Errors and innovations: An exchange

Abstract

Introduction by Alan Grey

This paper is unusual. For instance, one of its authors is a distinguished graphic artist, with interesting ideas about psychoanalytic treatment as a creative process. His collaborator is Arthur Feiner, who has been the editor of Contemporary Psychoanalysis for many years. As you can see, the paper itself is a dialogue between them, closely following an actual audiotape recording. Their theme has been much neglected. Immediately upon reading the paper, it occurred to me that it belongs in the Forum. For one thing, its important ideas are presented in a very readable fashion. Its informality sets a model inviting a wider range of creative thought about problems of our profession and how to approach them. It identifies our journal as something more than another analytic publication for reiteration of old dogmas.     

Situated Behavior and the Place of Measurement in Psychological Theory

Measured values of human behavior may entail contradictory attributes of wave and particle by analogy with the wave/particle attributes of the electron. 1/f scaling is the wave attribute in this analogy and punctate data points are the particle attribute. One consequence of the wave/particle duality in physics was to elevate measurement to a primary place in physical theory, and one purpose of the present analogy is to likewise elevate measurement to a primary place in psychological theory. Another purpose is to emulate Robert Shaw's creative use of analogies, consistent with the brief quotation that begins this article.     

Best Research from the Community Indicators Consortium 2009: Introduction to the Special Issue

This editors’ introduction provides some introductory comments for this special issue of Applied Research on Quality of Life dedicated to best research from the 2009 Community Indicators Consortium conference in Bellevue, Washington. In addition, it includes an edited version of the keynote address presented to this conference by Stephen Bezruchka of the University of Washington School of Public Health on the topic of “What indicators should be presented to Americans so we don’t die so young?”     

Berkeley on Inconceivability and Impossibility

Contrary to a popular reading of his modal epistemology, Berkeley does not hold that inconceivability entails impossibility, and he cannot therefore argue the impossibility of mind‐independent matter by appealing to facts about what we cannot conceive. Berkeley is explicit about this constraint on his metaphysical argumentation, and, I argue, does respect it in practice. Popular mythology about the ‘master argument’ notwithstanding, the only passages in which he might plausibly seem to employ the principle that inconceivability entails impossibility are those that argue for the inseparability of primary from secondary qualities. However, an alternative reading of these texts is available that is both consistent with Berkeley's express modal epistemology and credible in its own right.     

Equivalence of computerized and standard administration of the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale

Two hundred seventy-nine 8- to 17-year-old children and adolescents were randomly assigned to complete paper-and-pencil or computer-administered versions of the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale. The equivalence of these two administration modes was assessed by evaluating the comparability of scale means, variances, reliabilities, and validities. Results indicate that, of 27 comparisons, only 1 produced a statistically significant difference. We concluded that the computerized administration of the Piers-Harris scale did not affect its psychometric properties and that paper-and-pencil and computerized modes of testing for this questionnaire may be regarded as equivalent.     

Generation of different numbers of button presses under supplementary feedback conditions by educable retardates.

Educable retardates (10 boys and 10 girls) generated varying numbers of presses on a response key under 5 different feedback conditions. Neither time per response nor accuracy was affected by feedback condition, but time per response and magnitude of errors increased when larger numbers of responses were required.