Written narratives can provide insight into the mental and affective state of a person. However, current methods of analysis require extensive manual human coding, limiting the sample size that can feasibly be analyzed. Computational approaches using natural language processing offer promise as a rapid means of examining characteristics of narrative texts. Though used extensively in social media and customer reviews in industry, their classification accuracy relative to human coders remains unclear for psychological data. We compared the congruence of two popular lexicon-based sentiment analysis tools, Valence Aware Dictionary and sEntiment Reasoner (VADER) and TextBlob, with self-reported valence, for 3,309 narratives representing autobiographical memories from two different data sets. Both tools, but especially TextBlob, displayed a bias in rating memories as neutral in valence. Across both data sets, VADER consistently produced more congruent classifications than did TextBlob. Accuracy improved significantly, to moderate levels of congruence (rMCC = .32), on par with that of human coders reported in other work, when classification was limited to three valence types (negative, neutral, or positive) rather than five. Tool performance remained consistent regardless of data set size. VADER, more so than TextBlob, is a useful means of rapidly determining the broad emotional valence within large volumes of text data that would be unfeasible for manual coding. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Several parameters can influence children's enumeration processes, including the numerosity and configuration of the elements. Few studies have examined young children's enumeration from a developmental perspective, especially using eye-tracking data, highlighting the novelty of the present study. Eye movements analysis can indeed give crucial information to understand in depth the construction of enumeration processes in childhood. In this study, we analyzed how kindergarten pupils enumerated elements displayed on a computer screen and how far their responses were influenced by their age and three other parameters, namely, the numerosity, configuration, and colour of the elements. Behavioural measures were combined with eye tracking to gain detailed insights into visual attention patterns during enumeration tasks. Results revealed a strong effect of configuration on enumeration. Errors were more frequent and response times longer with random arrangements versus dice configurations. Five-year-olds performed better on enumeration tasks than 4-year-olds when the elements were in random arrangements and in the counting range. Eye-tracking data confirmed behavioural results and revealed additionally that visual attention was more uniformly distributed across all the dots and associated with longer scanpaths when these dots were displayed in random arrangements versus dice configurations. These findings suggest that structured configurations may reduce cognitive load by supporting pattern recognition, thereby improving children's efficiency in enumeration tasks. Our results support the assumption that pattern recognition plays a fundamental role in the acquisition of enumeration abilities and that young children use qualitatively different enumeration processes for small numerosities depending on the configuration of the elements. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
The number of available response options is a central design feature in any experimental psychology paradigm, with binary response paradigms restricting the range of behavioural responses into staying or shifting. Participants (n = 72) played nine blocks of a novel zero-sum game, Dice Dual, while we parametrically manipulated the different number of response options (2, 4, 6) against an unexploitable computerized opponent. When the number of responses exceeded two, this allowed us to identify two types of shift behaviours: between-category shifts relevant to mental model exploitation and within-category shifts reflective of random exploration. Between-category shifts were sensitive to outcome valence, exhibiting an increased shift rate when more response options were available after win, while shift rates were independent of response availability after loss. In contrast, within-category shifts were only sensitive to response availability, with increased shift rates when more response options were available, irrespective of outcome valence. Identifying multiple, functionally different classes of shift behaviour using nonbinary response paradigms allows us to more easily separate attempts at exploitation and exploration. The data also offer more general models of performance regarding suboptimal decision making, where negative outcomes constrict the range of factors considered in future mental model updates.
It is generally well known that emotion can benefit memory; however, much less is known about how emotion influences metamemory. The present study examined how list composition and emotion influence individuals' metamnemonic judgements and performance in a free recall task. Participants studied lists of words that varied in emotional valence and made immediate judgements of learning after each word. Valence was manipulated in a mixed-list design in Experiment 1, a pure-list design in Experiment 2, and in a mixed- versus pure-list design in Experiment 4; arousal was held constant. We expected that the relative influence of emotion on metamemory would depend on participants' beliefs about how emotion influences memory and that these beliefs would be more salient in a mixed-list than pure-list design. Consistent with this, emotional words were given higher judgements of learnings than neutral words in Experiments 1 and 4, but not in Experiment 2. Posttest questionnaires (Experiments 1 and 2) and data collected from a naïve participant sample (Experiment 3) indicated that participants believed that emotional words are more memorable than nonemotional words. These results suggest that list structure influenced the degree to which judgements of learnings were responsive to emotional content. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Research on smile perception indicates that smiles containing a cheek raiser tend to be judged as happier, more sincere, and more authentic than those without this cue. However, while this is well established for human smiles, less is known about how such cues are perceived in emojis. Guided by the emotions as social information (EASI) model, which posits that emotional expressions influence observers through inferential and affective pathways, this study examined judgements of sincerity for enjoyment and nonenjoyment smiles produced by human and emoji encoders. In Experiment 1, participants judged whether smiles (human or emoji) were "really happy" or "not really happy." Both stimulus types included smiles that varied in cues of sincerity (presence or absence of the cheek raiser). In Experiment 2, the same task was repeated with open or closed mouth variations. Participants identified human enjoyment smiles as "really happy" more often than nonenjoyment smiles, whereas emojis were rated as "really happy" regardless of the sincerity cue. Closed mouth smiles were judged as less happy than open mouth smiles, and judgements were faster for emojis than for human faces. These findings suggest that, in line with the EASI model, emoji-based expressions may elicit affective rather than inferential processing, highlighting their limited equivalence to human smiles in digital communication. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is characterized by impairments across several neurocognitive domains, particularly memory and executive function. The study explored the effectiveness of an individual cognitive stimulation (iCS) program on cognitive outcomes in older adults with moderate to moderately severe AD. A multicentre randomized controlled trial was conducted with 80 Portuguese older adults (Mage: 83.0 ± 7.1 years) with AD. Participants were randomly assigned to either iCS (n = 39; 49%) or treatment as usual (n = 41; 51%). Alzheimer's Disease Severity (ADS) categorized two groups based on Mini-Mental State Examination score: 10-14 in the ADS moderately severe group and 15-20 in the ADS moderate group. In participants with moderate AD, iCS led to significant improvements in memory-related outcomes (particularly Memory Assessment Test) and a trend toward improvement in global cognition. In contrast, no significant effects were observed in participants with moderately severe AD. Meta-analytic comparisons and meta-regression confirmed a significant difference in intervention effectiveness between severity levels. iCS was significantly more effective in individuals with moderate AD than in those with moderately severe AD. This difference in responsiveness between severity levels was statistically confirmed (Q = 11.29, p < .001). iCS was effective in enhancing memory in individuals with moderate AD, with additional indications of global cognitive benefit. However, no meaningful effects were observed in participants with moderately severe impairment, suggesting diminished responsiveness to iCS as disease severity increases. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
As the aging population grows, it is important to investigate factors that protect against cognitive decline. Bilingualism is hypothesized to contribute to cognitive reserve. However, the research on the influence of bilingualism and related variables (e.g., age of second language [L2] acquisition and language usage) on episodic memory remains sparse. We investigate the role of L2 age of acquisition, proficiency, and usage on verbal and nonverbal episodic memory in middle-aged and older adult bilingual speakers of English and French. Accuracy on a verbal memory task was negatively associated with L2 usage at work. People with lower L2 proficiency and usage at home performed better on a nonverbal memory task in terms of accuracy and reaction time, respectively. Earlier L2 acquisition was associated with higher accuracy on the nonverbal memory task. We hypothesize that greater L2 engagement leads to increased effort to inhibit nonrelevant stimuli, impeding episodic memory retrieval, and the effort required is lower with earlier L2 acquisition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Prediction error minimization and embodied cognition theorists posit that abstract self-representations are predicated on models of the self as an embodied agent. While the view of continuity between conceptual and bodily self is common to several frameworks in psychology and cognitive science, empirical tests of this relationship are scant. However, a recent study by Krol et al., (see record 2020-26839-011) found that people low in self-concept clarity (SCC) were more vulnerable to the rubber-hand illusion-in particular, in the asynchronous stroking condition, where the illusion is unwarranted. This study provides preliminary evidence for an association between self-concept strength and vulnerability to illusions regarding the bodily self. Here we sought to replicate this finding in an existing study that assessed SCC and the rubber-hand illusion. Using linear mixed-effects modelling, we found that lower SCC was again associated with greater embodiment of the rubber hand in the asynchronous condition; moreover, we also observed this effect in the synchronous stroking condition, providing additional evidence for the role of SCC in vulnerability to bodily illusions. We discuss the implications of this finding for theories in social cognitive neuroscience. Finally, as the study we drew upon to test the replication effect involved the administration of intranasal oxytocin, we also took this opportunity to replicate a previously observed effect of oxytocin on embodiment of the rubber hand; this effect, however, did not replicate, although methodological difference may have played a role. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Choosing when to start tasks can be an important aspect of task management in daily life. Do people prefer to start tasks at the beginning of the hour, that is, using clock time as a cue for their scheduling preferences? A first study showed a strong preference to start tasks on the hour, even in scenarios involving a cost to starting on the hour, in scenarios involving no other people, and across several forms of start preference measurement. A second study examined reports of real-life tasks: Participants identified next-day tasks ahead of time and then reported on these exact tasks 2 days later. Starting tasks on the hour was not linked with benefits for individual task progress, but starting a higher percentage of tasks on the hour over the day was linked with judging the day overall as having been spent more efficiently. In sum, these studies identify a preference for scheduling and starting tasks on the hour but show mixed evidence that this preference is beneficial for task achievement.
Mental imagery plays a central role in various cognitive processes and is increasingly investigated in cognitive science. Yet standardized tools for its assessment in French-speaking populations remain scarce. This study examined the psychometric properties of two widely used self-report instruments of mental imagery within the French Canadian population: the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) and the Plymouth Sensory Imagery Questionnaire (Psi-Q)-here termed VVIQ-Québec (QC) and Psiq-QC. A total of 328 adults completed the VVIQ-QC and Psiq-QC, with a randomly selected subsample (n = 73) repeating the assessment 1 month later. Exploratory factor analysis of the VVIQ-QC (eyes-open) revealed, as in the original VVIQ, distinct factors corresponding to each prompt cluster (i.e., relative, sunrise, landscape, and storefront). The Psiq-QC yielded a six-factor solution after excluding the Body modality, diverging from the original seven-factor model. Both instruments showed strong internal consistency, temporal stability, and convergent validity. No significant effects of age, sex, or education were observed on imagery scores. These findings provide the first validated French Canadian versions of the VVIQ and Psi-Q, available via the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/wuhja, offering reliable tools for both research and clinical applications. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
This article examines gender disparities in the allocation of Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) funding to cognitive scientists. It expands on previous work by Titone et al. (2018) with updated data from 2016 to 2023. By analyzing publicly available funding data, we assessed trends in NSERC awards distribution across different career stages. Our analyses revealed that while women receive more student research awards at the undergraduate and graduate levels, significant gender disparities persist at senior levels, where men continue to receive more Discovery Grants and higher funding amounts. With respect to changes in recent years, the postdoctoral fellowship awards showed increased gender parity. As well, early career researchers have seen a shift towards gender parity, indicating some success in the efforts to support up-and-coming researchers. Thus, while progress has been made, further actions are necessary to bridge gender gaps in research funding and to support the long-term career development of women cognitive scientists. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).
After a decade of implementing open science practices as a principal investigator, mentor, data repository founder, and editor-in-chief, I have learned that the question is not whether researchers should adopt these practices but how to adapt them meaningfully. This commentary, based on a talk given at the 2024 Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour, and Cognitive Science conference, argues for two key principles: First, open science implementation must be context-dependent rather than one-size-fits-all, and second, practical research realities require flexible approaches to idealized policies. Through personal examples, from my evolution with preregistration from "recipe" to "guide" during COVID-19 research to challenges with Registered Reports using existing data sets, I show how open science practices work best when researchers approach them as evolving tools rather than rigid rules. I also discuss field-specific differences in open science uptake between psychology and education and the importance of equity considerations in implementation. The commentary concludes with concrete recommendations for researchers and journals, emphasizing that sustainable open science requires meeting researchers where they are while maintaining transparency and scientific rigour. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).
Whereas the ability to prioritize important information in memory remains preserved with age, it is still unclear how subjective value may interact with emotional valence to impact memory. The present study examined the interaction of value and valence in memory selectivity among younger and older adults. A sample of 24 younger (aged 17-29; 20.13 ± 2.54) and 24 older adults (aged 65-79, 70.13 ± 4.47) ranked valenced (positive and negative) and neutral words based on their subjectively perceived value/importance for memory. They then completed a value-directed remembering task, studying the same set of words paired with their assigned values, with a goal to maximize value points accrued in a subsequent word free recall task. Next, they completed a cued recall for values assigned to the words. Mixed-model analyses of variance were conducted on value assignment, word free recall, and cued value recall performance. Positive words were assigned a higher value/importance than negative or neutral words. Items assigned a higher value were better recalled and likely to be recalled first, an effect that tends to be larger for older than younger adults. Older adults generally face specific challenges recalling schema-inconsistent high values originally assigned to negative words, an effect absent in younger adults. The results suggested that valence can direct value assignment and, in turn, interact with the assigned value to guide memory selectivity. Relative to younger adults, older adults appear more likely to rely on a "positive is more valuable than negative" schema to guide value retrieval. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).
In this narrative theoretical review, I take a closer look at the last 40 years of research on the cuing of attention and the often-related inhibition of return in the spatial senses of vision, audition, and touch. A distinction is made between perceptual versus response-based facilitation and inhibition in these two putatively related phenomena. Ray Klein has long been interested in the phenomenon of inhibition of return, though mostly from a unisensory visual perspective. This review highlights how examining these attentional and response-related phenomena outside of the visual modality (e.g., in audition and in touch), as well as crossmodally, and in a multisensory context, has helped to further our understanding of both empirical phenomena. The putative existence of attentional orienting and inhibition of return-like inhibitory phenomena outside of the spatial domain, as when attentional selection relates to a specific stimulus dimension (such as hue), semantic category, or even sensory modality, is also discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).
Although gaze information is important for human interactions, recent studies show that in natural exchanges, mutual face-to-face looks occur relatively infrequently, on less than 15% of interaction time. In the present study, we conducted two dyadic interaction experiments utilizing dual mobile eye-tracking eyeglasses to examine if the prevalence of mutual face-to-face looks may be affected by interactive context. In Experiment 1, we strengthened the interactive context by measuring looking behaviours in dyads of friends. In Experiment 2, we weakened the interactive context by measuring looking behaviours in dyads of strangers interacting under facial visual occlusion. In both experiments, we found that mutual looks continued to occur rarely, on 7% of interaction time in Experiment 1 and 4% of interaction time in Experiment 2. Thus, changes in the interactive context appear not to affect the overall low prevalence of mutual looking in natural interactions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Moments of inattention are commonly experienced by most people in everyday life. While some of these inattentive episodes occur inadvertently, others are the result of an individual's choices. Here we characterize the aspects of inattention over which individuals have agency, with a specific consideration of the inattentive state of mind wandering (i.e., off-task thought). Our research on this topic has revealed several general principles that underpin people's agency over their inattention to a task at hand. First, people have nuanced awareness of their inattentive episodes, reporting various degrees of both spontaneous and deliberate moments of inattention, even during tasks in which they agree to be attentive. Second, spontaneous and deliberate bouts of attentional disengagement have distinct correlates and underlying mechanisms. Third, people have considerable control over the degree of their inattention and are able to regulate it skillfully on command and strategically in response to situational demands. Fourth, people have reliable memories of prior moment-to-moment changes in their inattention. And finally, individuals are able to accurately forecast how their inattention might change in an upcoming task. These principles suggest an agentic view of inattention, according to which people are imperfect but intelligent managers of their attentional engagement and disengagement. We discuss the wide-ranging implications of this view on prior and future studies of attentional disengagement, the interpretability of performance in cognitive tasks, and strategies that can be implemented to reduce inattention. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).
Psychological science is hard. This short article focuses on two issues. One has to do with the importance of understanding statistical power and how post hoc data explorations and selective reporting can lead to exaggerated estimates of the size of effects and the strength of relationships (which in turn contribute to replication failures). The other topic is tools research psychologists can use to improve the reproducibility of their procedures and analyses. The article closes with a comment on the deeper challenge of improving the usefulness and testability of theories in psychology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).
Emotional information is treated differently than any other type of information and has a powerful impact on many cognitive processes, including attention. The aim of this study was to investigate how valence and arousal impact how we process words in sentences, as well as examine two theories of emotion, categorical negativity theory and the arousal hypothesis. Categorical negativity theory suggests that the valence of a word is what truly influences how emotional information receives attention, while the arousal hypothesis posits that the arousal level of a word determines the amount of attention it receives. In the current work, we used the rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task to investigate interactions between valence and arousal. The valence and arousal levels of positive and negative emotion words were manipulated within the context of full-sentence reading. Analyses revealed that all negative words, regardless of arousal level, produced the standard repetition blindness effect; however, positive words appeared to benefit from repetition. This interaction of valence and arousal suggests that a new theory is needed to accommodate evidence that both valence and arousal play a role in the attentional capture of emotion words. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
The goal of the present study was to investigate whether a relationship exists between statistical learning ability and sentence processing ability in adult readers and whether this relationship depends on the participant's exposure to print. Fifty participants read syntactically complex sentences while their eye movements were tracked and answered comprehension questions. The region of interest for the eye fixation analyses was the area where the complexity of the sentence became evident. Participants also completed a visual statistical learning (VSL) task and an author recognition test (ART). There were main effects of statistical learning ability and print exposure, as well as an interaction between the two on both first pass and total reading times. Reading times decreased with increasing VSL scores for participants with higher ART scores, whereas reading times increased with increasing VSL scores for participants with lower ART scores. In addition, participants with better statistical learning ability and greater print exposure had higher scores on the comprehension questions. These results demonstrate that efficient processing of complex syntactic structures depends on both good statistical learning skills and exposure to a large amount of print so that these skills have the opportunity to extract the relevant statistical relationships in the language. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
This work aimed to examine whether the spatial representations of actions depend on the spatial features of the body components involved in those actions. I proposed that this is possible, but only when the responses cannot be spatially coded based on the spatial features of the actions' goal. I presented participants with large and small objects and instructed them to respond with either their palm-hand or index-digit based on the colour of the objects. Palm-hand or index-digit responses represented large and small responses, respectively, considering the size of the effector part used. The collected data confirmed this hypothesis. I found a size-based Simon effect, indicating that participants code the size of their responses based on the relative size of the body part used for responding (i.e., palm-hand vs. index-digit). This finding therefore suggests that the size-based Simon effect could serve as a valuable tool for implicitly assessing the metrics of body representation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
