Andrés Santamaría

Cultural Self-Construals of Mexican, Spanish, and Danish College Students: Beyond Independent and Interdependent Self

Cross-cultural research over the past two decades has shown very important differences in self-construal. However, the comparison of a wider range of cultures is needed to further understanding into this relationship. In contrast to Markus and Kitayama’s distinction between independent and interdependent self-construal, authors such as Matsumoto, Kagitçibasi, and Oyserman and colleagues have defended a more complex, multidimensional, and situated perspective on self-construal. Recent studies using the Twenty Statement Test (TST) as a measure of self-construal have supported this multidimensional view of the construct. The current study explored self-descriptions in college students from three different countries (Denmark, Spain, and Mexico) by using a shortened version of the TST. The results evidenced some unexpected cultural differences in self-construal. Danish participants referred proportionally less to private and personal attributes and qualities than their Mexican and Spanish participants, and they made more references to interdependence and responsiveness to other. Results do not fit with some basic assumptions of Markus and Kitayama’s theory and give support to the view of self-construal as multidimensional and with variations associated with personal and situational factors.

Adolescents’ meaningful memories reflect a trajectory of self-development from family over school to friends.

The relationship between autobiographical memories and self is important in many theories. Promising recent approaches from cross-cultural psychology use a concept of self-construal”, in which reference to others can be as important as indicators of autonomy. However, these studies typically ask for earliest memories only, whereas we would expect the roles of others to change over the course of development. Taking as a premise that adolescents" life unfolds in three concurrent settings - family, school, and friendship - we asked 66 adolescents (22 Norwegians in Study 1, and 40 Slovaks in Study 2) for a meaningful memory from each of these settings. The memories they selected from the family setting were oldest, school memories intermediate and friend memories most recent, suggesting a developmental trajectory in which the three settings have changed in importance. Memories from the friendship setting were also most frequently on their mind. Furthermore, family memories referred most to other people, friend memories marginally less and school memories least, suggesting different contributions of these settings to self-construal. We conclude that characteristics of adolescents" meaningful memories reflect shifting settings" dominance during development and complementary roles of family, school and friends for adolescents" current self-construal.

La mediación semiótica de las acciones humanas: análisis sociocultural de la situación experimental

Resumen El presente artículo se centra en desarrollar una serie de ideas que permiten conectar los planteamientos de diferentes autores, tan dispares como cercanos, respecto a la considerateón de las acciones humanas como semióticamente mediadas. Uno de los puntos centrales del mismo tendrá que ver con un análisis de la naturaleza comunicativa de un contexto específico—una situación experimental—que será considerado como un escenario de actividaden el que distintas subjetividades entran en contacto. Se empleará para ello la idea de intersubjetividad como un proceso de coordinateón de las contribuciones de los participantes en la actividad conjunta, en el que serán vitales tanto los acuerdos alcanzados como los desacuerdos en la consecución de determinados estados de conocimiento compartido.

Cambio sociocognitivo y organización de las acciones: una aproximación sociocultural a la educación de adultos

ResumenSe estudia la educacion formal y «Literacy» con objeto de analizar diferentes aspectos del desarrollo cultural, asi como la influencia de factores socioculturales en el desarrollo cognitivo de los adultos. Son escasos los trabajos realizados en este campo. Se selecciono un grupo de mujeres pertenecientes al programa de Educacion de Adultos de la Junta de Andalucia cuyas edades oscilaban entre 35 y 55 anos. Los sujetos estudiados pertenecian a tres niveles educativos: alfabetizacion, pregraduados y graduados. La accion dirigida a meta es la unidad de analisis escogida y la metodologia desarrollada tiene su base en la perspectiva sociocultural iniciada por Vygostsky y desarrollada por algunos psicologos occidentales. La situacion experimental se diseno con objeto de analizar los componentes de las acciones de memoria que los sujetos podian utilizar para recordar un grupo de estimulos. Estos se podian incluir en diferentes categorias (animales, plantas y objetos). Componentes basicos de este tipo de a...

Auditory Hallucinations as Social Self-Positions: A Theoretical Discussion from a Single-Case Study

This work uses social positioning analysis to investigate the phenomenon of the auditory verbal hallucination (AVH) in schizophrenia in order to describe its social and interactive nature. We focus in detail on a single-case study of a patient who verbalized her AVHs. We analyze 3 significant excerpts from an interview with a person with paranoid schizophrenia. This interview is part of a larger study conducted with 18 participants about life narrative construction in the sociocultural context of care homes. The interaction between the patient and her voices is examined closely to reveal the dynamic between interviewer, patient, and voices. The analysis differentiates the voice of the patient from that of the hallucination and reveals “social interaction” between this dyad and the interviewer. We discuss a possible social and interactive framework to understand the origin of AVHs and the self-construction process.

Thinking as Action Theoretical and Methodological Requirements for Cultural Psychology

The aim of cultural psychology is understanding how mind is related to cultural, social, institutional, and historical contexts. This endeavor requires an adequate unit of analysis. We believe this unit of analysis to be mediated action. Our view of action as the unit of analysis has important theoretical and methodological consequences. In the theoretical domain , it means assuming a notion of culture as a set of semiotically mediated activity settings, and a view of cognition as heterogeneous, contextually and historically-culturally situated and semiotically mediated. We outline three methodological implications: a historical or genetic perspective, the analysis of activity in everyday cultural contexts, and the use of semiotically mediated action as a unit of analysis. Finally, we explain the way in which we have employed mediated action as a conceptual and methodological tool for conducting research in cultural psychology and illustrate some of these ideas with reference to specific studies carried out by our research group.

La memoria autobiográfica: el encuentro entre la memoria, el yo y el lenguaje

Resumen Este artículo versa sobre la indisoluble relación entre la memoria autobiográfica, el yo y el lenguaje. La psicología académica ha venido considerando al yo y a la memoria como áreas de investigación separadas y frecuentemente ignoradas la una por la otra. Esta situación ha comenzado a cambiar y la investigación empieza a destacar dicha relación, especialmente en el estudio de la memoria autobiográfica. Este trabajo se articula en torno a la historia de una serie de encuentros, en concreto, el encuentro entre el yo y la memoria, y entre el yo y el lenguaje, así como en el papel que estos encuentros juegan en la configuración de los recuerdos autobiográficos. Se conceptúa la memoria autobiográfica como un tipo de memoria que emerge de la práctica social y cultural de co-construir y narrar historias que estructuren y den sentido a nuestras experiencias personales, y que permiten constituir lo que se podría denominar un yo histórico y cultural.

Referential perspective and instruction: A study on teacher-student interaction and text remembering

The aim of this paper is to study the role ofteacher-student interaction, in the acquisitionof text comprehension and memory skills from asocio-cultural approach. In our view, one ofthe most important areas of neglect in cognitive research in this field is the interactional nature of that development. We intend to establish the way in which teacher-student interaction and, specially, the use of some specific semiotic means mayfacilitate the acquisition and internalizationof general strategies for understanding andremembering expository texts. The role ofreferential perspective (Wertsch, 1989) in theinternalization of complex text study actionsis analysed.The task was to study three expository textsthat were similar in their structure. Thecontent of the texts was analysed in terms ofidea-units (Meyer, 1984). Each text was formedby idea-units from three different levels: mainideas, secondary ideas and details. A categorysystem for the analysis of study and recall ofthe text is developed. In the study phase theanalysis proceeded in two steps: study actionsand text ideas. In the recall phase, two types ofindexes (number of ideas and degree ofclustering) were considered. For the analysisof instructional actions, both the nature ofinstruction and referential perspective wasrecorded.

Earliest autobiographical memories in college students from three countries: Towards a situated view

The relationship between culture and autobiographical memory has become an important research topic since research over the past three decades has shown (cross)-cultural variations in the content and style of autobiographical memories that are related to differences in how people from diverse cultures describe themselves and others. However, most research has compared North-American to Asian cultures, leaving a need to address the relationship in others. Our study examines differences in characteristics of autobiographical memory in three countries: Mexico, Spain and Denmark, using Qi Wang’s methodology and categories of analysis. College students from these three countries were asked to describe their earliest memory. Results confirm the expected differences, with Danish and Spanish participants’ earliest memories dating significantly earlier than that of the Mexican participants. At the same time, Danish participants were less likely to spontaneously mention emotions and feeling states in their earliest memories. On the other hand, Mexicans demonstrated a higher level of autonomous orientation than the participants in the other two groups. Gender was found to interact with several indicators, and even displayed a cross-over effect in emotion. The findings are interpreted as supporting the view of cultured self-construals, while also suggesting the need for more attention to the situated character of cultural differences.

El yo docente en la universidad. Posiciones del yo y voces en la construcción narrativa de las identidades del profesorado universitario

Resumen En el presente artículo se proponen las nociones de posiciones del yo y de voces como herramientas analíticas para estudiar cómo dos profesores universitarios construyen posibles identidades profesionales. A partir del análisis de entrevistas semi- estructuradas de carácter autobiográfico, se propone responder a tres preguntas: ¿Qué posiciones del yo y qué voces pueden ser identificados en las narrativas de profesores universitarios acerca de su práctica profesional? ¿Cómo se relacionan ambas? ¿ Cómo contribuyen a la construcción de sus identidades profesionales? Se desarrolla una concepción de la identidad como una continua y cambiante narrativa en la que el yo se constituye en una realidad múltiple, dinámica y constantemente negociada a partir de la que los individuos establecen quiénes son. Se analizan dos entrevistas, describiendo las distintas posiciones, implícitas o explícitas, que los participantes van adoptando, así como las voces que las articulan, en función de su procedencia o nivel de generalidad. Se concluye que las identidades de estos profesionales se están construyendo en un contexto cultural e ideológico específico. Finalmente, se plantean algunos alcances y limitaciones con vistas a futuros estudios.