Tag: Psychology

On This Day … 29 November

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People (Births)

  • 1825 – Jean-Martin Charcot, French neurologist and psychologist (d. 1893).
  • 1945 – Csaba Pléh, Hungarian psychologist and linguist.

Jean-Martin Charcot

Jean-Martin Charcot (29 November 1825 to 16 August 1893) was a French neurologist and professor of anatomical pathology.

He is best known today for his work on hypnosis and hysteria, in particular his work with his hysteria patient Louise Augustine Gleizes.

Charcot is known as “the founder of modern neurology”, and his name has been associated with at least 15 medical eponyms, including Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease and Charcot disease.

Charcot has been referred to as “the father of French neurology and one of the world’s pioneers of neurology” His work greatly influenced the developing fields of neurology and psychology; modern psychiatry owes much to the work of Charcot and his direct followers.

He was the “foremost neurologist of late nineteenth-century France” and has been called “the Napoleon of the neuroses”.

Csaba Pleh

Csaba Pléh (born 29 November 1945) is a Hungarian psychologist and linguist, professor at the Department of Cognitive Science, Budapest University of Technology and Economics.

He graduated from the Eötvös Loránd University where he earned his degrees in psychology (1969) and linguistics (1973). In 1970 he received his PhD in psychology. He became Candidate of Psychological Science in 1984 and Doctor of Psychological Science in 1997. He obtained his habilitation in 1998. He became a corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences is 1998, a full member in 2004.

On This Day … 22 November

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People (Births)

  • 1927 – Robert E. Valett, American psychologist, teacher, and author (d. 2008).

Robert Valett

Robert E. Valett (22 November 1927 to 14 November 2008) was an American psychology professor who wrote more than 20 books primarily focused on educational psychology.

He earned the distinguished psychologist award from the San Joaquin Psychological Association and was a president of the California Association of School Psychologists.

Early Life and Education

Robert Edward Valett was born in Clinton, Iowa on 22 November 1927. His father, Edward John Valett, worked for the railroad as a pipe fitter and his mother, Myrtle (née Peterson), was a saleswoman. Valett attended Clinton High School while also achieving the rank of Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America. During World War Two, he served in the US Navy Medical Corps. He then did his undergraduate work at the University of Iowa and George Williams College. Valett went on to earn an MA from the University of Chicago (1951) and an (Ed.D.) in educational psychology from the University of California in Los Angeles.

Career

Valett was a professor of psychology at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, Ca., and the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and taught psychology from 1970 to 1992 at California State University, Fresno where he was named Professor Emeritus. He authored several books on learning disabilities, child development, dyslexia and attention disorders/hyperactivity. He received the distinguished psychologist award from the San Joaquin Psychological Association in 1982 and served as president of the California Association of School Psychologists from 1971 to 1972.

Personal Life

In 1950, Valett married Shirley Bellman with whom he had 5 children. He died on 14 November 2008, in Fresno, California.

On This Day … 20 November

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People (Births)

  • 1916 – Charles E. Osgood, American psychologist (d. 1991).
  • 1920 – Douglas Dick, American actor and psychologist (d. 2015).

Charles Osgood

Charles Egerton Osgood (20 November 1916 to 15 September 1991) was an American psychologist and professor at the University of Illinois.

He was known for his research on behaviourism versus cognitivism, semantics (he introduced the term “semantic differential), cross-culturalism, psycholinguistic theory, and peace studies.

He is credited with helping in the early development of psycholinguistics.

Charles Osgood was recognised distinguished and highly honoured psychologist throughout his career.

Douglas Dick

Douglas Harvey Dick (20 November 1920 to 19 December 2015) was an American actor and occasional screenwriter.

His most famous role came in the 1948 film Rope.

In 1971, Dick left the entertainment industry to work as a psychologist.

Military Service

Dick did patrol duty with the United States Coast Guard and served as an aviator in the United States Navy, receiving a medical discharge from the latter.

Film

Dick’s film debut was in The Searching Wind (1946). Producer Hal B. Wallis met Dick in a Broadway agent’s office as Dick was waiting for an interview. Wallis had Dick make a screen test in New York City. The test, along with those of five other prospects, was shown to 300 women employees of Wallis’ studio. Dick was the clear favourite when the women were polled, and his role in The Searching Wind was the result. His best known film role is Kenneth Lawrence in the Alfred Hitchcock film classic Rope (1948). Among his other notable films are The Red Badge of Courage (1951) and Something to Live For (1952).

On This Day … 19 November

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People (Births)

  • 1833 – Wilhelm Dilthey, German psychologist, sociologist, and historian (d. 1911).
  • 1937 – Penelope Leach, English psychologist and author.

Wilhelm Dilthey

Wilhelm Dilthey (19 November 1833 to 01 October 1911) was a German historian, psychologist, sociologist, and hermeneutic philosopher, who held G. W. F. Hegel’s Chair in Philosophy at the University of Berlin.

As a polymathic philosopher, working in a modern research university, Dilthey’s research interests revolved around questions of scientific methodology, historical evidence and history’s status as a science.

He could be considered an empiricist, in contrast to the idealism prevalent in Germany at the time, but his account of what constitutes the empirical and experiential differs from British empiricism and positivism in its central epistemological and ontological assumptions, which are drawn from German literary and philosophical traditions.

Psychology

Dilthey was interested in psychology. In his work Ideas Concerning a Descriptive and Analytic Psychology (Ideen über eine beschreibende und zergliedernde Psychologie, 1894), he introduced a distinction between explanatory psychology (erklärende Psychologie; also explanative psychology) and descriptive psychology (beschreibende Psychologie; also analytic psychology, zergliedernde Psychologie): in his terminology, explanatory psychology is the study of psychological phenomena from a third-person point of view, which involves their subordination to a system of causality, while descriptive psychology is a discipline that attempts to explicate how different mental processes converge in the “structural nexus of consciousness.”

The distinction is based on the more general distinction between explanatory/explanative sciences (erklärende Wissenschaften), on the one hand, and interpretive sciences (beschreibende Wissenschaften or verstehende Wissenschaften, that is, the sciences which are based on the Verstehen method), on the other.

In his later work (Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften, 1910), he used the alternative term structural psychology (Strukturpsychologie) for descriptive psychology.

Penelope Leach

Penelope Jane Leach (née Balchin; born 19 November 1937), is a British psychologist who researches and writes extensively on parenting issues from a child development perspective.

Leach is best known for her book Your Baby and Child: From Birth to Age Five, published in 1977, which has sold over two million copies to date and won the BMA award for “best medical book for general audiences” in 1998. Leach notes in the introduction to that book: “Whatever you are doing, however you are coping, if you listen to your child and to your own feelings, there will be something you can actually do to put things right or make the best of those that are wrong.”

Early Life and Education

Born in Hampstead, London, she is the daughter of the novelists Nigel Balchin and Elizabeth Ayrton. She graduated from Newnham College, Cambridge, with honours in 1959. After Cambridge, she attended the London School of Economics, where she received her PhD in psychology (1964) and lectured on child development.

On This Day … 17 November

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People (Births)

  • 1896 – Lev Vygotsky, Belarusian-Russian psychologist and philosopher (d. 1934).

People (Deaths)

  • 2014 – Patrick Suppes, American psychologist and philosopher (b. 1922).

Lev Vygotsky

Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky (Russian: Лев Семёнович Выго́тский; Belarusian: Леў Сямёнавіч Выго́цкі; 17 November 17 (05 November (O.S.) 1896 to 11 June 1934) was a Soviet psychologist, known for his work on psychological development in children. He published on a diverse range of subjects, and from multiple views as his perspective changed over the years. Among his students was Alexander Luria.

He is known for his concept of the zone of proximal development (ZPD): the distance between what a student (apprentice, new employee, etc.) can do on their own, and what they can accomplish with the support of someone more knowledgeable about the activity. Vygotsky saw the ZPD as a measure of skills that are in the process of maturing, as supplement to measures of development that only look at a learner’s independent ability.

Also influential are his works on the relationship between language and thought, the development of language, and a general theory of development through actions and relationships in a socio-cultural environment.

Vygotsky is the subject of great scholarly dispute. There is a group of scholars who see parts of Vygotsky’s current legacy as distortions and who are going back to Vygotsky’s manuscripts in an attempt to make Vygotsky’s legacy more true to his actual ideas.

Patrick Suppes

Patrick Colonel Suppes (17 March 1922 to 17 November 2014) was an American philosopher who made significant contributions to philosophy of science, the theory of measurement, the foundations of quantum mechanics, decision theory, psychology and educational technology.

He was the Lucie Stern Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Stanford University and until January 2010, and was the Director of the Education Program for Gifted Youth also at Stanford.

On This Day … 16 November

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People (Births)

  • 1944 – Oliver Braddick, English psychologist and academic.

Oliver Braddick

Oliver John Braddick, FBA, FMedSci (born 16 November 1944) is a British developmental psychologist who is involved in research on infant visual perception. He frequently collaborates with his wife Janette Atkinson.

Biography

Braddick is Emeritus Professor of Experimental Psychology and was formerly head of the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford University from 2001 until his retirement in 2011. He attained a BA (1965) and PhD (1968) in Experimental Psychology at Trinity College, Cambridge. Between 1968-1969 he was a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Lorrin Riggs, Brown University, US. In 1969 he returned to Cambridge as a University Demonstrator, proceeding to become a lecturer and then reader.

By 1976, Braddick was an active member of the Cambridge Visual Development Unit, along with Janette Atkinson, his wife. The unit carried out pioneering research on the development of visual cortical function in infancy and in early visual screening. He also progressed understanding in binocular processes of both infants and adults.

In 1993, Braddick moved to University College London, together with Janette Atkinson, as professors of Psychology. He proceeded to become head of the Psychology department in 1998. He was elected fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2001 and that same year appointed Head Professor of Psychology at the University of Oxford and fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford.

In July 2012, it was announced that he had been elected as a Fellow of the British Academy, due to his contributions in the field of visual perception and its development in early childhood. Braddick is also a member of the Visual Development Unit at the University College of London and University of Oxford, a unit that specialises in child visual perception. He is a member of the Editorial Board for Current Biology.

Research

Braddick specialises in infant vision, particularly visual and visuomotor development of the dorsal and ventral streams in infants and children. In infancy, visual traits determine a manual response and the kinematic parameters of each type of response, including reach-and-grasp and surface exploration. These responses reflect the properties of visuo-motor modules which appear in infants from 4 to 12 months old. Since these modules are part of the dorsal cortical stream, they interact with the ventral stream processing in development and in the mature system.

His current research is on the perceptual development of infants with hyperopia. In addition to working on infant vision, he and his colleagues showed that adults attempting to grab a glowing item in the dark had a longer reach duration, lower average speed, as well as lower peak speed versus the same situation in the light.

According to Braddick, reliable motion perception needs a number of processes that integrate and combine visual motion signals from neighbouring locations within the field of vision. This has the effect of smoothing out spatial variations in velocity.

On This Day .. 12 November

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People (Births)

  • 1894 – Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe, Norwegian zoologist and comparative psychologist (d. 1976).

People (Deaths)

  • 2012 – Daniel Stern, American psychologist and theorist (b. 1934).

Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe

Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe (12 November 1894 to 08 June 1976) was a Norwegian zoologist and comparative psychologist.

Thorleif Schjelderup-Ebbe described the pecking order of hens in his PhD dissertation of 1921. The work in his dissertation was partly based on his observations of his own chickens that he had recorded since the age of 10.

The dominance hierarchy of chickens and other birds that he studied led him to the observation that these birds had established the order in which individuals would be allowed to get to food while others would have to wait for their turn.

Daniel Stern

Daniel N. Stern (16 August 1934 to 12 November 2012) was a prominent American psychiatrist and psychoanalytic theorist, specialising in infant development, on which he had written a number of books – most notably The Interpersonal World of the Infant (1985).

Stern’s 1985 and 1995 research and conceptualisation created a bridge between psychoanalysis and research-based developmental models.

Stern was born in New York City. He went to Harvard University as an undergraduate, from 1952 to 1956. He then attended Albert Einstein College of Medicine, completing his M.D. in 1960. In 1961, Stern was member of the Freedom Riders, a group of black and white activists challenging racial segregation in the south by travelling together on bus rides.

He continued his educational career doing research at the NIH in psychopharmacology from 1962-1964. In 1964, Stern decided to specialise in psychiatric care, completing his residency at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. In 1972 he started a psychoanalytic education at Columbia University Centre for Psychoanalytic Training and Research.

For more than 30 years, he worked in research and practice as well in developmental psychology and psychodynamic psychotherapy.

In his research, he dedicated his time to the observation of infants and to clinical reconstruction of early experiences. His efforts continue to contribute to currently existing developmental theories.

He was well known as an expert researcher of early affective mother-child bonding. Research and discoveries on the field of affective bonding was one of his leading activities.

Before his death, Stern was an honorary professor in Psychology at the University of Geneva, adjunct professor in the department of Psychiatry at the Cornell University Medical School and a lecturer at the Columbia University Centre for Psychoanalytic Training and Research.

He received Honorary Doctorates from the Universities of Copenhagen (2002), Dk; Palermo, It; Mons Hainaut, Be; Alborg, Dk; Padua, It, and Stockholm University.

He died, aged 78, in Geneva, Switzerland, following a heart failure. He actively contributed to the ongoing work of the Boston Process of Change Study Group only a few months prior.

Book: Cold War Freud

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Book Title:

Cold War Freud – Psychoanalysis in an Age of Catastrophes.

Author(s): Dagmar Herzog.

Year: 2016.

Edition: First (1st).

Publisher: Cambridge University Press.

Type(s): Hardcover, Paperback, and Kindle.

Synopsis:

In Cold War Freud Dagmar Herzog uncovers the astonishing array of concepts of human selfhood which circulated across the globe in the aftermath of World War II.

Against the backdrop of Nazism and the Holocaust, the sexual revolution, feminism, gay rights, and anticolonial and antiwar activism, she charts the heated battles which raged over Freud’s legacy.

From the postwar US to Europe and Latin America, she reveals how competing theories of desire, anxiety, aggression, guilt, trauma and pleasure emerged and were then transformed to serve both conservative and subversive ends in a fundamental rethinking of the very nature of the human self and its motivations.

Her findings shed new light on psychoanalysis’ enduring contribution to the enigma of the relationship between nature and culture, and the ways in which social contexts enter into and shape the innermost recesses of individual psyches.

Book: Clinical Psychology

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Book Title:

Clinical Pschology.

Author(s): Timothy J. Trull and Mitchell J. Prinstein.

Year: 2012.

Edition: Eighth (8th).

Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing Co Inc.

Type(s): Hardcover and Paperback.

Synopsis:

In language your students will understand and enjoy reading, Timothy Trull’s Clinical Psychology offers a concrete and well-rounded introduction to clinical psychology.

A highly respected clinician and researcher, Dr. Trull examines the rigorous research training that clinicians receive, along with the empirically supported assessment methods and interventions that clinical psychologists must understand to be successful in the field.

This new edition of Trull’s bestselling text covers cutting-edge trends, as well as offers enhanced coverage of culture, gender and diversity, and contemporary issues of health care.

Written to inspire students thinking of pursuing careers in the field of clinical psychology, this text is a complete introduction.

On This Day … 05 November

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People (Births)

  • 1950 – James Kennedy, American psychologist and author.

James Kennedy

James Kennedy (born 05 November 1950) is an American social psychologist, best known as an originator and researcher of particle swarm optimisation. The first papers on the topic, by Kennedy and Russell C. Eberhart, were presented in 1995; since then tens of thousands of papers have been published on particle swarms. The Academic Press/Morgan Kaufmann book, Swarm Intelligence, by Kennedy and Eberhart with Yuhui Shi, was published in 2001.

The particle swarm paradigm draws on social-psychological simulation research in which Kennedy had participated at the University of North Carolina, integrated with evolutionary computation methods that Eberhart had been working with in the 1990s. The result was a problem-solving or optimisation algorithm based on the principles of human social interaction. Individuals begin the programme with random guesses at the problem solution. As the programme runs, the “particles” share their successes with their topological neighbours; each particle is both teacher and learner. Over time, the population converges reliably on optimal vectors.

While there has been a trend in the research literature toward a “Gbest” or centralised particle network, Blackwell and Kennedy (2018) demonstrated the importance of a distributed population topology in solving more complex problems.

A recent paper discusses the possible contribution of human female orgasm to the species’ prosociality.

Kennedy has been an active combatant in the controversy over sex education in Montgomery County, Maryland, supporting the public schools’ efforts to develop a comprehensive and inclusive programme. He also worked to support a gender identity non-discrimination law in Montgomery County that came under attack from conservatives, and has maintained an online progressive presence.

He also worked as a professional musician for fifty years and currently plays in a rockabilly band called The Colliders, which released albums in 2011 and 2015. In 2018 Kennedy released a DIY album, The Life of Mischief, and is currently organising live performance of that material.

Kennedy worked in survey methods for the US government, and has conducted basic and applied research into social effects on cognition and attitude. He served as Director of the Office of Analysis and Research Services at the US International Trade Commission until his retirement in 2017. He has worked with particle swarms since 1994, with research publications in fields related and unrelated to swarms and surveys.