The Working Mind Meaning and Mental Attention in Human Development

• Main Author: Pascual-Leone, Juan (auth)
• Other Authors: Johnson, Janice M. (auth)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge The MIT Press 2021
• Series: The MIT Press
• Subjects: Neurosciences; Child & developmental psychology; cognitive development; endogenous; mental; or executive attention; working memory; mental processes in infancy; task analysis of symbolic processes; processing complexity; theory of constructive operators; neoPiagetian theory; constructivism; consciousness; schemes or schemas; cognitive neuropsychology; intelligence; developmental stages; schemes; theory of development; epistemology; dialectics; abstraction; dialectical constructivism; reality resistances; overdetermination; mental attention; causal theories; equilibration; accommodation; constructivist learning; functional invariants; misleading versus facilitating situations; learning paradox; reflective abstraction; mediation; Piagetian conservation; affect and emotion processes; sensorimotor stages; mental-attention in infancy; emergence of symbolic function; task analysis of infancy tasks; cognitive versus affective schemes; signals versus symbols; consciousness in infants; M-power versus M-demand trade-off; theory of mind; object permanence; semiotics; signalic versus symbolic function; iconic versus indexical function; distal versus proximal object; chimpanzees' symbols; intentionality; types of schemes; scheme learning; sensorimotor versus symbolic executives; hierarchical reinforcement learning; operative schemes; figurative schemes; executive schemes; resistances; expectancies; automatic or effortless attention; type-1 versus type-2 thinking; facilitating versus misleading situations; mental flow; automatic inhibition; internal field factor; mental or effortful attention; affects a
• Online Access: DOAB: download the publication; DOAB: description of the publication

A general organismic-causal theory that explicates working memory and executive function developmentally, clarifying the nature of human intelligence. In The Working Mind, Juan Pascual-Leone and Janice M. Johnson propose a general organismic-causal theory that explicates working memory and executive function developmentally and by doing so clarifies the nature of human intelligence. Pascual-Leone and Johnson explain "from within" (that is, from a subject's own processing perspective) cognitive developmental stages of growth, describing key causal factors that can account for the emergence of the working mind as a functional totality. Among these factors is a maturationally growing mental attention. After reviewing meaning-driven processes and constructivist knowledge principles that underlie what Pascual-Leone and Johnson term their Theory of Constructive Operators (TCO), they propose the TCO as as a developmental and neuropsychological approach to human cognitive and affective processes and their development. They present a novel method of mental task analysis that generates from-within process models of subjects' attempts to solve specific tasks. They provide an interpretation of brain semiotic processes that deploys TCO in functionally distinct brain locations. Finally, they show how TCO explicates complex human issues including consciousness, the self, the will, motivation, and individual differences, with applications in education, psychotherapy, and cognitive neuropsychology.