A call to arms: time to do cognitive science in Latin America

Previous theoretical reviews about the development of Psychology in Latin America suggest that Latin American psychology has a promising future. This paper empirically checks whether that status remains justified. In so doing, the frequency of programs/research domains in three salient psychological...

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Autores:
Marmolejo-Ramos, Fernando
Tipo de recurso:
Fecha de publicación:
2008
Institución:
Universidad de San Buenaventura
Repositorio:
Repositorio USB
Idioma:
spa
OAI Identifier:
oai:bibliotecadigital.usb.edu.co:10819/6346
Acceso en línea:
http://hdl.handle.net/10819/6346
Palabra clave:
Psychology in Latin America
Clinical psychology
Psychoanalysis
Cognitive psychology
Experimental psychology
Cognitive science
Psicología en Latinoamérica
Psicología cognitiva
Ciencia cognitiva
América Latina
Psicología organizacional
Psicología clínica
Psicoanálisis
Psicología experimental
Rights
License
Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 2.5 Colombia
Description
Summary:Previous theoretical reviews about the development of Psychology in Latin America suggest that Latin American psychology has a promising future. This paper empirically checks whether that status remains justified. In so doing, the frequency of programs/research domains in three salient psychological areas is assessed in Latin America and in two other regions of the world. A chi-square statistic is used to analyse the collected data. Programs/research domains and regions of the world are the independent variables and frequency of programs/research domains per world region is the dependent variable. Results suggest that whereas in Latin America the work on Social/Organizational Psychology is moving within expected parameters, there is a rather strong focus on Clinical/Psychoanalytical Psychology. Results also show that Experimental/Cognitive Psychology is much underestimated. In Asia, however, the focus on all areas of psychology seems to be distributed within expected parameters, whereas Europe outperforms regarding Experimental/Cognitive Psychology research. Potential reasons that contribute to Latin America's situation are discussed and specific solutions are proposed. It is concluded that the scope of Experimental/Cognitive Psychology in Latin America should be broadened into a Cognitive Science research program.