Toward a New Model of Integrative Psychotherapy: Psychosynergy

The goal of resynthesizing that which has been disconnected in our field is what the author has designated as psychosynergy. This article seeks to advance our shared interest in the subject matter of psychotherapy. Particularly noted are efforts to reconnect the separate realms that give support to therapeutic practice, namely its undergirding scientific principles, its theoretically deduced personality and psychopathologic features, its classification format for organizing psychic pathology, its empirically grounded assessment instruments, and its integration of diverse therapeutic modalities. This overall goal stems from the author's belief that a synthesis of these components not only is possible, but will strengthen progress through mutual reinforcement and reciprocal enhancements.     

Ability, breadth, and parsimony in computational models of higher-order cognition

Computational models will play an important role in our understanding of human higher‐order cognition. How can a model's contribution to this goal be evaluated? This article argues that three important aspects of a model of higher‐order cognition to evaluate are (a) its ability to reason, solve problems, converse, and learn as well as people do; (b) the breadth of situations in which it can do so; and (c) the parsimony of the mechanisms it posits. This article argues that fits of models to quantitative experimental data, although valuable for other reasons, do not address these criteria. Further, using analogies with other sciences, the history of cognitive science, and examples from modern‐day research programs, this article identifies five activities that have been demonstrated to play an important role in our understanding of human higher‐order cognition. These include modeling within a cognitive architecture, conducting artificial intelligence research, measuring and expanding a model's ability, finding mappings between the structure of different domains, and attempting to explain multiple phenomena within a single model.     

Truth Approximation, Social Epistemology, and Opinion Dynamics

This paper highlights some connections between work on truth approximation and work in social epistemology, in particular work on peer disagreement. In some of the literature on truth approximation, questions have been addressed concerning the efficiency of research strategies for approximating the truth. So far, social aspects of research strategies have not received any attention in this context. Recent findings in the field of opinion dynamics suggest that this is a mistake. How scientists exchange and take into account information about each others’ beliefs may greatly influence the accuracy and speed with which the scientific community as a whole approximates the truth. On the other hand, social epistemologists concerned with peer disagreement have so far neglected the question of how practices of responding to disagreements with peers fare with respect to the goal of approximating the truth. Again, work on opinion dynamics shows that this may be a mistake, and that how we ought to respond to disagreements with our peers may depend on the specific purposes of our investigations.     

Tutoring Techniques in Algebra

Although one-to-one tutoring has been regarded as the most effective method of teaching (Bloom, 1984), surprisingly little is understood about tutoring expertise. Much educational research focuses on classroom teaching, whereas the few studies that focus on one-to-one tutoring do not offer a precise information-processing account of this skill. This article describes our initial attempts to study one-to-one tutoring. The goal of our research is to construct a detailed cognitive model of the reasoning and knowledge of an expert human tutor. The method we have employed is a variant of knowledge engineering. We videotaped tutoring sessions with expert teachers, subjecting them to a detailed analysis aimed at abstracting the tutor's knowledge structures. In this article, we describe some important tutoring techniques we have isolated using these methods. We discuss several dimensions along which tutors appear to be intelligent planners and problem solvers. Finally, we note several implications of our research, including its potential impact on the construction of intelligent computer-based tutoring systems.     

Individual differences, intelligence, and behavior analysis

Despite its avowed goal of understanding individual behavior, the field of behavior analysis has largely ignored the determinants of consistent differences in level of performance among individuals. The present article discusses major findings in the study of individual differences in intelligence from the conceptual framework of a functional analysis of behavior. In addition to general intelligence, we discuss three other major aspects of behavior in which individuals differ: speed of processing, working memory, and the learning of three-term contingencies. Despite recent progress in our understanding of the relations among these aspects of behavior, numerous issues remain unresolved. Researchers need to determine which learning tasks predict individual differences in intelligence and which do not, and then identify the specific characteristics of these tasks that make such prediction possible.     

Development and Practice of the Systems Paradigm in Argentina, Chile and Peru

The systems paradigm has been developing in the southern region of South America for more than three decades, albeit at different paces and with a variety of achievements as can be expected when describing the process of countries as diverse as Argentina, Chile and Peru. This article describes the circumstances and actions that have enabled the systemic approach to gain a legitimate place in the local psychotherapy field permeating family, marital/couple, and individual therapy. Moreover, the family/contextual perspective has attained a valued respectability in the family legal system as well as in community interventions. Overall, the community is aware of and at ease with this efficacious contextual approach. As in other parts of the world, the universities have joined the private entities in the training endeavor and the accreditation process is a complex goal with obstacles that have not yet been surmounted.     

Targeting Self-Stigma in Returning Military Personnel and Veterans: A Review of Intervention Strategies

Research suggests that mental health-related stigma significantly decreases the use of mental health services by military personnel and veterans. The goal of this article is to review what is known about mental health stigma as it relates to military personnel and veterans, as well as to offer an interpretive review of self-stigma intervention strategies that have been applied within the field. Target areas for future work and the concerns and challenges faced by interventionists are discussed.     

Lexical organization and competition in first and second languages: computational and neural mechanisms

How does a child rapidly acquire and develop a structured mental organization for the vast number of words in the first years of life? How does a bilingual individual deal with the even more complicated task of learning and organizing two lexicons? It is only until recently have we started to examine the lexicon as a dynamical system with regard to its acquisition, representation, and organization. In this article, I outline a proposal based on our research that takes the dynamical approach to the lexicon, and I discuss how this proposal can be applied to account for lexical organization, structural representation, and competition within and between languages. In particular, I provide computational evidence based on the DevLex model, a self-organizing neural network model, and neuroimaging evidence based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, to illustrate how children and adults learn and represent the lexicon in their first and second languages. In the computational research, our goal has been to identify, through linguistically and developmentally realistic models, detailed cognitive mechanisms underlying the dynamic self-organizing processes in monolingual and bilingual lexical development; in the neuroimaging research, our goal has been to identify the neural substrates that subserve lexical organization and competition in the monolingual and the bilingual brain. In both cases, our findings lead to a better understanding of the interactive dynamics involved in the acquisition and representation of one or multiple languages.     

Becoming part of me: Examining when objects,thoughts, goals,and people become fused with the self‐concept

Fusion refers to the sense that a construct is integrated into the self‐concept. When a person feels fused with a construct, there is a perceived “oneness” with the construct, and as a result, the construct is treated as an extension of the self. This concept of fusion has been explored across a wide range of constructs and within a number of subfields in psychology. The goal of this article is to provide a comprehensive view of the fusion process and to connect these disparate areas of literature underneath a single unifying theme. Specifically, we focus on five constructs that researchers have explored in terms of fusion: objects, thoughts, goals, significant others, and groups. In our review, we discuss the ways that fusion is typically measured and highlight the consequences that occur as a result of such fusion. We conclude by highlighting questions that remain unanswered and suggest potential areas of future development.     

A realist social ontology of religion

Jonathan Z. Smith famously pointed out that the concept of ‘religion’ is not universal but emerged only in the modern West. Several scholars have drawn from Smith the non-realist implication that the existence of religion apart from that concept is an illusion. The word ‘religion,’ they say, does not refer to something out there in the world. In this article, the author argues that Smith’s point is open to a realist interpretation according to which religion exists in the world, as a transhistorical and transcultural reality, even apart from the concept. To make this case, the author outlines and responds to non-realist positions that draw on genealogical, deconstructive, and linguistic arguments, as well as to the alternative proposal that ‘religion’ is simply a heuristic device. In short, the goal of this article is to argue that a realist social ontology provides the better understanding of the central theoretical term in our field.     

The role of feedback, casual attributions, and self-efficacy in goal revision

An important issue in work motivation is how, when, and why individuals revise their goals up or down over time. In the current study, the authors examine feedback, causal attributions, and self-efficacy in this process. Although self-efficacy has frequently been suggested as a key explanatory variable for goal revision, its role has yet to be directly evaluated. Additionally, although attributions have been shown to influence goal revision following failure, the extent to which attributions influence goal revision following success remains unclear. In the current study, the authors address these issues by experimentally manipulating goal progress via performance feedback and tracking the resulting changes in self-efficacy and goal revision over time. In so doing, the authors also address several interpretive ambiguities present in the existing research. Results support the hypothesized model, finding that performance feedback and attributions interactively influenced self-efficacy, which in turn influenced goal revision. These results suggest that interventions targeting attributions, and self-efficacy more directly, may have meaningful influences on goal setting and pursuit, particularly following feedback.     

AXIOLOGY, SELF-DECEPTION, AND MORAL WRONGDOING IN BLAISE PASCAL'S PENSÉES

Blaise Pascal is highly regarded as a religious moralist, but he has rarely been given his due as an ethical theorist. The goal of this article is to assemble Pascal's scattered thoughts on moral judgment and moral wrongdoing into an explicit, coherent account that can serve as the basis for further scholarly reflection on his ethics. On my reading, Pascal affirms an axiological, social-intuitionist account of moral judgment and moral wrongdoing. He argues that a moral judgment is an immediate, intuitive perception of moral value that we willfully disregard in favor of the attractive, though self-deceptive, deliverances of our socially constructed imaginations. We can deceive ourselves so easily because our capacity to evaluate goods is broken, a dark legacy of the fall. In the article's concluding section, I briefly compare Pascal to contemporary ethicists and suggest directions for future research.     

Experimental psychopathology, clinical science, and practice: An irrelevant or indispensable alliance?

Psychopathology research is the scientific foundation for legitimate and credible forms of clinical practice and the ethical delivery of mental health services. Experimental psychopathology is a subfield of psychopathology research; its aims are to elucidate variables and processes that contribute, either in whole or in part, to the etiology, exacerbation, or maintenance of abnormal behavior. To date, experimental psychopathology has been poorly understood with regard to its identity, aims, history, and relevance for clinical practice. In this article, we critically review and address the role of experimental psychopathology in the contemporary field of clinical science and practice. Overall, we suggest that experimental psychopathology can maintain its important contributions to the field, and perhaps more important, adapt to the current health care context to have an even larger impact on directing conceptual and empirical analyses of core psychopathology processes.     

Putting the Mystical Mind Together

This article reviews and responds to various issues that have been raised in critical analysis of our work studying the relationship between religion and the brain. An adequate response necessitates a discussion about the origins of this research, the potential pitfalls of doing empirical research in this field, and the complex requirements of interpreting the implications of such an approach. Through inquiry such as this, the study of the brain and its relation to religion and religious experience will continue to advance and uncover the many fascinating questions that await.     

The antitrust, discrimination, and malpractice implications of specialization

In response to pressure from applied psychologists for the creation of speciality certification boards, professional organizations (e.g., the American Psychological Association and the American Boards of Professional Psychology) have considered and developed specialization and specialty recognition rules. This process may raise potentially serious professional and legal ramitications. Consequently, this article evaluates significant antitrust, discrimination, and malpractice remifications connected with specialization and specialty recognition within the field of professional psychology. The issue raised in the antitrust and discrimination sections of the article affect the very creation of specialty boards, whereas the issue raised in the malpractice section may strongly affect the individual practitioner who becomes board certified. The overarching purpose of this article is to assess and explain the legal implications raised, to predict, where possible the legal treatment of particular specialization-related behavior, and to twarn about possible legal pitfalls and liabilities. Our goal is to arm specialization activity with foresight, so that this inevitable activity can be formulated responsibly by practitioners, specialty organization, and patient/consumers, in a direction useful both for psychology and society.     

Methodology for motor learning: a paradigm for kinematic feedback

Knowledge of results (KR)--information feedback about goal achievement--has been one of the most extensively examined variables in motor learning. In most natural movement learning situations, however, instructors more common]y provide augmented information regarding various kinematic or kinetic aspects of the movement pattern itself (sometimes termed knowledge of performance, KP). But despite the inherent interest in kinematic feedback, several factors reviewed here have operated to inhibit its study, the most important of which has been the lack of a suitable laboratory task and paradigm. The limitations of earlier paradigms have concerned (a) the use of overly simple motor behaviors, probably to minimize the problems in kinematic measurement, (b) the tendency for the environmental goal or the task to be isomorphic with the kinematic pattern, and (c) thc failure to use transfer or retention tests as measures of learning effects of the feedback manipulations. In this article, we describe our efforts to create a new paradigm for kinematic feedback, the rationale for its development, and the details of its operation. Finally, we provide evidence that the task and paradigm are sensitive to manipulations of kinematic feedback, providing some assurance that the paradigm can potentially answer future research questions about the role of kinematic feedback for learning.     

The antitrust,discrimination, and malpractice implications of specialization

In response to pressure from applied psychologists for the creation of speciality certification boards, professional organizations (e.g., the American Psychological Association and the American Boards of Professional Psychology) have considered and developed specialization and specialty recognition rules. This process may raise potentially serious professional and legal ramitications. Consequently, this article evaluates significant antitrust, discrimination, and malpractice remifications connected with specialization and specialty recognition within the field of professional psychology. The issue raised in the antitrust and discrimination sections of the article affect the very creation of specialty boards, whereas the issue raised in the malpractice section may strongly affect the individual practitioner who becomes board certified. The overarching purpose of this article is to assess and explain the legal implications raised, to predict, where possible the legal treatment of particular specialization-related behavior, and to twarn about possible legal pitfalls and liabilities. Our goal is to arm specialization activity with foresight, so that this inevitable activity can be formulated responsibly by practitioners, specialty organization, and patient/consumers, in a direction useful both for psychology and society.     

Where's the Action? Understanding What Works and Why in Relationship Education

The field of couples relationship education has come to a critical junction. We have generally demonstrated that our interventions work (at least in the short run) but to what extent have we shown that the skills and processes we teach are in fact responsible for the success of the intervention? In this paper we review progress made in understanding mechanisms of change in relationship education, explore limitations of this body of research, explicate the barriers that interfere with progress in understanding mechanisms of change in intervention research, and present recommendations on how to proceed from here. Although our goal in this paper is to focus more on issues in the field rather than to present a comprehensive review of the literature, we provide overarching research summaries to illustrate some of our points. We conclude with offering recommendations for the next generation of research in the couples relationship education field.     

Differentiating intolerance of uncertainty from three related but distinct constructs

Individual differences in uncertainty have been associated with heightened anxiety, stress and approach-oriented coping. Intolerance of uncertainty (IU) is a trait characteristic that arises from negative beliefs about uncertainty and its consequences. Researchers have established the central role of IU in the development of problematic worry and maladaptive coping, highlighting the importance of this construct to anxiety disorders. However, there is a need to improve our understanding of the phenomenology of IU. The goal of this paper was to present hypotheses regarding the similarities and differences between IU and three related constructs – intolerance of ambiguity, uncertainty orientation, and need for cognitive closure – and to call for future empirical studies to substantiate these hypotheses. To assist with achieving this goal, we conducted a systematic review of the literature, which also served to identify current gaps in knowledge. This paper differentiates these constructs by outlining each definition and general approaches to assessment, reviewing the existing empirical relations, and proposing theoretical similarities and distinctions. Findings may assist researchers in selecting the appropriate construct to address their research questions. Future research directions for the application of these constructs, particularly within the field of clinical and health psychology, are discussed.     

Neuroeconomics,health psychology,and the interdisciplinary study of preventative health behavior

The goal of this article is to introduce readers to theories, tools, and evidence from the field of neuroeconomics and to describe how health psychology and neuroeconomics can be mutually informative in the study of preventative health behaviors. Preventative health behavior here refers to both individual actions that impact one's health (e.g., exercise) and broader behavioral patterns, such as those captured in personality constructs. Although neuroeconomic researchers have begun to incorporate health‐relevant behaviors into their studies, the full potential of this research to inform preventative health models is as yet unrealized. What is needed to “translate up” is the unification of rich theoretical content from health psychology with investigations by neuroeconomic researchers of the decision‐making process during health‐relevant choices. We identify choice as a central, shared feature across models of preventative health behavior that can serve as an inroad for neuroeconomics to contribute to existing models and highlight commonalities that might not otherwise be apparent. A central premise of our argument is that, because health decisions are nearly always multiply determined, a more precise and mechanistic understanding of how choices are made is an important but understudied topic in health psychology. A partnership between health psychologists and neuroeconomic researchers can yield valuable insights into how preventative health choice is made and to identify targets and methods for intervention.