Explaining prompts children to privilege inductively rich properties

Four experiments with preschool-aged children test the hypothesis that engaging in explanation promotes inductive reasoning on the basis of shared causal properties as opposed to salient (but superficial) perceptual properties. In Experiments 1a and 1b, 3- to 5-year-old children prompted to explain during a causal learning task were more likely to override a tendency to generalize according to perceptual similarity and instead extend an internal feature to an object that shared a causal property. Experiment 2 replicated this effect of explanation in a case of label extension (i.e., categorization). Experiment 3 demonstrated that explanation improves memory for clusters of causally relevant (non-perceptual) features, but impairs memory for superficial (perceptual) features, providing evidence that effects of explanation are selective in scope and apply to memory as well as inference. In sum, our data support the proposal that engaging in explanation influences children’s reasoning by privileging inductively rich, causal properties.     

Fragmentation or Differentiation: Questioning the Crisis in Psychology

There is a recurrent discourse about the fragmentation of psychology and its crises as a science, which often leads to a disenchanted view about its future. To this discourse we oppose a developmental one, in which crises can be occasions for development, and in which development might imply differentiation. We first review why psychology can be said to be in crisis. We then situate the crisis in the pragmatics of doing psychology. Crises occur when psychologists have problems either working with other psychologists or with communities. We argue that collaborative research is a way to overcome these crises. Specifically we suggest three specific scientific activities that can lead to the development of psychology: collaborative research methods, the identification of nodal concepts that enable the bringing together of different approaches and disciplines, and the creation and maintenance of institutional spaces that enable creative, collaborative work.

Imagination as Expansion of Experience

This paper proposes a developmental view on imagination: from this perspective, imagination can be seen as triggered by some disrupting event, which generates a disjunction from the person’s unfolding experience of the “real” world, and as unfolding as a loop, which eventually comes back to the actual experience. Examining recent and classical theorization of imagination in psychology, the paper opposes a deficitary view of imagination to an expansive notion of imagination. The paper explores Piaget, Vygotsky, Harris and Pelaprat & Cole consider: 1) What does provoke a “rupture” or disjunction? 2) What are the psychological processes involved in the imaginary loop? 3) What nourishes such processes? 4) What are the consequences of such imaginary loop, or what does it enable doing? The paper proposes to adopt an expansive view of imagination, as Vygotsky proposed—a perspective that has been under-explored empirically since his seminal work. To stimulate such sociocultural psychology of imagination, two empirical examples are provided, one showing how children make sense of metaphor in an experimental setting, the other showing a young person using a novel met at school as symbolic resource.     

Who am I? Differential effects of three contemplative mental trainings on emotional word use in self-descriptions

In a large-scale longitudinal mental training study, we examined whether learning different contemplative practices can change the emotional content of people’s self-concept as assessed through emotional word use in the Twenty Statement Test. During three 3-month training modules, participants learned distinct practices targeting attentional, socio-affective, or socio-cognitive capacities, or were re-tested. Emotional word use specifically increased after socio-cognitive training including perspective-taking on self and others, compared to attentional and socio-affective compassion-based trainings, and retest-controls. Overall, our findings demonstrate training-induced behavioral plasticity of the emotional self-concept content in healthy adults and could indicate greater emotional granularity. These findings can inform future interventions in mental health, given that alterations in self-referential processing are a common contributing factor in psychopathology.     

Is Exposure to Suicide Beyond Kin Associated with Risk for Suicidal Behavior? A Systematic Review of the Evidence

Suicide bereavement and postvention literature often espouses risk for subsequent suicidal behavior among those previously exposed to a suicide death. Most often risk is discussed in relation to kin; however, many more individuals are exposed to suicide, and the impact of this exposure is important to understand in relation to targeting postvention. This review examined the research literature (1990–2014) to determine the evidence base for risk among those exposed to suicide. The findings demonstrate that risk of suicidal behaviors among those exposed to the suicide is significantly higher than those unexposed. These results are discussed within the context of current research in the field of postvention, and suggestions for future research are suggested.