[Xmca-l] Re: Analytic/synthetic

[Huw Lloyd]

>From experience, I know that young children (e.g. 1 year olds) do not like
to build things either, but are rather compulsive at knocking things down.
Building blocks seem to say "knock me down" earlier than they say "build me
up".  I have a video of one building a tower from a collection of tea-bag
boxes (spontaneously) when (going by the video date) he is 14 months.

I suspect what would be worth looking at is the development of conscious
goals, rather than conscious reactions.  The young child can babble out
loud and clearly has a goal in mind. For younger children the goal is
simply to knock the tower over, perhaps compulsively -- i.e. with less
consciously directed operations.

Might be helpful?

Best,
Huw


On 22 October 2016 at 00:42, mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu> wrote:

> I am passing on a query from a colleague that I thought might find
> resonance on this
> list. If anyone has useful suggestions could you pass along to me,
> mcole@ucsd.edu?
>
> thanks
> mike
> --------------
> One of the more interesting (Russian) primate psychologists I came across
> many years ago was N.I. Voitonis.  He worked a lot with baboons and
> macaques at Sukhumi and published a great book 'Predistoriia Intellekta'.
>
> He distinguished two types of intelligence: analytic intelligence and
> synthetic intelligence. His basic conclusion was that monkeys and humans
> share analytic intelligence, but synthetic intelligence is largely the
> domain of humans. A prototypic experiment was to allow the monkey to play
> with a kid's ring pyramid. He would give the toy to a monkey or a child
> with the rings stacked on the post. Both the monkey and the kid would
> quickly take it apart, but only the kid had any inclination to put it back
> together...regardless of how many times he showed the monkey how to do it.
>
> I'm working on a manuscript about cognitive and behavioral differences
> between species and find the analytic/synthetic intelligence dichotomy a
> useful generalization when it comes to characterizing the results of
> diverse tool-use studies and language studies. I'd like to tie the concept
> to some modern 'school' of psychology but haven't had much luck on the
> human side. Do you know of experimental psychologists who think that way?
>