The comrade on the crossroads of scholarship and struggle: Troubling the exile of Frantz Fanon from social and political psychology

This article traces the presence and absence of Frantz Fanon in the field of social and political psychology. Our work is guided by an assemblage of methods— a critical analysis of mainstream scholarship, a collective interrogation with a transnational gathering of colleagues and friends, and a deep reading of Fanon's texts on struggle, internalized oppression, violence and a new humanism. Through this, our paper is a call for radical disciplinary reflection on why Fanon has been ruthlessly exiled from social/political psychology, the potential his writings hold for courses, scholarship, and struggle, and how we might more boldly theorize, as he did, from within the fire of struggles for justice and liberation.     

The emerging role of school psychology

This report relates personal experiences as they influenced the emerging role of the school psychologist, especially in Pennsylvania and Indiana from 1930 to 1970.     

The role of eye-fixation research in cognitive psychology

Eye-fixation research can be used to address issues of theoretical interest in several areas of cognitive psychology, such as linguistic processing, spatial processing, and reading. The eye-fixation behavior can lead to processing models, assuming that the eye fixates the referent of the symbol being operated on.     

The role of the feedforward paradigm in cognitive psychology

Feedforward control is a process adjusting behaviour in a continuative way. Feedforward takes place when an equilibrium state is disrupted and the system has to automatically retrieve the homeostatic stable state. It also occurs when a perturbation is previewed and must be eliminated in order to achieve a desired goal. According to the most general definition, a feedforward process operates by fixing the future representation of the desired state, the achieving of which stops the process. Then, feedforward works by means of the refinement determined by successive comparisons between the actual and target products. In its applications, a feedforward process is thought to be modulated by the subject’s purpose and the environmental state. Over the years, the feedforward process has assumed different connotations in several contests of cognitive psychology. An overview of the research fields in psychology that significantly progressed with the introduction of a feedforward paradigm is provided by: (a) reviewing models in which the feedforward concept plays a fundamental role in the system control; (b) examining critical experiments related to the interaction of feedforward and feedback processes; (c) evidencing practical applications for some of the presented feedforward-based architectures.     

Learning from others. Japan's role in bringing psychology to China

Recent research by Chinese and Japanese historians of psychology and education suggests that it was educational reformers' copying of Japan's education system in the 1st decade of the 20th century that provided the context for developing modern psychology in China. Psychology, although not well understood by those reformers, was thought to be useful in teacher training. In 1902 Japanese psychology teachers came to China and some textbooks were translated. Chinese students studying in Japan also brought back psychological knowledge in translations. However, the Chinese attraction to study in Japan declined after 1906. As the United States opened new universities and provided opportunities for Chinese students to study in U.S. schools, it became a more attractive option for later generations of Chinese, who saw psychology become established as a separate discipline.