Development of the appearance-reality distinction

Young children can express conceptual difficulties with the appearance-reality distinction in two different ways: (1) by incorrectly reporting appearance when asked to report reality (“phenomenism”); (2) by incorrectly reporting reality when asked to report appearance (“intellectual realism”). Although both phenomenism errors and intellectual realism errors have been observed in previous studies of young children's cognition, the two have not been seen as conceptually related and only the former errors have been taken as a symptom of difficulties with the appearance-reality distinction. Three experiments investigated 3- to 5-year-old children's ability to distinguish between and correctly identify real versus apparent object properties (color, size, and shape), object identities, object presence-absence, and action identities. Even the 3-year-olds appeared to have some ability to make correct appearance-reality discriminations and this ability increased with age. Errors were frequent, however, and almost all children who erred made both kinds. Phenomenism errors predominated on tasks where the appearance versus reality of the three object properties were in question; intellectual realism errors predominated on the other three types of tasks. Possible reasons for this curious error pattern were advanced. It was also suggested that young children's problems with the appearance-reality distinction may be partly due to a specific metacognitive limitation, namely, a difficulty in analyzing the nature and source of their own mental representations.     

Developmental changes in apportionment of study time among items in a multitrial free recall task

First grade, third grade, and college Ss attempted to memorize a single set of items over the course of 5 trials, each trial consisting of a 45-sec study period followed by a free recall test. On all trials but the first, S was allowed to have available during his study period only half of the total set of items, but was free to select whichever items he wished to include in this half. Third grade and college Ss were significantly more prone than first grade Ss to select for study items not recalled in the immediately preceding recall test. The results suggest that the strategy of deliberately concentrating one's study activities on the less well mastered segments of materials to be learned, like other elementary memory strategies (e.g., rote rehearsal), cannot automatically be assumed to be part of a young child's repertoire of learning techniques.     

What young children think you see when their eyes are closed

The common assumption that young children egocentrically believe you cannot see them when their own eyes are closed was investigated in two studies. It was found that 2.5-4-year-olds, but not 5-year-olds and adults, would indeed often give negative reply to the experimenter's question “Do I see you?” when their eyes were closed and covered with their hands. However, they would also correctly reply that the experimenter did see their arm and an object placed in front of them and did not see their eyes and back, indicating that they were making veridical, nonegocentric inferences about the experimenter's visual experience. In addition, their eyes being visible to the experimenter did not prove to be either a necessary or a sufficient condition for their judgment that the experimenter could see “them” (“you”). It was concluded that, in this context, adults take “you” to mean their whole body while young children take it to mean primarily their face region. Speculations were made as to how young children could have acquired this meaning, and about possible similarities and differences between the self conceptions of young children and adults.     

'Stream of consciousness' and 'ownership of thought' in indigenous people in central Australia

Fifteen Central Australian Aboriginal adults (8 patients, 7 colleagues) were presented with a culturally modified version of Flavell's 'stream of consciousness' experiment (pictures of persons with empty or 'busy' thought-bubbles, and an invitation to assign a picture to the mental state of a second experimenter seen reading or sitting quietly). Only 4 people assigned the empty thought bubble to the quiet experimenter. This result was at least as good as that of a sample of Stanford College students tested by Flavell. The experiment provoked detailed comments from the informants about subjectivity, suggesting great subtlety of phenomenological awareness in Central Australian Aboriginal people, and attributing a kind of subjectivity to non-human entities, including inanimate elements. We learnt that the Western Deserts dialect term watiya was reserved for the subjectivity attributed to trees and rocks. The ownership of all thought was attributed to the tjukurpa (the Aboriginal dreaming). These Aboriginal cultural attributions were compared and contrasted with reflections developed by Jung and the post-Jungian David Holt on the nature of subjectivity, and religious notions of the redemption of matter.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed: Ronald Hayman, A Life of Jung Mario Jacoby, Jungian Psychotherapy and Contemporary Infant Research: Basic Patterns of Emotional Exchange P. Pietikainen, C. G. Jung and the Psychology of Symbolic Forms Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams A New Translation by Joyce Crick. Ana-Maria Rizzuto, Why Did Freud Reject God? A Psychodynamic Interpretation T. Ogden, Reverie and Interpretation: Sensing Something Human Christopher Bollas, The Mystery of Things Douglas Kirsner, Unfree Associations: Inside Psychoanalytic Institutions      

Books received

Analytical Psychology
Thomas Singer, (ed) The Vision Thing: Myth, Politics and Psyche in the World
Erel Shalit, The Hero and his Shadow. Psychopolitical aspects of Myth and Reality in Israel
J. Hollis, The Archetypal Imagination
Psychoanalysis
A. Ferro, The Bi-Personal Field – Experiences in Child Analysis
M. Parsons, The Dove that Returns, The Dove that Vanishes–Paradox and Creativity in Psychoanalysis
Miscellaneous
J. W. Ciarocchi, & R. J. Wicks, Psychotherapy with Priests and Protestant Clergy and Catholic Religious: A Practical Guide
Chopra Deepak, How to Know God. The Soul's Journey into the Mystery of Mysteries
Rachel Charles, Your Mind's Eye. How to heal yourself and release your potential through creative visualisation
Joyce Rockwood Hudson, Natural Spirituality. Recovering the Wisdom Tradition in Christianity
Zerka T. Moreno, Leif Dag Blomkvist, & Thomas Rützel, Psychodrama, Surplus Reality and the Art of Healing
Ann Ulanov, & Barry The Healing Imagination. The Meeting of Psyche and Soul