Re: [xmca] bodies and artifacts

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

My apologies for posting the les treilles paper twice. it did not show on my
screen. As "recompense" here is a review of a book that
promotes the idea of "bio-cultural co-constructivism" without mention of
Vygotsky anywhere. Perhaps, as a result, it leads some of its adherents into
some (in my opinion) inappropriate reduction of culture to "the
environment," thereby opening up a very old, very stinky, can of worms.

Question: Many people on XMCA voted to discuss the
"Tacit Communicative Style and Cultural Attunement in Classroom
Interaction"<http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content%7Edb=all%7Econtent=a915635308>article,
but very few have followed David's lead in discussing it directly.
Is it because of final exam time on both a quarter and semester system in
the US? Or voting as a prelude to spectatorship? Where are those voters?

mike

On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 7:20 AM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:

> The book description came through, Larry. Attached is the most recent
> Fonagy article i could find that appeared general. His work looks very
> interesting, thanks. I have not read it yet, but that fact that Gergeley is
> a co-author indicates that issues of intentionality are involved and I am
> very curious to see if the effects you talk about are connected with changes
> at 9months. First guess, it would fit with Tomasello and Vygotsky, but if it
> fits with Trevarthan and primary intersubjectivity it will be a suprise.
> We'll see.
>
> A brief paper on this topic I wrote for an audience for whom the idea that
> culture mediates human activity was a novelty, and that there is a two way
> relation between "natural" and "cultural" is also attached.
>
> thanks a lot for the pointer.
> mike
>
>
> On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 10:10 PM, Larry Purss <lpurss@shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>> Vera
>> I sent an attachment through CHAT but I don't think it went through.
>> Fonagy and three other authors wrote the book "Affect regulation,
>> Mentalization, and the Development of the Self.
>> It is an extension of Bowlby's and Winnicott's approach (He works at the
>> same Tavistock institute in London) and its interweaving with his
>> understanding of Hegel and intersubjectivity theory.
>> The summary of infant studies from a relational framework is excellent.
>> Some of the "clinical" approaches in the second half of the book may be
>> critqued.
>> Also I wonder how feminist scholars may critique the focus on "mothers"?
>>
>> However the detail (though sometimes overwhelming) is systematically
>> presented and builds a coherent perspective on the centrality of relational
>> processes to the development of subjectivity.
>> Larry
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Vera Steiner <vygotsky@unm.edu>
>> Date: Saturday, December 12, 2009 8:04 pm
>> Subject: Re: [xmca] bodies and artifacts
>> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>>
>> > Hi Larry,
>> > I would be interested in a link to Fonagy's recent publications.
>> > I am
>> > related to him and am doubly curious about his work.
>> > Thanks, Vera
>> > ----- Original Message -----
>> > From: "Larry Purss" <lpurss@shaw.ca>
>> > To: <ablunden@mira.net>; "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"
>> > <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>> > Sent: Saturday, December 12, 2009 8:51 PM
>> > Subject: Re: [xmca] bodies and artifacts
>> >
>> >
>> > Andy
>> >
>> > I believe the reason we are cautious about brain research is it
>> > usually
>> > implies "biology" as foundational to being human.  The
>> > reason I mention
>> > Fonagy and others exploring the foundational premises of infant
>> > development
>> > is they are starting from intersubjectivity as prior to
>> > subjectivity and it
>> > is only within relational contexts that a sense of subjectivity
>> > arises or
>> > emerges. They are using brain research to support this
>> > relational paradigm.
>> > Larry
>> >
>> > ----- Original Message -----
>> > From: Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
>> > Date: Saturday, December 12, 2009 7:28 pm
>> > Subject: Re: [xmca] bodies and artifacts
>> > To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>> >
>> > > Larry,
>> > >
>> > > In my first forrays into this discussion on emotion, I found
>> > > myself introducing talk of physiological observations in a
>> > > way I would never have thought of doing in relation to
>> > > cognition. After reading about the 300 years of reflections
>> > > on the physiology of emotion in Vygotsky's article, I was
>> > > left asking myself: why? Why do I think it is important to
>> > > investigate the physiology of emotion, while I hold such a
>> > > low opinion of the place of physiological investigations in
>> > > understanding the normal process of cognition.
>> > >
>> > > Consciousness is the outcome of the intersection of two
>> > > objective processes: human physiology and human behaviour.
>> > > This is equally true of both emotion and cognition.
>> > >
>> > > While the marketing, military and medial industries are
>> > > spending billions of dollars on neurological investigations,
>> > > I would think that CHAT people would be interested in
>> > > questions like the role of emotion in learning, behaviour,
>> > > addicition, the formation of social bonds, and so on,
>> > > investigating such questions with dual stimulation type
>> > > experiments, with artifacts that are more or less affect-laden.
>> > >
>> > > Andy
>> > >
>> > > Larry Purss wrote:
>> > > > Mike
>> > > > Your comment that this leaves us only at the starting gate of
>> > > understanding how bodies can be "written on"  points to the
>> > > research and reflection on the relation of changes in the brain
>> > > mediated by culture.
>> > > > One area of research that is exploring how the brain is
>> > > changed via mediation is intersubjective infant developmental
>> > > studies that are mapping physiological changes in one person's
>> > > brain that "mirrors" similar  physiological brain
>> > > changes  being generated during the activity of the
>> > > other  person.  Fonagy is doing research in this area
>> > > and has written a detailed summary of the research in this area.
>> > > His term for this intersubjective process is "mentalization".
>> > > >
>> > > > Larry
>> > > >
>> > > > ----- Original Message -----
>> > > > From: mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
>> > > > Date: Saturday, December 12, 2009 12:19 pm
>> > > > Subject: Re: [xmca] bodies and artifacts
>> > > > To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>> > > >
>> > > >> I do not have all this sorted out by a long shot, but my own
>> > > way
>> > > >> of thinking
>> > > >> about the issue is that humans are hybrids, really complex
>> > > >> one's. Their
>> > > >> brains have LITERALLY been shaped by prior genrations of
>> > > >> mediation of
>> > > >> activity through material artifacts, their brains (and often
>> > > >> other parts of
>> > > >> the bodies) cannot operate normally without inclusion of
>> > > >> artifacts, they can
>> > > >> be "written on" as jay points out.
>> > > >>
>> > > >> The problem is that this leaves us only at the starting gate
>> > > for
>> > > >> furtherdevelopment of this point of view. I found that
>> > > >> experimental study I sent
>> > > >> around sort of interest in this regard, even though it
>> > > provides
>> > > >> such sketchy
>> > > >> detail and assumes so much about its cultural content and
>> > > >> organization. The
>> > > >> developmental implications, which in our current discussion
>> > > >> would mean, the
>> > > >> organization of hybridity during ontogeny, which in turn has
>> > > >> implicationsfor the cognition/emotion
>> > > >> discussion.
>> > > >> mike
>> > > >>
>> > > >> On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 5:36 PM, Jay Lemke
>> > > >> <jaylemke@umich.edu> wrote:
>> > > >>
>> > > >>> One of the ways I have found useful to think about the body
>> > > in
>> > > >> relation to
>> > > >>> semiotic mediation is to see the body as, among other
>> > > things,
>> > > >> a semiotic
>> > > >>> artifact.
>> > > >>>
>> > > >>> What I mean by semiotic artifact is a material object or
>> > > >> substrate that can
>> > > >>> be written on and read from, much like a printed page or an
>> > > >> architectural> drawing. Written on, in the general semiotic
>> > > >> sense, not necessarily in
>> > > >>> words, but in signs of some kind: meaningful features that
>> > > can
>> > > >> be "read" or
>> > > >>> made sense of by people (or nonhumans, but that's another
>> > > >> story) in that our
>> > > >>> meaning-mediated world, and our actions that respond to
>> > that world
>> > > >>> (including by trying to change or re-create it or just
>> > > imagine
>> > > >> it in some
>> > > >>> new way), are affected by our encounter with the features of
>> > > >> the semiotic
>> > > >>> object, according to some community interpretive practices,
>> > > >> with our own
>> > > >>> individual variations on them.
>> > > >>>
>> > > >>> At a very obvious level, bodies can be dressed up in signs:
>> > > >> hair styles,
>> > > >>> tans, cosmetics. And this can be taken to a more
>> > > "artifactual"
>> > > >> form with
>> > > >>> dress, or a more physiological form with, say, body-
>> > > building.
>> > > >> From tattoos
>> > > >>> to ripped abs is a small shift when we are thinking about
>> > > the
>> > > >> body as a
>> > > >>> writable/readable object. If we want to get still more
>> > > >> physiological, and
>> > > >>> think not only about reading other people's bodies, but
>> > > >> reading our own,
>> > > >>> then the proprioceptive feelings we sense within out bodies
>> > > >> can be
>> > > >>> considered signs as well, whether exhilaration or nausea,
>> > > >> strength or
>> > > >>> weakness, etc. The meaning of these feelings is certainly
>> > > culturally>>> mediated. They are physiological phenomena, but
>> > > they are also
>> > > >> meaningful> cultural phenomena, with value judgements
>> > > attached,
>> > > >> with intertexts in
>> > > >>> literature, etc.
>> > > >>>
>> > > >>> And we can deliberately write to our most physiological
>> > > >> states, e.g. with
>> > > >>> drugs, to produce feelings that have cultural meanings and
>> > > >> values for us,
>> > > >>> whether of calm or elation, energy or hallucination. And to
>> > > a
>> > > >> considerable> extent, our modifications of our body
>> > > physiology
>> > > >> can be "read" by others,
>> > > >>> just as can our made physiques, tattoos, or hair styles.
>> > > >>>
>> > > >>> So I would say that the body mediates our sense of the world
>> > > >> and ourselves
>> > > >>> and other people in at least two ways: directly through
>> > > >> physiology, as with
>> > > >>> hormonal responses, sensory modalities of perception, bodily
>> > > >> affordances and
>> > > >>> dis-affordances ("handicaps" for example), etc. AND also in
>> > > >> these other,
>> > > >>> clearly semiotic and cultural ways, as a semiotic artifact,
>> > > as
>> > > >> well as with
>> > > >>> the cultural overlays of meaning that lie over and color the
>> > > >> meanings and
>> > > >>> responses to all the direct physiological mediations.
>> > > >>>
>> > > >>> I do not, however, know what being wooden on a rainy day
>> > > feels
>> > > >> like to a
>> > > >>> chair.
>> > > >>>
>> > > >>>
>> > > >>> JAY.
>> > > >>>
>> > > >>>
>> > > >>> Jay Lemke
>> > > >>> Professor (Adjunct, 2009-2010)
>> > > >>> Educational Studies
>> > > >>> University of Michigan
>> > > >>> Ann Arbor, MI 48109
>> > > >>> www.umich.edu/~jaylemke <http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke> <
>> http://www.umich.edu/%7Ejaylemke>
>> > > >>>
>> > > >>> Visiting Scholar
>> > > >>> Laboratory for Comparative Human Communication
>> > > >>> University of California -- San Diego
>> > > >>> La Jolla, CA
>> > > >>> USA 92093
>> > > >>>
>> > > >>>
>> > > >>>
>> > > >>>
>> > > >>>
>> > > >>>
>> > > >>> On Dec 7, 2009, at 4:14 AM, Mabel Encinas wrote:
>> > > >>>
>> > > >>>
>> > > >>>> Ok. You have a point. Then, lets start thinking from an
>> > > >> embodied approach
>> > > >>>> :)
>> > > >>>>
>> > > >>>> Let's accept that the body is an artifact. What is then the
>> > > >> difference>> between a chair and the body. Both are yes,
>> > > >> "products of human art", as you
>> > > >>>> express it. However, only in the process (practice) there
>> > > >> seem to be a
>> > > >>>> difference. Both are material and ideal (the body is not
>> > > >> separated from the
>> > > >>>> mind; the chair, this one here that I feel is made of cloth
>> > > >> and a cushioned
>> > > >>>> material, plastic, metal, and involves the ideal that a
>> > > >> designer and workers
>> > > >>>> in a factory transformed so people could seat on). What is
>> > > >> the difference?
>> > > >>>> Mabel
>> > > >>>>
>> > > >>>>
>> > > >>>>
>> > > >>>>
>> > > >>>>
>> > > >>>>
>> > > >>>>
>> > > >>>>
>> > > >>>>
>> > > >>>>
>> > > >>>>
>> > > >>>>  Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2009 22:53:40 +1100
>> > > >>>>> From: ablunden@mira.net
>> > > >>>>> To: liliamabel@hotmail.com
>> > > >>>>> Subject: Re: [xmca] bodies and artifacts
>> > > >>>>>
>> > > >>>>> Well, the body is the body is the body. The reason the
>> > > >>>>> question arises for me is when we make generalisations in
>> > > >>>>> which things like person, artefact, consciousness, concept,
>> > > >>>>> action, and so on, figure, where does the body fit in? My
>> > > >>>>> response was that even though it is obviously unique in many
>> > > >>>>> ways, it falls into the same category as artefacts.
>> > > >>>>>
>> > > >>>>> My questions to you are: what harm is done? why is anything
>> > > >>>>> ignored? And, what is the body if it is not a material
>> > > >>>>> product of human art, used by human beings?
>> > > >>>>>
>> > > >>>>> Andy
>> > > >>>>>
>> > > >>>>> Mabel Encinas wrote:
>> > > >>>>>
>> > > >>>>>> Is this way being fruitful? That is why I do not like to
>> > > >> consider the
>> > > >>>>>> body as an artifact. Did not cognitive pscyhology do
>> > > that?
>> > > >> (Bruner, Acts
>> > > >>>>>> of Meaning). Then intentions and all the teleological
>> > > >> aspects are so
>> > > >>>>>> much ignored...
>> > > >>>>>>
>> > > >>>>>>
>> > > >>>>>>
>> > > >>>>>> Mabel
>> > > >>>>>>
>> > > >>>>>>
>> > > >>>>>>
>> > > >>>>>>
>> > > >>>>>>
>> > > >>>>>>
>> > > >>>>>>
>> > > >>>>>>
>> > > >>>>>>
>> > > >>>>>>  Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2009 20:21:09 +1100
>> > > >>>>>>> From: ablunden@mira.net
>> > > >>>>>>> To: liliamabel@hotmail.com
>> > > >>>>>>> Subject: Re: [xmca] bodies and artifacts
>> > > >>>>>>>
>> > > >>>>>>> Sure. But the body has been constructed like a living
>> > > >>>>>>> machine - the various artefacts that you use
>> > (especially but
>> > > >>>>>>> not only language and images) are "internalized" in some
>> > > >>>>>>> way. So one (external) artefact is replaced by another
>> > > >>>>>>> (internal) artefact. Yes?
>> > > >>>>>>>
>> > > >>>>>>> Andy
>> > > >>>>>>>
>> > > >>>>>>> Mabel Encinas wrote:
>> > > >>>>>>>
>> > > >>>>>>>> However, sometimes practices do not involve other artefact
>> > > >>>>>>>> than the body (some practices are directed to the
>> > > body),
>> > > >> and that was
>> > > >>>>>>>> why I was talking about the limit of thinking about the
>> > > >> body as
>> > > >>>>>>>> artefact... is that a limit? That is why I mentioned
>> > > the
>> > > >> body as "the
>> > > >>>>>>>> raw material". I was thinking for example practices
>> > > >> linked to
>> > > >>>>>>> meditation
>> > > >>>>>>> and the like, for example, among many others.
>> > > >>>>>>>> Mabel
>> > > >>>>>>>>
>> > > >>>>>>>
>> > > >>>>>> --------------------------------------------------------
>> > --
>> > > --
>> > > >> ------------
>> > > >>>>>> Keep your friends updated— even when you’re not signed in.
>> > > >>>>>> <
>> > > >>>>>>
>> > > http://www.microsoft.com/middleeast/windows/windowslive/see-
>> > > >> it-in-action/social-network-
>> > > >> basics.aspx?ocid=PID23461::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-xm:SI_SB_5:092010
>> > > >>>>> --
>> > > >>>>> ---------------------------------------------------------
>> > --
>> > > --
>> > > >> -----------
>> > > >>>>> Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/
>> > > >>>>> Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov,
>> > > >>>>> Ilyenkov $20 ea
>> > > >>>>>
>> > > >>>>>
>> > > >>>>
>> > _________________________________________________________________> >>>>
>> Windows Live Hotmail: Your friends can get your Facebook
>> > > >> updates, right
>> > > >>>> from Hotmail®.
>> > > >>>>
>> > > >>>>
>> > http://www.microsoft.com/middleeast/windows/windowslive/see-
>> > > >> it-in-action/social-network-
>> > > >> basics.aspx?ocid=PID23461::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-
>> > >
>> > xm:SI_SB_4:092009_______________________________________________>>>>
>> xmca
>> > > mailing list
>> > > >>>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>> > > >>>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>> > > >>>>
>> > > >>>>
>> > > >>>>
>> > > >>> _______________________________________________
>> > > >>> xmca mailing list
>> > > >>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>> > > >>> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>> > > >>>
>> > > >> _______________________________________________
>> > > >> xmca mailing list
>> > > >> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>> > > >> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xm
>> > > > _______________________________________________
>> > > > xmca mailing list
>> > > > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>> > > > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>> > > >
>> > >
>> > > --
>> > > ---------------------------------------------------------------
>> > --
>> > > -------
>> > > Andy Blunden http://www.erythrospress.com/
>> > > Classics in Activity Theory: Hegel, Leontyev, Meshcheryakov,
>> > > Ilyenkov $20 ea
>> > >
>> > > _______________________________________________
>> > > xmca mailing list
>> > > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
>> > > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>> > >
>> > _______________________________________________
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>

      Biology and Culture: A Two-Way Street of Causation

A review of


	
[book cover] <#>
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521844940?ie=UTF8&tag=americanpsy0c-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0521844940>
	

*Lifespan Development and the Brain: The Perspective of Biocultural
Co-Constructivism*
by Paul B. Baltes, Patricia A. Reuter-Lorenz, and Frank Rösler (Eds.)

New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 444 pp. ISBN
978-0-521-84494-9. $90.00

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reviewed by
Michael Cole
<http://www.psycinfo.com/psyccritiques/index.cfm?action=reviewer_bio&id=rev1185>


Cole, Michael S-1 #1 <javascript:showCitation('Cole, Michael','Book
Reviews','PsycCRITIQUES','52, No. 9','Article 9','Initial','1')> More
than six decades ago, developmental psychologist Arnold Gesell (1945, p.
358) declared that “Neither physical nor cultural environment contains
any architectonic arrangements like the [biological] mechanisms of
growth. Culture accumulates; it does not grow. The glove goes on the
hand; the hand determines the glove.” It is difficult to imagine a
clearer statement of the unidirectional causal relation between
phylogeny and culture.

Cole, Michael S-1 #2 <javascript:showCitation('Cole, Michael','Book
Reviews','PsycCRITIQUES','52, No. 9','Article 9','Initial','2')> Thirty
years later, anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1973), surveying extant
knowledge of human origins in which it appeared that manifestations of
culture were evident in the phylogenetic record for millions of years,
argued for the constitutive role of culture in the biological
composition of modern humans:

Man's nervous system does not merely enable him to acquire culture, it
positively demands that he do so if it is going to function at all.
Rather than culture acting only to supplement, develop, and extend
organically based capacities logically and genetically prior to it, it
would seem to be ingredient to those capacities themselves. A
cultureless human being would probably turn out to be not an
intrinsically talented, though unfulfilled ape, but a wholly mindless
and consequently unworkable monstrosity. (p. 68)

Cole, Michael S-1 #3 <javascript:showCitation('Cole, Michael','Book
Reviews','PsycCRITIQUES','52, No. 9','Article 9','Initial','3')> The
book /Lifespan Development and the Brain: The Perspective of Biocultural
Co-Constructivism/ provides a plethora of data to support Geertz's
prescient manifesto. The contributors dub this view “biocultural
co-constructivism,” the view, in their words, that “all entities
involved in the development of brain, behavior, and culture are deeply
interwoven and influence each other in cumulative ways” (p. 13). A
second message, which has been the major theme of Paul Baltes's work
over many decades, is that development does not stop following puberty
but continues for as many decades more that the person continues to live.

Cole, Michael S-1 #4 <javascript:showCitation('Cole, Michael','Book
Reviews','PsycCRITIQUES','52, No. 9','Article 9','Initial','4')> Several
key ideas and areas of research are brought together in this volume in
support of the editors' central theses. These include the following:

   1. The pioneering work of Hebb on the increased behavior capacities
      that are induced when laboratory rats are freed from their cages
      to engage with rich and challenging environments and Mark
      Rosenzweig and his colleagues' subsequent evidence that such
      environmentally induced behavioral capacities have their
      counterparts in neural growth characterized by increased synaptic
      connections and other biological indicators of enhanced neuronal
      functioning (summarized in Rosenzweig & Bennett, 1996).
   2. A variety of research on neurogenesis, including the now-familiar
      evidence that the developing brain produces an overabundance of
      neurons that are selectively pared away or consolidated depending
      on later experiences and new evidence of neurogenesis and changes
      in the brain's microanatomy far into adulthood and possibly into
      old age.
   3. A rapidly expanding body of research of neuronal plasticity and
      the consequent recognition of the potential multifunctionality of
      brain regions exhibited in cases, such as blindness or deafness in
      which brain areas deprived of sensory input from the
      evolutionarily typical sources reorganize to become additional
      resources to support and amplify remaining capacities (as when the
      visual cortex begins to respond to auditory input among the
      congenitally blind).
   4. A variety of research demonstrating that specific cultural
      practices (e.g., learning to read in school, driving a taxi for
      several years in London) are associated with measurable
      differences in the anatomical structure or functioning of specific
      brain regions known to be implicated in the associated form of
      activity.

Cole, Michael S-1 #5 <javascript:showCitation('Cole, Michael','Book
Reviews','PsycCRITIQUES','52, No. 9','Article 9','Initial','5')> The
book provides excellent summaries of specific areas of research
contributing to the overall thesis of lifespan biocultural
co-constructivism. I found that one of the most interesting aspects of
this book is the evidence that the field still faces serious challenges
in coming to grips with the problem of specifying in appropriate detail
the environmental side of the bidirectional process and, when dealing
with humans, with specifying what is meant by a cultural influence. This
difficulty shows up in different ways in different chapters.

Cole, Michael S-1 #6 <javascript:showCitation('Cole, Michael','Book
Reviews','PsycCRITIQUES','52, No. 9','Article 9','Initial','6')> With
respect to research on the environmental impact on brain development in
rats, for example, Charles Nelson notes that the term /enrichment/ is a
relative one, but then goes on to write that in the well-known studies
of enriched (more complex) environments, the experimental environments
are enriched “relative to the typical environments in which most rats
live” (p. 72). In fact, the enriched environments studied in the
laboratory are almost certainly less complex than the environments that
a vast majority of the world's rats live in outside of scientists'
laboratories, and their behavior in such environments is sufficiently
intelligent to defy the best efforts of exterminators from New York to
Mumbai to eradicate them.

Cole, Michael S-1 #7 <javascript:showCitation('Cole, Michael','Book
Reviews','PsycCRITIQUES','52, No. 9','Article 9','Initial','7')> This
same difficulty in situating environmental effects vis-à-vis behavioral
(and presumably brain) processes appears again when Nelson comments that
the enriched environments of rats are “all encompassing” whereas
interventions with human children such as Head Start are not all
encompassing so that “specific, narrow, effects, such as an increase in
IQ” (p. 73) cannot be reasonably expected—all the more so because such
children spend more time at home than at school, “and thus, the
deprivation effects inherent in the home environment may eventually
overwhelm the effects of early enrichment [in school]” (p. 73). To those
engaged in the debates about heritability of /g/ and the many
anthropologists who have documented the social complexity of the home
life of children attending Head Start programs, these kinds of judgments
are likely to seem improbable. (Which in no way detracts from the great
importance of the work by Nelson and his colleagues on the effects of
being raised in a Rumanian orphanage, which promises to shed important
light on brain-experience relationships.)

Cole, Michael S-1 #8 <javascript:showCitation('Cole, Michael','Book
Reviews','PsycCRITIQUES','52, No. 9','Article 9','Initial','8')> Other
chapters, each excellent in their review of their respective topics,
display similar uncertainties when it comes to explaining what is
specifically cultural about clear experience-expectant and
experience-dependent effects on brain development and just how specific
such cultural effects might be. For example, Ptito and Desgents's
well-crafted review of ways in which brain architecture changes to adapt
to or compensate for disrupted sensory input or the catastrophic
condition of hemispherectomy underlines the evidence that the spared
hemisphere “plays a role in the mediation of many residual abilities,
such as motor and sensory (vision and somesthesis) behaviors” (p. 129).
But extant evidence, such as Antonio Battro's (2000) study of a child
who underwent a hemispherectomy at the age of 3, indicates not only that
vision and somesthesis can be supported by the remaining hemisphere but
that such higher, clearly culturally mediated functions such as
literacy, numeracy, and all-but-normal language development can be
induced in the remaining hemisphere given a proper culturally organized
regime of enriched experience.

Cole, Michael S-1 #9 <javascript:showCitation('Cole, Michael','Book
Reviews','PsycCRITIQUES','52, No. 9','Article 9','Initial','9')> The
idea that dense, culturally organized experience can produce neural
specialization is also supported by two chapters devoted to the impact
of reading, writing, and arithmetic instruction on brain processes. As
researchers in this area, following Alexander Luria, point out, literacy
and numeracy are recent developments on an evolutionary scale and
require years of systematic instruction. Current evidence seems
compelling, however, that as a result of such instruction, there is, in
Polk and Hamilton's phraseology, “the development of new functional
brain areas that perform functions acquired through experience” (p.
195). A similar conclusion is supported by Petersson and Reis's chapter
comparing responses to verbal tasks of middle-aged women who did or did
not attend school as youngsters decades earlier.

Cole, Michael S-1 #10 <javascript:showCitation('Cole, Michael','Book
Reviews','PsycCRITIQUES','52, No. 9','Article 9','Initial','10')> An
important task confronting this line of research is to determine in more
detail the generality of the observed effects: Do the effects of
learning to read and write extend beyond the development of highly
specialized systems for analyzing words (or numbers?). Or, as is the
case with acquisition of expertise in use of the abacus, are the effects
highly specific to their corresponding tasks? Some degree of generality
is to be expected at the behavioral level, if only because reading,
writing, and numeracy are components of a variety of cultural practices
to which they can make important adaptive contributions (children who
master calculation on an abacus also perform better on some arithmetic
problem-solving tasks because the calculational part of the task has
been automated so that they can devote less attention to it). Something
of the same effect ought to be expected in relation to the brain
consequences of literacy and numeracy, but so far the evidence is lacking.

Cole, Michael S-1 #11 <javascript:showCitation('Cole, Michael','Book
Reviews','PsycCRITIQUES','52, No. 9','Article 9','Initial','11')> In
this regard I found especially interesting Vitouch's evidence that high
levels of musical training may result not only in changes in brain
architecture but also in changes with wide-ranging effects in the domain
of music. It is not only that skilled violin players show changed
architecture for brain regions subsuming the fingers of the right (not
the left) hand, but also that people who have undergone extensive
musical training may well undergo generalized changes in aesthetic
experience (associated with music, to be sure).

Cole, Michael S-1 #12 <javascript:showCitation('Cole, Michael','Book
Reviews','PsycCRITIQUES','52, No. 9','Article 9','Initial','12')> These
are only a few of the fascinating phenomena and important challenges to
psychological science presented in this important book. /Lifespan
Development and the Brain/ should be required reading for a broad range
of psychologists well beyond the devotees of life-span developmental
psychology or the study of the causal mechanisms of brain-behavior
relationships. It is perhaps the first book of its kind to deliver on
the longstanding promise that by combining the study of phylogeny with
the careful study of the organization of people's activities in everyday
life, psychology actually overcomes the false dichotomy of nature versus
nurture in fact as well as in words.

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


      References

Battro, A. M. (2000). /Half a brain is enough./ New York: Cambridge
University Press.

Geertz, C. (1973). /The interpretation of cultures./ New York: Basic Books.

Gesell, A. (1945). /The embryology of behavior./ New York: Harper & Row.

Rosenzweig, M. R., & Bennett, E. L. (1996). Psychobiology of plasticity:
Effects of training and experience on brain and behavior. /Behavioral
Brain Research/, /78/, 57-65.


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PsycCRITIQUES	February 28, 2007 Vol. 52 (9), Article 9
*1554-0138*	© 2007 by the American Psychological Association
<http://www.apa.org/about/copyright.html>

For personal use only--not for distribution.

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