Classical Psychological Theories Research Articles

Nurture-Preparedness Assessment for the Childless Adults in China

Since the role of caregivers at all stages of their offsprings development has a significant impact on the formation of sound personalities, assessment tests of the ability of caregivers to provide emotional support to their offspring can help reduce the probability of problems for adolescents during their formative years. This study aims to initially develop a scale for Nurture-Preparedness Assessment for the Childless Adults in China. Combined with the classical psychological theories of Freud, Erikson and Maslow, and under the basis of the parents expectation and the Bond of Kinship, primarily constructed the positive and negative six aspects of the scale, a total of 31 items. After discrimination analysis, the final 26 scale items. Meanwhile, the reliability and validity of the scales were assessed by analyzing the internal consistency and validity factors. It should be noted that this experiment is a preliminary exploration, so the results are controversial and need to be further explored.

Toward a knowledge economy: Factors affecting the sustainable consumption behavior in the Chinese online education industry.

Buoyed by recent calls to research and advance the knowledge economy and sustainable development. This study explains how the role of the knowledge economy in influencing the COVID-19 pandemic has emerged with numerous opportunities for the global E-learning or online education industry. And, knowledge sharing behavior has been hugely driven by various sharing platforms concerning a new paradigm for diversifying education and learning. However, our study is to further extend the understanding and examine the related empirically correlations to deepen online education for sustainable development (OESD). Both advancing theoretical underpinnings and enhancing the online education industry are highly integrated and introduced toward a sustainable pathway. This study brings the perspectives from consumer value, social identity social exchange, and value-attitude-behavior to explain sustainable consumption behavior in the Chinese online education industry (SCBOEI). Thus, the relationship among factors in this study is statistically examined and the SCBOEI model as the new theoretical insight is introduced in a way of sustainable consumption behaviors in the Chinese online education industry. Finally, this study addresses managerial implications to practitioners, the government, universities, and markets. Employing a quantitative approach, about 559 valid questionnaire surveys are collected from Chinese higher education institutions. This study includes participants from four controlling variables (age, education level, family income, and gender) and six latent variables. The bootstrapping method was applied to validate mediating factors and their interacting relationships. The finding reveals that a set of classic psychological theories related fits the SCBOEI in higher education from the consumer value, contextual factors, social identity, sustainable consumption attitudes, and consumer engagement to explain SCBOEI. The mediating role of identity, sustainable consumption attitudes, and consumer engagement is highly concerned. The value and contextual factors directly make impact on SCBOEI through identity, sustainable consumption attitudes, and consumer engagement. The study significantly contributes to enriching the theoretical bases for advancing the literature on sustainable consumption behavior and online education. Our research provides managerial insights into government policy about the online education industry and marketers to set more advertisements to wake awareness of SCBOEI. Furthermore, higher education institutions should encourage their employees and students to participate in SCBOEI actively. All the stakeholders are essential to lead the consumer to SCBOEI by shaping their internal psychology while paying more attention to social equality (education, gender), responsible consumption, and decent economic development. Overall, addressing these issues will help to provide scholars with novel theoretical insights and practitioners with managerial advice.

Higher power dynamics: How meaning search and self-transcendence inspire approach motivation and magnanimity

Fidelity with self-transcendent values is hailed as a hallmark of mature and magnanimous character by classic psychological and philosophical theories. Dozens of contemporary experiments inspired by self-affirmation theory have also found that when people are under threat, focus on self-transcendent values can confer magnanimity by improving psychological buoyancy (less anxious and more courageous, determined, and effective) and decreasing belligerence (less defensive, extreme, and hostile). The present research was guided by the postulate that both aspects of magnanimity—its buoyancy and its freedom from belligerence—arise from the approach motivated states that self-transcendent foci can inspire. Experimental manipulations of self-transcendent foci (values, spirituality, compassion) heightened state approach motivation as assessed by electroencephalography (Study 1, n = 187) and self-report (Study 2, n = 490). Further, even though the heightened approach motivation was transient, it mediated a longer-lasting freedom from moral (Study 1) and religious (Study 2) belligerence. Importantly, self-transcendent-focus effects on approach motivation and belligerence occurred only among participants with high trait meaning search scores. Results support an interpretation of meaningful values and spiritual ideals as self-transcendent priorities that operate according to basic motivational mechanics of abstract-goal pursuit. The transient, approach-motivated state aroused by transcendence-focus causes longer lasting relief from preoccupation with threat, leaving people feeling buoyant and generous. Relevance of results for self-affirmation theory and the psychology of spirituality are discussed.

Changes in Perceived Age Discrimination Over Time: Patterns, Covariates, and Consequences

Age discrimination is one of the most prevalent types of discrimination in the workplace and as such represents a major challenge for many workers. Although prior work suggests that perceived age discrimination is a dynamic process leading to detrimental effects on job- and health-related outcomes, little is known about how it changes over time. Drawing on classical psychological stressor-strain theory, the current study examines different patterns of changes in perceived age discrimination, their relationships with age, gender, and organizational justice, and effect on job satisfaction, work strain, and perceived employability. Using longitudinal data from 1,100 workers aged 27-57 in a prospective design over six years, we find three patterns characterized by low stable, increasing, and decreasing levels of perceived age discrimination change at work over time. We further observe that older employees and women (but not older women), as well as employees reporting lower levels of organizational justice, are more likely to belong to the increasing age discrimination change pattern. Finally, we demonstrate that workers belonging to the low stable age discrimination pattern are more likely to benefit from higher job satisfaction, perceived employability, and lower work strain. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

A Simple Analysis of the Changes of Visitors in Psychological Counseling —Based on Classical Psychological Counseling Theories and Rational Emotional Therapy

三仓出版社主要从事中文国际开源期刊的出版与发行，期刊领域涵盖工程技术、数学与物理、人文社会、信息科学、经济与管理、医药卫生、农业、地球环境等学科，借助互联网思维及现代信息技术，立足国内高校及研究机构的科研需求，力图推动中国学术界知识的交流与传播，可期刊发表、发表论文、快速发表，见刊快。三仓出版社欢迎广大科研学者加入我们，参与审稿，合作办刊，投稿荐稿，与中文期刊一同成长壮大。如果您对期刊有任何的意见或者建议，请联系service@sciscanpub.com.

Parallelograms revisited: Exploring the limitations of vector space models for simple analogies

Classic psychological theories have demonstrated the power and limitations of spatial representations, providing geometric tools for reasoning about the similarity of objects and showing that human intuitions sometimes violate the constraints of geometric spaces. Recent machine learning methods for deriving vector-space embeddings of words have begun to garner attention for their surprising capacity to capture simple analogies consistently across large corpora, giving new life to a classic model of analogies as parallelograms that was first proposed and briefly explored by psychologists. We evaluate the parallelogram model of analogy as applied to modern data-driven word embeddings, providing a detailed analysis of the extent to which this approach captures human behavior in the domain of word pairs. Using a large novel benchmark dataset of human analogy completions, we show that word similarity alone surprisingly captures some aspects of human responses better than the parallelogram model. To gain a fine-grained picture of how well these models predict relational similarity, we also collect a large dataset of human relational similarity judgments and find that the parallelogram model captures some semantic relationships better than others. Finally, we provide evidence for deeper limitations of the parallelogram model of analogy based on the intrinsic geometric constraints of vector spaces, paralleling classic results for item similarity. Taken together, these results show that while modern word embeddings do an impressive job of capturing semantic similarity at scale, the parallelogram model alone is insufficient to account for how people form even the simplest analogies.

Teorias e perspectivas sobre o envelhecimento: conceitos e reflexões

Nos países em vias de desenvolvimento, como é o caso do Brasil, o idoso é entendido como aquele com 60 anos ou mais, e as teorias psicológicas do envelhecimento foram possíveis somente nos últimos 60 anos, com o prolongamento temporal da vida humana e sua consequente velhice. Para a presente pesquisa, fez-se um estudo bibliográfico com materiais publicados por autores clássicos e contemporâneos a respeito das principais teorias psicológicas do envelhecimento. As teorias psicológicas do envelhecimento se subdividem em três categorias, sendo cinco teorias clássicas, duas teorias transição e seis teorias contemporâneas. As Teorias Psicológicas Clássicas apresentadas são: Desenvolvimento ao Longo da Vida, Afastamento/desengajamento, Evolutiva e da Atividade, Continuidade e Fases do Desenvolvimento Psicológico ao Longo da Vida. As Teorias Psicológicas de Transição são: Desenvolvimento da Personalidade ao Longo da Vida e Teoria Social-interacionista da Personalidade na Velhice. E as Teorias Psicológicas Contemporâneas são: Desenvolvimento ao Longo de Toda a Vida: life-span e life-course, Modelo de Desenvolvimento Bem-sucedido: otimização da seleção com compensação, Dependência Comportamental ou Aprendida, Seletividade Socioemocional, Controle no Curso de Vida e Eventos Críticos do Curso de Vida. Percebe-se que as teorias psicológicas sobre o envelhecimento sofreram alterações no decorrer do tempo, influenciadas pelo contexto sócio histórico e também pelo amadurecimento das representações sobre o envelhecimento.

The hippocampal sharp wave-ripple in memory retrieval for immediate use and consolidation.

Various cognitive functions have long been known to require the hippocampus. Recently, progress has been made in identifying the hippocampal neural activity patterns that implement these functions. One such pattern is the sharp wave-ripple (SWR), an event associated with highly synchronous neural firing in the hippocampus and modulation of neural activity in distributed brain regions. Hippocampal spiking during SWRs can represent past or potential future experience, and SWR-related interventions can alter subsequent memory performance. These findings and others suggest that SWRs support both memory consolidation and memory retrieval for processes such as decision-making. In addition, studies have identified distinct types of SWR based on representational content, behavioural state and physiological features. These various findings regarding SWRs suggest that different SWR types correspond to different cognitive functions, such as retrieval and consolidation. Here, we introduce another possibility - that a single SWR may support more than one cognitive function. Taking into account classic psychological theories and recent molecular results that suggest that retrieval and consolidation share mechanisms, we propose that the SWR mediates the retrieval of stored representations that can be utilized immediately by downstream circuits in decision-making, planning, recollection and/or imagination while simultaneously initiating memory consolidation processes.

The Socio-Cultural Image of Childhood (Based on an Analysis of Soviet and Russian Feature Films about Children)

The current state of childhood research is grounded in classical psychological theories, and Russian psychology is tied to cultural and historical theory in particular. These theories were invented to generalize and make sense of the realities of childhood as they existed at the time when these theories were created. Rapid social changes, especially during recent decades, have led to the emergence of a wide range of sources that bear witness to how the day-to-day life of childhood has changed. The understanding of childhood has continued to transform from one era to another. A metaphor was even coined to describe it, and at some point there was even a specific metaphor coined, “the disappearance of childhood.” This article seeks to explore how the image of childhood has changed in relation to the image of adulthood. As material for analysis, we chose Soviet and Russian movies from the 1940s to 2000s. The study is based on the assumption that a sequential analysis based on Yuri Lotman’s theory of the structure of the text demonstrates how the image of childhood changes over time. If in the 1940s and 1950s the child was presented as immature and not quite grown up, the adult was portrayed as the embodiment of the ideal form of the individual, and the main conflict was structured around childish immaturity, then gradually over the decades more and more main characters who were children and adults were portrayed as different kinds of individuals, and the child (or teenager) sometimes came to embody obviously negative features. The child–adult dichotomy itself lost its significance.

Общественно-культурный образ детства (на материале анализа советских и российских художественных фильмов о детях)

The current situation of studies of childhood goes back to the classical psychological theories, in Russian psychology to cultural-historical theory. These theories were developed as a generalization and comprehension of the realities of childhood, which were typical at the time of the creation of these theories. Rapid social changes, especially in recent decades, led to the emergence of a wide range of sources that emphasize the changing daily life of childhood — childhood changed from epoch to epoch, there was even the metaphor of a “disappearance of childhood”. The article describes a gradual change of child’s image in relation to an adult, and the Soviet and Russian films of the 40-ies — 2000-ies were used as a material of analysis. Study is based on the assumption that a consistent analysis based on a theory of text structure M. Lotman, demonstrates the changing image of the child. In the 40s — 50s the child appears immature, pre-adult, and the adult — the embodiment of ideal forms, and the main conflict — a manifestation of the child’s immaturity/ Then gradually from decade to decade more and more the main characters — the child and the adult - appear as different personalities; and the child (teenager) sometimes acquires a pronounced negative features. The very dichotomy of child-adult loses its value.

Motor Learning Unfolds over Different Timescales in Distinct Neural Systems.

Anyone who has learned how to play a musical instrument knows that translating notes on a sheet into finger movements is effortful at first, but gradually becomes more automatic over time. This widely appreciated feature of motor learning was described in 1967 by Paul Fitts and Michael Posner. In a book entitled Human Performance, the well-known psychologists proposed three stages of learning motor skills: a cognitive phase, an associative phase, and an autonomous phase. In the first stage, movements are slow, inconsistent, and inefficient, and large parts of the movement are controlled consciously. In the second stage, movements become more fluid, reliable, and efficient, and some parts of the movement are controlled automatically. And in the third stage, movements are accurate, consistent, and efficient, and movement is largely controlled automatically. However, it has not been clear exactly how the different stages of motor learning map onto neural systems in the brain. In a study published in this issue of PLOS Biology, Nicolas Schweighofer of the University of Southern California and Hiroshi Imamizu of the University of Tokyo combined computational modeling with behavioral and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data to create a brain-wide map of motor memories with different timescales (Fig 1). According to the authors, the findings shed new light on a classical psychological theory and could potentially be used to improve strategies for the rehabilitation of motor skills after brain damage. Fig 1 Different timescales for motor learning. In the new study, 21 healthy volunteers performed visual-motor adaptation tasks while their brain activity was measured with fMRI. At the beginning of each trial, a white cross (cursor) appeared at the center of the screen, and subjects then manipulated a joystick to move the cursor to a red or blue circle that appeared at the top of the screen. But there was a visual-motor mismatch: The cursor was rotated by 40 degrees relative to the actual movement direction. Over time, the subjects learned to adapt to this rotation by adjusting the joystick movement in the opposite direction. The behavioral data revealed multiple stages of motor learning, with fast adaptation occurring within blocks of nine trials and slow adaptation occurring across the blocks. The researchers then developed a model to determine which neural systems were involved in the different stages of motor learning. They found that fast learning taking place within five seconds was associated with activity in frontal and parietal brain regions. By contrast, intermediate learning between two minutes and about one and a half hours was associated with activity in the anterior region of the inferior parietal lobe. The slowest learning stage, which unfolded over hours, was associated with activity in the anterior to medial portions of the cerebellum—a brain region that plays an important role in motor control. These findings are consistent with past research showing that frontal regions are involved in early learning stages of attention, arousal, visual motion analysis, spatial working memory, memory of hand movements, and movement planning. Similarly, parietal regions are known to play a role in early learning stages of mental and visual-motor rotation. Taken together, the findings suggest that the initial cognitive and associative phases of motor learning recruit frontal and parietal brain regions, whereas the late stage of autonomous learning depends on the anterior-medial cerebellum. Thus, by combining multiple complementary techniques, the researchers provided deeper insights into a classical and influential psychological theory proposed several decades ago.

A biologically plausible computational theory for value integration and action selection in decisions with competing alternatives.

Decision making is a vital component of human and animal behavior that involves selecting between alternative options and generating actions to implement the choices. Although decisions can be as simple as choosing a goal and then pursuing it, humans and animals usually have to make decisions in dynamic environments where the value and the availability of an option change unpredictably with time and previous actions. A predator chasing multiple prey exemplifies how goals can dynamically change and compete during ongoing actions. Classical psychological theories posit that decision making takes place within frontal areas and is a separate process from perception and action. However, recent findings argue for additional mechanisms and suggest the decisions between actions often emerge through a continuous competition within the same brain regions that plan and guide action execution. According to these findings, the sensorimotor system generates concurrent action-plans for competing goals and uses online information to bias the competition until a single goal is pursued. This information is diverse, relating to both the dynamic value of the goal and the cost of acting, creating a challenging problem in integrating information across these diverse variables in real time. We introduce a computational framework for dynamically integrating value information from disparate sources in decision tasks with competing actions. We evaluated the framework in a series of oculomotor and reaching decision tasks and found that it captures many features of choice/motor behavior, as well as its neural underpinnings that previously have eluded a common explanation.

Dynamics of social balance under temporal interaction

Real social contacts are often intermittent such that a link between a pair of nodes in a social network is only temporarily used. The effects of such temporal networks on social dynamics have been investigated for several phenomenological models such as epidemic spreading, linear diffusion processes, and nonlinear oscillations. Here, we numerically investigate nonlinear social balance dynamics in such a situation. Social balance is a classical psychological theory, which dictates that a triad is balanced if the three agents are mutual friends or if the two of them are the friends of each other and hostile to the other agent. We show that the social balance dynamics is slowed down on the temporal complete graph as compared to the corresponding static complete graph.

Emotional Dimensions of Conducting Research in Disaster Settings: A Note on Social Psychological Considerations

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, disaster research witnessed a convergence of researchers from the social sciences in disciplinary and multidisciplinary teams. National Science Foundation grants funded significant numbers of teams to address topics related to the event and the emotional responses of its impact. Research on disaster mental health is not a new field of study, and research has demonstrated the devastating psychological and mental health effects of disasters; however, the literature focuses predominantly on assisting victims and survivors, with substantially less literature related to the potential social psychological and emotional impacts related to research conducting intense field studies. This essay discusses the emotional dimensions of conducting disaster research by using classic and contemporary social psychological theories to explore how researchers deal with and/or negotiate the potential role conflict and the emotional dimensions of their fieldwork.

Success Expectations and Performance: Regulatory Focus as a Moderator

According to classic psychological theories of motivation, success expectations induce high motivation and thus lead to high performance. However, recent researchers have found that people sometimes select subjectively worse performance goals, thus lowering their expectations so as to avoid future mistakes and regret. Therefore, our research was directed to answer the when and how questions?when are the classic relationships (i.e., the positive correlations between expectations and performance) most likely to occur and what self-regulatory principles underlie their occurrence. Applying regulatory focus theory, we hypothesized that regulatory focus moderated the relations between expectations and performance and that motivation served as a mediator and partially explained the mechanism. These hypotheses were tested through two studies, both of which used the game Spot the Differences as experimental materials and recruited undergraduate students as participants. Study 1 measured the level of expectations and manipulated temporary regulatory focus with task framing techniques. Study 2 measured individual chronic regulatory focus with Regulatory Focus Questionnaire (RFQ) to further test the moderating effects. In addition, considering that Study 1 didn’t support the main effects of expectations as presented in classic motivational theories, Study 2 applied within-subject experimental design and manipulated expectations through the difficulty of tasks. Motivations were manipulated as the time participants spent on the tasks in both studies, and their mediating effects were tested according to the procedures proposed by Muller, Judd, Yzerbyt (2005). The findings showed that: ①Regulatory focus moderated the relationship between expectations and performance. For promotion focus individuals, success expectations correlated positively with performance, which was consistent with classic motivational theories; For prevention focus individuals, the correlation was not significant. ②Motivation mediated the interactions—high success expectations raised the motivational strength of promotion focus individuals, thus resulting in enhanced performance; while it made no significant motivational impacts on prevention focus individuals. The present research deepens our understanding of the relationship between expectations and performance by considering regulatory focus as both a situational factor and s chronic individual difference. Furthermore, it extends the moderating effect of regulatory focus from realistic outcomes to outcome expectations. It also suggests that positive beliefs about further (e.g., high success expectations) do not always lead to positive outcomes, which may depend on their relationships with individual properties and situational requirement.

Contexte et intention dans la détermination de l’activité : une nouvelle topique des motivations

Le problème des bifurcations inopinées de l’activité, illustré par une enquête sur le travail de bureau pose la question de «pourquoi faisons-nous des choses que nous considérons comme peu importantes alors que nous avons des choses importantes à faire ? » qui est problématique pour les théories psychologiques classiques. A partir ce problème banal, on aborde ici la question générale des mécanismes de détermination de l’activité. On présente une analyse critique de la littérature sur la motivation, avec ses paradigmes dominants (homéostasie, utilité espérée) et la théorie des attracteurs cognitifs. L’analyse de leurs limites démontre la nécessité de tenir compte de plusieurs niveaux de détermination de l’activité, au-delà des facteurs classiques de contrainte par le contexte, au niveau du sujet lui-même mais aussi des organes qui le constituent et des organismes dont il fait partie. On postule que le sujet poursuit en permanence plusieurs motifs, dans un cadre plus large que le cadre des théories de la décision qui supposent un espace de problème formellement prédéfini. Pour résoudre ce problème complexe, une nouvelle topique des motivations est proposée, qui se fonde sur la notion spinoziste de «conatus » , en l’opérationnalisant après lui avoir démontré des bases biologiques dans une perspective évolutionniste. La topique est présentée sous deux formes, en compréhension (niveaux logiques successifs de contrôle des ressources de l’environnement correspondant à des anticipations) et en extension (en considérant le sujet comme une série d’entités emboîtées, depuis ses organes propres jusqu’aux super-organismes qui le constituent). Une nouvelle définition, plus extensive, de la notion de sujet permet d’appliquer la notion de conatus aux super-organismes comme les entreprises. Dans ce nouveau cadre, la question étant posée comme l’arbitrage en situation des ressources attentionnelles, psychiques et motrices du sujet entre la satisfaction du conatus de différentes entités présentes, on montre que le phénomène des bifurcations au bureau peut s’expliquer par l’utilisation par les super-organismes de mécanismes phylogénétiques de primauté accordée aux éléments prégnants de la situation pour faciliter la satisfaction de besoins de base de l’entreprise, notamment administratifs.

Statistical decision theory to relate neurons to behavior in the study of covert visual attention

Scrutiny of the numerous physiology and imaging studies of visual attention reveal that integration of results from neuroscience with the classic theories of visual attention based on behavioral work is not simple. The different subfields have pursued different questions, used distinct experimental paradigms and developed diverse models. The purpose of this review is to use statistical decision theory and computational modeling to relate classic theories of attention in psychological research to neural observables such as mean firing rate or functional imaging BOLD response, tuning functions, Fano factor, neuronal index of detectability and area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC). We focus on cueing experiments and attempt to distinguish two major leading theories in the study of attention: limited resources model/increased sensitivity vs. selection/differential weighting. We use Bayesian ideal observer (BIO) modeling, in which predictive cues or prior knowledge change the differential weighting (prior) of sensory information to generate predictions of behavioral and neural observables based on Gaussian response variables and Poisson process neural based models. The ideal observer model can be modified to represent a number of classic psychological theories of visual attention by including hypothesized human attentional limited resources in the same way sequential ideal observer analysis has been used to include physiological processing components of human spatial vision (Geisler, W. S. (1989). Sequential ideal-observer analysis of visual discrimination. Psychological Review 96, 267–314.). In particular we compare new biologically plausible implementations of the BIO and variant models with limited resources. We find a close relationship between the behavioral effects of cues predicted by the models developed in the field of human psychophysics and their neuron-based analogs. Critically, we show that cue effects on experimental observables such as mean neural activity, variance, Fano factor and neuronal index of detectability can be consistent with the two major theoretical models of attention depending on whether the neuron is assumed to be computing likelihoods, log-likelihoods or a simple model operating directly on the Poisson variable. Change in neuronal tuning functions can also be consistent with both theories depending on whether the change in tuning is along the dimension being experimentally cued or a different dimension. We show that a neuron’s sensitivity appropriately measured using the area under the Receive Operating Characteristic curve can be used to distinguish across both theories and is robust to the many transformations of the decision variable. We provide a summary table with the hope that it might provide some guidance in interpreting past results as well as planning future studies.

Binding hardwired versus on-demand feature conjunctions

Binding denotes the process by which features represented in early stages of the visual system are brought together within a meaningful representation that can support recognition, action, or consciousness. It is often considered that binding requires attentional resources. However, recent results have demonstrated that recognition of natural and familiar objects or scenes—as opposed to more arbitrary, meaningless conjunctions of features—can be done while attention is distracted. Surprisingly, the same discriminations do not lead to efficient “pop-out” visual search. These seemingly opposite conclusions can be reconciled by postulating the existence of two modes of binding in the brain: “Hardwired” binding of frequently encountered, natural objects through a hierarchy of increasingly complex feature detectors, as in classic computational models inspired by neurophysiological results; and “on-demand” binding mediated by attention for more arbitrary or meaningless feature conjunctions, as advocated in classic psychological theories. The former system can function without attention, but is challenged by spatial competition within neuronal receptive fields when multiple objects are presented. Thus, while on-demand binding always requires attention, hardwired binding only does when receptive field competition occurs. New experimental data using multiple stimuli and variable interstimulus distance supports this theoretical dissociation.

Miniseries: Broadening the Scope of Practice and Research in Pediatric Psychology

Over the last several years, the scope of articles published in the Journal of Pediatric Psychology has expanded. Previously, most articles in the Journal involved chronic medical conditions such as cancer, sickle cell disease, and diabetes (B. Aylward, personal communication, March, 2007). However, more recently, two special issues of the journal related to environmental risk of children and adolescents, namely, tobacco and youth, and perinatal drug exposure, have been published. (JPP Vol. 30(4) 2005 & JPP Vol. 31(1) 2006). The evolution in the expanded purview of pediatric psychology is underscored further in the first chapter of The Handbook of Pediatric Psychology (2003) where Roberts, Mitchell and McNeal discuss the evolving field of Pediatric Psychology. These authors note that the discipline of pediatric psychology was developed for pragmatic reasons, because pediatricians continued to be faced with large numbers of behavioral concerns in their young patients. The perceived role of the pediatric psychologist (and our identity in the medical community) was more circumscribed and related primarily to behavioral strategies that would enhance medical adherence or assist with coping and adjustment to the medical condition or environment. However, it is important to highlight, as does Roberts (2003), that ‘‘The growth of pediatric psychology has been a remarkable phenomenon.’’ (p. xvii) Pediatric psychology is, by nature, a multifaceted profession and as such will continue to evolve as its range of practice and research is broadened. Historically, the pediatric psychologists’ focus centered on risk factors ‘‘internal’’ or ‘‘proximal’’ to the child such as depression, anxiety, or emotional disturbances, as well as physical and mental well-being. Using classic psychological theories such as attachment models and social cognition, pediatric psychologists more explicitly included parents (well-being and their parenting practices) in both applied and research endeavors. Over time, foci have expanded from the child to parents, and now extend to address siblings and broader family characteristics. Nonetheless, articles on parents or adolescent populations and the child’s environment in general are still relatively infrequent. The articles by Lam et al. (in press) and Di Clemente et al. (2007) are examples of how pediatric psychology continues to broaden its scope to better address complex issues that affect the developmental trajectories of children today. This broader perspective is also reflected by the ‘‘top issues for the future of pediatric psychology’’ identified in a survey conducted by Brown and Roberts (2000). These issues included expansion to prevention and addressing the larger societal and socioeconomic conditions that affect child development, education, medical care, and psychological services. The evolving challenge for pediatric psychology is to also address these more ‘‘distal’’ risks on children and adolescents, their parents, and family members, and how the total milieu affects the biopsychosocial welfare of the pediatric patient. Notably, contemporary pandemics affecting our children are not cholera or small pox; instead they include pediatric obesity, drug-endangered children, and youth HIV/AIDS. It is reported that 10% of children ages 2 to 5-years-old and 15% of children ages 6 to 11-yearsold are overweight (Ogden, Flegal, Carroll, & Johnson, 2002). In addition, 8.3 million children live with parents who abuse alcohol or other drugs and substance abuse is consistently named as one of the top two problems (the other is poverty) for reports to child protective services (Child Welfare League of America, 2001). Furthermore, >50% of all cases of HIV/AIDS globally are in youth 14–24 years of age (Stine, 2005). The complexity of these pandemics, and our ability to understand and address them goes beyond direct focus

Understanding Psychological Type to Improve Project Team Performance

Individuals with different personalities approach an engineering project in different ways. These differences can cause tension and problems on projects by contributing to misunderstandings. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, based on Jung's classic psychological theories, can provide valuable insight into individual preferences for taking in information, organizing and evaluating that information, reaching conclusions, and dealing with the outer world. These characteristics, all relevant to conducting project work, are described by the following four preference scales: extraversion-introversion, sensing-intuition, thinking-feeling, and judging-perceiving. Each of these preference scales is described. Example situations whereby these differences impact project performance are presented, as well as information on how to deal with these impacts. Understanding and accepting individual differences in these preferences can improve project performance. Data on the predominant preferences of project personnel in c...