Department of Psychology

Our visual landscape consists of not only people, places, and objects (e.g., "soldier," "stadium," "flag") but also the conceptual relationships that unite them (e.g., "patriotism"). Because conceptual knowledge varies across individuals, this level of structure may support individualized patterns of attentional selection during naturalistic scene viewing. Here, we ask whether individuals' gaze patterns reflect, in part, latent attentional priorities organized in conceptual space. Participants (N = 61) freely explored a diverse set of immersive real-world scenes (N = 100) in head-mounted VR while their gaze position was continuously recorded. We modeled gaze behavior using spatial, visual, and conceptual feature spaces, leveraging embeddings from large vision and language models, to uncover the latent priorities guiding individuals' unique patterns of selective attention across environments. Individuals exhibited stable and idiosyncratic gaze patterns across scenes and test-retest sessions, consistent with trait-like individual differences in attention. Spatial, visual, and conceptual feature spaces each explained unique variance in individual gaze patterns, with conceptual features contributing variance beyond that explained by spatial and visual features alone. Notably, language-model-based predictions were particularly effective at capturing these individualized patterns. Together, these findings indicate that naturalistic visual attention is structured at multiple levels-including a conceptual level-revealing stable individual differences in how people sample and prioritize information across complex visual environments.

When encountering a novel word, adults and children as young as 12 months old often reason that it refers to a novel object rather than one with an existing name - making a 'mutual exclusivity inference.' We explored the mechanism of this inference, aiming to differentiate between three hypotheses: whether mutual exclusivity arises due to reasoning about a specific speaker's knowledge, projection of one's own egocentric knowledge, or reasoning generally about the conventionality of labels. Adults and 3.5-5-year-old children in our experiment heard a label being either taught or invented on the spot. They were then asked to decide what another label, produced by a speaker who was absent during the first label's introduction, referred to. Our results revealed that adults and older children made more mutual exclusivity inferences when the first label was taught compared to when it was invented. Additionally, they were more likely to exclude the previously-labeled object in the referential choice if they judged that the speaker also knew the label, regardless of how the label was introduced. Both adults and older children also showed sensitivity to the speaker's explicit statements of knowledge, excluding an object that the speaker explicitly stated that he did not know the name of from their referential choice. These results suggested that adults and older children reasoned about a specific speaker's knowledge of labels in order to make mutual exclusivity inferences, likely in the form of a Gricean inference where they reasoned about possible alternative utterances a speaker could have said.

Nitroaromatic small molecules are established anti-infectives, including against trypanosomal diseases. Inspired by our previously identified suicide inhibitors of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) decaprenylphosphoryl-β-d-ribose 2′-epimerase (DprE1), we report the synthesis and in vitro antitrypanosomal activity of six novel nitroquinoline derivatives (4a-4f), as well as the antitrypanosomal activity of 13 previously described nitroquinolone anti-Mtb compounds, 8a-8 m. Two compounds exhibited sub-micromolar activity (EC50 = 0.3–0.5 µM), while thirteen compounds exhibited low micromolar activity (EC50 = 1.1–8.0 µM) against Trypanosoma brucei. This study highlights nitroquinolones and nitroquinolines as a source of compounds that exhibit both antitrypanosomal and antitubercular activities.Graphical abstract

This paper addresses the question of how people determine the value of effortful activity. We apply a motivational framework, according to which value derives from the extent to which actions serve goals. Using this general instrumentality principle, we argue that effort is valued to the extent it contributes to goal progress and is appropriately calibrated. We then discuss how the “calibrated effort is good” principle is qualified by four factors: knowledge about what it takes to achieve a goal, the intrinsic value of effortful activity, the presence of additional goals, and the feasibility of goal attainment. Next, we apply these insights to explain the value of metacognitive effort (fluency), which accompanies the pursuit of epistemic (belief-related) goals. Finally, we distinguish between value and valence, arguing that difficulty can simultaneously (though not always) reduce immediate hedonic experience (valence) while still being valued due to its usefulness to long-term goals. This motivational account integrates research on effort, fluency, and valuation, offering a unified framework for understanding when and why effort is valued.

Psychedelic drugs have shown promise as a novel therapeutic for a variety of health conditions, yet the mechanisms underlying their clinical benefits remain unclear. A leading hypothesis suggests that psychedelics may enhance cognitive flexibility, a trait impaired in many of these conditions. While existing data from self-report and qualitative-interview studies support this hypothesis, data from experimental studies are limited and inconsistent. Here, we propose a novel cognitive development model that allows us to more precisely define cognitive flexibility as a mechanism underlying the effects of psychedelics. Considering children-a population known to be more cognitively flexible than adults-as a proxy psychedelic group, we identify three specific behaviors that could be used to empirically test this account: (1) changing the strength of, or reliance on, one's priors; (2) changing one's search and sampling strategies; and/or (3) changing one's allocation of attentional resources. Finally, we highlight preliminary findings from a pilot study supporting this framework and providing guidance for future work.

Adults infer social information from objects' locations by integrating multiple causal factors, which is often challenging for children. To test for integrated reasoning about objects' locations, 5- to 10-year-olds (N = 72; 38 girls; 62.5% White; tested 2024) viewed scenes with toys at high/low locations, in social contexts with/without competitors for toys, and inferred owners' preferences. In Experiment 2, 4- to 7-year-olds (N = 72; 27 girls; 52.8% White, tested 2023) predicted where objects would be placed, from social context and owners' preferences. Four- to 5-year-olds failed to integrate information when reasoning about objects' pre-existing locations but succeeded when predicting placement behavior. Six- to 7-year-olds succeeded in both experiments, as did adults (N = 144, 114 women, 86% White). From 4- to 7-years of age, children increasingly reason about objects' locations as the product of interacting social causes.

This review synthesizes ten years of research utilizing data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, emphasizing how the study's comprehensive, longitudinal design supports a multivariate understanding of adolescent mental health. We focus on studies that have examined the collective or interacting relations of multiple factors to mental health in adolescents, as this unique dataset allows for examining more complex configurations of risk factors. We highlight key findings from ABCD data that have deepened our understanding of the risk factors shaping mental health outcomes in adolescence. Findings underscore the complex interplay of biological, psychological, and/or contextual factors on adolescent mental health. We conclude with a forward-looking discussion of emerging research priorities and opportunities to further leverage the ABCD dataset to inform developmental theory, prevention, and intervention efforts.

Importance: Millions of children worldwide are experiencing prolonged symptoms after SARS-CoV-2 infection, yet social risk factors for developing long COVID are largely unknown. As child health is influenced by the environment in which they live and interact, adverse social determinants of health (SDOH) may contribute to the development of pediatric long COVID. Objective: To identify whether adverse SDOH are associated with increased odds of long COVID in school-aged children and adolescents in the US. Design, Setting, and Participants: This cross-sectional analysis of a multicenter, longitudinal, meta-cohort study encompassed 52 sites (health care and community settings) across the US. School-aged children (6-11 years; n = 903) and adolescents (12-17 years; n = 3681) with SARS-CoV-2 infection history were included. Those with an unknown date of first infection, history of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, or symptom surveys with less than 50% of questions completed were excluded. Participants were recruited via health care systems, long COVID clinics, fliers, websites, social media campaigns, radio, health fairs, community-based organizations, community health workers, and existing research cohorts from March 2022 to August 2024, and surveys were completed by caregivers between March 2022 and August 2024. Exposure: Twenty-four individual social determinant of health factors were grouped into 5 Healthy People 2030 domains: economic stability, social and community context, caregiver education access and quality, neighborhood and built environment, and health care access and quality. Latent classes were created within each domain and used in regression models. Main Outcomes and Measures: Presence of long COVID using caregiver-reported, symptom-based, age-specific research indices. Results: The mean (SD) age among 4584 individuals included in this study was 14 (3) years, and 2330 (51%) of participants were male. The number of latent classes varied by domain; the reference group was the class with the least adversity. In unadjusted analyses, most classes in each domain were associated with higher odds of long COVID. After adjusting for many factors, including age group, sex, timing of infection, referral source, and other social determinant of health domains, economic instability characterized by difficulty covering expenses, poverty, receipt of government assistance, and food insecurity were associated with an increased risk of having long COVID (class 2 adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 1.57; 95% CI, 1.18-2.09; class 4 aOR, 2.39; 95% CI, 1.73-3.30); economic instability without food insecurity (class 3) was not (aOR, 0.93; 95% CI, 0.70-1.23). Poorer social and community context (eg, high levels of discrimination and low social support) was also associated with long COVID (aOR, 2.17; 95% CI, 1.77-2.66). Sensitivity analyses stratified by age group and adjusted for race and ethnicity did not alter or attenuate these results. Conclusions and Relevance: In this study, economic instability that included food insecurity and poor social and community context were associated with greater odds of pediatric long COVID. Those with food security, despite experiencing other economic challenges, did not have greater odds of long COVID. Further study is needed to determine if addressing SDOH factors can decrease the rate of pediatric long COVID.

Emotional stimuli – such as facial expressions, images, or text – can influence behavior, including important decisions. This influence is complex as these stimuli may engage multiple psychological and physiological processes. The processes encompass (i) perception, attention, and memory, (ii) motor patterns, (iii) central and peripheral circuitry, (iv) subjective feelings, and (v) inferences regarding the stimulus’ meaning. All these processes can shape subsequent behavior. For example, a smile may communicate permission and encouragement to explore. A smile may also lift one’s conscious mood, which, in turn, may serve as a basis for more favorable judgments. However, other mechanisms can operate without involving conscious feelings. In fact, in some studies on facial expressions, researchers observe shifts in attention, perception, and memory, changes in physiology (e.g., amygdala activation, sweating, respiration, heart rate) and behavior (e.g., approach, consumption, risky decisions), without participants reporting any feelings. In other studies, observed changes in behavior are causally unrelated to changes in feelings. In this article, we propose a framework distinguishing informational, feeling-based, and unconscious affective pathways of affective influence. We illustrate our framework with key studies, focusing on the variety of influences by facial expressions.

The embodied simulation approach predicts that restricting facial movements disrupts emotion recognition. Such effects have been reported for facial and whole-body emotional expressions, but findings remain inconsistent, and it is unclear whether they generalize to emotional sounds. Previous work has also shown that restricting mimicry induces a positivity bias in valence ratings, consistent with the facial feedback hypothesis. Here, we tested whether restricting facial mimicry impairs recognition of emotional sounds across four emotion categories in a forced-choice task and whether it affects valence and arousal ratings. Drawing on previous findings indicating that vocal emotional expressions elicit facial mimicry, whereas instrumental emotional sounds do not, we expected to find an effect only for the former. Instrumental sounds were recognized less accurately and more slowly than vocalizations, particularly for negative and neutral expressions. Crucially, both frequentist and Bayesian analyses provided no evidence that the pen-in-mouth manipulation impaired emotion recognition or influenced valence or arousal ratings. Taken together, these findings underscore the need for further studies to systematically determine the conditions under which restricting emotional mimicry influences emotion processing, as well as the nature of such effects.