Psychological Laboratory Research Articles

The 'Real-World Approach' and Its Problems: A Critique of the Term Ecological Validity.

A popular goal in psychological science is to understand human cognition and behavior in the ‘real-world.’ In contrast, researchers have typically conducted their research in experimental research settings, a.k.a. the ‘psychologist’s laboratory.’ Critics have often questioned whether psychology’s laboratory experiments permit generalizable results. This is known as the ‘real-world or the lab’-dilemma. To bridge the gap between lab and life, many researchers have called for experiments with more ‘ecological validity’ to ensure that experiments more closely resemble and generalize to the ‘real-world.’ However, researchers seldom explain what they mean with this term, nor how more ecological validity should be achieved. In our opinion, the popular concept of ecological validity is ill-formed, lacks specificity, and falls short of addressing the problem of generalizability. To move beyond the ‘real-world or the lab’-dilemma, we believe that researchers in psychological science should always specify the particular context of cognitive and behavioral functioning in which they are interested, instead of advocating that experiments should be more ‘ecologically valid’ in order to generalize to the ‘real-world.’ We believe this will be a more constructive way to uncover the context-specific and context-generic principles of cognition and behavior.

Gertrude Stein and the Metaphysical Avant-Garde

When American metaphysical religion appears onstage, it most often manifests in the subject matter and dramaturgies of experimental theater. In the artistic ferment of the 1960s and 1970s counterculture, theater-makers looked both to alternative dramaturgies and alternative religions to create radical works of political, social, and spiritual transformation. While the ritual experiments of European avant-garde artists like Artaud and Grotowski informed their work, American theater-makers also found inspiration in the dramas of Gertrude Stein, and many of these companies (the Living Theatre and the Wooster Group, most notably) either staged her work or claimed a direct influence (like Richard Foreman). Stein herself, though not a practitioner of metaphysical religion, spent formative years in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at Radcliffe under the tutelage of William James. Cambridge, at the turn of the twentieth century, was a hotbed of spiritualism, theosophy, alternative healing modalities, and James, in addition to running the psychology lab in which Stein studied, ran a multitude of investigations on extrasensory and paranormal phenomena. This article traces a web of associations connecting Ralph Waldo Emerson, Transcendentalism, and liberal Protestantism to Gertrude Stein and landscape dramaturgy to the midcentury avant-garde, the countercultural religious seeking of the 1960s and 1970s, and the Off-Off-Broadway movement.

Psychoemotional status in patients with duodenal ulcer disease complicated by suband decompensated stenosis

The aim of the study was to assess the influence of the types of attitudes to disease and depression on adherence to treatment of patients with duodenal ulcer.Material and methods: Adherence to treatment was evaluated in 43 patients with sub- and decompensated scar-ulcerative stenosis aged from 21 to 74 years old (the average age being 47,5±26,5 years old), who underwent surgical removal of stenosis in the amount of duodenoplasty. The compliance of duodenal ulcer patients was assessed on the basis of the questionnaire developed by us. Assessment of the level of depression in patients was carried out using the Russian version of the Beck questionnaire (BDI). The method “type of attitude to disease” was used for psychological diagnosis of the types of attitude to the disease, the method being developed in the laboratory of clinical psychology of the Institute named after V. M. Bekhterev.Results: all 43 patients according to the degree of adherence to treatment were divided into 2 groups: compliant (20 patients) and non-compliant (23 people); also the types of attitudes to the disease and the level of depression were assessed. It was found that adaptive types of attitude to the disease were found in 51.2% of patients. Adaptive responses to illness provide overall adaptive behavior due to the adequate assessment of patients’ condition, or due to the obsessive desire for active employment, which is typical for ergopathic type of attitude to the disease, or due to the negation of everything associated with the disease with anosognosic type of the relation to disease. In «non-compliant» patients, in comparison with “compliant” ones, both before and after the surgery, statistically significant differences in the severity of the diagnosed depressive disorder were revealed. For «non-compliant” patients significantly more often mild depression and moderate depression were revealed, requiring the reception of psychopharmacological drugs.

A Process-Oriented Guided-Inquiry Learning (POGIL)-Based Curriculum for the Experimental Psychology Laboratory

We implemented NSF-funded computerized Experimental Psychology Laboratories at Touro College and incorporated process-oriented guided-inquiry learning (POGIL). We designed POGIL modules for the labs and conducted workshops for faculty on the implementation of the guided-inquiry approach, including learning teams. Data were collected from students who took experimental psychology with and without using POGIL, to assess the impact of the curriculum materials. Achievement was measured with (a) selected items from the Major Field Achievement Tests (MFAT) and (b) our own assessment instrument. Results indicated that students using the POGIL materials performed significantly better on both achievement tests than students not using them. This is the first demonstration that POGIL led to higher achievement than non-POGIL instruction for experimental psychology. These results are consistent with previous POGIL findings in the field of chemistry.

ПОСТТРАВМАТИЧНЕ ЖИТТЄТВОРЕННЯ ОСОБИСТОСТІ: МЕТОДИ ДІАГНОСТИКИ І ВІДНОВЛЕННЯ

Представлено емпіричну верифікацію наступних аспектів теорії відновлення психологічного здоров’я особистості: діапазону психологічних наслідків впливу травми на особистість; способів розподілу ресурсів особистості у складних умовах; засобів та процедур визначення ефективності реабілітаційних впливів; перс­пектив забезпечення комплексної психосоціальної підтримки особистості. Апробовано комплекс ме­тодик, який використовувався колективом лабораторії соціальної психології особистості при дослідженні посттравматичного етапу життєтворення. 
 Показали свою ефективність наступні методи діагностики: методи опитування, глибинного та контекстуального інтерв’ю, створення автонаративу. Інтерпретація результатів, отриманих в резуль­та­ті використання якісних методів, здійснювалася за допомогою процедур контент-аналізу та аналізу твор­чих продуктів. Засвідчено інформативність методу інтерв’ю, завдяки якому вдалося виявити вплив трав­матичних життєвих обставин на способи організації життєтворення, зміни стилю життя, апробацію нових копінгів. 
 Доведено формувально-відновлювальний вплив методів соціально-психологічної реабілітації на осо­бис­тість. Здійснено перевірку ефективності реабілітаційних технологій з використанням методу феноме­нологічного аналізу індивідуальних та групових впливів та подальшим аналізом консультативних, психоте­рапевтичних і тренінгових текстів, що дало змогу з’ясувати феноменологію травматичного досвіду постра­ж­далих, зафіксувати наявність внутрішніх і зовнішніх ресурсів для відновлення їхнього психоло­гіч­ного здоров’я та реконструювати ціннісно-смислові і праксеологічні контексти посттравматичного життєтворення.

Экология детства и психология устойчивого развития (итоги международной научно-практической конференции «9-я Российская конференция по экологической психологии: от экологии детства к психологии устойчивого развития»)

The article presents the results of the international research and practice conference “The 9th Russian conference on environmental psychology: from ecology of childhood to psychology of sustainable development”, which was held on March 17–19, 2020 at the Psychological Institute of the Russian Academy of Education, in Moscow. The conference was organized by the Federal State Budgetary Institution “Psychological Institute of the Russian Academy of Education” (Laboratory of Ecological Psychology of Development and Psychodidactics), International State Institute named after A. D. Sakharov, Belarusian State University (Department of Social Sciences, Humanities and Sustainable Development). The main ideas and research results presented at the plenary and section sessions are presented. Particular attention was paid to the problems of childhood ecology and psychology of sustainable development.

Roberto Ardigo’s (and Wilhelm Wundt’s) Pupil Gino Melati and the First Attempt to Introduce Experimental Psychology at the University of Padua

Although a philosopher and not a scientist, Roberto Ardigo, the father of Italian positivism, actively contributed to the birth of psychology as an autonomous science. Since his arrival at the University of Padua in 1881, he proposed integrating the traditional teaching of theoretical philosophy with the experimental investigation of mental facts , and therefore argued for the establishment of a psychological laboratory. After some attempts to introduce his followers, such as Giovanni Marchesini, to psychological studies, Ardigo’s project started to take shape when in 1898 he sent his pupil Gino Melati to be trained at the Leipzig laboratory under the supervision of Wilhelm Wundt. Melati fruitfully spent around two years abroad investigating the perception of binaural beats, likely with the cooperation of Felix Krueger. His research was published in the scholarly journal Philosophische Studien . In 1903 Melati asked for a libera docenza (a sort of Privatdozentur ) in Psychology, which would have enabled him to teach at university. However, he did not obtain the qualification and eventually Melati gave up science for politics. This paper aims to reconstruct, with the support of unpublished archival material, the almost completely ignored story of this disciple of Ardigo and his unsuccessful effort to introduce experimental psychology in Padua long before the arrival of Vittorio Benussi in 1919.

Predicting Bad Policing: Theorizing Burdensome and Racially Disparate Policing through the Lenses of Social Psychology and Routine Activities

Despite an increase in research relating to racial disparities in policing—particularly in the area of deadly force—there have been comparatively few attempts to theorize which factors predict disparate policing. We fill this gap by combining routine activity theory from criminology with situationist approaches to discrimination from social psychology. We propose that disparate policing is most likely to occur when officers who are vulnerable to situational risk factors for bias encounter citizens who are members of vulnerable out-groups. We argue that situational risk factors for bias and aggression among police provoke feelings of threat and motivate self-protection and/or feelings of disgust and out-group derogation. We present social psychological laboratory research and, where available, field research specific to policing as a way of exploring and bolstering the proposed framework. This work supports an agenda for future scientific research that may assist practitioners in identifying likely opportunities for reform even as we await further field research that tests these hypothesized parameters.

The Effect of Perimenopausal Transdermal Estradiol and Micronized Progesterone on Markers of Risk for Arterial Disease.

The arterial effects of hormone therapy remain controversial. This study tested the effects of transdermal estradiol plus intermittent micronized progesterone (TE + IMP) in healthy perimenopausal and early postmenopausal women on several mechanisms involved in the pathophysiology of arterial disease. Healthy perimenopausal and early postmenopausal women, ages 45 to 60 years, were enrolled in this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. Women were randomized to receive TE (0.1 mg/day) + IMP (200 mg/day for 12 days) or identical placebo patches and pills for 12 months. Outcomes included: change in stress reactivity composite z-score (combining inflammatory, cortisol, and hemodynamic responses to a standardized psychological laboratory stressor); flow-mediated dilation (FMD) of the brachial artery (an index of vascular endothelial function); baroreflex sensitivity; and metabolic risk (presence of the metabolic syndrome or insulin resistance), all assessed at baseline and at months 6 and 12. Of 172 women enrolled, those assigned to TE + IMP tended to have higher resting baroreflex sensitivity than those assigned to placebo across the 6- and 12-month visits. Although treatment groups did not differ in terms of the other prespecified outcomes, a significant treatment-by-age interaction was found for FMD and stress reactivity such that an age-related decrease in FMD and increase in stress reactivity were seen among women assigned to placebo but not those assigned to TE + IMP. Women on TE + IMP also had lower resting diastolic blood pressure, lower levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and higher baroreflex sensitivity during stress testing. TE + IMP tended to improve cardiac autonomic control and prevented age-related changes in stress reactivity and endothelial function among healthy perimenopausal and early postmenopausal women.

Diseño, implementación y evaluación de Guías de psicoorientación para población escolar/universitaria

El artículo presenta la sistematización del proyecto de práctica del Laboratorio de Psicología de la Universidad Mariana, implementado en el campo de la psicología educativa durante el año 2018. El proceso de sistematización propone una metodología cualitativa para la validación de guías de psicoeducación en cuanto a los siguientes temas: Educación para la sexualidad, Orientación vocacional y Preparación para la vida laboral, teniendo en cuenta las fases de diseño, implementación y evaluación de cada una de las guías de psicoeducación, las cuales atendieron las necesidades de los contextos educativos en los cuales el Laboratorio de Psicología de la Universidad Mariana realiza proyección social. Como resultado de la sistematización, es posible el reconocimiento de fortalezas, logros y dificultades relacionadas con la aplicación de estas guías de psico orientación en contextos educativos de educación básica, media y universitaria, lo cual optimiza las prácticas en psicología educativa y deriva beneficios directos en las comunidades educativas de la región, con servicios de calidad y pertinencia.

Ökonomie der Aufmerksamkeit

It is a well-known fact that Gertrude Stein participated in psychological experiments at Hugo Münsterberg’s psychological laboratory during her undergraduate studies at Harvard University in the 1890s. She also conducted such experiments, the results of which were published in the Psychological Review. In her autobiographical texts, Stein referred to the experiments and the articles. Biographical research on Stein never fails to mention the experiments, but treats them as proof of Stein’s early interest in character types, while a few scholars regard Stein’s texts as automatic writing and base their claim on the experiments. The essay contextualizes the experiments in the contemporaneous research on suggestion and the “doubling of the mind”. Rejecting the idea of automatic writing, I analyze the section “ROOMS” of Tender Buttons as a literary experiment with suggestion.

Evaluation of the effectiveness of relaxation in lowering the level of anxiety in young adults - a pilot study.

Anxiety is a negative emotion that acts as a mediator between stress stimuli and emotional (physiological) reaction patterns. The myofascial system is particularly sensitive to stress. The aim of this study was to determine which of the 2 popular methods used to reduce psychophysical tension, i.e., soft tissue manipulation and Jacobson's progressive relaxation, is more effective. This study was conducted at Gdansk University of Physical Education and Sports in the sports psychology laboratory and the manual therapy room. After performing specialist consultations and interviews to exclude potential participants with contraindications to any of the interventions, the final sample included 90 people who were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 treatment groups. In group I, soft tissue techniques were applied, including the techniques of post-isometric muscle relaxation, elements of myofascial relaxation of tissues, and elastic tissue deformation using the Swedish massage limited to the cervicothoracic complex. In group II, Jacobson's progressive relaxation was performed. The training consisted of tightening and relaxing specific muscle groups. The experiment was conducted under an ambulatory condition, consisting of a single physiotherapeutic session (group I) or a single progressive relaxation session using the Jacobson method (group II). The level of anxiety was assessed twice, i.e., immediately before and after the therapy. According to a repeated-measures ANOVA, each therapeutic impact was effective in reducing the level of perceived anxiety. Furthermore, the level of perceived anxiety in group I decreased significantly more than that in group II. In conclusion, both the soft tissue manipulation and Jacobson's progressive relaxation techniques were efficient methods of minimizing the negative effects of stress. Int J Occup Med Environ Health. 2019;32(6):817-24.

Seductive Details in the Flipped Classroom: The Impact of Interesting but Educationally Irrelevant Information on Student Learning and Motivation.

In this study, we assessed the impact of providing students with short video clips highlighting the relevance of material they are learning in the genetics classroom to their everyday lives. These interesting but non–learning objective oriented clips, referred to as “seductive details,” have been studied extensively in laboratory contexts. In laboratory studies, seductive details have been shown to actually decrease learning, leading some to recommend that any information not directly pertaining to academic learning outcomes be removed from education materials. We aimed to uncover effects of seductive details in an actual college course, in a manner divorced from the confounding variation introduced by instructor-level differences in personality and lecture styles. Our results show that, in a flipped-classroom environment, seductive details do not harm students’ content attainment, interest, or perceived learning, but they are memorable. Students with high background knowledge of genetics reported greater learning after watching videos containing seductive details than students who watched equivalent videos without seductive details, but there was no difference in quiz scores between the groups. These results contradict some of the major effects observed throughout decades of studies conducted in artificial psychology laboratory environments and highlight possible affective benefits of instructors using seductive details.

Neokantysta w laboratorium psychologicznym — Richarda Hönigswalda poszukiwanie zasad bytu psychicznego

Neo-Kantian in the Psychological Laboratory — Richard Hӧnigswald’s Research on the Principles of Mental BeingThe specificity of Richard Hӧnigswald’s attitude to the issues raised in the Neo-Kantian philosophy was clearly visible in his approach to psychology. First of all, this covered the question of the objectivity of cognizance. Like other Neo-Kantian philosophers, Hӧnigswald undertook in his work both the problem of the relationship between philosophy and psychology and the problem of psychologism. Unlike the representants of both Neo-Kantians schools, he took up psychology practically. In the years 1916–1930 he led the psychological laboratory of the Philosophical Seminar at the University of Wrocław, where he conducted a study of the process of thinking. Hӧnigswald took up psychology as he intended to expand the question of objectivity by the subjectivity conditions of cognizance, among which the most important was a synthesis in the way that Kant used this term — primary apperception, i.e. the unity of Self-Knowledge. According to Hӧnigswald, there is no knowledge beyond the knowing subject — an experience centre in which cognitive acts take place. In this way, Hӧnigswald extended the epistemological questions by the notion of ontology of thinking — the theory of mental existence.

A Survey on Awareness of Traffic Safety among Drivers in Delhi, India

Increasing number of road accidents coupled with increasing vehicle population means an increase in the number of aggressive road users resulting in incidence of road rage. Inexperienced drivers often experience anxiety due to their underdeveloped and declining skills, which influence their behaviour. To highlight the effectiveness of correct training on the drivers' performance, this research work was initiated at Traffic Psychological Laboratory in CSIR-CRRI. In this study, a purposive sample of two groups of 102 drivers was selected and they were administered the road sign test. Findings: The analysis of the data highlights that maximum level of awareness about road sign of driving on hill roads (89%), seat belts usage while driving (89%) the safe way of stopping during emergency (40%), safe place of parking the vehicle (39%) and road markings (27%). Overall, drivers have shown average and above average level of awareness 52% to 77%.

EEG coherence in theta, alpha, and beta bands in frontal regions and executive functions

Executive functions are higdevel cognitive processes that make possible the formation of flexible and adaptive goal-directed behaviors and the frontal lobes regulate these functions. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between frontal EEG coherence in theta, alpha, and beta bands and executive functions in adults. A sample of 168 students (Mage = 25.44 years, SD = 4.52) were included in this study. EEG records were recorded at the psychology laboratory of Mohaghegh Ardabili University (Iran), then intrahemispheric and interhemispheric coherence of frontal regions were analyzed using the NeuroGuide software. The participants were asked to fill in the Adult Executive Skills Questionnaire. Correlational results showed that there is a positive relationship between executive functions and EEG coherence in theta, alpha, and beta bands in frontal regions of the left hemisphere, EEG coherence of alpha and beta bands in frontal regions of the right hemisphere and EEG coherence of alpha band between frontal regions of the two hemispheres. The results of the regression analysis also revealed that coherence of alpha, beta, and theta bands between left and right frontal regions and coherence of beta and theta bands in the left frontal regions predict executive functions. These results indicate that the common activity of frontal cortex, especially the left hemisphere, is associated with executive functions and cognitive control.

Perceived Student Benefits of an Undergraduate Physiological Psychology Laboratory Course

Undergraduate research (UR) is a high-impact practice associated with many positive student outcomes. However, extending UR opportunities to all students is not practical for all psychology program...

Опытная психологическая лаборатория Академии Генерального штаба РККА как прототип психологической службы Вооруженных Сил Российской Федерации

<p>Статья посвящена созданию опытной психологической лаборатории, ставшей первым в истории российской армии специализированным подразделением военных психологов.</p><p class="a">По материалам научного доклада на конференции «Кросс-культурные и междисциплинарные исследования в истории психологии: результаты и перспективы» (Москва, 24-25 ноября 2018 г.), проведенной в рамках проекта № 18-513-18017, поддержанного РФФИ.</p>

What is a Psychological Task? The Operational Pliability of “Task” in Psychological Laboratory Experimentation

There has been no sustained sociological analysis of a near ubiquitous feature of psychological laboratory experimentation: the task. Yet the task is central in arranging the means by which phenomena are isolated and brought into the experimental scientist’s purview. As scientific objects, states such as mind wandering and daydreaming have been made visible in experiments that draw on a (sometimes) sharp distinction between what it means to be either “on task” or “off task”––which entails a long history of what it means to have a subject attend to her task, a central aspect of the psychology experiment since its foundation. Through an analysis of qualitative interviews with research participants in studies of so-called “mind wandering,” it becomes clear that task is deployed and understood in multiple ways: it is often hard to distinguish when a person is on task and when they are not; when participants reflect on their own internal states the boundedness that the concept relies upon is drawn sharply into question; and the complex spatio-temporal organization of experiences of both mind wandering and task disrupts the metaphorical structures that the scientific literature has baked into these terms. The term “operational pliability” allows us to understand how the pliability of the practice and concept of task is central to how task functions. Operational pliability offers a way of understanding how particular elements in scientific investigation are easily adaptable and at the same time are able to hold some kind of shape or form.

A Conversation with Piet Groeneboom

Petrus (Piet) Groeneboom was born in Scheveningen in 1941 and grew up in Voorburg. Both villages are located near The Hague in The Netherlands; Scheveningen actually being part of The Hague. He attended the gymnasium of the Huygens lyceum. In 1959, he entered the University of Amsterdam, where he studied psychology. After his “candidate” exam (comparable to BSc) in 1963, he worked at the psychological laboratory of the University of Amsterdam until 1966. In 1965, he took up mathematics as a part-time study. After having obtained his master’s degree in 1971, he had a position at the psychological laboratory again until 1973, when he was appointed to the Mathematical Center in Amsterdam. There, he wrote between 1975 and 1979 his Ph.D. thesis with Kobus Oosterhoff as advisor, graduating in 1979. After a period of two years as visiting professor at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle, Piet moved back to the Mathematical Center until he was appointed full professor of statistics at the University of Amsterdam in 1984. Four years later, he moved to Delft University of Technology where he became professor of statistics and stayed until his retirement in 2006. Between 2000 and 2006 he also held a part-time professorship at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. From 1999 till 2013 he was Affiliate Professor at the statistics department of UW, Seattle. Apart from being visiting professor at the UW in Seattle, he was also visiting professor at Stanford University, Universite Paris 6 and ETH Zurich. Piet is well known for his work on shape constrained statistical inference. He worked on asymptotic theory for these problems, created algorithms to compute nonparametric estimates in such models and applied these models to real data. He also worked on interacting particle systems, extreme value analysis and efficiency theory for testing procedures. Piet (co-)authored four books and 64 papers and served as promotor of 13 students. He is the recipient of the 1985 Rollo Davidson prize, a fellow of the IMS and elected member of the ISI. In 2015, he delivered the Wald lecture at the Joint Statistical Meeting in Montreal. Piet and his wife Marijke live in Naarden. He has two sons, Thomas and Tim, and (since June 12, 2018) one grandson, Tarik. This conversation was held at Piet’s house in Naarden, on February 28 and April 24, 2018.