In answer to JeongSuk Pang's request for references regarding Gibson's
theory of direct perception and the socio-cultural approach, I excerpted a
bit from a posting I made about a year ago (8/26/97) during the discussion
of Mike Tomasello's work on imitation.
My work is informed by ecological realism/direct perception (Gibson),
ethnomethodology (Garfinkel), and the ZPD (Vygotsky). Infants do not come
into the world empty-handed/blank slates. They arrive with some
preattunements, but they are cultural blank slates. Caregivers educate
these natural abilities, assist in their differentiation. I look at
member's methods/practices for achieving a practical understanding of
ongoing events.=20
I focus on caregivers educating their infants' attention to mundane daily
activities. My approach focuses on how caregivers educate attention during
cycles of perceiving and acting. Acting involves capabilities of the body
(effectivities) as well as noticing opportunities or affordances for action
in the environment.=20
These caregiver methods assist infants in coming to perceive, act in, and
know cultural practices/methods, so that they might become adept members of
their culture. Infants just don't imitate daily activities spontaneously,
"personal trainers" embody, show, demonstrate, point at what to do day-in
and day-out. And so do classroom teachers.=20
Despite conclusions by Ochs & Schieffelin and Rogoff regarding non-Western
adult caregivers' very different interactional patterns with children than
that of Western adult caregivers, sibling caregivers around the world (who
do must of moment-to-moment work) do carefully monitor and educate
attention unceasingly (Demuth, Martini, Zukow-Goldring).=20
Most developmental theories (whether assuming that knowledge is innate or
acquired) presuppose that knowing is in the individual, not emergent,
distributed, etc. I take a different tack. I assume that we all have
different (perceptual) histories/views as we approach what's happening. We
move along different trajectories/paths and occupy different observing
points as events unfold. People do not see eye-to-eye. Life is inherently
ambiguous. We spend much time and effort negotiating a rather tenuous,
fragile practical consensus just to get ordinary and esoteric things done.=
=20
=09
Pat Zukow-Goldring
Zukow-Goldring, P. (in press). Perceiving referring actions: Latino
and Euro-American caregivers and infants comprehending speech.
In K. L. Nelson, A. Aksu-Koc, & C. Johnson (Eds.), Children's
Language, Vol. 10. Hillsdale NJ: Erlbaum.=20
Zukow-Goldring, P. (in press). When Gibson and Wittgenstein perceive
eye-to-eye: Caregiver gestures cultivate the lexical development of Latino
and Euro-American infants. In B. Bril (Ed.), Proceedings for the Fifth
European Workshop for Ecological Psychology. Pont-=E0u-Mousson, France.
Zukow-Goldring, P. G. (1997). A social ecological realist approach to the
emergence of the lexicon: Educating attention to amodal invariants in
gesture and speech." In C. Dent-Read & P. Zukow-Goldring (Eds.), Evolving
explanations of development: Ecological approaches to organism-environment
systems (pp. 199-250). Washington, D. C.: American Psychological=
Association.
Zukow-Goldring, P. G., & Dent-Read, C. (1997). Epilogue: Where does the
organism end and the environment begin...and end? In C. Dent-Read & P.
Zukow-Goldring (Eds.), Evolving explanations of development: Ecological
approaches to organism-environment systems (pp. 551-566). Washington, D.
C.: American Psychological Association.
Dent-Read, C. & Zukow-Goldring, P. (1997b). Introduction: Ecological
realist, epigenetic systems, and dynamic systems approaches to development.
Evolving explanations of development: Ecological approaches to
organism-environment systems (pp. 1-22). Washington, D. C.: American
Psychological Association.
Zukow-Goldring, P. (1996). Sensitive caregivers foster the
comprehension of speech: When gestures speak louder than
words. Early Development and Parenting, 5 (4), 195-211.
Zukow-Goldring, P. (1995). Sibling caregiving. In M. Bornstein
(Ed.), Handbook of Parenting, Vol. III, Status and social conditions
of parenting (pp. 177 - 208. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Zukow-Goldring, P., & Ferko, K. R. (1994). An ecological
approach to the emergence of the lexicon: Socializing attention.
In V. John-Steiner, C. Panofsky, & L. Smith (Eds.), Sociocultural
approaches to language and literacy: Interactionist perspective
(pp. 170-190). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Zukow-Goldring, P., Romo, L., & Duncan, K. R. (1994). Gestures
speak louder than words: Achieving Consensus in Latino
classrooms. In A. Alvarez & P. del Rio (Eds.), Education as cultural
construction (pp. 227-238). Madrid: Fundacion Infancia &
Aprendizaje.=20
Zukow, P. G. (1991). A socio-perceptual/ecological approach to
language development: Affordances of the communicative
context. In J. A. Carranza & A. G. Brito (Eds.), Acquisition and
development of language. Anales de Psicologia, 7, 151-163.
Zukow, P. G. (1990). Socio-perceptual bases for the emergence
of language: An alternative to innatist approaches. In C. Dent, &
P. G. Zukow (Eds.), The idea of innateness: Effects on language
and communication research. Developmental Psychobiology, 23,
705-726.
Zukow, P. G. (1989). Siblings as effective socializing agents:
Evidence from Central Mexico. In P. G. Zukow (Ed.), Sibling
interactions across cultures: Theoretical and methodological issues
(pp. 79-105). New York: Springer-Verlag.
Patricia Zukow-Goldring, Ph. D.
Research Scholar
University of California, Los Angeles
Center for the Study of Women Mailing address:=20
3835 Ventura Canyon=20
276 Kinsey Hall Sherman Oaks CA 91423
405 Hilgard Avenue email: zukow who-is-at ucla.edu
Los Angeles CA 90095-1504 phone: (818) 905-6293=09