Psychological review最新文献

Morbid curiosity, or the seemingly paradoxical drive to engage with aversive or grotesque stimuli, has long puzzled psychologists, who have traditionally framed it as either a form of sensation-seeking or a mechanism for unambiguous threat learning. The current article proposes a novel adaptationist model positioning morbid curiosity as an evolved cognitive mechanism specifically tuned to resolve ambiguity surrounding survival-relevant stimuli. Drawing on evolutionary theory, cognitive psychology, and neurobiological evidence, I argue that morbid curiosity functions primarily as an uncertainty-reduction strategy, motivating individuals to approach ambiguous stimuli to clarify their threat or benefit. Unlike basic emotions such as fear or disgust that typically trigger immediate avoidance, morbid curiosity fosters cautious approach behaviors aimed at gathering survival-critical information. The proposed model thereby reconceptualizes morbid curiosity as an adaptive, ambiguity-oriented cognitive system, offering novel insights into broader questions about human motivation, information-seeking, and adaptive cognition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

As people engage in tasks over extended periods, their psychological states change systematically due to factors such as practice, learning, and/or boredom. However, the dominant frameworks for modeling cognitive processes, such as evidence accumulation models, only consider a single estimate of a process across the duration of an experiment. Our study describes, develops, and assesses the ParAcT-DDM framework: the Parameters Across Time Diffusion Decision Model, which unifies previous modeling efforts from practice and decision-making research. Specifically, our framework models time-varying changes to diffusion decision model parameters by assuming that rather than being constant across time, their estimates follow theoretically informed time-varying (e.g., trial-varying or block-varying) functions. Focusing on two diffusion model parameters: drift rate (task efficiency) and threshold (caution), our empirical results show that ParAcT-DDM variants vastly outperform the standard diffusion model in four existing data sets, including one where participants completed a practice block before data recording began, suggesting that time-varying cognitive processes often occur in typical cognitive experiments, even when the experimental design explicitly tries to remove practice effects. Finally, we find that the existence of time-varying processes causes systematic biases in the parameter estimates of the standard diffusion model, suggesting that our ParAcT-DDM framework can be crucial to ensuring the robustness of inferences against time-varying changes, regardless of whether these changes are of direct interest. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

How much of what we see is imagined? Perception is a constructive process, supplementing the information available in sensory inputs to build representations of the world, as when one perceives a cat behind a chain-link fence as a whole, intact object, though it produces only a fragmented image on the eye. A recent movement in cognitive science and the philosophy of mind argues that mental imagery supplies much of the material for constructing perceptual representations-filling in the missing parts of the cat, for instance. On this "Constitutive View" of imagery's role in perception, perceptual representations routinely contain elements of mental imagery. This view rests on an expansive conception of what mental imagery is: roughly, imagery consists in perceptual processing that is not directly connected to sensory inputs. We challenge the Constitutive View. First, we argue that the expansive conception of imagery on which the view relies is problematic, for it fails to capture a unified psychological kind. We then consider whether phenomena such as perceptual completion, in which the occluded parts of the cat are "filled in," support the Constitutive View. We argue that there is little explanatory utility in construing perceptual completion as a form of imagery. The constructive character of perception, we suggest, is best understood on its own terms, rather than by reference to imagery. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Context effects in multialternative, multiattribute choice are pervasive and yet, paradoxically, elusive at the same time. For example, simple changes to the spatial layout of alternatives on the screen can nullify or reverse the effects. Despite the success of dynamic decision models in explaining the occurrence of context effects, a coherent theory for understanding their elusiveness is currently lacking. We introduce a novel theoretical framework that relies on attention-modulated comparisons to explain the elusive nature of context effects. We show through simulation that our model produces the attraction, compromise, and similarity effects simply by assuming that more time is spent comparing alternatives that are more similar. However, when more time is spent comparing dissimilar alternatives, model simulations reveal a reversal of the attraction and compromise effects. The empirical support for this model-based prediction is assessed by manipulating similarity-based attention in separate experiments for the three context effects (total N = 887). Further, by allowing the spatial organization of information to constrain the attention process, the model can explain changes in context effects induced by display layout. We show that the model's spatial attention mechanism allows it to capture presentation order effects in a reanalysis of previously published data. Finally, we develop a continuous approximation of the full model that permits fitting of choices and response times. In summary, the proposed framework provides a new tool for understanding not only the existence of context effects in choice, but also the attentional factors that lead to null or reversed context effects. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

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) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Object individuation studies have been a valuable tool in understanding the development of kind concepts. In this article, we review evidence from object individuation paradigms to argue that by their first birthday, infants represent at least three superordinate-level sortal kinds: OBJECT, ANIMATE, and AGENT (possibly also ARTIFACT). These superordinate sortal-kind concepts share key characteristics of adult kind concepts, such as prioritizing causal properties and having inductive potential. We then discuss the implications of this body of research. First, we discuss how the early development of these sortal-kind concepts (i.e., OBJECT, ANIMATE, and AGENT) relate to the two major theories of concepts: core knowledge and psychological essentialism. Second, we suggest that superordinate kind concepts set the stage for later development of basic-level kind concepts and present evidence that human communication, either in the form of language or pedagogical demonstration, plays a key role in constructing basic-level kinds. Third, we compare feature-based versus kind-based object individuation studies and put forth the hypothesis that they may reflect two modes of construal theory. Last, we discuss several open theoretical and empirical questions about sortal-kind concepts and suggest directions for future research. Overall, our review underscores the importance of object individuation methods as a powerful research tool for investigating the development of kind concepts, mechanisms of learning, and the relationship between language and thoughts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Nonlinguistic external representations, such as diagrams, animations, or puppet shows, involve local relations between a perceptually available object (a symbol) and an entity that is relevant in the current communicative context (a discourse referent). By analyzing the empirical evidence on early pretend play, I argue that object substitution pretense can be fully accounted for if it is conceived of as a subspecies of external representation. This implies that the capacity to interpret objects as symbols emerges early and reliably in human ontogeny. I discuss several accounts of pretend play and related phenomena and argue that the current proposal provides a better and more general account of early symbolic understanding than alternative views. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Psychological measures frequently show trait-like properties, and the ontological status of stable psychological traits has been discussed for decades. We argue that these properties can emerge from causal dynamics of time-varying processes, which are omitted from the analysis model, potentially leading to the estimation of traits that are, at least in part, illusory. Theories positing the importance of a large set of dynamic psychological causes across development are consistent with the existence of illusory traits. We show via simulation that even a linear system with many processes can generate a covariance matrix with trait-like properties. We then attempt to examine how illusory traits affect our conclusions drawn from a common statistical model, which assumes stable traits to analyze longitudinal panel data-a random-intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM). We find that the RI-CLPM sometimes falsely detects the existence of traits in the presence of omitted processes, even when the data-generating model does not include any traits. However, in this scenario, the RI-CLPM estimates less causally biased autoregressive and cross-lagged effects than an analysis model, which does not assume traits (i.e., the cross-lagged panel model). The results indicate that the detection of trait variance should not be inferred as strong evidence for the existence of time-invariant trait causes. On the other hand, even when traits are illusory, statistical models assuming stable traits may sometimes be useful for causal inference. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Behavioral genetic research has demonstrated that shared genetics, not shared environment, makes adults who grew up in the same family similar in personality and psychopathology. The same research affirms the importance of the environment but shows that salient environmental influences in adulthood are not shared by family members; they are unique to the individual. Cognitive traits such as cognitive abilities and educational achievement are thought to be an exception, with half of the environmental variance attributed to shared environmental influences. However, most of this cognitive research has involved children. Here, we show that shared environmental influence on cognitive abilities and educational achievement declines from accounting for 20%-30% of the variance in childhood to 10%-20% in adolescence and to near 0% by early adulthood. Educational attainment (years of schooling) shows lasting shared environmental influence (30%) carried over from decisions made in adolescence to go to university, which shows the greatest shared environmental influence (47%). We conclude that specific cognitive abilities as well as general cognitive ability show moderate shared environmental influence in childhood when children live at home, but this influence disappears as young people make their own way in the world. We propose that random endogenous processes are responsible for nonshared environmental influences on adult cognitive abilities. We discuss the far-reaching implications for understanding the environmental causes of individual differences in cognitive abilities in adulthood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).