Eric Amsel

Young Children's Memory for the True and Pretend Identities of Objects.

Two studies examined how children conceive of the true and pretend identities of an object Used in object-substitution pretense. In each study, 3- and 4-year-olds were assessed for their memory for each identity of an object that they used in a previous episode of pretend play (Study l ) or observed someone else using (Study 2). More children correctly remembered the true than the pretend identity oftbe objects, and there was no contingency between their tendency to remember each identity. Additionally, childrens tendency to correctly specify each identity was related to their age and when (i.e., during or after the pretend episode) the task was given. The results were explained by factors affecting young childrens ability to manage separate representations of true and pretend identities of objects.

Making Meaning Together

THINK ABOUT your earliest memory of reading. Perhaps what first comes to mind is where and when it occurred. A memory of being tucked into bed and being read to by a parent, a grandparent, or another family member is common, as is a memory of being helped to read a book by a family member. Pushing that memory a little further, try to recollect not just reading or being read to, but also the experience of the narrative itself. Do you have a memory of a world you mentally created, the intense reactions you felt about events in this world, or having wished to return to the world, even after the story was over? Perhaps most difficult to retrieve would be supportive questions, comments, or probes offered by family members to help you understand the story. Do you remember being asked whether the Cat in the Hat was really silly or whose tracks Winnie the Pooh was following when hunting a Heffalump with Piglet?

Adolescent Vulnerabilities and Opportunities: Constructivist Processes in Adolescent Development

In John Godfrey Saxe’s poem, The Blind Men and the Elephant, based on earlier Chinese and Indian fables, six blind men surround and feel some part of an elephant. Each of them thinks that his part reveals the true nature of the beast. Saxe makes clear that the lesson to be learned involves the dangers in generalizing knowledge claims that are limited in scope. This lesson translates well into research on adolescent development. Although adolescents are popularly seen as having an unpredictable and inexplicable nature, any good adolescence textbook documents a range of conflicting alternative images afforded by multiple theoretical perspectives in the field. Adolescents are presented as apprentices (who participate in forms of cultural activities), architects (who construct normative mental structures and processes), and juveniles (who accommodate to a long, slow biological maturation processes).1 Just as Saxe warns, each of the theoretical frameworks underlying these images highlights a particular set of factors or forces as central to understanding adolescence, which is in turn used to paint these generalized but conflicting pictures. For example, fifty or so years ago, adolescence was seen as time for acquiring morality, rationality, and an autonomous sense of self and identity (Erikson, 1968; Inhelder & Piaget, 1958; Kohlberg, 1969), a position articulately defended by Moshman (2005). The constructivist theoretical framework that underlies much of this work presents a view of adolescents as designing their own development by actively seeking to make sense of themselves and their physical and social worlds. These powerful ideas, and the image of adolescents as architects that they imply, gave rise to a research program defining the normative developmental trajectory in adolescence as a progression toward rationality, morality, and autonomy.

PSYCHOLOGISM AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SCIENTISTS: A RESPONSE TO GIBSON

Gibson’s paper outlines a new and increasingly popular perspective on the relationship between cognitive psychology and the philosophy of science. Cognitive psychology, Gibson suggests, is conceptually on a par with and is “making the same sort of claims about the human organism” as contemporary philosophy of science (p. 212). He notes the recent trend of philosophers using psychology, sociology and history to explain how science is practiced (i.e. a descriptive account of science) as opposed to using logic and epistemology to explain how science ought to be practiced (i.e. a normative account of science). Gibson argues that psychological research provides direct evidence (p. 214) for these philosophical theories and a basis for enriching them (p. 214). He argues that understanding the “limitations and validity” of scientists’ reasoning can lead to an understanding of the “limitations and validity of the scientific evidence which is generated” (p. 220). Gibson’s approach is consistent with others who have called for a “psychology of science”, which involves the study of the cognitive characteristics of scientists (e.g. Tweney et al., 1981). Proponents of this view are compelled by arguments that epistemology and logic are inadequate methods to justify normative propositions and, consequently, they assume that questions of justification are ultimately answered by cognitive psychological analyses. In this view cognitive psychology and contemporary philosophy of science are not perceived to be distinct disciplines with different methods and g’oals because philosophical questions can be completely reduced to ones requiting cognitive psychological analyses. While epistemology and logic may inform psychological research, it is assumed that the philosopher’s search for normative standards of scientific inquiry will be derived ultimately from fine-grained cognitive explanations of scientists. Tweney et al. (198 1) write: The psychology of science may eventually lead to’prescriptions for better science, to specific analyses of inquiry processes enabling the design of better inquiry, and perhaps, through analyses of scientists’ thinking processes, to better science education. (p.7) The “psychology of science” view of the relationship between cognitive psychology and philosophy of science is a strong version of the thesis of psychologism. I’sychologism tends to “downplay or deny distinctions between

Logical and Hypothetical Reasoning in Adolescence, Development of

This article examines the development of logical and hypothetical reasoning from early childhood through adolescence and young adulthood. These two forms of reasoning enable adolescents to entertain and coordinate deductively valid and ontologically possible propositions. The development of logical and hypothetical reasoning in adolescence involves both the construction of metalogical knowledge about logical necessity and truth and executive regulation of inferences for systematic thinking. A variety of biological, psychological, social, and cultural factors are known to influence developmental changes in such reasoning.

Preschool pathways to science: Facilitating scientific ways of thinking, talking, doing, and understanding, Rochel Gelman, Kimberly Brenneman, Gay Macdonald, Moisés Román. Paul H. Brookes Publishing Company, Baltimore, MD (2010), ISBN-13: 978-1-59857-044-1 (paper), 144 pp,

Recently, Education Week highlighted the growing national interest in preschool science education (Viadero, 2010, January 20). The story leaves the impression that educating preschoolers in science is poised to become a national movement. Science education for preschoolers is supported in policy by a recent National Research Council (2007) report advocating preschool science instruction, backed economically by National Science Foundation and Department of Education funds for creating programs and outcome assessments, and guided intellectually by new theoretical insights about the nature of knowledge and young childrens ability to acquire it. As early childhood programs are more and more being seen as vital to general social and educational reform, early science education is a potential key component. But are science education programs for preschoolers a good thing for the children and for science education in general? We ask this question as interested parties with backgrounds in the development of scientific reasoning as a developmental psychologist (EA) and in scientific understanding as a physicist and science educator (AJ). Our question is posed with specific reference to this new book by Gelman, Brenneman, Macdonald, and Román. The book offers a good springboard for the discussion as it presents a preschool science curriculum which (a) conforms to the kind of science education reform advocated by the NRC, (b) is supported by NSF and DOE funding, and (c) was developed by a team led by Rochel Gelman, a leading researcher and theorist in articulating the new theoretical view of the child on which the curriculum is based. The curriculum presented in the book has entered the broader culture as the teaching approach behind Sid the Science Kid (http://pbskids.org/sid/index. html), a popular PBS childrens show co-produced by the Jim Henson Company. In a nutshell, the Preschool Pathways to Science (PrePS) curriculum holds that children have a good deal of general knowledge of specific intellectual domains but limited detailed knowledge of those domains. For example, although they readily distinguish between animate and inanimate objects, they may not understand what distinguishes them inside and out. Childrens knowledge is leveraged by a PrePS teacher who guides the children through a socially based scientific inquiry process that fills out their domain knowledge and promotes skills relevant to the “scientist-in-waiting.” The term scientist-in-waiting expresses the recognition that pre-