Tag Archives: Psychology

How conversation works – and why people with hearing loss rely more on their powers of prediction

Ruth Corps is an Early Career Research Fellow in Psychology, School of Psychology, University of Sheffield.
“I specialise in the cognitive mechanisms supporting conversation and the broader impacts of conversational breakdown and difficulty. My work has predominantly focused on student populations, but I am increasingly interested in populations that struggle with communication (such as those with hearing loss or ADHD) and how these difficulties develop across the lifespan.
I completed both my MA (Hons) in Psychology and my MSc in Psychology of Language at the University of Dundee and my PhD in the Psychology of Language at the University of Edinburgh. My PhD investigated the predictive mechanisms that support rapid turn-taking during conversation, focusing on how predicting what another person is likely to say help us determine what we should say and when we should say it.
After graduating, I stayed at Edinburgh for a further two years as a postdoctoral researcher, investigating how another person’s perspective may help us predict what they are likely to say. I then spent four years at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, investigating the mechanisms supporting conversation in real-world interactions.”

AI-generated images can exploit how your mind works − here’s why they fool you and how to spot them

Arryn Robbins (she/her) is Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Richmond.
Dr. Robbins is a cognitive psychologist whose expertise is in visual attention and memory. Her research focuses on how visual attention interacts with memory, experience, and expectations, particularly during visual search tasks in both everyday and applied settings. She explores questions like: How do we guide our attention in unfamiliar environments? How do our past experiences shape what we notice—or overlook? Dr. Robbins also addresses research questions in applied domains of visual cognition, such as design, and professional search (e.g., radiology or search and rescue). Dr. Robbins uses tools like eye-tracking and machine learning to uncover patterns in visual behavior. She is currently leading a project to develop webcam-based eye-tracking tools, making gaze research more accessible and scalable for researchers across disciplines.

The Future of AI Therapy: Promise, Peril, and Urgency

Cleandra Waldron, a counselling psychologist, shares the troubling patterns emerging with clients in her therapy room. Clients increasingly reveal details of their conversations with LLMs as they turn to AI for mental health support. Often unaware of the risks to privacy and dependence, they reveal intimate details of their lives and even medical data. A recent Sky News article reported that an alarming 1.2 million people had discussed suicide with ChatGPT. The ease of 24/7 support without wait times during an unprecedented mental health crisis—which largely operates in a regulatory void—has dangerous implications for user safety. Human psychological services have taken years to build safeguards and protections that clients take for granted, while AI poses as a therapist without any of the regulatory safeguards and protective guardrails that a human therapeutic relationship is bound by.
This article examines the real-world implications of AI therapy through the lens of clinical practice, revealing alarming gaps in data privacy, the dangers of AI “hallucinations” in therapeutic contexts, and the fundamental tension between business models optimized for engagement and the wellbeing of users. Drawing on recent legal actions against big tech AI companies, emerging research, and first-hand accounts from therapy sessions, it carefully asks critical questions: What do we lose when algorithms replace human connections? How do we balance the increased demand for cost-effective therapeutic services with common-sense protections that keep users safe?
The future of AI and its implications for therapy remain unclear. This article poses more questions than answers but aims to increase awareness and promote further research in the field of AI therapy, encouraging the implementation of common-sense policies that protect users from a therapist that never gets sick or goes on holiday.

Colors are objective, according to two philosophers − even though the blue you see doesn’t match what I see

Elay Shech is Professor of Philosophy, Auburn University.
Elay Shech is interested in philosophy of physics, philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, and history of philosophy, as well as issues in biomedical and environmental ethics. His work primarily concerns the nature and role of idealizations and representations in the sciences and, more specifically, in condensed matter physics.

Michael Watkins is Professor of Philosophy, Auburn University.
Michael Watkins earned his PhD from The Ohio State University. He has taught at Auburn for the past 20 years, during which time he has also held adjunct and visiting appointments at Dalhousie University in Canada, the University of Rijeka in Croatia, and Cornell. He publishes in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, aesthetics and ethics, with special interests in philosophical problems related to color, perception, and objectivity. He is a past Lanier Professor.

On ‘The Creative Brain’

Anna Abraham is the E. Paul Torrance Professor and Director of the Torrance Center for Creativity and Talent Development at the University of Georgia. She is the author of ‘The Neuroscience of Creativity’ and the editor of the multidisciplinary volume ‘The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination’. In this interview she discusses her latest book, ‘The Creative Brain: Myths and Truths’, which draws on theoretical and empirical work in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, and offers an examination of human creativity that reveals the true complexity underlying our conventional beliefs about the brain.

Your world is different from a pigeon’s – but a new theory explains how we can still live in the same reality

Catherine Legg is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Deakin University.

“My areas of research include philosophies of language, mind and mathematics. I have long standing interests in the American pragmatists, particularly Charles Peirce, and currently co-edit the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry ‘Pragmatism’. I maintain a side-interest in artificial intelligence, having previously worked as an ontological engineer. I’m also very interested in philosophy of education, and am involved with the Philosophy for Children movement.”

Babies and animals can’t tell us if they have consciousness – but philosophers and scientists are starting to find answers

Henry Taylor is Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Birmingham.

“I’m interested in philosophy of cognitive science, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and robotics. I have worked on perception, consciousness, attention, peripheral vision, the development of scientific concepts, scientific taxonomy, and robotics. Most of my research involves drawing together work from natural science and philosophy.”

The Archetypal Influences of Film: Revelations from the Collective Unconscious and Interdimensional Realities

Humanity is faced with serious decisions. Will it follow the dangerous path toward transhumanism, or will we commit to the unfolding of a greater intention: the discovery of a more meaningful power, purpose, and truth within each one of us, the call to Individuation? Carl G. Jung discovered unifying themes, regardless of whether they came from a hidden tribe in the Amazon, African desert, or a major world religion and called it the Collective Unconscious. He named specific Archetypes manifesting from this realm. This Archetypal journey is Alchemical in nature as described in ancient writings by early Alchemists and Mystics. Mystics have always pointed toward an inner process leading us to spiritual individuation and unity. Ultimately, this is a psychospiritual quest. Along this journey we can be motivated by archetypal influences of compassion and fierceness. As we assimilate these initiatory qualities, we come nearer to the knowing of the authentic spiritual power within us. Many modern movies and television series are doing a better job of illustrating this journey than most religious traditions. The battle between good and evil (what benefits compared to what destroys or prevents consciousness and related development) is real as are the images and stories of interdimensional realities expanding our understanding of new possibilities. They manifest via media and entertainment forms. The themes and messages are influential at both conscious and unconscious levels, preparing people for the end of an old paradigm and the beginning of the next. The threat of Transhumanism is addressed in this article as it moves humanity away from the work of individuation (Carl Jung) and Self-Actualization (Abraham Maslow). The emphasis toward wholeness includes love and human feeling. Transhumanism, focused on efficiency through artificial intelligence, is a threat to the path of becoming an authentic, courageous and compassionate human being. Thus, movies and series depicting superheroes, aliens, portals, and alternative realities are rapidly increasing at a time when many people have lost direction. This article supports their messages.

Why the future might not be where you think it is

Ruth Ogden is Professor of the Psychology of Time, Liverpool John Moores University.

“I have been an academic at Liverpool John Moores University since 2009. My research explores all aspects of how people experience the passage of time. I am particularly interested in understanding why time passes more quickly during some activities and more slowly during others, and how significant changes in life and society affect temporality.”

From control towards vulnerability

Claire Morgan is an Irish artist, born in 1980 in Belfast.

“Being alive can be beautiful and horrific. Every living thing is in this state of constant transition. I am intrigued by those simultaneous senses of spiritual communion and unpalatable intrusion that come about through awareness of our connectedness, and of our vulnerability.

My practice has been focussed on how we humans understand and interact with the rest of the natural world, and our unwillingness to acknowledge our absolute lack of autonomy or control. I look at humans as animals, and the complexity of our intellectual dislocation from the landscape that sustains us. We behave as individual entities with fixed identities, but the reality is less clear.”