Re: [xmca] method of double stimulation

Peter/Michael/Eric-

I think we have a good idea of what was involved in the method of dual
stimulation if we add peter and michael's note, and eventually get, at the
end of some continuum, to Pedro's
definition.

As an experimental method, the stimuli were actually supposed, in most
cases, to be neutral: Leontiev's method of mediated memory, the dax's and
veg's of the Sakharov concept formation
studies. But once they begin to accumulate a history of having mediated
human actions/interactions they have also begun to accumulate the kind of
ideality/intentionality that Peter is
talking about. Then when a presumably knowledgeable human seeks directly to
help they are sure not neutral (and may be negative!, whatever the
intentions of the "helping" party.

The Change Lab created by Yrjo and his colleagues is described, ABSTRACTLY,
as a neutral stimulus. But it is loaded with what they hope are affordances
for the actors to figure out their
own circumstances and exert agency in rearranging them, often by creating
"intermediate tools" (e.g. previously neutral stimuli that are not longer
so).

my take on it
mike
ps- Eric: Everyone is real busy. At present my schedule during the week is
pretty heavy so I am trying to keep up on weekends. I particularly hope to
see continued discussion of
Martin's paper. The entire last half really deserves a lot of thought.

On Wed, Mar 5, 2008 at 5:07 AM, Michael Glassman <MGlassman@ehe.osu.edu>
wrote:

> Peter,
>
> I think part of the reason for the double stimulation method, at least
> from my reading of Cultural Development of the Child is to measure the
> developmental progression from neutral to non-neutral. Early on when the
> pictures are presented with objects to be remembered, the child uses the
> pictures but in arbitrary ways, so that they serve as a mediating force but
> a limited one because there is really no organization beyond one to one
> correspondence - the mediating object is neutral. As the child grow older
> she is able to use aspects of the picture itself that are familiar to
> remember the objects. There is something beyond the one to one
> correspondence that is leading to the use of the picture as a mediating
> force greatly increasing its power in memory. So in this case the picture,
> the mediating object is not neutral.
>
> >From a sociogenetic perspective you might be able to recognize this is
> the book Ape, Primitive and Man. One parcular episode strikes me as
> particularly salient. The messenger who was going to forty different
> villages to tell them their fines. He used neutral pieces of paper to
> remember the amounts - as a matter of fact he started with pieces of leaves
> and then his boss changed them to paper and they didn't miss a beat.
> Compare that to the way individuals started using pieces of strings on a
> more social level, and different length strings came to mean different
> numbers. Far more efficient. It is part of the move I suppose from
> primiitive thinking to modern thinking.
>
> Michael
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu on behalf of Peter Smagorinsky
> Sent: Wed 3/5/2008 6:05 AM
> To: mcole@weber.ucsd.edu; 'eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity'
> Subject: RE: [xmca] method of double stimulation
>
>
>
> Mike, thanks. I did a quickie search for a definition of
> double-stimulation
> and that's what came up. My question in response to your response: Is the
> stimulus really neutral? Seems that from a Cultural-historical
> perspective,
> it'd be an artifact that distills prior purposes and activity and so is
> loaded with cultural baggage.
>
> Peter Smagorinsky
> The University of Georgia
> 125 Aderhold Hall
> Athens, GA 30602
> smago@uga.edu/phone:706-542-4507
> http://www.coe.uga.edu/lle/faculty/smagorinsky/index.html
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
> Behalf Of Mike Cole
> Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2008 5:53 PM
> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> Subject: Re: [xmca] method of double stimulation
>
> Peter-- Maybe this is off track, but I am not enamored of the definition
> of
> method of dual stimulation from Pedro et al's paper: "convert external
> assistance" totally begs the question. LSV used convert external NEUTRAL
> stimulus into
> a form of assistance (roughly). Of course, the stimuli (stimulus/means)
> may
> have arrived in the environment for purposes of assisting, their is an
> aspect of assistance. But
> what LSV and his followers were after was humans seeking to control the
> world and in doing so control themselves "from the outside." Its the
> conversation from neutral to assisting that needs to be accoplished by
> active agency.
>
> mike
>
> On Sun, Mar 2, 2008 at 4:50 AM, Peter Smagorinsky <smago@uga.edu> wrote:
>
> > Eric, whether or not there's an intervention is probably open to
> > interpretation. Most of us would agree that by introducing an outsider
> > (me)
> > taking notes on a laptop, there's, if not an intervention, a new
> variable
> > to
> > account for, and I try to do that when appropriate in the articles.
> > Generally, I've been invited to study classes, or have gotten teachers
> to
> > agree to have me observe and record, when the teacher is doing something
> I
> > might be interested in, e.g., doing multimodal composing in an English
> > class
> > (or the Language Arts strand of an alternative school curriculum). So,
> > it's
> > the teacher's instruction intersecting with my research interests that
> > puts
> > me in the position of collecting data then and there.
> >
> > I also wouldn't say that my goal is to measure learning, at least since
> my
> > dissertation when I crunched numbers in accord with the local cultural
> > practice of Chicago's ed faculty at the time. I generally study people
> > talking while they work as a way to make inferences about how they think
> > in
> > relation to task and setting. Originally I used protocol analysis in the
> > in-the-head tradition of information processing, although to study
> writers
> > in relation to instruction. But before long my goal became to expand
> what
> > info processing folks call the "task environment" which is largely
> > unfilled
> > in their models but is the place to start from a Vygotskian perspective
> as
> > I
> > interpret it. So, I study either individuals talking as they work (often
> > as
> > they write, but also as they design houses, ranches, and home interiors)
> > or
> > groups talking as they work together (e.g. as they interpret a work of
> > literature through art, dance, drama, music, etc.). Part of the goal is
> to
> > document situated cognition to make the argument that nonverbal
> composing
> > potentially has all of the virtues of writing as a medium for both
> > generating and representing ideas (tool and sign functions), an idea
> that
> > has gained traction through the popularity of first, Gardner's theory of
> > multiple intelligences, and now the New London Group's notion of
> > multiliteracies. I think that what I've tried to do complements both
> > efforts, although I'm less convinced that technology has primacy when it
> > comes to multimodal composing--the cognition required to design a house
> or
> > interpret Hamlet through pencil- or marker-rendered drawings is no less
> > complex than what it'd take to do something on a computer.
> >
> > Hope this help to clarify, Peter
> >
> > Peter Smagorinsky
> > The University of Georgia
> > 125 Aderhold Hall
> > Athens, GA 30602
> > smago@uga.edu/phone:706-542-4507
> > http://www.coe.uga.edu/lle/faculty/smagorinsky/index.html
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
> On
> > Behalf Of ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org
> > Sent: Saturday, March 01, 2008 9:37 PM
> > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> > Subject: RE: [xmca] method of double stimulation
> >
> >
> > On March 1, 2008 Peter Smagorinsky Wrote:
> >
> > "I don't think I'd characterize my research as employing a
> > double-stimulation, if it means a situation "in which children convert
> > external assistance into means that lead to task success."
> > (http://www.leaonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15327884mca0402_4) Rather, I
> > study (at least in the work that Eric refers to) what I'd term situated
> > cognition in a classroom setting. While collaboration does take place
> and
> > while I attempt to situate the students' work as well as I can
> > culturally-historically and in relation to the teacher's instruction, I
> > don't do an intervention. Rather, I study how students work in relation
> to
> > routine classroom instruction designed by the teacher (for the most
> > part)--a
> > major reason that the teacher is almost always credited as a coauthor in
> > the
> > publications and presentations."
> >
> > Such an important statement - placing practice as THE primary research
> > tool. Perhaps, the intervention is so subtle it is difficult to
> discern?
> > "student's work (unit of analysis)" being the goal of the student (?)
> > "effectiveness of instruction (unit of analysis) being the goal of the
> > teacher (?)
> >
> > the dialectic being the different unit of measuring instruction and a
> > different unit of measuring learning: however, in both cases 'word
> > meaning' is the methodology (?)
> >
> > any sense at all?????
> >
> > eric
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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Received on Thu Mar 6 08:20 PST 2008