{"title":"Event Segmentation Interventions Improve Memory for Naturalistic Events","authors":"Maverick E. Smith, Jeffrey M. Zacks","doi":"10.1177/09637214251350690","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214251350690","url":null,"abstract":"People segment ongoing experience into meaningful chunks that support new learning and long-term memory. We synthesize evidence showing that scaffolding segmentation improves memory, possibly by reducing interference. These findings highlight the role of segmentation in memory formation and suggest mechanisms for improving memory in older adults and clinical populations.","PeriodicalId":10802,"journal":{"name":"Current Directions in Psychological Science","volume":"52 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2025-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144669763","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Derek M. Isaacowitz, Blake D. Ebright-Jones, Rebecca J. Polk
{"title":"A New Frame on Emotion Regulation in Aging: The Adaptive Positive Tactic Shift","authors":"Derek M. Isaacowitz, Blake D. Ebright-Jones, Rebecca J. Polk","doi":"10.1177/09637214251349777","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214251349777","url":null,"abstract":"Older adults report higher levels of emotional well-being in cross-sectional studies. Despite assertions that older adults are better at regulating emotions, studies investigating emotion regulation (ER) <jats:italic>strategies</jats:italic> have not found consistent age differences. Instead, we propose a new framework on ER in aging focusing instead on ER <jats:italic>tactics</jats:italic> (how ER behavior is implemented in specific situations): the age-related <jats:italic>Adaptive Positive Tactic</jats:italic> (APT) shift hypothesis. Older adults report relatively greater use of positive-approaching tactics, consistent with this hypothesis. Positive-approaching tactics also appear more effective in regulating emotions than negative-receding tactics and thus may be more adaptive. We consider how context influences tactic use and discuss open questions about the hypothesis. With recent longitudinal evidence showing mixed patterns of emotional well-being in aging, the APT shift hypothesis can guide future investigation of within-person changes in ER behavior.","PeriodicalId":10802,"journal":{"name":"Current Directions in Psychological Science","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2025-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144547278","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Abstract Cognitive Maps for Complex Social Systems","authors":"Oriel FeldmanHall, Jae-Young Son, Apoorva Bhandari","doi":"10.1177/09637214251342742","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214251342742","url":null,"abstract":"How do people represent social networks in their minds? Inspired by work on spatial navigation, recent research reveals how people use domain-general computational principles to build cognitive maps for navigating their social environments. However, some aspects of our social worlds, such as the densely interconnected networks we are embedded in—and the dynamics of information flow within them—challenge the particular construct of a Euclidean cognitive map that has evolved in the study of spatial navigation. Recent research reveals different types of abstract representations people can use to build efficient cognitive maps for navigating social networks. We argue that to solve challenges inherent to navigating social relationships (e.g., figuring out whom to trust or gossip with, building coalitions made up of weak ties), people build cognitive maps of both the direct and indirect relational ties surrounding them. Although the incorporation of indirect ties makes these maps nonveridical, their addition aids in flexible, adaptive behavior, which can be used for successfully navigating any complex social environment.","PeriodicalId":10802,"journal":{"name":"Current Directions in Psychological Science","volume":"268 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2025-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144335246","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Temporal Hierarchy of Sustained Attention Dynamics","authors":"Monica D. Rosenberg","doi":"10.1177/09637214251342976","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214251342976","url":null,"abstract":"Maintaining focus is a critical component of attention. Our ability to do so, however, changes over time—developing across the life span, declining as tasks drag on, fluctuating from one second to the next, and even oscillating at the subsecond level. Research in psychology and neuroscience has made great strides in understanding how and why attention varies—and how this variation affects other mental processes—at each timescale. To motivate the integration of findings across scales and facilitate theoretical advances and practical interventions to enhance focus, I propose a nested hierarchy in which changes are considered in the context of dynamics at all other scales.","PeriodicalId":10802,"journal":{"name":"Current Directions in Psychological Science","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2025-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144304926","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Three Promising Directions in the Study of Intelligence With Genetic Methods","authors":"James J. Lee, Damien Morris","doi":"10.1177/09637214251339449","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214251339449","url":null,"abstract":"A genome-wide association study (GWAS) tests whether each of several million sites in the human genome is correlated with a trait of interest. For a number of reasons, including replication of GWAS results within families, we can be confident that significant correlations reflect in part the causal effects of DNA-level variation on the studied trait. This level of causal inference, much stronger than in most observational studies, enables some far-reaching conclusions about the antecedents and structure of human intelligence. We discuss some of these conclusions regarding whether brain size affects intelligence and the long-debated issue of how different intelligence tests are related to each other.","PeriodicalId":10802,"journal":{"name":"Current Directions in Psychological Science","volume":"104 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2025-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144202186","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Perceived Social Norms and Vaccine Hesitancy","authors":"Robert C. Dempsey, Alex M. Wood","doi":"10.1177/09637214251340023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214251340023","url":null,"abstract":"Vaccines are an important tool for preventing serious illness and avoiding deaths. Vaccine hesitancy, the delay or refusal of vaccines when available or offered, is one of the top 10 threats to global public health. The acceptance and uptake, delay, or refusal of vaccines has direct health implications for individuals, their close contacts, and indirectly for others in their environment and wider social networks. Vaccination uptake/hesitancy is the product of human decision-making and is influenced by various psychological and social factors, including perceived social norms. Individuals will often consider others’ vaccine-related attitudes and/or behaviors to guide their own decision-making. One potential way of reducing vaccine hesitancy is by changing people’s (mis)perceptions of these vaccine-related social norms through feedback interventions that highlight the actual vaccination norms (e.g., that most others would take a vaccine if offered). This article takes a social norms perspective toward understanding vaccine hesitancy, discusses how and why perceived social norms may be influential in hesitancy, and outlines ways psychological science can better understand the perceived social norms implicated in vaccine hesitancy.","PeriodicalId":10802,"journal":{"name":"Current Directions in Psychological Science","volume":"51 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2025-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144193163","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Consequences of Bilingual Language Coactivation for Higher Order Cognition","authors":"Viorica Marian, Sayuri Hayakawa","doi":"10.1177/09637214251339455","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214251339455","url":null,"abstract":"Hearing a single word can initiate a sequence of activation that spreads from the representation of the word (e.g., “candy”) to words that share auditory and visual form (e.g., “candle”) and the concepts those words reference (e.g., the idea of a “candle”). In bilinguals, this coactivation spreads both within and across languages to words that share form or meaning in either or both languages. This parallel activation across two languages has cascading effects on higher order cognitive functions such as attention (e.g., what people focus on in a visual scene), memory (e.g., what people remember seeing), and semantic organization (e.g., how concepts are represented and grouped on the basis of their meanings). Here, we consider how the consequences of language coactivation extend beyond the linguistic domain to impact the broader cognitive system and conclude that the interactivity of languages in the bilingual mind fundamentally transforms mental operations.","PeriodicalId":10802,"journal":{"name":"Current Directions in Psychological Science","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2025-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144104590","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Positive Affect Dynamics","authors":"Anthony D. Ong, Egon Dejonckheere, Nilàm Ram","doi":"10.1177/09637214251339454","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214251339454","url":null,"abstract":"Positive affect is a fundamental component of well-being, influencing multiple domains of psychological and physical functioning. This article synthesizes empirical research on positive affect dynamics in naturalistic contexts, emphasizing their associations with mental- and physical-health outcomes. Although a substantial amount of research has investigated positive emotional experiences through trait-based and state-based measurement paradigms, recent methodological innovations highlight the temporal dynamics of affective experiences within individuals across multiple timescales. Here, we examine how key temporal properties—including variability, instability, inertia, and reactivity—relate to adaptive functioning and health-relevant outcomes. These dynamic approaches extend traditional assessment frameworks, offering greater predictive utility for understanding health trajectories beyond static measures. Despite these advances, significant challenges remain in measuring, modeling, and integrating affective processes across diverse temporal resolutions and contexts. Addressing these issues requires refined methodological approaches that enhance precision and interpretability. We conclude by outlining a forward-looking agenda for advancing positive affect dynamics research, emphasizing its potential applications for promoting health and resilience.","PeriodicalId":10802,"journal":{"name":"Current Directions in Psychological Science","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2025-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144104548","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How Can We Characterize Human Generalization and Distinguish It From Generalization in Machines?","authors":"Mirko Thalmann, Eric Schulz","doi":"10.1177/09637214251336212","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214251336212","url":null,"abstract":"People appear to excel at generalization: They require little experience to generalize their knowledge to new situations. But can we confidently make such a conclusion? To make progress toward a better understanding, we characterize human generalization by introducing three proposed cognitive mechanisms allowing people to generalize: applying simple rules, judging new objects by considering their similarity to previously encountered objects, and applying abstract rules. We highlight the systematicity with which people use these three mechanisms by, perhaps surprisingly, focusing on failures of generalization. These failures show that people prefer simple ways to generalize, even when simple is not ideal. Together, these results can be subsumed under two proposed stages: First, people infer what aspects of an environment are task relevant, and second, while repeatedly carrying out the task, the mental representations required to solve the task change. In this article, we compare humans to contemporary AI systems. This comparison shows that AI systems use the same generalization mechanisms as humans. However, they differ from humans in the way they abstract patterns from observations and apply these patterns to previously unknown objects—often resulting in generalization performance that is superior to, but sometimes inferior to, that of humans.","PeriodicalId":10802,"journal":{"name":"Current Directions in Psychological Science","volume":"29 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2025-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144066835","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Corrigendum to “Interdependent Minds: Quantifying the Dynamics of Successful Social Interactions”","authors":"","doi":"10.1177/09637214251343551","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214251343551","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":10802,"journal":{"name":"Current Directions in Psychological Science","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2025-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144066157","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}