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Coventry et al. show that spatial demonstratives—such as ‘this’ and ‘that’ in English—are selected on the basis of whether the speaker is able to reach the object or not, across 29 diverse languages.
Combining neuroimaging, physiological and behavioural methods, Meissner et al. show that humans can self-regulate the brain’s arousal levels via a biofeedback approach that is based on measurements of the eye’s pupil.
A Registered Report field study by Nichols et al. finds little evidence that images of organizational diversity change the volume or quality of minority applicants. Stronger commitments to diversity may be needed to increase recruitment of minority applicants.
Growth stunting is associated with poor long-term outcomes. Here Wijeakumar et al. show that, as early as infancy, stunting impairs visual working memory performance, suggesting a possible neurocognitive mechanism underlying this relationship.
The authors use a computational model of word recognition to show that adults’ interpretation of young children’s speech depends heavily on beliefs about what children are likely to say.
On the basis of decades of cognitive science research into the nature of lexical concepts, we argue that gender categories that reflect the reality of the experiences of transgender people are more useful and cognitively natural than sex-based category definitions.
We spend a lot of time on the manuscripts we publish, from pre-review evaluation and finding reviewers to post-review decisions and revision evaluations. However, we reserve the closest level of scrutiny for manuscripts that have successfully passed the peer review process and are in preparation for acceptance.
Meng-Chuan Lai reviews the literature on mental health challenges faced by autistic individuals. The author proposes a framework of four contributing themes to aid personalized formulation: social–contextual determinants, adverse life experiences, autistic cognitive features and shared genetic and early environmental predispositions.
Hopelessness and despair threaten health and longevity. We urgently need strategies to counteract these effects and improve population health. Prosociality contributes to better mental and physical health for individuals, and for the communities in which they live. We propose that prosociality should be a public health priority.
A genome-wide association study of cerebral ventricle phenotypes finds 62 unique loci and reveals a genetic overlap between ventricular and neuropsychiatric traits.
Hardy and co-authors present a resampling strategy in social networks that is effective at reducing bias amplification while maintaining the benefits of information sharing.
Trends in interpersonal violence have been reconstructed using data on violence-related injuries from more than 3,500 excavated skeletons from the ancient Middle East. Documenting variations in the patterns of violence in this key historical setting broadens perspectives on the long history of conflict.
Tu et al. show that the medial-dorsal thalamic nucleus and its connectivity with the anterior cingulate cortex preferentially encode pain in humans and rats.
Using data on violence-related injuries in more than 3,500 excavated skeletons, Baten et al. reconstruct violence trends in the ancient Middle East from 12,000 to 400 bce, expanding the early history of conflict.
The rise of generative AI requires a research agenda grounded in the African context to determine locally relevant strategies for its development and use. With a critical mass of evidence on the risks and benefits that generative AI poses to African societies, the scaled use of this new technology might help to reduce rising global inequities.
