Attention between phenomenology and experimental psychology

It is possible to consider attention as the modulating dimension of consciousness. Understood in this sense, attention can be a privileged theme for relating the first person point of view (conceived as a psycho-phenomenology inspired by the work of Husserl) to the experimental sciences (e.g. psychology, neuropsychology, etc.), which have done a great deal of work on attention. This article will take up in succession some different points of view regarding the status of attention and its structure (e.g. static aspects). It will also consider the dynamic of attention from a micro-genetic point of view as well as a functional point of view. The final section will seek to show not only the unique and original contributions of each perspective, but also each perspective's limitations and biases.     

Psychological behaviorism and behaviorizing psychology

Paradigmatic or psychological behaviorism (PB), in a four-decade history of development, has been shaped by its goal, the establishment of a behaviorism that can also serve as the approach in psychology (Watson's original goal). In the process, PB has become a new generation of behaviorism with abundant heuristic avenues for development in theory, philosophy, methodology, and research. Psychology has resources, purview and problem areas, and nascent developments of many kinds, gathered in chaotic diversity, needing unification (and other things) that cognitivism cannot provide. Behaviorism can, within PB's multilevel framework for connecting and advancing both psychology and behaviorism.     

On the role of behaviorism in clinical psychology

This discussion presents the viewpoints of five well-known psychologists on the role of behaviorism in clinical psychology. The article is a condensed version of a symposium presented at the 1978 annual APA convention.     

Misconception and miseducation: Presentations of radical behaviorism in psychology textbooks

Behavior analysts have recently expressed concern about what appear to be misrepresentations of behaviorism in psychology textbooks. This paper presents an analysis of currently used textbooks in the areas of introductory, social, cognitive, personality, and developmental psychology that confirms this. Topics on which behavior analysis is most often misrepresented relate to the role of animal learning research, environmentalism, the "empty organism," language, and the overall utility of the approach. Because textbooks are often a major medium of interaction between the public and behaviorism, behavior analysts must work to correct these errors and to prevent possible negative consequences of widespread misunderstanding. Several potential solutions to these problems are presented that take into account current publishing practices and the monetary contingencies which support them.     

Interbehavioral psychology and radical behaviorism: Some similarities and differences

Both J. R. Kantor's interbehavioral psychology and B. F. Skinner's radical behaviorism represent wellarticulated approaches to a natural science of behavior. As such, they share a number of similar features, yet they also differ on a number of dimensions. Some of these similarities and differences are examined by describing their emergence in the professional literature and by comparing the respective units of analysis of the two approaches-the interbehavioral field and the three-term contingency. An evaluation of the similarities and differences shows the similarities to be largely fundamental, and the differences largely ones of emphasis. Nonetheless, the two approaches do make unique contributions to a natural science of behavior, the integration of which can facilitate the development of that science and its acceptance among other sciences and within society at large.     

Conflicts and missed signals in psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and Gestalt psychology

At the turn of the 20th century, European psychologists found themselves in conflict situations with respect to the role that private mental states should play in a scientific psychology. Out of this conflict arose 3 of the best-known schools of the 20th century: psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and Gestalt psychology. Each of these schools is discussed with respect to two characteristics. First, the authors discuss the attitude of each school on the meaning of the word unconscious as it was understood around 1900. Second, the authors discuss the influence of each school on the reception accorded to books written around 1900 espousing viewpoints that did not cohere with the school's beliefs. Such books may be considered "missed signals" in the history of psychology. "Hits" associated with each school are also highlighted.     

Pavlov's methodological behaviorism as a pre-Socratic contribution of the melding of the differential and experimental psychology

The differential/experimental distinction that Cronbach specified is important because any adequate account of psychological phenomena requires the recognition of the validity of both approaches, and a meaningful melding of the two. This paper suggests that Pavlov's work in psychology, based on earlier traditions of inquiry that can be traced back to the pre-Socratics, provides a potential way of achieving this melding, although such features as systematic rather than anecdotal methods of observation need to be added. Pavlov's methodological behaviorist approach is contrasted with metaphysical behaviorism (as exemplified explicitly in Watson and Skinner, and implicitly in the computer-metaphorical, information-processing explanations employed by current "cognitive" psychology). A common feature of the metaphysical approach is that individual-differences variables like sex are essentially ignored, or relegated to ideological categories such as the treatment of sex as merely a "social construction." Examples of research both before and after the "cognitive revolution" are presented where experimental and differential methods are melded, and individual differences are treated as phenomena worthy of investigation rather than as nuisance factors that merely add to experimental error.     

Paul Meehl and the evolution of statistical methods in psychology

In his landmark 1978 paper, Paul Meehl delineated, with remarkable clarity, some fundamental challenges facing soft psychology as it attempts to test theory with data. In the quarter century that followed, Meehl’s views stimulated much debate and progress, while continually evolving to keep pace with that progress. This paper pays homage to Meehl’s prescience, and traces the impact of his ideas on the recent shift of emphasis away from hypothesis testing and toward confidence interval estimates of effect size.     

Radical behaviorism and the subjective-objective distinction

The distinction between subjective and objective domains is central to traditional psychology, including the various forms of mediational stimulus-organism-response neobehaviorism that treat the elements of a subjective domain as hypothetical constructs. Radical behaviorism has its own unique perspective on the subjective-objective distinction. For radical behaviorism, dichotomies between subjective and objective, knower and known, or observer and agent imply at most unique access to a part of the world, rather than dichotomous ontologies. This perspective leads to unique treatments of such important philosophical matters as (a) dispositions and (b) the difference between first- and third-person psychological sentences.