A couple of things stick out in the first chapter of Luria's autobiography. One is the impact of the Revolution on Luria's life. Unlike many of his western colleagues, Luria, in his view, lived through times that were very socially and politically tumultuous, and the effect of those times had a significant effect on his development. Luria was caught up in a chaotic whirlwind of ideas that was very exciting but, as he puts it, "not at all conducive... to systematic, scientific inquiry."

The second thing that sticks out, as Mike pointed out, is Luria's ability to make something out of nothing. In complete social and intellectual chaos, Luria was able to find an interesting and diverse set of intellectual roots. In the midst of extreme shortages, Luria was able to found a journal and print it on borrowed yellow soap-paper.

The two opposed elements that helped shaped Luria's life-long psychological project appear in his early education. On the one hand, there was the early laboratory psychology, associated with both Wundt and Høffding, with its focus on highly controlled conditions, basic mental elements, mental associations. On the other hand, there were the critics of laboratory psychology, including Rickert, Windelband, and especially Dilthey. Dilthey focused on a descriptive approach that attempted to understand individual people as they lived and behaved in the world. Luria's career was shaped by trying to find a middle path, escaping the dichotomy between nomothetic and idiographic thinking in psychology.

Nomothetic: of our relating to the study or discovery of general scientific laws.

Idiographic: relating to or concerned with discrete or unique facts or events

A few other figures appear as early influences, especially psychoanalysis, William James, and Bekhterev and Pavlov. Luria was especially interested in taking the insights of psychoanalysis and attempting to subject them to more objective analysis.

Follow on Comment

Chapter 2

Punchline: Luria made the most of his first professional appointment, designing an experiment that provided objective evidence of subjective mental states.

This chapter outlines Luria's early professionalization and life as an experimental psychologist shortly after the Revolution. In 1923, Luria moved to Moscow at the invitation of Prof. Kornilov of the Moscow Institute of Psychology. Luria claims to have been invited because the institute was in need of experimentally-oriented psychologists open to the materialist lines the Institute was re-orientating itself along in order to conform better to Marxist philosophy. This re-orientation was reflected in the renaming of the individual laboratories to include 'reaction': "All this was meant to eliminate any traces of subjective psychology and to replace it with a kind of behaviorism." (31)

Luria claims ambivalence to this materialist orientation. On the one hand, he believed strongly in objectivity in psychology. On the other hand, the focus on 'reaction' and the distribution of 'mental energy' seemed like an oversimplification of a vastly more complex mental system. In order to address this conflict, Luria devised an experiment that would attempt to incorporate both objective measures of subjects' internal mental states and a more nuanced vision of the human mind. He did so by turning back to his earlier readings in Jungian analysis.

Earlier experimental work had suggested that confusion on the part of a subject was reflected in a disruption of motor tasks; "the smooth curve I usually obtained was distorted in a way that seemed to reflect the subject's uncertainty." (32) The objective reflection of confusion could be combined with psychoanalysis if verbal associative tasks were combined simultaneously with a motor task. If the two occurred simultaneously, then they could be treated as a single functional system, and so distortions in the motor task, which could be measured objectively, could be taken as evidence of internal mental distortion related to the associative task.

Luria worked with Alexei Leontiev (who he had met at the Institute) in the following experiment: research assistants told a story to several subjects, who were told to remember the story, but not to tell anyone that they knew it. Those subjects were then placed into a pool with subjects who had not received the narrative treatment, and were asked to participate in an experiment in which they would squeeze a bulb in their hand (motor function) while responding to a list of seventy words, of which ten were important to the story in the narrative treatment (internal mental distortion), while free-associating (internal mental state). Disruptions of the motor function could then be tracked by exposure to the narrative treatment to determine if an internal mental distortion was taking place; if those subjects told the story reacted differently than the non-treated subjects when the important words were read, then Luria and Leontiev would have evidence regarding their mental states. The experiment was a success, and led to immediate applications in criminal justice.

This application was useful to Luria and Leontiev, because it allowed them access to a population who were experiencing strong, stable emotions: criminals and accused criminals. The presence of strong, stable emotional states was useful to Luria, since psychological experiments frequently had difficulty in producing emotional states that were both strong and stable; strong emotions tended to dissipate. Luria and Leontiev adapted their earlier laboratory experiment to include details of the crime, rather than a story told be assistants.

"One of the first things we discovered is that strong emotions prevent a subject from forming stable, automatic motor and speech responses." (35) This disruption was systemic, rather than localized; this made it difficult to distinguish the criminals from the accused, both of whom had strong, stable emotional states. They finally settled on a process in which the subject was exposed to a variety of stimuli within a single subject. Luria claimed success with this method, although he does not elaborate here on his process for determining what constitutes a subject category.

We see Luria's characteristic modesty from his description of this experiment. Rather than focusing on his ground-breaking ability to find objective measures of subjective mental states, he soft-pedals the experiment, describing it primarily in terms of its use as an early lie-detector.

This modesty may also be the reason that Luria earlier (30) downplays his ability to understand Marxist philosophy, although Mike suggests another possible explanation for this in his excellent introduction. (12) At any rate, the relationship between Luria and Marxism is an important element of this chapter, both in his short discussion on page 30, and also in the nuances of the trend Luria identifies towards objectivity in psychology.
The Autobiography of Alexander Luria

Chapter 3 “Vygotsky”

This chapter opens with the assertion that “… Vygotsky was a genius.” (p38) Luria then describes Vygotsky’s extemporaneous speaking style, for which he required no notes or prepared materials. In class Mike suggested that while this is probably no exaggeration, we need to remember that Luria often underplayed his own contributions, and stood behind others as a way to protect himself from the political violence that was so much a part of his experience. Mike also explained that Luria had a way of being overly self-effacing, in order to signal that, contrary to his modest assertions, he did in fact contribute a lot to the groundbreaking work that he was involved with.

Luria goes on to explain the basic principles for analysis and lab practice that he and Leontiev worked on with Vygotsky. Their focus was to synthesize the two major intellectual tendencies in understanding human psychological processes—coming from the natural and social sciences. What they sought was an experimental practice that could help to uncover the workings of “higher” psychological functioning, an ability to focus on the entire person—not just reflexes, and on the person in a social context. Despite living in difficult circumstances, they worked hard to incorporate and be in touch with a wide range of intellectual influences. Luria asserts that Marxism was the central organizing theory, although also says that he was not an expert Marxist. On Page 42 he talks about Piaget—with whom they had fundamental disagreements, but whose clinical practices were influential for their work.

On Page 44 the three names for this new, synthetic practice are briefly explained—Instrumental, Cultural, and Historical, all three of which were then used in different combinations to describe what they were doing, which was to work from a theory in which “the origins of higher forms of conscious behavior were to be found in the individual’s social relations with the external world.” (p43) “Instrumental” refers to the ability of humans to actively modify their own behavior and cognitive functioning (i.e. tying a string around your finger to remember something). “Cultural” involves the structured way in which society organizes tasks and tools—epitomized in language, the “tool of tools”. “Historical” is not separated from cultural (Mike says “culture in history in the present”). Tools such as language, writing, and arithmetic carry with them the history of the many generations who developed and perfected them.

The rest of the chapter is devoted to describing some of the early experimental work that they did together, which laid the groundwork for the rest of Luria’s career. “The kindergarten and the clinic were equally attractive avenues of approach to the difficult analytic problems.” (p.57, concluding paragraph of the chapter). They studied development and disability/rehabilitation. People in these times function in a less synthetic, holistic way.

This summary will get to be as long as the chapter if I describe all the experiments, but from our class discussion it seems that one really important thing to note is that Vygotsky’s work and theories predicted (helped to found?) the field of neuropsychology—heralding a much more complex understanding of the ways that neurology affects behavior, and the ways that learning and behavior in turn affect the brain. This is detailed on pages 54 and 55.

-Emma

Luria on research methodology, chapter 3

I was especially interested in taking a close look at chapter 3, where Luria capsulizes many of the theories and research ideas of the Vygotsky school that he helped found. I wound up annotating groups of paragraphs in terms of the major themes Luria develops.

Below are my annotations on Luria's pages on research, which Emma could only touch on in her summary (BTW, I liked her summary, and all the summaries, I found them very useful). What is especially interesting about this section of chapter 3, which Luria devotes to the research work they did in the 1920's, is the emphasis he places on the method of studying the influence of auxiliary stimuli in various kinds of behavior, and how this concept underlaid all their experiments.

Auxiliary: supplementary

Making a generalization about this, I would say that this method of finding ways of exposing the use of auxiliary stimuli in cognitive behavior (e.g. studying things like the use of auxiliary stimuli to remember primary inform! ation, use of egocentric speech in planning, use of external rules to control motor behavior such as jumping) exemplified the essential theory of the Vygotsky school, that the development of higher psychological functions was a process of internalization - internalization of external activity, particularly social activity and engagement with tools and language. What each of these experiments had in common was the exposure and analysis of this internalization process by rendering visible the mechanisms involved - the mechanisms of internalizing external, auxiliary stimuli - transforming this stimuli into internal methods (including internal auxiliary stimuli) for the self-guidance of conscious behavior.

pg 45
Experimental arrangements were constantly being explored by the troika. The arrangements incorporated the theory that as higher psychological processes take shape, the structure of behavior changes.
pg 46
A. R. Leontiev studied how auxiliary stimuli can be used to help remember, distinguishing "natural remembering" from remembering stimulated by the use of “auxiliary stimuli." The idea of using two sets of stimuli, one that was supposed to be mastered and another to serve as an instrument to do so, became a central methodological tool in all these studies of memory.
pg 47
Natalia Morozova studied the development of complex choices in small children. The use of auxiliary stimuli was introduced into these choice reaction experiments, and demonstrated that the remembering used in choice reactions required rules governing their acquisition that were similar to those used in mediated remembering that were found in the Leontiev studies.
pg 48
R. E. Levina studied the role of speech in children's problem-solving activity. The role of egocentric speech in carrying out, and as a child gets older, planning an action, was of particular interest. The underlying theory of this work was the same as the other studies - words and speech became methods of self-guidance.
pg 49
Alexander Zaporozhets applied this concept of the internalization of external activity (use of egocentric speech in planning, use of auxiliary stimuli to remember primary information) to motor behavior. In this case, the influence of the use of external rules were applied to children learning how, for example, to control their own jumping.
pg 50
L. S. Sakharov applied this method to the study of how children classify using a block-sorting technique. He discovered that the naming function of words undergoes deep changes as a child develops.
In another line of studies conducted in 1929, "significative" activity in children was studied - ways that children engaged in activities that gave significance to stimuli they were asked to master. In these studies, children were asked to invent pictograms to help them memorize abstract phrases such as "The teacher is angry."
pg 51
There were other experiments.; Individually, all these studies were simplistic. But the concepts behind them laid the methodological foundation for Vygotsky's general theory and provided a set of experimental techniques Luria used throughout his career.
Luria's work on the combined motor method was also an important aspect of the research work done by the Vygotsky school participants. Although Luria began this work with an interest in studying the dynamic course of emotions, Vygotsky saw the combined motor method as a means for studying the relationship between voluntary movements and speech, especially the way speech served as an instrument for organizing behavior.

Steve Gabosh

Cole’s comments
Agree with the centrality of the method of using auxiliary stimuli as THE defining method/theory underlying the cultural historical approach, Steve. It is, not accidentally, the core of Yrjo Engestrom's current intervention research using the phrase, the "method of dual stimulation"
mike

Chapter 4: Cultural Differences in Thinking

Luria begins by noting that one way to study "man's intellectual function" is to compare intellectual activity in different cultures. He cites speculative work in the area by Durkheim, Janet, Levy-Bruhl, Rivers, and Werner but notes that this work was "being conducted without the benefit of any appropriate psychological data" (59). He notes that "a few studies on sensory processes, carried out by trained psychologist at the turn of the century, were available" (59) but this data did not address the higher psychological functions.

Luria saw Vygotsky's work as a framework that unified the phenomenological (descriptive) branches and the natural (explanatory) branches. Given this framework, in the 1930's Luria and Vygotsky planned a study of the "intellectual functions" of adults from "a nontechnological, nonliterate, traditional society". Luria says they sought a society that was undergoing social and technological change. They settled on Uzbekistan and Khirgizia in Central Asia, which were regions of the Soviet Union at the time. Luria describes some of his work in Uzbekistan in this chapter.

The Uzbekistan people he studied were traditionally villages who worked the land of others. They raised cotton and practiced animal husbandry. They were Muslims. Women were isolated from the life of society. In the period of the study, the Revolution of 1917 (and presumably the subsequent establishment of the Soviet Union in 1922) were causing significant changes in Uzbekistan. One change was the introduction of schooling, another the "collectivization of agriculture" and another the emancipation of women. The area was in a state of transition. Luria studied five groups of people. 1) Illiterate women in remote village who were not involved in the modern ways. 2) Illiterate peasants in remote villages who were not involved with socialized labor. 3) Nearly illiterate women with some training in teaching kindergarteners. 4) Barely literate but experienced collective farm workers. 5) Modestly literate women with training as school teachers (these women had had only two or three years of schooling). He considered that groups 1) and 2) were not exposed to modern ways but groups 3), 4) and 5) were.

His methods "approached a full-fledged experimental inquiry" (62). Much time was taken to make "subjects" comfortable with the experimenters and the type of tests prior to "testing". Field notes were taken during testing. Tests were not standardized but were specially designed to be meaningful to subjects. Each test had multiple possible answers. The following three higher psychological functions were tested: linguistic coding; categorization and abstraction; and verbal problem solving. Luria says, "In each of these areas we discovered a shift in the organization of people's cognitive activity that paralled the changes in the social organization of their work lives" (64).

Linguistic Coding:

Subjects differed in the way they named and grouped geometric stimuli. Subjects who were not illiterate used geometric names like "circle". Subjects who were illiterate used concrete names like "a plate". This had consequences for all the other higher psychological functions. Luria concluded that using geometric names "reflects historically developed and transmitted ways of classifying objects in the world" (66).

Classification and Abstraction:

Luria also called these functions Categorization and Generalization. "Non-modern" subjects tended to not categorize. "Modern" subjects categorized in expected ways. When presented with a set of objects "almost all subjects" tended to group according to practical considerations ("all these objects are needed for chopping") as opposed to using some characteristic of the objects ("all the yellow ones"). For "almost all subjects" grouping was idiosyncractic and resistant to change. For this same group, grouping by abstract characteristics seemed "stupid" (69). The tendency to practical grouping was strongest in the illiterate groups, groups 1) and 2). Mixed results were obtained for groups 3) and 4). Group 5 tended to employ categorical classification even though they had had only a year or two of school. These results were understood to mean that "the primary function of language changes as one's educational experience increases. When people employ a concrete situation as a means of grouping objects, they seem to be using language only to help them recall and put together the components of the practical situation rather than to allow them to formulate abstractions or generalizations about categorical relations" (72). Luria hypothesized that "when people acquired the verbal and logical codes that allowed them to abstract the essential features of objects and assign them to categories, they would also be able to do more complex logical thinking" (74). This was seen in Marxist terms as a "transition from sensory to rational consciousness" (74). Luria believed that theoretical concepts helped by creating a logical system of codes, which he believed develops with thought.

Verbal problem solving/Syllogistic reasoning:

Luria links the same categorization classification approaches to the development of syllogistic reasoning e.g. If one hears "Precious metals do not rust." and "Gold is a precious metal", Syllogistic reasoning would lead one to say "Gold does not rust.". Groups 1) and 2) saw each of the three parts of a syllogism as an isolated judgment even though Luria varied the syllogisms by crafting the statements so that they were about familiar or unfamiliar content. Groups 1) and 2) (and I think also groups 3) and 4)) tended to not exhibit syllogistic reasoning. He notes that groups 1) and 2) made "excellent judgments about facts of direct concern to them" and revealed "much worldly intelligence" but in theoretical thinking they were limited. Three problems presented themselves: a mistrust of initial premises; a failure to accept the premises as universal; and syllogisms disintegrating into three isolated propositions devoid of logical structure. Group 5) responded to logical syllogisms in the expected way.

Luria ends by referring to all the work that was not reported in this chapter -- what he calls the "anti-Cartesian experiments". He also studied "problem solving and reasoning (not sure if this is distinct from verbal problem solving mentioned above or not), imagination and fantasy, and the ways in which informants evaluated their own personality" (80). In these studies he found "critical self-awareness to be a product of socially determined psychological development, rather than its primary starting point" (80). He concludes that "basic changes in the organization of thinking can occur in a relatively short time when there are sufficiently sharp changes in social-historical circumstances, such as those that occurred following the 1917 Revolution" (80).

This was a controversial study in its time and I think this is still true today.

Chapter 5: Mental Development in Twins

In the 1930s, Luria was invited to set up a research program at the Medico-Genetic Institute, which gave him unlimited access to twins from all over the USSR. Luria's twin work was different because it did not assess mental functions using the standardized IQ test. Also, he considered not just biological and cultural explanations for differences between twin performance but also explanations that considered age and the nature of the task being examined.

Study 1:

Luria hypothesized that "As a child grows older, natural processes change quantitatively" (82) meaning that "mental processes increase in power but the basic principles of their action remain unchanged" (82). However, "Cultural processes, …. change qualitatively" (83) meaning, I believe, that changes occur in the action of culturally-mediated mental processes over time. Obviously, both natural and cultural processes will be influencing development simultaneously. Giving memory as an example, Luria notes that "the child gradually learns to organize his memory and to bring it under voluntary control through use of the mental tools of his culture" (83). Effectively, Luria distinguishes between "natural cognitive tasks" and "culturally mediated processes" and expects that biological factors have a stable relation to the former but that environmental factors have a changing relation to the latter. Luria considered that natural processes dominant up to 7 years and that cultural processes begin to dominant at 11 years. To test this relation he chose subjects who were 5-7 years old and 11-13 years old. He also selected task that required either natural or cultural psychological processes. He varied genetic factors by comparing identical and fraternal twins in the same environment. Fifty pairs of twins were part of the study and they were evenly spread amongst the two age groups and two types of twins. For tasks, Luria used Leontiev's memory tasks, which tested 1) natural direct remembering of geometric figures, 2) the ability to remember very difficult words, and finally 3) the ability to remember a set of words given a set of signs (one per word). Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected. Generally, the younger children relied on natural abilities to perform the tasks whereas some of the older children used mediated means, particularly in the third task. Regardless of the child's age he found that identical twins performed more similarly than fraternal twins on natural tasks (1 and possibly also 2 above). The culturally mediated task (task 3) was performed similarly whether the twins were fraternal or natural although the older group was more similar than the younger group.

Study 2:

Luria also noted that identical twins "presented an interesting opportunity to study the effects of environmental variation" (88) by introducing a cultural difference into one twin's life. He used educational games developed from a set of blocks to try to develop one twin's imagination, shape discrimination and ability to estimate visually. Using blocks, he and his colleague Mirenova sought a task that was not too structured and not to open-ended. They designed a learning activity that would give a child a goal but not the solution. They gave children a model of a structure that provided the overall shape or outline of the final structure but didn't specify what blocks to use. Luria felt that building from a partially specified model would develop "perceptual activity" in children (92). He then asked the ten children in his study (5 pairs of identical twins) to build under the three conditions 1) very structured 2) goal-oriented and 3) open-ended. Then one twin of each pair followed a two-month programme using strategy 1) above and the other using strategy 2). When tested at the end of the programme, the twin following programme 2) was superior in building using either the fully-specified models for strategy 1 or the outline models used in strategy 2. Luria asks why and sought an answer by analyzing the model-building process itself. He noticed that the twin in group 2 planned more, had a better sense of the relation of a block to the whole structure and were more articulate when identifying differences between their structure and the model they were working towards.

Then Luria explored the "basis of the initial differences observed" (93). He hypothesized those in group 1) above had "only exercised the children's elementary perception" (94). In further tests he showed both twins in a pair were equally good at discriminating elementary figures and concentrating. Eliminating these possibilities as explanations for the difference he then tested analytic skills. Here he found differences between the ability to analyze the relation between "objects and their spatial configuration" (95), where group 2) was superior. Luria concludes "this research was interesting not only for its general theoretical and educational implications but also for its demonstration that identical twins could serve as especially useful subjects in intensive work with small groups of children" (96).

Study 3:

Luria became interested in the "private" speech of twins. He studied one pair, Yura and Liosha, who had "a complex phonetic impairment" (97). At four they were speaking very little and interacting mostly with each other. At five Luria observed their vocabulary was that of a normal two or three year old and their speech was tightly bound to action. Luria wanted to "modify the level of the children's speech in a short time and by so doing produce a change in their mental functions" (99). During a ten-month programme the twins lived apart. Yura, the weaker twin, was "given speech training to discriminate and articulate sounds and to master adult speech" (99). After three months he found that both boys speech had improved. Both boys were heard uttering planning speech but Lioshas speech was rarely narrative whereas Yura's was not. Luria concluded "the development of planning speech grows out of the activities and interactions that normally occur in kindergarten, but the development of narrative speech seems to need special training at this stage in the child's language development" (101). However, Luria also noticed throughout the course of the study that Yura's planning and narrative speech was qualitatively different since it could apply to objects and actions that were not in the immediate environment. Luria concluded "the necessity to communicate led to the development of objective speech, but special training was required for the children to produce differentiated, well-developed sentences" (101). However, Luria was really interested in how speech affected children's thought processes. Following Vygotsky, he focused on assessing the quality of the children's play. After three months of separation he found "remarkable changes" in free play – games had "an agreed-upon objective" (102). Also, when playing with clay, both boys now worked towards a goal. However, Yura led play requiring verbal formulations and Liosha led games based on motor activity. In more detailed observations Luria noticed that Liosha could not label an object. He had trouble classifying or finding absurdities. Yura "demonstrated that he had learned to use culturally assimilated schemes to organize his thinking" (103).

I love how the questions and direction of these studies were shaped by cultural-historical psychology. I also greatly admire how each of the studies progressed to reveal more fundamental differences. This reflects Luria's remarkable powers of observation.

Chapter 6: Verbal Regulation of Behavior

Pavlovian physiology was a popular explanation for animal and human behavior (by the late 1940s), however Luria found its lab models and
experimental methods to be more useful (than its explanatory power). However, Luria found Pavlovian methods to be too reliant on a simplistic,
mechanistic connection between stimuli and response (by over emphasizing techniques of reinforcement and conditioning); also, the Pavlovian terminology of excitation, inhibition, and plasticity could only describe, but not explain, experimental results.

In early 1950s Luria moved to Institute of fectology, and worked with E.D. Homskaya on, among other things, the issue of how verbal regulation of behavior develop in children (or how children learn to regulate their motor functions based on verbal instructions). [Note: This research is summarized in _Problems in the Higher Nervous Activity of Normal and Abnormal Children_, 2-volumes, pub. 1956 and 1958 in Russian; also, it is
mentioned in _The Role of Speech in the regulation of Normal and Abnormal
Behavior_, 1960 in English.]

The initial series of three experiments used combined motor method to test both normal of different age groups and abnormal children. All three experiments required the subject respond to visual stimuli (or refrain from responding) based on verbal instructions; the first involved motor
responses, the second required verbal responses, and the third involved both motor and verbal responses. The reason motor and verbal responses
were chosen is because each is presumed to be a lower level function and a higher level function respectively; the reason normal and abnormal
children were chosen is because the normal group provides results concerning developmental processes and the other group provides results
involving pathological conditions.

The experiments involved groups of normal children (2 to 2.5 yrs, 3 to 3.5, 3.5 to 4 yrs) and groups of mentally retarded children (one group
with low level problems and one group with high level problems; both groups somewhat older than the normal children). The results of the normal
children showed that at age 3.5 to 4 subject could begin to control their own behavior based on verbal instructions, while younger children could
not, or could only do so sporadically. The results for the abnormal children showed that those with lower level (motor) problems could use their verbal system to overcome their motor difficulties, while those with higher level (verbal and motor) problems did not improve their performance.

These experiments with verbal regulation of behavior in normal and abnormal children provided results apparently confirming a hypothesis about low and high level brain functioning within both developmental processes and within pathological circumstances. Specifically, one of the key findings of this research involves the internalization of verbal
commands for normal children between 3.5 and 4 years of age. The internalization of verbal commands in normal children and the use of
verbal commands to overcome motor deficiency in some abnormal children showed that verbal processes are vital to motor coordination and possibly of extreme importance for complex mental functions in general. However, he warns against over-generalizing from these results due to the laboratory context of the experiments, and he suggests further studies involving observation of natural behaviors.

Luria, Chapter 7

From: "xavier cagigas" (xcagigas@ucsd.edu)

Luria suggests that there are two strategies toward understanding the nature of higher psychological functions: tracing their development and following the course of their dissolution under conditions of localized brain damage. He compares the localization theorists who attempted to relate each mental function to a specific cortical area with the holistic theorists who assumed that the brain functions as a whole to produce the psychological functions expressed in behavior. Using the dialectical method, he goes on to form a synthesis of narrow localization and equi-potentiality with the strategy of investigating “functional systems.”

Using Broca and Wernicke as a foil, he introduces Hughlings Jackson’s view of the brain as a “complex vertical organization.” Summarizing Jackson’s idea that each psychological function has a low (spinal cord/brainstem), middle (sensory/motor cortices), and high level (frontal/subcortical circuits) representation, Luria introduces the inspiration for what would later become his theory of the “3 functional blocks of the brain” as energizing, processing, and planning in function.

Having sketched the scaffolding for functional systems on which he would later draw, Luria launches into detailed descriptions of the functional systems of respiration and movement and the various different physiological ways of achieving the same end. Luria summarizes the two most salient features of a functional system as: a) the presence of an invariant task, performed by variable mechanisms, which bring the process to a constant invariant conclusion and b) the complex composition of a functional system always includes a series of afferent (adjusting) and efferent (effector) impulses.

Having given these examples in physiology, Luria then dives into Vygotsky’s theory that higher psychological functions represent complex functional systems which are mediated in their structure and incorporate historically accumulated symbols and tools. Vygotsky assumed that his historical approach to the development of such psychological processes as active memory, abstract thought, and voluntary actions also held for the principles of their organization on a cerebral level. This followed from the fact that research suggested that the role played by a cerebral region in the organization of a higher psychological process changes during the course of an individual’s development, and also by the fact that in its early stages complex thinking requires a number of external aids for its performance.

Luria gives many clinically rich examples of Vygotsky’s theory of higher cognitive functions guiding the rehabilitation of neurologically damaged individuals with Parkinson’s disease by reorganizing the theoretical functional systems using compensatory aids. This section illustrates the tight coupling between both cortical and extracortical components of the functional systems which subserve higher order cognition and find their nexus in the historically positioned individual.

Luria also advances the idea that “Neuropsychology” represents a synthesis of the scientific method characteristic of his training as a psychologist and the detective-like syndrome analysis of behavioral neurology. In doing so, he challenged the use of “standardized tests of intelligence” which don’t take into account the underlying neurocognitive functional systems and their social historical development, and therefore represent a reified view of “intelligence.”

Immediately following the short section on the shortcomings of either taking a purely “psychological” or “neurological” approach to the study of higher order cognition and on the tail of his short comment on intelligence testing, Luria ingeniously uses “aphasia” as a vehicle for deconstructing a reified construct. By systematically using syndrome analysis to show that there are different forms of “aphasia” and that one must include both the underlying neurodynamic properties as well as the social context in which different symptoms present themselves, Luria fleshed out the unity of the functional systems which drive an activity both in the nervous system and in the social historical world in which individuals are called to act. In the end, however, he states that perhaps if Vygotsky had lived longer he would have been able to expound upon t! his line of research in more depth.

Luria Chapter 8

Neuropsychology in World War II

During WWII, Luria was commissioned to organize a hospital to treat soldiers with brain injuries. He started the project in the Urals, but after three years he was transferred back to Moscow where he continued his work after the war ended. His team was required to diagnose brain lesions and treat complications, as well as develop a rehabilitation program for destroyed functions. Several key points emerge in his discussion of this experience:

Luria emphasizes the close relationship between diagnostic theory and restorative practice (156).

His “intermediate” solution to viewing brain functions as either equally distributed or narrowly localized is “to think of the functional system as a working constellation of activities with a corresponding working constellation of zones of the brain that support the activities” (141).

The process developed to diagnose and treat patients accords with Vygotsky’s theory that a) higher psychological functions can be analysed by tracing the path of their dissolution, and b) these functions have sociohistorical origins (156).

Luria's primary example, which illustrates the above points, is writing – an activity which “clearly could not have been coded in the human brain in a purely organic fashion because it involves the use of man-made tools” (141). Luria demonstrates that the task of writing involves a complex series of processes involving many different zones of the brain. The injured part of the brain can be identified by analyzing the particular problem that manifests in the act of writing. For example, when the tempero-occipital and parietal-occipital regions of the cortex are damaged, the “spatial organization of graphemes is disturbed” (142).

Once the injury was diagnosed, Luria devised a treatment which would use the intact links, as well as external aids, to create a new functional system. For example, in some patients with afferent motor aphasia, the partially-damaged functional system of articulated speech could be retrained by making the articulatory processes conscious: “to get the patient consciously to produce the sound of the letter p, the therapist gives the patient a lighted match, which he instinctively blows out when the flame reaches his fingers” (145). His examples of treatment demonstrate the very concrete methods he developed to reconstruct a damaged function, utilizing such external devices as mirrors, index cards, and diagrams. At the end of the retraining, the patient should be able to function without the external assistance. While clearly there are variations in the degree of rehabilitation possible depending upon the injury, Luria’s innovative treatments helped his patients improve specific problems, such as articulation and spatial functions, and even more generalized disturbances, such as spontaneous thinking.

Summary of Chpt 9.: Mechanisms of the Brain in The Autobiography of Alexander Luria.

After the Second World War, Luria was concerned with two lines of research: gaining a greater understanding of the neurophysiological mechanism underlying the brain structures associated with the specific syndromes and continuing to advance the general understating of higher cortical functions through the use of more sophisticated psychological analyses. The combination of these two lines of research into a single enterprise is represented, as Luria points out, in the term neuropsychology.

As part of this research project Luria studied the neurophysiology of the frontal lobes and the reticular formation. Research on the reticular formation had revealed that excitation of this structure spread in a gradual manner and therefore played a significant role in regulating activation of the cerebral cortex. This realization led to a shift in research focus from “horizontal” relations within specific levels of organization in the central nervous system (CNS) to “vertical” relations among between structures at the surface of the brain and those deep inside. (159) In addition to this change in research orientation, Luria notes a change in the way researchers understood the direction of excitatory influence in brain activation. Whereas earlier work in neurophysiology focused on the flow of CNS signals moving from lower to higher brain structures, later work highlighted the fact that signals also moved in the opposite direction, with higher structures exerting control over lower ones (afferent (ascending) vs. efferent (descending) connections).

To measure specific and non-specific activation by the frontal lobes of the brain as a whole, Luria and his colleagues employed electrophysiological techniques (electroencephalogram) in combination with tests of verbal comprehension. Participants were first habituated to listening to a list of common words. This elicited nonspecific activation. In order to elicit a specific response some words were imbued with “special significance either through being presented in conjunction with mild electrical shocks, or by asking the participants to listen for specific words (162). In this way Luria and his colleagues could examine their electroencephalogram recordings in order to distinguish between specific and non-specific activation in the brain. Confirmation of the central role of the frontal lobes in activation of the cerebral cortex came from studies demonstrating that frontal lobe patients who received instructions to listen for specific words did not showed any change in brain activation when presented with these specific words.

In the second half of the chapter Luria focuses his discussion on neurolinguistics. He introduces two significant influences on his thinking about the relationship between language and the brain. The first is the work of Trubetskoy who emphasized the importance of phoneme perception in language processing. The second was Saussurian linguistics. From Saussure Luria borrowed the distinction between “paradigmatic” (language as a tool for categorizing) and “syntagmatic” (language syntax) aspects of language and applied this distinction in trying to understand language organization in the brain. Luria and his colleagues found that lesions in specific parts of the cortex differentially affected patients’ abilities to speak fluently or to produce speech with coherent relations between individual words.

Luria ends the chapter by emphasizing the importance of motives and context in the organization of an individual’s speech. He cites Goldstein who argued that naming objects and word repetition did not form the basis of natural speech; rather “the basic form of speech communication is the formulation of ideas as whole propositions which are intimately bound up with the motives and conditions of the activity in which the individual is engaged,” (171).

Wk 2: Vygotsky

Vygotsky, Mind in Society, Ch 4: Internalization of Higher psychological Functions

Joanne Price

In this chapter, Vygotsky provides a distinction between tools and signs, the primary mediating artifacts that provide the evidence of higher psychological functioning. He believes that an imprecise use of metaphors associated with tools and signs might result in a blurring of the important distinction between them. And since the researcher’s task is “to uncover the real relationship, not the figurative one, that exists between behavior and its auxiliary means” (p. 53), such a blurring would be disastrous. Vygotsky accuses Dewey of making just such an error in referring to language as the ‘tool of tools.’

Of the two, tools and signs, tools have perhaps tended to receive more focus, more investigation since they are external, tangible. But Vygotsky seems to be intrigued with signs, ‘we seek to understand the behavioral role of the sign in all its uniqueness. This goal has motivated our empirical studies of how both tool and sign are mutually linked and yet separate…’

Vygotsky uses three ways to compare and contrast tool and sign:

1. They are similar in that either can play a mediating role in activity.

2. They are different in the ways that they orient human behavior:

a. A tool is externally oriented.
It is a ‘means by which human external activity masters nature.
b. A sign is internally oriented.
It s a ‘means of ‘mastering oneself.’

3. The real tie between these activities: the tie of their development in phylo- and onto-genesis.

‘The mastering of nature and the mastering of behavior are mutually linked, just as man’s alteration of nature alters man’s own nature.

I found this chapter shocking as it applies research in the workplace. There is so very little attention given to signs and their role in the development of activity and yet issues pertaining to ‘signs’ (because they are internally oriented) are perhaps the key stumbling-block to coordinated, distributed activity.

From: "david leitch" (dleitch@ucsd.edu)

Vygotsky begins Chapter Four of Mind in Society with a contention that, "the sign acts as an instrument of psychological activity in a manner analogous to the role of a tool in labor."(MiS 52) Here Vygotsky cautions against treating this analogy as an identity. On the one hand, treating the two as identical can lead, in Vygotsky's view, to meaningless expressions pretending to content: "The tongue is the tool of thought," for example. Once someone tries to interrogate this phrase for meaning, its vacuousness becomes clear. On the onther hand, treating sign and tool as identical can lead other psychologists, such as Dewey and other American pragmatists, to forget the important differences between them.

In order to avoid this, Vygotsky reaches back to Hegel's famous aphorism regarding reason:
"Reason is just as cunning as she is powerful. Her cunning consists principally in her mediating activity which, by causing objects to act and react on each other in accordance with their own nature, in this way, without any direct interference in the process, carries out reasons' intentions." (MiS 54 quoting "Encyklopadie, Eter Theil, Die Logik," which Vygotsky draws on from Marx's Capital [199])

Both tools and signs are like reason in that they cause intended actions without any direct interference in the process; they are subcategories of the general categoriy of mediated activity. The difference between them is that tools are used to mediate the physical world, and signs are used to mediate the psychological world. Therefore, tools are physical objects that mediate the physical world, such as wheels, pulleys, levers, and machines, and signs are psychological objects that mediate the mental world, such as mnemonics, gestures, and language. The physical and psychological worlds are analogous but not identical; note even the use of the term 'world' to describe what is psychologically mediated by signs; the term 'world' is itself a physical analogy, as there is no locatable psychological world. A crucial difference between the two is their orientation. The physical world is external to tool-user. The psychological world is internal to the sign-user. Therefore, ! tools orient the user externally and signs orient the user internally. These orientations are different things, but can take place together.

Indeed, this combination is the defining characteristic of higher mental functions. The development of pointing, for example, takes place in Vygotsky's model through the combination of tools and signs. The parent acts as a tool, in that they act upon the physical world to give the child the child reaches for, and the gesture towards the object and the failed attempt to grasp it is the beginning of a sign, in that it acts indirectly upon the world, mediating the child's desires through the rubric of the cultural significance of pointing. Let me explain this in a little more detail.

"We call the internal reconstruction of an external operation internalization." (MiS 56) In order to understand how internalization occurs, we must understand two things: what an external operation is and how it becomes reconstructed internally. Already from this sentence, however, we can see an important difference in Vygotsky's model from Piaget's. For Vygotsky, the higher mental functions begin externally, and move into the child, rather than vice-versa. This model opposes Piaget's conception of development as the increased external expression of internal development. This reversal is central for understanding Vygotsky because it encompasses the uniqueness of Vygotsky's thought. Modelling development as the external entering the internal emphasizes the need for a developmental model to account the transition from the external to the internal. For Vygotsky, this has two important effects, one of which I concentrate on in this account. First, this emphasis leads Vy! gotsky to the mediational aspects of his thought; signs and tools becomes central conceptual objects for Vygotsky because of the work they do in explaining the transition from the external to the internal. Second, Vygotksy's approach to signs and tools as conceptual categories forces Vygotsky to take account of culture in a much more nuanced, central way than previous thinkers had; as we will see, the innate sociability of man is the reason that operations begin externally. This accounting is not just a reaction against the Pavlovian Behaviorism that characterized the mainstream of Soviet psychology. Rather, it is the birth of a new way of approaching psychology, a way that takes an individuals' cultural memberships into account without denying the presence of the individual.

Vygotsky uses the example of a child pointing to outline the process of internalization. At first, a child sees and recognizes an object, and reaches out to grasp it. If the child is successful, the child grasps the object and, given the child's age when they begin to point, will frequently put the object into their mouth. If the child is unsuccessful, the attempt is either witnessed or not. If the attempt is not witnessed, then the child will either locomote over to the object and attempt to grasp it again, or the child will give up. If, however, the failed attempt is witnessed, by a parent for example, then the process of internalization can begin. (MiS 56)

The parent, seeing the child's failed attempt to grasp the object, understands that the child wishes to possess the object. Loving the child, the parent will frequently pass the object to the child. Consider this from the child's point of view. The attempt to grasp the object has succeeded, although through an unexpected means; rather than the gesture sucessfully interacting with the world directly, the gesture successfully acted on the wrold indirectly, mediated through a successful social interaction with the parent. "Consequently, the primary meaning of that unsuccessful grasping movement is established by others." (56) After some time, the child eventually comes to realize the primary meaning that has been established by the parent. At this point, the action of attempting to grasp an object becomes the action of pointing. The movement becomes simplified and oriented towards another person. So long as others respond to the gesture in the way the child has now come! to expect (by fetching the object), the social meaning of the gesture will be reinforced.

See what has happened here. The child no longer acts directly on the world in order to grasp an object, but rather indirectly upon the world through others. The child's interaction with the objective world has become mediated through the cultural convention of pointing. In this way, a cultural meaning has been internalized by the child through a series of three transformations:
An operation that initially represents an external activity is reconstructed and begins to occur internally
An interpersonal process is transformed into an intrapersonal one
The transformation of an interpersonal process into an intrapersonal one is the result of a long series of developmental events

From: "Matt Brown" (mjb001@ucsd.edu)

> Both tools and signs are like reason in that they cause intended
> actions without any direct interference in the process; they are
> subcategories of the general categoriy of mediated activity. The
> difference between them is that tools are used to mediate the
> physical world, and signs are used to mediate the psychological
> world. Therefore, tools are physical objects that mediate the
> physical world, such as wheels, pulleys, levers, and machines, and
> signs are psychological objects that mediate the mental world, such
> as mnemonics, gestures, and language.

I'm a little worried about this inference, but I guess that's because
I'm not sure what you mean by "psychological object." Surely, signs
aren't (always?) psychological objects in the sense of ideas or
mental representations. Traffic signs, words on a page, the sign on
the bathroom door, gestures and spoken words are all signs, but they
likewise have a material aspect. Similarly, tools also have an ideal
side. They aren't merely physical objects, because they are what
they are in virtue of having a history and being part of a culture.

From: "M Cole" (lchcmike@gmail.com)

These topics will be central to discussion today, David. Thanks for the
summary.
mike

From: "M Cole" (lchcmike@gmail.com)

I share your dis-ease Matt.
mike

L.S. Vygotsky, Mind and Society (1978), Ch. 5 The Problem of Method

Antonieta Mercado January 27, 2006

Problems of Method

Vygotsky argues that new approaches to scientific problems entail a
reevaluation of methodology. This has been the case in psychology, and th=e
introduction of stimulus-response experimentation was revolutionary at it=s
time, because it brought psychology closer to the natural sciences (p.
59).

Wundt saw the very essence of psychological method as the systematic
alteration of the stimuli that generate a change in the psychological
process linked to them (p. 59).

However, Wundt experimental method only applies to elementary processes o=f
psychophysiological character (p. 60). Higher psychological functions wer=e
out of the picture.

According to Vygotsky, experimental psychology has imposed the
stimulus-response framework as the main tool to study behavior and, he
argues, this approach cannot serve as the basis for the adequate study of
the higher, human forms of behavior (p. 60), because psychological
functions are processes not objects, and the stimulus-response framework
“fossilizes” a dynamic process.

Vygotsky talks about a method to assess higher mental functions as:

The search for method becomes one of the most important problems of the
entire enterprise of understanding the uniquely human forms of
psychological activity. In this case, the method is simultaneously
prerequisite and product, the tool and the result of the study (p. 65).

Vygotsky proposes three principles for the analysis of higher mental
functions and for the introduction of a developmental psychological
method, rather than only a experimental one. Those principles are:

a) Analyzing processes, not objects. Any psychological process
(development of thought or voluntary behavior) is undergoing constant
changes (even during experiments).

b) Explanation vs. description. Vygotsky cites K. Lewin when he contrasts
phenomenological analysis (based on phenotypes or external features), and
genotypic analysis (origins of phenomena). Vygotsky provides the example
of a whale: phenotypically a whale is a fish, but genotypically a whale i=s
a mammal. Thus, phenotypic viewpoints are descriptive in nature, whereas
genotypic viewpoints are explanatory (p. 62). “Two processes that are v=ery
close in their causal-dynamic nature may e very different phenotypically”
(p. 65).

Vygotsky has touched an important point for scientific inquiry: there is
mystery in the world, and science tools are out to discover, explain and
describe those mysteries. If phenotypical characteristics were the same a=s
genotypical, there would be no basis for scientific inquiry. Experience
solely would provide with knowledge about reality and nature.

c) The problem of fossilized behavior. Studying processes that have
already died. Examples of this are mechanized psychological processes
(some with ancient origins), that are repeated over and over (such as the
case of reflexes). Vygotsky posses that “inactive, rudimentary function=s
stand not as the living remmants of biological evolution, but as those of
the historical development of behavior (p. 64). In child development, thi=s
has been a big misunderstanding, because researchers have equated
historical as only past events, not processes that are continuously going
on before our eyes.

Vygotsky argues that in order to understand behavioral processes there is
no need for the mechanical decomposition of responses into their elements.
However, he argues that there is a risk that by not studying the elements
of a particular process, all what is left is a description of external
responses rather than an assessment of the dynamic process (refer to page
66 and the equation).

Vygotsky proposes a causal-dynamic study of choice reactions, where
complex reactions are studied as a living process, not as fossils. He
exemplifies it with an experiment on choice reactions in adults and
children. He observes that, when cued to push a button or respond to a
stimulus, adults acquire a stable response, while children generally do
not wait until directions are given and start a process of trial and erro=r
until they associate the correct way to approach a task. In doing this,
children may use external objects as signifiers, something that does not
have direct relation to the task. In this process, learning occurs as an
internal stimuli, that is hard to assess in a linear way, because it does
not occur linearly, but in leaps and set-backs. A experimental psychology
based solely on stimulus-response is unable to capture this very process
of learning that entails revolutions and evolutions.

Vygotsky Mind in Society, Chapter 5 Problems of Method

Anna

Hi all,
I’m too finally joining the inspiring discussion here!

Antonieta lists in her summary three main principles of Vygotsky’s genetic or developmental method for studying the higher mental functions. Of these I take up the two, focusing on process & explaining instead of describing.

This relates to what Steve and Mike pointed out in the last week’s Luria discussion: to the use of auxiliary stimuli as a central principle in cultural-historical research and its implications for practical research. Inspired by this, I am thinking of the following question:

What it means to apply Vygotsky’s principles of his method in the ethnographically oriented developmental research today?

The empirical research settings of Vygotsky and colleagues were mostly conducted in laboratory settings. One could say that these arrangements were often separate from real life contexts and set up for a research purpose only. However, since that teh focus has been on researching these similar issues in real life settings such as after-school clubs, workplaces, classrooms etc. Often in these cases the role of the researcher is something between an ethnographer and interventionist...

In these cases the empirical object of research is emerging and impossible to control and often very heterogeneous (a group of people developing their own work or a group of students and teachers developing their learning activity with the researcher). Also, what to focus on in an empirical analysis is hard to determine before the whole process is over - although development and change is what is often seen as the main focus of the study. And finally, the role of the research subjects themselves becomes crucial in this.

I find it challenging to think what actually does Vygotsky’s genetic method mean in these kinds of settings? And how to trace development so that one does not only describe what happened but can also trace the critical turning points, relations, etc., in which the subjects or the activity developed? (depending whether to concentrate on studying the development of activity or the development of an individual in that activity.. or both..)

Well, this is a very large topic and must be solved in each research separately. However, it would be interesting to hear how you people have struggled these issues in your own research settings / analyses?

Also Engeström discusses this issue in his paper presented in ARTCO conference in Lyon 2005, where he refers i.e. to van der Veer and Valsiner and the challenge Vygotsky himself was also very aware of:

“The notion of ‘experimental method’ is set up by Vygotsky in a methodological framework where the traditional norm of the experimenter’s maximum control over what happens in the experiment is retained as a special case, rather than the modal one. The human subject always ‘imports’ into an experimental setting a set of ‘stimulus-means’ (psychological instruments) in the form of signs that the experimenter cannot control externally in any rigid way. Hence the experimental setting becomes a context of investigation where the experimenter can manipulate its structure in order to trigger (but not ‘produce’) the subject’s construction of new psychological phenomena.” (van der Veer and Valsiner 1991, p. 399)

Who is to control what auxiliary stimuli is used and manipulated and in what way? This is first of all a question of agency…

Best wishes for all,
Anna

Vygotsky, Thought and Word Ch.7 Thinking, Sign and Inner Speech, Section 1:
Vygotsky Chapter 7 Thought and Word Sec 1

In this chapter Vygotsky begins by exploring the relationship between thought and word using a genetic approach. He pursues two genetic paths: phylogenetic (development of the species) and ontogenetic (development of the individual). He looks at the relationship between thought and word in the very early stages of the development of our species (the anthropoid stage) and the very early stages in the development of the person (childhood) (243). He asserts that we do not come to be able to think and speak as a result of a skill that has developed over time in our species but that each generation acquires thinking and speaking skills in the course of their development as individuals, and, more specifically, as they develop human consciousness (243). (Here, I'd love to know what Vygotsky meant by human consciousness – I can only guess because I understand that the Russian concept of consciousness is very different from Western conceptions that no doubt invade my head).

Vygotsky says that in anthropoids thought and speech (meaning, I think, vocalizations) are not connected. Also he says that in very young children you can observe speech without thought and also thought without speech (243). So, Vygotsky asks, when and how do thought and speech become linked and what is the nature of the relationship between thought and speech over time?

One common pitfall he warns is thinking about thought and word as separate (243). This happens especially when some researchers decompose verbal thinking (what Vygotsky calls the object of their study) into the two elements thought and speech, which individually do not possess the characteristics of verbal thinking. Here he is making a point about the appropriate unit of analysis for studying verbal thinking. He opposes decomposition into elements as an analytic technique that will reveal anything about the entire object of study.

His approach is to partition verbal thinking into units (244). Units are produced by the analytic process but their characteristics "relate to the whole" – this means that Vygotsky is seeking a unit that will relate to the object of study, verbal thinking, but is simpler. The unit he suggests in this case is 'the meaning of the word' because 'the meaning of the word' is present in both thinking and speech. He says speech without meaning is just sounds and that thinking produces meanings. Vygotsky claims the relationship between speech and thought is dialectical and complex (my words). Meaning is a phenomena of verbal thinking only if speech is connected with thought and thought is connected with the word (244).

Having established his case for 'the meaning of the word' as the unit of analysis for studying verbal thinking, Vygotsky takes a developmental perspective and looks at how this unit changes ontogenetically. In the rest of the section he critiques approaches that others have taken.

He says word and meaning are not developed through associations that can only be reinforced or weakened. Here I think he takes issue with word and meaning being related by an association – he believes this is not the nature of the relation. He believes the field of semantics misses that the semantic structure of the word meaning relation changes over the development of the person's lifetime. So, he says, initially we have primitive forms of generalization that relate word and meaning and later we have more complex forms (245). Then he makes the link with consciousness saying that "reflection and generalization of reality [consciousness] changes with the emergence of abstract concepts in the process of the historical development of language [the child learning to speak]". (245).

For Vygotsky, the word has a place in the inner life of thought (246), an assertion which challenges the thinking in the Wurzburg school and others of the same ilk. Vygotsky takes issue with the notion that there is a point when a concept is formed. What is incorrect with the notion, Vygotsky claims, is the assumption that "the initial moment and end point in the process of concept development coincide". (247)

Structural psychology, he says attempted to "remove not only thinking but speech from the domain of associative laws" (247). Words in this framework are seen as functional (like a stick is functional) but still separate from thought. Vygotsky has two other critiques of structural psychology. One is that this approach doesn't bring out the unique characteristics of words – how they're different from sticks, what their structure is, how words represent things in consciousness and so on and it doesn't, like associative psychology, allow for the semantic structure of the word meaning relation to change over a person's lifespan.

So Vygotsky sees the associative approach and structural psychology as "like identical twins". The words may be different but the thinking has not changed. Both assume that thought is independent of the word (248). None of the approaches he reviews in part one "has grasped what make the word a word (249). "All have overlooked the generalization that is inherent in the word, this unique mode of reflecting reality in consciousness." (249) and they "consistently analyze the word and its meaning in isolation from development" (249).

Section 1 is essentially a critique of the treatment of thought and language at the time and a suggestion for an alternative starting point for the study of verbal thinking. We see here Vygotsky's preference to view research problems from a genetic prospective and his quest for an analytic approach that identifies units that reflect the whole.

Judy

Judy Brown

David Mather:

He says there is no primal bond between thought processes and language, but that a connection between them grows, changes and develops. This connection can be analyzed by using word meaning as the unit of analysis, since it is both spoken (external) and thought (internal). His analysis confirms that word meaning provides concrete measure of the development of verbal thinking, but, more importantly, it found that word meanings change and develop.

This new view of semantic structure (via individual development) contradicts other attempts to study language, such as the Wurzburg school, Selz (?), Ach (?), and Gestalt psychology. These other prevailing theories had two fundamental problems: they believe that words are connected to meanings via internal associations and that the all word meanings use the same structure. His theory overcomes those two errors by viewing thought and language as a developmental process that can account for different semantic structures.

[His examples of erroneous methods were quite extended no doubt due to the contentious nature of the historical context. He spends so much time framing his critique of their theories that he only barely begins to describe his own theory. Thus, my synopsis is rather concise.]

From: momoko kashima

Hi all. My name is Momoko KASHIMA. I'm a graduate school student in Japan.

First, I would like to comment on this chapter pertaining to my study theme.

I've been working on children's play, especially on how they create a shared-new-meaning through their ongoing interaction. As Vygotsky says:

The semantic structure has three basic characteristics: -- predominance of the word’s sense over its meaning, of phrase over word, and of the whole context over the phrase (277) -- agglutination (277) -- word sense is characterized by different laws of unification and fusion. Words are more heavily laden with sense than in external speech -- words are “a concentrated clot of senseE(278)

What kind of process happens for a word to get clot of sense? Right now, I'm analyzing this process by focusing on the context of ongoing interaction; toys,spaces and gestures.

Second, I'm interested in this comment:

The path of verbal thinking can thus be represented as: motive --> formation of thought --> mediation in internal word --> meaning of external words --> to the words themselves. or, if I understood correctly: motive --> formation of thought --> [Realm of Inner Speech: internal mediation of thought, first by meanings and then by words] --> to the words themselves

In my understanding, word and thought are inseparable, so I guess it should be not separable process but more complicated. Although, I can't describe it in details.

That's all my comments for now.

Ana Marjanovic-Shane

Hi,
My name is Ana Marjanovic-Shane. I am one of the "external" non-UCSD
students in this course.

I would like to make a comment on Momoko's comments on Vygotsky's
Thought and Language, chapter 7. (I will address Momoko directly,
creating a dialogue, although my comments are directed to everyone else,
too).

It is interesting that you chose to focus on the part of the chapter
where Vygotsky analyzes the so called "inner speech". The semantic
structure you mentioned, where Vygotsky talks about predominance of the
word's sense over its meaning, agglutination and different laws of
unification and fusion when it comes to "sense"-- are all about
characteristics of inner speech. What is interesting is that you see a
connection between inner speech and play.

The most puzzling and least examined part of this chapter, in my opinion
is the analysis of "meaning" and "sense" as two different aspects or,
layers of meaning making. Vygotsky was partly inspired by Paulhan's
views on the relationships between word (phonetic aspect of language),
its meaning and sense. Vygotsky saw those three "layers" of language as
being in a constant dynamic process of change and simultaneously
changing the relationships between them. In his words:

"The relation of thought to word is not a thing but a process, a
continual movement back and forth from thought to word and from word to
thought. In that process the relation of thought to word undergoes the
changes that themselves may be regarded as development in the functional
sense. Thought is not merely expressed in words; it comes into existence
through them." (p.218)

In this chapter, Vygotsky's view of "sense" is somewhat puzzling in
itself. It is, at the same time, something, which is most characteristic
of inner speech ("In inner speech, the phenomenon reaches its peak. A
single word is so saturated with sense that, like the title "Dead
Souls", it becomes a concentrate of sense. To unfold it into overt
speech, one would need a multitude of words." p 247). Therefore, it
seems to be the most private zone of meaning. But, at the same time,
sense is that aspect of language which is the most dependent on the
immediate context ("A word acquires its sense from the context in which
it appears; in different contexts it changes its sense" p. 245).
Therefore it appears that sense is a function of dialogue, of
interaction, of situation, much more so than "meaning". Meaning is the
most stable "zone of sense" ("Meaning remains stable throughout the
changes of sense. The dictionary meaning of of a word is no more than a
stone in the edifice of sense, no more than a potentiality that finds
diversified realization in speech" p. 245).

The core of this discussion is, of course, the phenomenon of polysemy -
a capacity of a sign to have multiple meanings. If we agree with
Vygotsky that the relationship between word and thought (or word and
meaning) is a dynamic process, rather than a constant thing, then, the
question is, really "How is it possible for word to even develop a zone
of "constant" meaning?" In other words, if polysemy is the norm, then
how does a language ever acquire its "stable" zone of universal meanings.

What is interesting is that you chose to touch on this in the context of
studying play, especially how children "create a shared-new-meaning
through their ongoing interaction". I would like to know if you saw a
difference in the relationship between word and thought in play, and
their relationship out of play. And what are the criteria or the
phenomena that you take into account as critical when studying new
meaning making in play.

"That concludes my turn" (a phrase that in my inner speech has more
sense to me than you know :-) ).
Ana

Thinking, Sign and Inner Speech

From: gordon wells

When I first read Thought and Language in 1967 I was very excited by
Vygotsky's discussion of inner speech. I still think the 'concept' of
inner speech makes a lot of intuitive sense. But more recently I have
begun to worry about what V. means by 'thought' (or preferably
'thinking'), both in the ontogenetic developmental progression he
proposes and in his account of thinking and inner/outer speech in
Ch.7.

What exactly is pre-speech thinking? Is it essentially similar to the
thinking that might be attributed to other species, from dogs to
chimps; in other words, is preverbal thinking a 'lower mental
function', triggered by perception and motivation and leading to
external action of some kind? With the emergence of deliberate
communication in the first year of life (through gestures, systematic
vocalizations, etc.), the infant becomes able to get others to act
on her/his behalf and to share an interest in some aspect of the
environment. These are in fact the first functions that appear in the
infant's 'protolanguage' (Halliday, 1975) and, although not yet
'language', these are signs that seem to begin the process of
thinking together.

With the development into his/her first language, the child gradually
acquires both lexicon and grammar, making it possible to communicate
information as well as desires, and feelings. This is clearly what V.
is referring to when he writes about the beginning of verbal thought,
in which grammatical functions as well as word meanings develop as
the child engages in interaction with more mature speakers about
their shared situations. My question at this point is: How should we
think about the child's thinking? Is preverbal thinking changed as a
result of its interrelation with speech or does the preverbal
continue more or less before - perhaps at a level below conscious
awareness - while, at the conscious level thinking is essentially
sign-mediated thinking? In M&S Ch.3, V. talks about the natural
history of sign as being critical for an understanding of the
relationship between "two qualitatively different lines of
development," the biological and the sociocultural. But as has often
been mentioned, V. did not pursue the developmental nature of that
development. By the time he wrote T&L Ch.6, the relationship he
explored was between spontaneous and academic concepts. But both of
these are based in linguistic signs. So, is there any other sort of
thinking?

V puts the development of inner speech at the age of 5 years or so
and he argues that, as inner speech develops, it becomes both a means
of controlling one's own behavior and of mediating thinking. I am
happy about the idea of inner speech mediating thinking, but I wonder
how that is different from the verbal thinking that becomes possible
once the child has some mastery of outer speech. Is it that, prior to
inner speech, the child can only mediate thinking through external
speech when interacting with others?

If we now move on a decade or two, when the child is a young adult
(or even an old adult) who has learned both to read and write and to
make use of scientific concepts, what now is the relation between
thinking and speech (both inner and social/spoken and written)? Is
all thinking mediated by inner speech or can there be unmediated
thinking? This seems to be the implication of the sequence "from the
motive that engenders a thought to the shaping of the thought, first
in inner speech, then in meanings of words, and finally in words."

I think part of the problem is that "inner speech" is too narrowly
characterized as "verbal." It seems to me (in part from much
introspection) that thinking of which I am conscious is mediated by a
wide variety of sign types, including visual images, kinetic images,
numerical signs, etc. Linguistic signs of various kinds also play a
part, but they also combine with other sign types. At the same time
there seems to be an only partly conscious level of thinking,
particualrly in relation to my actions in the material environment.
To draw on V, this kind of thinking "does not express itself in
actions but rather realizes itself in them."

What do you all think?

While you all have been reading Vygotsky and Wertsch, I have been
reading Voloshinov, who has some very interesting ideas about inner
sign. I will try to summarize what I take from my reading in a future
message.

Gordon

From: "M Cole" (lchcmike@gmail.com)

Gordon-- Am I correct that you want to address two related aspects of the
question:

What is the nature of pre-speech thinking?

You are inquiring, at the same time of ontogeny and perhaps some
microgenetic
moment. Both questions lead to examination of what degree of mutual
change/transformation
is involved in the language/thought "lines" of development.

My students are asking the same question in the form, "is all thought
mediated." LSV would say no, I think. When Vronsky looks at the clock and
sees only its elements, but no emergent
meaning of "a time" it is an example of unmediated perception.

I fear its mediation all the way down, to paraphrase a joke.
mike

From: gordon wells

Mike, you quote your group as asking: "is all thought mediated?" LSV
would say no, I think. When Vronsky looks at the clock and sees only
its elements, but no emergent meaning of "a time" it is an example of
unmediated perception.

I would be inclined to call that "lower mental functioning"; it is
unmediated perception; it is not thinking. However, if the clock in
some way becomes a sign with some cultural meaning - of the time, or
the fact that it is a family heirloom, passed down from previous
generations - then it is perceived semiotically, as having a
particular meaning(s), which will tend to be related to other
meanings, such as I must get going or I shall miss the seminar or I
wonder where in his house my grandfather kept this clock. This way of
responding to the meaning of "seeing" the clock is of a higher order
of mental functioning because the occasioned meaning of the clock is
linked to other, cultural, meanings in relation to activities and
situations in which they functions as mediators.
--
Gordon Wells
Dept of Education, http://education.ucsc.edu/faculty/gwells
UC Santa Cruz.
gwells@ucsc.edu

From: "Matt Brown" (mjb001@ucsd.edu)

Gordon and Mike were discussing the question of what is meant by "pre-speech thinking" in Vygotsky, which I wanted to discuss in light of our discussion in yesterday's class. Mike brought up the example of a dog, which might be exhibiting a kind of pre-speech thinking when he remembers certain things about the daily walk and gets excited about them. Also, someone brought up the fact that we don't want to talk about a young child as not thinking.

I have to wonder about the range of things that Vygotsky really wants to refer to as "thinking." If it is the case that the thought is in some sense completed in the word, then isn't it the case that thinking has some essential tie to verbal expression or social communication? Doesn't this distinguish thinking from what the dog is doing, for instance?

Dewey makes a distinction between "mental" and "psycho-physical" that I think tracks the distinction that Gordon is making between "unmediated perception" and "thinking." Any sensitive creatures are psycho-physical, they can have unmediated perceptions, and perhaps when Vronsky experiences the clock without being able to see it as meaningful, he is having an unmediated perception of it.

With the dog, I think the accumulation of experience may allow the dog to perceive and anticipate a different landscape, but he is unable to mediate his interaction with that landscape in the way that a thinking creature might. I seem to remember Hubert Dreyfus, following Heidegger, describing certain activities like riding a motorcycle or navigating a crowded room or even playing chess as more like perceiving and navigating a complicated landscape and less like reflecting and conceptualizing (i.e., thinking) as that activity becomes more highly skilled.

This is where my thinking on the subject is at the moment.

From: gordon wells

Matt,

I like your distinctions and I don't see why dogs, like pre-speech
infants might not engage in some forms of thinking - though I'm not
sure whether one could give the same explanatory account of both.

I think it's pretty clear that a "lower mental activity" (LSV) is
going on when a dog sees her master take the lead from the hook: that
means we;re going for a walk. But is that more than Pavlovian
association and memory? When a pre-speech child acts on nearby
objects in the ways that Piaget described in terms of the
sensori-motor stage of development, I am happy to assume that s/he is
thinking. But, at least initially, I take this to be "lower mental
activity" too. But by the end of the first year, at the latest, the
triadic intersubjectivity that occurs when a parent and infant
jointly look at or hand back and forth an object, I think this is
something different, At this stage the activity is mediated by the
object as a sign as well, in addition, as a material object that the
two act on. In discussing this level of intersubjectivity, Engestrom
quotes Radzikhovskii (1984) as follows:

"Concretely, we are saying that the general structure of
ontogenetically primary joint activity (or, more accurately, primary
joint action) includes at least the following elements: subject
(child), object, subject (adult). The object here also has a symbolic
function and plays the role of the primary sign. In fact, the child's
movement toward, and manipulation of, an object, even when he is
pursuing the goal of satisfying a vital need, is also simultaneously
a sign for an adult: to help, to intervene, to take part. (...) In
other words, true communication, communication through signs, takes
place here between the adult and the child. An objective act is built
up around the object as an object, and sign communication is built up
around the same object as the sign. Communication and the objective
act coincide completely here, and can be separated only artificially
(...)." (Radzikhovskii 1984, 44.)
"The unit defined above should be seen as genetically earlier (in
ontogeny), as determining the basic internal sign structure of human
activity, and, finally, as a universal unit and a component of
individual activity." (Radzikhovskii 1984, 49.)

Since this also fits Voloshinov's conception of sign-mediated
"ideological" meaning - in a very primitive way - I suspect he would
treat it as the very beginning of inner sign/speech.

Does that make sense?

Gordon

From: "M Cole" (lchcmike@gmail.com)

Makes great sense, Gordon. And fits well with Tomasello's identification of
this same nexus as
central to "cultural learning."

But, way behind and racing to prepare stuff for class and the NSF, I worry
about the following statement:

In fact, the child's
movement toward, and manipulation of, an object, even when he is
pursuing the goal of satisfying a vital need, is also simultaneously
a sign for an adult: to help, to intervene, to take part. (...)

Sign? In Voloshinov's sense? Or as generally used in semiotic analysis? Is
it really "full communication"?
or am I again reading too quickly?
mike

From: gordon wells

Mike,

You extracted the following and commented:

movement toward, and manipulation of, an object, even when he is
pursuing the goal of satisfying a vital need, is also simultaneously
a sign for an adult: to help, to intervene, to take part. (...)

Sign? In Voloshinov's sense? Or as generally used in semiotic analysis? Is
it really "full communication"? or am I again reading too quickly?>

Interestingly, this is exactly the same situation as Vygotsky's
example of the infant's first gesture.
Newson (in Lock 1978) argued that it is by the adult treating the
child as already intentional (e.g. stretching for an unreachable
object) that the child comes to understand his own action as
intentional and communicative. In the quote above, I take it that the
child has already made this discovery and so the adult rightly takes
the child's "movement toward" as a sign, but if and only if the child
looks to the adult while making the movement.

Obviously many of our unconscious acts can communicate to others -
and be taken as signs - but if there was no intention on the part of
the actor to communicate through the action, it cannot be treated as
a sign for the actor. So it is not full communication.

gordon

From: "M Cole" (lchcmike@gmail.com)

Gordon-- Locke and whoever were wrong about the LSV analysis of pointing
emerging from reaching. The data as of about 3 years ago are summarized in
our textbook. In essence,
pointing appears to emerge as pointing and the infant plays a role in the
development of its
communicative function. This does not exclude parental interpretation, of
course.

Indexicality is the first function that semioticians (some) claim is
uniquely human. Hmmmm.
A gesture in the right direction?
mike

Voloshinov Summary

From: gordon wells

Here is my summary of some of the key ideas I have got from reading Voloshinov.

In Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, Voloshinov is concerned
with the relationship between signs (particularly linguistic signs)
and ideology, which might be glossed as knowledge and understanding
in (different classes of) society. In the Introductory chapter, he
makes three fundamental claims: 1. "Everything ideological possesses
meaning: it represents, depicts, or stands for something lying
outside itself. In other words, it is a sign. Without signs there is
no ideology" (p.9); 2. "..understanding can come about only within
some kind of semiotic material (e.g. inner speech) .. consciousness
itself can arise and become a viable fact only in the material
embodiment of signs "(p. 11); 3. he continues the preceding sentence
with "The understanding of a sign is, after all, an act of reference
between the sign apprehended and other, already known, signs; in
other words, understanding is a response to a sign with signs" (p.11).

While some have taken issue with what they take to be Voloshinov's
too ready acceptance of Saussure's referential theory of the
functioning of signs, what is more important in the context of his
overall approach is his insistence that all signs are both materially
embodied and social in origin. V. sums up his initial argument in
three "methodological prerequisites:
1. Ideology may not be divorced from the material reality of sign;
2. The sign may not be divorced from the concrete forms of social intercourse;
3. Communication and the forms of communication may not be divorced
from the material base." (p. 21).

A central feature of Voloshinov's argument is that consciousness is
essentially brought into existence and sustained through inner sign.
However, while signs are realized in many different forms of semiotic
material, it is linguistic material - inner speech - "that
constitutes the foundation, the skeleton of inner life" (p. 29).

It seems, therefore, that, contrary to the account of the
relationship between thinking and inner speech presented by Vygotsky,
in Voloshinov's account thinking is always sign-mediated, At the
same time, signs always originate in the social arena of the
different forms of activity in which people engage. "..the forms of
signs are conditioned above all by the social organization of the
participants involved and also by the immediate conditions of their
interaction" (p.21). Furthermore, although different social classes
use the same language, they have differently oriented social
interests. Thus "sign becomes an arena of class struggle."

But inner sign is not simply a copy of external sign as it occurs in
joint activity and interaction. "Closer analysis would show that the
units of which inner speech is constituted are certain whole entities
somewhat resembling a passage of monologic speech or whole
utterances. But most of all, they resemble the alternating lines of a
dialogue. There was good reason why thinkers in ancient times should
have conceived of inner speech as inner dialogue. These whole
entities of inner speech are not resolvable into grammatical elements
(or are resolvable only with considerable qualifications) and have in
force between them, just as in the case of the alternating lines of
dialogue, not grammatical connections but connections of a different
kind. These units of inner speech, these total impressions of
utterances, are joined with one another and alternate with one
another not according to the laws of grammar or logic but according
to the laws of evaluative (emotive) correspondence, dialogical
deployment, etc., in close dependence on the historical conditions of
the social situation and the whole pragmatic run of Iife.

Only by ascertaining the forms of whole utterances and, especially,
the forms of dialogic speech, can light be shed on the forms of inner
speech, as well, and on the peculiar logic of their concatenation in
the stream of inner speech" (p. 38).

By now, it will be clear that there are many similarities between
Voloshinov and Vygotsky, but also some significant differences. There
are also connections to other readings in this course (such as
Engestrom's) and to recent discussions on xmca of papers by Hasan,
Bernstein, Halliday - with all of the latter seeming to owe much to
Voloshinov. He also connects very obviously to Bakhtin's emphasis on
dialogism and different speech genres. While Voloshinov does not
emphasize the relationship between sign and object-oriented activity,
to my mind his ideas are certainly compatible.

From: natalia gajdamaschko

Hi Mike, Gordon and Dear ALL!

What a fascinating discussion about inner speech notion, thank you!

I am wondering if at this point of discussion we should be asking ourselves “the ultimate why question” about inner speech -- why Vygotsky created inner speech at the first place?

We know that Vygotsky was dealing with inner mechanisms of formation of word meaning (his unit of analysis), on relationships between meaning and sense. In his usual manner he considered and rejected other (unmediated?) options available for him in– from mechanistic, simplistic associative psychology ideas to a-la Platonic notion of Wurzburg’s school non-sensual, non-concrete and imageless and word-less notion of thought. (and Piagetian notion, of course).

Once Vygotsky argued that thought and word develop in opposite directions and thus are in constant dialectical contradictions (thought develops from whole to the part while the word develops from the part to whole) and introduce the idea of lack of correspondence between the grammatical subject and predicate, he was forced to come up with new component to explain the whole process.

According to Luria:

“ This forced Vygotsky to introduce new component into the process thought which thought is formed in the developed expression, a component of great significance to this process. This component was inner speech or the inner word.

Abbreviated and amorphous in structure, predicative in function, this inner speech contains the potential for making thought more precise and materializing it – for bringing it to its full, developed expression.” ( Luria, A.R. Afterward, p. 368 in The Collected Works of L.S. Vygotsky, Vol. 1)

What Vygotsky considered to be “thought” at this point? --- “ in his view thought was merely an initial and sometimes inadequate intention that reflects a general tendency of the subject, a tendency that is not embodied in the word but completed and formed in it. “

What do you, dear ALL, think – does this help or confuses thing even more?

Cheers,

Natalia.

Voloshinov From: "Steve Gabosch" (sgabosch@comcast.net)

Hi Gordon,
I really appreciate your comments on Voloshinov. I find myself wanting to combine an important idea about ideology you emphasize with some of Anna Rainio's interesting comments and questions about auxiliary stimuli and ethnography in a post over in Week 2, "L.S. Vygotsky, Mind in Society Chapter 5." How to apply CHAT to ethnography is a huge question. So I have some questions about how to combine ideas from Voloshinov, Vygotsky, Luria, Cole, and others.

Luria, of course, in his Autobiography, chapter 4, describes his study of cognitive practices among non-literate Kashgar peasants. Mike Cole discusses several similar studies he was involved in, and critiques cross-cultural psychology in general, in chapters 2-4 in Cultural Psychology. And Jim Wertsch has a few very interesting pages commenting on Luria's study in Chapter 6 of Voices of the Mind.

Please allow me to review some of this familiar materi! al to ask some questions about how Voloshinov's idea that ideology is always present in sign use (and therefore, cognition) might be part of the solution of how to apply CHAT to ethnography, the question Anna discusses.

Let me start with Wertsch's comments on Luria's work on how the non-literate Kashgar peasants handled so-called syllogistic reasoning. Luria explained how they would show these respondents pictures of 4 familiar objects and ask "which one does not belong?" Instead of abstractly grouping the objects in a way that showed one did not "belong," as a Western-educated college student might, they kept explaining how all four objects really did belong in the picture.

Wertsh points out: "The basic difference between experimenter and subject in this session arose because the former was trying to categorize linguistic objects (decontextualized word meanings), whereas the latter was categorizing the nonlinguistic referents of terms." (pg ! 132).

I too was struck how, in Luria's descriptions, th! e subjec ts kept insisting on finding reasons to explain why - no matter what objects were drawn in the picture - they always truly belonged there. As Jim points out, the fundamental framework they were working from seemed to be totally different.

Mike relates a similarly striking difference in reasoning in Cultural Psychology on page 83:

"In our work among the Kpelle [in Liberia] we had replicated Alexander Luria's studies of syllogistic reasoning, which found that nonschooled subjects are more likely to draw upon their empirical knowledge while ignoring the logical implications of the terms. For example:

"If Juan and Jose drink a lot of beer, the mayor of the town gets angry.
Juan and Jose are drinking a lot of beer now.
Do you think the mayor is angry with them?

"Instead of giving the apparently simple logical answer, people would often base their answers on knowledge of particular people, responding for example, "No - so many men drink beer, why should the mayor get angry?"

In another example, Luria describes how the Kashgars he worked with would refuse to draw conclusions from explanations and syllogisms like the following. In the far north, all bears are white: when asked about a certain place that is in the far north - what color are the bears? they would refuse to say they could know the answer. "I have never been there, how should I know?" they would respond.

So back to my question, which in a sense extends Anna's excellent comments about stimulus-means (auxiliary stimuli). Are the subjects in the above examples "thinking differently" because they are utilizing a different stimulus-means? If so, can we count ideology, in the way Voloshinov describes it, as such an auxiliary stimulus-means? Furthermore, can such "stimulus-means" or forms of auxiliary stimuli and the ideologies that accompany them be empirically determined?

My take on the above examples is that these Kashgars and Kpelles were acting n! ot within some "cognitive limitation," as many cross-cultural psychologists have presumed in similar research, but rather, were acting *ideologically*. In this case, they ideologically refused to accept hypothetical claims as worthwhile. They were quite deliberately, even when gently argued with, refusing to accept hypothetical claims as worth thinking about, worth considering logically, or even answering any inconsequential questions about. The hypothetical claim that an object in a picture did not belong - was rejected; the hypothetical claim that a mayor was going to get angry at so and so if they did such and such - was shrugged off; the hypothetical claim that bears are a certain color in some other part of the world - was denied. And the respondents often even used clear syllogistic reasoning to do so! (For example: if I haven't been to the far north, then I can't tell what color the bears are; I indeed have not been there, therefore, I c! an't and won't tell you such a thing!).

The reas! oning th ese respondents offered strike me as powerfully ideological (which of course, implies the use particular tools of thought and analysis). Do you agree? Would Voloshinov agree?

To sum up:

1) Could the ideological structures used by the responding Kashgars, or the Kpelles Mike's research team worked with, or anyone at all, count as internalized auxiliary stimulus-means in the way Vygotsky meant the concept - an auxiliary set of signs used to organize thinking?
2) Can this concept of ideology as a key internalized auxiliary stimulus-means be extended to enhance a CHAT-based ethnographic theory of human differences in reasoning, cognition, and other cultural behaviors?
3) If this is valid theoretically, how can it be concretely employed in practical ethnographic research (on any culture)?

Obviously, I am not just asking Gordon! :-))

Best,
- Steve

From: "Mary Bryson" (mary.bryson@ubc.ca)

³The living utterance, having taken meaning and shape at a particular
historical moment in a socially specific environment, cannot fail to brush
up against thousands of living dialogic threads, woven by socio-ideological
consciousness around the given object of an utterance; it cannot fail to
become an active participant in social dialogue. After all, the utterance
arises out of this dialogue as a continuation of it and as a rejoinder to
it‹it does not approach the object from the sidelines.²
Bakhtin, Discourse in the Novel

I think your analysis is totally consistent with the folks in the Bakhtin
Circle. And I think that the latter provide a much more persuasive model for
considering the mediative functioning of discourse than LSV precisely
because what is circumscribed as ³the social² is specifically articulated as
a space of power/knowledge.

Mary

: "M Cole" (lchcmike@gmail.com)

I used the same example in Class today, Gordon.
Michael Roth and I are discussing the issue of whether or not operations are
mediated; I will
try to get that out posted.

The system is sometimes working for reply, sometimes not. not sure why. Saw
the great
Voloshinov summary and hope we can discuss it.
mike

From: "Ana Marjanovic-Shane" (anamshane@speakeasy.net)

Hi all,
Gordon, that conclusion is really well put. I always thought of the
problems that any psychological study poses in the light of Voloshinov's
discussion of the ideological aspect of human discourse. (By the way, on
the side, when I read this text, it was published in Serbo-Croatian
under the name of Bakhtin, with a long introduction explaining various
controversies regarding who is the "real" author. It sounds actually
contradictory to even think of "one" author in the light of this theory.
And add the translators into that, too).
Anyway, I fully agree that any kind of simple comparison of people or
groups is, if not wrong, then at least meaningless if you want to
actually make sense of someone and especially if you want to figure out
either a way to help them (clinical aspect), teach them (educational
aspect) or change them (political/religious/ideological aspect) in any
way. But there is one more thing I thought you might want to include
into the implications of Voloshinov's understanding of the dialogic
nature of human thought and the use of semiotic systems. It is about the
social science researcher herself/himself. Since we do not live devoid
of our own ideology, how can we help ourselves overcome the narrowness
of our own views? How can we understand the "emic" aspect of the social
intercourse of the people we study and not be taken by it s "etic"
aspect? ("Emic/Etic" distinction comes from "Fonemic/Fonetic" where it
refers to the "meaning unit/sound unit" distinction in the study of
language. Usually it is used to mean roughly: "from the inner group
point of view"/"from the outside appearance point of view").

In other words, can we at the same time understand people and activities
we study both from their own internal point of view and also from our
point of view as researchers, as members of certain social classes,
nations, races, genders, age groups, religions, etc... And if we can,
what do we make out of the differences between the two -- how do we
relate them - the two points of view - to each other?

Ana

From: "M Cole" (lchcmike@gmail.com)

Gordon et al-- We discussed this posting (and other postings form outside of
ucsd) at some length in
class today.

The voloshinov materials are clearly very important to our discussion, but
owing to the fact that the
class has not made it to bakhtin and that the professor has not thought
about the lsv vs voloshinov
ideas about inner speech previously, a ready answer was not. is not, at
hand.

This does not mean that we did not discuss. For example, I really love the
idea that the thought is completed in the
word and that "thought. unembodied, returns to the hall of shadows". But I
always have this nagging feeling that
the thought is NOT completed in the word. In a variety of senses, the
thought continues to exist only in so far as it
is appropriated (via the word) by another who replicates and keeps it from
returning to the hall of shadows...... a
baby step toward dialogicality which, in principle, I fully accept.

I cannot speak for the students, but the class has been enormously
educational for me. one example. Today Monica
Nilsson, speaking about the Engestrom expanded triangle, emphasized that the
object of activity is always (also) a collective
object, which exists for the community as something discussed, argued over,
etc. In so far as the object of activity is the
result of collective human practices, it MUST be partially imagined/ideal.
As often as I have read and agreed with various
formulations of this idea,. something about the way it was said by Monica
simply clicked for me in a new and very persuasive
way, in part becase I am teaching an undergrad course which deals with many
of the same issues through different specific
materials.

Various of us will be responding to mail of the past week. We managed to
divide up the labor of summarizing for next week
BEFORE class ended (mirabus dictu). Those reading SHOULD be available to
all.

more comments to come.......
mike

From: "M Cole" (lchcmike@gmail.com)

Ana et al-- This line of discussion opens up a huge set of issues. I am
still trying to wrestle
with Gordon's very interesting and informative notes on inner speech,
language, LSV and
Voloshinov. That line of discussion, however, seems to focus our attention
on the mediator more than what it is mediating at different levels of scale.
Getting all the way from all of society to
individuals in one leap -- Voloshinov-- is very interesting, but seems to
skip over the proximal
environment where language/culture are being appropriated, deployed,
accomplished.

I have spent a lot of time on the Piaget/Donaldson-type discussions which I
think are very
important. But I shy away from going there in this discussion because too
few of the people
in my local course know the literature and we have taken on about all we can
manage at
present.

Perhaps this thread should be cut and pasted together and sent to xmca for
discussion? I am about
to propose a couple of things there, but if they don't find resonance, this
topic is almost certain to.
mike

From: "Ana Marjanovic-Shane" (anamshane@speakeasy.net)

Mike,
I agree that this opens a huge set of issues. It is obvious that all
cannot be done in one course. Gordonc's and Stevec's posts inspired me
to share some of my thoughts.
However, your words now clicked with something else that I had in mind
for a long time and did not know how exactly to formulate. And that is a
difference in the way how you use the word "mediate" and how I
understood it. I could glimpse a bit of that difference in many postings
and papers, but it was not easy to define it.
For instance when you say as you do below: "that line of discussion,
however, seems to focus our attention on the mediator more than what it
is mediating at different levels of scale".
I would try to describe where I see the difference in how "to mediate"
is conceptualized between different authors and theories, but tell me if
it would be beneficial to do it here or to post it in xmca.
Ana

From: "M Cole" (lchcmike@gmail.com)

I am uncertain of how to proceed. I recognize that there are many ways in
which the social situation of Piaget-style (and not just Piaget) experiments
mediates the interactions that occur. But I am afraid to focus on this issue
in the 6 remaining weeks because I think it would require additional
readings and I do not think the course can bear it.

On the other hand, when Gordon summarizes Voloshinov beautifully, others
benefit in this
discussion and perhaps if you and/or would take on summarizing the relevant
lit and we could
incorporate that in our discussion.

mike

From: gordon wells

Mike and All,

You wrote"... inner speech,language, LSV and Voloshinov. That line of
discussion, however, seems to focus our attention on the mediator
more than what it is mediating at different levels of scale. Getting
all the way from all of society to individuals in one leap --
Voloshinov-- is very interesting, but seems to skip over the proximal
environment where language/culture are being appropriated, deployed,
accomplished."

Like Ana, I should like you to unpack the underlined part.

But Voloshinov does not go from society to individual inner speech in one leap.
On pp.85-6, he states:
Utterance, as we know, is constructed between two [?or more G.W.]
socially organized persons, and in the absence of a real addressee,
an addressee is presupposed in the person, so to speak, of a normal
representative of the social group to which the speaker belongs. The
word is oriented towards an addressee, toward who that addressee
might be: a fellow-member or not of the same social group, of higher
or lower standing (the addressee's hierarchical status), someone
connected with the speaker by close social ties (father, brother,
husband, and so on) or not. There can be no such thing as an abstract
addressee, a man unto himself, so to speak. With such a person, we
would indeed have no language in common, literally and figuratively.
Even though we sometimes have pretentions to experiencing and saying
things urbi et orbi, actually, of course, we envision this 'world at
large' through the prism of the concrete social milieu surrounding
us...
Each person's inner world and thought has its stabilized
social audience that comprises the environment in which reasons,
motives, values, and so on are fashioned. The more cultured a person,
the more closely his inner audience will approximate the normal
audience of ideological creativity; but, in any case, specific class
and specific era are limits that the ideal of addressee cannot go
beyond.
[This is where the work of Bernstein is particularly
relevant, I think]

Orientation of the word toward the addressee has an extremely high
significance. In point of fact, word is a two-sided act. It is
determined equally by whose word it is and for whom it is meant. As
word, it is precisely the product of the reciprocal relationship
between speaker and listener, addresser and addressee. Each and every
word expresses the 'one' in relation to the 'other'. I give myself
verbal shape from another's point of view, ultimately, from the point
of view of the community to which I belong. A word is a bridge thrown
between myself and another. If one end of the bridge depends on me,
then the other depends on my addressee. A word is territory shared by
both addresser and addressee, by the speaker and his interlocutor....
Dialogue, in the narrow sense of the word, is, of course,
only one of the forms - a very important form, to be sure - of verbal
interaction. But dialogue can also be understood in a broader sense,
meaning not only direct, face-to-face, vocalized verbal communication
between persons, but also verbal communication of any type
whatsoever. A book, i.e., a verbal performance in print, is also an
element of verbal communication. It is something discussable in
actual, real-life dialogue, but aside from that, it is calculated for
_active perception, involving attentive reading and inner
responsiveness, and for organized, printed reaction in the various
forms devised by the particular sphere of verbal communication in
question.

So, if we combine Vygotsky's insights about interpersonal interaction
and the zpd with Voloshinov's ideas about sign-mediated thinking, it
seems to me we have a coherent account of how an individual's ways of
making sense of experience are given by the signs used in his/her
habitual interactions with others in his or her concrete social
milieu.

What do you think?
--
Gordon Wells
Dept of Education, http://education.ucsc.edu/faculty/gwells
UC Santa Cruz.
gwells@ucsc.edu

From: "M Cole" (lchcmike@gmail.com)

Of course, dialogue requires two. So it skips from all of society to two
people to inner speech as part of the cycling
process. But what is still not there is, for example, a workplace setting,
dinner at home with several people, etc...... activity(?).
I love what you are writing, Gordon. You have really put important stuff
together.
mike
ps-- I see now underlines on my screen.

From: "M Cole" (lchcmike@gmail.com)

I stopped doing cross cultural research. Anna, in large part because I
became convinced that, as practiced
40 years ago at least, it could do little more than raise questions because
of the problem of unshared social
worlds.
mike

Vygotsky, Thought and Word (Ch 7, Sec 2)

Best regards
Lars Rossen

The second part of Vygotskys "Thought and Word", chapter 7, opens the ball with the point that "the discovery that word meaning evolves leads the study of thought and speech out of a blind alley" pointing towards Vygotskys attempt to remove psychology from the obsolete trajectories of behaviourism by putting consciousness back in the equation and reframe the discipline as a general science that allows to â€œcritically coordinate heterogeneous data, to order uncoordinated laws into a system, to interpret and verify the results, to cleanse the methods and basic concepts, to create the fundamental principles, in a word, to pull the beginnings and ends of our knowledge togetherâ€ as pointed out in The historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology (1927) â€“ the initial quote is therefore emphasizing the new direction for the field of psychology and the implementation of a methodology that supplements the General Genetic Law of Cultural Development stating that â€œAny function ! in the child's cultural development appears twice, or on two planes. First it appears on the social plane, and then on the psychological plane. First it appears between people as an interpsychological category, and then within the child as an intrapsychological category... Social relations or relations among people genetically underlie all higher functions and their relationships (From: The genesis of higher mental functions). So, in short, when looking ahead out of the blind alley in which the field psychology supposedly is backed up, the psychologist now " wish to obtain a clear idea of the essence of individual and social psychology as two aspects of a single science, and of their historical fate, not through abstract considerations, but by means of an analysis of scientific reality" (Vygotsky 1927).
Following this reasoning Vygotsky advocates a view on the process that transforms thought to word as a relationship between the individual child and the surrounding world: the meaning of a word is not given by the word itself but evolves in a dialectical movement from thought to word and from word to thought, thus undergoing a functional development of both its meaning and content. In order to properly understand this transformative dialogue one must make a distinction between two modes of speech: the inner, meaningful semantic dialogue and the external phonetic aspect which forms a natural whole, but which never the less may move according to individual laws.
When mastering speech the child will begin with the single word and the move on to larger word complexes and following to coherent speech. Language will in this sense develop from a part to a whole. But, says Vygotsky, for the child the first single word is the whole sentence and the process should also be regarded as moving from the whole to a separation into its parts by mastering the breaking down of the meaningful one word sentence into a number of separate semantic pieces, thus moving from the whole to its pieces.
The development of thought and word therefore takes places on two different planes where the semantic and the external aspects of speech progresses according to differentiated laws; the semantic and phonetic development is essentially one due to these distinguished modes of development. One now understands how Vygotsky sees word meaning as impossible to appropriate as predefined and unambiguous and how there is a gap small between the word and thought, which allows for an unending development.
The text then moves on to discuss the meaning of the grammatical structure, using the sentence "The clock fell" as an example on how the same sentence will explain numerous events with shifing psychological meaning when it is understood in its proper context: if one where to ask why the clock has stopped working the answer "The clock fell" will refer to the past events that brought the clock to its pitiful current state. The psychological emphasis is in the clock itself and the reference to the fall completes the idea grammatically. On the other hand if one hears a crash in an adjacent room and makes an inquiry into what caused the noise, receiving the same answer: "The clock fell" it is now the fall and not the clock that is of first interest and the reference to the clock that makes the story complete.
By this example Vygotsky wants to show the plasticity of the language and often-incorrect use of grammar which keeps the connection between thought and word in a constant fluctuation between the ideal grammar and the necessary harmony. This point is further emphasizes though two literary examples.
Further, on the nature of grammar, it is pointed out how the child initially makes no distinction between the verbal form and the object itself: the word and the object is tied together so that exchanging the name would equally change the object â€“ if a dog was to be called a cow it would unavoidably be supplied with a pair of horns and give milk. Only later in the development of the child does this fusion between the semantic and the vocal structure break down and the between the two distance increases as the subject excels towards abstraction.

Vygotsky, Thought and Word, Ch 7 Sec 3

From: "xavier cagigas" (xcagigas@ucsd.edu)

Vygotsky defines inner speech as a special and unique form different from external speech. It is not simply external speech without sound, it is similar to how the representation of an object is different from the object itself. It is more akin to all the internal processes that occur before the act of speaking, and therefore, has its own structure and function.

“External speech is a process of transforming thought into word; it is the materialization and objectivization of thought. Inner speech moves in the reverse direction, from without to within. It is a process that involves the evaporation of speech in thought” [257]

Vygotsky contrasts his view of egocentric speech with that of Piaget. Piaget views egocentric speech as a direct expression of the egocentrism of a child’s thought. It represents the transition from a child’s initial autism to gradual socialization. Vygotsky, on the other hand, views egocentric speech as the transition from inter-mental to intra-mental function, from social collective mental activity to individual cognition based on the child’s internal socialization.

External social speech à egocentric speech à inner speech à abstract thinking

At 3yrs egocentric speech is undifferentiated from social speech, by 7yrs the structure and function differs from communicative speech

Egocentric speech “facilitates intellectual orientation, conscious awareness, the overcoming of difficulties and impediments, and imagination and thinking.” [259]

“Egocentric speech is internal in its mental function and external in it’s structure” [260]

Vygotsky manipulated the child’s environment such that based on Piaget’s theory egocentric speech should have increased (removed the social setting such that the child could not interact with others), but it actually decreased revealing its social origins

Egocentric speech, therefore, highlights the “process of development” in a child’s individual cognition by highlighting its social origins and the mediation that takes places through the child’s own external speech process. One can imagine Luria commenting on the underlying neurodynamic reorganization of functional systems that must be taking place…the transition from stimulation from the external world to the child’s own self stimulation.

Question to the group:

How might the phenomenon of “mirror neurons” enter into this dialogue of the transition from external to internal speech via egocentric speech?

Vygotsky, Thought and Word, Ch. 7, section 4

Nathaniel smith

This is a short section, in which Vygotsky begins to explore the differences in form between inner and external speech. His central claim is internal speech's unique function leads to a unique form, which he analyzes.

The primary characteristic of this form is that it is reduced -- it shows "fragmentation and abbreviation" -- but in a particular way. The predicate is preserved while the subject is removed. It is not clear whether he refers to the grammatical or psychological predicate and subject, and while he claims in passing that this pattern was observed empirically in all their experiments, later work has failed to reproduce this result.

In any case, he compares this to external speech in situations where interlocutors share context, and thus may elide words that express only already-shared information. In such situations, bare predicates also arise. We should understand the form of inner speech, therefore, as the natural form of speech whose listener already shares *all* context.

Vygotsky, Thought and Word (Ch.7, Section 5):

From: "noga shemer" (nnsevilla@yahoo.com)

This section begins with a focus on the characteristics of inner speech, and then moves to a discussion of the relationship between thought, word, and consciousness.

Based on Humbolt’s view that functional variations in speech forms possess their own lexicon, grammar, and analysis, Vygotsky considers the differences between external, written, and inner speech. He describes written speech as speech without an interlocutor. It is maximally expanded and syntactically complex. It is the opposite of oral speech, in which shared knowledge of a subject and intonation may facilitate abbreviation. Inner and oral speech are also opposites, since inner speech is always predicative. This is because the conditions which sometimes allow abbreviation in oral speech are always present in inner speech. Thus, the spec! trum of predicativity can be summarized as:

Written (never) ----- Oral (sometimes) ------ Inner (always).

How to account for the predicativity of inner speech? First, we always know what our speech is about. Second, we can express thoughts in inner speech without precise words. This leads to the development of a new syntactic structure. As Humbolt noted, functional change leads to structural change. This development can be traced through egocentric speech, establishing the following law: “as the functional character of egocentric speech is increasingly expressed, we begin to see the emergence of its syntactic characteristics. We begin to see its simplicity and predicativity” (274).

Within the phenomenon of abbreviation in inner speech lies a series of additional structural characteristics besides predicativity. These can be summarized as follows:

-- reduction in its phonetic aspect

-- a different relationship between semantic and phonetic aspects, in which word meaning is relatively independent of sound

-- unique semantic structure

The semantic structure has three basic characteristics:

-- predominance of the word’s sense over its meaning, of phrase over word, and of the whole context over the phrase (277)

-- agglutination (277)

-- word sense is characterized by different laws of unification and fusion. Words are more heavily laden with sense than in external speech -- words are “a concentrated clot of sense” (278)

Vygotsky notes two additional factors which account for the incomprehensible nature of inner speech:

-- inner speech is not meant for communication (278)

-- an inner “dialect” arises in inner speech in which word meanings are idiomatic (279)

This outline of the characteristics of inner speech can be summarized by the following key points (279-280):

1. These characteristics of inner speech can be found in external speech, supporting the hypothesis that “inner speech has its origins in the differentiation and circumscription of the child’s egocentric and social speech” (279)

2. “Inner speech is an internal plane of verbal thinking which mediates the dynamic relationship between thought and word.” This can be further explained as: “Inner speech is speech. It is thought that is connected with the word. However, where external speech involves the embodiment of thought in the word, in inner speech the word dies away and gives birth to thought…. Inner speech is a dynamic, unstable, fluid phenomenon that appears momentarily between the more clearly formed and stable poles of verbal thinking, that is between word and thought.” (279-280)

This last observation requires an exploration of thought, another plane of verbal thinking with its own structure and course. Thought fulfills a function; it establishes relationships. It is not identical with speech. This is evidenced by the fact that unsuccessful thought is possible, i.e. thought does not move into word. The transition from thought to speech is complex. Thought is simultaneous and whole, while individual words must unfold sequentially in speech. “The path from thought to word lies through meaning” (281), it is therefore indirect and internally mediated.

This prompts analysis of yet one more internal plane of verbal thinking – the final step. “Thought has its origins in the motivating sphere of consciousness, a sphere that includes our inclinations and needs, our interests and impulses, and our affect and emotion. The affective and volitional tendency st