We perceive key aspects of familiar environments almost immediately, while perception in unfamiliar environments is slower. In this review, we examine the distinct roles of recent versus accumulative long-term exposure in enabling this efficiency. Accumulative statistics underlie the formation of stable categories (e.g. syllables in our native language), whereas recent events bias our online predictions toward the current context. Typically developing individuals place greater weight on recent events than single earlier events, but also weight accumulative statistics. However, individuals with developmental atypicalities show atypical patterns of statistical learning: individuals with dyslexia tend to assign less weight to long-term statistics, which affects their long-term categories. By contrast, autistics utilize long-term statistics like neurotypicals, but are slower in updating their priors and motor plans by recent events, which reduces their flexibility. These observations suggest that the dynamics of statistical learning impact the strengths and weaknesses of people's social and cognitive skill acquisition.

The present study examined the association between the therapeutic alliance and social anxiety symptoms during internet-delivered cognitive behavior therapy (ICBT) for social anxiety disorder (SAD). We examined 162 individuals diagnosed with SAD who underwent therapist-assisted ICBT and completed measures of the therapeutic alliance weekly during a randomized controlled trial. We used a novel modeling strategy and modeled changes in the therapeutic alliance over time using sinusoidal models. We found that a model that incorporated both a linear component and a sinusoidal component (r² = 0.72), explained significantly more variance than models using only linear (r² = 0.42) or only sinusoidal (r² = 0.41) components. We also found that higher average levels of the alliance as well as greater increases in the therapeutic alliance during treatment were associated with greater reductions in social anxiety during treatment. Finally, we found that greater fluctuations around the slope of alliance were associated with greater reductions in social anxiety during treatment (above and beyond average alliance and increases in alliance). Considering fluctuations around a linear slope may be a useful model for the ups and downs experienced in the therapeutic alliance over the course of therapy. Fluctuations in alliance may not be a sign of negative processes, but could potentially indicate a healthy ebb and flow of the alliance that is predictive of better outcomes.

Electrooculography (EOG) has long been a reliable tool for detecting blinks and eye movements. However, its application in naturalistic and unrestricted settings has been little explored. We compared the accuracy of EOG-based eye tracking to a video-based tracking system during free viewing with unrestricted head and eye movements, in both normal lighting and complete darkness. Our results show that, with high signal-to-noise data, EOG reliably detects blinks and saccades, comparable to video-based tracking in light and in darkness. Applying our algorithms to EOG data recorded from blind participants or in sighted during eyes closed, eye movements are still effectively identified. In both participant groups, detected blinks and saccades retain characteristic movement profiles such as blink rate and saccade main sequence, though other features like blink length, preferred saccade direction, saccade rate, and saccade amplitude differ. Interestingly, these differences closely align between sighted individuals with eyes closed and blind participants, while remaining distinguishable from surrogate data, highlighting their genuine physiological basis. These findings affirm EOG’s robustness as a tool for eye movement and blink analysis in both controlled and naturalistic environments. Our work further emphasizes the presence of blinks and saccadic muscular movements both in sighted individuals with eyes closed and in the congenitally blind.

Infants can use statistical patterns to segment continuous speech into words, a crucial task in language acquisition. Experimental studies typically investigate this ability using artificial languages with a uniform frequency distribution, where all words occur equally often. However, words in natural language follow a highly skewed distribution conforming to a Zipfian power law, in which few words occur frequently while many occur infrequently. Prior work shows that such skewed distributions facilitate word segmentation, but the experimental evidence for this has been limited to individuals aged ten years or older, leaving unclear whether this effect arises from accumulated linguistic experience or is already present in the early stages of language learning. To address this, we conducted a word segmentation study with 7- to 9-month-old infants. Infants were exposed to a continuous speech stream containing four artificial words, presented either in a uniform or skewed frequency distribution. We found that infants exposed to the skewed distribution showed a greater looking time difference between familiar and unfamiliar words compared to those in the uniform condition. These findings suggest that skewed distributions facilitate learning during early linguistic development, highlighting the impact of such distributions on language acquisition. Moreover, these findings suggest that the widespread use of uniform distributions in lab-based studies may underestimate infants' segmentation abilities.

ObjectivesNeuropsychological difficulties are common following non-central nervous system (CNS) cancer. Five years after treatment, up to 40% of survivors still report deficits, supported by neuropsychological tests and MRI findings. As these deficits can pose significant difficulties in finding and maintaining employment, we developed a novel vocational rehabilitation day program for non-CNS cancer survivors. The 6-month program included individual and group interventions addressing cognitive and emotional difficulties, healthy lifestyle, and job placement. In a non-randomized controlled study, we compared changes in employment status and in cognitive and emotional variables, before and after program participation.Methods46 individuals in the rehabilitation group were tested before and after participation in the program. Inclusion criteria were completion of treatment for non-CNS cancer, unemployment, and cognitive deficits shown in a neuropsychological assessment before the beginning of the program. They were compared to a control group of 15 participants who met the same inclusion criteria and were tested upon recruitment and 6 months later. Measures included employment status, a computerized cognitive test battery, and questionnaires assessing the emotional variables depression, anxiety, and fear of cancer recurrence.ResultsThe emotional variables showed greater improvement in the rehabilitation group than in the control group. There was no group by time interaction for the cognitive variables. At the second timepoint, 67% of the rehabilitation group were employed, compared to 33% of the control group.ConclusionThis first-of-its-kind program met its primary goal of supporting reintegration into the workforce among non-CNS cancer survivors with neuropsychological difficulties, alongside additional positive effects.

The human ability to track overlapping and asynchronous time intervals is crucial for a myriad of tasks, from engaging in conversation to driving a car. Additionally, unexpected events can trigger rapid, on-the-fly adjustments, necessitating quick updating of both timing intervals and action planning. Such events require immediate recalibration of decision variables to allow the system to promptly adapt to new stimuli and update the timing mechanisms accordingly. In this study, we assessed human male and female participants’ ability to track two simultaneous and asynchronous beep trains and determine which one ended first. Due to the stochastic nature of the beeps, participants frequently had to reorient their intended actions in order to identify which train was more likely to have ended. We found that they were able to do this accurately, demonstrating timing performance that was comparable with that of a single train. At the neural level, we recorded slowly evolving EEG potentials that encoded a single interval, the one associated with the currently intended action. Upon an intention switch, when participants had to reorient to a previously unintended action, the EEG response amplitude was reset to reflect the new intended interval. In contrast, when participants were instructed to disregard one of the beep trains, EEG responses solely reflected the intervals of the sequence they attended to. This flexibility in response highlights the brain9s ability to dynamically reconfigure cognitive processes in real time, ensuring that actions remain contextually appropriate despite sudden changes in the environment.

Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD) stemming from childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is characterized by profound interpersonal difficulties in later life. Despite the crucial role empathy plays in social functioning, the specific deficits in emotional and cognitive empathy in CPTSD remain understudied. This study employs a rich, naturalistic empathy task to investigate empathic responses among women with CPTSD following childhood sexual abuse. Female participants with CPTSD following CSA and female controls viewed autobiographical videos containing emotional pain, while providing dynamic ratings of their own distress and post-viewing assessments of their own and the targets' emotions.

The results showed that the CPTSD group had higher levels of baseline and sustained anxiety compared to the controls, which is consistent with their heightened distress and hyperarousal clinical profiles. Emotional empathy operationalized as synchrony between participants' and targets' distress ratings, was significantly lower in the CPTSD group, indicating diminished alignment with others' emotional experiences. Cognitive deficits were evident in the systematic underestimation of targets' anger.

This study significantly contributes to the understanding of empathy deficits in CPTSD. Importantly, it holds potential to inform therapeutic strategies targeted for this population. Specifically, the findings suggest that interventions aimed at improving emotional attunement and fostering the recognition and expression of anger may enhance social functioning and therapeutic outcomes for women with complex trauma stemming from childhood sexual abuse.

Cognitive reappraisal is one of the most commonly used and effective emotion regulation strategies. This is partly because reappraisal targets a key characteristic of emotion – namely, what an emotion is about (i.e., intentionality). It is commonly assumed that whereas emotions have intentionality because they are about something, mood states do not have intentionality because they are typically not about anything in particular. Given that reappraisal targets intentionality, and mood states theoretically lack intentionality, we hypothesized that reappraisal would be less effective in regulating moods than in regulating emotions. We tested this hypothesis in two studies, one in which we assessed naturally occurring experiences and regulation in daily life (Study 1, N = 184), and another in which we manipulated experiences and regulation in a controlled experiment (Study 2, N = 65). In both studies, we compared the effects of cognitive reappraisal with those of distraction, which is another effective emotion regulation strategy that does not target intentionality. As expected, cognitive reappraisal, but not distraction, was more effective in regulating emotions than moods. These findings suggest that the regulation of emotions may differ from the regulation of moods and that strategies that may be effective in regulating one type of affective state may be less effective in regulating another.

Israel’s year-long protest calling for Prime Minister Netanyahu’s resignation created an opportunity to examine unique factors influencing sustained collective action (SCA; i.e., repeated participation in social movement action for the same cause). As little is known about how to explain such dedication, we compared a well-established set of predictors of one-time collective action (CA) with a new predictors set of SCA, focusing on collective instrumental and socio-emotional (CISE) motivations grounded in previous participation experience, to predict subsequent participation. In a unique longitudinal design, we tracked protestors over 6 weeks. Our findings showed that less emotional exhaustion, more subjective effort into participation, and a perceived closer timeframe for desired social change positively predicted SCA. This differentiates SCA from CA—moreover, as one-time CA predictors did not predict SCA, this suggests a need for a new model to explain SCA based on CISE motivations that reflect continuous goal pursuit.

Values are central for life choices, including vocational and academic decisions. Importantly, vocational choices begin within the school system, where selecting specific study tracks can impact later career development. How do values relate to adolescents’ academic track choices? Study 1 focused on Israeli students who chose exact science tracks compared to those who chose other tracks. Adolescents, reached through panel recruitment (N = 216, age: M = 16.66, SD = 0.95; 63% female), reported their values and listed their academic tracks. Openness to change related positively to studying in exact science tracks. Study 2 used a different approach, with Israeli participants, recruited through social media (N = 125, age: M = 17.21, SD = 0.60; 52% female), self-reporting their main academic track and values. Additionally, a new questionnaire was introduced to measure the students’ value-based academic goals (VAGS). Exact science students held the highest self-enhancement academic goals, conservation values, and conservation academic goals. Artistic students had the highest openness values and the lowest conservation values and academic goals. Psychology students had the highest self-transcendence values and academic goals and lowest openness to change academic goals. Additionally, exact science students prioritized long-term goals more than those in other tracks. Similarities and differences in the two samples’ findings are discussed, in light of the different strategies to assign students to their study tracks. Results are reviewed in light of Schwartz’s values theory and Holland’s vocational environment model, promoting our understanding of the association between values and high school academic track choices. Theoretical and practical implications are suggested for the concepts of value-based academic goals.