John Shotter

An investigation of the relationships between problem solving strategies, representation and memory

There has been considerable debate in recent years about the status of “imagery” in problem solving. The present experiment attempts to show that while subjects may employ representational strategies when they first encounter a class of problems, they abandon such strategies as they gain experience with the problems. It does this by asking subjects to answer unexpected questions which are based upon the information which they have just used to solve a problem. The hypothesis, which is supported by the results, is that increasing experience with problems will be paralleled by a decreasing ability to answer unexpected questions. The experiment also shows that such effects are not attributable to a build-up in proactive interference.

A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF DISTINCTIVE FEATURES IN PROBLEM SOLVING

The abstract logical structure of family relationship problems, such as, “What relationship to a man is his mothers father?” was described in terms of a “distinctive-feature-transition count (dft)”, where the answer to the problem was characterized in terms of the distinctive features of descendancy, co-linearity, and sex. On average, it proved possible to predict the difficulty of such problems from such a count; thus tending to support the idea of a relational rather than an associative memory structure.

The Rhetoric of Theory in psychology

Abstract If the function of language is not to represent reality, but to give form to, or to help coordinate, our diverse social activities, then theories cannot be taken simply as possible representations of reality either. The formative nature of theoretical language is such that the very stating of a theory works rhetorically to influence our perceptions selectively: to render aspects of our own activities ‘rationally invisible’ to us, as well as to induce in us ‘illusions of discourse,’ i.e., to lead us to treat fictions as realities.

Realism and relativism, rules and intentionality, theories and accounts: A response to Morss

In replying to Morss, let me say straight away that I do not want to get bogged down in textual exegesis, as to which of us has grasped the “real Mead” (1934, 1977), or whether he has understood me @hotter, 1974, 1978) aright or not. It will be clear by the end of this paper why such controversies are unrewarding, why there is no “real” Mead to reveal. Thus, it will be more productive to discuss the main substantive issue Morss raises in proposing his “impersonalist alternative,” and to explore its implications. As I see it, the issue is (and always has been in Western thought see Harris, 1980, 1981) whether communication is only possible within an already pre-established framework of understandings, or whether it is an activity which can, so to speak, be “self-specifying”: whether we can “point to,” or “indicate” what we are saying and doing actually in our sayings and doings, without it being necessary for us to have recourse to any antecedently existing things or structures. Or, to put what is essentially the same issue in other words, is it the function of words to stand for things, or is the function of languageformative, i.e. to give or lend to the flow of activity in which we are involved an intelligible shape of form a switch from a basic concern with things to activities? I take the latter view, that it is the function of our communicative activities to formulate the situations or states of affairs in which we are involved US situations, US states of affairs, to formulate them as “topics,” or as common “places” in terms of which we can relate ourselves to one another, to “lend” them a form which they are “open to” but which they would not, in themselves, actually otherwise have. In such a formative view of language, in contrast to the traditional view, instead of it being (as Bruner, 1983, puts it) “the human means by which we finally represented and interpreted the world” (p. 168), its function is primarily social: “the coordination of diverse action” (Mills, 1940, p. 904), with different