Phonological (speech sound) processing difficulties, including challenges with phoneme awareness, are core characteristics of developmental dyslexia. Categorical perception (CP) tasks, which assess the ability to organize the continuous acoustic speech signal into phoneme categories (e.g., /b/ vs /p/), provide insight into these challenges. CP is robust in humans, yet data from children with dyslexia are contradictory. While some studies report reduced CP in dyslexia, others report enhanced within-category discrimination, implying allophonic perception (sensitivity to phonetic variation within a category boundary). This study examines neural responses in a CP task among 4- to 5-year-old children with (at-risk, AR) and without (not-at-risk, NAR) familial risk for dyslexia, using the mismatch negativity (MMN) component. AR children exhibited MMNs to both within- and across-category contrasts, while NAR children demonstrated MMN only for across-category contrasts. These findings, consistent with allophonic perception in pre-reading AR children, align with the temporal sampling theory of developmental dyslexia.

Parental mentalizing, or the parent’s capacity to think about the child as having an inner psychological world, has been shown to play an important role in sensitive parenting and child socioemotional development. Studies suggest that high levels of stress impair (parental) mentalizing, yet surprisingly few studies have experimentally investigated this. The present study aimed to address this gap by investigating the impact of child-focused stress on parental mentalizing measured using a newly developed self-report questionnaire, following an experimental design with a computer-controlled baby simulator in a sample of 29 community mothers. Both subjective arousal, measured by a self-report item, and biological arousal, assessed through galvanic skin response, were measured throughout the experiment. Attachment dimensions, childhood trauma, and borderline personality disorder (BPD) features were assessed at baseline. Results demonstrated that the induction of child-focused stress was associated with an increase in parental mentalizing difficulties. Increases in mentalizing difficulties were, in turn, associated with increases in subjective and biological arousal following the simulator task. Finally, attachment anxiety and childhood trauma were positively correlated with both arousal and parental mentalizing difficulties in the simulator task, whereas attachment avoidance and BPD features were not. The implications of these findings for early intervention are discussed.

This article focuses on French espèce de + NP! ‘you + NP!’ to make a case that impoliteness can be conventionalized in linguistic form beyond the level of the lexicon. We argue that the pattern can be considered a construction in its own right and also that it is strongly conventionalized for impoliteness in particular. To support this claim, we adopt both a corpus-based and a questionnaire-based approach. The corpus study reveals not only that espèce de + NP! mainly serves impolite purposes in actual usage but also that it tends to force an impolite interpretation onto noun phrases that do not themselves express negative evaluation. Our questionnaire study complements these findings by showing, inter alia, that the construction is generally judged to be ill-formed when combining with positively evaluative or evaluatively neutral nouns and, at the same time, that such nouns are indeed rated as impolite in the construction. It also points to a difference between calling someone espèce d’idiot! ‘you idiot!’ and calling them just idiot!. We conclude the article with some reflections on why espèce de + NP! is an impoliteness construction.

This study investigates how Ukrainian asylum seekers in Switzerland experience administrative burdens during their early integration under temporary protection status S. Drawing on the concepts of bureaucratic self-efficacy and social capital, it examines how individual and social resources shape perceived administrative burden. Data were collected through a survey distributed via a Zurich-based NGO’s Telegram channel, which also included open-ended responses providing additional context to participants’ experiences. Findings show that higher bureaucratic self-efficacy significantly reduces perceived burden, while support from third-sector organizations – representing linking social capital – also plays a critical role. In contrast, bonding capital (e.g., family and friends) and general social media use have limited impact. The study contributes to both public administration and migration research by refining the conceptual understanding of social capital, highlighting the value of intermediaries in public service delivery, and emphasizing the importance of designing accessible systems supported by institutional and civil society actors.

The article promotes a new methodological approach to examining the development of European law that significantly advances our understanding of European legal integration. Building on interdisciplinary debates on European law between historians, lawyers, and political and social scientists, the article argues for analysing European law by approaching a legal text from a bottom-up perspective. Our understanding of legal text includes all texts that jurists consider as legal and use in judicialised conflicts.

Examining how a range of actors have used legal text to shape conflicts instead of taking ‘integration’ (or lack thereof) as the ontological lens yields important new insights into the functioning of European law over time. The case studies in this special issue trialling our methodological approach show that, first, certain areas of European law come into view including non-discrimination, the environment, and human rights. Second, social actors in the Member States and beyond were from the beginning involved in co-creating these areas of law, which indicates that European legal integration has always been more than an elite-driven project. Third, actors have mobilised European law for various reasons, often not tied to ‘Europe’. They have used European law to translate a range of political issues into legal questions. Finally, legal knowledge and expertise – and lawyers – have been central to European integration even if this is not reduced to an understanding of the binary relationship between European institutions and the Member States.

Hormone exposure in utero affects male- and female-typical behavior in animals, and these effects may persist in the next generation. Prenatal exposure to diethylstilbestrol (DES), a potent estrogen and endocrine disruptor, has been associated with a tendency toward greater heterosexual behavior in women, but the association in the next generation has not been studied. We evaluated the associations of maternal prenatal DES exposure with sexual behavior, sexual identity, and gender identity in 982 female offspring participating in the National Cancer Institute’s DES Third Generation Study, a cohort born to mothers who were prenatally exposed and unexposed to DES. Odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were estimated from logistic regression models that included birth year. The ORs were 0.71 (CI 0.46–1.1) for DES in relation to non-heterosexual compared with heterosexual behavior, and 0.99 (CI 0.55–1.8) for non-heterosexual identity, compared with heterosexual identity. Results were similar after additional adjustment for education. Only three individuals reported a gender identity distinct from what was reported by the mother at cohort inception, preventing meaningful quantitative analysis of DES and gender identity. These data do not provide evidence of differences in sexual behavior and sexual identity in female offspring of mothers with and without prenatal exposure to DES.

In recent years, scholars have investigated the ‘corruption voting puzzle’, ie why, despite an overwhelming distaste for corruption, voters often collectively fail to ‘throw the rascals out’. While previous literature has largely investigated why voters support corrupt incumbents, our focus lies on nonvoters. Using an original two-wave panel data with Romanian voters just prior to and after the 2020 municipal elections, we test three hypotheses. First, that there is a discrepancy between voters’ intentions and their actual voting behavior (e.g. ‘norms versus actions’). Second, that those most pessimistic about other voters’ intentions to come out to the polls to vote out corrupt incumbents are most likely to abstain. Finally, building on the collective action literature, whether providing such pessimistic voters with information about the intentions of other voters will decrease abstention and increase opposition voting. Using original observational and experimental data, we demonstrate empirical support for our three hypotheses.

Cognitive archaeology focuses on the mental processes behind human material culture, exploring the human mind for patterns of behavioural strategies and their corresponding material expression in artefacts. Sharing some of the aims and perspectives of cultural anthropology, cognitive archaeology has also been called ‘Evolutionary Cognitive Archaeology’ (ECA) when it refers to hominin evolution. However, despite the abundance of publications and research projects that focus on ECA, this is a relatively new discipline, in which the earliest analyses were principally oriented to the appearance and evolution of language and symbolism. As there is no standardized method for investigating cognitive evolution, ECA researchers use multidisciplinary and wider theoretical models and methodological approaches. In this sense, partially because it is not unique to the genus Homo, stone toolmaking has been, and still is, an essential criterion for inferring hominids’ cognitive capacities. Aiming to contribute to ongoing discussions, this paper addresses and reviews some of the more relevant evolutionary cognitive approaches related to stone-tool manufacture in general and Acheulean technology in particular, aimed at building a synthesized chronological review of the discipline.

This article considers the ambivalence of late colonial race politics in France and French Africa through the life and work of celebrated ethnographic filmmaker and pioneer of cinéma vérité, Jean Rouch (1917- 2004). Part of a special issue on late colonialism in Africa, this study shifts the focus from the continent itself to the legacies of late colonialism in Africa for race relations in postcolonial Europe.

While the idea of predistribution is gaining traction, it may seem inherently elusive. The source of confusion is the prefix ‘pre’, which denotes priority or prevention. This paper proposes a new functional definition of predistribution that is practically useful and unifies different predistributive policies. Through defending predistribution as policies of ex ante distribution, I offer a philosophically robust notion of priority (‘procedural priority’) and different functions of prevention that help make sense of predistribution. I also develop typologies of different predistributive policies and explore justificatory grounds and strengths of predistribution. I emphasize instrumental reasons for supporting predistribution.

Legal reforms in California are reshaping archaeological education and professional training in ways that may soon warrant national attention. These changes challenge traditional pedagogical models, particularly in bachelor’s and master’s degree programs that have long served as entry points into cultural resource management (CRM) careers. Drawing on one of the most extensive surveys of CRM organizations in California, this article examines how employers are responding to this evolving landscape. The data reveal a demand for field experience, local familiarity, knowledge of relevant laws, and interpersonal skills. We contextualize these findings within broader efforts to reform training and research models in California and discuss tensions in this shifting terrain. We advocate for a new public archaeology that redefines training and professional pathways through collaboration, accountability, and a deeper commitment to the communities that archaeology serves.

Early identification of risk for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms can enable more timely interventions and improve long-term outcomes. While previous research has linked various maternal and perinatal factors to ADHD, few studies have examined these predictors collectively in a single comprehensive analysis. This study aimed to assess whether later ADHD symptoms can be predicted from information available at birth, specifically ethnicity, maternal metabolic markers, mental health, and socioeconomic status. It additionally aimed to identify the most influential predictors. Using data from the Born in Bradford (BiB) study, we applied multiple linear regression (LR) and machine learning techniques to predict ADHD symptoms as measured by the Hyperactivity/Inattention subscale of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). A 10-fold cross-validated LR model explained 6.97% of the variance in SDQ scores. In the random forest model, infant male sex and maternal smoking during pregnancy emerged as the top predictors. These findings provide proof of principle for early identification of children at risk of ADHD. Future models may benefit from incorporating additional perinatal data to improve predictive accuracy.

This study sheds light on the diffusion of knowledge production as an institutional norm among central, development, and investment banks. It builds on an original database of 24,435 peer-reviewed scientific items published by a pool of 237 central banks, development banks, and investment banks from 1966 to 2023. The focus is on their interactive dynamics, analysed through a two-fold approach: Granger-Causality analysis for linear relationships and a multivariate Markov chain approach for non-linear interactions. Central banks emerge as leaders in scientific production, influencing development and investment banks. Results lead to further questions about inter-institutional agenda-setting, such as how central banks shape research priorities, the extent to which their intellectual leadership impacts others’ priorities, and the mechanisms through which institutional norms are diffused and reinforced within the global financial and policymaking landscape.

Cochlear implants (CIs) are neural prostheses that restore some level of hearing capacity, albeit conveying a less fine-grained speech signal than normal hearing conditions. For example, CIs convey altered fundamental frequency (F0) information, resulting in atypical lexical stress perception (e.g., distinguishing between the noun CONtent and the adjective conTENT) in languages in which this feature rests on F0 modulations. CI users can compensate for the degraded nature of the acoustic input by exploiting the audiovisual affordances of human communication, weighing more heavily the visual information provided by speakers (e.g., lip movements and gestures). Recent studies showed that, in individuals with normal hearing, the timing of simple up-and-down movements of the hand (i.e., beat gestures) biases lexical stress perception. The present study tested if the timing of beat gestures produced by an avatar can bias Dutch lexical stress perception in vocoded speech, which limits the reliability of F0 information in a way that mimics CI-hearing conditions. The effect of gestures in vocoded speech was particularly pronounced when hearing an ambiguous or the least frequent stress pattern in Dutch. These results suggest that (even artificially generated) beat gestures can support the perception of vocoded speech, especially when processing less frequent prosodic features.

Amidst a high-profile ecoclimate crisis, archaeology is rightly revisiting its relationship with ecology and seeking to orient its work towards pressing environmental concerns. Compelling proposals have been made for the potential of archaeological science to directly inform ecological problems and practices. We consider the strengths of and challenges for these scientific approaches here, alongside raising the prospect that archaeology can also harness less tangible analytical strengths – its expertise in human–landscape relationships (people in nature) and in landscape change (time) in attending to wider, but equally important, correlates of an ecological emergency.