Sheldon H. White (1928-2005).

Sheldon "Shep" Harold White, one of developmental psychology's most distinguished scholars, died on March 17, 2005, at the age of 76. He is perhaps best remembered for his sharp intellect, generous spirit, good humor, and warm compassion. Shep's principal work lay in three intermeshed areas: children's learning and cognitive development, social programs and policies, and the history of developmental psychology. Shep White is sorely missed by his family and friends, and countless children have unknowingly benefited from his research, scholarship, and contributions to public policy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An abrupt transition in colony founding behaviour in the ant Messor pergandei

Transitions in behaviour across a continuous distribution of organisms can provide valuable information on how variation in behaviour is maintained. We used analyses developed for interspecific hybrid zones to examine geographic variation in colony founding strategy in the desert seed-harvester ant, Messor pergandei. Newly mated females initiate new colonies either alone (haplometrosis) or cooperatively with other foundresses (pleometrosis). The incidence of these founding strategies were surveyed across the species' range and found to occur in geographically distinct regions joined by a narrow transition zone. Foundresses collected from haplometrotic sites were more likely to display aggression and found solitary nests than foundresses from pleometrotic sites, suggesting that geographical variation in metrosis is due to genotypic divergence. Foundresses from transitional sites were generally not aggressive and tended to co-found nests in the laboratory, yet rarely formed associations in the field. Such an abrupt shift in behaviour indicates that variation in colony founding strategy is maintained by selection rather than the result of secondary contact of neutral characters. Level of aggression displays a wider cline than founding strategy and is likely under selection only when accompanied by active strategy preference. Copyright 1998 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Copyright 1998 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.     

John Dewey and human development.

John Dewey (1859–1952) was an American philosopher-psychologist of international acclaim. Although he did not greatly influence early American psychology, Dewey's relevance to contemporary psychology is manifold. He identified the problem of social psychology as the relationship between human nature and changing social circumstances, proposed means and a rationale to broaden the empiricism of psychology to encompass domains outside of the traditional laboratory setting, suggested that functional rather than structural characteristics differentiate childish from adult reasoning, and proposed a theory of noninevitable child development in which social values and practices play essential roles. Dewey proposed that by elucidating mechanisms for realizing desired values, psychology can be an empirically based instrument for promoting human development and social progress in a democratic society. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Schooling and the development of transitive inference.

Because it is impossible to experiment with school attendance, the effect of formal education as opposed to chronological age on the development of transitive inference has never been investigated empirically. A recent quasi-experimental paradigm, which allows for disentangling the net effects of age and schooling, can help overcome this difficulty. The paradigm is applied to the estimation of the independent effects of age and schooling in Grades 5 and 6 on raw scores obtained in a 3-term series test. Results point to schooling as a major factor underlying the increase of scores as a function of age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The genetic psychologies of James Mark Baldwin and Jean Piaget.

It is now generally recognized that the writings of philosopher-psychologist J. M. Baldwin anticipated much of Piaget's work. The goals, genetic approach, and epistemological assumptions underlying Piaget's inquiry into cognitive development found explicit statement around the turn of the century in Baldwin's work. Both men agreed that (1) transformations of the relationship between thoughts and things occur in an orderly, progressive way; (2) the processes of assimilation and accommodation are complementary in the progressive development; (3) individuals experience dualisms of control that are manifested as perpetual reformulations of previous points of view; and (4) the principles of development apply to a domain far more comprehensive than individual cognitive development. Baldwin and Piaget differed on their conceptions of the relationship between individual forms of cognition and the social construction of reality in which that individual's thought is embedded, and on their proposed final stage of development. Baldwin's current importance to psychology is recognized because the climate in psychology is now conducive to the type of inquiry Baldwin pursued. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Decision quality (always) increases with the size of information samples—provided that the decision rule is statistically valid: Comment on Fiedler and Kareev (2006).

Fiedler and Kareev (2006) showed that small samples can, in principle, outperform large samples in terms of the quality of contingency-based binary choice. The 1st part of this comment critically examines these authors' claim that this small sample advantage (SSA) contradicts Bernoulli's law of large numbers and concludes that this claim is unwarranted. The 2nd part of the comment provides insight into the etiology of the SSA and points to the following as necessary conditions for the SSA's occurrence: (a) the statistical invalidity of the underlying threshold-based decision algorithm and (b) the particular payoff scheme underlying the definition of the decisions' quality. Together, these 2 factors explain how better information provided by larger samples is translated into worse decisions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Proposals for a second psychology.

During the 19th century, numerous writers including Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill, and Wilhelm Wundt called for a 2nd psychology, a psychology to complement laboratory-based psychology. This 2nd psychology would address aspects of human mind and behavior that emerged from cultural life. Different forms of empiricism appropriate to a 2nd psychology were gradually realized in studies of character formation, conduct, personality and culture, and more recently, cognition and culture. This article examines this 2nd psychology that has been slower to mature but has achieved some contemporary realization in personology, cultural psychology, and several of the applied psychologies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Obituary: William Kessen (1925–1999).

Memorializes William Kessen, a psychologist who pursued at least three distinct careers in psychology, all of them pathbreaking. Moving from a more empirical approach which he espoused before the cognitive revolution, Kessen abandoned the study of rats for the study of children—first probing their earliest sensory and perceptual development, and later also their changing place in culture and history. From the 1950s to the 1970s, historical and philosophical publications appeared periodically in his burgeoning bibliography, including, from his positivistic era, the treatise The Language of Psychology (with G. Mandler, 1959). In 1965 Kessen published The Child, a documentary history of childhood that laid the groundwork for much of his later historical writings. In The Child he selected and commented on primary works representing many medical, religious, philosophical, psychological, and pedagogical roots of contemporary developmental psychology. Childhood in China (1975) captured Kessen's observations while leading a delegation from the US State Department to study early education in China. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)