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Jerome Seymour Bruner died on 5 June 2016 at the age of 100. Beginning as a standard experimental psychologist working with laboratory animals, he next ventured into the field of human social psychology, working in intelligence and public opinion polling during World War II. He then gained fame for his ‘New Look’ studies of perception. WithA Study of ThinkingBruner took his place as a leader of the ‘Cognitive Revolution’, a movement that restored the mind to its traditional place at the core of psychology.Studies in Cognitive Growthwas the developmental sequel toA Study of Thinking. It contained a number of path-breaking studies that, in essence, asked how the adult hypotheses and concept-attainment strategies documented inA Study of Thinkingoriginated and developed in childhood. Unfortunately, these experiments on the developmental origins of adult concept attainment strategies largely got lost in the controversy over Bruner’s criticisms of Piaget. Bruner’s interest in educational experimentation, exemplified inThe Process of Education, continued throughout his life. In later years he made annual pilgrimages to Reggio Emilia, a small city in northern Italy famous for its outstanding approach to early childhood education, much of it in the Brunerian tradition. Jerry Bruner’s passion for ideas and his optimistic belief that all problems were, if not actually solvable, at least attackable brought new excitement to the study of the mind of the child. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]