What enables us to function effectively in society, to acquire and generate
knowledge, to develop intellectual prowess and high-level expertise, to create
and invent? Psychologists have attempted to answer this question for genera-
tions. Historically, intellectual functioning and development have been largely
viewed as cognitive phenomena, to be explained in terms of cognitive capacity,
structures, and processes. Motivation and emotion are often seen as peripheral
or epiphenomenal in that regard, or worse, as potentially detrimental to reason
and sound judgment. We call this view a cognitive-reductionistic perspective.
We argue that an exclusive emphasis on cognition misses some essential com-
ponents of intellectual functioning and development. We wonder whether such
a narrow focus has started to yield diminishing returns in generating viable ac-
counts of various intellectual phenomena.
In this volume, we pursue a different tack, an integrative approach, which
views motivation, emotion, and cognition as inextricably related, for good or
ill, in intellectual functioning and development. This road has been less trav-
eled but holds the promise of providing insights as to how people operate and
adapt themselves intellectually in real functional contexts instead of just per-
forming laboratory tasks. An emphasis on integration naturally brings the
enactive person as a whole to the forefront. In other words, such an emphasis
puts perception and cognition back in the context of human adaptive efforts
to effect changes in their environments as well as in themselves, and related
emotional reactions and affective experiences.
Specifically, this volume represents integrative efforts along four lines of
psychological research.
Preface
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