Piaget and Vygotsky Revisited: Dialogue or Assimilation?

In response to suggestions for merging Piagetian and Vygotskian psychology on the basis of their apparent similarity (e.g., Glassman, 1994), it is argued that numerous differences between the two paradigms constitute fundamental principled disagreements, and that these ought not to be minimized or simplified. Some fundamental differences involve underlying philosophy, social influences on development, the nature of the developmental process itself, developmental stages, and universality of cognitive structures. It is argued that a project of combining Piagetian and Vygotskian psychology would be premature at best, and that continued dialogue between these two distinct perspectives would be of greater value.     

Target and nontarget grouping in visual search

Results recently reported by Driver, McLeod, and Dienes (1992) are used to contrast three accounts of visual search—in particular, their mechanism for easy conjunction search. In the Driver et al. study, the target was defined by a conjunction of form and movement; the key manipulation was phase in both target and nontarget motion sets. Mechanisms working separately on each display element (inhibition from nontarget features, facilitation from target features) are unable to explain large effects of phase, since this is defined only by relationships between one element and another. As implemented in the guided search model of Cave and Wolfe (1990), local suppression between similar elements is also unable to account for the results. More promising is an approach based on perceptual grouping: Elements moving in phase can be selected (target motion) or rejected (nontarget motion) as a group. Rather than a bias against elements that are similar to or grouped with their neighbors, there is a bias to treat grouped elements together.     

Hiding valuables: A questionnaire study of mnemonically risky behavior

A survey investigated incidences where individuals intentionally hid objects but later forgot the item's location. Surveys from 111 younger and 99 older adults yielded the following prototypical scenario: the person hid the valuable 1 year ago to prevent theft, and waited 1 month before an initial 30-minute search, which included looking in dresser drawers plus 1.5 other locations. The person made three additional searches (total searches = 4) for the missing valuable over a 2 week period. Three-quarters of the hidden valuables were eventually found (usually by accident) about 1 month after hiding the object. About half of the time, the person had already searched the hiding area. Older adults typically hid jewellery from thieves, while younger adults hid money from friends and relatives. Older adults searched more often for longer periods of time for the hidden object, and took longer to eventually find the object, compared with younger adults.     

Self-esteem and Rogers' core conditions in close friends: A latent variable pathanalysis of panel data

A LISREL or path analysis with latent variables was used to test the Rogerian-derived hypothesis that self-esteem is determined by the degree to which a person has a current close friend who is seen to be unconditionally accepting, empathic, and congruent. The revised Barrett-Lennard (1964) Relationship Inventory and Rosenberg (1965) Self-Esteem Scale were completed by 38 female and 28 male students on two occasions 15 weeks apart. The hypothesis was conjimzed for unconditionality of acceptance (which was positive) and the core conditions combined. In addition, the temporal relationships between the core conditions were analysed. Level of acceptance was reciprocally related to both empathy and congruence, while prior congruence had a negative but nonsignajicant association with unconditionality of acceptance.     

Latent Structure of the Sources of Mathematics Self-Efficacy

General social cognitive theory and its career-specific elaborations posit four primary sources through which self-efficacy beliefs are acquired and modified: personal performance accomplishments, vicarious learning, social persuasion, and physiological states and reactions. We present two studies exploring the dimensionality of these sources within the context of career-relevant mathematics activities. In Study 1, 295 college students completed measures of the source variables. Testing two- through five-factor models, we found strongest support for a four-factor latent structure of the efficacy sources. In Study 2, involving 481 high school students, a five-factor model fit the data well. We also found evidence of a higher order factor structure in both samples. Several directions for further research on the sources of efficacy information are considered, along with implications for career and academic interventions.     

Intelligence and the Frontal Lobe: The Organization of Goal-Directed Behavior

Basic to the study of individual differences is the concept of “general intelligence” or Spearman'sg.In this article we suggest thatgis largely a reflection of the control functions of the frontal lobe. A series of experiments investigates a phenomenon we callgoal neglect:disregard of a task requirement even though it has been understood and remembered. Subjectively it is as though the neglected requirement “slips the subject's mind.” Previously described in frontal patients, we show that goal neglect can also be seen in some members of the normal population. In line with conventional distinctions between controlled and automatic processing, eliciting conditions for goal neglect include novelty, weak error feedback, and multiple concurrent task requirements. Under these conditions neglect is linked closely togand extremely common after frontal lesions. Following many other models, we suggest that behavior in any task is structured by a set of action constraints or requirements, derived in part from verbal instructions and specified at multiple levels of abstraction. A frontal process of constraint or requirement activation is fundamental to Spearman'sg.     

CHOICE-MAKING TREATMENT OF YOUNG CHILDREN'S SEVERE BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS

The choice-making behavior of 5 young children with developmental disabilities who engaged in aberrant behavior was studied within a concurrent operants framework. Experimental analyses were conducted to identify reinforcers that maintained aberrant behavior, and functional communication training packages were implemented to teach the participants to gain reinforcement using mands. Next, a choice-making analysis, in which the participants chose one of two responses (either a mand or an alternative neutral response) to obtain different durations and qualities of reinforcement, was conducted. Finally, treatment packages involving choice making via manding were implemented to decrease inappropriate behavior and to increase mands. The results extended previous applications of choice making to severe behavior disorders and across behaviors maintained by positive and negative reinforcement.     

Influence of a Cross-Cultural Training Course on Racial Identity Attitudes of White Women and Men: Preliminary Perspectives

The authors examine the influence of cross-cultural training on the racial identity attitudes of 35 White graduate counselors in training (10 men and 25 women) and the impact of gender on training. A pretest-posttest comparison of responses to the White Racial Identity Attitudes Survey (WRIAS) was used. Results indicated that the cross-cultural training course (a) influenced racial identity attitudes of White counselors in training and (b) racial identity attitudes were influenced by gender.     

Long-term benefits of seeding the knowledge base

Exposure to numerical examples (seed facts) produced a substantial long-term reduction in domain-specific innumeracy. In particular, learning the populations of 24 seed countries improved accuracy of estimates of the populations of 75 untrained countries, both at the time of learning and 4 months later. Consistent with abstraction-based theories of learning and memory, the benefits of having been exposed to the seed facts were as large 4 months after the exposure as immediately after it, despite the specific populations of the seed countries having been forgotten during the interval.