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About the Next Person

"Tell me how to think differently about the next person I meet."
Sheldon White
The study of the individual in a natural setting and the interpretation of behavior there brings us directly to the case we want most to know about, ourselves. Because my work is focussed on the learning of a particular child in particular situations, some people may wonder if it's so special that it carries no general relevance. Consider two criteria by which to make such judgments. Some experiences may be judged generally relevant because they involve kinds of events frequently encountered. Others may be so judged because they exhibit with unusual clarity or novelty events which are lawful. These suppositions are the main grounds of my empirical research: I chose to study the learning of my daughter Miriam, because we were very close, I had known her long, and knew her well. For six months -- beginning at her sixth birthday -- we two and my eight year old son Rob worked as colleagues on a research project to document and explore my daughter's learning. This effort included the execution of quasi-standard experiments from the Piagetian repertoire, working sessions at the computer laboratory of the MIT Logo project, experiments at home, and naturalistic observation of Miriam's behavior, thoughts, and feelings.

The basic corpus, consisting of the mechincal records of all experimental and working sessions (along with their transcriptions) is richly supplemented by the naturalistic observation. The primary themes of development emerged clearly, sufficiently early on, that they could serve as foci of documentation. From these main themes, I have chosen for extended analysis those whose development engages what I take to be central issues of the nature of mind. The modeling aims of my research have two bases:

  1. Functional structures are needed to represent problem solving behavior. They also can represent knowledge.
  2. The genesis of new functional structures can be seen to emerge from the functioning of pre-existing knowledge structures.
Exploring this dual thesis in detail is a central objective of my analyses.

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| Learning and Computing | Education | Computing | Psychology | Artificial Intelligence |