Spanish nouns like agua and área challenge grammar rules—and the brain agrees. Pupillometry shows gender violations trigger responses for regular nouns, but not dual-gender ones. Gender processing is flexible and context-driven.
Read more here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Finally, special thanks to the reviewers at @cognitionjournal.bsky.social, whose advice completely transformed the paper for the better, and if you'd like to read more related by the authors, check out:
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
doi.org/10.1016/j.ch...
Possibly, the effects of embodiment on postural control are related to the integration of multisensory signals, which is crucial for both these processes.
These results suggest that, even at the level of automatic full-body control, embodied movements are represented in the sensorimotor system similarly to the own movements; however, this effect is limited to the duration of the embodiment illusion.
During embodiment, but not during observation, the CoP shifted coherently with the flexion and extension phases of the avatar’s squats, despite participants standing still. On the other hand, there were no post-embodiment effects on the CoP shifts.
Changes in postural control (center of pressure, CoP, displacement) were measured during and after embodiment, or non-embodied observation, of a virtual avatar that performed one-legged squats.
We investigated whether embodiment of movements affected automatic sensorimotor processes that support the body in active and static conditions, such as postural control.
Embodiment illusions create a temporary feeling that a fake or virtual body belongs to oneself. Embodiment entails also the feeling of authoring the movements performed by the embodied body, even when no corresponding real movements are performed.
"The role of body ownership in postural control: A virtual full body illusion study"
📢New paper from: Maria Pyasik, Enrico Zingarelli, Silvia Giusiano, Andrea Cavallo, & Lorenzo Pia
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
📢New paper out today in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social!
Does the value of an unchosen option — inferred through counterfactual reasoning — spread to related items in memory, similar to how the value of a chosen option — acquired through direct experience — does?
In short, yes!
"The inferred value of unchosen options spreads to related items in memory"
📢New paper from: Zimeng Wang, Xinyue Li & Akram Bakkour @akrambakkour.bsky.social
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Memory links options during deliberation.
Counterfactual reasoning assigns value to the road not taken.
Semantic structure allows that inferred value to generalize.
Memory interacts with counterfactual reasoning to extend learning beyond direct experience to guide behavior in novel environments.
Prior work shows that:
1. The value of an unchosen option is inferred to be high or low when the chosen outcome is poor or good.
2. The value of a chosen option — learned through direct experience — spreads to semantically related items.
But do inferred values behave the same way?
In short, YES.
A new paper shows that the inferred value of an unchosen option spreads to related items in memory.
In other words: even outcomes you never experienced can generalize to guide future decisions.
Ever feel like time flies when you're juggling too much? It's not just a feeling. Our new study shows that holding more items in memory literally warps how your brain encodes and reproduces short durations. ⌛️🧠
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
"A dynamic affective surprise signal influences episodic memory"
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
This work integrates affective and predictive accounts of memory enhancements and suggests that affective surprise may capture dynamic affective prediction errors that shape memory.
@rohini-kumar.bsky.social
@tejassavalia.bsky.social
davidclewett.bsky.social
@aliocohen.bsky.social
Changes in our feelings, or "affective surprise," may act as a learning signal that influences what we remember. Large magnitude deviations in experienced valence during encoding relate to better long-term associative memory.
New paper exploring the flexibility of control mechanisms in bilinguals is out in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social l! w/ @kalinkatimmer.bsky.social, Jakub Szewczyk, and Zofia Wodniecka.
We ask if language context can affect language control in bilinguals.
authors.elsevier.com/a/1meRF2Hx32...
👇🧵
These findings show that statistical learning is sometimes grounded in the statistics of agent-environment interactions, not in the statistics of the world per se. They align with theories linking attention to action. Our study also highlights the importance of dynamic experimental setups.
Across experiments, we found that implicit distractor-location learning is viewer dependent when embedded in active behavior. That is, spatial inhibition cannot be abstracted from the agent moving through a 3D world and how they can suppress sampling the world from their perspective.
We showed this in 3 experiments with a novel setup: participants performed an additional singleton task projected on a table top, while switching standing position. This way, we could manipulate whether a high probably distractor location was fixed in the world or with respect to their viewpoint.
It is typically thought that distractor inhibition entails inhibiting the distractor location. Yet, here we show that distractor inhibition takes into account how one can suppress attentional sampling in space from their viewpoint to prevent distraction. It operates egocentrically.
"Grounding distractor inhibition in action control: Implicit distractor-location learning is viewer dependent"
📢New paper from: Litian Chen, Freek van Ede, Chris Jungerius, Heleen A. Slagter
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
"Context-dependent effects of branches in decisions under risk"
📢New paper from: Ioannis Evangelidis
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Design/ethics takeaway: branching can nudge choices without improving expected outcomes. If you want better decisions, highlight expected value (or expected lives saved), not just the number of pathways.
Practical implication: people may overweight “number of chances” vs value. Financial products or policies can be made more attractive by splitting outcomes—especially when compared against another risky option.
Theory: branch-splitting isn’t a fixed property of a prospect. Models that treat branching as context-invariant (e.g., classic configural-weight approaches) miss that branch effects depend on what else is on the menu.
Generalizes beyond money: similar branching effects appear in policy-style choices about lives saved. Branch structure can shift preference even when expected lives saved is lower.
Losses mirror: with probabilistic losses, more “pathways to losing” reduces choice share. More branches helps for gains (in joint risky choice) but hurts for losses.
