American Psychologist

doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.32.4.237pmid: N/A

The traditional dichotomy that has separated science and value judgment and set corresponding limitations to the domain and role of science is challenged in the context of recent developments in the concept of consciousness and mind-brain relations. A conceptual explanatory model for psychophysical interaction has emerged during the past decade that changes the scientific status of subjective experience and negates many mechanistic, deterministic, and reductionistic features of prior materialist-behaviorist doctrine. Subjective values, conceived in the present terms, transcend their neural components in brain function to become causal determinants per se with objective consequences. The strategic control power of human values functioning as universal cerebral determinants in all social decision making is emphasized, along with logical indications for a more active involvement therein on the part of science. (29 ref)

doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.32.4.246pmid: N/A

Examines a number of closely related issues in personality theory and assessment that have troubled the history of personality measurement and must be dealt with in its future. These issues include the multiple determinism of behavior, the role of context, the multiple goals of personality measurement, the "subject" as potential expert and colleague, the analysis of environments, and the role of person variables. Finally, some close parallels developing between personality psychology and cognitive psychology and the emergence in psychology of a new image of the human being are considered. (41 ref)

doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.32.4.255pmid: N/A

Skepticism regarding the utility of personality tests seems widespread in contemporary personality, clinical, and social psychology. Five sources of this skepticism can be identified. First, the trait concept has been widely criticized in the recent literature; since tests are assumed to measure traits, their role in developing psychological theory is also questioned. Second, it is frequently claimed that tests simply don't work very well, that social behavior is largely a function of situational constraints. Third, current enthusiasm for experimental research tends to minimize the importance of individual differences and the tests that are used to assess them. Fourth, behavior therapy and labeling theory have encouraged the view that tests are irrelevant as adjuncts to psychotherapy. Finally, the ease with which test data can be collected encourages mindless research. Each of these issues is reviewed, and arguments are presented to suggest that personality assessment continues to be an intellectually and scientifically defensible enterprise. (70 ref)

doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.32.4.265pmid: N/A

Presents a case history of William James Sidis which is concerned both with the adverse impact his example has had on special education for the intellectually gifted and with the dynamics that led to his tragic outcome. Sidis, the archetypal father-exploited prodigy, is examined in his social and historical context and is contrasted with another famous prodigy who had a similar background, Norbert Wiener. It is shown that Sidis, who as an 11-yr-old special student at Harvard College attracted national attention in 1910 by delivering a lecture on higher mathematics before the Harvard Mathematical Club, was so driven to defy his father's efforts to make him the ideal man that he dropped out of academics and died an obscure clerk. Certain myths that grew about Sidis are debunked. By presenting cases of prodigies who entered college as early as Sidis but who succeeded, the author attempts to dissuade the public from its opposition to educational acceleration for precocious children, to which the "Sidis fallacy" has helped give rise. (67 ref)

doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.32.4.280pmid: N/A

Recent successes teaching chimpanzees to engage in symbolic communication have again brought into question the Cartesian supposition that language is uniquely possessed by homo sapiens . Despite the very remarkable achievements of Washoe and Sarah, an objective comparison of these chimps' linguistic performances with those of a typical 3-yr-old child provides scant evidence for rejecting Descartes' view. An organism uses human language if and only if it uses structures characteristic of those languages. The ability of apes or even 2-yr-olds to communicate and use simple names is not sufficient reason to attribute the use of human language to them. The creative or projective aspect of human language cannot be overlooked. Efforts to explain the language deficits of apes in terms of impoverished language experience, anatomical deficits, or cognitive-structure differences are not convincing. (74 ref)