Title: Re: Touch and aggression
Whoa...after posting my description of Tiffany Field's presentation at APA I got worried that I
might be slandering her by somehow making it seem that she jumped to unfounded conclusions.
As I recall, her statements were careful and did not jump to "speculation and opinion," as Gary
Peterson correctly worried.
Another part of her research, which I neglected to recall earlier (two weeks later, skimpy notes...
you all know the routine) was actually counting the number of aggressive acts on the playground
and the number of times adults had to intervene. She did find that American children were
observed committing more aggressive acts (numbers? oops - will have to watch for her paper),
adults had to intervene more often and, interestingly, there were more adults monitoring these
children than the Parisian children.
And Gary Peterson also points out:
>>Fallacious argument from authority and citation of non-empirical, pop-culture forums? What makes someone an authority? Because she has published in the area? The key here would be whether her published research was scrutinized by scientific peers, has been, or is capable of being replicated by others, and development of further research showing the scientific utility of her studies. Just because she is credentialed, published, or does a nice presentation doesn't make her an authority in my view. I know you know the Boston Globe has a wonderful cadre of scientifically literate cogniscenti and that must mean her work is really solid to have achieved such coverage ;-) NOT
>>...generalizations regarding American youth touching and think she was going beyond her data to imply such things. I don't think her work is really relevant (as far as I can tell here) to such arena, and become skeptical when researchers/presenters leap to such socially relevant, but pop-psych agendas.<<
So please, TIPSpersons, don't jump to too many conclusions about Tiffany Field's research based on
my sketchy reporting.
However...no matter your judgment of research considerations, what are your feelings about the
subject?
Beth Benoit
University of Massachusetts Lowell
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