ABSTRACT
A t the 13th Carnegie Symposium in 1977, Gordon Bower was in a role he found unpalatable; he was a discussant for a portion of the symposium on the development of children's thinking, and he claimed it was the first time he had accepted such a role. His lament took the form of a contrast between being an acerbic critic who picks apart the contributions, pointing out methodological weaknesses and reasoning flaws, a role he labeled as doing a “hatchet job” that he assumed was expected in the situation, and that of being a “Cheerleader” or “Celebrator” or “Herald” who celebrates the path-breaking contributions and incisive thought of the contributors, a role he much preferred but for some reason didn't think was demanded by the task at hand. I sympathize with his dilemma in that the role of discussant does seem to be fraught with potentially challenging or uncomfortable situational demands and I too was something of a neophyte in this role and also not desirous of, in Gordon's words, “looking for possible flaws or things to take issue with or disagree about.” This implicit expectation about the role of discussants is exacerbated because we work in a science that has elaborated methodological criticism to perfection, with the result that we often seem more analogous to a wrecking company than a construction company when it comes to building a cumulative science with a core of sometimes evolving but nonetheless broadly accepted theories.
