Critical notes and reflections on ‘social representations’

Moscovici has ushered in the ‘era of social representations widely welcomed as a European alternative to what are increasingly regarded as the shortcomings of mainline American social psychology. The rapid and enthusiastic adoption by many psychologists of Moscovici's theoretical approach has not so far evoked a great deal of critical appraisal of the ideas he put forward. The present paper seeks to make a start in jilling this gap by an examination of the conceptual structure and some of its underlying assumptions. There appear to be a number of internal inconsistencies and some doubt concerning the logical status of social representations’ It is suggested that clarification of such issues, together with the establishment of closer links with the findings of neighbouring disciplines, would help to strengthen what is undoubtedly one of the most stimulating new departures in the field.     

THE INFLUENCE OF SCHOOLING ON ADULT RECALL OF FAMILIAR STIMULI: A STUDY IN GHANA*

Several studies have shown the influence of schooling on a variety of cognitive skills. However, since the tasks employed were nearly always derived from the school setting, such findings provide no adequate answer to the following question: given a cognitive task with which schooled and unschooled subjects have had equal experience, does schooling still have an effect? Opposing views are held about this question, and the aim of the present study was to contribute towards answering it. Twenty-four schooled and 24 unschooled subjects, evenly divided by sex within each group, were given a recall task based on an indigenous game equally familiar to all of them. The task involved positions, numbers, and combinations of both. The performance of schooled subjects was very significantly superior on all aspects of the tasks. With regard to position there was an interaction indicating that women's performance was particularly enhanced by schooling, but this was not the case with numbers. Results thus support the view that schooling does have a general effect not necessarily mediated by specific experience. Moreover, in the light of the proportion of variance accounted for among different component tasks, it is suggested that a major effect of schooling might be an increased ability to process complex information.     

The Effect of Attitude Similarity on Task Performance1

It was hypothesized in a two-person situation that students would perform significantly better on intellectual tasks when paired with a liked other than when paired with a disliked other. In a laboratory experiment, 108 male undergraduates performed one of three types of intellectual tasks with an attitudinally similar or dissimilar partner or with a partner about whom the subject had no attitude information. Individuals paired with a similar partner felt affectively more positive than those paired with a dissimilar partner (p < .01). Individuals paired with a similar other performed significantly better on the tasks than those paired with a dissimilar partner (p < .01).     

Theodor Lipps and the shift from "sympathy" to "empathy"

In the course of extensive philosophical debates on aesthetics in nineteenth-century Germany, Robert Vischer introduced the concept of Einfühlung in relation to art. Theodor Lipps subsequently extended it from art to visual illusions and interpersonal understanding. While Lipps had regarded Einfühlung as basically similar to the old notion of sympathy, Edward Titchener in America believed it had a different meaning. Hence, he coined the term empathy as its translation. This term came to be increasingly widely adopted, first in psychology and then more generally. But the lack of agreement about the supposed difference between these concepts suggests that Lipps had probably been right.     

Theodor Waitz on Psychic Unity

The tolerant stance on ‘race’ by prominent Enlightenment figures was followed in the 19th century by a powerful wave of biological racism. Many of its proponents took the view that human ‘races’ constitute separate species, and that most non-white ones are of inferior mentality. An early opponent of this claim was James Cowles Prichard, who used mainly missionary reports in seeking to refute it. Far more extensive work was undertaken by the Herbartian psychologist Theodor Waitz, who collected ethnographic material from all over the world. It was published in six volumes - the last two after his death by his former student Georg Gerland. Waitz aim was to demonstrate the ‘psychic unity’ of mankind. Initially extracts from the volume on African peoples are presented in order to show how he dealt with his material. The main focus is on his first volume entitled Introduction to Anthropology, in which he elaborates his general thesis. In it Waitz maintains, against the biological racists, that mankind is a single species. Furthermore he discusses the changes from savagery to civilization, attributing them to a combination of geography and history. He was followed by Adolf Bastian who, unlike Waitz, was a great traveller with personal experience of peoples all over the globe. Both firmly believed in the psychic unity of mankind, but Bastian’s approach to psychology was very different.     

Oculomotor atypicalities in Developmental Coordination Disorder

Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) fail to acquire adequate motor skill, yet surprisingly little is known about the oculomotor system in DCD. Successful completion of motor tasks is supported by accurate visual feedback. The purpose of this study was to determine whether any oculomotor differences can distinguish between children with and without a motor impairment. Using eye tracking technology, visual fixation, smooth pursuit, and pro‐ and anti‐saccade performance were assessed in 77 children that formed three groups: children with DCD (aged 7–10), chronologically age (CA) matched peers, and a motor‐match (MM) group (aged 4–7). Pursuit gain and response preparation in the pro‐ and anti‐saccade tasks were comparable across groups. Compared to age controls, children with DCD had deficits in maintaining engagement in the fixation and pursuit tasks, and made more anti‐saccade errors. The two typically developing groups performed similarly, except on the fast speed smooth pursuit and antisaccade tasks, where the CA group outperformed the younger MM group. The findings suggest that children with DCD have problems with saccadic inhibition and maintaining attention on a visual target. Developmental patterns were evident in the typically developing groups, suggesting that the pursuit system and cognitive control develop with age. This study adds to the literature by being the first to systematically identify specific oculomotor differences between children with and without a motor impairment. Further examination of oculomotor control may help to identify underlying processes contributing to DCD. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/NinXa2KlB4M . [Correction added on 27 January 2017, after first online publication: The video abstract link was added.]     

TOPOLOGICAL AND EUCLIDEAN SPATIAL FEATURES NOTED BY CHILDREN

The question explored in this study is whether the spatial-perceptual difficulties experienced in some cultures could be partly accounted for in terms of a persistence of predominantly topological functioning. An oddity-choice task was devised consisting of one set of regular and another of irregular figures such that responses could be classified as topological (T), Euclidean (E) or “unrelated” (U), the last indicating failure to categorize figures consistently. A total of 415 children aged 4–12 were tested in Hong Kong, India, Scotland and Zambia. Few significant age trends but highly significant cultural and sub-cultural differences were found. Contrary to expectation, T responses were roughly constant while the proportion of both E and U responses showed systematic cross-cultural variations. There was evidence that it is U responses rather than the proportion of E responses which directly reflect spatial ability. The factors producing cultural and sub-cultural differences are discussed.