Open AccessA call to arms: time to do cognitive science in Latin America
Author(s) -
Fernando MarmolejoRamos
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
international journal of psychological research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.23
H-Index - 11
eISSN - 2011-7922
pISSN - 2011-2084
DOI - 10.21500/20112084.919
Subject(s) - latin americans , psychology , scope (computer science) , cognition , international psychology , statistic , psychological research , social psychology , cognitive psychology , theoretical psychology , political science , asian psychology , computer science , statistics , mathematics , neuroscience , law , programming language
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 Americas 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.