Behavior analysts are having their professional identities challenged by the roles that cognition and biology are said to play in the conduct and outcome of applied behavior analysis and behavior therapy. For cogniphiliacs, cognition and biology are central to their interventions because cognition and biology are said to reflect various processes,…

Several epistemic formulations have been advanced to explain cognitive development. Many writers have divided the field of psychology into three basic underlying models: the mechanistic, organismic, and dialectic models. An examination of epistemic positions reveals five broadly defined positions on how behavior develops within a given organism.…

The goal of synergistic psychology is to synthesize different psychological theories into an explanation of how social, cognitive and biological factors interact in human behavior. Synergism refers to the mutually co-operating action of separate substances which taken together produce an effect greater than that of any component taken alone. The…

The concept of verbal self-regulation, or verbal mediation, originated in behavioristic analyses of thinking, but was later extended to cognitivistic analyses. In both applications, the research that was generated was usually deficient in ecological validity. In addition, in some of the research verbal self-regulation was inferred when an overt…

A model of need gratification inspired by the work of K.E. Rosengren suggests a theoretical framework making it possible to identify, measure, and assess the components of the need gratification process with respect to the mass media. Methods having cognitive and behavioral components are designed by individuals to achieve need gratification. Deep…

People daydream, plan, and anticipate. They think frequently about their own actual or potential behaviors, and create behavioral scenarios (or scripts) in which they are the main character. To investigate the relationship between thinking about a behavior and one's expectancies or intentions to perform that behavior, subjects (N=93) in Experiment…

This paper briefly reviews the concept of cognitive style and then analyzes Witkin's theory on Psychological Differentiation, examining its possible use for research in art education. Cognitive style refers to individual differences in the processes by which knowledge is acquired. According to Witkin's Psychological Differentiation theory,…

Metacognition, literally thinking about thinking, is a term used by cognitive psychologists to refer to our ability to monitor our own performance on cognitive tasks. The term also addresses the ability to assess level of knowledge and skill in a given domain. Behavioral and psychological researchers frequently solicit metacognitive judgments from…

Learning is defined as the modification and acquisition of knowledge, feelings, and abilities of the student--the outcomes of the teaching-learning process. The teaching-learning process in vocational education is intended to serve as the vehicle for achieving specific outcomes embodied in the goals of the vocational program. Two primary strands…

The potential influence of cognitive-behavioral theory on counselor preparation is an important aspect to consider in training counselors and therapists. To determine the effects of self-instruction and the knowledge of how to develop a clinical hypothesis on master's degree counselor trainees, two studies were conducted. In the first study, entry…

The interactive effects of implicit normative and explicit situational consensus information were examined regarding the processes of causal attribution and evaluation. Stimulus items were single sentence descriptions of antisocial and prosocial behaviors representing the extremes of high and low normative consensus in each behavior category, as…

One of the most important capacities which children employ when learning language is the capacity to generalize. A child who hears an utterance of a verbal expression while perceiving a particular object (or action, aspect, etc.) becomes normally able to apply the expression not only to this object but also to all those objects which, for him, are…

The leading frame-of-reference theories make opposing predictions about the effects of message discrepancy on attitude change. Assimilation-contrast theory predicts that messages that are highly discrepant with initial attitudes are likely to produce less attitude change than messages that are mildly discrepant. In contrast, perspective theory…

This paper reviews and comments on the ways that thought and feeling, cognition and affect, have been balanced in early childhood education at various periods in the last half century. The relationship between educators and psychologists is discussed, and a closer collaboration of the two encouraged. The cognitive-affective interaction view is…

There is increasing debate over the unidimensionality of the construct "drive" in theories of behavior. The earliest drive theory postulated a simple entity which increased or decreased as a function of external or internal stimulation and affected behavior monotonically. Duffy and Malmo have recently hypothesized that the effects of…