GUEST EDITORIAL MBR: RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT

It was hypothesized that paired-comparison judgments of multiple-cue profiles would be a joint function of instruction set,- cue-inconsistency, and individual differences. Thirty-one subjects judged all possible pairs of 22 profiles containing eight cues in an own-control, counterbalanced design. A comparison of instructions providing no attribute for judging similarity with those which did provide an attribute revealed systematic differences with respect to both the number and kind of perceived profile dimensions. However, within each instruction set individual differences emerged with respect to the perceived profile dimensionality which would have been obscured with a group-averaging multidimensional scaling procedure. Further, more individual difference variability was present in the instructional set providing no attribute for judgment. Finally, many subgroups of response-homogeneous judges were found to base their judgments of profile similarity on discrepant cues whereas others did not. The possibility was raised that resolution of inconsistent cues may involve either weighting of one or the other of the cues or utilizing an entirely new cue for judgment.     

SCIENCE AND CONFUCIANISM IN RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT

In contrast to Western science and religion, a topic which has been studied very much since the twentieth century, less research has been done on science and Confucianism. By way of a comparative viewpoint within the history of science, this article will deal with some aspects of science and Confucianism in retrospect, for instance, the Confucian origin of the idea of tian yuan di fang 天圓地方, the natural philosophy of qi, and the wu xing li tian zhi qi 五行沴天之氣 bringing abnormal astrological phenomena and reflecting a negative Confucian relation between politics, ethics, and nature. In the late Ming, Xiong Mingyu found that abnormal astrological phenomena, as atmospheric events, happened in the sublunar region rather than in the stars, and in the present time we can reinterpret the crisis of air pollution or global climate change as reflecting a negative Confucian relation between politics, ethics, and nature and as a warning of collective misbehavior in our use of modern scientific technologies.     

SIXTY YEARS OF CHINESE PSYCHOLOGY: RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT*

It is sixty years since the founding of the Chinese Psychological Society. In this comparatively short period, psychology in China has travelled a very tortuous and bumpy path. Experiences are worthy of being summarized, and lessons of being learned and remembered. On this occasion of commemorating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the society, let us review the past and look forward into the future, in the hope of pushing psychology in China towards a new stage of development.     

NEO-PIAGETIAN THEORIES: CROSS-CULTURAL AND DIFFERENTIAL PERSPECTIVES

The neo-Piagetian theories represented in this special issue are examined from the cross-cultural and differential perspectives. The goals, methods and achievements of these two approaches are briefly reviewed, and the similarities and differences between the two are pointed out. Six criteria are proposed that psychological theories should meet from the point of view of these perspectives. After a review of the few existing empirical cross-cultural and differential studies inspired by neo-Piagetian theories, the latter are matched to the six criteria, and the potential advantages of these new models over classical structuralist approaches are spelled out.     

NEO-PIAGETIAN THEORIES AND EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE

Three studies are reported showing different aspects of relating Piagetian studies to intervention research concerned with accelerating the cognitive development of early adolescents. It is argued that inferring causation from results of intervention studies is problematical. The first study involved Feuerstein's model of Mediated Learning and Instrumental Enrichment; the second utilised training on formal operational schemata in the context of science education, and the third investigated the effect of training for field-independence on Piagetian tests and on science learning. In each case effect-sizes of the order of one standard deviation on Piagetian tests between experimental and control were shown to be achievable over a period of a year or more, and in two types of study it was shown that the effects were not transient. Nevertheless, two substantial issues were common to each study. The effects shown on Piagetian and other tests had not been shown to transfer to students' learning during the intervention, and the successful communication of an intervention model to practising teachers was found to be a major research issue.     

EXPERIENTIAL STRUCTURALISM AND NEO-PIAGETIAN THEORIES: TOWARD AN INTEGRATED MODEL

Experiential structuralism is a new theory of cognitive organization and growth. It postulates that the cognitive system is organized into six autonomous capacity spheres: the quantitative-relational, the qualitative-analytic, the imaginal-spatial, the causal-experimental, the verbal-propositional, and the metacognitive-reflecting. These capacities were called experiential because they are experimentally documented, they reflect the organization of the persons' experience and the - subjective - experience the persons have about this organization. Thus it was proposed that a set of specific cognitive abilities may be integrated into a general capacity under the guidance of four principles. Namely, the principles of (1) domain specificity, (2) formal-procedural specificity, (3) symbolic bias, and (4) subjective distinctness of capacities. It was argued that this theory resolves some of the problems related to the competence-performance dispute better than the other neo-Piagetian theories. It seems to succeed in this regard because it postulates mechanisms directly linking performance variations with systematic variations in the organization of the cognitive system. However, the neo-Piagetian theories, though they did not define capacities, did propose notions able to causally explain the construction of autonomous capacities. These notions were integrated into a common model able to explain the generation of capacities. Overall, then, the present article attempts to integrate traditional differential and cognitive-developmental psychology into a common theory.     

CROSS-CULTURAL SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES ON TWO NEO-PIAGETIAN COGNITIVE TASKS*

Two studies are reported concerning performance differences and similarities across cultures. Pascual-Leone's tests of mental attention/energy (M-power) were administered to Zulu-speaking township children aged from 7 to 12 years. In study 1, the Compound Stimulus Visual Information task (CSVI) was used to determine whether children (N = 292) performed at theoretically predicted levels previously obtained with middle-class Canadian children. In study 2, the children (N = 252) were required to complete the Figural Intersection Test (FIT) four times. Unlike the CSVI, in which learning is controlled by training prior to testing, the FIT assumes basic familiarity with the general test requirements. The purpose of repeated testing was to assess the extent of learning across trials. The results for study 1 indicate that subjects do perform at the predicted levels on the CSVI and have the same M-power as Canadian children. The results for study 2 indicate that the subjects underperform on trial 1 of the FIT but overperform on trial 2 relative to Canadian children. Deux études sont rapportées concernant des différences et des similarités inter-culturelles de performance. Les tests de l'attention mentale/énergie (‘M-power’) de Pascual-Leone ont été administrés à des enfants âgés de 7 à 12 ans provenant de communautés d'expression Zulu. Dans la première étude, la tâche d'information visuelle du stimulus composé (CSVI) a été utilisée pour déterminer si les enfants (N = 292) pouvaient performer aux niveaux prédits théoriquement qui avaient été préalablement observés chez les enfants Canadiens de classe moyenne. Dans la seconde étude, les enfants (N = 252) devaient compléter quatre fois le test de l'intersection des figures (FIT). Contrairement au CSVI, dans lequel l'apprentissage est contrôlé par l'entraînement qui précède l'administration du test, le FIT assume une familiarité de base avec les prérequis généraux du test. Le but visé par la répétition du test était d'évaluer l'étendue de l'apprentissage en fonction des essais. Les résultats de la première étude indiquent que les sujets obtiennent les performances prévues au CSVI et possèdent le měme niveau de ‘M-Power’ que les enfants Canadiens. Les résultats de la seconde étude indiquent que, par comparaison avec les enfants Canadiens, les sujets livrent une performance inférieure au premier essai du FIT, alors qu'ils obtiennent une performance supérieure au second essai.     

流言理论和问题理论

把流言理论和问题理论联系起来似乎并不合适。不小过,人们也许会轻易地把一则流言理解为一种解答,即当做对于从集体角度来看具有重要意义的某个问题的、特别具有就事论事色彩的、完全以精神上的即兴创作为标志的解答：例如,为了说明一个人为什么完全有理由担忧,为了说明一个人可能有的、对某项新发明持敌意态度的无论什么理由,     

过度自信的研究展望

过度自信是个体高估自身判断精确度的一种认知偏差。过高估计和过高定位作为过度自信的两种主要类型被认为是个体在评价其绝对能力和相对能力时的表现。一般认为信息加工的偏差与判断误差的无偏性是造成过高估计的主要原因。自我提升动机、权重差异与信息的差异被认为是产生过高定位的原因。但是过度自信的这两种类型却在不同难度的任务巾出现了分离现象。最近,研究者提出了贝叶斯过度自信,用贝叶斯推理对不同任务中二者的分离进行了整合。过度自信产生的原因和内在心理机制、过度自信对决策的影响以及过度自信中的个体差异研究将会成为该领域日后研究的趋势。     

RESPONSIBILITY AND THE AIMS OF THEORY: STRAWSON AND REVISIONISM

Abstract: Strawsonian approaches to responsibility, including more recent accounts such as Dennett's and Wallace’s, face a number of important objections. However, Strawsonian theories can be recast along revisionist lines so as to avoid many of these problems. In this paper, I explain the revisionist approach to moral responsibility, discuss the concessions it makes to incompatibilism (including the point that compatibilists may not fully capture what our commonsense understanding of responsibility), why it provides a fruitful recasting of Strawsonian approaches, and how it offers an alternative to the pattern of dialectical stalemates exhibited by standard approaches to free will and determinism.     

INTUITIONS AND SEMANTIC THEORY

Abstract: While engaged in the analysis of philosophically central concepts, analytic philosophers have traditionally relied extensively on their own intuitions about when such concepts can be correctly applied. Intuitions have, however, come under increasingly critical scrutiny of late, and if they turned out not to be a reliable tool for the proper analysis of our concepts, then a radical reworking of analytic philosophy's methodology would be in order. One influential line of criticism against the use of intuitions argues that they only tell us about our conceptions of things, and not the things themselves. This venerable line of criticism can seem considerably strengthened if one endorses “externalist” accounts of meaning. Nevertheless, the move from semantic externalism to the rejection of intuitions will be shown to be illegitimate if one has a constitutive rather than expressive understanding of the relation between our intuitions and our concepts.     

ORGANISMIC PROCESSES FOR NEO-PIAGETIAN THEORIES: A DIALECTICAL CAUSAL ACCOUNT OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

The paper criticizes some epistemological presuppositions of Piaget's and of neo-Piagetian's work, in particular, the psycho-Logical principle. This principle is contrasted with a more valid psycho-dialectical one. It is suggested that a dialectical-constructivist (i.e., causal-dynamic) perspective offers a causal theoretical framework for cognitive development that is superior to that of Piaget and many neo-Piagetians. I outline criteria for evaluating causal developmental theories, and point out deficiencies in Piaget's and neo-Piagetian's stage theories vis-à-vis the criteria. An organismic theory of constructive operators - a dialectical/causal theory - is introduced as a remedy for these deficiencies. I focus on a modular model of mental attention that is constituted by four dynamically interacting functional systems. These systems together explain the ‘beam’ of mental attention and its phenomenological/behavioural effects. I claim that the stages of cognitive development are caused by growth of mental attention. The validity of this model is supported by data on a motor performance task (Rho task). The Rho data show: (a) the existence of stage-wise plateaus in children's performance at ages congruent with the redefined Piagetian stages; (b) the psychological structures which, driven by mental attention (M-capacity), are responsible for performance on the task, appear to be located in the left hemisphere of the brain. These findings, predicted by the dialectical theory of mental attention, highlight its causal-predictive power.