Biomedical subjects

Alan Costall

Publications and source records attributed to Alan Costall.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

'Introspectionism' and the mythical origins of scientific psychology.

According to the majority of the textbooks, the history of modern, scientific psychology can be tidily encapsulated in the following three stages. Scientific psychology began with a commitment to the study of mind, but based on the method of introspection. Watson rejected introspectionism as both unreliable and effete, and redefined psychology, instead, as the science of behaviour. The cognitive revolution, in turn, replaced the mind as the subject of study, and rejected both behaviourism and a reliance on introspection. This paper argues that all three stages of this history are largely mythical. Introspectionism was never a dominant movement within modern psychology, and the method of introspection never went away. Furthermore, this version of psychology's history obscures some deep conceptual problems, not least surrounding the modern conception of "behaviour," that continues to make the scientific study of consciousness seem so weird.

Behaviorism↗

PubMed2005

Group differences in the mutual gaze of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).

A comparative developmental framework was used to determine whether mutual gaze is unique to humans and, if not, whether common mechanisms support the development of mutual gaze in chimpanzees and humans. Mother-infant chimpanzees engaged in approximately 17 instances of mutual gaze per hour. Mutual gaze occurred in positive, nonagonistic contexts. Mother-infant chimpanzees at a Japanese center exhibited significantly more mutual gaze than those at a center in the United States. Cradling and motor stimulation varied across groups. Time spent cradling infants was inversely related to mutual gaze. It is suggested that in primates, mutual engagement is supported via an interchangeability of tactile and visual modalities. The importance of mutual gaze is best understood within a perspective that embraces both cross-species and cross-cultural data.

Agonistic Behavior↗

PubMed2005

False reports of childhood events in appropriate interviews.

The present study employed the "parental misinformation" paradigm to examine whether individuals report false events from their childhood even when they are interviewed in an appropriate manner by a trained interviewer. Each participant was interviewed on three occasions. By the final interview, one participant produced a "full" report, and six participants produced "partial" reports, of childhood events that did not occur. Although participants reported perceiving greater pressure to report the false events than the real events, independent judges' ratings of social pressure in the interviews did not differ as a function of what type of event participants were being asked about. Participants also reported higher confidence in their parents', compared to their own, recall of events from their childhood. False reports were also positively correlated with scores on both the full and the revised versions of the Dissociative Experiences Scale, and negatively correlated with score on the Self-Monitoring scale. These results indicate that, despite being interviewed in an appropriate manner by a trained interviewer, some participants will falsely report events from their childhoods.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

Parents' experiences of introducing everyday object use to their children with autism.

A semi-structured interview study, investigating the acquisition of everyday object use in children with autism and developmentally matched controls, is presented. Parents were asked to describe how their child currently used various everyday objects during mealtime and washing routines, the process by which this came about, and any problems encountered in attempting to introduce appropriate object use. Following transcription, the interviews were treated using a method combining phenomenological and content analysis. The statements generated were condensed, using progressive categorization, into three tables of summary statements. These represented the different sources of influence on the children's object use and the problems parents experienced in attempting to guide their child's actions. Relative to comparison groups, parents of children with autism reported that they experienced more problems and used more intensive teaching methods, and that their children were less actively involved. The findings are discussed in relation to the influence of other people in shaping object use and implications for intervention programmes.

Activities of Daily Living↗

PubMed2002

Misremembering Bartlett: a study in serial reproduction.

According to much of the recent psychological literature on memory, Bartlett should be credited with the insight that remembering can never be accurate but is, instead, more or less of a distortion (a view to which many modern authors themselves seem to subscribe). In the present paper, we argue that Bartlett did not himself provide such an unqualified account of remembering. Although he sought to challenge the idea that remembering is largely an accurate record of past events, he did not maintain that it is always inaccurate. Despite unqualified claims by Bartlett to the contrary, neither his own experiments nor his theoretical position warrant the conclusion that remembering is inherently unreliable. Indeed, as we explain, Bartlett himself provides several examples of impressively detailed and accurate recall, and sought to explain them within the framework of his schema theory.

Humans↗