RE: Science alert: When Vygotsky beat Piaget

From: Eugene Matusov (ematusov@udel.edu)
Date: Thu Aug 14 2003 - 08:02:21 PDT

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Dear David and everybody-

I want to offer a little correction. We are not talking about 30% or 10% of
all PSYCINFO article database for a particular year but 0.30% or 0.10%.
According to our mini-study with Mark, even such psychological notion as
"behavior*" (or "behaviuor*") can't yield more than 22% in its dawn (in
2000!).

We decided to zoom out on the historical scale and give you a "bigger
picture".

Any observations?

Eugene

-----Original Message-----
From: David Preiss [mailto:david.preiss@yale.edu]
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 1:47 AM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: Science alert: When Vygotsky beat Piaget

Wow! The decrease in Piaget's citations in a 10 year period strikes my eye!
From over 30% in 1992 to 10% in 2002! Any explanation?

----- Original Message -----

From: Eugene Matusov <mailto:ematusov@UDel.Edu>

To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu

Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2003 1:34 AM

Subject: Science alert: When Vygotsky beat Piaget

Dear xmca-ers-

Mark Smith and I were playing (for a different reason) with PSYCINFO
studying how often different psychological notions have been cited in
PSYCNFO abstracts across last 40 years. At 1am, we got second wind and
decided to check who has been historically most popular Piaget or Vygotsky
in PSYCINFO. Mark was arguing that Vygotsky beat Piaget in 1990s and 2000s.
I liked his theory but was not sure..

As the graph below shows, Mark was right only in 1999. 1999 was a good year
for Vygotsky for some reason.. Any ideas why? Maybe something to do with
stars.. What was his zodiac year?

Mark refused to present the graph on early years because he got upset about
increasing frequency for Piaget and decreasing frequency for Vygotsky. I
think he just started a new article on Vygotsky to beef up the umbers for
2003.. Good work, Mark! We all should follow his example! Long Live Lev!
(Piagetians are always lurking behind the scenes.)

What do you think?

Eugene

PS I'm afraid to present a graph about Freud who continues to blow both
Piaget and Vygotsky multiplied by 5 times. When will they all retire?!

PSS Notice how both Piaget and Vygotsky got popular in 1996 during their
centennial represented by the pikes.

------------------------

Eugene Matusov, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Education

School of Education

University of Delaware

Newark, DE 19716

email: ematusov@udel.edu

website: http://ematusov.soe.udel.edu <http://ematusov.soe.udel.edu/>