Psychological review最新文献

Communication is ubiquitous in human social life. There are many possible modes of human communication but language use is plainly of special interest: because it plays a critical role in culture and society; and because languages are important cultural products in their own right, with their own distinctive properties. These properties include in particular grammatical structure. However, we do not presently have any compelling synthesis of our understanding of communication and our understanding of grammar. This problem is important because synthesizing knowledge across neighboring domains can considerably deepen understanding in its own right, and bring new perspectives to bear on old issues. Mature syntheses are major scientific breakthroughs. Here, I argue that contextualist theories of communication, and constructionist approaches to the description of grammars, together provide a cohesive picture. Both bodies of work have proved enormously influential in their respective subfields, but their synthesis provides a unified picture of considerable clarity. Linguistic communication is a coordination problem on the speaker's informative intentions; and grammars are networks of microconventions ("constructions") that enable language users to resolve this coordination problem far more easily than they otherwise would. This synthesis in turn provides fresh perspectives on many classical issues in the language sciences. I sketch three examples: literal meaning and "construction modulation"; language learning; and the evolutionary emergence of language in our species. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Episodic memory is a core function that allows us to remember the events of our lives. Given that many events in our life contain overlapping elements (e.g., similar people and places), it is critical to understand how well we can remember the specific events of our lives versus how susceptible we are to interference between similar memories. Several prominent theories converged on the notion that pattern separation in the hippocampus causes it to play a greater role in processes such as recollection, associative memory, and memory for specific details, while overlapping distributed representations in the neocortex cause it to play a stronger role in domain-specific memory. We propose that studying memory performance on tasks with targets and similar lures provides a critical test bed for comparing the extent to which human memory is driven by pattern separation (e.g., hippocampus) versus more overlapping representations (e.g., neocortex). We generated predictions from several computational models and tested these predictions in a large sample of human participants. We found a linear relationship between memory performance and target-lure pattern similarity within a neural network simulation of inferior temporal cortex, an object-processing region. We also observed strong effects of test format on performance and consistent relationships between test formats. Altogether, our results were better accounted for by distributed memory models at the more linear end of a representational continuum than pattern-separated representations; therefore, our results provide important insight into prominent memory theories by suggesting that recognition memory performance is primarily driven by overlapping representations (e.g., neocortex). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

We examined how elements are integrated into larger units in working memory (WM). Four contrasting conceptual models exist with regard to this question: (a) a unitization model, in which there is a single integrated representation which is retrieved in an all-or-none fashion; (b) a unitization-with-element-failure model, in which a single integrated representation is retrieved as a whole, but access to its elements can still fail individually; (c) a pairwise-binding model, in which elements of a unit are represented separately and are bound together in pairs; (d) a hybrid model that includes an integrated representation as well as pairwise bindings between element representations. We developed four multinomial process tree models to test these theories. In three experiments, participants memorized multiple units which were random combinations of three elements. They were given one element as a cue and prompted to report the other two elements. The model-comparison analysis revealed that the hybrid model provides the best quantitative fit to the data. We conclude that multielement units are represented on two levels, as an integrated unit retrieved in an all-or-none manner, and in addition through pairwise bindings between their elements. Moreover, the assumption that bindings of nonspatial elements are mediated through their shared spatial location-a special case of the pairwise-binding model-was not supported by the data. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Traditional models of rational choice assume that preferences are complete, but the completeness axiom is neither normatively compelling nor psychologically plausible. Building on recent work in economics, we develop a rational analysis of decision making with incomplete preferences. The analysis sheds surprising light on a range of well-known behavioral "anomalies," including the endowment effect, status quo maintenance, the sunk cost effect, and coherent arbitrariness. We propose a two-part division of rational choice theory-into preference theory and "implementation theory"-and show how conservative and coherently arbitrary policies can effectively implement incomplete preferences. The two-part normative framework motivates a psychological distinction between evaluation and implementation phases in decision making. We argue that the endowment effect and related phenomena, which have usually been attributed to loss aversion in the evaluation phase, are better explained by conservatism in the implementation phase. The rational analysis challenges the normative adequacy of expected utility theory and raises questions about the explanatory scope of prospect theory. It illustrates the rich interplay between psychological models of value structure and normative models of rational choice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Psychologists have sought to understand individual differences in the ability to control thoughts, emotions, and actions during goal-directed behavior. Issues include whether the ability is unitary or componential and whether it is domain-general or task-specific. If domain-general, is it highly heritable with scant room for environmental influence or can it be enhanced by the right type of life experience or formal training? These questions have triggered one of the most heated debates in cognitive science, viz., is there a bilingual advantage in executive functioning (EF)? The empirical part of this study reports a substantially improved test of the bilingual advantage hypothesis in three respects. First, it tests for relationships between bilingualism and EF at the latent-variable level. Second, it extracts a latent-variable for performance-based measures of EF that are psychometrically strong. Third, it also includes a latent-variable based on self-rating scales of self-control/impulsivity that have enjoyed considerable success in predicting real-world outcomes. The results provide no evidence for a bilingual advantage on EF performance and a small, but significant, relationship to self-ratings. However, the relationship to self-ratings is no longer significant, when social desirability is taken into account. The correlation between the latent variables for performance-based and self-ratings was near 0, suggesting that they are separate constructs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Identifying safe and efficient pharmaceutical pain treatments remains an enduring challenge. However, despite significant advancements in pharmacological pain management, the inconsistent effectiveness of many analgesics between people remains puzzling. To address this problem, we introduce a new hypothesis suggesting that psychosocial factors exacerbate or attenuate (i.e., moderate) pain-relieving effects of analgesics: the psychosocial moderation hypothesis of pharmacological analgesia. According to this hypothesis, psychosocial factors can be categorized into three groups: (a) dispositional psychological factors, (b) situational cognitive or affective factors, and (c) contextual and social factors. The psychosocial moderation hypothesis is intended to extend the biopsychosocial model of pain to pharmacological pain management, with the goals to deepen the understanding of how analgesic drugs function and to open new paths to pain research and management beyond the traditional biomedical approach in pharmacological pain treatment. This hypothesis thus points toward a more comprehensive, psychosocial approach to pharmacological pain management and encourages the development of analgesic models that take the psychosocial context of analgesic consumers into account. We hope that this hypothesis will stimulate novel empirical and theoretical efforts in identifying the most beneficial analgesic for different types of people in different situations and, thus, to optimize analgesic dosing to provide adequate pharmacological pain relief while minimizing adverse side effects. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Human infants connect conceptual descriptions to objects in the first year of their life. Here, we explore the cognitive architecture that supports this capacity. We propose that early in development, the connection from descriptions to objects is mediated by a representational format proprietary to human communication: discourse referents. Discourse referents, just like other object representations, represent entities, but instead of being maintained based on spatiotemporal characteristics, they are created and maintained in relation to communicative contexts. After establishing criteria for what it would mean for preverbal infants to entertain such discourse referents, we review the evidence from developmental psychology. We find support for the idea that, in communicative episodes, infants create representations of entities that are encoded from a shared discourse perspective and which can be displaced or entirely perceptually unavailable. We conclude that infants cannot only represent "entities at locations" but also "entities under discussion" and that conceptual descriptions early in development are primarily elicited by and applied to this latter format. In this framework, successful referential communication about perceptually available objects can be understood as involving correspondences between perceptually created object representations and discourse referents. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Why do humans believe in moralizing gods? Leading accounts argue that these beliefs evolved because they help societies grow and promote group cooperation. Yet recent evidence suggests that beliefs in moralizing gods are not limited to large societies and might not have strong effects on cooperation. Here, we propose that beliefs in moralizing gods develop because individuals shape supernatural beliefs to achieve strategic goals in within-group interactions. People have a strategic interest in controlling others' cooperation, either to extort benefits from them or to gain reputational benefits for protecting the public good. Moreover, they believe, based on their folk-psychology, that others would be less likely to cheat if they feared supernatural punishment. Thus, people endorse beliefs in moralizing gods to manipulate others into cooperating. Prosocial religions emerge from a dynamic of mutual monitoring, in which each individual, lacking confidence in the cooperativeness of conspecifics, attempts to incentivize others' cooperation by endorsing beliefs in supernatural punishment. We show how variations of this incentive structure explain the variety of cultural attractors toward which supernatural punishment converges, including extractive religions that extort benefits from exploited individuals, prosocial religions geared toward mutual benefit, and forms of prosocial religion where belief in moralizing gods is itself a moral duty. We review evidence for nine predictions of this account and use it to explain the decline of prosocial religions in modern societies. Supernatural punishment beliefs seem endorsed as long as people believe them necessary to ensure others' cooperation, regardless of their objective effectiveness in doing so. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Referential processing is part and parcel of language comprehension, but in neurocognitive theories and models of comprehension it typically does not take center stage. Models informed by event-related potentials focus on semantic and syntactic processing in terms of the two most salient event-related potentials components, the N400 and P600, while experimental findings have implicated the Nref component-a frontal, sustained negativity-in referential processing. Extant accounts of the Nref assume it reflects processes involved in establishing reference or association at a distance, but an important open question remains how these mechanisms can be reconciled with existing neurocognitive models. We here offer a mechanistic account of referential processing grounded in retrieval-integration (RI) theory, an integrated theory of language comprehension with broad empirical coverage. On RI theory, the conceptual knowledge associated with an incoming word in context is retrieved from long-term memory (N400), and accordingly integrated into the unfolding utterance representation (P600). We here argue that word meaning is not only defined by the conceptual knowledge associated with a word, but also by its referential knowledge (its presuppositions). Whenever this referential knowledge is inconsistent with what is anticipated given the context, increased referential retrieval effort ensues (Nref). In contrast to extant accounts, we do thus not implicate the Nref in the establishment of reference itself, but instead attribute referential resolution to the integrative processes underlying the P600. The resultant referential RI theory integrates the N400, Nref, and P600 in a single model, and its predictions are consistent with extant empirical evidence on referential processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Our premodern ancestors had perceptual, motoric, and cognitive functional domains that were modularly encapsulated. Some of these came to interact through a new type of cross-modular binding in our species. This allowed previously domain-dedicated, encapsulated motoric and sensory operators to operate on operands for which they had not evolved. Such operators could at times operate nonvolitionally, while at other times they could be governed volitionally. In particular, motoric operations that derive from the same circuits that compute hand motions for object manipulation could now be retooled for virtual manipulation in a mental workspace in the absence of any physical hand or other effector movements. I hypothesize that the creativity of human imagination and mental models is rooted in premotor simulation of sequential manipulations of objects and symbols in the mental workspace, in analogy with the premotor theory of attention, which argues that attention evolved from "internalized" eye movement circuitry. Overall, operator "disencapsulation" led to a bifurcation of consciousness in humans: a concrete form centered on perception of the body in the physical world and an abstract form focused on explanatory mental models. One of the consequences of these new abilities was the advent of psychotic disorders that do not exist in species possessed solely of the concrete type of consciousness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).