Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Experiments in the United States, Great Britain and Canada show that fact-checks can reduce belief in misperceptions about COVID-19, especially among the groups who are most vulnerable to these claims. However, these effects do not persist over time.
Using data-driven mathematical modelling that combines viral evolution with epidemiological dynamics, Ye et al. show that COVID-19 vaccine inequity leads to the emergence of new variants and new waves of the pandemic, while equitable allocation of vaccine doses reduces case counts and fatalities in all countries.
Ciranka, Linde-Domingo et al. show that inference of transitive orderings from pairwise relations benefits from a seemingly biased learning strategy, where observers update their belief about one of the pair members but not the other.
Francl and McDermott use deep neural networks to reveal the behavioural phenotype of systems optimized for tasks in simulated environments, showing that many characteristics of human sound localization are adapted to real-world environments.
Koops et al. ran four field experiments in Guinea and found that chimpanzees did not independently (re-)innovate nut cracking. Their null results are consistent with the hypothesis that chimpanzee nut cracking is a product of social learning.
Draschkow et al. test working memory in virtual reality following self-movement and find that multiple representations of spatial environment are used to maintain and select visual contents in working memory.
In a systematic review and meta-analysis of 45 studies, covering a sample of 116,999 individuals across 22 countries, McGuire et al. find that cash transfers improve the subjective well-being and mental health of recipients in low- and middle-income countries.
Adolescents in Norway reported more depressive symptoms and less optimism during the COVID-19 pandemic, while alcohol and cannabis use decreased. Girls, younger individuals and those from low socio-economic backgrounds showed more adverse changes.
In two audit experiments with politicians and students, and an online experiment, Kirgios et al. show that women and racial/ethnic minorities seeking help are more likely to receive support when they explicitly mention their marginalized demographic identity.
What neural computations underlie the human sense of confidence? Geurts et al. show that subjective confidence is based on a probability distribution represented in cortical activity.
Serino et al. studied the sense of agency for actions generated via a brain–machine interface. They show that primary motor cortex encodes not only motor and sensory signals, but also subjective agency signals, enabling improved brain–machine interface proficiency.
Across 26 countries, Imhoff et al. find that conspiracy mentality is more prevalent at both ends of the political spectrum than the centre. This U-shaped pattern is accentuated for supporters of political parties not in government, particularly on the political right.
Skies of Manawak, a video game designed to train attentional control and executive processes, is associated with better reading skills in 8- to 12-year-old children that are maintained 6 months later and higher school grades 12–18 months later.
Our social lives involve interactions in many different domains, including networks of family members, friends, colleagues and online contacts. Su et al. show that networks with multiple domains of interaction tend to promote cooperative behaviour.
Xiao et al. report that toddlers with autism, who have reduced behavioural preference for motherese speech as indexed through eye tracking, also have impaired brain responses to motherese in language regions, while typical toddlers show the opposite pattern.
Mendenhall et al. use a locally constructed measure of stress and a mixed-methods approach to investigate a syndemic in Soweto, South Africa. Stress interacted with multiple morbidities to reduce quality of life, conditioned by illness experiences.
In a randomized controlled trial, Schleider et al. show that single-session online interventions are able to reduce depression symptoms up to three months later in adolescents.
Speech is produced and perceived at a rate of 4–5 Hz. Gagl et al. show that the temporal structure of our eye movements during reading is similar (3.9–5.2 Hz), suggesting a temporal link between reading and speech.
Do restrictive measures to control the spread of COVID-19 also reduce non-COVID-19-related mortality? Here, the authors show that, in China, non-COVID-19-related mortality declined by 4.6% during periods of stringent non-pharmaceutical interventions.
McDiarmid and colleagues show that psychologists update their beliefs about effect sizes after learning about new evidence from replication studies, although not as much as predicted by a rational Bayesian model.