Theory & Psychology recent issues

From Meehl to Fast and Frugal Heuristics (and Back): New Insights into How to Bridge the Clinical--Actuarial Divide

Katsikopoulos, K. V., Pachur, T., Machery, E., Wallin, A. — 2008-08-15

It is difficult to overestimate Paul Meehl's influence on judgment and decision-making research. His `disturbing little book' (Meehl, 1986, p. 370) Clinical versus Statistical Prediction: A Theoretical Analysis and a Review of the Evidence (1954) is known as an attack on human judgment and a call for replacing clinicians with actuarial methods. More than 40 years later, fast and frugal heuristics—proposed as models of human judgment—were formalized, tested, and found to be surprisingly accurate, often more so than the actuarial models that Meehl advocated. We ask three questions: Do the findings of the two programs contradict each other? More generally, how are the programs conceptually connected? Is there anything they can learn from each other? After demonstrating that there need not be a contradiction, we show that both programs converge in their concern to develop (a) domain-specific models of judgment and (b) nonlinear process models that arise from the bounded nature of judgment. We then elaborate the differences between the programs and discuss how these differences can be viewed as mutually instructive: First, we show that the fast and frugal heuristic models can help bridge the clinical—actuarial divide, that is, they can be developed into actuarial methods that are both accurate and easy to implement by the unaided clinical judge. We then argue that Meehl's insistence on improving judgment makes clear the importance of examining the degree to which heuristics are used in the clinical domain and how acceptable they would be as actuarial tools.

In Defense of National Character

Smith, R. J. — 2008-08-15

The concept of national character has a long and disputed history, serving at one time as a meeting point for anthropology and psychology, later as a signpost for the parting of the ways. Cultural anthropology has traditionally given ontological priority to culture over the individual and to values as relative over universal; psychology has increasingly pursued the reverse. Current trends in cross-cultural psychology—employing a biological trait ontology assessed via English language constructs at the individual level, and aggregated questionnaire responses at the cultural level—have furthered this universalist tradition, unlike research linking national character with sociocultural conditions. These data sources remain frozen in their respective tracks, related only by `undynamic' correlations. Their (premature) message has heralded the demise of national character, inadvertently paving the way for international character, mirroring methods, models, concepts, and values overwhelmingly Western in orientation, and nicely paralleling on-going economic globalization.

Shallow Reductionism and the Problem of Complexity in Psychology

Brattico, P. — 2008-08-15

In his recent book The Mind Doesn't Work That Way, Fodor argues that computational modeling of global cognitive processes, such as abductive everyday reasoning, has not been successful. In this article the problem is analyzed in the framework of algorithmic information theory. It is argued that the failed approaches are characterized by shallow reductionism, which is rejected in favor of deep reductionism and nonreductionism.

`Mind as Feeling' or Affective Relations?: A Contribution to the School of Andersonian Realism

Boag, S. — 2008-08-15

Andersonian realism is a determinist, empiricist position that acknowledges the important distinction between qualities and relations. However, Anderson's `mind as feeling' thesis, proposing that the mind's qualities are emotional, is problematic since it fails to account for `feelings' themselves. O'Neil's (1934) alternative relational account of affects, in conjunction with Maze's (1983) theory of instinctual drives, provides a coherent platform for developing a comprehensive realist account of affects. In discussing the relation between affects, cognition and motivation, affects are viewed as drive-evaluative phenomena, and `feelings' are known bodily states arising in conjunction with motivationally driven environmental evaluations. The role that affects play in a revised desire/belief model of behaviour explanation is discussed.

The Sources of Cooperation: On Strong Reciprocity and its Theoretical Implications

Engelen, B. — 2008-08-15

This article focuses on the explanations of human cooperation that dominate the fields of psychology, philosophy, economics, and other social sciences. It argues that these accounts all frame cooperation in egoistic terms and thus cannot solve the evolutionary puzzle of strong reciprocity, defined as a propensity to cooperate with others similarly disposed and to punish others who violate norms, even at a personal cost and without any prospect of present or future rewards. This article shows that strong reciprocity accounts for the uniquely high levels of human cooperation and is best explained by referring to the important role of culture in natural selection. In the end, it aims to analyze the implications of these insights for the interdisciplinary aim of understanding the sources of cooperation.

Review: A Case of Theory: Abby, Brittany, and Us RAYMOND MARTIN AND JOHN BARRESI, The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self: An Intellectual History of Personal Identity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. 400 pp. ISBN 0--231--13744 (hbk)

Freeman, M. — 2008-08-15

Review: The Way Things Are ALAN COSTALL AND OLE DREIER, Doing Things with Things: The Design and Use of Everyday Objects. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006. 242 pp. ISBN 0--7546--4656--4 (hbk)

van der Veer, R. — 2008-08-15

Special Section: Is Cognitive Science Changing its Mind?: Introduction to Embodied Embedded Cognition and Neurophenomenology

van de Laar, T., de Regt, H. — 2008-06-06

Embodied embedded cognition (EEC) and neurophenomenology (NP) are slowly invading cognitive (neuro)science. We provide a short introduction of what EEC and NP are about and an overview of the papers in this special section on EEC and NP.

Special Section: Can There Be Such a Thing as Embodied Embedded Cognitive Neuroscience?

van Dijk, J., Kerkhofs, R., van Rooij, I., Haselager, P. — 2008-06-06

Contemporary cognitive neuroscience, for the most part, aims to figure out how cognitive processes are realized in the brain. This research goal betrays the field's commitment to the philosophical position that cognizing is something that the brain does. Since the 1990s, philosophers and cognitive scientists have started to question this position, arguing that the brain constitutes only one of several contributing factors to cognition, the other factors being the body and the world. This latter position we refer to as embodied embedded cognition (EEC). Although cognitive neuroscience's research practice and EEC do not seem to fit well together at present, it is pertinent to ask if a variant of cognitive neuroscience can be developed that sets itself research goals that are more congenial to the EEC view. In this paper we investigate this possibility. We put forth a new guiding metaphor of the role of the brain in cognitive behavior to replace the current cognitivist metaphor of the brain as an information-processing device. We also identify a research agenda that naturally arises from our metaphor. In this way we hope to provide an impetus for cognitive neuroscientists to pursue an EEC-inspired research program.

Special Section: Towards an Embodiment of Goals

Cox, R. F.A., Smitsman, A. W. — 2008-06-06

This paper discusses both a dissociation view and a dynamic view with respect to the study of voluntary, goal-directed behavior. The dissociation view builds on the recently reintroduced ideomotor principle, and conceives of clearly dissociated and hierarchical roles for the planning and control of action. The dynamic view has a more integral and dynamic conception of how planning, control, and timing merge in the guidance of behavior. This view, however, lacks a clear way of encompassing the goaldirectedness of behavior. For behavior to be effective and efficient, sensory information has to play an equally important role in guiding action as goal-related information does. As a third view, a dynamic action-selection approach is introduced by combining aspects of the former two. This model is able to merge ideomotor and sensorimotor processes continuously and in real time. In discussing the action-selection approach, a special emphasis is given to the role of long-term influences like preferences and goals.

Special Section: The Skillful Body as a Concernful System of Possible Actions: Phenomena and Neurodynamics

Rietveld, E. — 2008-06-06

For Merleau-Ponty, consciousness in skillful coping is a matter of prereflective `I can' and not explicit `I think that.' The body unifies many domain-specific capacities. There exists a direct link between the perceived possibilities for action in the situation (`affordances') and the organism's capacities. From Merleau-Ponty's descriptions it is clear that in a flow of skillful actions, the leading `I can' may change from moment to moment without explicit deliberation. How these transitions occur, however, is less clear. Given that Merleau-Ponty suggested that a better understanding of the self-organization of brain and behavior is important, I will re-read his descriptions of skillful coping in the light of recent ideas on neurodynamics. Affective processes play a crucial role in evaluating the motivational significance of objects and contribute to the individual's prereflective responsiveness to relevant affordances.

Special Section: Mind the Methodology: Comparing Heterophenomenology and Neurophenomenology as Methodologies for the Scientific Study of Consciousness

van de Laar, T. — 2008-06-06

In this paper I compare heterophenomenology and neurophenomenology as methodologies for a science of consciousness. I give introductions of heterophenomenology (HP) and neurophenomenology (NP), respectively. Than I briefly relate HP and NP to mainstream cognitive science methodology and to each other. I claim that although HP and NP are indeed different methodologies for studying consciousness, in practice it will be very hard to decide on which methodology we should prefer since, given the research that is currently available, both methodologies seem to allow for the same range of experiments. Given the fact that HP excludes the validity of conclusions drawn by means of NP, it seems that we do have to choose between them, nonetheless. My goal is, however, to see whether there currently are reasons for rejecting HP or NP as unreliable or invalid across the board. I conclude that for the time being we had better keep both HP and NP in the running.

Special Section: On Looking Inward: Revisiting the Role of Introspection in Neuroscientific and Psychiatric Research

den Boer, J. A., Reinders, A.A.T. S., Glas, G. — 2008-06-06

Much of mainstream psychology and psychiatry has come under the umbrella of cognitive neuroscience and attempts to provide mechanistic accounts of mental processes. On the other hand, therapeutically oriented branches of psychiatry are concerned with giving accounts at a personal, experiential level of explanation. Relating introspective evidence (first-person perspective) to objective (third-person perspective) evidence is a key challenge for psychology and psychiatry and will be of significance for the unification of the two approaches. In this paper we show that in current neuroscientific experiments different forms of introspective evidence are used. Guided introspection inplies a conscious response to an ongoing stimulus. In unguided introspection, subjects are invited to report freely about `what it is like' to be a subject undergoing an experiment. In neurophenomenology, a method is offered to guide reflexive examination of ongoing subjective experience. Some neurophenomenologists presuppose that it is possible to derive phenomenological `invariants' from the analysis of phenomenal experience. We conclude that contemporary neuroscience allows subjective report to be part of its methodology, but that the added value and specificity of the neurophenomenological training remain to be established.

Identity as Self-Interpretation

Brinkmann, S. — 2008-06-06

The hermeneutic tradition in psychology and the social sciences claims that we should understand human identity in terms of self-interpretation. This article is an attempt to spell out what it means to think of identity as self-interpretation. First, two dimensions of identity as self-interpretation are outlined: that we can only have an identity if we are committed to issues of moral worth; and that self-interpretation involves a temporal dimension that has a narrative form. Second, I outline four levels of self-interpretation in order to show that identity is not confined to either social or mental representations, but is dispersed across bodies, persons, practices, and society. Often there are discrepancies and conflicts between levels of self-interpretation, which can lead to social progress but also to social pathologies. Finally, I analyse some pathological aspects of a dominating Western self-interpretation in the current consumer society, which frames identity formation in terms of self-realization.

Authoritarianism: The Role of Threat, Evolutionary Psychology, and the Will to Power

Hastings, B. M., Shaffer, B. — 2008-06-06

It has been demonstrated empirically and theoretically that threat is a primary contributor to the increased manifestations of the authoritarian personality. However, most conceptualizations of authoritarianism have failed to explore how these manifestations may have an adaptive value in the face of threat. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to employ the theories of evolutionary psychology in an attempt to provide a comprehensive explanation of authoritarianism. Attention is given to specific psychological mechanisms, such as coalition formation and social exchange, that when utilized by the authoritarian individual under conditions of threat, demonstrate adaptive value. Furthermore, a comprehensive explanation of authoritarianism is offered that encompasses variables related to authoritarianism, its association with a fundamental need to belong, and its larger philosophical relationship to Nietzsche's `will to power.'

Psychoanalytic Theory and Psychology: Conditions of Possibility for Clinical and Cultural Practice

Parker, I. — 2008-04-16

This special issue addresses a series of critical theoretical questions concerning the emergence and history of psychoanalysis in different cultural settings. Contributors from different parts of the world bring their particular local vantage points to bear on traditions of psychoanalysis, treated here as forms of clinical practice and as an array of cultural representations of internal mental states and social relations. The theoretical focus is on the status of psychoanalysis as a form of knowledge (positioned alongside and in contradistinction to psychology), on the nature of knowledge in psychology (of others by practitioners and researchers), and on forms of popularized self-knowledge (including the relationship between that self-knowledge and professional claims). The inclusion of such material in a psychology journal begs a series of questions about the relationship between psychoanalysis and psychology and the historical conjuncture at which it would seem appropriate to re-examine this relationship. This opens the way to a critical engagement with psychoanalysis in different parts of the world.

Freud and Jewish Identity

Frosh, S. — 2008-04-16

The idea of psychoanalysis as a `Jewish science' remains contentious, raising important issues about the specificity of the conditions of emergence of any discipline, and concerns about essentializing claims to knowledge. This paper presents material relating to Freud's own thinking on his Jewish identity and its connections with the origins of psychoanalysis. It is argued that psychoanalysis was constructed out of the very specific social and cultural conditions of the Jews in Europe at the end of the 19th century, and that this has left its mark on psychoanalysis ever since. This does not mean that no other origins for psychoanalysis are imaginable; it is simply a statement of what actually happened, and what has to be faced.

Psychoanalysis: Formalization and Logic and the Question of Speaking and Affect

Malone, K. R. — 2008-04-16

This paper examines the decision within Lacanian psychoanalysis to formalize the theory of psychoanalytic praxis. The intrinsic problematics of analysis, the place of authority, unconscious knowledge, the roles of embodiment and representation, and singularity are addressed as challenges that psychoanalytic theory must address. It is argued that psychoanalysis cannot locate its autonomy from or complicity with hegemonic cultural discourses without a clear sense of the specificity of its practice. This is addressed in detail. Part of Lacan's formulation of the four discourses was in fact to situate just such an interface founded in the structure of speaking and its remains and located between a separation from and enmeshment in social and cultural representations and arrangements. In light of this effort, I question the rather chilly reception of Lacan's formalization by North American and anglophone analysts in terms of the role of affect, the place of norms and knowledge, and issues about theory.

When White Buffalo Calf Woman Meets Oedipus on the Road: Lakota Psychology, Feminist Psychoanalysis, and Male Violence

Haaken, J. — 2008-04-16

This paper constructs a conversation about male violence between psychoanalytic feminism and Lakota psychology, based on interviews carried out at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in the United States. The paper has four aims. First, it outlines the concepts in feminist psychoanalytic theory that inform this study, and discusses key dilemmas that arise in working across cultural borders established through histories of colonial domination. Second, the paper identifies areas of common ground between feminist psychoanalytic theory and indigenous psychologies, focusing on their shared emphasis on traumatic splits in the human psyche, gender development, and storytelling. Third, the paper describes the Cangleska program developed by Lakota practitioners at Pine Ridge-a systematically conceived set of services that combines psychological, cultural, and political analyses of violence-and explains how Cangleska offers insights that go beyond the borders of indigenous communities. Fourth, the paper draws out lines of convergence between Kleinian psychoanalysis and Lakota principles in their ethical responses to violence and discusses the implications of such convergences for the wider anti-violence movement.

Psychoanalysis in the Shadow of Post-Apartheid Reconstruction

Hayes, G. — 2008-04-16

The presence of psychoanalysis in a country is usually adjudged by the existence of an internationally recognized training institute. In other words, psychoanalysis is usually coterminous with its clinical or therapeutic manifestation. Psychoanalysis in South Africa has been around in some form or other for the past 70 years. This article gives a brief history of psychoanalysis in South Africa, and especially with regard to attempts to establish an internationally recognized training of psychoanalysts. While not denying the value of clinical psychoanalysis, an argument is made for a social role for psychoanalysis. It is suggested that a psychoanalytic social theory could be developed to help us make sense of the `social terrors' that populate the human landscape in post-apartheid South Africa. Two such social issues are discussed, namely `race' and HIV/AIDS.

Psychology and Psychoanalysis in Brazil: From Cultural Syncretism to the Collapse of Liberal Individualism

Lenz Dunker, C. I. — 2008-04-16

This paper focuses first on cultural syncretism, used to characterize Brazilian culture. The other aspect of this socially and racially blended culture is the unfinished assimilation of liberalism in politics and the economy, which defines Brazilian society. The increased assimilation and dissemination of psychology may be linked with these in cultural and social aspects. During the military period (1964-1974) the major expansion in university-level studies in psychology contributed ideologically to the dissemination of psychology throughout Brazilian society. This introduced a type of psychology that was related primarily to clinical practice and developed in opposition to social work practice. This paper examines the ideological bases for this conflict between clinical and social work. Criteria for understanding the cultural dissemination of psychoanalysis are then discussed, and it is argued that cultural incorporation of psychoanalysis involves the development of discourse complexes to reflect particular aspects of Brazilian society. The criteria (a non-totalitarian society and the displacement of a magical and religious interpretation of mental disturbance by psychiatric interpretation) are evaluated in relation to the peculiarities of Brazilian syncretism. The paper argues that cultural syncretism and the incomplete assimilation of liberal ideology must be included as criteria in understanding the particular cultural incorporation of psychoanalysis in Brazil.

On the Absence of a Presence/The Presence of an Absence: Psychoanalysis in the Turkish Context

Gulerce, A. — 2008-04-16

The emergence and development of psychoanalysis as a discipline and clinical practice in Europe and the birth of Turkey as a modern nation-state are synchronic events in the world's sociocultural and political history. In this article, I shall reflect on the establishment of psychoanalysis in Turkey by providing a brief historical account. I shall treat the belated entry of psychoanalysis as a sign of Turkey's somewhat unique modernization experience. While viewing Turkey's non-Western modernization struggle as the past/present/future conditions of (im)possibility for psychoanalysis, I also expect to hint at an alternative and psychoanalytically informed insight for the sociopolitical transformations of Turkish society. This article will briefly document some events through which psychoanalysis has evolved in Turkish society within a macro-historical context. I will make the case in favor of a few psychoanalytical concepts in understanding various local political discourses and their split communities in inter-dependence and dynamic co-construction.

'Between Two Deaths': The Intersection of Psychoanalysis and Japanese Buddhism

Shingu, K., Funaki, T. — 2008-04-16

In both Western and Eastern traditions, human beings have had a tendency to imagine another death that would come after a physical, somatic death. There is an interval between two deaths, while they await the Last Judgment or the ultimate salvation. However, it must be noted that, aside from this tendency, there have also been particular thoughts that have laid emphasis on the anticipation of this second death from beyond, working its way into our lives. This anticipated nirvana was adumbrated in Beyond the Pleasure Principle by Freud, personified in the figure of Antigone by Lacan, and conceptualized as `the stage of the truly settled in this world' in Japanese Buddhism. We thus point out the structural homology between psychoanalytic thought and Japanese Buddhism. These concepts of anticipated nirvana were created in order to deal with the people's agonizing craving for an afterlife, which may be related to neurotic suffering.

Postcolonial Psychoanalysis

Hook, D. — 2008-04-16

J.M. Coetzee's undervalued paper `The Mind of Apartheid' provides a novel means of identifying the preoccupations of a `postcolonial psychoanalysis'. Such an approach to critique offers a tentative psychical-political diagnostics which pertains not only to the affective and discursive dynamics of the colonial sphere as a whole, but also to the subject-/desire-positioning enforced by the pathological colonial relation. Not reducible to the level of textual reading practices, this style of critique makes reference to a series of psychoanalytic concepts (anxiety, fantasy, ambivalence, disavowal) which are never merely figurative and which remain necessarily related to the frame of individual psychical functioning. Ultimately a postcolonial psychoanalysis offers a political analytics of desire that proves useful in engaging both the contents (racial/sexual fantasy) and the dynamics (affective economies, relational subject-positioning) of the psychic life of colonial power. It allows us to identify potential subversions (slippages of colonial authority and identity, the `return effect' of colonial desire) and to bring into focus those process elements (metaphoric condensation, metonymic displacement) that spread and sustain racist ideology and thereby much of the underlying rationality of (post)colonial power.

Honor as a Moral Category: A Historical-Linguistic Analysis

Barrett, F. J., Sarbin, T. R. — 2008-02-18

In this article we trace the historical transformations of the word `honor' in Western cultures as initially an extrinsic conception equivalent to reputation and social status and later as a moral category independent of external reference. The virtue of `honor' is a window into the dynamics of identity maintenance. By tracing the transformations of `honor' in different cultures through history, we can see how moral categories and notions of self-identity are related and how they evolve. We illustrate modern notions of identity by citing from a study of identity narratives of US Naval officers; we also draw upon the Dreyfus Affair as an illustration of the shift of honor from extrinsic to intrinsic moral marker.

Contemporary Epistemological Research in Education: Reconciliation and Reconceptualization of the Field

Niessen, T., Abma, T., Widdershoven, G., van der Vleuten, C., Akkerman, S. — 2008-02-18

In this article the authors challenge contemporary epistemological research within educational settings. After a reconciliation of the current models which treat epistemological beliefs as static and mechanical, the authors present a teaching experience to illustrate their enactivist view that epistemological beliefs should be conceptualized as fluid and dynamic constructs, emerging in web-like configurations. Answers to epistemological questions unfold within the interstices and mutual interactions between people and their environment. Boundaries between student—teacher, individual—community, cognition—bodily experience are becoming blurred. From this enactivist perspective the researcher's role changes considerably. Instead of determining teachers' personal traits and epistemological make-up, the researcher should sensitize teachers to the subtle ways epistemological beliefs are enmeshed within their day-to-day professional lives, focusing on the complex fabric of the teaching practice.

From Speculation to Epistemological Violence in Psychology: A Critical-Hermeneutic Reconstruction

Teo, T. — 2008-02-18

Based on historical and theoretical reflections it is argued that speculation cannot be eradicated from psychology and that it is a necessary part of empirical research, specifically when it concerns the interpretation of data. The quality of those interpretative speculations of data is particularly relevant when they concern human groups and differences between them. The term epistemological violence (EV) is introduced in order to identify interpretations that construct the `Other' as problematic or inferior, with implicit or explicit negative consequences for the `Other,' even when empirical results allow for meaningful, equally compelling, alternative interpretations. These interpretations of data are presented as `knowledge' when, in fact, harm is inflicted through them. Examples of EV in the context of `race' are briefly discussed. The concept of EV also demonstrates that the traditional separation of `is' and `ought' is problematic. Reflections on epistemological-ethical issues are provided.

Why P Values Are Not a Useful Measure of Evidence in Statistical Significance Testing

Hubbard, R., Lindsay, R. M. — 2008-02-18

Reporting p values from statistical significance tests is common in psychology's empirical literature. Sir Ronald Fisher saw the p value as playing a useful role in knowledge development by acting as an `objective' measure of inductive evidence against the null hypothesis. We review several reasons why the p value is an unobjective and inadequate measure of evidence when statistically testing hypotheses. A common theme throughout many of these reasons is that p values exaggerate the evidence against H₀. This, in turn, calls into question the validity of much published work based on comparatively small, including .05, p values. Indeed, if researchers were fully informed about the limitations of the p value as a measure of evidence, this inferential index could not possibly enjoy its ongoing ubiquity. Replication with extension research focusing on sample statistics, effect sizes, and their confidence intervals is a better vehicle for reliable knowledge development than using p values. Fisher would also have agreed with the need for replication research.

The Rasch Model from the Perspective of the Representational Theory of Measurement

Kyngdon, A. — 2008-02-18

Representational measurement theory is the dominant theory of measurement within the philosophy of science; and the area in which the theory of conjoint measurement was developed. For many years it has been argued the Rasch model is conjoint measurement by several psychometricians. This paper critiques this argument from the perspective of representational measurement theory. It concludes that the Rasch model is not conjoint measurement as the model does not demonstrate the existence of a representation theorem between an empirical relational structure and a numerical relational structure. Psychologists seriously interested in investigating traits for quantitative structure should use the theory of conjoint measurement itself rather than the Rasch model. This is not to say, however, that empirical relationships between conjoint measurement and the Rasch model are precluded. The paper concludes by suggesting some relevant research avenues.

The Rasch Model and Conjoint Measurement Theory from the Perspective of Psychometrics

Borsboom, D., Scholten, A. Z. — 2008-02-18

Kyngdon argues that psychometricians have erroneously claimed the Rasch model to be an instance of representational measurement, because the Rasch model does not map a bona fide empirical relational system (ERS) into a numerical relational system (NRS). While we agree that one does not automatically achieve a conjoint measurement representation upon fitting a Rasch model, we do not agree that the Rasch model could not in principle yield such a representation. In our view, whether this is possible depends on what one is prepared to accept as an empirical relational system. This is a philosophical question that extends beyond the scope of the formal structures advanced in representationalism and psychometrics; a question, moreover, that is not currently settled. We examine some of the ways in which one may react to this question, and conclude that Kyngdon's argument depends on a specific, and perhaps too strong, interpretation of representationalism and psychometric models.

Conjoint Measurement and the Rasch Paradox: A Response to Kyngdon

Michell, J. — 2008-02-18

Unlike Andrew Kyngdon, I think the issue he has addressed is most informatively considered outside the confines of the representational theory of measurement. Then it becomes clear that while the theory of conjoint measurement is about situations like that treated by the Rasch model, the former isolates a different feature of those situations to the latter. But, if the relevant attributes are already presumed to be quantitative, the perceived differences are minimized and the Rasch model might seem to be a version of conjoint measurement. It is on this basis that Rasch modellers pursue their paradoxical quest for measurement. However, because the relevant attributes are not actually known to be quantitative, use of the Rasch model to measure psychological attributes remains logically dependent upon the outcome of research involving the theory of conjoint measurement or something very similar.

Conjoint Measurement, Error and the Rasch Model: A Reply to Michell, and Borsboom and Zand Scholten

Kyngdon, A. — 2008-02-18

The theory of conjoint measurement was a genuine scientific revolution in measurement theory. For many years psychometricians and applied practitioners alike have contended that the Rasch model is a probabilistic version of this revolutionary theory. I disputed this claim from the perspective of representationalism. Michell's realist appraisal of the issue underscored the conclusions in my paper whilst Borsboom and Zand Scholten maintained that the Rasch model conceptually instantiates the theory of conjoint measurement. Nothing in either response refuted my conclusion. Nevertheless, relationships between the Rasch model and the theory of conjoint measurement remain an open research issue.

Review: The Meshing of Learning and Identity in Education STANTON WORTHAM, Learning Identity: The Joint Emergence of Social Identification and Academic Learning. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 306 pp. ISBN 0--521--60833--3 (pbk)

Dreier, O. — 2008-02-18

Review: The Measure of Psychometrics DENNY BORSBOOM, Measuring the Mind: Conceptual Issues in Contemporary Psychometrics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 185 pp. ISBN 13 978--0--521--84463--0 (hbk)

Michell, J. — 2008-02-18

Review: `Therapizing' Ourselves to Death? Challenging Therapeutics and the Discourse of Emotional Determinism FRANK FUREDI, Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age. New York: Routledge, 2004. 245 pp. ISBN 0--415--32159--X (pbk)

Misbach, J. — 2008-02-18

Review: Looking for Convergence FAYE Z. BELGRAVE & KEVIN W. ALLISON, African American Psychology: From Africa to America. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2006. 441 pp. ISBN 0--7619--2471--x (pbk)

Johnson, P. D. — 2008-02-18