research – PsyPhi

Network and doctoral course startup at Lund University for Dynamic Systems Theory and Ecological Psychology

TL/DR; I have officially started a research network for the proliferation of everything Dynamic Systems Theory and Ecological Psychology, along with the start of my brand new doctoral course ‘The Psychology in Dynamic and Ecological Systems’.

Outside of the doctoral programs at University of Connecticut and Cincinnati, there are research groups and individual researchers that work in Ecological Psychology and Dynamic Systems Theory (that is, the combination, also referred to as Ecological Dynamics). And while Dynamic Systems Theory is well known in its fields of origin, it is not too common still in Psychology. I personally have often felt quite isolated being at a university where it still is uncommon. Therefore, I decided to start this network, to collect international and interdisciplinary researchers and create seminars, presentations, and guest-lectures on the topic of EP and/or DST. If this sounds like something for you, then don’t hesitate to contact me or read more about the network Lund University Network for Dynamic Systems Theory and Ecological Psychology (LUNDSTEP) here.

In other good news, I’ve also put together an introductory doctoral course to the philosophy, psychological theory, research methods, and non-linear/dynamic analyses that started today. If anyone has any interest in this then we do take late signups and I can organize Teams for remote students. Also find more information on the Department of Psychology’s website here.

Contrasting Ecological and Computational Strategy in a Virtual Interception Task 1/5

Well, it looks like my master thesis will be admitted and graded. They brought in an extra examiner on my thesis since its philosophically heavy, so it’ll take a few more days to get it graded. When it is, I am going to correct some errors and format it properly (as luck had it, I was following a previous APA-style guideline, it was not appreciated). And I figured, I’ll post the whole thing here in three chunks. The arguments against representationalism, the basic definitions of ecological psychology and radical embodied cognitive science, and lastly, my research paper.

As I have been invited to speak at the Social Sciences Master Graduation Ceremony, I have that to focus on, as well as, wait for critique from my second examiner. Roughly, I’ll be able to post my stuff a few days after the 11th.

Ecological Strategy Favoured Over Computational

I am in the process of writing up my master thesis experiment but can reveal that in this specific task, participants use ecological strategy 53% of trials, computational strategy 26%, a second ecological type strategy 13% and other/non-distinguishable 8%. Also, accuracy is higher when using ecological strategy (63%) compared to computational (32%) and the other two. Inter-rater reliability ~.85. Exciting! It may support the ideas that screen-based research can indeed yield empirical results in Ecological Psychology (and add to that, in favour of Ecological Psychology). I have however yet to analyze the data statistically, to be continued!