More Research Questions: Rebuttal to Bornstein, Langer, and Stickney

Stickney (2010), Bornstein (2010), and Langer (2010) expand the research recommendations for experimental writing research that Range and Jenkins (2010) generated from gender schema, gender role, and socialization theory. Stickney derives research questions from communication and emotion theory. Bornstein and Langer focus on assessment in this paradigm. Bornstein’s multimodal assessment strategy might improve understanding of apparently inconsistent findings, indicate unstudied processes of interest, and show how changing instructions might maximize writing benefits. Langer’s recommendations to examine gender differences in pre/post/and follow-up emotional outcomes, and in subjective, expressive, and physiological indicators of emotion, identify potential new outcome measures in this research. All three commentaries show promise of advancing our understanding of how writing about trauma might help women and men.     

Who Benefits from Pennebaker’s Expressive Writing Paradigm? Research Recommendations from Three Gender Theories

Pennebaker’s experimental writing paradigm quantifies who, when, and how people benefit from writing about trauma, but researchers and meta-analyses thus far have rarely considered gender. Gender theories specify useful research strategies. Gender schema theory suggests examining gendered measurement biases, gender-relevant writing content, and whether traditional masculinity predicts benefits. Social role theory suggests assessing physician visits, disclosure history, and privacy as possible moderators of benefits. Socialization theory suggests assessing emotional approach coping, imagined readers, alexithymia, and whether mastery instructions influence benefits. All specify measuring functionally related gender constructs (gender schemas, gender roles, and socialization), asking whether gender proxies co-varying moderators and mediators of benefits, and examining possible linkages between benefits, trauma type, and disclosure. Help-seeking and somatization require integrated theoretical approaches.     

The influence of schemas,stimulus ambiguity,and interview schedule on eyewitness memory over time

The authors examined how a crime schema influenced the types of details witnesses recalled over multiple interviews that varied in delay before the initial interview and between subsequent interviews. Accuracy data showed that, in general, schema-irrelevant traces experienced greater decay than schema-consistent and schema-inconsistent traces after the initial interview and that delaying the initial interview negatively affected recall at the initial interview but led to less decay over subsequent interviews. Ambiguity of the crime stimulus was also manipulated. Witnesses used their schema to interpret ambiguous information and, as a result, made more schema-consistent intrusions and less correct responses and were more likely to report false memories that involved conscious recollection (using the remember-know paradigm).     

Kommunizierende Agenten: Gestische und natürlichsprachliche Interaktion

Communicating agents: Gesture and natural language interaction Summary. An important scientific method within cognitive science consists in the synthesis of cognitive abilities, of forms of behavior by developing specific artificial agents. Many current approaches make use of the notion of an agent in order to develop concepts of cognitive behavior on different levels of abstraction. Basic properties of agents are: reactivity, autonomy, goal directed activity, and communication. This contribution examines the communicative aspect, i.e. the interaction by gesture or language and their integration, e.g. in identifying referents. Since we conceive communicating agents as systems able to synthesize such interactions as well as their integration, this will be illustrated with respect to two artificial systems. The GRAVIS system detects objects as well as pointing gestures of an instructor, and the camera agent is able to focus on specific objects. The CoRA system processes situated natural language instructions, and the simulated robot agent is able to integrate the use of language, perception and action. Finally we propose an integration of both approaches. Zusammenfassung. Ein wichtiger Forschungsansatz innerhalb der Kognitionswissenschaft besteht in der Synthese kognitiver Fähigkeiten und Verhaltensweisen durch den Bau geeigneter, künstlicher Systeme. Viele der in jüngerer Zeit verfolgten Ansätze nutzen dabei den Begriff des Agenten, um kognitives Verhalten auf unterschiedlichen Abstraktionsebenen zu konzeptualisieren. Grundeigenschaften von Agenten sind u.a. Reaktivität, Autonomie, Zielgerichtetheit und Kommunikationsfähigkeit. In dem vorliegenden Beitrag interessieren wir uns für die Ebene kommunikativen Verhaltens, bei der Gestik und Sprache zur Vermittlung eines Sachverhaltes zusammenwirken, und verstehen unter einem kommunizierenden Agenten ein System, das für solches Verhalten einen nennenswerten Kompetenzausschnitt realisiert. Wir stellen hierzu beispielhaft zwei Systeme vor. Das System GRAVIS demonstriert die Referenzierung von Objekten im Blickfeld eines Kamerakopfes durch Handzeigegestik eines Instrukteurs. Das System CoRA demonstriert die Verarbeitung sprachlicher Handlungsanweisungen im Kontext der Kooperation mit einem simulierten Roboter. Abschließend wird die Integration der beiden Ansätze diskutiert.     

Masculine/feminine: A personological perspective

How might our expanding knowledge of gender contribute to a deeper understanding of personality? This paper offers a personological perspective for considering the import of contemporary work, and focuses on the ten substantive papers included in this issue of the Journal of Personality An agenda for our future inquiry is proposed that includes (a) revising our ideology of science in a postpositivist era, (b) recognizing the complexity of personality as a domain distinguished from “human being theory,” (c) developing richer and more comprehensive personality theory, and (d) studying persons over time The papers reported in this issue contribute in various ways to the enrichment of personological understanding     

MULTI-CULTURAL RESEARCH: DEVELOPING A PARTICIPATIVE METHODOLOGY FOR CROSS-CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGY

Since truly culture-free research is impossible, greater attention should be paid to the nature of collaborative processes among researchers in cross-cultural psychology. Participative methodology should be examined through appropriate research, and methodologies to ensure equal participation should be developed accordingly. It is suggested that the nature of the collaborative process be reported in research publications as a standard methodology section. A short questionnaire on researchers' reactions to these suggestions and on current collaborative processes is presented.     

FAMILY AFFAIRS

This department solicits reports of work-in-progress; applications of family therapy techniques and principles to new areas; reports of innovative programs of research, training, and therapy in the family field; accounts of relevant, personal experience. Material for consideration should be sent to The Editor.