Structures of content and patterns of incentives Before I continue further with the incentive dimension, I should like to

return to the divided whole I referred to at the beginning of this chapter and examine a little more closely the connection between content and incentive. In doing this I will continue with the above-mentioned book by Hans Furth (1987), because he concentrates on the relation between the two theoreticians, Piaget and Freud, from whom I have also taken my starting point.

In his introduction, Furth stresses that not only did Piaget and Freud develop the best known and most comprehensive theories in the cognitive and personality spheres, respectively, but that they also – despite the appar- ently huge difference in their theories – share some important fundamental features: they were both trained in biology, and they both anchored their theories in the biological development of the child, which they had studied empirically in detail.

However, Freud did not directly deal with the concept of learning, and even though many of his deliberations concern matters that belong under

this book’s learning concept, his contribution regarding the relationship between cognition and incentive is on a completely different level to the deliberations concerning learning with which I am dealing here.

The case is somewhat different when it comes to Piaget, however, because even though he did not work a great deal with emotional matters, some distinctive statements can be found in his work of many years. For example, the following:

All schemes, whatever they are, are at the same time affective and cognitive.

(Piaget 1946, p. 222, quoted from Furth 1987, p. 127) Affective life, like intellectual life, is a continual adaptation, and the two are not only parallel, but inter-dependent, since feelings express the interest and the value given to actions of which intelligence provides the structure. Since affective life is adaptation it also implies continual assimilation of present situations to earlier ones – assimilation gives rise to affective schemes or relatively stable modes of feeling or reacting – and continual accommodation of these schemes to the present situation. (Piaget 1951 [1945], pp. 205–206) Obviously for intelligence to function, it must be motivated by an affective power. A person won’t ever solve a problem if the problem doesn’t interest him. The impetus for everything lies in interest, affective motivation. . . . If the problem at hand is the construction of structures, affectivity is essential as a motivation, of course, but it doesn’t explain the structures.

(Piaget 1980b, quoted from Furth 1987, pp. 3 and 4) These three quotations were formulated over a period of 35 years, and it is, therefore, no surprise that they are not immediately consistent. The first quotation concerns schemes that have to do with both incentive and content at one and the same time. The second refers to incentive schemes that can, however, be characterised as ‘relatively stable modes of feeling or reacting’, i.e. they are not of the same nature as the content schemes that Piaget usually characterises as structures. In the third quotation, incentive lies outside of the structures, but is necessary as motivation. How can these differences be explained and elucidated?

In examining this question I will go first to an approach developed in German ‘Critical Psychology’ (see section 7.5), in which Ute Holzkamp- Osterkamp, in particular, has concerned herself with the same problem:

As we have been able to show with a thorough functional-historical analysis of the conditions for the differentiation of emotionality from

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the life process . . . the emotions consist of evaluations of environmental conditions perceived cognitively with their subjective meanings and the individual action potential as a standard. The emotions are thus a significant defining element for actions concerning cognitively perceived circumstances and events.

(Holzkamp-Osterkamp 1978, p. 15) For Holzkamp-Osterkamp, content and incentive are clearly perceived as two distinct spheres, functioning in close interaction in a particular way. This perception appears to parallel closely the last of the Piaget quotations, which concerned cognitive structures motivated by an affective power. But Holzkamp-Osterkamp continues:

The response concerning the evaluation of the adjustment of the individual behaviour reflects the individual organism not separately for each level in the environmental conditions, but as a ‘compound quality’, i.e. as a compound emotional mood that automatically sums up all single evaluations into a compound action direction, and only that can make goal-directed action possible.

(Holzkamp-Osterkamp 1978, p. 15) The influence of incentive on content is thus perceived as an overall function, characterised by converting a differentiated influence from the surroundings into one overall impression. Although this summarising is described rather categorically by Holzkamp-Osterkamp – after all, one can easily experience both differentiated and contradictory emotions in a given situation – there is a certain parallel to Piaget’s approach in that it concerns ‘relatively stable modes of feeling or reacting’. In both cases there is a form of mediation of the diversity of the emotional possibilities, but no fixed structure, as in the cognitive sphere. Or to put it another way: where as a rule it is clear what one knows and does not know, what one understands and how one understands it, on the emotional level it is more a case of gradual transitions which, for the individual at any rate, follow a certain pattern that can change over time – and these changes occur, according to Piaget’s approach in the second of the three quotations, by assimilations and accommodations in the same way as for the content structures. Where the individual builds up structures and schemes in the content sphere, in the emotional sphere it could be a case of developing incentive patterns.

However, Holzkamp-Osterkamp continues with another observation that is of interest in the present context:

Normally such emotional evaluations come forward only when there are ‘disturbances’ of the customary and ‘automated’ consequences of action and when there are actual threats to the ability to act, or in ‘new’ situations, requiring increased ‘attention’. Thus they are charac-

teristic for phases in which the organism ‘re-orients’ relations with the surrounding world.

(Holzkamp-Osterkamp 1978, pp. 15–16) If this is translated into the Piagetian and Freudian terminology used here, it can be seen that Holzkamp-Osterkamp perceives the emotions as more or less unconscious in assimilative processes, while in accommodation they come more to the forefront, and become conscious. If, for example, you work at actually acquiring the principles and history of social legislation, you are typically not very conscious of the emotions you attach to the matters being discussed, but if in that work you begin to grasp what some of these matters mean for people you actually know, the emotional aspect of the case can become conscious and very insistent. Using Piaget’s sporadic declarations as a basis, and with Holzkamp-Osterkamp’s approach as a filter, I am able to summarise the structural relationship between content and incentive after the relative separation that occurs around the age of six years as follows.

In learning, one can distinguish between the cognitive or epistemological aspect, which is concerned with the content of learning, and the incentive aspect, which is concerned with the dynamics of learning. Through the cognitive processes, content structures and schemes are developed, while emotional experience develops incentive patterns of a relatively stable nature. Both the content structures and the incentive patterns change and develop through an interaction of assimilative (additive, consolidating) and accommodative (transcendent, restructuring) processes. In assimilation the incentive aspect typically functions unconsciously for the most part, while in accommodation it typically becomes more conscious.

However, content and incentive develop from a common totality and always function in close interaction. So the next question has to be: what is this interaction like, and what is its function? Here, I would like to come back to another of Furth’s many Piaget quotations:

Take, for instance, two boys and their arithmetic lessons. One boy likes them and forges ahead; the other . . . feels inferior and has all the typical complexes of people who are weak in math. The first boy will learn more quickly, the second more slowly. But for both, two and two are four. Affectivity doesn’t modify the acquired structure at all.

(Piaget 1980b, quoted from Furth 1987, pp. 3–4) The example is clear, plausible and unquestionably correct – and yet it does not tell the whole story, and it suffers from a weakness in Piaget’s approach that was noted earlier: it only concerns a learning situation in which what is right and what is wrong can be clearly distinguished, i.e. convergent knowledge. 1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 44111

But what if it concerns divergent knowledge, in which the learning situation is ambiguous and there can be many equally ‘correct’ learning results? Do the emotions in that case still not have any significance for what is being learnt? And although in terms of content, both boys learn the same thing, have the emotions or the motivation no significance for the nature of the learning result, e.g. how well it is remembered, how inclined one is to use it in new contexts (transfer potential), or how it is at one’s disposal as an element in connection with new learning?

If one moves just a little beyond Piaget’s very straightforward example, it is easy to see that incentives will have a significance for the learning results, even if what is being learned is apparently the same. The well motivated boy will, as a rule, be better at remembering his maths, even if the less motivated boy slaves over it and eventually learns the same. The well motivated boy will be inclined to use his maths skills in all relevant contexts, while the less motivated one will tend to avoid such contexts, or avoid seeing them from a mathematical point of view – and this, in turn, will also make him more likely to forget it.

More generally, the incentive aspect of learning will always affect the learning result, even if it does not influence the epistemological content itself. To use an expression from Freudian terminology, we can say that cognitive learning is always affectively ‘obsessed’: there are always emotional tones or imprints attached to the knowledge being developed. And generally it will be the case that the stronger the incentives that are present in the learning situation, the stronger the emotional obsession will be – just think of the powerful tensions that characterise the Oedipal drama as described by Freud, and how this influences the individual for the rest of his or her life.

However, the interaction works in both directions. The emotions are also influenced by knowledge: ‘In the study of feelings, when you find structures, they are structures of knowledge. For example, in feelings of mutual affection there’s an element of comprehension and an element of perception. That’s all cognitive’ (Piaget 1980b, quoted from Furth 1987, p. 4).

Comprehension and perception, knowledge and insight all also influence the incentive patterns. But since these patterns differ in nature from the content structures and have a less manifest nature, the interaction is also different. It cannot be stated that particular emotional features are ‘obsessed’ by a particular comprehension. The incentive patterns have the nature, as Piaget expresses it, of ‘relatively stable ways to feel and react’, and precisely this ‘relatively stable’ means that the patterns typically shift gradually through processes of assimilative nature under the influence of impulses from the individual’s constant interaction with the environment, including the building up of new knowledge.

However, strong content accommodations can also be accompanied by strong accommodative restructurings in the incentive patterns. If a sudden

event, or the kind of cognitive processes that have earlier been referred to as reflection or meta-learning, causes a radical reconstruction of the individual’s comprehension of certain sets of conditions and contexts, there may also be a correspondingly radical shift in the emotional patterns, not as obsessions, but more what could be described as a toning: the nature of particular parts of the emotional patterns shift generally in strength and direction. For example, if, on the basis of various experiences and influences, one reaches a point of eliminating one’s prejudice concerning the opposite sex or other ethnic groups, it will probably also bring about general shifts in the emotions concerning these groups.