Discursive Psychology and Educational Technology: Beyond the Cognitive Revolution

As an alternative to dominant cognitive-constructivist approaches to educational technology, this article makes the case for what has been termed a discursive, or postcognitive, psychological research paradigm. It does so by adapting discursive psychological analyses of conversational activity to the study of educational technology use. It applies these modified techniques specifically to discursive interactions with chatbots or intelligent agents, and to the theories commonly associated with them. In doing so, it presents a critique of notions of human–computer “indistinguishability” or equality as they have been articulated from Alan Turing to Reeves and Nass, and it sketches an alternative account of the potential and limitations of this technology. In divergence from Turing and Reeves and Nass, human discourse generated through encounters with natural language interfaces is seen as emphasizing the issue of conversation itself, foregrounding the achievement of common discursive aims and projects, rather than illuminating the internal states of either interlocutor. Mind and cognition, correspondingly, are revealed as phenomena “accomplished” through contingent social activity, rather than as computational processes concealed within or distributed between mind and machine.     

Risk Taking with Left- and Right-Skewed Lotteries*

Journal of Risk and Uncertainty - While much literature has focused on preferences regarding risk, preferences over skewness also have significant economic implications. An important and...     

Food fights: irritating for social change among Auckland's alternative food initiatives

ABSTRACT

This article explores alternative food initiatives (AFI) and their performances of benign transgression. Through collaborative activist-and-academic-storytelling we tease apart the divergent practices of AFIs to question what mediates these performances in the grey area between conventional and alternative practice. Grounded examples of AFIs performing alternative economy and related acts of ‘irritant’ civil disobedience show how subverting normative practices of power and authority can catalyse social reproduction of difference, and tangibly alter the conventional food system.     

EMISSION TAXES,CLEAN TECHNOLOGY COOPERATION,AND PRODUCT MARKET COLLUSION: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE

We use a laboratory experiment to study the link between cooperative research and development (R&D) in clean technology and collusion in a downstream product market in the presence of a time‐consistent emissions tax. Such a tax creates additional interconnections between firms, in addition to the standard technological spillovers. Our results show a strong link between R&D cooperation and market collusion under symmetric R&D spillovers in a duopoly, but when the spillovers are asymmetric, R&D cooperation does not necessarily result in collusion. With symmetric spillovers, the link between R&D cooperation and collusion remains strong even in three‐ and four‐firm industries. (JEL C90, L5, O30, Q55)     

Quality of Parent–Child Relations in Adolescence and Later Adult Parenting Outcomes

Data from the Christchurch Health and Development Study, a 30‐year prospective longitudinal study, were used to examine the associations between the quality of parent–child relations in adolescence and adult parenting behaviour 15 years later. At ages 14 and 15 years, cohort members were interviewed about the quality of their relationship with their parents. At age 30, those who had become parents underwent a parenting assessment using self‐report and observational ratings of positive (warmth, sensitivity) and negative parenting (overreactive, inconsistency, and physical punishment/abuse). Results showed that adolescents who reported higher quality parent–child relationships were later characterized by higher levels of parental warmth, sensitivity, and effective child management, and lower levels of overreactive parenting. These associations remained after extensive covariate adjustment. Study findings highlight the importance of close parent–child relations during adolescence in preparing an individual for the challenges of caring for and parenting their own children when they themselves become parents.     

Privatized child welfare services: foster parents' perspectives

This study reports on the impressions of foster parents following the privatization of family foster care services in Kansas. A randomly selected sample of foster parents from one agency was surveyed to assess their current level of satisfaction, their opinions about privatization, and their experiences with newly established community-based treatment teams. Although overall satisfaction has remained high, opinions vary about specific aspects of foster parenting under managed care. Implications for supporting and enhancing the role of foster parents are discussed.     

Measuring hand movements

Hand movements were classified into speech illustrators, body manipulators, and actions which convey precise symbolic information. The behavioral code noted whether the action involved the left, right, or both hands, and the manipulator code also included the part of the body manipulated. The application of this code to videotapes of conversations provided data to examine a number of methodological issues. Reliability was inspected in a number of ways; each showed high intercoder agreement. Little redundancy was found among the various hand measures, although scores for the frequency of an activity and for the duration of an activity were highly intercorrelated for most classes of hand actions. An economical method for coding hand activity was compared with the standard, more time-consuming method. Similar results were obtained, although the economical method appeared to be more vulnerable to measurement error.This research was supported by a grant from NIMH, MH 11976. The preparation of this report was supported by a grant from the Harry F. Guggenheim foundation.     

Family patterns associated with anorexia nervosa*

A family systems perspective was used to explore familial transactional patterns related to anorexia nervosa. Father, mother and daughter, interpersonal assessments of parental initiative and daughter responsive behaviors as reported on Benjamin's (1974) Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB), were combined to serve as data for a hierarchical cluster analysis. Out of the 22 families with an anorexic child and the 22 matched control families, 7 family groups with unique family dynamics differentiating one from another emerged out of the clustering procedure. Prototypic family profiles were established and examined using Benjamin's (1984) program Figure (FIG) to explicate central features of the family transactional relationships. With no single family pattern characterizing the families of the anorexic daughters, the study challenges earlier family theories that postulated a single anorexogenic family system, and supports a broader, more complex view of anorexics and their families.