Psychoanalysis as a natural science.

Despite Freud's unwavering intention that psychoanalysis should conform to the requirements of a natural science, this aim has not been realized. Some analysts hold the aim to have been mistaken. Others believe it can and should be achieved, proposing that traditional metapsychology be replaced by a new conceptual framework utilizing modern concepts not available to Freud. Utilizing data obtained from current findings in developmental psychology based on direct observation of parent-child interaction as well as from therapeutic sessions, a possible framework is sketched using principles derived from ethology, control theory, and human information processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Subjective science: Kenneth Spence's human learning research program.

This article examines Kenneth Spence's human learning research from 1949 to 1967. His works show the conditioning field to be in turmoil over basic issues during this time. These issues included whether determinism should be accepted, how to interpret a psychological test score, what psychometric properties a test should have, and how to use theoretical constructs. Turmoil occurred because behaviors and events had different meanings and degrees of importance to different investigators. Thus, what appeared as "objective" scientific change in the conditioning field was really the adaptation of personal preferences in word meanings, research goals, and research methods. These issues also indicate disputes about definitions and purposes of scientific activity during Spence's era. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Subjective well-being: The science of happiness and a proposal for a national index.

One area of positive psychology analyzes subjective well-being (SWB), people's cognitive and affective evaluations of their lives. Progress has been made in understanding the components of SWB, the importance of adaptation and goals to feelings of well-being, the temperament underpinnings of SWB, and the cultural influences on well-being. Representative selection of respondents, naturalistic experience sampling measures, and other methodological refinements are now used to study SWB and could be used to produce national indicators of happiness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Subjective well-being.

Reviews the literature since 1967 on subjective well-being (SWB [including happiness, life satisfaction, and positive affect]) in 3 areas: measurement, causal factors, and theory. Most measures of SWB correlate moderately with each other and have adequate temporal reliability and internal consistency; the global concept of happiness is being replaced with more specific and well-defined concepts, and measuring instruments are being developed with theoretical advances; multi-item scales are promising but need adequate testing. SWB is probably determined by a large number of factors that can be conceptualized at several levels of analysis, and it may be unrealistic to hope that a few variables will be of overwhelming importance. Several psychological theories related to happiness have been proposed; they include telic, pleasure and pain, activity, top–down vs bottom–up, associanistic, and judgment theories. It is suggested that there is a great need to more closely connect theory and research. (7 p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive science and science education.

Discusses science education from a cognitive orientation that begins with the idea that to understand something, one must integrate it with already existing knowledge schemata. The paradox of science education is that its goal is to impart new schemata to replace the student's extant ideas that differ from the scientific theories being taught. Studies that illustrate the extent of the mismatch between the student's schemata and the expert's schemata are reviewed, and implications for instruction and for cognitive theories of learning are identified. Several characterizations of the differences between naive and scientific explanations are contrasted: the view from the cognitive science literature on the novice–expert shift, from the history of science on theory change, and from science educators and the works of Piaget. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Subjective memorability and the mirror effect.

The mirror effect refers to the common finding that hit and false alarm rates on a recognition test are inversely related. The present research investigated the generality of the mirror effect (to rare words) and tested whether the effect might be grounded in accurate estimates of word memorability. The 1st 2 experiments showed that although high- and low-frequency words exhibit a mirror effect, rare words do not. Furthermore, contrary to expectations, Ss consistently (and mistakenly) predicted that memorability was directly correlated with frequency of usage. These findings weigh against the idea that the mirror effect arises because of an S's ability to reject low-frequency lures on the grounds that such words would have been remembered had they apppeared previously. Instead, the rejection of lures from different frequency categories may be determined by their semantic or phonemic overlap with list targets, and an analysis along these lines may help to explain why rare words constitute an exception to the otherwise ubiquitous mirror effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Subjective measures of well-being.

Traditionally, the "happiness" of the American population has been measured in economic or objective terms. But research (A. Campbell et al, in press) indicates that between 1957 and 1972, while the economic and social indicators were rapidly moving upward, the proportion of the population who described themselves as "very happy" declined steadily, particularly among the most affluent portion of the population. It is argued that in order to describe the quality of the experience of the population, more subjective measures are needed to examine the experience itself. Three general measures of life experience (satisfaction with life, affective quality of life, and perceived stress) are discussed in terms of an earlier (1972) author-conducted study. Findings from that study indicate that while the 3 measures are moderately related to each, people living in different circumstances express different patterns of well-being and that these patterns reflect the peculiar quality of the situation in which they live. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Subjective measurements in television.

A discussion of the type of psychophysical experiments which are fruitfully carried out in studying the relation between physical circuit variables and the perception of television pictures by the viewer. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Subjective certainty and resistance to change.

"Ss were led to believe that they were exchanging numbered counters with one another, through a messenger, to the end that all six members could achieve simultaneous solutions to a problem… . The crucial determination was whether or not S would break his own solution to yield to a simulated request from another group member for one of the numbers he was using… . evidence is used to support an interpretation of yielding to group pressure which takes account of Ss' perceptual modes of organizing complex, ambiguous situations." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Subjective evaluation of life events.

Surveyed 50 medical/surgical patients (mean age 59.6 yrs) concerning the occurrence of life events during the preceding year. Their subjective evaluations of the events were obtained for the dimensions of desirability, adjustment, anticipation, and control. (Psychosocial adjustment was measured by a modification of the Profile of Adjustment and Role Skills.) Substantial overlap was found among the 4 dimensions, with the degree of overlap varying as a function of whether persons or events were taken as the units of observation. Overlap was greater when events rather than persons served as the units of observation. This finding has implications for the choice of normative versus idiographic approaches to weighting events. Regarding the evaluative dimensions themselves, overlap was greatest for desirability and least for control. Psychological impairment was the area of psychosocial adjustment primarily associated with subjective evaluations, specifically with desirability and adjustment. It is concluded that results are not promising for the inclusion of anticipation and control as major dimensions of stressfulness. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Subjective hierarchies in spatial memory.

Two experiments investigated the structure of spatial memories. Subjects learned locations of objects in spatial layouts (Experiment 1) or locations of object names on maps (Experiment 2). Physical and perceptual boundaries were absent in these spatial arrays. Subjects then participated in three tasks: item recognition, in which the variable of interest was spatial priming; free and cued recall; and Euclidean distance estimation. Ordered-tree analysis of individual subjects' recall protocols produced hierarchical trees consistent with regularities in output order. Spatial priming and distance estimations depended on whether pairs of objects appeared in the same subtree or in different subtrees. These findings indicate that spatial memories have a hierarchical component, even when physical and perceptual boundaries are nonexistent. Priming also increased with depth of clustering in ordered trees. This result supports spreading-activation theories of retrieval but provides evidence against several "non-spreading-activation" theories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Subjective probabilities of interpersonal relationships.

"Subjective probabilities of the existence of various interpersonal relationships under various conditions were obtained with a questionnaire given male college students. Positive affective relationships were regarded as generally most probable, and negative affective relationships as least probable." Various aspects of the interpersonal relationship, e.g., "likes," "trusts," "confides in," "feels superior to," etc., were discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Subjective characteristics of sleep efficiency.

Factor analyzed a 33-item questionnaire concerning typical self-report sleep habits and behavior. After rotation of the principal-components solution, 5 matching factors were isolated in 2 samples of 92 and 180 volunteer male college students. These factors were tentatively interpreted as (a) Voluntary Control of Sleep, (b) Sleep-Onset Difficulty, (c) Difficulty Maintaining Sleep, (d) Recall of Dreaming, and (e) Cognitive Control of Sleep Mentation. Parametric data on estimated factor scores for 640 college students are also reported. While it is not necessary for the dimensions of sleep efficiency to correlate with physiological and EEG data, some data suggest that they may do so successfully. Implications of these subjective dimensions of sleep quality for the understanding of the functions of sleep and the treatment of sleep disorders are briefly discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Psychological methodology: Should it differ from that of natural science?": Erratum.

Reports an error in "Psychological Methodology: Should it Differ from that of Natural Science" by Lawrence La Fave (Canadian Psychologist/Psychologie Canadienne, 1971[Oct], Vol 12[4], 513-525). The sentence beginning on line 30, p. 514 should read: Such value judgments include: falsifiability of a scientific theory is indispensable; as is logical consistency and (by implication) precise definition of technical terms; comprehensiveness; and parsimony. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2007-02143-006.) By the methodology of a science is intended its mathematical-logical base, its axiomatic foundations or philosophical commitments -- not its techniques. Whether psychological methodology differs from that of the natural sciences is considered obliquely by raising the question as to whether value judgments enter psychology in any way unknown to natural science. Six ways values enter psychology are found. Although only one of these does not also intrude upon natural science, this one suffices to require for psychology a new mathematical logic or methodology. The present approach seeks to help disambiguate such phenomenological approaches as Verstehen. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Political ideology and science.

Comments on the letter by S. P. Coe (1981) that raises questions of the relationship between belief in the importance of genetic or environmental factors in determining human conduct and political and social attitudes. It is suggested that this alleged conformity of political ideology and scientific stance is erroneous and historically untenable. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Subjective organization of personality in adulthood and aging.

Studied self-perceived personality change across 3 phases of adult life (young adulthood, middle age, old age). Drawn from developmental theory, dimensions were identified that were predicted to show self-perceived change during these age periods. Scales were written for the specific dimensions of complexity, generativity, integrity, and interiority. These were administered to 270 Ss divided equally among the 3 ages (young adult mean age 20.6 yrs, middle-aged mean age 47.8 yrs, and old-age mean age 69.3 yrs) and between males and females. Self-perceived change was examined by varying instructional conditions to include concurrent, prospective, and retrospective self-assessments. Four control scales from the Personality Research Form (Abasement, Defendence, Impulsivity, Order) were also administered and were predicted to show no self-perceived change. The predicted pattern of self-perceived change was supported for the generativity scale and partially so for the integrity and interiority scales. In addition, 3 of the 4 scales evidenced no self-perceived change. Sex differences were absent throughout the findings. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Cognitive Substrate of Subjective Probability.

The prominent cognitive theories of probability judgment were primarily developed to explain cognitive biases rather than to account for the cognitive processes in probability judgment. In this article the authors compare 3 major theories of the processes and representations in probability judgment: the representativeness heuristic, implemented as prototype similarity, relative likelihood, or evidential support accumulation (ESAM; D. J. Koehler, C. M. White, & R. Grondin, 2003); cue-based relative frequency; and exemplar memory, implemented by probabilities from exemplars (PROBEX; P. Juslin & M. Persson, 2002). Three experiments with different task structures consistently demonstrate that exemplar memory is the best account of the data whereas the results are inconsistent with extant formulations of the representativeness heuristic and cue-based relative frequency. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Philosophy of science versus psychology of science.

Comments that B. F. Singer (see record 1972-22035-001) and B. B. Wolman (see record 1972-20015-001) tacitly endorse the assumption that, in some fundamental sense, the philosophy of science may appropriately be displaced by the psychology of science. The distinction between a philosophical and a psychological approach to explanatory adequacy is illustrated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

AIDS 1988: The science and the limits of science.

Reviews the epidemiology, virology, and immunology of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and discusses the limits of current knowledge in these areas. AIDS came to the attention of public health officials in 1981. At 1st confined to homosexual and bisexual males, heterosexual transmission of AIDS has increased. The concept of high-risk group has been replaced by that of high-risk behaviors (e.g., intravenous drug use, intercourse). HIV damages the immune system by selectively infecting and killing T-4 lymphocytes, thus rendering the body susceptible to opportunistic infections. AIDS research has been limited by inadequate funding. Psychologists are urged to become informed about the science of AIDS as generated by their colleagues in medicine, biology, and public health. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Integrating psychological science and religion.

Comments on S. L. Jones's (see record 1994-29392-001) assertion that psychology and religion cannot be considered to be categorically separated and that there should be a constructive, dialectic, and dialogical relationship between them. Aguinis and Aguinis suggest that the fundamental differences between the science of psychology and religion may not be as easily bridged as Jones indicated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)