125 years of the American Psychological Association.

The American Psychological Association (APA) began 125 years ago as a small club of a few dozen members in the parlor of its founder, G. Stanley Hall. In the decades since, it has faced many difficulties and even a few existential crises. Originally a scientific society, it spent the decades between the world wars figuring out how to accommodate the growing community of applied psychologists while still retaining and enhancing its scientific reputation. After World War II, with an expanded mandate, it developed formal training models for clinical psychologists and became an important player in legal cases pertaining to civil rights and other social justice issues. With practitioners taking an ever-greater role in the governance of the organization in the late 1970s, and the financial viability of the association in doubt in the 1980s, many psychological scientists felt the need to create a separate organization for themselves. The 1990s and early 2000s brought more challenges: declining divisional memberships; a legal dispute over fees with practitioners; and a serious upheaval over the APA Board of Directors' cooperation with governmental defense and intelligence agencies during the "war on terror." These clashes appear to have precipitated a decline in the association's membership for the first time in its history. The APA has faced many storms over its century-and-a-quarter, but has, thus far, always ultimately found a way forward for itself, for its members, and for the wider discipline of psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record

Fifty psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid: a list of inaccurate, misleading, misused, ambiguous, and logically confused words and phrases.

The goal of this article is to promote clear thinking and clear writing among students and teachers of psychological science by curbing terminological misinformation and confusion. To this end, we present a provisional list of 50 commonly used terms in psychology, psychiatry, and allied fields that should be avoided, or at most used sparingly and with explicit caveats. We provide corrective information for students, instructors, and researchers regarding these terms, which we organize for expository purposes into five categories: inaccurate or misleading terms, frequently misused terms, ambiguous terms, oxymorons, and pleonasms. For each term, we (a) explain why it is problematic, (b) delineate one or more examples of its misuse, and (c) when pertinent, offer recommendations for preferable terms. By being more judicious in their use of terminology, psychologists and psychiatrists can foster clearer thinking in their students and the field at large regarding mental phenomena.

Why Ineffective Psychotherapies Appear to Work: A Taxonomy of Causes of Spurious Therapeutic Effectiveness.

The past 40 years have generated numerous insights regarding errors in human reasoning. Arguably, clinical practice is the domain of applied psychology in which acknowledging and mitigating these errors is most crucial. We address one such set of errors here, namely, the tendency of some psychologists and other mental health professionals to assume that they can rely on informal clinical observations to infer whether treatments are effective. We delineate four broad, underlying cognitive impediments to accurately evaluating improvement in psychotherapy-naive realism, confirmation bias, illusory causation, and the illusion of control. We then describe 26 causes of spurious therapeutic effectiveness (CSTEs), organized into a taxonomy of three overarching categories: (a) the perception of client change in its actual absence, (b) misinterpretations of actual client change stemming from extratherapeutic factors, and (c) misinterpretations of actual client change stemming from nonspecific treatment factors. These inferential errors can lead clinicians, clients, and researchers to misperceive useless or even harmful psychotherapies as effective. We (a) examine how methodological safeguards help to control for different CSTEs, (b) delineate fruitful directions for research on CSTEs, and (c) consider the implications of CSTEs for everyday clinical practice. An enhanced appreciation of the inferential problems posed by CSTEs may narrow the science-practice gap and foster a heightened appreciation of the need for the methodological safeguards afforded by evidence-based practice.

The research-practice gap: bridging the schism between eating disorder researchers and practitioners.

OBJECTIVE: The field of eating disorders (EDs) treatment has been beset by a marked disjunction between scientific evidence and clinical application. We describe the nature and scope of the research-practice gap in the ED field. METHOD: We draw on surveys and broader literature to better understand the research-practice gap in ED treatment and reasons for resistance to evidence-based practice. RESULTS: We identify three sources of the research-practice gap: (1) attitudinal factors, (2) differences in the definition of "evidence," and (3) cognitive factors, especially naïve realism and confirmation bias. We affirm the role of science as a safeguard against human fallibility and as a means of bridging the research-practice gap, and delineate key principles of scientific thinking for ED researchers and practitioners. DISCUSSION: We conclude with proposals for narrowing the research-practice gap in ED treatment and enhancing the quality of interventions for ED clients.

Why many clinical psychologists are resistant to evidence-based practice: root causes and constructive remedies.

Psychotherapists are taught that when a client expresses resistance repeatedly, they must understand and address its underlying sources. Yet proponents of evidence-based practice (EBP) have routinely ignored the root causes of many clinical psychologists' reservations concerning the use of scientific evidence to inform clinical practice. As a consequence, much of the resistance to EBP persists, potentially widening the already large scientist-practitioner gap. Following a review of survey data on psychologists' attitudes toward EBP, we examine six sources underpinning resistance toward EBP in clinical psychology and allied domains: (a) naïve realism, which can lead clinicians to conclude erroneously that client change is due to an intervention itself rather than to a host of competing explanations; (b) deep-seated misconceptions regarding human nature (e.g., mistaken beliefs regarding the causal primacy of early experiences) that can hinder the adoption of evidence-based treatments; (c) statistical misunderstandings regarding the application of group probabilities to individuals; (d) erroneous apportioning of the burden of proof on skeptics rather than proponents of untested therapies; (e) widespread mischaracterizations of what EBP entails; and (f) pragmatic, educational, and attitudinal obstacles, such as the discomfort of many practitioners with evaluating the increasingly technical psychotherapy outcome literature. We advance educational proposals for articulating the importance of EBP to the forthcoming generation of clinical practitioners and researchers, and constructive remedies for addressing clinical psychologists' objections to EBP.

Invoking history to teach about the scientist-practitioner gap.

The scientist-practitioner gap refers to the division between psychologists who believe that clinical practice should be heavily informed by empirical studies and those who believe clinical judgment and intuition should be paramount. Although the gap widened in the late 1980s and early 1990s, owing to the recovered memory controversy, the intradisciplinary schism between scientists and practitioners significantly predates this particular debate. Without an appreciation of the historical context of the term's emergence, however, students may come to regard the scientist-practitioner gap as a discrete and recent phenomenon. In this paper, the historical and philosophical roots of the gap are described, and it is argued that an appreciation of the historical circumstances from which the term emerged can enable students to better appreciate the past, present, and future of the discipline.

The Founding of the Association for Psychological Science: Part 1. Dialectical Tensions Within Organized Psychology.

The founding of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) did not represent the first time a group of psychologists broke away from the American Psychological Association, the parent association of organized psychology in the United States. In fact, the history of organized psychology is replete with examples of splinter groups that sought to better represent the needs and interests of their specific constituencies. All of these breakaway efforts have occurred amid intradisciplinary tensions-the continual push and pull between unity on the one hand and autonomy on the other-that reflect some of the enduring challenges of the field. A historical examination of this dialectic provides a useful framework within which to understand the founding of the APS, its most recent instantiation.

The Founding of the Association for Psychological Science: Part 2. The Tipping Point and Early Years.

The founding of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) occurred in the context of longstanding dialectical tensions within organized psychology. It represents the most recent breakaway effort from the American Psychological Association (APA), psychology's parent association in the United States. Beginning in the 1970s, numerous APA committees deliberated the Association's structure, making recommendations designed to appease the various constituencies within the changing organization; all but the last of these proposals were ultimately rejected by the APA Council. In 1987, the Assembly for Scientific and Applied Psychologists (ASAP) formed to encourage APA reorganization, and in early 1988, the APA Council approved a reorganization plan; that plan was, however, rejected by the membership. In August 1988, the ASAP became the APS. The early years of the APS were shaped by challenges and successes that would lay the groundwork for the APS to become a prominent organization in the promotion of scientific psychology. An understanding of these events may provide insight into the nature of organized psychology and its future.

David Shakow and schizophrenia research at Worcester State Hospital: the roots of the scientist-practitioner model.

As Chief Psychologist and Director of Psychological Research at Worcester State Hospital (WSH), David Shakow (1901-1981) made substantial contributions to the scientific study of schizophrenia and by extension to the study of psychopathology in general. His methodological innovations--particularly on issues of diagnosis and conditions of testing-set a new standard for experimental rigor in the field. Shakow helped to establish many of what are considered basic facts about schizophrenia. His empirical work at WSH-specifically on the crossover effect--provided the scientific foundation for his theory of schizophrenic cognition, known as segmental set. Moreover, Shakow's schizophrenia work informed his developing ideas on the synergy between clinical practice and research.

Assessing the enduring residual neuropsychological effects of head trauma in college athletes who participate in contact sports.

The present study examined the enduring residual neuropsychological effects of head trauma in college athletes using the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS), Postconcussion Syndrome Checklist, and the Stroop task. Based on a brief self-report concussion history survey, male and female athletes who participated in ice hockey, field hockey, lacrosse, and/or soccer were assigned to one of three concussion-history conditions: Non-concussed, Non-recent concussed (i.e., more than 2 years since last concussion), or Recent concussed (i.e., 2 years or less since last concussion). A fourth group of subjects consisting of non-concussed/non-athletes served in the control condition. Group differences emerged on the RBANS when immediate memory, delayed memory, and total scores were analyzed. Specifically, recent concussed athletes and, surprisingly, non-concussed athletes scored lower than control subjects in the two memory domains, whereas all three athlete groups had lower total RBANS scores than those of control subjects. Moreover, recent concussed athletes not only had lower immediate memory scores than control subjects, but also were impaired relative to non-recent concussed athlete subjects in this memory domain. No group differences were detected on the Stroop task or on the Postconcussion Syndrome Checklist. Interestingly, however, the severity of the Postconcussion Syndrome Checklist scores for the two athlete-concussed groups, taken in aggregate, correlated negatively with RBANS scores for attention (r = -.65) and delayed memory (r = -.61), and with the total RBANS score (r = -.59). In recent concussed athletes, lower delayed memory scores correlated with more severe Postconcussion Symptom Checklist scores (r = -.90), while more severe/higher number of concussions correlated with increased processing speed on the Stroop interference task (r = .90). These findings indicate that recent head injury produces alterations in neuropsychological function, especially that of memory, that resolve with time. More provocatively, the data also suggest that participation in contact sports may produce sub-clinical cognitive impairments in the absence of a diagnosable concussion presumably resulting from the cumulative consequences produced by multiple mild head trauma.