Search

Learning to read and write is seen as both the acquisition of skills useful in a modern society and an introduction to a world increasingly organized around the reading and writing of authoritative texts. While most agree on the importance of writing, insufficient attention has been given to the more basic question of just what writing is, that is, how best to think about writing as both a technology of communication and an instrument of thought. In this article we elaborate and defend the view that writing is distinctive not only as a technology for the visual representation of speech but more basically as a technology for taking language "off-line," that is, as language enclosed by quotation marks. Writing, like oral quotation, provides a set of objects divorced from the speaker that persist in time and space and that can be considered and reconsidered somewhat independently of the context of expression and the intentions of the original author. Of special relevance are the units of meaning, namely, words and sentences. When writing turns words and sentences into objects of analysis, it facilitates distinctive modes of discourse such as extended prose and distinctive modes of thinking such as formal rationality.

Children's ability to ascribe beliefs to themselves and others has been shown to develop in the late preschool and early school years. This ability to represent, that is to think about, beliefs known to be false is described as metarepresentational development. This article extends these findings to the domain of linguistic representations by exploring how children come to judge statements as true or false of a given reality. It presents two models of judgment, one based on the pragmatics of the expression, the other on the basis of the semantics of the expression. Two studies show that when preschoolers object to what someone has said, they are disagreeing with the speaker, a pragmatic judgment, rather than judging the truth or falsity of what the speaker has said, a semantic judgment. True/false judgments are metalinguistic judgments, later acquired, suggesting a new consciousness of linguistic form.

To address the question of whether young children are differentially sensitive to referential opacity, an advanced Theory of Mind skill, we assessed 4-, 6-, and 8-year-olds on three types of opaque contexts: epistemic, quotational, and intentional. Children's performance improved as a function of age and varied significantly by opacity type. Performance was best for epistemic opacity (using the verb "know") and poorest for intentional opacity (using "mean to"), with quotational opacity (using "said") falling in-between. Importantly, the current results suggest that children's sensitivity to referential opacity is not an all-or-nothing competence but rather one that varies across the contexts examined. Possible reasons for this variability are discussed. (Contains 3 tables and 2 figures.)

We investigated whether children's ability to deal with referentially opaque contexts could be predicted by both metarepresentational ability (false-belief understanding) and metalinguistic awareness (the ability to compare and evaluate statements containing referring expressions). Five- to 7-year-olds completed opacity, false-belief, metalinguistic awareness, digit-span, and vocabulary measures. Hierarchical regressions indicated that even after the variability from age, vocabulary, and digit span is taken into account, metarepresentational ability and metalinguistic awareness still significantly, and "independently", explain some variability in referential opacity performance. These results are taken as support for the view that both metarepresentational ability and metalinguistic awareness are necessary in order to deal with referentially opaque contexts. (Contains 5 tables.)

Brief measures of the five-factor model (FFM) have been developed but none include an assessment of facets within each domain. The purpose of this study was to examine the validity of a simple, one-page, facet-level description of the FFM. Five data collections were completed to assess the reliability and the convergent and discriminant validity of the rating form with other measures of the FFM and to replicate correlations with measures of maladaptive personality functioning that have been obtained with more extensive measures. Results appeared to support the validity of the FFM rating form (FFMRF) because it obtained relatively good internal consistency, convergent validity, and discriminant validity. In addition, self-descriptions of persons in terms of the FFMRF related to maladaptive personality traits in a manner that was consistent with theoretical expectations. Negative findings and limitations of the rating form also are discussed. (Contains 6 tables.)

Two experiments examined whether young children's difficulty with behavioral predictions when appearance was misleading would extend to more general domains. Found that while both 3- and 5- year-olds understood that persons dressing up in costume would retain their real identities, 3-year-olds were unable to predict that the character's biological predispositions would prevail across appearance changes and even ignored biological reality. (Author/KB)

Examines four different levels of development constituting writing as a technology for thinking. Discusses evolution (what speech affords thinkers), history (how text changed the collective construction of knowledge), ontogeny (how literacy affects the development of mind), and microgenesis (how writing facilitates thinking from moment to moment). Argues electronic technology changes students' learning much less than is generally thought. (SR)

Children's ability to distinguish between the text (what was said) and the intentional structure (what was meant) was interrogated by means of verbatim and paraphrase questions in two types of discourse: narratives and nursery rhymes. (Author/VWL)

Investigated the effect of language on Chinese-speaking children's performance on false-belief tasks under three between-subjects conditions. Chinese-speaking adults and young children responded to false-belief tasks. Results revealed a rapid developmental pattern in the children's understanding of false beliefs and suggested the important role of language in assessing children's understanding of belief and false belief. (SM)

Tested hypothesized relationship between development of a theory of mind and increasing computational resources in 3- to 5-year olds. Found that the correlations between performance on theory of mind tasks and dual processing tasks were as high as r=.64, suggesting that changes in working memory capacity allow the expression of, and arguably the formation of, a theory of mind. (Author)

As a summary of current advances in developmental psychology, the above article makes some useful contributions. As a contribution to educational policy and practice, it is limited if not a failure for two reasons. It fails to come to grips with the real demands of living classrooms, and second, it fails to grasp the actual subjective lives of the children taught. The gap between science and practice is now as large as it was when John Dewey first called attention to "the whole child" and a pragmatic approach to knowledge and thinking.

Slavin's call for evidence-based research on the effectiveness of treatments is criticized for its unreflective concept of a "treatment." It is argued that treatments cannot be defined objectively but only relative to the beliefs, goals, and intentions of those supposedly affected by the treatments. An alternative approach to the study of schooling in terms of the entitlements and obligations of those involved at all levels of the system is suggested.

Walter Ong emphasized two broad implications of literacy on mind, consciousness and interiority. I review some recent evidence for these conjectures by reference to my own research on children's understanding of mind. I then go on to show how a theory of literate consciousness may help to explain the peculiar nature of Trump's political rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we examined whether young children's difficulty with behavioral predictions when appearance was misleading would extend to more general domains, including those that do not require a representational [...]

Children are said to start acquiring the ability to represent the relation between two objects as a belief or as true or false at about four years of age, a stage at which children are believed to possess a theory of mind. The hypothesis that the development of a theory of mind and increasing computational resources are related was tested, revealing that an increased ability to 'hold in mind' is closely related with the acquisition of a theory of mind. The study involved three-, four- and five-year-old children, whose performance on a pair of theory of mind tasks was compared with that on a pair of dual processing tasks.

Bruner, in reassessing the cognitive revolution, argues for the centrality of 'meaning-making' in human activity, claiming that children learn to give meaning to what people do as they learn the language and social practices of their culture. The role played by the attribution of mental states to others has been studied intensely in the past decade in a new research area that has come to be known as children's 'theory of mind'. Researchers in this field who, unlike Bruner, see psychology as a natural empirical science, view the child as constructing a causal theory to explain and predict human action. They base their arguments largely on experimental observation of children's performance in laboratory tasks, especially the 'false-belief' task. In contrast, many researchers who take Bruner's view study the development of social understanding in naturalistic observation of children's interaction with peers and family members. In this article we examine the relations between these views and suggest that the real challenge of the cognitive revolution is to unite the two approaches, to achieve a causal, naturalistic account of the acquisition and elaboration of meaning-making. Key words Cognitive revolution; Culture; Folk psychology; Interpretation; Meaning-making; Naturalistic observation; Social interaction; Theory of mind

An analysis of graphic signs as representations of speech reveals insights which go against commonly held beliefs about this relationship. The discussion centers on writing as a conceptual model for speech and the history of scripts as incidental to the evolution of the alphabet. Linguistic models are composed of elements from attempts to read and write along with the concepts of language. These models also hide other features of language which are as important as those underscored.

Most research suggests that it is not until age 4 that children understand deception as a means of creating a false belief. Yet children could have failed on these tasks because of either (a) conceptual problems (an inability to understand that deception is a means of creating a false belief), or (b) pragmatic problems (an inability to articulate an understanding of false belief) and task complexity (an inability to follow the narrative or make appropriate inferences). Three experiments were conducted to determine why children might fail deception tasks, and results indicated that (a) children were no better at understanding deception whether they were 'active deceivers' or observers of a deceptive act, and (b) children's difficulty appeared to be associated with a conceptual deficiency (e.g., they could leave clues that would lead another to a possible belief but not a false belief).

Compares the structure of language and meaning in speaking, writing, and computing. Argues that writing and computing are biased toward a radical explicitness that eliminates the role of interpretation, the construction of a personal, subjective meaning. Discusses the cognitive implications of teaching children to cope with this explicitness. (KH)

The importance of Sullivan's book is that it is one of the first to tackle the issue of the psychologist's attitude toward subjects. Sullivan develops theories regarding interpretation of the personal world, distinguishing human sciences from physical sciences, and explaining how social structures reproduce themselves in the habits of individuals. (MT)

This article traces the development of interpretation of texts and the study of nature, and argues that, whether hermeneutic or epistemological, the form of the theory is the same. A discussion among the author, five journal editors and contributors follows. (MT)