Universals of Human Thought
Some African Evidence

This book, focusing on Africa, attempts to identify substantive universals that underlie the social diversity across cultures.

Barbara Bloom Lloyd (Edited by), John Gay (Edited by)

9780521298186, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 5 March 1981

300 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.44 kg

This book was originally published in 1981 and the theme of universals attracted a great deal of attention in the decade preceding publication. Psychologists and linguists in particular attempted to identify substantive universals that underlie the social diversity across cultures, which anthropologists and others documented. The contributors to this volume all focus on the relevant data in Africa to explain and test the major questions at issue. The book is divided into three main sections, dealing respectively with perception, cognitive development and language. There is also a general Review and Prospectus by Jerome Bruner, and a wide-ranging introduction to the philosophical background by Ernst Gellner. The volume will be of particular interest to cross-cultural psychologists, linguists, Africanists and anthropologists.

Preface
Michael Ogbolu Okonji: African psychologist Herman A. Witkins
Contributors
1. General introduction: relativism and universals Ernest Gellner
Part I. Perception: 2. Pictorial perception and the problem of universals Gustav Jahoda
3. Tallensi children's drawings Meyer Fortes
4. Space and community behaviour: a discussion of the form and function of spatial order in settlements Roland Fletcher
5. Taxonomic and multi-dimensional representations of reality John Gay
Part II. Cognitive Development: 6. 'Strong' and 'weak' universals: sensori-motor intelligence and concrete operations Pierre Dasen
7. Psychological differentiation Ogbolu Okonji
8. Cognitive development, education and social mobility Barbara Lloyd
Part III. Language: 9. Language and learning: some observations on the linguistic determination of cognitive processes Nigel Lemon
10. The formation of relative clauses Bernard Comrie
11. Literacy and literature Ruth Finnegan
12. Review and prospectus Jerome Bruner
Indexes.

Subject Areas: Psychology [JM]