Pre-unified separatism and rapprochement between behaviorism and cognitive psychology: The case of the reinforcer.

Psychology is in a preparadigmatic or pre-unified stage of scientific development. Two characteristics of psychology's status are: (1) lack of cumulative scientific growth and (2) experimental-theoretical overgeneralization. The reinforcer, as a construct in theories and as a critical element of behavioral change, has been a casualty of the separatism between such factions as radical behaviorism and cognitive psychology. In the end, psychology as a progressive science has been impeded, and psychological practitioners have been left to use intervention techniques that are not the most effective or efficient. In order to improve upon this situation, unification is needed between radical behaviorism and cognitive psychology, among other disciplines. However, the issue of the reinforcer is only one of many areas where such unification should be pursued and attained. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Application of projective techniques in personnel psychology since 1940.

A review of such projective tests as the Rorschach in its several forms, the TAT, the Worthington Personal-History, the Tomkins-Horn Picture Arrangement, and others as they have been applied in studies relating to various personnel problems. The usefulness of the projective instruments is discussed in relation to personnel selection, differentiation between successful and unsuccessful workers, measurement of promotion potential, job satisfaction and adjustment, and identification of vocationally significant personality patterns. It is concluded on the basis of both the methodologies used and the results obtained that there is a need for thorough job specifications in terms of personality traits and extensive use of cross-validation studies before any practical use can be made of projective techniques in personnel psychology. (2 p. ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychometric Theory and the Mystery Novel.

L. Krasner (May 1983) offers a number of examples in which psychological theory and research have been utilized in the literary genre of the mystery or detective novel. In addition to the applications mentioned by Krasner, nice examples of methodological criticism are represented in that medium. Even more specifically, psychometric theory has been represented in evaluating the use of certain assessment tools in the clinical endeavor of ascertaining "whodunit." A classical example of such a critique, more eloquently expressed than in most of psychometric literature, appears in the Father Brown story "The Mistake of the Machine" (Chesterton, 1951). This story was originally published in 1914, four years after the introduction of the lie detector technique in detective fiction, as already cited by Krasner (Balmer & MacHarg, 1910). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Disentangling the psychology and law of instrumental and reactive subtypes of aggression.

Behavioral scientists have distinguished an instrumental (or proactive) style of aggression from a style that is reactive (or hostile). Whereas instrumental aggression is cold-blooded, deliberate, and goal driven, reactive aggression is characterized by hot blood, impulsivity, and uncontrollable rage. Scholars have pointed to the distinction between murder (committed with malice aforethought) and manslaughter (enacted in the heat of passion in response to provocation) in criminal law as a reflection of the instrumental-reactive aggression dichotomy. Recently, B. J. Bushman and C. A. Anderson (2001) argued that the instrumental-reactive aggression distinction has outlived its usefulness in psychology and pointed to inconsistencies and confusion in criminal law applications as support for their position. But how similar is the legal distinction between murder and manslaughter to the instrumental-reactive aggression dichotomy in psychology? This article compares and contrasts the psychological and legal models and demonstrates that the purposes for distinguishing between instrumental and reactive aggression in psychology and law are undeniably different in meaningful ways. As such, a perceived shift in law away from differentiating murder and manslaughter has no bearing on the usefulness of the instrumental-reactive aggression distinction in psychological science. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Radical reductionism: A possible source of inadequacy in autoinstructional techniques.

It is the contention of the authors that psychologists concerned with autoinstructional techniques have been almost exclusively concerned with reductionist approaches to human behavior. Preoccupation with operationism and nomothetic laws has restricted the scope of these psychologists to only those data which are quantifiable, concrete, and unidimensional. Other data have too often been ignored or denied. Such rigorous dependence upon atomism has resulted in a naive pseudoscientific absoluteness which actually serves to constrict, rather than enlarge, the possibilities of understanding human experience. If educators are to most effectively use autoinstructional techniques to facilitate human learning, their technology must not be based on only one type of data. The authors feel that there are three major problems posed by radically applied, physicalistic reductionism which seriously impair the effectiveness of autoinstruction. These are: dependence upon mechanism as a model for human behavior; motivation viewed as extrinsic to learning; and the current operational definition of reinforcement. The mathematical-mechanistic conception of human learning is used as the basis for almost all present-day autoinstructional programming. This presently emphasized position in educational psychology champions only one of the major approaches of modern-day psychology. Behaviorism views man as an atomistic mechanism, and stresses a simplistic approach to the study of learning. The other major approach in psychology is that of intuitive rationalism, stressing orderliness, harmony, and holism in the study of human learning. The authors contend that the difficulty experienced by object-bound psychologists in departing from operationism, and their failure to sequence programs by holistic organization have been major sources of current failure in autoinstruction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Clinical practice and scientific psychology: Can this marriage be saved?

Discusses the relationship of scientific psychology to the practice of psychotherapy. The use of research to change psychotherapy techniques is examined in each of 3 major orientations of psychodynamic, experiential, and behavioral psychotherapy. Common factors that may be responsible for the success of all therapies are described, and the controversy between those who see psychotherapy as a cultural ritual and those who see it as a scientifically-based procedure is reviewed. The consequences of a split between researcher and clinician roles in clinical psychology are predicted. It is concluded that scientific psychology and psychotherapy can together contribute meaningfully to society and a divorce would not be in the best interest of either discipline. (41 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The theory of the mind of the autistic child]

It has been suggested that hypnosis techniques may have the potential to enhance eyewitness memory in forensic investigations. However, laboratory research shows that increases in recall with hypnosis techniques are often associated with decreases in accuracy, false confidence in incorrect information, and increased suggestibility to leading questions and misleading post-event information. These problems limit the usefulness of hypnosis as an interviewing procedure. However, in practical investigations, many factors associated with hypnosis, apart from the hypnotic induction itself, might lead to memory enhancement compared with standard police interviews. For example, hypnotic interviewers, because of their psychological, clinical, and interpersonal skills, may be better interviewers than police officers. They may use effective interviewing strategies such as those associated with the "cognitive interview"; a procedure which has the potential to enhance recall by approximately 35% without the problems of memory distortion associated with hypnosis. It is concluded, therefore, that a cognitive interview procedure should be used in preference to hypnosis.     

At random: Sense and nonsense.

"It is often said that psychologists are captivated by the magic of words." One example of this is the epidemic use by psychologists of the word 'design.' " "Despite glib talk about using factor analysis to test hypotheses, practically no users of factor analysis ever test hypotheses." A psychologist may "trudge off weighted down with a box full of statistical tools in search of a research problem that permits him to display skill with his tools." Most psychologists "without intentional eavesdropping know that occasionally their theory oriented colleagues simply discard all data of an experiment as bad data if not in agreement with the theory, and start over. The theory is, of course, always good." The theorist who has the one and only approach and solution to all, or nearly all, psychological problems "tends to lure those among us who have a low tolerance for the ambiguity that flourishes in psychology." This "model business is nothing more than a new name for old hat stuff… . The question of the usefulness of mathematical models and, to a certain extent, the value of high powered statistical techniques is debatable." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The master’s degree in clinical psychology: Longitudinal program evaluation.

The usefulness of a master's degree in psychology as a facilitator of admission to doctoral programs or as a means of securing full-time, psychology-related employment still remains a debatable issue. All persons who received degrees over a 28-year period (1958-1986) from a terminal master's program in psychology were surveyed on two occasions: in 1973 and in 1986. The data presented focus on the responses of the 105 persons who received clinical MS degrees. Over the 28-year period, 61% of the MS clinical graduates entered doctoral programs in psychology or related areas. Also, except for those who chose to become full-time homemakers or those who were still working toward doctoral degrees, all respondents were employed full time in psychology-related settings. A review of the empirically based reports on master's-level training in psychology between 1971 and 1987 is also presented, so as to provide a continuing historical overview of the master's-level issue in psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Purposes of punishment: Effects of utilities of criminal sanctions on perceived appropriateness.

Examined 5 commonly discussed purposes of punishment (incapacitation, retribution, rehabilitation, general deterrence, and special deterrence) in 2 experiments. The experiments were designed to study how the perceived usefulness of penalties in serving these purposes changes with seriousness and type of crime, and how these perceived utilities affect judgments about the appropriateness of penalties for various crimes. In Exp I, 72 undergraduates completed a Just World Scale and then rated the usefulness of 30 possible penalties (including fines, probation terms, and imprisonment terms) in serving these purposes for 4 crimes. In Exp II, 6 judges rated the penalties for all 4 crimes. Importance weights derived from the data indicate retribution to be the most influential for all crimes among the judges and for all crimes except murder among the students. Results concerning deterrence indicate that Ss believe that more serious crimes are more difficult to deter than minor offenses. Results suggest that it is important to distinguish between what decision makers say the most important considerations ought to be and how their decisions actually appear to depend on these factors. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Sexualized violence against women and children: A psychology and law perspective.

Reviews the book, Sexualized violence against women and children: A psychology and law perspective by B. J. Cling (see record 2004-21899-000). This book uniquely combines the fields of law and psychology in addressing the topic of sexual victimization of women and children. Clearly, violence of this nature continues to require attention in the literature, and this book provides an excellent historical and current understanding of the multifaceted issues involved in these crimes. The book consists of three parts: sexualized violence against women, sexualized violence against children, and perpetrators of sexualized violence and other harms against women and children. This is an excellent sourcebook for those who work in the area of sexual victimization, as it blends the worlds of law and psychology. It provides a thorough understanding of the interplay of victims, offenders, and the legal system. Strengths of the book include the breadth of information, as well as the citation of current literature and legal precedents. The editor has clearly chosen authors who are expert in their scholarship, allowing both the experienced clinician and the emerging professional to benefit from reading this book. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Legal issues and behaviour modification: A Canadian perspective.

The use of behavior modification techniques has been a matter of litigation in the US courts. The resulting judicial decisions have limited some aspects of the application of behavior modification techniques. Similar litigation is beginning to take place in Canada. The US cases will probably have some value as legal precedents before the Canadian courts. These US judicial decisions as well as related articles from legal and behavioral psychology journals and texts are reviewed. A series of guidelines is presented that behavior modification practitioners might adopt to prevent a similar legal-behavior modification conflict from developing in Canada. (French abstract) (53 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relevance: Who Decides?

Relevance and usefulness are important concepts in the academic world today, and I am grateful to Menges and Trumpeter (1972) for their analysis of the topic from the point of view of the undergraduate student in psychology. However, I believe it is a mistake to leave unspoken the fact that undergraduates might be quite mistaken in deciding that a topic is or is not relevant and useful, possibly as a result of the fact that the relevance of a topic is not made clear by the instructor. If the curriculum is to be structured in terms of relevance, expert opinion should be used instead of student opinion. To do otherwise is to cheat both society and students. Possibly a commission of experts could define the nature and extent of the usefulness of the various topics. Some attempt at evaluation of consequences would also be helpful. I believe this has been made more possible by the fact that, to their credit, the students used by Menges and Trumpeter tended to collapse relevance and usefulness into a single construct and distinguished more clearly between those concepts and interest. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Discovering functionally independent mental processes: The principle of reversed association.

A joint aim of cognitive psychology and neuropsychology has been the decomposition of mental function—the isolation and characterization of basic processes underlying behavior. By convention, the principal techniques used to identify such processes are based on functional dissociation—the observation of selective effects of variables on tasks. Yet, despite their widespread use, the inferential logic associated with these techniques is flawed. The aims of this article are twofold: (a) to review and make explicit the inferential limits of single and double dissociation; and (b) to introduce a new technique that overcomes these limits. Called reversed association, this new technique is defined as any nonmonotonic relation between two tasks of interest. We argue that reversed association, in place of functional dissociation, offers a sounder basis for inferring the number of functionally independent processes underlying performance and, having fewer assumptions, offers researchers greater scope for discovering such processes and determining their nature and effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Research Problems for Psychologists.

In the hope of finding some new areas where psychologists might do research, I decided to question some individuals in fields which are distant from psychology. To locate such individuals who could represent their field broadly, the past five presidents of certain professional groups were selected. The fields included art, architecture, chemistry, engineering, economics, geography, mathematics, and physics, plus other more specialized groups. They were asked to describe problems in their fields to which psychology might make a contribution. Psychology's wish to learn of new areas for research was emphasized. A number of these answers pointed out problems of a general nature of which psychology is already aware; such as how to improve interpersonal relations, how to make people more creative, and so on. There were, however, a number of suggestions which it seems worthwhile to describe here. Generally, as one might expect, there was some relation in this study between the nearness to psychology and the usefulness of the suggestions made. Those fields which are quite closely associated with behavior supplied most of the material which has been presented. Understandably, the fields less concerned with behavior, such as the physical sciences, could only offer problems which concerned the scientist as a person and not the actual science. Possibly this situation is indicative of a limiting factor in psychological research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Energy psychology: A review of the preliminary evidence.

Energy psychology utilizes imaginal and narrative-generated exposure, paired with interventions that reduce hyperarousal through acupressure and related techniques. According to practitioners, this leads to treatment outcomes that are more rapid, powerful, and precise than the strategies used in other exposure-based treatments such as relaxation or diaphragmatic breathing. The method has been exceedingly controversial. It relies on unfamiliar procedures adapted from non-Western cultures, posits unverified mechanisms of action, and early claims of unusual speed and therapeutic power ran far ahead of initial empirical support. This paper reviews a hierarchy of evidence regarding the efficacy of energy psychology, from anecdotal reports to randomized clinical trials. Although the evidence is still preliminary, energy psychology has reached the minimum threshold for being designated as an evidence-based treatment, with one form having met the APA Division 12 criteria as a "probably efficacious treatment" for specific phobias; another for maintaining weight loss. The limited scientific evidence, combined with extensive clinical reports, suggests that energy psychology holds promise as a rapid and potent treatment for a range of psychological conditions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A therapeutic jurisprudence approach to the legal processing of domestic violence cases.

Ample research indicates that the laws, policies, and legal actors involved in domestic violence cases can achieve iatrogenic or therapeutic effects on both offenders and victims. This article explores the ways in which the legal system reinforces maladaptive behavior by offenders and victims and how it can influence changes in such behavior through legal mechanisms. The therapeutic jurisprudence perspective is used to examine the psychology of offenders who commit domestic violence crimes in Part I. Part II explores the psychology of domestic violence victims. Part III covers the impact of the arrest and prosecution stages of the criminal justice system. Trials, plea bargains, and sentencing issues are explored in Part IV, and the use of restraining orders is explored in Part V. These issues and the therapeutic jurisprudence perspective can inform law reform efforts, criminal justice policy, and mental health policy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The science of choosing the right decision threshold in high-stakes diagnostics.

Many diagnostic tasks require that a threshold be set to convert evidence that is a matter of degree into a positive or negative decision. Although techniques of decision analysis used in psychology help one select the particular threshold that is appropriate to a given situation and purpose, just the concept of adjusting the threshold to the situation is not appreciated in many important practical arenas. Testing for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and for dangerous flaws in aircraft structures are used here as illustrations. This article briefly reviews the relevant techniques and develops those 2 examples with data. It suggests that use of the decision techniques could substantially benefit individuals and society and asks how that use might be facilitated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Using Hazard Functions to Assess Changes in Processing Capacity in an Attentional Cuing Paradigm.

Processing capacity-defined as the relative ability to perform mental work in a unit of time-is a critical construct in cognitive psychology and is central to theories of visual attention. The unambiguous use of the construct, experimentally and theoretically, has been hindered by both conceptual confusions and the use of measures that are at best only coarsely mapped to the construct. However, more than 25 years ago, J. T. Townsend and F. G. Ashby (1978) suggested that the hazard function on the response time (RT) distribution offered a number of conceptual advantages as a measure of capacity. The present study suggests that a set of statistical techniques, well-known outside the cognitive and perceptual literatures, offers the ability to perform hypothesis tests on RT-distribution hazard functions. These techniques are introduced, and their use is illustrated in application to data from the contingent attentional capture paradigm. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Further extensions of methodological diversity for counseling psychology.

Discusses the state of the art of research methodology in counseling psychology, which consists of the use of diverse methods. However, the diversity is limited to methods consistent with the values and logical framework of science as developed by the physical sciences. A further extension of methodology is required in order to include maturing alternative systems of inquiry such as systemic and structural methods, techniques designed to study goal-directed human action, and hermeneutic and phenomenological approaches. External critique from the philosophy of science and internal dissatisfaction expressed by practitioners are providing a renewed impetus to explore research strategies based in nonformal systems of logic. The need for and theoretical justification of diverse systems of inquiry are becoming more evident, yet a body of research examples or training strategies has not yet developed. It is important for the discipline of counseling psychology to support the development of alternative research strategies and to assume leadership in creating training methods for their use. (65 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)