Research and publications from Department of Psychology

We present the MultiplEYE Text Corpus, a large-scale, document-level, multi-parallel resource designed to advance cross-linguistic research on reading and language processing. The corpus provides paragraph-level alignment for texts in 39 languages spanning seven language families and seven scripts. Unlike many existing multilingual corpora, a substantial number of documents were originally written in languages other than English, reducing English-centric bias and supporting more typologically diverse investigations. The texts are carefully selected to balance linguistic richness with experimental feasibility, particularly for eye-tracking-while-reading studies. Developed within a multi-lab initiative, the MultiplEYE Text Corpus follows unified translation, alignment, and experimental design guidelines to ensure cross-linguistic comparability. Its inclusion of texts varying in type and difficulty enables research on discourse- level processing, genre effects, and individual differences across a wide range of languages. The text corpus and accompanying metadata provide a robust foundation for multilingual psycholinguistic and computational modeling research. Data and materials are publicly available at https://doi.org/10.23668/psycharchives.22294

Aim: This study aims to explore the association between cognitive disengagement syndrome (CDS) and three aspects of language (narrative coherence, core language, and pragmatic language) in children with ADHD, and to examine whether these associations differ from those observed in neurotypical children. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, parents completed questionnaires about their child's CDS and pragmatic language, while children with ADHD (n = 45) and neurotypical children (n = 38), aged 7–11 years, completed tasks of narrative coherence and core language. Results: CDS, after adjusting for age and sex, was significantly associated with pragmatic language in children with ADHD with a large effect (β = -0.51, p = .001), while CDS was significantly associated with core language in neurotypical children with a medium effect (β = -0.34, p = .04). There was a significant group difference in the association between CDS and pragmatic language (χ²(1) = 4.44, p = .04), with a stronger association in the ADHD group. After performing sensitivity analyses including inattention as an additional covariate, the associations ceased to be significant in both groups and there were no longer significant between-group differences. Conclusion: This study examined the association between CDS and language in children with and without ADHD. The findings suggest that there may be an association between CDS and pragmatic language in children with ADHD. However, sensitivity analyses including inattention as a covariate suggest that this association may largely reflect variance shared with inattention. Consequently, the association between CDS and language may partly reflect their shared association with ADHD symptoms. As this, to our knowledge, is the first study to investigate language in relation to CDS in children with ADHD, further research is warranted.

Purpose: This tutorial demonstrates how personal narratives elicited using the Global TALES (Talking About Lived Experiences in Stories) protocol can be analyzed using the four components of the Linguistic Underpinnings of Narrative in Aphasia (LUNA) framework for discourse analysis—pragmatics, macrostructure planning, propositional, and linguistic—in clinical practice to assess the language and communication skills of children with developmental language disorder (DLD). Such analysis can support diagnostic decision making or identification and monitoring of intervention goals related to the child's needs. Language measures that can be applied and interpreted in clinical practice are presented and linked to each of the four components of the LUNA framework. By understanding which measures correspond to these components, clinicians can identify the child's strengths and challenges across the four components to obtain a more complete view of the child's oral narrative production skills. An analysis of a personal narrative from a 7-year-old Danish-speaking child with DLD, elicited using the Global TALES protocol, was used to demonstrate in detail how to analyze personal narratives and interpret the results in a clinical setting using the LUNA framework. The case study also includes recommendations for supporting and monitoring the child's progress. Conclusions: This tutorial guides clinicians to integrate personal narratives as part of their assessment and treatment for children with DLD. The measures presented and discussed in the tutorial can help clinicians pinpoint interrelated discourse components and processes that need to be assessed and integrated into future support for a child's language development and overall well-being.

I denne artikkelen deler vi våre praktiske erfaringer og Best Practice for utredning av Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) hos skolebarn. Anbefalingene er forankret i forskning og praktisk kunnskap om DLD, samt dynamisk vurdering, som er en metode for å generere kunnskap som er relevant for utredning og intervensjon. I motsetning til andre nevrologiske utviklingsforstyrrelser, hvor det finnes nasjonale retningslinjer for utredning, er ikke dette tilfellet for DLD lidelsen. Det er derfor opp til den enkelte kommune, PPR-kontor og behandler å utrede etter beste kunnskap og evne. I denne artikkelen utvikler vi spesifikke anbefalinger for utredning av DLD, illustrert ved to caseeksempler, hvor barnet i det ene tilfellet kan få DLD diagnosen, mens dette ikke nødvendigvis gjelder det andre barnet.

Den nye abortloven utvider grensene for selvbestemt abort og styrker retten til informasjon og oppfølging. I denne diskusjonsartikkelen viser vi at dagens aborttjenester fortsatt ikke er i tråd med nyere forskning. Unødvendige rutineundersøkelser forsinker tilgangen til abort, informasjon utformes ofte på måter som styrer kvinnenes valg, og praksisen for smertelindring varierer.

Although psychology was established as a discipline more than one hundred years ago, it is far from homogeneous. On the contrary, it consists of several different schools. Evidence-based practice in psychology (EBPP) purports to be a neutral or pan-theoretic approach. The core of EBPP is randomized clinical trials (RCT). This paper traces the origins of RCT from the ideal of physics and shows how this ideal was exported to the social sciences and psychology. It particularly emphasizes the role of numbers and scales for quantitative measurements and shows that EBPP is built on these ideals. The paper concludes that psychology should be a pluralistic science, including different kinds of scientific knowledge.

Striving for social status is a fundamental human motive, yet individuals vary considerably in their status-seeking tendencies. Drawing on attachment literature and life history theory, we propose that attachment anxiety drives status pursuit through heightened intrasexual competition. Across six preregistered studies (N = 4,456) spanning five countries, we find that attachment anxiety, rather than attachment avoidance, predicts status strivings. This relationship is mediated by intrasexual competition—competing with same-sex rivals—rather than, as previously documented, by materialism or general competitiveness. Experimental evidence confirms causality: Inducing attachment anxiety increases the desire for high-status cars and houses through heightened intrasexual competition. A moderation-of-process design demonstrates that experimentally manipulating intrasexual competition correspondingly enhances or reduces the effect of attachment anxiety on status strivings but only for high-status possessions. These effects hold for both men and women. Our findings show that anxiously attached individuals pursue status to compensate for relational insecurities, and they do so by competing with same-sex rivals. This research extends attachment theory to status pursuit and clarifies whether, when, and why individual differences in attachment patterns predict people’s status strivings.

Gjennom en diskursteoretisk inngang utforsker artikkelen bruddlinjen mellom kunnskapen som styrer velferdsstatens møter med foreldre i høykonfliktsaker, der konfliktbegrepet posisjonerer foreldre på måter som inviterer fagfolk til å trekke deres omsorg for barna i tvil, og de hverdagserfaringer som foreldrene selv legger for dagen. Med utgangspunkt i empiri fra tre studier av foreldreskap ved samlivsbrudd med ulik grad av konflikt utvikler vi omrisset av en alternativ inngang til terapeutisk arbeid i høykonfliktsaker, og undersøker hvordan kjærlighetsbegrepet kan bidra til både å forstå og samarbeide med foreldre med erfaringer fra situasjoner preget av langvarig og intens konflikt.

Pyramidal cells that emit spikes when the animal is at specific locations of the environment are known as place cells: these neurons are thought to provide an internal representation of space via cognitive maps. Here, we consider the Battaglia-Treves neural network model for cognitive map storage and reconstruction, instantiated with McCulloch & Pitts binary neurons. To quantify the information processing capabilities of these networks, we exploit spin-glass techniques, namely the interpolation method and the replica trick. In particular, in the low-storage regime (i.e., when the number of stored maps scales sub-linearly with the network size and the order parameters self-average around their means), by adapting the Hamilton-Jacobi PDE-approach, we obtain an exact phase diagram in the noise vs inhibition strength plane. In the high-storage regime, by adapting the standard interpolation based on stochastic stability, we find that—for mild inhibition and not too high noise—memorization and retrieval of an extensive number of spatial maps is possible. These results, holding under the replica-symmetry assumption, are recovered, for completeness, also by the replica method and they are corroborated by Monte Carlo simulations. Finally, by leveraging the integral representation of the model (in terms of a bipartite network equipped with highly-selective hidden units), we successfully test its robustness versus various distributions of place fields, including the log-normal distribution observed in recent experiments on bats navigating long tunnels. Additionally, we demonstrate that, by appropriately coupling these hidden units, the network can effectively orient itself even in dynamic environments.

Flere forskere stiller spørsmål ved den biologiske sykdomsmodellen for psykose. De forholder seg i større grad til psykose som et normalpsy…

Psykologifaget har de siste femten årene måttet hanskes med en «replikasjonskrise». Krisen handler om at overraskende mange klassiske funn i sosialpsykologien ikke har latt seg gjenta. Da Open Science Collaboration i 2015 forsøkte å reprodusere hundre studier publisert i anerkjente tidsskrift, holdt under halvparten av originalstudienes konklusjoner stand. Kjente fenomener smuldret opp under nærmere ettersyn. Dette skyldtes sjelden uredelighet, men helt ordinære forskningspraksiser – en «hage av forgreinede stier», publiseringsskjevhet og en akademisk insentivstruktur som premierer oppsiktsvekkende resultater. Den åpne vitenskapsbevegelsen svarte med preregistrering og registrerte rapporter, og forskningspraksis er i dag merkbart strammere. Men opprydningen i metode besvarer ikke det dypere spørsmålet: hva om enkelte funn forsvant ikke fordi de var falske, men fordi de var ekte og situerte? Under replikasjonsidealet ligger en antakelse hentet fra fysikken – at et sant funn skal la seg gjenta hvor som helst, av hvem som helst. Men mennesker er ikke elektroner. Som Kenneth Gergen påpekte allerede i 1973, beskriver sosialpsykologiske funn mønstre i en bestemt kultur på et bestemt tidspunkt, ikke tidløse lover. Vinciane Despret og Isabelle Stengers viser at det eksperimentelle apparatet ikke er en nøytral linse, men noe som er med på å frambringe fenomenet det studerer – forsøkspersoner tolker situasjonen og svarer tilbake. Ian Hackings loopingeffekter er en annen måte å forstå dette på. Mennesker endrer seg av å bli kategorisert, i motsetning til elektroner, som er likegyldige til hva vi kaller dem. Dermed blir det å gi slipp på ideen om kunnskap som et speilbilde av en tidløs virkelighet – uten at det betyr at alt er relativt eller at det ikke finnes slikt som slett metode. Replikasjonskrisen er ikke bare en feil som skal rettes, men en anledning til å erkjenne at psykologiens gjenstand er historisk, kulturell og relasjonell , og at menneskene vi studerer svarer tilbake og forandrer seg av å bli sett.

Vi vet mye om hva som virker for psykisk helse. Likevel styres hjelpen fortsatt av diagnoser, produksjon og kontroll. Det trenger ikke være sånn.

Description of the essences of the phenomenon of being pregnant when facing economic disadvantage can increase understanding and contribute to a more targeted and tailored prenatal care for the population and provide positive effects for their families.

Foreldreveiledning er et tilbud for de som trenger støtte for å ivareta rollen som forelder. Felles for alle foreldreveiledningsprogrammene er at de tar utgangspu...