Current Directions in Psychological Science

Visuospatial bootstrapping is the name given to a phenomenon whereby performance on visually presented verbal serial-recall tasks is better when stimuli are presented in a spatial array rather than a single location. However, the display used has to be a familiar one. This phenomenon implies communication between cognitive systems involved in storing short-term memory for verbal and visual information, alongside connections to and from knowledge held in long-term memory. Bootstrapping is a robust, replicable phenomenon that should be incorporated in theories of working memory and its interaction with long-term memory. This article provides an overview of bootstrapping, contextualizes it within research on links between long-term knowledge and short-term memory, and addresses how it can help inform current working memory theory.

There has been a strong increase in the number of studies based on intensive longitudinal data, such as those obtained with experience sampling and daily diaries. These data contain a wealth of information regarding the dynamics of processes as they unfold within individuals over time. In this article, we discuss how combining intensive longitudinal data with either time-series analysis, which consists of modeling the temporal dependencies in the data for a single individual, or dynamic multilevel modeling, which consists of using a time-series model at Level 1 to describe the within-person process while allowing for individual differences in the parameters of these processes at Level 2, has led to new insights in clinical psychology. In addition, we discuss several methodological and statistical challenges that researchers face when they are interested in studying the dynamics of psychological processes using intensive longitudinal data.

The association between the quality of people’s close relationships and their physical health is well established. But from a psychological perspective, how do close relationships impact physical health? This article summarizes recent work seeking to identify the relationship processes and psychological mediators and moderators of the links between close relationships and health, with an emphasis on studies of married and cohabitating couples. We begin with a brief review of a recent meta-analysis of the links between marital quality and health. We then describe our strength and strain model of marriage and health, homing in on one process—partner responsiveness—and one moderator—adult attachment style—to illustrate ways in which basic relationship science can inform our understanding of how relationships impact physical health. We conclude with a brief discussion of promising directions in the study of close relationships and health.

Human cognition is sensitive to the distinction between living and nonliving things. Animacy plays a role in language comprehension, reasoning, the organization of knowledge, and perception. Although ignored until recently, animacy significantly influences basic memory processes as well. Recent research has indicated that people remember animate targets better than matched inanimate targets; in fact, an item’s animacy status is one of the best predictors of its later recall. Animate processing of inanimate stimuli can produce retention advantages, as can animate touching—inanimate objects are remembered better when they are simply touched by animate things. We discuss these recent findings and their implications for the evolution of cognition, the methodology of memory experiments, and educational practice.

Negative biases associating Black men with criminality are most pronounced for a subgroup of men with Afrocentric features (e.g., a wide nose, full lips). Face-type bias occurs for men with these features because they are readily categorized as stereotypically Black and representative of the category Black male. This categorization in turn makes this subgroup more likely to be associated with the criminal-Black-male stereotype than are men with non-stereotypical Black features. In this review, we discuss what features engender the stereotypical Black face, the association between stereotypical features and assumed criminality, and when this bias may lead to negative judgments and potential legal consequences.

What motivates people to make decisions in the present that benefit their self in the future? An emerging literature suggests that farsightedness is influenced by the degree of connection people perceive between their present and future self. People who see their core identity as changing substantially over time, into a substantially different future self, are less likely to forgo benefits in the present to ensure larger deferred benefits to be enjoyed by that future self they are not as connected to. Recent lab, field, and neural evidence has related such connectedness to time discounting, as well as more generally to a range of provident behaviors. This review discusses what is known and what remains to be studied about the bases of perceived connectedness, how people incorporate connectedness into their decision-making, and which psychological and contextual factors may influence the role of connectedness in decision-making.

Mind wandering—a mental phenomenon characterized by the spontaneous shift of attention away from external stimulation toward self-generated thought—has been consistently shown to have a negative impact on learning, yet little is known about how to reduce or redirect the experience in educational settings. In this article, I distinguish between approaches to directing mind wandering that focus on either the detection of lapses of attention (reactive) or restructuring of the learning environment (proactive) and argue that proactive approaches avoid issues of implementation that currently limit reactive approaches. I then review emerging research on a proactive approach to reducing and redirecting mind wandering that involves interpolating lecture-based content with brief memory tests, and further elaborate on the benefits of interpolated testing in other educationally relevant contexts. I conclude by highlighting that proactive approaches to creating attentive learning environments will also need to take into account characteristics of the individual learner.

Research in numerical cognition has led to a widely accepted view of the existence of innate, domain-specific, core numerical knowledge that involves the intraparietal sulcus in the brain. Much of this research has revolved around the ability to perceive and manipulate discrete quantities (e.g., enumeration of dots). We question several aspects of this accepted view and suggest that continuous noncountable dimensions might play an important role in the development of numerical cognition. Accordingly, we propose that a relatively neglected aspect of performance—the ability to perceive and evaluate sizes or amounts—might be an important foundation of numerical processing. This ability might even constitute a more primitive system that has been used throughout evolutionary history as the basis for the development of the number sense and numerical abilities.

Demand for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) professionals is on the rise worldwide. To effectively meet this demand, many governments and private organizations have revamped STEM education and promoted training to enhance math and science skills among students and workers. Education and training programs typically focus on increasing individuals’ math and science knowledge. However, data from laboratory studies and large-scale international assessments suggest that fear or apprehension about math, math anxiety, should also be considered when trying to increase math achievement and, in turn, STEM career success. This article reviews findings that shed light on antecedents of math anxiety, the bidirectional math anxiety-performance relation, underlying mechanisms, and promising routes to mitigating the negative relation between math anxiety and math performance.

One hundred twenty years ago, the emergent field of experimental psychology debated whether plateaus of performance during training were real or not. Sixty years ago, the battle was over whether learning asymptoted or not. Thirty years ago, the research community was seized with concerns over stable plateaus at suboptimal performance levels among experts. Applied researchers viewed this as a systems problem and referred to it as the paradox of the active user. Basic researchers diagnosed this as a training problem and embraced deliberate practice. The concepts of plateaus and asymptotes and the distinction between the two are important as the questions asked and the means of overcoming one or the other differ. These questions have meaning as we inquire about the nature of performance limits in skilled behavior and the distinction between brain capacity and brain efficiency. This article brings phenomena that are hiding in the open to the attention of the research community in the hope that delineating the distinction between plateaus and asymptotes will help clarify the distinction between real versus “spurious limits” and advance theoretical debates regarding learning and performance.

Understanding that individuals can be mistaken, or hold false beliefs, about the world is an important human ability that plays a vital role in social interactions. When and how does this ability develop? Traditional investigations using elicited-response tasks suggested that false-belief understanding did not emerge until at least age 4. However, more recent studies have shown that children demonstrate false-belief understanding much earlier when tested via other means. In the present article, I summarize recent evidence that a robust, flexible understanding of false belief emerges in infancy and discuss why older children fail elicited-response tasks despite their ability to represent beliefs.

Stigma devalues individuals and groups, producing social and economic disadvantages through two distinct but reinforcing processes: direct discrimination (e.g., a White person not hiring a Black person based on race) and stigma internalization (e.g., women believing men are more qualified for leadership positions). We review strategies that individuals can use to not only cope with but also challenge their stigma. We discuss how attempts to escape stigma can be effective at the individual level but may leave the stigma itself unchanged or even reinforced. We then identify two ways individuals can reappropriate and take ownership of their stigma to weaken it: reframing and self-labeling. Reframing highlights stereotypic characteristics as assets rather than liabilities—for example, framing stereotypically feminine traits (e.g., social intelligence) as essential for effective negotiations or leadership. Self-labeling involves referring to oneself with a group slur. We discuss ways to utilize these reappropriation strategies as well as how to handle potential pitfalls.

Childbirth is a major life event with implications for family health, but it has been understudied by psychological scientists. The biopsychosocial model, which posits that health is shaped by biological, social, psychological, and cultural processes, can describe birth. The physiology of birth involves the interplay of hormones such as cortisol and oxytocin that are known to be affected by socioemotional factors. Existing theories on pain, stress, and social support can be applied to birth. Psychologists can adapt and incorporate empirically supported treatments, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy and mindfulness-based stress reduction, into childbirth education. Although father presence at birth represents a relatively new phenomenon, research on partner support has been lacking. Birth experiences may mediate associations between prenatal stress and postpartum adjustment, suggesting a need for more integrated, longitudinal research on birth.

Research has documented that proper names are more difficult to learn and remember than other types of words. Various causes of this difficulty have been proposed to better understand how proper names are represented in memory and the degree to which names compete with each other. In the retrieval of names, some studies show competition, whereas other studies find facilitation. During comprehension, names demonstrate competition by causing a Moses illusion: People erroneously answer invalid questions such as “How many animals did Moses take on the ark?”, failing to detect that Noah is the correct name for the question. Errors in both name retrieval and comprehension are more likely when the correct name and distractor name sound similar, share biographical characteristics, or have some visual resemblance. However, shared visual information has played a competitive role more consistently in name comprehension than retrieval, an asymmetry that remains to be investigated.

Original article: Smalarz, L., Scherr, K. C., & Kassin, S. M. (2016). Miranda at 50: A psychological analysis. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 25, 455–460. doi:10.1177/0963721416665097