Although the importance of literacy is widely acknowledged in society and remains at the top of the political agenda, writing has been slow to establish a place in the cognitive sciences. Olson argues that to understand the cognitive implications of literacy, it is necessary to see reading and writing as providing access to and consciousness of aspects of language, such as phonemes, words and sentences, that are implicit and unconscious in speech. Reading and writing create a system of metarepresentational concepts (...) that bring those features of language into consciousness as a subject of discourse. This consciousness of language is essential not only to acquiring literacy but also to the formation of systematic thought and rationality. The Mind on Paper is a compelling exploration of what literacy does for our speech and hence for our thought, and will be of interest to readers in developmental psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, and education. (shrink)

Writing bears an uncertain relation to speech. Either it is treated as a largely autonomous medium of communication or it is treated as a simple adjunct, cipher, image or record of speech. This paper offers a compromise arguing that writing exploits a special and distinctive property of speech, namely, that of quotation. Quotation suspends the contextual, deictic, and illocutionary features of ordinary speech to create a quasi-autonomous linguistic form to which normal referential and intentional features of speech no longer apply. (...) Written documents, it is argued, are distinctive in possessing just those properties characteristic of quotation. Evidence from studies of the metalinguistic effects of learning to read and write is used to evaluate this hypothesis. (shrink)

Writing bears an uncertain relation to speech. Either it is treated as a largely autonomous medium of communication or it is treated as a simple adjunct, cipher, image or record of speech. This paper offers a compromise arguing that writing exploits a special and distinctive property of speech, namely, that of quotation. Quotation suspends the contextual, deictic, and illocutionary features of ordinary speech to create a quasi-autonomous linguistic form to which normal referential and intentional features of speech no longer apply. (...) Written documents, it is argued, are distinctive in possessing just those properties characteristic of quotation. Evidence from studies of the metalinguistic effects of learning to read and write is used to evaluate this hypothesis. (shrink)

In the 1960s claims were made about the role of literacy in restructuring the mind. While those claims were frequently criticized, this paper revives the claim by showing that reading and writing require a new consciousness of properties of language, properties relevant to a distinctive modes of literate thought.

In the late preschool years children acquire a "theory of mind", the ability to ascribe intentional states, including beliefs, desires and intentions, to themselves and others. In this paper I trace how children's ability to ascribe intentions is derived from parental attempts to hold them responsible for their talk and action, that is, the attempt to have their behavior meet a normative standard or rule. Self-control is children's developing ability to take on or accept responsibility, that is, the ability to (...) ascribe intentions to themselves. This is achieved, I argue, when they possess the ability to hold an utterance or rule in mind in the form of a quoted expression, and second, when they grasp the causal relation between the rule and their action. The account of how children learn to ascribe intention to themselves and others will then be used to explore the larger question of the relations amongst language, intentional states and the ascription and avowal of those states. (shrink)

Three- to six-year-olds were given Heyes's proposed task and theory of mind tasks. Although they correlated, Heyes's was harder; only 50% of participants with a theory of mind reached a criterion of 75% correct. Because of the complex series of inferences involved in Heyes's task, it is possible that one could have a theory of mind and fail Heyes's version.

Written by some of the world's leading academics and professionals in the field, this collection of essays brings together two complementary views on child development - the role of society and the role of cognitive growth.

While negatives are fundamental to the functioning of human languages and while they are acquired extremely early by children, there is some evidence that an aware-ness of the logical and representational functions of negation is late to develop and may depend in part on the invention of notational means for representing it. This hypothesis is explored by reference to the presence or absence of notations for negation in the world's writing systems, the acquisition of notational devices for representing negation by (...) young children, and the invention of numerical notation for representing nothing, namely, zero. In each case it is argued that while negation is part of oral language, conceptualizing absence may be related to the invention of notations for negation. (shrink)

Literacy, specifically the use of writing for rational purposes, adds a new dimension to the traditional problem of the relation between language, thought and rationality. Central to rational thought are the logical relations expressed by such terms as “is”, “or”, “and” and “not”. Whereas some see these concepts as fundamental and innate, it is here argued that such terms exhibit a diverse range of uses in speech and thought but through literacy and education they become explicit objects of thought and (...) formalized or ‘normed’ into logical operators as part of a literate rationality. This more formal orientation to language is seen as metarepresentational and may be shown to have both an historical and a developmental trajectory. (shrink)

Literacy, specifically the use of writing for rational purposes, adds a new dimension to the traditional problem of the relation between language, thought and rationality. Central to rational thought are the logical relations expressed by such terms as “is”, “or”, “and” and “not”. Whereas some see these concepts as fundamental and innate, it is here argued that such terms exhibit a diverse range of uses in speech and thought but through literacy and education they become explicit objects of thought and (...) formalized or ‘normed’ into logical operators as part of a literate rationality. This more formal orientation to language is seen as metarepresentational and may be shown to have both an historical and a developmental trajectory. (shrink)

Tomasello, Kruger & Ratner relate the evolution of social cognition – the understanding of others' minds – to the evolution of culture. Tomasello et al. conceive of the accumulation of culture as the product of cultural learning, a kind of learning dependent upon recognizing others' intentionality. They distinguish three levels of this recognition: of intention (what isxtrying to do), of beliefs (what doesxthink aboutp), and of beliefs about beliefs (what doesxthinkythinks aboutp). They then tie these levels to three discrete forms (...) of cultural learning – imitative, instructed, and collaborative – which children become capable of when they are 9 months, 4 years, and 6 years old respectively, at least in Western culture where relevant data are available. (shrink)

Understanding, as Descartes, Locke and Kant all insisted, is the primary 'faculty' of the mind; yet our modern sciences have been slow to advance a clear and testable account of what it means to understand, of children's acquisition of this concept and, in particular, how children come to ascribe understanding to themselves and others. By drawing together developmental and philosophical theories, this book provides a systematic account of children's concept of understanding and places understanding at the heart of children's 'theory (...) of mind'. Children's subjective awareness of their own minds, of what they think, depends on learning a language for ascribing mental states to themselves and others. This book will appeal to researchers in developmental psychology, cognitive science, education and philosophy who are interested in the cognitive and emotional development of children and in the more basic question of what it means to have a mind. (shrink)

Barresi & Moore provide an impressive account of how the coordination of first and third person information about the self and other could produce an account of intentional relations. They are less explicit as to how the child comes to understand the basic epistemic relation between experience and knowledge, that is, how informational access causes belief. We suggest one route.