Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Holbein et al. report an observational study, a natural experiment and a randomized experiment showing that insufficient sleep reduces prosocial behaviours such as voter turnout, donating to charity and signing petitions.
Flinker and colleagues describe a framework for auditory cortical asymmetries that capitalizes on spectrotemporal modulation space. Data from psychophysics, magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electrocorticography (ECoG) inform a signal processing-based view on lateralization.
Amasino et al. show that when humans decide between earlier or later monetary pay-outs of smaller or larger amounts, patient choices result from processing the information about amount and time successively, focussing first on amounts to be gained.
Pool and colleagues show that Pavlovian conditioning involves learning of different classes of responses: some flexibly adapt to changes in outcome value, whereas others persist even when the outcome is no longer valuable for the individual.
When do groups exhibit collective ‘wisdom’ vs maladaptive ‘herding’? Toyokawa et al. use modelling and experimentation to show that crowd intelligence versus herding can be predicted on the basis of the task and the social learning strategies used.
This scoping review identified, summarized and critiqued 15 ontologies related to human behaviour change. The review finds that no existing ontology covers the breadth of human behaviour change and identifies the need for an intervention ontology.
Combining behavioural modelling with functional and structural brain connectivity, Karlaftis et al. show that individuals learn the structure of variable environments by employing alternate decision strategies that engage distinct brain networks.
Adolescents regularly use digital technology, but its impact on their psychological well-being is unclear. Here, the authors examine three large datasets and find only a small negative association: digital technology use explains at most 0.4% of well-being.
An analysis of all Wikimedia projects shows that a small number of editors have a disproportionately large influence in the formation of collective knowledge.
Bollen et al. tracked changes in the emotions of Twitter users before and after they expressed a feeling online. Emotions grow quickly before—and decrease rapidly after—their expression, confirming previous affect labeling studies showing that putting one’s feelings into words can alleviate their intensity.
The attention received by cultural products—including scientific papers, patents, songs, movies and biographies—decays following a biexponential function, suggesting that collective memory follows a universal pattern.
McGovern and co-workers combine human brain signal measurements underlying decision formation with computational modelling to probe age-related differences in perceptual decision-making.
Smithers et al. find that, although there is some evidence that non-cognitive skills are associated with improved academic, psychosocial and health outcomes, the evidence is weak and heterogeneous. More rigorous research is required in this field.
Using a high-throughput experimental design and statistical modelling, the authors show how jurors and lawyers weigh different types of crime and evidence when assessing the guilt of someone accused of a crime.
Jepma and colleagues provide evidence that prior beliefs about pain influence perceived intensity of pain, and the degree of learning about pain intensity. This finding helps to explain why beliefs are often resistant to updating with experience.
A seven-week school-based field experiment shows that social-rewards schemes increase physical activity in preadolescents, with girls being more receptive to reciprocal and boys to team rewarding schemes.
As children grow, so does their knowledge of language. Sizemore et al. describe knowledge gaps, manifesting as topological cavities, in toddlers’ growing semantic network. These gaps progress similarly, independent of the order in which children learn words.
The N400 evoked potential is a window to meaning in the brain, but it remains incompletely understood. The authors provide a unified explanation of the N400 in a neural network model that avoids the commitments of traditional approaches to meaning in language.
Rutherford et al. analyse temporal, network and hierarchical effects to uncover, understand and quantify competing mechanisms of constitutional change worldwide.
Nowak and colleagues present a game theoretic model that explains how behaviours like subtlety, modesty and anonymous good deeds can be maintained under the standard model of reputation building and indirect reciprocity.