Abstract Huettig and Christiansen in an earlier issue argue that large language models (LLMs) are beneficial to address declining cognitive skills, such as literacy, through combating imbalances in educational equity. However, we warn that this technosolutionism may be the wrong frame. LLMs are labor intensive, are economically infeasible, and pollute the environment, and these properties […]

Everybody knows intuitively what mental fatigue is. However, we poorly understand why fatigue emerges with time spent on demanding cognitive work and how such ‘cognitive fatigue’ impacts neural processing and behavioral guidance. Here, we review experimental investigations that induced cognitive fatigue and recorded its potential markers, including self-report, behavioral performance, economic choice, physiological and neural […]

Abstract Language is traditionally characterized as an arbitrary, symbolic system, made up of discrete, categorical forms. But iconicity and gradience are pervasive in communication. For example, in spoken languages, word forms can be “played with” in iconic gradient ways by varying vowel length, pitch, or speed (e.g., “It’s been a loooooooong day”). However, little is […]