Psychological Science Research Articles

Mothers with low incomes view both individual and structural interventions as potentially helpful for supporting early child development

Many developmental psychologists aspire to conduct research that informs interventions and policies to prevent income-related disparities in child development. Among growing researcher discussion about the value of interventions that target “structural” and resource-related correlates of income inequality and child development (e.g., housing, food, material goods, cash), rather than individual, person-centered correlates (e.g., parenting behaviors), the perspectives of mothers with low incomes may provide important context. 281 mothers with young children and low incomes rated various structural and individual interventions, framed as having minimal costs and entry barriers, for their perceived helpfulness. Analyses were pre-registered. Overall, mothers rated all interventions very highly, though they rated structural interventions as slightly more helpful than individual interventions. Mothers rated interventions they used in the past as less helpful than those they hadn’t previously used. An exploratory qualitative analysis revealed mothers’ desires for supports in other intervention domains beyond those addressed in our survey. Together, mothers’ responses indicated that they did not see individual interventions as inherently unhelpful due to a focus on individual states, knowledge, and skills. Implications for developmental psychology and intervention science are discussed.

Facilitators and Barriers in Integrated Social Care for Families Facing Multiple and Complex Problems: A Scoping Review.

Families with multiple and complex problems often deal with multiple professionals and organizations for support. Integrated social care supposedly prevents the fragmentation of care that often occurs.We identified facilitators and barriers experienced by families receiving integrated social care and by the professionals who provide it. We performed a scoping review following Arksey and O'Malley's framework, using the following databases: PsycINFO, Web of Science Core Collection, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, CINAHL, PubMed, and Medline. Furthermore, conducted a thematic analysis. The results were divided into facilitators and barriers of integrated social care. We identified 278 studies and finally included sixteen in our scoping review. We identified facilitators, including: linking formal care with informal networks, promoting collaboration among professionals e.g., working in pairs, and professionals autonomy. We identified barriers, including: time constraints, tasks outside professionals' expertise, along with resistance to integrated collaboration among organizations. These findings can enhance the advancement of social integrated care as a promising approach to support families facing multiple and complex problems. To empower families, integrated social care requires a systematic approach based on trust. It involves coordinated care, shared decision-making, informal networks and the participation of all family members, including children.

Reorienting psychological science.

Psychological phenomena occur across a wide range of scales, ranging from small, quick events of neurology and biology, to broader, more prolonged unfoldings typical of extended cultural practices. Although theories deployed by psychologists of different stripes have tended to incorporate these different scales, this is typically done in a manner that is implicit, and often unsystematic. That is, typical psychological research is conducted in a manner that is 'scale-blind'. In this article, I explore some of the historical and more recent recognition of this scale-blindness and place it in the context of recent work on the concept and implications of scale. I conclude by elucidating some of the important ways in which behaviour settings theory, and the researchers who developed it, are explicit and disciplined in their approach to scale, and how such scale-aware work promises practical value in improving scientific practice. This article is part of the theme issue 'People, places, things, and communities: expanding behaviour settings theory in the 21st century'.

The replication crisis as mere indicator of two fundamental misalignments: Methodological confirmation bias in hypothesis testing and anthropological oversimplification in theory-building

Psychological research is currently in a phase of transition. The replication crisis has led to the introduction of a number of corrective measures such as preregistration, registered reports, open data and methods in order to make scientific knowledge in psychological science more reliable. In this article, we discuss why these tools remain superficial and provide rather a symptom treatment than a deeper treatment of the causes of the replication crisis. To this end, we address two central misalignments of current psychological research: Confirmation bias, in the sense of overweighting significant, hypothesis-confirming findings over negative ones, and the anthropological oversimplification of the human research subject. We conclude by providing indications of how a paradigm shift in psychological science research and publication practices can help to combat the causes of the replication crisis and poor scientific research practices.

Between Mind and Body? Psychoneuroimmunology, Psychology, and Cognitive Science

Abstract Over the past half century, our best scientific understanding of the immune system has been transformed. The immune system has turned out to be extremely sophisticated, densely connected to the central nervous system and cognitive capacities, deeply involved in the production of behavior, and responsive to different kinds of psychosocial event. Such results have rendered the immune system part of the subject-matter of psychology and cognitive science. I argue that such results, alongside the history of psychoneuroimmunology, give us good reason to be skeptical about the characterization of cognitive science and psychology as studying the mind and the mental.

Clinical Psychology Graduate Programs: Falling Short in Cultural Humility Training.

Despite requirements by the American Psychological Association and the Psychological Clinical Science Accreditation System regarding training and education in cultural humility, questions remain regarding the presence and quality of the training in clinical psychology PhD and PsyD programs. This is a critical issue as inadequate training in diversity, cultural humility, and multiculturalism has substantial downstream effects on care for clients of color and may contribute to racial disparities and inequities in access to mental health services. We seek to explicitly evaluate key features of the conceptual model thought to improve the provision of mental health services for clients facing oppression and marginalization which includes perceptions of clinical psychology graduate programs' training in and assessment of cultural humility. We also assess self-efficacy related to the application of cultural humility as well as actual practice of actions associated with cultural humility. Each of these domains are evaluated among a sample of 300 graduate students and faculty, clinical supervisors, and/or directors of clinical training (DCTs) and differences across position and race of participants were tested. Study findings highlight significant gaps between what trainees need to develop cultural humility and what they may actually be receiving from their respective programs. While findings suggest that there is still a lot of work to be done, understanding the state of the field with regards to clinical training in cultural humility is an important first step towards change.

Diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and antiracism statements by clinical psychological science programs: A mixed methods analysis of public commitments.

Diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and antiracism statements by clinical psychological science programs: A mixed methods analysis of public commitments.

Temperaments as Basic Bias.

In this work, we argue that the lack of a solid theoretical basis and the absence of an integrative movement in psychological science within evolutionary perspectives has meant that the various attempts to explain and define the phenomenon of "temperaments" offer notions that are either too broad or simply imprecise and, as a result, they failed to reach a high level of consensus among researchers in this science. In this regard, we understand that the evolutionary theory proposed by Osmo (Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science 57:205-234, 2023) is promising for reaching such a consensus. Thus, the objective of this article is, from this theory, to offer a better understanding of the phenomenon of "temperaments", and, based on it, to develop a precise and parsimonious definition of this term.

Natural Language Processing (NLP) for Sentiment Analysis in Social Media

Purpose: This study sought to analyze Natural Language Processing (NLP) for sentiment analysis in social media. Methodology: The study adopted a desktop research methodology. Desk research refers to secondary data or that which can be collected without fieldwork. Desk research is basically involved in collecting data from existing resources hence it is often considered a low cost technique as compared to field research, as the main cost is involved in executive’s time, telephone charges and directories. Thus, the study relied on already published studies, reports and statistics. This secondary data was easily accessed through the online journals and library. Findings: The findings reveal that there exists a contextual and methodological gap relating to Natural Language Processing (NLP) for sentiment analysis in social media. Preliminary empirical review revealed that advanced computational techniques significantly advanced the understanding of sentiments across diverse social media platforms. Methodologies such as machine learning algorithms and deep learning models like CNNs and RNNs demonstrated robust capabilities in categorizing sentiments accurately and capturing contextual nuances such as sarcasm and slang. The research highlighted the interdisciplinary nature of NLP applications, integrating linguistics with computer science and social sciences to develop effective frameworks for analyzing large-scale social media data. These findings contributed to enhancing decision-making in marketing, politics, and public opinion research, pointing towards future directions in hybrid NLP models for improved sentiment analysis across different languages and cultural contexts. Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: The Social Constructionism, Cognitive Linguistics and Discourse Analysis Theory may be used to anchor future studies on Natural Language Processing (NLP). The recommendations aimed to advance theoretical foundations by exploring deep learning models and nuanced sentiment lexicons. Practical applications were enhanced through the development of scalable NLP tools for real-time data processing and integration into social media platforms. Policy implications focused on establishing ethical guidelines for data privacy and bias mitigation in sentiment analysis algorithms. Cross-disciplinary collaboration fostered innovation by integrating insights from computer science, linguistics, psychology, and social sciences. Education initiatives and international collaborations were prioritized to build capacity and standardize methodologies globally, ensuring advancements in both research and practical deployment of sentiment analysis technologies.

Sample representativeness in psychological and brain science research

Sample representativeness in psychological and brain science research

Literature Review: A Study on the Influence of Emotions on Intertemporal Decision-Making

In recent years, with the integration and development of psychology and decision science, the research on the influence of emotions on intertemporal decision-making has increasingly emerged, forming a new academic trend. However, the current research in this field is still preliminary, and most of them focus on the revelation of phenomena, while few literatures directly analyze the complex mechanism between emotions and intertemporal decision-making. Therefore, in order to have a more comprehensive understanding of the psychological basis of intertemporal decision-making, and to guide people to use and control emotions more effectively in actual situations to achieve more satisfactory decision-making results, it is necessary to further explore the relationship between emotions and intertemporal decision-making. Such research can not only enrich the connotation of intertemporal decision-making theory, but also provide more scientific guidance for emotion management. This paper summarizes the previous research on the impact of emotion on intertemporal decision-making, and finds some current research areas and shortcomings, such as the lack of investigation of complex emotions, the lack of depth of research from the cognitive process itself, and the limitations of single-point results For example, to investigate the influence of dynamic emotions, daily emotions and complex emotions on intertemporal decision-making, and to make more attempts and explorations in emotional interventions.

A model curriculum in sexual medicine for undergraduate education in Europe

Sexual health has been recognized as an essential component of the overall health and wellbeing. The current article aims, first, to review the current state of sexual health education in undergraduate medical curricula, identifying gaps, needs and challenges. The main part of this paper describes the development and content of an undergraduate sexual medicine curriculum based on a clear concept of the competencies students should learn regarding knowledge, skills and attitudes. The content is based on a biopsychosocial understanding of human sexuality elaborated by international experts from different European countries integrating basic knowledge in biology, psychology, sociocultural and political sciences, preventive medicine, and the various therapeutic approaches to help women, men and couples with sexual health problems on a primary care level. In order to enable students to learn the basic skills of sexual history taking and sexual basic counselling two educational videos were produced. The material presented is part of the European Collaboration in Science and Technology (COST) supported project European Sexual Medicine Network (ESMN). The material provided can serve universities to give the training as a 25-30 hours course equivalent to 1 ECTS.

On (Im)Patience: A New Approach to an Old Virtue.

Patience has been of great interest to religious scholars, philosophers, and psychological scientists. Their efforts have produced numerous insights but no cohesive theoretical approach to understanding the broad set of experiences people label as patience. I propose a novel view of patience, one that departs from but ties together existing approaches. Grounded in theories of emotion and emotion regulation, I propose impatience as a discrete emotion triggered by an objectionable delay of some sort, and patience (as a state or process rather than a virtue) as a form of emotion regulation that targets the subjective experience and outward expression of impatience. I propose a number of predictors and consequences of patience and impatience and provide initial evidence for many of the theory's tenets. This theoretical approach, the process model of patience, reveals coherence across varied fields and methodologies and generates novel, testable, and timely questions for future patience scholars. "Patience is a virtue" is a familiar exhortation, and patience has been of great interest to religious scholars, philosophers, and psychological scientists. Their efforts have produced numerous insights but no cohesive theoretical approach to understanding the broad set of experiences people label as patience. This paper proposes an entirely novel view of patience, one that departs from but ties together existing approaches. I propose that impatience is an emotion, triggered by a frustrating delay of some sort, and patience captures the various ways people try to deal with their experience of impatience. I also propose that various aspects of the situation and the person combine to determine the intensity of impatience and the effectiveness of patience. Finally, I discuss the implications of a theoretical model, the process model of patience, for both scientific inquiry and issues of social justice, which are often fueled by appropriate experiences of impatience.

Experiences of loneliness and isolation among people with visual impairment: A review of literature (2016–2023)

According to the UK Government, people with a disability or long-term health condition are more likely to experience chronic loneliness than the general population. However, government figures do not disaggregate data on loneliness among different types of health conditions or disabilities, and it remains unclear how this affects people with visual impairment (VI). This review examines experiences of loneliness and isolation among people with VI. Six databases (CINAHL, PubMed, Scopus, Sage, APA Psycharticles, and Psychology and Behavioural Sciences Collection) were searched using a Population, Interest and Outcome (PIO) framework, yielding a total of 2476 articles. A total of 29 articles were selected and appraised for quality using JBI appraisal tools. These articles represented studies from 14 countries. Relevant Government and voluntary sector organisation websites were also considered. Findings showed widespread experiences of isolation and exclusion among people with VI, but subjective experiences of loneliness did not necessarily align with this. Further research is needed to gain a better understanding of the relationship between VI and loneliness and experiences of loneliness for people with VI within both LGBTQ+ communities and within Black, Asian, and Ethnically Minoritised communities, where research remains notably scant. Studies about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic showed its heightened effect on isolation and loneliness among the VI community. Further research is needed to understand the long-term effects of this. While technology holds promise in mitigating loneliness and isolation among individuals with VI, accessibility issues persist. Future research is needed to understand how technology-based interventions might address loneliness and isolation for individuals with VI and the accessibility barriers associated with the implementation of these. For loneliness and isolation to be minimised, recognising the diversity within the VI population is imperative for tailoring interventions and initiatives effectively.

Intergenerational Storytelling and Positive Psychosocial Development: Stories as Developmental Resources for Marginalized Groups

Academic We articulate an intergenerational model of positive psychosocial development that centers storytelling in an ecological framework and is motivated by an orientation toward social justice. We bring together diverse literature (e.g., racial-ethnic socialization, family storytelling, narrative psychology) to argue that the intergenerational transmission of stories about one’s group is equally important for elders and youth, and especially important for groups who are marginalized, because stories provide a developmental resource for resistance and resilience in the face of injustice. We describe how storytelling activities can support positive psychosocial development in culturally dynamic contexts and illustrate our model with a case study involving LGBTQ+ communities, arguing that intergenerational storytelling is uniquely important for this group given issues of access to stories. We argue that harnessing the power of intergenerational storytelling could provide a culturally safe and sustaining practice for fostering psychosocial development among LGBTQ+ people and other equity-seeking populations. Public Understanding one’s identity as part of a group with shared history and culture that has existed through time is important for positive psychological functioning. This is especially true for marginalized communities for whom identity-relevant knowledge is often erased, silenced, or distorted in mainstream public discourses (e.g., school curricula, news media, television, and film). To compensate for these limitations around access, one channel for the transmission of this knowledge is through oral storytelling between generations of elders and youth. Contemporary psychological science has often assumed that such storytelling occurs within families, but when families cannot or would not share such knowledge, youth suffer. We present a model of intergenerational storytelling that expands our ideas around who counts as “family” and how knowledge can be transmitted through alternative channels, using LGBTQ+ communities as a case example.

Book Review: Aaron Williamon, Jane Ginsborg, Rosie Perkins and George Waddell, Performing Music Research: Methods in Music Education, Psychology, and Performance Science

Book Review: Aaron Williamon, Jane Ginsborg, Rosie Perkins and George Waddell, <i>Performing Music Research: Methods in Music Education, Psychology, and Performance Science</i>

On finding one’s way: a comment on Bock et al. (2024)

In a recent issue of Psychological Research, Bock, O., Huang, J-Y., Onur, O. A., & Memmert, D. (2024). The structure of cognitive strategies for wayfinding decisions. Psychological Research Psychologische Forschung, 88, 476–486. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-023-01863-3.) investigated cognitive strategies purported to guide wayfinding decisions at intersections. Following experimentation in a virtualised maze, it was concluded that intersectional wayfinding decisions were based on a ‘generalized cognitive process’, in addition to ‘strategy-specific’ processes. The aim of our comment is not to challenge these findings or their methodological rigour. Rather, we note how the study of human wayfinding has been undertaken from entirely different metatheoretical perspectives in psychological science. Leaning on the seminal work of James Gibson and Harry Heft, we consider wayfinding as a continuous, integrated perception-action process, distributed across the entire organism-environment system. Such a systems-oriented, ecological approach to wayfinding remediates the organismic asymmetry pervasive to extant theories of human behaviours, foregrounding the possibility for empirical investigation that takes seriously the socio-cultural contexts in which inhabitants dwell.

Why psychological scientists should disdain determinism

This essay strives to challenge a conceptual foundation of psychology that is questioned all too rarely: causal determinism. Specifically, the issue we have an argument with is the idea that human behavior is characterized by strict and inevitable sequences of cause and effect. We make two arguments against this notion. First, we argue that, even if true, this conception of determinism is useless and misleading for psychological theories, because psychological theories typically must explain how agents respond to situations defined by having multiple alternative possible outcomes. Second, we argue that this determinism is probably wrong, outdated, and circular in its reasoning. Alongside these arguments, we present results of a survey among fellow researchers, assessing their beliefs on the topic. Results show that psychologists are indeed discordant about this issue, and tendencies to endorse notions of causal determinism are more prevalent in younger than older scientists. We respect this diversity of opinion and seek to make the case that psychology theory would be best served by abandoning the wrongheaded idea of human behavior being inevitable and physically predetermined and replacing it with a brain-based agent operating in a world defined by multiple genuine possibilities and probabilistic causation.

Acoustic behavioral observation in study abroad research: A case study using the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR)

Frequency of (aural) language exposure and productive (oral) language use, context, and interlocutors are important factors for language learning. Applied linguists and study abroad (SA) researchers have studied these variables mostly retrospectively through questionnaires and learners’ self-reports which have unknown correspondence with learner's actual language use and social networks. Surprisingly few applied linguists have attempted to capture quantitative aspects of day-to-day language use through systematic long-term observation even though methods to do so have been used in psychological science for some time. In this article, we present arguments for the application of acoustic behavioral observation in applied linguistics and SA research. We introduce the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR; Mehl, 2017) and illustrate its application in a case study about the use of first, second, and additional languages by two German high school students during their year abroad in the USA. The EAR is a digital audio recorder, currently available as an app for Android devices. It can be installed on smartphones worn by their users as they go about their daily activities. The app intermittently (e.g., 5 times per hour) records brief (e.g., 30 s) snippets of ambient sounds from the wearer's moment-to-moment sonic environment. EAR users are unaware of when exactly the device is recording. We describe the method, data collection, transcription, coding and analyses, address ethical concerns about its application, and report findings from the case study about the SA students’ language use to illustrate the potential and limitations of the method for applied linguistics research.

Breakdowns in Scientific Practices: How and Why Some Accepted Scientific Claims May Have Little Actual Support

This paper considers the reasonableness of claims made in empirical psychological science. Drawing on validity and institutional theories, our conceptual model views research methods as institutionalized approaches to supporting the (implicit) inferential argument that is used to validate conclusions. Breakdowns occur when researchers falsely believe that a method strongly supports the inferential argument, but where little support is provided. We identify two characteristics of methods that promote breakdowns and show that these characteristics explain breakdowns of two common methods, null hypothesis significance testing and cutoffs for fit indices. Last, we discuss broadly how to reduce breakdowns in scientific practice.