Parental care shapes anxiety-like behavior, oxytocin, social interaction, and ethanol sensitivity in adolescent C57BL/6J mice.

Infants' individual sensitivity to saliency shapes early word learning in social interaction.

Social support is positively associated with quality of life (QoL) in autistic people, yet almost all evidence is cross-sectional and focused on younger adults. We examined 2-year longitudinal survey data from 209 autistic adults aged ⩾40 years living in the United States, all recruited via the Research Match service of Simons Powering Autism Research for Knowledge. Participants self-reported their general QoL, autism-specific QoL, and social support (subjective support, instrumental support, and social interaction). Cross-lagged panel models tested bidirectional associations. Mean scores increased from Time 1 to Time 2 for the general QoL and autism-specific QoL, while social support was mostly stable. Higher baseline general QoL predicted greater subjective support later, whereas baseline subjective support did not predict later general QoL. A reciprocal relationship emerged between autism-specific QoL and subjective support. Unexpectedly, baseline instrumental support predicted lower subsequent general QoL. Among autistic adults in mid-to-later life, QoL appears to drive subsequent social support more strongly than support drives QoL, with the clearest reciprocity observed for autism-specific QoL and subjective support. Future multiwave studies with more diverse samples are needed to chart long-term trajectories and determine how tailored support can optimize aging outcomes in individuals with autism.Lay AbstractWe know little about how autistic people's perceived social support and quality of life (QoL) influence each other as they age. We surveyed 209 40+-year-old autistic adults living in the United States at two timepoints 2 years apart. They answered questions about their general QoL, QoL specific to their autistic experiences, and three types of social support (subjective support, instrumental support, and social interaction). The first survey was in late 2019/early 2020, and the second was 2 years later - late 2021/early 2022. We found that, on average, middle-aged and older autistic adults reported better QoL after 2 years, while the amount of practical help and the number of social interactions did not change. People who started out with better QoL reported more subjective support later. Reporting better autism-specific QoL at the beginning led to more emotional and practical support later and vice versa - feeling well-supported emotionally initially led to better autism-specific QoL later. Surprisingly, getting more initial practical support was linked to lower overall QoL 2 years later. Our results suggest that helping autistic adults feel comfortable with their identity, manage sensory needs, and navigate services may not only improve their QoL but also strengthen the emotional and practical support they receive from others. Practical help is still important, but it should match the person's goals and preferences, so that it boosts, rather than harms, life satisfaction. Programs that check in regularly about changing needs, especially around significant life events like retirement or health changes, could make a real difference as autistic adults grow older.

The motivation to belong is a fundamental social and psychological need that influences individuals’ well-being and behavior in society. There is currently significant research activity in this field, driven by increasing interest in areas such as social robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), and complex systems. This article presents a computational model that quantifies a weighted Belonging Score ( B ) as a function of seven socio-cognitive features: group identity, social interaction, acceptance/rejection, social memory, reciprocity, reputation, and utility. The aim is to propose a model that explains how agents’ motivation to belong emerges from their social interactions. The behavior of each model component is formally defined through mathematical functions. The inputs of these functions are normalized and dynamically updated in real time based on agent-agent interactions, ensuring B ∈ [ − 1 , 1 ] and enabling comparability across contexts. To validate the proposed model, realistic, nuanced, and context-sensitive scenarios were simulated using a large language model (LLM). In this setup, interactions among agents naturally vary the values of the variables determining each agent’s internal belonging score. Consequently, agents dynamically assess their perception of inclusion or exclusion within the group.

Widely regarded as precursors of speech, protophones show a complexity already at an early developmental stage by being voluntarily controlled, functionally flexible and having phonological characteristics of speech. However, in terms of function, they are considered as not having immediate situation-specific functions, in contrast to speech. This study investigates the topic of protophone function further by examining infants' protophone production during visual, tactile and auditory object communication. In the current study, we examined protophone activity in 47 infants (4-18 months old) during social interactions with their caregivers. The infants were recorded in their home environment, in a rural area in Zambia. Results indicated that the infants produced significantly more protophones when using visual rather than either tactile or auditory (sounds that objects/movements make) object signals. Caregivers also responded more when protophones accompanied visual signals than when they accompanied tactile and/or auditory signals. However, in the absence of protophones, there were no differences in caregiver behaviour/responses. Overall, the present work reveals that vocal precursors to speech may serve as attention-getters within social interactions. This lends further support to infants' early capacity to regulate multimodality in communication and their ability to use protophones with immediate situation-specific functions, further painting a picture of complexity embedded already at an early developmental stage within the linguistic communication system.

Interpersonal synchrony affects 18-month-olds' social alignment via self-other comparison.

Associations among social isolation, living alone, and cardiovascular mortality: The Otassha study.

Level-1 visual perspective-taking (VPT) enables individuals to infer what others see to support high-level cognitive processes. Despite evidence highlighting the importance of prior knowledge in social cognition, the specific impact of prior knowledge on level-1 VPT remains unclear. The present study conducted three experiments to fill this gap. In Experiment 1, the participants received prior knowledge about an avatar's subsequent action (i.e., turning or static) before judging disc visibility from their own or the avatar's perspective. Egocentric and altercentric biases emerged when prior knowledge was about turning, but only egocentric bias emerged when prior knowledge was about being stationary. Experiment 2 omitted the potential clues of the judgement task to replicate the findings of Experiment 1. The results revealed that egocentric and altercentric biases emerged regardless of whether prior knowledge was about turning or being stationary. Experiment 3 examined how stimulus presentation sequences influence level-1 VPT. Both egocentric and altercentric biases emerged when prior knowledge was about turning, whereas only egocentric bias emerged when prior knowledge was about being stationary. These results revealed that prior knowledge influences egocentric and altercentric biases in Level-1 VPT, with egocentric bias consistently observed and altercentric bias modulated by action salience and context ambiguity.

Communication and sociality are intimately related, as many important social processes are mediated by communication between signal senders and receivers. Despite recent advances in social network analysis, animal communication networks remain difficult to characterize because the interactions that comprise the network structure depend on receiver sensory, perceptual, and cognitive processes. Collectively, these receiver psychological traits process social information and lead to decisions regarding whether and how to interact with signallers, generating variation in social interactions and the structure of communication networks. Here, we review the evidence that variation in receiver psychology affects both individuals' positions within the communication network and the structure of the communication network as a whole. These effects range from limits on signal active space imposed by receiver sensory acuity and sensitivity, to facilitation of social connections by learning and memory of signal characteristics. Although we identify numerous receiver psychological traits that likely affect connections between receivers and signallers, few studies have explicitly examined the role of receiver psychology on variation in communication network structure. We therefore review recent methodological advances that could facilitate such studies. We then show that the effects of receiver psychology on communication networks could have strong impacts on ecological and evolutionary processes. In particular, we discuss the reciprocal links between receiver psychology and social structure, and how these individual-group feedbacks are expected to generate coevolution between communication and sociality. Our review synthesizes diverse evidence that receiver psychology can affect communication interactions and provides a path forward for integrating sensory, perceptual, and cognitive mechanisms of signal processing with individual behavioural variation and ecological and evolutionary consequences of variation in animal social behaviour.

Zoonotic diseases account for over ∼60% of infectious diseases and present a significantly growing fatality threat in Africa. Live and wet markets (LWMs) in Africa function as key economic venues that support human livelihoods through social interaction and trade in food stuff, including meat and other animal-based products. These spaces concentrate and exaggerate human and animal contact, creating conditions conducive to zoonotic spill-over events. This narrative review, based on an opportunistic literature identification process, summarizes the diversity of ticks and tick-borne pathogens (TTBPs) associated with carcasses at African LWMs, as well as the awareness, perceptions, and control practices of stakeholders along the meat value chain. Findings show pervasive infestations by Amblyomma, Rhipicephalus, Hyalomma; limited reports of Haemaphysalis, Ixodes, and Demacentor species; along with the circulation of Rickettsia africae, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus, Anaplasma spp., and Coxiella burnetii. Surveillance efforts remain geographically patchy, with strong bias towards East and West Africa. The knowledge of tick-borne zoonotic diseases is poor and shaped by sociodemographic factors, like education and occupational roles. Control measures, where practiced, are inconsistently applied and inadequate. Collectively, these findings flag African LWMs as understudied epidemiologically permeable hubs, with potential implications in the ecology of tick-borne zoonotic diseases.

This paper examines the causal role of face-to-face (F2F) interactions in generating local informational advantages for mutual fund managers. Using COVID-19 lockdowns as an exogenous shock, I show that fund managers’ performance on local stocks declined relative to distant stocks when in-person meetings were curtailed, driven by impaired investment timing rather than changes in firm fundamentals. I investigate two distinct benefits of F2F interactions arising from interpersonal cues: trust-building, which enhances the transmission of soft information, and impression management, which facilitates the transmission of favorable information. The results cannot be fully explained by changes in internal information flows or the use of public information, and are more pronounced for stocks in less transparent information environments and in regions with stronger social traits.

Survival of the nurtured: A 60-year follow-up study on mortality in institutionalised infants.

The use of avatars to improve empathy and emotional intelligence: A scoping review.

Sensitive windows, sensitive outcomes: Early or late-postnatal maternal separation differentially impacts puberty and behavior.

Social comparison and envy are significant psychosocial stressors in humans and are known to be involved in the onset and persistence of psychiatric disorders. However, animal models capable of experimentally reproducing the effects of indirect social comparison without physical contact are limited. In this study, we used a newly developed "adjacent-cage paradigm" to investigate whether chronic vicarious exposure to conspecifics in different environments induces envy-like stress in mice. Male C57BL/6 N mice served as observers, while demonstrator mice were assigned to one of four conditions: (1) an environment enriched with objects, (2) an igloo, (3) a tube, or (4) social isolation. Observers were continuously exposed to these adjacent cages for 21 days. Subsequently, a comprehensive battery of behavioral tests was conducted to assess general health, anxiety-like behavior, spatial memory, social behavior, and depression-like behavior. In the objects condition, a decrease in time spent in the light compartment of the light/dark box indicated an increase in anxiety-like behavior. In the isolation condition, the mean duration per social interaction was shortened, suggesting a qualitative change in social behavior. The igloo condition resulted in reduced immobility time in the forced swim test, suggesting a possible alteration in stress coping behavior. Furthermore, increased nociceptive sensitivity was observed in the hot plate test under both the objects and isolation conditions. Although the envy-like stress paradigm did not affect many behavioral indices, it did cause condition-dependent and limited behavioral changes. This suggests that the paradigm may serve as a novel model for capturing psychological and context-dependent social stress, which differs from conventional physical stress models. Elucidating the neural basis of this paradigm is expected to contribute to the understanding of how social comparison affects mental health in modern society.

Negative symptoms and social difficulties are a source of disability in patients with schizophrenia, yet they are less studied compared to delusions and hallucinations. We draw inspiration from calls to view schizophrenia as a disorder of social interaction, and argue that one way to operationalize such a second-person approach is in terms of the perceptual crossing paradigm. In this paradigm of social haptics, two participants are tasked to find each other’s avatar in an invisible virtual space that also contains other distracting objects. There are no explicit social cues and participants therefore need to learn how to distinguish between different affordances for interaction so as to disambiguate when haptic feedback is in fact mediated social touch. To test the feasibility of this experimental approach, we conducted a small pilot study consisting of seven schizophrenia patients paired with control participants. Both participant groups were able to solve the task, and preliminary findings are largely consistent with the literature on perceptual crossing. We propose hypotheses for future work with this paradigm in the context of social psychiatry, bringing to the fore the possible role of error and uncertainty in social interaction dynamics.

A substantial part of people's social lives unfolds within groups. However, there is a notable research gap concerning if and how the personality characteristics that people bring to group interactions combine to predict person and group outcomes. In this study, we used the group actor-partner interdependence model (Kenny & Garcia, 2012) as a framework to integrate prior approaches and understand how the composition of two socially relevant personality traits-agency and communion-affects people and groups. We analyzed data from 432 participants (Mage = 26.61, 51% female) who formed 108 four-person groups and engaged in four different group tasks. Our findings yield three key insights: (a) At the person level, people's own trait levels were the main drivers of their behaviors, experiences, and performance. (b) At the group level, personality composition affected different outcomes than at the person level, with agency playing an overall more important role for group behaviors and experiences. (c) Notable composition effects at both levels emerged for conflict behavior: People who were similar to their group in terms of agency were more engaged in conflicts, and groups whose members had similar agency levels were more likely to experience conflicts as a whole. We contextualize our findings within a theoretical framework to better understand when and how personality composition in social interactions is important, and we review methodologies to capture its multifaceted components. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Social behavior in mice is critical for understanding their natural interactions and underlying neural mechanisms. Traditional Markov models, however, face limitations in capturing the sequential dynamics of body language associated with social behaviors. To address these challenges, we developed the body language-bidirectional encoder representation from transformers (BL-BERT) framework, which surpasses the Markov model in extracting complex sequential behavioral patterns. BL-BERT effectively differentiates the body language of the mice within different social interaction paradigms and produces results consistent with manual annotations. Notably, BL-BERT achieves higher extraction accuracy than the Markov model by reducing the complexity of the recurrent state transitions in behavior sequences. These advantages enable BL-BERT to accurately quantify high-order sequential behavioral structures in mice, paving the way for more detailed insights into the brain’s mechanisms controlling complex behavior.

Metaverse adoption among university Generation Z in Malaysia and Saudi Arabia: A cross-cultural analysis of individual, social and ethical impacts

Impulsivity is an understudied area of post-traumatic stress disorder, a debilitating disorder specifically associated with stress. We examined reward-related impulsive behavior, anxiety-like behavior, locomotor activity and social behavior in the absence and presence of protracted pharmacological positive modulation of α5- and α6-GABAA receptors (GL-II-73 and DK-I-56-1, respectively) in male Sprague-Dawley rats exposed to a combination of maternal deprivation (MD) and single prolonged stress (SPS). While locomotor and anxiety-like behavior were not affected in the SPS and MD+SPS groups, the double-hit group treated with DK-I-56-1 exhibited a higher locomotor distance compared with MD+SPS and a higher percentage of open-arm time in the elevated plus maze compared with the control group. In the variable delay-to-signal task of impulsivity, the total number of successful trials and premature responses (PR) in the first stage of the test day were reduced in all groups exposed to stress compared with the controls. Based on PR rates in the first and second set of trials, motor impulsivity was apparently suppressed in all stressed groups, while delay intolerance was suppressed only in the MD+SPS+GL-II-73 group, respectively. In the three-chamber test, social interaction was completely normal, while social recognition was preserved in the MD+SPS+GL-II-73 group. In the resident-intruder test, social play was reduced only in the SPS group. The evaluation of impulsive behavior in the used complex task was hindered by the lack of motivation of stressed rats, which in the case of omission percentage was ameliorated by positive modulation of α5 and α6 GABAA receptors.