Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
Adolescence is a dynamic period of brain development marked by profound changes in learning, decision-making, and higher order cognition. This article explores how research on the adolescent brain can inform the development of biologically based computational models of learning and behavior. We highlight how computational frameworks such as reinforcement learning and artificial neural networks capture key features of adolescent behavior, including shifts in exploration and decision-making strategies. By integrating principles of brain development, such as synaptic pruning and the hierarchical development of neural circuits, computational models can offer insights into how the brain adapts to new experiences and challenges. We argue that studying adolescent brain development not only enhances our understanding of cognition but also provides a valuable framework for refining computational models of brain function. We propose future directions for how adolescent research can inform innovations in computational research to better capture dynamic brain states, individual variability, and risk for psychopathology.

Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
Cascades from culture inform beliefs and norms that guide childrearing, resulting in diverse experiences that shape developmental outcomes. This article explores the influence of cultural beliefs and childrearing practices on infant development, focusing on the traditional gahvora cradling practice in Tajikistan. Cradling in gahvoras involves movement restriction, providing a unique model for investigating how early physical constraints shape developmental trajectories and challenging conventional theories that emphasize the necessity of continuous, unrestricted movement. By situating motor development within a broader social and cultural framework, this article highlights the importance of considering cultural context in developmental research. Despite these physical constraints, infants exhibit adaptive motor activity when unbound, suggesting a flexible and resilient developmental system. These practices illuminate the dynamic interplay of physical, social, and cultural factors, revealing how diverse early experiences shape developmental outcomes.

Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
Early caregiving experiences have strong, persistent links to emotion regulation. In this article we offer a view that the content represented in emotion-regulation neurobiology in part reflects consolidated interpersonal-affective memories abstracted from early caregiving experiences. We suggest that these interpersonal-affective memories, referred to here as “attachment schemas,” are represented by cortical-subcortical (re)activations. Neural circuitry involving functional connections between subcortical and midline cortical regions is well positioned to generate predictive inferences from attachment schemas that have implications for emotion regulation. Although speculative, this perspective is motivated by the convergence of empirical findings from cognitive and developmental neuroscience. Situating affective neural predictions within a neurodevelopmental framework has great potential to uncover mechanisms of attachment and ultimately build toward a more complete understanding of the links between early caregiving experiences and emotional well-being.

Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
Basic spatial terms such as the English prepositions “in,” “on,” “above,” “below,” “left,” and “right” represent spatial relationships that are encoded in languages of the world and are readily learned by young children. How do children learn these terms, and what are the relative contributions of universal foundations from spatial cognition versus language-specific input? I argue that progress can be made on this issue by recognizing two distinct subclasses of spatial terms, each rooted in different classes of spatial properties, leading to different kinds of learning problems for the child. “Geometric” terms such as “above,” “below,” “left,” “right,” and “behind” focus on spatial properties such as the distance and direction between two objects, specified by orthogonal axes centered on a reference object and vectors that define the location of one object relative to the other. By contrast, “force-dynamic” terms such as “in” and “on” focus on the physical and mechanical properties of objects that specify how one object interacts with the force-dynamic properties of the other. The two sets of terms show different degrees of cross-linguistic variation and present different problems for learners, leading to different developmental trajectories and mechanisms of acquisition. They may ultimately derive from fundamentally different cognitive domains—space and objects.

Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
Research on children’s responses to preventive health behaviors during COVID-19 provides insights of both practical and theoretical importance: Understanding how children reason about preventive behaviors is crucial for developing effective public-health campaigns. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic presented us with a unique natural experiment for examining children’s emerging sociomoral reasoning in the face of rapidly changing norms and social practices. Here we summarize empirical findings from a series of experiments testing how children reason about preventive health behaviors such as mask-wearing and physical distancing that were introduced during COVID-19. Across these studies, we found that children apply sociomoral principles to interpret these novel behaviors. By as young as the age of 5 years, children are well equipped to adapt to novel norms and social practices by thinking through the trade-offs and social consequences of these new behaviors in a surprisingly mature and practical way. At the same time, political views of families and communities are reflected in children’s endorsement of preventive behaviors. We conclude with suggestions on the way developmental research can contribute to our knowledge of how to successfully prepare for public-health responses in anticipation of potential future pandemics.

Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
Humans are highly efficient in finding objects in their structured, daily-life environments. Behavioral studies have demonstrated that this efficiency is supported by expectations derived from scene context. Here, I review neuroimaging studies that have started to reveal the neural basis of contextual influences on visual search for objects. These studies point to a central role for the object-selective visual cortex (OSC) in mediating multiple types of contextual influences. Supporting the attentional guidance by scene context, activity patterns in the OSC reflect global contextual expectations about target location and represent local nontarget objects that are contextually associated with the target. Preparatory activity patterns in the OSC also incorporate contextual expectations about target appearance (e.g., object size) during the preparation phase of visual search. In addition to supporting attentional guidance, object representations in the OSC are directly facilitated by scene context, and this facilitation is causally linked to object-identification performance. Finally, activity patterns in the anterior OSC integrate representations of distractor objects that are positioned according to familiar configurations, thereby reducing scene complexity. Together, these studies show how attention and expectation interactively drive preparatory activity and jointly modulate the visual processing of potential targets, providing a neural basis for the efficiency of search in scenes.

Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
It is often said that much of consumption is “social” in nature, but what does this mean? This article proposes the social congruency framework for differentiating between different types of social consumption experiences—characterizing a consumption experience with respect to congruency with a social partner on up to three dimensions: what, where, and when. Utilizing this social congruency framework, we propose four different social consumption experiences: solo consumption with a social referent, asynchronous social consumption, synchronous social consumption, and shared consumption. We then leverage this framework to differentiate between different types of social consumption experiences and to explicate why this differentiation between different types of social consumption experiences matters in terms of how it can facilitate future research examining the nature of congruency within experiences as well as the antecedents and consequences across social consumption experiences.

Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
Advances in computer technology have produced a flood of new data sets for understanding human language. However, nearly all of these new data sets are based on written, rather than spoken, language. This means that, despite their importance, open-access data on naturally occurring spoken-language conversations are much more difficult to obtain. The major exception to this is the TalkBank system, which provides online multimedia data for 15 types of spoken-language data: language in aphasia, child language, stuttering, child phonology, autism spectrum disorder, bilingualism, conversation analysis, classroom discourse, dementia, psychosis, right hemisphere damage, Danish conversation, second-language learning, traumatic brain injury, and daylong recordings in the home. This article reviews these resources and describes the ways that they are being used to further our understanding of language learning and usage.

Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
Many people in many cultures have a spiritual connection with nature. Research is beginning to reveal the implications of this “ecospiritual” orientation for two great challenges of our times: preserving the well-being of the natural environment and of ourselves. This article provides an overview of the current research on ecospirituality, with a focus on its role in supporting, and sometimes inadvertently hindering, environmental preservation and human well-being.

Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
Filial piety—children’s respect, duty, and care toward parents—is often misconceptualized despite its role in intergenerational relationships and aging societies globally. We challenge three prevalent misconceptions about filial piety: that it solely involves unwavering obedience to parents, that it exists only in Asian cultures, and that it exclusively concerns caregiving to older adult parents. Drawing from cross-cultural and developmental research, we propose an integrative framework incorporating three main dimensions (i.e., beliefs and values, affect, and behaviors) that evolve across historical time and developmental stages. This framework conceptualizes filial piety as a dynamic and multidimensional construct that varies systematically across sociocultural contexts, age groups, and historical periods. We conclude with directions for future research, specifically focusing on distinguishing dimensions of filial piety, methodological approaches for studying these developmental trajectories, and implications for understanding intergenerational relationships in context.

Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
Establishing a causal relationship requires not only the presence of a factor of interest but also the demonstration that the relationship is absent when the factor is absent. Such ideal conditions are rare, especially in observational studies in which creating control conditions is inherently difficult. The COVID-19 pandemic, with its unparalleled disruptions, offers a unique opportunity to isolate causal effects and test previously impossible hypotheses. Here, we examine the home advantage (HA) in sports—a phenomenon in which teams generally perform better in front of their home fans—and how the pandemic-induced absence of fans offered a fortunate yet systematic change to typical conditions, serving as a natural experiment. Using a structural equation modeling approach and building a mediation model encompassing all relevant HA factors, we quantified the reduction in HA and elucidated the specific mechanisms behind it. The theory behind HA and the availability of measures for each factor before and during COVID-19 lockdowns enabled us to estimate all postulated pathways within a natural experimental context. The robust statistical framework used in our study offers a foundational model for integrating naturally occurring events that serve as control conditions into the analysis of various real-life phenomena.

Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
Beliefs about the changeable or stable nature of human attributes, that is, growth or fixed mindsets, act as fundamental frameworks guiding social perception. These mindsets are closely allied with other important beliefs that can be used to sustain and justify, or to mitigate, prejudicial attitudes. In this article, we review our program of research linking growth mindsets to prejudice. First, we present the double-edged-sword model, which outlines why growth mindsets can have the paradoxical effect of both increasing prejudice through blame and decreasing it by undermining social essentialism, defined as the categorization of individuals based on presumed inherent essences. Second, we present the stigma-reduction model, which outlines when growth mindsets serve to directly decrease prejudice. Third, we highlight the implications of this work for prejudice-reduction efforts, emphasizing the need for interventions that not only challenge personal-level beliefs but also seek to transform broader environments.

Current Directions in Psychological Science, Ahead of Print.
A rich storehouse of semantic or world knowledge is a critical developmental and educational achievement. This article summarizes a research program that elucidates a productive or self-generative means of building this knowledge base, namely, self-derivation of knowledge through the integration of separate yet related episodes of new learning. The article highlights features of the research that lend authenticity to the findings, including focus on an important topic, samples that represent relevant target populations, stimuli that reflect the richness of the phenomenon, and descriptions and explanations of individual variability. The authenticity of the research stands to increase its impact and facilitates application of the results beyond the laboratory.