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1

THE TENSIONS OF DARWIN THE MAN AND SCIENTIST IN THE EYE OF PSYCHOLOGISTS

100%

Pléh C.

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tom 65

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nr 1

37-47

EN

The paper first sketches a psychological reconstruction of the logic of Darwin’s discovery. Characteristic mental analogies can be revealed in the structure of the theory with the emphasis on small changes and constant change replacing catastrophes. Another important aspect is the motivating forces in the personality of Darwin and their relationship to his personal fate. From a perspective of present day psychology, Darwin was an extreme systematizer. One could place him along the much debated autism continuum exactly due to his taxonomic passion. At the same time, the emphasis on constant change connects the taxonomy with dynamicity. The paper also touches upon the rival theories of Darwin’s illness. It concentrates on the theory of Bowlby emphasizing the role of attachment dramas in intellectual achievements of the 19th century.

2

ON THE FORERUNNERS OF THE POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY VISION

100%

Pléh C.

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nr 1

13-18

EN

The paper surveys the intellectual past in the formation of positive psychology views. Among them, one can find the role attributed to culture and personality in middle 19th Century visions of John Stuart Mill, the problem of activation and energy mobilization, the allocation of the competence notion in the system of human motives, an active vision of personality with foregrounding self actualization and questioning over determinism.

3

THE ISSUE OF CONSCIOUS AND NON-CONSCIOUS IN THE LIGHT OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE

100%

Pléh C.

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nr 1

47-74

EN

The review paper starts off from phenomenological features of consciousness (reportability, vividness, unification, coherence). Than goes on first to review the first stage of the renewed interest towards consciousness in the 1960s’ concentration on phenomena like verbal conditioning, awareness continuum, split brain, relationships between consciousness and prefrontal activity. Then the paper reviews some leading ideas of contemporary scientific consciousness research. The search for neurobiological equivalents of consciousness, from cortical localizations (prefrontal systems) to peculiar modes of functioning (gamma oscillations), and to disorders of consciousness. While we know more and more about consciousness, we should not forget that several observations in experimental psychology (priming, ambiguity activation, attention blindness) indicate that one has to deal with a rather complex phenomenon. E.g. semantically anchored behaviors are not always accessible to consciousness.

4

UNTIL WHEN DO WE STILL NEED PSYCHOLOGY?

100%

Pléh C.

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nr 2

237-266

EN

Psychology is one of the victorious sciences and professions of 20th Century. Still, form its onset on doubts are accompanying its possibility, its assumed intellectual sterility, and practical sterility. These doubts reemerge today. However, one is able to ironically refute them not in the name of the oppressed and endangered, but in the light of clearer professional identity. In the second half of the 19th Century, the naissant psychology was challenged on the one hand by Comte claiming that its supposed contents could be divided between sociology and neurobiology, while on the other hand by Dilthey, Frege, and Husserl who considered it to be intellectually plain and lacking phantasy. These challenges were dealt with in mid-twentieth century by the three aspect theory of Karl Bühler (experience, behavior, and objectivations) and by the role of cultural mediation in the theory of Lev Vygotsky, and later on by Jean Piaget with his cross disciplinary position of psychology. Amongst these interpretive debates, the show went on undisturbed. During the early stages of the last century the best theoreticians took part in forming the practical profession of modern psychology. Binet, Ebbinghaus, Stern, S. Freud, Lewin, Lurija, Bowlby, while being outstanding theoretical researchers, played a crucial role in the formation of the basic frames of the profession as well, in a similar way as Ferenczi, Szondi, Harkai or Mérei in Hungary. The threats and challenges towards psychology never stopped while professional psychology was being formed. Just think of the dubious victories of Pavlovianism in the East-European countries, or the insatiable hunger of pedagogy this ethernel dedicated formator of humanity. All of this is merely the past to be remembered by historians of psychology. On the present day intellectual landscape, psychology is again challenged and questioned form two directions. In science, the new interdisciplinary field seem to digest psychology. Cognitive science, neuro-philosophy, and neuroscience all tend to question the independent future of psychology. Once we would know everything, there will not be anything but neural patterns of excitations, though in fact the real gurus of neuroscience like Gazzaniga and Ramachandran question the victorious nature of the reductionism of their own field. Experimental psychologists should not panic when witnessing the questioning of their existence partly initiated by them. The neural interpretation of man can indeed provide a causal model of behavior, but only the psychological interpretation of behavior can account for what do we have a causal model of, e.g. in the fMRI magnet, is the person reading, flirting, or fighting. And this is further complicated by the subjective experiences of the subject accompanying these behaviors. The other threat of today comes from the half-prepared representatives of rival professions, from trainers, coaches, and gurus of all sorts. Present day psychology should clearly see that it is not involved in a freedom fight any more, but it protects a clear professional image. With regard to intellectual reductionisms, it protects the idea that psychological science is supported in its identity by an existing profession, while there are no professions of cognitive scientist, or neuroscientist. Against the half-trained professional rivals it should claim that in the profession of psychology, in line with the ancestors mentioned, theoretical foundations have their place. Psychologists are not technicians or paramedics of behavior, but its engineers and doctors.

5

FOCUSING EFFECTS IN THE MEMORY REPRESENTATION OF HUNGARIAN SENTENCES

63%

Pléh C. , Sinkovics B.

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tom 66

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nr 2

321-333

EN

In two acoustic sentence recognition experiments the relative importance of recognition times (from 0 to 40 seconds) and relationships between the target sentence and test sentences was varied. Hungarian promised to be a good testing ground for traditional theories that claim that while form is readily forgotten, sentence meaning is preserved. In Hungarian, the informational structure of sentences allows for clear contrasts between neutral and meaning related order variations. In the stimulus material target sentences were compared in recognition scores with identical, neutral word order, paraphrased and focused sentence pairs. The results partly supported our starting hypotheses, but at the same time they have shown that the intricacies of Hungarian sentential syntax call for a more reserved and more carefully qualified expression of the initial proposals of Sachs (1967) and Johnson-Laird and Stevenson (1970). Focused sentences we are clearly in contrast with non-focused initial targets even after 40 seconds. Therefore it seems that the information structure is somehow maintained in the long term memory system for sentences in Hungarian. In accordance with the classical results, the meanings of neutral word order variations are misrecognized in about 60 percent after 16 seconds already. Contrary to our hypothesis, even after 40 seconds, paraphrases were correctly recognized more than 60 percent of the time. Thus, to clarify the cross-linguistic validity of memorial paraphrase equivalence more types of sentential paraphrases should be compared. The studies supported the main ideas underlying the experiments: the informational structure of the Hungarian sentence seems to be retained in long term memory, unlike neutral word order variations. This finding calls for a more detailed study with more varied stimulus materials to clarify some further issues of what is ‘form’ and what is ‘meaning’ for the memory system.