Tag "research projects"

World Deaf Day is traditionally celebrated on the last Sunday of September. This year, the HSE Faculty of Social Sciences joined the celebration and, together with the Moscow branch of the All-Russian Society of the Deaf (VOG Moscow), launched a study of the needs of hearing-impaired Moscow residents in terms of social services and accessible environments.

Mathematicians at HSE University believe that there is no need to fear losing jobs because of the widespread use of AI, while at the same time they warn against uncritical acceptance of works and projects prepared with its help. AI, however, can be a useful tool in research, creating models and processing large volumes of information.

Researchers from the MECO international project, including experts from the HSE Centre for Language and Brain, have developed a tool for analysing data on English text reading by native speakers of more than 19 languages. In a large-scale experiment involving over 1,200 people, researchers recorded participants’ eye movements as they silently read the same English texts and then assessed their level of comprehension. The results showed that even when comprehension levels were the same, the reading process—such as gaze fixations, rereading, and word skipping—varied depending on the reader's native language and their English proficiency. The study has been published in Studies in Second Language Acquisition.

Having a mortgage increases the likelihood that a Russian family will plan to have a child within the next three years by 39 percentage points. This is the conclusion of a study by Prof. Elena Vakulenko and doctoral student Rufina Evgrafova from the HSE Faculty of Economic Sciences. The authors emphasise that this effect is most pronounced among women, people under 36, and those without children. The study findings have been published in Voprosy Ekonomiki.

Researchers at HSE University have found that identifying with one’s country can support psychological coping during difficult times, particularly when individuals reframe the situation or draw on spiritual and cultural values. Reframing in particular can help alleviate symptoms of depression. The study has been published in Journal of Community Psychology.

From August 26–29, 2025, the largest annual linguistics conference, Societas Linguistica Europaea, took place in Bordeaux, France. Doctoral students and researchers from HSE University took part in the event. The paper ‘Lability Drift in Modern Aramaic languages’ by Elena Shvedova was highly praised by the expert community and took first place among PhD student presentations. In an interview with the HSE News Service, Elena Shvedova spoke about her research and the conference itself.

An international team, including scientists from HSE University, has demonstrated for the first time that the anterior and posterior portions of the human hippocampus have distinct roles in associative memory. Using stereo-EEG recordings, the researchers found that the rostral (anterior) portion of the human hippocampus is activated during encoding and object recognition, while the caudal (posterior) portion is involved in associative recall, restoring connections between the object and its context. These findings contribute to our understanding of the structure of human memory and may inform clinical practice. A paper with the study findings has been published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

Researchers from the HSE Institute of Education conducted a sociological study at four small, non-selective universities and revealed, based on 135 interviews, the dual nature of student care at such institutions: a combination of genuine support with continuous supervision, reminiscent of parental care. This study offers the first in-depth look at how formal and informal student care practices are intertwined in the post-Soviet educational context. The study has been published in the British Journal of Sociology of Education.

A team of Russian researchers, including scientists from HSE University, used AI to analyse 4,500 students’ subscriptions to VK social media communities. The study found that algorithms can accurately identify both high-performing students and those struggling with their studies. The paper has been published in IEEE Access.

Researchers from the HSE Laboratory for Cognitive Psychology of Digital Interface Users have discovered how social cues in the design of news websites—such as reader comments, the number of reposts, or the author’s name—can help build user trust. An experiment with 137 volunteers showed that such interface elements make a website appear more trustworthy and persuasive to users, with the strongest cue being links to the media’s social networks. The study's findings have been published in Human-Computer Interaction.