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Re: [xmca] LSV on the preschool stage
Hi Eric,
My reading is that at each stage there is development of awareness and deliberate control of a specific aspect of the child's relationship to the world. The infant develops mastery of the Great-we, the toddler develops mastery of a world of affordances, the preschooler is mastering the field of meaning, the school-age child comes to master the 'inner field' of their psychological functions, while the adolescent masters the field of possibilities.
Martin
On Oct 14, 2010, at 10:29 AM, ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org wrote:
> The general law of development says that awareness and deliberate control
> appear only during a very advanced stage in the development of a mental
> function, after it has been used and practiced unconsciously and
> spontaneously. In order to subject a function to intellectual and
> volitional control, we must first possess it (Vygotsky, 1999, pg. 168).
> This is just one more thought on Vygotsky's belief about the development
> of interiorization. That prior to deliberate control the developmental
> process of thinking occurs in fits and starts of speech. Paula's video of
> the block experiement is a perfect example of this.
>
> eric
>
>
>
> From: ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date: 10/14/2010 09:24 AM
> Subject: Re: [xmca] LSV on the preschool stage
> Sent by: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
>
>
>
> Martin:
>
> Extremely thought provoking post. I would agree whole-heartedly that the
> three year old is not thinking (in the sense of how an adult comprehends
> thinking, however I do believe there to be the autist perceptions
> occurring) unless they are talking. I would even go so far as to say even
>
> adults who are at a complex level are only thinking as they speak or in
> your case as you were writing the post. Would it be fair to say you now
> have a deeper understanding of how to teach developmental psychology as a
> result of typing it?
>
> I agree with mike cole, there is a two way spiral that spreads
> understanding both outwards and inwards. Unfortunately that spiral may be
>
> slippery and others will fall off or it may by course and cut too deeply.
>
> eric
>
>
>
> From: Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date: 10/13/2010 04:35 PM
> Subject: [xmca] LSV on the preschool stage
> Sent by: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
>
>
>
>
> Teaching is always such a humbling experience. One has to explain things
> as clearly as possible, and in doing so it turns out that the subtle and
> sophisticated understanding one thought one had of the topic is riven by
> inconsistencies and filled with gaps (so to speak).
>
> This semester I am recasting my undergraduate course in developmental
> psychology to focus much more centrally on presenting a complete and
> coherent Vygotskian account of development. The topic this and last week
> was the preschool stage (3 to 7 years). V wrote about this stage in at
> least five places: several times in T&L (on self-directed speech, and on
> the formation of complexes), the chapter on the crisis at age 3 in the
> unpublished manuscript on child development, in at least 2 chapters of
> HDHMF, and in the paper on play. These texts span only a few years, but
> coordinating them is not a straightforward task, for me at least, humbled
> as I now am.
>
> And then trying to relate them to Piaget's work is complex. Piaget himself
>
> had two distinct ways of describing the limitations in preschoolers'
> cognition (though he was consistent in emphasizing its limitations). One
> was in terms of egocentrism, the second in terms of limitations in the
> child's capacity to form mental representations at this stage (they are
> static, focused on a single dimension, etc.). LSV knew about the first of
> these, but didn't live long enough to encounter the second. So we have to
> extrapolate from his critique of Piaget's early work in order to infer
> what he might have said about conservation tasks, for example.
>
> First humbling experience: trying to reconcile the fact that preschoolers
> seem to be not only aware of the distinction between appearance and
> reality but actively mastering it in their pretend play, while at the same
>
> time they fail to distinguish between what a piece of playdoh really is
> and how it appears. Should we presume that the appearance/reality
> distinction slowly develops as consequence of playing (as Gaskins and
> Goncu once proposed)? Or are these phenoman related in some other way?
> Does anyone know of studies that have explored the timing of acquisition
> of these two (conservation and pretend play)? I h
>
> Second, my simple way of explaining LVS's view, and then contrasting it
> with Piaget's, has been to say that Piaget considered the preschooler's
> thought to be mental action on mental representations, and their speech to
>
> be simply the expression of this thought, and consequently as manifesting
> the same egocentric characteristics. LSV, on the other hand, proposed that
>
> preschoolers think, at least at first, only when they talk. Talk only goes
>
> completely 'inner' at the end of this stage. (There is simplification
> here, as I try to grapple with the fact that in some texts LSV wrote of
> preverbal thinking occurring as early as infancy, with the first use of
> tools, while in others he writes of thinking differentiating from
> perception and action only in the preschool stage. I'm not suggesting
> those two claims are mutually exclusive, but it does take a bit of work to
>
> reconcile them.)
>
> This raises the question, how would children perform on the three
> mountains task, for example, if they were allowed, or encouraged, to speak
>
> aloud in order to figure out the answer? ("The doll is over there, and so
> while the green mountain is to my left, she must see it to her right...").
>
> Anyone know of such a study? Anyone want to try such a study?The videos I
> have just shown in class don't offer much opportunity for this, but if LSV
>
> was correct, if the preschool child is not speaking, she is not thinking.
>
> Third, speech goes inner twice, in two different ways. First, social
> speech becomes individual speech, as the preschooler talks to self aloud
> in order to solve problems and to direct their own activity. Second,
> speech becomes silent, 'in the mind' (and while this way of putting it is
> probably an unavoidable part of our folk psychology it surely shouldn't be
>
> considered a satisfactory part of a scientific psychology, IMHO). This is
> the point, I told my students today, where the articulatory part of the
> brain has formed an internal, direct neurological connection with the
> receptive part of the brain. No longer does communication between these
> two require an external, indirect route via mouth and ears. One of the
> braver students asked me, is that just your idea or is it a fact? I seem
> to recall Luria writing along these very lines, but can anyone help me out
>
> here? Anyone know of either classic neuropsychological studies of 'inner'
> speech, or modern MRI studies? What lights up when I talk to myself,
> either out loud or silently?
>
> Then, to go back to play. LSV describes pretend play as a differentiation
> between the field of the visible and the field of meaning. The child rips
> the word from one object, but only by applying it to another object, which
>
> needn't resemble the first so much as be able to support a similar
> activity on the part of the child. A stick doesn't resemble a horse, but
> it can be named 'horse' because it can be placed between the legs and
> ridden. This, LSV writes, is the key to symbolic activity at this stage
> (chap 7 of HDHMF, as I recall). This is not yet an arbitrary relationship
> of sign/signifier, but a motivated substitution within an imaginary field.
>
> I take this to mean that the stick is not 'standing for' the horse;
> rather, the word 'horse' is standing for, picking out, the stick. I am
> sorely tempted to say that this means what we are dealing in prentend play
>
> with is not reality=stick, appearance=horse, an object that appears to be
> a horse within the play, but is really a stick. We have an object that
> appears to be a stick, but within the play is really a horse. I am further
>
> tempted to wish that Andy had read Hegel's Phenomenology, because in that
> book one of the stages of consciousness that is described is one in which
> a distinction develops between appearance and reality. The distinction is
> soon overturned, however, because it turns out to be unstable. Piaget
> stopped, but Hegel kept on trucking.
>
> In conclusion, any and all help and clarification of my jumbled thoughts
> would be greatly appreciated, not least by my students, who are dearly
> wishing that Prof. Packer could get stuff figured out before he tries to
> teach it. Sigh.
>
> Martin_______________________________________________
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