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- Convenors:
-
Greg Downey
(Macquarie University)
Cameron Hay (Miami University)
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- Sessions:
- Wednesday 7 April, -
Time zone: America/Chicago
Short Abstract:
This panel presents models of developmental and dynamic complexity and how they might be applied to psychological anthropology, such as looping effects of psychiatric diagnosis, development of skill acquisition and adaptation, and the ecocultural or social determinants of health and well being.
Long Abstract:
The widespread advocacy of biocultural approaches in psychological anthropology requires a step toward forms of biocultural analysis, including especially developmental and systems theories approaches. The complexity and sheer number of factors that might be relevant to human psychological diversity, from the microscopic to the macrosocial, pose significant challenges for analytical models. Many channels of influence, some of them bidirectional, cross the boundaries between categories like "biological" and "cultural," "social" and "psychological." This panel calls for presentations of models of developmental and dynamic complexity and how they might be applied to specific case studies in psychological anthropology, such as the looping effects of psychiatric diagnosis, developmental accounts of skill acquisition and adaptation over the lifecycle, and the ecocultural or social determinants of health and well being. Our goal in this panel is to offer techniques for analysing biocultural case studies that might be transferrable or generalisable but that go beyond simply advocating for biocultural analysis to providing concrete and testable models for different types of queries in psychological anthropology. We especially call for ethnographic case studies, core concepts grounded in concrete examples, and model analyses of biocultural interaction rather than programmatic statements; we seek to demonstrate how synthetic and holistic work might be done rather than arguing for its importance.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 7 April, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
Attention is a critical point in the school learning of indigenous children, since the school does not always consider the cultural attention that they use to learn. This occurs with rural Mapuche children who have sustained social attention and that the school system omits as a form of learning.
Paper long abstract:
The cognitive abilities of children are variable and adaptable to the contexts in which they develop (Keller & Kärtner, 2013). Considering this, this study looked for the differences in attention between Mapuche children from rural, urban and non-Mapuche urban areas, aged 9 up to 11 years, from Chile.
The attention it is a critical point in school learning that children with heritage indigenous have, since they must share the efforts to have sustained attention, with a selective attention (related to school) (Correa-Chávez, Rogoff & Mejía-Arauz, 2005).
Based on the study by Correa-Chávez and Rogoff (2009), the children were present at the demonstration of how to build a toy, but without an interaction directed to them. Mapuche rural children (whose mothers have an average of 9 years of Western schooling; 19 couples) had more sustained attention than non-Mapuche children (whose mothers average 13 years of Western schooling; 19 couples), and more than urban Mapuche children (whose mothers have an average of 12 years of participation in Western schooling; 13 couples). In addition, the urban non-Mapuche children interrupted more frequently than the other children.
The results are consistent with the research developed under the LOPI model, which shows that the organization of learning in indigenous communities emphasizes attention and observation in ongoing interactions (López et al., 2010). The implications of the findings for the theoretical field are discussed.
Paper short abstract:
We take a dynamic systems approach to medically unexplained illness using "Long Covid" as a case study. Applying a "biolooping" model, we explore how individual, social, and political processes interact with biological ones to shape bodily states and how they are perceived and made meaningful.
Paper long abstract:
Functional Neurological Disorder (FND), also known as Conversion Disorder, is distinguished by symptoms that mimic those of other neurological disorders like epilepsy or Parkinson's disease, but without apparent pathophysiology. FND is surprisingly widespread, yet notoriously poorly treated, with long term studies showing that over half of patients do not recover. As with many other "medically unexplained illnesses," sufferers of FND are disproportionately female (80%) and are often greeted with doubt and the suggestion that their symptoms are "merely" psychological in origin. In this paper, we use a dynamic systems approach to better understand the complex biosocial processes through which medically unexplained symptoms materialize. We explore how such states of illness emerge from the interactions of multiple subsystems within the individual, which are themselves part of a larger system that includes the lived environment. Using FND as a case study, we specifically propose what we call a "biolooping" model for understanding how individual, social, and political processes interact with biological ones to shape both bodily states and the way they are perceived and made meaningful by people, in continuous, reinforcing cycles. We analyze data from studies of FND, support group websites and patient narratives, and apply concepts from cutting edge research in the neurosciences, to explore the processes through which bodily sensations come to be perceived as symptoms of a particular illness, and the dynamic feedback through which their meanings come to affect underlying bodily states.
Paper short abstract:
This paper synthesizes methods drawn from comparative human development, cognitive science, and Indigenous Knowledge Systems. Two cases are examined to frame collaboration as embodied interaction in a singular, continuous process, rather than divided into biological and cultural domains..
Paper long abstract:
This paper articulates an approach to understanding collaboration that treats embodied interaction as a singular process rather than as the linking of separate divided-off skills, treated as objects. By describing two specific cases, I offer a synthesis of research stemming from comparative human development, cognitive science, and Indigenous Knowledge Systems. I contrast this process approach with research in mainstream social cognitive development that is based on the idea that collaboration develops by putting together separate abilities or skills widely thought to underlay collaboration, such as joint attention, imitation, helping, gaze following, pointing, and symbolic play, as if they are objects (or domains) existing independently of each other (Callaghan, Moll, Rakoczy, Warneken, Liszkowski, Behne, & Tomasello, 2011). Instead, I describe collaborative engagement in terms of culturally variable interactional synchrony events. This is simpler than an object-based approach. I focus on key cases from empirical work that describes collaborative engagement at a scale of fractions of seconds (Dayton, Aceves Azuara, & Rogoff, in prep) as well as theoretical work that contends that collaboration across micro and historical scales is a unified, continuous process (Dayton & Rogoff, 2016). This paradigm fundamentally includes cultural variation rather than introducing it as an additional empirical question. Likewise, this approach requires no presumption of “mental” activity for coherence. Finally, it allows me to generate and examine new theoretical predictions that conventional theory and methods cannot.
Paper short abstract:
Free divers hold their breaths up to eight minutes. Divers maintain breath holds past the ‘breakpoint,’ through the ‘struggle’ phase, and into serious hypoxia. Developmental systems analysis finds different stages of skill acquisition, using resources internal and external to the nervous system.
Paper long abstract:
Free divers develop the ability to hold their breath for up to eight minutes. Developmental systems analysis of stages in the acquisition of the skill reveals a series of different transformations in which the system undergoing change and the resources in play fundamentally reconfigure. Breath-hold divers, or “apnoeists,” make use of a variety of resources, both internal and external to the nervous system. As apnoeists learn to maintain breath holds past the normal ‘breakpoint,’ through the ‘struggle’ phase, and into more serious hypoxia, the skill acquisition process requires varied social, practical, perceptual, and neurological elements at different stages.
The example of learning to hold the breath for long periods clearly illustrates broader patterns of enculturation and skill acquisition, including how regimes of training involve quite distinctive stages where the ‘system’ producing greater expertise fundamentally varies. No single factor reliably drives each stage. Increased performance requires a sequenced set of processes, some in which cause and effect appear to alter significantly. The ongoing guided canalization of developmental neuroplasticity obviates the divide between the biological and cultural over time and shows the usefulness of a fine-grained developmental systems approach for examining how the nervous system can be encultured. This case study is part of a broader attempt to strengthen developmental systems analysis in biocultural approaches to issue in psychological anthropology, in this case, to skill acquisition and bodily enculturation.