ABSTRACT
If one accepts the line of argument developed in the previous chapter, then from a research perspective, a bounded individual is not adequate as the unit of interest and analysis. Rather, attention must focus on the reifications and cultural scripts in operation around the individual, the interactions, the sets of relationships, the histories, the memories, the surround and the affordances of the environment. A key research question becomes: how is ability and talent performed collaboratively in a given setting? For cognitive neuroscientists, environment is conceptualized differently to how it is conceptualized for sociocultural scientists. It is seen merely as background and, as such, easily separated from the person who is the unit of analysis. Socioculturalists resist mentalistic and reductive analyses of human development where the individual and the environment are treated as distinct. Instead, as we developed in Chapter 3, a social view of mind is assumed.
