Table Of ContentDevelopment
of Mental Representation
Theories and Applications
Development
of Mental Representation
Theories and Applications
Edited by
Irving E. Sigel
Educational Testing Service, Princeton, New Jersey
Psychology Press
Taylor & Francis Group
New York London
Copyright © 1999 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in
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means, without prior written permission of the publisher.
First published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
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This edition published 2012 by Psychology Press
Psychology Press Psychology Press
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Cover design by Kathryn Houghtaling Lacey
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Development of Mental Representation : Theories and Applications
/ edited by Irving E. Sigel.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN 0-8058-2228-3 (alk. Paper) 1. Mental representation in
children. 2. Connectionism. 3. Knowledge, Theory of. I.
Sigel, Irving E.
BF723.M43T47 1999
153.2—dc21 98-30736
CIP
Contents
Introduction vii
From Terra Incognita to Terra Cognita: The Science
of Representation
Rodney R. Cocking
I Theories of Representation 1
1 Approaches to Representation as a Psychological Construct: 3
A Treatise in Diversity
Irving E. Sigel
2 Cognitive Representations: Distinctions, Implications, 13
and Elaborations
Michael E. Martinez
3 Representation: Picture or Process? 33
April A. Benasich and Heather L. Read
4 Early Symbolic Representation 61
Judy S. DeLoache and Catherine M. Smith
5 What's in a Concept? Context, Variability, 87
and Psychological Essentialism
Susan A. Gelman and Gil Diesendruck
6 Representing Logic 113
Ellin Kofsky Scholnick
7 Constructivism, Communication, and Cooperation: 129
Implications of Michael Chapman's "Epistemic Triangle"
Jeremy I. M. Carpendale
8 The Properties of Representations Used in Higher 147
Cognitive Processes: Developmental Implications
Graeme S. Halford
9 A Dialectical Constructivist View of Representation : 169
Role of Mental Attention, Executives, and Symbols
Juan Pascual-Leone and Janice Johnson
v
vi CONTENTS
10 Representation Once Removed: Children's Developing 201
Conceptions of Representational Life
Michael J. Chandler and Bryan W.Sokol
11 The Development of Representation as the Coordination 231
of Component Systems of Action
Michael E Mascolo and Kurt W. Fischer
12 A Bakhtinian View of Egocentric Speech 257
Bruce Dorval
13 The Nature and Development of Representation: 273
Forging a Synthesis of Competing Approaches
James P. Byrnes
II Application of Representation in Practice 295
14 Developing an Understanding of External Spatial 297
Representations
Lynn S. Liben
15 The Development of Representational Abilities in Middle 323
School Mathematics
Richard Lesh
16 Representational Issues in Assessment Design 351
Drew H. Gitomer and Linda S. Steinberg
17 Representational Competence 371
Uri Shafrir
18 Representational Thought in Ego Identity, Psychotherapy, 391
and Psychosocial Developmental Theory
James E. Marcia
19 The Use of Cultural Tools: Mastery and Appropriation 415
Leslie Rupert Herrenkohl and James V Wertsch
20 A Representational System for Peer Crowds 437
Jeffrey McLellan and James E. Youniss
III Visual Representation as Pictorial 451
21 The Form of Thought 453
Sandra L. Calvert
Author Index 471
Subject Index 483
Introduction
From Terra Incognita to Terra Cognita:
The Science of Representation
RODNEY R. COCKING
National Academy of Sciences
The cognitive (Gardner, 1985) and neuroscience revolutions (Gazzaniga,
1997) of the last decade have advanced the efforts of identifying and localiz-
ing cognitive processes. One of the enduring problems in cogni-
tive-developmental psychology has been that of cognitive representation—in
its many forms that include the entity called representations, the activities of rep-
resenting, the uses of representations in learning, memory, and thinking, and
the mechanisms that control the formation of representations. Developmen-
tal theory has been a fruitful source for generating hypotheses to guide re-
search studies in this area and as a result, a vast database has been built around
theoretical conceptions of representational processes (Cocking & Renninger,
1993).
Now, a third revolution in technology is expanding cognitive and neurosci-
ence research in new directions and the databases are once again growing. Im-
aging technologies are enabling researchers to test theoretical conceptions of
cognitive representation more precisely. At the same time, new learning tech-
nologies, especially computer and interactive technologies, are expanding the
scope of developmental theory by adding new issues of representation, such
as visual cognition. This volume is about the new growth, new directions, and
new insights that are emerging around representation and representational
thinking as a result of these three scientific revolutions.
Some of the research questions are familiar ones and some are new. The fa-
miliar ones have taken on new meaning as research and theory have converged
to explain the processes of representation. At the same time, the familiar ques-
tions have shifted directions and new understandings are emerging. Indeed,
because of new evidence and new methodologies, the long-standing research
topic of representational thinking has moved from speculation to science. In
this evolution, the science of representation has played an important role as a
unifying concept across many research disciplines.
vii
viii INTRODUCTION
The move from terra incognita to terra cognita in any discipline involves a num-
ber of issues; and the ways in which these issues are framed determine the
kinds of research studies that are conducted. The shift from theoretical con-
ceptions to emergent ideas from cognitive science and neuroscience have pro-
pelled research in (at least) three directions: Based on theoretical formulations,
new methods have established an evidentiary base for the concept of repre-
sentation. Second, the territory of representation has been charted to move it
into the realm of an explanatory construct by specifying its structural and
functional properties. Third, studies now focus on a systems concept of repre-
sentation, which has moved the research from a prior focus on single systems
to current views of representation as multiple systems that have overlapping
functions and yet also maintain certain individual unique functions and prop-
erties.
Short-term memory, for example, is a subtopic of memory research that
has drawn upon psychological and neurological research aspects of represen-
tation. The result has been a convergence of research that has propelled scien-
tific growth in both domains. The research has indicated that people are
limited by the amount of information that they can hold in short-term mem-
ory for executing tasks so that information processing is facilitated by
chunking information in meaningful ways. This conceptualization of memory
functions sparked new research in both memory and cognition on categorical
thinking, information chunking, and the mechanisms by which memory is en-
hanced through representation. In these studies, the topic of representation is
seen as a tool of short-term memory.
Three large branches of study now characterize the field of representation
research. Those that ask: What is representation?; what are the acquisition and
developmental issues of representation formation?; and what are the uses of
representation? A number of different issues guide the research within each of
these three branches.
NEW DISCOVERIES AND NEW UNDERSTANDINGS
IN REPRESENTATION RESEARCH
Asking what //is has led to studies that ask if the //is different in some individ-
uals (e.g., studies of aging), if //changes over time, if //has different functions,
and how // is structured and structurally altered by injury and disease.
Are representations for working memory different from stored representa-
tions? This question is intended to address the functional roles of representa-
tion and the governing mechanisms. In this case, the question is whether
representation is a storage and retrieval mechanism of memory or a tool of
thinking for "on line" processing. It is now clearer how both kinds of roles are
filled by representations.
INTRODUCTION ix
How are updating mechanisms of short-term memory related to represen-
tational thinking? This kind of question has led to several types of studies that
converge on the role of representation in the regulation of behavior. Smith
(1998) asked if the 7-digit template of the representation of a phone number is
in working memory? Asking what the role of representation is in the construc-
tion of mental maps has similarly led to new discoveries and new understand-
ings about mental processes and the role played by representation.
Systems and Functions of Representation
Many of the imaging studies imply components of representation—spatial,
verbal, affective, etcetera—by localizing brain sites for these functions. Im-
pairments in one type of representation do not always implicate other sys-
tems. Older research addressed the separateness of representational systems,
since they clearly had individual functions. Findings that impairments in one
do not affect others led to the conclusion that they are separate entities. One
of the biggest barriers to understanding representation had been characteriz-
ing it as a single entity, and imaging studies confirmed the separate and distinc-
tive aspects of the systems. The studies in this volume, together, attest to the
new thinking of representation as more than singular and separate.
Imaging studies indicate that while there are separate neural representations
and separate brain loci, the psychological aspects of representation often unify
the separate systems. Again, memory studies and cognitive inferencing studies
illustrate psychological processes of representation. Schacter (1997) discussed
the relationship between inferential thinking and memory and illustrated the
active mind at work using psychological processes. Given word lists to remem-
ber, subjects report previous exposure to words that were not in the original
list if the real and falsely reported words are categorically related. That is, sweet
will be reported as having been in a list of words containing other words like:
cake, candy, horse, turnip, and cookie. Clearly, the phenomenon is psychological,
not neural, although imaging studies indicate that the same area of the brain
"lights up" as if both words were encoded in memory. Cognitive economy is
gained by using categories of information—representations.
Information processing (IP) theorists, however, have long held that the rep-
resentation storage is fragmentary. Byrnes (1996) said that for IP theorists "in-
formation such as the name of an object (how it sounds, how to spell it) and
what the object looks like, the kind of thing it is, and so on are all held in sepa-
rate places in long-term memory" (p. 28). Studies within domains such as
memory, are contrasting the structural and functional differences of represen-
tations in short-term and long-term memory systems.
The issue of systems and functions of representations has also led to some
interesting comparative analyses between younger and older people. Smith
