The ESCoP's 2025 Early Career Publication Award for postdoctoral researchers goes to Luca Moretti for their publication “Moretti, L., Koch, I., Hornjak, R., & von Bastian, CC (2025). Quality over quantity: Focusing on high-conflict trials to improve the reliability and validity of attentional control measures. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. Advance online publication. https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xlm0001466 ”. The study of Moretti et al. explored whether the low reliability of congruency effects in conflict tasks stems from poor theoretical specification. The jury, formed by Tilo Strobach, Eliane Deschrijven and Ana Rita Sá Leite recognized that the paper stood out especially for the valid, reliable, and innovative way in which the authors measured attentional control by analyzing only theoretically relevant trials.

The ESCoP’s 2025 Early Career Publication Award for Ph.D. students goes to Olesia Platonova for their publication “Platonova, O., & Miklashevsky, A. (2025). Warm and fuzzy: Perceptual semantics can be activated even during shallow lexical processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0001429”. The study shows that perceptual semantics—such as visual and tactile meaning—is activated even during shallow lexical tasks, with modality-specific effects supporting the embodied view of language. The evaluation committee, composed of Luca Rinaldi, Kobe Desender and Ven Popov, recognized that the authors’ work stood out for methodological rigor, strong focus on replicability, and clear adherence to open science practices.

We congratulate both winners on their accomplishments and we think that this award should serve as a token of our appreciation for their contributions to the field of cognitive psychology.