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This paper describes an experiment in which 30 students, classified according to high and low analytical performance, were given a reading and text production test to determine their sensibility to the structure of an Icelandic saga. This material was used because of its extreme simplicity on the textual surface level, a property suited for studying structure as something beyond the surface. The hypothesis tested is whether the structure mediated though the produced texts pertains to a descriptive dimension, implying analytic sensibility or to a reflective dimension, indicating synthetic sensibility. Hence, the aim of the experiment was to demonstrate the extent to which a certain learning strategy is governing the pick-up and production of a particular structure. Since synthesis is connected with structure, it implies that synthesis can only be studied through the structure of text production. In advancing the bio-kinetic hypothesis that the complexity and nonlinear dynamics of a produced discourse can be approached on the basis of the Agent-action-Objective (AaO) paradigm, it is shown that the derived [AaO] units rotate and AaO-governed rotations are including A- and O- functions that can be imaged in real time. On the basis of two discourses concerning the Icelandic saga, it is demonstrated that a system of [AaO] units has the capacity to keep track of rotations and to assemble textual elements that fit into the structure of a particular text. Discourse (A) has been shown to produce a state space in which the terminus, associated with the global state attractor, communicates an inevitable course of events, while the other (B) communicates boldness as final outcome. Thus, the results of the experiment make evident that significant differences in emergent consciousness are crucially dependent on structural sensibility and the developed learning strategies. (Contains 10 figures and 15 references.) (SLD)

This article presents the third study of a series that has been designed to manifest consciousness and to measure developed competence. The emphasis of the main hypothesis of this experiment has been put on the students ability to adapt to the main idea of a given story and to express his comprehension verbally. The way the two students of the previous two experiments have been able to accomplish the experimental task is reflected in the state attractors of the produced fitness landscapes. The student who has continued to follow the analytic-descriptive approach has focused on the conditions of that part of the study that relates to a critic of empiricism. Since it has been shown that the process of naming the resulting state attractors provides a sound theoretical basis, it can be concluded that the student has not been conscious of this purpose and consequently has been unable to abstract the criticism of empiricism. In contrast, the other student has continued to follow the synthetic-reflective approach. The produced narrative has made it evident that this student has been able to abstract the criticism of idealism. It follows that the proper outcome is "rationalism," which is validating that the degree of developed competence can be approached in a direct and obvious manner. (Author/SLD)

This paper presents the second study in a series that has been designed to manifest the emergence of consciousness and to measure developed competence. Its major aim has been to demonstrate that an invariant formulation of the Agent-action-Objective model and an analysis of it's a-O kinematics have the capacity to reproduce contour similarity over time. Within the studied evolutionary-developmental context, the biokinetics of the discovered AaO-mechanism has governed the synthesizing of information. Through the design of a single-subject experiment, it has been possible to demonstrate individual variations in growth as changes in complexity. When the two participating students are compared, obvious differences in their perspectives and consequently in their attractor spaces become apparent. Based on coordinated structural invariance, it has been possible to show that the convoluted spaces of the student who has followed the analytic-descriptive approach is concerned with the concrete level of the tested story. On the other hand, the student who is following a synthetic-reflective strategy seems to concentrate mainly on the symbolic level of the tested materials. Thus, from a developmental point of view, it has been possible to demonstrate that the AaO-mechanism is tracing embodied growth, which becomes manifest in the differences of the students' ability to adapt to the main idea of the given story. (Contains 8 figures and 14 references.) (Author/SLD)

The Agent-action-Objective (AaO) axiom and the theory of rotational dynamics constitute the frame of reference for the study of the metaphor as instrument for the direct perception of events. The major hypothesis of this frame of reference refers to the event structure embedded in the ground of a metaphor. Since the ground is implicit in the linguistic manifestation, an invariant representation of textual movement patterns is assumed to capture the event structure. Experimentally, it is demonstrated that an event is perceivable only through structure. To capture the event means to conserve its structure through informational invariants. As a result, it is demonstrated that the functional symmetry of a metaphor can be established in the form of state attractors evolving in attractor spaces. (Contains 3 figures and 34 references.) (Author/SLD)

This paper advances the bio-kinetic hypothesis that the Agent-action-Objective (AaO) axiom constitutes the only valid foundation for a behavioral expression of the informational dimensions contained in natural language. Based on the bookkeeping capacity of the discovered AaO mechanism, it is shown that this mechanism can capture emergent (AaO) units and track their growth in complexity. Through individual variations in the growth of the components as well as the variations in nesting, it is demonstrated that structural stability and textual morphogenesis generates corresponding informational invariants. Furthermore, on the basis of the translation function, it is shown that a sequential translation of an original text to Swedish and from Swedish to Italian produces the condition for an effective control of interplay between textual agents (A) and textual objectives (O) within a system of language specific coordinates. Based on coordinated structural invariants, it is shown that convoluted structures are pointing toward the presence of a biologically determined interplay between a produced perspective and stated objectives. (Contains 10 figures and 13 references.) (Author/SLD)

This paper is a direct continuation of the experimental evaluation of the basic space-hypothesis explored in Real Time Imaging of the Rotation Mechanism Producing Interview-based Language Spaces. This project has required that different pars, the spaces of the A- and O-domains, be related and contrasted. In this paper the focus is on the rotation-translation hypothesis. This paper demonstrates that the oscillations in pattern dynamics produce perspective transformations of motifs and themes. Motifs are assumed to carry intentional cues and to locate structurally the observers thematic orientation. At the kinematic level, this condition has made it possible to extract different perspective orientations. It is demonstrated that the asymptotic behavior of evolving motifs provides the basis for a thermodynamic description of an original Swedish sample text and to compare the description with the dynamics induced through its translation into English. As a result, it is shown that the original and its translation share highly similar informational invariants. This means that their attractor spaces are structurally alike. With reference to the general recognition problems, the capacity to induce dynamics in another system and to demonstrate their similitude has meaning and important implications for further analyses and system synthesis. (Contains 3 tables, 5 figures, and 22 references.) (Author/SLD)

No one has ever been able to look into the language space, nor has anyone been able to measure the phenomenon of consciousness without the interference of an observer. This article changes the situation, showing that from now on it is possible to produce measures of consciousness without the presence of classical observation devices. The observation problem can be bypassed since the "observer" is part of the "observed." This means that the phenomenon is describing itself. Since there is no longer any need for mirroring the state of consciousness by the state of an apparatus, the classical problem of an observation on the apparatus has disappeared. It is shown in this paper that the measurement situation has been changed fundamentally. A full description is attainable through the establishment of the geometrical shapes of involuted textual flows. In a simulation experiment, the captions of the Visual Cliffs experiment (E. Gibson and R. Walk, 1960) were explored. The hypothesis of this experiment was that a subtle interplay between the oscillation of textual strings and the winding of work cycles creates the language space. The significance of the analysis of the language space is in the determination of the phase transitions involved on the kinetic level and in the determination of the flow morphology of the text at different occasions of change. (Contains 11 references.) (SLD)

A method for providing a synthesis of the perspective that a text producer gives to a text in the moment of its production is presented in the form of a dialogue between reader and author. Perspective Text Analysis, the system presented, is a basic methodological part of a larger system of analyses. Linguistic data in the form of free text production is important so that the prejudices and attitudes, that both the researcher and the text producer may have, do not enter into the researcher's analysis. This guide describes the fundamentals of the method, and the principles of test analysis are given through prototypical examples. The applied model is based on the assumption that its components are reflecting "perspectivation," in which a source and one or more operators can be distinguished and differentiated from one another in the building up of a perspective. When the perspective is formed, the text producer takes a position toward something he or she wants to express. (Contains 41 references.) (SLD)

A simulation experiment demonstrated that the perceptual sensitivity of Swedish and Danish students at upper secondary school level varies systematically concerning the basic conditions for "personal growth." An attempt is made to constrain this concept contextually, in such a way that it can be described behaviorally. It is made evident that Swedish students are certain that only a society founded on the principles of behavior modification can provide the conditions for their personal growth. In contrast, Danish students have demonstrated a higher degree of differential sensitivity to contextual variations. Consequently, for them, a society that is building on behavioristic principles accommodates significantly different conditions for personal growth compared to a society building on process principles. Moreover, all three prototypical societies are discerned to have significantly fewer favorable conditions for the development of Life Quality (LQ) compared to the conditions of the Danish society. However, with respect to its surface conditions, the latter is determined to be highly similar to the social texture of the prototypical society which is obeying the principles of the process paradigm. Contains 7 tables of data and 30 references. (Author/BT)

This article focuses on the perception of the surface and deep dimensions of a society and its relation to competence. Participants were 117 students from various educational programs in a Swedish gymnasium who were exposed to videotaped projections of model societies on 2 occasions. They responded to 15 statements marking the degree of certainty with which they perceived quality of life in these societies. The instrument measured life quality (LQ) in a society by two factors, Eigenvalue (F1) and Visibility of Social Texture (F2). The model societies were based on three modes of modeling man interacting with his society, specifically on the concepts of: (1) behaviorism; (2) structuralism; and (3) process. The function of these concepts had been made to specify an actual society, namely Sweden. It was assumed that Sweden was familiar to the participants, but conceptually unknown. Between the two video occasions students were given a 9-week course in modern ideas and concepts, especially those from 20th century novels that connect to the three models. The certainty with which the students perceived the Eigenvalue and its conservation in Social Texture in the four societies differed significantly from the first to the second occasion. The first time, the only society that meets the requirements is the society based on behavior modification, while the other three seem unspecified to all the students. The second time there is a dramatic change in that Sweden now was assessed with the highest certainty, and secondly that is was conceptualized mainly by the behaviorist model. The study shows that the students have augmented their conceptual understanding of the dimensionality of a society and have come to "know" the society in which they live. (Contains 1 table, 4 figures, and 25 references.) (SLD)

This article presents a competence-oriented experiment on the comprehension of ideas in modern literature. Comprehension is defined as being indicative of competence as opposed to qualification. Participants were 117 students from various educational programs in a Swedish gymnasium course on modern literature and society. Students were exposed to three videotaped projections of model societies on two occasions. They then responded to 15 propositions about the quality of life in the proposed societies using an instrument that measured competence of civilization through two factors, eigenvalues (F1) and visibility of social texture (F2). The model societies represent three dimensions of ideas connected to three scientific paradigms: affinity, structure, and process. These dimensions had been related and discussed in conjunction with the literary and cultural concepts of behaviorism, structuralism, and functionalism. Before the participants' second exposure to the video, they were given a recognition test in which they were asked to react to 15 ideas, each of which described an idea discussed. According to the analysis of variance there is a significant degree of difficulty in the ideas but no difference at all between the classes. The degree of difficulty was used to establish a super-ordinal scale that measures comprehension of ideas linked to the cultural dimensions of society. The values on the F1 and F2 competence factors were filtered through the values on the literary scale, making the dimensions of the model societies that describe degrees of competence apparent. These results show that literature is an instrument for perceiving the disparity of a society and for developing competence, provided that its basic idea is transparent. (Contains 6 tables, 3 figures, and 16 references.) (Author/SLD)

This paper presents the geometric foundation and quantification of Agent-action-Objective (AaO) kinematics. The meaningfulness of studying the flows in verbal expressions through splitting and splicing the strings in a verbal flow related to the fact that free parameters are not needed since it is not required that the presented methodological development fits one or another empirical context. The major aim is to make evident that natural language employs its own intrinsic system of coordinates. These coordinate systems are transforming kinetic energy into discoverable verbal flows. It is demonstrated that language must be conceived of as a natural system that becomes structured through rhythmic driving forces. The presented results give weight to the hypothesis that rotational dynamics is basic to the effects that selective textual movement patterns have on the evolution of texture; i.e., a text surface. Since the experimental procedure focused on the manipulation of text translation, asymmetries, and phrase translation, it has been possible to show that translators meet the same functional requirements in different ways, but are producing multiple stable trajectories of similar kinds. The studied text example, with English and Swedish translations, shows that the dynamics induced through translations produce a deeply ingrained commonalty. Relative phase stability in the developing strands has revealed that the mechanism is generating symmetries. Since the symmetries are the consequence of processing, apparent contour similarity has important theoretical implications. (Contains 8 figures, 1 table, and 22 references.) (SLD)

Perspective Text Analysis is a way to measure competence by measuring the strategy of synthesizing, which intelligence tests or questionnaires cannot measure. This paper proposes the use of Perspective Text Analysis in the study of instructional materials. Perspective Text Analysis has been applied in various learning environments, and the results have shown the ways in which people adapt their thinking and action to situational constraints. Previous research has confirmed that the quality of instructional materials is crucial for the development of competence. Perspective Text Analysis can be used to analyze text materials for their conceptual relations so that they can govern learning situations. A theory of the construction of materials for the humanities and social sciences is also proposed as a new field of research. The starting point for studies in this field is a test that contains materials grouped according to the degree of difficulty in comprehension. The degrees of difficulty are related to three commonly accepted scientific models that build on the conceptual relations of behaviorism, cybernetics, and Gestalt psychology. Texts related to these models have been analyzed and their quality determined through Perspective Text Analysis. The materials can be compared with texts written by students as a way of defining the students' knowing or competence. The final part of this paper provides examples of prototypical studies in this area, showing some possible lines to follow when one wishes to introduce a humanistically based theory of materials into learning and judgment situations. (Contains 68 references.) (Author/SLD)

Two scientific ideas have been discerned in 20th century thinking: the structuralism common in Europe and the functionalism apparent in the United States. This paper presents two experiments in text analysis. One discusses the behaviorist writing style of Ernest Hemingway. It hypothesizes that since he is a behaviorist in practice, he should be a functionalist in thought. The basis for this hypothesis is the functionalistic Visual Cliff experiments in which a device was built for testing depth perception with the use of a behavior component. A text sample from Hemingway's 1927 short story, "The Killers," was studied through Perspective Text Analysis, and the result, portrayed in graphical terms, shows consistency between mind and practice in the sense that Hemingway is proved to be a functionalist throughout. The second experiment concerns the analysis of a test item that is supposed to be a description of the idea of functionalism. It has been difficult for students to distinguish this item from an item describing behavioralism. Using the same method, Perspective Text Analysis, it is shown that the item is a real representation of functionalism in that its functional component is transparent through the behavioral. It is concluded that the result of the two experiments is an invariant structure of the idea of functionalism. (Contains 9 figures and 27 references.) (SLD)

This report presents basic theoretical and methodological assumptions for investigating the relationship between competence and qualifications by means of simulation tasks. An analysis of the types of tasks that have been used in the study of problem solving psychology serves as a background for an exposition of the relationship between competence and qualifications. The vehicle for investigating competence and qualifications is the INTOPIA computer program, which simulates a virtual international reality of global enterprises from construction of plants to the sale and financing of products. Findings are reported from a pilot experiment involving two teams of two adults each, the aim of which was to examine the feasibility of using the program in research. Findings indicate that the number of sessions needs to be reduced from the amount used in the teaching situation for which it was developed originally. The issues for investigation in a forthcoming experiment and the tool to be used for modeling the behavior of subjects are outlined. (Contains 35 references.) (Author/SLD)

A dialogue between two secondary school students engaged in solving a problem is the basis for the assertion that the students differ in their problem solving capabilities; that is, they reduce the complexity of the situation in different ways. The discussion also suggests that students do not use the same form of competence. They make sense of the complex situation in different ways. It is also maintained that existing theories are able to explain different aspects of the problem solving process and competence. However, because no single theory encompasses all the aspects, a more comprehensive theory is proposed. This theory encompasses the notion that the person, through ideas, is able to consider and anticipate problem solving operations, thus displaying competence. More precisely, the person is in control through four processes: (1) efficacy, the degree to which the person experiences the feeling of control of the problem solving process itself; (2) achievement, the degree to which the person experiences that he or she is approaching the goal; (3) ruggedness, the degree of difficulty the person feels he or she has to overcome to solve the problem; and (4) availability, the degree to which the person feels that he or she has access to vital resources. With this frame of reference, an interpretation of the two students' problem solving processes is carried out using Perspective Text Analysis (B. Bierschenk and I. Bierschenk, 1993), a technique for making visible the structural relations of texts. It is also suggested that it is possible to apply catastrophe theory to make a model of problem-solving behavior. (Contains 8 figures and 29 references.) (Author/SLD)

The focus of this article is whether pure literature can contribute to education. As part of the study of modern literature in Swedish upper secondary school, novels about the future were examined, especially some that take a critical position toward modern civilization. In an experiment using the Perspective Text Analysis approach of B. Bierschenk and I. Bierschenk (1993), a master text was chosen that had shown the theoretically rooted dimensionality of "futurism" as a socially valid concept. Students (18 year olds) were given the task of writing about a novel using concepts from the master text, focusing on "public morality" for the analysis. The hypothesis tested was that a novel writer contributed to the edification of the public only if he or she translates some structural dimension in an ongoing process of civilization. To this translation is attached the sense of public morality. The three novels studied were "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley (1932), "En levande sjal" ("A Living Soul") by P. C. Jersild (1980), and "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood (1985). The study found that when the students' responses were matched against the master structure, only one of the three novels, Huxley's "Brave New World," met the criterion of being educational with respect to futurism. It contributes to education by mediating an ideology behind a civilization process with a sense of morality. (Contains 18 references.) (SLD)

The purpose of this paper is to explain how the Swedish citizen has developed his (or her) judgment concerning quality of life, attributable to real and simulated civilizations. It builds on a previous research report (B. Bierschenk, 1997) about three model societies that have been studied with the assumptions that: (1) competition implies selection; (2) selection implies independence; and (3) independence implies success. In this article it is shown that "certainty in preferential judgment" (judgment of life quality) constitutes a behavioral expression of survival competence. With a focus on the demonstrative definition of competence as development at the edge of competition and success, the study has generated two topographically derived scales. One is a time scale (T1) that is local and measures ecological variation. The other is a time scale (T2) that is global and measures evolution. (Contains 2 tables, 12 figures, and 8 references.) (Author/SLD)

"Scanator" (a modern, ecological psychophysics encompassing a cohesive set of theories and methods for the study of mental functions) provides the basis for a study of "competence," the capacity for making sense in complex situations. The paper develops a functional model that forms a theoretical expression of the phenomenon of leadership. The essential reasoning underlying this work is that organizing principles, and coordinating cooperation in particular, which are known at the biological level, can be transferred to the psychological level to make the phenomenon of leadership intelligible. The mental expression of competence, the holophor, can by means of Scanator, be described topologically as a cohesive set of stable attractors which encompass information in the form of ideas. It is the coordination of the holophors created through competence which forms the basis for understanding the concept of leadership. The coordination process (coordinating cooperation) is analyzed as an innovative searching process, which aims at establishing a stable state: the superholophor. A series of hypotheses are postulated concerning the functional nature of leadership. A small-scale empirical investigation of cooperation between two college students was undertaken. Prior to the commencement of their cooperation, the students were asked to describe their expectations of the cooperation, which they were subsequently similarly asked to describe. Results support the theory postulated--the expectation holophor of one student is embedded in the cooperation holophor of the other, and vice versa. Contains 23 references and 21 figures of data. (Author/RS)

This study, which includes data collected over a 15 year period, examines to what degree Swedish citizens' judgment concerning life quality is attributed to perceptions of real or simulated models of civilization. Subjects selected for the research study included Swedish male and female teachers, and doctoral students in business administration. The research instrument used required subjects to watch a video series that presented a vision of the U.S. society during the 1970s. The subjects were then asked to respond to questions regarding how they imagine themselves living in that society. Responses were expected to reflect initial assumptions that (1) competition implies selection; (2) selection implies independence; and (3) independence implies success. The subjects' notions of himself or herself as competent and successful in the simulated situation appears to be at stake. Subjects who emerge from "certainty in preferential judgment" concerning the possibility to integrate are seen as demonstrating a fundamental psychological expression of competence. Subjects' competence is judged in terms of perceived appropriateness in ability to meet the demands of certain environments. Findings suggest that Swedish citizens imagine potential life quality within simulated society in terms relative to self-judgments regarding their own competence or success in real-life situations. (Contains 23 references.) (MM)

Classical research operations in the cognitive sciences concern categorizations as well as classifications, and have been strongly influenced by nomological approaches. As a consequence, information processing has been explained with reference to syntactic-semantic models. Because of an absence of structural implications, personal interpretations have had great impact on the presentation of results of relevance to the cognitive sciences. In contrast, this article deals with the concept of "process" and an approach that takes its departure from text-building behavior and the oscillations of this behavior. The task of process is to give expression to textual movements and the dynamics of movements. With respect to this investigation, which analyzes text produced in an interview with an official of a municipality, quantitative transformations of scale as well as frame of reference have made it evident that a nonmechanical coupling of intention and orientation captures the perspective underlying a verbal flow without the mediation of organizational processes. The analysis reveals that verbal flows are structuring the textual system directly by producing their own internal constraints. Morphological profiles of speech patterns have been produced. It is characteristic of these profiles that they manifest time-dependent system states and state attractors. These are the results of an interplay of perspective and objective. The discovery of recursive phase singularities constitutes a significant discernment of the involved physical mechanism. (Contains 1 table, 12 figures, and 11 references.) (Author/SLD)

The consciousness of dizygotic twins in their communication of actions and events as seen in the visual cliff pictures published by E. J. Gibson and R. D. Walk (1960) was studied in Sweden. In the process of communication, many different state spaces are generated. The methodology demonstrates that ecological and biophysical properties of language produce unique morphological profiles. Four pairs of twins were exposed to these pictures in a classroom setting, and the text they built in response to the pictures was studied. The focus is on one pair of dizygotic twins between 16 and 17 years of age. At the kinetic level, stable relationships are identified among naturally occurring periods, mass, and length of text. The relating invariants are demonstrated through a multivariate statistical strategy involving an analysis of variance, an indexing of the size of effects, and a regression analysis. At the kinematic level, adiabatic trajectories are apparent, for which underlying state spaces and interrelated metrics are shown to be dependent on the particular text producer. It is made evident that a certain degree of consciousness is carried by a particular kind of concepts and conceptual relations. Finally, it is concluded that perceiving a phenomenon differs not only in degree but in kind from conceiving its consequences. Results also support the use of the Scanator methodology developed by B. Bierschenk as a way to keep track of unitizing activities. An appendix presents the original Swedish text produced by the four subjects. (Contains 18 figures, 7 tables, and 26 references.) (SLD)

A new approach to the study of text building behavior is possible through the application of Scanator. This paper consists of a demonstration of some of its fundamental functions. These are suitable in a study of text building. The basic concepts, expressed through an analysis of a small part of an interview text, derive from a thermodynamic treatment of text building. In a first phase, text material is transposed and arranged for automatic processing. Constituent of this phase are five components. A second phase is associated with joining and linking processes. At the kinetic level they provide for the book-keeping of reversible and irreversible flows. Through channelling of textual elements, supplementary operations fill out all places where textual material is lacking. The second phase terminates when all involved processes have reached their steady states. Strings of graphemes give rise to larger functional units through partial qualifications. Results demonstrate how points relate at various distances, pressures, and forces; and that points of different kind are separable when the distance measures reach their critical limit. At this limit, a third phase comes into existence. Processing during this phase concerns the assembling of point into natural groups and the naming of these groups. That verbal flow processes can be specified at the kinetic level suggests that point attractors can be named. When the curvatures of point attractors lean toward a virtual midpoint it becomes possible to demonstrate their state attractor. Results show that a state attractor is the proper constraint of its underlying kinetic processes. Contains 11 references, and 11 tables and 8 figures of data. (Author/RS)

Natural systems are self-organizing and stratify according to the angular articulation of their movements. In particular, movement is relative to the levels that define its behavior space. As natural phenomenon, text production is self-referential, In generating information, the intention of the producer of a text becomes specified. Specifying of intention is dependent on phase and phase transitions. In agreement with realized phase values, spanning over 360 degrees, co-ordination and cooperation among parts is of significance. Joints and links are channelling textual elements. A mapping procedure is locating the discontinuities by keeping track of changes, flows, and rhythms. This is a more elastic and fluid strategy, compared to former approaches. The discontinuities are used in the description of states and state changes across the kinetic and kinematic levels of verbal flow fields. It is shown that novel properties have emerged along the adiabatic paths of the investigated text. This means that attractors of points and attractors of states have manifested informational structures that are more elaborated than the previous studies could show. Contains 15 references and 10 figures of data; an appendix contains a table of data. (Author/RS)

Scanator is an extremely valuable tool in the functional analysis of qualitative stability in text building behavior during writing. Scanator also allows for a detailed investigation of subtle changes emerging in the structural relations of emergent novelties. This study focused on the extension of the application of Scanator to one pair of dizygotic (DZ) twins. Specifically, the study examined whether DZ twins differ in their mental structures as they construct text. The test material consisted of a series of pictures in which a baby is navigating a visual cliff--a sheet of glass between the child and its mother. Subjects wrote a 5-page essay in Swedish, rewrote the essay, constructed an abstract of the essay, then wrote the essay in English. The Scanator results did not indicate any systematic differences. A powerful effect was found in the cohesion of the produced verbal flows, but no such effect was evident in the elasticity of text volume flows. Contains 13 references. (Author/MDK)

Whether children shift their interpretations of a metaphor according to the social role of the speaker and the addressee of the sentence or the degree of lexicalization of the metaphor and the child's age was studied using a simple metaphorical sentence and animal terms. The 12 animal terms produced 6 lexicalized and 6 new metaphors. Metaphors were embedded in short stories with: (1) speaker and addressee both children; (2) child speaker and teacher addressee; (3) teacher speaker and child addressee; and (4) speaker and addressee both teachers. The 48 stories were told to 72 children aged 6, 9, and 11 years, and each child was asked what the speaker intended to mean and whether he or she had positive or negative feelings for the addressee. The paraphrases children gave for each metaphor were analyzed, and data were tabulated as to perceptual dimensions. Children aged 9 and 11, but not 6-year-olds, acknowledged the role of the speaker and the addressee, requiring more words to interpret the metaphor presented by a teacher to another teacher than to interpret the metaphor addressed by a child to another child. The meaning of the same metaphor also changed with the child's age. (Contains 7 figures, 9 tables, and 13 references.) (SLD)

A method for the assessment of competence in language is suggested that allows a new approach to the study of the sources and conditions of competence development. The method builds on the functional analysis of text building behavior, making use of the discontinuities in produced text as the only reliable observations from a scientific point of view. The method is known as Perspective Text Analysis. It characterizes the mechanism that has been discovered to govern text production and to foster an understanding of the actual processes of movement in language. The functional analysis of qualitative stability in text building behavior incorporates the double aspect of time into the approach, partly through an algorithm that takes care of the dynamics in text building behavior, and partly through the sequencing in text production that secures its evolutionary aspect. Aspects of competence are presented concerning five different areas. By means of global state attractors resulting from the perspective of anticipated consequences, mental determinants are presented. On the basis of established temporal morphologies, the kinds of determinants that constrain one's thinking under various experimental conditions are shown. Five tables illustrate concepts under discussion. (Contains 35 references.) (SLD)

Because computer-oriented researchers apply cognitive notions such as meaning, symbol and understanding, or concept, cognition and knowledge, it has become mandatory to inquire into the traditional explanatory models of science, including behaviourism. The article outlines the steering and control mechanism that has governed a new outlook in which subjective mental states become functionally interactive and essential for a full explanation of conscious behaviour. The presented model has governed a comprehensive exploration into Cognitive Science. Its purpose was to digest the viewpoints of "hard" science and to compare the transformation with the value-assumption underlying many of the approaches favoured by behavioural scientists. Advanced methods have been developed. For this reason, they have been analysed with respect to changes in both intention and orientation. These processes are highly dependent on the relations between natural language expressions and their underlying mentality. It is demonstrated that the frequently occurring non-additive effects of cognitive functions as design variables necessitate a research effort that concentrates on the instrumental functions of natural language. Each of the identified functions is studied as variable on the basis of a recurrent two-by-two factorial design. The approach stresses the fact that a variable in one developmental phase is treated as independent variable, whereas its re-appearance in the succeeding phase results in its treatment as dependent variable. The study of co-variation and interaction of the variables seems to be the only way to shed light on the confounded discussion of the traditional science-value dichotomy in Cognitive Science. The new methodological approach consists of a calculus that preserves responsibility as its constituent component. The calculus has progressively been introduced during the development of the presented double helical architecture, which is the result of an unfolding of the AaO-formula into a cognitive system. Seven figures illustrate the discussion. (Contains 82 references.) (Author)

This is the second paper in a series of three, the objective of which is to describe the fundamental discontinuities of human existence. Self-reference is explored in the first section of this paper, arguing that neither time-space nor developmental dimensions are adequate to explain the problem of self-reference. It is argued that self-reference might indeed be an uncognizable degree of freedom that governs human existence. The founding propositions of the discontinuity theory then state that human existence subexists as difference, time-space, development, and self-reference. The second section maintains that human existence can be modeled as discursive strings encompassing a context-agent enacting an agent enacting an objective, where the objective itself can be an agent enacting an objective, and so on. The general theory of discontinuity is described in section 2. Section 3 encompasses the specific theory of discontinuity that builds on the heritage of classic theories explored in part 1. The theory encompasses three different forms of development: (1) canalization, which includes perspectivizing; (2) correlation, which includes systematizing; and (3) combination, which encompasses organizing. Nineteen figures illustrate the discussion. (Contains 18 references.) (SLD)

The third in a series of three reports draws on earlier discussion of theories of discontinuity in human existence to develop a method for studying individual perceptions of existence. The method is Perspective Text Analysis, a form of discourse analysis that focuses on self-reference as a reflection of competence. The model for the methodology is first outlined, and the computer program used to perform the text analysis is explained. Application of the analysis to one text, a Danish company employee's comments concerning a job for which he was applying, is examined and the results compared with the subject's self-assessment and a psychologist's report on the individual. The text that was analyzed is also presented. Contains 20 references. (MSE)

The first in a series of three reports on philosophy of human existence focuses on human activity in the economic context, or more specifically, the role of the entrepreneur. A variety of treatments of entrepreneurship in the literature of economics and cognitive psychology are examined, and it is found that analyses of entrepreneurship are inhibited by the unclarified relationship between the singular (individual) and the super singular (society). Concepts of human existence are then explored across the classic theories of Karl Marx, Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Auguste Comte, A. N. Leontjew, Emile Durkheim, C. Horton Cooley, George Herbert Mead, L. Feuerbach, Sigmund Freud, and Max Weber. It is concluded that these theories can not solve the problem arising from the relationship of singular and super singular. It is also found that these theories have some elements in common: canalization that encompasses transference of something from one to another; correlation that encompasses reciprocity, which is the basis of generalization; and combination, which encompasses production of the new. The classic theories also point to the problem of self-reference. Subsequent reports examine theories of discontinuity and explore the use of perspective text analysis to study the notion of competence. (MSE)

In contrast to the mass-related verbal flow description given in part I, this report focuses on the cooperative interaction of textual agents and objectives in the production of information flows. Perspective Text Analysis (PTA) is used with the purpose of establishing their physical and functional significance in a non-mass based description of text building behavior. The most important feature of part II is the double aspect of the methodological approach to text building. One aspect of text building is an elaboration of Gibson's methodology into the study of a language-specific pickup of ecological invariants, exploring the abstract projections of ecological optics onto language spaces and the way in which projected optical flow fields constrain the coupling of perception and action, i.e. locomotor activities. The other refers to physical conditions as provided by the famous Visual Cliff experiments and their theoretical significance in an explanation of the established temporal morphologies. These have been represented within a topological space. This space is conceived of as a collection of points that are connected by affinity relations determining the As and Os of the AaO schema. It is shown that each point can be represented by a different number, and that the concentration of these points in the topological space ultimately becomes helical. It is also demonstrated that self-references and self-organization have significance for the embedding of the perceived topological properties of the experimental environment into text. The results of the analysis show that the ensemble of texts macroscopically is dominated by highly similar flow-field properties. Three figures, one table. An attachment contains cluster analyses. (Contains 15 references, 3 tables, and 1 figure.) (Author)

The degree of consciousness of one's own familiar surroundings by high and low achieving students of a technical gymnasium in Malmo (Sweden) was studied through essays written about Sweden as a place to live. Focus was on testing the proposition that an individual's ability to express cognitive integration of experience in covariation with personal knowledge is reflected through natural language, based on the assumption that selective attention and schematic processing are directly built into the process of perception. Essays of 4 students were chosen from 85 submitted. Using these four subjects as coordinate systems and bio-psycho-physical frames of reference, it was demonstrated that the order of performance can be upheld over levels of analysis. The way in which transformations of aggregates of joint textual element complexes become fashioned into single functional unities was also shown. On the basis of these unities, absolute termini (limits) are established and named. These termini provide for the structural connections that specify the informational invariants of one's own referential reality. These invariants also serve as keys to consciousness in the Kantian sense (intuition), and thus give a precise phenomenological description of reality through systemic deduction. (SLD)

This document describes how the main principles of Perspective Text Analysis are implemented in the PC-system PERTEX, concentrating on the main steps of the analysis. The analysis starts with normal text and ends in a topological representation of the mentality that the text presents. The text material is processed in the following main steps: (1) coding of function words by means of a special dictionary; (2) design and coding of blocks according to the AaO (Agent-verb-Objective) paradigm; (3) supplementation of A- and O-dummies; (4) generation of A/O matrices; (5) cluster analysis based on generated matrices; and (6) topological presentation of outcomes. PERTEX gives an integration of all the steps in the analysis, and the user is offered numerous comprehensive functions for automatic coding and control of syntax. By a multilingual design, PERTEX can operate on texts in different languages. The user can select different menu-languages for the interaction with PERTEX. The technical output of the system is illustrated in the appendix with the complete 17-page printout from analysis of a classic text. (Author/SLD)

Two kinds of perspectives governing the provision and preservation of knowledge, a universal and an ecological perspective, are discussed in this paper. In the first case, scientific observations are represented through a semantic interpretation of facts. This is illustrated with a series of experiments on semantic feature perception in the recall of pictures described by descriptor terms. In the second case, scientific observations are conceived as part of a constitutive context. Consequently, the researcher's development toward structurization and his use of precise concepts and well-defined conceptual relations requires an orientation toward the cooperative dimension of the context. This is illustrated by an ecologically oriented study of an information system that measures intentionality and orientation by means of an Agent-action-Objective (AaO) formula. Within the AaO formula a dependency between the cooperatively operating and interacting components creates the absolute terms (i.e., the invariants); these, in turn, serve as a point of departure for information synthesis. It is demonstrated that scientific reporting has the intermediary function between context and knowledge representation. Intentionality and orientation are fundamental in the development of concepts and conceptual relations. (21 references) (Author/DB)

In this study, the Kantian schema has been applied to natural language expression. The novelty of the approach concerns the way in which the Kantian schema interrelates the analytic with the synthetic mode in the construction of the presented formalism. The main thesis is based on the premise that the synthetic, in contrast to the analytic, proposition plays the central role in the measurement and representation of consciousness. It is assumed that the discontinuities in natural language production are the only reliable observations and that there is at present no other way in which these observations can be formalized. Despite the enormous number of textual elements and variations, it has been possible to demonstrate perspective and objective structures empirically as the result of a series of non-deterministic bifurcations of a dynamic vector field within euclidean space. By contrasting the captions to the picture series of the original "visual cliff" experiments with a narration produced in an experiment with a single subject, it was possible to show that the formalism can deal with alternative descriptions of the same system (experimental arrangement). On the basis of the given theoretical outline, a totally new comprehension of "text" and the underlying theoretical concepts related to the ecological approach to visual perception has emerged. Five figures illustrate the discussion. There is a 41-item list of references. (Author/SLD)

Implicit figuration and subjective interpretation make up the conventional basis of the classical discussion of the comprehensiveness and aesthetic quality of the metaphor. Its function and use in social science research is illustrated as a background to a radically different methodological approach. By means of a Perspective Text Analysis, it is demonstrated that metaphor has to be reconceived as the Re-naming Instrument. The hypothesis tested is that the metaphor carries ecological information. Results of the analysis show that the metaphor has to be treated as a self-contained verbal expression of affordance. By naming the affordance (i.e., what object and events in the environment offer), events of a certain kind are brought into perspective. One table illustrates algorithmic processing of a metaphoric sentence. A 24-item list of references is included. (Author/SLD)

Because the scientific treatment of the concept of consciousness has been multifaceted, there have been several different approaches to research concerning consciousness. This article gives an introductory account of the research on consciousness. The main hypothesis advanced is based on the premise that consciousness emerges from the cooperative interaction of multiple agents and agencies within naturally produced text. Through Perspective Text Analysis, it is demonstrated that the Kantian schema provides the necessary foundation for making explicit the teleonomic component governing natural language production. As a consequence, the concept of text is redefined so that the textual transformation and recursive restructuring reach their meaning in relation to the concepts of textual dynamics and linkages. Its configurational architecture is demonstrated on the basis of the (AaO) formula. As a result, the entirety of structural relations evolves as a double helical structure. Analysis within the framework of differential topology demonstrates the necessity of cooperating perspective and objective structures in establishing perspective and objective invariance. Five figures illustrate the discussion. A 23-item list of references is included. (Author/SLD)

An ecological approach to a psychological study of language is presented in this paper. Such an approach is based on the understanding that the process of perceiving an object or event is based neither in images or pictures nor in verbal or symbolic structures. In order for objects and events to become knowable, higher order cognitive processes must occur because these processes capture crucial qualities of structure and form. In light of the presupposed relationship between function and form, a computer simulation of neurotic behavior is critiqued. An 18-item list of references is included. (DB)

The psychological concept of consciousness is examined in this article. It is argued that the intentionality of an individual's behavior is the key to the measurement and representation of his consciousness. The experiment examined concerns groups of students of business administration and civil engineering as well as professional economists, and their responses to models of future society. Topological structures are formulated based on the groups' responses in terms of various aspects of consciousness as it is here defined. Distinctive aspects characterize the groups such that they can be ordered on a scale from non-consciousness to consciousness. Increasing consciousness implies increasing conceptual autonomy in the respective group's cooperation with its environment, and consequently, also an increase in its chance to survive in competition. A 31-item list of references is included. (DB)

Topological and algebraic scales were compared in the representation of the concept of human worth in behavioral-semantic terms. In a first experiment, seven doctoral students of Business Administration in Sweden explored the notion of worth using definitions from at least 10 dictionaries as the intentional-semantic content. Each subject served as experiencer, observer, and recorder in grouping entries by content. On the basis of the differentiations presented and names proposed for each of the groupings, the prototypical character of the groupings were summarized using the following descriptive names: (1) eigenvalue; (2) reputation; (3) reliability; (4) impartiality; (5) rank; (6) significance; and (7) status. The structural connections were represented topographically. In a second experiment, 180 Swedish high school students, college students, and adult professionals were asked to make preferential judgments about the intentional-semantic content of 50 statements about worth prepared by the subjects in the first experiment. A statistical analysis of choice alternatives then established an algebraic scale. Factor analysis led to the conclusion that the structure of the investigated concept was qualitatively invariant. The topological scale was preferred because it gave a synthetic representation of the underlying structure, while the algebraic scale only gave an analytic representation of details. (SLD)

The aim of this article is to draw a distinction between qualification and competence. Although academic institutions, organizations, companies, and schools are focusing on competence development as the natural answer to new technical and societal demands, no one has provided a satisfactory operational definition of "competence." A dictionary search has shown that different areas of science and the humanities conceive of competence from an analytical point of view, but the Latin word on which the word is based comprises properties of intentionality, adding both dynamic and individual components to the concept. This became the starting point for a study in which a student's competence was examined through Perspective Text Analysis (B. Bierschenk and I. Bierschenck, 1993), an entirely new method for making visible the structural relations of texts. In this study, a teacher of Swedish language and literature at the upper secondary level made visible for himself a conceptual structure that served as a steering instrument for literature study in class and also as the criteria for assessing and grading. He tested a student, who had not been able to qualify to pass the course, and was able to show that the student had produced a structure similar to the one that served as a criterion. The study suggests that by this method it is possible to identify students' competence, which may be deep enough for scoring high on a test despite insufficient qualifications. Competence is found to be beyond qualifications, and a grading system that aims at taking into account every single person's ability, would profit from this new approach. (Contains 2 figures and 23 references.) (Author/SLD)

The problem investigated in this study was formulated against a background of the theory of affordance as it was tested with the famous "Visual Cliff" experiment. The present study is based on the assumption that perceivers can detect transformational as well as structural invariants not only in the context of the classical "Visual Cliff" experiments but also when their basic assumptions are transformed into the social realm. On the hypothesis that structural invariants can be defined as an invariant combination of variables of significance for the perception of social structure, a series of three factor analytic studies was conducted with a sample of 611 subjects. The first study involved 214 inservice teachers and 57 high school students in Sweden; the second study involved 180 residents of the Lund-Malmo area of southern Sweden; and the third study involved 160 university and college students in Sweden. The three studies were used to: (1) reduce an initial data set in the empirical approach to the Gibsonian concept of affordance; (2) extend the search for a two-component structure; and (3) confirm the existence of invariance in the affordance structure. Despite different sets of variables, different sample subjects, and a time interval of 7 years, it was possible to infer the existence of two ecological components defining the transformed "Visual Cliff". The first specifies the nature of change (the development of worth), while the second specifies the structure that undergoes change (the visibility of developed worth). (Author/TJH)

An alternative to the standard "rule based" account of a child's acquisition of the past tense in English is presented in this paper. While the rule based assumption suggests that children typically pass through a three-phase acquisition process in which they first learn past tense by rote, then learn the past tense rule and overregularize, and then finally learn the exceptions to the rule, this paper argues that the acquisition data can be accounted for in more detail by dispensing with the assumption and substituting in its place a simple homogeneous learning procedure. The paper shows how "rule-like" behavior can emerge from the interactions among a network of units encoding the root form to past tense mapping. The paper concludes with the observation that a large computer simulation of the learning process demonstrates the operating rules of this alternative account, shows how details of the acquisition process not captured by the rule account emerge, and makes predictions about other details of the acquisition process not yet observed. A description of a binding network for converting the computer representation to a phonological representation is appended. (Author/HOD)

The traditional explanation for dual-task interference is that tasks compete for scarce processing resources. Another possible explanation is that the outcome of the processing required for one task conflicts with the processing required for the other task. To explore the contribution of outcome conflict to task interference, this paper describes two experiments with college undergraduates that manipulate the relatedness of tasks. Experiment 1 found that the difficulty of the individual tasks is not the only determinant of how much they will interfere when combined, and that there must be substantial interactions between processes carrying out the two tasks. Experiment 2 found that although between-category search was more efficient than within-category search in single tasks, it was less efficient in dual tasks. There appears to be significant task interactions due to the confusability emerging when the nontargets of one task belong to the same category as the targets of the concurrent task. In addition, the congruence of target presence or absence on the two channels was found to have a sizeable effect. Four potential sources of outcome conflict are discussed. (Author/PN)