Phil,
This is a new term to me. I am very interested in the study of how people
react to cultural phenomenon. Part of the reason severely emotionaly
disturbed individuals have difficulties in social situations is that they do
not process the cultural information properly. Perhaps enthymemetic forms is
the term I am searching for. My reasoning for using syllogism was from the
Scribner and Cole study done with the Vai of Western Africa. Initially they
presented syllogisms that were logically based on the scientific phenomenon
of schooled learning. From page 159 of The Psychology of Literacy Scribner
and Cole write "Working with child populations, other investigators have
often fallen back on appeals to general mechanisms of "intellectual growth"
when discussing performance differences for different age groups. We were
barred from such general appeals by the many differnet lines of eveidence we
had secured that Vai adults, nonliterate or literate, did not perform tasks
like America or European children." IN particular there is no such study
that breaks the syllogism down further to replicaate a study of encountering
everyday logicla or illogical choices (if I am wrong on this somebody please
correct me). But from reading the Kpelle study, the Vai study and Scribner
article "Modes of thinking and ways of speaking culture and logic
reconsidered" it appears that many people solve logical questions based on
their everyday experiences (Vygotsky's spontaneous thought processes) and not
based on what they learned in a formal school setting (Vygotsky's scientific
thought processes).
What do you think?
Eric
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 01 2001 - 01:01:07 PDT