Publications
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Aug 2024 • Journal Article • Cognition
Infant-directed speech becomes less redundant as infants grow: Implications for language learning
AbstractDo speakers use less redundant language with more proficient interlocutors? Both the communicative efficiency framework and the language development literature predict that speech directed to younger infants should be more redundant than speech directed to older infants. Here, we test this by quantifying redundancy in infant-directed speech using entropy rate – an
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1 Aug 2024 • Journal Article • Frontiers in Communication
The child's 'or' construction: It's all about choice
Abstract“Or” is associated, in Gricean approaches, with the readings Inclusive (“at least one, and possibly both, options are true”) and Exclusive (“exactly one option is true”). Empirical findings show adults favoring Exclusive readings; but for children, the literature yields puzzling results. Laboratory comprehension tasks suggest children favor Inclusive, but naturalistic
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27 Jul 2024 • Preprint • bioRxiv
Reduced monitoring of task performance is an effective biomarker of autism
AbstractPeople continuously track and adjust their behavior using external and internal signals. Autistic individuals manifest reduced sensorimotor error correction and slower updating of perceptual priors, yielding reduced behavioral flexibility. A potential reason for this reduced flexibility is a lessened sensitivity to both external and internal feedback. A key brain region
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24 Jul 2024 • Journal Article • Journal of Neuroscience
Decoding Remapped Spatial Information in the Peri-Saccadic Period
AbstractIt has been suggested that, prior to a saccade, visual neurons predictively respond to stimuli that will fall in their receptive fields after completion of the saccade. This saccadic remapping process is thought to compensate for the shift of the visual world across the retina caused by eye movements. To map the timing of this predictive process in the brain, we recorded
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19 Jul 2024 • Journal Article • Brain Research
Memory representations are flexibly adapted to orthographic systems: A comparison of English and Hebrew
AbstractAcross languages, speech unfolds in the same temporal order, constrained by the forward flow of time. But the way phonology is spatially mapped onto orthography is language-specific, ranging from left-to-right, right-to-left, and top-to-bottom, among others. While the direction of writing systems influences how known words are visually processed, it is unclear whether
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17 Jul 2024 • Journal Article • Nature Communications
Placebo treatment affects brain systems related to affective and cognitive processes, but not nociceptive pain
AbstractDrug treatments for pain often do not outperform placebo, and a better understanding of placebo mechanisms is needed to improve treatment development and clinical practice. In a large-scale fMRI study (N = 392) with pre-registered analyses, we tested whether placebo analgesic treatment modulates nociceptive processes, and whether its effects generalize from conditioned
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16 Jul 2024 • Journal Article • Nature Human Behaviour
Humans adaptively deploy forward and backward prediction
AbstractThe formation of predictions is essential to our ability to build models of the world and use them for intelligent decision-making. Here we challenge the dominant assumption that humans form only forward predictions, which specify what future events are likely to follow a given present event. We demonstrate that in some environments, it is more efficient to use backward
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9 Jul 2024 • Journal Article • Academy of Management Proceedings
Sex Bias in Pain Management Decisions
AbstractAdequate pain treatment is critical for patients’ physical and mental health. It is therefore essential that healthcare providers extend the appropriate treatment to each and every patient in pain. Here we build on findings showing that due to psychological stereotypes, females’ pain tends to be judged as less intense than males’ pain. We investigate whether medical
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2 Jul 2024 • Journal Article • Nature Reviews Psychology
Advancing research and practice of psychological intergroup interventions
AbstractThe decline in intergroup relations evident in myriad conflicts around the world has far-reaching implications: it erodes trust and cooperation at both the individual and societal levels, hinders effective societal functioning and threatens the well-being of individuals living in such contexts. In response, researchers have developed evidence-based interventions aimed
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2 Jul 2024 • Journal Article • Memory & Cognition
Reduced benefit from long-term item frequency contributes to short-term memory deficits in dyslexia
AbstractDyslexia, a specific difficulty in acquiring proficient reading, is also characterized by reduced short-term memory (STM) capacity. Extensive research indicates that individuals with developmental dyslexia (IDDs) benefit less from exposure, and this hampers their long-term knowledge accumulation. It is well established that long-term knowledge has a great effect on
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