Linked Gopher and World-Wide Web services for the American Psychological Society and Hanover College Psychology Department

The Internet is a vast and unorganized collection of information, making it difficult to find desired information. This paper describes the World-Wide Web (WWW) pages and Gopher directories designed to provide easy access to psychological resources set up by both the American Psychological Society (APS) and a college psychology department. The types of resources found at these sites include links to APS job listings, electronic journals, and psychology departments with Internet directories of information. One particular resource that is highlighted concerns the development of WWW tutorials in sensation and perception. These tutorials are offered as examples of how the WWW can be used to supplement texts and classroom instruction.     

Creating psychological tutorials on the World-Wide Web

The potential impact that the World-Wide Web (WWW) will have on psychology and psychological education extends far beyond serving as a resource for information acquisition. Particularly through the WWW there is the capability to develop interactive teaching resources with integrated multimedia. These resources can take the form of tutorials or quizzes. In the present paper, on-line examples illustrate how these resources can be developed and used.     

The making of a personality inventory: Help from the WWW

Data collected electronically from the World-Wide Web (WWW) in two samples (n=429 and 1,657) were compared with traditional paper-and-pencil measure data from two university samples (n=760 and 148) in three psychometric studies of a new measure of self-trust, the Self-Trust Questionnaire. With the exception of scale score variance, which was larger in WWW samples, psychometric properties of the scale were comparable across samples collected from the two sources. WWW samples were more similar to psychology student samples (predominantly young females) than to typical Internet users. On balance, findings indicate that the advantages of the WWW as a data source, including large heterogeneous samples, outweigh problems with data accuracy and generalizability, making the WWW an attractive source of data for researchers developing self-report personality inventories.     

Computer use in psychology instruction

This paper presents the ways in which psychology departments are using microcomputers for instruction, the types of facilities that they are using, and the varieties of hardware that they employ. These data are related to other data reported over the past 10 years. In addition, a summary of the types of software currently available in all areas of psychology is presented, and areas in which there is a need for further software development are identified. The information reviewed in this paper was compiled from the current software listings available through COMPSYCH, as well as the results of a survey distributed to registered users of COMPSYCH who hold academic positions.     

Evaluation of a Web-based introductory psychology course: I. Learning and satisfaction in on-line versus lecture courses

We offered introductory psychology on the World-Wide Web (WWW) and evaluated the on-line format relative to the traditional lecture-test format, using a pretest-posttest nonequivalent control group design. Multiple sections of the introductory course were offered each semester; on-line and lecture sections were taught by the same instructor, the same textbook was used, and the same in-class examinations were taken. For on-line sections, mastery quizzes, interactive individual exercises, and weekly laboratory meetings replaced lectures. Increased content knowledge was greater for the students in the Web sections, as was in-class examination performance. Use of the WWW and computers for academic purposes increased more in the on-line sections, and the on-line students showed a greater decrease in computer anxiety. The students in the on-line sections expressed appreciation for course components and the convenience of the course, but the lecture sections received higher ratings on course evaluations than did the on-line sections. Learning and course satisfaction were dissociated in the two course formats.     

Measuring study time distributions: Implications for designing computer-based courses

In both traditional lecture-test courses and courses delivered over the World-Wide Web (WWW), both beginning and experienced college students reported studying almost exclusively just before exams. Automatic measures (computer records, WWW page hits, and electronic mail archives) confirmed the self-reported distributions of study times. Weekly deadlines produced weekly volleys of taking on-line quizzes, a pattern that was reflected in self-reports of study times. However, on-line study materials were used primarily for review for regularly scheduled in-class exams. Thus, regardless of course format, students engaged in massed practice and did not experience study aids at appropriate times. Computer technology provides new forms of learning for students, as well as opportunities for instructors to observe patterns of student study time. Management of instructional contingencies will be necessary to bring students into contact with the rich cognitive aids enabled by technology.     

Clinical training and the duty to protect.

Given that the duty to protect is now a well established clinical and legal expectation, training in professional psychology should assist students in developing conceptual models for violence risk assessment and management. This report presents a training model incorporating recent advancements in risk assessment (such as the assessment of psychopathy), the need for basic legal understanding, and knowledge of specific risk management strategies. Additionally, academic and internship training programs in Michigan were surveyed by telephone about current training patterns. Preliminary results indicated program strengths in general awareness and training in risk factors. However, the data also suggested a need to formalize a faculty role in risk education, improve the training of students in relevant legal information, and establish coherent conceptual models of dealing with potential patient violence. It is argued that improving training of future professionals in this way will improve clinical practice, reduce legal liability, and improve public safety.     

The Association of American Medical Colleges and the Association of Medical School Psychologists: Finding Psychology’s Place in Academic Medicine

This paper highlights the role of the Association of Medical School Psychologists (AMSP) as a bridge between academic medicine and psychology. AMSP’s affiliation with Division 12 of the American Psychological Association is discussed, but the primary focus is AMSP’s affiliation with the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and the AAMC’s Council of Academic Societies (CAS). The history, structure, activities, and goals of AAMC and CAS are examined. AMSP’s affiliation with AAMC is important for psychologists in medical schools and academic medical centers, and for psychology in general, because AAMC is the major voice of academic medicine in the US. AAMC activities affect medical education at all levels, as well as research and health services at academic medical centers, and health care policy at the national level. AMSP’s dual affiliation with AAMC’s CAS and APA’s Society of Clinical Psychology will increase psychology’s visibility and influence in academic medical centers and enhance the two-way flow of ideas and information between academic medicine and psychology.     

Introduction: Social Cognition, Psychodynamic Psychology, and the Representation and Processing of Emotionally Significant Information

ABSTRACT This special issue examines two perspectives on how people comprehend and respond to significant features of their lives: psychoanalytic psychology and social cognition. The articles included present new empirical findings relevant to die overlap of psychoanalysis and social-cognitive psychology, as well as commentaries from each perspective. This introduction summarizes important conceptual and methodological challenges in the integration of two such distinct approaches to emotionally significant information.     

The gnosis of knowledge navigation on the Net

A set of activities developed to expose liberal arts undergraduates to global networking software and resources is detailed. Using a suite of Internet software tools and Macintosh computers, teams of students collaborated with faculty searching the World-Wide Web for on-line resources. Detailed student logs provide insights into the challenges of searching for Internet resources. Project shortcomings include difficulty in accessing information sites and poor organization of the final written reports. Ideas for improving the project in the future include allowing more time for the search process and replacing the written report with a WWW home page. The class project enhances the utilization of technology in the curriculum while equipping the students with computer skills to enhance their education.     

关联与互动:20世纪的科学心理学与分析哲学

今天的心理学是否仍然具有理论魅力和教化力量,心理学者是否真的在思考和创造,关键在于心理学研究的思维方式和话语方式是否发生真正的改变。中国心理学传统以关注人生命的完整性、目标的人本性和价值性以及方法论的关系化取向,在与科学心理学之间的关联与互动中,成为科学心理学高举"反思之刀"实现自救和新生的重要学术资源、创新资源和借鉴资源。     

Do humans use episodic memory to solve a <Emphasis Type="Italic">What</Emphasis>-<Emphasis Type="Italic">Where</Emphasis>-<Emphasis Type="Italic">When</Emphasis> memory task?

What-Where-When (WWW) memory tasks have been used to study episodic(-like) memory in non-human animals. In this study, we investigate whether humans use episodic memory to solve such a WWW memory task. Participants are assigned to one of two treatments, in which they hide different coin types (what) in different locations (where) on two separate occasions (when). In the Active treatment, which mimics the animal situation as closely as possible, participants are instructed to memorize the WWW information; in the Passive treatment, participants are unaware of the fact that memory will be tested. In both groups, the majority of participants report using a mental time travel strategy to solve the task, and performance on a different episodic memory test significantly predicts performance on the WWW memory task. This suggests that the WWW memory task is a good test of episodic memory in humans. Participants remember locations and coins from the first hiding session better than they do those of the second hiding session, suggesting their memories may be reinforced during the second hiding session. We also investigated how well episodic memory performance predicted performance on the three aspects of the WWW memory task separately. In the Passive treatment, episodic memory performance predicts performance on all three aspects of the WWW memory task equally. However, in the Active treatment it only predicts performance on the what component. This could imply that during active encoding a different memory system is used for where and when information than during passive encoding. Encoding of what information seems to rely on episodic memory processing in both conditions.     

Using internet resources in a research methods course

Internet resources (a WWW home page, a Unix-based Listserv discussion list, and e-mail) were used to supplement traditional materials in a research methods course. The course also included word processing and computerized data analysis, and the student version of MEL was used as a research simulator. A computer usage survey was administered at the beginning and end of the semester. Analysis of the survey results indicated that students were more positive in their attitudes about computers as a helpful tool for psychologists at the end of the course than at the beginning. They did not show an increased appreciation for the usefulness of Internet and e-mail, however, which is probably the result of the text-based Internet browser and the slowness of the e-mail system used.     

Person orientation of male and female high school students: To the Educational disadvantage of males?

Potential differences in the person orientation of male and female high school students that are likely to have a significant influence on their achievement strivings were investigated. A questionnaire, consisting of several indices of person orientation, was administered to 848 grade 10 and 12 students. The data revealed that boys are especially susceptible to anti-intellectual influences from their peers and suggest that the interference of affiliative concerns with achievement behavior, a problem that has received considerable attention in the psychology of women, may also be very relevant to understanding the academic underachievement of males.     

Medical Psychology in Australia

Medical psychology in Australia is heavily influenced by British and American thought. The dominant model for clinical training and practice is the scientist–practitioner model, yet a gulf exists between academic and practice settings. Membership of the professional society requires 6 years of university study in psychology. However, registration requires only 4 years training in psychology. Medical psychologists provide a broad range of services in hospital and community settings, often within multidisciplinary teams. Challenges for the future include bridging the divide between university and health settings, increasing qualifications required for registration, making psychology culturally relevant, and demonstrating to funding managers that psychological interventions are both clinically effective and cost effective.     

中国管理心理学发展的回顾和展望

本文以 1 980年中国心理学会工业心理学专业委员会成立为标志 ,总结了 1 5年来我国工业心理学的主要成就 ,并从激励、人员测评、领导行为、管理决策和跨文化研究等方面概述了中国管理心理学的发展 ,提出了今后值得研究的若干课题。本文最后指出 ,从我国企业的实际问题着手 ,不断积累资料 ,提出自己的理论 ,同时以我为主 ,借鉴国外的研究成果 ,在企业实际中不断检验和修正理论 ,是我国管理心理学的发展方向。     

Psychology at a crossroads

The current state of psychology is examined from the perspective that academic psychology and the private practice of psychology are faced with threats of their own obsolescence. Factors contributing to tensions in the discipline, as well as some hopeful signs, are reviewed. Three linked proposals are presented for the long-term resolution of these problems. An appropriate setting and a comprehensive model for graduate education are suggested. The third proposal concerns changes in our view of ourselves. A restoration of a sense of community is seen as a precondition for any constructive action.     

Gnosticism and Psychology

In this paper, I have attempted a historical analysis of what Jung might have been thinking when he wrote the 'Seven sermons'. To this end, I tried to ascertain which Gnostic texts Jung may have consulted before writing it. These documents were then compared with the 'Seven sermons', and numerous affinities noted between it and the Gnostic texts. Jung's contemporaneous academic works were then compared with this treatise, and parallels were established between the 'Seven sermons' and Jung's emerging psychology of the unconscious. In the process, an attempt was made to show how Jung made use of Gnostic themes in his emerging psychology. While there is no way of knowing precisely what Jung was thinking when he wrote the 'Seven sermons', it is clear that he was well acquainted not only with the work of Basilides, but also with the work of other Gnostic thinkers. It is not enough to assume that because Jung chose the pseudonym of Basilides, he was necessarily Jung's primary Gnostic influence. At the same time, it is also evident that Jung was developing his own psychology during the writing of the 'Seven sermons'. We recall Jung's observations regarding the 'Seven sermons', which we quoted on page 17: These conversations with the dead formed a kind of prelude to what I had to communicate to the world about the unconscious . . . All my works, all my creative activity, has come from those initial fantasies and dreams which began in 1912, almost fifty years ago. Everything that I accomplished in later life was already contained in them, although at first only in the form of emotions and images (Jung 21, p. 192). On the basis of what has been published, there are enough affinities between his academic work and this treatise to posit that the 'Seven sermons' played an important role in the emergence of Jung's psychology. Given these numerous parallels, I suspect that Jung's unpublished writings, including the Red Book, would only strengthen the arguments put forth in this paper.     

Advancing Psychology as a Bio-behavioral Science

Concerns for the integrity of psychology as an independent discipline have caused some psychologists to object to introducing any knowledge from the biological sciences into the training of psychologists. However, calls for the greater incorporation of the behavioral sciences in medical education, increased attention to research on the mechanisms of bio-behavioral interaction, and initiatives in translational medical research and clinical care, have prompted increased interest in interdisciplinary research, health care, and teaching. These changes, in turn, are resulting in a re-conceptualization of the structure of academic medicine with increasing emphasis upon multidisciplinary knowledge and interdisciplinary collaboration, and less emphasis upon disciplinary insularity and competitiveness. If clinical health psychology is to play a role in this evolving concept of academic health care, it must adequately prepare its trainees to function in interdisciplinary academic health care settings. This will require not only expertise in the role of behavioral factors relevant to medical disorders, but also some basic familiarity with the biological processes to which those behavioral factors relate. With the evolution of its fund of knowledge, clinical health psychology has the potential to utilize its science to discover, describe, interpret, teach and clinically apply knowledge of the mechanisms of interaction between biological functions and behavioral, learning, cognitive, socio-cultural and environmental processes. By failing to seize this initiative, clinical health psychology risks becoming irrelevant to the evolving model of medical research, education and health care. Presented, in part, to the Association of Psychologists in Academic Health Centers, Minneapolis, MN, May 2007.