Psychologie et culture: vers une solution du “Babel”?

The current scientific debate on the relationship between psychological development and culture has been given different labels. These labels not only indicate divergent methodological approaches and heterogeneous research interests, but also represent distinct national scientific traditions. The authors suggest making a distinction between three main perspectives, namely “Cross-Cultural Psychology”, “Cultural Psychology” and “Psychologie Interculturelle”; a specific German approach called “Kulturpsychologie” is also briefly touched upon. These perspectives are described as distinct types of conceptual approaches and research strategies on the relationship between psychology and culture.     

Self‐esteem and culture: Differences in cognitive self‐evaluations or affective self‐regard?

Although people from East Asian countries consistently report lower self-esteem than do those from Western countries, the origins of this difference are unclear. We conducted two studies to illuminate this issue. Study 1 found that Chinese participants appraised themselves less positively than American participants on a cognitive measure of self-evaluations, but cultural differences were absent on a measure of affective self-regard. Moreover, cultural differences in global self-esteem were eliminated once cognitive self-evaluations were statistically controlled. Study 2 found that cultural differences in modesty underlie cultural differences in cognitive self-evaluations. These findings suggest that Chinese feel as positively toward themselves as Americans do, but are less inclined to evaluate themselves in an excessively positive manner.     

Psychologie de la santé et cancers : quels apports et quelles perspectives ?

How to adjust to the malignancy is an area that is widely explored by researchers in health psychology for over 35 years. A number of concepts and theories have been developed in an attempt to help people better cope with this particularly stressful life event. Two theoretical approaches are briefly presented: the transactional model of stress and the health belief model. Then, we discuss the interest of several concepts from these models (personality traits, social support, perceived control and coping), illustrating recent research. Finally, both theoretical and practical perspectives are discussed, with proposals that are supported to develop to help patients.     

Amplitude and Width Manipulations in Fitts' Paradigm: Comment on Heath et al. (2011) and Heath et al. (2016)

Heath, Weiler, Marriott, Elliott, and Binstead (2011 Heath, M., Weiler, J., Marriott, K. A., Elliott, D., &; Binstead, G. (2011). Revisiting Fitts and Peterson (1964): Width and Amplitude manipulations to the reaching environment elicit dissociable movement times. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65, 259–268.1.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and Heath, Samani, Tremblay, and Elliott (2016 Heath, M., Samani, A., Tremblay, L., &; Elliott, D. (2016). Fitts' theorem in oculomotor control: Dissociable movement times for amplitude and width manipulations. Journal of Motor Behavior, 48, 489–499.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) have claimed that there are dissociable movement times for amplitude and width manipulations in the Fitts' paradigm. This may to some extent be true, but the Heath et al. (2011 Heath, M., Weiler, J., Marriott, K. A., Elliott, D., &; Binstead, G. (2011). Revisiting Fitts and Peterson (1964): Width and Amplitude manipulations to the reaching environment elicit dissociable movement times. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65, 259–268.1.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and Heath et al. (2016 Heath, M., Samani, A., Tremblay, L., &; Elliott, D. (2016). Fitts' theorem in oculomotor control: Dissociable movement times for amplitude and width manipulations. Journal of Motor Behavior, 48, 489–499.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) data do not support that contention, as shown in this comment. It is shown that data from the research of Heath et al. is not in the range of index of difficulty where ongoing visual control would be used and hence their fits of data to Fitts' law are spurious. The data of Heath et al. (2011 Heath, M., Weiler, J., Marriott, K. A., Elliott, D., &; Binstead, G. (2011). Revisiting Fitts and Peterson (1964): Width and Amplitude manipulations to the reaching environment elicit dissociable movement times. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65, 259–268.1.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) for arm movements and for the primary eye saccade submovements of Heath et al. (2016 Heath, M., Samani, A., Tremblay, L., &; Elliott, D. (2016). Fitts' theorem in oculomotor control: Dissociable movement times for amplitude and width manipulations. Journal of Motor Behavior, 48, 489–499.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) are well correlated by the ballistic movement time equation of Hoffmann (1981 Hoffmann, E. R. (1981). An ergonomic approach to predetermined motion time systems. Proceedings of the 9th National Conference of the Institute of Industrial Engineers, Australia, 30–47. [Google Scholar]) and Gan and Hoffmann (1988 Gan, K.-C. &; Hoffmann, E. R. (1988). Geometrical conditions for ballistic and visually controlled movements. Ergonomics, 31, 829–839.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). When the ballistic equation is used to model data for constant amplitude and constant target width conditions, the effects of the amplitude and width manipulations disappear. Other research indicates that the independent effects of movement amplitude occur due to changes in the time for the distance-covering phase of the movement.     

Cooperation or dolphin ‘tug-of-war’? Comment on Kuczaj et al. and Eskelinen et al.

Two recent papers by Kuczaj et al. (Anim Cognit 18:543–550, 2015) and Eskelinen et al. (Anim Cognit 19:789–797, 2016) claim to have demonstrated that (i) bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) cooperated to solve a novel task and (ii) vocal signals were important for coordinating these cooperative efforts. Although it is likely that bottlenose dolphins may share communicative signals in order to achieve a common goal, we suggest that this has not been demonstrated in the aforementioned studies. Here, we discuss the two main problems that preclude any definitive conclusions being drawn on cooperative task success and vocal communication from these studies. The first lies in the experimental design. The ‘cooperative task’, involving an apparatus that requires two dolphins to pull in opposite directions in order to achieve a food reward, is not conducive to cooperation, but could instead reflect a competitive ‘tug-of-war’. It is therefore of questionable use in distinguishing competitive from cooperative interactions. Second, the suggestion that the occurrence of burst-pulsed signals in this task was indicative of cooperation is disputable, as (i) this study could not determine which dolphins were actually producing the signals and (ii) this sound type is more commonly associated with aggressive signalling in dolphins. We commend the authors for investigating this exciting and topical area in animal communication and cognition, but the question of whether dolphins cooperate and communicate to solve a cooperative task remains as yet unanswered.     

Imitation, pretend play, and childhood: essential elements in the evolution of human culture?

There is much controversy over what is needed for culture to flourish and what has led human culture to be different from "cultural" characteristics of other animals. Here I argue that the emergence of childhood as a step in the life cycle was critical to the evolution of the human cultural mind. My line of reasoning is built around two complementary features of childhood: imitation and play. When children imitate adults they routinely copy unnecessary and arbitrary actions. They will persistently replicate how an object is used, even when doing so interferes with their ability to produce the very outcome those actions are intended to bring about. Though seemingly maladaptive, this behavior provides for the faithful transmission of cultural ideas across generations. When children play together they commonly construct rules and meanings that exist purely because the players agree they "exist." Play thus provides the building blocks with which children rehearse the kinds of institutional realities that typify cultural practices. I argue that these forms of imitation and play represent a foundation upon which human culture flourished and that neither are prevalent in nonhuman animals. In light of these arguments evidence will be assessed suggesting that childhood emerged relatively late in human evolution.     

Clock time vs. event time: Temporal culture or self-regulation?

Cross-cultural research documented two types of temporal culture governing the way individuals schedule tasks over time: clock-time, where individuals let an external clock dictate when tasks begin/end; and event-time, where tasks are planned relative to other tasks and individuals transition between them when they internally sense that the former task is complete. In contrast with this prior literature - that credits culture as the reason for variation in temporal norms - we show in two experiments that individuals choose clock- vs. event-time as a self-regulation strategy to achieve a regulatory goal (efficiency vs. effectiveness). A third experiment shows that this strategy enhances confidence and performance on a task. Participants solved significantly more math problems when their task scheduling (clock- vs. event-time) matched their regulatory state (promotion vs. prevention). Since clock-/event-time may both lead to superior performance, clock-time is not the single best way to organize productive activities in industrial societies—a result that counters a foundational principle of modern economics.     

Cookson,R., Griffin,S., Norheim,O. F., & Culyer,A. J. (Eds.). (2020). Distributional Cost-Effectiveness Analysis: Quantifying Health Equity Impacts and Trade-Offs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Paperback (ISBN-13: 9780198838197). £ 28.03. 365 pp

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice -     

Levels of processing: past,present. and future?

In this article I first briefly survey some enduring legacies of the Craik and Lockhart (1972) article on levels of processing (LOP) and address some common criticisms. In the next section I discuss whether memory can be regarded as "pure processing", the role of short-term memory in an LOP framework, measurement of "depth" in LOP, encoding-retrieval interactions, the concept of consolidation, and the reality of "levels" of processing. In the final section I offer some speculations on future directions, discussing the notion of levels of representation and a possible continuing role for LOP in memory research.