Psychology Research

I’ve lived for almost eight years in Ecuador, and directed a research group at Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ). Originally known as the Quito Brain and Behavior Lab, it more recently developed into the USFQ Institute of Neurosciences. Over that time, I’ve collaborated with many academics and clinicians in Ecuador and together we have conducted several research studies, resulting in lots of publications in journals. In fact, we have been the most productive psychology research group in the country. Here is a summary of that research, and an opportunity for me to acknowledge the collaborators, students and assistants. Although I wrote all the papers, all the data was collected by the research assistants and collaborators, and without them there wouldn’t have been a lab, or any research conducted.

Street-children, and foster care
A project on trauma and neuropsychological function of Quito street children was the very first project we undertook. Without a research grant, I had to pay all costs myself. I couldn’t even find help with the cost of photocopying. But I did manage to enlist three unpaid volunteers: Daniel Banda Cruz, Victoria Andrade, and Sofia Ricaurte. These three were all undergraduate students at the time, in my Health Psychology Class at USFQ. Fundeporte, a center for very poor children in south Quito, agreed to help us with this research, under the condition that we participate with their center. So, for several days Daniel, Vicky, Sofia and I attended and played with the kids, joined them at meal times, and attended their sports day competitions.

When the staff and kids were familiar with us, then we were able to start the data collection. We also attended a Quito school and collected the same data on their kids as a control sample. Overall, the street kids project was a great success, resulting in two data papers (Pluck et al., 2015; Pluck et al., 2018) and also a review article published in the Psychologist magazine (Pluck, 2015a), and an invited opinion piece on the Favelas Blog at the London School of Economics (Pluck 2015b). And most recently, an invited chapter in a book on Homelessness and Mental Illness to be published by Oxford University Press. USFQ even made a short promotional video about the research, which is available on YouTube.

We also performed a similar study on children living in foster care in Quito. These were compared with a control group from two schools in the city. This research was conducted by Cris Hugo, and assisted by Isa Lara and Mario Martínez among others. One manuscript has been prepared on that project, but not yet accepted for publication. Isa is working on a second manuscript.

Sofia Ricaurte being interviewed about the street children research in the promotional video (left), our research on the front cover of the Psychologist magazine in January 2015 (center). Isa Lara and Cris Hugo working on the foster care project (right).

Binaural beats
The next main project happened because a biophysics student at the Escuela Superior Politécnica de Chimborazo (ESPOCH) contacted me about project supervision. The student, Marco López, wanted to do an electroencephalography (EEG) study, and that wasn’t available at his university. In fact, I didn’t have the equipment either, but I offered to support a behavioral study. Marco wanted to examine binaural beats, the illusory acoustic phenomenon that occur when pure tones of different frequencies are delivered dichotically through headphones. We did the study, discovering that stimulation at 6Hz produced a mild fear response, and it was published in Psychology & Neuroscience (Pluck & López-Águila, 2019). This publication helped Marco to get a full scholarship for postgraduate study at Tianjin University in China.

More recently, I have collaborated with Dr Diego Benítez in the USFQ Colegio de Ciencias e Ingenierías. Diego provided us with EEG equipment, and we repeated our original study, but this time with neurophysiological recordings. This project was assisted by an intern from the UK, Emma McFadden, and an exchange student from Tulane University in the USA, Rachel Maue. We successfully replicated the induction of fear with 6Hz stimulation, but the EEG data has not been fully analysed yet. Hopefully when it is, we will detect the 6Hz in the brain electrophysiological signal.

The original behavioral data collection by Marco Lopez from ESPOCH for the binaural beats study (left), practicing EEG for the later study with Dr Diego Benítez and his assistant (center), and Emma McFadden measuring the head of a participant in order to position the EEG electrodes (right). 

Cognitive test development
One of the first research problems that I encountered here in Ecuador, is that there is a doubt over the validity of cognitive tests. This makes it hard to publish research (such as the foster care study). So, as a long-term goal, I started reliability and validity of studies of common cognitive tests. First was the Word Accentuation Test (WAT), assisted by Andrea Gonzales and Rafa Muñoz. This test allows psychologists to estimate premorbid ability of participants/clients, even if they have current cognitive impairments (Pluck et al., 2017). A couple of related tests, the Word Accentuation Test-Sentences and the Stem Completion Implicit Reading Test (SCIRT) were also validated (Pluck, 2018). I also produced another test that previously wasn’t available in Spanish. The Spot-the-Word test is a popular assessment in English to measure verbal knowledge. My Spanish language version (Spanish Lexical Decision Task) is valid and reliable (Pluck, in press), the tests can be downloaded from my website: www.gpluck.co.uk

I also realized that even common tests such as the Wechsler intelligence assessments are not valid in developing countries such as Ecuador, and even if you ignore that fact and use them in research, they are very expensive. My solution was to produce a free-to-use, simple intelligence test, that could be used for research anywhere in the World. Overall this was more difficult to achieve than I anticipated, but the Matrix Matching Test was eventually published (Pluck, 2019). A benefit of this test in Ecuador is that it was specifically validated there, unlike all the other intelligence tests. This can also be downloaded from my website: www.gpluck.co.uk

Nevertheless, we have also collected data to normalize the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale IV (WAIS-IV) in Ecuador. To do this Andrea Gonzales and I collected data in Quito, while Jose Hernandez collected data in Manta, Dr Patricia Bravo collected data in Rio Bamba and Dr Mayorga Amalín collected data in Guayaquil. This data has not been published yet, but should allow us to establish the normal mean point for Ecuador. This will aid in clinical and research work.

Me (Dr Graham Pluck) training Mayorga Amalín of Universidad de Guayaquil in cognitive test administration. This is part of the effort to norm the WAIS-IV.

A further test that we examined the psychometric properties of was the Tower Test. This is a commonly used assessment of executive function. However, executive function tests are rarely assessed for reliability or validity. With Doenya Amraoui (intern from the University of Amsterdam) and Isabella Fornell Villalobos (USFQ student) I examined the Tower Test in Ecuadorian youth, and found that it performed quite poorly, with only one performance measure found to be sufficiently reliable, the time-per-move ratio (Pluck et al., 2019, in press). That measure is probably the best for clinical or research use, in Ecuador, and worldwide.

Executive functioning
The next project that we undertook was to predict academic achievement of university students with executive function tests. To start the research, I recruited a research assistant, Jaime Vintimilla, who I rapidly replaced with Bernardo Ruales. Also assisting with administration was Karla Haro. We collected data on 64 undergraduate students, using a range of executive function tests. This allowed us to show that one test in particular, the Hayling Test of verbal response suppression, was a better predictor of student achievement than intelligence (Pluck et al., 2016).

In fact, later on a student from the USFQ master’s program in Mind, Brain, and Education, David Villagómez, started his graduation thesis with me. As did Maria Isabel Karolys, who was doing her masters at the Universidad International de la Rioja, in Spain, but I provided local supervision. They performed similar studies, using the Hayling verbal suppression test, assisted by two USFQ undergraduates, Pamela Almeida and Emilia Montaño. This time we included high school children in the sample. Together, we were able to replicate and extend the results, showing the verbal response suppression really is a good, perhaps the best, predictor of grades, and that working memory is a predictor of classroom misbehavior (Pluck, Villagomez-Pacheco, et al., 2019). This provides real-life validation for the role of response suppression in intelligent goal-directed behavior. The modified Hayling test that we developed is available to download from my website at www.gpluck.co.uk

Some of the researchers who have worked in the lab at USFQ, from left to right: Brittany Barajas, Doenya Amraoui, Nergiz Turgut, Alejandra Martínez, Sarahí Pontón, Rachel Maue, Christine Bock, Marco Cordova, Emma McFadden.

Most recently, with Dr Cris Crespo and Patricia Parreño at USFQ, we performed a similar study, attempting to predict real-life success with executive function tests. However, this time we recruited 90 car sales personnel, and we looked at how many cars they sold. This involved a research team (including Karla Haro and Alejandra Martínez) travelling around Quito to different showrooms, and administering a battery of executive function tests. We again found that verbal response suppression measured by the Hayling test was the best predictor of success of salesmen. However, it wasn’t predictive for saleswomen, for whom a different form of response suppression ability predicted sales. Interesting, in this research we also found a dissociation between intelligence and multi-tasking between men and women. Salesmen had higher intelligence test scores than saleswomen, but worse multi-tasking ability (Pluck, Crespo-Andrade et al., in press).

Neuroscience of education
I was also approached by Dr Patricia Bravo Mancero, a professor at Universidad Nacional de Chimborazo (Unach), who wanted to conduct a neuroscience of education research study at her institution. I designed for her a study in which several different cognitive tests, and a set of neurobehavioral questionnaires were applied to psychology and engineering students at Unach. At this point Isabela Lara joined the team, helping to produce the tests, and eventually Isa and I went to Unach to train their professors there on how to apply them. This turned out to be a very productive collaboration resulting in two good research papers. One on cognition and academic achievement, suggesting that procedural memory is more important than declarative memory (Pluck et al., 2019), the other on neurobehavioral traits, suggesting that schizotypy and mixed handedness are important to academic achievement (Pluck, Bravo Mancero, et al., 2020). For that latter paper, Paola Chacon assisted with a psychometric study of scale reliability.

Isa Lara and I went to Unach in Riobamba to train Dr Patricia Bravo and other professors on test administration for the neuroscience of education project.

Homelessness
I had already conduced some studies of homelessness and neuropsychological function in the UK and Japan, but had not had the opportunity in Ecuador. Then came along Brittany Barajas, a student of Speech and Language Sciences at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was spending a year in Quito and wanted to do a study of language ability of homeless adults. We put together a project, and Brittany was able to receive funding from her university. With a team of Ecuadorian psychologists including Jose Hernandez, Gonzalo Villa, Alejandra Martínez, and Sarahí Pontón, we interviewed a group of homeless people at a charitable center in Quito. We also interviewed a control group of adults with similar educational backgrounds to the homeless participants. All were assessed with the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination and several other tests. We were able to show that the homeless sample had pathologically poor oral expression and comprehension. That paper has been accepted for publication in International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders (Pluck, Barajas, et al. in press).

Alejandra and Brittany assessing language skills in the homeless research study

Other studies, other researchers
There were other studies too, e.g. a study of socioeconomic deprivation and cognitive skill, a study of smart phone addiction, but these projects have not been analysed and published yet. I should also mention Dr Ana Trueba who provided general support to several of the projects. Some of the other researchers that have contributed are Nicole Schmidt, Pablo Barrera, Wilmary Rodriguez, Allison Loaiza, Brenda Guerrero, Edgar Paucar-Guerra, and Marco Cordoba. Sorry of I’ve missed anybody out. Looking back it’s hard to recall all the people who have worked in the lab, and allowed us to be the most successful psychology research group in Ecuador.

References
Pluck, G. (in press). A lexical decision task for measuring crystallized-verbal ability in Spanish. Revista Latinoamericana de Psicología.

Pluck, G. (2019). Preliminary validation of a free-to-use, brief assessment of adult intelligence for research purposes: The Matrix Matching Test. Psychological Reports. 122(2), 709-730. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033294118762589

Pluck, G . (2018). Lexical reading ability predicts academic achievement at university level. Cognition, Brain, Behavior. An Interdisciplinary Journal, 22(3), 175-196. https://doi.org/10.24193/cbb.2018.22.12

Pluck, G. (2015a). The 'street children' of Latin America. The Psychologist, 28(1), 20-23. https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-28/january-2015/street-children-latin-america

Pluck, G. (2015b). Challenges and strengths, thinking about´ street children´. Favelas@LSE. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/63058/1/Challenges%20and%20strengths%2C%20thinking%20about%20%C2%B4street%20children%C2%B4%20_%20Favelas%20at%20LSE.pdf

Pluck, G., Almeida-Meza, P., Gonzales-Lorza, A., Muñoz-Ycaza, R., & Trueba, A. (2017). Estimación de la función cognitiva premorbida con el Test de Acentuación de Palabras. Revista Ecuatoriana de Neurología, 26(3), 226-234. http://scielo.senescyt.gob.ec/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2631-25812017000200226

Pluck, G., Amraoui, D., & Fornell-Villalobos, I. (2019, in press). Brief Communication: Reliability of the D-KEFS Tower Test in samples of children and adolescents in Ecuador. Applied Neuropsychology: Child. https://doi.org/10.1080/21622965.2019.1629922

Pluck, G., Barajas, B. M., Hernandez-Rodriguez, J. L., Martínez, M. A. (in press). Language ability and adult homelessness. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders. https://doi.org/10.1111/1460-6984.12521

Pluck, G., Bravo Mancero,P., Maldonado Gavilanez, C. E. Urquizo Alcívar, A .M., Ortíz Encalada, P. A.,Tello Carrasco, E. …Trueba, A. F. (2019). Modulation of striatum based non-declarative and medial temporal lobe based declarative memory predicts academic achievement at university level. Trends in Neuroscience and Education, 14, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tine.2018.11.002

Pluck, G., Bravo Mancero, P., Ortíz Encalada, P.A., Urquizo Alcívar, A. M., Maldonado Gavilanez, C. E., & Chacon, P. (2020). Differential associations of neurobehavioral traits and cognitive ability to academic achievement in higher education. Trends in Neuroscience and Education. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tine.2019.100124

Pluck, G., Banda-Cruz, D. R., Andrade-Guimaraes, M. V., Ricaurte-Diaz, S., & Borja-Alvarez, T. (2015). Post-traumatic stress disorder and intellectual function of socioeconomically deprived ‘street children’ in Quito, Ecuador. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 13(2), 215-224. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-014-9523-0

Pluck, G., Banda-Cruz, D. R., Andrade-Guimaraes, M. V., & Trueba, A. F. (2018). Socioeconomic deprivation and the development of neuropsychological functions: A study with “street children” in Ecuador. Child Neuropsychology, 24(4), 510-523. https://doi.org/10.1080/09297049.2017.1294150

Pluck, G., Crespo-Andrade, C., Parreño, P, Haro, K. I., Martínez, M. A. & Pontón, S. C. (in press). Executive functions and intelligent goal-directed behavior: A neuropsychological approach to understanding success using professional sales as a real-life measure. Psychology & Neuroscience. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pne0000195

Pluck, G. & López-Águila, M. A. (2019). Induction of fear but no effects on cognitive fluency by theta frequency auditory binaural beat stimulation. Psychology & Neuroscience 12(1), 53-64. https://doi.org/10.1037/pne0000166

Pluck, G., Ruales-Chieruzzi, C. B., Paucar-Guerra, E. J., Andrade-Guimaraes, M. V., & Trueba, A. F. (2016). Separate contributions of general intelligence and right prefrontal neurocognitive functions to academic achievement at university level. Trends in Neuroscience and Education, 5(4), 178-185. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tine.2016.07.002

Pluck, G., Villagomez-Pacheco, D., Karolys, M. I., Montaño-Córdova, M. E. & Almeida-Meza, P. (2019). Response suppression, strategy application, and working memory in the prediction of academic performance and classroom misbehavior: A neuropsychological approach. Trends in Neuroscience and Education, 17, 100121. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tine.2019.100121

Psychology Professors and PhDs

A PhD is a ‘Doctorate in Philosophy’, it is the highest commonly awarded academic qualification. In fact, a person who has a PhD is a true doctor. The medical use of the word 'doctor' is usually an honorary title. The PhD is basically an apprenticeship in how to be an academic, and in most countries, it is taken as the qualification required to get a job in a university as a professional academic, i.e. a professor. Psychologists sometimes also have PsyD qualifications, that is a Doctor of Psychology, and is training more intended for practice than for academic purposes.

As academics have two main functions, investigation and education, you would think that PhDs would be focused on those aspects. Unfortunately, they are not, PhD training is almost completely focused on research. It probably should include how to teach, but usually it doesn’t.

As an example, my doctoral study was in the late 1990’s at the Institute of Neurology, part of University College London. At the time, there were no classes at all in a PhD program. I had just a desk, a PC, and a supervisor (the Clinical Psychologist Dr Richard Brown), and the job of conducting enough research to form a coherent thesis. As is normal for such a thesis, it was based on multiple research studies. It is assessed in a face-to-face viva voce examination, which takes several hours. Two academics not involved with your thesis ask you to defend it, going into detail and trying to find flaws. My examiners were Dr Jane Powell and Dr Jane Riddoch. The oral examination is a tough process, it’s not uncommon for the candidate to take a bathroom break, cry for a while, and then go back in. The examiners’ decision is at best, ‘minor revisions needed’, but they can decide on ‘fail’. Some students do fail at that point, a friend of mine failed at the viva voce exam. A few others never made it that far. The whole process in the UK, if successful, takes about 4 years.

My final accepted thesis, about 80,000 words long (317 pages), titled ‘Neuropsychological Aspects of Apathy in Parkinson’s Disease’ 

In this kind of doctorate, the learning is through the research, but also from being within an academic research culture full-time for several years. The student learns how academics think, how they solve problems, as well as practical issues such as manuscript writing and conference presenting. It is therefore important where one studies, doing a PhD with world-renowned experts, will be different to doing one with relatively inexperienced or low performing academics.

In the USA, PhD programs often have lots of classes, and take much longer, often six or more years. Despite the length of time taken, in some cases the thesis may be quite minor, compared to a European thesis. Some USA PhD theses include only one study, and may be as short as 10,000 words. Others are equivalent in size and quality to European theses. Nevertheless, an important part of the PhD is still research, and the contextual learning that takes place from being in an academic environment.

In Ecuador there is a problem: there are lots of psychology students, and therefore many psychology professors. There is an expectation that the psychology professors will have PhDs, but there are few options for PhD study for people living in Ecuador. Some Ecuadorians go to Europe, Australia, the USA etc. for doctoral study. But of course, that is expensive, and realistically, grants are needed. A popular option is to take a PhD with distance study. But of course, this may not be as good an academic training as study in an actual research department. As a minimum, a reasonable quality PhD will be recognised in Ecuador by SENESCYT, and included in their online database.

Regrettably, a third option for some professors is simply to lie about having a PhD. It is not uncommon for people to simply claim to be a ‘Dr’ without any qualification to back it up. Needless to say, it is a gross violation on professional ethics for professors to deceive people in this way. If there is any doubt, then check the SENESCYT online system. That’s what it’s there for, to make life difficult for the cheats.

Not as serious, but still problematic, is the use of the post-nominal letters ‘PhD(c)’ i.e. ‘Doctorate of Philosophy, candidate’. People using these letters could be one week into a seven-year study, and still put PhD(c) after their name. Even if academics understand that a PhD(c) indicates a doctoral student, not an actual doctor, the public, and undergraduate students, probably won’t. Consequently, the use of PhD(c) is considered as being deceptive by the American Psychological Association, and actually violates their official ethics code. In other countries, such as the UK, where I studied, it would be completely unacceptable to imply that you had a PhD when in fact you did not. Even after my viva voce examination (i.e. the oral ‘defensa’) it was still many corrections and several months before the thesis was confirmed as accepted, only then could I use PhD after my name.

So, a PhD is important, but not are all equal. In my opinion, PhDs that were studied directly with a strong department, full of world experts, with a world-expert thesis supervisor are much better than most distance studied PhDs. Particularly if they are distance studied at poorly recognised institutions or with not particularly impressive thesis supervisors. Nevertheless, there are some good distance programmes, and many do include time attending the actual institute. The point is, don’t consider all PhDs equal, they are really not.

However, as I started this blog, a PhD is basically an academic apprenticeship. It matters more what the person has done since receiving the PhD. After it’s awarded, the professor should be doing something with the doctoral training, and that basically means research. And the research needs to be published in academic journals. In fact, as a rule of thumb, a good PhD should directly lead to two or three journal articles. Ten years after the PhD is completed, a professor will be defined by what they have achieved in that ten years, not by the PhD. The PhD itself should become irrelevant.

Rather than focus on the quality of academic qualifications, if you want to assess a professor, a better way is simply to Google them. This should turn up lists of their research works on sites such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Google Scholar, or their institutional webpage. Not all professors provide such information, so an absence of lists doesn’t tell you much. However, all publications in reasonable and better journals are indexed in Scopus. You can search for any professor on the Scopus free look-up service and see their publication history. A professor’s publication history is more important than their academic qualifications anyway. It doesn’t matter if a professor doesn’t have a PhD, or has one from a dubious institution, if they have proven themselves through their published research.

In summary, what Ecuador needs to improve psychology education is to get more professors who can do and publish research, i.e. academically active professors. The PhD is just the most common route that people take to become competent researchers and academics, but it is not necessarily the only route.

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This post has been about academic psychologists, i.e. those employed as professors. For a good review of issues around clinical psychologists in Ecuador, see the blog post by Dr Fergus Kane: How to Choose a Psychologist in Ecuador.

For, and against, cultural imperialism in psychology teaching

As a Europe-born professor teaching in a Latin American country I am always at risk of being a twenty-first century cultural imperialist, i.e. forcing my culture onto another. After all, a professor is there to teach, to affect a change in the abilities and behaviour of the students. That is what learning is. The learning itself is desirable of course, but the content of the learning is the crux of the issue. Professors come from specific cultures and have their own blind spots and biases. It is a real risk; one can easily assume that what one is familiar with is the correct way of doing things.

In fact, many psychologists are acutely aware that adaptions need to be made for teaching in different cultures. As a particular example, forms of psychopathology vary across cultures. Simply teaching about DSM disorders in Ecuador, without examining local manifestations of mental illness would be inappropriate. DSM is really only a classification of mental disorders based on signs and symptoms commonly seen in the USA. Much of that will transfer across cultures, but some will not.

However, here I argue that adaption of teaching to different cultures is not necessarily the big issue that some psychologists make it. I am talking here from the perspective of a British psychologist teaching in Ecuador. I teach more or less the same ideas and concepts whatever country I am in. This is not out of laziness; it is out of belief. In this blog post I explain why I believe in a general, global education for psychologists, rather than parochial, local-style psychology, which may appear more culturally appropriate, but ultimately does not serve the students well. These are my reasons:

1. Good psychology is science. Science does not change from culture to culture. The way to advance psychology is to produce and interpret data logically. That’s basically what science is: Sensible, intelligent interpretation of data. It’s a clear way of thinking, not a topic. That way of thinking is the same in Ecuador as it is in my home country (England), or in Kazakhstan, or anywhere. It is my job as an educator to encourage the scientific way of thinking. It is true that there are inter-cultural differences in the matter of psychology, i.e. the mind. For example, there are cognitive processing differences between people in individualist and collectivist cultures. We know this because quantitative, scientific psychologists have done research on it. Good psychology teaching is about teaching good science.

2. Psychology is international. Psychologists move around the world, particularly those from countries such as Ecuador, where postgraduate study opportunities are limited. To continue one’s studies one often has to move to a different country. That’s good. However, if the students only study a version of psychology considered suitable for the Ecuadorian context, then they will be at a disadvantage when they go abroad, and that’s not fair. Good psychology education prepares people to use their training globally. This is particularly important in regards to information literacy and research methodology. Such skills are currently not emphasised in Ecuadorian psychology training. Nevertheless, they are essential for one to succeed in one’s studies in many other countries.

There is admittedly a bias for psychology literature, particularly journal articles, to come from a small number of English-speaking countries. And journal articles are the number one source of information for good psychologists. The way to address that imbalance is for psychologists in countries such as Ecuador to gain the skills to be able to publish their own research. That will ultimately serve Ecuadorian psychology better than making unnecessary distinctions between the local psychology and gringo psychology. Again, this will be achieved by international-standard research skills being emphasized in Ecuador, as they are in the countries publishing most of the research.

3. Universities are special. Whereas most people in their working lives are focused on producing profits for somebody, good professors are in the business of truth (the ultimate goal of research) and forming better people (the ultimate goal of education). That’s the same around the world. I think of universities as being like embassies, they are both insulated to a large extent from the environments that they are physically located in. There are ways of doing things, in universities or in embassies, which are the same wherever you are, in Quito, Washington or Moscow. In academia at least, these are generally virtuous ways of doing things. For example, attitudes to cheating may vary between cultures, but there is a common belief amongst university-people that one should not present as one’s own, work that was produced by another, i.e. plagiarism. Students may have to learn that, but that is part of their education in how to be academic. That special, high-minded feature of universities globally is something that should be celebrated. Adapting academic ways to local cultures risks that specialness of higher education.

4. Much of the ‘Ecuadorian psychology’ that I come across is nothing that needs to be preserved anyway. In fact, it shouldn’t even be taught at universities. If there was a rich cultural tradition of thinking about the mind espoused by modern Ecuadorian psychologists, derived from their history, perhaps of Amerindian origin, then I would be all for teaching that, alongside internationally-accepted psychology material. But the psychologists who resist my teaching of psychology, and suggest that I’m imposing my academic cultural background, are generally involved with highly dubious fields anyway. These include hypnotherapy, dream analysis, graphology, tarot cards, Bach flower remedies, etc. These are all European, nineteenth and twentieth-century pseudosciences. Think about it. The damaging cultural imperialism has already been done. I’m in fact one of the people fighting against it. It is the responsibility of good psychology professors, from whatever background, to train psychologists who can tell the difference between pseudoscience and psychology. That means not only teaching up-to-date and accepted knowledge, but even more importantly, the scientific skills and the information literacy needed to recognize and reject pseudoscience.

Finally, if students are trained well in the core of globally recognised psychology, and have the information literacy and research skills they will become good psychologists. From those foundations they can develop a psychology for Ecuador.