General Psychological Theory Research Articles

Perceptual control and layered protocols in interface design: I. Fundamental concepts

Perceptual Control Theory (PCT) is a general psychological theory based on the tenet, “All behaviour is the control of perception”. Layered Protocol Theory (LPT) can be seen as PCT applied to the special case of communication between cooperating partners, both controlling their own perceptions. PCT and LPT can be applied to the design and analysis of human×machine interfaces, although LPT may be more tractable in many cases. LPT is discussed in the context of the analysis and redesign of the interaction between a pilot and a Control Display Unit (CDU) in an operational helicopter.

USE OF INDIGENOUS EXPLANATIONS AND REMEDIES TO FURTHER UNDERSTAND NAUSEA AND VOMITING DURING PREGNANCY

Professional and indigenous midwives are rich and appropriate sources of information about antenatal comfort measures. Midwives from a variety of geographic and cultural areas were interviewed to further our understanding of the phenomenon of nausea and vomiting during pregnancy (NVP). The midwives offered general physiological, psychological, and socioeconomic etiological theories that were, at times, inconsistent with their recommended remedies. The remedies generally included alterations in maternal nutrition, activity, and environment. Commonalities in the midwives theories of etiology and treatment were found across culturally and geographically diverse groups. Much of the variation that was noted in the midwives recommendations for treatment was related to (a) availability of a specific remedy and (b) the midwife's willingness to either support or discourage intuitive responses that women have to their pregnancies (e.g., encourage either additional rest or exercise and productive activity; social withdrawal or usual social interaction; and pica and food cravings or a balanced diet with high nutritive value).

Commentary: Australian psychological society position paper on racism and prejudice

People who work with a multicultural clientele and who are trained in psychology sometimes wonder about the applicability of theories and techniques developed and normed over many years for homogeneous white Anglo-Saxon middle-class populations, and subsequently applied to people of other ethnic origins. Racism and prejudice as matters of political and social context are not part of the life experience (as victim) of most individuals within middle-class Anglo-Saxon populations. On the other hand, for many people belonging to identifiable minorities this may be a daily occurrence, with a range of psychological consequences for mental health and wellbeing. However, a focus on the affects of racism and prejudice for individuals is not generally undertaken in the mainstream training of psychologists, nor are these topics prominent in general psychological theory. This commentary on “Racism and Prejudice: An Australian Psychological Society Position Paper” (Sanson et al., 1998) supports the view that it is incumbent on psychology as a discipline to have a leading role in examining racism and prejudice, the perpetrators and the victims. However this approach needs to extend further to make issues surrounding ethnicity, culture, and minority experience central to the training of all psychologists practicing and researching in a multicultural community.

Visual search of driving situations: danger and experience.

Previous research on visual search in driving suffers from a number of problems: small sample sizes, a concentration on mundane situations, and a failure to link results to more general psychological theory. The study reported in this paper addresses these issues by recording the eye movements of a large sample of drivers while they watched films of dangerous driving situations and comparing the findings with those from more general studies on scene perception. Stimuli were classified according to the types of road shown and the degree of danger present in the scenes. Two groups of subjects took part, fifty-one young novice drivers who had just gained a full driving licence and twenty-six older more experienced drivers. Dangerous situations were characterised by a narrowing of visual search, shown by an increase in fixation durations, a decrease in saccade angular distances, and a reduction in the variance of fixation locations. These effects are similar to the concept of 'attention focusing' in traumatic situations as it is described in the literature on eyewitness memory. When road types are compared, the least visually complex rural roads attracted the longest fixation durations and the shortest angular saccade distances, while the most visually complex urban roads attracted the greatest spread of search but the shortest fixation durations. Differences between the groups of subjects were also present. Novices had longer fixation durations than experienced drivers, particularly in dangerous situations. Experienced drivers also fixated lower down and had less vertical variance in fixation locations than novices.

Pragmatic model of patient satisfaction in general practice: progress towards a theory.

A major problem in the measurement of patient satisfaction is the lack of an adequate theory to explain the meaning of satisfaction, and hence how it should be measured and...

Suicide and the police role: a psychosocial model

Previous models apply general social and psychological theory to police suicide. Presents a specific psychosocial model which attempts to clarify the impact of the police role on the potential for suicide. The model is based on the premiss that socialization processes strongly influence officers to adopt the police role as a principal mode for dealing with psychological strain. This process likely involves a complex interaction of the individual, police organization, social relationships, and society. Dominant use or perhaps overlearning of the police role constricts cognitive coping style and impacts the use of other roles to deal with life strain. As a result, the potential for suicide may increase. Discusses suggestions for the prevention of police suicide.

Cognitive Therapy for Delusions, Voices and Paranoia

PAUL CHADWICK, MAX BIRCHWOOD, AND PETER TROWER: Cognitive Therapy for Delusions, Voices and Paranoia. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, England, 1996, 210 pp., $55.00, ISBN 0-471-93888-2. It may seem anachronistic now, but there was a time when clinicians took seriously the psychotherapeutic treatment of schizophrenics and other psychotic patients. There used to be genuine optimism, at influential institutions such as Austin Riggs, that intensive psychoanalytic psychotherapy would be successful in alleviating psychotic symptomatology. With the remarkable efficacy of pharmacological treatments, clinicians currently pay little attention to the patient's internal psychological make-up, other than to use rehabilitation or psychoeducational approaches that represent efforts to help the patient accommodate to disturbing residual symptoms and functional deficits. In their new volume, Chadwick, Birchwood, and Trower challenge this pervasive skepticism, and take the psychotherapy of psychosis quite seriously. They claim that delusions, auditory hallucinations, and paranoia are amenable to relatively brief (20-30 sessions) psychotherapeutic interventions. Psychotherapy works, as they see it, because psychotic symptoms are merely exaggerations of normal psychological phenomena. Symptoms are not discontinuous with normal experience; rather, they are manifestations of basic mechanisms, regarding how people interpret and make inferences and attributions about events. As such, psychotic experiences will respond to therapy interventions. Although therapists have traditionally found psychotic patients to be untreatable, the authors label their approach cognitive therapy, and scrupulously examine the beliefs and evaluations underlying psychotic experiences, engaging floridly paranoid individuals in ongoing psychotherapy. Using an ABC framework, they conceptualize all experiences and interactions in terms of Activating events, Beliefs, and emotional (or behavioral) Consequences. Delusions and paranoid thinking reflect beliefs about certain events and experiences, once those events are placed within an appropriate context. Even perceptual distortions, such as voices, are considered activating events, with associated beliefs and evaluations. As Chadwick et al. view it, these beliefs are the source of problems, not the psychotic experiences per se, and these beliefs may be changed. They will not directly confront a delusions, but they will subtly call it a belief (as opposed to a fact), challenge inconsistencies within the delusional logic, and ask about reactions to hypothetical contradictions. All these strategies are attempts to access the patient's self-evaluations. These three British psychologists ground their therapy in general social psychological theory, which may not be familiar to nonpsychologists. For example, they discuss self-other attributions, but make no mention of the concept of projection. They speak of other-self or self-self evaluations in ways that are quite similar to object relations theorists, and yet there is no reference to this way of thinking. Considering the long tradition of conceptualizing psychosis in terms of lack of ego boundaries, it would have been useful to discuss the notion of paranoid delusions as a defense against fear of merger. …

The development of representations: The origins of mental life.

AbstractDevelopmental psychology, like anthropological psychology, has allowed us to see that others, including the young, must be described not merely as failed attempts to achieve modern adult norms but as peoples in their own right. Secondly, it has shown that the structures and processes needed for the explanation of adult minds, specifically symbolic representational systems, cannot be assumed to be present in children. In this paper I examine the notion of representation and its role in cognitive theory. The representational theory of mind simply takes for granted the existence of such representational states and processes as symbol use, belief, meaning and intention. The problem for developmental psychology is to explain the origin and development of such states. A sequence of developments is proposed which would have the effect of reworking the elementary sensorymotor schemata present at birth and which are causal in nature into the propositional representational states which develop in twoto four - year - olds and which operate on the basis of meaning, significance and intentionality. The theory is used to explain a series of intellectual achievements of young children.In her introduction to this symposium Callaghan (this issue) cited the contradictory claims of Wundt and Baldwin as to the relation between developmental theory and general psychological theory, Wundt claiming that development cannot be studied fruitfully without reference to adult norms and Baldwin that adult norms can be understood only in terms of their developmental history. In my view both are right. A theory of adult cognition is required if we are to understand developmental changes as solutions to problems which are more or less universal and which have been solved in particular ways by adults in that culture.Equally important, however, is the significance of developmental theory for theories of adult cognition. Baldwin's claim was that no process can be understood unless we understand how it came to be -- a view which would be hotly contested by structuralists who insist that we distinguish synchronic from diachronic descriptions. That, after all, was what made possible the development of modern semantic theory as opposed to the traditional etymological accounts of word and sentence meaning.Developmental studies make at least two other contributions to general psychology. First, they help free us from our adult ethnocentrism which sees all members of all cultures other than the currently dominant one as faltering steps toward or failed attempts at achieving modern adult norms by insisting that other cultural or age groups be understood on their own terms and in their own rights. That, after all, was the legacy of modern anthropology to cultural studies and it was the legacy of Piaget to developmental studies.But secondly, developmental studies may permit us to critically examine the underlying assumptions about mental functions and to either reject them as unwarranted or, in the best case, provide a basis for justifying them. This is the case for the topic I shall develop, namely, the assumption that the mind is a representational system, a system which operates on the basis of symbols and meanings rather than simply chemical and biological causes. The ProblemA central question in cognitive psychology is how the brain, which is a purely physical - biological causal system, can ever produce or come to be a mental system, one which operates on the basis of meanings, beliefs and intentions. It seems inescapable that we experience the actions of ourselves and others in terms of beliefs, desires and intentions -- mental states -- and yet as scientists we are committed to the view that the brain is a purely causal system. How are we to reconcile these seemingly incommensurable notions?We are all familiar with the traditional alternatives. Abolish the notion of mind as the behaviourists attempted to do and explain behaviour in terms of complex causal states which reflect accumulated patterns of experienced objects and events. …

The importance of heritability in psychological research: The case of attitudes.

It is argued that differences in response heritability may have important implications for the testing of general psychological theories, that is, responses that differ in heritability may function differently. For example, attitudes higher in heritability are shown to be responded to more quickly, to be more resistant to change, and to be more consequential in the attitude similarity attraction relationship. The substantive results are interpreted in terms of attitude strength and niche building. More generally, the implications of heritability for the generality and typicality of treatment effects are also discussed.

Social psychological contributions to the decade of the brain. Doctrine of multilevel analysis.

The 1990s were declared by Congress to be the "decade of the brain." This declaration is important to all psychologists, not only neuroscientists, because with this declaration come expectations of the cognitive and behavioral sciences generally and because the brain does not exist in isolation but rather is a fundamental component of developing and aging individuals who themselves are mere actors in the larger theater of life. This article examines the importance of a multilevel, integrative approach to the study of mental and behavioral phenomena in the decade of the brain, reviews how this approach highlights the synergistic relationship between theoretical and clinically relevant research, and illustrates how this approach can foster the transition from microtheories to general psychological theories.

The developmental self-valuing theory: A practical approach for business ethics

Ethics in business has been an increasingly controversial and important topic of discussion over the last decade. Debate continues about whether ethics should be a part of business, but also includes how business can implement ethical theory in day-to-day operations. Most discussions focus on either traditional moral philosophy, which offers little of practical value for the business community, or psychological theories of moral reasoning, which have been shown to be flawed and incomplete. The theory presented here is called the Developmental Self-Valuing Theory, and adapts the general psychological theory of Albert Bandura for ethics in business. In this theory, individuals first learn moral values from associations with others who are significant in their lives. Secondly, self-regulation is learned through a process of self-observation, self-judgment and self-reaction. Thirdly, the individual must believe that he can act ethically. Situational constraints and inducements, as well as positive and negative consequences for specific behaviors, will also affect the level of ethical performance. Each of these elements is examined and combined to achieve a practical method for increasing the level of ethics in corporate activity through selection, training and situational enhancement.

The Place of Language in a Scientific Psychology

One of the psychologists’ great methodological difficulties is how they can make the events they wish to study publicly observable, countable, measurable. It is significant to note that the device most often used for conversion from private to public is language. Thus speech is a crucial problem for psychology. None of their other activities gives the same sort of insight into another person as does their language. Since people spend so many of their waking hours generating and responding to words, and since speech is such a typically human mode of adjustment, no general theory of psychology will be adequate if it does not take account of language.

Topical problems of theoretical psychology

A critical review of different aspects of constructing the general theory of psychology and theoretical psychology as a highest level of its development is presented in the paper. The contemporary psychology is viewed as a disintegrated preparadigmatic science, the further progress of which is unthinkable without the synthesis of different schools, theories and levels (empirical, theoretical and practical). The causes of psychology disintegration are analysed; pretensions of cognitive psychology and other modern schools (humanistic psychology, transpersonalism) are criticized. Reductionist theories are not able to substitute for the general psychological theory. The development of psychology is shown as a cumulative process, which now and then is disturbed by microrevolutions caused by behaviourism, psychoanalysis and other schools. An example of such a microrevolution was the remaking of Soviet Marxist psychology initiated by L. Vygotsky. The integration of psychological knowledge and the construction of the general psychological theory may be fulfilled by using the multiple analysis of intertheoretical relations, the cooperation of psychologists from different countries, branches and schools of psychology, the extension of theoretical investigations in the field of psychology, axiomatisation and formalisation of its laws, regularities and principles.

The Concept Of An "Image Of The World" And Some Problems In The Ontogeny Of Consciousness

The concept an image of the world as construed by A. N. Leont'ev in his last works (1976, 1979) has begun to acquire the status of one of the key concepts in analyzing cognitive processes within the context of the general psychological theory of activity (Smirnov, 1981, 1985; Velichkovskii, 1983; Lomov, 1983; Petukhov, 1984). For further development of the concept of an image of the world and disclosure of its heuristic potential, more is necessary than merely fleshing out its definition by comparing it with other psychological categories or by seeking some empirical facts that would fit it: explication of the actual investigatory and objective-practical tasks whose resolution made it necessary to introduce this concept is also necessary (see Stetsenko, 1986, for an investigatory task as the basis for construing the object of a psychological study in the strict sense).

Cognitive intervention with elite performers: reversal theory.

Noticeable in the literature associated with the application of psychology to the area of sport and sports performance in particular has been the increasing frequency of references to the use of cognitive intervention in the sports context. Currently utilised in clinical psychology and behavioural medicine, and receiving increasing attention in sports psychology, are a number of intervention techniques primarily oriented towards altering the individual's level of arousal. These techniques, which have been advocated for use by sports performers as an aid to adapting and coping during competition, have been largely concerned with arousal reduction. This paper presents an alternative approach, the case of reversal theory, a new general theory of psychology concerned with motivation, and emphasises the conceptual implications of this new approach for the use of cognitive intervention techniques in sport.

Basic Principles of a Psychological Analysis in the Theory of Activity

The general psychological theory of activity created by L. S. Vygotsky, A. N. Leontev, A. R. Luria, and their disciples has entered a critical phase in its development. An external sign of the advent of this phase is the increased frequency of discussions of the role of the category of activity in building the conceptual apparatus of psychology. One hears ever more insistently the idea that the category of activity is threatening to become a kind of monster, ready to devour all other psychological concepts [4,14,37,45]A.n internal sign of the advent of this critical phase in the development of the theory of activity is the discrepancy between the tremendous amount of factual material accumulated in the various special areas of psychology in which the theory of activity plays a special role and the initial principles of this theory, formulated very early, when it was just being developed. As a result, a paradox has emerged: a theory engendered by the exigencies of practice is beginning to be perceived as a theory independent of practice. A critical phase in the development of any theory, like a crisis in the development of the life of a child, means the beginning of a new stage in its existence. For such a critical phase to occur, at least the following steps are, I think, necessary. The first step is enumerating the original principles of the theory of activity. The second involves an analysis, through the prism of these original principles, of all the factual material accumulated in the special areas of psychology and in general psychology. This analysis will overcome the discrepancy between the key principles of the theory of activity and the factual material, and will also help to refine and modify those principles. Finally, the third stage is the development of prospects for basic and applied research, i.e., defining the area for the most immediate development of a psychology built on the basis of a general psychological theory of activity.

What is needed for a theory of mobility: Direct perceptions and cognitive maps—lessons from the blind.

A theory of mobility using nonvisual stimuli and cognitive control process is proposed to augment Gibson's (1958, 1979) explanations of visual guidance. Nonvisual processes are clearly important to the totally blind, who often manage considerable independent mobility in the absence of vision, but are also important to the sighted. Mobility can be directed by visual control stimuli in the ambient optic array, by nonvisual control stimuli, as well as by processes of spatial learning, including stimulus-response (S-R) rote learning, motor plans, schemas, and cognitive maps. The selection of processes and strategies depends on the availability of particular information or on task demands. Attentional processes select stimuli for locomotor control within any particular modality and select between perceptual and cognitive processes. The skill of traveling through the spatial environment, avoiding obstacles, and traveling directly or indirectly toward goals, is a general characteristic of animal behavior and is described here by the term mobility. Although this term has a special connotation within blindness rehabilitation (Welsh & Blasch. 1980), it is used here to describe the overall processes of guidance by which both blind and sighted travelers move through space. The study of mobility encompasses several more traditional research concerns, such as space perception, motor control, and spatial cognition. Until recently there has been little research related to general psychological theory of mobility. A comparison may be made with the study of reading, where considerable research has taken place on component tasks such as letter extraction, word recognition, and eye movements, but where there has been comparatively little interest until recently in the general rules of the process (see Haber, 1978).

Higher-Order Structure-Of-Intellect Abilities.

Using data available from the published reports of factor analyses performed by the Aptitudes Research Project at the University of Southern California, investigations were made into the possibility of demonstrating higher-order factorial abilities latent in those data. Since the policy in those analyses had been to rotate axes orthogonally rather than obliquely, there was no direct information regarding intercorrelations among first-order or basic factors. By combining salient tests for each basic factor, and using their loadings on the obtained factors, correlations were estimated among representatives of those factors. Several methods were devised for factoranalyzing those intercorrelations, applying experimental controls that seemed to be needed, in view of the three-faceted nature of each basic ability. Evidence was found for a large number of second-order abilities and a smaller number of third-order factors, connected with many parts of the structure-of-intellect model, within the limits of available data. In general, the results provide excellent support for the model and for its oblique nature, and for relative discriminability of its categories. Implications for higher-order factorial procedures, for the testing of intelligence, for research, both bivariate and multivariate, and for general psychological theory are suggested.

Diagnosis of clinical depression on four source trait dimensions -U.I. 19, U.I. 20, U.I. 25, and U.I. 30--from the O.A. Kit.

Describe four personality factors with preliminary indications of distinguishing depressed patients from normals, namely those indexed in the O-A Kit as U.I. 19, U.I. 20, U.I. 25 and U.I. 30. Thirty-one clinically depressed Ss--22 inpatients and 9 outpatients--were administered the O-A (Objective-Analytic) battery for these four and the scores compared with those of 30 demographically matched controls. From earlier research and the general psychological theory that concerned these source traits it was hypothesized that depressed Ss would deviate negatively on U.I. 19 and U.I. 25 and positively on U.I. 20 and U.I. 30. A comparison of means that used a one-tailed t-test showed significant differences on two of the factors, U.I. 19 and U.I. 20, at p less than level of significance, and on U.I. 25 and U.I. 30 at p less than .05 significance level. Thus, the clinical sample showed the hypothesized directions of divergence from the control sample on all four of the factors. Later use of a discriminant function on this pattern of deviations shows a high degree of patient-control separation (Price, Cattell, & Patrick, Note 1).

Privacy and camping: Closeness to the self vs. closeness to others

Abstract The “opportunities for solitude” provision of the Wilderness Act of 1964 has led to an interest in privacy by researchers and managers to determine carrying capacities for some types of areas. This study, following the theoretical approach of Altman, attempts to operationalize privacy to determine the extent to which privacy attitudes motivate wilderness use. By applying a set of privacy attitude scales, this comparison of car campers and backpackers shows that a lifestyle predisposition for privacy with units larger than one (e.g., with intimate friends or family), rather than being alone, is the meaning of solitude best predicting backcountry use. Implications suggested by our findings include (1) that managers should be scattering backpackers rather than clustering them at designated sites and (2) that leisure theory should look more to general social and psychological theory to explain the behavior patterns in leisure, which these data indicate reflect general lifestyle choices.