Epistemic cultural constraints on the uses of psychology

This paper describes some epistemic cultural considerations which shape the uses of psychology. I argue the study of mind is bound by the metaphysical background of the given locale and era in which it is practiced. The epistemic setting in which psychology takes place will shape what is worth observing, how it is to be studied, how the data is to be interpreted, and the nature of the ultimate explanatory units. To demonstrate conceptual epistemic constraints, I discuss metaphor use in psychology. In addition, epistemic constraints shape the praxes that arise from structural study of the mind. In order to illustrate this cultural constraint, I discuss Soviet Psychology and provide a contrast between practical uses of psychoanalysis in India, Egypt, and rural Ghana. In response to these conceptual and practical epistemic limitations, psychology could adapt methods drawn from history and anthropology.     

Adaptations in driver deceleration behaviour with automatic incident detection: A naturalistic driving study

Traffic congestion and crash rates can be reduced by introducing variable speed limits (VSLs) and automatic incident detection (AID) systems. Previous findings based on loop detector measurements have revealed that drivers reduce their speeds while approaching traffic congestion when the AID system is active. Notwithstanding these behavioural effects, most microscopic traffic flow models assessing the impact of VSLs do not describe driver response accurately.This study analyses the main factors that influence driver deceleration behaviour while approaching traffic congestion with and without VSLs. The Dutch VSL database was linked to the driver behaviour data collected in the UDRIVE naturalistic driving study. Driver engagement in secondary tasks and glance behaviour were extracted from the video data. Linear mixed-effects models predicting the characteristics of deceleration events were estimated.The results show that the maximum deceleration is high when approaching a slower leader, when driving at high speeds and short distance headways, and close to the beginning of traffic congestion. The minimum time headway is short when driving at high speeds and changing lanes. Certain drivers showed higher decelerations and shorter time headways than others. Controlled for these main factors, smaller maximum decelerations were found when the VSLs were present and visible, and when the gantries were within close proximity. These factors could be incorporated into microscopic traffic simulations to evaluate the impact of AID systems on traffic congestion more realistically. Further research is needed to clarify the link between engagement in secondary tasks, glance behaviour and deceleration behaviour.     

Age constraints on first versus second language acquisition: evidence for linguistic plasticity and epigenesis

Does age constrain the outcome of all language acquisition equally regardless of whether the language is a first or second one? To test this hypothesis, the English grammatical abilities of deaf and hearing adults who either did or did not have linguistic experience (spoken or signed) during early childhood were investigated with two tasks, timed grammatical judgement and untimed sentence to picture matching. Findings showed that adults who acquired a language in early life performed at near-native levels on a second language regardless of whether they were hearing or deaf or whether the early language was spoken or signed. By contrast, deaf adults who experienced little or no accessible language in early life performed poorly. These results indicate that the onset of language acquisition in early human development dramatically alters the capacity to learn language throughout life, independent of the sensory-motor form of the early experience.     

A Liberation Psychology Approach to Acculturative Integration of Migrant Populations

This paper describes an acculturative integration approach that stresses the contribution of liberation psychology. Immigrant integration is a challenge for receiving countries in the Western world due to the frequent asymmetrical and oppressive conditions suffered by newcomers in their new settlements. The cross-cultural perspective connects integration with psychological acculturation, emphasizing harmony between acquisitions of the new culture while maintaining cultural heritage, and creating opportunities for intergroup relationships. In turn, liberation psychology permits an understanding of the acculturative transition as an empowerment and self-construction process by which immigrants acquire a new vision of the world and of themselves, transforming both structural conditions and themselves. From this perspective we conceptualize acculturative integration as the process by which newcomers become an accepted part of the new society through a reflexive and evaluative process, changing their social references and position, rebuilding their social and personal resources, and achieving a new agency in coherence with their new challenges and goals. In this process, they acquire critical thinking about unequal conditions, gain capacities to respond to the inequalities, and take effective actions to confront them. We illustrate this process using the narratives of nine Moroccan women who are living in asymmetrical and oppressive local contexts in Andalusia, the southern-most region of Spain.     

Group critical incident stress debriefing with emergency services personnel: a randomized controlled trial

Although single-session individual debriefing is contraindicated, the efficacy of group psychological debriefing remains unresolved. We conducted the first randomized controlled trial of critical incident stress debriefing (CISD) with emergency workers (67 volunteer fire-fighters) following shared exposure to an occupational potentially traumatic event (PTE). The goals of group CISD are to prevent post-traumatic stress and promote return to normal functioning following a PTE. To assess both goals we measured four outcomes, before and after the intervention: post-traumatic stress, psychological distress, quality of life, and alcohol use. Fire brigades were randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions: (1) CISD, (2) Screening (i.e., no-treatment), or (3) stress management Education. Controlling for pre-intervention scores, CISD was associated with significantly less alcohol use post-intervention relative to Screening, and significantly greater post-intervention quality of life relative to Education. There were no significant effects on post-traumatic stress or psychological distress. Overall, CISD may benefit broader functioning following exposure to work-related PTEs. Future research should focus on individual, group, and organizational factors and processes that can promote recovery from operational stressors. Ultimately, an occupational health (rather than victim-based) approach will provide the best framework for understanding and combating potential threats to the health and well-being of workers at high risk for PTE exposure.     

Avoiding Authoritarianism: On the Problem of Justification in Contemporary Critical Social Theory

Abstract

Critical social theories look critically at the ways in which particular social arrangements hinder human flourishing, with a view to bringing about social change for the better. In this they are guided by the idea of a good society in which the identified social impediments to human flourishing would once and for all have been removed. The question of how these guiding ideas of the good life can be justified as valid across socio‐cultural contexts and historical epochs is the most fundamental difficulty facing critical social theories today. This problem of justification, which can be traced back to certain key shifts in the modern Western social imaginary, calls on contemporary theories to negotiate the tensions between the idea of context‐transcendent validity and their own anti‐authoritarian impulses. Habermas makes an important contribution towards resolving the problem, but takes a number of wrong turnings.     

We,Heirs of Enlightenment: Critical Theory,Democracy and Social Science

Abstract

My goal here is to come to terms with the Enlightenment as the horizon of critical social science. First, I consider in more detail the understanding of the Enlightenment in Critical Theory, particularly in its conception of the sociality of reason. Second, I develop an account of freedom in terms of human powers, along the lines of recent capability conceptions that link freedom to the development of human powers, including the power to interpret and create norms. Finally, I show the ways in which the social sciences can be moral sciences in the Enlightenment sense. This account provides us with a coherent Enlightenment standard by which to judge institutions as promoting development, understood in terms of the capabilities necessary for freedom. The relevant social science in this area might include the robust generalization that there has never been a famine in a democratic society.     

Our world is more than physics: a constructive – critical comment on the current science and theology debate

“Critical realism” is one of the most important positions in the current science and theology debate. An analysis of its origin and meaning leads to the question if this position mostly propagated by physicist-theologians could miss an intrinsic feature of the personal dimension of reality. A deeper meaning of the personal dimension sets human science apart. Taking into account social science's insight that persons responsible for their conclusions and actions drive the process of science, the moral dimension of science has to be emphasized. To integrate these aspects into a coherent position, a more differentiated epistemological model is needed. The solution proposed in this paper is to modify critical realism to constructive-critical realism. Theologically interpreted, constructive-critical realism remembers humankind's purpose to shape nature in cooperation with God and with the means of culture toward increasing realization of freedom in relationship. The argument is widely influenced by an analysis of the works of John Polkinghorne.     

Substitutes for leadership in anaesthesia teams and their impact on leadership effectiveness

In this study we aim to increase our understanding of leadership in anaesthesia teams by investigating the relationship between substitutes for leadership, leadership behaviour, and team performance in situations with varying levels of routine and standardization. The present study relied on video recordings of 12 anaesthesia teams in a simulated setting with the occurrence of a nonroutine event. Clinical team performance was measured by the speed of adequate team reaction to this event. The leadership behaviours observed were coded either as content oriented (e.g., information transmission) or structuring (e.g., assigning tasks). Results showed that leadership behaviour changed depending upon the level of routine of a situation, the degree of standardization, and, to some extent, on the experience of team members. Leadership tends to be positively related to team performance during nonroutine and low standardized situations but negatively related to team performance in routine and highly standardized situations. Furthermore, leadership is only slightly related to team member experience. This study improves our understanding of influences of substitutes for leadership on successful leadership behaviour in anaesthesia teams. The findings also lead to suggestions for both further research and the enhancement of team leadership in critical care.     

An exploratory study of linguistic–colour associations across languages in multilingual synaesthetes

In one of the most common forms of synaesthesia, linguistic–colour synaesthesia, colour is induced by stimuli such as numbers, letters, days of the week, and months of the year. It is not clear, however, whether linguistic–colour synaesthesia is determined more by higher level semantic information—that is, word meaning—or by lower level grapheme or phoneme structure. To explore this issue, we tested whether colour is consistently induced by grapheme or phoneme form or word meaning in bilingual and trilingual linguistic–colour synaesthetes. We reasoned that if the induced colour was related to word meaning, rather than to the acoustic or visual properties of the words, then the induced colours would remain consistent across languages. We found that colours were not consistently related to word meaning across languages. Instead, induced colours were more related to form properties of the word across languages, particularly visual structure. However, the type of inducing stimulus influenced specific colour associations. For example, colours to months of the year were more consistent across languages than were colours to numbers or days of the week. Furthermore, the effect of inducing stimuli was also associated with the age of acquisition of additional languages. Our findings are discussed with reference to a critical period in language acquisition on synaesthesia.