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A label’s entrenchment, its degree of use by members of a community, affects its perceived explanatory value even if the label provides no substantive information (Hemmatian & Sloman, 2018). The repository contains the data and materials related to three experiments that show the susceptibility of laypersons and mental health professionals to the entrenchment effect for diagnostic categories. Participants saw entrenched psychiatric and non-psychiatric diagnostic labels as better explanations than non-entrenched labels even if they are circular. Using scenarios involving experts who discuss unfamiliar diagnostic categories, we show that this preference is not due to violations of conversational norms, lack of reflectiveness or attentiveness, and the characters’ familiarity or unfamiliarity with the label. In Experiment 1, whether a label provided novel symptom information or not had no impact on lay responses, while its entrenchment enhanced ratings of explanation quality. The effect persisted in Experiment 2 for causally incoherent categories and regardless of direct provision of mechanistic information. The effect of entrenchment was partly related to induced causal beliefs about the category, even when they contradict explicitly provided information. Most participants in both experiments did not report any effect of entrenchment and the effect was present for those who did not. In Experiment 3, mental health professionals showed the effect using diagnoses that were mere shorthands for symptoms, despite a tendency to rate all explanations as unsatisfactory. The data suggest that bringing experts’ attention to the manipulation eliminates the effect. This pre-registration relates to the fourth experiment in this series, which attempts to disambiguate the social and epistemic utility of labels, and to provide additional controls.

How do we decide what to say to ensure our meanings will be understood? The Rational Speech Act model (RSA, Frank & Goodman, 2012) asserts that speakers plan what to say by comparing the informativity of words in a particular context. We present the first example of an RSA model of sentence level (who-did-what-to-whom) meanings. In these contexts, the set of possible messages must be abstracted from entities in common ground (people and objects) to possible events (Jane eats the apple, Marco peels the banana), with each word contributing unique semantic content. How do speakers accomplish the transformation from context to compositional, informative messages? In a communication game, participants described transitive events (e.g. Jane pets the dog), with only two words, in contexts where two words either were or were not enough to uniquely identify an event. Adults chose utterances matching the predictions of the RSA even when there was no possible fully 'successful' utterance. Thus we show that adults’ communicative behavior can be described by a model that accommodates informativity in context, beyond the set of possible entities in common ground. This study provides the first evidence that adults' language production is affected, at the level of argument structure, by the graded informativity of possible utterances in context, and suggests that full- blown natural speech may result from speakers who model and adapt to the listener’s needs.

How do our valuation systems change to homeostatically correct undesirable psychological or physiological states, such as those caused by hunger? There is evidence that hunger increases discounting for food rewards, biasing choices towards smaller but sooner food reward over larger but later reward. However, it is not understood how hunger modulates delay discounting for non-food items. We outline and quantitatively evaluate six possible models of how our valuation systems modulate discounting of various commodities in the face of the undesirable state of being hungry. With a repeated-measures design, an experimental hunger manipulation, and quantitative modeling, we find strong evidence that hunger causes large increases in delay discounting for food, with an approximately 25% spillover effect to non-food commodities. The results provide evidence that in the face of hunger, our valuation systems increase discounting for commodities, which cannot achieve a desired state change as well as for those commodities that can. Given that strong delay discounting can cause negative outcomes in many non-food (consumer, investment, medical, or inter-personal) domains, the present findings suggest caution may be necessary when making decisions involving non-food outcomes while hungry.

By definition, individuals with absolute pitch (AP) can categorize an isolated musical note with near perfect accuracy without a reference pitch. This definition implies a uniformity of performance across people; however, in reality AP is a complex, multidimensional ability, shaped by both early and recent auditory experiences. In the present study we assess how individual differences in working memory, musical expertise, and language background relate to the accuracy with which an AP possessor can identify an isolated musical note. In a standard test of AP ability, all AP participants performed virtually perfectly. When tested on more challenging notes, drawn from less frequently experienced timbres and octave ranges, we found that working memory positively related to note categorization performance, though only among individuals who reported a tonal language background. This interaction between tonal language and working memory, however, may have been partly grounded by differences in musical expertise reported between tonal and non-tonal language. Supporting this possibility, in a follow-up analysis we observed a general interaction between working memory performance and musical expertise across all participants. Taken together, these results highlight the complexity of AP categorization when considered as an auditory skill rather than a native talent. The observation that working memory may be an important component of auditory processing in AP when the to-be-judged sounds are less easily categorized is consistent with recent theoretical accounts of how working memory and expertise relate to auditory recognition more broadly.

Events that conform to our expectations, i.e, are congruent with our world knowledge or schemas, are better remembered than unrelated events. Yet events that conflict with schemas can also be remembered better. We examined this apparent paradox in four experiments, in which schemas were established by training ordinal relationships between randomly-paired objects, while episodic memory was tested for the number of objects on each trial. Better memory was found for both congruent and incongruent trials, relative to unrelated trials, producing memory performance that was a “U-shaped” function of congruency. Furthermore, the incongruency advantage, but not congruency advantage, emerged even if the information probed by the memory test was irrelevant to the schema, while the congruency advantage, but not incongruency advantage, also emerged after initial encoding. Schemas therefore augment episodic memory in multiple ways, depending on the match between novel and existing information.

Although euphemisms are intended to put a more positive spin on the words they replace, some euphemisms are ineffective. Our study examined the effectiveness of a popular euphemism for persons with disabilities, special needs. Most style guides prescribe against using the euphemism special needs and recommend instead using the non-euphemized term disability; disability advocates argue adamantly against the euphemism special needs, which they find offensive. In contrast, many parents of children with disabilities prefer to use special needs rather than disability. But no empirical study has examined whether special needs is more or less positive than the term it replaces. Therefore, we gathered a sample of adult participants from the general population (N = 530) and created a set of vignettes that allowed us to measure how positively children, college students, and middle-age adults are viewed when they are described as having special needs, having a disability, having a certain disability (e.g., is blind, has Down syndrome), or with no label at all. We predicted and observed that persons are viewed more negatively when described as having special needs than when described as having a disability or having a certain disability, indicating that special needs is an ineffective euphemism. Even for members of the general population who have a personal connection to disability (e.g., as parents of children with disabilities), the euphemism special needs is no more effective than the non euphemized term disability. We also collected free associations to the terms special needs and disability and found that special needs is associated with more negativity; special needs conjures up more associations with developmental disabilities (such as intellectual disability) whereas disability is associated with a more inclusive set of disabilities; and special needs evokes more unanswered questions. These findings recommend against using the euphemism special needs.

This paper investigates how cognition facilitates the adoption of new words through a study of the large-scale Reddit corpus, which contains written, threaded conversations conducted over the internet. Parameters for the cognitive architecture are estimated. Using ACT-R's account of declarative memory, the activation of memory chunks representing words is traced and compared to usage statistics sampled from a year of data. Potential values for decay and retrieval threshold are identified according to model fit and growth rates of word adoption. The resulting estimate for the decay parameter, d, is 0.22, and the estimate for the retrieval threshold parameter, rt, lies between 3.4 and 4.5.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 115(6) of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (see record 2018-63189-002). In the article, the original supplemental material has been revised to include a clarifying note to the Tests of model fit over larger sample (Samples C-G) section and post-peer review analyses added to the Post-peer review Factor Analytic Tests section. All versions of this article have been corrected.] Philosophers and behavioral scientists refer to wisdom as unbiased reasoning that guides one toward a balance of interests and promotes a good life. However, major instruments developed to test wisdom appear biased, and it is unclear whether they capture balance-related tendencies. We examined whether shifting from global, de-contextualized reports to state-level reports about concrete situations provides a less biased method to assess wise reasoning (e.g., intellectual humility, recognition of uncertainty and change, consideration of the broader context at hand and perspectives of others, integration of these perspectives or compromise), which may be aligned with the notion of balancing interests. Results of a large-scale psychometric investigation (N = 4,463) revealed that the novel Situated WIse Reasoning Scale (SWIS) is reliable and appears independent of psychological biases (attribution bias, bias blind spot, self-deception, and impression management), whereas global wisdom reports are subject to such biases. Moreover, SWIS scores were positively related to indices of living well (e.g., adaptive emotion regulation, mindfulness), and balancing of cooperative and self-protective interests, goals (influence-vs.-adjustment), and causal inferences about conflict (attribution to the self-vs.-other party). In contrast, global wisdom reports were unrelated or negatively related to balance-related measures. Notably, people showed modest within-person consistency in wise reasoning across situations or over time, suggesting that a single-shot measurement may be insufficient for whole understanding of trait-level wisdom. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for research on wisdom, judgment and decision making, well-being, and prosociality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

We discuss two relatively understudied yet important phenomena relevant to the ecologically crucial task of gathering reliable information from human faces. First, facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) predicts aggressiveness judgments and is associated with aggression-related behavior and life history outcomes. A significant body of research indicates fWHR is an honest evolutionary signal of propensity to aggression yet little is known about how or if this signal is preserved in judgments across race boundaries. Evidence for a universal relationship between increased fWHR and enhanced aggression perception has been found using Asian and white face stimuli, but race moderated the relationship between high fWHR and ratings in a pain ascription task using black and white faces. Second, we examine research on olfactory cues to face perception and focus particular attention on the possibility that face judgments may be influenced by putrescine, an organic compound found recently to heighten threat and escape-related cognitions in a single subliminal odor presentation study. Here we probe how fWHR and face race interact in aggression judgments during subliminal exposure to putrescine and a control condition. We present a standardized method of subliminal putrescine delivery and find null effects of putrescine on face judgments. Overall, our primarily white participants show a reduced difference in aggressiveness ratings to black faces from low to high levels of fWHR compared to the same contrast in white face stimuli, consistent with an account in which black faces are not perceived with the same configural precision as white faces.

The present study examined the effect of stimulus valence on two levels of selection in the cognitive system, selection of a task-set and selection of a response. In the first experiment, participants performed a spatial compatibility task (pressing left and right key according to the locations of stimuli) in which stimulus-response mappings were determined by stimulus valence. There was a standard spatial stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) effect for positive stimuli (flowers) and a reversed SRC effect for negative stimuli (spiders), but the same data could be interpreted as showing faster responses when positive and negative stimuli were assigned to compatible and incompatible mappings, respectively, than when the assignment was opposite. Experiment 2 disentangled these interpretations, showing that valence did not influence a spatial SRC effect (Simon effect) when task-set retrieval was unnecessary. Experiments 3 and 4 replaced keypress responses with joystick deflections that afforded approach/avoidance action coding. Stimulus valence modulated the Simon effect (but did not reverse it) when the valence was task-relevant (Experiment 3) as well as when it was task-irrelevant (Experiment 4). Therefore, stimulus valence influences task-set selection and response selection, but the influence on the latter is limited to conditions where responses afford approach/avoidance action coding.

This study used a Web-based naturalistic story-reading paradigm to investigate the impact of number of exposures on incidental acquisition and long-term retention of new meanings for known words by native English-speaking adults. Participants read one of four custom written stories in which they encountered novel meanings (e.g., a safe concealed within a piece of furniture) for familiar words (foam). These meanings appeared two, four, six, or eight times in the narrative. Results showed reasonably good memory of the new meanings, assessed by cued recall of novel meanings and word forms, after only two exposures, emphasizing the importance of initial encounters. Accuracy in cued recall of novel meanings showed a linear, incremental increase with more exposures. There was no significant forgetting after 1 week, regardless of the number of exposures during training, demonstrating the efficiency with which adults acquire new word meanings incidentally through reading and retain them over time. Open Practices: This article has been awarded an Open Data badge. All data and analysis scripts are publicly accessible via the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/ybu6r. Learn more about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science: https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki.

Humans can see through the complexity of scenes, faces, and objects by quickly extracting their redundant low-spatial and low-dimensional global properties, or their style. It remains unclear, however, whether semantic coding is necessary, or whether visual stylistic information is sufficient, for people to recognize and discriminate complex images and categories. In two experiments, we systematically reduce the resolution of hundreds of unique paintings, birds, and faces, and test people's ability to discriminate and recognize them. We show that the stylistic information retained at extremely low image resolutions is sufficient for visual recognition of images and visual discrimination of categories. Averaging over the 3 domains, people were able to reliably recognize images reduced down to a single pixel, with large differences from chance discriminability across 8 different image resolutions. People were also able to discriminate categories substantially above chance with an image resolution as low as 2 × 2 pixels. We situate our findings in the context of contemporary computational accounts of visual recognition and contend that explicit encoding of the local features in the image, or knowledge of the semantic category, is not necessary for recognizing and distinguishing complex visual stimuli. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

An emerging area of research in cognitive science is the utilization of networks to model the structure and processes of the mental lexicon in healthy and clinical populations, like aphasia. Previous research has focused on only one type of word similarity at a time (e.g., semantic relationships), even though words are multi-faceted. Here, we investigate lexical retrieval in a picture naming task from people with Broca’s and Wernicke’s aphasia and healthy controls by utilizing a multiplex network structure that accounts for the interplay between multiple semantic and phonological relationships among words in the mental lexicon. Extending upon previous work, we focused on the global network measure of closeness centrality which is known to capture spreading activation, an important process supporting lexical retrieval. We conducted a series of logistic regression models predicting the probability of correct picture naming. We tested whether multiplex closeness centrality was a better predictor of picture naming performance than single-layer closeness centralities, other network measures assessing local and meso-scale structure, psycholinguistic variables and group differences. We also examined production gaps, or the difference between the likelihood of producing a word with the lowest and highest closeness centralities. Our results indicated that multiplex closeness centrality was a significant predictor of picture naming performance, where words with high closeness centrality were more likely to be produced than words with low closeness centrality. Additionally, multiplex closeness centrality outperformed single-layer closeness centralities and other multiplex network measures, and remained a significant predictor after controlling for psycholinguistic variables and group differences. Furthermore, we found that the facilitative effect of closeness centrality was similar for both types of aphasia. Our results underline the importance of integrating multiple measures of word similarities in cognitive language networks for better understanding lexical retrieval in aphasia, with an eye towards future clinical applications.

Does language reflect the categories of our mind or does it help create them? On one widespread view (cognitive priority), learning a language involves mapping words onto pre-existing categories, leaving little room for language to change the structure of conceptual content. On another view (linguistic priority), conceptual structure is shaped by experience with and use of language. We argue for the latter perspective and present experimental findings showing that nameability – the ease with which a feature can be named – influences problem-solving, category learning, and geometric reasoning. Even subtle manipulations affecting the availability of verbal labels can impact the categories people discover and use. Words do not simply reflect joints of nature, but are used to flexibly carve joints into nature.

Real-world decisions often take place under radical uncertainty—where outcomes cannot be enumerated and probabilities cannot be assigned. Conviction Narrative Theory (CNT) is a theory of choice under radical uncertainty. Whereas most theories of choice assume that people rely on (potentially biased) probabilistic judgments, such theories cannot account for adaptive decision-making when probabilities cannot be assigned. CNT proposes that people use narratives—structured causal hypotheses—rather than probabilities, as the currency of thought that unifies our sense-making and decision-making faculties. According to CNT, narratives arise from the interplay between individual cognition and the social environment, with reasoners adopting a narrative to explain the available evidence; using that narrative to imagine plausible futures; and affectively evaluating those imagined futures to make a choice. Evidence from many different areas of the cognitive, behavioral, and social sciences supports this basic model, including lab experiments, interview studies, and econometric analyses. We describe several varieties of narratives that govern decisions, documenting the psychological mechanisms governing their evaluation and their use in decision-making. We suggest two ways in which narratives and affect work together to support adaptive decision-making—evaluating the compatibility of imagined futures and goals and maintaining conviction to act in the face of ambivalent reasons and changing information. We conclude by discussing practical implications of CNT and its generativity for future research.

Interest in wisdom in the cognitive sciences, psychology, and education has been paralleled by conceptual confusions about its nature and assessment. To clarify these issues and promote consensus in the field, wisdom researchers met in Toronto in July of 2019, resolving disputes through discussion. Guided by a survey of scientists who study wisdom-related constructs, we established a common wisdom model, observing that empirical approaches to wisdom converge on the morally-grounded application of metacognition to reasoning and problem-solving. After outlining the function of relevant metacognitive and moral processes, we critically evaluate existing empirical approaches to measurement and offer recommendations for best practices. In the subsequent sections, we use the common wisdom model to selectively review evidence about the role of individual differences for development and manifestation of wisdom, approaches to wisdom development and training, as well as cultural, subcultural, and social-contextual differences. We conclude by discussing wisdom’s conceptual overlap with a host of other constructs and outline unresolved conceptual and methodological challenges.

Typical approaches to study practical wisdom are person-centric, use faulty methods and produce insights of little relevance to construct’s definition. We propose that understanding the mental processes underlying practical wisdom require a social-ecological framework, supported by emerging empirical insights. Wise reasoning (i.e., intellectual humility, open-mindedness, recognition of broader perspectives and possible changes, integration of diverse viewpoints) varies dramatically across cultures, regions, economic strata, and situational contexts. By adopting a social-ecological perspective, psychologists can address some paradoxes about wisdom, including biases and errors in decontextualized versus context-variable assessments and a greater propensity for wise reasoning about social versus personal challenges, despite greater knowledge about personal issues. Moreover, an ecological perspective suggests the propensity for practical wisdom in the population can also shape its ecology and surroundings. This new approach to wisdom is enriching our understanding and exploration of practical wisdom as a mental process and an ecological asset for societies at large.

Objectives Across the life span, deficits in executive functioning (EF) are associated with poor behavioral control and failure to achieve goals. Though EF is often discussed as one broad construct, a prominent model of EF suggests that it is composed of three subdomains: inhibition, set shifting, and updating. These subdomains are seen in both younger (YA) and older adults (OA), with performance deficits across subdomains in OA. Therefore, our goal was to investigate whether subdomains of EF might be differentially affected by age, and how these differences may relate to broader global age differences in EF. Methods To assess these age differences, we conducted a meta-analysis at multiple levels, including task level, subdomain level, and of global EF. Based on previous work, we hypothesized that there would be overall differences in EF in OA. Results Using 1,268 effect sizes from 401 articles, we found overall differences in EF with age. Results suggested that differences in performance are not uniform, such that variability in age effects emerged at the task level, and updating was not as affected by age as other subdomains. Discussion These findings advance our understanding of age differences in EF, and stand to inform early detection of EF decline.

Abstract. Language comprehenders have been arguing to mentally represent the implied orientation of objects. However, compared to the effects of shape, size, and color, the effect of orientation is rather small. We examined a potential explanation for the relatively low magnitude of the orientation effect: Object size moderates the orientation effect. Theoretical considerations led us to predict a smaller orientation effect for small objects than for large objects in a sentence–picture verification task. We furthermore investigated whether this pattern generalizes across languages (Chinese, Dutch, and English) and tasks (picture-naming task). The results of the verification task show an orientation effect overall, which is not moderated by object size (contrary to our hypothesis) and language (consistent with our hypothesis). Meanwhile, the preregistered picture–picture verification task showed the predicted interaction between object size and orientation effect. We conducted exploratory analyses to address additional questions.

What do we communicate with causal explanations? Upon being told, "E because C", one might learn that C and E both occurred, and perhaps that there is a causal relationship between C and E. In fact, causal explanations systematically disclose much more than this basic information. Here, we offer a communication-theoretic account of explanation that makes specific predictions about the kinds of inferences people draw from others' explanations. We test these predictions in a case study involving the role of norms and causal structure. In Experiment 1, we demonstrate that people infer the normality of a cause from an explanation when they know the underlying causal structure. In Experiment 2, we show that people infer the causal structure from an explanation if they know the normality of the cited cause. We find these patterns both for scenarios that manipulate the statistical and prescriptive normality of events. Finally, we consider how the communicative function of explanations, as highlighted in this series of experiments, may help to elucidate the distinctive roles that normality and causal structure play in causal judgment, paving the way toward a more comprehensive account of causal explanation.

The COVID-19 global pandemic has left many feeling a sense of profound uncertainty about their world, safety, and livelihood. Individuals are faced with a range of explanatory frameworks that can help reduce feelings of uncertainty. Such frameworks are offered by numerous sources, including government and health-organizations as well as sources espousing misinformation and conspiracy theories. Conspiratorial thinking (CT) may impede adherence to empirically-based guidelines for mitigating the spread and impact of COVID-19, highlighting the need to understand the psychological factors that contribute to CT. It is hypothesized that one of the key psychological drivers of CT is the need for understanding and certainty; thus, those who are particularly intolerant to uncertainty may be quicker to accept conspiratorial explanations. In addition, paranoia and delusion-proneness may constitute cognitive styles that further predispose individuals towards CT. In the present study we aimed to examine the relationship of intolerance to uncertainty and CT regarding COVID-19 and whether this relationship is mediated by individual differences in delusion-proneness and paranoia. Our results from an online survey (N=261) show that higher levels of intolerance of uncertainty, delusion-proneness, and paranoid ideation were associated with stronger CT. Furthermore, delusion-proneness and paranoia mediated the relationship between intolerance to uncertainty and CT. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of individual differences in intolerance to uncertainty, delusion proneness and paranoia in the development of CT in the context of crisis and uncertainty due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings provide evidence that specific individual differences can create susceptibility to misinformation and may have implications for message framing strategies when designing informational interventions.

The aim of our study was to explore psychological determinants of COVID-19 responsible behavior. We focused on trait anxiety and worry about the corona crisis, knowledge and unfounded beliefs about coronavirus and thinking dispositions (cognitive reflection, actively open-minded thinking, faith in intuition and science curiosity) that should drive knowledge and beliefs. Additionally, we tested the effectiveness of a one-shot intervention based on the “consider counter-arguments” debiasing technique in changing COVID-19 unfounded beliefs. We used a convenience sample of 1439 participants who filled in the questionnaire on-line. Comparison of latent means showed that the “consider counter-arguments” intervention did not affect unfounded beliefs. Structural equation model, conducted on 962 participants with data on all variables, indicated that greater worry and weaker endorsement of COVID-19 unfounded beliefs lead to more responsible COVID-19 behavior. The relationship of trait anxiety and thinking dispositions with the criterion was mediated through the worry about COVID-19 and unfounded beliefs about COVID-19, respectively. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s12144-020-01040-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Agents that can make better use of computation, experience, time, and memory can solve a greater range of problems more effectively. A crucial ingredient for managing such finite resources is intelligently chosen abstract representations. But, how do abstractions facilitate problem solving under limited resources? What makes an abstraction useful? To answer such questions, we review several trends in recent reinforcement-learning research that provide insight into how abstractions interact with learning and decision making. During learning, abstraction can guide exploration and generalization as well as facilitate efficient tradeoffs---e.g., time spent learning versus the quality of a solution. During computation, good abstractions provide simplified models for computation while also preserving relevant information about decision-theoretic quantities. These features of abstraction are not only key for scaling up artificial problem solving, but can also shed light on what pressures shape the use of abstract representations in humans and other organisms.

In insight problem solving solutions with AHA! experience have been assumed to be the consequence of restructuring of a problem which usually takes place shortly before the solution. However, evidence from priming studies suggests that solutions with AHA! are not spontaneously generated during the solution process but already relate to prior subliminal processing. We test this hypothesis by conducting an fMRI study using a modified compound remote associates paradigm which incorporates semantic priming. We observe stronger brain activity in bilateral anterior insulae already shortly after trial onset in problems that were later solved with than without AHA!. This early activity was independent of semantic priming but may be related to other lexical properties of attended words helping to reduce the amount of solutions to look for. In contrast, there was more brain activity in bilateral anterior insulae during solutions that were solved without than with AHA!. This timing (after trial start / during solution) x solution experience (with / without AHA!) interaction was significant.The results suggest that a) solutions accompanied with AHA! relate to early solution-relevant processing and b) both solution experiences differ in timing when solution-relevant processing takes place. In this context, we discuss the potential role of the anterior insula as part of the salience network involved in problem-solving by allocating attentional resources.

In this article we describe the origins of the subtests that appear on the modern Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales (SB5), Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI-IV), Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-V), and Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-IV). We found that the majority of these subtest formats were first created in 1908 or earlier and that only three have been created since 1980. We discuss the implications of these findings, which are that (1) many subtests have lengthy research histories that support their use in measuring intelligence; (2) many subtests have formats that predate modern theories of test creation, cognitive psychology, and intelligence; and (3) the history of many subtests is more complex than psychologists probably realize.

Forensic science techniques are often used in criminal trials to infer the identity of theperpetrator of crime and jurors often find this evidence very persuasive. Unfortunately, two of the leading causes of wrongful convictions are forensic science testing errors and false or misleading forensic testimony (Saks & Koehler, 2005). Therefore, it is important to understand jurors pre- existing beliefs about forensic science, as these beliefs may impact how they evaluate forensic evidence in the courtroom. In this study, we examine people’s perceptions of the likelihood of error and human judgment involved at each stage of the forensic science process (i.e., collection, storage, testing, analysis, reporting, and presenting). In addition, we examine peoples’ perceptions of the accuracy of — and human judgment involved in — 16 different forensic techniques. We find that, in contrast to what would be expected by the CSI effect literature, participants believed that the process of forensic science involved considerable human judgment and was relatively error-prone. In addition, participants had wide-ranging beliefs about the accuracy of various forensic techniques, ranging from 65.18% (document analysis) up to 89.95% (DNA). For some forensic techniques, estimates were lower than that found in experimental proficiency studies, suggesting that our participants are more skeptical of certain forensic evidence than they need to be. Keywords: Forensic science, forensic evidence, accuracy, error rate, CSI effect.

Bows and arrows, houses and kayaks are just a few examples of the highly optimized tools that humans have produced and used to colonize new environments1,2. Because there is much evidence that humans’ cognitive abilities are unparalleled3,4, many believe that such technologies resulted from our superior causal reasoning abilities5–7. However, others have stressed that the high dimensionality of human technologies makes them very difficult to understand causally8. Instead, they argue that optimized technologies emerge through the retention of small improvements across generations without requiring understanding of how these technologies work1,9. Here we show that a physical artefact becomes progressively optimized across generations of social learners in the absence of explicit causal understanding. Moreover, we find that the transmission of causal models across generations has no noticeable effect on the pace of cultural evolution. The reason is that participants do not spontaneously create multidimensional causal theories but, instead, mainly produce simplistic models related to a salient dimension. Finally, we show that the transmission of these inaccurate theories constrains learners’ exploration and has downstream effects on their understanding. These results indicate that complex technologies need not result from enhanced causal reasoning but, instead, can emerge from the accumulation of improvements made across generations. An experiment shows that complex technologies need not result from our superior causal reasoning abilities but, instead, can emerge from the accumulation of improvements across generations without requiring understanding of how these technologies work.

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is an assimilative change in liking of neutral conditioned stimuli (CS) following pairings with positive or negative stimuli (unconditioned stimulus, US). Dual-process theories postulate that, in addition to a controlled propositional process underlying conscious learning of CS-US contingencies, a second automatic and associative learning process exists that underlies EC effects. A central argument for dual-process theories is the dissociation between US expectancy and CS evaluation in extinction learning: When CSs are presented alone subsequent to CS-US pairings, participants cease to expect USs but continue to exhibit EC effects. This dissociation is typically interpreted as demonstration that EC is resistant to extinction, and consequently, that EC is driven by a distinct learning process. We tested an alternative single-process account, namely that expectancy-liking dissociations are caused by different judgment strategies afforded by the dependent measures rather than due to separable learning processes. According to this view, CS evaluations are by default integrative judgments---summaries of large portions of the learning history---whereas US expectancy reflects momentary judgments focusing on recent events. In a counterconditioning and two extinction experiments, we eliminate the expectancy-liking dissociations reported in the literature by inducing nondefault momentary evaluative judgments, and demonstrate a reversed dissociation when we additionally induced integrative expectancy judgments. Our findings corroborated a-priori predictions based on MINERVA 2, a formal single-process memory model. Hence, dissociations between US expectancy and conditioned CS liking reflect judgment properties and can be accounted for parsimoniously by a single learning process.

Decision-making competence (DMC) has potential utility in incrementally predicting decision-making behavior relative to general mental ability (g). However, prior research presents an incomplete depiction of the degree to which these two constructs overlap. This paper evaluated both theoretical and empirical discriminant validity evidence for DMC. Theoretically, DMC and g are distinct constructs though highly interconnected; both constructs exist within the intelligence nomological network. However, our empirical findings demonstrate scores on the Adult-Decision Making Competence assessment, are largely indistinguishable from g. Future research should treat DMC as an acquired skill as opposed to an underlying individual difference.

A recent surge of interest in the empirical measurement of mind-wandering has led to an increase in the use of thought-probing to measure attentional states, which has led to large variation in methodologies across studies (Weinstein in Behavior Research Methods, 50, 642-661, 2018). Three sources of variation in methodology include the frequency of thought probes during a task, the number of response options provided for each probe, and the way in which various attentional states are framed during the task instructions. Method variation can potentially affect behavioral performance on the tasks in which thought probes are embedded, the experience of various attentional states within those tasks, and/or response biases to the thought probes. Therefore, such variation can be problematic, both pragmatically and theoretically. Across three experiments, we examined how manipulating probe frequency, response options, and framing affected behavioral performance and responses to thought probes. Probe frequency and framing did not affect behavioral performance or probe responses. But, in light of the present results, we argue that thought probes need at least three responses, corresponding to on-task, off-task, and task-related interference. When researchers are specifically investigating mind-wandering, the probe responses should also distinguish between mind-wandering, external distraction, and mind-blanking.

Members of the public can disagree with scientists in at least two ways: people can reject well-established scientific theoriesandthey can believe fabricated, deceptive claims about science to be true. Scholars examining the reasons for these disagreements find that some individuals are more likely than others to diverge from scientists because of individual factors such as their science literacy, political ideology, and religiosity. This study builds on this literature by examining the role of conspiracy mentality in these two phenomena. Participants were recruited from a national online panel (N= 513) and in person from the first annual Flat Earth International Conference (N= 21). We found that conspiracy mentality and science literacy both play important roles in believing viral and deceptive claims about science, but evidence for the importance of conspiracy mentality in the rejection of science is much more mixed.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) provide a window into how the brain is processing language. Here, we propose a theory that argues that ERPs such as the N400 and P600 arise as side effects of an error-based learning mechanism that explains linguistic adaptation and language learning. We instantiated this theory in a connectionist model that can simulate data from three studies on the N400 (amplitude modulation by expectancy, contextual constraint, and sentence position), five studies on the P600 (agreement, tense, word category, subcategorization and garden-path sentences), and a study on the semantic P600 in role reversal anomalies. Since ERPs are learning signals, this account explains adaptation of ERP amplitude to within-experiment frequency manipulations and the way ERP effects are shaped by word predictability in earlier sentences. Moreover, it predicts that ERPs can change over language development. The model provides an account of the sensitivity of ERPs to expectation mismatch, the relative timing of the N400 and P600, the semantic nature of the N400, the syntactic nature of the P600, and the fact that ERPs can change with experience. This approach suggests that comprehension ERPs are related to sentence production and language acquisition mechanisms.

Cognitive control is applied in situations that require overriding a habitual and automatic response. The conflict monitoring hypothesis and the Expected Value of Control (EVC) theory as its extension posit a control system responsible for detecting conflicting occasions and adapting to them dynamically within a task. Here we evaluate this prediction in two versions of one of the most popular tasks in cognitive control, namely the Stroop task. We hypothesized that nearby-items interference combines with task interference in the multi-item version effectively turning it into a multi-task that may challenge cognitive control. Adopting an alternative methodology tracking within-task performance, we compared the classical multi-item version of the Stroop task and its single-item counterpart in adults and children. The results revealed a within-task performance decline only in the multi-item version of the task, in both incongruent and neutral conditions, modulated by the presumed maturity of the control system. These findings suggest capacity constraints in control implementation and allocation under conditions requiring parallel execution of multiple cognitive tasks. Task complexity and demands seem to modulate effects on performance. We discuss implications for cognitive control as well as substantial concerns regarding the calculation and use of indices of interference based on the commonly used multi-item version of the Stroop task.

Critical thinking is of paramount importance in our society. People regularly assume that critical thinking is a way to reduce conspiracy belief, although the relationship between critical thinking ability and conspiracy belief has never been tested. Interestingly, certain conspiracy believers claim to have higher critical thinking ability, whereas most researchers hypothesize that conspiracy believers have lower critical thinking ability. To resolve this debate, we conducted two studies (Study 1, N = 86; Study 2, N = 252), in which we found that critical thinking ability—measured by a writing task that requires identifying poor arguments and reasoning—is negatively associated with belief in conspiracy theories. Additionally, we did not find a significant relationship between self-reported (subjective) critical thinking ability and conspiracy belief. Our results support the idea that conspiracy believers have less developed critical thinking ability and stimulate discussion about the possibility to reduce conspiracy beliefs via critical thinking development.

In two ERP experiments, we investigated whether readers prioritize animacy over real-world event-knowledge during sentence comprehension. We used the paradigm of Paczynski and Kuperberg (2012), who argued that animacy is prioritized based on the observations that the ‘related anomaly effect’ (reduced N400s for context-related anomalous words compared to unrelated words) does not occur for animacy violations, and that animacy violations but not relatedness violations elicit P600 effects. Participants read passive sentences with plausible agents (e.g., The prescription for the mental disorder was written by the psychiatrist) or implausible agents that varied in animacy and semantic relatedness (schizophrenic/guard/pill/fence). In Experiment 1 (with a plausibility judgment task), plausible sentences elicited smaller N400s relative to all types of implausible sentences. Crucially, animate words elicited smaller N400s than inanimate words, and related words elicited smaller N400s than unrelated words, but Bayesian analysis revealed substantial evidence against an interaction between animacy and relatedness. Moreover, at the P600 time-window, we observed more positive ERPs for animate than inanimate words and for related than unrelated words at anterior regions. In Experiment 2 (without judgment task), we observed an N400 effect with animacy violations, but no other effects. Taken together, the results of our experiments fail to support a prioritized role of animacy information over real-world event-knowledge, but they support an interactive, constraint-based view on incremental semantic processing.

In uncertain environments we must balance our need to gather information with our desire to reap rewards by exploiting current knowledge. Achieving this balance is further complicated in reactive environments where actions produce long-lasting change to the system. In four experiments, we investigate how people learn to make effective decisions from experience in a dynamic multiarmed bandit task. In contrast to the typical exploitation-dependent diminishing rewards found in previous studies, options were framed as skills that developed greater rewards the more they were chosen. In Experiment 1, we provide a proof of concept, and in Experiments 2-4 we explore the boundaries of participants' sensitivity to reactive dynamics. Our results suggest that most individuals can learn effective strategies for coping with these reactive environments. A two-part comparison of several competing psychological models supports several conclusions: (a) a sizable minority of individuals learned that their environment was reactive, (b) evidence suggests several distinct groups of individuals employed unique decision strategies, and (c) testing models with the simulation method reveals qualitative misfits that motivate future theory development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

A large literature debates whether emotions are universal and innate. Here, we ask whether reasoning about such matters is shaped by intuitive Essentialist biases that link innateness to the material body. To gauge the perception of innateness, we asked laypeople to evaluate whether emotion categories will be recognized spontaneously by hunter–gatherers who have had no contact with Westerners. Experiment 1 shows that participants believe that emotions are innate and embodied (facially and internally) and these two properties correlate reliably. Experiment 2 demonstrates that the link is causal. When told that emotions are localized in specific brain areas (i.e., embodied), participants concluded that emotions are innate. Experiment 3 shows that this naïve view persists even when participants are explicitly informed that these emotions are acquired. Our results are the first to suggest that laypeople incorrectly believe that, if emotions are embodied, then they must be innate. We suggest that people’s failure to grasp the workings of their psyche arises from the human psyche itself.

When do people say that an event that didn't happen was a cause? We extend the counterfactual simulation model (CSM) of causal judgment (Gerstenberg, Goodman, Lagnado, & Tenenbaum, 2021) and test it in a series of three experiments that look at people's causal judgments about omissions in dynamic physical interactions. The problem of omissive causation highlights a series of questions that need to be answered in order to give an adequate causal explanation of why something happened: what are the relevant variables, what are their possible values, how are putative causal relationships evaluated, and how is the causal responsibility for an outcome attributed to multiple causes? The CSM predicts that people make causal judgments about omissions in physical interactions by using their intuitive understanding of physics to mentally simulate what would have happened in relevant counterfactual situations. Prior work has argued that normative expectations affect judgments of omissive causation. Here we suggest a concrete mechanism of how this happens: expectations affect what counterfactuals people consider, and the more certain people are that the counterfactual outcome would have been different from what actually happened, the more causal they judge the omission to be. Our experiments show that both the structure of the physical situation as well as expectations about what will happen affect people's judgments.

The relationship between executive functions (EF) and academic achievement is well-established, but leveraging this insight to improve educational outcomes remains elusive. Here, we propose a framework for relating the role of specific EF on specific precursor skills that support later academic learning. Starting from the premise that executive functions contribute to general math skills both directly – supporting the execution of problem solving strategies – and indirectly – supporting the acquisition of precursor mathematical content, we hypothesize that the contribution of domain-general EF capacities to precursor skills that support later learning can help explain relations between EF and overall math skills. We test this hypothesis by examining whether the contribution of inhibitory control on general math knowledge can be explained by inhibition's contribution to processing rational number pairs that conflict with individual's prior whole number knowledge. In 97 college students (79 female, age = 20.58 years), we collected three measures of EF: working memory (backwards spatial span), inhibition (color-word Stroop) and cognitive flexibility (task switching), and timed and untimed standardized measures of math achievement. Our target precursor skill was a decimals comparison task where correct responses were inconsistent with prior whole number knowledge (e.g., 0.27 vs. 0.9). Participants performed worse on these trials relative to the consistent decimals pairs (e.g., 0.2 vs. 0.87). Individual differences in the Stroop task predicted performance on inconsistent decimal comparisons, which in turn predicted general math achievement. With respect to relating inhibitory control to math achievement, Stroop performance was an independent predictor of achievement after accounting for age, working memory and cognitive flexibility, but decimal performance mediated this relationship. Finally, we found inconsistent decimals performance mediated the relationship of inhibition with rational number performance, but not other advanced mathematical concepts. These results pinpoint the specific contribution of inhibitory control to rational number understanding, and more broadly are consistent with the hypothesis that acquisition of foundational mathematical content can explain the relationships between executive functions and academic outcomes, making them promising targets for intervention.

Play is a universal behavior widely held to be critical for learning and development. Recent studies suggest children’s exploratory play is consistent with formal accounts of learning. This “play as rational exploration” view suggests that children’s play is sensitive to costs, rewards, and expected information gain. By contrast, here we suggest that a defining feature of human play is that children subvert normal utility functions in play, setting up problems where they incur needless costs to achieve arbitrary rewards. Across four studies, we show that 4-5-year-old children not only infer playful behavior from observed violations of rational action (Experiment 1), but themselves take on unnecessary costs and perform inefficient actions during play, despite understanding and valuing efficiency in non-playful, instrumental contexts (Experiment 2-4). We end with a discussion of the value of apparently utility-violating behavior and why it might serve learning in the long run.

We explore whether children’s strategies on a causal learning task show a bias observed in adults towards “exploitative” hypothesis revision. Adults and children (ages 4–6) were presented with evidence which initially seemed to conform to a simple, salient rule (e.g. blue blocks activate a machine), but then encountered evidence that violated this rule. The true rule in the "near" condition was more complex, but could be reached through iterative revision of the salient rule, while in the "distant" condition, the true rule was comparatively simple, but incremental revision could not yield the true rule. Participants then predicted the behaviour of a set of new blocks. Adults performed better in the near condition, while in the distant condition adults did not appear to revise their initial hypothesis significantly. Unlike adults, children's overall performance in both conditions was similar, while condition differences may reflect a broader search for alternative solutions.

We examined whether the processing of semantic relations shows typicality effects similar to those found for the processing of entity concepts. Participants performed four relational processing tasks with the same set of word-pair stimuli: relational exemplar generation; similarity ranking; analogical verification; and a paired-associate learning task. In the similarity ranking task, we gathered separate rankings for relational, role and semantic similarity between word pairs. We found significant correlations at the item level among relational generation frequencies, analogical verification RTs/accuracy and relational luring in associative memory. Relational similarity predicted exemplar generation frequencies, analogical verification RTs/accuracy, and relational luring in associative memory. Role similarity predicted exemplar generation frequency, and analogical verification RTs, but not relational luring. Semantic similarity did not predict any of the tasks, after controlling for the other two factors. Contrary to current theories which posit that semantic similarity is more important for retrieving relevant analogues, and that analogical mapping is based on role-filler bindings, relational similarity was the strongest predictor across all tasks. These results suggest that just like entity concepts, semantic relations have an internal structure that gives rise to typicality effects across a variety of tasks, which could provide constraints for testing competing theories of relational representation.

The implied order of a ranked set of visual images can be learned by transitive inference, without reliance on stimulus features that explicitly signal their order. Such learning is difficult to explain by associative mechanisms but can be accounted for by cognitive representations and processes such as transitive inference. Our study seeks to determine if those representations may be applied to categories of images without explicit verbal instruction. Specifically, we asked whether participants can (a) infer that images being presented belonged to familiar categories, even when every image presented during every trial is unique, and (b) perform transitive inferences about the ordering of those categories. To address these questions, we compared the performance of humans during a standard TI task, which used the same set of images throughout the session, to performance in a category TI tasks, which drew images from a set of categories. Each of the images used in the category TI task was only presented once, limiting the extent to which stimulus-outcome associations could be learned. Participants were able to learn the order of the categories based on transitive inference. However, participants in the category TI condition did not produce a symbolic distance effect. These findings collectively suggest that differing cognitive processes may underpin serial learning when learning about specific stimuli versus stimulus categories.

We have introduced a common wisdom model to establish a shared language, clarify underlying theoretical assumptions, advance assessment tools, and foster evidence-based interventions for stimulating wisdom during challenging societal times. The common wisdom model synthesizes the views of numerous contemporary scientists working on wisdom and includes two components: perspectival meta-cognition and moral aspirations. Having received insightful commentaries on our model, here we consider the overall motivation for the model, address remaining jingle-jangle fallacies, clarify the meaning of morality for wisdom, and expand upon the relationship between moral and meta-cognitive components within the common wisdom model. We reflect on how the common wisdom model provides a nexus for integrating insights across multiple areas of research, affording plentiful opportunities for future research into wisdom’s development, function, and underlying processes. We situate our reflections in the context of present-day pandemic-related uncertainties and unfolding societal shifts.

To activate the human subjects sympathetic nervous system; we installed virtual flames in front of our moving stimuli; in conclusion, the perceived speed is highly boosted. The aforementioned observation could be a result of pupil dilation triggered by active sympathetic nervous system. Dilation that should grant the retinal peripheries greater accessibility to the external surroundings. Accessibility that should catalyze fulsome activation of these peripheries and its corresponding distinguished visual awareness, see reference 1 and 2, thus, awareness with boosted visual perceived speed.

A core proposition in economics is that voluntary exchanges benefit both parties. We show that people often deny the mutually beneficial nature of exchange, instead espousing the belief that one or both parties fail to benefit from the exchange. Across 4 studies (and 8 further studies in the Supplementary Materials), participants read about simple exchanges of goods and services, judging whether each party to the transaction was better off or worse off afterwards. These studies revealed that win–win denial is pervasive, with buyers consistently seen as less likely to benefit from transactions than sellers. Several potential psychological mechanisms underlying win–win denial are considered, with the most important influences being mercantilist theories of value (confusing wealth for money) and theory of mind limits (failing to observe that people do not arbitrarily enter exchanges). We argue that these results have widespread implications for politics and society.

It is well-established that intelligence and working memory capacity are closely related. The cognitive mechanisms underlying this relationship are, however, still under debate. One popular hypothesis, the capacity hypothesis, states that this relationship is caused by limitations in the amount of information that can be maintained and held active in working memory. Previous research testing this hypothesis assumed that the capacity hypothesis implies stronger relationships of more difficult intelligence test items, or items requiring to maintain more information (e.g. sub-goals), with measures of working memory capacity. The present article addresses this assumption in a simulation systematically varying different psychometric variables: the mean sample ability, the variability of ability in the sample, item difficulty, and item discrimination. Critically, all simulations assumed only one latent ability underlying performance in the test items. The results of this simulation show that almost any pattern of correlation can be obtained depending on the variable settings. In this, the assumption made by previous studies does not hold and items varying in difficulty cannot be used to test the causality of working memory capacity for intelligence.

Borrowing techniques from complex systems and software engineering, this paper defines a Functional Modeling Framework to provide a simple common mechanism for representing models of consciousness or cognition that is independent of assumptions made by any specific model. All models of consciousness or cognition should of course fit into the complete set of functions of what consciousness, or cognition can do. Through attempting to represent all such functions (both computable and non-computable), this framework attempts to gain the capacity to represent all models of consciousness or cognition, even where the implementation mechanisms of those functions are unknown. Enabling different models of consciousness or cognition to be more easily compared is intended to enable research on consciousness and cognition to more reliably converge on a single understanding, even across massively collaborative research projects spanning multiple disciplines. Furthermore, if biological functionality can be considered as dynamically stable where it is persistent, then in aiming to provide a common approach for representing and comparing the functionalities of consciousness or cognition as dynamically stable systems, this framework provides a set of features through which it may be possible to see commonality between the functional components of a wide range of other dynamically stable biological or non-biological systems. If such commonality does exist, and if, as proposed, that commonality reflects deeper underlying physical and mathematical principles, then representing any researcher’s model of consciousness or cognition within this framework might help reveal applications of that researcher’s model across a wide range of other domains of study.

The ability to reason about causal events in the world is fundamental to cognition. Despite the importance of this ability, little is known about how adults represent causal events, what structure or form those representations take, and what the mechanism is that underpins such representations. We report four experiments with adults that examine the perceptual basis on which adults represent four-object launching sequences (Experiments 1 and 2), whether adults representations reflect sensitivity to the causal, perceptual, or causal and perceptual relation among the objects that comprise such sequences (Experiment 3), and whether such representations extend beyond spatiotemporal contiguity to include other low-level stimulus features such as an object’s shape and color (Experiment 4). Based on these results of the four experiments, we argue that a domain-general associative mechanism, rather a modular, domain-specific, mechanism subserves adults’ representations of four-object launching sequences.

Speakers of many languages prefer allocentric frames of reference (FoR) when talking about small-scale space, using words like ‘east’ or ‘downhill.’ Ethnographic work has suggested that this preference is also reflected in how such speakers gesture. Here, we investigate this possibility with a field experiment in Juchitán, Mexico. In Juchitán, a preferentially allocentric language (Isthmus Zapotec) co-exists with a preferentially egocentric one (Spanish). Using a novel task, we elicited spontaneous co-speech gestures about small-scale motion events (e.g., toppling blocks) in Zapotec-dominant speakers and in balanced Zapotec-Spanish bilinguals. Consistent with prior claims, speakers’ spontaneous gestures reliably reflected either an egocentric or allocentric FoR. The use of the egocentric FoR was predicted—not by speakers’ dominant language or the language they used in the task—but by mastery of words for ‘right’ and ‘left,’ as well as by properties of the event they were describing. Additionally, use of the egocentric FoR in gesture predicted its use in a separate non-linguistic memory task, suggesting a cohesive cognitive style. Our results show that the use of spatial FoRs in gesture is pervasive, systematic, and shaped by several factors. Spatial gestures, like other forms of spatial conceptualization, are thus best understood within broader ecologies of communication and cognition.