Communications Psychology最新文献

{"title":"The association between the error-related negativity and self-control is moderated by impulsivity and compulsivity.","authors":"Rebecca Overmeyer, Anja Kräplin, Thomas Goschke, Tanja Endrass","doi":"10.1038/s44271-026-00446-3","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44271-026-00446-3","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Impaired self-control has been linked to deficits in performance monitoring and is associated with impulsive and compulsive behaviors. Although altered error-related negativity (ERN) amplitudes have been observed in disorders characterized by these traits, it remains unclear how such alterations relate to the translation of monitoring signals into behavior. In a sample of 221 participants, we combined electroencephalography with ecological momentary assessment to examine how self-reported impulsivity and compulsivity relate to daily self-control and moderate the association between ERN amplitude and daily self-control. High compulsivity was associated with increased desire enactment and more frequent self-control failures. Critically, ERN amplitude was associated with better self-control only at low levels of both impulsivity and compulsivity. These findings indicate that the relationship between performance monitoring and daily self-control varies as a function of trait-level impulsivity and compulsivity. While the present findings are correlational in nature, they suggest that considering trait interactions may inform cognitive and neural models of self-control and our understanding of how performance monitoring translates into adaptive behavior.</p>","PeriodicalId":501698,"journal":{"name":"Communications Psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13046855/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147535436","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Perceptual and conceptual influences on memory judgments.","authors":"Ricardo Morales-Torres, Simon W Davis, Roberto Cabeza","doi":"10.1038/s44271-026-00443-6","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44271-026-00443-6","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Memory representations contain a rich array of features, including perceptual and conceptual features of encoded stimuli. While prior research demonstrates that both feature types are independently represented in memory, available evidence suggests that recognition decisions (i.e., identifying one image as previously seen) depend primarily on conceptual features. However, memory judgments are a culmination of several processing stages: evidence accumulation, recognition decisions and subjective evaluations about memory quality. Whether perceptual and conceptual representations influence stages beyond recognition decisions, and whether these representations interact during these stages, remains untested. To address these questions, we conducted a series of experiments in which subjects performed forced-choice memory tests. In these tests, subjects encoded several images (e.g., the picture of a dog) and later had to discriminate between the encoded images and similar lures (e.g., the picture of a similar dog). Crucially, we employed computational models of vision to independently quantify the perceptual and conceptual similarity between the encoded images and their lures. Experiment 1 (N = 140) revealed that both perceptual and conceptual similarity impaired evidence accumulation, though only conceptual similarity decreased recognition accuracy. Experiments 2 (N = 254) and 3 (N = 315) revealed a similar effect, with conceptual similarity decreasing recognition accuracy. However, by directly testing interactions between both types of features, our results showed that when perceptual similarity between targets and lures was high, the detrimental effect of conceptual similarity on recognition accuracy was diminished -a reduction that was associated with participants increased reliance on more detailed-based retrieval strategies.</p>","PeriodicalId":501698,"journal":{"name":"Communications Psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13124592/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147517662","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Scene variability affects action decisions, confidence and behaviour dynamics.","authors":"David Aguilar-Lleyda, Antonio González-Del Pozo, Joan López-Moliner, Cristina de la Malla","doi":"10.1038/s44271-026-00448-1","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44271-026-00448-1","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Humans often unfold their actions within complex, variable environments. While such variability is sometimes irrelevant to task success, it could still influence both action decisions and confidence in their outcome. We used immersive virtual reality to examine how scene variability affects each of these processes, while also testing whether its influence extends to the dynamics of information sampling and motor execution. Our task simulated a street-crossing scenario where participants saw six cars approaching a crosswalk. In separate conditions, participants judged their confidence in crossing successfully or attempted to cross if deciding so. Across trials, scene variability was manipulated by changing the cars' relative velocities. Higher scene variability led participants to report lower confidence and to attempt crossing less often. Moreover, it delayed crossing initiation, which participants compensated for by moving slightly faster once committed to the action. These kinematic adjustments indicate flexible online control in response to environmental variability. Consistent with this interpretation, overall crossing performance remained high across variability conditions, suggesting that such adjustments enabled participants to maintain successful outcomes despite increased scene complexity. Additionally, eye movement patterns revealed that trials with high confidence and attempted crossings were associated with faster information acquisition engagement and subsequent disengagement. Our findings suggest that, even when irrelevant for action success, variability can shape not only confidence and action decisions but also the dynamics of motor execution. This highlights the importance of accounting for variability to fully understand sensorimotor tasks in dynamic complex environments.</p>","PeriodicalId":501698,"journal":{"name":"Communications Psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-03-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13187009/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147523595","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A systematic review and meta-analysis of studies testing effects of cash transfers on child cognitive, language, and socio-emotional development in low- or middle income countries.","authors":"Lia C H Fernald, Eleanor Tsai, Paul J Gertler","doi":"10.1038/s44271-026-00440-9","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44271-026-00440-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Cash transfers alleviate financial hardship as either conditional programs, requiring behavioral compliance, or unconditional programs. We undertook a systematic review, quality appraisal, and meta-analysis of 16 RCTs following PRISMA guidelines, examining effects of cash transfers on child development among children (n = 29,887, <8 years old) in low- or middle-income countries; papers were excluded if they used quasi-experimental or simulation methods, or did not have a control group without cash. To examine risk of bias in the studies, we used the revised Cochrane risk-of-bias tools for individually randomized trials (RoB 2) and cluster randomized trials (RoB 2 CRT). After 3.6 years, cash transfers had a small but significant positive effect on cognitive (Cohen's d  =  0.08, 95% CI 0.04, 0.13), language (d  =  0.09, 95% CI 0.04, 0.13), and gross motor outcomes (d  =  0.07, 95% CI 0.03, 0.11); only conditional cash transfers showed significant effects on socio-emotional outcomes (d  =  0.17, 95% CI 0.04, 0.31). Across outcomes, findings were strongest for children in families receiving conditional cash transfers and a sub-set of cash transfer programs (\"cash-plus\", which integrated health, nutrition, or parenting support). Limitations of the analysis are that we could only include a small number of studies, and that there was a great degree of heterogeneity among cash transfer programs, and thus our findings are exploratory. In spite of these limitations, our findings suggest that cash transfers were most effective to promote child development when the transfers were bundled with crucial services or support for families, not simply as cash alone.</p>","PeriodicalId":501698,"journal":{"name":"Communications Psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13153418/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147517664","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"When distrust is misplaced, social and democratic bonds weaken.","authors":"Louisa Estadieu, Markus Langer","doi":"10.1038/s44271-026-00437-4","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44271-026-00437-4","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":501698,"journal":{"name":"Communications Psychology","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13013608/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147517698","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Affiliation in human-AI interactions is based on shared psychological traits.","authors":"Santiago Castiello, Riddhi Jain Pitliya, Daniel R Lametti, Robin A Murphy","doi":"10.1038/s44271-026-00433-8","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44271-026-00433-8","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>People affiliate with others who share their psychological traits. Does the same phenomenon occur with AI instructed to mimic human psychology? Large language models (LLM) were prompted to use language that mimicked anxious symptoms or their absence (Experiment 1; n = 100), extroversion or introversion (Experiment 2; n = 100), and an exact mirror or inverse of participants' personality (preregistered Experiment 3; n = 100). With full knowledge that they were interacting with an artificial system, participants engaged in written interactions with both LLM versions and then evaluated their engagement. Those with anxiety reported a stronger connection to the LLM that mimicked anxiety, a distinction also reflected in the sentiment of the messages they exchanged. Extroverted participants affiliated more with the AI that mimicked extroversion. Finally, when participants interacted with LLMs that mimicked either their own personality profile or the inverse of their personality (i.e., the opposite pattern of their Big-Five scores), they reported more affiliation with the LLM mimicking their personality; this distinction was also reflected in the sentiment of their messages. Results support affiliation in human-AI interactions based on the linguistic presentation of a shared psychology. We propose that through socioaffective tuning, LLMs might achieve greater human-like correspondence.</p>","PeriodicalId":501698,"journal":{"name":"Communications Psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13254357/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147505855","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The belief in a decline in cooperation in the USA and China.","authors":"Yi Liu, Giuliana Spadaro, Sümeyye Ergün, Yingling Li, Paul A M Van Lange","doi":"10.1038/s44271-026-00442-7","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44271-026-00442-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Amidst growing global challenges, perceptions of human cooperation-a cornerstone of societal progress-appear to be in decline. Despite empirical evidence showing that people in both the USA and China exhibit increased cooperation in experimental games, the public remains convinced that morality and trust-two key ingredients of cooperation-have declined over time. To investigate this paradox, this study examines trends in cooperation that people perceive from the past into the future, along with the reasons they perceive to underlie these trends. We conducted a cross-cultural survey of 628 Americans and 449 Chinese, asking them to estimate the likelihood of others' cooperative behavior in a prisoner's dilemma game and to rate four cooperation-related traits-warmth, morality, assertiveness, and competence-at various times between 1960 and 2030. Participants also provided reasons for their beliefs. Our findings revealed a stable belief in declining cooperative behavior in the game, along with all four traits, with a relatively small decline in competence, in both the USA and China. Moreover, over 60% of respondents believed in a more general decline in cooperation. Declining social trust and increasing stress and wealth were the primary perceived reasons for their beliefs in both countries; also, increasing exposure to social media was a stronger perceived reason for U.S. participants, whereas increasing education was stronger for Chinese participants. This study reveals a widespread belief in the declining cooperation in two of the world's largest nations and highlights the profound influence of sociocultural factors on public beliefs.</p>","PeriodicalId":501698,"journal":{"name":"Communications Psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13172330/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147494974","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Autistic children sample costly information with increased variability due to inflexible updating.","authors":"Haoyang Lu, Hang Zhang, Li Yi","doi":"10.1038/s44271-026-00439-2","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44271-026-00439-2","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Efficient information sampling is crucial for human inference and decision-making even for young children. It is also closely associated with the core symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), since both the social interaction difficulties and repetitive behaviors suggest that autistic people may sample information from the environment distinctively. However, the specific ways in which autistic children sample information, especially when facing explicit costs and adapting to environmental changes, remain unclear. Thirty-two autistic and 41 IQ-matched neurotypical children aged five to eight participated in a computerized bead task, where children decided to gather samples sequentially from an unknown target to infer which of the two options was the target. Autistic children showed lower sampling efficiency under costly conditions compared to neurotypical peers, resulting from increased variability in sample numbers across trials, rather than solely systematic sampling bias. Computational models indicated that while both groups shared a similar decision process, autistic children's sampling decisions were less influenced by dynamic changes and more by recently gathered evidence. This led to higher sampling variation and lowered the efficiency of autistic children. These findings offer valuable insights into the cognitive mechanisms underlying fundamental behaviors in autistic children.</p>","PeriodicalId":501698,"journal":{"name":"Communications Psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13168704/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147492334","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The impact of stress on personality state expressions.","authors":"Samantha J Grayson, Gabriella M Harari, Sandra C Matz","doi":"10.1038/s44271-026-00438-3","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44271-026-00438-3","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Who we are at any given moment depends not only on our psychological dispositions but also the situational forces we experience. Here, we explore how stress - an intrapsychic situational force - impacts momentary personality expression. In Study 1 (N = 792), we experimentally induced stress, showing that the experience of stress is causally related to lower levels of state Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and higher levels of state Neuroticism. In Study 2 (N = 713; 17,853 observations), we used experience sampling to capture naturally occurring stress and show that stress is associated with lower levels of state Extraversion and Agreeableness, and higher levels of state Neuroticism and Openness in everyday situations. Notably, across both studies, the associations between stress and personality state expressions are largely robust when accounting for momentary affect. Together, our work highlights stress as a distinct and dynamic driver of personality state variability in everyday life.</p>","PeriodicalId":501698,"journal":{"name":"Communications Psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13168389/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147492343","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Determinants of visual ambiguity resolution.","authors":"Juan Linde-Domingo, Javier Ortiz-Tudela, Johannah Völler, Martin N Hebart, Carlos González-García","doi":"10.1038/s44271-026-00441-8","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s44271-026-00441-8","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Visual inputs during natural perception are highly ambiguous: objects are frequently occluded, lighting conditions vary, and object identification depends significantly on prior experiences. However, why do certain images remain unidentifiable while others can be recognized immediately, and what visual features drive subjective clarification? To address these critical questions, we developed a unique dataset of 1854 ambiguous images and collected more than 100,000 ratings (from a total of 947 participants) evaluating their identifiability before and after seeing undistorted versions of the images. Relating the representations of a brain-inspired neural network model in response to our images with human ratings, we show that subjective identification depends largely on the extent to which higher-level visual features from the original images are preserved in their ambiguous counterparts. In line with these results, an image-level regression analysis showed that the subjective identification of ambiguous images was best explained by high-level visual dimensions. Notably, the predominance of higher-level features over lower-level ones softens after participants disambiguate the images, suggesting that the visual system flexibly shifts between top-down guessing to bottom-up matching after disambiguation. Moreover, we found that the process of ambiguity resolution was accompanied by a notable decrease in semantic distance and a greater consistency in object naming among participants. However, the relationship between information gained after disambiguation and subjective identification was non-linear, indicating that acquiring more information does not necessarily enhance subjective clarity. Instead, we observed a U-shaped relationship, suggesting that subjective identification improves when the acquired information either strongly matches or mismatches prior predictions. Collectively, these findings advance our understanding on how we resolve ambiguity and extract meaning from incomplete visual information.</p>","PeriodicalId":501698,"journal":{"name":"Communications Psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":6.4,"publicationDate":"2026-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13143824/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147477712","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}