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Sex, Mayhem, and Psychology's Two Solitudes
Review of M. Sabourin, F. Craik, & M. Robert (Eds.), Advances in psychological science, Volume 2: Biological and cognitive aspects. Hove, East Sussex; Psychology Press, 1998. (633 + xxii pages).
D. J. K. MEWHORT, Queen's University
The volume arose from the International Congress of Psychology held in Montreal, August 1996. It is a collection of papers, predominantly on biological aspects of psychology. Although the title promises a discussion of cognition, like the dog that did not bark in the Sherlock Holmes story, reference to much of current cognitive psychology is conspicuously missing. In the section on Cognition, Perception, and Memory, for example, only three papers (Hatano on comprehension, Bertelson on perception of multimodal events, and Koria on metamemory) have an experimentalbehavioural focus. Moreover, such icons of cognitive psychology as J. R. Anderson, A. Baddeley, C. Burgess, M. Coltheart, D. Hintzman, M. Humphreys, P. Johnson-Laird, H. Pashler, D. Kahneman, W. Kintsch, T. Landauer, B. Murdock, G. McKoon, D. Medin, J. Nairne, R. Nosofsky, A. Newell, R. Ratcliff, R. Schank, R. Shiffrin, A. Treisman, and A. Tversky are not cited anywhere. Connectionist thinking is considered only in Plunkett's paper on cognitive development. In short, the psychological science advanced in the book is a very different psychology than the one I know. As I read the book, I felt like an outsider looking in on a psychology that has been untouched by the revolution in computational modelling and, indeed, untouched by much of current behavioural work.
But first, let me turn to sex and mayhem. Roubertoux, Mortaud, Torjman, Le Roy, and Degrelle discuss genetic aspects of aggression using the mouse as an animal model. It is a fascinating example of basic science and, importantly, of good methodology. The genetic contribution to aggression is complex and indirect. As Roubertoux et al. note, it is not a story that lends itself to simple-minded excursions into social policy: It "should discourage any eugenic temptation and disgrace eugenics itself' (p. 24). But, as they also note, mayhem results if the lesson is ignored. Their example concerns a dispute within the Behavior Genetics Association leading to the resignation of the President Elect both from office and from the society itself. But, with eugenic and racist views waiting...