Psychological review最新文献

This article argues that the diverse causal domains underpinning human language converge and interface at a single privileged locus, a ∼2½-s opportunity for action, called the enchronic envelope. Evidence is given for the existence and nature of the envelope as a universally primary frame for the selection, deployment, and evolution of linguistic structure. The first key argument is that language is a form of action and will therefore be structured similarly to physical actions. The second is that because linguistic actions exploit principles of communication, they are subject to a legibility constraint, which requires speaker-recipient calibration, thus importing strong constraints on the design of linguistic structures from the interpersonal alignment of the dyad in the enchronic time frame of social interaction. The case is made that this envelope is the site at which processes at diverse timescales must be realized. We examine how this applies to individual-level language learning. The account has implications for our developing understanding of languages as complex adaptive systems. It seeks to advance the complex-systems idea for language by showing that highly diverse linguistic networks and processes are moored to a single, central interface, where language is processed, learned, transmitted, and conventionalized. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

According to Bayesian, "inverse optics" accounts of vision, perceiving is inferring the most likely state of the world given noisy sensory data. This inference depends not only on prior beliefs about the world but also on an internal model specifying how world states translate to visual sensations. Alternative accounts explain perceptual decisions as a rule-based process, with no role for such beliefs about perception. Here, we contrast the two alternatives, focusing on decisions about perceptual absence as a critical test case. We present data from three preregistered experiments where participants performed a near-threshold detection task under different levels of partial stimulus occlusion, thereby visibly manipulating the measurement function going from external world states to internal perceptual states. We find that decisions about presence and absence are differentially sensitive to sensory evidence and occlusion. Furthermore, we observe reliably opposite individual-level effects of occlusion on decisions about absence. Our model accounts for these findings by postulating robust individual differences in the incorporation of beliefs about visibility into perceptual inferences, independent of population variability in visibility itself. We discuss implications for the varied and inferential nature of visual perception more broadly. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 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) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Cognitive science is a study of human universals. This assumption, which we will refer to as the Newtonian principle (NP), explicitly or implicitly pervades the theory, methods, and prose of most cognitive research. This is despite at least half a century of sustained critique by cross-cultural and anthropologically oriented researchers and glaring counterexamples such as the study of literacy. We argue that a key reason for this intransigence is that the NP solves the boundary problem of cognitive science. Since studying the idiosyncratic cognitive features of an individual is not a generalizable scientific enterprise, what scale of generalization in cognitive science is legitimate and interesting? The NP solution is a priori-only findings generalizing to all humans are legitimate. This approach is clearly flawed; however, critiques of the NP fail to provide any alternative solution. In fact, some anti-NP branches of research have abandoned generalizability altogether. Sailing between the scylla and charybdis of NP and hermeneutics, we propose an explicit, alternative solution to the boundary problem. Namely, building on many previous efforts, we combine cultural-evolutionary theory with a newly defined principle of articulation. This framework requires work on any given cognitive feature to explicitly hypothesize the universal or group-specific environments in which it emerges. Doing so shifts the question of legitimate generalizability from flawed, a priori assumptions to being a target of explicit claims and theorizing. Moreover, the articulation framework allows us to integrate existing findings across research traditions and motivates a range of future directions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

We are all constantly going in and out of sync with the people we meet in our lives: significant others, incidental encounters, and strangers. Synchrony is a ubiquitous phenomenon, considered an evolution-based mechanism of survival. In recent years, technological development has made it possible to collect much data on synchrony across disciplines. The collected data show great potential to shed light on the benefits of this universal phenomenon. At the same time, mixed results emerged, stressing the need for a theory to navigate research inquiries and discoveries. It is proposed here that synchrony serves as an individual-specific mechanism for making relationships curative in all life circumstances, especially therapeutic ones-hence its special relevance for psychotherapy. A synthesis of the majority of the literature across disciplines reveals two implicit assumptions about synchrony, resulting in two separate bodies of knowledge: (a) synchrony is a trait-like signature characterizing individuals; and (b) synchrony is a state-like phenomenon that can be manipulated in the lab. It is proposed here to personalize synchrony research by integrating the two assumptions into a comprehensive theory according to which individuals have a trait-like signature for getting in sync, which determines their physical and mental health, and that this deterministic reality can be subject to state-like manipulation. Individuals can deviate from their trait-like signature. When the deviation is toward normative activation, mental health improves, and the state-like changes are defined as therapeutic. This article calls for research to investigate how trait-like signature of synchrony develops and how it can be therapeutically changed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

The explanation of psychological phenomena is a central aim of psychological science. However, the nature of explanation and the processes by which we evaluate whether a theory explains a phenomenon are often unclear. Consequently, it is often unknown whether a given psychological theory indeed explains a phenomenon. We address this shortcoming by proposing a productive account of explanation: a theory explains a phenomenon to some degree if and only if a formal model of the theory produces the statistical pattern representing the phenomenon. Using this account, we outline a workable methodology of explanation: (a) explicating a verbal theory into a formal model, (b) representing phenomena as statistical patterns in data, and (c) assessing whether the formal model produces these statistical patterns. In addition, we provide three major criteria for evaluating the goodness of an explanation (precision, robustness, and empirical relevance), and examine some cases of explanatory breakdowns. Finally, we situate our framework within existing theories of explanation from philosophy of science and discuss how our approach contributes to constructing and developing better psychological theories. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported online in Psychological Review on Mar 14 2024 (see record 2024-63968-001). Incorrect italic formatting was removed throughout the article, and an unnecessary paragraph of text was removed from the "Levels of Analysis and the Branches of Psychology: What Is Needed for a Complete Explanation of a Behavior or Cognitive System?" section. These were editorial production errors. All versions of this article have been corrected.] Levels of analysis are crucial to the progress of science. They frame the epistemological boundaries of a discipline, chart its explanatory goals, help scientists to avoid needless conflict, and highlight knowledge gaps. Two frameworks in particular, Tinbergen's four questions from biology and Marr's three levels from cognitive science, hold immense potential for psychology. This article proposes ways to integrate the two frameworks and suggests that doing so helps resolve key confusions and unnecessary conflicts in psychology. Integrating these two frameworks clarifies what "mechanism" really means, sheds light on how to test evolutionary hypotheses in psychology, and specifies what is required for a comprehensive explanation of a behavior or cognitive system. Adopting and integrating these two theoretical frameworks has the capacity to spur progress in psychology and to clarify what is needed for a comprehensive science of the mind. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

To date, research has reliably shown that language can engage and modify perceptual processes in a top-down manner. However, our understanding of the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying such top-down influences is still under debate. In this review, we provide an overview of findings from literature investigating the organization of semantic networks in the brain (spontaneous engagement of the visual system while processing linguistic information), and linguistic cueing studies (looking at the immediate effects of language on the perception of a visual target), in an effort to isolate such mechanisms. Additionally, we connect the findings from linguistic cueing studies to those reported in (nonlinguistic) literature on priors in perception, in order to find commonalities in neural processes allowing for top-down influences on perception. In doing so, we discuss the effects of language on perception in the context of broader, general cognitive and neural principles. Finally, we propose a way forward in the study of linguistic influences on perception. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Research suggests that negative affective states, such as fear and anxiety that accompany placebo treatment may be considered predictors of placebo hypoalgesia and nocebo hyperalgesia. There is also data showing that the likelihood of developing nocebo hyperalgesia is related to the relatively stable tendency to experience these negative emotions. We aimed to summarize the current state-of-the-art in studies and theoretical models on the role of fear and anxiety in placebo hypoalgesia/nocebo hyperalgesia, with a clear differentiation between these emotions. The role of fear and anxiety accompanying placebo treatment in shaping placebo effects is often studied, but less attention has been given to pretreatment emotional states. We propose a model that combines knowledge from the emotional and pain paradigms with the current research on placebo hypoalgesia and nocebo hyperalgesia to present the involvement of fear and anxiety as traits, as well as pretreatment and posttreatment states of fear and anxiety to placebo effects. The main assumption of the model is that trait fear, trait anxiety, and related pretreatment affective states impact pain perception differently. Heightened fear is associated with decreased pain perception, while heightened anxiety is linked to increased pain perception. Consequently, heightened pretreatment fear may lead to reduced nocebo hyperalgesia and enhanced placebo hypoalgesia, while heightened pretreatment anxiety may result in decreased placebo hypoalgesia and increased nocebo hyperalgesia. In conclusion, we propose future research directions and clinical applications of the model. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Within psychology, the underachievement of students from working-class backgrounds has often been explained as a product of individual characteristics such as a lack of intelligence or motivation. Here, we propose an integrated model illustrating how educational contexts contribute to social class disparities in education over and beyond individual characteristics. According to this new Social Class-Academic Contexts Mismatch model, social class disparities in education are due to several mismatches between the experiences that students from working-class backgrounds bring with them to the classroom and those valued in academic contexts-specifically, mismatches between (a) academic contexts' culture of independence and the working-class orientation to interdependence, (b) academic contexts' culture of competition and the working-class orientation toward cooperation, (c) the knowledge valued in academic contexts and the knowledge developed through working-class socialization, and (d) the social identities valued in academic contexts and the negatively stereotyped social identities of students from working-class backgrounds. Because of these mismatches, students from working-class backgrounds are likely to experience discomfort and difficulty in the classroom. We further propose that, when attempting to make sense of these first-order effects, students and teachers rely on inherent characteristics (e.g., ability, motivation) more often than warranted; conversely, they overlook extrinsic, contextual factors. In turn, this explanatory bias toward inherent features leads (a) students from working-class backgrounds to experience self-threat and (b) their teachers to treat them unfairly. These second-order effects magnify social class disparities in education. This integrated model has the potential to reshape research and discourse on social class and education. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).