Re: [xmca] Those Pesky emotions in the ZPD

[Larry Purss <lpurss@shaw.ca>]

Hi David and Ana
 
I've been thinking about the "normative" aspect of development and how development is conceptualized differently within particular historical moments.  Also when Ana suggested that their are many dimensions to development beyond abstraction and generalization I reflected on how some Discourses reflect on affective development.  Following is some reflections from Frank Lachmann and Beatrice Beebe who have been exploring the same affective developmental terrain as Daniel Stern, Fonagy, and others. They look to the parent-infant relationship for understanding the dynamic movement  of the developmental process. 
Lachmann and Beebe in an earlier (1989) article in Psychoanalytic Psychology, 1989, 6(2), p. 137-149  "Oneness Fantasies Revisited" take the position that earlier phases of development both organize and continue to be transformed by later phases of development.  Of special interest in this article are the complex and subtle interactive experiences of MATCHING (imitation) DISRUPTION, and REPAIR exchanges of active participants in an activity.
Infant researchers have documented numerous kinds of matching interactions in infancy.  These have variously been termed "mirroring" "imitation" "matching" "attunement" (D.Stern)  Beebe and Lachmann are most interested in the dynamic process of CYCLES of match, disruption, and repair in face to face interactions.Tronick researched mother-infant play interactions with infants at  2 to 6 months old. When these interactions were videotaped and microanalyzed Tronick found 30% of mismatched states "were repaired within 1 second and within 2 seconds 70% of mismatched states are repaired". EACH partner has a chance to alter his behavior or his/her partners behavior to reestablish a matched state.
Lachmann and Beebe that the managing of the cycle from matching to disruption to repair is the beginning of a lifelong developmental capacity to FLEXIBLY span the the DIMENSION of experience from "we-ness" to a sense of "self".  They emphasize this is only a single dimension or source of WE and SELF experiences and there are multiple developmental sources.
D. Stern (1983) suggests vocalizing in alternation, where each person takes his or her turn is later transformed into a conversational dialogue in the exchange of symbolic information.  Bowlby's Attachment theory describes toddlers moving back and forth between mother (attachment) and the environment (emergence and alterity)
Tronick developed a "still-face method" where mother shows no response to the infants engagement and differentiates the infant's response along a continuum from most to least adaptive. Those infants who continue to signal the mother (with positive or negative emotions) and repair the interactional mismatch are considered most adaptive.
Tronick's conclusions to the research was that the mode of managing match and disruption in "normal" ongoing interaction does BIAS DEVELOPMENT.  The CAPACITY for INTERACTIVE REPAIR increases security of attachment. The capacity to FLEXIBLY move along the range of sense of self to "we" experiences is a developmental achievement and a loss oe diminishment of this flexibility leaves a person more vulnerable.
Beebe and Lachmann suggest it is the mode of managing the sequence from match to disruption to repair (which can change in a 1 to 2 second interval) which may BIAS the solutions to development at each transformation. Mother-infant patterns of match-disruption-repair "begin a long chain of developmental transformations. The various transformations of these patterns will ultimately be relevant to the adult's capacity to FLEXIBLY encompass the range of experience from sense of self to oneness." (p146)
This dimension of optimally being flexible to experience both "Self" and "we" develops over a life time rather than within a specific stage (as in traditional psychoanalysis) A growing child's perceptual, affective, and cognitive capacities are influenced by the capacity to maintain both a firm sense of self and the ability to flexibly yield one's sense of a bounded self.  Gradually, over time, this range of experience is abstracted and represented in symbolic elaborations but the process of match-disruption-repair continues throughout life and can be reinforced or undermined within socio-cultural settings. These processes are generally not in the FOREGROUND of awareness in ongoing experience across all stages of development.
 
David and Ana and others interested in the Zo-ped 
This post is an attempt to articulate one particular dimension of the multiple dimensions Ana pointed out.  It points to the movement of emotions and the centrality of the affective dimension within the Zo-ped at the microgenetic level of analysis.  As Ana stated at the end of her post
What do others think?
 
Larry
 
 


----- Original Message -----
From: David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>
Date: Monday, February 15, 2010 9:13 pm
Subject: Re: [xmca] Those Pesky emotions in the ZPD
To: Culture ActivityeXtended Mind <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>

> 
> Thanks, Larry, for your thought-provoking quotes, your 
> thoughtful comments, and above all for changing the subject 
> line. Of course, it goes without saying that emotions are not 
> mostly adjectives; an adjective is merely a type of word. As 
> Bakhtin reminds us, personal emotion is an inseparable part of 
> every word meaning, but the part of speech is not. 
>  
> I suspect that If anything English tends towards verbs 
> in expressing emotion, partly, I think, because of a general 
> emphasis on individual activity in English grammar (SVO, the 
> hero slew the dragon, instead of SOV, once upon a time, a dragon 
> and a hero did combat). In Korean, "feeling" is mostly nominal, 
> and "kibun" (individual emotion) is a kind of microcosm of 
> "bunwigi", social emotion.
>  
> Mr. Bae Hicheol, a valued member of our Vygotsky translation 
> team who is, along with his fellow teachers, the target of very 
> nasty government witch-hunt, pointed out to me this morning 
> that the distinction between "vertical" and "horizontal" isn't 
> simply a distinction between "hierarchy" and "democracy", or 
> even between concrete, syntagmatic relations of the sort we find 
> in e-motions that are produced as a result of action in a 
> concrete situation (e.g. conversations about everyday matters) 
> and the abstract, paradigmatic relations we find in sicence 
> concepts. 
>  
> It's a distinction between quantitative, gradualistic, 
> incremental learning (e.g. times tables, lists of likes 
> and dislikes, simple categories of good and bad guys) and 
> qualitative, revolutionary, paradigm-shifting development (e.g. 
> access to algebraic relations, principles of artistic taste, 
> concepts of justice and fairness). 
>  
> Yrjo Engestrom pointed out that "horizontal" movement eventually 
> involves transgressing boundaries. But we can often move pretty 
> far, at least in language learning, without a fundamental 
> paradigm shift.  For example, if you are at the stage of 
> ostension, everything becomes an object you can hold (and emote 
> over). Of course, you rapidly run out of things within arms 
> reach, but there is a simple strategy for coping with that which 
> does not restructure the language system; you simply crawl a 
> little ways further. The same thing is true of  indicatory 
> reference, where everything either near or far becomes an object 
> you can point at. It is even true of naming. 
>  
> It's really only when we start to talk of things that cannot be 
> seen (the past, the future, the imaginary character, the 
> abstract principle) that we need a signifying function at all. 
> But as soon as we do this (even when we are talking perfectly 
> concretely, but about things we want or things we miss) we knock 
> our heads against a very hard paradigm ceiling which only 
> NEGATION can really shatter.
>  
> I don't think e-motion is any different, at least in principle. 
> It's actually possible to go on feeling your own feelings and 
> expressing a vast variety of your own feelings without any 
> fundamental, qualitative growth. Development arises when, in the 
> course of role play, it becomes necessary to feel feelings that 
> you don't actually feel, or feelings that someone else is 
> feeling. It's precisely at this point that emotion becomes the 
> basis of esthetics, and even the basis of ethics.
>  
> Here are some kids role playing "The Bremen Town Musicians" in a 
> fifth grade English class in a public school here in Seoul. The 
> donkey leaves his master to become a Beatle in Hamburg, and 
> meets a hound-dog along the way.
>  
> T: (pointing to the third picture) Dog! Yes, he ... they met ... 
> they meet a 
> Ss: Dog! 
> T: Dog. What are they saying to the dog? 
> Ss: Can you join us? 
> T: Can you join us? Let's go together. Can you join us? And the 
> dog says ... 
> S1: See you again. 
> S2: Sure! 
> S3: Who are you? 
> S4: Do you want to die? 
> 
>  
> Now, you might think that S4's comment is simply being sassy, 
> because of course "Do you want to die?" is the way that Korean 
> yakuza threaten each other. But it comes up again when the dog 
> and the donkey meet a mouse:
>   
> 
> T: The donkey, the cat, the dog says to the mouse ... ?
> S: Can you join us?
> T: Can you join us?
> S9: Sorry! Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!
> T: The mouse says ...
> S: Sorry, I can't. I'm play computer game.
> S: Do you want to die?
>  
> Now at this point the teacher might respond. Of course, "Do you 
> want to die?" could mean something like if you DON'T want to 
> die, you have to go to Bremen and join my rock band. But another 
> child has a better idea and suggests, with the teacher's help, 
> that the mouse might have a very good reason for not joining.  
>  
> 
> T: Sorry, I can't. Why? Why do you think ... he says "Sorry, I can't"?
> Ss: *&^%$#@!
> S: I don't like cat!
> T: Why do you think he says "Sorry, I can't."?
> S21: I'm tired!
> S: Teacher! Because I don't like *&^%$
> S: Tired! I'm tired!
> S: I don't like YOU!
> T: Uh? Jerry can't join them? Jerry? Jerry? The mouse can't join them?
> S!: Ah! Ah! (pointing to the cat in the book) Tom! Tom!
> T: Yes, his name must be Jerry. Why ... why can't he join them?
> S: Ah! ... Mouse doesn't like cat!
> KT: Because the mouse ...
> S: don't like cat.
> T: doesn't like the cat. He is (gesturing of being scared) 
> scared of ...
> S: cat.
> KT: the cat. Yes, maybe ... maybe. What ... what ... what 
> happens next?
>  
> Now we have an interesting twist in the tail. Can the story 
> accomodate it? Can Tom provide some kind of safety guarantee? 
> Will he keep to it? Here some real development seems not only 
> possible but inevitable. 
>  
> Of course, it's easier to get to ascend to this point if you see 
> individual feelings ("I don't like you") as a descent of social 
> emotion to the individual in the first place ("Can you join 
> us?")! 
>  
> This is the day after Seolal, here in Korea--the rice harvest 
> festival when everybody goes home (via a three day traffic jam) 
> to bow to their elders and hope for a prosperous new year. Hope 
> works better in large groups. Let us all pitch in and hope for 
> bigger harvests, smaller traffic jams, and a world in 
> which witches get to go hunting instead of being hunted like mice.
>  
> David Kellogg and Friends
> Seoul National University of Education
> 
> --- On Mon, 2/15/10, Larry Purss <lpurss@shaw.ca> wrote:
> 
> 
> From: Larry Purss <lpurss@shaw.ca>
> Subject: [xmca] Those Pesky emotions in the ZPD
> To: "Activity eXtended Mind, Culture," <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date: Monday, February 15, 2010, 2:45 PM
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> David and Ana 
> I thought I would start a new post so we don't loose focus on 
> the dialogical functions of development in the other thread.  
> I've attached the Chaiklin article on the ZPD to help clarify 
> David's recommendation we not loose focus on the notion of 
> development of higher mental functions. 
> However the place of emotions in development also needs 
> articulation and therefore this new thread that focuses more 
> centrally on pesky emotions.
> I want to quote a passage from Gordon Well's and Guy Claxton's 
> edited volume Learning For Life in the 21st Century on page 8 of 
> the introduction which is inviting reflection on e-motions and 
> identity formation.
>  
> "We must ask how can the concept of individual agency be 
> reconciled with the strong emphasis on 
> socialization/enculturation that is taken to be a central 
> feature of sociocultural theory, as well as of most public 
> education.?  We might also note here  that traditionally 
> education has tended to IGNORE social and emotional development, 
> concentrating almost exclusively on intellectual development, 
> and, more specifically, on the acquisition of bodies of 
> formalized knowledge. From a CHAT perspective, however, all 
> human activity is inherently social and IMBUED WITH EMOTION.  
> Along with other more HUMANISTIC perspectives, which are also 
> challenging the status quo, CHAT therefore invites us to inquire 
> how educational activities can be designed to engage the active 
> involvement of the student as a 'whole person' and to contribute 
> positively to IDENTITY FORMATION." (page 8, emphasis added)
>  
> Wells and Claxton also quote Vygotsky on this same theme.
>  
> "Thought has its origins in the MOTIVATING sphere of 
> consciousness; a sphere that includes our inclinations and 
> needs, our interests and impulses, and our AFFECT and EMOTION 
> ... A true and complex understanding of another's thought 
> becomes possible ONLY when we discover its real AFFECTIVE-
> VOLITIONAL basis. (Vygotsky, 1987, page 282, emphasis added)
>  
>  As Vygotsky, Wells, Claxton, (and many others in the CHAT 
> community, the larger sociocultural community, and the even 
> larger humanistic community) make clear  those pesky emotions 
> have a place in our ongoing discourse on the ZPD. 
>  
> Ana's account of the complexity of the ZPD and the many 
> functions and dimensions of development (not learning) of the 
> whole person invites us to elaborate the "affective-volitional 
> basis" as foundational to our continuing dialogue.
>  
> Larry
>  
>  
>  
> -----Inline Attachment Follows-----
> 
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