Annual Review of Psychology

Internet là bước tiến công nghệ mới nhất trong chuỗi các đột phá công nghệ trong giao tiếp giữa con người, tiếp nối theo điện báo, điện thoại, radio và truyền hình. Internet kết hợp các đặc điểm sáng tạo của những người tiền nhiệm, chẳng hạn như khả năng kết nối khoảng cách lớn và tiếp cận đông đảo công chúng. Tuy nhiên, Internet cũng có những tính năng mới, quan trọng nhất là sự ẩn danh tương đối mà nó cung cấp cho người dùng và khả năng tạo ra các không gian nhóm nơi họ có thể gặp gỡ những người có sở thích và giá trị tương đồng với mình. Chúng tôi đặt Internet trong bối cảnh lịch sử của nó, và sau đó xem xét những ảnh hưởng của việc sử dụng Internet đến sức khỏe tâm lý của người dùng, sự hình thành và duy trì các mối quan hệ cá nhân, thành viên trong các nhóm và danh tính xã hội, môi trường làm việc và sự tham gia cộng đồng. Bằng chứng cho thấy rằng mặc dù những ảnh hưởng này chủ yếu phụ thuộc vào các mục tiêu cụ thể mà người dùng mang lại cho sự tương tác—chẳng hạn như tự thể hiện, liên kết hay cạnh tranh—chúng cũng tương tác theo những cách quan trọng với các đặc điểm độc đáo của tình huống giao tiếp qua Internet.

One of the most provocative and exciting issues in cognitive science is how neural specificity for semantic categories of common objects arises in the functional architecture of the brain. More than two decades of research on the neuropsychological phenomenon of category-specific semantic deficits has generated detailed claims about the organization and representation of conceptual knowledge. More recently, researchers have sought to test hypotheses developed on the basis of neuropsychological evidence with functional imaging. From those two fields, the empirical generalization emerges that object domain and sensory modality jointly constrain the organization of knowledge in the brain. At the same time, research within the embodied cognition framework has highlighted the need to articulate how information is communicated between the sensory and motor systems, and processes that represent and generalize abstract information. Those developments point toward a new approach for understanding category specificity in terms of the coordinated influences of diverse regions and cognitive systems.

▪ Abstract  The aim of clinical assessment is to gather data that allow us to reduce uncertainty regarding the probabilities of events. This is a Bayesian view of assessment that is consistent with the well-known concept of incremental validity. Conventional approaches to evaluating the accuracy of assessment methods are confounded by the choice of cutting points, by the base rates of the events, and by the assessment goal (e.g. nomothetic vs idiographic predictions). Clinical assessors need a common metric for quantifying the information value of assessment data, independent of the cutting points, base rates, or particular application. Signal detection theory (SDT) provides such a metric. We review SDT's history, concepts, and methods and provide examples of its application to a variety of assessment problems.

A full range of psychological processes has been put into play to explain judgment and choice phenomena. Complementing work on attention, information integration, and learning, decision research over the past 10 years has also examined the effects of goals, mental representation, and memory processes. In addition to deliberative processes, automatic processes have gotten closer attention, and the emotions revolution has put affective processes on a footing equal to cognitive ones. Psychological process models provide natural predictions about individual differences and lifespan changes and integrate across judgment and decision making (JDM) phenomena. “Mindful” JDM research leverages our knowledge about psychological processes into causal explanations for important judgment and choice regularities, emphasizing the adaptive use of an abundance of processing alternatives. Such explanations supplement and support existing mathematical descriptions of phenomena such as loss aversion or hyperbolic discounting. Unlike such descriptions, they also provide entry points for interventions designed to help people overcome judgments or choices considered undesirable.

The hypocretins (Hcrts, also known as orexins) are two peptides, both synthesized by a small group of neurons, most of which are in the lateral hypothalamic and perifornical regions of the hypothalamus. The hypothalamic Hcrt system directly and strongly innervates and potently excites noradrenergic, dopaminergic, serotonergic, histaminergic, and cholinergic neurons. Hcrt also has a major role in modulating the release of glutamate and other amino acid transmitters. Behavioral investigations have revealed that Hcrt is released at high levels in active waking and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and at minimal levels in non-REM sleep. Hcrt release in waking is increased markedly during periods of increased motor activity relative to levels in quiet, alert waking. Evidence for a role for Hcrt in food intake regulation is inconsistent. I hypothesize that Hcrt's major role is to facilitate motor activity tonically and phasically in association with motivated behaviors and to coordinate this facilitation with the activation of attentional and sensory systems. Degeneration of Hcrt neurons or genetic mutations that prevent the normal synthesis of Hcrt or of its receptors causes human and animal narcolepsy. Narcolepsy is characterized by an impaired ability to maintain alertness for long periods and by sudden losses of muscle tone (cataplexy). Administration of Hcrt can reverse symptoms of narcolepsy in animals, may be effective in treating human narcolepsy, and may affect a broad range of motivated behaviors.

The development of addiction involves a transition from casual to compulsive patterns of drug use. This transition to addiction is accompanied by many drug-induced changes in the brain and associated changes in psychological functions. In this article we present a critical analysis of the major theoretical explanations of how drug-induced alterations in psychological function might cause a transition to addiction. These include: (a) the traditional hedonic view that drug pleasure and subsequent unpleasant withdrawal symptoms are the chief causes of addiction; (b) the view that addiction is due to aberrant learning, especially the development of strong stimulus-response habits; (c) our incentive-sensitization view, which suggests that sensitization of a neural system that attributes incentive salience causes compulsive motivation or “wanting” to take addictive drugs; and (d) the idea that dysfunction of frontal cortical systems, which normally regulate decision making and inhibitory control over behavior, leads to impaired judgment and impulsivity in addicts.