25th Annual Symposium

Applying Rasch Analysis to Cognitive Developmental Data

Researchers from three countries use Rasch analysis to provide insights into data collected on tests of cognitive development. Central to their interpretations is the extent to which Rasch analysis reveals the data to be measuring a single underlying trait. Further, the researchers attend to the questions of growth over time and of the quantitative and qualitative indices for the stage allocation of responses. The invited discussant, a specialist in data analysis, will indicate how recent analytical techniques might further address these and other questions derived from Piagetian theory.

• Rasch Analysis Applied to Multiple-Domain Tasks
  GERALD NOELTING, JEAN-PIERRE ROUSSEAU, GINO COUDE, Université Laval

• Rasch Analysis of Two Recursive Thinking Tasks
  ULRICH MUELLER, MARY WINN & WILLIS F. OVERTON, Temple University

• Detecting Cognitive Development with the Rasch Model
  TREVOR G. BOND, James Cook University of North Queensland

• Discussant: MARK WILSON, University of California

Hearing, Seeing and Thinking in Music and the Visual Arts: Issues of Development

This symposium addresses questions of the development of competency in the visual and musical arts. What role do biological factors play and which aspects of their development depend on figurative or operational thinking? The participants present a range of view points on two different levels of competency, gifted and normal. Studies presented in music development seem to indicate that early representations are figurative compositions may depend on the development of operational thought. Studies presented for the visual arts suggest that although composing a visually balanced piece can be accomplished by relying on perception (figuratively), as children get older they may use operational thought to construct equivalency relationships across different visual dimensions. The development of children gifted in the arts is discussed from these points of view as well as from a biological perspective.

• Giftedness in the Visual Arts and Music: Cognitive and Biological Factors
  ELLEN WINNER, Boston College

• Children's Representations of Pitch and Pitch Relations in Music
  CAROLYN HILDEBRANDT, University of Northern Iowa

• Two Windows on the Development of Music Composition
  RENA UPITIS, Queens Unviersity

• The Development of Visually Balanced Compositions
  CONSTANCE MILBRATH, UC San Francisco

• Discussant: EMEIL REITH, Université de Gen�ve

The Development of Cognitive Structures for Sex-role, Racial Identity, and Coping in African adolescents

Differences in sex-role, racial identity and coping strategies are often indicative of qualitatively different cognitive structures. These differences in cognitive structures are reflected in corresponding differences in self-perception, social cognition and mental health outcomes. Piaget's theory of cognitive development provides the framework for explaining the assertion that sex-role can be an adaptive or maladaptive response to environmental experiences. Piaget's theory also provides the framework for explaining the transition from reactive to proactive racial identity. Finally, Vygotsky's zone of proximal development provides the framework for explaining differences in cognitive\behavioral coping responses of adolescents in response to stressful experiences.

• The Influence of Contextual Peer-Based Perceptions on African-American Adolescent Males' Gender Role Development
  MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM, University of Pennsylvania

• Adolescent Cognition as Coping Mechanisms in the Formation of Racial Identity
  DENA SWANSON, University of Pennsylvania

• The Relationship of Social Support to Cognitive/Behavioral Coping Responses Among African-American Adolescents: The Zone of Proximal Development as an Explanation of Differing Cognitive/Behavioral Coping Strategies
  DAVIDO DUPREE, University of Pennsylvania

• Discussant: MARGARET BEALE SPENCER, University of Pennsylvania

Representations of Relationships: Their Impact on Risk and Resilience in Development

Constructivist approaches to relationship in at-risk children, adolescents and adults have considerably advanced the study of developmental psychology and developmental psychopathology. This symposium will explore three theoretical and research questions that relate developmental ideas of meaning-making to representations of self and relationships.

1. How are the development of relationship representations related to overcoming dysfunctional pathways?
2. What is the link between the cognitive transformations of these representations and the reworking of life history?
3. What role do clinical constructs, such as transference, play in the development of more encompassing models of at-risk adolescents and adults? In what way do these concepts become transformed by applying a cognitive and developmental lens.

The presenters will engage in a joint discussion of their papers.

• Role-Relationship Models: A Person-Schematic Method for Inferring Beliefs About identity and Social Action
  MARDI HOROWITZ, UCSF

• The Organization of Person Schemas in Mourning
  CONSTANCE MILBRATH, UCSF

• Relational Transformations as Development of Resilience
  GIL NOAM, Harvard Medical School

The Interpretive Turn: Implications for the Study of Human Development

Certain areas of the social sciences have witnessed a conceptual shift of sufficient breadth, strenght and unity that it has acquired a label. "The interpretive turn" is a large, multidisciplinary movement that construes human action and culture as readable text, articulated here to include three assumptions: texts are actively constructed; they are mediated through communicative practices; they are constructed over time, and carry their histories forward through time. This trigon - active construction, semiotic mediation, and temporal organization - constitutes the centerpiece of an interpretive developmental psychology. Its attraction is coextensive with a growing desire to regard persons as participants in community and culture. Contributors will explore its methodological ramifications, with special reference to peer relations, language, cognition and emotion, and identity.

• Interpretive Approaches: Promises and Challenges for Studying Children's Friendships
  MARGARTIA AZMITIA, UC Santa Cruz

• What Bakhtin can Contribute to the Project of an Interpretive Psychology: An Exploration of the Dialogic Imagination in Children's Narrative Activity
  AGELIKI NICOLOPOULOU, Smith College

• Knowing Distress and Controlling Passions: Development of Abstract Reasoning and Mind-Body Dissociations in Adolescent Girls
  ELIZABETH DEBOLD, Harvard University

• The Intent to be a Subject: Interpretive Activity and the Unity of Epistemic and Sociocultural Processes
  CYNTHIA LIGHTFOOT, SUNY Plattsburgh

Interdisciplinary Exploration and Practice of Constructivist Pedagogy Across the Lifespan

This symposium takes an interdisciplinary approach to examine four different programs designed to promote constructivist education. The presentations describe the rewards as well as the problems of applying constructivist educational theory across the lifespan. In addition, this symposium seeks to provide a clear bridge between issues of theory and praxis. Vania's presentation describes the lessons he uses and has learned in teaching fifth grade mathematics. Cohen examines how knowledge of children's misconceptions can guide curriculum and instructional design. Pennell draws on interviews with teachers and classroom observations to discuss the California Subject Matter Projects and their success in helping teachers (K-12) become more constructivist in their teaching. Finally, Cohen discusses the challenges facing senior citizens and the techniques she uses in her classes to encourage them to be constructive thinkers.

• Hands-On But Minds-Off? Lessons From a Constructivist Classroom
  LUKE VANIA, Latimer Elementary School, San Jose, CA

• In Search of the Proper Misconception
  MICHAEL COHEN, Indiana University

• The Construction of Knowledge and Community Through Involvement in the California Subject Matter Projects
  JAMES PENNELL, Rutgers University

• Still Constructivist After All These Years: The Evolving Challenge For Senior Citizens
  ROCHELLE F. COHEN, Indianapolis Senior Citizens Center

On the Role of Self in the Development of Knowledge: Beginnings of Self in Collaborative Constructions of Memory Narratives

Interdisciplinary approaches to human development have begun to reveal how knowledge of events and knowledge in content domains can be dependent upon the knower's representations and presentation of self. Nevertheless, theories of cognitive development have not yet been enriched by the myriad definitions of "self" explored in sociocultural and personality theory. The focus in this symposium is on exploring relationships between self, society, and knowledge as manifested in the understandings and performance of children, adolescents, and adults in challenging situations. Much of the research on relationships between knowledge and self has been done via study of narratives, in which speakers and writers represent and transfer experience, ideas, and other phenomena. The papers in this symposium take different approaches to account for how groups and individuals represent self and how these representations shape knowledge, including memory of events, self-knowledge, knowledge of natural phenomena, and knowledge in content domains. Drawing on oral and written narratives, the presenters take different approaches to examining presentations of self, including the analysis of socioculturally-devised scripts, thematic analyses of interviews, and the construction of interpretive profiles of children's works. Each presenter, then, explores how presentations of self play a role in the genesis of knowledge. These reflections are intended to highlight interrelationships between cognition, culture and affect.

• Beginnings of Self in Collaborative Constructions of Memory Narratives
  KATHERINE NELSON,The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York

• Imposing the Self on School
  COLETTE DAIUTE, The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York

• Narratives of Self in Life Threatening Illness
  DAVID J. BEARISON, The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York

• Darwin and Holocausts
  JOE GLICK, The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York