As we have talked a good deal in class about school psychology, my reflection and link for this week focus on the industrial-organizational aspect of psychology. Our readings for the week in the blue book mentioned the Hawthorne studies, conducted in the Hawthorne Works factory outside of Chicago. I decided to focus on one of the experiments, conducted by Mayo, that took place on an assembly line. Mayo was interested in how fatigue and job monotony affected productivity and how to control them through variables such as rest breaks, work hours, temperature and humidity. "In the process," says one of the links listed below, "he stumbled upon a principle of human motivation that would help to revolutionize the theory and practice of management." Interestingly, it appears Mayo used women for his study, removing them from their position working on the assembly line of a factory and isolating them, frequently changing their work environments. I couldn't find any information as to why Mayo decided to use women, but I would guess he had some sort of motivation to do so.. ?
The first link below gives good description of Mayo's method, including having the team of 6 women be observed by a friendly coworker instead of a domineering supervisor. Be sure to check out the conclusion, such that after series of changes that had positive and negative effects, the team was most productive at the very end of the experiment when placed back in their original working conditions! The key concept here is all about how one feels about their work environment - their level of control and freedom in the situation, their willingness to participate, etc. It's really interesting! Check it out: http://accel-team.com/motivation/hawthorne_02.html
I found the best explanation of the Hawthorne studies as a whole, including diagrams for another of the experiments, here: http://www.analytictech.com/mb021/handouts/bank_wiring.htm
Friday, March 27, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Here's the Link!
Here's the link to the NASP newsletter that I talked about in my reflection. The artcile is found on pages 1, 26-27 and is entitled "The 1968 National Invitational Conference of School Psychologists: Is This the 41st Anniversary of NASP?" Enjoy!
http://www.wooster.edu/psychology/wscott/nasp.pdf
http://www.wooster.edu/psychology/wscott/nasp.pdf
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
History of a Psychiatric Hospital and Whatever happened to Little Albert
On his pages, "The Psych Files", Michael Britt has an interview you can listen to about the history of the Hudson River Psychiatric Hospital which is quite informative.
He also has an audio presentation regarding what really happened to Little Albert with good references on the page.
Week of 3/24 Reflection
This week we read about different applied fields in psychology. The field that I am interested in and will be pursuing a future in is School Psychology. The blue book discussed the many people that can be accredited for developing the field. The first school psychologist, Arnold L. Gesell impressed me so much! I feel like he should get more credit and attention than he does. He developed a set of normative tables on children that not only school psychologists use, but also parents, medical professions, and other educational professionals! Can you imagine where we would be in so many child focused fields if Gesell hadn't put this table together?
Also I wanted to add a little bit more about why the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) was founded. The book briefly mentioned the tiff between the APA and school psychologists. Their Divsion (16) was present, but school psychologist wanted more from the association. I will post the NASP newsletter, Communique, which includes an article that goes into more detail about why and how NASP was created. Some of the reasons are as follows: identity, represent specific interests, strongly support non-doctoral professionals, and understand the complexities of working in public schools.
Also I wanted to add a little bit more about why the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) was founded. The book briefly mentioned the tiff between the APA and school psychologists. Their Divsion (16) was present, but school psychologist wanted more from the association. I will post the NASP newsletter, Communique, which includes an article that goes into more detail about why and how NASP was created. Some of the reasons are as follows: identity, represent specific interests, strongly support non-doctoral professionals, and understand the complexities of working in public schools.
Link and Reflection
Here is a link to a website that nicely details the differences between a Ph.D. and a Psy.D. At one point in my college career I seriously considered going for a Psy.D. after Beloit and becoming a clinical psychologist, but after careful thought I chose my law school path. However, I still believe that the Psy.D. degree is very valuable and a great degree to have in psychology.
http://www.internationalgraduate.net/psyd.htm
After our assigned readings, I began to wonder what would have happened in psychology if WWI and WWII had not occurred. WWII is frequently cited as helping the U.S. pull out of the Great Depression, but I think that psychology also benefited from U.S. involvement. The field of clinical psychology was somewhat established pre-war, but there were still many steps to take and questions to be answered. During and after both wars, the government and VA hospitals gave enormous amounts of money to psychologists for testing and treatment of soldiers. This gave the field of psychology resources and test subjects that otherwise would have been impossible to amount. Psychologists took advantage of this and developed various mental and intelligence tests, therapies, and theories of psychopathology. As a result, the Boulder Conference, along with other smaller ones, were required to unify the quickly growing field.
I believe that if it wasn't for either war, the field of psychology would not have developed nearly as quickly. There would have been no demand for a large-scale conference in 1949. In high school history I learned about numerous effects and influences that WWII had on many parts of our country, but there was never any mention about psychology. I think that should change because WWII had a direct role in the expansion of our discipline, and we would be years behind without that influence.
http://www.internationalgraduate.net/psyd.htm
After our assigned readings, I began to wonder what would have happened in psychology if WWI and WWII had not occurred. WWII is frequently cited as helping the U.S. pull out of the Great Depression, but I think that psychology also benefited from U.S. involvement. The field of clinical psychology was somewhat established pre-war, but there were still many steps to take and questions to be answered. During and after both wars, the government and VA hospitals gave enormous amounts of money to psychologists for testing and treatment of soldiers. This gave the field of psychology resources and test subjects that otherwise would have been impossible to amount. Psychologists took advantage of this and developed various mental and intelligence tests, therapies, and theories of psychopathology. As a result, the Boulder Conference, along with other smaller ones, were required to unify the quickly growing field.
I believe that if it wasn't for either war, the field of psychology would not have developed nearly as quickly. There would have been no demand for a large-scale conference in 1949. In high school history I learned about numerous effects and influences that WWII had on many parts of our country, but there was never any mention about psychology. I think that should change because WWII had a direct role in the expansion of our discipline, and we would be years behind without that influence.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Blog and Link for 3/24
http://www.apa.org/divisions/div12/homepage.html
This is a link to the clinical psychology division of the APA. I thought it would be interesting to look at since it took so long for the APA to accept clincial psychology into the organization.
I wanted to comment on how the VA and the government really had to push the APA and the AAAP to come together to help the war veterans after WWII. Benjamin, in the blue book, discussed how it wasn't until the war ended that the need for clinical psychologists was pushed to the forefront. Benjamin also commented on how many of the clinical psychologists of the time, although practicing had not ever really had the appropriate training, and there was a substantial lack of research confirming or denying the effectiveness of certain clinical techniques and methods. What really suprised me was that because the demand for psychologists was so high after the war that unqualified, or should I say MORE unqualified, psychologists were treating war veterans suffering from a multitude of maladies, most common being PTSD. So this all made me wonder, what sort of mistakes doing you think psychologists made? Do you think there were misdiagnoses, any that were harmful?
This is a link to the clinical psychology division of the APA. I thought it would be interesting to look at since it took so long for the APA to accept clincial psychology into the organization.
I wanted to comment on how the VA and the government really had to push the APA and the AAAP to come together to help the war veterans after WWII. Benjamin, in the blue book, discussed how it wasn't until the war ended that the need for clinical psychologists was pushed to the forefront. Benjamin also commented on how many of the clinical psychologists of the time, although practicing had not ever really had the appropriate training, and there was a substantial lack of research confirming or denying the effectiveness of certain clinical techniques and methods. What really suprised me was that because the demand for psychologists was so high after the war that unqualified, or should I say MORE unqualified, psychologists were treating war veterans suffering from a multitude of maladies, most common being PTSD. So this all made me wonder, what sort of mistakes doing you think psychologists made? Do you think there were misdiagnoses, any that were harmful?
Sunday, March 22, 2009
CBT - link and response for last week
While talking about behaviorism, I was thinking about how it applies directly to our lives as psychology students. Beyond knowing about classical and operant conditioning (which helps us shape our professors to stand in corners), how can it directly help us if we decide to go into careers in psychology?
Cognitive-behavioral therapy is a type of therapy that we've all heard about. It is a combination of studying behavior (what we do) and studying the cognition that causes our behavior (what we think). It's an interesting way that we can take Watson's idea of the "prediction and control" of behavior and apply it to a theraputic, clinical practice. I think it even helps to combine the psychology of the late 19th century (before behaviorism), the study of consciousness and its processes, with behaviorism.
Going beyond that, I was thinking about a discussion question I would have liked to ask in class last week. Do you agree or disagree with the "prediction" aspect of Watson's goal of psychology? How about the "control" aspect? I think it's interesting that he lumped the two together. In earlier psychology, we were interested in reaction time, for example, which would help us to predict aspects of human consciousness. However, when did control come into the picture? When did it become desirable to control humans through the study of their mind/consciousness/behavior? This is something that I think applied psychology really influenced. Without applied psychology, we never would have thought to control aspects of people, especially not their behavior. Yet with the research produced in the subfield of behaviorism, we learned that people can be predicted, controlled, and manipulated. This is such a far cry from any ideas that the earliest psychologists had, but they are some of the most pervasive ideas to this day.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy is a type of therapy that we've all heard about. It is a combination of studying behavior (what we do) and studying the cognition that causes our behavior (what we think). It's an interesting way that we can take Watson's idea of the "prediction and control" of behavior and apply it to a theraputic, clinical practice. I think it even helps to combine the psychology of the late 19th century (before behaviorism), the study of consciousness and its processes, with behaviorism.
Going beyond that, I was thinking about a discussion question I would have liked to ask in class last week. Do you agree or disagree with the "prediction" aspect of Watson's goal of psychology? How about the "control" aspect? I think it's interesting that he lumped the two together. In earlier psychology, we were interested in reaction time, for example, which would help us to predict aspects of human consciousness. However, when did control come into the picture? When did it become desirable to control humans through the study of their mind/consciousness/behavior? This is something that I think applied psychology really influenced. Without applied psychology, we never would have thought to control aspects of people, especially not their behavior. Yet with the research produced in the subfield of behaviorism, we learned that people can be predicted, controlled, and manipulated. This is such a far cry from any ideas that the earliest psychologists had, but they are some of the most pervasive ideas to this day.
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