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From a theoretical and methodological perspective, we provide analyses of cultural-historical psychology to identify its differences with constructivism. As well as the origin of psychological development and the usage of “cultural” and “social” terms. The article discusses about the method used in cultural historical psychological approach and its implications for the organization of the teaching-learning process. The authors conclude on the need to differentiate between Vigotsky’s approach and postmodern constructivism according to conceptual, methodological, and epistemological basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keywords: Pedagogy; Instructional design; Developmental psychology; Cognitive psychology; Constructivism EN Pedagogy Instructional design Developmental psychology Cognitive psychology Constructivism 234 238 5 10/11/21 20211001 NES 211001 Engeness (this issue, DOI 10.1159/000) begins this article with the statement that "learning as a psychological process has been downplayed in the design of MOOCs." Theories from both cognitive and developmental psychology feature prominently in informing the art and science of teaching and learning and keep psychological processes at the very center of teaching and learning. Developmental and cognitive psychology has provided us with some clear guidelines to consider the appropriate decisions regarding the roles of instructors, students, content, and containers. This container (Canvas LMS) and these human elements (skilled and motivated learners plus a present instructor) facilitate the creation of a productive learning community where the learners will be able to construct complex new knowledge. [Extracted from the article]

This article deals with the subject of personal change. As such, one could be tempted to say that it deals with psychology as a whole: What else should psychology be concerned with? But this is not exactly how things are, as I will argue by answering a first question: Is psychology, as a discipline, mainly concerned with the study of human change? To a second question—whether personal construct theory (PCT) in particular is mainly concerned with the study of human change—I give an affirmative answer, after some necessary qualifications. I would like to dwell particularly on answering a third question: Can the way personal construct theory deals with change be regarded as centering around a peculiarity? I am convinced that the revolutionary and cutting-edge nature of PCT can be fully appreciated only by pinpointing and highlighting such a peculiarity. In discussing this, I find it convenient to answer a last question: Is the way PCT deals with change akin to the way other theories handle it? After having discussed personal change as it is treated in PCT, I give a bird's eye view of the contribution of personal construct psychology to the fields of psychology more concerned with change—namely, developmental and educational psychology. The last part of the article will focus on the role of change in clinical psychology, and on what Kelly pointed out as the focus of convenience of his theoretical construction: personal construct psychotherapy as a relational process aimed at favoring a personal change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three experiments provide evidence of an incipient sense of fairness in preverbal infants. Ten-month-old infants were shown cartoon videos with two agents, the ‘donors’, who distributed resources to two identical recipients. One donor always distributed the goods equally, while the other performed unequal distributions by giving everything to one recipient. In the test phase, a third agent hit or took resources away from either the fair or the unfair donor. We found that infants looked longer when the antisocial actions were directed towards the unfair rather than the fair donor. These findings support the view that infants are able to evaluate agents based on their distributive actions and suggest that the foundations of human socio-moral competence are acquired independently of parental feedback and linguistic experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In Gibb’s theory of moral development Piagetian ideas concerning egocentrism play an important role. Based on these ideas Gibbs offers a detailed analysis of transitions in moral development. However, Gibbs still fails to utilize the full potential offered by Piaget’s equilibration theory, because he does not generalize the idea of overcoming egocentrism, as an important mechanism, to all stage transitions. Gibbs seeks a non-relativistic theoretical/ethical justification for his claims about moral development in a difficult to substantiate notion of an underlying reality. Moreover, such objectivist claims are difficult to reconcile with his endorsement of Piaget’s constructivism. Following Piaget’s equilibration theory development can be seen as the march to an ever widening perspective, possible through reflecting abstraction, and implying overcoming egocentric biases that recur at all levels of development. Assuming the widest level in the case of moral development is the moral point of view, an impartial procedure that should guarantee that everybody involved can freely agree as the result of considering arguments reflecting all viewpoints, fits in with a tradition in ethics from Kant, to Rawls, to Habermas which takes the moral point of view as the ultimate moral principle. These so called ‘Procedural Ethics’ theories are not relativistic, but not objectivist either, because they ultimately depend on the characteristics of the procedure. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Surprisingly little headway has been made towards understanding how brain growth maps onto mental growth during child development. This review aims at bridging and integrating recent human neuroscientific brain maturation findings with the conceptual thinking of theorists in the behavioural tradition of studying cognitive development. Developmental research in the field of internal control and self-regulation serves as a reference point for understanding the relation between brain maturation and mental growth. Using several recent neuroimaging findings as points in case, we show how a deeper appreciation of structural and functional neural development can be obtained from considering the traditional conceptual frameworks, and vice versa. We conclude that paradigmatic progress in developmental neuroscience can rely more on knowledge from developmental experimental psychology, and that developmental models of cognitive development can be constrained and articulated with more precision on the basis of knowledge of differential structural and functional brain maturation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This work communicates some discussions on modularity and its implications in Developmental Psychology, particularly applied to the understanding of cognitive development. First, we review some reasons for the emergence and expansion of a modular hegemony within the Developmental Cognitive Psychology the last two decades. We examine both assumptions about the mental architecture arising from the theoretical work of Fodor (1983 / 1986), as well as empirical research that indicates the existence of innate structures and contents in babies. While reviewing critically various modular models, we consider such hegemony and open lines of the debate. Progress of the modularity has led in different directions and disciplines within the cognitive sciences. On the one hand, much of the psychological research was conducted to search for modules, going against the general domain paradigm of long tradition. Theorizing was a dramatic turnaround beyond Fodor, assuming the hypothesis of massive modularity, which maintains the mind consists essentially (or may be completely) by innate modules for specific purposes. Modularity also appears as encouragement of investigations in the field of Neurobiology, working steadily on pathological cases such as double dissociations or atypical development (vg. Williams Syndrome). There are also positions of soft modularity, like the assumption of modularization of Karmiloff-Smith -which seems to have marked a turning point in the dynamics of theorizing and experimentation on the subject in question. Contributions from the paradigm of modularity led to estimate the differences between baby's consideration as a blank slate without any previous knowledge- the Piagetian and behaviorist babies, and a new nativist baby, initially much more powerful. For the standard constructivism, mind development occurs by general changes that affect the general structures of representation for all domains, and that operate on all aspects of cognitive system similarly, from a few processes biologically determined and functional processes as invariant. For the nativist / modular thesis, the baby is much better equipped from this starting, and is programmed to understand specific sources of information; their further development will be restricted by the specific innately modules established for each domain. To explain cognitive development would involve a difficult balance: while there are more specific domain properties in the baby's mind, less creative and flexible will be their cognitive system. Neuroscience of development and recent experiments with babies, provide elements to try reconciliation between their explanation of the constructivist legacy and the new findings about the innate background of the babies. The evolutionary specialization of human beings would be characterized precisely by a relative lack of expertise at birth, and a very lengthy development during which our brains learn and configure out. So, it would be possible to stay (or return) to constructivist positions, without abandoning the notion that there is something innate -although not necessarily coincident with the Fodor's view. This approach is borrowing heavily from the idea of modularization of Karmiloff-Smith (1992 /1994). She proposed that the domain expertise and modularity (re-defined) may well be understood as the natural product of the process of development. According to this author, modularization is the result of a process of representational redescription, a phased-development mechanism, able to give an account of the genesis of flexibility and variety of human cognition. Perhaps the challenge will be continuing with the debate in order to figure out the core features of a renewed constructivism, within or beyond the Fodorian modularity, but also of Piaget and computational paradigm, that considers modularistic contributions, and it is compatible with psychological and neurobiological theories.… [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this response, we consider four main issues arising from the commentaries to the target article. These include further details of the theory of interactive specialization, the relationship between neuroconstructivism and selectionism, the implications of neuroconstructivism for the notion of representation, and the role of genetics in theories of development. We conclude by stressing the importance of multidisciplinary approaches in the future study of cognitive development and by identifying the directions in which neuroconstructivism can expand in the Twenty-first Century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on Joe Becker's work on abstraction as a key in understanding cognitive development. Becker discusses understanding in a rather schematic and abstract way. According to the author, one of Becker's major theoretical innovations is that consciousness can be constructed as a more advanced form of having such overarching unities.

The article explores the notion of integrating the constructivist theories and sociocultural theories of cognitive development which are essential to developmental psychology, with the intention of moving toward a theory of cognitive development involving both the active mind of the child as well as the social embeddedness of developmental change. The authors elucidate the results from learning object names, understanding symbols, and learning causal explanations for events. They draw conclusions concerning the challenges and promise of the new approach.

Developmentalists such as Baldwin (1975); Basseches (1984); Cook-Greuter (1990, 1999, 2000); Kegan (1982, 1994, 2001); Loevinger (1976, 1979, 1983, 1993, 1997, 1998, 2002); Piaget (1970); and Wade (1996) have devoted their research to the growth of different lines of development in individuals. A developmental understanding of conflict has implications for conflict theorists and interveners. In applying Kegan's staged model of adult psychological development to the experience of conflict, we can better understand the meaning-making that underlies the behaviors that disputants exhibit in conflict, thereby allowing interveners to help the disputants expand their understanding of the conflict situation and find new pathways to its resolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on an article about the internal and external sources of human development. Factors that influence development; Concept of scheme-scheme interaction in development; Notions about the constructivist theory of human development; Computer simulation of scheme-scheme interaction.

In this commentary, I analyze Zittoun and her collaborators' idea of symbolic resources as mediators of the representational work demanded by ruptures or discontinuities in the experience of ordinary life (Zittoun, Duveen, Gillespie, Ivinson, & Psaltis, 2003). These remarks are mainly centered on the ideas of disquieting experience and alterity, approached from the lens of semiotic-cultural constructivism, which seems to allow a more in-depth discussion of the I-world relationship suggested by the authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I highlight the discipline of developmental psychopathology as an integrative framework that builds upon the historical underpinnings of a constructivist perspective. After presenting illustrative developmental psychopathology principles that I consider to be central to a constructivist view, I turn my attention to the role of experience on brain development. This serves as the entree into a discussion of research conducted with maltreated children on brain event-related potentials (ERPs) and the cognitive processing of emotional stimuli, neuroendocrine functioning, and acoustic startle. Each of these components of brain functioning serve to underscore how different neurobiological systems reflect the way in which individuals ascribe meaning to traumatic experiences. Research on child maltreatment, an “experiment of nature,” reveals that maltreated children actively construct their reality at both the biological and psychological levels of analysis, at least in part based on the meaning these children impute to their caregiving experiences. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article suggests an approach to representation – simultaneously constructivist, sociocultural, and interpretive – that can address the complementary roles of culture and individual agency in development. The necessary starting point is to recognize, following Durkheim, that collective representations are an irreducible reality sui generis and play a constitutive role in the formation and structuring of individual representations. Development must be understood as a genuinely dialectical process that includes the active appropriation (not just passive absorption) of collective representations through various modes of socially structured symbolic action. This requires both distinguishing and grasping the interplay of three analytical levels: individual, relational or interactional, and collective. Piaget’s work is shown to offer an instructive case of how promising tendencies in this direction have become derailed. The authors also offer a concrete illustration of one line of research informed by the kind of theoretical approach advocated here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the relations between the psychological constructivist, sociocultural and emergent perspectives in the context of developmental research. Interpretative framework at the classroom level; Interpretive framework at the school and societal levels; Coordination of the three psychological perspectives.

As discussions about so-called ‘epistemology’ have receded within family therapy, discussions about the doctrine of constructivism have emerged to carry on the underlying impulse of those earlier discussions. This article contends that a constructivist epistemology is not a new doctrine in family therapy, but, rather, reflects a shift in emphasis in that discipline from a nontraditional use to the traditional use of the term ‘epistemology’-uses that coexisted during the ‘epistemology’ debates of the early 1980s and that were the source of many confusions and logical contradictions. The article also demonstrates how recent articulations of constructivism have resulted in the same logical contradictions that were committed during the earlier ‘epistemology’ debates. The logic and utility of applying constructivism in particular, and epistemological analysis in general, to the practice of psychotherapy are questioned and considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Responds to a commentary on an article about the concept of scheme-scheme and scheme-object actions based on the constructivist theory of human development. Notions about the changes associated with the interaction between schemes and external objects; Overview of Jean Piaget's developmental theory; Distinction between scheme-scheme and scheme-object actions.

This commentary focuses on the conceptual implications of analyses of individual differences in francophone post-Piagetian research. These analyses are viewed as preoccupied by the "American question" of measurement and method, instead of attempting a theoretical account of the issues raised by intraindividual and interindividual variability in development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neuroconstructivism (Mareschal et al. 2007a) provides a useful framework for how to integrate research from different levels of analysis to model the multidimensional dynamics of development. However, the authors overlook the topic of meaning, a fundamental feature of cognition and subjective experience and also downplay the nonlinear nature of developmental causality. Neuroconstructivism is overly optimistic on the point of how well current computational models can address the challenge of complexity in developmental science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors of this commentary concur with the viewpoint presented by Mareschal et al. (2007a; 2007b) concerning the relevance of neurological data when theorizing about cognitive development. However, we argue here that Mareschal et al. fail to consider adequately the relevance of reorganizational brain events occurring through adolescence and early adulthood, especially regarding the prefrontal cortex and the ontogeny of executive functioning. In addition, evidence from the lifespan neurodevelopmental literature indicates that increased activity of neural networks may signify less efficient processing. This observation is of potential relevance when considering the neurological changes associated with cognitive development during childhood and adolescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neurocostructivism aims to illustrate and explain cognitive development in relation to the underlying neural structures, with the help of computational models. This enterprise should be grounded both in the evolutionary and in the developmental perspectives. In both, selection plays a fundamental role in the construction of neural and cognitive structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]