In this brief paper I have attempted to summarize a general theory of human symbolic cognition and cognitive-based behavior within cultural contexts that constitutes the basis for human cognitive and personality development and for all forms of human cognitive acquisition. This theory is consonant with the Piagetian framework and attempts to extend this framework anthropologically to account for cross-cultural variability and differentials of context, and for specific symbolic aspects of cognitively oriented human behavior. H. A. Witkin's theory of relative field dependence-independence is related to Bloom's taxonomy of learning as well as to the general stages of Piaget's framework of equilibriation. The human brain is specialized as a symbolic processing organ that is context bound in its operation and adaptive behavioral functioning, and this symbolic structuration of apperceptive and reactive experience constitutes the universal patterning of human consciousness and environmental responsiveness within a cross-cultural framework. It stands to reason that methods designed to elicit and assess patterns of symbolic-cognitive response in general and in specific ways can be adapted, as a methodology, to the problem of language acquisition and achievement of literacy in a particular language.

The statement that human beings are symbolic creatures with large brains specialized for human language and cultural-symbolic integration of reality may be received as a trite cliché until and unless empirical evidence can be offered up in support of a mind-brain connection and bridging the gap between symbolism on one hand and the complicated problems of human cognition on the other. Through research and scholarship, I've lately arrived at a general synthetic-analytic theory of human cognitive development and symbolic function that accounts for a general range of learning disabilities that I've termed "minimal brain dysfunction" and for predictable processes of normal psychological development and maturation of the child. This theory offers a means of reinterpreting and integrating theoretical and methodological approaches across otherwise exclusive disciplinary domains, and is consonant with a broader range of theory and method developed in the anthropological sciences relating to the human construction and structuration of symbolic reality.

There have occurred several dilemmas of understanding human cognitive development. The first concerns the argument over the differential and determinative contribution of natural (i.e., genetic) versus environmental factors. The second related problem concerns the role of alleged universal psychic structures versus the relative role that cultural patterning and influence may play in the shaping of human consciousness and behavior.

Undoubtedly both sets of influences work together in a complementary manner, and the real scientific question is in sorting out the specific roles and contributions of both the hen and the egg in the natural cycles of life.

Central to this theory is the pivotal role played by the constructed cultural context in the process of development of the child, and the interaction between the developing cognitive apparatus of the child and the life-world context in which that development takes shape and becomes behaviorally articulated. There are concomitant evolutionary implications of this theory which will not be addressed in this paper, and these implications point to a biological and natural basis for cognitive-developmental and stylistic variability that may be a consequence of differential genetic endowments. Selection forces in different contexts that may favor one genotypical configuration over an alternative genotype would tend to promote such a configuration over alternative possibilities. The large size and sophisticated and specialized function of the human brain suggests a pleiotropic underdetermination of underlying genetic factors.

This issue of latent genetic variability of brain structure and developmental pattern is complicated in the case of the human species because substantial evidence demonstrates that the human brain has evolved as a context-dependent system that depends upon the proper environmental cues, stimuli and structures for its maturation and normal expression. As a consequence, human beings are endowed with a certain degree of "world openness" that entails a freedom from the constraints of instinctive brain-controlled behavioral patterns and hence a certain susceptibility and plasticity to adaptive and environmental influences. This openness has allowed human beings to construct human-made cultural realities that are symbolically structured and that demonstrate a very high degree of variability of alternate patterning. I refer to this as the symbolic transformation of human experience.

The psychic unity of human kind is rooted in the evolutionary "generalization" of the human brain as a super-complex symbolic-mediational and information processing system. Given our current state of knowledge, the general eco-evolutionary framework from which this patterning emerged can be construed as complex type 3 predatory pattern in a generalizing context depending upon intraspecific social cooperation/competition and sophisticated search-image pattern recognition. Central to this process is the dual function of linguistic communication and interpretation of experiential information, in a symbolic framework, and the behavioral articulation of the individual in sophisticated response patterning. In other words, the human brain was organized for complex and sophisticated linguistic functioning and for differentiated behavioral articulation with the environment. Furthermore, it is clear that the language based relationship of the human brain to the environment is preeminently a socially oriented and socially mediated process.

From the standpoint of human behavioral and experiential reality, there really is no effectively separating the issues of cognitive response pattern and development from the dilemmas of behavioral response pattern and behavioral development in general. The central function of the mammalian brain in general, and the human brain specifically, is that of centralized control over all other systemic functions, and the problem of the integration of these functions to achieve adaptive-reproductive success of the organism. In human beings especially it is apparent that this control function has achieved higher-order levels.

At the same time, the fact of a tremendous range of variability of pattern of the brain and nervous system, both organic, functional and behavioral, must be admitted in the case of the human species especially. It is apparent for instance that nerve patterns and networks are as almost individually unique as are patterns of fingerprint, the face and voice quality. Some people have the capacity to make one ear or another move, others lack this capacity. Furthermore, there appears to be substantive variability of brain organization in certain areas that are linked to sexual and hormonal differences, since the endocrine system is closely associated with brain based physiological response pattern. And an argument can be increasingly made based upon evidence for a non-racially based genetic pattern of variability of brain structure and function.

As a logical consequence of these considerations we may state that human beings in general fall within a normal range of distribution of cognitive pattern and organizational structure that has social and behavioral correlates and implications, and this spectrum of human cognitive-symbolic variability is relatively independent of the cultural context in which such patterning gains expression and becomes subsequently shaped through modeling and training: i.e., modalities of cultural transmission.

In a general sense, the immature and developing human brain of the infant functions as a "general acquisition device" and has a general series of stages that it passes through. The scheduling of these stages is not coercively obligatory or fine-tuned. Natural acquisition has its own built-in set of clocks, and the timing of these clocks depends upon successful completion of prior and basic stages of development before successive and more complex stages of development can go to completion. If earlier stages of missed or underdeveloped, then this will have the consequence of rendering later stages less potentially well developed as they might otherwise have been. We can say that in conditions of abnormal restriction, there will be a general stunting of developmental capacity and consequential growth. On the other hand, there appears once again to be a range of variability in the exact timing, and even the exact ordering, of these processes and it is clear that all children of all cultures will tend to fall along a curve of developmental variability, just as some kids will be short and others tall.

It remains evident that though the order or exact sequence of acquisition is nowhere mandatory or obligatory, it is nonetheless equally true that acquisition of derivative skills, knowledge and abilities rests upon attainment and potential mastery of more basic underlying processes.

The theory of symbolic transformation of human experience through development rests upon what I would call the symbolic differentiation of experiential reality in response to environmental patterns and cues. This differentiation of the experiential field is linked to relative field dependence/independence or the relative capacity of the human mind to symbolically distinguish itself from the field of environmental stimuli in which it is situated, and this relates directly to the capacity to disembedded figure-ground relationships and part-whole relationships from the perceptual-phenomenal field of one's attention.

On at least several levels, this process is developmentally linked to the Piagetian four-stage schema that underlies of the equilibriation of the ego in adaptation to environmental stimuli and situations, and this framework emphasizes the adaptive nature and role of human symbolic-cognitive functioning in environmental contexts. What is emphasized in this is the attainment of relatively independent and abstractly sophisticated "formal" or propositional schemata in the mature mind that is capable of sufficiently differentiating a clear and distinct sense of self from an objective sense of the environment.

In a previous work, I have developed a four stage framework of symbolic development, in which a young infants first stages of percepto-cognitive relation are tied to an emblematic pattern recognition that is largely dependent upon fixed context and iconographic representation. Eventually, the child graduates to a more sophisticated level of cultural-categorical pattern recognition that is essentially involved in the symbolic classification and organization of experience in culturally and psychologically meaningful sets or schema, and this intermediate stage will eventually lead to a formal propositional ordering of knowledge and experience in relatively independent frameworks of understanding that are capable of rationalization, rule formulation and application, and normative evaluation of reality. In the culminating stage of symbolic cognitive development, logical based propositional structures or experience are normally superimposed and order experience, and overcome the misapprehension of reality through ambiguous perceptual stimuli.

It is evident that the degree to which this stage of symbolic-cognitive development is achieved, the style and manner in which it is perceived, and whether or not it may even be achieved, depends partially upon the cultural framework within which this development takes place. We may refer to variable styles of "ethnologic" and to alternative cultural systems of symbolic integration that have different outcomes in terms of the psychic and cognitive response patterning of individuals of that cultural orientation.

Differentiation of the experiential field is developmentally progressive and results in greater articulation and specialization of symbolic schemata that are used to organize and order the apprehension of experience. At the same time, this process is complemented by one of the symbolic integration of reality by means of which the experiential field becomes organized at increasingly higher levels of control and more sophisticated levels of symbolic displacement and ratiocination.

The central concept of object permanence in the Piagetian developmental schema underlies the differentiation of all subsequent symbolic schemata and constructions, and this is critically related to the function of symbolic-cognitive displacement and retention of perceptual stimuli that implicates the symbolic mediation of memory structures in the human brain. This symbolic mediation of memory structures is itself largely linguistically and behaviorally based, and it is upon this basic level that cultural patterns are capable of being inserted into the cognitive apparatus and worldview of the individual. Clear evidence of this occurs in terms of the acquisition of basic color terms in culturally mediated contexts.

Semantic meaning coheres symbolically in both the unconscious of the human brain and in the background field of the cultural patterning in which the individual is situated. To a large extent, these subjective and objective frameworks are coordinate with one another. The lack of coordination or the rise of discrepancies between internalized and external constructs leads to psychological and behavioral disorders, especially in common cases where there occurs primary and/or secondary gain from the sense of discrepancy of pattern. This semantic field of meaning is posited socially and culturally in the conventional and implicitly marked relationships embodied in formal and informal language and in human behavior. This field of meaning entails that the young child at an early age is involved primarily with the "passive processing" of this background field through observation and experimentation and encounter-experience, and this long period of latency prepares and presages the active involvement and engagement in acquisition through application of learned behavior. This is as true in the learning of language as it is in the learning of any other form of complex system. This embedded and embodied background field of meaning therefore constitutes the foundational substrate upon which all subsequent and more elaborated symbolic-cognitive structures are constructed and configured.

This background processing does not stop upon attainment of a certain level of cognitive-symbolic elaboration, but continues to occur throughout the life of the individual. It is literally and figuratively the stuff of which dreams are made of, and dreaming provides a mechanism by which passive and unconscious cognitive-symbolic schemata can be expressed and reevaluated in relation to the on-going phenomenal train of every-day experience. This processing is largely analogical and appears to be quite chaotic, and attempts to provide systematic and scientifically valid frameworks of the interpretation of dreams must therefore be doomed to failure. Dream and dream content may be said to be both psychologically and culturally relative to the dreamer, but the fact and function of dreaming serves for everyone the same purposes in the symbolic mediation of everyday experience with unconscious symbolic schemata.

Achievement of stable symbolic schematization of reality entails the capacity to regularly elicit gestalt-type pattern recognition responses in a manner that is overall congruent and consonant with the underlying symbolic relationships that have been established. This achievement of gestalt-type pattern recognition is a function of time and capacity to process information in a coordinate manner. In pattern recognition tasks it is evident that there occurs a latency period of pre-processing in which the mind is analytically searching the field for clues and highlights, and drawing tentative relationships. This preprocessing of information goes on in the forward most parts of one's apperceptive awareness and to some extent must be considered automatic as a part of visual-auditory or general sensory selection and discrimination of relevant or focal cues from the background. All responses on such tasks demonstrate this pattern of preprocessing of information, and a certain rapid movement of the eye on visual tasks, before achievement of the gestalt pattern occurs. With achievement, the gestalt pattern recognition becomes an either all or none kind of thing. Either an individual gets it or fails to. In the case of learning disabilities, the likelihood is great that, without exceptional clues or cues, this kind of pattern recognition consistently fails.

Such schematization of reality occurs in a stratified sense at multiple levels of awareness and organization, and its elicitation can occur as well upon multiple levels of perceptual and conceptual awareness. It is this ability to correctly and in a conceptually consistent manner distinguish the figure from the field and form from the framework in which it is embedded, that most clearly characterizes achievement of developmental differentiation of cognitive style. In this regard, an ambiguous field that hinders such achievement in a consistent manner is virtually equivalent in its outcomes as a state of cognitive confusion that similarly interferes with the capacity to disambiguate the figure-ground relationship. It is in this sense that environmental inconsistency or chronic ambiguity can serve to reinforce or even initiate a predisposition towards cognitive confusion and an attentive fixation upon external stimuli that hinders formation of symbolic schemata. On the other hand, while all people may experience a similar sense of frustrated processing under unusually ambiguous or difficult circumstances, people who are in a chronic state of psychological confusion may frequently or always experience such a state of ambiguity in relation to their environment, and as a consequence developmental or adaptational acquisition will be hindered.

We may refer to relative thresholds of acquisitional attainment in attention and retention. A certain threshold must be over-reached before gestalt pattern recognition and symbolic identification can be achieved. These thresholds are relative to both situational and environmental circumstances and conditions, and to psychological states of mind, behavioral predispositions and attitudes. The sense of acquisitional threshold is important in understanding the process of developmental acquisition of knowledge, because consistent success or failure in the achievement of gestalt recognition provides a positive or negative feedback to the general learning cycle that can serve to dampen or amplify this cycle. If work given to a child is beyond the child's level and too difficult, then the child will experience chronic frustration and a growing sense of failure that, in a behavioral sense, will lead to negative reinforcement of the general acquisition apparatus. In other words, the brain gets turned off. If a child is prevented from play and from seeking learning challenges in the effective life-world, then certainly the learning apparatus will also eventually become closed. It is clear that attentional or retentional deficits or disorders will interfere with this relative acquisition threshold. This threshold varies substantially with individuals both idiographically during different times of the day or night or different days of the week or seasons of the year, or different periods of one's life-trajectory, and also between individuals in similar ways.

Differentiation of the phenomenal field that underlies the developmental emergence of relative field/frame independence has a social, emotional and anxiety component. In other words, a social orientation or focus upon especially inconsistent or unpredictable stimuli in the environment that are stress inducing as a result of increasing discrepancy with internalized symbolic constructs or schemata, can serve to arrest or hinder developmental acquisition and further differentiation processes, resulting in the relative fixation of cognitive style in a modality of relative field-frame dependence. It is evident as well that there may be a trade-off in different directions these symbolic differentiation processes may take, and that a social or strong socio-centric orientation may serve to preclude development of relatively independent cognitive-symbolic control structures or frameworks.

We may look to the general class of non-organic learning disabilities as the rise of a proto- or "pre-neurotic" complex of cognitive-symbolic organization and dysfunctional schemata that interfere with the normal cognitive processing apparatus of the brain and that therefore result in low rates of retention, attention and overall acquisition by the individual. These processes are underdetermined and multi-factorial, and combine both organic and inorganic as well as genetic and environmental factors. Anxiety of basic perceptual patterning, enhancing the gestalt ambiguity of the figure-field or figure-frame relation, is the hallmark of these proto-neurotic or psychologically undifferentiated patterns of response, and these patterns stand in the way and preclude the further differentiated elaboration and integration of higher order control structures and response patterns of the human brain.

In general, higher order integrative and control power passes in the functional specialization of the brain toward more specialized centers and from inner brain and rear brain and right brain regions towards frontal, fore-brain, outer brain and left-hemispheric functions. Brain control is never permanently situated or centralized in one location of the brain, but is distributed and exchanged between multiple interconnected regions or locations of the brain in a functionally complementary manner. Developmental acquisition therefore tends to enhance and further elaborate this integrative-distributive control of the brain, and this becomes reflected directly in the degree of differentiated/elaborated pattern of symbolic response patterning that an individual may make in a timely manner to the presentation of environmental stimuli.

We may refer to a condition of attentional or retentional inertia that is correlated with learning disabilities that affect acquisition. This inertia can be demonstrated to be due to the destructive interference of previously learned behaviors or symbolic shemata that are contradictory to the acquisitional problem set or situational framework at hand. There may be a sense of both primary gain achieved through a strong, neurotic attachment to previously achieved schemata, and the persistence of these schemata even in maladaptive circumstances. This can become a form of neurotic defense mechanism that may block or repress threatening experiences or protect a sense of ego or provide access to libidinal drives that may otherwise lack an appropriate form of expression. These may also come to achieve a degree of secondary gain from social interactional feedback that may on one level deny the identity of the character and on another level indirectly reinforce the sense of inertia or resistance to acquisition. The entire system of labeling theory and symbolic interactionism based upon stereotypes and cognitive-cultural constructs serves as a form of self-fulfilling prophecy in terms of the sustaining secondary gain such people may experience from a continuation of their condition. This affects ego-development and a sense of personal identification in a generally counter-productive and adverse manner, encourage a form of dependency, or even codependency, that is part and parcel of a predominant orientation of field-dependency.

In social psychology, the capacity to remain what is referred to as objectively self versus becoming subjectively self aware as a product of one's environment, suggests that those personality structures exhibiting greater degrees of symbolic differentiation and hence relative field independence will tend to exhibit an increased capacity for remaining objectively self-aware regardless of contravening signals or stimuli that may otherwise induce a condition of subjective involvement in the environmental situation. This may be related to a condition of relative hypersuggestibility or hyposuggestibility to external stimuli.

It becomes apparent in this general theory of human enculturative acquisition that culturally defined contexts plays a critical role upon a number of levels in the organization and outcomes of these complex processes. To a great extent the relative contextuality of cultural frameworks has been ignored and bypassed as a set of issues that are theoretically and methodologically intractable. It is possible to empirically demonstrate in a statistically significant manner the relative differential patterning of cultural based response patterning to symbolic framing tasks in basic ways that reinforce culturally normative differentials along the dimensions of field dependence/independence and aspectual stylistic elaboration and symbolic alternation. This has bearing not only on how people interpret and think about the world they see and experience, but actually in terms of how they perceive and experience the world on a very basic level of apperceptive awareness.

Since its inception, the question and thesis of cultural relativism has been seen as problematic and has been met with much criticism and a bias towards explanations that bypass or circumvent or implicitly deny the possibility of cultural relativity of behavioral response. The problem of context itself is in a broader sense inherently intractable because it is difficult to draw obvious or logical or natural boundaries about the problem, or to parse the problem analytically in a manner that would be systematically useful to its understanding and application in research. In general, control over the influence of context is sought through its delimitation in experimental or testing situations. Context is employed in visual based pattern-recognition types of tasks, and in gestalt methodology its accounting as a background field that influences normal perception and cognition becomes important.

Different societies divide up living space, both geographically and biographically in terms of temporal spaces of successive occupation and activity, into different external schemata of organization in which certain expectable behavioral and informational sets are likely to occur. We refer to these as behavioral settings, and these settings may be described for each cultural configuration in fairly common and widely shared terms. The degree to which a society is organized and stratified can be measured by the multiplicity and specialization of the plethora of such behavioral settings that are possible in such a system. Access to some kinds of socially defined space is restricted and granted as a matter of privilege. The ability to navigate, negotiate, and achieve mobility within this framework of social living space determines to a great degree the style of life and cultural patterning that an individual will adopt, as will as the consequential life trajectory that the individual will achieve in such contexts.

The background and working knowledge of informants is a direct measure of the structure and spaces that such an individual inhabits and occupies on a daily basis. The achieved level of expertise of such knowledge, in terms of highly shared, detailed working knowledge, including the implicit knowledge that is embedded in the context of each setting, reflects the degree of specialized access that such an individual achieves. At the same time, it is evident that reward structures and relative availability of resources are strongly correlated with such privilege of access in stratified systems.

Similarly, language style and linguistic preference and function also reflect the same patterning of the context in which the individual operates and becomes embedded. Language defines identity and access as much as it promotes insider communication in an exclusive sense, and who talks to whom and who talks behind whom's back and what gets foregrounded and background in such contexts becomes part of the symbolic transactionalism in which language and politics are at the core of everyday life. Membership, induction and inclusion, as well as processes of exclusion and ostracism from a social formation, is reflected and largely a function of linguistic expression and negotiation that individuals are able to achieve.

We may say in general then that there is a broader definition of socio-cultural literacy that operates implicitly in most social settings and that requires skill in performance that is rooted in symbolic transactionalism utilizing behavior, language, knowledge, values and social interactions and relations. We may include dress, material habits and interests, and working skills in this basic form of contextual symbolic literacy.

In general it may be said that symbolic functioning, indeed human perception and pattern recognition, and the development of more sophisticated and differentiated processes, depends upon the preexistence and interaction of a given constructed cultural context, and the influence of this context, though difficult to measure in any precise or analytical manner, is critical to the facilitation and achievement of developmental acquisition. All human symbolic processes and processing can be said to be context-dependent in a basic sense. In such a manner we may distinguish a context in a relative or comparative manner along dimensions of active-passive, provocative or reactive, interactive or one-way, or possibly constructive, neutral or destructive in terms of its consequences for the processes of symbolic pattern recognition and processing of information.

In general, a context that is highly ambiguous for any of a variety of possible reasons can be said to elevate the threshold of acquisition necessary. Highly structured contexts can serve to reduce the relative threshold of acquisition that is required for a given individual, while too great a structure may also serve to inhibit acquisitional play or experimental behavior or natural curiosity that an individual brings to any learning situation.

The problem of context-dependency of acquisitional and general response patterns relates to another notion of what has been referred to as "state-dependent" behavior. Different transitive and temporary states can result in different patterns of response. We understand this in relation to states of stress and high anxiety, and also in relation to drug induced states. This kind of state-dependency of behavioral response may be also critically tied to the behavioral setting or background context in relatively unconscious ways. It is clear that for example in cases of post-traumatic stress disorders, relatively minor and only mechanically related stimuli can evoke a major response or episode that is tied back to a previous event that may otherwise be repressed from conscious awareness. Adaptive stress disorders may work in a similar though more mild manner, and I cannot but help think that adaptive stress disorders are very much like general learning disorders.

A learning context is any behavioral setting or situation that serves to promote or require acquisition as a by-product of successful adaptation to that context. I will make an analytical distinction between what I will call generalized and specialized learning contexts, and structured and unstructured learning contexts. I will also suggest what can be called elaborated or focal contexts as being those that are specifically designed and intended to encourage development of a particular area of knowledge and involvement.

Achieved literacy in a literate society that in which knowledge organization is based upon textual storage and transmission of knowledge, represents a special and central expression of the more general form of contextual symbolic literacy that every member needs, in a relative manner, to achieve success within a given socio-cultural framework. This focal form of textual literacy depends upon an input-output learning cycle that is centered upon the complementary activities of reading and writing. Reading and writing are both simultaneously analytic and synthetic activities, or what can be called symbolically dialectical activities, in which acquisition of knowledge and understanding depend first upon the analytical decoding skills and then upon the synthetic, symbolic integrating skills that allows the construction of new semantic spaces from different textual formulations. This is a two step process that depends directly upon the achievement of relative field independence that is associated with analytical focus and decoding skills, as well as upon symbolic integration, or what I would call "part-whole form" projection of culturally appropriate symbolic constructs upon the behavioral stream of events, or in this case, upon the textual stream of word-meanings. The second stage of part-whole form projection takes us to the upper levels of Blooms learning hierarchy involving application and understanding, and these critical processes can in a psychoanalytical sense be said to involve the processes of subjecitification, or subjective identification, and objectification, or what can be called social reification of the symbolic construct. There is a third stage of higher order, post-structural apperceptive dereification of the symbolic construct as an ultimately arbitrary symbolic form, or what I would call critical deconstruction of the symbolism, but this is somewhat akin to the development of a genuine post-conventional ethical quotient and moral system that lies beyond the purview and bounds of conventional society.

For human beings, the word becomes the archetypical or prototypical symbolic representation. In fact, words exhibit certain basic syntagmatic-paradigmatic prototypicality of meaning, as for instance basic nouns or naming words, and basic verbs or action/relation words. In this sense, basic sentential-syntactic structure of strings reflects the symbolic-analogic chaining of these basic word-elements and the prototypical "semantic spaces" that they convey, and the manner of thematic elaboration of relationships and symbolic connections that can be found on TAT type tasks reflects the basic quaternary structures of fundamental linguistic strings.

There is no better expression of this symbolic function of text than in mass communications industry and in societies that are based upon wide-spread literacy through the reading of newspapers and periodicals. It is in such contexts that the news becomes daily relied upon as the source for symbolic reintegration of worldview and for connecting the average citizen and their limited life-world with the larger entity of the state. A major event, a disaster or a war, can precipitate a wide-spread and deep-seated reaction by a population merely through its description and reporting via the news and even if most citizens had no direct connection to the event.

The writing and reading of a word confers upon that word and its symbolic complex of relationships (the things and meanings for which it stands as a symbolic representation) a greater degree of legitimacy and cultural significance than the mere speaking of the same word. It posits a concretization of the form and function of the word in a visible and manipulable context. It offers a symbolic reification of the meaning of the word that extends permanently beyond its broadcast transmission as an ephemeral sound, and as a physical construct relating to specific writing and reading technologies it becomes more manipulable as a symbolic device that mere oral language.

The same basic processes of symbolic pattern recognition and schematic construction occur in relation to spoken language as well as to written language. Furthermore, these processes are central to all forms of human activity that requires some degree of expression, evaluation, expertise in performance and possible erudition or specialized knowledge. Those who have great skill in hunting with a certain technology and in a certain bio-geophysical realm, have achieved a kind of non-verbal literacy that makes them proficient and effective as hunters. The language of such a group of individuals or a society will tend to reflect this proficiency and encode this knowledge and expertise in special ways.

Knowledge is implicitly embedded and structurally encoded in the background social context and is evidenced in the articulation of cultural reality within the constructed cultural context in terms of the natural and logical rule systems by which such knowledge is organized. This external and environmental patterning is isomorphic with the unconscious semantic-symbolic substrate of meaning which constitutes the apperceptive background field of awareness for the individual.

We may say that the symbolic schemata and its chunking and organization in the cultural environment resonates and is for the most part coordinate with the internalized and subjectivized symbolic schemata that the individual employs in daily life to adapt and navigate through complex constructed landscapes. The human brain is a specially adapted organ that mediates this complex process, and this constitutes the basis for acquisition.

Literacy in a general sense is learning to decode and encode signal streams within this background context, and the symbolic meaning embedded within it upon multiple levels. We can identify different forms of literacy and competency in such decoding-encoding processes, including social literacy, cultural literacy, structural literacy, functional and pragmatic literacy, formal literacy that is associated with systems of explicit marking, stylistic literacy, popular and informal forms of literacy, and increasingly, electronic forms of literacy. These forms of literacy come together in our print based culture in which knowledge is stored by means of texts and communications achieved through printing, in terms of the development of textual literacy. Print-based society puts this form of literacy at the foreground of knowledge acquisition. We must understand the relevance of this to society in terms of the reproduction and transmission of knowledge that is the basis for the continuity of culture and society.

The context that is of greatest concern in educational circles is the textual context in which conventional knowledge is stored and transcribed and thereby interpreted. Writing and print technology make possible a system of knowledge and information storage and retrieval that goes beyond the capacity of a merely oral language system, based upon broadcast transmission, on-going performance and rote memorization of knowledge.

If symbolic framing methodology can be reliably used in assessment to systematically elicit a wide range of behavioral response that is related to symbolic integration and differentiation of experience, then it stands to reasons that a modified form of methodology can be adapted and applied to a range of learning situations and needs to facilitate and improve responsive performance on similar or related kinds of tasks. In this case I am especially concerned with the challenges developing fluency in reading and writing skills. Previous work, adapting the Peabody Language Development system within an active whole language approach, was successful in the application of modified symbolic framing methods to oral acquisition of English as a second language.

The capacity to apply this to the problem of reading and writing extends the problem beyond that of basic oral-auditory competency in a language.

It requires command of the following elements:

1. A background cultural and general knowledge base in terms of the target language (i.e., basic and elaborated vocabulary and an extended and intensive semantic network incorporating that vocabulary.)

2. The capacity to acquire or achieved competency to work with the morpho-phonemic patterning and lexical system of conditioning and marking that a language takes. (i.e., word changes, modifications, orthography, lexicology.)

3. The implicit competency to use the syntactic and pragmatic structure of a language in a functionally effective manner, and to deliberately manipulate this structure or the rules to achieve desirable expressive enhancement. (formal grammar and rules of usage, use of proverbs & sayings, rules of context and nonverbal signals & cues associated with a given context of usage, informal and pragmatic logic encoded by a language.)

4. The capacity to develop and distinguish between stylistic variations of a language in an informal and pragmatic sense. (Stylistic variation and patterning, development of personal style.)

5. The motivation and incentive to work consistently and regularly in the medium of the language, with reading and writing being seen as natural and logical extensions of a normal input-output feedback loop, within an elaborative and constructive context that encourages and rewards achievement.

If this theory is correct, reading and writing as a part of a learning loop should entail a general movement from less differentiated and less integrated constructs to more elaborated, differentiated and integrated contexts. In this case, a context becomes the rest of a paragraph, the remainder of an essay, a chapter, a book, a set of books, a library, an entire library system. Movement from few large words per page, few pages per book, to more sophisticated vocabulary in denser pages in denser texts, becomes direct evidence of the degree of literate differentiation that is achieved by an individual. The writing skills and achievements of an individual become similarly a direct measure of the structural symbolic integration that an individual achieves as a result of reading from texts, or alternatively "reading" from real life contexts.

For the use of symbolic framing methods in promoting these processes, it is evident that methods can be fruitfully applied at all levels listed above in an active manner to improve pattern recognition and performance in text-based activities, and in building direct and indirect context based activities that reinforce these processes. In a remedial sense, asking children with learning disabilities to act out a text, such as a dramatic script, an act or scene of a play, is a good way of buying the child into the process of textual construction and symbolic interaction-identification that is associated with reading and writing. Drawing is another kind of integrative literacy that is similar to and on some levels closely related to writing, and its training, especially "from the Right Side" of the brain, is a good means of developing supportive context. Cartoon strips and their construction or similar activities with story boards built around reading and writing are common symbolic-framing types of activities that are used to reinforce reading and writing.

Almost any activity that is structured and that involves the students upon multiple levels in the challenges of learning and application can be construed and turned into a symbolic framing activity, whether this is done so intentionally or otherwise. The critical difference for calling such an activity a form of symbolic framing is its relative effectiveness in eliciting and possibly transforming a symbolic response from the individual student, whether this is in a group or whole-class context. Such a response must be considered a kind of part-whole engagement of the student in the object of interest in a manner that involves either part or all of the students aquisitional resources. This can be seen as the symbolic configuration of part-whole form within a marked and demonstrable context that is deliberately manipulated to either facilitate or frustrate the learning process. By frustration I refer to rendering contexts increasingly more difficult in order to challenge students to greater achievement. In this sense, doing an obstacle course on a field would be construed as a symbolic framing activity if successfully negotiating this course required the student to read the track and to engage in a series of skill-based activities that involved putting "mind over matter." Making the obstacle course increasingly difficult challenges students to improve and build upon their basic skills.

It is evident from this brief digression that throwing a learning challenged child, whether this challenge is organic or psychological or culturally relative, into a full-sized classroom to compete with peers better equipped to play the learning game, can be overwhelming for such a child. Providing such a child a reduced context, with greater one-on-one assistance, would permit the child the kind of handicap required to work at one's own pace to a level that the child can be more completely integrated with the rest of the class on a "normal" basis.

Experience in teaching both reading and writing at the college level suggests that strategies designed for both extensive and intensive involvement in reading and writing processes are necessary. This is an on-going process and needs to focus on increasing the breadth and sophistication of vocabulary, extending and elaborating the pragmatic function of vocabulary and language in a range of behavioral contexts, increasing the range and depth of knowledge, enhancing worldview and challenging preconceived ideas with alternative constructs and ways of looking at reality. It entails broad based and in-depth reading, a successive cycle of writing, and repetition of these cycles with positive and specific constructive feedback.

It is evident therefore that symbolic framing methodologies can serve to induce and facilitate gestalt acquistion and pattern recognition of the implicit knowledge embedded in different contexts at different levels of organization, context and function. Greater attention to these design aspects of this highly productive methodology would permit greater success in teaching and learning strategies employed in the classroom. A great deal of this is happening anyway, though for the most part symbolic framing-like methods are employed without the deliberate intentionality or overarching design, and without the kinds of potential results, that might otherwise be achieved. It can be said that this is probably a more educationally efficient and integrative way of teaching, and it should at least in principle if not in practice yield higher levels of productivity.