2004.01.25.

★14:30-17:00 Symposium on cultural psychology

Chair
Hajime Yoshida（Prof. of Ritsumeikan Univ.）

Panelists

Wolfgang Friedlmeier（Konstanz Univ.）

Interactive emotion regulation of mother-child dyads in Germany and Japan

Yasuko Minoura

（Prof. of Ochanomizu Woman's Univ.）

Maternal and Infant Health: A Neglected aspect of Cultural Psychology

Tatsuya Sato

（Assoc. Prof.of Ritsumeikan Univ.）

Money and Children in the culture of north-east Asia

Hisako Kakai

（Assoc. Prof. of Aoyamagakuin Univ.）

The development of critical thinking dispositions among college students in multicultural Hawaii

Yoko Yamada

（Prof. of Kyoto Univ.）

The generative life cycle model: The images of circular time and rebirth in Japanese culture




Discussants
Jaan Valsiner (Clark Univ.)
Hideo Kojima (Prof. of Kyoto gakuen Univ.)

Jaan Valsiner's comment on the symposium.

The Symposium on Cultural Psychology filled its intended function to its best-- to get together Japanese and visiting scholars from USA and Germany to discuss how to build new ways of studying cultural phenomena in psychology. I was very glad to learn from the presentations a number of very new notions that I had not known before.

Dr. Yamada made an elegant presentation showing how Japanese and European depictuions of life course differ, while fulfilling the same cultural psychological function of organizing the lives of the living in their everyday contexts. Dr. Kakai brought into the open discourse of the participants the issues of cultural regulation of critical thinking, demonstrating how different informants in Hawaii conceptualize what it means to advance critical approaches to thinking, and how the diaslogue between the person and the authority opinion proceeds.

Dr. Sato showed how the phenomenon of children asking for-- and receiving --or not receiving-- their pocket money is crucial for linking micro-cultural negotiations with wider societal issues of value socialization of children. Dr. Minoura dfemonstrated how cultural psychology is needed for introduction of international aid-- medical services-- in Third World countries. She mentioned a number of cultural-psychological barriers on the way of pregnant women to improved antenatal health care.

Dr. Friedlmeier showed how the same basic socioal process-- parents regulating children in their emotions-- can take two different structurede forms, one found more frequently in Germany and the other in Japan. Professor Hideo Kojima gave a constructive summary commentary on all of the presentations.

Jaan Valsiner
Kyoto, 26.01.2004

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