Reviews & Analysis

Humans organize the visual world into meaningful perceptual objects. In this Review, Ayzenberg and Behrmann examine the maturation of object recognition from infancy through childhood and describe how children’s environments and visual capabilities shape early object recognition.

Studies of the effect of sleep on learning and memory sometimes reveal conflicting or unreliable results. In this Perspective, Nemeth and colleagues review methodological challenges and make recommendations for improving the reliability of research in this field.

The p-factor is a construct that is thought to explain and perhaps cause variation in all forms of psychopathology. In this Perspective, Watts et al. outline theoretical and statistical challenges in the p-factor literature that raise questions about whether general factors of psychopathology are useful summaries of psychopathology variation.

Some researchers equate insight with cognitive restructuring processes that occur when solvers reinterpret the problem, whereas others equate insight with phenomenological Aha! experiences that accompany solutions. In this Review, Wiley and Danek summarize both approaches to insight problem solving and consider the extent to which Aha! experiences co-occur with restructuring.

Laypeople tend to believe that self-esteem influences the quality of relationships, but the empirical evidence is mixed. In this Review, Wood et al. summarize the current state of evidence for simple direct effects, propose that self-esteem is best understood as influencing relationships indirectly through a causal chain of mediators, and review evidence for such mediators.

Humans can rapidly and accurately recognize visual scenes and objects within them. In this Review, Peelen and colleagues discuss bidirectional interactions between object and scene processing and the role of predictive processing in visual inference.

Autistic individuals and people with schizophrenia spectrum disorders share traits and behaviours, which can interfere with diagnosis and treatment. In this Review, Schalbroeck and colleagues describe the shared and unique clinical and neuropsychological features of each condition and discuss clinical implications.

Self-control is traditionally viewed as an individual-level struggle, reflecting prevailing notions of individual autonomy and personal responsibility. In this Perspective, Hofmann calls for a multilevel approach to self-control that considers not only how individuals may proactively shape their environments, but also how structural factors often shape individuals’ environments beyond their control.

Metacognition is the evaluation, control, or representation of one’s own cognition. In this Review, Mazancieux et al. discuss whether metacognition is general or specific across domains, focusing on memory and perception.

Mobile sensing methods can overcome methodological challenges to naturalistic observation and facilitate research about the link between everyday behaviours and psychological constructs. In this Review, Harari and Gosling describe illustrative findings from mobile sensing studies in psychology and propose a research agenda to guide future work.

Large language models (LLMs), which can generate and score text in human-like ways, have the potential to advance psychological measurement, experimentation and practice. In this Perspective, Demszky and colleagues describe how LLMs work, concerns about using them for psychological purposes, and how these concerns might be addressed.

Collective narcissism — a belief that one’s group is exceptional and deserves special treatment — arises when group identity is motivated by frustrated psychological needs. In this Review, Cislak and Cichocka describe the implications of collective narcissism in the national context and how such national narcissism explains contemporary social and political phenomena.

Adaptive behaviour requires the ability to maintain focus on a task and to flexibly switch tasks, depending on the context. In this Perspective, Egner integrates the task focus and task switching literatures and suggests that cognitive stability and flexibility are supported by independent mechanisms.

Responses to potentially traumatic events go beyond the typical binary classification based on the presence or absence of psychopathology. In this Review, Bonanno et al. describe multiple outcome trajectories following adversity and consider how the different components of regulatory flexibility can promote resilience.

The ability to think spatially is associated with STEM success. In this Review, Taylor and colleagues discuss how visualizations engage spatial thinking and the role of visualizations across STEM fields.

Embodied theories propose that concept knowledge involves simulations of sensory information. In this Review, Muraki et al. discuss how studying individuals with an inability to form mental images can provide insight into the relationship between mental imagery and these mental simulations.

Social touch plays a vital part in human development and psychological well-being, but relevant research is often siloed across disciplines. In this Review, Suvilehto and colleagues integrate across areas and approaches to draw conclusions regarding the purpose, participants and use of social touch.

The behavioural immune system consists of psychological mechanisms that evolved to prevent pathogens from entering the body (such as avoiding stimuli that elicit disgust). In this Review, van Leeuwen et al. consider how pathogen avoidance gives rise to prejudice and evaluate the empirical support for principles hypothesized to underlie this phenomenon.

Mental disorder classification provides a definitional framework that underlies applied clinical and research efforts to understand, assess, predict, prevent and ameliorate the burden of psychopathology. In this Review, Eaton et al. describe transdiagnostic dimensional, network and clinical staging approaches to classification and consider their strengths, their limitations, and their scientific and clinical utility.

Traditional syntheses are limited by methodological issues and the rapid rate of research production. In this Perspective, Sakaluk et al. propose a model for more useful syntheses that integrate data on impact, consistency, research credibility and sampling inclusivity and present these data in a modular and accessible way.