May 27, 2008

The 50th Meeting of Mind and Activity



Saturday, June 21, 2008

15:30 pm. - 19:00 pm.
Honkan (Main building)
Room 1555
Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo

Program

We plan to have two presentations.

1. Domenic Berducci (Toyama Prefectural University)
gFrom reacting to understanding: Infants' first bottleh

In preparation of these data for the Language, Culture, and Mind III conference, I examine a small collection of videotaped interactions (YouTube) between caregivers and infants.

I focus on what the infants can and cannot (relevantly) do in the interaction, which is comprised of the infants' reactions/actions to the caregivers during feeding of 'first bottle'. Through a conversation analysis, of 'proto' turns, turns and emerging sequential organization, I hope to demonstrate that the infants' natural reactions ground their future understanding, and thus ground the learning of activities/practices and the 'formation of mind'.

2. Aug Nishizaka (Meiji Gakuin University)
gDistributed reference in the technological environment:
An aspect of the sequential and intercorporal organization
of ultrasound prenatal examinationsh

In this presentation, through the detailed analysis of interaction in ultrasound prenatal examinations, I elucidate practices of referencing particular locations within interaction in the environment with an ultrasound scanner. The environment with an ultrasound device is composed of a complex of perceptual, visual or tactile, fields for interaction, namely, the monitor screen and the woman's abdomen. I argue that reference made to a particular abdominal location in those locational reports preceding a differentiation sequence is achieved by distributing the parties' orientations to spatially separate perceptual fields appropriately to the current activity.



If anybody is interested in bringing their own data, analyses, observations, arguments, or whatever, to a next meeting to discuss together, please contact Aug Nishizaka at augnish(a)soc.meijigakuin.ac.jp.