While religious beliefs are typically studied using questionnaires, there are no standardized tools available for cognitive psychology and neuroscience studies of religious cognition. Here we present the first such tool—the Cambridge Psycholinguistic Inventory of Christian Beliefs (CPICB)—which consists of audio-recorded items of religious beliefs as well as items of three control conditions: moral beliefs, abstract scientific knowledge and empirical everyday life knowledge. The CPICB is designed in such a way that the ultimate meaning of each sentence is revealed only by its final critical word, which enables the precise measurement of reaction times and/or latencies of neurophysiological responses. Each statement comes in a pair of Agree/Disagree versions of critical words, which allows for experimental contrasting between belief and disbelief conditions. Psycholinguistic and psychoacoustic matching between Agree/Disagree versions of sentences, as well as across different categories of the CPICB items (Religious, Moral, Scientific, Everyday), enables rigorous control of low-level psycholinguistic and psychoacoustic features while testing higher-level beliefs. In the exploratory Study 1 (N = 20), we developed and tested a preliminary version of the CPICB that had 480 items. After selecting 400 items that yielded the most consistent responses, we carried out a confirmatory test–retest Study 2 (N = 40). Preregistered data analyses confirmed excellent construct validity, internal consistency and test–retest reliability of the CPICB religious belief statements. We conclude that the CPICB is suitable for studying Christian beliefs in an experimental setting involving behavioural and neuroimaging paradigms, and provide Open Access to the inventory items, fostering further development of the experimental research of religiosity.

虽然通常使用问卷调查宗教信仰，但没有可用于宗教认知的认知心理学和神经科学研究的标准化工具。在这里，我们介绍了第一个这样的工具——剑桥基督教信仰心理语言清单(CPICB) ——其中包括宗教信仰的录音项目以及道德信仰、抽象科学知识和经验日常生活知识三个控制条件的项目。CPICB 的设计方式使得每个句子的最终含义仅通过其最终关键词来揭示，这使得能够精确测量反应时间和/或神经生理反应的延迟。每个陈述都有一对同意/不同意的批评词版本，这允许在相信和不相信条件之间进行实验对比。同意/不同意句子版本之间以及不同类别的 CPICB 项目（宗教、道德、科学、日常）之间的心理语言学和心理声学匹配，能够在测试更高层次的信念时严格控制低层次的心理语言学和心理声学特征。在探索性研究 1 中（N  = 20)，我们开发并测试了一个包含 480 个项目的 CPICB 的初步版本。在选择了 400 个产生最一致反应的项目后，我们进行了确认性重测研究 2（N  = 40）。预先注册的数据分析证实了 CPICB 宗教信仰声明的出色结构效度、内部一致性和重测信度。我们得出结论，CPICB 适合在涉及行为和神经影像范式的实验环境中研究基督教信仰，并提供对清单项目的开放访问，促进宗教信仰实验研究的进一步发展。