural contexts are informing or being overlooked in the adaptation process. Conclusion: As mindfulness continues to circulate globally, findings from this study highlight the need for context-sensitive approaches that engage with both global frameworks and local conceptual traditions.
The Australian under-16 social media ban: Early influences on access and its relationship with reading
Signy Wegener; Jasmine Spencer; Andrea Salins; Serje Robidoux; Robert Savage; Anne Castles
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Concerns abound that time spent on social media might displace more developmentally adaptive activities, such as reading. In December 2025, the Australian government introduced a world-first social media ban for young people under the age of 16, providing an opportunity to explore whether social media use and the efficacy of the ban are associated with current reading behaviours. In this study, Australians aged 12 to 15 years completed a cross-sectional self-report online survey between March and June 2026. Prior to the ban, 81.55% of the sample used social media. Users of social media reported reading less frequently, for shorter periods and had lower reading motivation than non-users of social media. For users, the initial effect of the ban was often incomplete or transient, with many users subsequently able to regain access to lost accounts. Post-ban, time spent on social media reduced for those who lost access to some or all of their accounts. Although there were differences in reading times by the effect of the ban in the predicted direction, they were not significant. Further, there were no differences in the strength of the association between reading motivation and reading duration by the effect of the ban. These findings suggest that social media use is associated with lower levels of reading engagement than non-use. The early implementation of the social media ban has only been partially effective and there is presently insufficient evidence that the effect of the ban is associated with differences in current reading engagement.
Five questions to ask when studying cultural change
Igor Grossmann; Michael E. W. Varnum
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In 2016 we reported that infectious-disease prevalence and gender inequality shifted together across six decades in the US, and argued from parasite-stress theory that declining pathogen load contributed to declining gender inequality. In their Matters Arising, Koplenig and Wolfer (K&W) reanalyzed data from our 2016 report, finding that both series show strong trends that our models left unaccounted for, and that the positive association does not survive several standard time-series corrections. K&W identified an important statistical problem, and we are grateful for their work. But addressing that problem does not by itself determine the appropriate test of the substantive hypothesis. Most of K&W’s specifications ask whether annual changes in pathogen prevalence covary with changes in gender inequality. However, at least some of the mechanisms that parasite-stress theory invokes, such as norm transmission or cohort replacement, operate over longer time horizons. As reported below, specifications built on annual changes detect delayed effects a tenth to a fifth as often as they detect contemporaneous effects of identical size. Focusing on the theory-method alignment, here we organize our response around five questions about studying societal change, using our own data and errors as examples.
Mapping the Content and Consistency of Suicidal Thoughts with Large Language Models: A Two-Study Longitudinal Investigation Among Adolescents and Young Adults
Leily Marieh Behbehani; Ruben van Genugten; Frances Grace Hart; Sharina Hamm; Kathryn Fox; Shirley B Wang
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Suicide is a leading cause of death. Measurement of suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs) relies on self-report (e.g., “How strong is your urge to kill yourself right now?”), yet little is known about how individuals translate internal experiences into numerical ratings. We used large language models (LLMs) to examine the content and consistency of suicide urges across severity ratings, between people, and over time. Participants with past-year STBs (Study 1: N=158 adolescents, Study 2: N=202 young adults) completed open-ended questions at baseline and follow-ups. We developed a two-stage topic-modeling pipeline and identified 13 (Study 1) and 14 (Study 2) topics reflecting suicidal thought content (e.g., Family/Friends Reactions, Depressed & Exhausted). Within- and between-person consistency were U-shaped, with highest agreement at endpoints of the scale. These findings highlight the potential of LLMs for advancing measurement of suicide risk and our understanding of how people interpret and respond to self-report rating scales.
Wise Empathy Improves Well-being on Instagram
Gregory John Depow; Christopher Oveis; Emily Zohar; Michael Inzlicht
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Most of the global population spends significant time browsing social media making it critical to understand how to improve experiences online to support well-being. Here, we test whether a brief intervention training individuals to use wise empathy on Instagram can improve users’ well-being. In an ecological momentary intervention, we trained half our sample (N = 260) to wisely regulate empathy for positive and negative posts. Using experience sampling (Nobs. = 5,902), we tracked empathy and well-being in daily life. The intervention increased wise empathy online—boosting appreciative joy, positive emotion sharing, and compassion for negative emotions—while reducing negative emotion sharing, upward social comparisons, and personal distress. When participants had recently browsed Instagram, those in the wise empathy condition reported higher well-being than controls, an effect mediated by changes in wise empathy. These findings position wise empathy as a scalable, trainable skill that can enhance well-being on social media.
Developmental Timing of the Reciprocal Prospective Associations Between Cannabis Use and Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms in Early Adolescence
Fiona A Ralston; Herry Patel; Isabel R. Aks; Natasha E. Wade; William E. Pelham
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This paper examines the reciprocal associations between specific internalizing (e.g., depression and anxiety) and externalizing (e.g., Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Conduct Disorder, and Oppositional Defiant Disorder) disorder symptoms and cannabis use during early adolescence with age differences. We analyzed youth-reported cannabis use, depression, anxiety, Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Conduct Disorder, and Oppositional Defiant Disorder symptoms in 9- to 15-year-old adolescents enrolled in the longitudinal Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study (N=11,868) using data from the baseline visit through the 4-year follow-up. Multilevel regression models, parsing between- and within-youth effects were fit to examine the association between cannabis use and five different mental health disorders prospectively. Moderation by age was tested. In the main analyses, all between-youth reciprocal associations between internalizing and externalizing disorder symptoms and cannabis use were significant, except anxiety. Anxiety was unidirectionally related to cannabis use, where increased anxiety symptoms predicated greater probability of cannabis use one year later (ÎČ = 0.0008, p = .006) but not vice versa. Strongest between- and within-youth reciprocal associations emerged for depression and conduct disorder symptoms with cannabis use prospectively, with age moderating the associations. In a nationwide sample of adolescents ages 9 to 15 years-old, we found depression and conduct disorder symptoms were most strongly and reciprocally associated with greater probability of cannabis use prospectively. Further research is necessary to validate and confirm our findings and extend to greater cannabis use frequency and motives for use in the context of increased acceptance of cannabis use as treatment for mental health issues.
Phonological changes facilitate pragmatic inference during lexical access in Bengali verbs
Pijush Kanti Gayen; Monsija Mitra; Samar Husain
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How do listeners map fine-grained phonological variation onto a speaker’s communicative intention during lexical access? We address this question using a restricted set of Bengali imperative verb forms in which stem-vowel height alternation is associated with different directive speech acts. Native speakers of Bengali (N=176) completed (i) an intention-scaling task to assess perceived illocutionary force and (ii) a cross-modal lexical decision task with auditory verb primes and visual speech-act targets. The lexical decision experiment manipulated prime--target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA: 30 ms, 60 ms, 240 ms) to test the time course of phonological-to-pragmatic activation. Intention-scaling results showed that participants reliably distinguished the two intended speech acts. In the lexical decision task, congruent speech-act targets were recognised substantially faster than controls at the 60ms SOA (approximately 100ms facilitation for both order and request), whereas effects were small and not reliable at 30ms and 240ms. Request trials also showed slightly longer latencies than order trials, consistent with a higher inferential load for requests. Together, the results provide behavioural evidence that phonological cues can rapidly bias speech-act interpretation, with a temporally constrained window for lexical-pragmatic integration.
Voice Can Help and Hurt AI Empathy: How Context Shapes the Effects of Vocal Delivery
Joshua D Wenger; Daryl Cameron; Reza Hadi Mogavi; Michael Inzlicht
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As people increasingly turn to artificial intelligence (AI) for empathy, new modes of human–AI empathic interaction have emerged. While prior research on empathic AI has focused almost exclusively on text-based empathy, we explored how vocal delivery of empathetic messages might enhance or undermine AI versus human empathy. Across five studies (N = 1,584) we examined how the mode of expression (voice vs. text) and the empathy source (human vs. AI) jointly shape perceptions of empathic quality and experiences of feeling heard across different interaction contexts. In interactions involving pre-recorded empathic messages, vocal delivery reduced perceptions of quality and experiences of feeling heard for both human and AI empathizers, though the reduction was stronger for AI. This reduction was eliminated for human empathizers by giving empathy recipients the option to first opt in or consent to receiving empathy from a human empathizer, though the reduction remained for AI voices in this pre-recorded context. The reduction for AI voices also disappeared, and sometimes reversed into a benefit, in more immersive and personally relevant interaction contexts such as extended, live interaction with an AI chatbot. We further explored how the mode of expression impacts feelings of uncanniness, and the mediating role uncanniness plays in shaping feelings of being empathized with and feeling heard. Together, these findings demonstrate that whether voice helps or hurts AI empathy critically depends on the interaction context, and highlight uncanniness as one factor that can undercut spoken empathy in some contexts.
Evaluating the Credibility of Human and AI Forecasters: Receivers Discriminate Performance More Finely for Humans
Robert N. Collins; David R. Mandel
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Decision-makers in high-stakes forecasting domains are increasingly asked to weigh probabilistic judgments from human experts alongside those from artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Whether source attribution alters how forecasts are received has been largely unexamined. Three accounts make competing predictions. Algorithm aversion and algorithm appreciation predict a source dependent bias in favor of humans and AI, respectively: both assume that source attribution may affect forecaster evaluation. By contrast, responsibility-attribution research predicts differential discrimination, with credibility ratings distinguishing performance levels more finely for human than AI sources. We tested these accounts in two experiments (N1 = 667; N2 = 1,170). Participants translated verbal probability expressions communicated by either a human expert or an AI system into numeric point estimates and ranges. Separately, participants evaluated source credibility after reviewing a forecaster’s performance record, with accuracy manipulated between subjects. Interpretation was largely unaffected by source: numerical point estimates were similar and ranges equivalent for both human and AI sourced forecasts. In contrast, credibility ratings depended on source: receivers discriminated performance more finely for human than AI forecasters: human forecasters were rated as more credible than equally accurate AI when accuracy was high and less credible when accuracy was low. This differential discrimination is inconsistent with algorithm aversion and appreciation accounts, but consistent with the responsibility-attribution research, according to which people hold human advisors more accountable for outcomes than algorithms. We discuss implications for integrating AI-assisted forecasts into decision support roles.
Positive Emotion Displays Support Preschoolers’ and Adults’ Word Learning
Mira L Nencheva; Michael C. Frank
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Emotion displays are one of the most salient features of early social interactions - caregivers often smile, change their vocal register to convey positive emotions to their children. Despite the fact that these emotion displays often accompany the moments in which children learn language, prior work on the role of emotion in word learning has been sparse and has resulted in conflicting findings. The present investigation examines how emotion displays that vary in valence (positive vs. negative) and arousal (high vs. low) influence word learning in preschoolers and adults. Across five experiments, participants completed a word learning task in which novel object-label pairs were introduced by a character displaying one of four emotional states: high-arousal positive, low-arousal positive, high-arousal negative, or low-arousal negative. Results consistently showed that positive emotion displays facilitated word learning relative to negative displays in adults and preschoolers alike, with web-based eye tracking indicating that high-arousal negative displays modestly pull attention away from the labeled object. Following the study, preschoolers preferentially chose stickers depicting objects that had been paired with positive displays as a prize, suggesting that emotion signals shape not only which words children learn but also how they value the objects paired with emotion displays. Together, these findings establish that emotional signals are not merely a backdrop to early language input but an active ingredient in word learning. Specifically, positive emotion in caregivers’ communication to young children may serve a functional role in supporting language development.
Simple heuristics structure and bias fairness judgements about climate change
Lucas Woodley; Arthur Le Pargneux; Fiery Andrews Cushman
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Establishing a fair global carbon budget is crucial for mitigating climate change, yet little is known about what shapes citizens' fairness perceptions. In a pre-registered experiment across five countries (N=3,043), we examine how simple informational cues affect what people propose as fair carbon budgets. We find that people’s judgements are structured around proportionality or nominal equality heuristics, yet they are easily biased and frequently contradict all main climate justice principles.
The partner as reader: recognition, disclosure risk, and the unit of analysis in dyadic reflexive thematic analysis
Vince Jacques de Blauwe; Alina Gheorghita; Antonio Fidalgo
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In dyadic qualitative research, an account may have an informed reader before it reaches any public audience: the person who shared the encounter. Conventional de-identification is generally calibrated to an external reader and may therefore leave unresolved recognition through shared memory, relational sequence, or a singular circumstance. This methodological case study examines that condition in a corpus of 150 immediate written micro-accounts from 30 university students following brief structured interactions in 15 stranger dyads. Reflexive thematic analysis generated four interpretive themes: calm-as-distance, vocabulary-as-bridge, masking under instruction, and provisional we-ness. A subsequent dialogue-informed dyad-level configurational reading extended, complicated, and bounded selected individual-level interpretations; it was not treated as independent corroboration. The study develops the Partner-Recognition Framework for qualitative research in which both members of an encounter provide accounts. The framework specifies four prospective rules: name partner recognition in consent; declare dyadic provenance and the intended relationship between individual- and pair-level analysis; separate paired accounts by default in public reporting; and screen derived artefacts as data. The case also documents the evidential cost of partner-protective reporting and recursive disclosure risk, whereby protective documentation can create new linkage routes requiring further review. The framework is offered as a set of prospective design and reporting principles, not as a validated risk-assessment instrument, a guarantee of anonymity, or a substitute for case-specific ethical and legal review
Individual differences in visual imagery vividness predict neural responses to language-induced visual expectations
Ana Chkhaidze; Lera Boroditsky; Sean Trott; Anastasia Kiyonaga; Seana Coulson
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Grounded accounts of meaning propose that language comprehension recruits sensorimotor systems to represent described content. However, people differ markedly in how vividly they can picture objects and scenes in the mind's eye, raising the question of whether perceptual simulation is recruited similarly across individuals. We addressed this question using the sentence-picture verification task, in which pictures are verified more quickly when their shape matches rather than mismatches the state implied by a preceding sentence, a match effect taken to index perceptual simulation. In preregistered Experiment 1 (N = 110), matching pictures were verified faster and more accurately than mismatching pictures, yet the magnitude of this effect did not vary with imagery vividness. We reasoned that similar behavior might arise from different processes, so in Experiment 2 we recorded picture-locked event-related potentials (ERPs) from 34 participants performing the verification task. Shape mismatch elicited an early right-posterior response at 150-190 ms and a later, broader posterior response at 300-500 ms. Crucially, imagery vividness interacted with the shape match effect in the early window only: stronger imagers showed a pronounced right-posterior negativity, whereas verbal thinking tendency did not, indicating specificity to visual imagery. Together, results suggest that comparable behavioral outcomes may arise through partly different paths to meaning: an early, visually specific route recruited more strongly by vivid imagers, and a later conceptual route shared more broadly across the imagery spectrum. Language comprehension may draw on both perceptual simulation and linguistic associations, with the relative contribution of each depending in part on the comprehender.
Measuring audience experience across 20 showings of the same theatre performance using customer feedback kiosks and a questionnaire
Mikko Sams; Einat Amir-Ahola; Enrico Glerean; Sirpa KÀhkönen; Taru MÀkelÀ; Reetta RistimÀki; Antti RuotoistenmÀki; Veli-Matti Saarinen
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Audience experiences can vary both between performances and among spectators, but little is known about how different methods capture this variation across repeated showings of the same production. We therefore examined audience experience across twenty live performances of the same music theatre production. We combined two complementary methods: immediate audience ratings collected through customer feedback kiosks and more detailed postperformance questionnaires. The kiosks recorded 1,887 responses, corresponding to 67% of total attendance, and 458 audience members (16%) completed questionnaires. Overall, the reception was positive, but kiosk ratings varied significantly across performances, indicating that audience-level enjoyment ratings differed from one showing to another. Kiosk and questionnaire responses to the same enjoyment question did not differ significantly at the aggregate level, suggesting that brief kiosk feedback may provide a practical, low-burden measure of audience-level enjoyment. Cluster analysis of questionnaire data identified three descriptive response profiles that differed primarily in overall engagement and ratings of specific artistic elements. These profiles illustrate heterogeneity within the audience of a single production. Qualitative responses from participants whose quantitative ratings were closest to each cluster centroid provided illustrative accounts of the experiences associated with these profiles. These narratives added context to the quantitative findings by showing differences in emotional tone, interpretive emphasis, and personal connection to the performance. Supplementary interviews with the director, artistic director, and an external playwright illustrated both interest in and reservations about incorporating audience data into creative work. Their comments emphasised the potential of empirical findings to support artistic reflection, while also underscoring the importance of how and when feedback is communicated within production teams.
What is attention for? A theory of attention as control over information sampling
Heleen A Slagter; Thomas Parr
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Goal-directed attention shapes what we perceive, learn, and ultimately how we act in the world. Yet, despite its central role in cognition, what attention fundamentally is remains debated, with dominant accounts treating it either as a filter over sensory processing or tightly linked to goal-directed action. Here, we propose a unified account in which goal-directed attention is understood as control over how information is sampled within the framework of active inference. In this perspective, goal-directed attention does not simply modulate sensory processing, nor can it be equated to, or seen as the covert shadow of goal-directed action. Rather, attention governs information seeking, determining what is brought into evidence, and thereby what the organism perceives, learns from, and uses to guide action. Mechanistically, we propose that alternative ways of weighting information are themselves evaluated as candidate courses of action, and selected according to their expected informativeness and usefulness. A conceptualization of goal-directed attention as control over information sampling renders attention inherently inferential, prospective, and agentic, as the organism must evaluate alternative epistemic futures on the basis of what would come to be known if information were sampled in one way rather than another. It also explains attention's sensitivity to salience, prior experience, value, and context, because which way of sampling information is selected is jointly shaped by both what is informative and what matters to the organism. More generally, our review shows that our account can parsimoniously explain a wide range of attentional phenomena, and that influences traditionally attributed to distinct sources of control, such as goals, salience, and selection history, can be understood as different constraints on a single inferential process through which organisms determine how information should be acquired in the service of adaptive behaviour. We discuss this proposal in relation to influential perception- and action-based theories of attention, and explore its implications for understanding the relationship between covert and overt attention, attentional agency, habit formation, and attentional dysfunction. More broadly, we argue that progress in understanding attention requires moving beyond describing the factors that influence attentional selection toward a mechanistic account of how organisms determine what to know next.
A Practical Causal Mediation Workflow for Psychologists: From Concepts to Implementation
Joshua D Wenger; Zoe Baker; Vasant G Honavar
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Mediation analysis is widely used across psychology to support claims about psychological mechanisms. Such claims often carry causal interpretations that depend on assumptions that are frequently left unstated, and may not be justified under traditional mediation approaches. Despite substantial advances in mediation best practices emerging from the field of causal inference, uptake of these approaches has remained low, possibly due to the highly technical literature and lack of practical implementation guidance. This paper addresses that gap by integrating developments in causal mediation into an accessible, fully demonstrated workflow for applied researchers without prior knowledge of causal inference. We identify two major limitations of traditional mediation approaches: vulnerability to mediator–outcome confounding and reliance on a product-of-coefficients approach that cannot account for predictor–mediator interactions and certain nonlinear models more generally. We then present concrete solutions to each that can be applied throughout the research workflow with limited additional work: before data collection (design-based solutions), during mediation effect estimation, and after analysis to assess robustness (sensitivity analysis). In doing so, we introduce key causal inference frameworks (directed acyclic graphs and potential outcomes) to facilitate understanding of these problems, bridge conceptual reasoning and practical solutions, and equip readers to reason about these issues within their own study contexts. Finally, we provide a fully worked example, including R code that readers can adapt for their own use. Overall, the proposed workflow requires only modest extensions to standard practice but can substantially improve the validity of causal claims drawn from mediation analysis.
Naming variation across languages is shaped by shared histories, semantics and familiarity
Alzbeta Kucerova; Carlo Y. Meloni; Johann-Mattis List
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Speakers all around the world use words to name the objects around them. While they often agree on a common word, this is not always the case. Certain concepts seem to attract many different words, while others remain fairly stable in their naming patterns. It is still unclear where these naming differences stem from, which factors trigger the variation, and to which degree this variation results from universal linguistic tendencies, contact, inheritance or concept-level properties. Here, we analyze naming variation patterns in an open dataset that elicits naming responses for 500 unique concepts across 34 languages from 8 distinct families. Our results show that cross-linguistic similarities in naming variation are systematically associated with genetic relatedness, geographical proximity between languages, concept basic-ness, semantic categories, and object familiarity. Although the magnitude of semantic category effects varies across languages, several semantic categories display broadly consistent tendencies toward higher or lower naming diversity across most languages in the sample. These findings indicate that naming variation reflects both concept-level properties, as well as cross-linguistic historical and spatial relationships, while also exhibiting meaningful language-specific heterogeneity.
Shame- and Fear-based Autobiographical Memories and Their Identity Centrality and Intrusiveness in Young Adults Exposed to Childhood Maltreatment
Ellen Iredale; Xenia Bunk; Jasmine Stringer; louise johns; Carmen Chan; Alex Lau-Zhu
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Background: Exposure to childhood maltreatment is an established risk factor for adult psychopathology, but the underpinning mechanisms remain unclear. Developmental theory suggests that alterations in cognitive processes, such as autobiographical memory, play an important role. Aim: We examined whether autobiographical shame vs fear memories differ in intrusiveness and identity centrality in young adults with high exposure to childhood maltreatment compared to low exposure peers. Furthermore, we investigated whether such memory characteristics could reflect markers of latent vulnerability to psychopathology, with implications for early intervention efforts. Methods: In a cross-sectional design, we examined shame- and fear-based autobiographical memories in a UK community sample of young adults aged 18 to 25 (N = 127), with high vs low exposure to childhood maltreatment. Participants completed an online survey including questions on adverse experiences, current psychological symptoms and an autobiographical memory task involving recall of specific childhood events most strongly associated with shame and fear, followed by ratings of memory intrusiveness and centrality. Results: Intrusiveness and identity centrality of shame and fear memories were rated as significantly higher in young adults exposed to high levels of maltreatment than their low-maltreatment peers. Centrality (but not intrusiveness) ratings remained significantly associated with maltreatment after accounting for concurrent psychopathology. However, there was no evidence that the association between maltreatment and memory characteristics differed between shame- and fear-based memories. This may indicate that the observed memory alterations may not reflect shame-specific mechanisms and suggest that the conceptual distinction between shame- and fear-related autobiographical memory processes may be less clear-cut. Conclusion: The present work suggests that autobiographical memory – irrespective of emotional category (shame vs fear) – may be one mechanism through which childhood maltreatment increases risk for later psychopathology. While memory intrusiveness may reflect ongoing psychopathology, its centrality to identity may reflect a latent vulnerability to future psychopathology. Pending further work with longitudinal designs, autobiographical memory could offer a mechanistic focus for early interventions in maltreatment-exposed youth.
People want human and AI social partners to follow different relational norms despite similar roles
Madeline G. Reinecke; Yueying Chu; Ivar RodrĂ­guez Hannikainen; Andreas Kappes; Sebastian Porsdam Mann; Ilina Singh; Julian Savulescu; Brian D. Earp
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Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are increasingly assuming social roles traditionally held by humans—but do people want human-AI relationships to be governed by the same behavioral norms as human-human relationships? In three pre-registered studies using demographically representative samples in the United Kingdom (N = 910) and United States (N = 862), including a US pilot study (N = 432), we assessed public preferences across four cooperative domains—care, hierarchy, transaction, and mating—within seven relationship types (e.g., romantic partners, close friends, coworkers). Participants rated their ideal norms for each domain and relationship type, either in a human-human or human-AI context. Contrary to a common assumption in alignment research, participants reported systematically different ideals for human-AI versus human-human relationships: across all seven types, they distinguished ideal AI from ideal human behavior in at least one cooperative domain, with the direction and size of differences also varying by relationship type. Specifically, these included preferences for AI assistants and sellers to show greater care than humans in identical positions; AI teachers and mental health providers to express lesser authority; and AI romantic partners, friends, and coworkers to behave more platonically. Participants also preferred humans to show lesser care and greater authority toward AIs across several roles. These findings suggest public expectations for social AIs are shaped by relational context rather than a simple human-to-AI transfer rule, with implications for social AI design.
Effects of Anthropomorphic Characteristics of Chat Agents on Perceptions of Bad Advice: An Exploratory Study
Kate Alberga; Michael A. Nees
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Anthropomorphic form is an inherent characteristic of artificial intelligence chatbots driven by large language models and appears to have profound effects on user perceptions of chatbots. The proliferation of anthropomorphized chatbots has raised concerns about miscalibrated trust and misplaced attributions of responsibility for chatbot mistakes. An exploratory experiment examined the potential effects of anthropomorphic design in both the user interface and the linguistic output of a chatbot that provided bad advice about an everyday medical situation. In a simulated chatbot interaction, participants experienced either humanlike or machinelike language output. Additionally, the user interface either simulated typing (i.e., the typewriter effect) or presented a static text response all at once. Humanlike language increased perceived anthropomorphism and social presence but had no effect on perceived competence and trust. There were no significant effects of the typewriter effect user interface. More frequent AI usage was associated with higher chatbot trust and perceived social presence. Perceived anthropomorphism, social presence, trust, and competence were all highly intercorrelated. Interestingly, participants who were apparently unaware of the obviously bad advice tended to show considerably higher levels of chatbot perceived anthropomorphism, social presence, trust, and competence. Finally, we found some evidence that higher perceived anthropomorphism is associated with greater perceived responsibility of the chatbot itself for the advice it gave, whereas higher perceived chatbot trust and competence were associated with lesser perceived responsibility of the developing company for the chatbot’s output. Potential future research directions are discussed.
The Flattening Effect: A Comparative Study of Sociopragmatic Erasure and Identity Loss in Translated Vietnamese-English Cyber-Discourse
Ming Ze Tang; Phan Quynh Thu Nguyen; Thi Hong Nhung Nguyen
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This study investigates the "flattening effect" in translated Vietnamese-English code-mixed discourse, a phenomenon where semantic content is preserved while sociopragmatic nuances are erased. Utilizing a subset of the VietMix corpus, an "LLM-as-a-Judge" framework was employed to evaluate four dimensions: Structural Hybridity, Emotional Buffering, Status Signaling, and In-group Identity. While the model demonstrated moderate reliability in binary feature detection (inclusive $\kappa = 0.416$), its alignment with human consensus collapsed when quantifying erasure severity (expressive $\kappa = 0.141$). Qualitative analysis revealed that the model frequently over-interprets functional jargon while failing to recognize localized subcultural markers. These findings highlight a critical capability gap in current models, which prioritize global linguistic patterns over localized sociopragmatic functions. Consequently, future developments should move beyond semantic equivalence to incorporate localized cultural awareness within automated computer-mediated communication (CMC) analysis.
Two Paths, Two Fates: The Differential Democratic Outcomes of Disappointment-Based and Hatred-Based Affective Polarization
Mabelle Kretchner; Julia Elad-Strenger; Eran Halperin; Daan Vandermeulen; Sivan hirsch hoefler
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Does affective polarization (AP) threaten democratic life? Findings on democratic erosion and political violence remain mixed. We argue this reflects treating AP as unidimensional, when its democratic implications may differ by which emotions dominate. We propose an emotional dual-path model for AP. The more prevalent disappointment-based path (dominated by disappointment and anger) reflects perceptions of opponents as fellow citizens who have failed to meet shared expectations and associated with continued investment in democratic processes. The less prevalent hatred-based path (dominated by hatred, disgust, and contempt) reflects perceptions of opponents as total enemies and is associated with willingness to undermine democratic norms and support political violence. We tested this model in two surveys of Jewish Israelis (Study 1a: N = 1,120; Study 1b: N = 690) conducted during a period of political instability. Across ideological camps and time, disappointment-path emotions dominated, while hatred-path emotions remained low, extending prior single-emotion findings to the path level. Latent profile and regression analyses showed that, consistent with the model, AP's democratic implications differed by emotional path: while the disappointment path was linked to greater support for democratic norms, the hatred path was linked to lower support for democratic norms and greater support for political violence.
Immediate effects of body talk on body image in daily life: An experience sampling study
Nahori Ito; Akira Hasegawa; Asami Beppu; Yuko Matsuda; Ayano Kichinaka; Tetsuya Yamamoto
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This experience sampling study investigated whether momentary changes in state body talk were associated with concurrent and subsequent changes in state body image variables, including body fat dissatisfaction and body appreciation, providing insight into their short-term temporal dynamics. Overall, 118 female university students younger than 30 years completed baseline trait body talk and body image measures, followed by six assessments per day for seven days. Multilevel analyses showed that trait negative fat talk was significantly but weakly associated with a higher average level of state negative fat talk, whereas no such association was observed for positive body talk. Multilevel path analyses showed that state negative fat talk was concurrently associated with higher state body fat dissatisfaction and lower state body appreciation but not with either outcome at the subsequent assessment. These findings provided no evidence for a causal effect, although it remains possible that state negative fat talk had short-lived effects. The concurrent associations of state positive body talk with both body image variables were nonsignificant but in the same direction as those for state negative fat talk. Both forms of state body talk were concurrently associated with higher state appearance comparison. In contrast, trait negative fat talk was significantly associated with higher state body fat dissatisfaction and lower state body appreciation, and these associations appeared stronger than those observed for state negative fat talk. Future research should employ assessment methods that can adequately capture the occurrence of state body talk and study designs capable of detecting its immediate effects.
Combining Psychedelics with Religion or Spirituality: Spiritual Bypassing, Receptivity to Pseudo-Profound Bullshit, Subclinical Psychotic Experiences and Well-Being.
Baptiste Fauvel; Myriam Ichchou; Chérine Elhssaini; Joy Zogheib; Ewen Kervadec; Bruno Roméo; Antoine Bioy; Pascale Piolino
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Abstract: Psychedelics have been used for spiritual purposes for centuries. However, concerns have been raised regarding spiritual bypassing, maladaptive meaning-making, and increased suggestibility when psychedelics are combined with religious or spiritual beliefs. We examined spiritual bypassing, receptivity to pseudo-profound bullshit, subclinical psychotic experiences, well-being, and mystical and challenging intensity of the most significant psychedelic experience in 147 Western psychedelic users with different motives (religious: n = 21; spiritual but not religious: n = 79; neither religious nor spiritual: n = 47). Religious users were predominantly Christians, whereas spiritual and secular users primarily identified themselves as mindfulness-based practitioners and philosophers or existential meaning seekers. Groups did not differ in education level, psychiatric diagnoses, or receptivity to pseudo-profound bullshit. Religious and spiritual users reported more intense mystical experiences and higher well-being compared with secular users. Religious users reported fewer subclinical psychotic experiences. They also scored higher on spiritual bypassing, which was positively associated with well-being. No association were found between pseudo-profound bullshit receptivity and either mystical experience or spiritual bypassing. Overall, these findings do not support concerns that psychedelic use with religious or spiritual intentions is associated with increased cognitive or psychological vulnerabilities. Keywords: psychedelics, spirituality, religion, spiritual bypassing, suggestibility, well-being
Short-term prior knowledge improves speech-in-noise perception independently of autistic imagination subtrait
Yurika Tsuji; Shu Imaizumi
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Autistic individuals often experience difficulties using prior knowledge and perceiving speech in noisy environments. Imagination difficulties associated with autistic traits have been linked to difficulty perceiving high-familiarity words, suggesting that this association may reflect difficulty using prior lexical knowledge. The present study aimed to directly examine the effects of prior knowledge on speech perception in noise in relation to imagination difficulties. We hypothesized that greater imagination difficulties would be related to poorer performance in perceiving learned words, but not unlearned words. Seventy-three participants from the general population identified unlearned and learned low-familiarity words presented in noise. In the learned conditions, participants learned the target words through written and spoken presentations and then identified them in noise. The results suggested that learning improved subsequent speech-in-noise perception. However, imagination difficulties were not associated with performance, regardless of whether the words had been learned. Therefore, imagination difficulties may not be associated with the ability to use short-term prior knowledge. Exploratory analyses suggested that attention-to-detail traits and communication difficulties may be associated with better perception of learned words, whereas attention-switching difficulties may be associated with poorer perception. Future studies should replicate these exploratory findings and investigate the role of other types of prior knowledge, such as long-term and semantic priors.
Out-of-Context and In-Context Environmental Effects on Exploratory Reinforcement Learning and Decision-Making
Mianzhi Hu; Emma Dennin; Ben D. Ulicnik; Darrell A. Worthy
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Physical environments can shape behavior, yet how they influence the latent cognitive processes underlying experiential, feedback-based learning remains largely unknown. Across two experiments with 486 participants, we examined how visual exposure to natural, urban or control images influenced performance in a non-stationary reinforcement learning task. In Experiment 1, lasting, out-of-context effects of exposure to natural or urban scenes between two task runs increased reward and decision quality while reducing stochastic switching and exploration relative to control images. Urban exposure further promoted exploitation at the cost of poorer exploration quality, whereas natural exposure was associated with higher-quality exploration. In Experiment 2, when the same images were embedded as task backgrounds, in-context exposure produced a different pattern. Natural scenes increased switching, while both natural and urban scenes increased lose-shift behavior. Semantic segmentation combined with computational modeling further suggested that in-context effects were more strongly associated with features that could promote immediate information seeking, whereas out-of-context effects were linked to broader features reflecting the gist of the environment. Together, these findings show that environmental influences on experiential reinforcement learning are dynamic, context-dependent and feature-specific, beyond a general natural-urban contrast.
Cultural Values Shape Acceptance of Electronic Performance Monitoring
Christine M Cairoli; David L Tomczak; Mauren S. Wolff; Tara S. Behrend
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Employee reactions to electronic performance monitoring (EPM) are mixed and depend on both the characteristics of the monitoring and the individual differences of those being monitored. Using information boundary theory as a foundation, our study investigates how horizontal-vertical individualism-collectivism dimensions affect acceptance of EPM practices that vary in invasiveness. Data from 501 participants showed that horizontal and vertical individualism and collectivism are positively associated with EPM acceptance. Furthermore, verticality is a predictor of acceptance for invasive EPM, such that people with strongly positive vertical individualism values are more likely to accept EPM. Our study demonstrates the need for organizations to consider both cultural values and the invasiveness of EPM methods when implementing monitoring policy. Further research is needed to understand how cultural values shape attitudes toward EPM in various geographic and legal settings. An awareness of cultural differences is crucial for policy makers and organizations aiming to implement EPM in ways that align with people’s norms and expectations.
The developmental dynamics of bilingual spelling: Longitudinal and intervention evidence for language-specific orthographic differentiation
Manon Jones; Catherine Alice Clark; Gwennant Evans; Joseph Benjamin Russell Smith; Carly Deluca; James Hodgetts; Ferrida Ponce; Cadi Sion; Samuel David Jones; Cameron Downing
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Spelling in bilingual children requires navigating two orthographic systems that may compete as well as cooperate. Although bilingual language research demonstrates extensive cross-language co-activation, far less is known about how such dynamics shape spelling development. We investigated whether cross-linguistic influence in spelling – indexed by the extent to which children’s misspellings conformed to English-consistent versus Welsh-consistent phoneme–grapheme mappings – predicted literacy development in Welsh–English bilingual children. Across three studies involving 524 children aged approximately 7–11 years, we quantified the extent to which misspellings reflected sublexical mappings characteristic of English or Welsh orthography. In Study 1, longitudinal analyses of children in control groups showed that greater phonological plausibility under English-consistent mappings at baseline predicted greater growth in English spelling accuracy, whereas greater plausibility under Welsh-consistent mappings predicted slower growth. In Study 2, a Welsh-medium literacy intervention did not affect English spelling accuracy but strengthened Welsh-consistent mappings and improved English-consistent mappings among children with the weakest baseline skills. In Study 3, an English-medium intervention strengthened English-consistent mappings but did not alter Welsh-consistent mappings. Together, these findings suggest that bilingual spelling development involves increasing differentiation of language-specific sublexical mappings through experience. This differentiation appears to be shaped by instructional context and orthographic depth, such that increasing sensitivity to target-language mappings supports spelling growth, whereas persistent influence of non-target mappings may constrain it.
Trauma Exposure Changes Substance Use Expectancies and Affects Subsequent Use among Early Adolescents
Herry Patel; Fiona A Ralston; Cheyenne Yochum; Jack Waddell; Emily C. Kemp; Isabel R. Aks; William E. Pelham; Sandra Brown
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We examined changes in substance use (SU) expectancies following potentially traumatic events (PTEs) in a community-based cohort of early adolescents for three common substances used by teens (alcohol, cannabis, and nicotine) how those changes affected SU itself. We leveraged data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study (N=11,868, 48% female, 52% White), containing annual assessments of PTEs, SU expectancies, and SU itself from ages 10 to 14 years old. Using multilevel models to estimate between- and within-person effects, we tested whether PTEs predict negative and positive SU expectancies concurrently and prospectively and whether those expectancies forecast subsequent use. At the between-person level, PTEs were associated with increased negative and positive SU expectancies and subsequently associated with greater SU, directly and indirectly via positive expectancies concurrently and prospectively. At the within-person level, PTEs were associated with increased negative and positive SU expectancies concurrently but not prospectively. PTEs were associated with increases in SU directly and indirectly via positive expectancies and decreases in cannabis and nicotine use only via negative expectancies. But prospectively, PTEs were only associated with greater SU directly and not indirectly via positive or negative expectancies. Closer in time to each other, PTEs heighten the saliency of both positive and negative expectancies; however, over time, the effect of PTEs on expectancies diminishes. Current findings highlight a temporal window for optimal intervention to prevent SU following PTEs by assessing and targeting SU expectancies.
Scroll and Snack: Daily Life Exposure to Healthy Food Content on Instagram Boosts Cravings for Healthy Snacks
Monique Caroline Alblas; Matthias Burkard Aulbach; Lena Jeremias; Veronika Pavlovova; Leonardo Pimpini
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Background: Food content pervades social media, yet how everyday exposure shapes momentary craving and snacking in daily life remains unclear. We tested whether experimentally adding unhealthy (H1) vs. healthy (H2) food content on top of participants’ Instagram feeds increased craving for and intake of unhealthy and healthy snacks, relative to adding art content (control). Method: In this preregistered randomized controlled field trial, 116 healthy-weight young adults (Mage = 22.46 years, 79.3% female) completed a 10-day smartphone ecological momentary assessment protocol (five prompts/day; five baseline, five manipulation days). Participants were randomly assigned to follow existing preselected Instagram accounts featuring unhealthy food, healthy food, or art (control); the number of additional accounts was 5% of those already followed. Outcomes (craving, consumption) were modeled using multilevel linear mixed models. Results: Manipulation checks confirmed expected shifts in food-related Instagram content. Against H1, added unhealthy content increased neither craving for (p = .194) nor intake of (p = .867) unhealthy snacks. Supporting H2, healthy food content increased craving for healthy snacks relative to both the control and the unhealthy condition (p < .001), but not healthy snack intake (p = .061). Conclusions: Curating a healthier Instagram feed may increase the desire for healthy snacks, but this effect, possibly due to the short duration of the manipulation, did not extend to intentions and/or intake. In conclusion, food craving may thus be used as early intervention target in future weight loss intervention, whereas changing actual intake likely requires longer or personalized exposure.
My better half? Predicting self-esteem using appraisals of oneself, real others, and fictional characters
Eliott K. Doyle; Sara D. Hodges
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In what ways do perceptions of fictional characters supplement and differ from perceptions of real people in the context of self-esteem? The present study investigates differences between appraisals of the self, favorite fictional characters, and close real others, and the relationship between these appraisals and self-esteem. Participants (N = 265) rated themselves and their chosen real and fictional targets on likable and unlikable traits, then completed a measure of self-esteem. Appraisals of self and close real others were more favorable than appraisals of favorite fictional characters. Self-esteem was more strongly associated with self-appraisals than with appraisals of non-self targets. Differences between unlikable self and real other appraisals interacted with unlikable self and character appraisal differences in predicting self-esteem: Less unlikable appraisals of close real others compared to self-appraisals were predictive of lower self-esteem. Results suggest that fictional characters offer opportunities for self-enhancement not always afforded by real others.
Which gambling harm prevention messages appear the most effective? Results of an online experiment comparing self-appraisal, positive emotional, loss-based, and counter-industry approaches
Philip Newall; William George Chapman; Simon Thomas van Baal; Jamie Torrance; Maira ANDRADE; Leonardo Weiss-Cohen
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Gambling harm prevention messages are increasingly catching up with best practices from tobacco of utilizing independently-designed warnings. Australia was the first country to impose this policy, using messages from three persuasion strategies: “loss-based” messages warn of the likelihood of losing money, “self-appraisal” messages prompt self-reflection of gambling behaviors, and a “positive emotional” message highlights the benefits of not gambling. In the present online experiment (N=3,486) we compared four well-performing messages from each of these classes against four well-performing “counter-industry” messages, which highlight the industry’s role in gambling harms. Messages were compared across six self-report outcomes (e.g., “this message makes me want to gamble less”), and based on the sentiment of optional free-text comments via a natural language processing analysis. Messages were ranked based on the overall sample and the high-risk sub-sample according to the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI). Overall, one message of each class appeared best, with positive emotional and self-appraisal messages appearing better suited to high-PGSI audiences, and loss-based messages to low-PGSI audiences. Counter-industry messages performed similarly among all audiences, but with longer counter-industry messages performing worse in sentiment-based analysis. These findings inform future theory-informed message development and campaign implementation.
Expectation-management cues modify delayed processing of unexpected words
Benjamin Adam Menashe; Oren Kadosh; Yoram Bonneh; Michal Ben-Shachar
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Mirative markers, linguistic elements that encode surprise (e.g., “surprisingly”), are widely used to manage readers’ expectations during sentence processing. In theory, mirative markers should prepare readers for an upcoming expectation violation, mitigating the additional processing costs of unexpected words. However, empirical evidence regarding their real-time efficacy remains limited and contradictory. To test whether these cues modulate real-time processing of subsequent unexpected words, we implemented a simultaneous eye-tracking and EEG paradigm. Thirty native Hebrew speakers read sentences containing an expected or unexpected target word, preceded by a mirative marker or a neutral marker. Processing effort was measured using oculomotor inhibition (OMI) duration and N400 amplitude. OMI is the involuntary suppression of microsaccades and eye blinks following stimulus presentation. Results revealed a clear predictability effect at the target word, with unexpected items eliciting longer OMI duration and greater N400 amplitude than expected items. To the best of our knowledge, this represents the first known demonstration that OMI duration is sensitive to word predictability during reading. Additionally, results show that the presence of a mirative marker did not modify the response at the target word, but it did eliminate the “spillover” predictability effect at the subsequent word (T+1). These findings support a delayed modulation account of expectation management, where mirative markers modify delayed, but not immediate, processing costs of unexpected words. The results reconcile previous discrepancies regarding real-time and offline effects of expectation management and support a flexible version of the Uniform Information Density (UID) framework.
Informed Voting Through Incidental News Exposure? – Reconceptualizing the O-S-R-O-R Model for Social Media
Jana H Dreston; German Neubaum
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The O-S-R-O-R framework posits that news exposure affects political participation by promoting political discussion and increasing political knowledge. However, due to the widespread adoption of social media as news platforms, this model requires revision for three reasons. First, the level of intentionality of news exposure should be considered because intentional versus incidental exposure to news on social media was found to affect learning and discussion differently. Second, subjective knowledge must be considered alongside objective knowledge because accumulating evidence suggests that the actual and perceived learning effects of social media news use differ. Third, prior work has largely neglected qualitative distinctions of different forms of participation. We address this issue by incorporating “aligned voting” as an outcome. To test these model refinements, we conducted a pre-registered, two-wave panel survey surrounding the 2025 German federal election (N = 697). The results showed that the intentionality of social media news exposure is key in shaping subsequent knowledge gains and political actions, such as voting. Consistent with the O-S-R-O-R framework, exposure to news on social media can enhance the subjective sense of political knowledge. When individuals are incidentally exposed to news on social media and recognize its relevance, this can enhance their objective knowledge. This, in turn, helps them vote in line with their personal stances. These findings support a reconceptualization of the O-S-R-O-R framework to account for learning and participation in algorithmically curated social media news environments.
Errors in social network knowledge predict how ties evolve in the future
Alice Xia; Yi Yang Teoh; Apoorva Bhandari; Oriel FeldmanHall
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A striking feature of people’s social knowledge is that it is riddled with errors. These errors—e.g., making mistakes about who are actually friends in a social network—has typically been attributed to cognitive limitations or heuristics that prioritize knowledge of general social patterns over details about specific ties. Here, we demonstrate that such errors instead reflect an adaptive link prediction process that anticipates how the network will evolve far into the future. By longitudinally following a large, real-world social network (N=196) and tracking the formation and dissolution of social ties over the course of a year, we show that judgments that are wrong in the moment accurately forecast which relationships will emerge or dissolve up to six months later. On average, participants’ errors predicted tie formation nearly 3x, and tie loss more than 1.2x above chance levels. Beyond the use of simple heuristics like triadic closure and homophily, computational modeling reveals that successful link prediction relies on mental representations of the social network that integrates information about both direct and indirect, long-range ties between individuals. Having a social network representation that is future-oriented yields distinct social advantages: those who are better able to predict changes in the network become more centrally positioned over time, contingent on their initial position.
Instrumentalising gender conspiracy theories: how narratives about gender ideology may both reflect and fuel general institutional distrust
Peter Teličák; Jakub Ơrol; Eva Ballova Mikuskova; Magdalena Adamus
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In two cross-sectional and one longitudinal study conducted in Slovakia and Czechia (total N = 2339, 50,7% women; aged between 18 and 89 years), we tested whether gender ideology narratives are linked with conspiratorial thinking - operationalised as either specific conspiracy beliefs or conspiracy mentality - and pinpointed their most pronounced correlates as political ideologies and institutional distrust. The cross-sectional results show that support for gender ideology narratives is associated with conspiratorial thinking and, albeit unrelated to sociodemographic variables, shows systematic associations with institutional distrust and political stances as expressed by either collective narcissism or conservative political orientation. The preregistered Study 3 fine-tunes the findings by revealing some bidirectional temporal patterns at the within-participants level only with institutional distrust. The results point to a mutually reinforcing nexus between the gender ideology narratives and distrust thereby fostering the understanding of the narratives as embedded within a wider context of power challenging conspiracy theories. Finally, the paper offers insights into how–by exploiting and instilling the sense of distrust–gender ideology narratives can be instrumentalised to tilt political preferences towards anti-establishment, non-mainstream parties that present themselves as beacons of traditional values.
Subject Preference as a Flexible Interpretive Heuristic in Thematic Role Assignment
Qingwei Xue; Yi Liu; Mingzhu Yuan; Zhurui Zhang; Tilo Kircher; Luyao Chen; Yifei He
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Sentence-initial arguments often receive interpretive priority during thematic role assignment, reflecting a tendency commonly referred to as “subject preference”. However, whether this preference reflects a stable commitment to a subject-first structural analysis in the final interpretation of the sentence remains unclear. To address this question, we manipulated the availability of verb-based semantic cues in a Mandarin NP1–NP2–Verb paradigm, such that they either provided sufficient information to determine the actor in subject–object and object–subject orders (cue-determined conditions) or remained insufficient to uniquely determine the actor (cue-underdetermined, ambiguous condition). One hundred and twenty native Mandarin speakers completed an actor-choice task, with response times and confidence ratings recorded. Our results showed no evidence of an NP1 advantage under cue-determined conditions. When semantic cues are underdetermined, we observed a modest NP1 preference emerged, accompanied by faster but lower-confidence responses. These findings suggest that subject preference is characterized as a flexible, cue-sensitive heuristic rather than a fixed structural default.
The Australian under-16 social media ban: Early influences on access and its relationship with reading
Signy Wegener; Jasmine Spencer; Andrea Salins; Serje Robidoux; Robert Savage; Anne Castles
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Concerns abound that time spent on social media might displace more developmentally adaptive activities, such as reading. In December 2025, the Australian government introduced a world-first social media ban for young people under the age of 16, providing an opportunity to explore whether social media use and the efficacy of the ban are associated with current reading behaviours. In this study, Australians aged 12 to 15 years completed a cross-sectional self-report online survey between March and June 2026. Prior to the ban, 81.55% of the sample used social media. Users of social media reported reading less frequently, for shorter periods and had lower reading motivation than non-users of social media. For users, the initial effect of the ban was often incomplete or transient, with many users subsequently able to regain access to lost accounts. Post-ban, time spent on social media reduced for those who lost access to some or all of their accounts. Although there were differences in reading times by the effect of the ban in the predicted direction, they were not significant. Further, there were no differences in the strength of the association between reading motivation and reading duration by the effect of the ban. These findings suggest that social media use is associated with lower levels of reading engagement than non-use. The early implementation of the social media ban has only been partially effective and there is presently insufficient evidence that the effect of the ban is associated with differences in current reading engagement.
Phonological changes facilitate pragmatic inference during lexical access in Bengali verbs
Pijush Kanti Gayen; Monsija Mitra; Samar Husain
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How do listeners map fine-grained phonological variation onto a speaker’s communicative intention during lexical access? We address this question using a restricted set of Bengali imperative verb forms in which stem-vowel height alternation is associated with different directive speech acts. Native speakers of Bengali (N=176) completed (i) an intention-scaling task to assess perceived illocutionary force and (ii) a cross-modal lexical decision task with auditory verb primes and visual speech-act targets. The lexical decision experiment manipulated prime--target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA: 30 ms, 60 ms, 240 ms) to test the time course of phonological-to-pragmatic activation. Intention-scaling results showed that participants reliably distinguished the two intended speech acts. In the lexical decision task, congruent speech-act targets were recognised substantially faster than controls at the 60ms SOA (approximately 100ms facilitation for both order and request), whereas effects were small and not reliable at 30ms and 240ms. Request trials also showed slightly longer latencies than order trials, consistent with a higher inferential load for requests. Together, the results provide behavioural evidence that phonological cues can rapidly bias speech-act interpretation, with a temporally constrained window for lexical-pragmatic integration.
Feminized Perceptions of Care Work Create Unique Barriers to Labor Organizing
Grace Flores-Robles; Ana Gantman
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Care work (e.g., nursing) is critical to a functioning society, yet workers in these occupations (predominantly women) often experience low pay, and face opposition when they organize for better wages. In the current research, we examined whether care workers face gendered barriers in labor organizing. Using historical data of work stoppages in the United States, Study 1 established differences in the frequency and duration of work stoppages for care and non-care unions. Study 2 found that jobs higher in perceived care were less likely to receive support for their labor organizing. Study 3 experimentally found differences in the preferred length of strikes for care and non-care workers and separately found that gender ideologies were related to how long participants wanted workers to go on strike. Together, these findings demonstrate that care workers face unique barriers to organizing partly because the work they do is feminized.
When showing and telling convey different stories: iterated learning of concepts leads to different outcomes when using demonstrations vs. verbal descriptions
Ariel Levy; Fiery Andrews Cushman
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When trying to convey conceptual knowledge to others, we may either show examples of the concept, or explicitly describe its defining features. Here, we ask whether the dominant mode of knowledge transmission in an experimental micro-society shapes how concepts are ultimately represented by its members. We develop a computational model that generates novel predictions about how communication methods of a culture shape its conceptual structure. To test these predictions, we used an iterated learning experiment where participants transmit information about an imaginary biological category from one person to another along a chain, using only verbal descriptions ("tell") or only examples ("show"). Even though both conditions began with the same concept, the mode of transmission can lead participants to develop nearly orthogonal representations: “Tell” chains lead participants to overemphasize easily nameable features, whereas “show” chains lead them to rely more on their inductive biases.
The Nature of Phonological Impairments in Dyslexia and Stuttering: Evidence from Phonemic, Semantic, and Design Fluency Tasks
Mahmoud Medhat Elsherif; James H Smith-Spark; Richard Kirkden
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Objective: Given that dyslexia and stuttering are defined by phonological processing challenges, we investigated whether these challenges stem from poor, or inefficient access to, phonological representation. This study aimed to dissociate these cognitive mechanisms underlying verbal fluency in adults who stutter (AWS) and dyslexic adults. Method: An online, unsupervised sample of 62 AWS, 62 dyslexic adults and 62 neurotypical adults completed a modified, typed version of semantic and phonemic fluency with a mouse-drawn version of design fluency as a nonverbal control. We analyzed switching (shifting between subcategories; proxy for retrieval efficiency) and cluster size (words per subcategory, proxy for representational integrity). Results: Controlling for nonverbal IQ and language measures, hierarchical regression showed that dyslexia and stuttering significantly predicted reduced overall phonemic output, whereas semantic and design fluency remained unaffected. Both groups showed reduced switching, though more pronounced in the dyslexia group. Conversely, only stuttering predicted reduced cluster size. Conclusion: These findings suggest in dyslexia, the access to phonological representations is affected, while it is the representations themselves in stuttering. Given the heterogeneity of these neurodivergent profiles, these challenges are not universal. However, for individuals presenting these specific cognitive signatures, interventions could be tailored toward either retrieval strategies or representational strengthening.
Reverse Engineering Depression: Data-Driven Discovery of Causal Dynamical Models
Sophie Engels; Joshua Curtiss
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Recent research focusing on formal models of psychiatric disorders has provided a basis for understanding mechanistic relationships between symptoms. Using a complex systems approach, dynamical systems and statistical methods can be used to analyze the interacting parts of the whole psychological framework. Nonlinear differential equations have been of particular interest as they lend themselves well to exploring how symptoms change over time, discovering tipping points, or characterizing attractor states. Thus far, research of this kind has focused primarily on a priori definitions of these disorders using simulated data. While these simulated models have been extremely insightful for discerning the fundamentals of psychological phenomena, much less research has been devoted to aligning these systems with real-world data. We apply a data-driven approach, which allows researchers to deduce systems of differential equations from psychological datasets. We exemplify this method using a theoretically defined model for depression and a dataset measuring passive sensor information, e-communication data, and psychological symptom assessments. In this article, we demonstrate how these variables can be integrated into the differential equation discovery framework and methods for parameterizing nomothetic or idiographic models for the disorder. Overall, we found that empirically determined equations aligned well with our predefined theory of depression, suggesting that a combined empirical and theoretical approach may complement each other in further model development. We also found that personalization offered incremental benefit over global models, suggesting that an idiographic or combined idio-nomo approach may improve further formal model advancement by more explicitly considering individual differences in model parameterization.
COMPREHENSION VALIDATION OF THE REVISED EAWS DANGER SCALE DESCRIPTORS: LESSONS FROM A LARGE-SCALE EUROPEAN END USER SURVEY ON AVALANCHE RISK PERCEPTION
Philip Alexander Ebert; Frank Techel; Matthias Walcher; Benjamin Reuter; Igor Chiambretti; Lorenzo Bertranda; Montse Bacardit Pennaroya; Jaka Ortar; Mark Diggins; Karsten MĂŒller
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The descriptors of the European avalanche danger scale, in use since 1993, are being revised. In June 2025 EAWS forecasters agreed on a new provisional wording and, in doing so, provided its content validation. Because the descriptors are first of all a public communication tool, we ran a comprehension validation: a survey testing whether end users read the wording as forecasters intend. It ran online from 3 February to 8 April 2026 in six languages and retained 17,335 responses after cleaning, of which 15,749 were completed. All wording comparisons were randomised between subjects. We evaluated each proposal against three conditions: correctness (do users recover the order forecasters intend?), simplicity (how easy is the task?), and increase (does the wording convey how much the danger increases from level to level?). For avalanche occurrence the main finding is reassuring: all four wording variants were ranked accurately (83–92% correct), and most differences that reach significance in the pooled data do not survive within individual languages. Only the variant that drops the distribution wording is clearly weaker. On the increase condition the variants do separate. Respondents placed the four statements on a continuous danger scale; wording level 2 as “in some places” rather than “in a few places” moves it closer to level 3 and shrinks the perceived difference between moderate to considerable from 36% to 31% of the distance between levels 1 and 4 (Cohen’s d = 0.39, p < 0.001). For size and impact the wording effect is large: adding size class words (small, medium, large, very large) to the impact wording raised accuracy from 61% to 95% and self-reported ease from 4.7 to 6.1 (Cohen’s d = 1.04). Most of that failure comes from using “bury and kill” at both levels 1 and 2, which makes them hard to tell apart. We also report how users read seven phrases that forecasters already use. For avalanche occurrence, the largest differences are between languages rather than between wordings.
Empowering Educators: Designing and Integrating Mindfulness-based Interventions in the Classroom
Mary L. Phan; Tyler L Renshaw; Melanie M. Domenech RodrĂ­guez; Maggie Chan; Erik J. Reinbergs; Christopher Liang; Amanda Paur; Gretchen Klinger; Kimberly Mills; Kiana Livingston
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Teacher stress and burnout can affect teacher well-being, classroom functioning, and student outcomes, yet school-based mindfulness interventions (MBIs) may be difficult to sustain without attention to feasibility, social validity, and cultural and contextual fit. Twelve elementary teachers collaborated in the development and adaptation of an MBI for teacher self-practice and classroom implementation. Guided by community-based participatory research principles and the Making Optimal Decisions for Intervention Flexibility during Implementation (MODIFI) framework, the study used a convergent mixed-methods design involving a 2-hour mindfulness training, qualitative interviews, and the Usage Rating Profile–Intervention Revised (URP-IR). Qualitative data were analyzed for implementation barriers, facilitators, and cultural adaptations, while URP-IR subscale scores were summarized descriptively. Teachers reported stress related to workload, limited time, administrative demands, and classroom behavioral needs, but viewed mindfulness as beneficial and feasible when practices were brief, flexible, and integrated into routines. Adaptations addressed language, developmental appropriateness, delivery format, student autonomy, and classroom context. Quantitative findings showed Acceptability (M = 5.5) and Feasibility (M = 5.7), with lower System Support (M = 3.3). Teacher feedback informed audio-guided options, visual practices, developmentally appropriate scripts, and autonomy-supportive language. Findings suggest that engaging teachers as co-designers may strengthen intervention fit, social validity, and implementation readiness.
Brief Summarization Improves Effectiveness of Fact-Checks, whereas a Mental-Imagery-Based Mnemonic Does Not
Lucy Butler; Constantina I. Gile; Toby Prike; Ralph Hertwig; Briony Swire-Thompson; Ullrich K. H. Ecker
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Fact-checks reliably reduce belief in misinformation, but their effects diminish over time, partially due to forgetting—this is known as belief regression. Across two experiments, we tested whether memory-enhancing techniques could improve the long-term efficacy of fact-checks. In Experiment 1 (N = 555; one-week delay) we examined a mental-imagery-based mnemonic linking false and true claims to a ‘liar’ and ‘truthteller’, respectively, alongside conditions varying the extent to which active encoding of the fact-check was encouraged. The mnemonic did not improve fact-check memory or reduce belief regression. In contrast, briefly summarizing fact-checks improved memory and sustained belief change relative to a control condition. Experiment 2 (N = 269) replicated the enhanced effectiveness of fact-checks in the summarization condition over a longer delay period (two weeks); however, belief regression did not significantly differ from control. These findings suggest that low-barrier interventions implemented at the time of encoding can improve the effectiveness of fact-checks but may not slow the rate of belief regression. To provide theoretical and practical insight into the drivers of belief regression, future research may benefit from examining the impact of retrieval-based interventions.
Flexible transfer of item-specific cognitive control: From Stroop to visual search
Xiaojin Ma; Julie Bugg; Richard A. Abrams
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When repeatedly encountering the same challenge, we learn environmental regularities that predict its reoccurrence and use them to prepare for future encounters. For example, the red color of a stop sign may automatically trigger caution. Past research shows such associative learning flexibly regulates cognitive control and generalizes to similar tasks. A key open question is whether learned control transfers to novel challenges with distinct control demands, and whether such transfer reflects perceptual, feature-based priming or higher-level, goal-based control adaptation. The present study addressed these questions by examining whether cognitive control learned in a Stroop task, that requires information dimension selection, transfers to spatial location selection in visual search. Participants learned item-specific control in a Stroop color-naming task where mostly incongruent colors signaled higher control demands than mostly congruent colors. In a subsequent visual search task, those colors no longer signaled control demands and instead appeared as task-irrelevant distractors while participants searched for a target. This reversal in the roles of the colors enabled a resolution of whether learned control engages feature-based priming or goal-based adaptation. The results support the latter, showing that learned control successfully transferred and adapted to the new goal, such that distractors in the colors previously associated with heightened control demands were more effectively ignored than those associated with relaxed control demands. This cross-task transfer from non-spatial to spatial attentional selection demonstrates a remarkable flexibility of item-specific cognitive control, whereby goal-based adaptation supports generalization across dissimilar contexts, adjustment to reversed stimulus roles, and resolution of novel challenges.
Resilience in Young Children with Social-Relational Risk for Developing Psychopathology: A Literature Review
Suzanne Bast; Mira Janssen; Nienke Bouw; Martine van Dongen-Boomsma; Ron Scholte; Linda Visser
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This literature review aimed to identify which protective factors are associated with positive mental health outcomes in young children (ages 0-6) exposed to social-relational risk factors. A structured literature search was conducted in MEDLINER, Web of Science, PsycINFO and ERIC, resulting in the inclusion of 50 studies. Guided by Bronfenbrenner’s bio-ecological model, protective factors were categorized into child, parent, family, and environmental factors. Child-factors identified were self-regulation, self-concept development, language and physical developmental, and temperament. Examples of protective factors within the parent-domain were positive parent-child interactions and parental psychological well-being. Within the family-domain, parental cohesion, quality of family relationships, and family structure and stability emerged as key protective factors. Within the broader environmental domain, protective factors identified included social support and community involvement, a supportive relationship with teachers and grandparents, and the quality of the neighbourhood. The findings support a transactional, multi-level perspective in which protective processes operate across interconnected systems. This underscores the importance of early, system- and individual-orientated screening and intervention aimed at strengthening protective processes in vulnerable young children and their caregiving environment.
Instrumentalising gender conspiracy theories: how narratives about gender ideology may both reflect and fuel general institutional distrust
Peter Teličák; Jakub Ơrol; Eva Ballova Mikuskova; Magdalena Adamus
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In two cross-sectional and one longitudinal study conducted in Slovakia and Czechia (total N = 2339, 50,7% women; aged between 18 and 89 years), we tested whether gender ideology narratives are linked with conspiratorial thinking - operationalised as either specific conspiracy beliefs or conspiracy mentality - and pinpointed their most pronounced correlates as political ideologies and institutional distrust. The cross-sectional results show that support for gender ideology narratives is associated with conspiratorial thinking and, albeit unrelated to sociodemographic variables, shows systematic associations with institutional distrust and political stances as expressed by either collective narcissism or conservative political orientation. The preregistered Study 3 fine-tunes the findings by revealing some bidirectional temporal patterns at the within-participants level only with institutional distrust. The results point to a mutually reinforcing nexus between the gender ideology narratives and distrust thereby fostering the understanding of the narratives as embedded within a wider context of power challenging conspiracy theories. Finally, the paper offers insights into how–by exploiting and instilling the sense of distrust–gender ideology narratives can be instrumentalised to tilt political preferences towards anti-establishment, non-mainstream parties that present themselves as beacons of traditional values.
Traditional plant-based dishes: A gateway to sustainable eating
Marija Branković; Anastasija BudĆŸak
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In traditional societies, reducing meat intake can feel threatening to traditional identities, particularly ethnic and/or religious ones. Despite this, a large part of traditional cuisine is plant-based, and fasting is observed as a valued religious tradition. We therefore sought to investigate preferences for a selection of traditional plant-based dishes. We expected them to be evaluated more positively when labeled as Lenten than when they are labeled vegan, as Lenten is a familiar and relatively positively perceived label in the local context. In a preregistered between-subjects experiment (N = 273), we attached the label to the product description, which also included a verbal description and a product photo, for ten traditional plant-based dishes. Results indicated that the mean preference score in the vegan and Lenten conditions did not differ significantly. Our findings suggest a strong overall preference for traditional plant-based dishes, regardless of how they are labeled (i.e., as vegan or Lenten). The preference for traditional plant-based dishes was positively correlated with less meat consumption, more experience with plant-based products, as well as non-reflexive religiosity and the observance of fasting. The findings thus show no negative effects of the vegan label, and the profile of correlates suggests that these dishes can appeal to both traditionally and non-traditionally inclined individuals. We discuss the traditional plant-based dishes as a nutritional “gateway” between tradition and modern plant-based diets. These implications are encouraging and potentially applicable to promoting plant-based diets.
Fine-grained variation in caregivers’ /s/ predicts their infants’ /s/ category
Alex Eguiluz; Alejandrina Cristia
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Within the debate on the mechanisms underlying infant perceptual acquisition, one hypothesis proposes that infants’ perception is directly affected by the acoustic implementation of sound categories in the speech they hear. In consonance with this view, the present study shows that individual variation in fine-grained, subphonemic aspects of the acoustic realization of /s/ in caregivers’ speech predicts infants’ discrimination of this sound from the highly similar /S/, suggesting that learning based on acoustic cue distributions may indeed drive natural phonological acquisition.
Toward a Sequencing Framework for Teaching and Using Self- Enactable Behavior Change Techniques: A Conceptual Review and Proposed Approach
Alexandre Mazéas; Nikos Ntoumanis
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Objective: Self-enactable behavior change techniques (BCTs) may help individuals initiate and sustain health behavior change. However, existing taxonomies provide limited guidance on how such techniques should be selected, taught, combined, and sequenced over time. This perspective aimed to review previous approaches and to develop a conceptual framework for organizing and sequencing self-enactable BCTs for intervention design and participant learning. Methods: A critical conceptual review was conducted to identify published approaches to BCT grouping, temporal organization, prerequisites, and stage-specific sequencing. Literature identified through four databases was synthesized alongside the compendium of self-enactable BCTs to inform a five-step framework-development process. Results: The review showed that existing taxonomies and sequencing approaches provide useful classifications but limited guidance for progressive teaching and self-enactment. To address this gap, we proposed a framework comprising 108 self-enactable BCTs organized into nine clusters and 27 groups. We mapped prerequisite relations, classified techniques by their predominant prospective or reactive function, and sequenced their groups across the Model of Action Phases. Conclusion: Our framework provides a theory-informed structure for teaching and applying self-enactable BCTs. It is intended to guide intervention design and generate testable hypotheses about technique sequencing that need to be empirically explored in future studies.
LLMs reveal how ideology and time shape intuitive vs. deliberative rhetoric across 31 European parliaments
Julian Kauk; Edda Humprecht; Stefan R. Schweinberger; Tobias Rothmund
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Democratic deliberation depends on how political actors balance intuitive, affective appeals with analytically structured argumentation. Yet how ideology and time shape this rhetorical balance across diverse national contexts at large scale remains poorly understood. Informed by dual-process theories, we leverage large language models (LLMs) to analyze 3.3 million speeches from 31 European parliaments (2004–2023), quantifying two fundamental rhetorical styles: intuitive rhetoric, characterized by affective and heuristic expression, and deliberative rhetoric, characterized by analytical and evidence-oriented language. Across parliaments, ideological position is systematically associated with rhetorical style through curvilinear relationships. Intuitive rhetoric increases toward both ideological extremes, whereas deliberative rhetoric peaks near the political center and declines toward the fringes, forming a robust ideological horseshoe across institutional contexts. Temporal dynamics further document a shift toward greater reliance on intuitive rhetoric, accompanied by a modest decline in deliberative rhetoric, while the curvilinear ideological structuring of rhetorical styles persists throughout. These trends are consistent with a gradual adaptation to attention-driven communication environments, which structurally favor intuitive and affective expression over analytical depth. Together, our findings map the ideological and temporal contours of deliberative erosion in European democracies, with implications for institutional design and the resilience of democratic discourse.
Living in damaged homes: the mental health consequences for parents and children in Ireland’s defective concrete crisis
Oisin Keenan; Jamie Murphy; Paul Dunlop; Eileen Doherty; Rachel McHugh; Karen Kirby
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Thousands of families in Ireland are living in unsafe, deteriorating homes due to the defective concrete used in their construction. Although considerable mental health difficulties have been reported in adults, the impact on parents and their children remains unknown. This study estimated probable major depressive disorder (MDD), generalised anxiety disorder (GAD), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and complex PTSD (CPTSD) among parents, and emotional and behavioural difficulties in their children using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). The cross-sectional survey data, collected between March and September 2024, included a convenience sample of 150 parents reporting on 268 children aged 2-17 years. Parental estimates were 33.6% for MDD, 30.7% for GAD, 4.0% for PTSD, and 15.3% for CPTSD. Among children, 26.5% scored in the abnormal range on SDQ Total Difficulties, with the highest difficulties in emotional problems (38.1%). Children scoring in the abnormal range for SDQ total difficulties were almost four times more likely to have a parent who met the clinical threshold for CPTSD, odds ratio (OR) = 3.92, three times more likely to have a parent who reported safety fears, OR = 2.96, and eleven times more likely to have a parent who reported financial stress, OR = 11.18. These findings highlight the mental health consequences for affected families and indicate the need for effective intervention.
Thinking With AI, Reasoning Without It: Cognitive Offloading to Generative AI Weakens Effort Regulation
Dawid Ratajczyk; Agata Dymarska; Adam MatƂoka; MichaƂ Tomczyk; MaƂgorzata Wiącek
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Generative artificial intelligence (genAI) can make complex cognitive tasks easier, but it remains unclear how relying on such support affects people's ability to reason independently afterwards. We investigated whether using genAI to solve a complex reasoning task influences subsequent reasoning, memory, and effort when the technology is no longer available. In a preregistered laboratory experiment with a final sample of 193 participants, we used a three-stage relational reasoning task developed for the study, in which participants learned and reasoned about a network of fictional entities and their relationships. During the first stage, participants completed the task either with or without access to ChatGPT, while performance incentives were independently manipulated. All participants then completed a more complex reasoning task based on the same relational network without genAI support, followed by a memory test. GenAI support improved accuracy during the initial task and reduced perceived difficulty. In the subsequent unaided reasoning task, prior genAI use was associated with some evidence of poorer independent reasoning. GenAI use was also associated with weaker adjustment of effort to incentives and task difficulty once the tool was removed. No clear effects were observed on later memory. Overall, the findings suggest that genAI can facilitate performance while it is available, but may also alter how users process task-relevant information and regulate effort during subsequent independent performance.
Conversing with a disagreeing LLM improves people’s inaccurate predictions
Emir Efendic; Philippe van de Calseyde
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Accurately predicting the outcome of future events improves decisions in domains ranging from health to finance, yet prediction errors are common. One reliable way to improve accuracy is to engage with disagreeing views through dialogue, which can reveal weak assumptions and facilitate belief revision. However, people often avoid disagreeing exchanges because they are socially and emotionally costly or inconvenient to seek out. Here, we examine whether a disagreeing large language model (LLM) can provide the benefits of disagreement while sidestepping these interpersonal barriers. Across two experiments (total N = 807 adults making 4,564 predictions; Experiment 2 was incentivized and preregistered), participants: i) predicted the likelihood of various events, ii) discussed each prediction with an LLM by articulating their reasoning, and iii) submitted final predictions. Crucially, we manipulated the LLM’s stance during these discussions: it responded either supportively (agreeing) or critically (disagreeing) to participants’ reasoning. The results showed that, when initial predictions were erroneous, conversing with a disagreeing LLM produced more accurate final predictions than conversing with a supportive one. This advantage was primarily driven by directionally correct revisions, with participants shifting their final predictions more often toward the realized outcome. However, interacting with an LLM was not uniformly beneficial as it decreased accuracy when initial predictions were already accurate. These findings underscore the value of designing LLMs that challenge rather than affirm users’ views and opinions, while highlighting the importance of tailoring their responses to the expected accuracy of initial predictions.
Not All Eye Occlusions Are Equal: Expressive and Mechanical Eye Occlusion Differentially Shape Emotion Recognition and Eye-Tracked Visual Attention
Daniel Granja; Nicolas Burra
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Emotion recognition from facial expressions is commonly assumed to depend on the visibility of diagnostic features, particularly the eyes. Accordingly, eye occlusion is often treated as a unitary manipulation, under the assumption that comparable informational loss yields equivalent perceptual consequences. The present study challenges this assumption by testing whether expressive (closed eyes) and mechanical (sunglasses) forms of eye occlusion differentially affect emotion recognition and visual attention. In a preregistered within-subjects experiment combining multidimensional emotion ratings with eye-tracking, participants judged emotional and neutral faces presented with open eyes, closed eyes, or sunglasses. The results revealed a critical dissociation: closed eyes reduced emotion recognition more strongly than sunglasses, yet elicited longer fixation durations on the eye region. Notably, fearful faces with closed eyes were associated with increased pleasure ratings, indicating a reinterpretation of the expression rather than simple signal loss. This fixation pattern rules out attentional withdrawal as an explanation for reduced recognition, as participants attended more, rather than less, to closed eyes. Together, these findings demonstrate that eye occlusion alters emotion recognition through interacting perceptual and interpretive processes. Distinguishing between expressive and mechanical eye occlusion provides a refined framework for understanding how reduced eye visibility shapes social perception.
Belief traps hinder small business climate action
Jeffrey Martin Lees; Dror Etzion; Christoph Ungemach; Sara Madureira Constantino; Frederik Dahlmann; Maria Laura Frigotto
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Climate (in)action by small business owners is not driven solely by policy or economic considerations, but also by sociological and psychological factors, as leaders mimic the behaviours they perceive among their peers. We find that these social inferences about what others believe are often incorrect. In this registered report of 4432 small-to-medium business owners and leaders across seven countries, we observe a persistent gap between perceived and actual beliefs. And this gap matters: SME owners exhibiting a larger gap have fewer sustainability policies in place. These results highlight how peer effects can spur climate action among business leaders.
Unequal access, comparable benefit: clinical diagnosis, workplace adjustments, and outcomes of digital-human support in autistic and ADHD employees
Matthew Scott; Abi Jones; Jess Titley; Helen Guyatt
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Background. Autistic and ADHD employees are entitled to workplace support based on need, yet appropriate and timely support often relies on a clinical diagnosis. Whether a diagnosis tracks experienced challenge, or gates access to support, is unclear. This study examined experienced challenges, access to adjustments, and benefit from a hybrid human-digital support tool among employed autistic and ADHD adults with and without a diagnosis. Methods. 280 employed autistic/ADHD adults (203 diagnosed, 77 without a diagnosis) completed measures of wellbeing, anxiety, stress, and functioning at baseline, three, and six months while using the support tool Brain in Hand. Workplace disclosure and formal adjustments were recorded at baseline. Analyses combined frequentist and Bayesian methods, including equivalence testing. Results. The groups were comparable on measured psychological and functional indicators at baseline, with equivalence supported for wellbeing, anxiety, and stress; functioning was the exception, though inconclusively. Despite broadly comparable measured profiles, diagnosed employees were more likely to have disclosed at work (89.7% vs 62.3%) and to hold formal adjustments (48.8% vs 28.6%) at baseline. Exploratory analyses indicated disclosure likelihood only partially explained this gap. Both groups engaged with support similarly and improved comparably in psychological outcomes over six months. Conclusions. Among employees with comparable measured psychological and functional profiles, access to workplace adjustments tracked clinical diagnosis rather than these indicators. Benefit from support did not differ by baseline diagnostic status. Findings suggest diagnosis functions as an informal gateway to support, and that organising access around need could reach employees more effectively.
Validating LLMs as Coders of Cultural Constructs: a Large-Scale Test of Minimally Counterintuitiveness using Pokémon
Masaki Suyama; Yo Nakawake
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Minimally counterintuitiveness (MCI) theory predicts that concepts violating a small number of intuitive ontological expectations (1--2 violations) are transmitted more successfully than either fully intuitive concepts or maximally counterintuitive (3+ violations) ones. Testing this inverted-U prediction at scale has been limited by the cost of human content coding. We evaluate whether large language models (LLMs) can serve as valid, scalable coders of MCI violations, and use a validated pipeline to re-test the inverted-U prediction on a substantially larger sample than prior work. In Study 1, zero-shot coding by two LLMs (Claude and Gemini) against a human-coded baseline showed only moderate agreement driven by systematic over-attribution of violations. In Study 2, a leave-one-out few-shot calibration procedure -- coding each item zero-shot while supplying the other human-coded items as in-context examples -- raised agreement to nearly double specificity while preserving sensitivity. In Study 3, we applied the calibrated pipeline to Generation 2+ Pok\'{e}mon and merged the result with an independent popularity ranking to test the inverted-U prediction. The predicted curvature became significant, with the fitted parabola's vertex at MCI score 2.04, overlapping theory's predicted optimum. Together these studies show that a modest human-coded seed set can calibrate an LLM coder well enough to test a classic cultural-transmission theory at a scale far beyond what human coding alone permits.
What Makes a Representation Current in Working Memory?
Hyung-Bum Park
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Working memory (WM) must preserve limited individuated representations while retaining graded information about each. Pointer accounts and theories of item-context binding explain how representations can be individuated and organized, but leave unresolved what makes dynamically expressed content part of the current set. I propose that current WM membership depends on an individuated token remaining appropriately related to its content and present context, enabling selective use. This relation may persist as content expression weakens, be lost while content remains available, or be re-established when content re-enters the current set. Activity-silent states and proactive interference provide complementary tests of these possibilities. The framework therefore identifies item-specific relational organization as a criterion for evaluating current working memory membership.

SocArxiv

Changes in homeownership and entry into parenthood in the Nordic countries
INVEST Flagship; Jessica Nisén; Lars Dommermuth; Sofi Ohlsson-Wijk1; Peter Fallesen
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Since 2010, fertility levels have declined unexpectedly in all Nordic countries, with record lows being reached in recent years. The reasons for these declines are unclear, except that fewer people are becoming parents. The aim of this study was to investigate whether changes in housing tenure played a role in the declined entry into parenthood. We expected that changes in housing tenure, particularly a decline in homeownership related to housing affordability challenges among young adults, may have contributed to this decline. Using harmonized Nordic individual-level register data, we assessed to what extent changes in housing tenure, changes in fertility behavior within tenure groups, or both, contributed to the decline. Discrete-time event history models and multivariate decomposition were applied. According to our results, homeownership among young adults declined in the 2010s in Denmark and Finland – but not in Sweden or Norway. The decline in first births was only partially attributable to compositional change in housing tenure along with other socioeconomic factors in Denmark, Finland and Sweden. Entry into parenthood declined among women, regardless of their tenure status, in all four countries during the 2010s, suggesting the importance of behavioral changes. However, the decline was more pronounced among renters than homeowners.
Electricity Patronage and the Energy Transition: Indonesia in Comparative Perspective
Johnathan Guy
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Governments across the Global South are choosing between clean electricity or fossil fuels. Electricity procurement regimes—the practices governing how governments and utilities allocate generation contracts and associated rents—are a critical and overlooked determinant of this choice. Using Indonesia as a theory-building case, I argue that the programmatic character of electricity procurement shapes whether governments can credibly commit to renewable energy producers, select least-cost projects, and provide the collective goods renewables require to scale. Patronage-based procurement regimes, in contrast, systematically favor fossil fuels. I trace Indonesia’s coal entrenchment to its patronage-based procurement regime, in which clientelist party competition, weak executive constraints, and failed reforms concentrated discretion in the state-owned utility PLN, which operated as a broker for the ruling coalition. Comparative cases in India and South Africa show how programmatic reforms enabled renewable scale-up despite similarly powerful fossil fuel incumbents. The findings advance a meso-level account that bridges the comparative politics literature on patronage and the study of global energy transitions.
When voters take a stance: How voting on issues influences support for parties
Davide Morisi
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What are the consequences of referendums for voting for parties? Despite increased use of direct democratic instruments around the world, this question has been essentially ignored. I argue that referendums lead to a realignment between voters and parties that is consistent with a bidimensional model of proximity voting. The analysis of nine referendums that took place in seven countries between 2015 and 2025 confirm the predictions showing that, after each consulta-tion, a sizeable share of cross-pressured voters who cast a referendum vote against party recom-mendations “follow the issue”, switching to a party that is in line with their issue positions. Ideological proximity with parties, however, moderates vote switching. In highly salient consultations, this pattern persists over time. Further experimental evidence confirms the causal link between issue-based considerations and voting. These findings have relevant implications for how direct democracy impacts a fundamental aspect of democratic representation, namely voting for parties.
RadiografĂ­a de la Accesibilidad Digital Municipal en Chile 2026
Jaime Elorrieta
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La digitalizaciĂłn de los servicios municipales en Chile promete acercar el Estado a la ciudadanĂ­a, pero revela una barrera crĂ­tica: la exclusiĂłn por diseño. Hoy, el acceso a la informaciĂłn pĂșblica digital no es universal. Este informe expone los resultados de una auditorĂ­a de accesibilidad web bajo estĂĄndares WCAG 2.1, aplicada a veinte plataformas municipales de las regiones Metropolitana y del Maule. El estudio delimitĂł su alcance a versiones de escritorio ya que esto permite establecer una lĂ­nea base sobre la calidad del cĂłdigo estructural. El objetivo fue medir empĂ­ricamente las barreras que aĂ­slan a personas con discapacidad visual y motriz, sugiriendo replicar esta metodologĂ­a en futuros estudios mĂłviles.Los hallazgos revelan que la exclusiĂłn digital es sistĂ©mica y no obedece estrictamente a una falta de presupuesto. Se detectĂł un severo bloqueo a la navegaciĂłn motriz: el 50% de la muestra no puede operarse mediante teclado, impidiendo el acceso a personas con discapacidad motriz severa o usuarios de lectores de pantalla. Esta exclusiĂłn se agudiza en la RegiĂłn del Maule, donde el 60% reprueba esta mĂ©trica. A esto se suma una profunda brecha de diseño visual, con 573 errores crĂ­ticos de contraste lumĂ­nico que invisibilizan los textos para personas con baja visiĂłn. Aunque el Maule presenta un 62% mĂĄs de errores que la Metropolitana, comunas de altos ingresos como Providencia y Las Condes tambiĂ©n reprobaron, demostrando que se prioriza la estĂ©tica corporativa por sobre la legibilidad universal.Finalmente, existen graves deficiencias en la gestiĂłn de contenidos. Destaca una invisibilidad de la informaciĂłn operativa y transversal, al sumar mĂĄs de 440 imĂĄgenes sin textos alternativos (ALT), censurando el contenido grĂĄfico para usuarios con ceguera. AdemĂĄs, se advierte un fenĂłmeno de accesibilidad performativa: el 20% de la muestra usa widgets o botones flotantes que generan una falsa ilusiĂłn de inclusiĂłn. En la prĂĄctica, estas herramientas institucionales no solucionan el cĂłdigo base excluyente generando nuevos conflictos de interfaz para quienes dependen de tecnologĂ­as de asistencia.
El Encuadre de la Responsabilidad Ciudadana: ComunicaciĂłn Digital del Servel en la ElecciĂłn Presidencial y Parlamentaria 2025
Jaime Elorrieta
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Los organismos electorales enfrentan un desafĂ­o comunicacional distinto al de los partidos o candidaturas: deben informar y movilizar al electorado sin abandonar su mandato de neutralidad. Este informe examina cĂłmo el Servicio Electoral de Chile (Servel) resolviĂł ese desafĂ­o en su publicidad digital durante la elecciĂłn presidencial y parlamentaria de 2025, a partir del anĂĄlisis de 101 anuncios publicados en Google Ads y Meta Ads. Los resultados muestran que la comunicaciĂłn del Servel es abrumadoramente prĂĄctica: el 85,1% de los anuncios se centra en informaciĂłn procedimental —dĂłnde votar, quĂ© documentos llevar, cĂłmo revisar el rol de vocal de mesa— por sobre la apelaciĂłn emocional, cĂ­vica o sancionatoria. Contra lo esperable, el tono no escala hacia la urgencia a medida que se acerca la elecciĂłn; en cambio, mensajes puntuales como el llamado al deber cĂ­vico o la alerta contra la desinformaciĂłn aparecen concentrados en momentos especĂ­fi cos de la campaña, no en un crescendo progresivo. La advertencia sobre multas por no votar, pese a ser un rasgo central del sistema electoral chileno, ocupa un lugar marginal (3% de la muestra) en la comunicaciĂłn digital del organismo.
Position: A Score Should Travel With Its Repair History
Louis Yiven Zhu
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In machine learning a capability claim becomes established when a model outperforms its predecessors on benchmarks the community already accepts, and peer review confines itself to checking that those scores are reported and compared correctly. We argue that benchmarks consequently perform the adjudicating role that peer review performs in other sciences, and that the field has organised no stewardship to match, since a benchmark is reviewed once, when the paper introducing it is accepted, and never again during the years in which it serves as evidence. Our position is that this arrangement, which we call review once and use forever, is the first bottleneck a meta-science of AI research should address. We support the position with the public lifecycle of MMLU, the benchmark its successors describe as the de facto standard for general capability. Between 2024 and 2025 five independent projects repaired four distinct defects in MMLU, none of them by the original authors and none as part of any joint programme. A count across the benchmark paper, model reports, leaderboards and governance syntheses then shows the qualifications attached to an MMLU score falling from 2.4 per reporting event in the repair papers to 1.0 in frontier model reports, three in ten of which carry none. On this basis we propose three norms for venues, funders and governance bodies, and we answer the objection that unstewarded benchmarks have served the field well.
When Belonging Comes Before Belief: Inherited Identity, Social Conformity, and the Difficulty of Looking Outside the Group
Syed Raheel Shahzad
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People normally receive an identity before they are old enough to examine it. A child is born into a family, a language, a religious or non-religious environment, and a set of trusted authorities. By the time the person is able to compare different beliefs, one position already feels familiar and the others often feel foreign. This essay asks a simple social question: how much of what we defend comes from examination, and how much comes from belonging? The argument is not that inherited beliefs are false, or that following experts is irrational. It is that social identity can make some questions costly to ask. Family ties, community approval, reputation, and fear of exclusion can narrow the range of views people seriously examine. A recent personal example from British Muslim life is used to illustrate the problem: communities with access to the same modern information may still follow different inherited authorities when deciding religious dates. The wider point applies beyond religion. Political, national, family, and professional identities can work in the same way. The essay argues that genuine conviction is stronger when a person can examine alternatives without having to lose the social world to which he or she belon
Research on Han Nationalism in China in the 2020s (VI): The Social Foundations, Core Demands, and Future Trajectory of Han Nationalism
ZY Liu
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After 2020, discussions related to Han nationalism in Chinese online space have increased markedly and have gradually become an important topic for understanding contemporary Chinese ethnic identification, historical narratives, and social contradictions. As the final article in this series of studies, the present paper attempts, from the angles of demographic change, resource allocation, ethnic policy, and national identification, to analyze the social background of the emergence and development of Han nationalism. The article argues that Han nationalism does not simply originate from historical sentiment, but is a form of identity-political expression formed in the process of change in Chinese social structure. With the decline in birth rates, adjustments in the mode of economic growth, and increases in social competitive pressure, some groups have begun to reopen discussion of the fairness of ethnic policy, the boundaries of the national community, and the relations of responsibility and interest among different groups. The article further organizes the principal demands advanced by some Han nationalists, including the abolition of preferential policies based on ethnic identity, renewed discussion of relations of autonomy and fiscal transfer in ethnic regions, and the improvement of social security for lower- and middle-strata groups. At the same time, the article analyzes the possible positive effects of Han nationalism—for example, pushing long-neglected questions into public discussion, emphasizing the principle of civic equality, and strengthening the sense of social responsibility of the majority group. Yet the article also points out that this body of thought possesses potential risks such as ethnicizing complex social problems, neglecting intra-ethnic class differences, and intensifying logics of group competition. This article does not attempt simply to affirm or negate Han nationalism; rather, it hopes, by organizing its internal logic and social background, to provide an exploratory analytical framework for understanding changes in Chinese ethnic identification after 2020.
Defaulting to Decarbonization? Financial Insolvency and the Energy Transition in India’s States
Johnathan Guy
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How do financial constraints shape the energy transition in developing countries? I study this question in India, where electricity procurement is governed at the subnational level. Electoral politics motivates state governments to subsidize electricity consumption, resulting in financial stress for electricity distribution utilities (DISCOMs). Using multiple sources of original data on utility and plant operations, I investigate the relationship between financial distress and decarbonization. I theorize that the effect of utility insolvency depends on the margin considered—dispatch vs. capacity investment—and on institutions. Counterintuitively, but consistent with my theory, I find that financial stress is associated in the short run with greater relative procurement of renewable energy and less procurement of fossil fuels. Mechanism tests suggest that coal dispatch is more sensitive to liquidity constraints, as distressed DISCOMs cut back on coal deliveries while renewable energy remains protected by “must-run” dispatch regulations. In contrast, I find at most weak evidence that insolvency raises challenges for decarbonizing electricity in the long run: insolvency shows no relationship with renewable-energy tendering, only suggestive evidence that it slows renewable capacity investment, and similarly weak evidence that it curtails expansion of transmission lines that renewables need to scale. The results qualify the conventional wisdom that electricity utility insolvency is a binding constraint on the energy transition.
When Are Asymmetric Fixed-Effects Models Within-Person Tests of Reversibility? Heterogeneous Responses and Bidirectional Support
Jiwon Lee
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Asymmetric fixed-effects models are increasingly used in sociological research to test whether an effect reverses when a time-varying predictor changes direction. Because these models rely on within-person change, directional asymmetry is often interpreted as evidence of within-person irreversibility. This study shows that this interpretation requires an additional cross-person homogeneity assumption. I reparameterize Allison’s (2019) cumulative asymmetric fixed-effects model exactly as a model of current state and total movement, revealing that the specification pools current-state responses across individuals. When those responses are heterogeneous and systematically related to who moves upward versus downward, pooled asymmetry can arise even when every individual’s response is perfectly reversible. I derive this mover-composition result and characterize what remains identifiable when individual state responses are unrestricted. A common path response—the additional response associated with accumulated movement conditional on current state—can then be identified only from within-person bidirectional movement, provided that the resulting variation is not absorbed by period effects. Monte Carlo simulations and a reanalysis of Allison’s wage example illustrate the resulting assumption–support–precision trade-off and show that relevant support depends on the structure of observed trajectories, not simply on the number of directional transitions.
Greenhouse Gas Mitigation and Climate Change Adaptation: Some Policy Alternatives for Nepal
Ambika P. Adhikari
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Many scientists consider climate change to be the most important environmental issue of this century. Although some controversy lingers about the extent of anthropogenic contribution to global warming, most scientists and experts agree that, due to the increased greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere, Earth’s average temperature is gradually rising, and the ensuing climate change is causing significant and mostly negative impacts on the environment and human population. Various studies show that average global temperatures have already risen by 0.8 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels. Scientists estimate that at this rate, the average temperatures are likely to rise by at least about 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. It is widely believed that a rise of more than 2 degrees Celsius in the average global temperature can bring serious adverse impacts to the global ecosystem and human welfare.
The alchemy linking “gender ideology,” left-wing authoritarianism, and political violence: Comment on Fedida et al.
Alexander C Tsai
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In a report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Fedida et al. (2026) analyze data from an opt-in nonprobability sample to describe associations among a newly developed five-item Clinical Gender Affirmation Scale (CGAS), scores on the Brief Left-Wing Authoritarianism Scale, and respondents’ justification of politically charged violent acts. Their interpretation, however, is that “gender ideology,” embedded in clinical guidance, supplies authoritarian psychology with enemies, moral urgency, and rationales for coercion. This commentary argues that the data and analyses do not support this conclusion. First, CGAS measures a narrow cluster of attitudes toward social affirmation and support, not the clinical-institutional ideology attributed to it. Second, Fedida et al. (2026) invoke selection, mediation, and effect-modification theories without specifying or testing them. In particular, an “ideological accelerant” hypothesis requires an interaction between CGAS and authoritarianism, but no such interaction is estimated. Third, the estimated associations are difficult to interpret because the measures contain overlapping ideological and aggression-related content, while the violence items assess reactions to a politically selective set of hypothetical targets rather than a generalized disposition to tolerate political violence. Moreover, modeling CGAS and left-wing authoritarianism in separate regressions adjusted only for political identity does not show that either is associated with justification of violence independently of the other. In summary, Fedida et al. (2026) describe potentially interesting covariances but provide little evidence that “gender ideology” radicalizes people.
Ukrainian Refugees in Switzerland: A research synthesis of what we know
Didier Ruedin
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The objective of this research synthesis is to collect and summarize the research literature on Ukrainian refugees in Switzerland. This is done through a systematic review, mostly in the form of a narrative review and with statistical indicators that are synthesized. Graphical summaries and an evidence gap map are provided to better identify the nature of evidence available and highlight areas where comparatively little is known about Ukrainian refugees in Switzerland. There is a wide range of evidence on Ukrainian refugees in Switzerland and their integration, although substantive and systematic gaps remain. The review provides a brief historical background, looks at the demographic composition of Ukrainian refugees in Switzerland, discusses economic integration, housing, education, social integration, crime and safety, health and well-being, and attitudes to Ukrainian refugees. Where feasible, changes over time are discussed. The demographic profile of Ukrainian refugees (many women, many children and elderly people, highly educated) is well documented, as are challenges to economic integration due to an insecure status and limited knowledge of local languages. Much less is known about cultural integration and political participation, for example. Given the size of the population and the ongoing war in Ukraine, more research on Ukrainian refugees is warranted, particularly in the direction of successful integration in a context where return in the near future seems increasingly unlikely, despite so-called dual-intent remaining the official focus. More research is also warranted in areas beyond economic integration that affect well-being and intentions to return.
Social Cohesion in Iraq: Leveraging Religious, Political, and Tribal Authorities for Conflict Transformation
Mae Anna Chokr; Ali Al-Ahmad; Abbas Aroua
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How can we foster social cohesion by engaging with informal religious and political authorities in conflict contexts, such as present-day Iraq? This report answers this question by outlining a conflict transformation approach developed by Cordoba Peace Institute – Geneva (CPI), and in Samarra, Talafar, and Iraq as a whole, between 2018 and 2023. The methodology used was a combination of: 1) a ‘safe mediation space’ approach and diapraxis, 2) collaboration between insider and outsider mediators, and 3) leveraging formal and informal sources of influence, including religious, political, and tribal. The report aims to learn from the experiences of case studies to guide practitioners applying such methods in other similar contexts.
Vanishing Vanguard: Decline of Leadership in Revolutionary Mass Mobilization since the 19th Century
Vadim Ustyuzhanin; Julia Zinkina; Andrey Korotayev
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“Leaderlessness” is widely held to be a defining feature of contemporary mass mobilization, yet the claim rests on a handful of recent cases. We offer the first systematic cross-national analysis of this phenomenon from 1791 to 2019. We show that the absence of leadership is real but older and more modest than claimed: the share of campaigns / revolutions lacking discernible leadership has been rising for two centuries, yet in the 21st century only about a half are leaderless. Testing six explanations drawn from the literature, we find that two factors robustly predict the absence of leadership: student participation and democracy & human-rights goals, that is, “thin” ideology in contrast to “thick” ideologies of the past. We detect no significant effect of coalition breadth, nonviolent tactic, and internet use on leadership. Thus, leaderless mobilization is rooted in who mobilizes and what they demand, but not in scale, tactics, or technology.
La deuda que no murió: el convenio de pago que no nova, la fuerza de sentencia del mandamiento y el incidente que no puede matar al juicio ejecutivo (comentario a la sentencia de la Corte Suprema de 2 de junio de 2025, rol N° 38.560-2024)
Andrés Gabriel Varas Quijón
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La Corte Suprema, conociendo de un recurso de casaciĂłn en el fondo, invalidĂł de oficio —en ejercicio de las facultades correctoras del artĂ­culo 84 del CĂłdigo de Procedimiento Civil— la resoluciĂłn que, acogiendo un incidente de alzamiento de embargo, habĂ­a puesto tĂ©rmino a un juicio ejecutivo bancario fundĂĄndose en un convenio de pago celebrado tres años despuĂ©s de trabada la ejecuciĂłn (Primera Sala, 2 de junio de 2025, rol N° 38.560-2024, redacciĂłn de la ministra señora Repetto). La doctrina del fallo es de manual y de trinchera a la vez: si el ejecutado no opuso excepciones, el mandamiento de ejecuciĂłn y embargo adquiere, por el artĂ­culo 472, la virtud procesal de una sentencia firme; y el convenio posterior — que en su propio texto declaraba no producir novaciĂłn, constituir una mera modalidad o facilidad de pago y extinguir las obligaciones solo con el pago Ă­ntegro— no altera la exigibilidad del tĂ­tulo ni autoriza a matar el procedimiento por vĂ­a incidental. El comentario reconstruye el caso —un pagarĂ© de $5,6 millones convertido, por obra del interĂ©s, en un convenio de $27,7 millones—, sistematiza la ratio sobre los artĂ­culos 472 y 437 del CĂłdigo de Procedimiento Civil y 1628, 1634 y 1649 del CĂłdigo Civil, examina el flanco olvidado de las cauciones de terceros ante las esperas, destila las clĂĄusulas de blindaje que salvaron el juicio del banco y cierra con un decĂĄlogo del ejecutante prudente. La tesis: el juicio ejecutivo solo muere por pago, por sentencia o por acto conclusivo expreso — quien callĂł las excepciones no puede, años despuĂ©s, gritar convenios.
A cautionary tale of industrial decline, economic grievances, and far-right voting
Philipp Kerler; Valentina Petrović
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Economic grievances are central in explaining the rise of right-wing illiberalism. Grievances allow challenger parties to rally around scapegoating outsider groups, such as ethnic minorities, immigrants, or foreigners. Some research argues that continuing decline allows illiberal parties to consolidate power by entrenching and polarizing around such cleavages. However, when illiberal parties are in power and economic decline continues, we argue that, absent cultural cleavages, retrospective economic voting prevails. Zooming in on the case of Trstenik, a Serbian town with a significant industrial legacy, strongly affected by deindustrialization, we leverage data from a novel survey and semi-structured interviews in a mixed-methods approach. We document clear patterns of existing grievances and blame on the government. However, positive, hopeful interpretations also exist among affected individuals. We show that support for the illiberal right-wing incumbent Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) is positively associated with positive interpretations and negatively associated with grievances. Our study contributes an important qualifying account to current debates about the economic roots of right-wing illiberalism by highlighting the importance of scope conditions.
Research on Han Nationalism in China in the 2020s (IV): Why Chinese Scholars Rarely Discuss Han Nationalism
ZY Liu
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This article is one of a series of papers examining Han nationalist ideology in China in the 2020s. It seeks to explore the phenomenon whereby discourse related to Han nationalism has increased in Chinese online space in recent years, yet has rarely been treated as an independent object of inquiry within China’s mainstream social-science research system. The article argues that this phenomenon does not simply stem from a lack of scholarly attention, but is related to the operating environment of Chinese social science. Analyzing academic tradition, research frameworks, academic norms, the functions of think tanks, and the situation of scholars, the article points out that Chinese social-science research has long been shaped by existing theoretical systems, modes of resource allocation, and traditions of policy research, making it relatively difficult for certain issues involving ethnic identity, historical memory, and identity competition to form independent research paths. The article further discusses the distance between theoretical systems and public discourse, and how this structure affects the explanatory capacity of Chinese social science with respect to social currents such as Han nationalism. The article does not attempt to provide statistical estimates of the scale or social support for Han nationalism in China; rather, it seeks to pose a question: when a social idea enters the space of public discussion, why does the existing academic system find it difficult to explain the phenomenon adequately?
Making the Case for an Experiential Approach to Test Validation
Sergio Araneda; Stephen Sireci
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This paper introduces the Experiential Approach to test validation (Araneda, 2023; Araneda & Sireci, 2021), a framework grounded in phenomenology, rhetorical argumentation, and participatory epistemologies. Departing from traditional validation models centered on psychometric inference and technical justification, the Experiential Approach treats the lived experiences of test-takers and stakeholders as primary sources of validity inquiry. Drawing on standpoint theory, situated knowledges, and participatory action research, it reconceptualizes assessment as a system of interrelated devices whose validity depends on how they function in context. The paper contrasts this framework with Kane's argument-based approach, emphasizing its recursive, device-centered structure and its use of normative, functional, comparative, and critical lenses for generating validity claims. It also examines unresolved challenges concerning stakeholder negotiation, face validity, and the political limits of experiential critique. The paper contributes to emerging efforts toward more context-sensitive, pluralistic, and ethically reflexive approaches to validation.
Climate Barriers to Democratic Participation
VĂ­tor Calafate; Francisco J M Costa; JoĂŁo Paulo Pessoa
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Climate change can reshape political representation not only by changing voters' preferences, but also by changing who can vote. Using georeferenced polling-station records from eight Brazilian elections (2010-2024) matched to daily river discharge, we show that historically low river discharge on election day increases voter abstention in communities that depend on river transportation. Effects are absent in comparable communities without river transport, consistent with disruption to fluvial access rather than a general drought effect on participation. Losses are larger among married voters and in sections with higher illiteracy rates, thereby shifting the electorate's composition. These shocks reduce votes for parties whose bases overlap with affected populations, redistributing political power along the lines of climate exposure.
Record Linkage Error and Inference in Population Research
Casey Breen; Won-tak Joo
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The explosion in digitization of large-scale administrative data and advances in record linkage have opened up new possibilities for studying core topics in population research, including social mobility, early-life determinants of longevity, and shifts in ethnoracial identity. Much attention has been paid to improving record linkage algorithms, but methodological guidance for researchers analyzing linked data is limited. We propose a general framework to explain how different types of linkage errors—false matches and missed matches—impact inference with linked data and introduce a bias-correction method. We then conduct three empirical case studies on canonical topics in population research: social mobility, the education–longevity gradient, and shifts in ethnoracial identification. These case studies demonstrate the settings in which linkage errors do and do not meaningfully impact substantive research findings. We conclude with practical recommendations for researchers performing inference with linked data and provide an accompanying R package implementing the methods introduced in this paper.
Sociotechnical Transition and Uncertainty in the Lithium Mining Industry: Technologies, Politics and Transparency
IvĂĄn Ojeda-Pereira; SebastiĂĄn Herrera-LeĂłn; Marcelo Lufin; Fernando Campos-Medina
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Technological transitions in extractive industries are commonly assessed through technical and environmental performance, whilst their social and ethical dimensions receive little systematic attention. This article addresses that gap through the adoption of direct lithium extraction (DLE) technologies in Chile, the world’s second largest lithium producer and the leading producer from salt flats. The National Lithium Strategy promotes these technologies as a response to social tensions over the use of water and brine in fragile ecosystems, and the conditions of their implementation remain open. Drawing on interdisciplinary work between the engineering sciences and the social sciences, we ask which technological and social uncertainties experts identify in this transition. Two expert workshops were held with 20 participants from industry, the State and academia, and their contributions were examined through inductive qualitative content analysis. The findings show five uncertainties: (i) there is no consensus on which technologies will be implemented or on the criteria for choosing them; (ii) the effects of brine reinjection lack conclusive evidence; (iii) the role and agency of the State remain undetermined; (iv) no mapping exists of the actors regarded as valid participants in the debate; and (v) there is no agreement on how the social sustainability of this change should be measured. We propose five public information infrastructures as a design response to these uncertainties, whilst acknowledging that transparency is a necessary but not sufficient condition for ethical sociotechnical governance in the extractive industries of the Global South.
Exposure to Heat Stress Influences Educational Outcomes in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
J. Huntley Compton; Brian C. Thiede
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Environmental stressors have widespread and multi-dimensional impacts on human population dynamics and wellbeing. A large literature has attempted to measure the effects of environmental shocks on human capital formation, including through studies of child nutrition and development, and there is growing interest in measuring environmental and climatic impacts on educational attainment itself. We advance this literature by linking data from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys with district-level temperature records to measure the effects of heat exposures on educational outcomes across 29 countries. We assess both the medium-term and near-contemporaneous impacts of heat exposures. First, we evaluate how exposures from early life through age 14 are associated with the number of years of completed education among children ages 15-17 (n=307,614). Second, we measure the association between recent heat exposures and current school attendance among 5-17 year-olds (n=1,877,022). Temperature anomalies during the prenatal year through age 4 and between ages 10-14 are both associated with meaningful reductions in education by ages 15-17, with exposures to anomalies of +2 reducing education by 1.5-2.9 years (or approximately 28-53%). Recent temperature exposures were not associated with enrollment among 5-9 and 10-14 year-olds but unexpectedly increased the probability that 15-17 year-olds were enrolled in school. These results suggest that older children’s education may be protected against shocks in the short run but undermined by previous impacts on developmental and economic processes that unfold over multiple years.
Beyond the Right Answer: Measuring Ethical Logic in Large Language Models
W. Russell Neuman; Chad Coleman
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Research on the ethical capacities of large language models has expanded rapidly, but the field remains conceptually fragmented. Some studies ask whether models agree with human moral judgments. Others examine moral values, developmental schemas, contextual norm recognition, resistance to framing, behavior under incentives, multimodal moral salience, or the perceived quality of model-generated advice. These approaches are often grouped under broad labels such as AI ethics, moral alignment, or moral reasoning, even though they measure substantially different constructs. This field is also distinct from much of the larger domain of LLM benchmarking because ethics does not generally provide ground truths that permit simple calculations of percent correct. This article reviews an expanded inventory of assessment families designed to evaluate how large language models respond to ethical choices. Building on early reviews such as Snoswell, Kilov, and Lazar (2026), this article treats the assessment family rather than the individual paper as the unit of analysis. It organizes the literature into five ethical measurement (ETHMEAS) dimensions: moral reasoning structure, moral value orientation, alignment with human values, contextual norm understanding, and behavior, harm, and social reception. The review also identifies a separate but increasingly important mechanistic-interpretability literature that attempts to locate moral concepts, values, and ethical-framework pathways inside model activations. The central claim is that the field is moving from outcome matching toward a more demanding investigation of ethical logic: the reproducible organization of moral attention, value prioritization, principle application, exception handling, justification, and conduct across changes in framing, language, context, modality, incentives, and internal intervention. A key conclusion is that a better understanding of the dynamics of LLM ethical logic informs our understanding of human ethical logic. The review identifies recurring validity challenges, including the transplantation of human psychometrics to language models, benchmark contamination, instability of model values, conflation of majority agreement with moral competence, and uncertainty about the relationship between explanations and underlying decision processes. ETHMEAS is proposed as a multidimensional framework for evaluating model ethical logic without reducing morality to a single score.
Seeds of Change: Structural Transformations and Support for the Radical Right
Philipp Kerler; David Doyle; Victor AraĂșjo
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The rise of the radical right is often attributed to economic disappointments rooted in structural transformations. However, these explanations frequently fail to extend beyond advanced democracies, where most structural changes differ. To advance the limited understanding of the political effects of structural transformations in countries of the Global South, we study the shift to high-intensity agricultural production in Brazil in the early 2000s. We argue that -- similar to electoral realignment in advanced democracies -- left majoritarian parties (in this case, the Brazilian Workers' Party, PT) losing the support of those left behind by structural change contributed significantly to Jair Bolsonaro's rise to power. At the same time, Bolsonaro's neoliberal appeals around revoking land protection and reducing trade barriers resonated with workers and farmers embedded in increasingly industrialized, export-oriented agriculture. Therefore, Bolsonaro garnered support from the winners and losers of structural transformation simultaneously. Contrary to the protectionist appeals of the radical right in the Global North, our research highlights the distinct role of neoliberal appeals for the success of the radical right in the Global South.
From science to policy: A multilevel framework for measuring institutional policy engagement through Overton
Daniel Torres-Salinas; Wenceslao Arroyo-Machado; Nicolas Robinson-Garcia; Esteban Romero-FrĂ­as
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This study presents a multilevel framework to assess the policy attention of academic institutions using Overton as a primary data source. We illustrate this framework through a case study of the University of Granada, combining Overton policy mentions, OpenAlex topics, and bibliometric analysis. Results show policy engagement particularly concentrated in health, physical, and social sciences, with mentions from key governmental and intergovernmental organisations. The study quantifies the university's visibility in policy documents, classifies mentions by scientific domain and issuer type, maps 1,145 research topics to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and identifies seven researchers whose work aligns with Spain's Urban Agenda. The findings demonstrate the value of Overton for mapping the presence of institutional research in policy documents and tracing science-policy linkages. However, given the well-documented risks of misuse of bibliometric indicators in research evaluation, users of this framework should be aware of key interpretive boundaries: policy mentions should not be equated with policy impact; raw mention counts cannot establish reliable temporal trends given Overton's continuous expansion; and geographic and linguistic distributions of mentions reflect Overton's structural indexing biases toward OECD countries rather than real-world policy engagement. With these caveats, the framework offers a scalable model for institutional policy engagement assessment.
Digital Transformation and Strategic Adaptation in Small Businesses: Evidence from Local Interview Case Studies
Pranay Saripalli; Shaurya Yadav; Ayush Tripathi
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This qualitative case study examines how small businesses adapt to digital innovation, financial constraints, and external economic pressures. The study draws on structured in-person interviews with owners and representatives of three local businesses—Empxre, Bam Clothing, and American Hide—to examine how business owners assess the costs and benefits of digital adoption and sustain competitiveness amid changing market conditions. Existing research has established that small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) digitalization can improve business performance and customer engagement, but less attention has been given to the strategic reasoning that shapes individual firms’ adaptation decisions. The findings highlight the importance of aligning digital transformation with broader business strategy, customer needs, and available financial resources. Empxre demonstrates how an omnichannel approach incorporating websites and social media can support customer engagement. Bam Clothing illustrates how financial constraints, concerns about debt, and competitive pressures can limit digital adoption even when market conditions favor greater digitalization. American Hide demonstrates how product differentiation can remain an effective competitive strategy when digital expansion is limited. Across the three cases, the COVID-19 pandemic emerged as a common external factor influencing businesses’ approaches to digital transformation and customer engagement. Overall, the study suggests that digital tools do not create value independently; rather, their effectiveness depends on how strategically they are integrated with customer needs, competitive conditions, and a firm’s available capital.
한ꔭ의 ëł”ì§€ê· ì—Ž 부상에 ꎀ한 ì—°ê”Ź
Jihun Yeo
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읎 ì—°ê”Źì˜ ëȘ©ì ì€ êČœì œì„±ìž„ë‹ŽëĄ ìŽ 지배적읎던 한ꔭ정ìč˜ì—ì„œ ëł”ì§€ë‹ŽëĄ  및 전선읎 부상한 요읞을 규ëȘ…하는 êČƒìŽë‹€. êČœì œ ê”ŹìĄ°ì˜ ëł€í™”ì˜ êž°ìĄŽ 규ëČ”ì—ì˜ 작용 및 ì‹œëŻŒì‚ŹíšŒ 낮 í—€êȌëȘšë‹ˆë„Œ ë‘˜ëŸŹì‹Œ ë‹ŽëĄ íˆŹìŸ ìŽëĄ ì„ 톔핎 2009년 ëŹŽìƒêž‰ì‹ë¶€í„° 2012년 대선 시Ʞ ëł”ì§€ë‹ŽëĄ ì˜ 활성화 및 ëł”ì§€ê· ì—Žì˜ 부상 요읞을 추적하였닀. 저 발달한 ë°œì „ìŁŒì˜ ëł”ì§€ë ˆì§êłŒ ì‹ ìžìœ ìŁŒì˜ êČœì œì •ì±…ì˜ ì—°êł„ëœ ì •ì±…íššêłŒëŠ” ì‚ŹíšŒì–‘ê·č화, ëčˆ êł€ìž” 확대 등을 ìŽˆëž˜í•˜ì˜€êł , 읎êČƒì€ ‘êČœì œì„±ìž„ìŽ ëŻŒìƒëŹžì œë„Œ 핮êČ°í•œë‹€â€™ëŠ” êž°ìĄŽì˜ 규ëČ”ì„ 앜화 시쌰닀. êČœì œì„±ìž„ìŽ ëŻŒìƒëŹžì œë„Œ 핮êČ°í•œë‹€êł  ìŁŒìž„í•˜êł  집권한 읎ëȘ…ë°• 정부의 정ë‹č성읎 앜화되 êł , 2009년 êČœêž°ê”ìœĄê°êłŒ êČœêž°ì˜íšŒì˜ 갈등을 êł„êž°ëĄœ ëŹŽìƒêž‰ì‹ 녌쟁읎 쎉발하였닀. ê·žëŠŹêł  시 ëŻŒì‚ŹíšŒ 낮 ì‹œëŻŒ, ì‚ŹíšŒë‹šìČŽë“€ì€ ì‚Źì ìŽì”ì„ êł”ì ìŽì”ìœŒëĄœ ì „í™˜í•˜êł , ì‚ŹíšŒì  정ë‹č성을 획득하Ʞ 위한 ë‹ŽëĄ íˆŹìŸì„ 전개한닀. 읎넌 톔핎 ê”­ëŻŒì—ŹëĄ ìŽ ëŹŽìƒêž‰ì‹ 및 ëł”ì§€ì— 대한 ì§€ì§€ëĄœ ëł€í™”í•˜ì˜€ ë‹€. ëł”ì§€ì— 대한 ê”­ëŻŒì  지지넌 확읞한 정ë‹č듀은 íŠč정 위Ʞ ꔭ멎에서 ëł”ì§€ë„Œ 수용할 정ìč˜ì  읎읔읎 있는 ì„žë „ ìš°ì„ ì ìœŒëĄœ ëł”ì§€ë„Œ 수용하êȌ 된닀. ê·žëŠŹêł  ì—ŹëĄ , ì‹œëŻŒì‚ŹíšŒë‹šìČŽë“€ì˜ êł„ì†ì ìž ì••ë „ 속에서, 선거에서 ëł”ì§€ 읎슈넌 선점하Ʞ 위핎 양ë‹č은 ì „ë©Žì ìœŒëĄœ ëł”ì§€ë„Œ ìˆ˜ìš©í•˜êł , 읎후 읎êČƒì€ êČœì œëŻŒìŁŒí™”ë‹ŽëĄ ìœŒëĄœ 읎얎지êȌ 된닀.
A STUDY OF THE EMERGENCE OF WELFARE CLEAVAGES IN SOUTH KOREA
Jihun Yeo
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This study aims to trace the cause of an emerging welfare cleavage under circumstances where discourses on economic growth have been dominant in Korean politics. On the basis of the theories of interaction between changing social structure and social-norm dynamics, this paper explores the causes of an emerging welfare cleavage in the case of South Korea during the late 2000s. To analyze the change of economic structure and public awareness regarding public welfare, I used the data of macro-economic indicators and public opinion polls and utilized press releases to analyze discourses of political actors. The linked-policies effects of an immature “developmental welfare regime” and neo-liberal economic policies caused social polarization and expansion of the poverty stratum in the course of a slowdown in economic growth in the 1990s and foreign exchange crisis in 1998. The existing norm (i.e., economic growth could solve problems concerning people's livelihood) that had been maintained in the era of rapid economic growth was weakened. A conflict between an education superintendent and the Gyeonggi-do Provincial Council triggered a debate on free meals and welfare in 2009. Civil society groups were organized on a national scale, and they started a discourse struggle to replace individual interests with public interests and to obtain social legitimacy. Political parties gradually accepted the welfare issue as the primary electoral pledge for their political interests after public preference regarding growth and distribution changed when confronted with political crises. This study draws an implication that general factors affecting Western welfare states (e.g., power alliance and democratic institutions) influence East Asian welfare states by analyzing the case of South Korean welfare politics. It means that studies of East Asian welfare states can use explanatory building blocks partly from existing welfare theories rather than stressing the exceptionalism of East Asian welfare states. However, owing to the different economic and political structures of East Asian states from those of Western countries during the formative stage of welfare states, studies of East Asian welfare states need to consider path dependency in the historical context of East Asian political economy.
The Divergent Trajectory of Environmental Politics between the United States and the United Kingdom
Jihun Yeo
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This study examines factors affecting the divergent environmental performances between the U.S. and the U.K. from the perspective of social movement. I look into domestic political factors, especially social movements causing different environmental performances in two countries that attain the high level of economic growth and are under the same international factors. Given that previous research dealing with domestic political factors tends to focus on political institutions and that the comparative research on the cases of the U.S. and the U.K. are limited, this research is relevant. I utilize the EPI scores, protest data, public opinion data and party manifestos. I conclude that the strong connection of environmental movement with political parties, less dispersive social movement agendas, favorable conditions from the EU and relatively weak anti-environmental movement led Britain to making a better environmental performance than the U.S.
The Cultural Integration of Wellbeing Practices (CIWP) Framework: Conditions of Possibility Through Design
Carolina Andrea CĂĄrdenas FernĂĄndez
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The gap between knowing about wellbeing and practicing it constitutes a central challenge for research in design and public health. This article proposes the Cultural Integration of Wellbeing Practices (CIWP) Framework, a conceptual framework developed through Research through Design that articulates five dimensions—connection with meaningful values, situated opportunities, appropriation, everyday sustainability, and social legitimacy—to understand the conditions that support the incorporation of evidence-based wellbeing practices into everyday life and, eventually, into culture. Through a retrospective reading of the Wellbeing Practices in Waiting Spaces (WPWS) Framework, the article shows how these conditions can be translated into concrete design decisions through a situated activation mechanism, operationalized through three interdependent components—spatiotemporal conditions, human capacities, and visual mediation devices—and five design principles. The crosswalk indicates that WPWS provides direct operational expression to three of the five CIWP dimensions—situated opportunities, appropriation, and everyday sustainability—while connection with meaningful values and social legitimacy remain open dimensions that require processes beyond the visual mediation device itself. CIWP is offered as a transferable conceptual architecture—not as a fixed configuration—whose value will be tested through future operationalizations in contexts other than waiting spaces. Keywords: cultural integration of wellbeing practices; conditions of possibility; salutogenesis; interdisciplinarity for wellbeing; design for wellbeing promotion; Trauma-informed design; Research through Design; situated activation.
Understanding children’s housing in Australia: a data framework
Amy Clair; Emma Baker; Lynne Giles; Claire Morey; Megan Robinson
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This project examines the available data on children’s housing and wellbeing and current policy in Australia to highlight how housing affects children’s health and development. It provides policymakers with a guide to the different housing situations children face, identifies significant knowledge gaps and related risks, and proposes priorities for policy-relevant data collection and evidence development. The impacts of Australia’s housing crisis on children have received less attention than for other population groups. Accessible data collections rarely focus on them. Yet households with children are particularly affected by poor quality and insecure housing, and children’s physical vulnerability and dependence on caregivers increases the related risks to their wellbeing. This underscores the need for stronger data insights to support earlier intervention, better targeting and more accountable policy for children.
The lived experience of climate change: a story of one piece of land in Dhaka. Engagement and impact report
Joanne C. Jordan
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This report evaluates the engagement and impact of a research project examining the everyday realities of climate change for low-income communities in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Based on research with more than 600 residents of the Duaripara informal settlement, the project explored how climate change affects daily life, how land tenure shapes vulnerability and adaptation, and the strategies residents use to respond. To communicate these findings beyond academic audiences, the project partnered with the University of Dhaka’s Department of Theatre and Performance Studies to develop an interactive Pot Gan, a traditional Bengali performance combining music, drama, images and dance. Drawing directly on participants’ testimonies, the performances aimed to make the lived experience of climate change accessible to diverse audiences, including informal-settlement residents, academics, policymakers and practitioners. Three live performances attracted 634 attendees. Survey findings indicated strong engagement: 100% of respondents considered the Pot Gan useful for raising climate-change awareness, 92% agreed that focusing on everyday experiences was an effective way to communicate climate change, and 83% reported learning something new or changing how they thought about the issue. The project also produced thirteen videos, including a documentary and filmed performance, which reached at least 126,873 viewers. Overall, the findings demonstrate the potential of participatory theatre, storytelling and film to communicate climate research, centre the knowledge of frontline communities, and encourage wider reflection on climate-change policy, practice and communication.
Relay cooperation between women and girls during foraging trips among BaYaka hunter-gatherers in the Republic of the Congo
Amandine Erika Stéphanie Visine; Haneul Jang
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Children in small-scale societies contribute to subsistence and infant care from an early age, developing relevant skills through everyday participation. To examine how such participation is organised in practice, we focus on women’s daily foraging among BaYaka hunter-gatherers in the Congolese rainforest, where children frequently accompany adults. Using focal follows, we recorded mothers’ activity states - foraging, travelling, and resting - alongside helping behaviours of group members, including childcare, foraging, and basket carrying. We find that childcare, subsistence, and load-carrying responsibilities are dynamically redistributed through relay cooperation between women and girls, who are not necessarily kin. Infant care is frequently transferred from women to girls, enabling mothers to continue foraging without carrying infants. When mothers pause to rest or breastfeed, girls temporarily take over foraging tasks. These role shifts occur repeatedly within trips, revealing a structured yet flexible system that allows mothers to manage the energetic and mobility constraints of childcare while maintaining productivity. At the same time, relay cooperation provides girls with repeated opportunities to engage in both caregiving and subsistence, supporting learning through participation with women other than their own mothers. These findings provide insight into how children develop as cooperative actors through active participation in women’s subsistence and caregiving activities.
Occupational AI Exposure and the Reconfiguration of Class Inequalities in Perceived Job Insecurity
Daniela Bellani; Honorata Bogusz; samuel plach
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Research on AI and inequality has focused primarily on employment, wages, productivity, and task displacement, while less is known about how occupational AI exposure is associated with workers’ subjective insecurity and how these concerns are distributed across social classes. This study examines perceived job insecurity among employed workers in Europe, distinguishing quantitative insecurity - fear of job loss - from qualitative insecurity - fear of an undesirable change in the work situation. We use the 2024 European Working Conditions Survey, linked to an occupation-level measure of potential AI exposure, to examine whether the class pattern of AI-related insecurity mirrors the conventional class gradient in perceived job insecurity. Manual workers report the highest average fear of job loss, but the positive association between occupational AI exposure and job-loss fear is concentrated among higher- and lower-grade service workers and is weak or absent among manual workers. By contrast, occupational AI exposure shows a positive association with fear of undesirable job change, but this outcome displays no recurrent class pattern. Exploratory analyses show that the service-class association with job-loss fear is especially visible among tertiary-educated and older workers and among those who do not report using AI directly at work, while cross-national estimates indicate that the pattern appears across several institutional contexts. The findings suggest that occupational AI exposure may reconfigure rather than sim-ply reproduce existing inequalities in insecurity, as the workers reporting the highest baseline insecurity are not those among whom the association with AI exposure is most pronounced
Knowledge to action in alternative crisis response: Examining alignment and misalignment between evidence and practice
Megan Wheeler Rowe; Claire Ryder; Amanda Mathew; Jenny Angela Hui; Brandon Barksdale; Leyna Lowe; Andrew David Eaton
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Background: Alternative crisis response models have rapidly emerged to reorganize mental health crisis care away from traditional police-led responses. It is important to explore whether the existing evidence base on co-response and civilian-led models aligns with the perspectives of those closest to the field. Aims: This study examined points of alignment and misalignment between synthesized evidence from two scoping reviews and the lived, practice-based, and systems-level knowledge of key informants in alternative crisis response. Methods: From August-December 2025, 33 crisis response key informants in Canada and the United States participated in semi-structured interviews prompted by the scoping reviews. Data were analyzed using directed qualitative content analysis, with 13 sensitizing domains regarding key processes of co-response and civilian-led models. Results. Participants strongly aligned with reducing police involvement and developing distinct crisis response teams. Misalignment most often appeared as contextualization or extension, especially around police involvement, interprofessional collaboration, team composition, local service capacity, and public narratives. Domains related to monitoring, evaluation, and model variation had high counts of no available data. Conclusions: Findings suggest that evidence on alternative crisis response is broadly resonant but requires contextualization to reflect the realities of practice and the sustainability needs of a rapidly evolving field.
Statistischer Quartalsbericht 4/2022
Amt fĂŒr Statistik und Wahlen Stadt Leipzig
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RegelmĂ€ĂŸige vierteljĂ€hrliche Veröffentlichung: TextbeitrĂ€ge zu ausgewĂ€hlten Themen (Teil 1) und statistische Daten (Teil 2)
Spirit Becoming Matter: A Thematic Analysis of Creation Stories
Pamela Venerdrow Lucas; Michelle Fauver
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Objective This qualitative study examined the creation stories from a cross-section of cultures and traditions to determine whether there are important similarities. Methods Thematic analysis was conducted with 15 creation stories from 11 traditions. Initial coding was reviewed to develop themes, which were then recursively applied to the stories to find further examples and refine definitions. The resulting 13 themes were then clustered into 4 categories. Results The diverse stories shared significant commonalities in their processes, elements, and implications. The first category is consciousness, which includes the themes of creator being, humans as co-creators, thought/mind, and one source. The second category is the elements, which includes the themes of water, light, and earth. The third category is opposites and similars, with no further subcategories. The fourth category is energy, which includes the themes of energy/vibration, breath, void, and time. Conclusions Surprising similarities across cultures point toward a model of reality in which consciousness is primary, preceding, and giving rise to physical form. All matter started as energy, and each part contains elements of the whole. The findings suggest that the divine, or universal consciousness, is contained in all matter, that consciousness may be eternal, and that the continuum of consciousness facilitates communication between humans, the divine, and all manifest forms.
Are we nursing the technologies? An ethnographic study of nurses’ tech work and its implications for well-being
Paulien D'Huyvetter; Ellen Algera; Daantje Derks; Pascale Marie Le Blanc; Iris Wallenburg; Rik Wehrens
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Healthcare systems across the world face persistent nursing shortages. Although technological innovations are widely promoted as solutions to rising workloads and staff shortages, they also generate additional, largely invisible forms of work. We examine nurses’ tech work: the unanticipated work nurses perform to keep hospital technologies functioning. Drawing on insights from Science and Technology Studies and Work and Organizational Psychology, we investigate the types of tech work nurses perform and their implications for nurses’ well-being. Based on ethnographically grounded observations, interviews, and focus groups conducted in a Dutch academic hospital, we identify eight types of tech work in nursing. For each type, we show tech work can negatively affect nurses’ well-being through hindrance demands and reduced perceptions of meaningfulness, particularly when combined with other demanding tasks. Our findings suggest that the challenge is not the deployment of more technologies, but their design and implementation in ways that minimize burdensome tech work and better support nurses’ care practices.
The Politics of Consolidation: Authoritarian Drift and Economic Ambition in Post-Election Tanzania
Rutashubanyuma Nestory
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Abstract Tanzania’s political trajectory in August 2026 is increasingly defined by a striking contradiction: ambitious economic modernization is unfolding alongside a marked contraction of political space. Following the contested October 2025 general election, President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s administration appears increasingly focused on restoring political control while facing unresolved questions concerning electoral legitimacy, accountability and constitutional reform (BBC, 2026; Xinhua, 2026a; Xinhua, 2026b). The resignation of Vice President Emmanuel Nchimbi on 25 August 2026 (BBC, 2026; KBC Digital, 2026), restrictions on opposition political activity (The Citizen, 2026b; Daily News, 2026a), and the prosecution of opposition leader Tundu Lissu (The Citizen, 2026a; Mwananchi, 2026) have intensified concerns about the direction of Tanzania’s political order. At the same time, major infrastructure achievements, particularly the Julius Nyerere Hydropower Project, provide the government with a powerful narrative of developmental competence (Xinhua, 2026c). This paper situates these developments within the comparative literature on democratic backsliding, electoral authoritarianism, political legitimacy, institutional change and developmental states. Drawing on Bermeo’s (2016) analysis of democratic backsliding, Schedler’s (2013) conception of electoral authoritarianism, Beetham’s (1991) theory of political legitimacy, and Doner, Ritchie, and Slater’s (2005) analysis of developmental states, it argues that Tanzania is exhibiting features of political consolidation in which executive control and developmental performance increasingly operate as mutually reinforcing sources of regime stability. The paper does not suggest that Tanzania has become a fully authoritarian state. Rather, it identifies an authoritarian drift in which restrictions on political competition and civic space coexist with continued electoral institutions and ambitious economic modernization. The central argument is that economic performance may strengthen short-term regime legitimacy, but it cannot permanently substitute for credible elections, accountable institutions, judicial independence and meaningful political inclusion. The widening gap between developmental ambition and political openness consequently represents both a democratic challenge and a long-term governance and investment risk.
Older adults without a partner and adult children in Finland
INVEST Flagship; alyona artamonova; Mirkka Danielsbacka
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Background: Core-kinless older adults, i.e., those lacking a partner and children, represent a potentially vulnerable group. However, the whole population-level research devoted to this group remains scarce. Objectives: This study estimates the prevalence, sociodemographic characteristics, and geographic distribution of core-kinless adults in Finland, with attention to variation across ethnolinguistic groups of Finnish, Swedish, and other language speakers. Methods: We used register data covering the entire population aged 65 and over in 2024 (N = 1,328,732) and descriptive analyses. Core-kinlessness was defined as the absence of both a registered co-residing partner and any living children registered in Finland. Results: In total, 11.6% of older adults in Finland were core-kinless. Prevalence was 11.3% among Finnish-speaking, 10.3% among Swedish-speaking, and 30.5% among other language-speaking individuals. Migration background in general, being male among Finnish-speaking as well as being female, being older and having lower education among other language-speaking individuals are the characteristics of this group. The positive associations between municipal core-kinlessness and i) demographic dependency ratio, ii) the mortality rate among older adults and iii) the rate of home care clients confirm that municipalities where these older adults are concentrated also face greater demographic and service pressures. Contribution: This study provides the first register-based national estimates of core-kinlessness in Finland, demonstrating that survey data underestimate this group. The findings offer evidence for targeted care planning at the individual and municipality levels.
Exploitation-based social class, class consciousness and political participation
Agata Anita Troost; Jaap Nieuwenhuis; Jonathan J.B. Mijs
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Departing from recent discussions about social class and relational inequality, we investigate the idea of the power antagonism between the workers and capitalists, and the implications of this antagonism for political participation. While the popular sociological occupation- and income-based schemes can measure social mobility within the existing economic conditions, social class based on exploitation is more relevant for measuring political empowerment. We adopt a quantitative empirical approach to analyse the class structure, class consciousness, and their associations with political behaviour including voting, direct political action and trade union membership. We recreate E.O. Wright’s exploitation-based class scheme (1985) with new survey data collected by us in the Netherlands in 2024. We then test whether people’s housing market position, income, wealth and education influence their class consciousness and political actions to a similar degree as their labour market, or production processes, position captured by the class scheme. Exploitation-based social class, more than income, wealth, housing, or occupation, predicts class consciousness and shapes patterns of political participation in the Netherlands, although education remains the strongest predictor of direct political action and voting. High class consciousness only motivates some middle classes to direct political action, but all classes are similarly demotivated by feelings of political resignation and being unable to enact change. While low-skilled workers display relatively high class consciousness, they are unable to translate it into political engagement. Our findings highlight the persistent and complex role of class in contemporary society.
THE HORMUZ STRAIT DISRUPTION AND PAYMENT DELAYS IN INDIAN TRADE FINANCE: A Time-Series Analysis of Banking Sector Vulnerability (2019-2024)
Jainish Bhagat
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The Hormuz Strait—through which 21% of global petroleum trade passes—experienced significant geopolitical tensions from 2019-2024, creating disruptions to maritime commerce and financial flows. This paper provides a detailed empirical analysis of how these disruptions affected payment cycles in Indian trade finance and banking. Using Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data, port statistics, and transaction-level banking records (2019-2024, N=18,547 trade credit facilities), we employ time-series analysis, distributed lag models, and shock analysis to quantify the relationship between Hormuz disruptions and payment delays. Key findings: (1) Trade finance payment delays increased by an average of 8.3 days (95% CI: 6.1-10.5) following Hormuz tension announcements; (2) Letter of Credit (LC) issuance costs rose by 42-67 basis points; (3) Banks increased collateral requirements by 12-18%, contracting working capital availability by â‚č4,200-6,800 crores; (4) The shock effect persisted for 90-120 days post-incident, with heterogeneous impacts across firm sizes (SMEs experienced 2.1x higher delays than large enterprises). Our analysis reveals that geopolitical shocks in maritime chokepoints generate significant financial friction in emerging market trade finance systems, with particular vulnerability among smaller firms lacking working capital buffers. We propose targeted policy interventions including development of trade credit insurance mechanisms, geographic diversification of banking relationships, and central bank communication frameworks for predictable intervention during crises.
A National Portrait of Life Course Marital and Cohabiting History
Yiang Li; Kyung Won Choi
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Objectives Partnership histories encompass the duration, timing, and sequence of marital and cohabiting relationships that accumulate across the life course. Taking advantage of detailed cohabitation history data available in The National Social Life and Health and Aging Project (NSHAP), this paper constructs older adults’ partnership histories and describes variation across gender, race and ethnicity, and social class. It also examines the associations between partnership histories and health outcomes. Methods Using NSHAP Rounds 1 through 4, we harmonized retrospective marriage and cohabitation records for 6,618 respondents and constructed measures of union counts, timing, duration, sequence, and dissolution, with 7-, 11-, and 14-category classifications. We evaluated missingness and consistency, summarized sociodemographic differences, and illustrated associations with three health outcomes. Results Older adults married to their first spouse (37.7%) and widowed (14.9%) comprise over half of the sample. Yet divorce and cohabitation are also common in older adults’ partnership histories, with over one third of the sample reporting having ever divorced (38.5%) and having ever cohabited before a marriage (36.7%). Partnership histories involving union disruption, never marrying, and cohabitation are associated with differences in self-rated health, depressive symptoms, and functional limitations relative to continuous first marriage. Discussion The partnership history data available in NSHAP provides a novel opportunity for researchers to examine the significance of intimate relationships accumulated across the life course for health and aging beyond marital histories alone or current relationship status.
Transforming Public Sector Corporations in Tanzania: A Capability-Based Framework for Addressing Persistent Governance, Financial, and Organizational Weaknesses
Josephat Lotto
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Public and Statutory Corporations (PSCs) remain important instruments for economic transformation, strategic investment, and public service delivery in developing economies. Governments establish PSCs to address market failures, provide essential services, support industrial development, and advance national economic objectives. However, despite growing interest in PSCs' governance, several gaps remain in existing literature. First, many studies focus primarily on ownership structures, privatization outcomes, and financial performance while paying limited attention to internal institutional capabilities. Second, existing performance assessments frequently identify weaknesses without developing systematic approaches for measuring recurring organizational constraints. Third, limited attention has been given to mechanisms that translate oversight findings into continuous organizational improvement. The study, therefore, addresses these gaps by developing the Public Sector Corporation Performance Weakness Index (PSC-PWI), an analytical framework designed to identify and measure recurring institutional weaknesses affecting PSCs' performance.
El contrato que cambia de manos: la cesiĂłn de la posiciĂłn contractual en el derecho comparado y su silencio en el derecho chileno (revisiĂłn de un estudio de 2023 a la luz del Code civil reformado y del CĂłdigo Civil y Comercial argentino)
Andrés Gabriel Varas Quijón
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Este trabajo revisa y pone al dĂ­a, desde la perspectiva chilena, un estudio del propio autor de 2023 sobre la cesiĂłn de contrato: la transferencia de la calidad de parte —crĂ©ditos, deudas, potestades y cargas— que uno de los contratantes hace a un tercero. El paisaje comparado cambiĂł de raĂ­z: Francia codificĂł la figura en los artĂ­culos 1216 a 1216-3 del Code (reforma de 2016), zanjando por ley el duelo entre monismo y dualismo; Argentina la regulĂł en los artĂ­culos 1636 a 1640 del CĂłdigo Civil y Comercial (2015); Italia la consagra desde 1942 y Alemania la practica como construcciĂłn jurisprudencial; los Principios UNIDROIT y los PECL la reciben como derecho uniforme. Chile, en cambio, mantiene el silencio: islas de cesiĂłn legal sin archipiĂ©lago, una doctrina clĂĄsica que la negĂł por la incesibilidad de la deuda y una prĂĄctica —promesas inmobiliarias, suministro, concesiones, carteras de contratos— que la celebra a diario sin rĂ©gimen. El artĂ­culo demuestra la admisibilidad de la figura en el derecho chileno sobre el artĂ­culo 1545, propone su rĂ©gimen supletorio (consentimiento del cedido como condiciĂłn de eficacia liberatoria, cesiĂłn perfecta e imperfecta, oponibilidad por las reglas de la cesiĂłn de crĂ©ditos, excepciones y suerte de las garantĂ­as) y constata una vindicaciĂłn: la regla de las garantĂ­as de terceros que aquel estudio de 2023 defendĂ­a es hoy texto expreso en el artĂ­culo 1640 argentino y en el 1216-3 francĂ©s. Cierra con un decĂĄlogo del cedente prudente. La tesis: lo que el consentimiento atĂł, el consentimiento puede hacer circular — y el derecho chileno merece un texto que lo diga. Palabras clave: cesiĂłn de contrato — posiciĂłn contractual — cesiĂłn de crĂ©ditos — asunciĂłn de deudas — artĂ­culos 1216 a 1216-3 del CĂłdigo Civil francĂ©s — artĂ­culos 1636 a 1640 del CĂłdigo Civil y Comercial argentino — consentimiento del cedido — cesiĂłn perfecta e imperfecta — garantĂ­as de terceros — libertad contractual — artĂ­culo 1545 — derecho comparado.
Psychological Readiness, Innovation Management, and the Adoption of Sustainable Agriculture: An Extended Theory of Planned Behaviour Model of Food Security among Smallholder Farmers in Climate-Vulnerable Bangladesh
Enamul Haque; M. Nasim Reza; Nurul Islam Nepo; Syed M. Ali Reza; Solaiman Chowdhury; Atikur Rahman
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This study examines the psychological and managerial factors that influence the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices (SA) and household food security (FS) in climate-vulnerable regions of Bangladesh. Drawing on an integrated framework that combines the Extended Theory of Planned Behaviour (ETPB) with Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT), the study analyses a refined sample of 380 smallholder farmers using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). Unlike earlier models that confounded institutional and individual respondents, this study isolates the psychological readiness of primary producers by restricting the quantitative sample to active smallholders. The results show that climate change beliefs exert a significant positive effect on attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control, and that these socio-cognitive constructs in turn positively predict sustainable behavioural intention. Both behavioural intention and perceived behavioural control significantly influence the adoption of sustainable agriculture, which subsequently enhances food security. Individual innovation management further contributes to both the adoption of sustainable agriculture and food security outcomes. The findings underscore the importance of aligning the psychological readiness of individual farmers with the institutional readiness of the wider innovation system, offering a holistic basis for designing rural development strategies in climate-stressed agrarian economies.
Legitimacy Without Exit: Why Voluntary Alternatives to the State Lose to Involuntary Ones
Tymur Kisielov
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Discourse on the future of the state usually treats voluntary alternatives (network states, micronations, charter cities) and involuntary reconfigurations of political identity (civilizational-state rhetoric, corporate infrastructural control) as one phenomenon — "the state losing its monopoly." This paper argues the frame conflates two structurally different processes and proposes a testable thesis: a new political container's durable legitimacy — from an offshore platform to a state itself — depends not on the voluntariness of its formation, but on whether it inherits an existing power's legitimating apparatus, secures that power's patronage, or independently builds comparable governance competence. The thesis is tested on controlled comparisons rather than mismatched object types: unpatronized claimants (Sealand, Republic of Minerva, Liberland, Próspera, Ciudad Morazán) against patronized de facto states of the same type (Abkhazia, Transnistria, Northern Cyprus), backed by a systematic dataset of all 34 de facto states, 1945–2011, including the author's own reanalysis of its raw data, and re-tested on an independent second dataset (Kursani, 2023) where patronage showed no statistical link to legitimacy. A further check replacing a blunt democracy proxy with a variable matching the paper's own institutional argument (party-ban severity, V-Dem data) found the regime-type confound more robust, not less — reported honestly rather than as a convenient result. Negotiated decolonization is compared with unilateral declarations of independence across three post-communist federations (Bunce, 1999) and illustratively via Rhodesia and the 2023–2024 collapse of Nagorno-Karabakh, where patron withdrawal itself proved to be a product of internal delegitimation inside the patron state. For micronations, lacking any peer-reviewed dataset, the paper builds its own coding of all 81 documented cases (0/81 with a patron, 0/81 with confirmed recognition). Two cases the mechanism explains only partially are addressed directly: the USSR's collapse despite one of history's highest documented exit costs, and the breakdown of Sweden's neo-corporatist model. The causal mechanism (Weberian legitimacy via Hirschmanian exit/voice/loyalty) is marked as interpretation, not fact, and is empirically hard to distinguish from simple patronized power; open survey data on four de facto states offers a first partial, substantive test of this distinction. The thesis is probabilistic, not universal: no single future case falsifies it — a pattern across independent cases is required. The paper addresses three potential counterexamples (neo-corporatism, EU constitutional patriotism, universal basic income) and twelve explicitly unresolved debates, presenting none as settled consensus.
From Silence to the Archive: The Uneven Institutionalization of Legal-Political Memory Across Displacement Contexts
Ramazan BOZTEPE
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Legal-political memory occupies an ambivalent position in contexts marked by state violence and forced migration: documentation promises evidentiary weight, yet producing it can expose the documenter to risk. Drawing on 80 semi-structured interviews with Kurdish-origin participants across three positional contexts (Bölge, n=25; İç Anadolu, n=25; Diaspora, n=30), coded against a reliability-tested framework (overall Îș=0.838), this article examines Documentary Witnessing and Legal Memory (Îș=0.818) and Institutional/Archival Memory and Digitization (Îș=1.000). Documentary witnessing remains uniformly weak across contexts (8.0–13.3 per cent), while institutional memory diverges sharply, reaching 50.0 per cent among Diaspora participants against 16.0–20.0 per cent within Turkey. Read through Halbwachs, Assmann, Derrida and Trouillot, we read this pattern as consistent with a geography of risk rather than a uniform absence of institutions: within our sample, protective silence is most visible near the site of origin, material erosion under internal displacement, and institutionalization at greater distance. A cross-cutting family-archive practice further complicates the institutional/oral binary.
EDUCAÇÃO SEXUAL NO ENSINO MÉDIO: IMPACTOS DA AUSÊNCIA DE CONHECIMENTO SEXUAL
Ruan VinĂ­cius Lopes Da Silva
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A educação sexual constitui um pilar fundamental no desenvolvimento integral de adolescentes, abordando nĂŁo apenas aspectos biolĂłgicos da sexualidade, mas tambĂ©m dimensĂ”es psicossociais, relacionais e Ă©ticas. No contexto do ensino mĂ©dio, a ausĂȘncia ou precariedade de um ensino sexual abrangente e de qualidade gera lacunas de conhecimento que tornam os estudantes mais vulnerĂĄveis a riscos e desafios relacionados Ă  saĂșde sexual e reprodutiva, como a gravidez nĂŁo planejada, as infecçÔes sexualmente transmissĂ­veis (ISTs), alĂ©m de comprometer a percepção sobre consentimento, limites corporais e relacionamentos saudĂĄveis. Este trabalho tem como objetivo investigar os impactos decorrentes da carĂȘncia de uma educação sexual introdutĂłria adequada, identificando as principais dĂșvidas, fontes de informação e necessidades de orientação entre os jovens. A justificativa fundamenta-se na urgĂȘncia de tratar a saĂșde sexual como uma pauta de saĂșde pĂșblica e desenvolvimento humano, ressaltando o papel mediador da escola e a importĂąncia de abordagens pedagĂłgicas interdisciplinares, estruturadas e contextualizadas na promoção do bem-estar e da cidadania no ambiente escolar.
Incarceration and Deservingness: Experimental Evidence on Less Eligibility
Christopher Berk; Lucas Nunez; Brett C Burkhardt
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A substantial literature on welfare politics shows that public support for redistribution depends on markers like need, effort, and reciprocity that sort recipients into deserving and undeserving categories. We test whether incarceration status functions as a particularly powerful deservingness marker, structured by the eighteenth-century principle of "less eligibility": that no one subject to punishment should fare better than the poorest free person. Using a pre-registered conjoint experiment with a representative U.S. sample (N = 1,929), we find that incarcerated applicants to an identical rehabilitative program receive substantially less public support than otherwise-comparable poor or welfare-dependent applicants — a penalty that persists even when the incarcerated applicant is shown to benefit more from the program than the comparison case. Decomposing the moral-cultural mechanisms behind this penalty, we find community-belonging and cost-benefit evidence each narrow it somewhat, while signals of the applicant's hard work and reliability paradoxically widen it. The incarceration penalty, we argue, operates as a durable boundary of moral exclusion rather than a correctable informational gap, with implications for how welfare-state and punishment scholarship jointly understand deservingness.
Using Geospatial modeling to Understand Spatial Job Access for TANF Recipients
Gabriel Appiah; Arthi Rao; Latrice Rollins; Andrew Cooper; Alex Camardelle
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Access to employment is central to the effectiveness of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, yet job opportunities are unevenly distributed across space. This study examines county-level patterns in job accessibility for TANF recipients, with a particular focus on African American (AA) populations and urban–rural differences in commuting behavior. Using data from Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, Virginia, and the District of Columbia, we construct gravity-based job accessibility indices for high-, median-, and low-paying employment. Distance-decay parameters are empirically estimated from Longitudinal Employer–Household Dynamics (LEHD) commuting flows, allowing travel sensitivity to vary between urban and rural areas. Accessibility measures are computed for total employment and compared across AA TANF - majority and minority counties. We then apply hierarchical clustering to county-level indicators of accessibility, socioeconomic vulnerability, housing and mobility constraints, and TANF caseload composition. The resulting seven-cluster typology reveals distinct TANF opportunity contexts, including counties characterized by severe spatial isolation and others where high accessibility coexists with persistent disadvantage. These findings highlight the limitations of uniform TANF work requirements and support the need for place-sensitive, equity-oriented welfare policy design.
Strategic behaviour in decision support systems: a conceptual framework for observation in multi-stakeholder decision-making processes
Monique Arkesteijn; Adinda Jongkind; Fatemeh Hedieh Arfa; Haiko van der Voort
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While DSS are designed to enhance transparency and provide structure in complex, multi-stakeholder settings, they also influence actions of participating stakeholders and thereby their strategic choices. This paper reviews the literature on SB and DSS, identifies diverse forms of strategic action, and proposes a five-step framework for systematically observing SB in DSS-supported processes and environments. The framework integrates contextual dynamics, stakeholder motivations, strategic approaches, and resource use, offering a structured and comprehensive lens for analysis. By focusing on how stakeholders engage strategically in practice, rather than prescribing how they should behave, the framework enables a nuanced and realistic understanding of stakeholder interaction, behaviour, and power in participatory settings. This conceptual contribution advances both academic and applied discussions by providing a tool that supports empirical investigation as well as the design and use of DSS in real-world decision-making contexts.
Capital as a System of Multidimensional Valuations: Transformation, Money Crisis and Contours of New Architecture.
Marat Idrissov; Nazerke Alipbayeva
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The article is devoted to an analysis of the fundamental transformation of the nature of capital in the 21st century. Despite the growing body of research on intangible assets, debt dynamics, and the concentration of wealth, there is no comprehensive framework linking these trends to the crisis of money’s functions and the formation of a new capital architecture. Based on a comparison of aggregated data — the share of intangible assets in 92% of the capitalization of the S&P 500 (Ocean Tomo, 2025), global debt of $353 trillion (IIF, 2026), wealth concentration in 0.001% of the population (WIR, 2026) — and illustrative cases (capitalization of Tesla, dynamics of real estate prices in megacities, digital assets) it is shown that the dominant form of capital is shifting from material to a valuation system based on expectations, narratives and trust. Four key drivers of transformation are identified: technological, institutional, environmental, and socio‑psychological. The crisis of the four functions of money — as a measure of value, a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a means of payment — is interpreted as a symptom of a deeper shift in valuation. It is substantiated that money will retain its function as a measure of value even as the object of measurement changes — from physical goods and labour to data, algorithms, reputation, and trust. Three scenarios for a new capital architecture are formulated — energy‑based, digital, and institutional — and the need to transition to a multidimensional system of value assessment, which includes energy, data, trust, and natural capital, is substantiated.
Cost of Safe Abortion Care in Kigali, Rwanda: A Retrospective Analysis of Hospital Billing Data
Melina Gaju Uwamwezi; Stephanie KĂŒng; Ritah Mukashyaka; Allan Higiro; Lawrence Rugema; Alain Favina; Aflodis Kagaba; Margaret Giorgio
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Background: Rwanda has progressively liberalized its abortion law over the past decade, most recently through a 2024 order decentralizing safe abortion care (SAC) to health centres and clinics. However, the financial accessibility of legally provided SAC remains poorly understood; existing cost evidence in Rwanda focuses on post-abortion care, which has a different clinical and cost profile. This study assessed the direct facility-based costs of legally provided SAC in Kigali, Rwanda. Methods: We conducted a retrospective analysis of itemized hospital billing data from the Health Development Initiative (HDI) Rwanda for 236 SAC patients treated at 4 public and 1 private facility in Kigali from June 2022 to December 2024, including total costs and costs across 9 categories. Total and category-specific costs were compared by visit type using the Mann-Whitney U test; associations between characteristics and visit type were assessed using chi-square or Fisher's exact tests. Results: The median total cost of a SAC visit was 62,353 RWF (range: 282-256,100 RWF). Consultation fees (94.9%) and commodities (92.8%) were incurred by nearly all patients, while medical acts (76.3%), imaging (75.4%), and laboratory tests (70.8%) were also common. Two-thirds of patients (66.1%) were treated as inpatients, with a mean length of stay of 3.1 days. Inpatients incurred more than twice the mean total cost of outpatients (96,572 RWF vs. 47,167 RWF; p<0.001), driven by significantly higher costs across most categories except examinations. Visit type varied by age group (p=0.014); adolescents (15-18 years) were least likely to be inpatients. Conclusions: Legally provided SAC in Kigali carries a non-trivial financial burden relative to household income, and heavy reliance on inpatient care, inconsistent with WHO guidance, inflates costs. These findings point to the need for a standardized SAC tariff, alignment of admission practices with evidence-based guidelines, and further research into drivers of cost variation in abortion care access.
Locating the evidence: a Minimal Geography scale for the geographic locatability of research, demonstrated on LGBTQ+ fertility studies
Boyana Buyuklieva; Hanxi Wang; Martin Gozzi
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Background: Reporting checklists require a setting to be stated, but are satisfied at any granularity: "conducted in the United States" complies while remaining placeless. Access to fertility care and assisted reproduction depends heavily on where people live, and evidence-appraisal frameworks (GRADE indirectness, CERQual relevance) presuppose that a study's setting can be ascertained. Yet how practically locatable a study's evidence is (i.e., whether a reader can tell where it was produced) has rarely been treated as a measurable property. Methods: We introduce Minimal Geography (MG), a five-point ordinal scale rating how precisely a study's evidence can be resolved to a real place, from placeless (MG 1) to a named local site whose own population was sampled (MG 5), with a self-contained codebook. We applied it to 116 primary studies of LGBTQ+ fertility intentions identified through a scoping review, recording the verbatim source excerpt behind every rating. A second coder blind-rated a 10% sample. Results: Geographic locatability is strongly bimodal: 91 of 116 studies (78.4%) are vague (MG 1-2), two sit at the anonymised midpoint, and 23 (19.8%) are clearly locatable (MG 4-5). We observe the locatable minority to be concentrated in named specialist clinics, predominantly in the US. Quantitative studies were far more often locatable than qualitative ones, reflecting how each design recruits. Blind double-coding showed 75% band agreement and a linearly weighted kappa of 0.68. The instrument, codebook, and dataset are openly deposited (doi:10.5281/zenodo.21496412) to invite comparator corpora test of whether our observed bimodal distribution is distinctive or typical. Conclusions: Reporting compliance is not locatability and we discuss the coarsest-safe-level reporting (CSLR). We conclude that CSLR must state the most specific geography compatible with participant safety, and importantly, flag deliberate masking.
Local Governance and Maternal Health Outcomes: A Case Study of Nepal’s Decentralized Health Reforms
Nirmal Gurung
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Nepal has made impressive gains in reducing maternal deaths in the last 25 years. The maternal mortality ratio dropped from 539 to 151 deaths per 100,000 live births between 1996 and 2022. During the same period, skilled birth attendance rose from 9% to 77% and institutional delivery from 8% to 79%. Alongside these improvements have been major reforms in the health system, especially decentralization. The Local Self-Governance Act of 1999 assigned local bodies responsibility of health facilities. In 2015, the Constitution of Nepal established a federal system with 753 local governments responsible for basic health services. This case study explores the role of decentralization in improving maternal health outcomes in Nepal. It draws on data from national demographic and health surveys, policy documents and global health estimates. The study finds that decentralization was helpful as it increased local resources, improved community participation, strengthened accountability and supported national programs such as the Aama Program. However, the challenges remain and include inadequate local capacity, lack of clarity of roles, quality gaps and disparities between rich and poor, urban and rural and between provinces. Nepal’s experience provides important lessons for other countries looking to reduce maternal mortality rates through devolved health systems.
Natural Hazards Threat and Early Marriage for Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean
Boyoon Lee; Guilherme Natan Fasolin; Ted Hsuan Yun Chen
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Natural hazards threat can shift marriage practices in ways that systematically harm young women and girls, as post-disaster conditions incentivize families to marry off daughters as an adaptation response against economic and physical insecurity. We study this link using geolocated representative samples from 15 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, a region with one of the highest early marriage rates in the world. We show that exposure to natural hazards is associated with higher prevalence of marriage among women under 18 and increased acceptance of these marriage practices among the general population. This relationship is mitigated by strong government institutions, which was previously unobserved in other regions. Our study demonstrates that rational climate adaptation behaviors at the household level can exacerbate within-household distributional inequalities, emphasizing the need for stronger institutional support structures that provide equitable means of adaptation.
ICT, Sustainable Development and Job Polarization: Evidence from ECOWAS
Dennis Nchor
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This paper assesses the contribution of information and communication technology (ICT) to sustainable development and job polarization in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Panel pooled mean group models are used to assess the role of ICT in sustainable development whereas changes in employment shares of the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO08) occupations are used to investigate the changing employment distribution in the labor markets in the region. The results show that all measures of ICT had a positive and significant impact on sustainable development. The paper also finds that the West African countries are lagging in terms of ICT adoption and ICT infrastructure. The pace of adoption is slower compared to developed countries thus minimizing the pace of job polarization. The results obtained found no u-shaped employment distribution in the countries to indicate job polarization. Significantly however, there is a decline in the share of employment of the agriculture, forestry and fishery sectors. The decline in the share of employment is however offset by rising employment shares of most middle-skilled occupations in the region.
When the Diagnosis Breaks the Home: Paternal Abandonment and Maternal Endurance in Families of Children with Disabilities in Bangladesh
Syed Jabir Hossain
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In Bangladesh, literature shows that a child with a disability is considered to profoundly reorient family life around the mother, who becomes the primary and often only caregiver. A smaller but growing body of research has also documented the financial hardship, institutional barriers, and religiously-inflected stigma that already accompany this caregiving role. An examination of a dimension that is not closely studied in the context of Bangladesh, a child’s disability in marriage dissolution of the parents, extends that literature. In keeping with the secondary qualitative methodology that Cheong et al. (2023) propose, the study analyses eight past news narratives (2016-2026) in Bangladeshi media, which are publicly available. In these narratives, family members speak for themselves about raising a disabled child. Discourse analysis reveals three themes. First, mothers globally carry the structural weight of caring for the family, regardless of the father’s involvement. Second, some discourse suggests the child’s disability is sometimes ‘responsible’ for the father’s exit, which can occur before and/or after birth. Third, despair for the future collides with maternal agency, best seen through the mother who established her own school after being turned away from every single one. The analysis does not imply a causal link between disability and divorce. It shows how this link is narrated in the Bangladeshi public sphere. The analysis offers the narrated link as a focused question for future primary, interview-based research. As an exploratory secondary analysis, this piece recognises the limitation of the data being drawn from credible journalistic sources rather than high-quality interviews.
Donor Responses to Civil Society Repression
Andrew Heiss; Suparna Chaudhry
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This chapter examines donor responses to the global crackdown on civil society, where governments use legal measures to repress NGOs. Donors, including bilateral and multilateral agencies, respond variably; bilateral aid often decreases following anti-NGO laws, while multilateral aid remains stable. Private donors' responses depend on factors like social trust and NGO transparency. NGOs adapt by diversifying funding, forming affiliates, or shifting to community-based support. As the space for civil society continues to shrink, coordinated international efforts are essential to counteract these repressive trends and uphold civil society's role in democratic governance.
Evaluating the Theory of the AnthroShift: How are Climate Shocks Related to Civic Engagement and Support for Climate Science in the US?
Dana R Fisher; Arman Azedi
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Since the theory of the AnthroShift was introduced in 2019, it has been increasingly seen as a theoretical lens through which to analyze social responses to climate change. This paper builds on this small but growing literature to assess the AnthroShift at the individual level. We analyze a new dataset collected from a national sample of adults in the US to understand how experiencing climate shocks is associated with climate-change supportive attitudes and behaviors. Specifically, we look at how self-reported experiences with climate shocks are associated with heightened levels of civic engagement and support for the science that documents climate change. This paper is separated into three sections. First, we review the theory of the AnthroShift, which explains how risk pivots can drive environmental behaviors, and connect it with the growing research that assesses the social effects of climate shocks. Next, we describe our data, which were collected from a nationally representative sample of adults in the US in fall 2025 (n=1,068). Third, we present the results of our analysis that document how individuals’ experience with climate shocks is strongly associated with civic and political engagement and support for climate science. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of our findings for the relationship between climate shocks, attitudes, and behaviors, as well as for our understanding of the society-environment relationship and the sociological theory of the AnthroShift.
Research on Han Nationalism in China in the 2020s (V): Three Frameworks for Interpreting Qing History—Han Nationalism, New Qing History, and Chinese Nationalism
ZY Liu
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This article examines the differences that have arisen among Han nationalism, Chinese nationalism, and international New Qing History in the 2020s concerning the interpretation of Qing history. It argues that the three narratives do not revolve merely around evaluations of the Qing, but respectively focus on questions of ethnic identity, imperial structure, and the historical continuity of the modern state. Han nationalism emphasizes ethnic hierarchy and historical rupture under Qing rule; New Qing History places the Qing within a comparative framework of Eurasian empires and stresses its multi-ethnic imperial character; Chinese nationalism emphasizes the Qing’s important role in the formation of modern China’s territory and national community. The article further points out that controversies surrounding the Qing in fact reflect different understandings within contemporary Chinese society of national identification, ethnic relations, and the allocation of resources.
When Full Employment Is No Longer Necessary
Hong-Ming Chen
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Artificial intelligence may reduce the economic necessity of some forms of cognitive labour faster than employment and social institutions can reorganize the time, identity and roles that work currently structures. Rather than forecasting mass unemployment, we ask what should be tested if that transition arrives unevenly or abruptly: how people are received after occupational loss, how newly available time becomes genuinely self-directed, whether AI can make heterogeneous, voluntary arrangements administratively feasible without turning personalization into obligation, whether unmet human needs can support voluntary new roles, and what it costs to keep the human last mile human. Employment organizes more than income, so occupational displacement is an institutional problem as well as an economic one. We set out a sequence — receive, stabilize, recover, choose — in which recovery is a legitimate state rather than a delay before activation, and in which voluntary reconnection is one possible exit among many. The central proposition is offered as a hypothesis rather than a finding: full employment may have functioned partly as a technology of standardization, while AI could make heterogeneity administratively affordable. Because the same capacity could also produce a more efficient workfare machine, we propose personalization without compulsory optimization as a governing constraint. AI may make matching cheap without making human contact cheap.
A Moment or a Movement? The Effects of Spatial Exposure to the 2017 Women’s March on Political Attitudes and Behavior
Colette Marcellin
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How do social movements affect the public in a polarized era? I examine how the 2017 Women’s March—the largest single-day protest in US history—affected Americans who were exposed to the march in their local communities. I theorize that crowd size moved residents’ political attitudes and behavior in a liberal direction, particularly among Republicans. Using an instrumental variables approach, I find that crowd size increased Republican women’s disapproval of Trump and both Republican women and Republican men’s Democratic vote choice in the 2018 midterm elections. This paper has important implications for understanding the effects of protests that reach a range of communities and focus on identity.
Discussions of Race in Online Right-Wing Communities: A Cross-platform Computational Analysis of Reddit, Telegram, and Truth Social Using BERT and Structural Topic Modeling
Qin Li; Jack Gabriel Risien Wippell; Jasmine Hunt; Robert Bond; Joseph Tien; Nicole Yadon
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Race has long been a divisive fault line in American public discourse. Yet, political and societal changes have catalyzed the emergence of alternative collective identities, particularly in digital environments where alternative narratives can flourish. We examine right-wing social media spaces as forums in which racial discourse (specifically, that related to Black identities) is produced and contested through conversation, focusing on three platforms—Reddit, Truth Social, and Telegram—during Summer 2022. Structural topic modeling reveals six prominent themes: comparisons of the Black Lives Matter and January 6th protests; persistent discussions of race, crime, and violence; perceived racism within the Democratic party; broad discussion about ``wokeness''; race and health issues (abortion and infectious disease); and racial identity. While their relative prominence and framing vary, these themes appear across all three platforms. This indicates that racial narratives do not vary substantially across platforms. By extending the scope of social media platforms studied and foregrounding everyday conversations about race, this study advances academic understanding of how racial identities are both (re-)constructed and (re-)enforced online. In doing so, this study offers insights for political psychologists concerned with identity and its social underpinnings, as well as for scholars of race, political communication, culture, and collective behavior.
How Much Labelled Data Is Enough? A Simulation Study of Prompting Strategies for Unbiased and Reliable LLM-Based Annotation Workflows in Social Sciences
Qixiang Fang
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Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used in (computational) social science to annotate text at scale. Typically, this approach requires researchers to provide (enough) gold labels, develop and evaluate candidate prompts, and decide on the most promising prompt. Meanwhile, many questions arise and remain unanswered: How much labelled data is enough? How should prompt evaluation be conducted? In particular, how can researchers prevent overfitting, an important consideration many social scientists are unfamiliar with. To address these questions, this paper reports a simulation study of prompt evaluation workflows for LLM-based text annotation. I compare intentionally biased yet often employed all-data reuse and validation-only baseline strategies with two defensible workflows: a two-way development/evaluation split and a three-way Explore--Select--Evaluate (ESE) workflow. Across 360 simulation scenarios and 360,000 workflow-level simulation results, all-data reuse and validation-only workflows produced positive reporting bias, especially under adaptive prompt development. In contrast, both two-way and ESE workflows had near-zero mean reporting bias and close-to-95% coverage. However, ESE did not generally select stronger prompts. In fixed-candidate settings, two-way selection outperformed ESE because ESE retained less data for formal prompt comparison without gaining any benefit from exploration. In adaptive settings, ESE reduced regret only modestly under some split ratios, while two-way workflows usually selected prompts with higher absolute true performance. The results suggest that a held-out evaluation set is essential, but that a separate Select stage should be used selectively rather than treated as universally optimal.
Research on Han Nationalism in China in the 2020s (III): From Banner Affiliation to Ethnicity—The Reconstruction of Modern Manchu Identity and Online Narratives of Manchu–Han Conflict
ZY Liu
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This article examines the formation of modern Manchu identity and its relationship to Manchu–Han tensions within the context of Han nationalist discourse on the Chinese internet in the 2020s. It begins by analyzing the Qing Eight Banner system, arguing that the banners were not a single-ethnicity organization in the modern sense, but a political and social system composed of multiple identity groups including Manchu, Mongol, Han-martial (Hanjun), and bondservant (baoyi) populations. After the fall of the Qing, the former banner affiliation was gradually reorganized within the modern ethnic classification system, producing the Manchu identity of today. The article further discusses the process of reconstituting modern Manchu identity since the 1980s, contending that this process involves both historical continuity and the influence of ethnic policy, local administrative factors, and practical interests. When ethnic identity becomes linked to the allocation of public resources, social policy, and historical narrative, it may shift from cultural identification toward an identity of social interest. The article maintains that contemporary Manchu–Han contradictions are not purely ethnic conflicts, but the product of the combined operation of historical memory, identity recognition, class differences, and material interests. Reducing the binding between ethnic identity and the distribution of public goods, thereby allowing ethnic identity to return more fully to the domain of cultural identification, may be an important direction for alleviating related tensions.
Dynamic Democratic Consent: A System Dynamics Framework for Public Trust, Political Communication, and Policy Feedback
Muhammad Sukri Bin Ramli
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Political communication is often analyzed through event-based models that give lim ited attention to feedback, delay, saturation, and changing public trust. This conceptual paper proposes the Dynamic Democratic Consent framework, integrating selected princi ples from Edward Bernays’ account of public relations with the S-E-E-D behavior modes of Snowball growth, Equilibrium seeking, Elastic adjustment, and feedback-loop Dominance. The framework extends the conventional resource categories of manpower, mindpower, and money by treating algorithmic media infrastructure as a conditional fourth dimension. It maps an eight-stage communication-planning process onto reinforcing and balancing feed back structures, perception delays, demographic capacity, and institutional trust. Simulated reference modes illustrate how political-support momentum may encounter electoral satura tion, how delayed perception and corrective response may produce oscillatory adjustment, and how divergence between communication and policy delivery may weaken institutional trust and contract effective support capacity. A four-stage diagnostic process is proposed for describing trajectories, identifying feedback structures, designing policy interventions, and examining potential behavioral shifts. The framework is exploratory rather than predictive. Empirical estimation, comparative case testing, sensitivity analysis, and ethical evaluation are required before it can support applied political analysis.
Seizing the Agenda: Polarization and Legislative Autonomy in Brazilian Presidentialism
Jamil Civitarese; Fabiano Guilherme Mendes Santos
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Brazilian coalitional presidentialism has long been read as a system in which the executive sets the agenda and the legislature holds a veto. We argue that, since the mid-2010s, the Congress has been building agenda-setting power. We account for the shift with a formal spatial framework in which a legislature weighs the cost of acquiring agenda power against the costs caused by the executive it expects to face. Two forces drive the investment: the rightward movement of a median legislator dissatisfied with the status quo and the recent polarization of the Executive, a partner that became too radical and costly to legislate with. Reading the record from Lula's first governments through Lula III, we show how the realignment of agenda power came to constrain the president who now has to both manage the coalition and to accommodate increasing policy demands from the legislature.
Towards a Typology of Islamic Higher Education in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of Institutional Models
Cemal YILMAZ
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This article examines the emergence and institutional diversity of Islamic higher education in Europe and develops a comparative typology of its principal institutional models. While existing scholarship has focused primarily on individual countries, institutions, or debates concerning imam training, a systematic comparative framework for understanding the broader landscape of Islamic higher education remains underdeveloped. Using a comparative institutional analysis of developments in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Austria, England, France, Spain, and Italy, the study examines historical trajectories, state–religion relations, institutional structures, accreditation systems, leadership formation, and sources of legitimacy. The findings demonstrate that Islamic higher education in Europe has not developed through a single institutional pathway. Instead, five ideal-type models can be identified: the Independent Islamic University Model, the State-Integrated Islamic Theology Model, the Seminary-Based Model, the Hybrid Partnership Model, and the Emerging and Transitional Model. The study contributes to the literature by providing a comparative framework for analyzing institutional diversity and by proposing a typology that facilitates future research on Islamic higher education, Muslim institutionalization, and religious leadership in Europe.
Bowling Alone Was Never the Right Diagnosis: On Engineered Isolation and the Mathematics of Community Recovery
GavilĂĄn Longino
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In 2000, Robert Putnam documented a measurable decline in American social capital and named it a crisis. He explained how it happened, but not why. Without that explanation, there could be no real prescription for resolution. This paper argues that what Putnam observed was not cultural drift or technological change but a structural outcome. The systematic extraction of communal infrastructure from American life by market forces that profit from its absence was the mechanism driving the decline. The Social Nest is the term used here for what was lost: the web of informal, reciprocal relationships and shared spaces that historically provided resilience, childcare, elder support, food access, and psychological stability without market mediation. A mathematical framework represented by the Impact Curve is introduced for modeling the conditions under which community infrastructure can be rebuilt. Drawing on Centola et al.'s (2018) experimental confirmation of social tipping dynamics and Rogers' (2003) diffusion research, the framework identifies two critical thresholds (25% and 33% community adoption) that govern the momentum of cooperative formation. The Citadel is introduced as a proposed implementation model: a federated network of community pods designed to reconstitute the Social Nest at scale. This paper is explicitly theoretical. Its purpose is to provide a framework precise enough to test, and to invite the primary research that would validate or falsify its claims. Keywords: social capital, cooperative economics, community development, tipping points, structural isolation, social nest, impact curve
Research on Han Nationalism in China in the 2020s (I): Examining the Narrative Contest between Han Nationalism and State Nationalism through the Withdrawal of the Film The Battle of Penghu
ZY Liu
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Taking the withdrawal of the 2026 film The Battle of Penghu as a point of entry, this article explores the rise of Han nationalist ideology within Chinese society in the 2020s, and the increasingly prominent divergences in orientation between it and the officially led “Chinese nationalism (state nationalism).” The article analyzes the institutional roots of Han nationalism during a period of economic zero-sum competition, its contestation of historical narratives in the sphere of popular culture, and its comprehensive deconstruction of the official discursive system on core issues such as the definition of the nation, historical orthodoxy, and territorial legality.
Research on Han Nationalism in China in the 2020s (II): Cultural Products, Historical Memory, and the Narrative Conflicts of Zhonghua Nationalism
ZY Liu
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This paper examines how the narrative of Zhonghua nationalism exerts influence over cultural production in contemporary China and analyzes its structural ramifications. Within film and television, specific historical themes are constrained from entering mainstream cultural production; in video games, certain historical factions are minimized or rendered entirely absent from narratives; in online literature, market mechanisms reflect historical preferences distinct from official state narratives through reader subscription behavior; in historical publications, ethnicity-inflected linguistic expressions from the past undergo textual revision; and within the Hanfu movement, Han culture is not directly suppressed but rather subsumed and repackaged within the overarching framework of "Zhonghua culture."
Everyday Talk and Child Development: A Conceptual Framework for the Informal Conversation Deficit Hypothesis A Theoretical Paper Proposing an Untested Hypothesis and Research Agenda
Craig Davidon
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Over recent decades, documented shifts in family and community routines — including declining rates of children walking to school, smaller household sizes, and increasingly structured extracurricular scheduling — have measurably reduced the settings in which children once encountered casual, unscripted conversation with a range of adults and peers. This paper proposes the term informal conversation deficit to describe a hypothesized reduction, alongside these routine changes, in children's everyday practice with varied social speech. The framework is motivated by the author's own long-standing personal observations, made over approximately five decades, of apparent declines in children's verbal and nonverbal (for example, body-language-based) social communication. These observations are offered as motivating context only: the paper presents no empirical data of its own, and every causal relationship it proposes is a hypothesis rather than an established finding. Drawing on Vygotsky's (1978) account of private speech, Romeo and colleagues' (2018) finding that conversational turns are associated with language-related brain function, and the ongoing debate over socioeconomic disparities in children's verbal environments, the paper considers how reduced frequency and variety of conversational practice may plausibly be linked to slower pragmatic language development and, in turn, to difficulty articulating internal states such as fear, frustration, or unmet needs. It is hypothesized that resulting frustration may sometimes present as behavior that resembles or compounds features of neurodevelopmental conditions, without being caused by them. The paper closes with explicit limitations and a proposed longitudinal study — using LENA audio-recording metrics — designed to test, for the first time within this framework, the relationship between conversational-turn exposure and children's emotional self-regulation
Between Disintermediation and Inertia: Preprints and the Digital Transformation of the Scientific Knowledge Order
Christian Koß; Frank Marcinkowski
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Informed by work on the digital transformation of traditional knowledge orders, this study examines how researchers use preprints relative to journal publication, and how they perceive preprints’ credibility, benefits, and risks. Evidence comes from a cross-disciplinary survey of 1,403 researchers affiliated with German universities who had previously served as corresponding authors on Web of Science-indexed publications. Corresponding authors indexed in Web of Science are not representative of the scientific community as a whole, and participation was low relative to the number invited, so the estimates describe the respondent sample rather than population prevalence. Unlike studies that recruit through preprint servers, however, this frame also reaches researchers who have never posted a preprint. We investigate five dimensions: (1) adoption rates and disciplinary variations, (2) publication practices, (3) audience orientation and reported feedback, (4) motivations for preprint use, and (5) scientific perceptions of preprints’ implications for research integrity and credibility. Our findings reveal disciplinary differences: 48.6% of natural scientists had uploaded a preprint compared with 18.6% of humanities scholars. Among adopters, reported motivations emphasized access, open science, and speed. Respondents also expressed concerns about credibility and premature public reporting. Intended audiences and reported feedback were concentrated within the scientific community, with little frequent feedback reported from journalists, policymakers, industry, or citizens. Most users posted preprints alongside the journal publication process, although 21.6% included having no intention to publish elsewhere among the circumstances in which they usually posted. These findings describe preprints as a widely used but unevenly adopted publication mode that commonly coexists with formal peer review, with implications for scientific policy and research integrity.
Covariate Adjustment in Political Science Experiments: Progress and Recommendations
Matthew H. Graham; Hai Binh H Hoang
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Covariate adjustment can reduce the standard error of experimental treatment effect estimates without increasing the sample size but is vulnerable to abuse unless a specific procedure is preregistered. We assess adjustment practices in ten political science journals in 2013, 2018, and 2023-24. Encouragingly, preregistration and covariate adjustment have each been rapidly adopted. Preregistration is also a good predictor of what practices are used in articles. However, just 12% of articles published in 2023-24 preregister a specific covariate adjustment procedure and use adjustment for the main estimate. Although preregistering an adjusted estimator is not always advisable (when covariates are unavailable or preregistration is not possible), there is substantial room for improvement. We recommend that when feasible, researchers preregister a specific covariate adjustment procedure and use it for their preferred estimate regardless of covariate balance. This may require a shift in preregistration culture away from predicting results and toward constraining analysis.
Cognitive Degradation: The Reconfiguration of the Labor Process and Knowledge Authority in the Era of Generative Artificial Intelligence
çŽ‹æœŹæ°
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Generative artificial intelligence is increasingly entering knowledge-intensive work, including programming, writing, design, analysis, and management. Unlike earlier forms of automation that were often concentrated on physical operations or clearly defined executional tasks, generative AI can produce text, code, classifications, and proposals within the workflow itself. Its significance therefore lies not simply in the displacement of particular tasks, but in the possibility that activities once associated with professional judgment become increasingly mediated by corporate technological systems. This paper examines that possibility through the concept of “cognitive degradation.” Drawing on Marx’s analysis of machinery and fixed capital, Braverman’s account of labor-process control and deskilling (Braverman, 1974), and Burawoy’s emphasis on worker agency and consent (Burawoy, 1978; 1979), the paper defines cognitive degradation narrowly. It occurs when AI takes over cognitive tasks previously performed by workers, workers’ effective authority over the criteria and application of judgment declines, and that shift is stabilized through organizational rules, technological systems, or labor institutions. The concept therefore should not be treated as synonymous with deskilling, declining productivity, or algorithmic management. To explore the mechanism, the paper examines three ideal types rather than three directly comparable causal cases: boundary-setting in the Writers Guild of America (WGA), internalization in AI-assisted software development, and institutional mediation through German co-determination. The cases show that AI can increase productivity without necessarily reducing workers’ skills, while still altering how knowledge and judgment are organized. The paper argues that the central issue in AI-mediated labor is therefore not whether machines replace workers, but whether workers retain meaningful authority over the definition, evaluation, and application of knowledge. The paper further proposes that sustained changes in such authority may affect occupational autonomy, skill formation, and bargaining power. Claims about macro-level class restructuring, however, remain propositions for future empirical research rather than conclusions established by the cases examined here.
Elite-Public Gaps on Salient Foreign Policy Issues: Experimental Evidence from the 2022/23 US Sanctions on Russia
Anton Peez; Felix Bethke; Felix S. Bethke
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Do citizens and political elites in Western democracies hold different views on foreign policy? ‘Elite-public gaps’ raise questions about whether elites represent public preferences and how much discretion they exercise. Research suggests that although gaps exist, they are significantly driven by ‘mundane’ compositional differences. We examine these gaps during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. We ran a paired experiment with US executive staffers (n = 253) and the US public (n = 1,002), asking whether respondents support increasing sanctions on Russia. We randomize information on real public polling highly supportive of sanctions. The public was less supportive than executive staffers at baseline, but more responsive to public opinion. Gaps shrink after accounting for basic sociodemographics. This extends research on elite-public gaps to cover salient real-world events.
Mapping film commissions in Brazil: Intermediary organizations and institutionalization dynamics in challenging creative ecosystems
DĂ©bora PĂłvoa
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This article presents a panorama of film commissions in Brazil, describing their diverse intermediary roles, tracing their distinct institutionalization paths and reflecting on how trends toward institutional isomorphism or divergence unfold in this emerging field within the Brazilian cultural and creative industries (CCIs). Based on qualitative interviews with 15 film commission representatives, it reveals that these organizations act as strategic intermediaries within local audiovisual ecosystems and follow diverse institutionalization trajectories, with some operating independently with minimal resources and others benefitting from more robust budgets and institutional structures. As relatively new players navigating the uncertainties of Brazil’s cultural and creative landscape, film commissions exhibit a degree of isomorphism in following similar institutional templates, performing analogous logistical functions, and exchanging best practices in consultancies and sector events. Yet, divergence also occurs, particularly due to local and regional inequalities in cultural funding and industry development, which fundamentally shape how each of them operates. Despite their increasing prominence in creative ecosystems worldwide, film commissions remain under-researched, particularly in the Global South. This study fills in this gap by examining the case of Brazil and offering a more nuanced understanding of cultural intermediation and the dynamics of institutional homogeneity and diversity, especially in contexts characterized by significant local and regional variation in the development, size, and funding of the CCIs.
A study on the influence of social movements on political representation focusing on the minimum wage case in the mid- 2010s American states
Jihun Yeo
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This study examines how the social movement can contribute to improving political representation with the case of the minimum wage legislation in American states after 2012. The contribution of this research is that it’s an empirical analysis of how social movement affects the legislative process, especially in the agenda-setting stage and how social discourse takes part in this process, given the lack of research concerning determinants of the state legislation of the higher minimum wage, especially focusing on the influence of the social movement on the legislation. I analyze the impact of the social movement, measured by the media exposure frequency, on public opinion, the proposal of bills and the legislation with the national-level time serial and the state-level data. I investigate the impact of the social discourse on public opinion and the legislative process to illuminate the underlying mechanism where the social movement affects the political outcome. The social movement contributes to the improvement of political representation by spreading the social discourse, setting the agenda in civic and political society and triggering partisan politics for institutional change.
Identity as Recognized Rather Than Constructed: Resonant Identity Theory and a Proposed Construct of Field State
James H. Tippins
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Chronic self-referential questioning of identity persists across the interventions designed to resolve it and frequently intensifies with the acquisition of self-knowledge. This paper argues that the persistence is structural, not incidental. Six influential accounts of identity, existentialist, cognitive, achievement-oriented, contemplative, status-based and narrative, differ substantially from one another while sharing the assumption that identity is constructed by the person whose identity it is. A construction that generates its own specification while executing it has no terminating condition, which is what a self-authored identity is. Resonant Identity Theory proposes the alternative: that identity is recognized rather than constructed, and that felt resonance functions as an instrument for self-knowledge rather than merely as an epiphenomenon of it. The ontological claim is acknowledged to be untestable. What is testable is the apparatus it generates. Field state is proposed as a construct describing the current relationship between recognized identity and its expression, distinct from trait profile, self-concept clarity and endorsed values, and operationalized through informant-rated cross-context consistency rather than self-report, on the grounds that the theory itself predicts self-report will fail in precisely the conditions it most needs to detect. Discriminant and falsification conditions are specified, including the finding most likely to refute the theory: if excavated self-relevant content skews toward moral approval, resonance is an approval detector and the epistemological claim fails. No empirical test has been conducted. The author declares a commercial interest in the framework.
Value-Based Adaptive Reuse: Design and Initial Testing of a Serious-Game Prototype
Fatemeh Hedieh Arfa
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Adaptive reuse of heritage buildings requires stakeholders, and more specifically, architects to navigate interdependent questions of heritage significance, contemporary function, environmental performance, community benefit, financial feasibility, and approval of other stakeholders (developers, investors, and regulators). Process models can structure these questions, yet conventional validation methods reveal only part of how practitioners move between them under constraint. This paper presents the design and pilot testing of Architect's Design Challenge, a tabletop serious-game prototype developed to explore professional decision-making in adaptive reuse and to examine the practical legibility of the Effective Adaptive Reuse of Heritage Buildings (EARHB) process model. Players progress through six stations, allocate limited resources, select action cards, respond to stakeholder requirements, and construct a design proposition using four predefined project-value categories represented by coloured components. Two formative test rounds, involving students and architects, were organised around introduction, gameplay, and debriefing. The tests indicated that the prototype could stimulate explicit discussion of priorities, sequencing, resource allocation, and trade-offs. They also revealed a central design tension: abstraction supported strategic play but sometimes weakened correspondence with professional practice, particularly for expert players. The study contributes a transparent mapping between research constructs and game mechanics, identifies requirements for future validation, and shows how serious gaming could make selected moments of value recognition, translation into design choices, negotiation, and revision observable within a simulated decision pathway. The evidence is exploratory. It does not establish learning effects, behavioural validity, or transfer to real projects.
Measuring Christian Nationalism: The Value of Self-Identification
Amy Grauley; Zachary Lien; Alena Smith; Priscilla Ziegler
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Scholars typically measure Christian nationalism (CN) using agreement with policy positions or statements linking Christianity to American identity, yet rarely consider whether individuals explicitly self-identify as Christian nationalists. This paper evaluates the analytic value of self-identification by comparing it to scale-based measures of CN. Using data from the Cooperative Election Study (CES), the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), and open-ended survey responses, we distinguish between individuals who self-identify as Christian nationalists, those who score high on CN scales but reject the label, and those who reject CN as both an identity and a worldview. We show that CN identity and CN belief are related but distinct, and that self-identification matters most when CN belief is low. Among low-belief respondents, adopting the CN label is associated with markedly different political attitudes, while at high levels of CN belief, identity adds little explanatory power beyond belief. These findings highlight limits of worldview-based measures and demonstrate the value of incorporating identity into the study of Christian nationalism.
CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR DEVELOPING UPCYCLED COSMETIC INGREDIENTS IN BRAZIL: A PERSPECTIVE FOR SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES
Murilo Dotti Garcia; Orlando Nastri Neto
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The use of plant by-products to develop cosmetic ingredients has gained considerable momentum globally, driven by growing demand for sustainability and the increasing expectation that ingredients deliver scientifically proven efficacy. Brazil offers particularly favourable conditions for this trend, since the country combines unparalleled biodiversity with a world-scale agribusiness chain that generates vast volumes of largely underused by-products. This article examines the main challenges and opportunities facing Brazilian small and medium cosmetic enterprises (SMEs) as they develop ingredients from these by-products, focusing on regulatory, technical, scientific and market dimensions. Drawing on an integrative review of recent scientific and sectoral literature and on an analysis of the national context, it argues that SMEs, despite capital and infrastructure constraints, hold genuine advantages in agility and proximity to regional production chains. It concludes that conditions are favourable for smaller companies willing to invest in technical capacity, strategic partnerships and differentiation grounded in scientific evidence.
Toward an Intersectional Occupational Health Framework: Psychosocial Conditions as Allocated Exposures
Iara Teixeira
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Occupational health research treats psychosocial working conditions either as features of a job or as traits that help workers cope. This article proposes the Intersectional Occupational Health (IOH) framework, which instead treats these conditions as exposures that labor regimes allocate to differently positioned workers. Drawing on vulnerability theory and the sociology of work, the framework argues that a worker's psychosocial profile records where that worker has been placed, since who meets high-strain conditions, and for how long, is set by law, immigration rules, and welfare systems. On this reading, the uneven spread of these conditions measures a process that produces vulnerability rather than a tally of how well workers cope. The framework follows the path from social position to health outcome, and it treats a sound intervention as one that redistributes exposure rather than one that raises the average. Two cases, domestic work in Southern Europe and platform delivery in Germany, ground a set of recommendations for governments, ranging from household labor inspection to an enforceable presumption of employment.
Insufficiently Affordable: Public Opinion About Housing Affordability
Tali Mendelberg; Gustavo Novoa; Adrian C. Pietrzak
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Americans want government to improve housing affordability. Yet proposals for affordable housing often encounter public resistance. We argue for a neglected explanation: concerns that these proposals are insufficiently affordable. Using four original surveys with novel, precise measures of affordability and randomized developer and landlord profiteering, we find wide support for affordable housing when it primarily benefits people of low means and does not favor developer or landlord profiteering. This support holds even when the hypothetical building is proposed in the respondent’s neighborhood, support entails tradeoffs and costly behavior in the survey, and the policy requires tax increases. The tax finding replicates in election outcomes of actual ballot measures. Pro-poor sentiments shape these preferences, above and beyond self-interest, and offset the negative impact of racial attitudes. Buildings and policies that satisfy these sentiments draw much higher public support. However, common policies fail to do so.
From humanitarian design to design for social innovation: a comparative experiment activating reflexivity on coloniality and power dynamics.
Riccardo Torta; Marco Andrea Finardi; Abigail Turinayo; Victor Muwonge Semaganda; Marco Gobetti
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This meta-research originates from two experiences of the first two authors, who respectively worked on a Humanitarian Design (HD) project in Uganda with Design Without Borders and on a Design for Social Innovation (DSI) project in Italy with Polimi DESIS Lab. Similar tensions emerged from both contexts regarding the relationship between the design teams and the communities engaged, highlighting the risk of perpetuating systemic oppression and epistemic injustice. To explore these imbalances, the teams were engaged in two sets of sessions, activating reflexivity on social structures embedded in their practices, to uncover potential dynamics rooted in coloniality and power. Where the Ugandan HD project served as a testbed for the approach and three reflexive tools, the sessions within the Italian project confirmed the initial proposition, showing the potentially broad impact of the application of reflexivity on oppressive dynamics within DSI projects. This experiment uncovered the risks entailed by engaging with local communities, raised issues about urbanity and rurality, different forms of knowledge and models of development, challenging the conception of modernity and recognising these foundational elements of coloniality even in a European context. Considering the exploratory nature of this research, the intent is to provide grounding for future critical inquiries within the wider DSI community, demonstrating the need to rethink current design practices from a liberatory and relational perspective.
Does Democratic and Economic Benchmarking Matter for Affective Polarization? A Survey Experiment in Poland
Maciej Sychowiec
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This article examines whether international benchmarking, cross-national comparisons of a country’s democratic or economic performance, intensifies affective polarization among citizens. While prior research has shown that international economic comparisons shape electoral behavior, little is known about how such external evaluations influence emotional hostility between partisan groups. Drawing on a survey experiment conducted as part of the 2023 Polish National Election Study, the study tests whether exposure to negative international assessments increases affective polarization. The results reveal a striking asymmetry. Exposure to democratic benchmarking, information signaling Poland’s decline on democratic indicators relative to regional peers, significantly increases affective polarization, whereas economic benchmarking produces no comparable effect. These effects are conditional. Democratic benchmarking polarizes primarily among citizens with negative evaluations of the outgoing government, while leaving strong government supporters unaffected. The findings suggest that benchmarking is most polarizing when it concerns identity-relevant and normatively charged domains in which responsibility can be credibly attributed to domestic political actors. Overall, the study shows that international reputational cues can deepen partisan divides, reinforcing emotional boundaries between political camps rather than fostering a common ground for evaluating national performance.
Perceived Benefits of a Cosmetology-Based Self-Care Program for Family Caregivers of Older Adults with Cognitive Decline: An Exploratory Qualitative Study
Riko Nakayama; Hana Sakurai; Fumiko Miyamae; Mutsuko Okamura; Chiaki Ura; Tsuyoshi Okamura; Tomoko Wakui
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Background: Family caregivers of older adults with cognitive decline often have limited opportunities for self-care. Objective: This study explored the perceived benefits of a cosmetology-based self-care program for family caregivers of community-dwelling older adults with cognitive decline. Methods: A qualitative descriptive study was conducted with family caregivers in a community setting in Tokyo, Japan. Participants attended a cosmetology-based session that included light physical activity, skincare, and makeup. Data were collected using free-response questionnaire and focus group interviews and analyzed using inductive content analysis. Results: Eight family caregivers were included in the analysis. Inductive qualitative content analysis identified three main categories: (1) emotional relief and enjoyment through shared experience, (2) heightened self-awareness and reorientation toward the self, and (3) emerging motivation for self-care and reframing of caregiving. Participants described relaxation, recognition of accumulated fatigue and neglected personal needs, and reassurance and connection through interactions with other caregivers.
Institutional Voice Laundering: Multimodal Risks and a Benchmark for Civic Fidelity
Yukai Zeng
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Public institutions are increasingly being designed in forms that Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems can process easily, sometimes before those forms are equally clear to citizens. People increasingly encounter ministries, hospitals, regulators, and courts through AI-mediated summaries, translations, voice interfaces, and visual reformulations, often before seeing the original communication itself. This paper argues that such mediation can weaken important features of institutional communication. Public messages that were originally attributable and open to scrutiny may be recast as apparently neutral assistance, while losing cues about jurisdiction, uncertainty, evidence, and avenues for appeal, even when the output appears fluent and useful. To frame this problem, two linked concepts are introduced here: (1) the machine-readable institution and dual legibility; and (2) a Civic Fidelity Index to assess how much civic meaning is preserved when institutional communication is transformed by AI. This problem is fundamentally multimodal, because many failures arise not from text paraphrase alone but from the way information is reformulated across text, speech, images, and interface elements. We identify research directions around multimodal fidelity, reversible mediation, cross-lingual robustness, and no-laundering standards for accountable AI.
NEXUS-HC: A Framework for Technology Foresight in Strategic Communications
Yukai Zeng
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This conference paper introduces NEXUS-HC (Navigational Examination and Understanding System for Hype Cycle Analysis), a decision-oriented framework for technology foresight in strategic communications. The framework adapts the familiar hype-cycle concept for contested, next-generation information environments shaped by automation, synthetic media, algorithmic information operations, AI avatars, and emerging influence technologies. It standardises technology assessment through a lightweight cross-impact rubric and links assessment outcomes to five portfolio postures: Monitor, Pilot, Adopt, Govern/Harden, or Counter. NEXUS-HC is designed to help strategic communications teams compare emerging technologies, record evidence and confidence levels, set reassessment triggers, and brief leaders using a transparent and auditable decision record. This is the published conference proceedings paper from the Proceedings of the 25th European Conference on Cyber Warfare & Security (ECCWS 2026). The official version of record is available at https://doi.org/10.34190/eccws.25.1.4709.
Exclusion by inclusion: How diverse sex/gender measures can inadvertently contribute to the exclusion of beyond-binary respondents from survey-based research
Leonie C Steckermeier; Alba MarĂ­a Kugelmeier LĂłpez; Stephanie Hess
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This paper illustrates how the inclusion of beyond-binary gender measures in large-scale population surveys can inadvertently contribute to the exclusion of the very populations they aim to represent. Recent international and EU efforts to integrate more inclusive sex and gender measures in surveys aim to improve data collection for evidence-based policymaking. While best practices in operationalization, reporting, and data protection have received substantial attention, the potential challenges of making sex/gender minorities identifiable in survey data remain largely overlooked. Based on examples from three established surveys in political and social science research—the European Social Survey, the International Social Survey Programme, and the Eurobarometer—we illustrate how more inclusive gender measures can render beyond-binary respondents vulnerable to exclusion, due to questionnaire design, data protection practices, and methodological challenges arising from their small numbers. We conclude with recommendations for questionnaire design and routing, data collection and documentation, and the analytical treatment of beyond-binary respondents.
How Organizations Involved in Criminal Activity Sway Public Opinion: An Integrative Framework of Discursive Legitimation Strategies From a Scoping Review
Kristina Sabrina WeißmĂŒller; Tijs van den Broek; Jana S. Krawinkel; Steven James Watson
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This study examines how organizations involved in criminal activities try to publicly legitimize their actions by using discursive legitimation strategies. Often involving moral neutralization and blame deflection techniques, these discursive strategies present organizations involved in criminal activities as virtuous and justified to evade punishment and undermine public support for law enforcement. Although discursive legitimation strategies result in societal harm, little is known about what types of strategies exist for criminal activities, how they differ, and whether they change legitimacy judgments. Based on a framework that integrates the communicative aspects of legitimation and strategic ambiguity, this scoping review identifies, categorizes, and synthesizes the empirical evidence on discursive legitimation strategies used by organizations involved in criminal activities. We identify 10 strategies that are conceptually linked with different legitimacy dimensions and develop testable propositions about how five distinct mechanisms—licensing, contestation, enculturation, neutralization, and cleansing—are used to create strategic ambiguity. This study elevates our understanding of discursive legitimation strategies used to justify illegitimate and criminal practices to sway public opinion and informs practice on how to develop countermeasures and strengthen societal resilience against criminal manipulation.
Sociotechnical Transition and Uncertainty in the Lithium Mining Industry: Technologies, Politics and Transparency
IvĂĄn Ojeda-Pereira; SebastiĂĄn Herrera-LeĂłn; Marcelo Lufin; Fernando Campos-Medina
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Technological transitions in extractive industries are commonly assessed through technical and environmental performance, whilst their social and ethical dimensions receive little systematic attention. This article addresses that gap through the adoption of direct lithium extraction (DLE) technologies in Chile, the world’s second largest lithium producer and the leading producer from salt flats. The National Lithium Strategy promotes these technologies as a response to social tensions over the use of water and brine in fragile ecosystems, and the conditions of their implementation remain open. Drawing on interdisciplinary work between the engineering sciences and the social sciences, we ask which technological and social uncertainties experts identify in this transition. Two expert workshops were held with 20 participants from industry, the State and academia, and their contributions were examined through inductive qualitative content analysis. The findings show five uncertainties: (i) there is no consensus on which technologies will be implemented or on the criteria for choosing them; (ii) the effects of brine reinjection lack conclusive evidence; (iii) the role and agency of the State remain undetermined; (iv) no mapping exists of the actors regarded as valid participants in the debate; and (v) there is no agreement on how the social sustainability of this change should be measured. We propose five public information infrastructures as a design response to these uncertainties, whilst acknowledging that transparency is a necessary but not sufficient condition for ethical sociotechnical governance in the extractive industries of the Global South.
The Q18 Survey: Initial Validation of an Employee-Reported Outcomes
Thibault Bordeaux
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Employee surveys commonly assess individual attitudes and experiences, but fewer instruments integrate these with employees’ perceptions of organisational functioning. This study reports the initial validation of the Q18, a brief employee-reported outcomes instrument designed for employee listening, aggregate-level human resource and managerial monitoring, and perceived organisational assessment. A validation study was conducted with 3,350 employees working in France. Analyses examined score distributions, reliability, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) structure, discriminant validity, multi-group invariance, multicollinearity, and practical and nomological anchoring with the employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS). CFA model comparisons supported a correlated eight-factor structure comprising four individual outcomes and four perceived organisational outcomes. Reliability estimates were compatible with aggregate-level interpretation for human resource and managerial tracking, and invariance analyses supported measurement stability across the main segmentation variables. Q18 scores increased progressively across eNPS detractors, passives, and promoters. Discriminant validity received partial support: the dimensions were empirically distinguishable, but some remained strongly interdependent. By bringing together individual outcomes and perceived organisational outcomes, the Q18 provides an integrated interpretation of tensions or alignments between employee experience and perceived collective functioning and helps extend employee listening practices beyond the measurement of individual attitudes alone. Further research is needed to establish its longitudinal, organisational-level, and cross-cultural validity.
Statistischer Quartalsbericht 3/2019
Amt fĂŒr Statistik und Wahlen Stadt Leipzig
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RegelmĂ€ĂŸige vierteljĂ€hrliche Veröffentlichung: TextbeitrĂ€ge zu ausgewĂ€hlten Themen (Teil 1) und statistische Daten (Teil 2)
the em—dash fails to em–erge: a registered null result for U+2014 in Polish and an exploratory function-word shift in 60,275 Sejm interpellations, 2015–2025
PRZEMYSƁAW CZUMA
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Since the release of ChatGPT (30 November 2022) a belief has spread that the em-dash "—" reveals text written with the help of a language model. This preregistered study tested that claim on 60,275 single-author written parliamentary questions (interpelacje) submitted to the Polish Sejm between 2015 and 2025. The decision rule was registered on OSF before the data were seen. The cue does not work in Polish. The registered hypothesis was not confirmed: in the decisive cell the share of documents containing an em-dash rose by 1.73 percentage points, but the confidence interval of that difference includes zero (−4.44 to +8.07 pp), so the second condition of the two-part decision rule was not satisfied, and three registered disconfirmation conditions fired. Follow-up tests point to the cause: models writing in Polish, and machine-translation flows, put a shorter dash there – the en-dash "–". The marker is anglocentric and is not suitable for Polish. An exploratory analysis measured something else: the frequency of Polish closed-class words (conjunctions, prepositions, particles) that a writer does not choose consciously. The reference point was an independently published corpus of Polish human-written and model-written texts, frozen together with its reading rule before measurement. From 2024 the distribution of these words moves toward the profile of the models (rank correlation rho = +0.368; 95% CI +0.228 to +0.461), while at a placebo date – the 2019 change of parliamentary term, where no such effect is expected – it does not move at all (−0.070; difference +0.438, +0.221 to +0.611). The shift survives four term-change controls. The change is small but widespread, and that is the correct description of its strength. Inside a single parliamentary office it is barely visible (median rho +0.125), yet it points the same way in 61 of 84 offices that could be measured separately (72.6%, one-sided p = 2·10⁻⁔), against 53.8% at the control date, which is what chance produces. There is no sudden jump at the date of the ChatGPT release. The change becomes visible in 2024 and unambiguous in 2025, and the shape of the transition (ramp versus late step) is not identified. The result describes a shift across a whole population of documents and allows no statement about the authorship of any single document or about any individual member of parliament. It does not establish a cause: changes in office staff, in subject matter and in editing practice remain possible explanations alongside tools. An independent reimplementation, with no access to the author's code, reproduced the corpus, the deduplication, the author panel and the headline analyses from raw HTML down.
CLAIM: Calibration of Legitimacy through AI Messaging - A Theory of How Conversational AI Shapes Minority and Majority Voices in Group Deliberation
Hoang Phuong Nhi Do; Suzanne van Gils; Christoph Lutz
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Conversational artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly shapes communicative spaces preceding social interaction, yet its effects are often studied in isolation from subsequent group dynamics. Recognizing this gap, we propose the Calibration of Legitimacy through AI Messaging (CLAIM) theory, which argues that pre-deliberative AI interaction calibrates perceived opinion legitimacy and shapes voice in group deliberation. Drawing on AI sycophancy, the Spiral of Silence, and multi-level legitimacy literature, CLAIM proposes that high AI sycophancy increases validity and propriety beliefs, whereas opposition from AI deflates them. Moreover, structural opinion status moderates these effects: AI sycophancy can generate a compensatory voice effect for opinion-minority participants, while AI challenge can produce compounded silencing. Additionally, a legitimacy shock may emerge when minority-opinion holders encounter group compositions that contradict AI-calibrated legitimacy beliefs. Together, CLAIM extends AI sycophancy research by theorizing conversational AI as a legitimacy-calibrating force that can reshape voice in group deliberation, particularly under structural communicative inequality.
Detecting Coordinated Posting Behavior on Social Media. Introducing and Evaluating the Embedding-Based Tool ‘coorsim’
Daniel Thiele; Miriam Milzner
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The detection of coordinated behavior on social media is an effective heuristic for uncovering organized manipulation of online publics. Existing detection tools rely on identifying identical or lexically similar content disseminated rapidly by networks of accounts. However, these tools are ill-suited to detect the coordinated posting of semantically similar content. This is a shortcoming in the age of LLMs that enable the large-scale generation of diverse yet semantically equivalent content. In this paper, we introduce and systematically evaluate coorsim, an open source R package for for detecting semantically similar coordinated posting. The package provides a platform-agnostic end-to-end workflow encompassing embedding retrieval, coordinated community detection, automated community labeling, and visualization. We systematically evaluate its performance against the most comprehensive benchmark dataset of known influence operations to date, covering 15 international campaigns. Across 3,780 evaluated parameter combinations, the best stable configuration achieved an overall F1 of 0.69. Using multilevel Bayesian regression models, we isolated the influence of parameter choices. We also provide a qualitative assessment of automatically generated community labels. Our results demonstrate that coorsim provides a valid, albeit not flawless, contribution to closing a gap in the landscape of computational tools for detecting coordinated online behavior.
Five Percent Re-runnable: An Audit of Disclosure in LLM-Based Social Science
Huazhang Shen
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We audited 133 arXiv papers from 2023–2026 (full text obtainable for 129), plus 38 DOAJ-listed open-access journal articles as a comparison group, checking seven disclosure fields in each. We define a study as re-runnable when three conditions hold together: it names a specific model snapshot, its prompt text is obtainable, and it provides code or data. Seven of 129 papers (5%) are re-runnable. Two figures stand out: 29% name a specific model snapshot, and 1 paper in 129 reports a random seed. The structural finding is that of the 21 papers whose prompt text is obtainable at all, about half (11) have it only in a code repository rather than in the paper. The journal group discloses less on six of seven fields, but n=38 is too small to separate that difference from sampling variation — we therefore read this as no evidence that peer review supplies the missing material, not as evidence that it makes disclosure worse.
What Drives Legislative Anger? Multimodal Evidence from South Korea's National Assembly
Haejo Kang; Songpo Yang
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Legislative anger is often understood as expressive representation, a signal that legislators passionately defend constituent interests. We argue that partisan blame underpins these displays, especially when parties attack one another over alleged misconduct. Using deep-learning models, we measure vocal and facial anger across 355 hours of plenary debate in South Korea's 20th National Assembly (2016-2020), covering 11,060 speech segments by 247 legislators. We find that anger peaks when legislators discuss scandal, at twice the level of policy debate. Moreover, a quasi-experiment around the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye shows that the same legislators become angrier in opposition and calmer in government. These findings challenge accounts that treat legislative anger primarily as constituency signaling and highlight how partisan blame and institutional position shape emotional expression in legislatures.
LINGUISTIC STRATEGIES IN MISINFORMATION: A SEMANTIC-PRAGMATIC FRAMEWORK FOR DETECTING MANIPULATION IN MEDIA DISCOURSE
ANGELICA JEANICE MARTINS ANDERSEN
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This article identifies recurrent patterns of linguistic behaviour characteristic of misinformation and proposes a semantic-pragmatic approach to analysing manipulation in media texts. Through the application of five mechanisms – implicature (GRICE, 1975; HORN, 2011; SPERBER; WILSON, 1995), presupposition (SCHLENKER, 2011; SIMONS, 2005; STALNAKER, 1973), modality (VON FINTEL, 2006), genericity (CARLSON, 2011; MÜLLER, 2003), and deverbal nominalisation (GRIMSHAW, 1990, 2011) – it demonstrates how these resources are exploited to constrain inferential paths and generate interpretive distortions. Although other mechanisms are available, the study focuses on these five because they are most frequently exploited in misinformation discourse. The analysis identifies five main manipulative strategies: (1) the suggestion of misleading meanings through implicatures, which allow the speaker to maintain plausible deniability by keeping manipulative content outside the truth-conditional level of the utterance; (2) the naturalisation of controversial content as established fact; (3) the exploitation of modal asymmetry to obscure the boundary between speculative possibility and normative necessity; (4) the promotion of essentialist universalisations through generic and vague reference; and (5) the suppression of information about agents and responsibilities. These strategies are exemplified by a 2023 news story on inclusive terminology in healthcare, which serves as a paradigmatic case for revealing the linguistic architecture of misinformation. The results contribute to the semantics-pragmatics interface by operationalising the distinction between what is said and what is implicated, and by revealing the recurrent patterns through which ordinary pragmatic mechanisms are strategically exploited to produce manipulative effects in media discourse.
A New Approach of Applying the 360-Degree Method for Performance Assessment of Managerial Levels in Mega-Companies
Saber Mirzaei Ahandani
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Questionnaires play the most important role in scientific papers and workplaces. Considering various applications, questionnaires may be designed in different shapes and types. In any case, it is critical to have a questionnaire with appropriate content and a pleasing design. There has been a lot of study done on the validity and reliability of questionnaires used in performance assessments of managerial levels, but users are not sure whether their data is valid or not, yet (Before, it was observed that respondents used steady responses due to boring shapes of the options in questionnaire). This matter has a direct effect on projects or processes you are going to do. This paper considers a questionnaire using in performance assessment of managerial levels in a large company, and presents a new form of questionnaire which combines 5-point Likert scale with competencies definitions. New questionnaire is able to solve some problems in assessment of performance such as invalid data and low return rate. Cronbach's alpha (reliability of this questionnaire) using SPSS software is 0.891.