The authors present a neurological theory of how cognitive information and emotional information are integrated in the nucleus accumbens during effective decision making. They describe how the nucleus accumbens acts as a gateway to integrate cognitive information from the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus with emotional…

According to a recent theory, anterior cingulate cortex is sensitive to response conflict, the coactivation of mutually incompatible responses. The present research develops this theory to provide a new account of the error-related negativity (ERN), a scalp potential observed following errors. Connectionist simulations of response conflict in an…

In his comment, A. Roelofs claimed that a feedforward-only theory of spoken word production (WEAVER++) can account for certain basic facts of spoken word production that B. Rapp and M. Goldrick (2000) argued could not be accounted for by feedforward-only theories. Rapp and Goldrick argued that to account for these facts, mechanisms such as…

Soft constraints hypothesis (SCH) is a rational analysis approach that holds that the mixture of perceptual-motor and cognitive resources allocated for interactive behavior is adjusted based on temporal cost-benefit tradeoffs. Alternative approaches maintain that cognitive resources are in some sense protected or conserved in that greater amounts…

A theory is presented concerning the impact of attributions about the causes of emotional responses as they influence self-control in temptation situations. (Editor)

Evidence is reviewed which suggests that there may be little or no direct introspective access to higher order cognitive processes. It is proposed that when people attempt to report on their cognitive processes they do not do so on the basis of any true introspection. (Editor/RK)

The model of the decision system in Murdock's two-stage memory- and-decision model for item recognition is developed and tested. The decision model is shown to be able to fit the accuracy and mean response latency data from four major recognition paradigms (Sternberg, study-test, continuous, and prememorized list). (Author/LMO)

A model of information processing has been developed that combines concepts from the study of attention and the study of problem solving. The model has been realized as a computer program and used to simulate a variety of phenomena from the attention and performance literature. (Author/LMO)

Five information processing models that relate memory for evidence to judgments based on the evidence are identified in the current social cognition literature: independent processing, availability, biased retrieval, biased encoding, and incongruity-biased encoding. A distinction between two types of judgment tasks is introduced and is related to…

This article critically examines the evidence for interpersonal complementarity according to four recent theories. The only prediction found to be regularly supported is that friendly-dominant and friendly-submissive behaviors are complementary. A repeated finding is that hostile-dominant acts are frequently responded to with further…

Judging plausibility is argued to be a more efficient strategy than direct retrieval (finding a propositional match) to judge a statement's truth. A proposed model contrasts the strategies in terms of verbatim memory and duration. Direct retrieval is faster when verbatim traces are strong, but plausibility judgment is more efficient over time.…

It is argued that human memory is adaptively designed and that much can be learned by understanding its adaptiveness. The information-retrieval problem is framed, and optimal memory behavior is derived. Applying this framework to the classic free-recall paradigm is discussed. (SLD)

A new theoretical analysis of the stop-signal model is proposed. Within the concepts of crude- and net-hazard functions, the nonobservable control-latency distribution can be estimated from observable reaction times. This result allows a test of the Logan and Cowan model (1984) without simplifying assumptions. (SLD)

A general theory of humor elicitation is presented that specifies the conditions in which humor is experienced in both social and nonsocial situations. The theory is used to conceptualize humor elicited by jokes, witticisms, and social events that are not intended or expected to be humorous. (SLD)

Letters and words are better identified when there are fewer available choices. How do readers use choice-set restrictions? By analyzing new experimental data and previously reported data, the author shows that Bayes theorem-based models overestimate readers' use of choice-set restrictions. This result is discordant with choice-similarity models…