How to Make Psychology a Genuine Science of Behavior: Comment on Dolinski’s Thoughtful Paper

In this comment to Doliński’s (2018, this issue) challenging paper, I express my agreement with his basic ideas and with his concerns about the alienation of social psychology. However, I also present some critical thoughts that amount to a slightly different diagnosis of the present situation. Rather than concluding that our discipline has ceased to study real behaviors, I provide positive counter-examples of substantial behavioral science and argue that the major problem is not to distinguish between measures of “real” and “non-real” behaviors. The problem core, rather, lies in the widespread tendency to mistake statistical and technical indices (latencies, model parameters, fMRI indices, etc.) for measures of meaningful behavior. When technical means become ends in themselves, Doliński’s metaphor applies that “the tail wags the dog”.

Do we really need a Multimodal Construction Grammar?

A multimodal construction is said to be a conventional pairing of a complex form, comprising at least a verbal and a kinetic element, with a specific meaning or a specific function. Do we need a new constructional approach to account for such multimodal constructions? What are the challenges to account for multimodality? The aim of this contribution is to provide a precise notion ‘multimodal construction’ and, on this basis, to indicate possible pathways for future investigations. The paper opts for cautiously extending the scope of existing constructional approaches in order to include non-linguistic meaningful behavior. In particular, it is argued that even though Construction Grammar invites for treating multimodal on a par with linguistic constructions, there is a huge lack of substantial empirical support to arrive at a more detailed and data-based understanding of the nature of multimodal constructions.

Cue-Based Feeding in the NICU: Using the Infant’s Communication as a Guide

Although studies have shown cue-based feeding can lead to earlier achievement of full oral feeding, the successful implementation of cue-based feeding has been constrained by the volume-driven culture, which has existed for many years in the NICU. This culture was built on the notion that a “better” nurse is one who could “get more in,” and infants who are “poor feeders” are ones who “can’t take enough.” The infant who feeds faster is often viewed as more skilled in this task-oriented approach.The feeding relationship and the infant’s communication about the experience of feeding may not be nurtured. This article will explain the central role of the preterm infant’s communication in successful cue-based feeding. When the infant is perceived as having meaningful behavior (i.e., communicative intent), the focus changes from a volume-driven to a co-regulated approach, through which the infant guides the caregiver. This is cue-based feeding.

On Boredom and Social Identity

People who feel bored experience that their current situation is meaningless and are motivated to reestablish a sense of meaningfulness. Building on the literature that conceptualizes social identification as source of meaningfulness, the authors tested the hypothesis that boredom increases the valuation of ingroups and devaluation of outgroups. Indeed, state boredom increased the liking of an ingroup name (Study 1), it increased hypothetical jail sentences given to an outgroup offender (Study 2 and Study 3), especially in comparison to an ingroup offender (Study 3), it increased positive evaluations of participants’ ingroups, especially when ingroups were not the most favored ones to begin with (Study 4), and it increased the appreciation of an ingroup symbol, mediated by people’s need to engage in meaningful behavior (Study 5). Several measures ruled out that these results could be explained by other affective states. These novel findings are discussed with respect to boredom, social identity, and existential psychology research.

Human Intention Detection and Activity Support System for Ubiquitous Sensor Room

In this paper, we propose the human behavior detection and activity support environment Vivid Room. Behavior in Vivid Room is detected by numerous sensors built into the room, i.e., magnet sensors for doors and drawers, microswitches for chairs, and ID tags for personnel, and information is collected by a sensor server via an RF tag system and LAN. To recognize meaningful behavior, e.g., studying, eating, and resting, we use ID4-based learning system. We also developed activity support using sound and voice taking into account human behavior in the room. Experimental results confirmed the accuracy of behavior recognition and the quality of support.