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.

Gilbert Gottlieb's theory of probabilistic epigenesis: probabilities and realities in development.

Abstract: Gilbert Gottlieb's theory of probabilistic epigenesis is a fertile ground for further theoretical construction in developmental science. It fills in the gap in the domineering empiricism and honoring of inductive generalization that dominates psychology in the beginning of the 21st century, by offering a basic deductive framework for guiding the efforts of developmental science. It was based on a program of careful experimental investigations of the early avian ontogenies -- later to be generalized to the developmental processes as a generic phenomenon. Further development of his theory takes the form of (a) explicating the different meanings of probabilism in his model, and (b) extending his multi-level system to include psychological and social levels of organization. Gottlieb's contribution allows for a new synthesis of contemporary epigenetics and developmental science, and sets up major challenges for the methodology of research on development.

Needed in Psychology: Theoretical Precision

Abstract: Europe's Journal of Psychology, 2018, Vol. 14(1), 1–6, doi:10.5964/ejop.v14i1.1602 Published (VoR): 2018-03-12. *Corresponding author at: Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Kroghstræde 3, 9220 Aalborg Ø, Denmark. E-mail: jvalsiner@gmail.com This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Repairing ruptures: multivocality of analyses

Abstract: Dialogical thinkers have long known that consciousness is a kind of irreversible flow that passes through similar (but not identical) positions; yet, the methodological tools to analyse these complexities have not been wholly adequate. Analytic strategies need to be developed that demonstrate both how to identify positions and analyze their spatial/temporal relationships. To this end, the present chapter aims to concretely explore researchers' reasoning in conducting a dialogical analysis of intra-psychological discourse. Six researchers were given the task of independently carrying out a dialogical analysis of Angel's (1985) stream-of-consciousness short story The Guerrillero (see Appendix A). The main object of the text is the narrator ‐ a woman named Felicidad Mosquera. Felicidad is both the thinker and that which is thought about, she is knower and known, subject and object—in short, what James (1890) called the ‘I’ and the ‘Me’. But we also find in Felicidad’s stream of thought a number of significant others, such as her lover, her tormenters, and their previous victims (i.e. “Him” and “Them”) which Felicidad can use to reflect on herself. Thus, Felicidad’s stream of thought is replete with I-positions and dialogical tensions between them. The plot of the story is very simple: in the context of a civil war, a woman is expecting some soldiers who might abuse her for having hosted a rebel fighter, the Guerrillero. The text narrates her experience of inner change, from a state of strong panic when thinking of being searched by soldiers, through a recollection of her amorous experiences with the Guerrillero, to a heroic state of great calm and readiness in the face of whatever is awaiting her. How can we analyze these profound intra-psychological movements from a dialogical perspective? In what follows five approaches are advanced. These approaches were first developed for a symposium at the Fifth International Conference for the Dialogical Self.

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.