Bridge the Gap in Reading Comprehension Between Narrative and Informational Text

This article explores the challenges K-12 literacy teachers face in balancing students’ engagement with narrative texts and the Common Core State Standards’ (CCSS) emphasis on informational texts. While narratives naturally capture students’ attention and enhance comprehension through relatable experiences, many struggle with understanding informational texts due to their abstract content, domain-specific vocabulary, and complex structures. Drawing on classroom observations and research, this article identifies three key factors influencing comprehension: (1) world knowledge as a foundation for meaning-making, (2) text features as tools for structural understanding, and (3) decoding skills as essential for processing complex texts. The study highlights the “fourth-grade slump,” where comprehension difficulties arise as students transition to more informational reading, and discusses strategies for integrating informational texts into literacy instruction effectively. By aligning instructional methods with students’ cognitive development, educators can enhance comprehension across genres, bridging the gap between narrative engagement and informational literacy

The role of cognateness in native spoken word recognition

When listening to speech in an unfamiliar language, words and phrases in the native language are frequently activated due to their acoustic similarity with some parts of the speech stream. This study explored this phenomenon, for the first time, from a language processing perspective. Across three studies, English- and Spanish-native adults completed a translation elicitation task, in which they listened to a series of words from an unfamiliar language (Catalan or Spanish for English speakers, Catalan for Spanish speakers). For each presented word, participants had to type their best-guess translation in their native language. Both English and Spanish natives were surprisingly good at translating unfamiliar words, efficiently exploiting the phonological similarity between the presented (unfamiliar) words and their correct translation. When the correct translation belonged to high-density phonological neighbourhood, participants' ability to benefit from phonological similarity decreased. Spanish participants, whose native language was typologically closer to the presented language, benefited more strongly from phonological similarity than English participants. Overall, we show that speech in an unfamiliar language triggers equivalent dynamics of lexical selection than native speech, providing a psycholinguistic account for homophonic translation

The Moralization of Artificial Intelligence

Opposition to artificial intelligence (AI) is widespread, but is it driven by deliberate reasoning or intuitive moral reactions? Across two studies, we examine whether AI opposition generalizes across four different AI applications, whether it stems from moral convictions, and which groups are most resistant. Most participants do not oppose using AI. However, among those who do oppose AI, most indicated their views would remain unchanged even if AI proved beneficial, suggesting resistance stems from moral intuitions. Structural equation modeling analysis shows that attitudes toward AI are best explained by a single latent factor of AI moralization, supporting the idea that initial moral intuitions guide later reasoning. We also identify individual differences predicting opposition to specific AI uses and uncover the most common arguments people invoke to justify their AI stance. These findings suggest AI aversion is often moral, implying that shifting attitudes requires addressing moral—not just pragmatic—concerns

Cross-cultural adaptation of the Craving Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) and the Functions of Binge Eating Scale (FBES) to Brazilian Portuguese

Background: Food cravings and binge eating behaviors are critical components of eating disorders, contributing to maladaptive eating patterns, weight gain, and psychological distress. Despite the growing recognition of their importance, there is a lack of culturally adapted assessment tools to evaluate these phenomena in Brazil. Aims: This study aimed to perform the cross-cultural adaptation and validation of two key instruments—the Craving Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) and the Functions of Binge Eating Scale (FBES)—for use in the Brazilian population, ensuring semantic, content, and cultural relevance. Methods: The process included translation, synthesis, back-translation, expert committee review, and pre-testing. Content validity was assessed using the Content Validity Index (CVI) and inter-rater agreement via the Finn Coefficient. A panel of six experts in psychology, psychiatry, and nutrition evaluated the semantic equivalence, content alignment, and item relevance. Results: The CEQ demonstrated excellent validity in terms of semantics, content, and relevance. There was perfect agreement among raters for content and relevance. The FBES showed strong validity for content and relevance, with slightly lower validity for semantic equivalence. Minor revisions were made to enhance clarity and cultural appropriateness. Discussion: The adaptation process confirmed the instruments' conceptual integrity and cultural fit. The CEQ effectively assesses craving intensity, imagery, and intrusiveness, while the FBES captures eight motives underlying binge eating, such as emotion regulation and self-punishment. Conclusion: The Brazilian versions are reliable instruments for assessing food cravings and binge eating motives. Their integration into clinical and research settings will enhance specificity within established diagnostic categories, increasing the accuracy of binge eating disorder treatments by considering the integration of various areas of care. In this way, interventions will achieve more specific outcomes beyond the mere remission of binge eating episodes

Rethinking the Link Between Cognitive Reflection and Susceptibility to Misinformation: On the Distinction Between Hard and Soft News

The literature presents two contrasting accounts on the influence of cognitive reflection (tendency to override intuition by engaging in deliberation or analytical thinking) on susceptibility to misinformation. According to the classical reasoning account, rooted in research on evaluation of mainly soft news (sensational, human-interest stories), cognitive reflection improves truth discernment. According to the motivated reasoning account, rooted in research on argument construction about hard (policy-related) issues, cognitive reflection enhances political bias. We integrate these two accounts by examining how the distinction between soft and hard news interacts with individuals’ reasoning style to shape their capacity for truth discernment and susceptibility to political bias. Initially, we conducted an integrative data analysis (IDA) by synthesizing data from existing misinformation studies and incorporating independent ratings of news items along a hard-soft news dimension. We also conducted two experiments—one in the U.S., one in Greece—where participants viewed soft or hard political news. Across the IDA and experiments, participants higher on cognitive reflection were more prone to political bias, but only when evaluating hard news. Cognitive reflection was associated with improved truth discernment for both soft and hard news in the IDA, but not consistently so in the experiments. The findings reconcile discrepancies in the misinformation literature by demonstrating that cognitive reflection is not a one-size-fits-all solution to misinformation: although it is associated with improvement in truth discernment, it is also linked to exacerbated political bias in the case of hard news. We discuss implications of news softening for what qualifies as misinformation

The Role of Location in Feature Binding in Working Memory

We tested two competing hypotheses about the nature of multi-featured object representations in visual working memory (vWM). One is that all object features are integrated into an object file. The other is that locations are critical for maintaining the bindings of visual features of an object. We developed an experimental paradigm that bridges the vWM and object-file literatures. Several multi-featured objects were presented simultaneously, followed by a retention interval in which placeholders either moved or not. Participants were then given one feature of a randomly chosen object as a cue and prompted to report the other two features of the same object. Applying multinomial process tree (MPT) models to evaluate the competing accounts of how multi-featured objects are represented in memory, we found evidence supporting the object-file theory and challenging the location-binding hypothesis. We conclude that bindings of features within the object can be maintained after motion. Furthermore, pairwise bindings between color and shape are robust against motion, implying that location is not essential for visual feature bindings

Language or Syndrome? Investigating the Origins of the General Psychopathology Factor through Large Language Model Embeddings

This study examines whether transdiagnostic factors, including the general psychopathology factor (p-factor), emerge primarily from linguistic properties or reflect underlying syndromic co-occurrence. By comparing text embeddings with self-reported responses from a sample of 985 individuals, both approaches yielded comparable clustering patterns and general factor structures. However, self-reported responses exhibited stronger associations with participants’ mental health histories, indicating a greater capacity to capture clinically relevant features. These findings highlight the potential for large language models (LLMs) to advance psychopathology assessment while emphasizing the continued importance of traditional diagnostic approaches

Why, where and how do top-down and bottom-up signals interact in the primate brain?

Here we propose a roadmap for addressing hierarchical predictive coding theory (hPC) in the primate brain, theorizing that perception arises from the integration of top-down (TD) pathways carrying priors and predictions with bottom-up (BU) pathways carrying sensory evidence in the form of precision weighted prediction errors. However, given the conceptual importance of hPC for higher cognitive function in humans there is surprisingly little evidence concerning the location and functional mechanisms underlying such BU-TD integration. This will be overcome by parallel experiments in humans and non-human primates (NHPs). Molecular characterization in NHP of cortico-cortical BU and TD projection cell types should allow tracing these circuits and exerting causal control to explore functional mechanisms in visual paradigms in behaving NHPs. Similar paradigms in human subjects undergoing ultra-high field laminar fMRI scanning will allow investigation of corresponding pathways in the human brain. In NHP and human, the observation of long-distance TD signals carrying predictions suggest that the claustrum may be involved in hPC. Recent connectomic and transcriptomic characterisation of cortical claustral cortical loops may enable a similar approach to explore these pathways. Specifically, we hypothesize that the claustrum is uniquely positioned to mediate the precision-weighting of prediction errors in the sense of selecting salient (bottom-up) signals that drive representational or belief updating in cortical hierarchies. Progress in primate hPC will further emphasise the synergy between neurobiology and artificial intelligence with important consequences for both domains

Childhood Predictors of Dispositional Forgivingness in Adulthood: A Cross-National Analysis With 22 Countries

A robust body of empirical evidence suggests that forgiveness is positively related to individual wellbeing. To support a population health agenda aimed at the promotion of forgiveness, further research is needed to identify potential determinants of forgiveness. In this study, we used the first wave of nationally representative data from 22 countries included in the Global Flourishing Study (N = 202,898) to explore associations of 13 individual characteristics and retrospectively assessed childhood factors with dispositional forgivingness in adulthood. We estimated country-level modified Poisson models in which forgivingness was regressed on all candidate predictors, and then aggregated results for the 11 predictors that were common across countries using a random effects meta-analysis. Risk ratios from the meta-analyses showed that a combination of individual characteristics (e.g., older birth cohort, female gender), early life conditions or experiences (e.g., more frequent religious service attendance, better health, more secure family financial status), and social circumstances or influences when growing up (e.g., higher quality maternal and paternal relationships) were associated with a higher likelihood of forgivingness in adulthood. Associations were somewhat heterogenous across the countries. Our findings suggest that childhood may be important in shaping forgivingness in adulthood and provide some potential foci for population-level interventions

Who Touched It Matters: Gender and Role Effects on Negative Contagion Effect

Consumers often feel disgusted toward products that have been touched by others, a phenomenon known as the negative contagion effect (NCE). While prior research has explored NCE through biological and cultural lenses, the role of interpersonal factors remains underexamined. This study investigates how the toucher’s gender and social role influence NCE and psychological ownership. Study 1 revealed that male touchers elicited stronger NCE compared to female touchers, and products touched by stranger customers were more negatively perceived than those touched by store staff. Study 2 demonstrated that psychological ownership was higher for products touched by stranger customers than by store staff, suggesting a close relationship between ownership perceptions and NCE. These findings highlight the interplay of social and psychological factors in shaping consumer disgust. Practical implications include strategies for optimizing product handling in retail and online contexts. Future research should explore cultural and product-specific variations to further refine our understanding of NCE dynamics