Does psychology make a significant difference in our lives?

The intellectual tension between the virtues of basic versus applied research that characterized an earlier era of psychology is being replaced by an appreciation of creative applications of all research essential to improving the quality of human life. Psychologists are positioned to "give psychology away" to all those who can benefit from our wisdom. Psychologists were not there 35 years ago when American Psychological Association (APA) President George Miller first encouraged us to share our knowledge with the public. The author argues that psychology is indeed making a significant difference in people's lives; this article provides a sampling of evidence demonstrating how and why psychology matters, both in pervasive ways and specific applications. Readers are referred to a newly developed APA Web site that documents current operational uses of psychological research, theory, and methodology (its creation has been the author's primary presidential initiative): www.psychologymatters.org.     

Data quality affects meta-analytic conclusions: a response to Miner and Raju (2004) concerning entrepreneurial risk propensity

J. B. Miner and N. S. Raju (2004) contended that there are additional studies that compare the risk propensity of entrepreneurs and managers, which, when added to the data from W. H. Stewart and P. L. Roth (2001) and meta-analyzed, produce relationships between risk propensity and entrepreneurial status that are substantially weaker than previously believed. This conclusion was evaluated by identifying and examining methodological problems associated with their inclusion of effect sizes (i.e., ds) from studies with variables not relevant to research questions, dependent samples, extraneous variance in outcome variables, and confusion of constructs. When these methodological issues were addressed, a new meta-analysis indicated an overall conclusion consistent with that of Stewart and Roth, but the results varied according to instrumentation, particularly objective instrumentation (observed d = 0.31) versus the Miner Sentence Completion Scale-Form T (observed d = -0.35).     

Task characteristics and performance in interpersonal cognitive problem solving

The authors examined the extent to which performance on interpersonal cognitive problem-solving (ICPS) tasks is affected by whether the goals within the dilemmas to be addressed are sex typed. Fifty children, aged 7-8 years old, were tested for the core ICPS skills of Alternative Solutions Thinking (AST) and Consequential Thinking (CT) on a series of 8 social problem-solving tasks, 4 having goals characteristically more attractive to boys and 4 with goals more attractive to girls. A 2 x 2 MANOVA was used to compare the performances of boys and girls on each set of sex-typed tasks with the 3 dependent variables of liking for the tasks, number of alternative solutions suggested, and the number of consequences anticipated. As expected, liking for the tasks was higher if the activities were characteristically associated with the participant's own gender (p < .001), although the different tasks did not produce any significant gender differences in the numbers of AST or CT suggestions they prompted. Gender differences in children's peer relationships were considered, and the implications of these results for the format of ICPS interventions are noted.     

Effects of rate building on fluent performance: a review and commentary

The use of rate-building procedures to encourage the production of high response rates and to develop fluency has been increasingly justified by research on precision teaching and automaticity. Rate-building procedures often ensure both speed and accuracy, and claims have been made that such procedures result in greater retention, persistence, and generalization of trained skills, as well as preference by students. Given the potential importance of these claims for behavior analysts and educators alike, this review assesses the validity, generality, and implications of research on rate building. The review revealed sparse empirical evidence that retention, persistence, and generalization of skills result from the use of rate-building procedures when the effects of practice and reinforcement rate are controlled. Given the results of this review, the implications are discussed in the context of behavior-analytic research (e.g., behavioral momentum), and further research is recommended.     

Sensory discrimination and intelligence: testing Spearman's other hypothesis

At the centenary of Spearman's seminal 1904 article, his general intelligence hypothesis remains one of the most influential in psychology. Less well known is the article's other hypothesis that there is "a correspondence between what may provisionally be called 'General Discrimination' and 'General Intelligence' which works out with great approximation to one or absoluteness" (Spearman, 1904, p. 284). Studies that do not find high correlations between psychometric intelligence and single sensory discrimination tests do not falsify this hypothesis. This study is the first directly to address Spearman's general intelligence-general sensory discrimination hypothesis. It attempts to replicate his findings with a similar sample of schoolchildren. In a well-fitting structural equation model of the data, general intelligence and general discrimination correlated .92. In a reanalysis of data published byActon and Schroeder (2001), general intelligence and general sensory ability correlated .68 in men and women. One hundred years after its conception, Spearman's other hypothesis achieves some confirmation. The association between general intelligence and general sensory ability remains to be replicated and explained.     

An experiential approach to the inpatient anger management group

Groups that target aggression on the inpatient milieu usually use psycho-educational and cognitive-behavioral techniques. In contrast, this article presents an experiential approach that targets the moment-by-moment experience within the inpatient group. It makes unique use of group-closing relaxation exercises that facilitate cohesion, consolidate the affectively charged material generated during the session, and reorganize patients' emotional/cognitive understanding of themselves and the world around them. These groups also give patients the opportunity to negotiate the affective residue associated with past aggressive acts, and the opportunity to examine the personal meaning and underlying assumptions behind ongoing group interactions. We describe several techniques or modes of intervention. The authors also use case examples to illustrate the theory, technique, and impact the approach can have on its members.     

Visual feature integration theory: past,present, and future

Visual feature integration theory was one of the most influential theories of visual information processing in the last quarter of the 20th century. This article provides an exposition of the theory and a review of the associated data. In the past much emphasis has been placed on how the theory explains performance in various visual search tasks. The relevant literature is discussed and alternative accounts are described. Amendments to the theory are also set out. Many other issues concerning internal processes and representations implicated by the theory are reviewed. The article closes with a synopsis of what has been learned from consideration of the theory, and it is concluded that some of the issues may remain intractable unless appropriate neuroscientific investigations are carried out.     

Tribal Participatory Research: Mechanisms of a Collaborative Model

Although much social science research has been conducted within American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) communities, relatively little research has been conducted by or for those communities. We describe an approach that facilitates the active involvement of AIAN communities in the research process, from conceptualizing the issues to be investigated to developing a research design, and from collecting, analyzing, and interpreting the data to disseminating the results. The Tribal Participatory Research (TPR) approach is consistent with recent developments in psychology that emphasize the inclusion of community members and the social construction of knowledge. We describe the foundations of the approach and present specific mechanisms that can be employed in collaborations between researchers and AIAN communities. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of the use of TPR regarding project timelines and budgets, interpretation of the data, and ultimately the relationships between tribes and researchers.     

Seeing double: the role of meaning in alphanumeric-colour synaesthesia

When PD, an alphanumeric-colour synaesthete, is shown black digits or letters, each grapheme elicits a highly specific colour, called a "photism" (e.g., a 2 induces green, a Z induces brown). Previous experiments showed that photisms interfere with video-colour naming when the photism colour and the video colour are incongruent. Here we used coloured ambiguous graphemes that could be interpreted as either digits or letters depending on context (e.g., an ambiguous grapheme was interpreted as a 2 if presented within a block of digit trials, but as a Z if presented within a block of letter trials). Ambiguous graphemes were presented in video colours that were either congruent or incongruent with PD's photisms. Crucially, what was a congruent trial in one context was an incongruent trial in the other context. PD's pattern of response times indicated that identical graphemes could induce differently coloured photisms depending on their interpretation. This suggests that the meaning of graphemes ultimately determines their synaesthetic colour.     

Synaesthetic photisms guide attention

We evaluated whether synaesthetic colour experiences (i.e., photisms) guide or attract attention. An alphanumeric-colour synaesthete, J, and seven non-synaesthetes searched for target digits presented against backgrounds that were either congruent or incongruent with the colours of J's photisms for the target digits. For J, the slope of the search function for detecting the target digits on incongruent trials was shallower than the slope of the search function for detecting the target digits on congruent trials. In contrast, for the seven non-synaesthetes, the slopes of the search functions for detecting the target digits on congruent and incongruent trials were equivalent. These findings suggest that synaesthetic colour experiences influence the efficiency of visual search by guiding or attracting attention.