Rethinking protocol analysis from a cultural perspective

2001 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 233-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Smagorinsky

Some form of verbal report — that is, a research participant's concurrent or retrospective verbal account of thought processes during problem-solving activities — has been used throughout this century as the data base from which psychologists have developed theories of human mentation. Newell and Simon (1972) and Ericsson and Simon (1980, 1993) have provided extensive justification for use of one such method, protocol analysis, to investigate cognition from an information processing (IP) perspective. They have characterized protocol analysis as a methodology capable of providing evidence of the cognitive processes used when people attend to information stored in short term memory (STM) in order to solve problems. Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), with its concern for the mediation of human development by culturally- and historically-grounded signs and tools based on the work of Vygotsky (1987), Leont'ev (1981), and others, suggests a different view of protocol analysis. In this chapter I outline a CHAT perspective that accounts for protocol analysis along three key dimensions: (a) the relationship between thinking and speech from a representational standpoint; (b) the social role of speech in research methodology; and (c) the influence of speech on thinking during data collection. The purpose of this discussion is to illustrate how use of verbal reports can be viewed through a CHAT lens and to identify alternative assumptions necessary to use it from a CHAT perspective.

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 101
Author(s):  
Vesna Srnic ◽  
Emina Berbic Kolar ◽  
Igor Ilic

<p><em>In addition to the well-known classification of long-term and short-term memory, we are also interested in distinguishing episodic, semantic and procedural memory in the areas of linguistic narrative and multimedial semantic deconstruction in postmodernism. We compare the liveliness of memorization in literary tradition and literature art with postmodernist divisions and reverberations of traditional memorizations through human multitasking and performative multimedia art, as well as formulate the existence of creative, intuitive and superhuman paradigms.</em></p><em>Since the memory can be physical, psychological or spiritual, according to neurobiologist Dr. J. Bauer (Das Gedächtnis des Körpers, 2004), the greatest importance for memorizing has the social role of collaboration, and consequently the personal transformation and remodelling of genomic architecture, yet the media theorist Mark Hansen thinks technology brings different solutions of framing function (Hansen, 2000). We believe that postmodern deconstruction does not necessarily damage memory, especially in the field of human multitasking that utilizes multimedia performative art by means of anthropologization of technology, thereby enhancing artistic and affective pre&amp;post-linguistic experience while unifying technology and humans through intuitive empathy in society.</em>


Author(s):  
Hyo-Dong Lee

Confucians in East Asia have always dreamed of holding human communities together and constructing well-functioning polities in and through the binding and harmonizing power of rituals. Underlying their trust in the power of rituals is the notion that rituals constitute symbolic articulation and enchancement of our affective responses to the conditions of embodied relationality and historicity in which we always already find ourselves. This Confucian theory of rituals resonates with Whitehead’s theory of symbolism, insofar as the latter advances a primordially relational ontology of the subject by highlighting the hitherto neglected epistemological notion of perception in the mode of causal efficacy. As such, the Confucian theory of rituals offers a fresh cross-cultural perspective to understand Whitehead’s implied critique of the modern liberal social theories that are based on a view of human beings as atomized individuals who rationally consent to enter society.


2018 ◽  
pp. 1060-1068
Author(s):  
Galina A. Dvoenosova ◽  

The article assesses synergetic theory of document as a new development in document science. In information society the social role of document grows, as information involves all members of society in the process of documentation. The transformation of document under the influence of modern information technologies increases its interest to representatives of different sciences. Interdisciplinary nature of document as an object of research leads to an ambiguous interpretation of its nature and social role. The article expresses and contends the author's views on this issue. In her opinion, social role of document is incidental to its being a main social tool regulating the life of civilized society. Thus, the study aims to create a scientific theory of document, explaining its nature and social role as a tool of social (goal-oriented) action and social self-organization. Substantiation of this idea is based on application of synergetics (i.e., universal theory of self-organization) to scientific study of document. In the synergetic paradigm, social and historical development is seen as the change of phases of chaos and order, and document is considered a main tool that regulates social relations. Unlike other theories of document, synergetic theory studies document not as a carrier and means of information transfer, but as a unique social phenomenon and universal social tool. For the first time, the study of document steps out of traditional frameworks of office, archive, and library. The document is placed on the scales with society as a global social system with its functional subsystems of politics, economy, culture, and personality. For the first time, the methods of social sciences and modern sociological theories are applied to scientific study of document. This methodology provided a basis for theoretical vindication of nature and social role of document as a tool of social (goal-oriented) action and social self-organization. The study frames a synergetic theory of document with methodological foundations and basic concepts, synergetic model of document, laws of development and effectiveness of document in the social continuum. At the present stage of development of science, it can be considered the highest form of theoretical knowledge of document and its scientific explanatory theory.


Author(s):  
Eduardo Manzano Moreno

This chapter addresses a very simple question: is it possible to frame coinage in the Early Middle Ages? The answer will be certainly yes, but will also acknowledge that we lack considerable amounts of relevant data potentially available through state-of-the-art methodologies. One problem is, though, that many times we do not really know the relevant questions we can pose on coins; another is that we still have not figured out the social role of coinage in the aftermath of the Roman Empire. This chapter shows a number of things that could only be known thanks to the analysis of coins. And as its title suggests it will also include some reflections on greed and generosity.


2015 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 390-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
António Carlos Valera ◽  
Thomas Xaver Schuhmacher ◽  
Arun Banerjee

1997 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. CODELL CARTER

In early-nineteenth-century medical literature, one finds an elegant symmetry between causes of disease and causes of death: both were sufficient causes of particular events. However, as I will argue, by the end of the century physicians no longer sought sufficient causes of individual disease episodes – instead almost all of medical research was organized around the quest for necessary causes that were shared by all the episodes of each particular disease. Such causes carried great practical and theoretical advantages: they enabled physicians to control and to explain disease phenomena.One might wonder why there has been no parallel change in our thinking about causes of death; to this very day, causes of death are sufficient causes of particular events. In principle there is no apparent reason why we could not identify necessary causes for classes of deaths – indeed, we sometimes do so. But, in the case of death, such causes hold little interest. Because of how they are used, sufficient causes for individual deaths are more interesting and more important to us than are necessary causes of deaths. Thus, the change in thinking about causes of disease – the change that destroyed the symmetry between causes of disease and causes of death – may not reflect simply progress within a fixed system of medical goals and values, but a profound change in the social role of physicians.


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