Before getting swallowed up by today's obligations, I want
to respond to some of the helpful notes concerning joint
activity, imitation, and the modularity/context issues
posted in the last couple of days.
The immediate context for the shape of this note is my attempt
to summarize "culture and development" in 25 pages, a project
which has taken an unusual turn that makes the messages of the
last few days especially pertinent. As I remarked in the
note that spurred Vera's comments, I was struggling because
I had started from the CP chapter on ontogeny and to motivate
what I wanted to say I found I needed to include the prior
chapter on hominization, but time constraints made that entirely
impossible.
After flailing around for a long weekend I stepped into even
deeper water that goes back to a question that I raised in the
epilogue to the Cole and Cole *Development of Chidlren*: Is it
necessary to introduce new principles into the explanation of
development following birth, and if so, what might they be. I
couldn't really develop my thoughts at length in that context,
but found myself returning to them, reminded of a statement
by Piaget and Inhelder to the effect that all of child development
up to the adult level should be regarded as "embryogenesis of
organic as well as mental growth".
I am still finishing up the paper, but the excercise brought me
by that strange route to issues of coordination of synchrony,
and of course the fact that the coordination of child and
environment was not mediated in a new and medium, culture.
In that context, Jay and Eugene's comments on the centrality of
synchrony and co-regulation as primal foundations for later
interaction and the development of inter-subjectivitiy struck
me as just right, and fit well with the emphasis that Sheila
and I put on the important of "getting on a schedule" in
developmental niches as the necessary conditions for post-
natal development.
However, the discussions of the past few days have
greatly enriched my undertanding of the issues involved in
the development of intersubjectivity off of this base.
Returning to think about embryological mechanisms of
development change also got me re-thinking the issue of the
functions of symbolic play. In CP (p. 197) I wrote that
"play will be an important cultural context within which
children can simulate the cultural practices the observe and
participate in, including the roles theyu will be expected
subsequently to carry out in earnest. Play is proleptic."
Two comennts on this passage. First, in it I failed
to acknowledge that in his 1993 article "Development of
intersubjectivity in social pretend play", Artin Goncu
develops in far more detail than I do the relation of
prolepsis to the development of intersubjectivity, and the
concomitant influence of the forms of intersujectivity
that arise in the third year for the development of play.
(Goncu, Human Development, 1993, p. 185-199). For those
interested in this topic, Artin's discussion is a distinct
improvement on my p. 197 summary.
Second, I began to wonder if play (not intesubjectivity)
really is proleptic, or at least, whether it is entirely
proleptic. This may seems strange, but it goes back to the
question of form/function relations in embryology. In Cole&Cole,
when we discuss the question of the functionality of play
(citing Goncu, Nicolopolou, and Packer) we write that "early
forms of play provide opportunities to acquire abilities that
will become important later, just as the seemingly aimless
movements of the embryo are a vital part of the process of
fetal development.
Here a question raised by Jay comes into play: do the
mechanisms of learning (and development, Jay?) change with
age? Or might they remain the same (this in the context of the
discussion on imitation/emulation). Well, in embryology the
question of the function of early behavior is controversial.
Viktor Hamburger, in an article from the 1957 book on *The
Concept of Development* writes, "One can make the general
statement that organization and structure develop in forward
reference to functional activity, but without its participation
as a determining agent. Organs build up first, and thereafter
they are taken into use" (p. 54).
Cole&Cole argue that early behavior IS functional--
for example, early movement of chick wings is essential for
the paring of excess nerve connections that would otherwise
form leaving the more mature bird unable to move. But what
is the analogy here to play? Is a new mechanism involved?
Or might the embryological principles simply be playing themselves
out in a new medium?
This note is getting too long, but righ now I am
reading up on the process of induction in embryogenesis which
seems to be the yang to anticipation's ying. It seems like
prolepsis is a cultural mechanism that plays the role of
inducer more than anticipator. But perhaps it is right here
that we find the crucial difference made by the cultural
medium; prolepsis acts as both anticipator and inducer.
Finally, Vera, I hold no special brief for modularity
positions but wanted to find some way to talk about non-general
phylogenetic constraints that were counterparts to contexts/
activities/discourses in their channeling functions/mechanisms
and at the time I wrote that material (circa 1990) I thought
that a weak version of the modularity position, which I take
to be pretty much synomynous with "prepared structures" a la
Reznick, did the job. The bottom part of the figure on p. 216
is where my intuitions lie. Formalizing that intuition is a
project I would love to be able to understake. Ed Hutchin's
current connectionist modelling work strikes me as one way
to get there.
Which brings us to chapter 8 and perhaps the key
question for differentiating among different approaches to
cultural psychology: Is it possible to begin one's psychological
analysis from the processes that occur in everyday human
activities. If the answer to that question is no, might as well
pack in the project I embarked on and get back to fly fishing!
I look forward to your continued editifaction. Apologies
for the uncharacteristically long note.
mike