This theoretical paper discusses some conceptual and methodological obstacles that one encounters when analyzing the contextual determination of thinking in psychology. First, we comment upon the various representations of the "cognitive" individual that have been formed over the years--from the epistemic subject to the psychological subject, and…

Giyoo Hatano was an international scholar--an adaptive expert himself. His creative methodologies and theoretical insights have enriched the work of researchers in many countries. How Hatano lived his life and treated others provides enriching insights as well. In this essay, we focus on "adaptive expertise", one of Giyoo Hatano's major…

Reviews the literature pertaining to spatial perspective-taking and attempts to account for the inconsistent findings in this area of research by examining the methodological differences between studies. (Author/SS)

The goal of this paper is to examine efforts to understand the developmental consequences, particularly the cognitive consequences, of children spending large amounts of time in formal schools where their activity is separated from the daily life of the rest of the community and mediated by technologies of literacy and numeracy as well as…

Evaluates empirical studies on child development. Suggests that most such research consists of studies of a priori, nonempirical, logical relations between concepts, whose definitions guarantee the relationship studied. Argues that hypotheses are empirical if variables involved are semantically and logically independent. Research that is not based…

The pattern of parent-child correlations in adoption studies has long been interpreted to suggest substantial additive genetic variance underlying variance in IQ. The studies have frequently been criticized on methodological grounds, but those criticisms have not reflected recent perspectives in genetics and developmental theory. Here we apply…

Comments on the ideas espoused by Smedslund (PS 522 552) in this issue. Agrees to the idea of spending more intellectual energy in distinguishing between a priori and empirical hypotheses but emphasizes that concepts are not always accurate reflections of reality and that even empirical disconfirmation of an a priori hypothesis sometimes can…