Die Naturalistische Auffassung der Pädagogik scheint unaufhaltsam voranzuschreiten, wie es an der globalen Tendenzen der „learnification“ der Erziehung ablesbar ist. Naturalistische Ansätze hinterlassen in der Pädagogik sichtlich widersprüchliche Konsequenzen: die Hervorhebung der vorbestimmten und der plastischen Merkmale der menschlichen Natur und ferner die Hervorhebung der aktiven und der rezeptiven Seiten der menschlichen Plastizität. Um die komplizierte Beziehungsstruktur dieser doppelten Beidseitigkeit zu erläutern, wird auf die geschichtliche Ursprungsphase der pädagogischen Auseinandersetzungen mit dem Naturalismus zurückgegriffen: eine Auseinandersetzung mit der Evolutionstheorie in der (...) Pädagogik in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. und am Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts. (shrink)

Sound-symbolism is the nonarbitrary link between the sound and meaning of a word. Japanese-speaking children performed better in a verb generalization task when they were taught novel sound-symbolic verbs, created based on existing Japanese sound-symbolic words, than novel nonsound-symbolic verbs (Imai, Kita, Nagumo, & Okada, 2008). A question remained as to whether the Japanese children had picked up regularities in the Japanese sound-symbolic lexicon or were sensitive to universal sound-symbolism. The present study aimed to provide support for the latter. (...) In a verb generalization task, English-speaking 3-year-olds were taught novel sound-symbolic verbs, created based on Japanese sound-symbolism, or novel nonsound-symbolic verbs. English-speaking children performed better with the sound-symbolic verbs, just like Japanese-speaking children. We concluded that children are sensitive to universal sound-symbolism and can utilize it in word learning and generalization, regardless of their native language. (shrink)

Grammatical gender is independent of biological sex for the majority of animal names (e.g., any giraffe, be it male or female, is grammatically treated as feminine). However, there is apparent semantic motivation for grammatical gender classes, especially in mapping human terms to gender. This research investigated whether this motivation affects deductive inference in native German speakers. We compared German with Japanese speakers (a language without grammatical gender) when making inferences about sex-specific biological properties. We found that German speakers tended to (...) erroneously draw inferences when the sex in the premise and grammatical gender of the target animal agreed. An over-generalization of the grammar–semantics mapping was found even when the sex of the target was explicitly indicated. However, these effects occurred only when gender-marking articles accompanied the nouns. These results suggest that German speakers project sex-specific biological properties onto gender-marking articles but not onto conceptual representations of animals per se. (shrink)

This paper compares aspects of the thinking of Walter Benjamin and John Dewey. Both attempted to address the problem of ‘poverty of experience’ in modern society by means of an anti-dualistic concept of experience and the concept of media. These concepts can be observed optimally in their work on aesthetics. Such concepts of experience and media were the keys to the development of new conceptions of education. Differences in their understanding of media, however, led them to different strategies in the (...) development of their educational thought. The present paper will show that Benjamin's strategy offers a promising alternative to that of Dewey. (shrink)

In Japan during the 1980s, there was an interesting debate about how to teach the area of a parallelogram effectively to primary school children. Yutaka Saeki criticized the standard method, which relies on a cut-and-paste procedure. He argued that the standard method inevitably failed to convince children because it does not provide any cogent reason for them to accept that the formula ‘base x height’ is indeed true. Saeki proposed his own method using a bundle of paper. This method, however (...) convincing at first glance, was totally dismissed by Akira Nakagaki based on his orthodox scientific methodology. There emerged a lively debate between the two. By means of a reconstruction of this debate, this paper will show how the materiality of a thing can scaffold the process of gaining understanding of the concept of geometrical space. Although Saeki and Nakagaki were both unaware of the fact, the debate between them shows clearly that the convincing points of Saeki’s method rely on its material basis. The materiality of a thing can serve as a common basis, in which acquaintance in the context of everyday life is transgressed to the mathematical context. With this transgressive structure entailed in the materiality of a thing, children can be led to understand the spatial logic of the parallelogram, while they themselves make their own reasoning and judgement based on the context of their everyday lives. (shrink)

The target article proposed that women display greater self-protectiveness than men to major physical and social threats because such self-protective responses have higher fitness value for women than men. Rather than having evolutionary roots, we suggest the various physiological, behavioral, and emotional responses to social and physical threats exhibited more by women than men are instead rooted in sociocultural forces.

In German, nouns are assigned to one of the three gender classes. For most animal names, however, the assignment is independent of the referent’s biological sex. We examined whether German-speaking children understand this independence of grammar from semantics or whether they assume that grammatical gender is mapped onto biological sex when drawing inferences about sex-specific biological properties of animals. Two cross-linguistic studies comparing German-speaking and Japanese-speaking preschoolers were conducted. The results suggest that German-speaking children utilize grammatical gender as a cue (...) for inferences about sex-specific properties of animals. Further, we found that Japanese- and German-speaking children recruit different resources when drawing inferences about sex-specific properties: Whereas Japanese children paralleled their pattern of inference about properties common to all animals, German children relied on the grammatical gender class of the animal. Implications of these findings for studying the relation between language and thought are discussed. (shrink)

We suggest in this commentary an emotional origin of the Industrial Revolution. Specifically, increased living standards directly preceding the Industrial Revolution produced increased happiness and subjective well-being that, in turn, fueled the explosion of innovation and economic growth experienced in industrial England.

Recent advances in automation technology have increased the opportunity for collaboration between humans and multiple autonomous systems such as robots and self-driving cars. In research on autonomous system collaboration, the trust users have in autonomous systems is an important topic. Previous research suggests that the trust built by observing a task can be transferred to other tasks. However, such research did not focus on trust in multiple different devices but in one device or several of the same devices. Thus, we (...) do not know how trust changes in an environment involving the operation of multiple different devices such as a construction site. We investigated whether trust can be transferred among multiple different devices, and investigated the effect of two factors: the similarity among multiple devices and the agency attributed to each device, on trust transfer among multiple devices. We found that the trust a user has in a device can be transferred to other devices and that attributing different agencies to each device can clarify the distinction among devices, preventing trust from transferring. (shrink)

Against the background of current reforms in higher education, we analyze the traditional education of Japanese doctoral students in philosophy of education from Western and Japanese perspectives by focusing on learning as self-education, on being and learning with others, on the socialization into the profession, and on the study of the foreign subject. Imai's explication of the Japanese construction of the adult self as instrumental is compared to Gadamer's ideas on self-education and education with others. A significant element of (...) doctoral education in Japan involves the learning of certain forms ( kata ) of professional conduct: belonging to a group, occupying a clear position in the social hierarchy, and developing a close mentoring relationship that fosters strong feelings of loyalty, harmony and respect. Furthermore, reciprocal dependence ( amae ) is analyzed and contrasted with the Western ideal of autonomy and maturity. Finally, the study of the foreign subject is considered in light of Gadamer's and Hegel's notion of making a home in the alien. Saito affirms a cross-cultural reading of foreign philosophical texts, claiming that they destabilize the native culture and turn a teacher in philosophy of education into a translator and prophet of her own as well as the foreign culture. (shrink)