Re: [xmca] LSV on the preschool stage

[Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>]

Hi Larry,

Thanks for pointing out this article. The authors' overall aim is to develop Piaget's focus on structures of knowing in a way that is more sensitive to differences among cultural contexts. The article contains a helpful summary of various aspects of Piaget's theory, including this on the limitations of preschoolers' preoperational reasoning:

"One context in which the developing relations between operative and figurative aspects of knowing take on particular significance is in the transition from pre-operational to concrete operational thinking. The cognitive structures available to the pre-operational child do not yet allow for any co-ordination between different per- spectives, but are limited to grasping the appearance of things. Thus, when compar- ing equal quantities of liquid in two glasses of different shapes the child suggests that there is either more or less in one of the glasses. In this sense, the child’s knowing is dominated by the figurative aspects, which focus on the end states (the phenomenal appearances of the liquid in the two glasses). The development of concrete operations furnishes the child with a different set of operative structures which, by allowing them to co-ordinate simultaneous variations in two dimensions, also allows them to focus on the transformation between the end states. In this way, the operative aspect of knowing now dominates the figurative aspect. As Piaget put it, ‘sooner or later reality comes to be seen as consisting of a system of transformations underlying the appearance of things’ [Piaget & Inhelder, 1971, p. xiii]."

One thing that stands out for me is Piaget's confidence that the appearance/reality distinction is (to borrow a phrase from Jonas Langer) a "final a priori" of development. That is, P has no doubts of the validity of seeing the world this way. 

On the other hand, I think the article offers a rather weak (and very brief) summary of LSV's approach. For example, the authors claim that for LSV " the social process structuring psychological development is envisaged as a single type of social relation, in which there is always an asymmetry of knowledge between an expert and a novice." Not so, IMHO. 

There is also a review of several generations of post-Piagetian research, including studies of conservation tasks in which children work together on the solution.  I have to read this section again more carefully than I have yet had time for, but I have some initial skepticism. The authors note a movement from the fact that "For Piaget, the child was always considered as an epistemic subject, a centre of operative activity abstracted from any particular context," to a research position in which "the child has now become a social-psychological subject engaged in triadic relations with other social-psychological subjects and their common objects," and in which "The field of social relations in which children discuss a common problem with one another is a field that structures and is structured by these triadic interactions." This is certainly a step forward, but LSV offers an account of development in which the subject him/herself is transformed during each time of crisis and revolution.   I don't see that kind of conceptualization in this article.

Martin


On Oct 13, 2010, at 7:00 PM, Larry Purss 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_______________________________________________
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