Histoire et tendances de la psychologie critique en Amérique du Nord

Critical psychology in the United States and Canada identifies psychology as inherently a political enterprise. It has developed along three overlapping but distinct lines that diverge in history, focus, and purpose: (a) building on psychology's empirical research methods, employing them to help reduce injustice and advance progressive or radical social change; (b) rejecting mainstream psychology's positivist and individualistic theoretical and empirical underpinnings and developing emancipatory theory and practices in their place; and (c) challenging psychology's institutional power over individuals, especially mentally and emotionally troubled individuals whose behavior strikes others as problematic. This article first describes each approach's history, influences, and roles in academic scholarship and institutions and in professional and nonacademic organizations. It then details recent efforts to expand and institutionalize a critical psychology presence despite mainstream North American psychology's strong resistance, while noting the central intertwining of personal networks, political leanings, and psychological theory. Finally, it briefly considers the implications and consequences of the lack of consensus about what critical psychology is and should become.     

La pragmatique développementale : état des lieux et perspectives

The aim of this article is to summarise the field covered by the submitted theme: “Developmental pragmatics: normal aspects and pathological aspects”, to discuss the tracks already explored by published articles and to indicate the research tracks to be explored. We are trying to show how the developmental pragmatics allowed to take in consideration the social uses of language and communication, to renew the theoretical perspectives which model children development, to increase our empirical knowledge and to finally progress in the building of relevant methodological tools. Therefore pragmatics allow to solve the mental processes which underlie the use of communication and language by children.     

Differential effectiveness of explicit verbal feedback on children's communication skills

In order to specify by which combination of content and form dimensions the explicit verbal feedback comes to be most effective in enhancing communication skills, a training experiment was designed where both dimensions were factorially manipulated. Forty children (mean age, 5–10) were randomly assigned to one of four treatment conditions: Interrogative Cognitive feedback, Declarative Cognitive feedback, Interrogative Perceptual feedback, and Declarative Perceptual feedback. The Cognitive type of feedback specified the successive cognitive steps underlying the comparison activity whereas the Perceptual type of feedback stressed only the necessity of describing perceptual differences when communicating. These two contents of feedback were either provided by a set of standardized questions or of declarative statements, after each trial of a speaking training task. Subjects were given a pretest, and immediate and delayed posttests comprised of a speaking task and a listening generalization task. A 2 (Contents) × 2 (Forms) × 2 (Tasks) × 2 (Post-tests) analysis of variance showed that all subjects performed significantly better on the speaking task than on the listening generalization task and that subjects in the Interrogative Cognitive condition performed better than subjects in the three other conditions, on both post-test tasks. Results emphasize the mutual facilitating effects of the Interrogative Form and the Cognitive Content of explicit feedback and are discussed in terms of the generalization and stability of the induced learning.     

The mean fundamental frequency in stutterers and nonstutterers during reading and spontaneous speech

Corresponding to the higher tension of muscles involved in speech production, a higher mean fundamental frequency should be expected in stutterers as compared to nonstutterers. It could be shown by the change scores of the mean fundamental frequency from reading to free conversation that stutterers tend to have a higher fundamental frequency during spontaneous speech.     

The effects of ventriloquism on the right-side advantage for verbal material

Subjects were asked to recall one of two simultaneous messages coming from hidden loudspeakers situated either at 90° or at 45° from the median plane to the left and to the right. They were told that the messages were coming from two visible dummy loudspeakers which were also situated either at 90° or at 45°. Pre-stimulus cueing of the side to be recalled was given. Significant right-side advantage was obtained in the 90° real-fictitious condition, not in the other conditions. These results show that right-side advantage can be obtained with presentation over loudspeakers and unilateral recall, and dismiss a purely structural or purely cognitive view of lateral asymmetries in audition. Role of structural and cognitive factors is discussed.     

Interhemispheric functional relationships in auditory agnosia : An analysis of the preconditions and a conceptual model

A statistical analysis revealed the following concerning auditory agnosia. (1) Bilateral temporal lobe lesions prevailed; in a minority of cases unilateral lesions were verified. (2) The syndrome occurred as a result of repeated insults. (3) There was a statistically significant correlation between the side of the first insult and the predilective type of the syndrome, i.e., agnosia preferably for linguistic with respect to nonlinguistic material. On the basis of these results we discuss the principle of contralateral compensation and the hypothesis of lesional interference. In doing so a conceptual model of interhemispheric functional relationships is developed. We made use of a set theory-oriented interpretation of Kinsbourne's “attention-model” (M. Kinsbourne, 1970, Acta Psychologica 33, 193–201).     

Majority influence,minority influence and conversion behavior: A replication

A recent experiment by Moscovici and Personnaz (Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 1980, 16, 270–282) showed that whereas a majority produces merely compliance, or a change in the individual's verbal responses, a minority induces conversion, or a true change in one's subjective judgments. Because of the theoretical significance of these findings and because of their inconsistency with data from other experiments, an exact replication and extension of this experiment was performed. There was no evidence of compliance in any social influence condition. Instead, and in contrast to Moscovici and Personnaz, both a majority and a minority produced “conversion” behavior. Subjects' behavior is interpreted as the expression of an improved perception, resulting from a heightened level of attention to the object of judgment under social influence conditions.     

Factors of hemifield differences in form discrimination

The influence of some process-limiting variables on hemifield differences for nonsense shapes in a "same-different" classification task was examined. "Different" responses, but not "same," did show systematic effects. Weakly discriminable and unfamiliar shapes which were presented successively yielded a significant left-hemifield advantage, while highly discriminable and more familiar shapes presented simultaneously yielded a nonsignificant right-hemifield advantage. Discriminability, considered independently of the other variables, had effects in opposite directions: low discriminability tended to favor more the right than the left hemifield in each experiment, but the right hemifield more than the left when the comparison was made between experiments. The results are discussed in terms of the spatial-frequency model (Sergent, 1982b, 1983) and the analytic-holistic distinction.     

Étude des stratégies d’adultes présentant un retard mental dans la résolution de la Twenty Questions Task

A Twenty Questions problem solving Task was given to 30 mentally retarded adults, 30 mentally nonretarded adults matched on chronological age, and 12 mentally nonretarded children matched on cognitive efficiency. Four strategies were identified on the basis of a subject-by-subject analysis. Results showed group differences of frequency in the use of the strategies. Moreover, results indicated that the more frequent strategy used by the mentally retarded adults is the one which consists in identifying the categories without using them to efficiently reduce the problem space. The interpretation of the results as reflecting a conceptual deficit or a chronicle cognitive sub-functioning of the mentally retarded adults depicted in the literature is discussed.     

On integrating Jungian and other theories

This paper consists of reflections on some of the processes, subtleties, and ‘eros’ involved in attempting to integrate Jungian and other analytic perspectives. Assimilation of other theoretical viewpoints has a long history in analytical psychology, beginning when Jung met Freud. Since its inception, the Journal of Analytical Psychology has provided a forum for theoretical syntheses and comparative psychoanalysis. Such attempts at synthesizing other theories represent analytical psychology itself trying to individuate.