The sociocultural movement in psychology,the role of theories in sociocultural inquiries,and the theory of sociocultural models

This special issue presents the theory of sociocultural models (TSCM) and its applications in diverse areas of psychology, including education, health care, clinical practice, gender relations, and general research. As many theories already exist in the social sciences, some readers may ask: “Why do cross‐cultural, cultural, and indigenous psychologists need another theory?” This question is comprised of two aspects: culture/cultural and theory/theoretical. Therefore, to answer it, it is important to clarify both issues. The first relates to cultural and its relation to psychological. The second, theory, considers its relation to cultural and psychological. These issues have long‐range implications for all culture and psychology disciplines as they pose many questions: What role does culture play in the mental functioning of people? How is culture constituted? Is cultural related to social? Does people’s mental functioning exert reciprocal influences on their cultural and social functioning? While working toward answering these questions, researchers quickly determine that more questions arise: What role should theories play in answering these questions? What constitutes theory in culture and psychology disciplines? How should such a theory (or such theories) address the triad of cultural, social, and mental? Consequently, in an effort to provide an overview of the TSCM and to begin to answer these questions, this introduction consists of two parts. The first part addresses the sociocultural turn in modern psychology; this part discusses its implications for research in culture and psychology disciplines. The second segment examines the topic of the theoretical backgrounds of cultural and cross‐cultural research and connects the philosophical paradigms of interpretivism and realism with the theory of sociocultural models. This introduction concludes with a brief overview of the articles included in this issue.     

Evolving research misconduct policies and their significance for physical scientists

Scientific misconduct includes the fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism (FFP) of concepts, data or ideas; some institutions in the United States have expanded this concept to include “other serious deviations (OSD) from accepted research practice.” It is the absence of this OSD clause that distinguishes scientific misconduct policies of the past from the “research misconduct” policies that should be the basis of future federal policy in this area. This paper introduces a standard for judging whether an action should be considered research misconduct as distinguished from scientific misconduct: by this standard, research misconduct must involve activities unique to the practice of science and must have the potential to negatively affect the scientific record. Although the number of cases of scientific misconduct is uncertain (only the NIH and the NSF keep formal records), the costs are high in terms of the integrity of the scientific record, diversions from research to investigate allegations, ruined careers of those eventually exonerated, and erosion of public confidence in science. Existing scientific misconduct policies vary from institution to institution and from government agency to government agency; some have highly developed guidelines that include OSD, others have no guidelines at all. One result has been that the federal False Claims Act has been used to pursue allegations of scientific misconduct. As a consequence, such allegations have been adjudicated in federal courts, rather than judged by scientific peers. The federal government is now establishing a first-ever research misconduct policy that would apply to all research funded by the federal government regardless of which agency funded the research or whether the research was carried out in a government, industrial or university laboratory. Physical scientists, who up to now have only infrequently been the subject of scientific misconduct allegations, must nonetheless become active in the debate over research misconduct policies and how they are implemented since they will now be explicitly covered by this new federal wide policy. Disclaimer: The authors are grateful for the support for conduct of this research provided by the United States Department of Energy (DOE). The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the authors and were formed and expressed without reference to positions taken by DOE or the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). The views of the authors are not intended either to reflect or imply positions of DOE or PNNL.     

The professional approach to engineering ethics: five research questions

This paper argues that research for engineering ethics should routinely involve philosophers, social scientists, and engineers, and should focus for now on certain basic questions such as: Who is an engineer? What is engineering? What do engineers do? How do they make decisions? And how much control do they actually have over what they do?     

孤独症谱系障碍者的生物运动探测障碍：基于行为与神经的证据

关于孤独症谱系障碍个体探测生物运动的能力是否受损,已有行为研究尚存分歧。导致分歧的原因可能是实验刺激、实验任务和测量指标存在差异。然而,神经研究却一致证实其潜在的神经机制存在异常。领域特殊性观点认为该障碍可能是基于后侧颞上沟功能异常的社会性功能障碍,也可能是基于镜像神经元功能异常的社会性功能障碍;而领域一般性观点认为该障碍可能是基于背侧视觉流功能异常的视运动知觉障碍,也可能基于脑功能联结异常的弱中央统合障碍。据此,本文将从研究范式、行为表现及潜在机制三个方面梳理相关研究,以期为后续研究提供新方向。     

炎症性肠病的药物治疗现状及进展

炎症性肠病（IBD）病程迁延反复,影响患者生活质量,耗费卫生资源。虽然传统药物如5-氨基水杨酸、糖皮质激素、免疫抑制剂等仍是目前治疗主流,但是大量有关发病机制的研究以及循证医学的发展对IBD的治疗产生了积极的推进作用。IBD的治疗正步入免疫调节的生物学时代,多种新型生物制剂的出现为IBD的治疗提供了新的策略和选择。现就目前IBD药物治疗现状以及最新进展进行综述,以期对临床IBD治疗提供参考。     

自我:从生物性到精神性

本文一方面从“生物性”与“精神性”两个人性层次透视自我,将自我视为一个由“生物自我”与“精神自我”组成的、以“生物自我”为基础“精神自我”为目标的对立统一体;另一方面又从“内容”与“功能”两个意识维度解析自我,将自我看成既是一个意义的存在又是一架认识的“机器”。自我便是一个由上述两个层次与维度有机组成的心理系统,这里的“有机”的涵义主要体现在,不仅生物自我与精神自我是相辅相成的辩证结构,而且这两个层次又都各自表现为内容与功能相互联系的认识主体。     

Do details bug you? Effects of perceptual richness in learning about biological change

People often have difficulty in understanding processes of biological change, and they typically reject drastic life cycle changes such as metamorphosis, except for animals with which they are familiar. Even after a lesson about metamorphosis, people often do not generalize to animals not seen during the lesson. This might be partially due to the perceptual richness of the diagrams typically used during lessons on metamorphosis, which serves to emphasize the individual animal rather than a class of animals. In two studies, we examined whether the perceptual richness of a diagram influences adults' learning and transfer of knowledge about metamorphosis. One study was conducted in a laboratory setting, and the other was online. In both studies, adults who saw the bland diagram during the lesson accurately transferred more than adults who saw the rich diagram during the lesson.     

Augmenting treatment efficiency in exposure therapy for PTSD: a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial of yohimbine HCl

The alpha-2 adrenergic receptor antagonist, yohimbine, can facilitate fear extinction in animals and humans. One potential mechanism is increased noradrenergic activity and associated arousal in the presence of conditioned stimuli. Accordingly, yohimbine might augment prolonged exposure (PE) therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), where heightened exposure-oriented arousal is a theorized driver and empirical predictor of treatment success. A double-blind placebo-controlled randomized trial (NCT 01031979) piloted yohimbine augmentation in 26 males with combat-related PTSD. Participants were given one-time dose of yohimbine or placebo prior to the first imaginal exposure. Subsequently, both arms completed standard PE. The primary outcome was trauma-cued heart-rate reactivity a week after the drug/exposure visit, a highly specified, objective measure sensitive to incremental change. Secondary outcomes included arousal during the drug/exposure visit and slope of distress, PTSD, and depression over the course of PE. Consistent with hypothesis, yohimbine led to higher objective and subjective arousal during the drug/exposure visit and to lower trauma-cued heart-rate reactivity one-week later. One dose of yohimbine also led to greater between-session habituation and more rapid improvement on depression, but not PTSD, over the course of care. Results of this controlled pilot indicate support for continued investigation of yohimbine-augmented exposure therapy for PTSD.     

Crisis,Biology, Ecology: A New Starting-Point for Phenomenology?

The crisis of European sciences in Husserl’s late work diagnoses Galilean science as specifically and necessarily losing touch with the intuitive evidence that would legitimate it due to its reliance on a formal-mathematical conceptual apparatus. While the vast majority of Husserl’s late work was focussed on a critique of the formal-mathematical paradigm of the physical science of nature, at several points the possibility of biology as the exemplary science is raised to suggest that the lack of a reliance on formal-mathematical conceptual language would mean that a systemic crisis would not occur in such a case. This investigation considers the grounds for the expectation that biology would not engender a crisis, suggests that a paradigmatic role for ecology would more adequately address this expectation, and finally claims that the question of the relation between a specific exemplary science and transcendental phenomenology is not fully resolved even in this case.