Cognitive Ecology (eBook)

Edward C. Carterette, Morton P. Friedman (Autoren)

eBook Download: PDF

1996 | 1. Auflage
384 Seiten
Elsevier Science (Verlag)
9780080529271 (ISBN)

Infos

Cognitive Ecology identifies the richness of input to our sensory evaluations, from our cultural heritage and philosophies of aesthetics to perceptual cognition and judgment. Integrating the arts, humanities, and sciences, Cognitive Ecology investigates the relationship of perception and cognition to wider issues of how science is conducted, and how the questions we ask about perception influence the answers we find. Part One discusses how issues of the human mind are inseparable from the culture from which the investigations arise, how mind and environment co-define experience and actions, and how culture otherwise influences cognitive function. Part Two outlines how philosophical themes of aesthetics have guided psychological research, and discuss the physical and aesthetic perception of music, film, and art. Part Three presents an overview of how the senses interact for sensory evaluation.

Inhalt

Front Cover 1
Cognitive Ecology 6
Copyright Page 7
Contents 8
Contributors 14
Foreword 16
Preface 18
Part I: Mind and Culture 20
Chapter 1. The Environment of Minds: Toward a Noetic and Hedonic Ecology 22
I.The Historical Background: Behaviorism 24
II. Noetic Ecology: The Knower and Knowledge 26
III. Hedonic Ecology: Desires and Things Desired 31
IV. The Self 39
V. Conclusions 41
References 42
Chapter 2. Cultural Organization of Cognitive Functions 48
I. Introduction 48
II. Shared Mysteries of Culture and Cognition 49
III. Contemporary Attempts to Understand Culture within Mental Processes 56
IV. Pathways to Methodology 63
V. General Conclusions: Dynamic Interdependence of Culture and Cognition 68
References 69
Part II: The Arts 78
Chapter 3. Confluence and Divergence in Empirical Aesthetics, Philosophy, and Mainstream Psychology 80
I. Origins of Unity in Diversity and Disinterest 81
II. Contemporary Theory and Research 84
III. Aesthetics and Mainstream Psychology 91
IV. Conclusions 99
References 100
Chapter 4. Music Perception and Cognition 106
I. Introduction 106
II. Musical Pitch: Scales and Tuning 110
III. Musical Gestalts 127
IV. Melody as Pitch Pattern 134
V. Rhythm 138
VI. Musical Timbre and Orchestration 146
VII. Musical Communication 154
VIII. Coda 159
References 160
Chapter 5. The Perception of Pictures and Pictorial Art 170
I. Introduction 170
II. Representation and Communication about the World 173
III. Nonrepresentational Functions of Artistic Representations: Expressive, Aesthetic and Architectural 196
References 211
Chapter 6. The Perception of Motion Pictures 224
I. Introduction 224
II. The Moving Camera and the Representation of Space 254
III. Discontinuous Cuts and Their Contribution to Mental Structure and Visual Momentum 268
IV. Summary and Conclusions 296
References 297
Chapter 7. The Art of the Puzzler* 312
I. Wordplay and the Cognitive Psychologist 312
II. The Methods of Scientific Psychology 313
III. The Origins of Wordplay 314
IV. Written Language, Concealment, and Revelation 314
V. Word Puzzles and Perceptual Puzzles 317
VI. Intuition and Discovery 319
VII. Intimacy and the Development of Expertise 320
VIII. What the Puzzler Knows and Does 321
IX. On Being Sure There's Nothing There 329
X. Disguise and Decipherment 330
XI. Constraint and Creativity 332
XII. Concluding Remarks 333
References 334
Part III: Sensory Evaluation 342
Chapter 8. Flavor 344
I. Flavor Modalities 344
II. How Flavor Is Measured in Foods–Applied Sensory Evaluation 350
III. Sensory Experts 364
IV. Functional Properties of the Flavor Senses 373
V. Research Issues and Enduring Questions 378
VI. Interactions among Flavor Modalities 386
VII. Flavor Science, Cuisine, and Culture 392
References 393
Index 400

Textauszug

CHAPTER 2

Cultural Organization of Cognitive Functions

Jaan Valsiner

I INTRODUCTION

The issue of culture has had a varied fate in the realm of psychology—its relevance has been episodically denied, while at other times culture has been recognized as central for understanding human psychology. However, that latter recognition has usually remained unproductive, because the research practices of psychology have been built upon scientific models for which culture inclusiveness is a threat, rather than an asset (see Danziger, 1990; Valsiner, 1994).

Recently, different groups of investigators have started to talk about the field of culture-linked psychological issues, often in conjunction with interest in mental functions (Cole, 1992; Cole, 1995; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Shweder, 1990, 1992; Shweder & Sullivan, 1993). This orientation towards bring different notions of culture into the social sciences can be observed in different disciplines—sociology, ethnology, psychology, and so on (e.g., Boesch, 1983, 1991; Bourdieu, 1973, 1985; Eckensberger, 1991; Ivic, 1978, 1988; Kon, 1988; Krewer, 1990, 1992; Lyra & Rossetti-Ferreira, 1995; Moscovici, 1981, 1982, 1988; Ratner, 1991; Rio & Alvarez, 1990, 1992; Rogoff, 1990, 1992, 1993; Tulviste, 1991). This effort seems to gain momentum, hence it is in a phase of constructing (rather than possessing) its view upon the complex psychological phenomena. However, complex psychological phenomena have always been difficult for psychologists to handie, and it remains to be seen how psychologists of the 1990s can address the task that previous decades have failed to accomplish. Reviews of recent efforts to summarize empirical finding on the social foundations of cognition (e.g., Levine, Resnick, & Higgins, 1993) have demonstrated how the discipline suffers within its theoretical stagnation and repetition of old research practices, dressed in new verbiage.

In the context of the history of science, the focus on culture in psychology is better seen not as a new development in the discipline, but rather as a restoration of the interests that were characteristic of human sciences in the nineteenth century (see Jahoda, 1990, 1993, 1995). Wilhelm Wundt’s version of Völkerpsychologie (which served as both an opponent and proponent of different twentieth-century tendencies in psychology) grew out of that general cultural-psychological orientation (Van Hoorn & Verhaeve, 1980). Before the revitalization of American psychology by behaviorism, cognitively oriented psychology of the turn of this century benefited from regular exchange of information between ethnologists, sociologists, and psychologists (e.g., Simmel, 1906, 1908; Thurnwald, 1922; Wertheimer, 1912). Culturally situated perspectives on human mental processes have a long tradition in science (see Jahoda, 1990).

Obviously, any cultural perspective on cognition has to face psychology’s traditional conceptual confusion. In this chapter, I relate three ill-defined idea complexes—culture, cognition, and ecology. All three terms have traditionally been generic “family names” for different research orientations that have at times proclaimed their revolutionary status (Gardner, 1985), even if such claims can be viewed as rhetorical (Gergen, 1989; Valsiner, 1991). Rhetorics in science are productive for constructing socially shared understanding (and misunderstanding), or at least a particular perspective on reality.

II SHARED MYSTERIES OF CULTURE AND COGNITION

A The Concept of Culture from an Anthropological Standpoint

It may be a surprise to find out that culture—the central concept of cultural (or social) anthropology—has been a troublesome theoretical entity. In that discipline, cultures have traditionally been viewed as homogeneous classes where all persons “share” the culture that may be said to consist of strictly defined and relatively stable rules, beliefs, or folk models. Culture has been usually viewed as either fully “shared” by all successfully socialized members of the given social group (i.e., thus treating cultures as homogeneous groups), or as shared by different degree (in likeness to a fuzzy set) by persons who occupy different positions in their status, role, and social relationships with one another (see Linton, 1936; Swartz, 1982; Wallace, 1970).

1 Past Views on Culture

Anthropology has borrowed from psychology regarding cultural transmission. Thus culture has been defined as a “mass” of learned and transmitted motor reactions, habits, techniques, ideas, and values—and the behavior they induce” (Kroeber, 1948, p. 8). The holistic focus on phenomena is likewise not lost in anthropology—culture has been defined as an integrated whole in which systemic interconnections between physiological drives and their transformations through social institutions were the core of the concept (Malinowski, 1944). Within that perspective,

culture is an integral composed of partly autonomous, pardy coordinated institutions. It is integrated on a series of principles such as the community of blood through procreation; the contiguity in space related to cooperation; the specialization in activities; and last but not least, the use of power in political organization. Each culture owes its completeness and self-sufficiency to the fact that it satisfies the whole range of basic, instrumental and integrative needs. (Malinowski, 1944, p. 40)

2 Anthropology’s Flirtation with Cognitive Science

In the 1980s and 1990s, anthropologists’ difficulties with the concept of culture are amplified. The consensual beliefs of previous decades that culture is a relatively homogeneous and stable entity (shared by all of its “members”—i.e., persons), is being eroded by a number of critical tendencies in the social sciences (see Strauss, 1992). In contemporary anthropology there exist three major kinds of views on “culture” in anthropology (see D’Andrade, 1984, pp. 115–116):

1. Culture is seen as knowledge: it is the accumulation of information (irrespective of the extent to which that information is shared between “members of the culture”).

2. Culture is seen as consisting of core conceptual structures that provide basis for intersubjectively shared representation of the world in which the persons live. This perspective does not emphasize the moment of accumulation (of information), but is rather a set of rules that makes it possible for persons to arrive at shared understandings.

3. Culture is construction of conceptual structures by activities of persons.

Undoubtedly these explanations of culture indicate appropriation of concepts brought to anthropologists’ social discourse by the popularity of the “cognitive revolution.” If we carefully examine all the three cognitive views on culture, we can reach an understanding that much of anthropology tries to study culture through persons (individual members of the culture) without taking the persons as persons into account. In this respect, the anthropology seems to be under the influence of the “cognitive revolution” in psychology (and other disciplines). This modern state of affairs seems to repeat other episodes in anthropology’s history, where psychoanalytic or behavioristic ideas were appropriated from psychology. Yet the conceptual problem remains unclear: How can personal, culturally constructed knowledge be “shared” interpersonally? The concept of culture has become a target of ambivalent attitudes in contemporary anthropology (Moore, 1994). Its static connotations lead anthropologists to reject it, yet all of cultural anthropology is based on the axiomatically set relevance of the ontological view of the culture.

B Psychology’s Inferential Fallacies and Discourse about Culture

Psychology’s conceptual apparatus has been largely essentialistic. Thus, statements about direct linear causation (“X causes Y”) have been rampant, and probably on the increase in recent decades (see Gigerenzer et al., 1989). Thus, talk about “cultural effects” upon “cognition” (or vice versa: “effects” of “cognitive models” upon “culture,” or “accounting for variance” by way of “variables”) abounds in the literature, yet we have rather few insights into the actual processes that are involved in such implied causal effects.

1 Fascination with Variables: Constructing Black Boxes

Psychology’s usual logic of inference has proceeded from outcomes (products of some psychological processes) to finding plausible causes for these outcomes. The latter are usually viewed as static essences (or at least as terms referring to black boxes, which include processes that psychologists consensually agree not to tear open—such as “learning”—see Goodyear, 1995). The...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 5.2.1996
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Allgemeine Psychologie
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Sozialpsychologie
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Verhaltenstherapie
• Themenwelt: Medizin / Pharmazie ► Medizinische Fachgebiete ► Neurologie
• Themenwelt: Medizin / Pharmazie ► Medizinische Fachgebiete ► Pharmakologie / Pharmakotherapie
• Themenwelt: Medizin / Pharmazie ► Medizinische Fachgebiete ► Psychiatrie / Psychotherapie
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Humanbiologie
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Zoologie
• ISBN-13: 9780080529271 / 9780080529271