Pornography has long been a subject of interest to researchers, policy makers, and the general public. This chapter provides an overview of recent findings in pornography research with an emphasis on male sexuality. First, we present a brief summary focused on the definition of pornography. Then we outline the results of studies on pornography use along with details about how often men and women consume pornography, what type of pornography they prefer, and other aspects of pornography use. Finally, we address the results of some of the most significant research on the effects of pornography use on male sexuality, such as risky sexual behavior, sexual self-esteem and well-being, sexual dysfunction, sexuality in couples, and pornography addiction. The findings of current research on pornography are limited by methodological and theoretical shortcomings which compromise their generalizability. We provide a short overview of some limitations in the measurement of pornography use. All in all, many findings on pornography, its use, impact, and long-term effects are preliminary and should be interpreted with caution.

At first glance, the relationship between parent and offspring seems to begin in perfect harmony. In particular, the image of human parents’ devotion to their infant is one that has been depicted in art for thousands of years. And yet it often seems a sharp contrast to the modern Western image of the adolescent–parent relationship, full of strife and angst. It’s also a contrast to the relatively abrupt end of parent–child relationships seen in many animal species as offspring disperse. Human offspring have a much longer period of juvenile dependence and sometimes don’t disperse very far. But is there a good reason to expect perfect harmony or strife and angst? Parent–offspring conflict theory has informed a wide range of research in nonhuman animals as well as in humans. Both research areas have focused on early maternal–infant conflict, such as prenatal conflict and weaning conflict; however, recent research in humans (as well as research in animals on cooperative breeders) has also highlighted conflict over mate choice. In this chapter we examine these sources of conflict.

Parental Investment Theory, as an overarching theory in evolutionary biology, has not only deepened our understanding of sexual selection and mate preferences, as is evident in this chapter, but has also contributed to our understanding of the underlying mechanisms producing sexual behavior in all sexually reproducing species, including humans. In evolutionary biology, parental investment, as formulated by Robert Trivers in 1972, is any cost or expenditure (e.g., resources, time, energy) associated with raising offspring that increases that offspring’s chances of survival or reproductive success, and reduces a parent’s ability to invest in other or future offspring. There are many applications of Parental Investment Theory when considering the behavior of sexually reproducing species; however, the current chapter focuses on the implications of the evolution of asymmetrical parental investment for human sexual psychology. Parental investment theory has inspired new theories in the human evolutionary sciences addressing sexual preference and mating behaviors, including sex difference in sexual preferences and attraction tactics, emergence of intrasexual competition and intersexual selection, cognitive biases in perceptions of sexual intent, sexual coercion and rape, female coyness and sexual regret, mate guarding and sex difference in sexual jealousy, and sex differences in the consumption of sexually explicit content and the psychology of extramarital relationships. This chapter considers how knowledge of asymmetric parental investment, which is a result of the evolution of sexual reproduction, has contributed to our understanding of sexual behavior and psychology. Finally, ecological variation in parental investment across different human populations due to environmental harshness and demand, as well as the importance of cross-cultural research in human sexual psychology, are discussed.

We view working memory as a general resource in which attention can be allocated to any type of information and stimulus input. One vital skill that requires the use of working memory is the comprehension and production of language. In this chapter, we outline the basis of the embedded-processes model of working memory. We then discuss how the different parts of the model might be relevant to language use. Finally, we discuss how working memory is used in the acquisition of language as children develop or as individuals take on a second language. We wish to provide a basis for understanding the importance of attention and its interaction with long-term memory for the successful use of language, from understanding a simple sentence to producing a well-formed set of sentences for communication.

This chapter starts by providing brief accounts of both first and second language speaking, and then surveys empirical work, measurement issues, and theory on the use of second language speaking tasks – the sort of tasks, often with real-world connections, used in communicative language classrooms to nurture second language development and performance. The main section of the chapter is concerned with the relationships between working memory and performance on such tasks. Broadly it is argued that, as yet, there are not many systematic findings relating task characteristics, working memory, and actual performance. In contrast, the conditions under which second language speaking tasks are done (such as planning opportunities, repeated tasks) do show some interesting results. Based on such research, it is argued that working memory plays more of a role in the Formulation stage of speech production. Proposals are made regarding the areas where it would be most helpful to research working memory connections with second language speaking tasks.

To conceptualize the communicative role of working memory (WM), the Ease-of-Language Understanding (ELU) model was proposed (e.g., Rönnberg, 2003; Rönnberg et al., 2008, 2013, 2019, 2020). The model states that ease of language understanding is determined by the speed and accuracy with which the signal is matched to existing multimodal language representations. When matching is fast and complete, language understanding is effortless; this process may be facilitated by predictions based on the contents of WM. However, when the contents of the language signal mismatches with existing representations, WM is triggered to access knowledge in semantic long-term memory (SLTM) and personal experience from episodic long-term memory (ELTM) – promoting inference-making and postdictions in WM. The interplay between WM and LTM is fundamental to language understanding; its efficiency becomes apparent in adverse conditions and its breakdown may explain cognitive decline and dementia. Empirical support, limitations, and future studies will be discussed.

Many general linguistic theories and language processing frameworks have assumed that language processing is largely a chunking procedure and that it is underpinned and constrained by our memory limitations. Despite this general consensus, the distinction between short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM) limitations as they relate to language processing has remained elusive. To resolve this issue, we propose an integrated memory- and chunking-based metric of parsing complexity, in which STM limitations of 7 ± 2 (Miller, 1956a) are relevant to the Momentary Chunk Number (MCN), while WM limitations of 4 ± 1 (Cowan, 2001) are relevant to the Mean Momentary Chunk Number (MMCN). Examples of concrete calculations of our new metric are presented vis-à-vis Liu’s MDD metric and Hawkins’ IC-to-word Ratio metric. Related methodology issues are also discussed. We conclude the paper by echoing some recently repeated calls -(O'Grady, 2012 & 2017; Gómez-Rodríguez et al., 2019; Wen, 2019) to include STM and WM limitations as part and parcel of the language device (LD; cf. Chomsky, 1957) in that their impacts are ubiquitous and permeating in all essential linguistic domains ranging from phonology to grammar, discourse comprehension and production.

Sperm competition occurs when a female copulates with two or more males within a sufficiently brief period, resulting in sperm of the different males competing to fertilize ova. Sperm competition has been documented or inferred to occur across many species, ranging from insects to primates, including humans. To open the chapter, the theory of sperm competition is introduced and the role of sperm competition as a recurrent adaptive problem for humans is highlighted. Because sperm competition could be detrimental to male reproductive success through cuckoldry, males have likely evolved anti-cuckoldry adaptations. Therefore, convergent evidence of anatomical, genetic, and physiological adaptations to sperm competition in human males is presented. This is followed by a discussion of behavioral and psychological evidence that is unique to humans and that differentiates them from nonhuman species, such as negative affect in response to sexual rejection by a man’s female partner. The remainder of the chapter is devoted to issues still debated within sperm competition theory, such as male precedence, intensity of sperm competition, the role of sperm heteromorphism, and the relationship between male phenotypic quality and ejaculate quality. The chapter concludes with the message that the evidence for anatomical, biological, physiological, genetic, and behavioral adaptations to human sperm competition provides compelling evidence that sperm competition has been a recurrent feature of human evolutionary history.

Rape and sexual coercion have been recurrent adaptive challenges for women over human evolutionary history. There are many reproductive, physical, and psychological costs of sexual victimization, including mitigation of female sexual choice. The use of rape and coercion are well-documented behaviors in human males intended to circumvent female rejection. The intersexual conflict resulting from these deceptive and sometimes violent tactics likely generated selection pressures for a female defense system to protect reproductive choice. This chapter synthesizes a broad domain of research on the psychology of rape perpetration and avoidance to suggest that women may have evolved a specialized threat management system to mitigate their risk of rape and coercion. This system is hypothesized to be sensitive to inputs that signal either an increased likelihood of sexual victimization or greater costs of sexual victimization. Such inputs are expected to produce an emotional response, fear, that motivates avoidant behavior to preemptively avoid sexual victimization. Here, we discuss research in support of a precautionary psychological threat management system for rape avoidance, highlighting potential inputs to and outputs from this system.

The high working memory demands of writing are now well documented across the development of writing as well as in expert writing. The limited capacity of working memory of beginning writers and their effortful untrained writing processes indeed constrain learning to write. In experienced writers, operations of the writing processes are more complex and therefore continue to heavily engage working memory. In this frame, this chapter describes the theoretical models of the writing processes that describe the role of working memory. It then reviews research that examined how writing and the writing processes engage working memory. It is shown that managing the planning, translating, and revising processes involve the executive and nonexecutive components of working memory for storing verbal and visual spatial information that is processed during writing.

This chapter examines variation patterns across the world's grammars in relation to working memory (WM) models in psycholinguistics. It distinguishes: (1) constrained capacity proposals in which certain limits in WM are used to explain why some grammatical phenomena are (or are supposed to be) nonoccurring; (2) more versus less WM proposals where greater or lesser demands on WM are reflected in dispreferred versus preferred structures and in declining typological distributions across languages; and (3) integrated WM proposals where WM considerations interact with other factors that facilitate processing. These include prediction, and communicative efficiency, with the result that structures that add to WM load can sometimes be preferred across languages. It is proposed that grammars have conventionalized the preferences of language performance and so have been shaped by the same processing considerations, including WM load, that determine usage data within individual languages and that lead to the preferences in performance. As a result grammars and cross-linguistic comparison can provide relevant evidence for certain issues in language processing that are being debated currently, such as the precise nature and role of WM and its interaction with other processing considerations. These grammatical data come from a vast range of languages that psycholinguists have yet to consider

The multicomponent model of working memory developed during the period when psycholinguistics was dominated by Chomsky’s transformational grammar and its potential implications. The original model had assumed a limited capacity attentional control system, the central executive, aided by temporary verbal storage from the phonological loop and visuospatial storage from the visuospatial sketchpad. Over the decades, each component of the model has been systematically explored by language studies, which have repeatedly resulted in challenges to earlier versions of the model and led to the addition of the fourth component of the episodic buffer and the recent incorporation of the concept of binding. Overall, the multicomponent model was developed using a different approach than Popper’s emphasis on falsification, and the model continues to evolve and has proven successful both in accounting for a broad range of data and in its application to the understanding of a wide array of language phenomena and populations. L11

Improved clarity of Neanderthal ways of life brought about by advancements in analysing the fossil and archaeological records, accompanied by increased willingness to accept complex Neanderthal cognition, makes it appropriate to begin to understand their sexual behavior. In this chapter, we briefly review current understandings about Neanderthals based on anatomy, genetics, and behavior evidenced from the archaeological record. We then integrate this with broad behavioral ecology and evolutionary sexual selection concepts to consider potential selection pressures on Neanderthals’ sexual and reproductive behaviors. Large adult brain size, rapid infant brain growth, and protracted offspring development, similar to Homo sapiens, were supported by adaptations in social organization, mating and parental effort. It is likely that male provisioning and investment in offspring strengthened reproductive pair bonds, improved infant survival, and impacted mate choice in both sexes. Systematic collaborative subsistence strategies were probably matched by a heavy reliance on kin and other trusted adults within the cooperative breeding group, reducing the energy burden on reproducing females, and enabling shorter lactation and reduced interbirth intervals. Neanderthals’ wide ecological tolerances and behavioral flexibility suggest that they also adjusted their sexual and reproductive behavior according to environmental circumstances. Small group size, local-to-regional social networks and potentially seasonal breeding enabled populations to adapt to fluctuating energy availability. During harsher climatic phases, limited access to mating opportunities may have favored social monogamy, with genetic isolation and inbreeding more likely. When conditions were milder (during interglacials, in warmer regions or seasons) with more plentiful resources, group sizes and social networks may have permitted polygyny. Finally we explore the behavioral implications of genetic evidence that Neanderthals interbred with other hominins including H. sapiens. This suggests that differences in physical appearance and social structures did not prevent copulation or raising hybrid infants, although sterility and lower fitness of the latter may have limited the spread of genes between species.

Working memory is a cognitive device for simultaneous information storage and processing in ongoing learning tasks or events. Current theories of second language acquisition (SLA) posit a central role of interactive tasks in facilitating the process and outcome of second language development. The mechanism of working memory is a perfect match for the mechanism of learning that occurs in second language (L2) interaction. This chapter seeks to synthesize the literature on the relationship between working memory and L2 interaction including theoretical models and findings of empirical research. To achieve these objectives, the chapter starts with a discussion of major SLA theories that elaborate the relevance of working memory to L2 interaction including the Interaction Hypothesis (Long, 1996), the Cognition Hypothesis (Robinson, 2011), and the Limited Attentional Capacity Theory (Skehan, 1998). The chapter proceeds to review the various streams of research investigating the associations between working memory and (1) interactional behaviors, (2) task performance represented by the complexity, accuracy, and fluency of L2 speech, and (3) interaction-driven L2 gains. The chapter then concludes by identifying the strengths and limitations of existing research and recommending ways to address issues and advance the field.