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"Theory of mind, leisure reading, and reading comprehension in adulthood" 📢New paper from: Virginia Tompkins, Derek Montgomery, & Xin Feng www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Theory of mind, leisure reading, and reading comprehension in adulthoodTheory of mind, our understanding of our own and others' mental states, is related to leisure reading as well as reading comprehension. However, most …www.sciencedirect.com

Reading fiction may practice simulating the mental states of others, which reinforces theory of mind abilities, which are needed to comprehend text passages because characters’ mental states and motivations drive the plot.

These results suggest that adults who read more fiction for pleasure tend to have greater understanding of others’ mental states, which in turn predicts greater reading comprehension.

Theory of mind was also significantly related to reading comprehension. Controlling for other factors (e.g., vocabulary), theory of mind mediated the relationship between leisure reading and reading comprehension.

Young adults who enjoyed reading more were also more likely to have greater theory of mind, for example, the ability to follow embedded thoughts in narratives, and understand characters’ motivations.

Reading fiction for pleasure was significantly related to theory of mind (the understanding of our own and others’ mental states) in young adults, for example, the ability to determine the expression in another’s eyes.

This study integrated these lines of research in an adult sample, which can inform theories of reading comprehension in adulthood, which largely ignore the role of theory of mind.

"Sensory attenuation scales with the strength of action-outcome coupling: A psychophysical study" 📢New paper from: Adrien Paire, Lilian Nguyen, Hélène Gomes de Araujo, Dorine Vergilino-Perez, & Céline Paeye www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Sensory attenuation scales with the strength of action-outcome coupling: A psychophysical studySensory attenuation refers to the reduced neural or perceptual responses elicited by self-generated stimuli relative to externally generated ones. Yet…www.sciencedirect.com

Sensory attenuation thus scales with the strength of the action-outcome coupling, in line with the hybrid prediction model of Dogge et al. (2019): overlearned couplings would rely on motor-based forward models, novel ones on broader predictive mechanisms.

We compared an overlearned coupling (keypress → tone) with a novel one (saccade → tone). Keypress-generated tones were perceived as less loud than passively presented tones; saccade-generated tones, as quieter when their occurrence was more strongly expected.

But behavioral findings remain inconsistent, perhaps because studies differ in the strength of the action-outcome coupling, that is, how reliably an action predicts its sensory consequence.

Self-generated stimuli often elicit reduced perceptual and neural responses relative to externally generated ones (sensory attenuation).

"Creative foraging and the explore–exploit trade-off in knowledge networks" 📢New paper from: Kara Kedrick, Kyana Burhite, Iris Vilares, & Paul Schrater www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

"Can reasonable people disagree about right and wrong? The determinants and implications of perceiving moral reasonableness" 📢New paper from: Arvid Samuelson & Audun Dahl www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Can reasonable people disagree about right and wrong? The determinants and implications of perceiving moral reasonablenessWhen people disagree about deeply held moral convictions, conflicts can seem inevitable. This paper proposes that conflicts can be avoided, and respec…www.sciencedirect.com

Seeing someone as reasonable is not the same as agreeing with them, but it is powerful. As such, it can be used and abused. Studying how they work is essential for understanding (and resisting) how political conflict gets manufactured.

We find that a key to seeing someone as reasonable is to believe an issue is harder. When issues are harder, there are more ways that a good-faith, competent person can disagree. Seeing someone as reasonable predicts sociability over hostility.

"Embodying the other using the sixth finger illusion" New paper by Holly Blood, Denise Cadete and Matthew Longo @mattlongo.bsky.social @birkbeckpsychology.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Using another person’s finger as the extra digit, the illusion made someone else’s finger feel like their own, even when the real-life volunteer was in full view.

"Productivity matters for the neural processing of novel words, but not existing ones" 📢New paper from: Marianne Azar & Alec Marantz www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Productivity matters for the neural processing of novel words, but not existing onesEvery day, we are likely to encounter novel words. We might even make those ourselves from familiar parts of words we know, creating something new and…www.sciencedirect.com

These findings invite the field to reassess our understanding of lexicality and to treat it more as a cognitively evaluable metric instead of a binary variable.