Power and Participation: Social Representations among Children in Pre-school

Children’s play is usually connected with qualities such as happiness and innocence, and regarded as important and necessary for learning and development. However, play is not always a state of joy. Experiences of being socially excluded or ignored and of taking part in such activities are occurring. The article draws on a re-analysis of empirical data from a study of pre-school children’s play. The focus in the article is directed towards how pre-school children within the context of play communicate and act in relation to social participation and power. The theoretical framework is built upon a socio-cultural research tradition, particularly emphasising context and communication. Interpretive reproduction, secondary adjustment, and social representations are used as additional theoretical concepts in the analyses and discussions of the results. Empirical data show that children’s social representations of power and participation in play include rationales for who can join the play and who can not, and also how to allow exceptions from the main rule that ‘anyone can join’.     

Might Intentions be the Only Source of Practical Imperatives?

I focus on the broadly instrumentalist view that all genuine practical imperatives are hypothetical imperatives and all genuine practical deliberation is deliberation from existing motivations. After indicating why I see instrumentalism as highly plausible, I argue that the most popular version of instrumentalism, according to which genuine practical imperatives can take desires as their starting point, is problematic. I then provide a limited defense of what I see as a more radical but also more compelling version of instrumentalism. According to the position I defend, genuine practical deliberation and genuine practical imperatives take as their starting point the agent's intentions and only the agent's intentions.Given my loose usage, the Humean position Bernard Williams defends in his seminal article “Internal and External Reasons” (1981) counts as a version of instrumentalism about practical reason, since it incorporates the idea that every genuine practical imperative takes as its starting point some existing motivation(s) of the agent. It deviates from strict instrumentalism in that it leaves room for specificationist reasoning (reasoning aimed at moving from general ends to specific ends) in addition to means-end reasoning. For example, it leaves room for practical reasoning that is focused on “finding constitutive solutions, such as deciding what would make for an entertaining evening, granted that one wants entertainment” or on “thinking how the satisfaction of elements in [one's subjective motivational set] can be combined, e.g. by time-ordering” (Williams, 1981, p. 104).     

An ordinal evaluation of categorical judgement data by random utilities and a corresponding correlation analysis

Categorical judgement data are analyzed along the lines of random utility theory. A class of orders is introduced (categorical weak orders); their characteristic vectors are regarded as points in a Euclidean space; their convex hull forms a polytope whose facets are fully characterized. This polytope is shown to correspond to an order polytope. Furthermore, its relation to the biorder polytope is pointed out. The convex representations of a given point of the polytope are discussed. The impact of these results on the methods of analyzing data arising from a categorical judgement procedure is outlined. In particular, some consequences are drawn with respect to the usual evaluation of correlations of such data.     

The organization and dissolution of semantic-conceptual knowledge: Is the ‘amodal hub’ the only plausible model?

In recent years, the anatomical and functional bases of conceptual activity have attracted a growing interest. In particular, Patterson and Lambon-Ralph have proposed the existence, in the anterior parts of the temporal lobes, of a mechanism (the 'amodal semantic hub') supporting the interactive activation of semantic representations in all modalities and for all semantic categories. The aim of then present paper is to discuss this model, arguing against the notion of an 'amodal' semantic hub, because we maintain, in agreement with the Damasio's construct of 'higher-order convergence zone', that a continuum exists between perceptual information and conceptual representations, whereas the 'amodal' account views perceptual informations only as a channel through which abstract semantic knowledge can be activated. According to our model, semantic organization can be better explained by two orthogonal higher-order convergence systems, concerning, on one hand, the right vs. left hemisphere and, on the other hand, the ventral vs. dorsal processing pathways. This model posits that conceptual representations may be mainly based upon perceptual activities in the right hemisphere and upon verbal mediation in the left side of the brain. It also assumes that conceptual knowledge based on the convergence of highly processed visual information with other perceptual data (and mainly concerning living categories) may be bilaterally represented in the anterior parts of the temporal lobes, whereas knowledge based on the integration of visual data with action schemata (namely knowledge of actions, body parts and artefacts) may be more represented in the left fronto-temporo-parietal areas.     

Identity Processes in Collective Action Participation: Farmers' Identity and Farmers' Protest in the Netherlands and Spain

This study tested the assumption that a sense of collective identity stimulates participation in collective action. Contextual circumstances supposedly make a collective identity more salient and compel people to act as members of the group; protest participation is more likely among people with a strong collective identity. Group identification and participation in identity organizations were used as indicators of collective identity in a study of 248 farmers from Galicia (Spain) and 167 farmers from the Netherlands. The farmers were interviewed three times at intervals of 1 year. The longitudinal design also allowed a test of causality. A sense of collective identity appeared to stimulate preparedness to take part in farmers' protest. Action preparedness leads to action participation, which in turn appears to foster collective identity.     

Shifting from Treatment Plans to Action Plans: Solidifying the Therapeutic Alliance

This article summarizes the evolution of my theoretical orientation and treatment intervention style over the past thirty-something years. It discusses the pathways taken, influences felt, and experiences that have contributed to my expanding mindset and current therapeutic modus operandi, progressing from past to present. As to what will be in the future, that is difficult to predict as the metamorphosis keeps happening, although some components remain essential ingredients and provide grounding and balance. Que será, será sums up the future succinctly.     

The Experience of Agency: Feelings, Judgments, and Responsibility

ABSTRACT— The experience of agency refers to the experience of being in control both of one's own actions and, through them, of events in the external world. Recent experimental studies have investigated how people recognise a particular event as being caused by their own action or by that of another person. These studies suggest that people match sensory inputs to a prediction based on the action they are performing. Other studies have contrasted voluntary actions to physically similar but passive body movements. These studies suggest that voluntary action triggers wide-ranging changes in the spatial and temporal experience not only of one's own body but also of external events. Prediction and monitoring of the consequences of one's own motor commands produces characteristic experiences that form our normal, everyday feeling of being in control of our life. We conclude by discussing the implications of recent psychological work for our notions of responsibility for action.     

Six Factors Fostering Protest: Predicting Participation in Locally Unwanted Land Uses Movements

In two studies we analyzed the predictors of participation in an Italian Lulu mobilization, rooted in the Susa Valley, a North-Western Italian valley where a high speed railway (HSR) should be sited. Based on the data of qualitative Study 1, performed interviewing 12 anti-HSR militants and 12 non anti-HSR militants, we hypothesized that Klandermans' (1997) model on participation (centered on group identification, sense of injustice, and collective efficacy) is suitable to predict the Lulu mobilization we studied, and that three contextual variables (community involvement, the perception of the existence of a vast majority in the community favoring the mobilization, and place attachment) may be added to Klandermans' to predict such a mobilization. We formally tested such hypotheses in quantitative Study 2 (representative sample of the people living in the Susa Valley, N =  250). Results supported the role of Klandermans' (1997) variables and confirmed the influence exerted by our contextual variables, thus suggesting that an integration of the two models would be fruitful in the analysis of Lulu mobilizations. Limits and future developments of this research are discussed.     

Qualitative differences in the representation of abstract versus concrete words: Evidence from the visual-world paradigm

In the present visual-world experiment, participants were presented with visual displays that included a target item that was a semantic associate of an abstract or a concrete word. This manipulation allowed us to test a basic prediction derived from the qualitatively different representational framework that supports the view of different organizational principles for concrete and abstract words in semantic memory. Our results confirm the assumption of a primary organizational principle based on association for abstract words, different from the semantic similarity principle proposed for concrete words, and provide the first piece of evidence in support of this view obtained from healthy participants. The results shed light on the representational structure of abstract and concrete concepts.