Technology in Practice (Section 2.31 of the Comprehensive Clinical Psychology: Vol. 2. Professional Issues)

The contemporary practice of psychology requires a prudent balance of traditional and emerging communication methods. Interpersonal interactions in the context of human relationship (e.g., speech, emotional expressions, and nonverbal gestures) have been a vital part of emotional healing throughout many centuries, and research findings in the 1990s underscore the importance of relational factors in effective psychological interventions (Whiston & Sexton, 1993). In addition to the time honored interpersonal communication methods of professional psychology, rapid technological advances have propelled psychologists into another sphere of communication. Today\u27s professional psychologist is increasingly expected to attain mastery in both of these communication methods-the very old and the very new

Curiosity cloning: neural analysis of scientific knowledge

Event-related potentials (ERPs) are indicators of brain activity related to cognitive processes. They can be de- tected from EEG signals and thus constitute an attractive non-invasive option to study cognitive information pro- cessing. The P300 wave is probably the most celebrated example of an event-related potential and it is classically studied in connection to the odd-ball paradigm experi- mental protocol, able to consistently provoke the brain wave. We propose the use of P300 detection to identify the scientific interest in a large set of images and train a computer with machine learning algorithms using the subject’s responses to the stimuli as the training data set. As a first step, we here describe a number of experiments designed to relate the P300 brain wave to the cognitive processes related to placing a scientific judgment on a picture and to study the number of images per seconds that can be processed by such a system

Refined Characterization of Student Perspectives on Quantum Physics

The perspectives of introductory classical physics students can often negatively influence how those students later interpret quantum phenomena when taking an introductory course in modern physics. A detailed exploration of student perspectives on the interpretation of quantum physics is needed, both to characterize student understanding of physics concepts, and to inform how we might teach traditional content. Our previous investigations of student perspectives on quantum physics have indicated they can be highly nuanced, and may vary both within and across contexts. In order to better understand the contextual and often seemingly contradictory stances of students on matters of interpretation, we interviewed 19 students from four introductory modern physics courses taught at the University of Colorado. We find that students have attitudes and opinions that often parallel the stances of expert physicists when arguing for their favored interpretations of quantum mechanics, allowing for more nuanced characterizations of student perspectives in terms of three key interpretive themes. We present a framework for characterizing student perspectives on quantum mechanics, and demonstrate its utility in interpreting the sometimes-contradictory nature of student responses to previous surveys. We further find that students most often vacillate in their responses when what makes intuitive sense to them is not in agreement with what they consider to be a correct response, underscoring the need to distinguish between the personal and the public perspectives of introductory modern physics students.Comment: 24 pages, 31 references, 1 Appendix (5 pages

Application of an expert system shell in the preliminary design of offshore supply vessels

This paper presents the application of expert system programming in preliminary ship design with particular emphasis on offshore supply vessels. Instead of using one of the conventional programming expert system languages, the system is developed using an expert system shell, Leonardo. The design program is written in such a way that it is user friendly as well as giving the user full control over the progress of the design. The algorithms developed in this system are based on extensive research on existing offshore supply vessels