Attached is a commentary on the Psaltis et al article by members of XMCA.
Note that Anne-Nelly is on the MCA editorial board. Perhaps these are issues
that should be more extensively discussed in that forum?
Whither...?
mike
On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 4:00 PM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Martin
>
> The Journal HUMAN DEVELOPMENT 52:291-312 has an article titled "The Social
> and the Psychological: Structure and Context in Intellectual Development".
> The authors are Charis Psaltis, Gerard Duveen, and Anne-Nelly
> Perret-Clermont.
>
> The ABSTACT begins,
>
> "This paper discusses the distinct meanings of 'internalization' and
> 'interiorization' as ways of rendering intelligible the social constitution
> of the psychological in a line of research that started with Piaget and
> extended into a post-Piagetian reformulation of intelligence in successive
> generations of studies of the relations between social interaction and
> cognitive development."
>
> The article is an attempt to develop the idea of OPERATIVITY-IN-CONTEXT as
> a
> means of retaining the advantages of Piaget's structural analysis of
> cognition whilst recognizing the situational and cultural constraints on
> cognitive functioning.
>
> Not sure if this might be helpful to facilitate ongoing dialogue with the
> students contrasting Piaget and Vygotsky, but seems relevant to other
> threads on CHAT.
>
> Larry
>
> On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 2:34 PM, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:
>
> >
> > 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 unpublished manuscript on child development, in at least 2 chapters of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_______________________________________________
> > xmca mailing list
> > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >
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