Thoughts About Who We Are

Originally published in Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 2004, Vol 49(1), 20-22. In this review of Self and Identity: Personal, Social, and Symbolic, (see record 2002-12838-000), the reviewer notes that one of the central themes is the relationship between cognition and identity, and discusses the emergence of an alternative processing metaphor to the dominant serial computer metaphor known as connectionism or parallel distributed processing. The second chapter, by Humphreys and Kashima, starts with a rigorous mathematical description of how parallel processing operates. This mathematical model can help the reader unfamiliar with the tenets of parallel processing understand some of the implications of that model. The authors then suggest what a self based on parallel processing might look like. The next two sections of the book take up that challenge and review how various theories conform to the parallel processing view of the self. The reviewer concludes that the parallel distributed processing model has certain advantages for understanding the self. However, as illustrated by the chapters in this book, the parallel approach needs more theoretical development. More important, any cognitive model (either parallel or serial) needs to consider emotions and motivation in developing a model of self and identity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)