Author
Jaan Valsiner
Other affiliations: University of Luxembourg, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Clark University ...read more
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.
Papers published on a yearly basis
Papers
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01 Jan 1992
115 citations
01 May 2003
TL;DR: This article propose a theory of enablement that treats all cultural tools (signs and instruments) as vehicles of coping with the uncertainty of the immediate future, rather than taking stock of the present (and past).
Abstract: Social representations are simultaneously representations (of what already has come into being, and is recognizable on the basis of previous experience) and representations (of the expected—yet indeterminate—future experience). If viewed from this perspective, social representations are meaning complexes that play the role of macro-level cultural constraints of human conduct in its PRESENT - FUTURE transition. These constraints lead to the generation of micro-level constraints that guide particular thought, feeling, and acting processes. I propose a theory of enablement that treats all cultural tools—signs and instruments—as vehicles of coping with the uncertainty of the immediate future. Signification in the present is meant for the making of the future, rather than taking stock of the present (and past). Human beings create semiotic mediators that set the range and direction for further expectation of to-be-lived-through experience. The resulting meaningfully bounded indeterminacy allows the person to transcend the here-and-now setting through intra-psychological distancing.
106 citations
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01 Jan 2010
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors bring together contributions from leading scholars in different fields of psychology - cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, cultural psychology, methodology of psychology, and cognitive neuroscience -and discuss methodological issues that were more thoroughly understood more than half a century ago than they are now.
Abstract: In recent years an increasing dissatisfaction with methods and thinking in psychology as a science can be observed. The discipline is operating under the tension between the traditional quantitative and the new qualitative methodologies. New approaches emerge in different fields of psychology and education?each of them trying to go beyond limitations of the mainstream. These new approaches, however, tend to be "historically blind" - seemingly novel ideas have actually been common in some period in the history of psychology. Knowledge of historical trends in that context becomes crucial because analysis of historical changes in psychology is informative regarding the potential of "new/old and forgotten" approaches in the study of psyche. Some approaches in psychology disappeared due to inherent limitations of them; the others disappeared due to purely non-scientific reasons. And some new approaches were rejected long ago for well-justified scientific reasons. This book brings together contributions from leading scholars in different fields of psychology - cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, cultural psychology, methodology of psychology. Each of the contributors discusses methodological issues that were more thoroughly understood more than half a century ago than they are now. Overall, the contributions support the idea that in important ways 60 years old psychology was far ahead of the most recent trends in mainstream psychology.
103 citations
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01 Oct 1989
103 citations
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors present an account of basic internalization/externalization processes as the vehicle by which socio-cultural meanings are turned into personal sense systems, and an empirical example is provided and analyzed in terms of the unfolding of the personal sense system in a task environment.
Abstract: This paper presents an account of basic internalization/externalization processes as the vehicle by which socio-cultural meanings are turned into personal sense systems. Such systems guide persons’ actions in respect to their environments. Social and personal worlds constantly mutually constrain each other in ways that lead to transformations in both. Internalization and reciprocal externalization occur as the person takes in and transforms social messages and other signs in self-talk (dialogues with oneself and imagined others). The theoretical account is accompanied by the specifications of empirical criteria for observing personal dialogues, and an empirical example is provided and analyzed in terms of the unfolding of the personal sense system in a task environment. The data of dialogues between police officers and a computer program about adolescent shoplifting reveal how these respondents transformed the computer input through their internalizing/externalizing operations, by interpolating specialize...
100 citations
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01 Dec 2014TL;DR: This chapter discusses the emergence of learning activity as a historical form of human learning and the zone of proximal development as the basic category of expansive 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.
5,768 citations
01 Jan 1964
TL;DR: In this paper, the notion of a collective unconscious was introduced as a theory of remembering in social psychology, and a study of remembering as a study in Social Psychology was carried out.
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.
5,690 citations
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01 Dec 1996TL;DR: Clark as mentioned in this paper argues that the mental has been treated as a realm that is distinct from the body and the world, and argues that a key to understanding brains is to see them as controllers of embodied activity.
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.
3,745 citations