خلاصه مقالات نوروسايكلوژى شماره پنجم

Gentrification—the process in which an economically disadvantaged urban neighborhood experiences an influx of wealthier individuals, leading to the displacement of the original inhabitants—is associated with worse mental health for affected children in families with low socioeconomic status (SES), indicates a study in Developmental Psychology. Researchers surveyed 1,045 youth ages 10 to 15 from low-SES families in the United States between 2014 and 2015. Participants lived in neighborhoods that census data and community surveys in 2010 suggested were “gentrifiable.” The researchers found that compared with living in a nongentrifying neighborhood, living in a gentrifying neighborhood was linked to later heightened psychological distress among low-SES youth, which, in turn, was associated with lower math test scores 1 year later. The link between gentrification and increased psychological distress was strongest among low-SES Black youth, who may face both heightened racism and classism-related social stressors in gentrifying neighborhoods.

People are better than chance at determining if a piece of text was written by a human or an artificial intelligence (AI) system, according to a study in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition. Researchers asked 101 online participants to rate five randomly selected narratives as either human- or AI-generated and explain their choices. Participants chose correctly 65% of the time and were more accurate at identifying human-generated narratives than AI-generated narratives. When participants relied on grammar and writing to make their decisions, they were highly accurate, but when they relied on emotional expression, their performance dropped to chance levels.

People feel less empathy toward others’ distress in the future compared with the present, according to research in Emotion. Across four online studies, researchers asked 4,498 participants to report their level of empathy in response to various hypothetical situations taking place in the present or future. They found that participants felt less empathy toward another person’s suffering in the future compared with the present despite predicting that the same amount of pain would be felt. However, imagining another person’s future distress did lead them to place greater value on future generations’ welfare. The researchers also found that reduced empathy for others’ future hardships led the participants to donate less money to a future-oriented charity than a present-oriented charity. Finally, the empathy gap vanished after asking the participants to imagine the future in vivid detail.