ROLE DU PARTENAIRE ADULTE DANS LA GENESE DE LA COMMUNICATION: LES PRINCIPAUX COURANTS THEORIQUES

According to some authors, socialisation explains the emergence and development of communicative behavior. Other authors think that this development is an autonomous process: either because communication and even sociability exist per se and are innate activities of the infant, or because the development of communication is an aspect of cognitive development. Up to the present time the experiments and observations do not lend support to one hypothesis over the other: there are strong arguments in both directions, without them being definitive. Two approaches seem suited to establish the range and restriction of these different theoretical points of view: a systematic analysis of the reciprocal roles of the adult and the infant during interaction and the study of the influence of certain characteristics of the family or institutional milieu on the communicative behavior of the infant.     

L'APPRENTISSAGE DE LA NOTION D'INCLUSION DE CLASSES CHEZ DE JEUNES ENFANTS BAOULÉS (CÔTE D'IVOIRE)*

This training study of the concept of class inclusion follows a previous paper on the training of the conservation of liquids (Dasen et al. 1979). Twenty-eight African (Baoulé) children, aged 7 to 9 years, were attributed to two groups, matched on age, schooling and performance on a pretest comprising 5 concrete operational tasks. Fourteen subjects who performed at stages 1 or 2 on class inclusion were trained according to a method adapted from Inhelder et al. (1974). The training effect was measured during two post-tests at the interval of one month. The results show a stable training effect in half of the subjects; there is a statistically significant generalization to other concepts of the same stage. This finding, which is similar to what has been reported for European children, supports the hypothesis of connections between operational concepts based on the common structure of the ‘grouping’. A ‘time lag’ of about 2 years in the development of class inclusion appears when comparing Baoulé and European children. The absence of very rapid learning (‘actualization’) shows that this lag probably occurs at the competence and not only at the performance level. The training effect is sufficient to reduce and even bridge this lag.     

COMPARAISON INTERLINGUISTIQUE DE MATÉRIEL VERBAL PROPRE A L'APPRENTISSAGE DE CONCEPT1

Inter-language comparison of verbal material for the study of concept formation. — A list of 215 French words, which were translation equivalents of the words in Underwood and Richardson's (1956) published list, were presented to 119 French students from which single, restricted to sense impression associates were obtained. A systematic inter-language comparison is established and differences between French and English speaking subjects discussed. The piocedure adopted by Mednick and Halpern (1962) to study the ease of concept attainment as a function of Associative Rank has been applied to French subjects. A replication using a direct translation of the English nouns shows no difference between concepts at Associative Rank 1 and 2. It appears indeed from norms of the French group that the concepts selected are balanced not only with respect to Dominance Level but also with respect to Mean Associative Rank. But further experiment, with a material established according to the norms of the French list of associates, shows a very significant difference in the mean number of trials taken to solve each concept. It thus strengthened the assumption of homogeneity of associative response hierarchies in a given language community.     

利奥波德·塞达尔·桑戈尔与普世文明

在利奥波德·塞达尔·桑戈尔积极捍卫的观念中,普世文明当属其思想的主要组成部分。这一观念曾受到各种评论,有时甚至受到错误的解释或反驳。本文将阐述笔者对桑戈尔思想基础的个人看法。我首先要分析他关于“黑人精神”（N6gritude）的思想,