Collaborative communication efficiency is linked to relationship satisfaction in dating couples

The speed, or efficiency, in which people communicate is linked to positive interpersonal outcomes. However, no studies of communication efficiency have examined romantic partners, making it unclear whether efficient communication is linked to relationship satisfaction above and beyond previously identified communication skills (e.g., problem‐solving). We recruited dating couples (N = 56) to attend a laboratory session to complete survey measures and a collaborative communication task. Multilevel models demonstrated that both task efficiency (β = ?.36, p = .04) and self‐reported problem‐solving communication skills (β = .28, p = .002) were associated with relationship satisfaction. Results suggest that communication task efficiency can be meaningfully applied to the study of romantic relationships and couple communication skills.     

SOME CORRELATIONS BETWEEN METHODS OF KNOWING AND THEOLOGICAL CONCEPTS IN ARTHUR PEACOCKE'S PERSONALISTIC PANENTHEISM AND NONPERSONAL NATURALISTIC THEISM

Differences in methods of knowing correlate with differences in concepts about what is known. This is an underlying issue in science and religion. It is seen, first, in Arthur Peacocke's reasoning about God as transcendent and personal, is based on an assumption of correlative thinking that like causes like. This contrasts with a notion of causation in empirical science, which explains the emergence of new phenomena as originating from temporally prior phenomena quite unlike that which emerges. The scientific understanding of causation is compatible with a naturalistic theism that holds a nonpersonal model of God as the creative process. However, focusing on the immanence of God, there is a second correlation between methods of knowing and concepts of God. Classical empiricism, used by science, correlates with God understood nonpersonally as the creative process. Radical empiricism, in which feelings and not only sense perceptions have cognitive import, opens up the possibility that one can experience Peacocke's personal, panentheistic God as pattern‐forming influence. I illustrate this second method‐concept correlation with a personal experience.     

Advancing the dialogue between inner and outer empiricism: A comment on O’Nualláin

In a recent contribution to New Ideas in Psychology, Seán O’Nualláin draws out a distinction between inner and outer empiricism, and suggests that consciousness research can benefit from analysis in both directions, that is, via the exploration of facts and relations that facilitate a third-person understanding of consciousness (by reference to an analysis of the structures, processes, and functions of the brain) and via the direct exploration of conscious experience itself, both in terms of its computational (content filled) and non-computational (content empty) aspects. In positing a substrate of subjectivity independent of the contents of consciousness (and, more specifically, a state of “nothingness”), Ò’Nualláin follows a long tradition deeply rooted in mythical, religious, and esoteric schools of belief and practice. Although there is considerable debate amongst philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists as to whether or not a non-computational view of consciousness is viable, O’Nualláin accepts that such a possibility does exist. Further, he suggests that a dialogue between the inner and outer empiricists will be fruitful. In this comment I, critique Ò’Nualláin's initial thoughts on the subject and draw out a series of useful distinctions that will help to advance the dialogue between inner and outer empiricism. Critical amongst these distinctions is explicit reference to (1) ontological and epistemological interdependencies in consciousness research, and (2) states of consciousness that describe the transition from “mindfulness” through “nothingness” to “no-mind”.     

心理学经验主义、理性主义与解释学认识论比较研究

虽然现代心理学一直想摆脱哲学的束缚与羁绊,但心理学的发展中总是自觉不自觉地表露出不同的认识论取向。经验主义、理性主义和解释学哲学对现代心理学的发展产生了重要影响。三种取向的心理学在心理学研究对象本质的理解、知识形成的途径、研究结果的表现形式以及研究方法的选择上各执己见,由此展现出三种不同的心理学风景。经验主义认识论注重事物各种特征的描述,经验材料的收集,主张采用自然科学研究方法以揭示现象的规律与法则。理性主义认识论关注现象背后的深层次结构,主张用信息加工、记忆检索、图式与结构、感觉输入等方式获得对现象本质的认识,并以形式结构的方式呈现研究结果。解释学认识论则注重对人类实践活动的理解,重视人与环境的相互作用,主张以语义的言说阐明研究结果。在未来,心理学仍需寻求完善的认识论基础,真正确立适于人性的心理学研究方式,以期展示人的完整本质。     

詹姆斯心理学的现象学阐释

必须从詹姆斯的人格和他的思想作为整体及其统一性的背景出发,才能有效地理解詹姆斯心理学的真髓。詹姆斯思想的内核是彻底经验主义。他以彻底经验主义为基础的心理学思考,与胡塞尔的现象学思考作为思想态度是同质的,因而表现出明确的现象学特征。文章指出了对詹姆斯心理学进行现象学阐释的根据,并结合心理学史探讨了詹姆斯的思想方法对心理学作为整体而言的理论意义。     

HOW ACTS OF DISCOVERY TRANSFORM OUR TACIT KNOWING POWERS IN BOTH SCIENTIFIC AND RELIGIOUS INQUIRY

Abstract. In this essay I take Michael Polanyi's analysis of scientific discovery and extend it to encompass fresh encounters with the living God. Given the embodied character of all human knowing, Polanyi challenged objectivism and positivism as untenable. In its place, Polanyi noted that the tacit skills established when a physicist learns to detect radio waves has its counterpart in a Christian's being trained to find God. Once trained, stubborn organismic habits constrain both physicist and believer within a socially approved heuristic circle that can be broken only by the act of discovery. The puzzlement that erupts at the onset of an inquiry ultimately finds relief only in an expanded encounter with the realities that one has been trained to serve. Thus, the act of discovery not only serves to disrupt the tradition as it has been received but also reveals that the realities being served make themselves known in novel ways. The lifelong pursuit of God and the lifelong pursuit of novel manifestations of radio waves thus share a common epistemological and phenomenological underpinning.     

Conflict and metacognitive control: the mismatch-monitoring hypothesis of how others' knowledge states affect recall

Information about others' success in remembering is frequently available. For example, students taking an exam may assess its difficulty by monitoring when others turn in their exams. In two experiments, we investigated how rememberers use this information to guide recall. Participants studied paired associates, some semantically related (and thus easier to retrieve) and some unrelated (and thus harder). During a subsequent cued recall test, participants viewed fictive information about an opponent's accuracy on each item. In Experiment 1, participants responded to each cue once before seeing the opponent's performance and once afterwards. Participants reconsidered their responses least often when the opponent's accuracy matched the item difficulty (easy items the opponent recalled, hard items the opponent forgot) and most often when the opponent's accuracy and the item difficulty mismatched. When participants responded only after seeing the opponent's performance (Experiment 2), the same mismatch conditions that led to reconsideration even produced superior recall. These results suggest that rememberers monitor whether others' knowledge states accord or conflict with their own experience, and that this information shifts how they interrogate their memory and what they recall.     

Reflective writing: I wouldn’t start from here – examining a professional development initiative to enhance the scholarly activity of English HE in FE lecturers

This paper explores the nature of reflective writing through the experience of the researchers in running a series of writing workshops with a group of higher education practitioners working in a UK further education college. The focus here is on reflective writing, which was chosen to start the sequence of workshops, as it was perceived as a form of writing with which the participants would be familiar, given its role in the education and development of teachers within the sector. Our assumption was that this familiarity would facilitate the writing process and participants would readily respond by engaging in reflective writing. However, in practice this proved not to be the case, despite being introduced to a variety of different forms of writing over a series of workshops, it took the participants longer than we expected to begin to write. This led us to question our assumptions about the starting point for the writing workshops and what they might achieve. The paper draws on field notes made during the writing initiative and data gathered through focus groups and interviews with the participants, as well as extracts of their writing to examine their experiences. Different conceptualisations of reflective writing are identified and their implications are explored in relation to the participants’ engagement with writing and their experience of professional development.     

Structure versus process: Mach, Hertz, and the Normative Aspect of Science

In the end of the nineteenth century, there was a remarkable ‘empiricist attitude’ found among certain philosopher-scientists, an attitude which arguably emerged in the main as a reaction to the anti-scientific mood prevalent in the culture that time. Those philosopher-scientists, such as Mach and Hertz, were particularly anxious to emphasize and laud the privileged status of the empirical dimension ofour scientific knowledge, distinguishing it carefully from the theoretical constructions and hypothetical entities that are ordinarily posited by scientists. Yet, as I exhibit in this article, there were certain crucial philosophical differences between these two thinkers with respect to their general conception of scientific theories and scientific norms guiding the activity. I suggest further that the most central difference in this context between Mach and Hertz can justifiably (and, perhaps, more fruitfully) be articulated and reckoned in traditional andcontemporary epistemological terms. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Deciphering the Tower of Babel: Examining the Theory Base for Wraparound Fidelity

I present the results of a study that examined a theoretical and paradigmatic basis to better define fidelity in a wraparound approach to service delivery. I first examined the literature to clarify terms and to suggest a paradigmatic and theoretical base for the easily misinterpreted, value-laden philosophy of wraparound. Two deceptively simple constructs were identified and examined through a multi-case, multi-method design. Results suggested that wraparound is an emerging collaborative model based in critical and constructivist thought and in ecological systems theory. My study provides a preliminary but essential step in clarifying the process of implementation and evaluation of the wraparound approach.