new preprint of work with @dimitrisbolis.bsky.social that will be published this summer! across the cognitive sciences, there has been a recent emphasis on *interaction* in studies of behavior. here, we take the implications of this shift seriously. osf.io/preprints/ps...

The dialectical underpinnings of multilevel selection Evolution isn’t flat: new levels arise through conflict and then reshape the very dynamics that brought them into being

The Dialectics of Multi-Level Selection in Evolutionary Biology - Dialectical Systems

Introduction Dialectical thinking in biology has famously been put forward by the eponymous book of Levins and Lewontin (1985). Much of the book was dedicated to the interpenetration between organisms...

dialecticalsystems.eu

Validating dynamic time warping as a measure of gesture form similarity. New paper by @shoakamine.bsky.social , @dingemansemark.bsky.social & @asliozyurek.bsky.social doi.org/10.3758/s13428-026-02975-5

Validating dynamic time warping as a measure of gesture form similarity - Behavior Research Methods

Dynamic time warping (DTW) is a well-known algorithm used to assess the similarity between signals of varying lengths. Initially developed for automatic speech recognition, DTW has found applications in psycholinguistics, particularly in analyzing gesture form similarity. An open question in this domain is how effectively DTW captures gesture form similarity. Here, we validate DTW against human annotations of gesture form similarity across two multimodal interaction corpora and explore its utility as an automatic, continuous measure of gesture form similarity. Our findings reveal weak to moderate correlations between DTW distance and the number of similar gesture features – such as handshape, movement, orientation, and position – suggesting that DTW serves as a useful proxy for gesture form similarity. Additionally, we highlight the importance of qualitative analysis of raw data and DTW predictions in enhancing DTW’s predictive accuracy. Our study offers a rigorous validation of DTW as a measure of gesture form similarity and presents a detailed framework for preprocessing motion tracking data and calculating DTW distance. While none of the methods is perfect, the combination of automatic and manual measures provides a comprehensive approach to understanding and measuring gesture form similarity.

doi.org

Happy to report that our survey study on the diversity with which people seem to experience their mental imagery is now published in RSOS :) doi.org/10.1098/rsos... I posted a longer thread summarising the findings some months ago when we first put out the preprint: bsky.app/profile/samp...

Sam Schwarzkopf@sampendu.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Long time in the making: our preprint of survey study on the diversity with how people seem to experience #mentalimagery. Suggests #aphantasia should be redefined as absence of depictive thought, not merely "not seeing". Some more take home msg: #psychskysci #neuroscience doi.org/10.1101/2025...

🎉 Excited to share our publication in PNAS! 🎉 What happens when our stream of consciousness turns towards the body? Our fMRI study of 536 individuals finds that 'body-wandering' is associated with patterns of brain connectivity, physiology, affect, and mental health: www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

Information transfer between the brain's hemispheres is not passive process. It is an active process under top-down influence. Interhemispheric transfer of sensory and working memory information is dictated by behavioral strategy doi.org/10.64898/202... #neuroscience

Our new review paper ‘Multimodal encoding of motion events in speech, gesture and cognition’ is out 🎉 (w. Aslı Özyürek & Ezgi Mamus) doi.org/10.1017/lang...

New work with @zenamello.bsky.social -- using the person-centered approach, we found that social class discrimination, particularly discrimination that occurs in school negatively relates to academic outcomes. Classism from teachers was most common onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

Social Class Discrimination and Academic Success: A Person‐Centered Approach Among Adolescents Disadvantaged in Social Class

Introduction Prior research indicates that social class is strongly associated with academic outcomes such as GPA. However, little work explores the role that social discrimination plays in this rel...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Nonlinear phenomena are acoustic irregularities widespread in animal & human vocal repertoires, as well as music. This #PhilTransB issue brings together studies introducing new ideas and exploring future directions for this growing field of study: royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3...

Insightful commentary by Antonio Narzisi on the deep resonances between Gestalt theory and recent advances of social neuroscience link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Gestalt contributions to relational and interactional neuroscience. Reply to authors: Understanding and explaining differences across minds in social interaction: insights from social neuroscience and...

This commentary responds to Kamp et al. (Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci 275:2199-2201, 2025) editorial on understanding differences across minds in social interaction. It fully supports their relat...

link.springer.com

📢 New preprint from the lab🧠 ▶️doi.org/10.64898/2026.03.12.710517 What does fMRI connectivity actually reflect at the neural level? The natural intuition is: more neural activity = more connectivity! Using cortical perturbations we show this is not necessarily the case: sometimes less is more! 👇🧵

Bayesian psychophysical modelling of cardiac & respiratory interoception (N=241) showed no cross-domain associations in sensitivity, precision, or metacognition, indicating that interoceptive performance is organ-specific. @leahbanellis.bsky.social @micahgallen.com www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Interoceptive ability is uncorrelated across respiratory and cardiac axes in a large scale psychophysical study - Communications Psychology

Bayesian psychophysical modelling of cardiac and respiratory interoception (N=241) showed no cross-domain associations in sensitivity, precision, or metacognition, indicating that interoceptive perfor...

nature.com

Using ecological momentary assessment and multilevel timeseries models, this study quantifies loneliness inertia and its links to perceived social threat and social behavior, identifying dynamic patterns that help explain persistence of chronic loneliness. www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Loneliness modulates social threat detection in daily life - Communications Psychology

Using ecological momentary assessment and multilevel time-series models, we quantify loneliness inertia and its links to perceived social threat and social behavior, identifying dynamic patterns that ...

nature.com

Has Broadening the Autism Spectrum Led to Overdiagnosis? | Psychology Today www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ment...

Has Broadening the Autism Spectrum Led to Overdiagnosis?

An autism expert sparks fierce debate over whether the spectrum has grown too broad, leading to misdiagnosis in children and adults in cases that are milder or unclear.

psychologytoday.com

1/9 I’m excited to share our new pre-print! 𝐈𝐧 𝐃𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐮𝐧𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭: 𝐇𝐲𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐇𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧–𝐀𝐈 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 with @abeba.bsky.social, Thomas Pollak, and @leoschilbach.bsky.social osf.io/preprints/ps...

"I interact therefore I am"

How do we deal with rich, multilevel, and multimodal data? In a new preprint, @rachaelkee.bsky.social and I sketch an answer! For all the details, and the preprint link, see Rachael’s thread. Be sure to give her a follow, especially if you’re interested in neuroscience, sleep, and media!

Rachael Kee@rachaelkee.bsky.social · 5mo ago

🚨 New Preprint Alert 🚨 Communication science has no shortage of data. But what do we do with all of it? Experience sampling, sensors, digital trace, location aware observations are growing in popularity and scale.

www.nature.com/articles/s44...

The complex and emerging landscape of autism - Nature Mental Health

Autism research is entering a new and pivotal phase, as growing recognition of its biological and clinical heterogeneity presents challenges to previous paradigms and the adequacy of a single diagnost...

nature.com

This semester, we will be reading selected chapters from "Everything flows", edited by @djnicholson.bsky.social and John Dupré in our Reading Group. All interested are welcome to join us at @ruhr-uni-bochum.de (room NDEF04/346). If needed, we can also arrange hybrid meetings. #HPBio #PhDSky

New paper led by SJ Shao in @commspsychol.nature.com. Across 20 days of EMA (5x daily), momentary loneliness prospectively predicted heightened social threat perception and social withdrawal. Trait loneliness amplified loneliness–rejection coupling and social disengagement @emoriebeck.bsky.social

Loneliness modulates social threat detection in daily life - Communications Psychology

Using ecological momentary assessment and multilevel time-series models, we quantify loneliness inertia and its links to perceived social threat and social behavior, identifying dynamic patterns that ...

nature.com

📢 PhD position in Developmental Language Modelling (PLZ RT) What can human language acquisition teach us about training language models? Join us as a PhD! mpi.nl/career-education/vacancies/vacancy/fully-funded-4-year-phd-position-developmental-language @carorowland.bsky.social @mpi-nl.bsky.social

Temporally-precise sensory encoding of predicted content, entraining motor oscillations to derive time. @akalt.bsky.social's first study out @currentbiology.bsky.social, testing parts of this idea (tinyurl.com/TiCSKaltenma...). Huge thanks @leverhulme.ac.uk ac.uk @erc.europa.eu, great work Aaron!

Fixed and flexible perceptual rhythms

Our sensory inputs are never identical across time and contain temporal structure. Cognitive scientists have recently been fascinated by how these sensory rhythms interact with neural oscillatory rhyt...

tinyurl.com

Aaron Kaltenmaier@akalt.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Excited to share that our MEG project is now out in Current Biology! We show how visual content codes relate to motor oscillations in telling time. Huge thanks to Quirin Gehmacher, Peter Kok, Matt Davis and Clare Press (bsky links below).🧵 authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

Sycophantic AI distorts reality by returning responses that are biased to reinforce existing beliefs. "sycophantic AI distorts belief, manufacturing certainty where there should be doubt." Unbiased sampling produces discovery rates 5X higher! arxiv.org/pdf/2602.14270

“The rest is silence.” In his final notebook, Vygotsky wrote that he would die “at the summit”, having glimpsed a promised land he would never enter. Nearly a century later, we are still finding our way there. A note on Vygotsky and a psychology of becoming:

Dimitris Bolis@dimitrisbolis.bsky.social · 5mo ago

dimitrisbolis.substack.com/p/beyond-sil...

Understanding social brains

Understanding social brains

Social environment and species-specific experiences of macaque monkeys shape the development and plasticity of the amygdala.

buff.ly

“The rest is silence.” In his final notebook, Vygotsky wrote that he would die “at the summit”, having glimpsed a promised land he would never enter. Nearly a century later, we are still finding our way there. A note on Vygotsky and a psychology of becoming:

Dimitris Bolis@dimitrisbolis.bsky.social · 5mo ago

dimitrisbolis.substack.com/p/beyond-sil...

dimitrisbolis.substack.com/p/beyond-sil...

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A Predictive Processing Framework for Joint Action and Communication

Humans act together to achieve feats they could never achieve alone and communicate to ensure alignment of meaning and understanding across different …

sciencedirect.com

"To encompass in research the process of a given thing’s development in all its phases and changes—from birth to death—means to discover its nature, its essence, for it is only in movement that a body shows what it is."

1/6 Excited to share the call for posters & registration for the 2nd XSCAPE Workshop: "Varieties of Externalism" ! 📅 Friday, April 10th, 2026 — Gallery Room, Bramber House, University of Sussex Registration is free but places are limited. 🧵