From the epistemic to the social-psychological subject: The missing role of social identities, asymmetries of status, and social representations: Commentary on Sorsana and Trognon
Date
2011Source
Human developmentVolume
54Issue
4Pages
234-240Google Scholar check
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Sorsana and Trognon [this issue] discussed the various representations of the
subject of cognitive development that have been formed over the years since the
seminal work of Jean Piaget. The terminology they used to describe this shift is that
of the epistemic subject to the psychological subject, and finally, to the psychosocial
actor . The aim of their review was to discuss the major conceptual and methodological
obstacles to the analysis of the contextual determination of human thinking in
psychology. In other words, the question was to identify the conceptual and methodological
progress that was made during the last decades in order to try to grasp
how cognitive acquisitions take place in interaction. Compared to similar reviews in
Human Development [Psaltis, Duveen, & Perret-Clermont, 2009], this paper is an
addition in at least three ways. First, it offered a more informed historical account of
the importance of the work of Bärbel Inhelder on the microgenetic method and especially
the emphasis on goals, intentions and control as a ‘transitional’ shift between
the epistemic subject and the psychosocial actor. Second, it offered a convincing
critique of methodological solipsism found in cognitive psychological research.
Finally, it proposed an analysis of some data using the approach based on interlocutory
logic as a way to formalize reasoning moves and their transformations in the
unfolding interaction, thus offering a concrete proposal of how to analyze the psychosocial
actor. However, at the same time, this analysis exposed the weak points of
interlocutory logic since it can be criticized for lack of clarity in what it accepted and
what it rejected in terms of the theoretical and methodological advances of work previously
published and reviewed in the same paper.
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