Bücher der Reihe SpringerBriefs in Theoretical Advances in Psychology

This Brief presents the argument for the need to re-establish the theoretical focus of general psychology in contemporary psychological research.

This Open Access Brief analyzes the dynamics in which childrenΓÇÖs selves emerge through their everyday activities of meaning construction, both in their relationships with family and within school education. It begins with a discussion of new psychological inquiries into children''s selves and builds upon the innovative theoretical notion of the Presentational Self, developed by the author over the last decade.The book illustrates how the observation of childrenΓÇÖs meaning construction in their everyday lives becomes a starting point for theoretical and empirical inquiries into child development and gives a framework that promotes new inquiries in this area. The book describes the Presentational Self Theory as a sense of how the notion of the Self is being worked upon in everyday life encounters. Chapters feature in-depth analyses of exchanges between adults and children in the Japanese cultural context. Meaning-Making for Living will be of interest to researchers and graduate students in the fields of cognitive, social, developmental, educational, and cultural psychology. 

This book is a theoretical account for general psychology of how human beings meaningfully relate with their bodies-- from the basic physiological processes upwards to the highest psychological functions of religiosity, ethical reasoning, and devotional practices.

This brief sets out on a course to distinguish three main kinds of thought that underlie scientific thinking. Current science has not agreed on an understanding of what exactly the aim of science actually is, how to understand scientific knowledge, and how such knowledge can be achieved.

This book aims to address the challenges of defining measurement in social sciences, presenting a conceptualization of the practice of measurement from the perspective of the pragmatic tradition in philosophy.The book reviews key questions regarding the scope and limits of measurement, emphasizing that if the trust that the public places on mea­sures in the social sciences relies on their connection to the notion of measurement in the physical sciences, then the clarification of the similarities and differences between measurement in the physical and the social realms is of central importance to adequately contextualize their relative advantages and limitations. It goes on to present some of the most influential theories of measurement such as the ¿classical view¿ of measurement, operationalism, and the representational theory of measurement, as well as more methodological perspectives arising from the practice of researchers in the social sciences, such as the latent variableperspective, and from the physical sciences and engineering, represented by metrology. This overview illustrates that the concept of measurement, and that of quantitative methods, is currently being used across the board in ways that do not necessarily conform to traditional, classical definitions of measurement, pushing the boundaries of what constitutes our technical understanding of it. Moreover, what constitutes a technical understanding of measurement, and the theoretical commitments that it entails, must vary in different areas. In this context, disagreement on what is constitutive of measurement is bound to appear.Pragmatism is presented as a theoretical perspective that offers the advantage of being flexible and fallibilist, encouraging us to abandon the pursuit of a timeless and perfect definition that attempts to establish decontextualized/definitive demarcation criteria for what is truly measurement.This book will be of particular interest for psychologists and other human and social scientists, and more concretely for scholars interested in measurement and assessment in psychological and social measurement. The pragmatic perspective of measurement presents a conceptual framework for researchers to ground their assessment practices acknowledging and dealing with the challenges of social measurement.