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The ego depletion effect is one of the most famous phenomena in social psychology. A recent meta-analysis showed that after accounting for small-studies effects by using a newly developed method called PET-PEESE, the ego depletion effect was indistinguishable from zero. However, it is too early to draw such rushing conclusion because of the inappropriate usage of PET-PEESE. The current paper reported a stricter and updated meta-analysis of ego depletion by carefully inspecting problems in the previous meta-analysis, including new studies not covered by it, and testing the effectiveness of each depleting task. The results suggest that attention video should be an ineffective depleting task, whereas emotion video should be the most effective one. Future studies are needed to confirm the effectiveness of each depletion task revealed by the current meta-analysis.

This study examined the longitudinal associations between non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) in early adolescence and various positive and negative aspects of mental health in young adulthood. The participants were a cohort of regular school students (n = 1064) in grades 7–8 from a Swedish municipality. Nine hundred and ninety-one of these completed an 11-page questionnaire (T1: Mage = 13.7; 50.3% girls); 1 year later, 984 students completed the questionnaire again (T2: Mage = 14.8; 51.1% girls); and 10 years later, 557 took part (T3: Mage = 25.3; 59.2% women). The prevalence of any NSSI (≥ 1 instance) decreased from about 40% in adolescence to 18.7% in young adulthood, while the prevalence of repetitive NSSI (≥ 5 instances) decreased from about 18 to 10%. Compared to individuals who reported no NSSI as adolescents, and controlling for gender and psychological difficulties in adolescence, adolescents with stable repetitive NSSI (i.e., repetitive NSSI at both T1 and T2) showed significantly higher levels of stress, anxiety, NSSI, and difficulties in emotion regulation 10 years later. Even infrequent and unstable repetitive NSSI in adolescence was associated with negative outcomes in young adulthood. These results suggest that stable repetitive NSSI in adolescence is a strong risk factor for mental health problems in young adulthood and that occasional engagement in NSSI in adolescence is an indicator of vulnerability for poorer mental health in young adulthood.

The ability to flexibly plan for events outside of the current sensory scope is at the core of being human and is crucial to our everyday lives and society. Studies on apes have shaped a belief that this ability evolved within the hominid lineage. Corvids, however, have shown evidence of planning their food hoarding, although this has been suggested to reflect a specific caching adaptation rather than domain-general planning. Here, we show that ravens plan for events unrelated to caching—tool-use and bartering—with delays of up to 17 hours, exert self-control, and consider temporal distance to future events. Their performance parallels that seen in apes and suggests that planning evolved independently in corvids, which opens new avenues for the study of cognitive evolution.

Eye tracking technology has become increasingly prevalent in scientific research, offering unique insights into oculomotor and cognitive processes. The present article explores the relationship between scientific theory, the research question, and the use of eye-tracking technology. It aims to guide readers in determining if eye tracking is suitable for their studies and how to formulate relevant research questions. Examples from research on oculomotor control, reading, scene perception, task execution, visual expertise, and instructional design are used to illustrate the connection between theory and eye-tracking data. These examples may serve as inspiration to researchers new to eye tracking. In summarizing the examples, three important considerations emerge: (1) whether the study focuses on describing eye movements or uses them as a proxy for e.g., perceptual, or cognitive processes, (2) the logical chain from theory to predictions, and (3) whether the study is of an observational or idea-testing nature. We provide a generic scheme and a set of specific questions that may help researchers formulate and explicate their research question using eye tracking.

Understanding the factors that predict adolescent delinquency is a key topic in parenting research. An open question is whether prior results indicating relative differences between families reflect the dynamic processes occurring within families. Therefore, this study investigated concurrent and lagged associations among parental behavioral control, parental solicitation, adolescent disclosure, and adolescent delinquency by separating between-family and within-family effects in three-wave annual data (N = 1515; Mage = 13.01 years at T1; 50.6% girls). At the within-family level, parental behavioral control negatively predicted adolescent delinquency. Adolescent disclosure and delinquency, and adolescent disclosure and parental solicitation, reciprocally predicted each other. Parental solicitation negatively predicted parental behavioral control. The findings indicate a prominent role of adolescent disclosure in within-family processes concerning parental-adolescent communication and adolescent delinquency.

Computer-vision-based gaze estimation refers to techniques that estimate gaze direction directly from video recordings of the eyes or face without the need for an eye tracker. Although many such methods exist, their validation is often found in the technical literature (e.g., computer science conference papers). We aimed to (1) identify which computer-vision-based gaze estimation methods are usable by the average researcher in fields such as psychology or education, and (2) evaluate these methods. We searched for methods that do not require calibration and have clear documentation. Two toolkits, OpenFace and OpenGaze, were found to fulfill these criteria. First, we present an experiment where adult participants fixated on nine stimulus points on a computer screen. We filmed their face with a camera and processed the recorded videos with OpenFace and OpenGaze. We conclude that OpenGaze is accurate and precise enough to be used in screen-based experiments with stimuli separated by at least 11 degrees of gaze angle. OpenFace was not sufficiently accurate for such situations but can potentially be used in sparser environments. We then examined whether OpenFace could be used with horizontally separated stimuli in a sparse environment with infant participants. We compared dwell measures based on OpenFace estimates to the same measures based on manual coding. We conclude that OpenFace gaze estimates may potentially be used with measures such as relative total dwell time to sparse, horizontally separated areas of interest, but should not be used to draw conclusions about measures such as dwell duration.

A number of virtual reality head-mounted displays (HMDs) with integrated eye trackers have recently become commercially available. If their eye tracking latency is low and reliable enough for gaze-contingent rendering, this may open up many interesting opportunities for researchers. We measured eye tracking latencies for the Fove-0, the Varjo VR-1, and the High Tech Computer Corporation (HTC) Vive Pro Eye using simultaneous electrooculography measurements. We determined the time from the occurrence of an eye position change to its availability as a data sample from the eye tracker (delay) and the time from an eye position change to the earliest possible change of the display content (latency). For each test and each device, participants performed 60 saccades between two targets 20° of visual angle apart. The targets were continuously visible in the HMD, and the saccades were instructed by an auditory cue. Data collection and eye tracking calibration were done using the recommended scripts for each device in Unity3D. The Vive Pro Eye was recorded twice, once using the SteamVR SDK and once using the Tobii XR SDK. Our results show clear differences between the HMDs. Delays ranged from 15 ms to 52 ms, and the latencies ranged from 45 ms to 81 ms. The Fove-0 appears to be the fastest device and best suited for gaze-contingent rendering.

In much of the current academic and public discussion, conspiracy theories are portrayed as a negative phenomenon, linked to misinformation, mistrust in experts and institutions, and political propaganda. Rather surprisingly, however, philosophers working on this topic have been reluctant to incorporate a negatively evaluative aspect when either analyzing or engineering the concept conspiracy theory. In this paper, we present empirical data on the nature of the concept conspiracy theory from five studies designed to test the existence, prevalence and exact form of an evaluative dimension to the ordinary concept conspiracy theory. These results reveal that, while there is a descriptive concept of conspiracy theory, the predominant use of conspiracy theory is deeply evaluative, encoding information about epistemic deficiency and often also derogatory and disparaging information. On the basis of these results, we present a new strategy for engineering conspiracy theory to promote theoretical investigations and institutional discussions of this phenomenon. We argue for engineering conspiracy theory to encode an epistemic evaluation, and to introduce a descriptive expression—such as ‘conspiratorial explanation’—to refer to the purely descriptive concept conspiracy theory.

Over the past 10 years, Oosterhof and Todorov’s valence–dominance model has emerged as the most prominent account of how people evaluate faces on social dimensions. In this model, two dimensions (valence and dominance) underpin social judgements of faces. Because this model has primarily been developed and tested in Western regions, it is unclear whether these findings apply to other regions. We addressed this question by replicating Oosterhof and Todorov’s methodology across 11 world regions, 41 countries and 11,570 participants. When we used Oosterhof and Todorov’s original analysis strategy, the valence–dominance model generalized across regions. When we used an alternative methodology to allow for correlated dimensions, we observed much less generalization. Collectively, these results suggest that, while the valence–dominance model generalizes very well across regions when dimensions are forced to be orthogonal, regional differences are revealed when we use different extraction methods and correlate and rotate the dimension reduction solution. Protocol registration The stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 5 November 2018. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.7611443.v1 . Jones et al. examine the generalizability of the valence–dominance model of social judgements of faces in 41 countries across 11 world regions. They find evidence of both generalizability and variation, depending on the analytical method.

In human interactions, gaze may be used to acquire information for goal-directed actions, to acquire information related to the interacting partner’s actions, and in the context of multimodal communication. At present, there are no models of gaze behavior in the context of vision that adequately incorporate these three components. In this study, we aimed to uncover and quantify patterns of within-person gaze-action coupling, gaze-gesture and gaze-speech coupling, and coupling between one person’s gaze and another person’s manual actions, gestures, or speech (or exogenous attraction of gaze) during dyadic collaboration. We showed that in the context of a collaborative Lego Duplo-model copying task, within-person gaze-action coupling is strongest, followed by within-person gaze-gesture coupling, and coupling between gaze and another person’s actions. When trying to infer gaze location from one’s own manual actions, gestures, or speech or that of the other person, only one’s own manual actions were found to lead to better inference compared to a baseline model. The improvement in inferring gaze location was limited, contrary to what might be expected based on previous research. We suggest that inferring gaze location may be most effective for constrained tasks in which different manual actions follow in a quick sequence, while gaze-gesture and gaze-speech coupling may be stronger in unconstrained conversational settings or when the collaboration requires more negotiation. Our findings may serve as an empirical foundation for future theory and model development, and may further be relevant in the context of action/intention prediction for (social) robotics and effective human–robot interaction.