Psychology articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Estimating confidence in the decision making ability of others is important for cooperative behaviour. Here the authors combine computational modelling and fMRI to investigate how the brain supports this process.

    • Dan Bang
    • , Rani Moran
    •  & Stephen M. Fleming
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Naturalistic experiences often have complex structure, consisting of multiple inter-related events. Here, the authors show that the semantic and causal interconnectedness of events in narratives positively predicts memory performance and neural responses associated with memory encoding and recall.

    • Hongmi Lee
    •  & Janice Chen
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mass gatherings may elicit experiences of profound personal change. Here the authors show across six field sites that reporting of transformative experiences at mass gatherings are common, increase over time, and predict lasting increases in participants’ circle of moral regard.

    • Daniel A. Yudkin
    • , Annayah M. B. Prosser
    •  & M. J. Crockett
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The question of whether women who produce twins are more fertile than other women has been debated. Here, the authors analyze a large dataset of pre-industrial birth outcomes and find evidence against the idea of higher fertility and instead that more births lead to more twinning opportunities.

    • Ian J. Rickard
    • , Colin Vullioud
    •  & Alexandre Courtiol
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Utilizing spaceflight and its ground-based analog, the authors show how the Earth’s gravity sustains the human brain’s orientation-dependent sensitivity to biological motion signals based on neural computations of visual and vestibular gravitational cues.

    • Ying Wang
    • , Xue Zhang
    •  & Yi Jiang
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Information-seeking behavior in humans is often viewed as irrational rather than utility maximizing. Here the authors describe data obtained in Spring 2020 showing that participants’ concern about COVID-19 was related not only to their drive to seek information about the virus, but also to their curiosity about other more general topics.

    • Yaniv Abir
    • , Caroline B. Marvin
    •  & Daphna Shohamy
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Flow is a desired but elusive state characterized by the subjective experience of immersion and engagement in an activity. Here, the authors develop and empirically validate a formal model that specifies variables and computations involved in the subjective experience of flow.

    • David E. Melnikoff
    • , Ryan W. Carlson
    •  & Paul E. Stillman
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Little is known about the consequences of prenatal exposure to wildfire smoke on biobehavioural outcomes. Here, the authors show that infant rhesus monkeys exposed early in gestation to wildfire smoke from the 2018 Camp Fire in California show more inflammation, blunted cortisol and altered behaviour outcomes compared to non-exposed animals.

    • John P. Capitanio
    • , Laura A. Del Rosso
    •  & Bill L. Lasley
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Uncertainty is a factor in most decisions. Here the authors quantify tolerance for two forms of economic uncertainty—risk and ambiguity—and show that greater lifetime stressor exposure (as assessed by a comprehensive lifetime stressor exposure inventory) was associated with higher aversion to decisions involving ambiguity, but not risk.

    • Candace M. Raio
    • , Benjamin B. Lu
    •  & Paul Glimcher
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The relationship between social media use and well-being might change across adolescent development. Here, the authors use cross sectional and longitudinal data to show that distinct developmental windows of sensitivity to social media emerge in adolescence, dependent on age and sex.

    • Amy Orben
    • , Andrew K. Przybylski
    •  & Rogier A. Kievit
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Convergent processing of external stimuli may contribute to social connectedness. Here the authors show that people with high in-degree centrality in a social network have similar neural responses to their peers and to each other and that less-central individuals have idiosyncratic responses.

    • Elisa C. Baek
    • , Ryan Hyon
    •  & Carolyn Parkinson
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Assortative mating could violate the assumption of random mating used in many genetic studies. Here, the authors study more than 25,000 Norwegian families to find genetic similarity between partners, siblings, and in-laws in genetic factors related to educational attainment, height, and depression.

    • Fartein Ask Torvik
    • , Espen Moen Eilertsen
    •  & Eivind Ystrom
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding collective behaviour is an important aspect of managing the pandemic response. Here the authors show in a large global study that participants that reported identifying more strongly with their nation reported greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies in the context of the pandemic.

    • Jay J. Van Bavel
    • , Aleksandra Cichocka
    •  & Paulo S. Boggio
  • Article
    | Open Access

    In uncertain conditions, people make accurate decisions by considering multiple pieces of information. Here, the authors show that pharmacological n-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor hypofunction is associated with elevated uncertainty and premature decisions based on unreliable evidence.

    • Alexandre Salvador
    • , Luc H. Arnal
    •  & Valentin Wyart
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors show that metacognitive awareness of choice certainty is closely linked to endogenous attentional states that guide decision behaviour.

    • Jeroen Brus
    • , Helena Aebersold
    •  & Rafael Polania
  • Article
    | Open Access

    The neural and computational mechanisms underpinning pitch perception remain unclear. Here, the authors trained deep neural networks to estimate the fundamental frequency of sounds and found that human pitch perception depends on precise spike timing in the auditory nerve, but is also adapted to the statistical tendencies of natural sounds.

    • Mark R. Saddler
    • , Ray Gonzalez
    •  & Josh H. McDermott
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Previous research suggests that, for children and adults, there is an association between better performance on cognitive tests and less functional connectivity between two brain networks. Here, the authors find that this association does not hold in a sample of children from households in poverty, highlighting the need for more diverse samples to incorporate a range of childhood environments in developmental cognitive neuroscience.

    • Monica E. Ellwood-Lowe
    • , Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli
    •  & Silvia A. Bunge
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Serological testing remains a passive component of the current public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a mathematical model, the authors examine how testing for antibodies could have enabled policies in which seropositive individuals increased their relative levels of social interaction while offsetting transmission risks

    • Alicia N. M. Kraay
    • , Kristin N. Nelson
    •  & Benjamin A. Lopman
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Information-seeking is important for learning, social behaviour and decision making. Here the authors investigate factors that associate with individual differences in information-seeking behaviour.

    • Christopher. A. Kelly
    •  & Tali Sharot
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Finding positive meaning in past negative events is associated with enhanced mental health. Here the authors show this adaptively updates memory, leading to enhanced positive emotion and content at future retrieval, which remains two months later.

    • Megan E. Speer
    • , Sandra Ibrahim
    •  & Mauricio R. Delgado
  • Article
    | Open Access

    A crucial component of voluntary behaviour is deciding that it is worth doing something rather than nothing. Here the authors show the brain network that encodes this decision, which includes the habenula and anterior insula.

    • Nima Khalighinejad
    • , Neil Garrett
    •  & Matthew F. S. Rushworth
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Memories are assumed to undergo a time-dependent systems consolidation, during which hippocampal contributions to memory decrease while neocortical contributions increase. Here, the authors show that noradrenergic arousal after encoding may reverse this course of systems consolidation in humans

    • Valentina Krenz
    • , Tobias Sommer
    •  & Lars Schwabe
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Identical physical inputs can evoke non-identical percepts. Here, the authors investigate the sources of such variability and find that rats and humans, trained to judge tactile vibration strength, express a robust sequential effect that could be modeled as the trial-by-trial incorporation of sensory history.

    • I. Hachen
    • , S. Reinartz
    •  & M. E. Diamond
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mechanisms underlying time-extended, curiosity-driven learning in humans are still poorly understood. Here, the authors present empirical evidence that humans rely on learning progress in deciding how to allocate time in free exploration of multiple learning activities.

    • Alexandr Ten
    • , Pramod Kaushik
    •  & Jacqueline Gottlieb
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Rapid and spontaneous estimation of number is observed in many animals. Here the authors show that perceived number of items modulates the pupillary light response in humans, confirming its spontaneous nature, and introducing pupillometry as a tool to study numerical cognition.

    • Elisa Castaldi
    • , Antonella Pomè
    •  & Paola Binda
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Moral judgments depend on relational context, with different normative cooperative expectations – relational norms – embedded in different social relationships, such as parent-child, romantic partners, siblings, or acquaintances. Here, the authors show how relational norms for care, hierarchy, reciprocity, and mating are embedded in a set of everyday social relationships in the United States, and use this information to predict out-of-sample moral judgments in relational context.

    • Brian D. Earp
    • , Killian L. McLoughlin
    •  & Molly J. Crockett
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Humans adapt decision strategies in response to environmental demands. Here the authors show that decisions in a virtual foraging task can be modelled based on perceived patch value, which includes reward, competition and threat, and is associated with activity in ventromedial prefrontal and medial cingulate cortices.

    • Brian Silston
    • , Toby Wise
    •  & Dean Mobbs
  • Article
    | Open Access

    Autism is characterized by diverse symptoms, including impaired social skills, motor and perceptual atypicalities. Here, using computational modelling, the authors show that impaired synchronization ability in autism stems from reduced error correction, supporting a slow-updating account of autism.

    • Gal Vishne
    • , Nori Jacoby
    •  & Merav Ahissar
  • Article
    | Open Access

    When reading, we extract information about upcoming words before we saccade to them. Here the authors provide insights on the neural mechanisms supporting this previewing process using MEG data, and show an association between previewing effects and reading speed.

    • Yali Pan
    • , Steven Frisson
    •  & Ole Jensen
  • Article
    | Open Access

    When two memories are similar, their encoding and retrieval can be disrupted by each other. Here the authors show that memory interference is resolved through abrupt remapping of activity patterns in the human hippocampal CA3 and dentate gyrus.

    • Guo Wanjia
    • , Serra E. Favila
    •  & Brice A. Kuhl