Please interpret this text, comparing and contrsting it with your
theories about subjective space and show where it agrees and disagrees.
In this way I may be better prepared to googooWikiYahoo you some
helpful evidence.
Programs of the brain.
J. Z. Young 1978
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0198575459/
...The importance of these perhaps rather obvious facts for us is that
humans are born with certain capacities for communication of emotional
and even moral attitudes. This is not surprising since such expressions
constitute the language of animals-such as it is. Can we recognize any
similar stage of progressive development of more distinctively human
characteristics?
Growing skills of the infant
Stages of the appearance of physical operations by children have been
studied by many workers but we shall use especially the observations of
J. Burner, formerly of Harvard, now at Oxford (1974). A child is born
with a large set of actions that it can already perform perfectly well,
including those that it needs to maintain its life such as sucking,
swallowing, and breathing. It can do these things almost at once and
without instruction, moreover it avoids trying to do more than one of
them at a time. These are actions performed with little information and
this implies that they are 'hard-wired' and cannot be varied or
recombined in any subtle ways.
But the skills that the child is about to learn are quite different
from these. Bruner lists five competences that will be acquired by the
end of the first year-feeding, attending, perceiving, manipulating, and
interacting with others. Each of these has a background of
species-typical genetic instructions, but the neurons able to perform
these tasks are also capable of adap-tational changes. All capacity to
adapt and to learn depends upon the possession of particular sorts of
nerve cell and their metabolic operations (see Chapter 10). We do not
know what these learning mechanisms are and cannot say how far they
limit the variation in performance that can be learned. Certainly these
skills do not mature in fixed or invariant ways, but flexibly, to suit
the particular conditions that are encountered. Like other memory
processes these are partly achieved by suppression of unwanted actions,
limiting originally redundant sets of possibilities, which is the
scheme that I suggest for memory mechanisms in general (Chapter 10).
These early skills are not isolated units, to be later replaced, or
ones to which others will later be added. On the contrary they form the
very centre and core of all subsequent behaviour and personality, the
centre of the brain-program of action. They 'become the constituents
for new patterns of action directed at more remote or complex
objectives' (Bruner 1974, p. 298). These skills thus become generative,
in the sense that they can be combined and recombined-they are open and
lead on to the use of tools and of language.
the elements of much of human behaviour. The same fundamental program
is at the base of the processes that make culture possible. They are
characterized by Bruner as intention, skill, attention, and
integration. We can illustrate these by the growth of the power of the
child to integrate the action of eye and hand. By intention we mean in
this case the capacity to direct anticipatory orientating action
towards an object, say in the visual field, with the aim of putting it
in the mouth.
There are considerable differences in the situations to which infants
will direct their gaze, and in the age at which they will do so. The
earliest visually attractive objects in Bruner's studies included
circles with features resembling the human face or, alternatively,
bright sparkly objects. The action of following objects with the eyes
is perhaps the earliest of all anticipation or intention movements. It
must involve a process by which distinction is made between movements
produced by the individual and those initiated in the outside world. We
shall follow the mechanisms for this later. It is probably largely
predetermined in the infant and such activity is soon performed
smoothly and with skill (Bruner 1974, p. 272). The capacity to make
this distinction between self and other is thus fundamentally linked
with intention, the aim of reaching a particular situation and
achieving satisfaction therefrom.
Searching for what to see
For its first six weeks or so the child is very easily distractable but
then for a while becomes so readily attached to visual targets that it
cannot leave them. Gradually it adopts what Piaget might call a schema
of moving the eyes around, searching for targets rather than being
caught by them (Chapter 12). This is an excellent example of a program
in the sense we are using it. Partly by inheritance and partly by
learning the brain has come to produce a set of operations that is
switched on whenever the conditions are appropriate. When we come to
examine the process of seeing we shall be able to trace the
neurological mechanism that is used and knowledge of it is a great help
to pediatricians in the care of children's eyesight.
Learning to explore
Meanwhile at about 6-8 weeks the earliest manipulations begin. At first
when an attractive object appears the child swipes crudely towards the
midline, at the same time opening its mouth. If a hand happens to hit
the object it may be grasped and brought to the mouth. Bringing the
hand alone to the mouth is accomplished in very early days and seeing
an attractive object will at first itself be followed by mouth opening.
Perception of anything is indeed an act, or at least clearly
accompanied by an act. This is a very important thought, with many
implications.
Gradually manipulative skill improves, at first there is rivalry
between the two hands, then they come to be used together. The
movements become more and more anticipatory, by feed forward, for
instance the hand is opened as the arm moves towards an object. If the
object and hand are covered at the moment of contact a 7-month child
will not take it but will pull his hand out and search again. At 9
months he will bring the object out. The full achievement of the skill
of exploring objects involves eliminating various sorts of irrelevance.
At first the child tenses his whole body and makes movements of arms
and shoulders, as well as hands, often in competition. All this becomes
sorted out at about 8 months as successive stages are simplified and
ordered, each one or two steps ahead, so that the object does not have
to be followed intensely at each step. The action becomes ballistic,
fully planned from the start to stop at the right point. The whole
process gradually becomes freed from the mouth as its aim. The child
now explores the object visually or tactually, or by the action of
banging with it. So another phase of visual and manual exploration
begins, ready to lead on to the capacities that have allowed production
of tools of all sorts from hand axes to aeroplanes.
Later development of the brain
The period of maturation that we have been following with Jerry Bruner
is approximately what Piaget calls the period of sensori-motor
intelligence- from birth to about 2 years old (1971). We have now to
see whether we can gain any insights into what happens next as the
child's brain develops further. Inevitably it becomes more difficult to
do this as he approaches the mature human condition. Experiments with
kittens will not tell us much about the skills that are acquired by
children in the periods Piaget calls pre-operational thought and
concrete operations. They include first, language, then the later
acquisition of the capacity to understand conservation of quantity,
cause and effect, and much else.
It is worthwhile to examine the changes that take place, and for
educational theory it is fundamental. As neuroscience develops we shall
certainly come to understand more. There is some indirect evidence that
these later developments are accompanied by physical changes in the
brain. For example if a child up to about 10 years old unfortunately
loses the usually dominant left cerebral hemisphere it will none the
less be able to acquire language in the right hemisphere, which would
normally not possess this facility. So evidently the use to which the
brain is put fundamentally influences its later development.
Learning about conservation
In what Piaget calls the pre-operational stage 2-7 years the child is
dependent on concepts involving spatiotemporal continuity. For example
his classification categories may change from moment to moment. Asked
to put together similar objects from several sets mixed together he may
first choose a red square and red triangle, saying they are alike
because both are red, Then instead of adding another red he will add a
yellow triangle 'because it has the same shape', and then back to
colour with a yellow circle and so on. Similarly with language, spatial
concepts must be preserved. Shown a toy truck pushing a car he can say
'truck pushes car', but not 'car is pushed by truck'-the pusher must
come first and the passive language of reversibilities is simply not
available. The well-known experiments of failure of conservation
concepts are similar. The child judges quantity by the level of liquid
it can see in a jar. The concept of a given quantity (that is of object
conservation) simply has no meaning for him apart from what he can see
(Beard 1969). He has no conception of measuring or of series. Similar
problems arise over comparisons. Take the question, Edith is fairer
than Susan, Edith is darker than Lily: Who is the darkest? Most young
children cannot solve this. They consider each relationship separately.
I confess to finding the problem difficult myself!
How then does a child come to the concepts of conservation and
relationships as he passes through the period of concrete operations
(7-12 years)? It seems that this cannot be 'taught'. A child can be
shown conservation and reversibility and even do it for himself but
still not be able to make the reversal in his head. Experience must
play a part, but there is little account in the literature of
intermediate stages, and teachers seem to avoid the attempt to teach
such skills as understanding of reversibility. It seems likely that
what is involved is largely a process of maturation of a program by
which the brain comes to be able to combine distinct experiences in new
ways. In the pre-operational stage the child's thinking is described by
Piaget as like a slow-motion film, representing one static frame after
another but lacking a simultaneous encompassing view of all the frames
(Schwebel and Raph 1974, p. 10).
The unified model in the brain
Later, therefore, there is a unification of previously distinct
processes, either by the overall interaction of the parts or by a
dominating superior control. Workers in the subject often speak of this
appearance of a unified approach, as if the child now truly begins to
operate with a single model, which it lacked before. The characteristic
achievements of this stage all provide capacities for such a general
view. Classification, seriation, conservation, number and space all
begin to enter into judgements, behaviour, and speech. The child now
has 'something flexible and plastic and yet consistent and enduring,
with which he can structure the present in terms of the past without
undue strain and dislocation, that is, without the ever-present
tendency to tumble into the perplexity and contradiction which mark the
preschooler' (Flavell 1963, p. 165).
This is a good way to think about the model in the brain, but what does
the change involve neurologically and what external influences are
required for this maturation to occur? One guess is that the integrated
action of the various parts of the cortex may depend upon maturation of
long pathways between areas, which develop relatively late. But this is
much too simple and anyhow few of such pathways are known. There must
be much more to it than this. Emotional factors are certainly involved,
for one pronounced feature is that at this time the child is becoming
more socialized and less egocentric. The interaction with others may be
a requirement for the maturation. The child begins to consider his own
actions, to get beyond individual acts and words, in fact to pass from
personal forms of representation to socialized forms with more general
meaning.
Cognition and emotion
At all times the child is acting out its own life in the immediate
present-not preparing for some undiscernable future. His own
homeostasis is his primary interest in these early years, and for long
after, and meeting his own emotional and physical needs may be at all
stages actually a requirement for maturation. And '. . . before and
beyond the three R's-more precisely beneath the three R's-exists a
human being who is not partly cognitive and partly emotional but in
being and substance is both of these all of the time and indivisibly'
(Schwebel and Raph 1974, p. 30). We have to think of all brain programs
of activity as compounded in this way. Similar considerations come into
play far beyond the stage of the three R's into the period when the
child begins to conduct formal operations in its head, beyond 12 years
and indeed throughout the life of the adult. Cognition and emotion are
never wholly separate, because of the interaction of brain processes.
It is difficult to know how far it is wise to try to separate cognitive
skills from their emotional background. Academic purity frowns upon
emotion and believes that it need not enter into learned logical
discourse. Certainly we do not want emotion in every phase of
discussion, but attempts to elucidate fundamentals without considering
why we are doing so are bound to fail to satisfy (Chapter 17).
The program for adolescence
To emphasize the place that emotion plays in the unfolding of the
program consider what happens at adolescence. Here a clock that has
been ticking in the hypothalamus sends chemical signals to the
pituitary to release more gonadotropic hormones (Fig. 9.1). The
individual has no control over this clock and the evidence is that
environmental factors such as climate or food do not have much effect
either. Yet sex hormones now released from the ovary or testis produce
a dramatic change in her or his physical and emotional condition. It is
easy to dismiss this as a crude example of an unfolding program but
there is every reason to think that all nervous activities arc
influenced by the changes at puberty. And the individual will continue
to be so influenced for every day of his life, indeed, as one sadly
learns, there are physical and emotional changes hardly less profound
towards its end. If the biologist is called crude to emphasize that
many emotional as well as rational factors influence all thinking he
may reply that no system that claims to show what is meant by knowledge
should neglect them. For the very concept of receiving information
depends upon the presence of a receiver who is able to produce acts
that in some way correspond to the signals that are sent (p. 42). And
such actions are the property so far as we know only of systems like
ourselves that are motivated by inner urges to ensure life's
continuance. The sustained effort to do this is somewhere near to the
root of all acquisition of knowledge.
Programs of the brain.
J. Z. Young 1978
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0198575459/
