Jaan Valsiner

Bio: Jaan Valsiner is an academic researcher from Aalborg University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Cultural psychology & Dialogical self. The author has an hindex of 55, co-authored 384 publications receiving 12659 citations. Previous affiliations of Jaan Valsiner include University of Luxembourg & University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Irreversibility of time and ontopotentiality of signs

Abstract: Time plays the central role in any developmental system. Its irreversibility contrasts with the functioning of the psychological realm that attempts to stabilize the real flow by means of perception/action constancies and signs. Efforts of apprehending the possible events of the next moment in ordinary life are paralleled by the focus on prediction in psychology as science. Signs operate as tools for reduction of the uncertainty of the immediate future. The notion of ontopotentiality of signs is introduced—it is the set of possibilities for creating quasi-stable meanings that would direct the flow of personal experiencing (in time) in a specific direction. This perspective advances further the notion of presentation (Vorstellung) that was worked through within the Brentano-Meinong tradition in philosophy and psychology. Narratives—and their corresponding notion of narrating—constitute macro-level stabilizing devices for individuals coping with uncertainty.

Cultural Psychology of Human Values

Abstract: The book provides conceptual and theoretical elaborations on human values from a cultural psychological approach. The authors illustrate their original contributions with empirical data, allowing for productive discussion on the topic of ontogenesis of values from a historical-cultural perspective.

Encountering the border: Vygotsky’s zona blizaishego razvitya and its implications for theory of development

Abstract: Lev Vygotsky's cultural-historical psychology is a "grand theory" that attempts to provide a unifying approach for the discipline of psychology. This chapter introduces Vygotsky's cultural-historical psychology without oversimplifying the theoretical ideas but at the same time making his sometimes complex ideas accessible. Vygotsky traces the development of various forms of speech from external social speech through to internal private speech to show how humans develop the ability to master themselves, to control and regulate their own mental functions. The significance of Vygotsky's psychological tools is that they provide a bridge between the development of human culture and the cultural development of the human child. According to Vygotsky, the potential concept is a "pre-intellectual formation arising very early in the development of thinking". Vygotsky identified different structures or kinds of generalization that arise during the course of development of concepts.

Between Groups and Individuals

Abstract: Correlation coefficients are social inventions that capture certain aspects of reality from a particular scientific perspective. Different facets of correlation coefficients are important for science. Usually the mathematical side of the bases for correlation coefficients have received the most attention. There is, however, another facet of correlations that is exceedingly important for science—the interpretation of correlational findings within conceptual spheres of one or another scientific discipline, and in the process of social communication of these disciplines with the lay public. Only one aspect of the interpretation of correlations—the issue of attribution of causality to different possible agents—has been given wider attention. However, even that attention has been more practical than theoretical. Numerous statistics “cookbooks” have tried to remind their users of the difficulties involved in making straightforward causal attributions on the basis of empirical correlational data. Users of these manuals may, but need not, accept such calls for caution.

Views of Context. An instrument for the analysis of the cultural milieu. A first validation study

Abstract: The View of Context (VOC) is a survey instrument designed to detect the content of generalized affect-laden meanings embedded within large-scale cultural milieus. Generalized affect-laden meanings work as basic embodied system of assumptions channelling the way of feeling, thinking, making de- cision. The paper outlines the theoretical and methodological framework of VOC Semiotic Cultural Psychology - and reports a first study of validation, aimed at analysing the VOCs construct validity. The study tests 5 hypotheses, each of them focused on a characteristic of the generalized affect-laden meanings that the instrument is designed to map: their a-semantic (HP1) and affective (HP2) valence; the regulative function (HP3) they exercise on the sensemaking; the assumption that these meanings are transversal to different domains of experience (HP4); the assumption that there is a plurality of these meanings embedded in a certain cultural milieu (HP5). In order to test these hypotheses, a combination of a multidimensional procedure of data analysis and a Path Modeling has been applied on a survey responses obtained from a UK representative sample (n=765). Results are consistent with hypotheses, in that providing evidence of the VOCs construct validity.

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

Abstract: 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.

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

Abstract: 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.

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

Abstract: 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.