The similarities between 2D summary statistics and fragmentary 3D vision suggest common principles. Specifically, both 2D and 3D visual processing discard information whenever that information is redundant or inessential for ecologically valid vision in a consistent world. Change blindness and other illusions result from information loss without awareness, when the corresponding consistency assumptions are violated.

While I agree with Rosenholtz that attention as mechanism should often be “banned”—this conception is confused and often explanatorily useless—I suggest that the real crisis is the proliferation of different, too often underspecified, mechanisms as attention. Attention is not an explainer. It is what we are trying to explain. Confusion on this point leads to unnecessary theoretical disunity.

The debate on attention’s validity in cognitive psychology persists. However, attention remains essential beyond peripheral vision constraints, as it is a resource-limited process (Norman & Bobrow, 1975). The outright dismissal of attention proposed in the target article risks conceptual voids without superior alternatives. Instead, refining attention as a theoretical framework offers a pragmatic path for advancing cognitive research.

We do not share Rosenholtz’s central worry that visual attention is in “crisis”. There are many examples of notable progress in understanding how the brain prioritizes and gathers information about the environment where “attention,” as a relatively loose concept, has worked well. We also discuss how focusing on a single definition, the field can be led astray.

Why have some organisms evolved processes of attention as distinct from perception in general? Investigation of freely behaving organisms (not in laboratory tasks) suggests that attention as distinct from perception is critical for goal-directed organisms’ value-based decision making. As such, the target of attention is not punctate stimuli, but whole situations (scenes) that are relevant to that decision.

Rosenholtz’s framework reconciles contradictory findings in ensemble perception by attributing perceptual failures to task complexity and peripheral summary-statistic limitations rather than attentional lapses. This perspective also reframes the attentional blink (AB) as a manifestation of temporal crowding rather than a failure of selective attention. Philosophically, this challenges the idea that attention is constitutive of action, suggesting instead that task constraints shape both perception and agency.

We agree that while there is a “crisis” in visual attention, the Rosenholtz’ article does not offer bold enough solutions. We argue that the real crisis extends beyond attention, reflecting a broader need for theoretical integration. Addressing this requires abandoning artificial subdivisions and adopting a more ecologically valid, contextually grounded approach to cognition.

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.