Varieties of psychologism

In section 1 I offer a definition of psychologism which applies to many of the apparently quite disparate uses that philosophers have made of the term. In section 2 I map out some distinct varieties of psychologism. In a short section 3 I indicate how the changing academic climate has injected a new urgency into the debate on psychologism. In section 4 I offer an argument for a variety of psychologism which has important consequences for cognitive science, and in section 5 I consider some objections to the argument.     

Cognitive vulnerability in children at risk for depression

Cognitive, developmental, and psychodynamic theories all hypothesize that negative self-concepts acquired in childhood may induce vulnerability to depression. Children at risk because of maternal major affective disorder, compared with children of medically ill and normal mothers, were examined for evidence of negative cognitions about themselves, and were found to have more negative self-concept, less positive self-schemas, and more negative attributional style. It was further predicted that negative cognitions about the self would be related to maternal depression and chronic stress, and to the quality of perceived and actual interactions with the mother. In general, the predicted associations were obtained, supporting speculations about how maternal affective disorder is associated with stress and with relatively negative and unsupportive relationships with children that in turn diminish children's self-regard.This research was supported by a William T. Grant Foundation award to Dr. Hammen and a Veterans Administration Merit Award to Dr. Hiroto.     

Short-term memory and the nature of interference from concurrent shadowing

Trigrams were presented visually or auditorily and followed by a 12 s retention interval filled with shadowing numbers or letters. Auditory memory letters followed by letter shadowing were recalled less than auditory memory letters followed by number shadowing or visual memory letters followed by either type of shadowing. The latter three conditions did not differ among themselves. An analysis of the recall intrusions suggested that forgetting of auditory memory letters followed by letter shadowing was caused mainly by a confusion between covert rehearsals and shadowing activity, while forgetting in the other three conditions was caused primarily by proactive interference from earlier memory trials.     

The influence of sex bias upon compliance with expert power

The present study evolved from the belief that sex bias influences the degree of expert power which the expert has in relation to the perceiver. Therefore, the influence of level of expertise, sex of the expert, sex of the influencee, and sex domination of the expert's occupation upon compliance was examined. Separate experiments were conducted for the male- and female-dominated occupations. Subjects' degree of compliance was measured by their responses to three recommendations contained in an in-basket. The three-way analyses of variance revealed that only expertise significantly affected subjects' degree of compliance. Results are discussed in terms of the presence of outside recognition of competence and legitimate power.     

Uncontrollability versus perceived failure as determinants of subsequent performance deficits

An experiment is reported that attempted to dissociate the effects of uncontrollability from those of failure in the standard learned helplessness induction procedure involving instrumental tasks. The task was administered to both university and high school students. The primary finding was a grade by controllability interaction, whereby uncontrollability had a larger effect for university students who became much more helpless. Further analysis revealed that while controllability or uncontrollability was the main determinant of university student performance, the performance of the high school students depended primarily upon success or failure. Perhaps we have previously generalized too widely from a restricted subject population.     

Classical conditioning and socialization—A biosocial interaction

While Eysenck (1977) has argued that socialization is in part determined by classical conditioning, there is little difinitive evidence to support this hypothesis. Close inspection of investigations carried out to date reveal most to contain conceptual or methodological flaws which invalidate their results as a strict test of Eysenck's theory. An attempt was made to circumvent these problems by testing Eysenck's undersocialization-poor conditionability prediction on a sample of 101 15-year-old male schoolchildren using self-report and teacher rating measures of socialization in conjuction with skin conductance measures of classical conditioning. This study also investigated the more specific hypothesis that biological predispositional factors are of particular relevance in determining antisocial conduct in the higher social classes (Mednick et al., 1977).Results of the first analysis provided no support for Eysenck's theory. In a second analysis an undersocialization-poor conditionability relationship was uncovered in the high-class children, a relationship which was reversed in the low classes. This result contradicts Eysenck's general prediction, is not readily interpretable by Mednick's analysis, but is explained by Eysenck's suggestion that in more criminogenic environments, superior conditionability facilities antisocial behaviour. These results suggest that the interaction between conditionability and social milieu needs to play a much more central role in the explanation of antisocial conduct than hitherto.     

Minor illness and social behavior of infants and caregivers

Fourteen infants attending day care were observed during the first year of life when well and during acute minor illnesses. Comparisons of behavior during 46 afebrile illnesses and a like number of well observations revealed no differences in infant or caregiver behavior. During 24 febrile illness observations, however, infants moved less, contacted toys less, were in closer proximity to teachers, cried more, and looked at teachers more. During a subset of these febrile illnesses, in which teachers recognized that infants were ill, teachers vocalized, gave toys, looked at, touched, held, and fed infants more than when infants were well. Analysis of teacher behavior during infant crying demonstrated that infant cries played an important role in eliciting social responses from teachers during febrile illness. These results suggest that both caregiver perception of illness state and illness-induced changes in infant behavior contribute to increased sociability by caregivers during acute febrile illness.     

Recognition memory for prose items in noise

Using a probe-recognition technique the signal detection theory parameters d' and Beta were estimated for three types of probe (common surnames, uncommon surnames and synonyms) for material contained in a prose passage. Subjects were presented with the prose passage either in the presence of noise (85dBA) or in quiet (60dBA). In two experiments the effects of noise on auditory and visual presentation of the passage were studied. In both cases the recognition test took place in quiet. Noise decreased values of Beta for rare names and increased Beta for common names in both auditory and visual versions of the task. Noise influenced d' values in the auditory version only, with d' increasing for common names in loud noise. The results support the view that noise influences performance by disturbing the pigeon-holing mechanism with the qualification that when material may not be recapitulated (as in the auditory presentation in the present study) greater attention may be allocated to easily recognizable material. The findings give little support to theories of noiseinduced deficits in performance based on the masking of inner speech.