The Working Mind Meaning and Mental Attention in Human Development

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.

Juan Pascual-Leone is Professor of Psychology Emeritus and Senior Scholar at York University in Toronto. Once a student of Jean Piaget, he is a founder of neo-Piagetian approaches to cognitive development. Janice M. Johnson is Associate Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar at York University. Pascual-Leone and Johnson are Codirectors of the Developmental Processes Laboratory at York University.

Preface vii
Acknowledgments xiii
I Foundations of a Causal Constructivist Theory: Semiotic Processes
1 Dialectical Constructivism: The Working Mind Underlying
Working Memory 3
2 Problems of Cognitive Developmental Theory 33
3 Emergence of Mental Attention in Infancy:
From Sensorimotor to Symbolic Processing 61
4 Meaning, Mental Attention, and the Symbolic Function 119
II Theory of Constructive Operators (TCO)
5 Schemes/Schemas and Their Causal Constructivist Learning 141
6 Automatic Attention: Effortless, Perceptual, and Personal 181
7 Mental Attention, Intelligence, and Consciousness 205
III TCO, Task Analysis, and Neuroscience
8 Process Analysis and Mental Task Analysis: Foundations 257
9 Process and Mental Task Analysis: Methods and Examples 289
10 The Working Mind Inside a Working Brain:
A Neuropsychological Introduction 317
11 The Working Mind Inside a Working Brain: Functional Dimensions
in Brain Semiotics 359
12 The Working Mind Model across Human Domains 397
Appendix: On Metasubjective Task Analysis (MTA) 413
Glossary 421
Notes 427
References 435
Index 471