In the past decade, various recommendations have been published to enhance the methodological rigor and publication standards in psychological science. However, adhering to these recommendations may have limited impact on the reproducibility of causal effects as long as psychological phenomena continue to be viewed as decomposable into separate and additive statistical structures of causal relationships. In this article, we show that (a) psychological phenomena are patterns emerging from nondecomposable and nonisolable complex processes that obey idiosyncratic nonlinear dynamics, (b) these processual features jeopardize the chances of standard reproducibility of statistical results, and (c) these features call on researchers to reconsider what can and should be reproduced, that is, the psychological processes per se, and the signatures of their complexity and dynamics. Accordingly, we argue for a greater consideration of process causality of psychological phenomena reflected by key properties of complex dynamical systems (CDSs). This implies developing and testing formal models of psychological dynamics, which can be implemented by computer simulation. The scope of the CDS paradigm and its convergences with other paradigms are discussed regarding the reproducibility issue. Ironically, the CDS approach could account for both reproducibility and nonreproducibility of the statistical effects usually sought in mainstream psychological science.

中文翻译：

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心理过程的复杂性如何重构心理科学中的再现性问题。

在过去的十年中，已经发布了各种建议来提高心理科学的方法论严谨性和出版标准。然而，只要心理现象继续被视为可分解为因果关系的单独和附加统计结构，遵守这些建议可能对因果效应的再现性产生有限的影响。在本文中，我们表明（a）心理现象是从不可分解和不可分离的复杂过程中出现的模式，这些过程服从特殊的非线性动力学，（b）这些过程特征危及统计结果的标准再现性的机会，以及（c）这些特征调用促使研究人员重新考虑什么可以并且应该被复制，即心理过程本身及其复杂性和动态的特征。因此，我们主张更多地考虑复杂动力系统（CDS）关键属性所反映的心理现象的过程因果关系。这意味着开发和测试心理动力学的正式模型，可以通过计算机模拟来实现。关于再现性问题讨论了 CDS 范式的范围及其与其他范式的收敛性。讽刺的是，CDS 方法可以解释主流心理科学中通常寻求的统计效应的可重复性和不可重复性。