Search

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has played a major role in promoting behavioral medicine research over the past 40 years through funding, review, and priority-setting activities and programs including scientific conferences, meetings, workgroups, intramural research, and training opportunities. In this review of NIH activities in support of behavioral medicine over the past four decades, we highlight key events, programs, projects, and milestones that demonstrate the many ways in which the NIH has supported behavioral and social sciences research and advanced the public health while contributing to the evolution of behavioral medicine as a scientific field.

This paper presents a historical and conceptual analysis of a group of research strategies known as the Single-Case Methods (SCMs). First, we present an overview of the SCMs, their history, and their major proponents. We will argue that the philosophical roots of SCMs can be found in the ideas of authors who recognized the importance of understanding both the generality and individuality of psychological functioning. Second, we will discuss the influence that the natural sciences' attitude toward measurement and experimentation has had on SCMs. Although this influence can be traced back to the early days of experimental psychology, during which incipient forms of SCMs appeared, SCMs reached full development during the subsequent advent of Behavior Analysis (BA). Third, we will show that despite the success of SCMs in BA and other (mainly applied) disciplines, these designs are currently not prominent in psychology. More importantly, they have been neglected as a possible alternative to one of the mainstream approaches in psychology, the Null Hypothesis Significance Testing (NHST), despite serious controversies about the limitations of this prevailing method. Our thesis throughout this section will be that SCMs should be considered as an alternative to NHST because many of the recommendations for improving the use of significance testing (Wilkinson & the TFSI, 1999) are main characteristics of SCMs. The paper finishes with a discussion of a number of the possible reasons why SCMs have been neglected.

Out of the eight points of methodological criticism against contemporary psychology formulated by Watson (Psychological Bulletin 31:755-776, 1934) and put forward by Toomela in this issue, the overemphasis on prediction, the neglect of individual differences, the habit of the differences between the mental states of subjects in objective experimental conditions are particularly important. Modem cognitive psychology has began to remedy those problems, in part by proposing broad, integrative theories. It is not useful to subdivide psychology into "schools of thought" defined by their methodological practices.

Reworking psychology's methodology is of utmost importance if the discipline is to progress. This paper explores methodological strategies which could help overcome the methodological crisis outlined by Toomela (Culture of Science: Strange History of the Methodological Thinking in Psychology. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 2007, doi:10.1007/s12124-007-9004-0). First, I describe a classic research program (i.e., Bartlett's experiments on remembering) that exemplifies the virtues of a "German-Austrian" approach to psychology. Second, I elaborate upon these insights to investigate other aspects of remembering. Finally, I conclude by outlining a methodological programmatic for future research in psychology that overcomes existing forms of experimentation in a new synthesis. The new methodology borrows from both traditions advancing via rich description of single cases and their qualitative transformation to complex theory capable of explaining all individual cases.

I am in general agreement with Toomela's (Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science doi:10.1007/s12124-007-9004-0, 2007) plea for an alternative psychological methodology inspired by his description of the German-Austrian orientation. I will argue, however, that this alternative methodology has to be based on the classical ergodic theorems, using state-of-the-art statistical time series analysis of intra-individual variation as its main tool. Some more specific points made by Toomela will be criticized, while for others a more extreme elaboration along the lines indicated by Toomela is proposed.

There are two ways for overcoming limitations of methods used in psychology, as Toomela (Integr. Physiol. Behav. Sci. doi:10.1007/s12124-007-9004-0, 2007) points out. These are inventing new methods of research, and looking back into the history of methodological thought for new ideas. Though he limited the former as if it is a quantitative area and he declared to take the latter path, his paper actually advocates the need to create new methodology for understanding the human psyche through historical approach. We discuss problems of sampling and generalization in that context, and suggest a new way to creative synthesis through elaboration of qualitative methodologies. To us this direction constitutes an updated version of the German-Austrian methodology exactly as Toomela suggests.

The author presents several arguments against Toomela's (Culture of science: Strange history of the methodological thinking in psychology. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 2007a, doi:10.1007/sl2124-007-9004-0, History of methodology in psychology: Starting point, not the goal. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 2007b, doi:10.1007/sl2124-007-9005-z) pessimistic thesis: "The last 60 years of research in psychology seems to have gone astray." Nevertheless he admits that Toomela's article despite the excessively categorical assessments contained in it and the undue pessimism crowing its conclusion, represents a substantial contribution to the highlighting of socio-cultural impact on various models of psychological cognition, which lurks behind the international unification of globalizing science.

In pre-World-War-II psychology, two directions in methodological thought-the German-Austrian and North American ways-could be differentiated. After the war, the German-Austrian methodological orientation has been largely abandoned. Compared to the pre-WWII German-Austrian psychology, modern mainstream psychology is more concerned with accumulation of facts than with general theory. Furthermore, the focus on qualitative data-in addition to quantitative data-is rarely visible. Only external-physical or statistical-rather than psychological controls are taken into account in empirical studies. Fragments--rather than wholes-and relationships are studied, and single cases that contradict group data are not analyzed. Instead of complex psychological types simple trait differences are studied, and prediction is not followed by thorough analysis of the whole situation. Last (but not least), data are not systematically related to complex theory. These limits have hindered the growth of knowledge in the behavioral sciences. A new return to an updated version of the German-Austrian methodological trajectory is suggested.

Miki Takasuna describes knowledge transfer between elite communities of scientists, a process by which ideas become structurally transformed in the host culture. By contrast, a process that we have termed knowledge transfer by deelitization occurs when (a) participatory action researchers work with a community to identify a problem involving oppression or exploitation. Then (b) community members suggest solutions and acquire the tools of analysis and action to pursue social actions. (c) Disadvantaged persons thereby become more aware of their own abilities and resources, and persons with special expertise become more effective. (d) Rather than detachment and value neutrality, this joint process involves advocacy and structural transformation. In the examples of participatory action research documented here, Third World social scientists collaborated with indigenous populations to solve problems of literacy, community-building, land ownership, and political voice. Western social scientists, inspired by these non-Western scientists, then joined in promoting PAR both in the Third World and in Europe and the Americas, e.g., adapting it for solving problems of people with disabilities or disenfranchised women. Emancipatory goals such as these may even help North American psychologists to break free of some methodological chains and to bring about social and political change.

Methodological issues in psychology consist of a key aspect for the scientific development of the discipline. In this paper I elaborate on the reasons why I partially agree with Toomela's ideas, and why I also disagree with some of his arguments. The convergence refers to the need for a radical change concerning the widespread use of methodologies that has been typical of mainstream psychology, which still flavors too positivist and pseudo-quantitative, overlooking the central relevance of theory for scientific development. The divergence resides in Toomela's insistence to oppose what he designates as "the North American" to "the German-Austrian" scientific thinking: from my perspective, the misuse of cultural categories can only lead to misguided and unconstructive dichotomies that entails a naive concept of culture, and do not contribute to scientific development. From a contemporary systemic approach, complex issues deserve more sophisticated analysis.