Endogenous reward (intrinsic reward at will) is a fiat currency that is occasioned by steps toward any goals which are challenging and/or uncommon enough to prevent its debasement by inflation. A “theory of mental computational processes” should propose what properties let goals grow from appetites for endogenous rewards. Endogenous reward may be the universal selective factor in all modifiable mental processes.

This introductory article outlines three fundamental regulatory developments in the EU’s legislation addressing digitalization and automation of decision-making: One is that across many acts we see a move towards more complex multi-level composite procedures, involving not only public structures with agencies, EU bodies, national agencies, but also co-regulation through standardisation in combination with – in several areas – audited self-regulation. A second feature of much of the current legislation in digital matters is that obligations imposed therein require an increased attention to information management – from sourcing to use, dissemination, sharing. This is a requirement for both public and private actors imposing ever more ‘granular’ knowledge and reporting of information flows in economic operators. A third is the growing role of interoperability which is being firmly established as a tool to create data exchange possibilities The diverse regulatory tools and methods are creating complex networks of legal relations and obligations which appear difficult to submit to oversight and compliance without strong protection of individual rights and procedural structures ensuring their enforcement.

The target article argued that motivation constructs are treated as black boxes and called for work that specifies the mental computational processes underlying motivated behavior. In response to critical commentaries, we clarify our philosophical standpoint, elaborate on the meaning of mental computational processes and why past work was not sufficient, and discuss the opportunities to expand the scope of the framework.

Although in basic agreement with Murayama and Jach's call for greater attention to the black boxes underlying motivated behavior, we provide examples of our published suggestions regarding how subjective task value (and ability self-concepts) “gets into people's knowledge structures.” We suggest additional mental computational processes to investigate and call for a developmental and situated individual differences approach to this work.

Murayama and Jach point out that we do not sufficiently understand the constructs and mental computations underlying higher-order motivated behaviors. Although this may be generally true, we would like to add and contribute to the discussion by outlining how interdisciplinary research on novelty-evoked exploration has advanced the study of learning and curiosity.

Addressing climate change requires substantial shifts in individual behavior. Providing information about climate externalities through carbon labels is a promising tool to foster sustainable choices when individuals weigh environmental against personal outcomes. We study the impact of carbon labels over time and their underlying mechanisms in a repeated risky choice task. We ran two preregistered experiments (US samples, N = 1,268) with realized carbon and monetary payoffs, examining how choice is influenced by the timing of carbon information (One-off vs. Recurring) and participants’ political preference (i.e., Democrat or Republican voters). In Study 1, we find that both Democrats and Republicans reduce carbon emissions when carbon labels were provided. Further, recurring labels significantly reduced carbon choices compared to one-off labels. Study 2 replicated the results in a within-participant design and showed that the impact of recurring carbon labels on sustainable choices cannot be explained by the strength of emission recall. This suggests that recurring labels amplify the importance given to the climate attribute in the decision process, operating via attentional rather than informational mechanisms. Our results emphasize the importance of providing climate externality information at time of use to raise awareness about climate costs and bolster sustainable preferences across population segments.

Malaria remains a major health challenge in developing countries, with climate change intensifying its impact. Pakistan is among the most vulnerable nations. This study examines the relationship between temperature and malaria cases in two highly affected districts, Bannu and Lakki Marwat, to inform climate-adaptive interventions.

We analyzed monthly malaria cases (2014–2022) from the Integrated Vector Control/Malaria Control Program in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, combined with gridded meteorological data from Copernicus ERA5-Land. Time-series analysis using distributed lag nonlinear models and quasi-Poisson regression was applied to assess the associations.

The findings suggest that as temperatures exceed 22.4°C, malaria transmission increases by 9 to 10% for every 1°C rise in both districts. In Bannu, up to 39.8% of reported malaria cases could be attributed to heat, while in Lakki Marwat, 54.1% of cases were attributable to heat. Under high emission scenarios, heat-related malaria cases could increase by 0.8 to 3.5% by the 2060s. Relationship between temperature and malaria transmission is complex and is influenced by environmental factors such as precipitation and humidity.

Given Pakistan’s limited healthcare infrastructure, addressing climate-driven malaria risks is urgent. Recent severe floods and malaria surges highlight the need for climate adaptation measures and strengthened healthcare systems to enhance community resilience.

It is well-known that English variable word-final coronal stop deletion (CSD) is less likely to occur when the final coronal stop instantiates the inflectional suffix -ed. It is sometimes hypothesised that the reason for this effect is to avoid the homophony between past and present tenses that would result from the suffix -ed being deleted. This reasoning suggests another hypothesis: that CSD should also be disfavoured when it would create homophony between two distinct lexical items, such as bald and ball. In this squib, we test that hypothesis on data from a corpus of Philadelphia English. We find no evidence that probability of CSD is affected by homophony avoidance between lexical items. This weakens the case that homophony avoidance is at play in disfavouring CSD in the -ed case, and may have implications for the theory of homophony avoidance in phonology in general.

In their proposal for unpacking the black box of motivation, Murayama and Jach (M&J) propose three types of reductions: From high-level to low-level motivational constructs, from motivation to cognition, and from contentful to contentless explanations. Although these reductions come with the promise of parsimony, they carry the risk of losing vital explanatory power.

In their article, Murayama and Jach contend that a mental computational model demonstrates that high-level motivations are emergent properties from underlying cognitive processes rather than instigators of behaviors. Despite points of agreement with the authors' critiques of the motivation literature, I argue that their claim of dismantling the black box of the human mind has been constructed on shaking grounds.

This is the sixth report on international humanitarian law (IHL) and the challenges of contemporary armed conflicts prepared by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for the International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (International Conference). Similar reports were submitted to the International Conferences held in 2003, 2007, 2011, 2015 and 2019. The aim of all these reports is to provide an overview of some of the challenges posed by contemporary armed conflicts for IHL; generate broader reflection on those challenges; and outline current or prospective ICRC action, positions and areas of interest, and bring them to the attention of members of the International Conference.

Like its predecessors, this report addresses only some of the contemporary challenges to IHL. It outlines a number of issues that are the focus of increased interest among states and other actors, as well as the ICRC: nuclear weapons; protection of people in the hands of parties to armed conflict; conduct of hostilities; new technologies of warfare; impartial humanitarian work; and implementation of IHL. These issues include matters not addressed in previous reports, such as separated family members, missing people and obligations on the handling of the dead, food security, military operations in outer space, and how respect for IHL can contribute, in a modest way, to building steps towards peace. This report also provides an update on some issues of concern that were addressed in previous reports and that remain high on the international agenda, such as the urbanization of warfare, autonomous weapon systems and other new technologies of warfare, and protection of people deprived of their liberty.

We introduce and study a game-theoretic model to understand the spread of an epidemic in a homogeneous population. A discrete-time stochastic process is considered where, in each epoch, first, a randomly chosen agent updates their action trying to maximize a proposed utility function, and then agents who have viral exposures beyond their immunity get infected. Our main results discuss asymptotic limiting distributions of both the cardinality of the subset of infected agents and the action profile, considered under various values of two parameters (initial action and immunity profile). We also show that the theoretical distributions are almost always achieved in the first few epochs.

Child socioemotional difficulties emerge as early as infancy, increase over time, and place children at risk for future internalizing and externalizing symptoms. The aim of the present study was to investigate pathways that originate within the interparental relationship during pregnancy and unfold during infancy that mitigate risk for toddler socioemotional difficulties and to examine the differential effects of these pathways for children with varying degrees of temperamental fearfulness. Specifically, we examined whether dyadic mutually responsive orientation (MRO; i.e., a system of attunement, reciprocity, cooperation, and warmth) observed in the prenatal interparental relationship and in both mother-infant and father-infant relationships predicted child socioemotional functioning at age 2. Findings revealed a significant direct effect of observed prenatal interparental MRO on mother-infant and father-infant MRO. Results also demonstrated an indirect effect of prenatal interparental MRO on socioemotional functioning via father-infant MRO. Temperamental fearfulness did not interact with interparental MRO, mother-infant MRO, or father-infant MRO to impact socioemotional functioning. Taken together, findings suggest high interparental MRO during pregnancy contributes to similar relational qualities in the parent-infant relationship and mitigates the risk for toddler socioemotional difficulties. Further, results underscore the importance of integrating fathers into prevention and intervention efforts when they are part of the family system.

The two main sources of difficulty for a group of mobile robots employing sensors to find a source are robot collisions and wireless ambient noise, such as light, sound, and other sounds. This paper introduces a novel approach to multi-robot system cooperation and collision avoidance: the new modified source-seeking control with noise cancelation technology. The robot team works together on an incline of a light source field; the team’s mobility is dependent upon following the upward gradient’s direction and forming a particular movement pattern. The proposed program also takes into account each robot’s size, speed limit, obstacles, and noise. The noise cancelation technique has been used to avoid the delay and false decisions to find the target point of the source. When the noise is canceled, all control inputs to the algorithm are accurate, and the feedback decision will be true. In this study, we use the MATLAB simulation tools to test the velocity, position, time delay, and performance of each robot in the used group of robots. The simulation and practical results of the robots in searching for a light source showed very satisfactory performance compared with the results in the literature.

Murayama and Jach claim that current motivational constructs do not specify causal processes (black-box problem) and that mental computational processes solve this problem. We argue, process-focused research requires theoretical frameworks addressing situational variations, individual differences, and their interaction. Classic achievement motivation theory provides comprehensive models with empirically measurable process-related constructs and predictions. Recent developments build on this, addressing motivation, action, and their socio-cultural and lifespan context. Theory-free mental computational processes cannot do any of that.

Though we see the potential for benefits from the development of process-oriented approaches, we argue that it falls prey to many of the same critiques raised about the existing construct level of analysis. The construct-level approach will likely dominate motivation research until we develop computational models that are not only accurate, but also broadly usable.

Some constructs in motivation science are certainly underdeveloped and some motivation researchers may work with underspecified constructs, as suggested by Murayama and Jach (M&J). However, this is not indicative of a general problem in motivation science. Many motivation theories focus on specific mechanisms underlying motivated behavior and thus have already adopted the computational process perspective that M&J call for.