1. Introduction 2. The emergence of learning activity as a historical form of human learning 3. The zone of proximal development as the basic category of expansive research 4. The instruments of expansion 5. Toward an expansive methodology 6. Epilogue.

Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research

Part I. Experimental Studies: 2. Experiment in psychology 3. Experiments on perceiving III Experiments on imaging 4-8. Experiments on remembering: (a) The method of description (b) The method of repeated reproduction (c) The method of picture writing (d) The method of serial reproduction (e) The method of serial reproduction picture material 9. Perceiving, recognizing, remembering 10. A theory of remembering 11. Images and their functions 12. Meaning Part II. Remembering as a Study in Social Psychology: 13. Social psychology 14. Social psychology and the matter of recall 15. Social psychology and the manner of recall 16. Conventionalism 17. The notion of a collective unconscious 18. The basis of social recall 19. A summary and some conclusions.

Remembering. A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology, Cambridge (University Press) 1964.

From the Publisher:
The old opposition of matter versus mind stubbornly persists in the way we study mind and brain. In treating cognition as problem solving, Andy Clark suggests, we may often abstract too far from the very body and world in which our brains evolved to guide us. Whereas the mental has been treated as a realm that is distinct from the body and the world, Clark forcefully attests that a key to understanding brains is to see them as controllers of embodied activity. From this paradigm shift he advances the construction of a cognitive science of the embodied mind.

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Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again

The measurement of meaning

How we Think

Developmental theorizing in psychology is shown to be based on axiomatic grounds that are antithetical to those of `the cognitive revolution'. Therefore it is not surprising that cognitivism has had a very limited impact upon our knowledge of developmental processes. Instead, it has had curious `side-effects'-it has kept the investigators' attention away from the processes of development, and has fortified the historically strong emphasis on the study of those psychological functions that have already developed. The question of how cognitive processes emerge, develop and reach their fully functional states has been replaced by the question of whether persons (at different age levels) can be shown to 'possess' specific mental functions that are adaptive in specific task settings.

Construction of the Mental: From the `Cognitive Revolution' to the Study of Development

Because anthropology is predicated upon the centrality of the social and the cultural in human life, anthropologies of the individual must account for the collective nature of the individual. Psychologies inspired by Marxist thought share a similar task and, at least in one case, have originated an account of cognitive and affective development that appeals to anthropologists. Developed in Russia in the 1920s and 1930s by L. S. Vygotsky and his associates, including A. R. Luria, this approach grants society a key role in the development of personality. Human development is characterized, in a phrase, as the transformation of the interpersonal into the intrapersonal. The "cultural-historical" school of psychology, as this approach is called, began to attract attention outside of the U.S.S.R. in the 1960s, when translations reached anthropologists and psychologists in the United States and in Europe. Although translated works (Vygotski 1929, 1934, 1939, 1962, 1978, 1981a, 1981b) are limited, a

Cognition, Symbols, and Vygotsky's Developmental Psychology

The development of the concept of development: Historical and epistemological perspectives.

Cultural psychology brings back to psychology the crucial role of history— which leads to the need for new methodology. Such methodology needs to fit the nature of phenomena—which in psychology are of open systemic nature. Cultural phenomena are historical at all levels: personal (personal life histories), that of society (history of any given society) and at the level of the microgenesis of actions. Such historicity renders a number of habitual empirical practices—such as random sampling and generalization from samples to populations-- inappropriate for science. Despite the tradition in psychology of that treats ―random sampling‖ as normative for science, we show that it constitutes a conceptual dead-end street that moves psychology away from adequate strategies of generalization. Psychology at large can follow the lead of cultural psychology and look at individual cases as systemically organized within themselves, generalizing from such systemic organization of particulars to generic systemic models of the phenomena, with subsequent empirical testing of these models in selected new individual cases. We show the importance of the selection of individual cases for the study through consideration of their historical trajectories moving through a common temporary state (equifinality point). Some of these equifinality points are obligatory—set by the phylogeny of the species or by collective cultural construction. In this paper we propose the Historically Structured Sampling (HSS) - which is based on the acceptance of Equifinality Trajectory Model (ETM)-- as the core for the methodology of selection of the objects of investigation in psychology. This orientation grows out of our look at culture in psychology—especially as it brings to psychology the notion of history. The adoption of culture leads to the necessity to take a new look at some of the key methodological problems in the discipline (Valsiner, 2001a, 2003, 2004). It is the systemic nature of human psychological processes that becomes highlighted by the re-insertion of cultural—higher psychological processes—into our models of the mind. A major problem that blocks research in cultural psychology from developing new methodology is the issue of sampling. Sampling is an inevitable operation in any research project. Any research effort—unless it analyzes the whole realm of the given phenomenon—requires some way of sampling. Some specimens of the existing (known) pool of all specimens are selected—which means others are left out. The researcher generalizes from the studied specimens (sample) to all specimens (population)—and is likely to misjudge what is generalized as it is posited to be applicable to the non-studied cases. Yet, as we show, even moving the sample to cover the population is no automatic solution here.

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Historically Structured Sampling (HSS): How can psychology's methodology become tuned in to the reality of the historical nature of cultural psychology?

Since the new beginning in 2007 of Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science we have brought out to the open both the reasons why the ever-widening research enterprise in psychology has largely failed to produce general knowledge, and to point to promising new directions in the field The post-modernist turn in psychology is now over, and it is an interesting task to return to creating a universal science of psychology that is context-sensitive, and culture-inclusive The latter goal entails a renewed focus upon qualitative analyses of time-based processes, close attention to the phenomena under study, and systematic (single-system-based—usually labeled idiographic) focus in empirical investigations Through these three pathways centrality of human experiencing of culturally constructed worlds is restored as the core of psychological science Universal principles are evident in each and every single case Transcending post-modernist deconstruction of science happens through active international participation and a renewed focus on creating general theories Contemporary psychology is global in ways that no longer can any country’s socio-political world view dominate the field Such international equality of contributions grants innovation of the core of the discipline, and safeguards it against assuming any single cultural myth-story as the axiomatic basis for the discipline

Jaan Valsiner

Papers

Construction of the Mental: From the `Cognitive Revolution' to the Study of Development

Cognition, Symbols, and Vygotsky's Developmental Psychology

The development of the concept of development: Historical and epistemological perspectives.

Historically Structured Sampling (HSS): How can psychology's methodology become tuned in to the reality of the historical nature of cultural psychology?

Integrating psychology within the globalizing world: A requiem to the post-modernist experiment with wissenschaft