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Jerome S. Bruner

Other affiliations: University of York, York University, University of Nottingham  ...read more
Bio: Jerome S. Bruner is an academic researcher from New York University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Perception & Cognitive development. The author has an hindex of 90, co-authored 248 publications receiving 92417 citations. Previous affiliations of Jerome S. Bruner include University of York & York University.


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TL;DR: The field of psycholinguistics has flourished as a result of the influences of linguistics and of information theory as discussed by the authors, and there have been numerous advances both on the neurological side, notably in the concepts of centrifugal control of information intake and on the side of behavioral changes predicted by the general Hebbian theory.
Abstract: A Dutch colleague has done us the service of classifying and counting the articles appearing between 1950 and 1954 in the Psychological Abstracts under the heading of “Cognition” (van de Geer, 1957). Of the total in this category (a rather staggering total of about 4471 titles) nearly one third deal with learning and memory and nearly two thirds with perception; the remainder, about 6 per cent, concern themselves with the topics of thinking and imagination. I have no data for the six years since then, but I have the strong impression of a most vigorous and disciplined renewal of activity in the field. Sir Frederic Bartlett (1958) has published a major book on thinking, likening it to the symbolized internalization of motor skills. Several major books from the Geneva laboratory have been written and translated into English in the last few years, perhaps the most important of which is the very challenging The Growth of Logical Thinking (1958) in which Barbel Inhelder and Jean Piaget take the child to the brink of adulthood a t which point concrete operations are replaced by the propositional or formal operations we know as adult thought. Luria (1959) in the Soviet Union has carried ahead the tradition established by Vigotsky’s work and has begun to show the manner in which language and symbolizing serve to free the organism from the control of stimuli so that it may gain control over its own activities through the transformations of thought. At the Cognition Project a t Harvard, my associates and I have shown the way in which aspects of thinking can be conceived of as planful strategies designed to gain and organize information while a t the same time regulating the risks of failure and the strains of overload brought about by man’s highly limited capacity for processing information a t any given moment of time. The field of psycholinguistics has flourished as a result of the influences of linguistics and of information theory. At last we have stopped treating Benjamin Whorf (1956) as a delightful oddity whose claims were the intriguing stuff we could put into introductory lectures while assuring our colleagues that his concept of linguistic relativity was patently absurd. We have learned about the tremendous power of the discontinuous variables of structural linguistics : phonemes, allophones, lexemes, distinctive features and, hopefully some day, sememes. There have been challenging experimental contributions in psycholinguistics by brilliant scholars and experimentalists such as Miller et al. (1960), Brown and Lenneberg (1954), and Osgood et al. (1957). Since Hebb’s pioneering book on the Organization of Behavior (1949) in which a concept of structure in thought was given a hypothetical neural stiltus, there have been numerous advances both on the neurological side, notably in the concepts of centrifugal control of information intake and on the side of behavioral changes predicted by the general Hebbian theory, in-

5 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Tomasello et al. as discussed by the authors point out the mutual interdependency of the unique human capacity for intersubjectivity and the evolution and institutionalization of culture and point out that human is highly reliant on such knowledge and in that sense is a highly localized species, requiring special means to surmount cultural misreadings and to achieve translocal or global, interconnection.
Abstract: Tomasello et al. point up the mutual interdependency of the unique human capacity for intersubjectivity and the evolution and institutionalization of culture. Since both intersubjectivity and cultural cooperation require localized knowledge, Homo sapiens is highly reliant on such knowledge and in that sense is a highly localized species, requiring special means to surmount cultural misreadings and to achieve translocal, or global, interconnection.

5 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In the early 1970s, there was a worldwide movement in psychology against mindless, mechanistic theory as discussed by the authors, and the new heroes were much more holistic, much less reductionist.
Abstract: I want to start with the compelling subject of ‘culture and mind’ and how it emerged in psychology and with what subsequent effects. Obviously, one would have to mention Vygotsky in such an account. But I mostly want to speculate about how psychology turned toward cultural explication – even in the early but polite attacks on Freud by the ‘culture-and-personality’ people like Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead. What was going on in the world culturally and politically in those years? Migration into radically different cultures by refugees from Europe who were awakened to the impact of culture? The rise of more subjective anthropology in America, aided by the political subjectivism of our great Franklin Delano Roosevelt as expressed in his famous ‘Four Freedoms’? But let me be more specific about changes that were taking place in psychology around the world – including the contribution of Vygotsky. For deep changes were also taking place in Germany with the rise of Gestalt psychology, in America (as mentioned) with the growth of such topics as ‘culture-and-personality’, and in Britain with the leadership of Sir Frederic Bartlett and his famous book Remembering. There was a worldwide movement in psychology against mindless, mechanistic theory. The new heroes were much more holistic, much less reductionist. So, for example, the worldwide major figures in the field of developmental psychology were now Lev Vygotsky and Jean Piaget. But the big difference between those two was that Piaget was indifferent to the role of cultural factors in mental activity, while Vygotsky was preoccupied with them, though both had rejected mechanistic approaches to mental functioning and mental growth. (I might mention in passing that on my visits to Piaget in Geneva, he was always eager to discuss my ideas about the impact of culture on mind, as if he wanted to find out what he had been omitting from his theoretical and experimental work. Indeed, his chief collaborator, Baerbel Inhelder, came to Harvard for a year as a Visiting Fellow to get a

4 citations


Cited by
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TL;DR: This article seeks to make theorists and researchers aware of the importance of not using the terms moderator and mediator interchangeably by carefully elaborating the many ways in which moderators and mediators differ, and delineates the conceptual and strategic implications of making use of such distinctions with regard to a wide range of phenomena.
Abstract: In this article, we attempt to distinguish between the properties of moderator and mediator variables at a number of levels. First, we seek to make theorists and researchers aware of the importance of not using the terms moderator and mediator interchangeably by carefully elaborating, both conceptually and strategically, the many ways in which moderators and mediators differ. We then go beyond this largely pedagogical function and delineate the conceptual and strategic implications of making use of such distinctions with regard to a wide range of phenomena, including control and stress, attitudes, and personality traits. We also provide a specific compendium of analytic procedures appropriate for making the most effective use of the moderator and mediator distinction, both separately and in terms of a broader causal system that includes both moderators and mediators.

80,095 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Theories of the self from both psychology and anthropology are integrated to define in detail the difference between a construal of self as independent and a construpal of the Self as interdependent as discussed by the authors, and these divergent construals should have specific consequences for cognition, emotion, and motivation.
Abstract: People in different cultures have strikingly different construals of the self, of others, and of the interdependence of the 2. These construals can influence, and in many cases determine, the very nature of individual experience, including cognition, emotion, and motivation. Many Asian cultures have distinct conceptions of individuality that insist on the fundamental relatedness of individuals to each other. The emphasis is on attending to others, fitting in, and harmonious interdependence with them. American culture neither assumes nor values such an overt connectedness among individuals. In contrast, individuals seek to maintain their independence from others by attending to the self and by discovering and expressing their unique inner attributes. As proposed herein, these construals are even more powerful than previously imagined. Theories of the self from both psychology and anthropology are integrated to define in detail the difference between a construal of the self as independent and a construal of the self as interdependent. Each of these divergent construals should have a set of specific consequences for cognition, emotion, and motivation; these consequences are proposed and relevant empirical literature is reviewed. Focusing on differences in self-construals enables apparently inconsistent empirical findings to be reconciled, and raises questions about what have been thought to be culture-free aspects of cognition, emotion, and motivation.

18,178 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a model that incorporates this overall argument in the form of a series of hypothesized relationships between different dimensions of social capital and the main mechanisms and proces.
Abstract: Scholars of the theory of the firm have begun to emphasize the sources and conditions of what has been described as “the organizational advantage,” rather than focus on the causes and consequences of market failure. Typically, researchers see such organizational advantage as accruing from the particular capabilities organizations have for creating and sharing knowledge. In this article we seek to contribute to this body of work by developing the following arguments: (1) social capital facilitates the creation of new intellectual capital; (2) organizations, as institutional settings, are conducive to the development of high levels of social capital; and (3) it is because of their more dense social capital that firms, within certain limits, have an advantage over markets in creating and sharing intellectual capital. We present a model that incorporates this overall argument in the form of a series of hypothesized relationships between different dimensions of social capital and the main mechanisms and proces...

15,365 citations

Book
01 Jan 1958
TL;DR: The psychology of interpersonal relations as mentioned in this paper, The psychology in interpersonal relations, The Psychology of interpersonal relationships, کتابخانه دیجیتال و فن اطلاعات دانشگاه امام صادق(ع)
Abstract: The psychology of interpersonal relations , The psychology of interpersonal relations , کتابخانه دیجیتال و فن آوری اطلاعات دانشگاه امام صادق(ع)

15,254 citations

Book
01 Jan 1973

9,000 citations