Giyoo Hatano's Analysis of Psychological Tools

摘要

This paper focuses on the relation between two areas of research which owe a great debt to the work of Giyoo Hatano: the ways in which the use of the abacus mediates arithmetic problem solving and the way in which the use of the kanji writing system mediates the interpretation of unfamiliar words. These examples are related to L.S. Vy-gotsky's ideas about the ways in which particular kinds of mediational means can serve as psychological tools for accomplishing culturally valued problem solving. They also urge upon us the need to be cautious when we are tempted to order culturally valued mediational means in terms of a unilinear evolutionary sequence.