Collective memories of intergroup history persist as dynamic structures that shape how societies perceive foreign others. This article proposes a framework for understanding stereotypes rooted in collective memory as both premises for journalistic coverage – guiding story selection – and tools within it, offering adaptable templates for framing. Analysing Israeli media’s coverage of Poland across two decades of conflict, conciliation, and routine reporting, I show how journalists reproduce and renegotiate stereotyped perceptions, clarifying their dual role as memory agents: sustaining stereotype-laden perceptions anchored in collective memory, while recalibrating these perceptions in light of shifting political and narrative contexts. The study foregrounds journalism’s dual role in carrying forward and adapting the collective memory structures through which foreign nations are perceived.

Contingent responses in which caregiver and child build on each other’s positive behavior may attenuate the deleterious effects of early adversity on youth mental health and neuroendocrine functioning. 159 caregiver–child dyads (child age: 6–16 years; 50.9% male; 44.6% adversity-exposed in stable arrangements with adoptive caregivers) participated in a 6-min conflict resolution task, which was coded for second-by-second changes in caregivers’ and children’s behavior (κ’s >0.78). Caregivers reported on their child’s mental health problems; youth hair cortisol concentration was obtained. Caregiver contingent responses to their children (i.e., responding to their partner’s positive social communication with active efforts to facilitate emotion regulation and/or problem-solving) attenuated the effects of adversity on child anxiety and conduct disorder symptoms. Stronger positive child contingent responses to their caregivers attenuated the effects of adversity on child depressive, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms, and oppositional defiant symptoms. Positive contingent transactions are health-promotive interaction sequences that could be targeted in transdiagnostic intervention programs.

Previous research has mainly explored the relationship between bilingual language control and domain-general cognitive control through behavioral correlations, often revealing epiphenomenal links rather than causality. This study utilizes transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to investigate the causal roles of the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and left middle temporal gyrus (LMTG) in 33 unbalanced Chinese-English bilinguals. Continuous theta burst stimulation was applied in separate sessions to decrease cortical excitability, with vertex stimulation as a control. LIFG stimulation significantly increased switching costs in nonverbal switching tasks, highlighting its role in domain-general cognitive control. LMTG stimulation did not affect switching or mixing costs in language or nonverbal switching tasks, suggesting no causal involvement, but it reduced reaction times (RTs) during language switching tasks, underscoring its specialization in language processing. These findings highlight distinctions between the neural mechanisms of bilingual language control and domain-general cognitive control, particularly in the LIFG.

Maternal affect contributes to children’s psychosocial adjustment. How maternal daily affect intensity and dynamics (i.e., inertia and variability) are associated with adolescents’ psychopathological symptoms, however, remains unclear. This preregistered study examined (1) associations of maternal day-to-day positive and negative affect intensity, inertia, and variability with psychopathological symptoms in adolescence and young adulthood, and (2) how mother–adolescent affect congruency moderates these associations. Mother–adolescent dyads (N = 488) reported positive and negative affect in 75 daily assessments across ages 13 – 17 years. Adolescents rated their psychopathological symptoms at ages 14 – 18, 20, and 27 years. Maternal affect intensity was associated with adolescent psychopathological symptoms, while maternal affect dynamics were inconsistently associated with symptoms in young adulthood. Mother–adolescent affect congruency only moderated the effects of positive affect intensity and variability, in that high-congruent adolescents reported lower internalizing symptoms at age 20 than low-congruent adolescents. No other interaction effects were found. While maternal affect intensity and dynamics seem to contribute to youth psychopathology, evidence for the role of mother–adolescent affect congruency remained limited.

Behavioral instruments have unique advantages in certain governance contexts for the reasonable use of public products. Drawing on bounded rationality, we compare two major behavioral instruments – nudging and boosting – and experimentally test their effectiveness in promoting reasonable use of public products. We select the default option (nudging) and future orientation (boosting) as specific instruments. In Study 1, we conduct a laboratory experiment and find that (1) both the default option and future orientation reduce free electricity usage; (2) the immediate effect of the default option is greater than that of future orientation, but its delayed effect is smaller; and (3) the combination strategy is more effective than any single intervention. In Study 2, we conduct a field experiment targeting reasonable use of public toilet paper and basically replicate the results of the laboratory experiment. These findings reinforce our confidence in the effectiveness of nudging and boosting and suggest the possibility of bridging behavioral science with governance theory.

Despite abundant studies on motion events and mental simulation in first languages (L1s), research on how cross-linguistic dis/similarity – whether an L1 shares constructions with a second language (L2) – affects mental simulation during incremental L2 processing remains limited. This study used a novel self-paced reading task with video verification to investigate L1 influence on mental imagery of the dual (directional/locational) interpretation of locative prepositions. Participants included native English speakers and advanced L2 English learners whose L1s were either similar (Dutch) or dissimilar (Japanese) to English. Results revealed an L1 dis/similarity effect on the reaction times for the directional interpretation, but not for the locational interpretation, which was readily accessible across all L1 groups. Factors such as L2 proficiency and onset age of L2 acquisition were found to be constrained by L1, suggesting that L1–L2 constructional correspondence limits the influence of learner factors. These findings support the simulation-based model of L2 sentence processing.

How has human culture become so complex? We argue that a key process is social tinkering: the gradual accumulation of ad hoc innovations to the social rules that coordinate behavior in response to immediate challenges. Momentary innovations provide precedents that can be reused, entrenched, adapted and recombined to handle future challenges. Interactions between these social rules create rich cultural systems (languages, ethics, political organization) of increasing complexity through processes of spontaneous order, not deliberate design. To explain the historical emergence of cumulative cultural complexity, we distinguish between six overlapping and interacting stages: (1) non-social tinkering to solve problems in the natural world; (2) learning and copying from the tinkering of others; (3) social tinkering involving jointly agreeing on momentary conventions to coordinate interactions, typically for mutual benefit; (4) creating communicative conventions (language) to support more complex social interactions; (5) social tinkering of linguistically-formulated cultural rules leading to laws, organizations, institutions, etc.; and (6) tinkering with linguistically-formulated non-social knowledge, allowing for the creation of science and technology. The rich interplay of innovation across the six stages is crucial for explaining increasing cultural and organizational complexity and our collective mastery of the natural world. Because social and non-social tinkering requires two different kinds of learning, this analysis has important implications for the understanding of human learning and cognition, including moral and evolutionary psychology, theory of mind, and the view of the child-as-scientist. Social tinkering also has substantial implications for current theories of cultural evolution.

This study examines the elicited production of Spanish infinitives versus gerunds among Spanish/English bilingual children and adolescents in the United States. We focus on three contexts: infinitives in subject position, infinitives with the phrasal verb parar de (“to stop doing something”), and infinitives with the prepositional verb parar a (“to stop to do something”). Results showed that children and adolescents produced fewer infinitives than their Spanish-dominant parents in subject position and with parar de, often overextending the gerund. By contrast, all groups performed more accurately with parar a, where English and Spanish align structurally. Language dominance and Spanish experience significantly predicted more target-like infinitive use, while chronological age and English dominance were associated with increased gerund overextension. These findings support the Bilingual Alignment Hypothesis, showing that heritage Spanish morphosyntactic development is gradual and context-sensitive, with greater accuracy in areas of crosslinguistic convergence.

This research examines the impact of investment language on Home Bias, investors’ tendency to prefer local over foreign assets. Across 12 rounds of incentivized investment decisions with portfolio return feedback after each round, 398 participants deciding in a foreign language exhibited no home bias, whereas those deciding in their native language did. A moderated mediation analysis further indicates that using a foreign language reduces fluency cues linked to local assets, thereby attenuating home bias. These findings extend the literature on the foreign language effect and suggest that encouraging foreign language use in investment contexts may reduce home bias and facilitate global market risk sharing.

The experience of human trafficking is associated with a high prevalence of mental health problems, particularly post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, and depression, for which cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) would be indicated as an evidence-based intervention. However, lack of knowledge about trafficking survivors’ psychosocial needs, and the complexity of their presentation and circumstances can deter clinicians and impact on survivors’ access to evidence-based care. This article aims to offer guidance for clinicians working therapeutically with adult survivors of human trafficking. It draws on existing CBT evidence-based interventions, and highlights survivors’ holistic needs. This article proposes the use of an existing three-phased approach to treatment and draws upon cognitive behavioural principles. The psychological impacts of exploitation, key assessment topics, and safeguarding concerns are discussed. Considerations for psychological formulation and intervention are described, with a focus on trauma reactions, including PTSD. The integration of a survivor’s social and cultural context into treatment is also explored. CBT interventions can be adapted and applied effectively to address the mental health needs of survivors of trafficking alongside other support to meet their holistic needs.

Recent research suggests that bilinguals flexibly adjust distinct types of cognitive control mechanisms to meet the linguistic demands of their language use and exposure contexts. The present study compared two groups of young, Mexican-born, sequential Spanish L1–English L2 bilinguals who reported either separate or integrated use of both languages. Results showed that greater linguistic diversity across social spheres predicted different patterns of engagement in proactive and reactive control for each group. Among separate-context bilinguals, higher linguistic diversity was associated with faster reaction times in both proactive and reactive control, as well as in overall processing speed. Notably, for integrated-context bilinguals, higher linguistic diversity predicted slower responses in proactive control and processing speed. Additionally, a significant relationship emerged between L2 proficiency and accuracy on proactive control trials for separate-context bilinguals. These findings support perspectives emphasizing the interplay between proactive and reactive control as an outcome of bilinguals’ adaptation to contextual linguistic demands. An important implication is that bilingual groups who share the same language pair and are immersed in their L1 environment may nonetheless differ in cognitive performance, with such differences becoming evident when assessed through fine-grained, nonlinguistic cognitive measures.

Noun bias is the tendency to acquire nouns earlier than other syntactic categories. Whether it is universal or language and culture dependent is debated. We investigated noun bias in the receptive lexicon of Palestinian-Arabic-learning infants and examined whether maternal input and cultural values are related to lexicon composition beyond the language’s structural properties. Thirty-one infants (16–24 months) completed a Computerized Comprehension Task in Palestinian Arabic, and mothers described picture narratives to their children, and completed demographic and cultural values questionnaires. Results showed a noun bias in infants’ receptive lexicon. While no significant correlation was found between maternal noun usage and infants’ noun bias, higher verb usage significantly correlated with reduced noun bias. Neither maternal education nor cultural values significantly predicted maternal input composition. These findings suggest that while noun bias exists in Palestinian Arabic, exposure to verbs may moderate it, highlighting the complex interplay between language structure, input, and early lexical development.