Klaus F. Riegel

Dialectic Operations: The Final Period of Cognitive Development

Arguments for an extension of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development have been derived from philosophical and historical consideration of modern natural sciences. Implicit contradictions, which char

Toward a Dialectical Theory of Development

A dialectical theory of development is concerned with short-term situational changes, e.g., in the dialogue between mother and child, and long-term developmental changes, e.g., in the career development of husband and wife. A dialectical theory deem-phasizes equilibrium or balance at which development is at rest; it emphasizes continuing changes brought about by inner and outer contradictions. These conflicts create asynchronies within or between any two of four dimensions of development; inner-biological, individual-psychological, cultural-sociological, outer-physical. Development aims at synchronizing progressions along different dimensions. Such an interpretation is closely comparable to orchestral arrangements (from classical music to jazz) rather than to physical theories of balances on which social psychologists and even cognitive developmental psychologists continue to rely.

Adult Life Crises: A Dialectic Interpretation of Development

Crises, conflicts, and contradictions ought to be regarded as constructive confrontations and the basis for development rather than in a negative manner and as causes for disruption. In this chapter the course of general adult development is analyzed, as well as the career development of the normal and exceptional scientist — in particular, of Jean Piaget and Wilhelm Wundt. Individuals through their constructive development create historical changes; the sociocultural conditions, in turn, will change the individual. These double interactions produce conflicts or crises between individuals, between groups, and between individuals and groups. Several cases of conflicts are described and a general model for developmental progression through crises resolution is proposed.

Time and Change in the Development of the Individual and Society

Publisher Summary Time in the natural sciences has an absolute zero point, which is arbitrarily determined by the initiation of a particular process, for instance by the activation of a watch. Absolute zero points are not given by “nature” but are delineated through the development of scientific theories and techniques. When considering psychological and social processes, zero points in time are always arbitrarily defined. By defining its units, the periodicity of time represents the basis for time measurements. These units could be the solar year, the lunar month, or the terrestrial day. Practical measurements rely on the isomorphism between these astronomical units and those more directly accessible for the manipulations, such as the swing of the pendulum or the vibration in quartz molecules. This chapter examines how time units of psychological and sociological processes might be defined.

A comparison of the first and second languages of American and Spanish students

Twenty-four American and 24 Spanish Ss gave restricted associations both in English and in Spanish to 35 stimuli under seven different instructions. Second-language learners left more blanks in their records than native speakers. This was particularly true for American Ss studying Spanish. In both languages, the response variability was greater for Spanish than for Amerian Ss. However, American Ss were superior when the degree of conceptual clarity was analyzed by counting the response repetitions per stimulus that occur under different task instructions. Interpretations were given in terms of growth of vocabulary and in terms of the acquisition of the conceptual, semantic systems of the target language.

Prediction of Word-Recognition Thresholds on the Basis of Stimulus-Parameters*

The effect of stimulus-parameters on word-recognition thresholds was investigated. Fifty words were tachistoscopically administered to 24 subjects with an average age of 16 4 years. Of the 40 parameters analyzed, the following were the best predictors of the thresholds and were included in a multiple regression equation: (a) Classification of words into concrete nouns vs. all others; (b) Classification of words with vs. without prefixes; (c) Logarithms of word-frequencies; (d) Number of letters. The multiple correlation (0 74) and the correlation with the logarithms of word-frequencies (-0 50) are surprisingly low. The correlations could be raised considerably if counts of childrens rather than adults language were used. Based on this finding and the high correlation between thresholds and our classification of concrete nouns and other words, it was concluded that recognition of words is to a greater degree dependent on the frequency with which subjects had prior experiences with objects (or perceptual images) rather than on the frequency with which subjects had perceived or used the names attached to them.

Subject-Object Alienation in Psychological Experiments and Testing

Since the time when Wundt formulated his requirements for scientific experiments, psychologists have tried to separate the experimenter from his object of study, commonly called the ‘subject’. Since both the experimenter and his subject are human beings, this separation eliminated the very basis upon which psychological inquiries should rest. In three examples, the dialectical interdependence of the experimenter and his subject, i.e., of the subject and object, is demonstrated. First, verbal fluency tasks show greater relative gains in lesser able subjects when cooperative rather than segregated performance is stressed. Second, conservation in cognitive tasks is most likely to be acquired by children in cooperative but contradictory rather than asymmetric instructional settings. Third, the lopsided relation between the tester and the testee and between the diagnostic and the therapeutic part of clinical interactions is demonstrated. Some practical and theoretical remedies are explored.

The Language Acquisition Process: A Reinterpretation of Selected Research Findings

ABSTRACT In contrast to traditional interpretations, relations rather than elements were considered as the basic information in the language acquisition process. As relational information is acquired the child will engage simultaneously in two types of intellectual processes: (1) He will identify the elements (words) and abstract their meaning by intersecting various relations such as ZEBRA-ANIMAL; ZEBRA-STRIPEs; ZEBRA-AFRICA; ZEBRA-RUNs; etc. (2) He will recognize the free elements of relations intersecting at one or (more likely) several points as members of classes, such as “animals,” “toys,” “places,” “animated actions,” etc. In the main body of the paper research findings on the identification of both the elements and classes of the natural language were reviewed. A final section dealt with the more complex operations of combination and transformation: (1) Combinations either assemble several relations into long strings or–more important–combine classes. In discussing different types of combinations, such as those implying logical, spatial, or temporal orders, we touched upon the topic of logical syntax, syllogistic and analogical reasoning. (2) Transformations imply the reversal in the direction of one or more of the relations combined. The generality of such a process in regard to psycholinguistic, cognitive, and social performances was emphasized. Our interpretations need to be supplemented by discussions of extralingual and interlingual relations. The former relate objects, actions and emotions to labels. The latter connect terms across different language under bilingual conditions.

An Investigation into Denotative Aspects of Word-Meaning

Five tasks of restricted associations (synonyms, co-ordinates, superordinates, attributes, and antonyms) were applied to analyse some aspects of denotative meaning. Nine subjects gave two responses each to 120 German words and under all five conditions. The results of factor analyses indicated most clearly the prevalence of a superordinate - co-ordinate dimension and its high stability across form classes. Other factors are : attribute - synonyms, antonyms - synonyms, and co-ordinate -synonyms. Thus, synonyms seem to indicate least clearly the denotative meaning of words. Interpretations and rationales for the procedure are presented.

Dialectics, Transaction, and Piaget’s Theory

Overton (1976) has criticized those perspectives that subordinate scientific metaphors to scientific inquiries themselves. From such perspectives, the use of metaphor in the context of discovery must be followed by acts of verification, and the use of metaphor is permitted only until it can be reduced to empirical concepts. In agreement with Overton, however, we claim that metaphor is an essential part of the activity of science, guiding the relationship between scientists and the object of their study. As Overton (1976) himself suggests, the metaphors one employs to capture the essential character or image of one’s object of study may have “a continuing determining influence on the formulation of more concrete models and ultimately on the types of theories constructed; the questions asserted as significant or nonsignificant; and even the types of methods preferred” (p. 76). In this chapter, the use of two metaphors, dialectics and transaction, is explored.