Psychological reviewPub Date : 2024-10-01Epub Date: 2023-06-08DOI: 10.1037/rev0000428
Tadeg Quillien, Christopher G Lucas
{"title":"Counterfactuals and the logic of causal selection.","authors":"Tadeg Quillien, Christopher G Lucas","doi":"10.1037/rev0000428","DOIUrl":"10.1037/rev0000428","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Everything that happens has a multitude of causes, but people make causal judgments effortlessly. How do people select one particular cause (e.g., the lightning bolt that set the forest ablaze) out of the set of factors that contributed to the event (the oxygen in the air, the dry weather … )? Cognitive scientists have suggested that people make causal judgments about an event by simulating alternative ways things could have happened. We argue that this counterfactual theory explains many features of human causal intuitions, given two simple assumptions. First, people tend to imagine counterfactual possibilities that are both a priori likely and similar to what actually happened. Second, people judge that a factor C caused effect E if C and E are highly correlated across these counterfactual possibilities. In a reanalysis of existing empirical data, and a set of new experiments, we find that this theory uniquely accounts for people's causal intuitions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":21016,"journal":{"name":"Psychological review","volume":" ","pages":"1208-1234"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9593087","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}
Psychological reviewPub Date : 2024-10-01Epub Date: 2024-07-18DOI: 10.1037/rev0000472
Joshua Calder-Travis, Lucie Charles, Rafal Bogacz, Nick Yeung
{"title":"Bayesian confidence in optimal decisions.","authors":"Joshua Calder-Travis, Lucie Charles, Rafal Bogacz, Nick Yeung","doi":"10.1037/rev0000472","DOIUrl":"10.1037/rev0000472","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The optimal way to make decisions in many circumstances is to track the difference in evidence collected in favor of the options. The drift diffusion model (DDM) implements this approach and provides an excellent account of decisions and response times. However, existing DDM-based models of confidence exhibit certain deficits, and many theories of confidence have used alternative, nonoptimal models of decisions. Motivated by the historical success of the DDM, we ask whether simple extensions to this framework might allow it to better account for confidence. Motivated by the idea that the brain will not duplicate representations of evidence, in all model variants decisions and confidence are based on the same evidence accumulation process. We compare the models to benchmark results, and successfully apply four qualitative tests concerning the relationships between confidence, evidence, and time, in a new preregistered study. Using computationally cheap expressions to model confidence on a trial-by-trial basis, we find that a subset of model variants also provide a very good to excellent account of precise quantitative effects observed in confidence data. Specifically, our results favor the hypothesis that confidence reflects the strength of accumulated evidence penalized by the time taken to reach the decision (Bayesian readout), with the penalty applied not perfectly calibrated to the specific task context. These results suggest there is no need to abandon the DDM or single accumulator models to successfully account for confidence reports. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":21016,"journal":{"name":"Psychological review","volume":" ","pages":"1114-1160"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7617410/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141634354","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Psychological reviewPub Date : 2024-10-01Epub Date: 2023-12-14DOI: 10.1037/rev0000449
Christian Frings, Anna Foerster, Birte Moeller, Bernhard Pastötter, Roland Pfister
{"title":"The relation between learning and stimulus-response binding.","authors":"Christian Frings, Anna Foerster, Birte Moeller, Bernhard Pastötter, Roland Pfister","doi":"10.1037/rev0000449","DOIUrl":"10.1037/rev0000449","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Perception and action rely on integrating or binding different features of stimuli and responses. Such bindings are short-lived, but they can be retrieved for a limited amount of time if any of their features is reactivated. This is particularly true for stimulus-response bindings, allowing for flexible recycling of previous action plans. A relation to learning of stimulus-response associations suggests itself, and previous accounts have proposed binding as an initial step of forging associations in long-term memory. The evidence for this claim is surprisingly mixed, however. Here we propose a framework that explains previous failures to detect meaningful relations of binding and learning by highlighting the joint contribution of three variables: (a) decay, (b) the number of repetitions, and (c) the time elapsing between repetitions. Accounting for the interplay of these variables provides a promising blueprint for innovative experimental designs that bridge the gap between immediate bindings on the one hand and lasting associations in memory on the other hand. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":21016,"journal":{"name":"Psychological review","volume":" ","pages":"1290-1296"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138807777","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}
Psychological reviewPub Date : 2024-10-01Epub Date: 2024-07-25DOI: 10.1037/rev0000466
Lauren C Fong, Anthea G Blunden, Paul M Garrett, Philip L Smith, Daniel R Little
{"title":"Unifying approaches to understanding capacity in change detection.","authors":"Lauren C Fong, Anthea G Blunden, Paul M Garrett, Philip L Smith, Daniel R Little","doi":"10.1037/rev0000466","DOIUrl":"10.1037/rev0000466","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>To navigate changes within a highly dynamic and complex environment, it is crucial to compare current visual representations of a scene to previously formed representations stored in memory. This process of mental comparison requires integrating information from multiple sources to inform decisions about changes within the environment. In the present article, we combine a novel systems factorial technology change detection task (Blunden et al., 2022) with a set size manipulation. Participants were required to detect 0, 1, or 2 changes of low and high detectability between a memory and probe array of 1-4 spatially separated luminance discs. Analyses using systems factorial technology indicated that the processing architecture was consistent across set sizes but that capacity was always limited and decreased as the number of distractors increased. We developed a novel model of change detection based on the statistical principles of basic sampling theory (Palmer, 1990; Sewell et al., 2014). The sample size model, instantiated parametrically, predicts the architecture and capacity results a priori and quantitatively accounted for several key results observed in the data: (a) increasing set size acted to decrease sensitivity (<i>d</i>') in proportion to the square root of the number of items in the display; (b) the effect of redundancy benefited performance by a factor of the square root of the number of changes; and (c) the effect of change detectability was separable and independent of the sample size costs and redundancy benefits. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":21016,"journal":{"name":"Psychological review","volume":" ","pages":"1266-1289"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141760648","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}
Psychological reviewPub Date : 2024-10-01Epub Date: 2024-09-19DOI: 10.1037/rev0000493
Jake Spicer, Jian-Qiao Zhu, Nick Chater, Adam N Sanborn
{"title":"How do people predict a random walk? Lessons for models of human cognition.","authors":"Jake Spicer, Jian-Qiao Zhu, Nick Chater, Adam N Sanborn","doi":"10.1037/rev0000493","DOIUrl":"10.1037/rev0000493","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Repeated forecasts of changing values are common in many everyday tasks, from predicting the weather to financial markets. A particularly simple and informative instance of such fluctuating values are <i>random walks</i>: Sequences in which each point is a random movement from only its preceding value, unaffected by any previous points. Moreover, random walks often yield basic rational forecasting solutions in which predictions of new values should repeat the most recent value, and hence replicate the properties of the original series. In previous experiments, however, we have found that human forecasters do not adhere to this standard, showing systematic deviations from the properties of a random walk such as excessive volatility and extreme movements between subsequent predictions. We suggest that such deviations reflect general statistical signatures of cognition displayed across multiple tasks, offering a window into underlying mechanisms. Using these deviations as new criteria, we here explore several cognitive models of forecasting drawn from various approaches developed in the existing literature, including Bayesian, error-based learning, autoregressive, and sampling mechanisms. These models are contrasted with human data from two experiments to determine which best accounts for the particular statistical features displayed by participants. We find support for sampling models in both aggregate and individual fits, suggesting that these variations are attributable to the use of inherently stochastic prediction systems. We thus argue that variability in predictions is strongly influenced by computational noise within the decision making process, with less influence from \"late\" noise at the output stage. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":21016,"journal":{"name":"Psychological review","volume":" ","pages":"1069-1113"},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142294112","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":"Measuring the impact of multiple social cues to advance theory in person perception research.","authors":"Samuel A W Klein, Jeffrey W Sherman","doi":"10.1037/rev0000503","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000503","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Forming impressions of others is a fundamental aspect of social life. These impressions necessitate the integration of many and varied sources of information about other people, including social group memberships, apparent personality traits, inferences from observed behaviors, and so forth. However, methodological limitations have hampered progress in understanding this integration process. In particular, extant approaches have been unable to measure the independent contributions of multiple features to a given impression. In this article, after describing these limitations and their constraints on theory testing and development, we present a multinomial processing tree model as a computational solution to the problem. Specifically, the model distinguishes the contributions of multiple cues to social judgment. We describe an empirical demonstration of how applying the model can resolve long-standing debates among person perception researchers. Finally, we survey a variety of questions to which this approach can be profitably applied. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":21016,"journal":{"name":"Psychological review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142294114","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}
Orlando E Jorquera, Osvaldo M Farfán, Sergio N Galarce, Natalia A Cancino, Pablo D Matamala, Edgar H Vogel
{"title":"A formal analysis of the standard operating processes (SOP) and multiple time scales (MTS) theories of habituation.","authors":"Orlando E Jorquera, Osvaldo M Farfán, Sergio N Galarce, Natalia A Cancino, Pablo D Matamala, Edgar H Vogel","doi":"10.1037/rev0000504","DOIUrl":"10.1037/rev0000504","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In this article, we compare two theories of habituation: the standard operating processes (SOP) and the multiple time scales (MTS) models. Both theories propose that habituation is due to a reduction in the difference between actual and remembered stimulation. Although the two approaches explain short-term habituation using a similar nonassociative mechanism based on a time-decaying memory of recent stimulus presentations, their understanding of retention of habituation or long-term habituation differs. SOP suggests that retention of habituation happens through associative retrieval from a long-term memory store, while MTS relies on the differential decay rate of a series of memory units. This essential difference implies that spontaneous recovery, which refers to the return of the response to levels above those reached during habituation, is predominantly a consequence of a mixture of decay and loss of association for SOP and exclusively of decay for MTS. We analyze these mechanisms conceptually and mathematically and demonstrate their functioning with computer simulations of conceptual and published experiments. We evaluate both theories regarding parsimony and explanatory power and propose potential experiments to evaluate their predictions. We provide MATLAB-Simulink and Python codes for the simulations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":21016,"journal":{"name":"Psychological review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142294105","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":"Exploring the underlying psychological constructs of self-report eating behavior measurements: Toward a comprehensive framework.","authors":"Clarissa Dakin, Graham Finlayson, R James Stubbs","doi":"10.1037/rev0000496","DOIUrl":"10.1037/rev0000496","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Food and eating are fundamental for survival but also have significant impacts on health, psychology, sociology, and economics. Understanding what motivates people to eat can provide insights into \"adaptive\" eating behavior, which is especially important due to the increasing prevalence of health-related conditions such as obesity. There has been considerable interest in developing theoretical models and associated constructs that explain individual differences in eating behavior. However, many of these models contain overlapping theories and shared theoretical mechanisms of action. Currently, there is no recognized standard framework that integrates psychological, physiological, and neurobiological theory to help explain human eating behavior. The aim of the current article was to review key psychological theories in relation to energy balance, homeostasis, energy intake, and motivation to eat and begin to develop a comprehensive framework of relevant factors that drive eating behavior. The key findings from this review suggest that eating behavior is conceptualized by elements of dual process models, which include conscious processing (reflective factors) and automatic responses to desires, environmental cues, habits, and associative learning. These processes are mediated by neurobiology and physiological signaling (homeostatic feedback) of energy balance, which is more tolerant of positive than negative energy balances. From a synthesis of available evidence, it is suggested that eating behavior constructs (traits) can be explained by three latent constructs: reflective, reactive, and homeostatic eating. By understanding the interplay between reflective, reactive, and homeostatic processes, interventions can be developed that tailor treatments to target key aspects of eating behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":21016,"journal":{"name":"Psychological review","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142294111","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":"Social exploration: How and why people seek new connections.","authors":"Shelly Tsang,Kyle Barrentine,Sareena Chadha,Shigehiro Oishi,Adrienne Wood","doi":"10.1037/rev0000499","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000499","url":null,"abstract":"Just as animals forage for food, humans forage for social connections. People often face a decision between exploring new relationships versus deepening existing ones. This trade-off, known in optimal foraging theory as the exploration-exploitation trade-off, is featured prominently in other disciplines such as animal foraging, learning, and organizational behavior. Many of the framework's principles can be applied to humans' choices about their social resources, which we call social exploration/exploitation. Using known principles in the domain of social exploration/exploitation can help social psychologists better understand how and why people choose their relationships, which ultimately affect their health and well-being. In this article, we discuss the costs and benefits of social exploration and social exploitation. We then synthesize known person- and situation-level predictors of social decision making, reframing them in the language of the explore-exploit trade-off. We propose that people explore more when they find it more rewarding and less costly, and when the environment has many opportunities to do so. We conclude by discussing hypotheses generated by applying optimal foraging theory to social decision making. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).","PeriodicalId":21016,"journal":{"name":"Psychological review","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142174456","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":"Understanding self-control as a problem of regulatory scope.","authors":"Kentaro Fujita,Yaacov Trope,Nira Liberman","doi":"10.1037/rev0000501","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000501","url":null,"abstract":"Although the focus of research for decades, there is a surprising lack of consensus on what is (and what is not) self-control. We review some of the most prominent theoretical models of self-control, including those that highlight conflicts between smaller-sooner versus larger-later rewards, \"hot\" emotions versus \"cool\" cognitions, and efficient automatic versus resource-intensive controlled processes. After discussing some of their shortcomings, we propose an alternative approach based on tenets of construal level theory (Trope et al., 2021) that integrates these disparate models while also providing novel insights. Specifically, we model self-control as a problem of regulatory scope-the range of considerations one accounts for in any decision or behavior. Self-control conflicts occur when the pursuit of specific local opportunities threatens the ability to address motivational priorities that span a broader array of time, places, individuals, and possibilities. Whereas a more contractive consideration of relevant concerns may prompt indulgence in temptation, a more expansive consideration of concerns should not only help people identify the self-control conflict but also successfully resolve it. We review empirical evidence that supports this new framework and discuss implications and new directions. This regulatory framework not only clarifies what is and what is not self-control but also provides new insights that can be leveraged to enhance self-control in all its various forms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).","PeriodicalId":21016,"journal":{"name":"Psychological review","volume":"382 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2024-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142174457","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}