Review of Memory in mind and culture.

Reviews the book, Memory in mind and culture edited by Pascal Boyer and James V. Wertsch (see record 2010-05180-000). This book rides the waves of two recent trends: interdisciplinarity and the effect of mind on culture. First, its psychologist and anthropologist editors deliberately chose an interdisciplinary panel of experts on memory, inviting highly respected psychologists, anthropologists, and historians to review cutting-edge memory research in their area of expertise. For psychologists, the resulting collection not only provides readable reviews of current psychology research in memory but also introduces concepts and issues from other disciplines that may open new avenues for research. Second, the book emphasizes the coconstitution of mind and culture, especially seeking evidence for how our minds structure culture. This unusual perspective is especially well developed in the last chapters of the book (Boyer; Rubin) but shows its influence throughout the book, with some authors exploring new ideas about how basic research on memory processes can connect to the study of culture. In summary, this book provides excellent reviews of up-to-date memory research in psychology—from brain structures to blogs—and also innovatively connects this research to larger questions about human culture. Though the coverage of eminent cognitive psychologists is admirable, I wish the book had included some of the new work by cultural and evolutionary psychologists on the topic. Nevertheless, the book advances the field in important ways, pointing the way to new research and theories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Leda Cosmides.

Leda Cosmides has received an award for inspiring leadership in defining a new approach to the mind: evolutionary psychology. In thoughtful essays with John Tooby, she has shown how to unite the cognitive, social, and natural sciences by invoking evolutionary theory in its most sophisticated modern form. This journal article includes a citation and biography of Leda Cosmides. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Applied hermeneutics: Retrospective reevaluation of life course events.

Suggests that because life course narratives change over time, they generate competing accounts of the same events. The attempt to adjudicate between accounts is an empirical hermeneutic enterprise that parallels current issues in the social sciences. The problem of retrospective reevaluation is explored from the perspective of cognitive psychology and psychoanalysis. Insights gained from them are applied to the problem as conceptualized by philosophy, drawing on the similarity of retrospective reevaluation to conceptions of time. This approach is used to understand a life history. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The linguistic repudiation of Wundt.

Wilhelm Wundt's influence on the development of linguistics and psychology was pervasive. The foundations for this web of influence on the sciences of mind and language were laid down in Wundt's own research program, which was quite different from other attempts at founding a new psychology, as it was deeply rooted in German philosophy. This resulted in certain gaps in Wundt's conception of mind and language. These gaps provoked a double repudiation of Wundt's theories, by linguists and psychologists. The psychological repudiation has been studied by historians of psychology, and the linguistic repudiation has been studied by historians of linguistics. The intent of this article is to bring the linguistic repudiation to the attention of historians of psychology, especially the one outlined by two important figures in the history of psychology: Karl Bühler and George Mead. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Proposals for a second psychology.

During the 19th century, numerous writers including Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill, and Wilhelm Wundt called for a 2nd psychology, a psychology to complement laboratory-based psychology. This 2nd psychology would address aspects of human mind and behavior that emerged from cultural life. Different forms of empiricism appropriate to a 2nd psychology were gradually realized in studies of character formation, conduct, personality and culture, and more recently, cognition and culture. This article examines this 2nd psychology that has been slower to mature but has achieved some contemporary realization in personology, cultural psychology, and several of the applied psychologies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comparative psychology as the praxist views it.

The plight of modern comparative psychology is rooted in part in the destructive effect that early behaviorism had on the field. Early in the 20th century, Mercier, Dunlap, Kuo, and others proposed the creation of a new, multidisciplinary science devoted to the study of behavior. Watson derailed this effort by insisting that psychology should adopt behavior as its subject matter and that it should abandon the study of mind. Watson's proposal isolated the study of behavior from the biological sciences and led to an incessant and unproductive battle between behaviorists and cognitivists, in which the latter have emerged the victors. Because comparative psychology has remained for the most part the comparative study of animal behavior, it has suffered greatly both by the field's isolation from biology and by the emergence of a strong cognitive psychology. The comparative study of mind will undoubtedly flourish in modern psychology, but the comparative study of behavior should be part of a new, comprehensive, multidisciplinary science of behavior, along the lines suggested by Kuo. Efforts are underway to establish such a science. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Can psychology be a science of mind?

Addresses the question of whether the brain initiates behavior as the mind or self is said to do. This cannot be answered in the body-cum-brain, observed either introspectively or with instruments and methods of psychology. Two sciences that have a bearing on human behavior are discussed. These are physiology and a group of 3 sciences concerned with the variation and selection that determine the condition of the body-cum-brain at any moment: ethology, behavior analysis, and anthropology. Behavior analysis is the youngest of the 3 sciences and the only one to be studied at length in the laboratory. The roles of behaviorism and cognitive psychology in the development of the discipline of psychology are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychology: The core discipline.

Because it deals with fundamental understanding of behavior, psychology is a core discipline for other social sciences concerned with human behavior. Its founders viewed psychology as integrating knowledge from many sources and disciplines. This diversity has posed problems in finding unifying themes and principles and has contributed to a discontinuity in psychology as a science and as a profession. As a core discipline, psychology contains scientific knowledge about human behavior and methods of applying that knowledge. There is a need for cooperation and integration between academic and applied psychology, with both serving to benefit society. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What comparative psychology is about: Back to the future.

The problem of the status and identity of comparative psychology can be analyzed from two standpoints. One that has been predominant in the last few decades consists of reactions to the various criticisms that other animal behavior sciences have addressed to it. This standpoint is useful as a first approximation of comparative psychology's particulars but does not delineate common objectives that could encourage a sense of identity and ensure a stable and consistent progress of the field. Another standpoint is based on the examination of the epistemological tradition of comparative psychology. Although the study of behavioral phenotypes is an essential first step, comparative psychology has always been and still is about animal mind. Its future should be built on the expertise that results from this long and fruitful tradition and that has still to be matched by other animal behavior sciences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Why Freud failed: Some implications for neurophysiology and sociobiology.

Many parallels have recently been drawn between Freud's early work and the goals of the contemporary neurophysiology of mind and sociobiology. In this article it is argued that the portrayal of Freud as a reductionist and a biological determinist is incorrect. As a consequence, so is the perceived alignment of Freud with neurophysiology and sociobiology. But it is also true that, in his early work, Freud faced many of the same problems and issues that confront those interested in theories of mind and of human nature, and an understanding of how Freud faced these issues may inform our increasing interest in views of mind and behavior emanating from the life sciences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The psychology of science and the origins of the scientific mind.

Reviews the book, The psychology of science and the origins of the scientific mind by Gregory Feist (see record 2006-02942-000). In this book, Gregory Feist sets out to show two things: that psychology of science can be its own field and that this field has been growing along side of humanity ever since its inception. Feist divides the book into two parts. First, he argues for the legitimacy of the field of psychology of science, addressing relevant research from many sub fields and their applications for the future. Part two delves into the origins and future of the scientific mind. Overall, this book makes one logically consider what science is and is not. It brings about contemplation about how science developed and how humans embraced it. Feist says he wants to take on the applied implications for the formalized study of both the psychology and science and the properties of the scientific mind. His goal is to move the psychology of science from its implicit methods scattered across domains of psychology and make them explicit. He wants to unite researchers scattered across the world to make up a new psychology of science that actively meets, has its own journal, and can educate future researchers. This is all very interesting and indeed possible, as long as the meetings would follow the same integrative genius that is displayed in this book. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

One person and two person psychologies and the method of psychoanalysis.

The distinction between a monadic theory of mind (a one-person psychology) and a relational theory of mind (a two-person psychology) is crucial in understanding psychoanalytic concepts. However, some psychoanalytic theorists see these two models as essentially complementary whereas others see them as contradictory and irreconcilable. I argue that the artificial distinction between clinical theory and metapsychology obscures the recognition that the most fundamental psychoanalytic clinical concepts and procedures were formulated and historically understood as one-person phenomena. Transference was not conceptualized as an interpersonal event occurring between two people but was rather understood as a process occurring within the mind of the analysand. The article attempts to extricate fundamental clinical concepts from the quasibiological drive theory that has dominated both our metapsychology and our clinical theory, and to reexamine the value of these clinical concepts within a relational, contextual, and intersubjective framework. The article examines the method of free association in order to illustrate the different implications of one-person and two-person psychologies. I propose that a two-person or relational field theory does not need to neglect or minimize the... (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

You say you had a revolution: Methodological foundations of closed-loop psychology.

To the extent that a scientific revolution represents a fundamental change in a discipline, the cognitive revolution in psychology was not particularly revolutionary. What changed least in this revolution was methodology. The experimental methods used in cognitive psychology are the same as those used in the behaviorism it overthrew. This methodological continuity results from the fact that both behaviorism and cognitive psychology are based on the same paradigm, which is also the basis of experimental psychology: the open-loop causal model of behavioral organization. A truly revolutionary approach to understanding the mind has been largely ignored because it is built on a paradigm that is inconsistent with conventional research methods. This new approach to psychology, called Perceptual Control Theory (PCT), is based on a closed-loop control model of behavioral organization that is tested using control engineering methods that are unfamiliar to most psychologists. This paper introduces the methodological foundations of closed-loop psychology, explains why the closed-loop revolution has not happened yet, and suggests what psychology might look like after the revolution has occurred. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Hebb legacy.

Discusses the influence of Donald Olding Hebb (1904–1985) on the discipline of psychology. The author notes that Hebb's principled opposition to radical behaviourism and emphasis on understanding what goes on between stimulus and response (perception, learning, thinking) helped clear the way for the cognitive revolution. His view of psychology as a biological science and his neuropsychological cell-assembly proposal rejuvenated interest in physiological psychology. Since his death, Hebb's seminal ideas exert an ever-growing influence on those interested in mind (cognitive science), brain (neuroscience), and how brains implement mind (cognitive neuroscience). Specific events in Hebb's career are outlined, with particular attention to the influence on psychology of his book The Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological Theory (1949). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The altered rationale for the choice of a standard animal in experimental psychology: Henry H. Donaldson, Adolf Meyer, and "the" albino rat.

The mid-20th-century dominance of albino rats in nonhuman experimental psychology research often presumed that the animal embodied fundamental psychological processes that could generalize to a wide range of vertebrates. The author describes the conceptual basis for the original choice of white rats by the 2 individuals most responsible for establishing rats as a prominent animal model in the life sciences at the turn of the century: Henry H. Donaldson and Adolf Meyer. The author stresses the comparative rationale that justified their choice and argues that they sought generality through attention to diversity and species differences. Their approach contrasts sharply with the later view of the rat as a generic animal model that could represent similarities shared by all vertebrates. It is suggested that the change resulted from an emphasis on standardization produced by the growing industrialization of the life sciences in America. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Deception, efficiency, and random groups. Psychology and the gradual origination of the random group design

In the life sciences, psychology, and large parts of the other social sciences, the ideal experiment is a comparative experiment with randomly composed experimental and control groups. Historians and practitioners of these sciences generally attribute the invention of this "random group design" to the statistician R.A. Fisher, who developed it in the 1930s for agricultural research. This essay argues that the random group design was advanced in psychology before Fisher introduced it in agriculture and that in this context it was the unplanned outcome of a lengthy historical process rather than the instantaneous creation of a single genius. The article analyzes how the random group design came about bit by bit when methodological practices from nineteenth-century psychophysical laboratories were gradually adapted, extended, and codified by twentieth-century educational psychologists to support procedural objectivity in educational administration. In passing, the article also amends the received historiography of the separate elements of randomization and control groups.     

Complex adaptive systems in the behavioral and social sciences.

This article examines applications of complexity theory within the behavioral and social sciences. Specific attention is given to the fundamental characteristics of complex adaptive systems (CAS)—such as individuals, groups, and societies—including the underlying structure of CAS, the internal dynamics of evolving CAS, and how CAS respond to their environment. Examples drawn from psychology, sociology, economics, and political science include attitude formation, majority-minority relations, social networks, family systems, psychotherapy, norm formation, organizational development, coalition formation, economic instabilities, urban development, the electoral process, political transitions, international relations, social movements, drug policy, and criminal behavior. The discussion also addresses the obstacles to implementing the CAS perspective in the behavioral and social sciences and implications for research methodology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Physiology as the antechamber to metaphysics: The young William James's hope for a philosophical psychology.

In the 5 years before 1878, when his career in psychology was becoming established, William James wrote a series of notes and reviews assessing the work of many of the pioneers in the new field. Adopting a public and confident voice, even while he was privately still uncertain and searching, James criticized the dogmatism of positivist and idealist claims to the study of the human brain and mind. In his short writings of 1873–1877, James started to formulate his own middle path. His first steps on that path show that he did not reject either scientific or philosophic inquiry; instead, he viewed scientific knowledge as a way to understand philosophical questions more deeply. Saving his sharpest critiques for positivism, James endorsed scientific investigation without materialist assumptions. While his career in psychology was still only a hope, James treated science as a means toward humanist insight. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)