A review of the methods used to describe and measure aggressive behaviour in physiological studies

A review of the methods used to study behaviour in a number of experiments investigating the physiology of aggression highlights in the following problems: 1) the narrow range of species studied, 2) the inappropriate conditions in which animals are often housed for observation, 3) the inappropriate stimuli used to elicit aggressive responses in some cases, and 4) the lack of adequate detail with which behaviour is often recorded and analysed. It is stressed that without better techniques for studying behaviour, many questions about the organisation of aggression will remain unanswered.     

Change and continuity in neurobehavioral development: lessons from the study of neurobiology and neural plasticity

The goal of this paper is to discuss our current understanding of change and continuity in neurobehavioral development. After describing the basic elements of neurobiological development, attention is focused on the myriad of ways experience influences the developing and developed brain. This literature is used to illustrate the complexity of both brain and behavioral development in the context of change and continuity. The implications of considering brain/behavior relations in the context of development comprise the final section of the paper.     

论分子生物学时代的生理学探索——微观与宏观的统一

20世纪中期,随着蛋白质空间结构的解析和DNA双螺旋结构的发现,形成了核酸和蛋白质为主要研究对象的分子生物学时代,然而随着科学研究的不断深入微观,越来越多的科学家意识到认为将复杂的生物现象还原称简单的组成部分(细胞或分子)就能充分解释生物现象的观点有失偏颇。分子与整体,微观与宏观必须结合与统一,这一点已显得日益重要和紧迫。由此,生理学作为一门相对古老的研究结构与功能关系,尤其是整体功能的生命学科,在这一时期获得了新的契机。     

Integrative study in physiology and medicine: Obstacles on the road to integration

A recent report of the Long-Range Planning Committee of the American Physiological Society identifies physiology with “integrative biology” and urges that physiologists make their field “a unique branch of biology that deals with synthesis and integration.” However, certain institutional, procedural, and psychological obstacles lie in the way of those who would embark upon this task. The hurdles to be overcome include the following: the erroneous belief that biomedical scientists are already integrative; the inapplicability of the powerful methods of areas of specialization to integrative study; the fear of failure; the identification of integrative biology with the study of function; the disregard of hierarchy; the undervaluation of the abstract; and the loss of a sense of mystery. These obstacles, though insidious, pervasive, and powerful, can be surmounted.     

聋人早期手语经验对脑功能及结构的塑造作用

语言经验对脑功能和结构发展有重要的塑造作用。然而, 目前的相关证据主要来自对脑损伤导致的失语症病人的语言康复、第二语言学习以及针对成人读者进行的语言训练等方面的研究。幼儿时期的早期语言经验对脑结构与功能发展的影响更加重要, 但直接的研究证据却相当缺乏。本文提出一个研究设想, 拟综合使用多种脑成像技术, 系统探讨有早期手语经验和无早期手语经验的聋人个体在脑皮层语言功能的组织及脑结构发育的差异, 包括语言任务中大脑语言区的激活模式, 静息状态下脑功能联结的默认网络特征, 脑皮层灰质密度, 以及神经纤维束发育状况等, 揭示早期语言经验对大脑功能和结构发育的塑造作用。     

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.     

Graduate education in qualitative methods in U.S. psychology: current trends and recommendations for the future

The visibility of qualitative research methods (QRM) in U.S. psychology has increased with the dissemination of qualitative research in journals and books, formation of professional and scientific organizations, and recognition in educational institutions. While gains have been made, the current state of doctoral training in qualitative methods remains uncertain. It is unclear what training graduate students receive in U.S. psychology programs about qualitative methodologies and how further gains can be made in expanding visibility of QRM in graduate education. In this mixed-methods study, we surveyed a sample of faculty in U.S. psychology graduate programs about the frequency of QRM course offerings, graduate training, and students’ use of QRM in their dissertation research. We also explored qualitative responses from faculty regarding their attitudes about QRM and how these attitudes might help increase or diminish the frequency of methods training available to students. We found that even within graduate programs where there was support for QRM, enduring perceptions about the value of qualitative research limit faculty and graduate students’ use of qualitative methodologies in their research. With these findings in mind, we offer several recommendations for increasing the visibility of QRM in U.S. graduate education and the discipline of psychology as a whole.     

Using sonic branding in the retail environment — an easy and effective way to create consumer brand loyalty while enhancing the in‐store experience

Retail is no longer simply a point of purchase, it has now become part of a brand's communications strategy. As brands begin to explore the benefits of the retail environment they are mostly failing to utilise fully its ability to communicate with all the senses. Sonic branding has yet to make a significant impact on the retail environment and yet it is a powerful tool in the development of brand loyalty. As brands search for new ways of communicating with consumers both locally and globally, sonic branding will become a key tool in the creation of fully immersive brand experiences. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications.     

Interactions between astrocytes and the reward-attention circuit: A model for attention focusing in the presence of nicotine

Recent studies in neurophysiology suggest that astrocytes—a specific type of glial cells in the central nervous system—perform dynamical signaling, integrating neural inputs and regulating synaptic transmissions. This work presents a mathematical model for bidirectional signaling between astrocytes and neurons, investigating the functional role of such glial cells in a neural network that simulates the influence of nicotine on attentional focus. Considering the neurons’ firing frequency as an indicator of analysis, our results indicate that the tripartite synaptic transmission substantially changes the network activity, in comparison to the bipartite synapse. In addition, we show that this effect occurs specifically due to inclusion of astrocytes, corroborating experimental findings that show astrocytes improve of transmission performance in neural networks. Moreover, our simulations contribute to a better understanding of the astrocytary role in brain function and of synaptic transmission in a neuroglia network.     

Intelligence is differentially related to neural effort in the task-positive and the task-negative brain network

Previous studies on individual differences in intelligence and brain activation during cognitive processing focused on brain regions where activation increases with task demands (task-positive network, TPN). Our study additionally considers brain regions where activation decreases with task demands (task-negative network, TNN) and compares effects of intelligence on neural effort in the TPN and the TNN. In a sample of 52 healthy subjects, functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to determine changes in neural effort associated with the processing of a working memory task. The task comprised three conditions of increasing difficulty: (a) maintenance, (b) manipulation, and (c) updating of a four-letter memory set. Neural effort was defined as signal increase in the TPN and signal decrease in the TNN, respectively. In both functional networks, TPN and TNN, neural effort increased with task difficulty. However, intelligence, as assessed with Raven's Matrices, was differentially associated with neural effort in the TPN and TNN. In the TPN, we observed a positive association, while we observed a negative association in the TNN. In terms of neural efficiency (i.e., task performance in relation to neural effort expended on task processing), more intelligent subjects (as compared to less intelligent subjects) displayed lower neural efficiency in the TPN, while they displayed higher neural efficiency in the TNN. The results illustrate the importance of differentiating between TPN and TNN when interpreting correlations between intelligence and fMRI measures of brain activation. Importantly, this implies the risk of misinterpreting whole brain correlations when ignoring the functional differences between TPN and TNN.     

Near-Death Experience,Consciousness, and the Brain: A New Concept about the Continuity of Our Consciousness Based on Recent Scientific Research on Near-Death Experience in Survivors of Cardiac Arrest

In this article first some general aspects of near-death experience will be discussed, followed by questions about consciousness and its relation to brain function. Details will be described from our prospective study on near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest in the Netherlands, which was published in the Lancet in 2001. In this study it could not be shown that physiological, psychological, or pharmacological factors caused these experiences after cardiac arrest. Neurophysiology in cardiac arrest and in a normal functioning brain will be explained. Finally, implications for consciousness studies will be discussed, and how it could be possible to explain the continuity of our consciousness. Scientific study of NDE pushes us to the limits of our medical and neurophysiologic ideas about the range of human consciousness and mind–brain relation.     

A collective unconscious reconsidered: Jung's archetypal imagination in the light of contemporary psychology and social science

A needed rapprochement between Jung and the contemporary human sciences may rest less on the much debated relevance of a biologistic collective unconscious than on a re-inscribing of an archetypal imagination, as the phenomenological and empirical core of Jungian psychology. The most promising approaches in this regard in terms of theory and research in psychology come from combining the cognitive psychology of metaphor and synaesthesia, individual differences in imaginative absorption and openness to numinous experience and spirituality as a form of symbolic intelligence. On the socio-cultural side, this cognitive psychology of archetypal imagination is also congruent with Lévi-Strauss on the metaphoric roots of mythological thinking, and Durkheim on a sociology of collective consciousness. This conjoined perspective, while validating the cross cultural commonality of physical metaphor intuited by Jung and Hillman on alchemy, also shows Jung's Red Book, considered as the expressive source for his more formal psychology, to be far closer in spirit to a socio-cultural collective consciousness, based on metaphoric imagination, than to a phylogenetic or evolutionary unconscious. A mutual re-inscribing of Jung into congruent areas of contemporary psychology, anthropology, sociology, and vice versa, can help to further validate Jung's key observations and is fully consistent with Jung's own early efforts at synthesis within the human sciences.     

On aims and methods in the neuroimaging of derived relations

Ingenious and seemingly powerful technologies have been developed recently that enable the visualization in some detail of events in the brain concomitant upon the ongoing behavioral performance of a human participant. Measurement of such brain events offers at the very least a new set of dependent variables in relation to which the independent variables familiarly manipulated in the operant laboratory may be explored. Two related paradigms in which a start has been made in such research concern the derivation of novel or emergent relations from a baseline set of trained relations, and include the phenomenon of transitive inference (TI), observed in studies of stimulus equivalence (SE) and serial learning (SL) or seriation. This paper reviews some published and forthcoming neuroimaging studies of these and related phenomena, and considers how this line of research both demands and represents a welcome synthesis between types of question and levels of explanation in behavioral science that often have been seen as antithetical.     

Introduction to special section of the Journal of Family Psychology, advances in mixed methods in family psychology: integrative and applied solutions for family science

Mixed methods in family psychology refer to the systematic integration of qualitative and quantitative techniques to represent family processes and settings. Over the past decade, significant advances have been made in study design, analytic strategies, and technological support (such as software) that allow for the integration of quantitative and qualitative methods and for making appropriate inferences from mixed methods. This special section of the Journal of Family Psychology illustrates how mixed methods may be used to advance knowledge in family science through identifying important cultural differences in family structure, beliefs, and practices, and revealing patterns of family relationships to generate new measurement paradigms and inform clinical practice. Guidance is offered to advance mixed methods research in family psychology through sound principles of peer review.     

The society for community research and action on a path toward conocimiento: From silences and statements to solidarities in action in U.S. community psychology

A first-person narrative essay is presented through a critically reflexive auto-ethnography of a community psychologist's experiences as a member of the Society for Community Research and Action (SCRA) and (as of this writing) co-chair of the Cultural, Ethnic and Racial Affairs council. Through this methodological orientation, an analysis of some of the discourses that circulated within the SCRA listserv in relation to the murder of Mr. George Floyd, and amidst an ensuing pandemic are analyzed and discussed in relation to Anzaldúa's seven stages of conocimiento. The intentions that guide and ground this first-person account are to animate deeper reflection, accountability, and solidarity-in-action, as well as an organizational shift in the culture of the SCRA. Guided by a set of questions—What accounts for the organizational silences within the SCRA? How did the SCRA respond or engage with the murder of Mr. Floyd, anti-Blackness, Black Lives Matter, and related racial justice efforts?—the purpose is to turn a critical social analysis gaze to the SCRA in order to align its purpose, values, and mission with liberation and a decolonial feminist praxis. Anzaldúa's seven-stage framework of conocimiento is utilized to describe the possibilities for an organizational cultural shift in the SCRA that aligns with racial justice and liberatory decolonial feminist praxes.     

A role for clinical psychology in health care and policy concerning the physical environment

Some persons adversely react to specific environments, while others are impervious or actually thrive. Medical attention often overlooks such sensitivities to the physical environment. Such sensitivities, including phobias and seasonal affectivity, fall within clinical psychology's purview. A theoretical/clinical approach called the Synchronous Systems Model, which defines and uses individual differences in people and in settings, could serve medical health care and policy. When specific people are matched appropriately with specific treatments within the most propitious settings, cost effectiveness and medical efficacy rise. Such documented accountability could make clinical psychologists central to triage of medical services as well as health care policy in these days of the shrinking health care dollar. The Synchronous Systems Model provides theory, supportive data, and clinical assessment devices to strengthen clinical psychology's role in medical settings.     

Health psychology in international perspective: A summary and some thoughts for the future

This article reviews the progress made by the field in its short history and attempts to look at developments which seem likely to occur as the field matures.

Recommendations are made for training of health psychologists in the future and a plea is made for international standardisation of health psychology training programmes at the Ph.D. level which incorporate research and clinical training. Health psychologists are further encouraged to take a more active public and political role in order to provide needed visibility for their work.     

恐惧管理理论的争议及其对死亡心理研究的启示

死亡心理是人类面临死亡及相关事件时所产生的认知、情感和行为意向的复杂心理状态。目前, 研究死亡心理较为全面和科学的理论是恐惧管理理论(Terror Management Theory, 简称TMT)。但该理论存在以下争议: (1)在死亡的基本认知方面, 恐惧管理理论呈现出不一致的研究结果, 如死亡是否与不确定性无关, 死亡是否导致恐惧情绪, 寻求个体生存是否为人类的核心议题; (2)在社会文化层面, 恐惧管理理论提出者的文化背景对待死亡的普遍态度是呈否认的, 但是跨文化的研究显示其他文化背景对待死亡的态度却呈现出接纳或蔑视; (3)在恐惧管理理论的研究结果方面, 呈现出较多的矛盾性, 表明研究中有重要的调节因子未被涉及。基于此, 死亡心理可能的研究方向拟从认知、行为和社会三个层面进行梳理。未来死亡心理研究需秉承科学与文化并重的原则, 并结合死亡心理的内容与过程, 关注群体面对死亡时的心理规律, 开展死亡心理影响下的身心健康干预研究。