Applied Cognitive Psychology最新文献

Research on neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) has led us to refine our theoretical and methodological approaches. We explore whether new deficit clusters in line with the Research Domain Criteria, a novel multifactorial framework, optimally explain known conditions such as ADHD, DLD, or SLD in reading. Following the PRISMA guidelines for systematic reviews, we assimilated relevant literature from 2015 to 2025 on the RDoC framework and the above conditions. We retrieved 3486 studies focusing on the RDoC Cognitive Systems domain from databases, including PubMed, PsycINFO, and Web of Science. Studies were processed with the RayYan software. Fifteen studies met all inclusion criteria. Findings show that RDoC-informed neural and cognitive phenotypes were only partially aligned with DSM-based diagnoses. Moreover, deficits in Cognitive Control and Working Memory cut across known diagnoses, thus serving as transdiagnostic markers. The RDoC framework helps distinguish the neural, cognitive, linguistic, and behavioral deficits that cut across NDDs.

The increased perceived threat of conspiracy theories (CTs) and misinformation has led to research on strategies to reduce their spread. One method is to encourage stronger critical scientific appraisal skills, known as the scientific reasoning intervention (SRI). This study examined whether the SRI could reduce CT endorsement and engagement with misinformation content with targeted qualities (i.e., that do not overlap with CTs) in an online context through a simulated social media platform. After completing baseline measures of CT endorsement and misinformation engagement, 184 participants were randomly allocated to the SRI or control condition. A repeated measures analysis found people exposed to the SRI showed a lower endorsement of CT beliefs and were less likely to positively engage (i.e., like/share) with false posts compared with the control group. The findings suggest that the SRI can encourage some small reductions in CT endorsement and online engagement with misinformation.

Research on list-method directed forgetting (LMDF) shows that previously encountered material can be voluntarily forgotten. Here, we examined LMDF of news contents. Experiment 1 found that a first set of news headlines from a supposedly untrustworthy source could be voluntarily forgotten, which benefited memory for a second set of news headlines from a supposedly trustworthy source. Experiment 2 used fictitious news reports as study materials and also found intact voluntary forgetting for Set 1 as well as a benefit for Set 2. Moreover, Experiment 2 clarified that the results were not affected by whether the news source for Set 1 was characterized as trustworthy or untrustworthy. News contents can be voluntarily forgotten, but whether this curtails the spread of untrustworthy information may depend on an individual's goals and motivation. Future work is needed to better understand how voluntary forgetting operates in applied settings.

We investigated whether the phenomenological experience of a negative autobiographical memory changes when the self is presumably distanced from it. In session 1, participants described and phenomenologically rated an important negative event. One week later, in session 2, they imagined and described the event as if either a similar or a dissimilar friend experienced it. Afterward, they once more rated the original event that they described in session 1. Results showed increased observer perspective and decreased vividness, accessibility, and reliving of the original event after imagining that a friend experienced it. Importantly, when the negative event was imagined as experienced by a friend, preoccupation with overwhelming emotions related to the event, the event's emotional intensity, and its centrality to identity and life story also decreased. When the imagined friend was dissimilar, the emotional valence of the memory became more positive, and the emotional distance to the memory increased.

Spatial optimism is the tendency to underestimate the severity of environmental threats in local relative to global contexts. We investigated whether spatial optimism was evident in people's beliefs about the estimated duration and severity of the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants from 15 countries provided estimates of (i) when the pandemic would be brought under control and (ii) infection rates for their country and globally. Overall, individuals estimated that the pandemic would end sooner and with a lower infection rate in their own country relative to the rest of the world. This spatial optimism bias was moderated by the severity of COVID-19 at the country level, such that the bias was greatest in countries with lower levels of pandemic severity. Findings parallel those observed for environmental threats and provide evidence for a spatial optimism bias in a distinct domain of collective thought. Implications for public-health messaging are discussed.

This commentary discusses the recently published article by Andrews and Brewin (2024) that reanalyzed data collected by Murphy et al. (2023) to replicate the well-known “lost in the mall” study first published by Loftus and Pickrell (1995). We begin by outlining initial and more recent findings that brought the “lost in the mall” paradigm to the forefront of false memory research before considering the thought-provoking results of the reanalysis by Andrews and Brewin (2024). We then highlight some of the implications of the reanalysis for child sexual abuse investigations, and more broadly, for the reliability and validity of psychological research that relies on researchers' coding and interpretation of information provided by participants about the content of their memories. We ask whether the definition and measurement of false memories within laboratory experiments can be meaningfully applied to real-life debates concerning justice for alleged victims and perpetrators of sexual abuse.

In the 1970s Elizabeth Loftus and her team conducted a series of highly influential experiments demonstrating that misleading information received after a personal experience can lead people to make mistakes when they later try to describe what happened (Loftus and Palmer 1974; Loftus 1975). After establishing the impact of misinformation on memory for personal experiences, an innovative research paradigm was designed to demonstrate that memories of entire events that never occurred could be implanted in people's minds with relative ease. Loftus and Pickrell (1995) misled 24 adult participants to believe that their family members provided descriptions of four true past events, but unbeknownst to the participants, one of the supposed true events, being “lost in the mall”, was made up by the researchers. After participants were told that they had been lost in the mall many years earlier they were then asked to recall what they could remember in writing and verbally and rate the clarity of their memories. The results showed that a quarter of the participants were successfully induced to claim that they remembered the false event, although their average clarity ratings for the false memory were substantially lower than scores assigned to true events. (1) The “lost in the mall” study resulted in a “veritable explosion of cognitive research on the topic of false memory” (Pezdek and Lam 2007), (2), and led to the establishment of a new view of human memory as being particularly fragile and easily manipulated.

However, while most memory researchers accept that false memory implantation is possible, the proportion of people who can be induced to develop false memories has been the subject of fierce debate (Wade et al. 2002). Scrutiny of false memory implantation experiments identified two main challenges concerning the definition of f

People can easily form false memories for events described in “fake news” stories. This is more likely if the content of the stories is consistent with the individual's political or social identity. Here, we test a novel intervention to reduce this effect by demonstrating participants' own bias to them. Participants (n = 1026) were asked to indicate their political affiliation (Democrat or Republican) and then randomly assigned to the intervention or to a control condition. They were then exposed to true and false news items on the topic of U.S. politics. Participants in the intervention condition reported fewer false memories overall, and fewer ideologically congruent memories in particular. The effect was somewhat stronger among those who experienced their own bias during the intervention but was effective even among those who did not. We conclude that this simple and easily scalable intervention can markedly reduce cognitive biases in response to misinformation.

Accuracy in eyewitness testimony is shaped by factors affecting attention to event details. While research has explored attention's role in memory accuracy, less is known about its effect on the recollection accuracy for emotional events. This study investigates how emotional arousal and scene presentation duration influence susceptibility to misinformation. Participants viewed high-arousing negative, low-arousing negative, and neutral scenes, with either short or long presentation times. Participants then answered questions about the event, which included misleading information, and completed a forced-choice recognition test. Results showed a misinformation effect under both long and short presentation durations for the negative emotional images, but the effect disappeared for the neutral scene presented for a short duration. These findings suggest that negative emotional content is more susceptible to misinformation under limited viewing conditions, potentially highlighting the need for caution when relying on eyewitness accounts of briefly experienced emotional events.