Mathematical psychology: Prospects for the 21st century: A guest editorial

The twenty-first century is certainly in progress by now, but hardly well underway. Therefore, I will take that modest elasticity in concept as a frame for this essay. This frame will serve as background for some of my hopes and gripes about contemporary psychology and mathematical psychology’s place therein. It will also act as platform for earnest, if wistful thoughts about what might have (and perhaps can still) aid us in forwarding our agenda and what I see as some of the promising avenues for the future. I loosely structure the essay into a section about mathematical psychology in the context of psychology at large and then a section devoted to prospects within mathematical psychology proper. The essay can perhaps be considered as in a similar spirit, although differing in content, to previous editorial-like reviews of general or specific aspects of mathematical psychology such as [Estes, W. K. (1975). Some targets for mathematical psychology. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 12, 263-282; Falmagne, J. C. (2005). Mathematical psychology: A perspective. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 49, 436-439; Luce, R. D. (1997). Several unresolved conceptual problems of mathematical psychology. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 41, 79-87] that have appeared in this journal.     

Adapting human lifestyles for the 21st century

A number of ecological problems (e.g., global warming, ozone depletion, deforestation, acid rain) have been identified, which threaten to reduce the quality of human life in the 21st century. These problems are human produced, resulting primarily from over-population and over-consumption. Alterations in people's awareness, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors may stimulate changes in their political and economic systems, which in turn might foster the kind of lifestyle changes that could mitigate these ecological problems. Psychologists can play a role in helping individuals and systems advance toward the goal of becoming a sustainable society: one that satisfies its current needs without jeopardizing the prospects of future generations.     

Antiepileptic drugs in the 21st century

During the past 10 years, there has been a welcome influx of novel agents for the treatment of epilepsy. Many show advantages compared to older agents, including better adverse effect profiles and lack of drug-drug interactions. The sheer number of agents now available makes distinction among them confusing at times. Agents differ in spectrum of action, pharmacokinetic profile (affecting dosing schedule and drug interactions), and titration time. This review highlights the differences between the various new agents and the more traditional antiseizure drugs. Evidence for the widespread use of these compounds outside their indication, particularly for diseases other than epilepsy, is reviewed as well.     

Personality disorders in the 21st century

The diagnosis and classification of personality disorders have come a long way since the beginning of the 20th century. Perhaps by this time next century, the diagnostic manual of mental disorders will be using a dimensional model of classification that will provide more reliable and meaningful points of demarcation between normal and abnormal personality functioning. This article offers suggestions for the form, content, and placement of such a dimensional model. The particular model emphasized herein is the five-factor model of personality functioning, but the optimal diagnostic system will probably involve an integration of alternative dimensional models.     

Windows on the 21st century

Behavior analysis is a cultural system of which the Association for Behavior Analysis is a component cultural system. As cultural systems, they are composed of interlocking behavioral contingencies that constitute their cultural practices. Critical to the survival of both cultural systems is the frequency of interaction with and the nature of the content of the behavioral contingencies composing those cultural practices. The strengths of behavior analysis as a cultural system include its disciplinary character and its worldwide community of scientists and practitioners; its ability to be integrated into a scientific worldview; its track record in providing effective solutions to problems of importance to society; and the high levels of intellect, competence, and commitment that are characteristic of its participants. Weaknesses of behavior analysis are its status as an academic orphan, its relatively small size and its underdeveloped professional identity, and a lack of sociopolitical sophistication among many of its members. Behavior analysis will need to maximize its strengths and mitigate its weaknesses if it is to take advantage of the many opportunities available for growth in the modern world.     

Life Design: A Paradigm for Career Intervention in the 21st Century

A new paradigm is implicit within the constructivist and narrative methods for career intervention that have emerged in the 21st century. This article makes that general pattern explicit by abstracting its key elements from the specific instances that substantiate the new conceptual model. The paradigm for life design interventions constructs career through small stories, reconstructs the stories into a life portrait, and coconstructs intentions that advance the career story into a new episode.     

Representing Health and Illness: Thoughts for the 21st century

The on-going discussion about a new empiricism in the study of the medical humanities has lead to a misapprehension about the problems attendant to representing health and illness. The difficulty in understanding the politics of health and illness as well as the concomitant new aestheticism that has arisen concerning its representation demands a rethinking of these categories in the 21st century. Obesity can provide a model for the importance of this problem today.     

ADHD treatment in the 21st century: pushing the envelope

Required for optimal intervention for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is evidence-based matching of child, treatment, and situation. The landmark Multimodal Treatment Study (MTA) of Children with ADHD documented the superiority of pharmacotherapy for the vast majority of children with ADHD. Although this study could not address the problem of the match directly, it is generating important leads for research on the use of psychosocial strategies to enhance the scope and durability of treatment gains while decreasing the risks attendant upon long-term use of medication. Given the inherent distinctions between pharmacological and psychosocial treatments, conclusive answers to questions about comparative efficacy will continue to elude scientist-practitioners. Needed next is research examining ways to improve outcomes beyond the effects of medication, using systematically tailored and sequenced psychosocial approaches and exploring new treatment targets, agents, and modalities. To illustrate, some emerging findings from an ongoing experience sampling study and implications for online therapy are discussed.     

Marital research in the 20th century and a research agenda for the 21st century

In this article we review the advances made in the 20th century in studying marriages. Progress moved from a self-report, personality-based approach to the study of interaction in the 1950s, following the advent of general systems theory. This shift led, beginning in the 1970s, to the rapid development of marital research using a multimethod approach. The development of more sophisticated observational measures in the 1970s followed theorizing about family process that was begun in the decade of the 1950s. New techniques for observation, particularly the study of affect and the merging of synchronized data streams using observational and self-report perceptual data, and the use of sequential and time-series analyses produced new understandings of process and power. Research in the decades of the 1980s and 1990s witnessed the realization of many secular changes in the American family, including the changing role of women, social science's discovery of violence and incest in the family, the beginning of the study of cultural variation in marriages, the expansion of the measurement of marital outcomes to include longevity, health, and physiology (including the immune system), and the study of comorbidities that accompany marital distress. A research agenda for the 21st century is then described.     

A bibliometric analysis of the recovered memory controversy in the 21st century

In the 1990s, repressed and recovered memories were at the heart of intense debates within the clinical field as well as in academia. Recent data suggest that this controversy has not yet been resolved in the clinical field. However, it is unclear to what extent repressed and recovered memories are studied in peer‐reviewed outcomes in the 21st century. The current article examined the volume of publications and citations regarding repressed and/or recovered memories during the years 2001–2018. Analysis of the 145 articles retrieved shows that these issues are still being investigated within the academic sphere. Proponents and opponents of repressed memories regularly published articles, and these were cited as often as articles published during the 1990s. These issues were also multidisciplinary (i.e., social/clinical/experimental psychology, psychiatry, and law) and often dealt with dissociation, child abuse, and/or false memory. The results are encouraging for furthering the research field and for the understanding of traumatic memory mechanisms.     

Darwin's lost theory and its implications for the 21st century

This paper reports the reconstruction of the long ignored “second half” or human level completion for Darwin's theory of evolution. Pursuing the striking contradictions between what has been attributed to Darwin by his neo‐Darwinian and sociobiological heirs and what he actually said, in ignored sections of The Descent of Man and Darwin's long unpublished notebooks it uncovers a three‐level theory of the moral agent that foreshadows the emergence of 20th century social science and the late 20th century rise of the fields of systems science and humanistic psychology. Implications for a joint venture of natural science and social science in the completion of the humanistic and action‐oriented theory of evolution called for by the species‐threatening challenges of the 21st century are considered.     

Psychological testing and assessment in the 21st century.

As spin-offs of the current revolution in the cognitive and neurosciences, clinical neuropsychologists in the 21st century will be using biological tests of intelligence and cognition that record individual differences in brain functions at the neuromolecular, neurophysiologic, and neurochemical levels. Assessment of patients will focus more on better use of still intact functions, as well as rehabilitating or bypassing impaired functions, than on diagnosis, as is the focus today. Better developed successors to today's scales for assessing personal competency and adaptive behavior, as well as overall quality of life, also will be in wide use in clinical settings. With more normal individuals, use of new generations of paper-and-pencil inventories, as well as biological measures for assessing differences in interests, attitudes, personality styles, and predispositions, is predicted.