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RE: [xmca] The Ubiquity of Unicorns: conversation
Eric--
I am not very knowledgeable about Luria's combined motor method, nor in the
way it has been
applied, but I am familiar with the differences between conversation that
is imbued with and
directed by conscious verbal thinking (inner speech), and conversation that
is not. Young
children who have not yet developed inner speech engage in "naive"
interpersonal speech--
to use LSV's description. This is interpersonal speech that children
produce based on *implicit*
knowledge of the rules of conversation, the kind of understanding that
exists before they become
consciously aware of the linguistic operations they have been using for
years. In contrast,
once inner speech enters the picture, speech communication can be
consciously planned.
Inner speech enables children to reflect before speaking, to consider the
consequences
to the listener before moving ahead with an utterance. Of course, there are
"degrees" to
communicative competence--a continuum between speaking without any
conscious thinking
at all (I do that a lot when I'm really tired) and speaking with conscious
thinking engaged full-throttle.
Interestingly, Vygotsky was most pointed about the distinction between
conscious and unconscious
conversation when referring to the differences between dialogue and
monologue. He considered
dialogue the "less mature" form because participants carry one another
along with routine
responses and chains of "repartee". Routine, repetitive, conversations can
be conducted
almost "mindlessly". Monologue, however, requires a lot of elaboration,
extra contextual support,
and focused thinking because the speaker is out there all alone.
I wish I was better versed in Luria's work, Eric. Sorry I can't be of more
help developing your idea.
Peter
ERIC.RAMBERG@spps
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11/03/2009 08:05 Subject
PM RE: [xmca] The Ubiquity of
Unicorns: conversation
Please respond to
"eXtended Mind,
Culture,
Activity"
<xmca@weber.ucsd.
edu>
Hi Peter & Mike and All:
Thanx for asking. Let's see if I can flesh this out in a manner that makes
sense to you and others. From Mike Cole's introduction to "The Making of
the Mind":
"The early chapters explain "the combined motor method," in which the
subject had to carry out a simple movement in response to verbal stimuli
while reaction time and the dynamics of the movement were being recorded.
Using this technique, Luria (assisted by Alexei N. Leont'ev, his lifelong
colleague and current Dean of the Psychology Faculty at Moscow University)
studied the influence of motives on the organization of voluntary motor
activity. This academic research was carried out in such real-life settings
as a purge of Moscow University (where students with inadequate academic
records or "undesirable " family backgrounds were appearing before a board
of examiners). It not only was relevant to an experimental psychoanalysis
(an idea Luria was no longer pursuing when the book was written in 1930)
but had promising potential for application, which Luria pursued in the
criminal justice system, where he developed the combined-motor method- into
the prototype of the modern lie detector. The very popularity of the
research seems to have extended his participation in it."
Now granted Luria's research was on adults and unfortunately led to an
unethical method (lie detector tests) but it is the concept of "a simple
movement in response to verbal stimuli" that makes me consider the
utilization of this tool in the study of conversation development. The
joint-mediated activity of language provides the opportunity for this
juxtopositioning of unintended meaning. Unintended meaning is that point in
conversation where an eyebrow is raised, a smirk crosses lips, fire reaches
the pupils. Fluent conversation(i.e. without unintended meaning) would
not be a combined motor method but I am referring to the fits and starts
that accompany the young child learning the give and take of a
conversation. I think of that time when I was 5 and playing football at a
friends house. As background, I sometimes would spend a few hours a day
with older kids (9,10, 11) and had heard some words they sounded sure
about. Well. . .playing football i got a good bonk on my head and yelled
out, "Jesus Christ!" Fun over! Friend's parent sent me home and called my
parents. This is a perfect example of my body being accustomed to an
activity and my mouth getting ahead of my thoughts. Immediately after
seeing all football participants gasp or raise eyebrows I knew my error.
So.....Peter my thoughts about combined motor method pertains to having
systematic studies of children engaged in simple repetative (sp?)
activities and then engaging in conversation that produces these reflexive
(yeah I know chastise me on this word) responses.
what do you think?
eric
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
cc: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
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Subject: RE: [xmca] The Ubiquity of Unicorns: conversation
Peter Feigenbaum <pfeigenbaum@fordham.edu>
Sent by: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
11/03/2009 06:01 PM EST
Please respond to "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <font
size=-1></font>
Ooooh, great connections are popping up! I love seeing private speech
from these other perspectives!
The following points respond to comments made by Andy, Paula, and Eric.
1) Andy, your comments are very insightful. Thank you for sharing them.
First, let me correct a fallacy--it's *not* true that you've never analyzed
a
conversation in your life. You've been doing it since childhood! And
obviously very well! It's just that all of your analyses have been done
*implicitly*. The struggle here is to make them all *explicit* (which, by
the
way, always renders them unrecognizable at first).
You are very perceptive to realize that the issue of establishing the unit
is not just a matter of creating rules for dividing up the data, but of
properly
conceptualizing the unit. Thus, one must shuttle between Vygotsky's
concept of word meaning (which I claim is unfinished) and the practical
challenges presented by an actual stream of speech. Here is how I, as
a researcher, experience that conundrum:
On the one hand, the utterance unit is manipulable. Consider an analogy
between the utterance unit and the role of a microscope in biology. The
microscope provides a framework for viewing a cluster of cells--with the
proper magnification and with the proper focus, the biologist can see the
cells, their contents, their structure, and watch the functions that are
occurring
within them. But the microscope does not *create* these properties, it only
enables the biologist to see them. Similarly, the utterance unit does not
create linguistic structures, nor functions or their contents--but it does
bring
them into focus.
On the other hand, speakers are the producers of an utterance. Speakers
emit utterances in time and place, and shape their linguistic contents and
functions in accordance with their communicative intentions. From this
perspective, the utterance is Ground Zero—the very substance of speech
communication!
So we must approach the problem from both a practical and a conceptual
perspective, and find a way to make them coincide. For Bakhtin, utterance
unit boundaries can be concretely identified by turn-taking. For Vygotsky,
word meaning is the irreducible unit of analysis, beneath which the
functional
integration of word and meaning ceases to exist. If conversation is,
indeed,
that irreducible functional unit, then what is the smallest concrete form
conversation can take? It cannot be defined as a turn at talk, for some
turns
can be quite extensive, such as a monologue consisting of multiple
sentences.
But if an individual utterance is defined in terms of a single word (at
minimum)
or a single sentence (at maximum), and these linguistic structures are
shown
to have the functional properties of conversation (i.e., they participate
in an
initiation-response structure with other utterance units or practical
activity),
then this unit would meet both the practical and conceptual criteria we
have
been discussing.
Of course, this does not address all of the problems associated with the
analysis of private speech utterances, for there is still the knotty
problem of
*who is conversing with whom*! But that moves the problem down a different
path, which is a whole other topic.
2) Paula, the private speech you describe is the exact same private speech
that I and others have observed even in situations where children are not
instructed to think aloud. In my own research, prior to putting children
into the
experimental situation, I have tested their verbal IQ using the WISC-R or
some
other standardized IQ test, and with some of the tasks (like placing
colored
pegs in holes) the private speech just comes flowing out! For example:
"Red one goes here, and the blue one there...." The more cryptic,
abbreviated
private speech—the kind Piaget referred to as "incomprehensible"—tends to
be the kind produced by older children (i.e., 6- to 8-year-olds),
especially during
challenging problem-solving activities.
You are right to question the impact that the presence of another person in
the
testing situation has upon a child's private speech. Numerous studies have
shown how sensitive the phenomenon is to conditions. But that doesn’t mean
that the expanded private speech you observed was designed for a listener’s
benefit. There is a “no man’s land” between speaking to others and speaking
to oneself. For example, Mead raised the possibility that speech can be
directed
toward a “generalized other”, which is neither a concrete person present in
the
room, nor oneself.
3) Eric, I am unable to make a connection between Luria’s combined motor
method and the concept of conversation. Could you help by stating the
connection that you see?
I would love to hear the thoughts of the XMCA community in regard to these
issues!
Best wishes to all,
Peter
Peter Feigenbaum, Ph.D.
Associate Director of Institutional Research
Fordham University
Thebaud Hall-202
Bronx, NY 10458
Phone: (718) 817-2243
Fax: (718) 817-3203
e-mail: pfeigenbaum@fordham.edu
ERIC.RAMBERG@spps
.org
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11/03/2009 09:23 Subject
AM RE: [xmca] The Ubiquity of
Unicorns: conversation
Please respond to
"eXtended Mind,
Culture,
Activity"
<xmca@weber.ucsd.
edu>
Hello All:
Enlivening thread! I believe Luria's combined motor method is too
important of a tool to ignore when discussing the concept of conversation
development.
what do other's think?
eric
"Paula M Towsey" <paulat@johnwtowsey.co.za>
Sent by: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
11/03/2009 03:44 AM
Please respond to "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"
To: <lchcmike@gmail.com>, "'eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity'"
<xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
cc:
Subject: RE: [xmca] The Ubiquity of Unicorns: conversation
About Mike's question from Sunday:
"...The topic seems of great importance, and not unrelated to the once and
future thread of the "Vygotsky blocks" methodology. Any private speech
observed there, Paula?"
Because participants are encouraged to "think out aloud" as they go ("you
know, like little children do when they say "I'm putting this one here
because..." or "I think this one goes here because...", okay?"), I think
this casts a very big (woolly) blanket over being able to distinguish
between what would perhaps have been private speech and what would not
have
been. Because in effect what we're doing to participants is introducing
an
"outside" interlocutor in a rather artificial way: I use the qualifier
"outside" here to differentiate the term's use for this contrived
situation
in particular from where, as I understand it to be in private speech, the
self is the interlocutor (but correct me here if I need it please?). So
even if someone says "Okay... Let's see... maybe I could try putting...",
it
seems to me to be more a case of musing out aloud in a way where the
participant is possibly making private speech more coherent because there
is
an "outside" interlocutor.
And then if I've got Mike's very magic "thread" as he intends, it's about
word meaning and this question of a unit of analysis: it is here that I
think the "thinking out aloud" by participants helps to make more explicit
the way in which they are making use of the various elements of this
richly
structured experimental situation (the two kinds of stimulus means and the
stimulus objects). The blocks are specifically designed to reveal the
processes involved in coming to understand what the words cev, bik, mur,
and
lag mean through the activity of solving the problem of why different
blocks
belong together. And yet, if the participants don't talk, it is very,
very
difficult to work out from their actions alone what is going on.
Back to Peter now for more enlivening...?
Paula
-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
Behalf Of mike cole
Sent: 01 November 2009 02:40 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] The Ubiquity of Unicorns: conversation
As usual, tardy to the party. Very interesting comments on private speech,
thanks for starting it Peter.
A couple of questions for different xmcaonaughts:
What about Peter's observation, Nacho?
"Personally, I don't know of one private speech researcher who uses LSV's
concept of word meaning when analyzing speech data--and to me, that
suggests
something is very wrong." That beautiful new book you have published on
private speech is devoid of an interest in meaning? Really?
And Peter, what about Andy's comment, which also struck me, that when you
talk about your data, your unit of analysis appears to be the utterance, a
la Bakhtin. And Bakhtin makes central to his analysis the idea that words
are always characterized by addressivity. Seems like grist for your mill.
But utterance is absent from your jpeg figure, and Bakhtin from your
discussion thus far. And does conversation start with the first
recognizable
word spoken by the child? All Samoan children are said by their parents to
have as their first word, shit (or so ethnographers have claimed). What
would that imply for addressivity of first words, I wonder.
Someone asked about availability of published work for folks to read;
might
you post your article from the Robbins et al book? And, of course, we
would
be glad to post a video session and transcript. The topic seems of great
importance, and not unrelated to the once and future thread of the
"Vygotsky
blocks" methodology. Any private speech observed there, Paula?
Thanks again for the enlivening discussion.
mike
On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 10:08 AM, Peter Feigenbaum
<pfeigenbaum@fordham.edu>wrote:
> Steve--
>
> I am very gratified to see that you grasp the full thrust of my work on
> conversation
> as it relates to word meaning. You are the first to do so! I feel
> vindicated and
> validated! Thank you.
>
> To be honest, when I first started down this path in 1981, I was working
on
> instinct--
> it felt right, but I was largely unconscious of the direction I was
taking.
> But in 2004
> I had an epiphany, and since that moment, all of the pieces have been
> falling into
> place, and I have become able to consciously articulate the consequences
of
> taking this particular stance. For many years I have had to cope with a
> fair degree
> of disorientation due to the fact that private speech is at the center
of
> so many
> philosophical knots. It was the shift of focus to conversation that
finally
> made
> sense of so many issues, and that holds out the promise of making sense
of
> others (that I have yet to return to).
>
> The epiphany came in the form of an old "Snow White" refrain: "Mirror,
> mirror on
> the wall, who's the fairest of them all?". Periodically, I would ask
> myself: "Why do
> children talk out loud to themselves?", and the answer that returned was
> always
> "Because they are learning how to think." But on this one, surprising
> occasion,
> the answer that came back was: "Because they are learning how to talk."
It
> was
> at that moment that I realized that LSV never made explicit the obvious
> next step:
> after thinking becomes verbal, speaking becomes intelligent--because
inner
> speech is then recruited for the purpose of talking! Once it became
clear
> that
> inner speech--the mechanism for directing one's attention--was available
> for
> children to use in all realms of their lives, it was obvious that
language
> acquisition
> would become a major beneficiary of this new mental faculty. So Vygotsky
> deserves TWO Nobel prizes in psychology--one for conceptualizing how
> thinking becomes conscious, and the other for conceptualizing how
children
> master their native tongue. What a genius he was!
>
> Far be it from me to reign you in! Because I only became conscious of
this
> path a few years ago, I have yet to see its limitations or
constraints--nor
> do I think
> about them, for I am still uncovering all of the possibilities that this
> perspective
> affords. If you would be so kind as to humor me, let me point out a few
of
> the
> problem areas that I believe this new conversational focus sheds light
on--
> besides the conceptual integration it provides, as you have so
delightfully
> noted.
>
> 1) By looking at the development of word meaning from a conversational
> vantage
> point, Vygotsky's claims about the transformation of private speech take
on
> a new significance. I used to look at private speech as *causing* the
> transformation
> of thinking from unconscious and impulsive to conscious and deliberate,
but
> in
> fact, it is the development of word meaning that *causes* private speech
to
> change! Naive social speech, private speech, inner speech, mature
> (intelligent)
> social speech--these do not cause development per se, but instead are
the
> external
> forms in which the development of word meaning manifests itself. This,
in
> turn,
> prompts the question: Just what IS word meaning, and what causes it to
> develop?
> Sagely, Vygotsky (Chapter 7, again) points us to the answer: words
develop
> in
> one direction, while meaning develops in the opposite direction. To be
> concrete
> about it, a child's first word does NOT correspond to its dictionary
> (lexical)
> meaning, as you might expect, but to its global, undifferentiated
> (conversational)
> meaning. In other words, the forms and functions of words and meanings
are
> "sprung" in an incompatible way from the start, and so development is
> merely the
> "unwinding" action brought about by the initial tension. This needs a
> visual (I hope
> this diagram comes through everyone's email system):
>
> (Embedded image moved to file: pic14204.jpg)
> The first stage (infancy) in the development of word meaning takes
place
> in
> the form of social speech with a caregiver, and is represented in the
> diagram
> as the relationship between "word" and "topical" meaning". A child's
first
> word
> is a whole turn at talk, but all the child has available to express this
> thought is a
> single word. As the tension on both sides of this equation exerts
pressure
> on the
> child, the relationship between "sentence" and "propositional" meaning
> takes
> center stage. The child's focus alternates between the relationship of
word
> to
> sentence, and the relationship of topical to propositional meaning. The
> third
> stage, which I believe corresponds to the abbreviation of private speech
> (its final form before becoming abbreviated inner speech), moves the
focus
> to the relationship between conversation and lexical meaning. The
process
> of abbreviation, which is tied to predication, involves the child in
> understanding
> how individual word meanings (lexical meanings) are related to the whole
> flow
> of conversation. The child must consider which words need to be uttered
in
> order to move the topic of conversation along, and which do not need to
be
> voiced. "Clots" of words are the result.
>
> 2) Dialectical materialism: What does this Marxist form of philosophical
> explanation bring to the problem? Although I have been a student of
Marxism
> even longer than I have been a student of Vygotsky's theory, I was
unable
> to
> formulate the connection between them--until recently. I believe the
very
> same
> diagram above applies to Marx and Engels' explanation of the development
> of human society--if you make some substitutions. For Marx and Engels,
it
> is
> the forms and functions of *labor (economic) activity* and *civil
> (political)
> activity* that are "sprung" in an incompatible way from the start,
causing
> society to morph from primitive communism to slave society, to feudal
> society,
> to capitalist society, and (hopefully) to socialist society and
eventually
> to
> advanced communism. I don't expect everyone to agree with this
> interpretation,
> and I understand that introducing politics into the discussion is a
risky
> business,
> but I think it's hard to ignore (and useful to acknowledge) the
parallels
> between
> Marx and Engels' stages and Vygotsky's stages of primitive social
speech,
> impulsive private speech, regulative private speech, abbreivated private
> speech, and (hopefully) inner speech and eventually advanced
(intelligent,
> rational) social speech. Of course, the role of dialectical logic in
> Vygotsky's
> theory is much more involved than what I have outlined here, but my aim
is
> simply to draw attention to the "feedback" effect of Vygotsky's theory
on
> our
> understanding of Marx and Engel's theory. My experience thus far is that
> each
> of these two very special theories can be helpful in understanding the
> other.
>
> 3) The relevance of Bahktin and Voloshinov's analyses to LSV's theory:
> If we make an analogy between initiating and responding in conversation
> to throwing and catching a ball, then we can see the design of an
> individual
> "utterance" in a new light. In playing "catch" with a ball, each
> participant
> must first catch the ball before he or she can throw it back. Thus, a
> "turn"
> at catch involves first catching, then throwing. These moves are done in
> a smooth transition, constituting a "turnaround". Likewise, in
> conversation,
> a "turn" at talk involves first listening, then responding. This, too,
is
> performed
> (by competent communicators) in a smooth fashion. Listening flows right
> into speaking, enabling the conversation to move forward. Thus, each
> utterance by a speaker actually consists of *both* listening and
> *speaking*.
> Just waiting patiently for one's turn at talk--without listening to the
> other--does
> not constitute communication with speech. One must listen (and reflect?)
> before speaking, or else "responding" doesn't occur.
>
> This leads to the notion that every utterance is linked both backwards
and
> forwards. Every initiation responds to some thought (even ones that
start
> up
> a conversation), and every response constitutes a new initiation--a
> furthering
> of the ongoing conversation. Bahktin claimed that the relationship
> *between*
> utterances in conversation eventually develops into a relationship
*within*
> an utterance. Every utterance "anticipates" a response--the voice of the
> "other" is contained in every utterance. (I must confess that I am only
now
> beginning to look at the relationship of Bahktin's work to this new
> approach,
> so I may be off-base). (No pun intended)
>
> That's way more than enough for now. I don't want to dominate this
> discussion.
>
> But thanks for listening and responding, XMCA-ers! You're marvelous!
>
> Best wishes,
> Peter
>
>
>
>
> Steve Gabosch
> <stevegabosch@me.
> com> To
> Sent by: "eXtended Mind, Culture,
Activity"
> xmca-bounces@webe <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> r.ucsd.edu cc
>
> Subject
> 10/29/2009 10:58 Re: [xmca] The Ubiquity of
> PM Unicorns: conversation
>
>
> Please respond to
> "eXtended Mind,
> Culture,
> Activity"
> <xmca@weber.ucsd.
> edu>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Peter, I am very happy to see how well developed the empirical and
> practical side of your work is! Have you published any of your
> studies, have more writings on your theory, etc.? I am actually quite
> excited by your work.
>
> Your argument for viewing the conversation as a unit of word-meaning
> (in the Vygotskyan sense of "meaning through language use") seems
> compelling. I like this idea quite a bit, and find myself wanting to
> go with it, try it out, test it, play with it, see how far it goes.
> Once this simple and obvious relationship is pointed out, as you are
> doing so clearly and concisely, a lot of connections seem to fall
> right into place. They are the same old connections, of course, but
> more dialectical, more dynamic, more far-reaching. For me, anyway ...
>
> For example, this concept makes me want to ask the reverse question:
> how can word-meaning be conceived **other** than in conversation? And
> how can the **parts** of conversation - parts of words, words, word-
> sequences, sentences, sentence-sequences - or utterance-sequences in
> general - as well as gestures, facial expressions etc. etc. - be
> conceived other than as just that - as parts of **conversations**?
> (This suggests that the conversation could actually be **the**
> structural unit of word-meaning - with everything else being parts of
> conversations - in the way we usually think of parts of sentences. Am
> I taking this too far?) These are not new questions, of course, but
> ones that your work revives in a new light.
>
> This line of thinking makes me want to take this a step further - or
> "upward" - how can a particular conversation be conceived other than
> in its particular social, cultural and historical as well as
> psychological "context" (its concrete reality)? This idea, of course,
> has been deeply explored by Bakhtin and others. Have you had a chance
> to relate your thinking on this to Bakhtin, Volosinov, etc.?
>
> Thinking of word-meaning this way is one of those ideas that has "been
> there" all along, but so big that I know that I for one never quite
> apprehended it in this way. I have always thought of a conversation
> as some kind of combination, sequence or interchange of "word-
> meanings" - not a "word-meaning" in and of itself. This in some ways
> is a mind-boggling concept. We think of our words as being in our
> conversations, but it is harder to conceptualize the opposite being
> the case - that it is our conversations that are in our words, and
> that our words and word-meanings actually mean nothing apart from and
> outside our conversations. Obvious, understood already in many ways,
> but also new and dizzying for me.
>
> This viewpoint - and perhaps I am taking this too far and someone is
> going to have to rein me in - this view of word-meaning places, the
> dialogue, or the conversation, as the transmission mechanism, the
> concrete link between 1) the meanings of social relations and culture
> (the interpsychological) and 2) psychological meanings (the
> intrapsychological). I like putting conversation in the middle like
> that.
>
> On one hand, of course, this is not at all a new idea. How else do we
> communicate? Hello? On the other hand, by viewing conversation as
> the **necessary** form that word-meaning takes - that is, that
> conversation IS word-meaning - this insight opens up new possibilities
> for harnessing Vygotsky's theory of word-meaning as a powerful lens
> into two simultaneous realms - 1) human social relations and
> activities, which are inherently language-based, and 2) individual
> psychology (the higher mental functions), which, according to
> Vygotsky, is also inherently language-based.
>
> This seems to be exactly what your research is trying to do, Peter.
> You are showing how to look at the totality of an activity in a given
> situation - in this case, children playing while talking out loud - to
> see and show how human action and human meaning-making are a
> dialectical unity - using Vygotsky's classical theory of word-meaning
> as a lens into **everything** that is simultaneously happening - or,
> at least, that which is happening that you can figure out how to
> record and analyze!
>
> An interesting reverse question to ask here about what you have
> observed in your studies so far: what are some of the **limitations**
> of Vygotsky's concept of word-meaning in trying to understand what
> these children are doing, thinking, saying, feeling? Above, I speak
> almost as though it can explain "everything". Can it? Probably not!
> LOL So what are the **limits** of this lens into human activity?
> (For example, it probably does not explain roles, personalities,
> membership in social classes ...)
>
> To the extent that this approach is successful at viewing certain
> multiple levels of human activity at once, one can legitimately ask:
> how can this be so? I find myself answering that question with
> another: isn't this **precisely** what Vygotsky accomplished when he
> discovered word-meaning as a basic unit of analysis? To show how to
> view the **convergence** of the social and the individual? To see
> both realms at the same time at the place they meet and transform one
> another and together become something new? This is probably why I
> like this idea so much, it seems to expand Vygotsky's approach to do
> exactly what we want it to.
>
> If we only apply the concept of word-meaning to "words," perhaps we
> are setting our sights too low, and only on certain details, missing
> the larger picture. But if we step back and include **the
> conversation** along with words and sentences, new possibilities seem
> to emerge. Maybe someone will shoot me down here and point out how I
> am going off the deep end with this (or more likely, just leave me be
> with my false hopes!) - but I think you are on to something, Peter.
> (Maybe you think I am going too far, too! LOL)
>
> Another question: have you tried to apply Leontiev's activity theory
> (conditions-based tasks and operations, goal-based actions and action-_______________________________________________
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