Showing papers in "American Psychologist in 1985"

How many memory systems are there

Abstract: Memory is made up of a number of interrelated systems, organized structures of operating components consisting of neural substrates and their behavioral and cognitive correlates. A ternary clas- sificatory scheme of memory is proposed in which procedural, semantic, and episodic memory constitute a "monohierarchical" arrangement: Episodic memory is a specialized subsystem of semantic memory, and semantic memory is a specialized subsystem of procedural memory. The three memory systems differ from one another in a number of ways, including the kind of consciousness that characterizes their operations. The ternary scheme overlaps with di- chotomies and trichotomies of memory proposed by others. Evidence for multiple systems is derived from many sources. Illustrative data are provided by ex- periments in which direct priming effects are found to be both functionally and stochastically independent of recognition memory. Solving puzzles in science has much in common with solving puzzles for amusement, but the two differ in important respects. Consider, for instance, the jigsaw puzzle that scientific activity frequently imitates. The everyday version of the puzzle is determinate: It consists of a target picture and jigsaw pieces that, when properly assembled, are guaranteed to match the picture. Scientific puzzles are indeter- minate: The number of pieces required to complete a picture is unpredictable; a particular piece may fit many pictures or none; it may fit only one picture, but the picture itself may be unknown; or the hypothetical picture may be imagined, but its com- ponent pieces may remain undiscovered. This article is about a current puzzle in the science of memory. It entails an imaginary picture and a search for pieces that fit it. The picture, or the hypothesis, depicts memory as consisting of a number of systems, each system serving somewhat different purposes and operating according to some- what different principles. Together they form the marvelous capacity that we call by the single name of memory, the capacity that permits organisms to benefit from their past experiences. Such a picture is at variance with conventional wisdom that holds memory to be essentially a single system, the idea that "memory is memory." The article consists of three main sections. In the first, 1 present some pretheoretical reasons for hypothesizing the existence of multiple memory systems and briefly discuss the concept of memory system. In the second, I describe a ternary classifi- catory scheme of memory--consisting of procedural, semantic, and episodic memory--and briefly com- pare this scheme with those proposed by others. In the third, I discuss the nature and logic of evidence for multiple systems and describe some experiments that have yielded data revealing independent effects of one and the same act of learning, effects seemingly at variance with the idea of a single system. I answer the question posed in the title of the article in the short concluding section.

Response expectancy as a determinant of experience and behavior.

Abstract: Response expectancies, defined as ex- pectancies of the occurrence of nonvolitional responses, have generally been ignored in theories of learning. Research on placebos, hypnosis, and fear reduction indicates that response expectancies generate corre- sponding subjective experiences. In many cases, the genuineness of these self-reported effects has been substantiated by corresponding changes in behavior and physiological function. The means by which re- sponse expectancies affect experience, physiology, and behavior are hypothesized to vary as a function of re- sponse mode. The generation of changes in subjective experience by corresponding response expectancies is hypothesized to be a basic psychological mechanism. Physiological effects are accounted for by the mind- body identity assumption that is common to all non- dualist philosophies of psychology. The effects of re- sponse expectancies on volitional behavior are due to the reinforcing properties of many nonvolitional re- sponses. Classical conditioning appears to be one method by which response expectancies are acquired, but response expectancy effects that are inconsistent with a conditioning hypothesis are also documented.

How motives, skills, and values determine what people do.

Abstract: According to general behavior theory, motives, probability of success (or skill), and incentive value are three independent organismic determinants of excitatory potential (or the impulse to act) that combine with situational opportunity to determine response strength or response probability. Much con- fusion has been introduced into human motivation theory by investigators 'failure to measure separately motive strength (from coding operant thought) and incentive value (from value attitude questionnaires) and by their misuse of the term motivation. Moti- vation properly refers to an aroused motive, but they have broadened it to mean excitatory potential, which is determined partly by the aroused motive and partly by probability of success, incentive value, and other variables. Research is reviewed that dem- onstrates the importance of motivation, incentive value, and probability of success, independently mea- sured, for predicting achievement performance and the frequency with which affiliation acts are per- formed. Both theory and experiment lead to the conclusions that motive strength, particularly in re- lation to the strength of other motives in the person, is the more important determinant of operant act frequency," that incentive value is the more important determinant of cognitively based choices," that motive strength and probability of success combine multi- plicatively to predict response strength or probability," and that all determinants, plus this last interaction, together account for over 75% of the variation in operants like affiliative act frequency. The remainder of the variation is readily attributable to environ- mental opportunities.

Hypochondriasis, neuroticism, and aging. When are somatic complaints unfounded?

Abstract: An analysis of the relation between subjective and objective health provides the framework for an evaluation of the view that medical complaints among the elderly are often unfounded. Naive realist, psychiatric-categoricaL and dimensional models of somatic concern are compared, and it is argued that individuals differ along a continuum from persistent underreporting of symptoms to frank hypochondriasis. Data are presented showing that, even among psy- chiatrically normal individuals, the personality di- mension of neuroticism is systematically related to the number of medical symptoms reported and that neuroticism-related complaints are best viewed as exaggerations of bodily concerns rather than as signs of organic disease. Psychometric data purporting to show that hypochondriasis increases in the elderly are confounded by real health changes with age, and evidence from longitudinal studies shows that where health complaints increase, they probably reflect veridical reports of changing health status. These conclusions have implications for health research, medical diagnosis, and public policy and suggest that the stereotype of old men and women as hypo- chondriacs is unfounded.

Rationality in psychological research: The good-enough principle.

Abstract: " This article reexamines a number of methodological and procedural issues raised by Meehl (1967, 1978) that seem to question the rationality of psychological inquiry. The first issue concerns the asymmetry in theory testing between psychology and physics and the resulting paradox that, because the psychological null hypothesis is always false, increases in precision in psychology always lead to weaker tests of a theory, whereas the converse is true in physics. The second issue, related to the first, regards the slow progress observed in psychological research and the seeming unwillingness of social scientists to take seriously the Popperian requirements for intellectual honesty. We propose a good-enough principle to resolve Meehl's methodological paradox and appeal to a more powerful reconstruction of science developed by Lakatos (1978a, 1978b) to account for the actual practice of psychological researchers. From time to time every research discipline must reevaluate its method for generating and certifying knowledge. The actual practice of working scientists in a discipline must continually be subjected to severe criticism and be held accountable to standards of intellectual honesty, standards that are themselves revised in light of critical appraisal (Lakatos, 1978a). If, on a metatheoretical level, scientific methodology cannot be defended on rational grounds, then metatheory must be reconstructed so as to make science rationally justifiable. The history of science is replete with numerous such reconstructions, from the portrayal of science as being inductive and justificationist, to the more recent reconstructions favored by (naive and sophisticated) methodological falsificationists, such as Popper (1959), Lakatos (1978a), and Zahar (1973). In the last two decades psychology, too, has been subjected to criticism for its research methodology. Of increasing concern is empirical psychology's use of inferential hypothesis-testing techniques and the way in which the information derived from these procedures is used to help us make decisions about the theories under test (e.g., Bakan, 1966; Lykken, 1968; Rozeboom, 1960). In two penetrating essays, Meehl (1967, 1978) has cogently and effectively faulted the use of the traditional null-hypothesis significance test in psychological research. According to Meehl (1978, p. 817), "the almost universal reliance on merely refuting the null hypothesis as the standard method for corroborating substantive theories [in psychology] is a terrible mistake, is basically unsound, poor scientific strategy, and one of the worst things that ever happened in the history of psychology." He maintained that it leads to a methodological paradox when compared to theory testing in physics. In addition, Meehl (1978) pointed to the apparently slow progress in psychological research and the deleterious effect that null-hypothesis testing has had on the detection of progress in the accumulation of psychological knowledge. The cumulative effect of this criticism is to do nothing less than call into question the rational character of our empirical inquiries. As yet there has been no attempt to deal with the problems raised by Meehl by reconstructing the actual practice of psychologists into a logically defensible form. This is the purpose of the present article. The two articles by Meehl seem to deal with two disparate issues--null-hypothesis testing and slow progress. Both issues, however, are linked in the methodological falsificationist reconstruction of science to the necessity for scientists to agree on what experimental outcomes are to be considered as disconfirming instances. We will argue that the methodological paradox can be ameliorated with the help of a "good-enough" principle, to be proposed here, so that hypothesis testing in psychology is not rationally disadvantaged when compared to physics. We will also account for the apparent slow progress in psychological research, and we will take issue with certain (though not all) claims made by Meehl (1978) in this regard. Both the methodological and the progress issues will be resolved by an appeal to the (sophisticated) methodological falsificationist reconstruction of science developed by Lakatos (1978a), an approach with which Meehl is familiar but one he did not apply to psychology in his articles. January 1985 • American Psychologist Copyright 1985 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0003-066X/85/$00.75 Vol. 40, No. 1, 73-83 73 Meehl's Asymmetry Argument Let us develop Meehl's argument. It is his contention that improved measurement precision has widely different effects in psychology and physics on the success of a theory in overcoming an "observational hurdle." Perfect precision in the behavioral sciences provides an easier hurdle for theories, whereas such accuracy in physics makes it much more difficult for a theory to survive. According to the Popperian reconstruction of science (Popper, 1959), scientific theories must be continually subjected to severe tests. But if the social sciences are immanently incapable of generating such tests, if they cannot expose their theories to the strongest possible threat of refutation, even with ever-increasing measurement precision, then their claim to scientific status might reasonably be questioned. Further, according to this view of research in the social sciences, there can be no question of scientific progress based on the rational consideration of experimental outcomes. Instead, progress is more a matter of psychological conversion (Kuhn, 1962). Let us look more closely at the standard practice in psychology. On the basis of some theory T we derive the conclusion that a parameter 6 will differ for two populations. In order to examine this conclusion, we can set up a point-null hypothesis, Ho: = 0, and test this hypothesis against the predicted outcome, H~: 6 4: 0. However, it has also been recognized (Kaiser, 1960; Kimmel, 1957) that another question of interest is whether the difference is in a certain direction, and so we could instead test the directional null hypothesis, I-I~: 6 ~ 0, against the directional alternative, H*: ~ > 0. In such tests, we can make two types of errors. The Type I error would lead to rejecting Ho or H~ when they are indeed true, whereas the Type II error involves not rejecting Ho or HJ when they are false. The conventional methodology sets the Type I (or alpha) error rate at 5% and seeks to reduce the frequency of Type II errors. Such a reduction in the Type II error rate can be achieved by improving the logical structure of the experiment, reducing measurement errors, or increasing sample size. Meehl pointed out that in the behavioral sciences, because of the large number of factors affecting variables, we would never expect two populations to have literally equal means. Hence, he concluded that An earlier version of this article was read at the 1983 meeting of the American Educational Research Association. The authors are grateful to Robbie Case, Joel R. Lcvin, and Leonard Marascuilo for reading earlier drafts, and to Crescent L. Kringle for her help with the manuscript. Requests for reprints should be sent to Ronald C. Serlin, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706. the point-null hypothesis is always false. With infinite precision, we would always reject Ho. This is perhaps one reason to prefer the directional null hypothesis H~. But Meehl then conducted a thought experiment in which the direction predicted by T was assigned at random. In such an experiment, T provides no logical connection to the predicted direction and so is totally without merit. Because H0 is always false, the two populations will always differ, but because the direction in H~ is assigned at random, with infinite precision we will reject HJ half of the time. Hence, Meehl concluded "that the effect of increased p r e c i s i o n . . , is to yield a probability approaching 1/2 of corroborating our substantive theory by a significance test, even i f the theory is totally without merit" (Meehl, 1967, p. 111, emphasis in original). Meehl contrasted this state of affairs with that in physics, wherein the usual situation involves the prediction of a point value. That which corresponds to the point-null hypothesis is the value flowing as a consequence of a substantive theory T. An increase in statistical power in physics has the effect of stiffening the experimental hurdle by "'decreasing the prior probability of a successful experimental outcome if the theory lacks verisimilitude, that is, precisely the reverse of the situation obtaining in the social sciences" (Meehl, 1967, p. 113). With infinite precision, and if the theory has no merit, the logical probability of it surviving such a test in physics is negligible; in the social sciences, this logical probability for H~ is one half. Perhaps another way of describing the asymmetry in hypothesis testing between psychology and physics is to note that, in psychology, the point-null hypothesis is not what is derived from a substantive theory. Rather, it is a "straw-man" competitor whose rejection we interpret as increasing the plausibility of T. In physics, on the other hand, theories that entail point-null statistical hypotheses are the very ones physicists take seriously and hope to confirm. If 0 is a predicted outcome of interest, and 0 is its logical complement, then the depiction of null and alternative statistical hypotheses in the two disciplines can be written as follows:

The Evolution of Mental Metaphors in Psychology. A 90-Year Retrospective

Abstract: It seems plausible that the conception of the mind has evolved over the first hundred years ofpsychology in America . In this research, we studied this evolution by tracing changes in the kinds of metaphors used by psychologists to describe mental phenomena. A corpus ofmetaphors from 1894 to the present was collected and examined . The corpus consisted ofall metaphors for mental phenomena used in the first issue ofPsychological Review in each decade, beginning with the inception ofthe journal in 1894 and continuing with 1905, 1915, and so on through 1975 . These nine issues yielded 265 mental metaphors, which were categorized ac- cording to the type of analogical domain from which the comparison was drawn . The chief finding was that the nature ofthe mental metaphors . changed over time . Spatial meta- phors and animate-being metaphors predominated in the early stages, then declined in favor of systems metaphors, often taken from mathematics and the physical sciences . A secondary finding was that the numbers of mental metaphors varied . Metaphors for mental phenomena were more prevalent in the early and late stages of the corpus than in the middle stages (1935 to 1955) . These patterns are interpreted in terms of conceptual evolution in psychologists' models of the mind . In this article we examine historical changes in the metaphors used by American psychologists to de- scribe mental processes . Our aim is to use changes in metaphoric language to trace changes in the models of the mind that psychologists have held . It is by now accepted that researchers bring to their field of study a theoretical framework-which may be more or less explicitly conscious-in terms of which they construe the phenomena they observe (Koestler, 1964) . Moreover, these frameworks change

In the beginning was the "name".

Abstract: In emphasizing the ability to generate sentences as a uniquely human skill, psycholinguists have overlooked an equally important and perhaps more fundamental skill the ability to refer with names. The same oversight can be attributed to the first generation of projects devoted to teaching an ape to use a language. In the absence of referential naming, it is doubtful that syntax would have developed in human languages. Accordingly, students of human language, as well as those researchers who seek to establish linguistic skills in nonhuman subjects, for example, Savage-Rumbaugh and her associates, should reap handsome dividends by continuing their efforts to examine critically the ontogeny of naming. At least as much as any other ability, the ability to name has provided a unique impetus to the evolution of human language. Recent attempts to teach apes basic features of human languages and the reactions to such efforts constitute an unusual chapter in the history of psychology. Few, if any, research programs that have generated such widespread interest have had to endure a subsequent reaction that has bordered on benign neglect. The reasons for this abrupt succession of attitudes are numerous and complex. It is, however, not too much of an oversimplification to observe that a major factor was the emphasis that these studies placed on demonstrating grammatical competence in apes. That emphasis, which reflected the strong focus o f psycholinguists during the 1960s and 1970s on the grammatical competence of children, stimulated ape language projects to set goals for themselves that were unrealistically ambitious. Appraisals of these projects focused almost exclusively on the extent to which they succeeded in training an ape to acquire certain rudimentary grammatical rules. (See Mounin, 1976, and Terrace, 1979a, for exceptions.) As a result, some essential nongrammatical aspects of language use by apes were neglected, both by the researchers who conducted those projects and by their critics. The current negative attitude toward research on an ape's linguistic ability is unfortunate if for no other reason than that attention may be diverted from important aspects of an ape's ability to communicate symbolically, however primitive that ability may be. Crucial to our understanding of human language is a clear specification of the differences (and similarities) that exist between human and nonhuman use of symbols. In a later section of this article, I will discuss some recent studies that pose more productive comparisons of human and pongid linguistic competence than those posed by earlier studies. Before turning to that work, I will try to make clear why and how earlier research on language learning by apes went awry. (See Ristau & Robbins, 1982, for a thorough summary of the literature on attempts to teach language to apes.) Initial Goals and Findings of Studies of Ape Language Though differing in details of methodology and in the explicitness of their initial goals, the independent projects started by the Gardners (1969, 1975a, 1975b) and by Premack ( 1970, 1971) shared a common point of departure. Both sought to reverse earlier failures to teach chimpanzees to communicate with spoken words by shifting from a vocal to a visual medium of communication. Given Lieberman's observation that the human and chimpanzee vocal apparatuses differ significantly (Lieberman, 1968, 1975), it seemed reasonable to appeal to a chimpanzee's inability to articulate human phones as an explanation of various failures to teach home-reared infant chimpanzees to speak English or Russian (Hayes, 1951; Hayes & Hayes, 1951; Kellogg & Kellogg, 1933/1967; Khouts, 1935). The Gardners sought to reverse those failures by teaching a chimpanzee to use American Sign Language (ASL), a natural language used by thousands of deaf Americans. ASL was the main medium of communication between Washoe (an infant female chimpanzee) and her caretakers and between the caretakers themselves while in Washoe's presence. Premack, who started an independent project at roughly the same time the Gardners began theirs, taught the principal subject of his study (a juvenile female chimpanzee named Sarah) to use an artificial visual language consisting of plastic chips of different colors and shapes. Rather than waiting for language to emerge spontaneously, as one might with a child or with a home-reared chimpanzee, Premack devised specific training procedures for teaching Sarah various \"atomic\" components of language. Researchers studying ape language accepted as a given the prevailing working assumption of psycholinguists that human language makes use of two levels September 1985 • American Psychologist Copyright 1985 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0003-066X/85/$00.75 Vol. 40, No. 9, 1011-1028 1011 of structure: the word and the sentence. In contrast to the fixed character of various forms of animal communicat ion (e.g., bird songs that assert the presence of food or a readiness to mate or bee \"dances\" that specify the location of a food source with respect to the hive), the meaning of a word is arbitrary. One must keep in mind, however, that even though apes can learn substantial vocabularies of arbitrary symbols, there is no a priori reason to regard such accomplishments as evidence of human linguistic competence. After all, dogs, rats, horses, and other animals can learn to produce arbitrary \"words\" to obtain spe-

Getting out of our conceptual ruts: Strategies for expanding conceptual frameworks.

Abstract: The human tendency to think recurring thoughts limits our theories and research. This article presents four sets of strategies that may be useful for generating new perspectives on familiar research problems: playing with ideas, considering contexts, probing and tinkering with assumptions, and clarifying and systematizing the conceptual frame. In 1879, Sir Francis Galton published an article describing a leisurely stroll he took in the interests of science--specifically to explore how the mind works. In the article, Galton told of walking down a London street and scrutinizing every object that came into his view. He recorded the first thought or two that occurred to him as he focused on each of about 300 objects. Galton reported that this method produced a great variety of associations, including memories of events that had occurred years earlier. After several days, Galton repeated the walk and the recording procedure and again found a variety of associations. He also discovered a great deal of repetition or overlap in his thoughts on the two occasions. Galton likened his thoughts to actors in theater processions in which the players march off one side of the stage and reappear on the other. This recurrence of ideas piqued Galton's curiosity. He next devised some word association tasks that led him to the same conclusion as his walks, namely, that "the roadways of our minds are worn into very deep ruts" (Galton, 1879, cited by Crovitz, 1970, p. 35). Although Galton's methods may have been faulty by present standards, he seems to have discovered a stable psychological principle: the recurrence of ideas (Crovitz, 1970). My comments here assume that Galton was rightwthat our thoughts flow in a limited number of channels and that our research efforts are thereby constrained. This article sketches a variety of approaches for stimulating new insights on familiar research problems. Four sets of strategies, phrased as advice to researchers, are discussed as follows: 1. Researchers should play with ideas through a process of selecting and applying metaphors, representing ideas graphically, changing the scale, and attending to process. 2. Researchers should consider contexts. They can place specific problems in a larger domain, make comparisons outside the problem domain, examine processes in the settings in which they naturally occur, consider the practical implications of research, and probe library resources. 3. It is important for researchers to probe and tinker with assumptions through such techniques as exposing hidden assumptions, making the opposite assumption, and simultaneously trusting and doubting the same assumption. 4. Finally, it is vital that researchers clarify and systematize their conceptual frameworks. They should scrutinize the meanings of key concepts, specify relationships among concepts, and write a concept paper. The need for psychologists to attend to conceptual framing processes has been widely acknowledged (see, for example, Brinberg & McGrath, 1985; Campbell, Daft, & Hulin, 1982; Caplan & Nelson, 1973; Gergen, 1978, 1982; Jones, 1983; McGuire, 1973, in press; Tyler, 1983; Wachtel, 1980; Weick, 1979). Several caveats are in order before we proceed: 1. Some readers may already be familiar with certain strategies and find them obvious. I have tried to include a diversity of heuristics in the hope that even seasoned investigators will find something of value. 2. Given the goal of presenting a range of strategies, only limited space is available for describing and illustrating each procedure. There is a risk that important and complex topics have been oversimplified-possibly even trivialized. I strongly recommend further reading on any strategy that seems promising; references are provided in the text. 3. These strategies are offered as heuristics. Most have not been systematically evaluated, although they have been useful to the scholars who proposed them and to others who have used them. 4. The substantial and important psychological literature on problem solving and critical and creative thinking has not been reviewed or even cited here. Much of that research addresses problems for which there are consensual solutions derived from mathematical or other logical systems. And some of that 1094 October 1985 • American Psychologist Copyright 1985 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 00034)66X/85/$00.75 Vol. 40, No. 10, 1094-1103 literature presumes that thinking habits developed from work on abstract puzzles or exercises are readily transferable to a wide range of other problems. The present concern is how to generate useful ideas whose "accuracy" cannot immediately be assessed. The following strategies draw upon, and in some cases expand, the researcher's existing knowledge structures (cf. Glaser, 1984). They are directly applicable to research problems in all areas of psychology.

Subliminal messages. Between the devil and the media.

Abstract: We describe our entanglement in the controversial public issue of subliminal messages in advertising and popular music in order to provide a report of our research unencumbered by the misrep-resentations in the various media reports of this work. A distinction is drawn between the allegedpresence of these messages in the media concerned and the impact they are purported to have upon the listener or viewer. Our research is concerned primarily with the latter: Is there any evidence to warrant assertions that such messages affect our behavior? Across a wide variety of tasks, we were unable to find any evidence to support such a claim. Secondarily, we present evidence to suggest that the apparent presence of backward messages in popular music is a function more of active construction on the part of the perceiver than of the existence of the messages themselves. Finally, we describe our experiences with the public media's handling of these issues. In the fall of 1982 we were contacted by a local radio announcer for information about a phenomenon he referred to as "backmasking." However, his question did not concern the well-studied phenomenon of visual persistence (see DiLollo, 1980; Sakitt, 1976); the announcer wanted to know what were the effects on a listener of messages that allegedly had been recorded backward into popular rock music. He informed us that when such recordings are played in the normal, forward fashion, the messages are not consciously perceived; however, played backward, intelligible messages can be heard. His concern was not that listeners would play their records backward and thereby "hear" the messages but rather that the messages would be perceived unconsciously by the listener when the recording was played forward. He informed us that those who advocated this belief also claimed that the messages had an evil content and that, upon hearing them, the youthful listener was led down a path of loose morality and behavioral aberration. Depending upon the degree of religious belief held by the proponents of these views, the backward messages are, at the least, thought to have been technologically engineered by the rock groups themselves or, at the worst, inserted by Satan. The announcer's and subsequently our interest in backmasking arose from the arrival in our city of Pastor Gary Greenwald of the Eagle's Nest Fellowship in California; Greenwald is a well-publicized proponent of these views (Tisdall, 1983). While in our city, Greenwald held a two-day …

Psychology and Anomalous Observations : The Question of ESP in Dreams

Abstract: Books by psychologists purporting to offer critical reviews of research in parapsychology do not use the scientific standards of discourse prevalent in psychology. Experiments at Maimonides Medical Center on possible extrasensory perception (ESP) in dreams are used to illustrate this point. The experiments have received little or no mention in some reviews to which they are clearly pertinent. In others, they have been so severely distorted as to give an entirely erroneous impression of how they were conducted. Insofar as psychologists are guided by these reviews, they are prevented from gaining accurate information about research that, as surveys show, would be of wide interest to psychologists as well as to others. In recent years, evidence has been accumulating for the occurrence of sfich anomalies as telepathy and psychokinesis, but the evidence is not totally convincing. The evidence has come largely from experiments by psychologists who have devoted their careers mainly to studying these anomalies, but members of other disciplines, including engineering and physics, have also taken part. Some psychologists not primarily concerned with parapsychology have taken time out from other professional concerns to explore such anomalies for themselves. Of these, some have joined in the experimentation (e.g., Crandall & Hite, 1983; Lowry, 1981; Radin, 1982). Some have critically reviewed portions of the evidence (e.g., Akers, 1984; Hyman, 1985). Some, doubting that the phenomena could be real, have explored nonrational processes that might encourage belief in their reality (e.g., Ayeroff & Abelson, 1976). Still others, considering the evidence substantial enough to justify a constructive theoretical effort, have struggled to relate the apparent anomalies to better established knowledge in a way that will render them less anomalous (e.g., Irwin, 1979) or not anomalous at all (e.g., Blackmore, 1984). These psychologists differ widely in their surmise about whether the apparent anomalies in question will eventually be judged real or illusory; but they appear to agree that the evidence to date warrants serious consideration. Serious consideration of apparent anomalies seems an essential part of the procedures of science, regardless of whether it leads to an understanding of new discoveries or to an understanding of how persuasive illusions arise. Apparent anomalies--just like the more numerous observations that are not anoma lous-can receive appropriate attention only as they become accurately known to the scientists to whose work they are relevant. Much parapsychological research is barred from being seriously considered because it is either neglected or misrepresented in writings by some psychologists--among them, some who have placed themselves in a prime position to mediate interaction between parapsychological research and the general body of psychological knowledge. In this article, I illustrate this important general point with a particular case, that of experimental research on possible ESP in dreams. It is a case of especially great interest but is not unrepresentative of how psychological publications have treated similar anomalies. The Maimonides Research The experimental evidence suggesting that dreams may actually be influenced by ESP comes almost entirely from a research program carried out at the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York. Among scientists active in parapsychology, this program is widely known and greatly respected. It has had a major indirect influence on the recent course of parapsychological research, although the great expense of dream-laboratory work has prevented it from being a direct model. None of the Maimonides research was published in the journals that are the conventional media for psychology. (The only possible exception is that a summary of one study [Honorton, Krippner, & Ullman, 1972] appeared in convention proceedings of the American Psychological Association.) Much of it was published in the specialized journals of parapsychology. The rest was published in psychiatric or other medical journals, where it would not be noticed by many psychologists. Most of it was summarized in popularized form in a book (Ullman, Krippner, & Vaughan, 1973) in which two of the researchers were joined by a popular writer whose own writings are clearly not in the scientific tradition, and the book departs from the pattern of scientific reporting that characterizes the original research reports. November 1985 • American Psychologist Copyright 1985 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0003-066X/85/$00.75 Vol. 40, No. 11, 1219-123