Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chelsea Arnold, Clinical Psychologist and Research Fellow (Lead Clinician), Monash University

Many hundreds of people were at Bondi beach on Sunday when 50-year-old Sajid Akram and his 24-year-old son Naveed Akram opened fire on a Hanukkah celebration, killing 15 people.

Many witnesses saw people be seriously injured or die. These experiences are considered traumatic events, even when you don’t know the person who was harmed.

While some people will be able to process such events with some coping strategies, others will will find their extreme distress impacts their mental health.

If you witnessed the Bondi Hanukkah attack, here’s what you might be going through – and when you might need additional support.

Traumatic events impact us differently

People who witnessed the attacks may be affected in different ways.

Factors that make people more vulnerable to traumatic responses, such as extreme distress or mental health challenges, include:

• being closely involved in the attack, placing you in immediate physical danger or witnessing somebody else be seriously injured

• thinking your life was at risk or being extremely fearful during the attack

• having a history of traumatic experiences

• being from a minority background

• being part of a targeted group, with the Jewish community disproportionately impacted by this attack.

What you might be experiencing

In the immediate aftermath of a traumatic event, it’s normal for people to have heightened emotions. Some people might feel upset or overwhelmed, or experience a low mood.

People might feel very fearful or anxious, and feel they need to constantly check their environment for signs of threat.

Witnessing or experiencing traumatic events can impact your ability to complete everyday tasks. People may feel disorientated or have intrusive thoughts about the event. These experiences can change over time and vary from day to day.

While these responses can be distressing and disruptive, they’re our brain’s attempt to make sense of what we experienced. Our brains are designed to keep us safe, so after a threat to our safety, it makes sense we’re on high alert.

What to do in the weeks after a traumatic event

Social and emotional support tends to be the most helpful option for most people to get through and reduce the impact of traumatic events. So lean on your personal network.

Exercising can also be helpful in preventing negative mental health issues after a traumatic event.

Exposure to media about the traumatic event, particularly graphic images and videos, is linked with worse mental health outcomes. Limiting your media consumption is particularly important for people directly linked to the attack.

Faith-based or spiritual practices may help some people to find meaning after a traumatic event, or to draw comfort from their community and rituals.

Finding small ways to help or give back, such as charity or blood donations, or attending memorials can reduce feelings of helplessness.

Coping strategies such as avoidance, emotional numbing and disconnection tend to be less helpful. Instead, deliberately reflecting about the event, problem-solving and seeking understanding are more effective for promoting recovery.

Read more:
Want to donate blood after the Bondi attacks? Here’s what you need to know

PTSD can follow a traumatic event

Most people psychologically recover after experiencing a traumatic event, with their distress reducing over time. For many people, the initial feelings and impact on day-to-day functioning significantly reduce within the first month after the traumatic event.

However, some people may have more severe or prolonged reactions. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a condition that mcay develop in some people following exposure to a traumatic event.

Symptoms of PTSD include:

• being on high alert for danger
• avoiding reminders of the event
• having flashbacks of the event or nightmares
• negative changes in your mood, relationships, or thoughts about yourself.

PTSD is common after a terrorist attack. Around 20% of people who witness terrorist attacks may develop PTSD.

When you might need additional support

While most people who experience traumatic events don’t have ongoing symptoms of PTSD, some people might need professional support.

If symptoms of PTSD are still present three months after the trauma exposure and significantly interfering with your everyday life, then it might be time to seek professional support.

Psychological treatments, including trauma-focused cognitive behaviour therapy and eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) are effective for trauma responses, including PTSD.

If you need additional support, reaching out to your GP is a good place to start. Your GP can support you with a referral to a psychologist who specialises in trauma.

If this article has raised issues for you, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or you can find further resources here.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. If you witnessed the Bondi Hanukkah attack, here’s what you might be going through – https://theconversation.com/if-you-witnessed-the-bondi-hanukkah-attack-heres-what-you-might-be-going-through-272054

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Bartos, Professor of Economics, University of Canberra

The federal government’s mid-year budget update shows a modest improvement in the deficit forecast in 2025–26, but much of this comes from a larger-than-forecast tax take.

The update, known as the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO), estimates a deficit for 2025–26 at A$37 billion, or 1.3% of gross domestic product (GDP). This is down from the $42 billion forecast in the March 2025 federal budget and the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook (PEFO) issued before the May election.

The drivers of the $5 billion improvement in the bottom line are largely outside government control – higher global commodity prices, and a higher income tax take. That’s due to a stronger jobs market and higher wages growth than previously forecast.

The Australian government’s gross debt is projected to exceed $1 trillion for the first time by mid-2027.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers described the update as being “all about delivery, responsibility and restraint”.

MYEFO is required by the Charter of Budget Honesty Act 1998 to be tabled in parliament by the end of January. In recent years it has mostly been released in mid-December.

The document can be merely a technical update of the estimates for economic changes, or an opportunity for policy announcements to reset the government’s budget plans.

The 2025 MYEFO is a mix of both. It includes numerous policy measures, though most confirm announcements already made at or soon after the election. Parameter changes, such as increases in tax revenue, are nevertheless far bigger than all of the policy changes combined.

Spending pressures increasing

Restraint in some areas is needed, given what Finance Minister Katy Gallagher referred to as “significant spending pressures”. These include:

• Natural Disaster Relief – an additional $6.3 billion over the four years of forward estimates

• Higher than expected uptake of the Cheaper Home Batteries Program has increased
  payments by $4.9 billion

• The Age Pension, up $3 billion over four years, reflecting increased numbers of pensions. This revision is puzzling, because numbers should have been predictable at budget time

• Defence Force superannuation benefits, up $2.1 billion, largely reflecting a revised valuation of the government’s superannuation liability

• a range of other increases over the four years of forward estimates, including in veterans’ entitlements, childcare subsidies, non-government schools, and carers.

Not included, but sure to come, is additional spending in response to the Bondi terrorism shooting incident and its tragic loss of life.

Spending pressures outlined in the last budget, in health, the NDIS, public debt interest and defence, continue.

The CSIRO is set to receive an additional $233 million, which will be directed to priorities such as AI, quantum sensing, robotics, critical minerals, climate change adaptation and resilience, agricultural productivity and biosecurity. Tight budgets have led to serious concerns about cuts to CSIRO staff. This additional funding will to an extent help offset those concerns.

Investments in areas such as climate resilience may take time to pay off, but as shown by the massive increase in disaster payments in this budget update, are very much needed.

Cuts in use of contractors

Chalmers has confirmed the government will not be extending electricity bill rebates. They will end in December, as planned. This is a bold measure given opinion polls showed 65% of people surveyed supported extending them.

There have been further cuts in public-service use of contractors and in areas such as travel and hospitality. There are some specific cuts, for example in climate change, but no sign of reported but unconfirmed 5% savings for public service departments.

Shifting spending from one bucket to another

Chalmers claimed the federal government’s $20 billion in savings in the mid-year update meant it “has now delivered $114 billion in savings and reprioritisations since coming to office”.

Although this is technically true, reprioritisation does not help the budget balance. It shifts spending from one bucket to another – a good thing if new purposes meet Australia’s needs more effectively – but does not deliver net savings.

The Australian Financial Review is highly critical of Chalmers’ claims. After more than three-and-a-half years, comparisons with the previous Coalition government’s fiscal record are wearing thin.

Chalmers said the government had “kept average real spending growth to around half the 30-year average”. But that average includes the large amount of spending during the COVID years.

Updated economic forecasts

Treasury has also updated the economic forecasts from the budget.

Treasury has lifted its forecast for inflation during 2025–26 from 3% in the budget to 3.75% in the mid-year update. This is a very similar inflation forecast as the Reserve Bank. But it is 0.5% higher than the forecast growth in wages, so the cost of living will remain an issue.

Inflation is forecast to drop back to 2.75% in 2026–27, back within the Reserve Bank’s 2–3% target band, and less than the expected increase in wages that year.

Real GDP is forecast to grow by 2.25% in 2025–26 and 2026–27. This is just above the rate the Reserve Bank believes the economy can sustain without putting upward pressure on inflation.

Unemployment is forecast to be around 4.5% in mid-2026 and mid-2027.

In short, this update contains no big surprises but also no significant changes to improve the budget bottom line or significant tax reform to make the economy more efficient and more equitable for future generations.

John Hawkins was formerly a senior economist with Treasury and the Reserve Bank.

Stephen Bartos does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The budget update shows a slight improvement in the federal deficit, but it’s mostly due to good luck – https://theconversation.com/the-budget-update-shows-a-slight-improvement-in-the-federal-deficit-but-its-mostly-due-to-good-luck-271934

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Iain Davidson, Emeritus Professor, Department of Archaeology, Classics and History, University of New England

All over Australia, Songlines, or Dreaming tracks, connected First Nations people in one place with those in another through ritual, song and storytelling, which told of their shared beliefs.

In our newly published research, we have used material evidence to establish such links where they were disrupted by the violent past.

Isabel’s mother, Mrs Hansen, told stories from the traditional knowledge of her tribe, the Wangkamadla people, that Isabel passed on to her daughter Avelina.

We have combined these with the archaeological work of Iain in different parts of Australia, to extend the connectivity of those songs and tracks from one region to another.

Rock art images in one region show Songlines reached from Murujuga beside the Indian Ocean to the eastern Simpson Desert 2,300 kilometers away.

Maintaining sacred sites

Mrs Hansen (first name, Annie) and her husband Jack (also known as Snapshot) were born about 125 years ago and brought up on their own First Nations Country on the edge of the Simpson Desert of far western Queensland.

The Hansens were employed at Glenormiston Station in the Channel Country, and from time to time would visit sacred sites in the region to maintain them and retell their songs and stories.

The people of the station referred to this as “going walkabout” as if it was trivial, but it was an important part of maintaining their connection to Country. Isabel was brought up on that Country.

In 1982, Mrs Hansen led a party of people on a tour of such sites. The group included Iain, and Isabel and her husband Ramón Tarragó. Some were ceremonial sites, such as the nest of cobbles, others were art sites.

At these, Mrs Hansen would tell us stories associated with the sites.

During that trip, Mrs Hansen sang songs for Isabel in the language she learned with her tribe and accompanied the songs with sand drawings.

Her stories told of connections to the west through the Songlines or Dreaming tracks associated with the travels of Dingoes from the West and Emus from the Southwest, and she talked to us about connections to Western Australia.

Our studies of the images in the art show the same images can be found right across Australia from the Simpson Desert to the Indian Ocean.

Finding connections

The map of sites with related imagery was made up of smaller regions with interconnected networks of relationships and stories.

Often, these regions had a different range of motifs, but the geometric signs with coded meanings were present among them.

We show in the map of the Boulia region, that, according to stories told us by First Nations Yulluna man Tom Sullivan, there were more local Dreaming tracks or Songlines (in these cases of the Yellow Belly fish from Wonomo Waterhole and the Rainbow Serpent from Woodul Rockhole both further north).

These stories aligned with the mythology along the trading routes moving north for the narcotic drug Pituri for which the ceremonies were owned by Mrs Hansen and related women.

We have also traced archaeological evidence of axes from the quarries around Cloncurry and Mount Isa moving south along these same routes, and there are other links through message sticks collected in the 19th century.

Mrs Hansen said:

On rock faces and in caves are paintings and carvings that white men have never seen. In that Country lie the bones of my people.

All over Australia, there are sites with paintings or carvings which have been damaged by weathering during the passage of time. The repeated use of the rock at different times, and the different weathering of the art over time, shows the places were likely to have been part of a long tradition of ceremony and ritual.

The repeated marking of the rocks with similar signs suggests the stories, such as those told by Mrs Hansen, provided coded meanings.

We can compare some of the images on the edge of the Simpson with those as far west as Murujuga in Western Australia, as well as in between. This allows us to see meanings were encoded in similar ways and the connections gave meaning to the rituals that accompanied the stories.

Similar signs are found in the rock art right across Australia from the Indian Ocean to the Simpson Desert, and stretching to the north around Cloncurry and to the south at Mutawinji. These likely provide the common coded meanings in ceremonies.

When Mrs Hansen and Jack Hansen “went walkabout”, it was not a trivial matter, as people on the station thought. Rather it was an important part of maintaining their ritual relationships with Country, long after pastoralism had destroyed much of the context.

Through such relationships we can identify the reach of the Songlines Mrs Hansen spoke about.

Iain Davidson previously received funding from Australian Research Council. This research was part of his ongoing work from 1981 onwards. His book was published in 2025 and the research reported here occupies part of chapter nine.

Avelina Tarrago and Isabel Tarrago do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Stories from traditional knowledge combined with archaeological work trace 2,300km of Songlines – https://theconversation.com/stories-from-traditional-knowledge-combined-with-archaeological-work-trace-2-300km-of-songlines-269400

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Kemish, Adjunct Professor, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of Queensland

Thirty years ago this week, the Dayton Accords were signed in Paris, bringing an end to the Bosnian war, the most destructive conflict Europe had witnessed since 1945.

Weeks of intensive negotiations at an air base in Dayton, Ohio, finally produced a settlement to a conflict that accompanied the disintegration of Yugoslavia and saw more than 100,000 people killed and millions displaced.

The agreement was imperfect. But today, with war raging in Europe again and international cooperation appearing fragile, the Dayton Accords remind us that determined diplomacy can still prevail over violence.

Experiencing the conflict up close

In the early 1990s, Bosnia and Croatia were the sites of systematic ethnic cleansing and brutal siege warfare. It was a bitter and often confusing triangular conflict that saw Serb forces attacking both Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) and Croats for territorial control across both countries. There was also fighting between Bosniaks and Croats in Bosnia’s southwest.

Ian Kemish and Jasmina Joldić, the authors of this article, experienced the war from different vantage points.

Kemish served as an Australian diplomat accredited to Bosnia and Croatia, travelling regularly to Sarajevo and other towns during the conflict and its aftermath. He engaged with the rival factions and his international colleagues struggling to protect civilians within severely constrained mandates.

Though not a decisive player in the international deliberations to end the war, Australia was still an engaged participant. It accepted thousands of refugees from the region after the war. And Australians served with UN peacekeeping forces and aid agencies in Bosnia and other regional countries, as well as with the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

Joldić was nine years old when the war broke out in her hometown of Bijeljina – this was the first town in Bosnia taken over forcibly by Bosnian Serb forces.

Overnight, their Serb neighbours became enemies – people she had grown up with and celebrated weddings and birthdays with turned against her family. They became the victims of what was the opening act for ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. Her father was taken to the nearby Batković concentration camp. For years, the full truth of such places remained hidden; their horrors only came to light long after the war.

Like many families, hers fled in stages, eventually finding precarious refuge in western Europe. From exile, Joldić experienced the war largely through television screens. International reporting became a lifeline, and a source of hope the world might finally act.

However, UN peacekeepers even failed to prevent the murders of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica – the worst atrocity in Europe since the Holocaust. For Joldić‘s family and many like them, Srebrenica was the defining moment of the war. She remembers her family watching the news from Berlin in horror and disbelief. Human cruelty seemed to have reached a new, unimaginable level.

The family had lost everything – their house, their previous lives, their friends, their country. But they knew that in many respects they were the fortunate ones, because they had survived.

After clinging to the possibility of a return to Bijeljina, Joldić’s family eventually found a new home in Australia.

This story is not unique. It echoes the experience of hundreds of thousands of Bosnians who were displaced, dispossessed and scattered across the world.

What Dayton accomplished – and what it didn’t

At the end of 1995, international revulsion at the killings – amplified by relentless media coverage – spurred the United States and Europe into coordinated action. Working with regional leaders, they brought the fighting to an end.

The accords fulfilled the most fundamental task of any peace agreement: the fighting stopped. Bosnia survived as a single sovereign state, and the agreement established protections for its people.

But Dayton also entrenched a complex constitutional structure in the country that has often impeded reform and enabled nationalist politics. The division of the country into two entities – the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska – continues to shape its political life. Periodic threats of secession underline the fragility of the settlement.

Peace has required sustained external engagement. As global attention has shifted elsewhere, democratic backsliding and nationalist rhetoric have intensified.

Dayton also made possible a modern system of international criminal justice. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, established in 1993, became the first UN war crimes tribunal of its kind. More than 160 individuals were indicted and 92 were convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity. This laid the groundwork for the foundation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002.

Lessons for a troubled world

Thirty years on, Dayton offers lessons that are not only strategic, but deeply human.

First, peace requires sustained commitment from major powers – and timely action. Dayton succeeded in part because the US and Europe finally acted in concert. In today’s fractured geopolitical environment, that kind of unity is harder to achieve, but the cost of inaction remains just as high.

For many Bosnians, the prolonged international hesitation to intervene decisively bred fear and disbelief. It reinforced a lasting narrative the United States was slow to act because the violence posed no immediate threat to its own strategic or economic interests.

Echoes of that anxiety are now heard in Ukraine, where delays, conditions and debates over “escalation” have fed similar doubts about Western resolve.

Second, justice is not a luxury byproduct of a peace process – it is an essential condition for peace.

For survivors and displaced communities, accountability was a recognition that what happened mattered, and that it was wrong. The international criminal tribunal gave legal weight to people’s lived experience, transforming testimony into judgement.

At a time when the ICC is increasingly challenged or ignored, Dayton reminds us that justice can help societies move forward, even when wounds remain open.

Third, the displacement of people leaves long shadows.

Post-conflict recovery is not just about holding elections and rebuilding institutions; it’s also whether people can regain a sense of belonging and security, and contribute to their new countries.

More than two million Bosnians were displaced during the war, and over a million left the country permanently. They still measure time not in years, but in “before” and “after”. Countries across Europe, North America and elsewhere opened their doors to Bosnian refugees, allowing them to rebuild their lives.

For those displaced by conflicts today – from Gaza to Ukraine to Sudan – the Bosnian experience offers a reminder of what is at stake when borders close and compassion falters. At a time when hesitancy about migration is hardening, this history stands as a powerful argument for keeping pathways to refuge open, even when doing so feels politically difficult.

Finally, Dayton cautions against complacency. Europe’s post-Cold War confidence that large-scale war was a thing of the past proved illusory. The war in Ukraine has reinforced how quickly norms can unravel.

Bosnia’s story warns of the dangers of unchecked nationalism and the enduring consequences when the international community looks away.

Dayton is not a perfect blueprint. But it stopped a war, enabled accountability for atrocities, and offered millions the chance to rebuild their lives.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. This peace deal ended Europe’s last major war 30 years ago. It provides important lessons for today’s fractured world – https://theconversation.com/this-peace-deal-ended-europes-last-major-war-30-years-ago-it-provides-important-lessons-for-todays-fractured-world-270160

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rikke Louise Bundgaard-Nielsen, Senior Lecturer, School of Languages and Linguistics, The University of Melbourne

Effective communication lies at the heart of human connection. It helps us collaborate with each other, solve problems and build relationships. And communicating clearly is a major consideration for most of us in most aspects of life.

But what if the way some words sound makes them more impactful in communication?

New research I coauthored, published in Cognition, suggests this might be the case. And it could help us all understand how to communicate better with each other.

What makes some words special?

Psycholinguistics is the study of the use and acquisition of language. A key concept in the field is known as “surprisal”. Surprisal is a measure of how expected something – for example, a word in a sentence or a sound in a word – is relative to what typically happens in the language.

All English words are built from the same vowels and consonants and follow the same rules of combination. But despite this, not all words are created equal. Words made up of unusual sequences of vowels and consonants sound more surprising to listeners. That makes them stand out in speech and affects how we process them.

We use information theory to calculate how surprising a word is. Information theory works by calculating how much information each speech sound contributes to an individual word.

Speech sounds that occur in highly predictable environments contribute relatively little information. These include sequences like /st/ as in “stick” and “stone”, and /an/ as in “can” and “and”. This is because lots of other words share the same sequences of sounds.

Speech sounds that occur in unusual environments contribute much more information. These include /koi/ like in “coil” and “coin”, and /sv/ as in “svelte” and “svabite”. This is because more unusual sequences of sounds are shared with fewer words in the lexicon.

Highly vivid words are more surprising

We applied an information theoretical analysis to data from a very large corpus of 51 million words of spoken American English – many of which were repeated – taken from movie and television subtitles.

This allowed us to assign each word in English a score showing how surprising its sounds are in English.

We then took these scores and cross-referenced them with the results of a battery of word-processing experiments. These included an auditory lexical decision task which required participants to decide whether what they heard were real words or not; a reading task; and several memory recognition tasks.

This revealed that highly vivid words – those that are very specific or concrete – are more surprising. It also revealed that both vividness and surprisal improves memory recognition.

For example, words like “dog” and “flower” are more vivid than words like “stun” and “plot”, and they also sound more surprising.

Using highly surprising word forms ensures their meaning is processed deeply and remembered better.

Challenging modern linguistics

The fact that highly vivid words sound more surprising than other words challenges the assumption in modern linguistics that the relationship between a word and its meaning is arbitrary and conventionalised.

For example, while English speakers use the sound sequence /tri:/ to refer to the concept of a “tree”, French speakers use the sequence /aʁbʁə/ (arbre) just as successfully. This shows that language users agree on what names to use within each speech community. This is what it means for language to be conventionalised.

Similarly, small things can have long names (for example, “caterpillar”) and vice versa (for example, “bus”). Very different things can have very similar names – take “pig” and “pin”. This shows that the shape of a word is not normally linked to its meaning. In other words, it is arbitrary.

An exception to this is onomatopoeic words, which linguists refer to as being “iconic”. Well-known examples are animal noises such as “cockadoodledoo” and “miaow”, and words like “splash” and “boom”.

Iconic words are often highly surprising and include unusual sounds and sound combinations. They often sound similar across languages.

Read more:
Kapow! Zap! Splat! How comics make sound on the page

Why are highly vivid words more surprising?

Previous research has shown that words with negative meanings tend to be surprising. This includes words such as “snake” and “tiger”, which some researchers argue is because they clearly communicate danger. Surprising sounds mean dangerous words are less likely to be confused with other words.

But this doesn’t explain why vivid words also show high levels of surprisal.

We propose that speakers “hack” into the linguistic structure to ensure that listeners’ attention and memory is drawn toward important concepts. They do so by unconsciously creating or maintaining surprising word forms, because these words grab our attention and stick in our memory more effectively.

In this way, the sounds of words are subtly guiding how we focus and learn from language.

How can we “hack” communication?

The fact that some words induce deeper processing and better recall potentially has significant impact on how we structure communication in many domains.

Using highly surprising words might enhance personal communication. But it could also be impactful for professional communication. And it is easy to imagine that any marginal improvement afforded by using highly surprising words might be valuable in advertising and public service messaging.

It might also be the case that knowledge of high-impact words could be leveraged in education.

And if we tested enough readers of this article, we would be able to demonstrate better recall for “flower” and “dog” than “stun” and “plot”, hinting that science communication can also benefit from using some words rather than others.

The author would like to acknowledge the crucial contribution of Dr Alexander Kilpatrick to this article.

Rikke Louise Bundgaard-Nielsen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Some words affect us more than others. It boils down to how they sound – https://theconversation.com/some-words-affect-us-more-than-others-it-boils-down-to-how-they-sound-264677

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rikke Louise Bundgaard-Nielsen, Senior Lecturer, School of Languages and Linguistics, The University of Melbourne

Effective communication lies at the heart of human connection. It helps us collaborate with each other, solve problems and build relationships. And communicating clearly is a major consideration for most of us in most aspects of life.

But what if the way some words sound makes them more impactful in communication?

New research I coauthored, published in Cognition, suggests this might be the case. And it could help us all understand how to communicate better with each other.

What makes some words special?

Psycholinguistics is the study of the use and acquisition of language. A key concept in the field is known as “surprisal”. Surprisal is a measure of how expected something – for example, a word in a sentence or a sound in a word – is relative to what typically happens in the language.

All English words are built from the same vowels and consonants and follow the same rules of combination. But despite this, not all words are created equal. Words made up of unusual sequences of vowels and consonants sound more surprising to listeners. That makes them stand out in speech and affects how we process them.

We use information theory to calculate how surprising a word is. Information theory works by calculating how much information each speech sound contributes to an individual word.

Speech sounds that occur in highly predictable environments contribute relatively little information. These include sequences like /st/ as in “stick” and “stone”, and /an/ as in “can” and “and”. This is because lots of other words share the same sequences of sounds.

Speech sounds that occur in unusual environments contribute much more information. These include /koi/ like in “coil” and “coin”, and /sv/ as in “svelte” and “svabite”. This is because more unusual sequences of sounds are shared with fewer words in the lexicon.

Highly vivid words are more surprising

We applied an information theoretical analysis to data from a very large corpus of 51 million words of spoken American English – many of which were repeated – taken from movie and television subtitles.

This allowed us to assign each word in English a score showing how surprising its sounds are in English.

We then took these scores and cross-referenced them with the results of a battery of word-processing experiments. These included an auditory lexical decision task which required participants to decide whether what they heard were real words or not; a reading task; and several memory recognition tasks.

This revealed that highly vivid words – those that are very specific or concrete – are more surprising. It also revealed that both vividness and surprisal improves memory recognition.

For example, words like “dog” and “flower” are more vivid than words like “stun” and “plot”, and they also sound more surprising.

Using highly surprising word forms ensures their meaning is processed deeply and remembered better.

Challenging modern linguistics

The fact that highly vivid words sound more surprising than other words challenges the assumption in modern linguistics that the relationship between a word and its meaning is arbitrary and conventionalised.

For example, while English speakers use the sound sequence /tri:/ to refer to the concept of a “tree”, French speakers use the sequence /aʁbʁə/ (arbre) just as successfully. This shows that language users agree on what names to use within each speech community. This is what it means for language to be conventionalised.

Similarly, small things can have long names (for example, “caterpillar”) and vice versa (for example, “bus”). Very different things can have very similar names – take “pig” and “pin”. This shows that the shape of a word is not normally linked to its meaning. In other words, it is arbitrary.

An exception to this is onomatopoeic words, which linguists refer to as being “iconic”. Well-known examples are animal noises such as “cockadoodledoo” and “miaow”, and words like “splash” and “boom”.

Iconic words are often highly surprising and include unusual sounds and sound combinations. They often sound similar across languages.

Read more:
Kapow! Zap! Splat! How comics make sound on the page

Why are highly vivid words more surprising?

Previous research has shown that words with negative meanings tend to be surprising. This includes words such as “snake” and “tiger”, which some researchers argue is because they clearly communicate danger. Surprising sounds mean dangerous words are less likely to be confused with other words.

But this doesn’t explain why vivid words also show high levels of surprisal.

We propose that speakers “hack” into the linguistic structure to ensure that listeners’ attention and memory is drawn toward important concepts. They do so by unconsciously creating or maintaining surprising word forms, because these words grab our attention and stick in our memory more effectively.

In this way, the sounds of words are subtly guiding how we focus and learn from language.

How can we “hack” communication?

The fact that some words induce deeper processing and better recall potentially has significant impact on how we structure communication in many domains.

Using highly surprising words might enhance personal communication. But it could also be impactful for professional communication. And it is easy to imagine that any marginal improvement afforded by using highly surprising words might be valuable in advertising and public service messaging.

It might also be the case that knowledge of high-impact words could be leveraged in education.

And if we tested enough readers of this article, we would be able to demonstrate better recall for “flower” and “dog” than “stun” and “plot”, hinting that science communication can also benefit from using some words rather than others.

The author would like to acknowledge the crucial contribution of Dr Alexander Kilpatrick to this article.

Rikke Louise Bundgaard-Nielsen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Some words affect us more than others. It boils down to how they sound – https://theconversation.com/some-words-affect-us-more-than-others-it-boils-down-to-how-they-sound-264677

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hinze Hogendoorn, Professor, Visual Time Perception, Queensland University of Technology

How is it December already? What happened to 2025? And how did we suddenly jump from eating Easter eggs to putting up Christmas trees?

To understand why our perception of time seems to bend and warp, we need to dig into how our brains tell time in the first place.

The term “time perception” is actually a bit of a misnomer, because time itself isn’t “out there” to be perceived.

When we perceive a colour, a sound, a flavour or a touch, specialised sensory organs detect something in the environment: the wavelength of a light particle that enters the eye, the frequency of a sound wave that enters the ear, the presence of different chemicals in the mouth and nose, or the pressure of an object against our skin.

But there is no parallel for time – no “time particle” for the brain to detect.

How brains deal with time

Our brains don’t perceive time – they infer it. Like the ticking of a clock, the brain estimates the passage of time by keeping track of change.

But unlike a clock, the brain does not have regular ticks to count. To infer how much time has passed, the brain simply adds up how much happened. If you fill a time interval with exciting stuff, it seems to last longer. In the lab, a briefly presented flickering image seems to last longer than a static image of the same duration.

This is also why witnesses of highly intense events (such as car accidents) frequently report that time seems to slow down. Indeed, in one well-known study, research participants fell backwards into a net from a height of more than 30 metres.

When they were subsequently asked to estimate the duration of their terrifying experience, they reported durations more than a third longer than when they judged someone else’s fall.

The intense arousal of the first-hand experience amplifies attention, in turn causing the brain to store dense, rich memories of events as they unfold.

Afterwards, when it needs to estimate how much time passed during the event, this unusually dense recollection of unfolding events causes the brain to overestimate how much time passed.

Time… flies?

To understand what happened to November and the rest of 2025, we also need to distinguish between telling time retrospectively (how much time has passed) versus prospectively (how fast time is passing now).

As every child knows, time spent waiting at the dentist passes much more slowly than time spent playing with a new toy. But why?

Again, a key part of the story is how much is happening – and, specifically, what you’re paying attention to. The more you pay attention to time itself, the more slowly it seems to pass.

The old adage states that time flies when you’re having fun, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be fun. Whatever you’re attending to just needs to distract you from the passage of time. Keep your mind engaged, whether it’s work or play, and time will slip away.

But try staring at a clock for even five minutes, and you will feel how endless that seems, unless you let your mind wander. Boredom slows time right down.

Read more:
‘Mum, Dad, I’m bored!’ How to teach children to manage their own boredom these holidays

Routine makes the years fly by

This disconnect between prospective and retrospective time perception also explains the saying “the days are long but the years are short”, a phenomenon which tends to increase as we age.

When we are young, lots of things are new: we go to school for the first time, enter a first relationship, start our first job. All these novel events form a rich store of memories that the brain later looks back on to conclude that a lot has happened, so a lot of time must have passed.

Conversely, when we get older, a lot of our daily tasks become more routine: bring the kids to school, go to work, cook dinner. As some previously novel parts of our day become routine, they become less interesting. Boring jobs cause time to slow down, creating the impression that the days crawl.

Paradoxically though, because these routine tasks are less exciting and novel, they leave weaker and less vivid memory traces. When our older brain therefore looks back to infer how much time has passed since the start of the year, it concludes that not much has happened, so it doesn’t feel very long ago.

Of course, this is at odds with our conscious knowledge that it’s already December, and we are left wondering how the year flew by.

How do I slow down time, then?

Slowing down time as you’re experiencing it is very easy, although completely dissatisfying: just get bored. Go wait at red traffic lights. Count to ten thousand in your head. Watch paint dry, as they say.

On the other hand, slowing down retrospective time is a little more difficult. Essentially, you need to make sure that come December, you have a year’s worth of memories to show for it.

One way to do this is to prevent memories from fading, and the best way to do that is to rehash them. Write things down in a diary or journal. Look back and reminisce. Keep your memories alive, and you’ll keep your past alive.

The other way to ensure you’ve got a year’s worth of memories at year’s end takes a little more initiative, but is a lot more inspiring. Because the best way to prevent the year from feeling like it flew by, is to fill it with lots of exciting memories of new, unique experiences. So explore. Go adventuring. Do something crazy – something you’ll never forget.

Your internal clock will thank you for it.

Hinze Hogendoorn receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Road Safety Action Grants Program.

– ref. Why is time going so fast and how do I slow it down? – https://theconversation.com/why-is-time-going-so-fast-and-how-do-i-slow-it-down-268982

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hinze Hogendoorn, Professor, Visual Time Perception, Queensland University of Technology

How is it December already? What happened to 2025? And how did we suddenly jump from eating Easter eggs to putting up Christmas trees?

To understand why our perception of time seems to bend and warp, we need to dig into how our brains tell time in the first place.

The term “time perception” is actually a bit of a misnomer, because time itself isn’t “out there” to be perceived.

When we perceive a colour, a sound, a flavour or a touch, specialised sensory organs detect something in the environment: the wavelength of a light particle that enters the eye, the frequency of a sound wave that enters the ear, the presence of different chemicals in the mouth and nose, or the pressure of an object against our skin.

But there is no parallel for time – no “time particle” for the brain to detect.

How brains deal with time

Our brains don’t perceive time – they infer it. Like the ticking of a clock, the brain estimates the passage of time by keeping track of change.

But unlike a clock, the brain does not have regular ticks to count. To infer how much time has passed, the brain simply adds up how much happened. If you fill a time interval with exciting stuff, it seems to last longer. In the lab, a briefly presented flickering image seems to last longer than a static image of the same duration.

This is also why witnesses of highly intense events (such as car accidents) frequently report that time seems to slow down. Indeed, in one well-known study, research participants fell backwards into a net from a height of more than 30 metres.

When they were subsequently asked to estimate the duration of their terrifying experience, they reported durations more than a third longer than when they judged someone else’s fall.

The intense arousal of the first-hand experience amplifies attention, in turn causing the brain to store dense, rich memories of events as they unfold.

Afterwards, when it needs to estimate how much time passed during the event, this unusually dense recollection of unfolding events causes the brain to overestimate how much time passed.

Time… flies?

To understand what happened to November and the rest of 2025, we also need to distinguish between telling time retrospectively (how much time has passed) versus prospectively (how fast time is passing now).

As every child knows, time spent waiting at the dentist passes much more slowly than time spent playing with a new toy. But why?

Again, a key part of the story is how much is happening – and, specifically, what you’re paying attention to. The more you pay attention to time itself, the more slowly it seems to pass.

The old adage states that time flies when you’re having fun, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be fun. Whatever you’re attending to just needs to distract you from the passage of time. Keep your mind engaged, whether it’s work or play, and time will slip away.

But try staring at a clock for even five minutes, and you will feel how endless that seems, unless you let your mind wander. Boredom slows time right down.

Read more:
‘Mum, Dad, I’m bored!’ How to teach children to manage their own boredom these holidays

Routine makes the years fly by

This disconnect between prospective and retrospective time perception also explains the saying “the days are long but the years are short”, a phenomenon which tends to increase as we age.

When we are young, lots of things are new: we go to school for the first time, enter a first relationship, start our first job. All these novel events form a rich store of memories that the brain later looks back on to conclude that a lot has happened, so a lot of time must have passed.

Conversely, when we get older, a lot of our daily tasks become more routine: bring the kids to school, go to work, cook dinner. As some previously novel parts of our day become routine, they become less interesting. Boring jobs cause time to slow down, creating the impression that the days crawl.

Paradoxically though, because these routine tasks are less exciting and novel, they leave weaker and less vivid memory traces. When our older brain therefore looks back to infer how much time has passed since the start of the year, it concludes that not much has happened, so it doesn’t feel very long ago.

Of course, this is at odds with our conscious knowledge that it’s already December, and we are left wondering how the year flew by.

How do I slow down time, then?

Slowing down time as you’re experiencing it is very easy, although completely dissatisfying: just get bored. Go wait at red traffic lights. Count to ten thousand in your head. Watch paint dry, as they say.

On the other hand, slowing down retrospective time is a little more difficult. Essentially, you need to make sure that come December, you have a year’s worth of memories to show for it.

One way to do this is to prevent memories from fading, and the best way to do that is to rehash them. Write things down in a diary or journal. Look back and reminisce. Keep your memories alive, and you’ll keep your past alive.

The other way to ensure you’ve got a year’s worth of memories at year’s end takes a little more initiative, but is a lot more inspiring. Because the best way to prevent the year from feeling like it flew by, is to fill it with lots of exciting memories of new, unique experiences. So explore. Go adventuring. Do something crazy – something you’ll never forget.

Your internal clock will thank you for it.

Hinze Hogendoorn receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Road Safety Action Grants Program.

– ref. Why is time going so fast and how do I slow it down? – https://theconversation.com/why-is-time-going-so-fast-and-how-do-i-slow-it-down-268982

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cody Lindsay, Lecturer, Exercise and Sport Science, Flinders University

If you’ve ever watched a batter get beaten by a ball that curved, jagged or dipped at the last moment, you’ve seen one of cricket’s great mysteries.

Whether it’s a Mitchell Starc inswinger, a Josh Hazlewood delivery that nips off the seam, or a Nathan Lyon off-spinner turning sharply, each comes down to physics and biomechanics working together.

Bowlers make the ball move in three ways: swing, seam and spin.

Each challenges batters differently, and scientists are still learning how bowlers achieve them.

Swing: when the air does the work

Swing bowling is the sideways curve of the ball in flight.

It’s most common for fast or medium-pace bowlers, though some spinners swing the new ball in shorter formats.

For batters, swing is one of the hardest balls to face. Despite coaches urging them to “watch the ball”, it often curves too quickly.

Batters rely on cues from the bowler’s action and early ball flight to predict where it will land – any deviation throws off that prediction.

There are three main types of swing bowling: conventional, contrast and reverse swing.

Conventional swing happens with a new, shiny ball.

When the seam is angled slightly, it makes one side of the ball’s surface rougher than the other. As the air hits the raised seam, it becomes turbulent on that side, while the air on the other side stays smooth. The turbulent air stays attached to the ball for longer, while the smooth air on the other side separates earlier.

This difference creates a sideways force that makes the ball swing toward the direction of the pointed seam.

My research from 2024 shows keeping the ball’s seam upright and stable increases swing, while a wobbling seam reduces it.

Through interviews with elite bowlers and coaches, and later filming them in separate research, I found bowlers achieve this by aligning their fingers and wrist with the seam, then running their fingers down the back on release.

Any sideways movement of the seam “scrambles” it and kills the swing.

As the ball ages, one side roughens while the bowling team will shine the other side so it stays smoother and shinier. This creates contrast swing, where the ball moves towards the rough side because air clings longer to the ball’s surface.

With more wear, the rough side can become so coarse that air no longer stays attached, flipping the airflow.

This produces reverse swing, where the ball moves towards the smoother side. Reverse swing usually appears only at very high speeds, which is why the world’s fastest bowlers generate it most consistently.

Seam: when the bounce is unpredictable

While swing happens through the air, seam movement occurs off the pitch – the sideways deviation caused when the seam grips the pitch surface.

To seam the ball, fast bowlers release the ball with a slight wobble or at an angle, rather than perfectly upright. The raised seam then catches the turf and deviates slightly towards the direction of the seam.

Because cricket pitches vary, some are better for seam movement than others.

“Flat” wickets with short grass offer little movement. Greener pitches with more grass or moisture have small irregularities that make the ball grip and change direction.

From the batter’s point of view, seam movement is brutal. At 130 kilometres per hour or more, they’ve already committed to their shot before the ball lands.

Even a few centimetres of deviation can turn a good shot into an edge or a miss – this is why seam bowlers claim so many caught behind, bowled and leg before wicket (LBW) dismissals.

Spin: making the ball dance

Spin bowling creates movement through rotation, causing the ball to drift, dip and turn.

Spin bowlers trade pace for revolutions, relying on sidespin and topspin to manipulate flight and bounce.

There are two main types: finger spin (off-spin, left-arm orthodox spin) and wrist spin (leg-spin, left-arm unorthodox spin).

Finger spinners roll their fingers across the ball, while wrist spinners use a strong flick of the wrist to generate more spin.

A spinning ball changes the airflow around it: air speeds up on one side and slows on the other, producing sideways drift in flight.

Adding topspin makes the ball dip, dropping sharply as it nears the batter.

When the ball lands, friction between ball and pitch can cause it to turn sideways.

Pitch conditions play a big role with spin bowling.

Dry, dusty wickets common in the Indian subcontinent create more friction and turn, while harder, faster Australian pitches offer bounce but less spin.

Variations in moisture, grass and wear also influence how much the ball grips.

That’s why spinners constantly adjust their pace, angle and release – small tweaks that can deceive even the best batters.

The beauty of unpredictability

Cricket is a game of fine margins, where physics meets skill.

Even the smallest variation – a flick of the wrist, a roughened seam or a patch of grass – can send the ball on a different path.

That unpredictability keeps cricket fascinating – a constant contest between bowler and batter, skill and science, order and chaos.

Cody Lindsay does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How cricket balls move: the science behind swing, seam and spin – https://theconversation.com/how-cricket-balls-move-the-science-behind-swing-seam-and-spin-267965