Reviews & Analysis

Complex spatial cognition supports seemingly simple actions such as picking up a coffee mug. In this Review, Fiehler and Karimpur discuss the spatial coding underlying such actions, highlighting high-level factors and suggesting that research should integrate across spatial scales.

Sexism encompasses attitudes that are both overtly negative and those that seem subjectively positive but are actually harmful. In this Review, Barreto and Doyle describe the predictors of ambivalent sexism and its effects on women, and consider societal shifts that might influence how sexism is manifested, experienced and understood.

Conspiracy theories have the potential to undermine governments, promote racism, ignite extremism and threaten public health efforts. In this Review, Hornsey et al. synthesize the literature on factors that shape conspiracy beliefs at the individual, intergroup and national level.

Post-traumatic stress disorder and substance use disorder frequently co-occur, and this combination is more difficult to treat than either disorder alone. In this Review, Kline and colleagues discuss effective treatments for this combination, focusing on trauma-focused treatments, and provide recommendations to improve treatment response and reduce dropout.

People feel lonely when their social needs are not met, which can lead to long-term health issues. In this Review, Luhmann et al. summarize empirical findings on differences in the prevalence of loneliness across time and space and consider macro-level factors that might account for these differences.

Remembering to execute in the future an intention that cannot be fulfilled when formed in the present is an essential cognitive skill. In this Review, Rummel and Kvavilashvili discuss how well theories of prospective memory account for the cognitive processes involved.

Retrieving information from memory influences memory in complex ways. In this Review, Roediger and Abel describe positive and negative effects of three facets of memory retrieval and the influence of context on each.

Human social groups depend on processes that enable social interactions. In this Review, Ristic and Capozzi present three attentional mechanisms that are flexibly and dynamically used to facilitate social interactions between individual group members as a function of the size of the social group.

Perceptual learning, or performance improvements after training on perceptual tasks, is a widespread phenomenon in visual perception. In this Review, Lu and Dosher describe findings regarding the specificity and transfer of perceptual learning, mechanisms of learning and key applications in visual rehabilitation.

Individuals who are transgender or nonbinary experience a higher prevalence of certain mental health concerns, including depression, anxiety and disordered eating behaviours. In this Review, Tebbe and Budge discuss these disparities along with factors that protect these individuals from negative outcomes and promote well-being.

The focus on functional deficits in conventional autism research constrains understanding of autistic lives. In this Review, Pellicano et al. appraise research on autistic adulthood through a capabilities lens to identify areas where autistic adults thrive, and where more research and services are needed to enhance their quality of life.

Dual- and single-process theories have been proposed to explain how attitudes arise from stimulus co-occurrence via evaluative conditioning. In this Review, Hütter appraises these theoretical views in light of the empirical evidence and considers how dual- and single-process accounts can be integrated.

People often look for objects in their immediate environment, engaging in a behaviour known as visual search. In this Review, Lleras and colleagues discuss how visual processing influences visual search, focusing on theories that incorporate constraints from peripheral vision.

A key factor that instigates and perpetuates intergroup conflict is people’s support for violence against the outgroup. In this Review, Saguy and Reifen-Tagar consider the sources of support for violent conflict: basic cognitive-motivational roots, personal inclinations, group-level influences, situational influences and post-hoc justifications of violence.

Decades of research have uncovered effective learning strategies to support student learning. In this Review, Carpenter et al. summarize the literature on spaced learning and retrieval practice strategies, and describe how metacognition guides strategy use in realistic learning situations.

Democracy is at risk when citizens become so polarized that an ‘us versus them’ mentality dominates. In this Review, Jost et al. provide a conceptual framework that integrates scientific knowledge about cognitive–motivational mechanisms that influence political polarization and the social-communicative contexts in which they are enacted.

Intellectual humility involves acknowledging the limitations of one’s knowledge and that one’s beliefs might be incorrect. In this Review, Porter and colleagues synthesize concepts of intellectual humility across fields and describe the complex interplay between intellectual humility and related individual and societal factors.

Sleep problems are both a symptom and precursor of adolescent depression. In this Review, Gradisar et al. describe how the combination of adolescent sleep biology and psychology predisposes adolescents to develop depression, and describe interventions that improve sleep and depression symptoms in this population.

People spend approximately half of their waking hours inattentive to their surroundings. In this Review, Wamsley describes the beneficial effect that these periods of offline waking rest have on memory, contrasting this benefit and its underlying mechanisms with the effects of sleep.

When people judge an agent’s action, they often look beyond the act itself to infer the agent’s motives. In this Review, Carlson et al. survey research on the role of inferred motives in moral judgement and describe how motive properties serve as inputs to these inferences.