While AI coding tools have demonstrated potential to accelerate software development, their use in scientific computing raises critical questions about code quality and scientific validity. In this pa...

People's goal-directed behaviors are influenced by their cognitive biases, and autonomous systems that interact with people should be aware of this. For example, people's attention to objects in their...

Nature Communications - When learning to make choices that simultaneously affect the self and others, asymmetric encoding of information guides future social behaviors across mutually beneficial,...

Generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) is one of the most common mental health problems, but the mechanisms underpinning its symptoms remain poorly understood, limiting the development of novel interventi...

A core strength of computational psychiatry is its focus on theory-driven research, in which cognitive processes are precisely quantified using computational models that formalize specific theoretical mechanisms. However, the data used in these studies often come from traditional laboratory-based cognitive tasks, which have unclear ecological validity. In this review we propose that the same theoretical frameworks and computational models can be applied to real-world data such as experience sampling, passive data, and digital-behavior data (e.g., online activity such as on social media). In turn, modeling real-world data can benefit from a theory-driven computational approach to move from purely predictive to explanatory power. We illustrate these points using emerging studies and discuss the challenges and opportunities of using real-world data in computational psychiatry.