Psychological science in the public interest : a journal of the American Psychological Society最新文献

{"title":"Bilingual Minds.","authors":"Ellen Bialystok, Fergus I M Craik, David W Green, Tamar H Gollan","doi":"10.1177/1529100610387084","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100610387084","url":null,"abstract":"The regular use of two languages by bilingual individuals has been shown to have a broad impact on language and cognitive functioning. In this monograph, we consider four aspects of this influence. In the first section, we examine differences between monolinguals and bilinguals in children’s acquisition of language and adults’ linguistic processing, particularly in terms of lexical retrieval. Children learning two languages from birth follow the same milestones for language acquisition as monolinguals do (first words, first use of grammar) but may use different strategies for language acquisition, and they generally have a smaller vocabulary in each language than do monolingual children learning only a single language. Adult bilinguals typically take longer to retrieve individual words than monolinguals do, and they generate fewer words when asked to satisfy a constraint such as category membership or initial letter. In the second section, we consider the impact of bilingualism on nonverbal cognitive processing in both children and adults. The primary effect in this case is the enhancement of executive control functions in bilinguals. On tasks that require inhibition of distracting information, switching between tasks, or holding information in mind while performing a task, bilinguals of all ages outperform comparable monolinguals. A plausible reason is that bilinguals recruit control processes to manage their ongoing linguistic performance and that these control processes become enhanced for other unrelated aspects of cognitive processing. Preliminary evidence also suggests that the executive control advantage may even mitigate cognitive decline in older age and contribute to cognitive reserve, which in turn may postpone Alzheimer’s disease. In the third section, we describe the brain networks that are responsible for language processing in bilinguals and demonstrate their involvement in nonverbal executive control for bilinguals. We begin by reviewing neuroimaging research that identifies the networks used for various nonverbal executive control tasks in the literature. These networks are used as a reference point to interpret the way in which bilinguals perform both verbal and nonverbal control tasks. The results show that bilinguals manage attention to their two language systems using the same networks that are used by monolinguals performing nonverbal tasks. In the fourth section, we discuss the special circumstances that surround the referral of bilingual children (e.g., language delays) and adults (e.g., stroke) for clinical intervention. These referrals are typically based on standardized assessments that use normative data from monolingual populations, such as vocabulary size and lexical retrieval. As we have seen, however, these measures are often different for bilinguals, both for children and adults. We discuss the implications of these linguistic differences for standardized test performance and clinical approaches. We conclude by co","PeriodicalId":37882,"journal":{"name":"Psychological science in the public interest : a journal of the American Psychological Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1529100610387084","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"34284183","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Preschool Promises: An Introduction, Commentary, and Charge.","authors":"Walter S Gilliam","doi":"10.1177/1529100610387083","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100610387083","url":null,"abstract":"It is clear from decades of research that preschool education can have large and lasting positive effects on the lives of participants and can be of meaningful benefit to society. It is just as clear that what preschool can do when implemented under conditions of high quality is not the same as what it usually does do during broad-scale implementation. Pianta, Barnett, Burchinal and Thornburg (2009, this issue) take on the important questions of why this disconnect between promise and delivery exists and what might be done to effectively reconcile the two. Readers of this excellent discussion by four of the field’s foremost scholars are treated to a wide-ranging excursion through the extant literature on early education and child care, but it is not a wild ride. Rather, the authors skillfully navigate the reader through a complex research literature about an even more complex and changing set of social programs. Everything about preschool education is fast paced. Young children develop competencies at an amazing rate, the programs that are designed to support this development are quickly changing and becoming more differentiated, and the federal and state policies that govern these programs are being developed and changed on a trajectory that often seems disconnected from the evolving early education research. Taking stock of what we know and need to know about this ever-changing area of work is an ambitious undertaking. Several overarching questions come to mind in reading the report by Pianta and colleagues. Below, is a brief discussion of some of these questions that may help frame many of the issues raised by these scholars.","PeriodicalId":37882,"journal":{"name":"Psychological science in the public interest : a journal of the American Psychological Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1529100610387083","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"34283537","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Starting Early on a New Educational Agenda for the United States.","authors":"Elaine F Walker","doi":"10.1177/1529100610387085","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100610387085","url":null,"abstract":"A headline in the July 23, 2010, New York Times read ‘‘Once a Leader, U.S. Lags in College Degrees’’ (Lewin, 2010). The article goes on to describe the contents of a report issued on the previous day by the College Board warning that ‘‘the growing gap between the United States and other countries threatens to undermine American economic competitiveness’’ (p. A11). In the following days, the media was abuzz with the statistic that the United States ranks 12th among 36 developed nations in the proportion of 25to 34-year-olds with college degrees. Commentators discussed the long-term economic implications, and many expressed grave concerns about the state of higher education in the United States. Amid this rising tide of concern about the standing of the United States in education, the present article on preschool education could not be more timely. Four leading investigators in the field, Robert Pianta, W. Steven Barnett, Margaret Burchinal, and Kathy Thornberg, carefully delineate the effects, including the effects on college attendance rates, of preschool education. The authors document scientific progress on the ingredients for effective preschool education, and the findings provide a template for the development of new programs. The authors also highlight the gaps in our knowledge and the critical areas for further investigation. While the research provides strong evidence for the long-term benefits, both to children and communities, of quality preschool education, the authors argue persuasively that the benefits could be further enhanced. What follows is a superb and scholarly overview of what we know, what we need to know, and what, based on the evidence, we can do. It behooves parents, educators, community leaders, and policy makers to carefully consider the recommendations offered by Dr. Pianta and his coauthors.","PeriodicalId":37882,"journal":{"name":"Psychological science in the public interest : a journal of the American Psychological Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1529100610387085","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"34283538","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Effects of Preschool Education: What We Know, How Public Policy Is or Is Not Aligned With the Evidence Base, and What We Need to Know.","authors":"Robert C Pianta, W Steven Barnett, Margaret Burchinal, Kathy R Thornburg","doi":"10.1177/1529100610381908","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100610381908","url":null,"abstract":"Early childhood education is at the nexus of basic developmental science, policy research and analysis, and the applied disciplines of education and prevention science. The field has become one of the most vibrant areas of scientific activity in terms of the connections among scientific advances and theory, program design, policy, and classroom practices. But despite the potential links between research and evaluation on the one hand and program development, practices, and public policy on the other, there are too many key areas in which public policy and practice are not well aligned with the knowledge base. These misalignments, as well as a host of questions emerging from new areas of scientific development (e.g., connections between physiological or genetic processes and behavioral development) and practice-based realities (e.g., the need for focused, intensive, and effective professional development of teachers), point to areas in which new research is needed. The aim of this monograph is to provide an analysis of the research evidence in four major domains of work in early childhood education, identifying points at which evidence is not well aligned with public policy or practice, and a set of questions to guide the next wave of research in this rapidly growing field. Overall features of the preschool landscape, including those tightly regulated by policy (such as entry age or eligibility) and those more directly related to child outcomes (such as quality of classroom interactions), are stunningly variable across settings and across time. Reasonable evidence suggests that these features also vary as a function of family background factors. The resulting picture is one of too many children and families falling through too many cracks and seams at too many levels. Thus, even in a policy and program development environment in which early education is valued and prominent and recognition of the need to close gaps and seal seams is growing, the realities point to a fragile and vulnerable nonsystem through which many of our most fragile and vulnerable citizens pass. Demographic shifts will place tremendous pressure on early education and child care in the United States in the coming decades—a trend that is well under way in many states. The consequences for preschool program eligibility and enrollment, available slots, preparation and support of staff, and program resources such as curricula are enormous. It is abundantly evident that the features of the preschool landscape—connections among child care, preschool, and schools; links between families and the adults who teach their children; capacities of the ‘‘system’’ for fostering positive development in children who increasingly vary by race, culture, language, and economic background—will undergo tremendous strain. The pressures imposed on this context and these relationships by the sheer variability present in the children and families will itself be a considerable threat to the viability of t","PeriodicalId":37882,"journal":{"name":"Psychological science in the public interest : a journal of the American Psychological Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1529100610381908","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"34283536","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Psychology, Financial Decision Making, and Financial Crises.","authors":"Tommy Gärling, Erich Kirchler, Alan Lewis, Fred van Raaij","doi":"10.1177/1529100610378437","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100610378437","url":null,"abstract":"It is understandable in times of financial crisis that the general public asks how this could happen. And since the market actors appear so irrational, it is also understandable that people – lay people and experts alike – believe that “psychological” factors play a decisive role. Is there evidence for this and what is the evidence? It is true that in general people individually use their cognitive and other resources in sensible ways, and that they collectively have developed institutions that effectively regulate economic and other transactions. It is likewise true that extreme circumstances sometimes are beyond people´s capacity, individually as well as collectively. It is therefore essential that scientific knowledge of people´s cognitive and other limitations is brought to bear on the issue of how to prevent such extreme circumstances to occur. Arguably, financial markets such as those for stocks and credit overtax actors’ capacity to make rational judgments and decisions. In product markets with full competition, prices represent the true value of the products offered. This does however not hold in stock markets where stock prices, due to excessive trading, are more volatile than they should be if reflecting the true value of the stocks. Psychological explanations include cognitive biases such as overconfidence and overoptimism, risk aversion in the face of sure gains and risk taking and loss aversion in the face of possible losses, and influences of nominal representation (money illusion) of stock prices. If no cognitive biases (strengthened by affective influences) exist or only some actors are susceptible to such biases, individual irrationality in stock markets would be eliminated. This is however not what evidence indicates. Still, in order to understand stock market booms and busts, it is necessary to take into account the tendency among actors to imitate each other. In de-stabilized stock markets, experts are less likely to loose money than lay people who lack skill in constructing stock portfolios that effectively diversify risk. Credit markets allow people to lend money for investments that will pay off in the future. Yet, under extreme circumstances credit lenders offer loans without appropriately considering the risk borrowers run of not being able to pay back installment rates. Global credit excesses in general, and the current sub-prime mortgage crisis in particular, also show that households often accept risky loans. Furthermore, their preparedness to use credit has been increasing and credit is no longer solely a means of investing in the personal future. An example is that, in the new member states of the European Union, citizens having a desire for a Western living standard are increasingly prepared to use credit. Credit use is a process consisting of different stages of decision making, starting with purchasing a product for borrowed money and ending with paying back the borrowed money. Decisions to save now in order to bu","PeriodicalId":37882,"journal":{"name":"Psychological science in the public interest : a journal of the American Psychological Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1529100610378437","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"33898905","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Crisis in Economics, a Challenge for Psychology.","authors":"Fritz Strack","doi":"10.1177/1529100610382386","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100610382386","url":null,"abstract":"On September 15, 2008, Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy. The event is noteworthy because it was the starting point of the greatest economic crisis since the Second World War. This crisis was caused by developments in the financial sector, in which loans for houses suddenly dropped in value and created enormous losses for banks and their customers who had these loans as assets in their portfolios. Because many banks were of systemic importance for the national economies, governments had to spend taxpayers’ money to rescue these financial institutions and tremendously increase governments’ debts. Moreover, economic growth decreased with an increase in unemployment. This sketch of the crisis is far from complete, and it is important to note that the crisis affected not only economies but also people’s faith in economic theory. Because the crisis was not predicted by the prominent mathematical models, and because the corrective influence assumed to be exerted by the efficiency of financial markets failed to prevent the ‘‘housing bubble’’ from bursting, doubts about economics’ explanatory power spread fast. As a consequence, psychological mechanisms underlying financial decisions drew increased attention, and deviations from the doctrine of rational choice received growing interest as important accounts of economic behavior. The present monograph by Tommy Garling and his colleagues is a response to this increasing demand for psychological explanations of financial decision making, and it does a truly admirable job in reviewing the available evidence. The authors first focus on what is perhaps the most basic parameter in such decisions, the assessment of risk, and describe its psychological and sociological determinants. They then identify the most important judgment biases in the context of financial decision making. Having laid this groundwork, the authors are ready to move on to the two most important domains of financial decision: the stock and credit markets. Although one may wonder why they did not choose the same psychological categories as substructures for both domains, the authors succeed in identifying an enormous number of important phenomena, ranging from ‘‘overreaction to news’’ to ‘‘repayment experience.’’ The authors devote the remainder of the report to some psychological consequences of the financial crisis and analyze it from a social psychological perspective. While the reader profits from an exceptionally thorough review of the literature, the authors, like others in the field, refrain from integrating the reported findings into a single conceptual model. The sequential account they propose distinguishes two phases of decision making (pre-decision and post-decision) but is not sufficiently specific to describe the interaction between cognitive and affective processes in generating judgments, decisions, and behavior. This is exactly the criticism that economists bring forward in defense of their model of rational choice. They oft","PeriodicalId":37882,"journal":{"name":"Psychological science in the public interest : a journal of the American Psychological Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1529100610382386","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"33898908","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Advances in Applying the Science of Learning and Instruction to Education.","authors":"Richard E Mayer","doi":"10.1111/j.1539-6053.2009.01037.x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1539-6053.2009.01037.x","url":null,"abstract":"Begin with a commonly held belief about educational practice and follow the evidence to see if the practice is warranted. This is the approach taken by Pashler, McDaniel, Rohrer, and Bjork (this volume) concerning the learning-styles hypothesis—the proposal that instructional methods should be aligned with the student’s learning style. Although the learning-styles hypothesis is part of the folklore of educational practice, the authors seek to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to justify its implementation. Accordingly, the most compelling evidence for the learningstyles hypothesis would be a crossover interaction in which type A learners learn better with instructional method Awhereas type B learners learn better with instructional method B. For example, according to the learning-styles hypothesis, verbal learners will learn best with verbal methods of instruction (e.g., instruction that emphasizes words) whereas visual learners will learn best with visual methods of instruction (e.g., instruction that emphasizes graphics). In line with a classic review by Cronbach and Snow (1977), this pattern can be called an attribute-by-treatment interaction (or ATI). As you can see, the learning-styles hypothesis assumes that there are two (or more) kinds of learners (such as verbalizers versus visualizers) and that it is possible to develop instruments that can be used to classify each person’s learning style along each learning style dimension. Learning style refers to a person’s mode of learning—the kind of cognitive processing someone uses during learning (such as verbalizer versus visualizer style or impulsive versus reflective style). Importantly, learning style—such as verbalizer versus visualizer style—is different from cognitive ability—such as verbal ability or spatial ability (Mayer & Massa, 2003). In spite of the fact that the learning-styles hypothesis has been proposed for more than 30 years (Jonassen & Grabowski, 1993; Sternberg & Zhang, 2001), Pashler and colleagues were able to find only a handful of scientifically rigorous experimental tests. In a careful and balanced review of the literature, Pashler and colleagues were forced to conclude that there was not sufficient evidence for crossover interactions in which one kind of learner benefited more from one kind of instructional method whereas another kind of learner benefited more from another kind of instructional method. For example, in the domain of visualizer versus verbalizer style, there is not strong evidence of ATIs in which visualizers learn better with pictorial methods of instruction and verbalizers learn better with text-based methods of instruction (Massa & Mayer, 2006). In short, when the authors followed the evidence, they could not offer support for the learning-styles hypothesis. This report provides an excellent example of what it means to apply the science of learning and instruction to education (Mayer, in press). From the very beginning of scientific resear","PeriodicalId":37882,"journal":{"name":"Psychological science in the public interest : a journal of the American Psychological Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/j.1539-6053.2009.01037.x","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"33997428","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence.","authors":"Harold Pashler,&nbsp;Mark McDaniel,&nbsp;Doug Rohrer,&nbsp;Robert Bjork","doi":"10.1111/j.1539-6053.2009.01038.x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1539-6053.2009.01038.x","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The term \"learning styles\" refers to the concept that individuals differ in regard to what mode of instruction or study is most effective for them. Proponents of learning-style assessment contend that optimal instruction requires diagnosing individuals' learning style and tailoring instruction accordingly. Assessments of learning style typically ask people to evaluate what sort of information presentation they prefer (e.g., words versus pictures versus speech) and/or what kind of mental activity they find most engaging or congenial (e.g., analysis versus listening), although assessment instruments are extremely diverse. The most common-but not the only-hypothesis about the instructional relevance of learning styles is the meshing hypothesis, according to which instruction is best provided in a format that matches the preferences of the learner (e.g., for a \"visual learner,\" emphasizing visual presentation of information). The learning-styles view has acquired great influence within the education field, and is frequently encountered at levels ranging from kindergarten to graduate school. There is a thriving industry devoted to publishing learning-styles tests and guidebooks for teachers, and many organizations offer professional development workshops for teachers and educators built around the concept of learning styles. The authors of the present review were charged with determining whether these practices are supported by scientific evidence. We concluded that any credible validation of learning-styles-based instruction requires robust documentation of a very particular type of experimental finding with several necessary criteria. First, students must be divided into groups on the basis of their learning styles, and then students from each group must be randomly assigned to receive one of multiple instructional methods. Next, students must then sit for a final test that is the same for all students. Finally, in order to demonstrate that optimal learning requires that students receive instruction tailored to their putative learning style, the experiment must reveal a specific type of interaction between learning style and instructional method: Students with one learning style achieve the best educational outcome when given an instructional method that differs from the instructional method producing the best outcome for students with a different learning style. In other words, the instructional method that proves most effective for students with one learning style is not the most effective method for students with a different learning style. Our review of the literature disclosed ample evidence that children and adults will, if asked, express preferences about how they prefer information to be presented to them. There is also plentiful evidence arguing that people differ in the degree to which they have some fairly specific aptitudes for different kinds of thinking and for processing different types of information. However, we found virtuall","PeriodicalId":37882,"journal":{"name":"Psychological science in the public interest : a journal of the American Psychological Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/j.1539-6053.2009.01038.x","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"33997426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Current Status and Future Prospects of Clinical Psychology: Toward a Scientifically Principled Approach to Mental and Behavioral Health Care.","authors":"Timothy B Baker,&nbsp;Richard M McFall,&nbsp;Varda Shoham","doi":"10.1111/j.1539-6053.2009.01036.x","DOIUrl":"10.1111/j.1539-6053.2009.01036.x","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The escalating costs of health care and other recent trends have made health care decisions of great societal import, with decision-making responsibility often being transferred from practitioners to health economists, health plans, and insurers. Health care decision making increasingly is guided by evidence that a treatment is efficacious, effective-disseminable, cost-effective, and scientifically plausible. Under these conditions of heightened cost concerns and institutional-economic decision making, psychologists are losing the opportunity to play a leadership role in mental and behavioral health care: Other types of practitioners are providing an increasing proportion of delivered treatment, and the use of psychiatric medication has increased dramatically relative to the provision of psychological interventions. Research has shown that numerous psychological interventions are efficacious, effective, and cost-effective. However, these interventions are used infrequently with patients who would benefit from them, in part because clinical psychologists have not made a convincing case for the use of these interventions (e.g., by supplying the data that decision makers need to support implementation of such interventions) and because clinical psychologists do not themselves use these interventions even when given the opportunity to do so. Clinical psychologists' failure to achieve a more significant impact on clinical and public health may be traced to their deep ambivalence about the role of science and their lack of adequate science training, which leads them to value personal clinical experience over research evidence, use assessment practices that have dubious psychometric support, and not use the interventions for which there is the strongest evidence of efficacy. Clinical psychology resembles medicine at a point in its history when practitioners were operating in a largely prescientific manner. Prior to the scientific reform of medicine in the early 1900s, physicians typically shared the attitudes of many of today's clinical psychologists, such as valuing personal experience over scientific research. Medicine was reformed, in large part, by a principled effort by the American Medical Association to increase the science base of medical school education. Substantial evidence shows that many clinical psychology doctoral training programs, especially PsyD and for-profit programs, do not uphold high standards for graduate admission, have high student-faculty ratios, deemphasize science in their training, and produce students who fail to apply or generate scientific knowledge. A promising strategy for improving the quality and clinical and public health impact of clinical psychology is through a new accreditation system that demands high-quality science training as a central feature of doctoral training in clinical psychology. Just as strengthening training standards in medicine markedly enhanced the quality of health care, improved training","PeriodicalId":37882,"journal":{"name":"Psychological science in the public interest : a journal of the American Psychological Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/j.1539-6053.2009.01036.x","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"29298495","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Connecting Clinical Practice to Scientific Progress.","authors":"Walter Mischel","doi":"10.1111/j.1539-6053.2009.01035.x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1539-6053.2009.01035.x","url":null,"abstract":"Paul Meehl, in one of his last public speeches, memorably noted that most clinical psychologists select their methods like kids make choices in a candy store: They look around, maybe sample a bit, and choose what they like, whatever feels good to them. For many of us who initially became clinical psychologists because we were inspired by the scientist-practitioner ideal, Meehl’s comment was as heartbreaking as it was accurate. It makes particularly compelling the article that follows, ‘‘Current Status and Future Prospects of Clinical Psychology: Toward a Scientifically Principled Approach to Mental and Behavioral Health Care’’ by Baker, McFall, and Shoham. This urgently needed and long overdue analysis and proposal will be welcomed by those who grieve the widening gulf between clinical practice and scientific progress in psychology. And it offers giant but feasible steps toward reforms that can advance both clinical practice and relevant psychological science, to at last reverse the disconnect that has been unfortunate for each. The authors’ proposal for a ‘‘scientifically principled approach to mental and behavioral health care’’ is an incisive and scholarly analysis of where clinical psychology is (and is not) today, how it got there, and how it will increasingly discredit and marginalize itself if it continues the trajectory it has pursued for far too many years. But it is also much more. The article makes clear the heavy costs and consequences to the profession, and more important to the people who have a right to expect much more from their health care providers. Most exciting, it charts a route toward a scientifically principled and thus responsible approach to the mental and behavioral health care that our science can offer and that those who suffer from mental and behavioral problems deserve to get. The disconnect between much of clinical practice and the advances in psychological science is an unconscionable embarrassment for many reasons, and a case of professional cognitive dissonance with heavy costs. The Boulder Model of the scientist-practitioner, now mostly a historical footnote and a cue for depression, came half a century ago when psychological science was still somewhere between its infancy and its turbulent adolescence. Evidence for most assessment and treatment methods for clinical psychology was still far from solid, and usually highly dubious, making the choices of practitioners ‘‘like kids in a candy store’’ more understandable. The distressing cognitive dissonance now is that the science has advanced dramatically over the last 50 years, and there are now numerous state-of-the-science–based and empirically supported choices for assessment and for treatment, yet practitioners too often still choose to do whatever they feel like, as Meehl described, regardless of evidence. In my own career, I struggled with these issues beginning in the 1960s. During many of my 20 years at Stanford University, Albert Bandura and I tried to ho","PeriodicalId":37882,"journal":{"name":"Psychological science in the public interest : a journal of the American Psychological Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/j.1539-6053.2009.01035.x","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"33997425","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}