On Fri, 01 Sep 2017 08:42:39 -0700, Christopher Green wrote:
Many good points, Dap! You even have these kinds of differences
among different subfields of psychology, not just different
nationalities.
For instance, every historian of psychology knows that William James
was highly active in the spiritualist movement from the 1880s until
his death, but many non-historian psychologists don't know it. So,
I would be unlikely to cite this fact if I were writing for a history
of
psychology journal.
Chris, what you say above is somewhat confusing. Are you saying:
(1) You would not mention that Williams James was into spiritualism in
a history of psychology article,
or
(2) If you mention that William James was into spiritualism in a history
of psychology article, you would not cite a specific source or provide a
reference.
Point (1) is puzzling because you are stating this as general rule but
one has to make the inference that relevance and context would determine
whether or not you state that James was into spiritualism. Moreover,
it is understandable if you are making a minor point or offhand comment
and do not cite a source and do not provide a reference, but surely
you would cite a source if you are making a substantial point, right?
This leads to point (2). Again, if you are making a minor statement
about James's involvement in spiritualism, it is understandable that
you might not cite a source but students who read your article and
are surprised about James involvement in spiritualism would wonder
what the basis is for this statement. I guess this comes down to who
one thinks is one's audience -- only historians of psychology or a
much larger readership of both professional psychologists, professionals
in other areas, and students. I understand that one could limit how
one writes so that one writes only for the group that one has the
greatest
"common ground" (i.e., expert to expert presentation instead of
expert to novice presentation) but I am then reminded of my experiences
reading articles in mathematics and math statistics journals where
one might come across a statement like the following:
"It is well-known that the basis of the Cholesky decomposition of a
matrix
is most efficient and ...."
The old joke, of course, is that one uses "it is well-known" when one
is too lazy to find a reference that actually supports the assertion.
Not that I am saying Chris is guilty of such a thing or even other
psychologists -- it's a lot easier to get away with such a dodge in
math. ;-)
So, I guess it comes down to how narrow or how broad the
audience is that one is presently writing for. However, one should
keep in mind that what is "common knowledge" today may not be
so in the future, for example:
"It is well known that Underwood and colleagues have shown that
a single store model of memory is most consistent with the results
of memory studies and that proactive interference is the primary
mechanism of forgetting."
In the 1950s and early 1960s, most experimental psychologists
and even "ordinary" psychologists ;-) would be familiar with this
perspective, primarily because of the following article:
Underwood, B. J. (1957). Interference and forgetting.
Psychological review, 64(1), 49.
And the devastating demonstration that the Brown-Peterson memory
task's results could be explained purely by proactive interference and
there was no need to assume decay as a process of forgetting (see:
Keppel, G., & Underwood, B. J. (1962). Proactive inhibition in
short-term retention of single items. Journal of verbal learning
and verbal behavior, 1(3), 153-161.
I won't bother citing sources for the well-know research by Wickens
with the Release from PI procedure that demonstrated that semantic
processing occurs in short-term memory, supporting the theoretical
position that a duplex model of memory was unnecessary and a
single store model was to be preferred. ;-)
I might do so, however, if I were writing for a generalist journal or
an experimental journal. The issue isn't so much how I came to know
it as it is whether my readers are likely to be aware of it as part of
their general knowledge.
I think you mix up two different issues in the statements above.
First, your concern with common ground (i.e., shared knowledge
between writer and reader) is appropriate but the problem is
that you will never really know what your reader knows, either now
or in the future. What is general knowledge today may be forgotten
a decade from now. Similarly, what is specialized knowledge today
may become general in the future -- consider the 1959 paper by
Deese that Roddy Roediger & Kathleen McDermott made famous
with false memory inducement procedure (the DRM procedure).
Second, I think it is important to know what source a writer is
relying upon for the assertions he/she is making. Again, the
classic example is Freud's iceberg. People who have presented
this metaphor cite sources that do not support their claim. Indeed,
we still don't know who originally claimed that the mind is either
7/10s or 9/10s unconscious. Why? Was it considered common
knowledge, hence, there was no need to cite a source? And such
an attitude leaves us where now?
When in doubt, cite a source and make sure it's the correct one. ;-)
-Mike Palij
New York University
[email protected]
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