Culture, Cognition, and Development
Ed Psych, 920: Kalish
Friday 12-2
Office: 1057 Edsciences, Phone: 262-0840 Email: cwkalish@facstaff.wisc.edu
Class Homepage: http://labweb.soemadison.wisc.edu/edpsy920-kalish/
Description
This class will explore three sets of influences on the development of cognition and thinking: culture (e.g., information we receive from others), nature (facts about the objective world), and mind (e.g., innate structure). One important source of information about the roles of these factors is evidence about cross-cultural differences and similarities in cognition. In the first section of this seminar we will explore several theories of cognitive development and their predictions/implications for cultural variability. The remainder of the class will be devoted to examining the evidence--how much (and what kinds of) variability do we see? The selection of evidence will be extremely idiosyncratic and limited. However, I will encourage class members to participate in choosing topics.
All readings are available on reserve at the CIMC. Paper copies of readings are held in the CIMC in the Teacher Education Building. Readings are also available on the web at the CIMC's E-reserve site. E-reserve files are stored in PDF format which requires Adobe Acrobat Reader to be installed. These files are large: they take a lot of time to download and a lot of memory for a printer. The link for E-reserves is:
Requirements and Assignments
1) Each student will be responsible for writing 1 or 2 seminar papers during the semester. There will be 1-2 papers for each class period and students will sign-up for particular topics. The paper should be a short (2 pgs. single-spaced) presentation of the author's (your) reactions to (some of) the readings for the week. The seminar paper should not be a simple summary of the readings. Rather this paper should present and argument for a particular interpretation/reaction to the material. This paper will form part of the basis for our in-class discussion and will be distributed to all the participants. Since the seminar paper is part of the required reading for the class period it must be available no later than 5:00 pm of the Monday before class. The paper will be available on the class web-page (see above). Authors will make brief presentations of their papers to the class.
2) Students taking the class for three credits will have the additional responsibility of a presentation. Students should work in groups of 2-3. This assignment involves picking a topic related to the content of this class, choosing readings, and distributing a paper (~10 pgs.) outlining the issues involved.. Presentations will be scheduled for the final classes of the semester. Plan on about 10-15 minutes of presentation and 25 minutes of discussion.
3) All students are expected to be active participants in class discussions. At a minimum this requires doing the reading (carefully) before class. Participation is welcomed at all levels; from educating all of us on some technical point within one's unique area of expertise to general, "naive," questions ("What I didn't understand was...").
In furtherance of class participation, each student not writing a seminar paper (or doing a presentation) should submit two questions or comments about the readings each week. Weekly questions should be emailed to me (see address above) by Thursday afternoon (6:00 or so).
Weighting of requirements will be (from most important to least): class participation, class project, seminar paper.
Introduction- Theories
1 Universals and Relativity 1/22
2 Theories: Philosophical and Anthropological Perspectives 1/29
Quine, W. (1977). Natural Kinds, in Schwartz, Naming, Necessity, and Natural Kinds. (pp. 155-175). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Geertz, C. (1975). Common sense as a cultural system. Antioch Review, 33, 221-241
Sperber, D. (1990). The epidemiology of beliefs. in C. Fraser and G. Gaskell (Eds.), Social psychological study of widespread beliefs. (pp. 25-44). Oxford: Clarendon Press
3 Theories Psychological Perspectives. 2/5
Chomsky, N. (1975). Reflection on language. NY: Random House. Chapter 1. pp (3-35)
Barkow. Evolutionary Psychology
Carey, S., & Spelke, E. (1993). Domain-specificity and conceptual change. In L. Hirschfeld & S. Gelman, (Eds.). Mapping the mind: Domain specificity in cognition and culture. (pp. 169-200). New York: Cambridge University Press.
B. Dasen, (1994). Culture and Cognitive Development from a Piagetian Perspective, in Lonner & Malpass, Psychology and Culture. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
A. R. Luria, (1976). Cognitive development: Its cultural and social foundations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Chapter 1.
Varieties of Thought
4 Believing in Magic 2/12
I. Jarvie & J. Agassi (1970). The problem of the rationality of magic, in Wilson, Rationality, (pp. 172-193). Aylesbury, Great Britain: Blackwell.
P. Rozin & C. Nemeroff, (1990). The laws of sympathetic magic: A psychological analysis of similarity and contagion. In Stigler, Herdt & Schweder, Cultural psychology: Essays on comparative human development. (pp. 205-232). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Tambiah, S. (1996). Relations of analogy and identity: Toward multiple orientations to the world. In Olson & Torrance (Eds.) Modes of Thought (pp.34-52). NY: Cambridge U. Press.
Foucault, M. "The Prose of the World" from The Order of Things
(Optional)M. Gauquelin (1982). Spheres of influence, in Grim, Philosophy of science and the occult. (pp. 33-46) Albany: SUNY Press.
5 What's Rationality and Who Has It? 2/19
S. Stich, (1990). Rationality, in Smith and Osherson, An invitation to cognitive science: Part 1, Thinking. (pp. 173-196). Cambridge: MIT Press.
Janowitz, N., & Lazarus, A. J., (1992). Rabbinic methods of inference and the rationality debate. The Journal of Religion, 72, 491-511.
A. R. Luria, (1976). Cognitive development: Its cultural and social foundations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Chapter 5.
Sperber D. On apparently irrational beliefs. in On Anthropological Knowledge
6 Scientific Thinking 2/26
D. Kuhn (1997) Is good thinking scientific thinking? In Olson & Torrance (Eds.) Modes of Thought (pp.261-281). NY: Cambridge U. Press
R. Horton, (1970). African traditional thought and western science, in Wilson, Rationality, (pp. 131-171). Aylesbury, Great Britain: Blackwell.
Kawagley, A., Noris-Tull, D, & Noris-Tull, R. A. (1998) The indigenous worldview of Yupiaq culture: Its scientific nature and relevance to the practice and teaching of science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 35, 133-144.
7 School and School Skills (Literacy & Math) 3/5
Heath, S. (1982). What no bedtime story means: Narrative skills at home and school, Language in Society, 11, 49-76.
Geary, D. C., Hamson, C. O., Chen, G., Liu, F., & Hoard, M. K. (1998) A biocultural model of academic development. In Paris and Wellman (Eds.) Global prospects for education: Development, culture, and schooling. (pp. 13-43). Washington, DC, USA: American Psychological Association.
J. Lave, M. Murtaugh, & O. de la Rocha (1984). The dialectic of arithmetic in grocery shopping. in Rogoff & Lave, Everyday cognition: Its development in social context. (pp. 67-94). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
----Spring Break---- 3/12
Conceptions of the Natural World
9 Ontology and Cosmology 3/19
Samarapungavan, A., Vosniadou, S., & Brewer, W. F. (1996) Mental models of the earth, sun, and moon: Indian children's cosmologies. Cognitive Development, 11, 491-521.
P. Boyer, (1993). Cognitive constraints on cultural representations: Natural ontologies and religious ideas, in Hirschfeld & Gelman (Eds.), Mapping the mind: Domain-specificity in cognition and culture.
M. Mead, (1932). An investigation of the thought of primitive children with special reference to animism. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 62, 173-190.
10 Living Things 3/26
S. Atran, (1996)Core domains versus scientific theories: Evidence from systematics and Itza-Maya folkbiology. In Hirschfeld & Gelman (Eds.) Mapping the mind (pp.316-339). NY: Cambridge U. Press.
Boster, J., & D'Andrade, R. (1989). Natural and human sources of cross-cultural agreement in ornithological classification. American Anthropologist, 91, 132-142.
Boneman, J. (1998). Race, ethnicity, species, breed: Totemism and horse-breed classification in America. Comparative study of society and history, 88, 25-51.
Conceptions of the Social World
11 Theory of Mind 4/2
Lillard, A. (1998) and replies from Psychological Bulletin
12 Persons and Personality 4/9
Shweder, R., & Bourne, E. J. (1991). Does the concept of the person vary cross-culturally? In R. Shweder, Thinking through cultures: Expeditions in cultural psychology. (pp. 113-155). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Markus & Kitayama (1998). The cultural psychology of self. Journal of Cross-cultural Psychology, 29, 63-87.
Lindholm, C. (1997). Does the sociocentric self exist? Journal of Anthropological Research, 53, 405-423
13 To Be Decided 4/16
Meetings of Society for Research in Child Development Reschedule
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Tradition and authorityÿ
Kinshipÿ
Gender and gender rolesÿ
Race and ethnicity14 Presentations 4/23
15 Presentations/Summary 4/30