Cognitive psychology in Scandinavia: Attention, memory, learning and memory dysfunctions

The last 15 years of research on attention, memory, learning and memory dysfunction is reviewed in detail, while areas such as reading, problem-solving and decision making are viewed from the perspective of memory and learning. Parts of the reference material are drawn from other areas than cognitive psychology: For example, educational psychology and the neurosciences. A total of 513 papers are reviewed of which 360 papers are of Scandinavian origin. On the basis of the reviewed material, three trends are projected: Cognitive task analysis, cognitive neuropsychology and, finally, an increase of qualitative data analyses.     

Trends in the psychophysiology of individual differences

Pavlov’s typology of higher nervous activity was the first systematic approach to the psychophysiology of individual differences. Pavlov’s theory has been further developed by Teplov, Nebylitsyn and their pupils in the Institute of Psychology in Moscow. In particular, Nebylitsyn has delineated a new property of the nervous system and has shown that it is different from strength of nervous system. In the Western research context we can compare the relationship between these two parameters to that between arousal and conditioning level. Eysenck’s theory of the physiological bases of extraversion/introversion is discussed in relation to Nebylitsyn ’s theses and Gray’s conception of arousability. Finally, it is suggested that future work in the psychophysiology of individual differences should stress the study of the ontogenetic development of the physiological variables.     

Dialectical and hermeneutical psychology

Dialectical and hermeneutical contributions to psychology are reviewed separately for the countries Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Then, selected contributions are presented more extensively from the areas of family, socialization, and therapy; behavior therapy; educational psychology; research methods; and general psychology. Particularly in the area of family and socialization, dialectical and hermeneutical approaches have contributed to the application of, and reflection upon, therapy as a research method. The impact of dialectical and hermeneutical thought on Scandinvian psychology is too diverse to talk about any specific school, in either of the two traditions. Some main points of emphasis are, though: the qualitative study of individual cases, particularly through therapy; the focus on the internal unity of individual acts with the historical and material context of the act; the impact of the dominating mode of production upon every sphere of human life; the focus on issues of interpretation, particularly the relation of appearance and essence; and the conception of the object of psychology as a developing individual in a historical world.     

Self-monitoring: individual differences in orientations to the social world

In their articles in this special section of the Journal of Personality, the authors have focused their attention on the role of individual differences in self-monitoring for a variety of interpersonal phenomena. In so doing, the authors have provided an overview of the theoretical and empirical contributions of the psychology of self-monitoring to the domains of interest: close relationships, consumer behavior, behavior in the workplace, and social interaction. As each of the contributing authors to this special section suggests, much more theoretical and empirical work is in order if the impact of individual differences in self-monitoring for the phenomena reviewed here is to be fully appreciated. Moreover, the four domains of interest represented in this special section by no means exhaust the areas to which theorists and researchers have applied or can apply the psychology of individual differences in self-monitoring. Given the large nomological network that currently exists involving the self-monitoring construct, it is anticipated that the breadth and depth of applications of the psychology of self-monitoring will only continue to expand as it has in the last 30 years since the appearance of the construct in the literature.     

视觉观点采择的发生发展及其影响因素

通过总结视觉观点采择的概念和研究范式,概括发展心理学和比较心理学中视觉观点采择演化发生和个体发展的已有研究,分析视觉观点采择与心理理论的关系及语言和文化等影响因素,指出将来的研究需要归纳测验不同水平视觉观点采择的一系列研究范式,系统考察不同物种间视觉观点采择的演化发生过程,还可将不同水平的实验范式与脑成像研究相结合来考察视觉观点采择的脑神经机制,并关注影响视觉观点采择发展的因素.     

Psychological Science in Australia

This paper is a brief account of the Australian Strategic Review of the Psychology Discipline and its Research. Issues discussed include Australia's contribution to world research in psychological science, research funding, the age and qualifications of researchers, the social and economic benefits arising from the applications of research outcomes, multidisciplinary issues, the role of psychology in industry, links between the discipline and the profession of psychology, professional training, cross-cultural issues, and educational issues. Priorities for development of research and postgraduate training are identified, and include human factors and other areas related to technological change, clinical psychology with particular attention to health psychology, industrial and organizational psychology, and neuroscience and physiological psychology.     

Biopsychology research in China

The early studies on biopsychology in China were classified under the name of physiological psychology and comparative psychology. In 1979 the Division of Physiological Psychology of the Chinese Psychological Society was founded. Fifteen years later, the Brain‐Behavior Research Center was founded at the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The objective of the Center was to establish a multidisciplinary scientific environment for conducting experimental research on the relationship between brain and behaviour as well as the interactions of the mind and body. A wide range of studies in biopsychology has been conducted in China. The most major research areas are: (1) Behavioural and physiological studies of stress: Research work includes the effect of early environment on stressful responses, interactions of behavioural and endocrine responses under stress, effects of emotional stress on immune function, stress and hypertension and the related role of interleukin‐1. (2) Conditioning and immunity: Studies focus on the effects of conditioning in the modulation of bidirectional immune function. Data from different experiments demonstrate that psychological processes are capable of influencing immune function. The neural substrates are also explored. (3) Memory and learning: Studies mostly concentrate on types of memory formation and training stimulus, effect of light exposure and corticosterone on learning and memory, and the role of the hippocampus in learning and memory. (4) Drug addiction: Work mainly focuses on long‐term aspects of addiction, including memory, novelty seeking, motivation‐related models, and the brain mechanisms underlying morphine psychological dependence.     

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN EXPERIMENTAL AND CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY: THE CASE OF BEHAVIOR THERAPY

Behavior therapy is the outstanding example of the beneficial influence of experimental research on clinical practice. Initial applications of laboratory research to clinical disorders consisted primarily of the principles and procedures of operant and classical conditioning. The development and evaluation of the token economy and biofeedback methods are used to illustrate the contribution of operant conditioning, whereas the derivation and efficacy of exposure-based treatments for phobic and obsessive-compulsive disorders exemplify the utility of classical and avoidance conditioning concepts. As behavior therapy has matured and grown more clinically sophisticated, its theoretical and research bases have broadened to include areas such as vicarious learning and self-regulatory processes. Most recently, concepts from modern cognitive and social psychology (e.g., information processing, attribution theory) have begun to guide clinical applications. In turn, different therapeutic approaches have influenced the nature of laboratory research in some areas. Nonetheless, a gap still exists between experimental research and clinical practice. The solution to this perennial problem is not to make scientists of practitioners, but to recognize the unique contributions of basic researchers, clinical investigators, and practitioners, within a consistent framework that specifies the complex interrelationships among the different levels of analysis along the continuum of basic research to clinical practice. Such a framework is sketched-out together with some comments on the reasons for relative paucity of controlled clinical research in the U.S.A. and suggestions for bringing the influence of research findings to bear on practice.     

A majority world perspective on human development: Commemorating the achievements of Çiğdem Kağıtçıbaşı

This obituary draws attention to the contributions by Çi?dem Ka??tç?ba?? in the fields of developmental psychology and cross-cultural psychology. Three themes are mentioned: research on the value of children, early childhood enrichment programs, and conceptualization of the autonomous related self.     

Contributions of Social Psychology to the Study of Appetltive Behaviors1

Social psychology has contributed substantially to the study and understanding of appetitive behaviors. This paper focuses on three major lines of social psychological research that have made particularly important contributions to appetitive behaviors: Hovland's work on attitudes and attitude changes, Bandura's social learning theory, and Schachter's studies of obesity and cigarette smoking. The relevant work of these three social psychologists and the research following from each line of inquiry are reviewed. Additional potential applications of these social psychological approaches to the study of appetitive behaviors are discussed.     

Charles “Erik” Eriksen (1923-2018)

A towering figure in experimental psychology, Charles W. Eriksen, passed away in February this year. “Erik” made extensive original and lasting contributions to both research methods and theories in several areas of psychology, especially involving visual information processing. His research exhibited consistent concerns with experimental methods for distinguishing among alternative explanations and distinguishing perception from behavior. Erik pioneered many research methods now in common use—including converging operations, visual search, rapid serial presentations, the stop-signal paradigm, temporal integration in form perception, spatial cues for guiding selective attention, and the flankers task. He also introduced and tested many theories of selective attention. Erik was the founding editor of Perception & Psychophysics, and served for 23 years as its principal editor. An impressive and unforgettable person, Erik was a compelling personification of “the greatest generation.”     

Facial expressions and the regulation of emotions

In the two decades since contemporary psychologists produced strong evidence confirming Darwin's century-old hypothesis of the innateness and universality of certain facial expressions of emotions, research on expressive behavior has become well established in developmental, social, and personality psychology and in psychophysiology. There are also signs of increased interest in emotions in clinical psychology and the neurosciences. Despite the success of the work on emotion expression and the upward trend of interest in emotions in general, the fundamental issue of the relation between emotion expression and emotion experience or feeling state remains controversial. A new developmental model of expression-feeling relations provides a framework for reevaluating previous research and for understanding the conditions under which expressions are effective in activating and regulating feeling states. The model has implications for research, socialization practices, and psychotherapy.     

The widespread influence of the Rescorla-Wagner model

The theory of Pavlovian conditioning presented by Robert Rescorla and Allan Wagner in 1972 (the Rescorla-Wagner model) has been enormously important in animal learning research. It also has been applied in a variety of areas other than animal learning. We summarize the contribution of the Rescorla-Wagner model to research in verbal learning, social psychology, human category learning, human judgments of correlational relationships, transitive inference, color aftereffects, and physiological regulation. We conclude that there have been few models in experimental psychology as influential as the Rescorla-Wagner model.     

Pavloviana inPsychology of the 20th Century: A special review

In the encyclopedicPsychology of the 20th Century three volumes are relevant to the work of I. P. Pavlov, his predecessors, contemporaries, and followers. Volume 1 (1976) provides an extensive account of the history of non-introspective, “objective” psychology. In Volume 4 (1977), examined in this review and consisting of sections on “Theories of Learning” and “Behavior Modification,” separate chapters are devoted to Pavlov’s life and work, and its continuation in the Soviet Union. Classical conditioning is considered in the context of S-R learning theories, interaction with operant conditioning, and development of behavior therapy. Additional materials are likely to be presented in Volume 6 (to be published) dealing with animal psychology, ethology, and physiological psychology.     

The interface of cognitive and industrial,work and organizational psychology

This special issue brings together a collection of papers that variously integrate, extend and/or test new theory and research lying at the boundaries of the cognitive sciences and the field of industrial, work and organizational (IWO) psychology. Over the last two decades, the IWO psychology field in general has witnessed a dramatic upsurge in the development and testing of theories of work‐related behaviour and the design of interventions with a cognitive emphasis. In the related areas of engineering psychology and ergonomics, for example, researchers have devoted considerable attention to an analysis of the nature and significance of employees' mental models of complex operating systems in terms of their impact on system performance while in the area of selection and assessment, attribution theory and other work from the field of social cognition have increasingly informed the analysis of personnel selection interviews. Cognitive theory and research have also been applied in an attempt to better understand the underlying bases of appraisers' judgments in the appraisal of performance. In the area of training and development, conventional approaches to the analysis, design, and evaluation of interventions are being augmented, and in some cases openly challenged, by the application of cognitive constructs, theories, and principles. Much recent theory and research relating to the topics of employee relations and motivation, organizational development and change, teamwork, leadership, organizational culture and climate, negotiation, group decision‐making, stress, and personality and individual differences has also been decidedly cognitive in emphasis. This essay provides a selective overview of these developments, both in order to place in context the other contributions to this volume and in order to reflect more generally on the state of theory and research lying at the IWO‐cognitive psychology interface.     

Vocational behavior and career development, 1980: A review

Papers were reviewed in the sections where their major findings seemed to have the most important implications. Since it typically was not possible to do justice to individual studies in a few lines of summary, readers are referred to the specific articles of their interest for further information regarding other findings.As has been the case in the past several years, the number of studies related to vocational behavior and career development appears to be expanding, along with perceptions of what is relevant to the field. As greater emphasis is placed on the working life of individuals after initial occupational choices are made, researchers on vocational behavior and career development will increasingly find it necessary to synthesize research findings from the areas of industrial/organizational psychology, organizational sociology, and organizational behavior and theory. This factor may suggest greater collaboration among researchers across these fields in the future. In any event, the broadening base of relevant research, while challenging, also is an exciting development with rich potential for increased knowledge of vocational behavior.As Walsh mentioned in his review of 1978 literature, there is a vital need for more work of a longitudinal nature. We see some increase this year, but we are too frequently forced to draw conclusions regarding long-term vocational development from studies which are mainly crosssectional and correlational in nature.Among the research directions of note this year is the increasing emphasis on information processing/decision-making frameworks as a means of studying the vocation development process. Other trends were the growing concern with the relationship between work and nonwork, interest in recruitment processes, and the emphasis on situational as well as individual factors in predicting vocational behavior.     

Leipzig and Louvain University in Belgium

Summary Experimental psychology was introduced at the University of Louvain in 1891 under the influence of Désiré J. Mercier, a philosopher, who wanted to bridge the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas with experimental psychology. As the head of the philosophy program at the Louvain University, Mercier sent Armand Thiéry, his collaborator, to Leipzig in order to acquaint him with Wundt's physiological psychology and laboratory. Upon his return from Germany Thiéry organized a psychological laboratory at the Louvain University and offered a course in psychophysiology. Thiéry headed the experimental program at Louvain for over ten years but he was more interested in philosophical and theoretical problems than in laboratory investigations. His successor, Albert Michotte, was wholeheartedly committed to laboratory experimentation and research. He also studied in Leipzig but was more influenced by Külpe than by Wundt. Under Michotte's leadership, which lasted over 50 years, Louvain laboratory became one of the most active and original research centers in Europe.     

On Becoming Scholars and Activists for Disability Rights

In this paper, the authors discussed the nexus between the Americans with Disabilities Act and the founding of the field of Community Psychology. Contributions of the latter and future areas of research are reviewed here in three areas of importance to both fields: Community living and participation, employment, and transition from high school. Community psychology can make potential contributions to advancing research in these three areas. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Neuroscience of Pavlovian conditioning: a brief review

Current knowledge on the neuronal substrates of Pavlovian conditioning in animals and man is briefly reviewed. First, work on conditioning in aplysia, that has showed amplified pre-synaptic facilitation as the basic mechanism of associative learning, is summarized. Then, two exemplars of associative learning in vertebrates, fear conditioning in rodents and eyelid conditioning in rabbits, are described and research into its neuronal substrates discussed. Research showing the role of the amygdala in fear conditioning and of the cerebellum in eyelid conditioning is reviewed, both at the circuit and cellular plasticity levels. Special attention is given to the parallelism suggested by this research between the neuronal mechanisms of conditioning and the principles of formal learning theory. Finally, recent evidence showing a similar role of the amygdala and of the cerebellum in human Pavlovian conditioning is discussed.     

现代运动心理学研究综述

从宏观的角度描述了现代运动心理学的研究领域,分析了运动员个性、唤醒水平与运动成绩、焦虑与运动成绩、心理技能训练和运动动机等五个方面的研究倾向,指出：认知运动心理学仍是研究的主流,各类研究都在尽量追求更明确的理论导向和更好的生态学效度,试图综合性地探讨运动行为,并且更加注重在描述和预测的基础上解释和控制运动行为。