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1868What can Recent Replication Failures tell us about the Theoretical Commitments of Psychology?Theory and Psychology 24 326-338. 2014.I suggest that the recent, highly visible, and often heated debate over failures to replicate the results in the social sciences reveals more than the need for greater attention to the pragmatics and value of empirical falsification. It also is a symptom of a serious issue -- the underdeveloped state of theory in many areas of psychology. While I focus on the phenomenon of “social priming” -- since it figures centrally in current debate -- it is not the only area of psychological inquiry to whic…Read more
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3396The complex act of projecting oneself into the futureWIREs Cognitive Science 4 63-79. 2013.Research on future-oriented mental time travel (FMTT) is highly active yet somewhat unruly. I believe this is due, in large part, to the complexity of both the tasks used to test FMTT and the concepts involved. Extraordinary care is a necessity when grappling with such complex and perplexing metaphysical constructs as self and time and their co-instantiation in memory. In this review, I first discuss the relation between future mental time travel and types of memory (episodic and semantic). …Read more
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474Klein and Loftus's model of trait self-knowledge: The importance of familiarizing oneself with the foundational research prior to reading about its neuropsychological applicationsFrontiers in Human Neuroscience 7 1-3. 2013.In this article I want to alert investigators who are familiar only with our neuropsychological investigations of self-knowledge to our earlier work on model construction. A familiarity with this foundational research can help avert concerns and issues likely to arise if one is aware only of neuropsychological extensions of our work.
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676The Curious Case of the Self-Refuting Straw Man: Trafimow and Earp’s Response to Klein (2014)Theory and Psychology 26. 2016.In their critique of Klein (2014a), Trafimow and Earp present two theses. First, they argue that, contra Klein, a well-specified theory is not a necessary condition for successful replication. Second, they contend that even when there is a well-specified theory, replication depends more on auxiliary assumptions than on theory proper. I take issue with both claims, arguing that (a) their first thesis confuses a material conditional (what I said) with a modal claim (T&E’s misreading of what I s…Read more
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4201Decisions and the Evolution of Memory: Multiple Systems, Multiple FunctionsPsychological Review 109 306-329. 2002.Memory evolved to supply useful, timely information to the organism’s decision-making systems. Therefore, decision rules, multiple memory systems, and the search engines that link them should have coevolved to mesh in a coadapted, functionally interlocking way. This adaptationist perspective suggested the scope hypothesis: When a generalization is retrieved from semantic memory, episodic memories that are inconsistent with it should be retrieved in tandem to place boundary conditions on the scop…Read more
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578Images and Constructs: Can the Neural Correlates of Self be revealed through Radiological Analysis?International Journal of Psychological Research 6 117-132. 2013.In this paper I argue that radiological attempts to elucidate the properties of self -- an endeavor currently popular in the social neurosciences -- are fraught with conceptual difficulties. I first discuss several philosophical criteria that increase the chances we are posing the “right” questions to nature. I then discuss whether these criteria are met when empirical efforts are directed at one of the central constructs in the social sciences – the human self. In particular, I consider whet…Read more
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