Engaging Polanyi’s embeddedness–disembeddedness framework, this study explored the work experiences of Bhil children employed in Indian Bt cottonseed GPNs. The innovative visual technique of drawings followed by interviews was used. Migrant children, working under debt bondage, underwent greater exploitation and perennial and severe depersonalized bullying, indicative of commodification of labour and disembeddedness. In contrast, children working in their home villages were not under debt bondage and underwent less exploitation and occasional and mild depersonalized bullying, indicative of how civil society organizations, (...) along with the state, attempt to re-embed economic activities in the social context. Polanyi’s double movement was evident. ‘Place’ emerged as the pivotal factor determining children’s experiences. A ‘protective alliance’ of community controls and social power, associated with in-group affiliations and cohesive ties, stemming from a common village and tribal identity, aided children working at home for Bhil farmers. ‘Asymmetric intergroup inequality’ due to pronounced social identity and class differences, coupled with locational constraints and developmental disadvantage, made migrant children vulnerable targets. Social embeddedness influences how child workers are treated because it forces employers to be ethical and not engage in bullying. However, by shifting production to children’s home villages, there is an attempt to obscure the difference between child labour and child work. Thus, the seeds of disembeddedness are sown through the very act of re-embeddeding, potentially hampering future interventions. (shrink)

ArgumentI believe that some pollutions are used as analogies for expressing a general view of the social order.Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger The possibility of crossing humans with other anthropoid species has been discussed in fiction as well as in scientific literature during the twentieth century. Professor Il’ya Ivanov’s attempt to achieve this was crucial for the beginning of organized primate research in the Soviet Union, and remains one of the most interesting and controversial experiments that was ever done on (...) non-human primates. The possibility of removing the boundary that separates humans from other animal species, apes in particular, is loaded with important political meaning and violates cultural and ethical taboos. The history of Ivanov’s scientific experiment thus helps to reveal some of the twentieth-century’s important cultural conventions and hidden assumptions about human nature, species, and social hierarchy. (shrink)

Early work in child psychology -- Phenomenology, gestalt theory, and psychoanalysis -- Syncretic sociability and the birth of the self -- Contemporary research in psychology and phenomenology -- Exploration and learning -- Culture, development, and gender -- Conclusion: an incomparable childhood.

Philosophers of mind have long been interested in the relation between two ideas: that causality plays an essential role in our understanding of the mental; and that we can gain an understanding of belief and desire by considering the ascription of attitudes to people on the basis of what they say and do. Many have thought that those ideas are incompatible. William Child argues that there is in fact no tension between them, and that we should accept both. He (...) shows how we can have a causal understanding of the mental without having to see attitudes and experiences as internal, causally interacting entities and he defends this view against influential objections. The book offers detailed discussions of many of Donald Davidson's contributions to the philosophy of mind, and also considers the work of Dennett, Anscombe, McDowell, and Rorty, among others. Issues discussed include: the nature of intentional phenomena; causal explanation; the character of visual experience; psychological explanation; and the causal relevance of mental properties. (shrink)

Several language experiments have been carried out on apes and other animals aiming to narrow down the presumed qualitative gap that separates humans from other animals. These experiments, however, have been driven by the understanding of language as a purely symbolic sign system, often connected to a profound disinterest for language use in real situations and a propensity to perceive grammatical and syntactic information as the only fundamental aspects of human language. For these reasons, the language taught to apes tends (...) to discard iconic and indexical elements in favour of symbolic signs. This paper sheds light on the iconic components of human language, with close attention to the iconic properties of language as present in the ape language experiments. We emphasise the role of the body in the interpretation and production of iconic signs, while demonstrating the need to take into account the Umwelt theory in the research paradigm of the experiments. Uexküll’s Umwelt theory is used to exemplify the methodological problems connected to the teaching of human language to other animal species; furthermore, we discuss how the modelling capacities of language affect the biological layer that constitutes the animal Umwelt. Language is analysed as a particular case of Umwelt transition, and as such its implications are further discussed in the article. With this paper, we enrich the discussion surrounding the human-ape pidgin language by advocating for the need to include iconic components as vital parts of this research area. With this inclusion, we uncover the inter-dependency of iconic, indexical and symbolic signs in human language, aiming to further develop the research paradigm of the ape language experiments. (shrink)

This chapter distinguishes two uses of the terms “inner” and “outer” in Wittgenstein's writings on philosophy of mind. It discusses the inner‐outer picture by exploring Wittgenstein's account of the origin and appeal of the picture, his reasons for rejecting it, and his own very different way of thinking of common‐sense psychology. The chapter considers his account of our relation to our own experiences and attitudes, and discusses his suggestion that utterances like 'I'm in pain' or 'I want an apple' are (...) avowals or expressions of a person's experiences and attitudes. It discusses Wittgenstein's positive view of the relation between “inner” mental states and “outer” behavior. The inner–outer picture, as Wittgenstein describes it, has a metaphysical and an epistemic dimension. The inner–outer picture encourages the view that our use of language in self‐ascriptions of current experiences and attitudes is analogous to its use in talking about the non‐mental world. (shrink)

The influence of pervasive cultural norms on people’s actions constitutes a longstanding problem for autonomy theory. On the one hand, such norms often seem to elude the kind of reflection that autonomous agency requires. On the other hand, they are hardly entirely beyond the pale of autonomy: people do sometimes reflect critically on them and resist them. This paper draws on phenomenological accounts of embodiment in order to reconcile these observations. We suggest that pervasive cultural norms exert a strong and (...) elusive, but occasionally resistible, influence because they are incorporated – they operate on the largely pre-reflective bodily level of human existence. As an illustration we discuss parental decisions about surgery for children born with unclear sex, decisions permeated by deeply entrenched norms about sexual difference and genital appearance. (shrink)

There exists a variety of types of folk healers in African American society. This paper examines the sequence of dreams and visions whereby a woman realized the status of evangelical healer. "It was hypothesized that these altered states functioned as facilitating mechanisms whereby the subject could alleviate anxiety while at the same time realize a new master status. By gathering extensive interview data and employing a structuralist analysis, it was possible to relate the dreams and visions to personal crises, thus (...) substantiating the hypothesis. In addition to offering processual insight to Anthony Wallaces "mazeway reconstruction,” this analysis provides a fresh perspective from which to examine the recruitment process to the status of "healer.”. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;I deal with two themes: the idea that an account of thought should be given by giving an account of the ascription of thoughts by a radical interpreter--which I call interpretationism; and the idea that psychological concepts like action and perception are essentially causal. It has often been thought that these two themes conflict; or at least, that if they can co-exist, then they must be kept separate, and (...) associated with different perspectives on behaviour. But is that right? I discuss the character of interpretationism and the nature of causal theories, and examine the extent to which the two themes are compatible. ;Chapter I explains and argues for an interpretationist approach, distinguishing between different interpretationist views, and defending interpretationism against various common objections. ;Chapter II examines the links between interpretationism and the anomalousness of the mental. I discuss a number of different arguments and distinguish a range of theses about anomalousness and indeterminacy which they may support. ;Chapter III discusses the motivation for causal theories. I explain why it matters that we should give causal theories within an interpretationist perspective rather than treating the two themes as insights of different perspectives; and I examine the difficulties of doing so. ;Chapter IV considers the causal theory of vision. I argue against the view that the interpretationist's conception of experience undermines the causal theory. ;Chapter V considers the case of action. I develop a substantive causal theory of action which responds to the following argument: that if we accept the interpretationist's claim that the mental is anomalous, then we must concede that mental properties cannot be causally relevant. ;From the particular cases, and on general grounds, I conclude that it is possible to adopt an interpretationist perspective which simultaneously sees the mental in causal terms; and that such a perspective is essential for an adequate understanding of the mind. (shrink)

As a matter of justice children have several claims and are entitled to a range of goods. In this paper I will argue that one of these goods is positive self-relations. Since poverty during childhood distorts the proper development and experience of these three self-relations it violates children’s claims to justice. I will defend this argument in three steps: I will introduce and examine three types of positive self-relations and argue that children are entitled to all of these; I will (...) move on to examine the concept of humiliation and argue that acts of humiliating are unjust even if the victims do not experience them as humiliating; finally, I will provide six arguments as to why it is humiliating for children to live in poverty. The six arguments presented in the last section are: poverty is connected to other forms of injustice; poverty is undeserved and represents an arbitrary feature of affected children for which they cannot be held responsible; poverty is widespread among children; poverty is imposed on children because they are part of a larger social group; poverty is an enduring humiliation and not just an occasional incident; the humiliation caused by poverty targets the particular vulnerability of children as developing beings. Based on the humiliating nature of poverty, which violates children’s claims to the aforementioned types of positive self-relations, I can conclude that it is unjust for children to live in poverty. (shrink)

Part 1 of this paper sketches Wittgenstein’s opposition to scientism in general. Part 2 explores his opposition to scientism in philosophy focusing, in particular, on philosophy of mind; how must philosophy of mind proceed if it is to avoid the kind of scientism that Wittgenstein complains about? Part 3 examines a central anti-scientistic strand in Wittgenstein’s Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology volume II: his treatment of the ‘uncertainty’ of the relation between ‘outer’ behaviour and ‘inner’ experiences and mental (...) states. (shrink)

It is natural to say that when we acquire a new concept or concepts, or grasp a new theory, or master a new practice, we come to see things in a new way: we perceive phenomena that we were not previously aware of; we come to see patterns or connections that we did not previously see. That natural idea has been applied in many areas, including the philosophy of science, the philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of language. And, in (...) reflecting on the character of philosophy itself, Wittgenstein himself associates the introduction of a new concept in philosophy with the discovery of a new way of looking at things (PI §401), and says that the point of presenting us with an imagined example may be to change our way of looking at things (PI §144). The paper considers four interrelated questions about this association between seeing-as and change, novelty, or innovation. 1. Is there an important difference between the case where the change in someone’s way of seeing things involves the invention or discovery of a completely new concept, a completely new theory etc., and the case where it involves the person’s coming to understand an existing concept or theory? 2. Is there a special connection between seeing-as and conceptual or theoretical change or creativity: a connection that does not obtain between seeing-as and using or applying a familiar theory or system of concepts? 3. In cases where seeing-as is associated with novelty or creativity, is there any sense in which the fact that someone sees things in a new way can help to explain their conceptual or theoretical creativity? 4. To the extent that there is some association between seeing-as and novelty or creativity, why if at all does it matter that one experiences things in a certain way? Would someone who was aspect-blind be any worse off with respect to creativity or innovation than the rest of us? And if so, why? (shrink)

The essays in this special issue of HEC Forum provide reflections that make explicit the implicit anthropology that our current pandemic has brought but which in the medical ethics literature around COVID-19 has to a great extent ignored. Three of the essays are clearly “journalistic” as a literary genre: one by a hospital chaplain, one by a medical student in her pre-clinical years, and one by a fourth-year medical student who reports her experience as she completed her undergraduate clerkships and (...) applied for positions in graduate medical education. Other essays explore the pandemic from historical, sociological, and economic perspectives, particularly how triage policies have been found to be largely blind to structural healthcare disparities, while simultaneously unable to appropriately address those disparities. Central issues that need to be addressed in triage are not just whether a utilitarian response is the most just response, but what exactly is the greatest good for the greatest number? Together, the essays in this special issue of HEC Forum create a call for a more anthropological approach to understanding health and healthcare. The narrow approach of viewing health as resulting primarily from healthcare will continue to hinder advances and perpetuate disparities. Health outcomes result from a complex interaction of various social, economic, cultural, historical, and political factors. Advancing healthcare requires contextualizing the health of populations amongst these factors. The COVID-19 pandemic has made us keenly aware of how interdependent our health as a society can be. (shrink)

Interpretationism in the philosophy of mind is often thought to conflict with the idea that beliefs and desires play a genuinely causal role. It is argued that there is in fact no such conflict and that a causal understanding of the mental is essential for realism about mental phenomena and about the relations between thought and reality. First, the chapter considers and responds to various reasons for thinking that the metaphysics of interpretationism is incompatible with a causal view of the (...) mental. Then it examines the view of philosophers who accept that rationalizing, interpretative stories and causal stories are both legitimate, but argue that no single account of anything can be simultaneously rationalizing and causal. Against that view, it is argued that, unless we see interpretative, psychological stories as themselves being causal stories, we cannot understand psychological explanation and we cannot understand how thought and experience can have the objective content they do. (shrink)

_Objective:_ The aim of the current study was to investigate associations, unique and interactive, between mothers’ and children’s histories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and children’s psychiatric outcomes using an intergenerational perspective. Further, we were particularly interested in examining whether maternal reflective functioning about their own trauma (T-RF) was associated with a lower likelihood of children’s abuse exposure (among children of CSA-exposed mothers). _Methods:_ One hundred and eleven children ( M age = 9.53 years; 43 sexual abuse victims) and their (...) mothers ( M age = 37.99; 63 sexual abuse victims) participated in this study. Mothers completed the Parent Development Interview (PDI), which yielded assessments of RF regarding their own experiences of abuse, and also reported on their children’s internalizing and externalizing symptoms. _Results:_ Children of CSA-exposed mothers were more likely to have experienced CSA. A key result was that among CSA-exposed mothers, higher maternal T-RF regarding their own abuse was associated with lower likelihood of child CSA-exposure. Mothers’ and children’s CSA histories predicted children’s internalizing and externalizing symptoms, such that CSA exposure for mother or child was associated with greater symptomatology in children. _Conclusion:_ The findings show that the presence of either maternal or child CSA is associated with more child psychological difficulties. Importantly in terms of identifying potential protective factors, maternal T-RF is associated with lower likelihood of CSA exposure in children of CSA-exposed mothers. We discuss these findings in the context of the need for treatments focusing on increasing T-RF in mothers and children in the context of abuse to facilitate adaptation and reduce the intergenerational risk. (shrink)

Since the financial crisis, the malfeasance of business leaders has been a recurring theme in the news, along with calls for increased regulation and oversight. This focus on the ethics of the business community raises a concern about the ethics of those in business or going into business. The ethics of business people and business students has been explored by a number of researchers using survey techniques. We propose and report the results of an alternative method for investigating unethical behavior (...) by students. In a motivated economic experiment with introductory level students, we find that business students were almost twice as likely to lie for a monetary reward as students in other disciplines, demonstrating the need for effective business ethics. (shrink)

The use of child soldiers in armed conflict is an increasing global concern. Although philosophers have examined whether child soldiers can be considered combatants in war, much less attention has been paid to their moral responsibility. While it is tempting to think of them as having diminished or limited responsibility, child soldiers often report feeling guilt for the wrongs they commit. Here I argue that their feelings of guilt are both intelligible and morally appropriate. The feelings of (...) guilt that child soldiers experience are not self-censure; rather their guilt arises from their attempts to come to terms with what they see as their own morally ambiguous motives. Their guilt is appropriate because it reaffirms their commitment to morality and facilitates their self-forgiveness. (shrink)

Visual self-recognition is often controversially cited as an indicator of self-awareness and assessed with the mirror-mark test. Great apes and humans, unlike small apes and monkeys, have repeatedly passed mirror tests, suggesting that the underlying brain processes are homologous and evolved 14-18 million years ago. However, neuroscientific, developmental, and clinical dissociations show that the medium used for self-recognition (mirror vs photograph vs video) significantly alters behavioral and brain responses, likely due to perceptual differences among the different media and prior experience. (...) On the basis of this evidence and evolutionary considerations, we argue that the visual self-recognition skills evident in humans and great apes are a byproduct of a general capacity to collate representations, and need not index other aspects of self-awareness. (shrink)

Members of the Clinical Ethics Consultation Affairs Standing Committee of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities present a collection of insights and recommendations developed from their collective experience, intended for those engaged in the work of healthcare ethics consultation.

A work that takes up development as its key theme must also inherently be a work about time. Typically, developmental psychology assumes an objective, linear progression of time that moves from the past and into the future in a rather orderly fashion. We move steadily along this line in a forward motion. However, as Talia Welsh demonstrates in The Child as Natural Phenomenologist, such an assumption will over-determine our understanding of childhood development. It too will be viewed as mostly (...) linear (although with possible regressions, delays or alacrity), having a predictable, “normal” course in which an earlier stage is overcome by a more sophisticated one. An objective and linear course of development is one of many prejudices that adults tend to impose on their interpretations of children’s behavior. This presumption is one of several that Talia Welsh takes up. In contrast, she argues: “no single path of development exists” (15) and favors a more open approach that more effectivel .. (shrink)

In this study, family- and center-based child care providers participated in day-long research workshops in which they first identified dimensions of an “ideal” caregiving situation and then, using a critical incident technique, explored the meaning and experience of “power” as caregivers. This article is devoted to examining the ways in which child care workers understand the notion of “powerfulness” and “powerlessness” in their work. Themes emerging from critical incidents are considered in light of feminist and caregiving literatures. The (...) article concludes by drawing implications from the project's findings for policy, advocacy, and conceptual development. (shrink)

: The natural philosopher Michael Faraday and the psychologist Jean Piaget experimented directly with natural phenomena and children. While Faraday originated evidence for spatial fields mediating force interactions, Piaget studied children's cognitive development. This paper treats their experimental processes in parallel, taking as examples Faraday's 1831 investigations of water patterns produced under vibration and Piaget's interactions with his infants as they sought something he hid. I redid parts of Faraday's vibrating fluid activities and Piaget's hiding games. Like theirs, my experiences (...) showed that incomplete observations and confusions accompanied—and facilitated —experimental developments. While working with things in their hands, these experimenters' minds were also engaged, inferring new, more coherent understandings of the behaviors under study. Transitory ripples disclosed distinct patterns; infants devised more productive search methods. From the ripples, Faraday discerned an oscillatory condition that informed his subsequent speculations about light. From the infant search, Piaget identified experimenting as a child's means of developing self and world, later envisioning its infusion into education. Taken together, these two stories demonstrate that cognitive capacities emerge in the actual process of experimenting. This finding eclipses the historical context in its implications for education today. When learners pursue their own experiments, their minds develop. (shrink)

Abstract Since their inception, distributional models of semantics have been criticized as inadequate cognitive theories of human semantic learning and representation. A principal challenge is that the representations derived by distributional models are purely symbolic and are not grounded in perception and action; this challenge has led many to favor feature-based models of semantic representation. We argue that the amount of perceptual and other semantic information that can be learned from purely distributional statistics has been underappreciated. We compare the representations (...) of three feature-based and nine distributional models using a semantic clustering task. Several distributional models demonstrated semantic clustering comparable with clustering-based on feature-based representations. Furthermore, when trained on child-directed speech, the same distributional models perform as well as sensorimotor-based feature representations of children’s lexical semantic knowledge. These results suggest that, to a large extent, information relevant for extracting semantic categories is redundantly coded in perceptual and linguistic experience. Detailed analyses of the semantic clusters of the feature-based and distributional models also reveal that the models make use of complementary cues to semantic organization from the two data streams. Rather than conceptualizing feature-based and distributional models as competing theories, we argue that future focus should be on understanding the cognitive mechanisms humans use to integrate the two sources. (shrink)

In this essay, I read Freud and Merleau-Ponty as voices for a more perceptive and nuanced discourse on the child. Their works, I suggest, contain two complementary approaches in this direction. The first approach concerns the structural asymmetry of child and adult. In his early writings, Freud assumes a radical break between the child’s and the adult’s sexualities. Taking seriously this assumption of asymmetry cautions us against the hasty application of adult standards to the child. The (...) second approach concerns what I would call a “thick description” of the child’s lived experience. Merleau-Ponty exemplifies this approach in his lectures on child psychology and the notion of institution, where he develops a concrete, phenomenologically informed account of childhood and puberty. (shrink)

Psychopathology in children cannot be understood without considering developmental processes and transactional relationships, particularly the relationship with caregivers. Time-limited intersubjective child psychotherapy is a developmental and transactional approach aimed at helping children and caregivers get back on healthier developmental trajectories. Core developmental processes, such as self-other-regulation and affect integration, are considered particularly important for healthy function and transactions with caregivers and contexts. Therefore, TIC seeks to strengthen core developmental processes in the child and the caregivers’ ability to scaffold (...) the child’s development. This is achieved through parallel child therapy and parent sessions. The current study is a qualitative study of parents’ experiences of change after TIC. The study explores parents’ perception of change in their child, themselves, and their transactions, and what they experienced as helpful in therapy.Materials and MethodsNine semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with parents of nine children aged 9–12 years with internalizing difficulties after completing TIC. The data were analyzed with thematic analysis.ResultsThe parents described positive changes in the children’s ability to understand, regulate and express themselves. The parents also described positive changes in their parenting, and for all nine children the parents reported positive changes in the transactions between themselves and the child. Most parents saw the parallel child and parental sessions as particularly important, while several parents mentioned play and the therapeutic focus.DiscussionParents’ description of changes after TIC indicate that the parents perceived their children as strengthened in core developmental processes important for intersubjective exchanges such as self-regulation and affect integration. In addition, parents saw their children and their own contributions more clearly, and their transactions were described as more supportive and positive.ConclusionThe results from this study give support to TIC as a developmentally supportive approach to therapy, with potential effects on children’s core developmental processes, their parents’ ability to both see and scaffold the child’s development and positive effects on the transactions between children and parents. The positive effects likely result from the integration of the different parts of TIC and the synergies taking place between them, rather than any one component by itself. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to analyze the experience of hope that appears in a parent's blog presenting everyday life while caring for a child with Trisomy 18 (Edwards syndrome). The author, Rebekah Peterson, began her blog on 17 March 2011 and continues to post information on her son Aaron's care. The analysis of hope in the blog is carried out using a mixed methodology: initial and focused coding using Charmaz's constructed grounded theory and elements of Colaizzi's method. (...) Each aspect of hope is coded through the blog author's statements, from which three main aspects of hope emerge: hope for the longest possible presence of Aaron with his family, hope for control over situations, pain, and symptoms, and existential facets of hope. These various aspects reveal to what extent the experience of hope is unique. Additionally, analyzing the experience of parental hope uncovers the additional problem of inappropriate communication by health care professionals (HCPs) in intensive care units, particularly when discussing the termination of causal treatment. The problem may be solved through proper education for HCPs and serious consideration of parental involvement in order to properly elaborate guidelines on this issue. The three main aspects of parental hope discussed in this paper might expand knowledge on the issue, helping HCPs to better understand the parents' experience of care and to help sustain parental hope in pediatric palliative care. (shrink)

The unexpected death of a child is one of the most challenging losses as it fractures survivors’ sense of parenthood and other layers of identity. Given that not all the bereaved parents who have need for support respond well to available treatments and that many have little access to further intervention or follow-up over time, online interventions featuring therapeutic writing and peer support have strong potential. In this article we explore how a group of bereaved mothers experienced the process (...) of participating in an online course in therapeutic writing for the integration of grief. Our research questions were: How do parents who have lost a child experience being part of an online course in therapeutic writing? What are the perceived benefits and challenges of writing in processing their grief? We followed an existential phenomenological approach and analyzed fieldwork notes (n= 13), qualitative data from the application and assessment surveys (n= 35;n= 21), excerpts from the journals of some participants (n= 3), and email correspondence with some participants (n= 5). We categorized the results in three meaning units: (1) where does my story begin? The “both and” of their silent chaos; (2) standing on the middle line: a pregnancy that does not end; (3) closures and openings: “careful optimism” and the need for community support. Participants experienced writing as an opportunity for self-exploration regarding their identities and their emotional world, as well as a means to develop and strengthen a bond with their children. They also experienced a sense of belonging, validation, and acceptance in the online group in a way that helped them make sense of their suffering. Online writing courses could be of benefit for bereaved parents who are grieving the unexpected death of a child, but do not replace other interventions such as psychotherapy. In addition to trauma and attachment informed models of grief, identity informed models with a developmental focus might enhance the impact of both low-threshold community interventions and more intensive clinical ones. Further studies and theoretical development in the area are needed, addressing dialogical notions such as the multivoicedness of the self. (shrink)

Employing a constructionist framework of emotion, this study examines whether parental language during emotion belief discussions predicts parents’ self-reported beliefs about emotion and child emotion regulation (ER). 102 parents of children ages 8 through 12 participated in focus groups about emotion beliefs, and nine months later, completed questionnaires on their emotion beliefs and child ER. Focus group content was analyzed for positive and negative emotion talk, cognitive process talk, and an established linguistic marker of psychological distancing. Parents’ positive (...) emotion talk and parental linguistic distancing when discussing their child’s (but not their own) emotion experiences positively predicted beliefs about children’s emotional capabilities. Finally, negative emotion talk negatively predicted parental beliefs about children’s capacity to control their own emotions and the value of anger expression as well as child ER. Current findings contribute to our understanding of how parental communication patterns about emotions may influence emotion beliefs and child emotion development. (shrink)

As the suspect interview is one of the key elements of a police investigation, it has received a great deal of merited attention from the scientific community. However, suspect interviews in child sexual abuse (CSA) investigations is an understudied research area. In the present mixed-methods study, we examine Swedish (n= 126) and Norwegian (n= 52) police interviewers' self-reported goals, tactics, and emotional experiences when conducting interviews with suspected CSA offenders. The quantitative analyses found associations between the interviewers' self-reported goals, (...) tactics, and emotions during these types of suspect interviews. Interviewers who reported experiencing more negative emotions were more likely to employ confrontational tactics. Specifically, anger was positively associated with the goal of obtaining a confession and with aggressive tactics like raising one's voice and emphasizing the seriousness of the crime. Frustration and disgust displayed similar patterns. Somewhat contrasting these quantitative results, the thematic analysis identified a strong consensus that emotions should not and do not affect the police interviewers' work. Furthermore, the police interviewers described a range of strategies for managing emotions during the interview and for processing their emotional reactions afterwards. The present findings highlight the relevance of emotional processes in CSA suspect interviews and provide an initial exploration of the potentially complex relationship between the goals, tactics, and emotional experiences of police interviewers who question CSA suspects. (shrink)

The Ape that Understood the Universe is the story of the strangest animal in the world: the human animal. It opens with a question: How would an alien scientist view our species? What would it make of our sex differences, our sexual behavior, our child-rearing patterns, our moral codes, our religions, our languages, and science? The book tackles these issues by drawing on ideas from two major schools of thought: evolutionary psychology and cultural evolutionary theory. The guiding assumption is (...) that humans are animals, and that like all animals, we evolved to pass on our genes. At some point, however, we also evolved the capacity for culture - and from that moment, culture began evolving in its own right. This transformed us from a mere ape into an ape capable of reshaping the planet, travelling to other worlds, and understanding the vast universe of which we're but a tiny, fleeting fragment. (shrink)

This edition presents the first complete English translation of N.N. Ladygina-Kohts' journal chronicling her pioneering work with the chimpanzee, Joni. The journal entries describe and compare the instincts, emotions, play, and habits of her son Rudy and Joni as each develops.

Historians of science have only just begun to sample the wealth of different approaches to the study of animal behavior undertaken in the twentieth century. To date, more attention has been given to Lorenzian ethology and American behaviorism than to other work and traditions, but different approaches are equally worthy of the historian's attention, reflecting not only the broader range of questions that could be asked about animal behavior and the "animal mind" but also the different contexts in which these (...) questions were important. One such approach is that represented by the work of the French zoologist Louis Boutan (1859-1934). This paper explores the intellectual and cultural history of Boutan's work on animal language and the animal mind, and contextualizes the place of animal behavior studies within late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century French biology. I explore the ways in which Boutan addressed the philosophical issue of whether language was necessary for abstract thought and show how he shifted from the idea that animals were endowed with a purely affective language to the notion that of they were capable of "rudimentary" reasoning. I argue that the scientific and broader socio-cultural contexts in which Boutan operated played a role in this transition. Then I show how Boutan's linguistic and psychological experiments with a gibbon and children provide insights into his conception of "naturalness." Although Boutan reared his gibbon at home and studied it in the controlled environment of his laboratory, he continued to identify its behavior as "natural." I specifically demonstrate the importance of the milieu of the French Third Republic in shaping Boutan's understanding not only of animal intelligence and child education, but also his definition of nature. Finally, I argue that Boutan's studies on the primate mind provide us with a lens through which we can examine the co-invention of animal and child psychology in early-twentieth-century France. (shrink)

In Becoming Human (2021), evolutionary psychologist Michael Tomasello provides a comprehensive account of the social intentionality which makes us human. One of the many themes discussed is the intentionality required for switching between perspectives. A number of interesting claims are made in these parts, including that great apes (and young infants) have no sense of perspective, no understanding of false beliefs, and do not know they could be wrong about how they experience things. While I am sympathetic to the general (...) purport of Tomasello’s theory of switching perspectives, I believe his theory mispresents the intentional skills that are involved in various pre-conceptual forms of switching perspectives, to the extent that it is worth a brief commentary. I first outline Tomasello’s theory of perspectivalness, and subsequently develop an alternative, based on the phenomenological distinction between operative and thematic intentionality. (shrink)

According to a “selective” (as opposed to “instructive”) model of human language capacity, people come to know more than they experience. The discrepancy between experience and eventual capacity (the “poverty of the stimulus”) is bridged by genetically provided information. Hence any hypothesis about the linguistic genotype (or “Universal Grammar,” UG) has consequences for what experience is needed and what form people's mature capacities (or “grammars”) will take. This BBS target article discusses the “trigger experience,” that is, the experience that actually (...) affects a child's linguistic development. It is argued that this must be a subset of a child's total linguistic experience and hence that much of what a child hears has no consequence for the form of the eventual grammar. UG filters experience and provides an upper bound on what constitutes the triggering experience. This filtering effect can often be seen in the way linguistic capacity can change between generations. Children only need access to robust structures of minimal (“degree-0”) complexity. Everything can be learned from simple, unembedded “domains” (a grammatical concept involved in defining an expression's logical form). Children do not need access to more complex structures. (shrink)

Cerebral Visual Impairment is an umbrella term which includes abnormalities in visual acuity, or contrast sensitivity or colour; ocular motility; visual field and the conscious and unconscious filtering or processing of visual input. Children with CVI have specific needs and problems relating to their development from infancy to adulthood which can impact on their wellbeing. Recent research indicates the complexities of living with CVI but there remains limited information of the full impact of CVI on families’ everyday lives. The qualitative (...) interviews reported here explored families’ experiences to discover the impact of CVI on all aspects of everyday life. Parents and children were invited to participate in semi-structured interviews, either face to face, by phone or video call between January 2018 and February 2019. Topics covered everyday practicalities of living with CVI, focusing on challenges and what worked well at school and home. Interviews were audio-recorded and subject to thematic analysis to look for patterns across the data. Twenty families took part in interviews, with eight children/young people within those families contributing interviews of their own. Four themes were developed from the interviews: Assessment and understanding implications of CVI, Education, Family life, Psychological wellbeing and quality of life. The interviews provide valuable insights into the impact of living with CVI and highlight the need for more awareness of the condition among professionals in both health and education settings. (shrink)

Studies of the conceptual abilities of nonhuman primates demonstrate the substantial range of these abilities as well as their limitations. Such abilities range from categorization on the basis of shared physical attributes, associative relations and functions to abstract concepts as reflected in analogical reasoning about relations between relations. The pattern of results from these studies point to a fundamental distinction between monkeys and apes in both their implicit and explicit conceptual capacities. Monkeys, but not apes, might be best regarded as (...) “paleo‐logicans” in the sense that they form common class concepts of identity on the basis of identical predicates (i.e., shared features). The discrimination of presumably more abstract relations commonly involves relatively simple procedural strategies mediated by associative processes likely shared by all mammals. There is no evidence that monkeys can perceive, let alone judge, relations‐between‐relations. This analogical conceptual capacity is found only in chimpanzees and humans. Interestingly, the “analogical ape,” like the child, can make its analogical knowledge explicit only if it is first provided with a symbol system by which propositional representations can be encoded and manipulated. (shrink)