El pancalismo de James Mark Baldwin. Estética,psicología y constructivismo

Resumen

En este artículo nos proponemos realizar una exposición crítica del “pancalismo”, denominación que dio el psicólogo funcionalista James Mark Baldwin (1861–1934) a la ontología que corona su psicología evolucionista y su epistemología genética. Defendiendo que el pancalismo constituye uno de los mejores frutos del constructivismo, presentamos sus filiaciones teóricas generales, discutimos sus interpretaciones metafísicas—en las cuales el propio Baldwin cayó—y apuntamos algunas de sus implicaciones actuales.     

Constructing an Aesthetic Weltanschauung: Freud,James, and Ricoeur

I will investigate in this paper what kind of Weltanschauung Freud suggests. Although Freud argues in the lecture XXXV, The Question of a Weltanschauung (1933), that psychoanalysis is incapable of creating a Weltanschauung of its own, I think that he has a certain Weltanschauung, i.e., the aesthetic worldview, which involves his scientific, psychoanalytic, and artistic principles. Furthermore, I will explicate that Freud's aesthetic worldview is ultimately related to the Weltanschauungen of William James and Paul Ricoeur. I will focus particularly on their terms, sympathetic and poetic, which are the crucial elements that constitute the aesthetic Weltanschauung. Finally, I will briefly present my intention in drawing this aesthetic Weltanschauung. I will conclude that throughout the aesthetic Weltanschauung we may accept that everything is precious, pertinent, and worthy to be viewed as a part and a whole, and as home (Heim).     

Guest Editorial: The Resistance to Belief

William James's essay The Will to Believe proposed that we are sometimes justified, even obligated, to believe from our strong emotional or passional nature that something is true, even though there may not be total logical, evidential proof—which he also wrote is not to be found in this world. This essay explores situations, using a recent dear-death experience (NDE) example, in which there are reasonable evidence and logic, and yet belief seems to be withheld. I postulate and discuss nonrational influences producing resistance to belief, including the fear of being in error, the fear of rejection from the scientific community, irrational requirements of logicality, avoidance of consequences, and paradigm fixation. I also discuss issues in philosophy of science and epistemology in regard to proof.     

Developmental changes in selective and integrative visual attention

School-aged children and adults performed two speeded classification tasks designed to examine the relation between selective and integrative aspects of visual attention. Stimuli consisted of two parentheses (Experiment 1) or two arrows (Experiment 2) separated by 0.5 to 16 degrees visual angle. In a selective attention task, observers classified stimuli on the basis of one of the two elements. Younger children experienced more interference when the elements were closely spaced than older children and adults. In an integrative attention task, stimuli were classified on the basis of both of the elements. Here age differences were most pronounced when elements were separated by large visual angles. These findings suggest that the ability to contract and expand the size of the attentional "spotlight" improves with age in the school years.     

FOLLOWING A TRAJECTORY: ON “TRACING A TRAJECTORY” AND “EXPLAINING AND VALUING,” BY JAMES M. GUSTAFSON

Abstract. The roots of religious faith–and the provenance of ethical thought–may be sought in the human sciences, the physical sciences, literature, religious traditions, and deep human intuitions. Gustafson's religious stance and the author's, while different on their face, in common reflect a mingling–and tangling–of skepticism, understanding, and transcendence. Let all of us hope and believe what we can.     

Fowler's Stages of Faith Development in an Honors Science-and-Religion Seminar

According to Paul Tillich's understanding of religion as "ultimate concern," a religious dimension is implicit in all university curricula. A science-and-religion course, such as one taught at Southeast Missouri State University, can offer students the opportunity to integrate their worldview, taking seriously both religious ideas and scientific information. Assignments based on A. E. Lawson's model of a learning cycle provide a vehicle for evaluating significant student learning leading toward fuller integration. The stages of faith developed by James W. Fowler serve as a fruitfull framework for interpreting changes in student viewpoints. Fowler's six stages of faith are characterized. Examples from student writing assignments demonstrate shifts in the cognitive understanding of faith that coincide with Fowler's stages.     

Whole-word units are used before orthographic knowledge in perceptual development

A visual search task for target letters in multiletter displays was used to investigate information-processing differences between college students and presecond-grade children (mean age = 7 years, 4 months). The stimulus displays consisted of single words, pronounceable pseudowords, and unpronounceable nonwords varying in length from three to five letters. The mean response times for indicating whether or not a target letter occurred in the display increased with the number of display letters for both groups, although there were apparent differences between groups in the rate of search and type of search strategy used. Pre-second-grade children responded faster to word displays than to pseudoword and nonword displays, indicating that familiar letter strings could be processed faster than unfamiliar strings regardless of whether or not the latter were consistent with rules of English orthography. In contrast, college students processed words and pseudowords about equally well, and both resulted in faster responses than nonwords. As reading skills develop, children apparently come to process familiar words differently from other letter strings. Only after a significant sightword vocabulary is established do children seem to recognize the regularities of standard English orthography and make use of this knowledge to facilitate perceptual processes.     

Children's cognitive maps of large-scale spaces: Effects of exploration,direction, and repeated experience

Kindergarteners and third graders (mean ages 5–10 and 8–9 years) repeatedly encountered a model town and then constructed the town from memory. In Experiment 1, the effect of different types of exploration on the development of a cognitive map was assessed. Children who were directed to walk within the town placed buildings more accurately than children who had walked along the town's perimeter. Children who walked within the town and were directed to the spatial relationships among buildings had the highest placement accuracy. Third graders were more accurate than kindergarteners across the three types of exploration. In Experiment 2, children were permitted to explore the town alone for an unlimited amount of time. Under these conditions, third graders still placed buildings more accurately than kindergarteners. A comparison of Experiments 1 and 2 indicated that children developed more accurate cognitive maps when motor activity and attention were directed by the experimenter as opposed to being directed by the child. Accuracy improved with repeated walks and constructions in both experiments, and the results of Experiment 3 suggested that constructing facilitated the development of the cognitive map as much as walking. It was concluded that third graders' cognitive maps were more accurate than kindergarteners' maps due to differences in the speed of acquisition and storage of spatial information.     

The development of visual information processing skills related to reading

Literate adults can use their familiarity with specific words and their knowledge of English orthography to facilitate word recognition processes. The development of word superiority effects in visual perception was investigated in the present study using a search task with kindergarten (5.7 years old), second (8.0 years old), and fourth grade children (10.0 years old), and college students. The search task consisted of the visual presentation of a target letter followed by a three-, four-, or five-letter display. The target letter was included in the display on half the trials, and the displays were common words, orthographically regular pseudowords, and irregular nonwords. Although response times decreased with age, the three oldest groups showed similar effects for the size and structure of the displays. That is, response times increased linearly with the number of display letters, and responses were faster for word and pseudoword displays than for nonwords. The data for the kindergarten children showed evidence for the use of a different search strategy, and they did not respond differentially to the three types of displays. The results are discussed in terms of the implications for developmental models of visual search and word superiority effects in visual perception.