Eric P. Charles

Retaining students by embedding librarians into undergraduate research experiences

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify an important area for librarians to positively impact student retention. Design/methodology/approach – This programmatic and conceptual piece describes how embedding librarians into the growing enterprise of undergraduate research experiences (UREs) lays a framework for a context in which libraries and librarians directly contribute to the retention of undergraduate students. Findings – Librarians are capable of directly contributing to the retention of students. While their efforts, it is contended, contribute routinely and to the actual retention of students, it is difficult for their efforts to register in the assessment of retention used by administrators. This discrepancy can be solved if librarians play a more explicit (and quantifiable) role in retaining students. Research limitations/implications – UREs are a growing, but generally untapped trend for librarians; however, because UREs generally correlate with academic success and student retention,...

The (Old) New Realism: What Holt Has to Offer for Ecological Psychology

As Ecological Psychology pushes into new areas, success will be made easier by a rediscovery its theoretical history, in particular the “New Realism”, lead in part by E. B. Holt. Three New Realists tenants seem particularly relevant: (1) we experience reality, (2) relations are real, and (3) things are what you see when you see those things. Though the two groups differ in terms of their conception of perception, and what can be perceived, their conceptions are related in very insightful ways. Further, the comparison reemphasizes the extent of unique empirical claims ecological psychologists make, and grounds those claims within a larger framework for psychology as a whole. This makes obvious the need for further work on the mathematics of invariants, the physiological mechanisms of information extraction, and the behaviors of perception.

Seeing minds in behavior: Descriptive mentalism.

One of the core debates in the history of psychology is about the relationship between mind and behavior, or at least between particular mental phenomenon and associated behavioral phenomenon. Descriptive mentalism is the belief that this relationship is primarily descriptive; mental terms describe something about the behavior of the organism in question. This approach offers the potential to clarify many persistent problems in psychological theory and empirical investigation. The logic of descriptive mentalism is here displayed, starting with E. B. Holts elaboration of William Jamess work, and continuing through to the comparatively recent contributions of Nicholas S. Thompson. Understanding descriptive mentalism offers a key to reintegrating insights from behaviorist psychology with mainstream psychology and neuroscience.

Insights from studying prejudice in the context of American atheists.

Our research on non-religion supports the proposed shift toward more interactive models of prejudice. Being nonreligious is easily hideable and, increasingly, of low salience, leading to experiences not easily understood via traditional or contemporary frameworks for studying prejudice and prejudice reduction. This context affords new opportunity to observe reverse forms of interactive prejudice, which can interfere with prejudice reduction.

Psychology: The Empirical Study of Epistemology and Phenomenology

Though psychology is now fractured, it was not always so. Psychology formed as a distinct discipline when researchers tried to use empirical evidence to answer epistemological and phenomenological questions—questions about knowledge and experience. The current subdisciplines of psychology can be understood as putting emphasis on different parts of the answer to those very complicated questions. Even radical behaviorism, long treated as a pariah among approaches to psychology, can be understood as providing insights into nature of mundane, daily acts of knowing and experiencing. This can be seen in the tradition of descriptive mentalism that connects from Charles Sanders Peirce and William James through to the present. This line of thinking has the potential to unify the field, by allowing us to distinguish core from peripheral questions and to understand how the various interests of individual psychologists fit together, in service of an overarching goal.

Comparative Psychology as Unified Psychology: The Case of Curiosity and Other Novelty-Related Behavior

The comparative study of human and nonhuman animals covers the full range of psychological phenomenon, and so comparative psychology already exists as a form of general psychology. The potential of comparative psychology to bring together many aspects of the field of psychology is illustrated through a review of studies exploring curiosity in a variety of species. The issue of an organisms response to novelty was recognized as an important research subject in the era of Darwin. Since that time, considerable empirical and theoretical material on various aspects of behavior associated with new stimuli has been accumulated. This research additionally illustrates the utility of integrative levels theory, which enables a multilevel, comprehensive analysis of behavior. Comparative psychologists played important roles in the history of most of psychologys subdisciplines, and present-day comparative psychologists continue to contribute insights into a startlingly broad range of psychological phenomenon. Further, appreciation for the higher-level research program provided by comparative work provides a larger context that helps ground the study of human psychology.

Ecological psychology and social psychology: continuing discussion.

What form would an ideal merger of ecological and social psychology take? Is that ideal attainable? Many researchers and theorists are working to answer these questions. Charles (2009, 2011a) offered insights from E. B. Holt, one of James J. Gibson’s mentors, who argued that minds—mental kinds, processes, states, etc.—are observable aspects of the environment. Phrasing that in Ecological terms, the minds of other organisms are specified in the structure of ambient energy extended over time and space; they are directly perceivable by a properly attuned organism. Ecological Psychology enhances Holt’s story, by brining to the table a sophisticated theory of direct perception; Holt enhances the Ecological story by brining to the table a sophisticated theory about the nature of minds. The two combine to form the long-sought ideal merger. Thus, I claimed, Ecological Psychology will either rediscover its roots, or go through the trouble of re-creating them. This paper further develops those ideas, by presenting a simpler version of the argument, suggesting easy ways of dismissing that argument, and addressing the concerns expressed by Castro and Lafuente (2011).

A Cross-Sectional Evaluation of Student Achievement Using Standardized and Performance-Based Tests.

Three groups of undergraduates (42 senior graduating psychology majors, 27 first-year premajors taking introductory psychology, and 24 first-year, high-performing nonmajors taking introductory psychology) completed the Psychology Major Field Test (MFT) and a short-answer (SA) essay test on reasoning about core knowledge in psychology. Graduating majors significantly outperformed both first-year groups using raw and covariate-corrected scores (adjusted for group differences in SAT-Verbal and high school grade point average). On the MFT, graduating majors scored above the 50th percentile, whereas high-performing nonmajors and premajors scored in the 25th and 20th percentiles, respectively. On the SA test, graduating majors averaged good-to-excellent quality responses, whereas premajors and high-performing nonmajors averaged only fair-to-good quality responses. Discussion focuses on the design and implementation of value-added, academic program assessments with limited data collection resources.