Re: RE: [xmca] Lindqvist on Leontiev on Play - collision between making sense and made sense

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

At last I have sprung free of several fetters and have had time to read
Rod's article and ensuing discussion which, by the end, bring us right up to
the current article for discussion on play.

I would like to go back to the beginning because i was misled in my
superficial reading of an earlier note into misinterpreting the general
sense of Rod's paper so I tossed in a suggestion about discussions of the
ways in which different tools differentially affect thought processes. That
topic
does come up later (and is well worth more discussion -- the consequences of
literacy being a topic of more than passing interest in this group), but its
the early early start of human communication that rod is focused on. Like
Larry, i am very sympathetic to Rod's argument out the special nature of
early human mutual imitation. As David notes, is resonates with discussions
that he, Andy, and I have had over time, and also with work I am doing with
a local colleague on the central role of reciprocity in human sociality.

But note the following interesting, later ontogenetic consequence of this
form of relationship a little later in life (at least in one, contemporary
American) sample -- what is referred to as "over-imitation." It may well
be that this phenomenon can be explained by the same mechanisms that Rod
invokes for newborns and parents, I need to think about that more. But
meantime, I toss it in here for the moment, so the issue does not get lost.
Summary of early article below. This is available cost-free (check the pnas
reference through google when you search on overimitation) if you are
interested.
mike
--------------------------

The hidden structure of overimitation

   1. Derek E. Lyons<http://www.pnas.org/search?author1=Derek+E.+Lyons&sortspec=date&submit=Submit>
   * <http://www.pnas.org/content/104/50/19751.abstract#aff-1>,†<http://www.pnas.org/content/104/50/19751.abstract#corresp-1>,

   2. Andrew G.
Young<http://www.pnas.org/search?author1=Andrew+G.+Young&sortspec=date&submit=Submit>
   ‡ <http://www.pnas.org/content/104/50/19751.abstract#aff-2>, and
   3. Frank C. Keil<http://www.pnas.org/search?author1=Frank+C.+Keil&sortspec=date&submit=Submit>
   * <http://www.pnas.org/content/104/50/19751.abstract#aff-1>

+ <http://www.pnas.org/content/104/50/19751.abstract#> Author Affiliations

   1. *Department of Psychology, Yale University, Box 208205, New Haven, CT
   06520; and
   2. ‡Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, Brogden Hall,
   Madison, WI 53706


   1.

   Edited by Susan E. Carey, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, and approved
   October 18, 2007 (received for review May 11, 2007)

 Abstract

Young children are surprisingly judicious imitators, but there are also
times when their reproduction of others' actions appears strikingly
illogical. For example, children who observe an adult inefficiently
operating a novel object frequently engage in what we term *overimitation*,
persistently reproducing the adult's unnecessary actions. Although children
readily overimitate irrelevant actions that even chimpanzees ignore, this
curious effect has previously attracted little interest; it has been assumed
that children overimitate not for theoretically significant reasons, but
rather as a purely social exercise. In this paper, however, we challenge
this view, presenting evidence that overimitation reflects a more
fundamental cognitive process. We show that children who observe an adult
intentionally manipulating a novel object have a strong tendency to encode
all of the adult's actions as causally meaningful, implicitly revising their
causal understanding of the object accordingly. This automatic causal
encoding process allows children to rapidly calibrate their causal beliefs
about even the most opaque physical systems, but it also carries a cost.
When some of the adult's purposeful actions are unnecessary—even
transparently so—children are highly prone to mis-encoding them as causally
significant. The resulting distortions in children's causal beliefs are the
true cause of overimitation, a fact that makes the effect remarkably
resistant to extinction. Despite countervailing task demands, time pressure,
and even direct warnings, children are frequently unable to avoid
reproducing the adult's irrelevant actions because they have already
incorporated them into their representation of the target object's causal
structure.

On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 6:17 PM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>wrote:

> eric:
>
> Well, it's really not MY assumption, you know. It's not even an assumption.
> It's something that Leontiev actually wrote, argued and believed, and
> something that his followers still believe today (e.g. Karpov's "The
> Neo-Vygotskyan Approach to Child Development").
>
> This is from my copy of "Problems of Development of the Mind" by Leontiev.
> It's on p. 399 in my book, but you can find the same passage on p. 362 of
> the MIA edition of Leontiev's selected works, "The Development of Mind":
>
> “The existence of development of crises has long been known and their
> ‘classic interpretation is that they are caused by the child’s maturing
> inner characteristics and the contradictions that arise on that still
> between it and the environment. From the standpoint of that interpretation
> the crises are of course inevitable because these contradictions are
> inevitable in any conditions. There is nothing more false however, in the
> theory of development of a child’s psyche than this idea. In fact crises are
> not at all inevitable accompaniments of psychic development it is not the
> crises that are inevitable but the turning points or breaks the qualitative
> shifts in development. The crisis on the contrary is evidence that a turning
> point or shift has not been made in time. There need by no crises at all if
> the child’s psychic development does not take shape spontaneously but is a
> rationally controlled process, controlled upbringing.”
>
> And in fact that's what Leontiev's theory of "play" does, and that's why
> Lindqvist was so mad at him. This is from p. 372 of my book, and it appears
> on p. 336 of the MIA edition:
>
> “We already know how play arises in the preschool child. It arises from its
> need to act in relation not only to the object world directly accessible to
> itself but also to the wider world of adults.”
>
> THAT'S the world of imagination: the world of adults! THAT'S why Leontiev
> sees all really developmental play as basically either constructive (just
> like Piaget and Inhelder) or socio-dramatic (like Hall and Robinson, and
> some passages of Bordrova and Leong). It HAS to be that way, so that the
> child can be socialized noncritically.
>
> As a result, poor Leontiev ties himself in a terrible knot. It occurs to
> him that games with rules are actually goal oriented in a sense that role
> plays are not. So as a result, Leontiev, who as we know defines all
> activities according to their goals, ends up deciding that although
> child play and adult work are in not qualitatively different in an ideal
> sense (at least not under Comrade Stalin's benevolent eyes) there IS a
> qualitative difference between competitive games with rules and cooperative
> role plays.
>
> Now Leontiev has to completely deny the link that Vygotsky makes between
> role play and rule play. Role play, you see, is intrinsically satisfying to
> the child.
>
> “As we have already said, play is characterized by its motive’s lying in
> the process itself rather than in the result of the action. For a child
> plaing with wooden bricks, for example, the motive for the play does not lie
> in building a structure, but in the doing, ie. In the content of the action.
> That is true not only of the preschool child’s play but also of any real
> game in general. ‘Not to win but to play’ is the general formula of the
> motivation of play. In adult’s games, therefore in which winning rather than
> playing becomes the inner motive, the game as such ceased to be play.” (PDM
> p. 370, MIA edition p. 335)
>
> But rule play is different in kind:
>
> “Games ‘with rules’, i.e. like hide and seek, table games, etc. differ
> sharply from such ‘role’ games as playing doctor, polar explorer, etc. They
> do not seem to be related to one another by any genetic succession and seem
> to constitute different lines in the devleopment of children’s play, but in
> fact the one form develops from other (sic) by virtue of a need inherent in
> the child’s play activity itself (?), whereby games ‘with rules’ arise at a
> later stage.” (p. 381 for PDM, and p. 344 MIA)
>
> Now, how does the child get from one the other without a crisis? Go figure!
>
> Unfortunately, I think you will find this non-critical view of development,
> not in my work, but in the current article for discussion. The authors (it
> seems to me) try to argue that a playworld allows the development of BOTH
> the adult and the child TOGETHER, and they produce microgenetic evidence
> that this is the case. But this argument really depends on collapsing the
> whole distinction between learning and development that lies at the core of
> Vygotsky's work and also that of Gunilla Lindqvist.
>
> Even if I accepted that adults and children "develop" in the same sense, I
> would not accept that they develop together; to do that is really to rob the
> whole concept of development of any content.
>
> I'm with you, eric. The crisis IS the content. No crisis, no development.
>
> David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education
>
> --- On Fri, 2/5/10, ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org <ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org> wrote:
>
>
> From: ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org <ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org>
> Subject: Re: RE: [xmca] Lindqvist on Leontiev on Play - collision between
> making sense and made sense
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date: Friday, February 5, 2010, 6:46 AM
>
>
> David:
>
> I believe your assumption that crisis can be avoided is false. Development
> be it at the micro or societal level requires crisis for movement.
> Irreversible time provides for a three year old that has already
> incorporated numerous neopeptide connections and that the mentalization
> they bring to the table is unavoidable.  Crisis moves this forward.  In
> the Fonagy article he is most interested in those individuals who lack
> solid attachments and believes therapies for that individual need to focus
> on their ability to "mentalize".  Obviously the intervention is as gentle
> as possible but it still needs to incorpate stress.
>
> Stress is good and without it humans would not have achieved the
> technologic advances available today.  Different country's cultures
> exhibit this stress in different guises.  I believe your example is
> beautifully illustrative of this difference.
>
> eric
>
>
>
>
> David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>
> Sent by: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
> 02/04/2010 08:36 PM
> Please respond to "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"
>
>
>         To:     Culture ActivityeXtended Mind <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>         cc:
>         Subject:        Re: RE: [xmca] Lindqvist on Leontiev on Play -
> collision between making
> sense and made sense
>
>
> A couple of days ago I had dinner with my former grad student, his wife,
> and their six year old daughter. Yeonhui is still in kindergarten, but her
> library is about half the size of her Dad's and when I asked her if she'd
> read them all, she said yes. I looked to see if I had read any of them.
> They were mostly cartoon books done in the Japanese "anime" style that
> school kids here love. But there was the Iliad, and of the Odyssey, lots
> of Korean history, and a series of "Why?" books covering the science
> curriculum, from how the Northern Lights work to why a fuel cell produces
> water.
>
> It wasn't just that she'd learned to read at home; that's not unusual in
> Korean children, thanks to the great learnability of the alphabet and the
> consistent fit with spoken language. It only takes between three hours
> (for an adult) and three days (for a child) to learn the alphabet. Then,
> if you know the spoken language, every printed text seems to open up like
> a blossom and speak in response to your gaze. Only in Korean is it really
> true that "When you know the notes to sing, you sing most anything!"
>
> Yeonhui had also mastered the "honorific" forms of speech which Korean
> kids have to use with their teachers and with adult strangers. During
> dinner, while her father and I spoke in English, she did not become bored
> or demand attention; she listened for a while and then found objects
> around the room to amuse herself with, tuning out the TV screen in the
> restaurant in almost exactly the same way as she tuned out our meaningless
> chatter in English.
>
> Of course, it's tempting to see all of these phenomena as related. After
> all, Vygotsky predicts, in the chapter on learning and development in Mind
> in Society, that preschool education when it is properly organized may be
> able to guide children's thinking in conceptual directions much earlier
> than we now think possible. But of course what has really happened in
> South Korea is a prolepsis of a different kind; the tasks, the tools, and
> even the discourse of the school environment are introduced (in a
> non-threatening but nevertheless quite insistent way) into the home
> environment.
>
> Last Saturday we had thesis proposals, and one of the grads made a very
> interesting proposal for studying the transition between elementary school
> English (which tends to be play-centred) and middle school English (which
> is much more test-based). Like many attempts to study this transition, the
> underlying assumption was the Leontievian one, that under ideal conditions
> this transition could be made crisis free (by streamlining the
> vocabularies, grammatical syllabi, etc, and introducing the new format of
> testing with famliar phrases.).
>
> It seems to me that the STRUCTURES of discourse in primary school and in
> middle school are always going to be (and probably should be) different in
> kind, just as the structures of home discourse and school discourse
> are. If we want to make the child's structural transition trauma-free (or,
> more realistically, crisis-ridden but minimally traumatic) then it seems
> to me that there are two choices.
>
> Either we proleptically introduce the new material in the familiar
> psychological forms (as Yeonhui's parents have introduced her to reading
> and writing), by introducing a lot of our middle school vocabulary in the
> form of role plays and games right in middle school. Or (what I think of
> as the Baby Einstein solution, though it is really found throughout
> on-line learning programmes) we retroleptically stunt the child's progress
> by dumbing down the new, innovative forms of middle school discourse
> (especially the testing genres) to the old content and thereby rendering
> all restructuring otiose and unnecessary. Two choices, but only one worth
> choosing.
>
> David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education
>
> --- On Thu, 2/4/10, Larry Purss <lpurss@shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>
> From: Larry Purss <lpurss@shaw.ca>
> Subject: Re: RE: [xmca] Lindqvist on Leontiev on Play - collision between
> making sense and made sense
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date: Thursday, February 4, 2010, 9:53 AM
>
>
> Hello Eric, Rod and others
> Eric I also want to bring this article, Rod's article, and other
> perspectives on the parenting relationship into dialogue with CHAT
> perspectives.  Attachment theory points to early bonding as a central
> foundation for further developmental elaborations.  How do others view the
> relation of these early experiences to higher mediated mental
> functioning.  Also, do our institutional structures facilitate or
> frustrate these relational patterns.  In elementary schools these
> developmental questions have a huge impact on pedagogical discourse but it
> is often assumed children arrive at school having "integrated" the
> tensions of these developmental functions when in fact these parent-infant
> dyad's (and triads) are continuing to be in tension with school norms and
> roles (which often have a monological conduit metaphor of pedagogy).  It
> is the "fit" and "tension" between the different sociocultural practices
> between intimate home structures and the more
> "detached" focus on "authoritative" communication patterns of "received"
> pedagogy that I think lead to experiences of futility for many students.
> Rod's article mentions in passing the issue of VULNERABILITY in various
> institutional structures such as schools.  Attachment theory has a lot to
> say about these patterns of vulnerability.
> What do others think about early parent-infant relational patterns and
> pedagogy
> Larry
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org
> Date: Thursday, February 4, 2010 7:46 am
> Subject: RE: [xmca] Lindqvist on Leontiev on Play - collision between
> making sense and made sense
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>
> > Hello all:
> >
> > This fonagy article should be brought into the discussion
> > pertaining to
> > the parent infant relationship.  It was briefly touched
> > upon a short time
> > ago but not really discussed in depth.
> >
> >
> http://communication.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.2009_12.dir/pdfu8DjDXTWQv.pdf
> >
> > eric
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Rod Parker-Rees <R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk>
> > Sent by: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
> > 02/03/2010 04:31 AM
> > Please respond to "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"
> >
> >
> >
> > To:     "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"
> > <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>        cc:
> >
> > Subject:        RE: [xmca]
> > Lindqvist on Leontiev on Play - collision between making sense
> > and made sense
> >
> >
> > David,
> >
> > I don't think I am all that optimistic about the ways in which
> > technology
> > is still transforming the relationship between 'individuals' and
> > their
> > cultural ecology. I am interested in the ways in which
> > communication at a
> > distance depends on a sophisticated internalisation of 'primary'
> > aspects
> > of communication - I have never met you but I have a set of
> > assumptions
> > about how you are likely to respond to things I type. What makes
> > me less
> > optimistic is the feeling that 'remote' communication might be
> > eating into
> > the time which people have available for the more intimate, face
> > to face
> > and body to body forms of communication (I mean picking up on
> > cues about
> > feelings which are expressed in vocal tension, gesture, gaze
> > direction
> > etc.). If we see communication more and more in terms of a
> > trading in
> > symbols rather than a sharing of sense (co-creation of common
> > meanings
> > with all the tangles of emotional and corporeal connotations)
> > then I see a
> > risk of social dis-integration. On the other hand, I can see
> > myself as an
> > old chimpanzee grumbling that the newfangled use of speech means
> > that
> > people don't do as much fur grooming and nit-picking as they
> > used to - and
> > I can see in my own children that the massive increase in symbol-
> > trading
> > has not turned them into social isolates, they still manage to
> > get on fine
> > with friends when they do meet up and they seem to enjoy meeting
> > up every
> > bit as much as I do.
> >
> > I came across a lovely analogy on the 'Edge' website recently -
> > http://www.edge.org/q2010/q10_2.html  George Dyson writes
> > about the difference between Aleut kayak building
> > (gather pieces of driftwood, bone etc, tie it all together to
> > make a frame
> > and then stretch skins over it to make a boat) and Tlingit
> > dugout canoes
> > (take a tree trunk and remove as much as you can until a boat is
> > left).
> > Dyson argues that we used to take an Aleutian approach to
> > information,
> > assembling arguments from scarce and hard won pieces of
> > information but
> > that we may now need to focus more on digging arguments out of
> > the mass of
> > information available to us. We have to chop out the spam, the
> > reality TV
> > etc. to make something useful, elegant and pleasing from the
> > mass of stuff
> > at our disposal.
> >
> > Stories for children is a whole other thing! Written, published,
> > sold and
> > bought by adults, even though the stories may be already well
> > within the
> > common domain, they tell us more about adults' anxieties about
> > childhood
> > than about what children are interested in. All the arguments
> > about 'age
> > appropriate material' seem to miss the crucial fact that when an
> > adult
> > shares a book with a child the book is a tool to support, frame
> > and
> > pattern interaction, not a chest of meanings to be delivered
> > from the page
> > to the child's mind! The scary bits of fairy tales (child-
> > killing, eating
> > of people, cutting stomachs open etc.) provide opportunities for
> > a child
> > to experience horrific situations while safely cuddled up with
> > an adult
> > who can offer reassurance and safety - if any possibility of
> > upset is
> > edited out (I remember versions of 'Little Red Riding Hood' in
> > which she
> > jumps onto a wardrobe rather than being eaten by the wolf)
> > children will
> > not have the opportunity to enjoy the experience of
> > contemplating danger
> > from a safe vantage point.
> >
> > I have just been teaching a group using Merlin Donald and Steven
> > Mithen's
> > arguments about the importance of mimesis as a kind of 'missing
> > link'
> > between prelinguistic and later ways of making sense of the
> > world and I
> > think Donald's sections on 'mythic culture' have a lot to say
> > about how
> > information has a very different status for oral cultures (if
> > the stories
> > are not retold, the accumulated knowledge of the group is lost)
> > and for
> > literate ones. For children the structure and patterning of
> > stories seem
> > to be at least as important as the details of their content -
> > surprise is
> > fun but knowing what to expect is comforting.
> >
> > Apologies for a rambling response.
> >
> > Rod
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-
> > bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
> > Behalf Of David Kellogg
> > Sent: 02 February 2010 22:37
> > To: Culture ActivityeXtended Mind
> > Subject: RE: [xmca] Lindqvist on Leontiev on Play - collision
> > between
> > making sense and made sense
> >
> > Rod (not "Rees", Mike!):
> >
> > Thanks for your note. One of my grads is using your work in her
> > work--she's interested in the extraordinary difference we've
> > discovered
> > between the creativity of language (in this case, the
> > GRAMMATICAL
> > creativity of SECOND language) in primary intersubjectivity
> > (which as we
> > all know is the leading edge of first language development) and
> > secondary
> > intersubjectivity (which appears, in some important ways, to
> > lead in
> > second language development). She's trying to operationalize
> > alot of what
> > you said about creativity in your recent article (which you
> > kindly posted
> > for us here) by using Tomasello's neat distinction between fixed
> > expressions, item-based "combinations", and what she calls
> > abstract
> > creative constructions.
> >
> > I'm afraid I'm not as optimistic as you are about the ability of
> > new
> > technological means to make a big difference in the way we
> > think. Perhaps
> > this is true of technological means of production, both because
> > the actual
> > increase in production impacts people's lives in the short run
> > and, in the
> > long run, the DECREASE in SURPLUS value produced leads
> > inexorably to a
> > fall in the rate of profit. Both of these are material
> > constraints on the
> > way we think.
> >
> >
> > It seems to me that the issue you raise, when you talk about how
> > the
> > ability to store track changes, is not a difference in
> > production, but
> > rather a way in which the very distinction between text and
> > discourse
> > (which I have made such hay out of) is starting to disappear,
> > and with it
> > the distinction between sense and meaning (which Vygotsky, in
> > his day,
> > also made hay with). If the visible trace of a discourse is
> > infinitely
> > malleable, unfinalizeable, then it is no longer the trace of a
> > discourse;
> > it's the discourse itself. There is ONLY outside text, and no
> > actual text.
> >
> > You suggest that this might lead to making literature more
> > porous to
> > children's responses; we might actually get a child literature
> > instead of
> > a children's lit, that is, something that is written as well as
> > read by
> > kids the way that, say, Russian literature is written by
> > Russians but read
> > by the whole world.
> >
> > But you also admit, and it seems to me that this more
> > likely, that this
> > child literature might get lost in the flood of adult drivel,
> > exactly the
> > way that child motives, child aims, child goals for play are
> > completely
> > ignored in Leontiev (or, to take a more immediate example, the
> > way that
> > e-mail has been strangled by spam, television throttled by
> > 'reality TV',
> > the cinema devestated by the 'blockbuster', etc.)
> >
> > To me, that's just why Lindqvist's critique of Leontiev is so
> > important.
> > Here is a man around whom the entire world changed, touched, or
> > at least
> > brushed, by the greatest genius in child psychology of the
> > twentieth
> > century, a man who then looked both ways and produced a "theory"
> > of play
> > that is essentially no different from what Piaget comes up with
> > in "Play,
> > Imitation, and Dreams": play is essentiallly assimilative and
> > only labor
> > has accomodational potential. For Piaget, that is almost
> > synonymous with
> > creative potential. But then why create, if the result is the
> > same old
> > drivel?
> >
> > I have on my desk a version of "Goldilocks" by James Marshall,
> > which, I am
> > reliably informed by the cover, won the Caldecott medal, was  a
> > 'pick of
> > the lists' for American Bookseller, and an ALA notable book. We
> > are told
> > that it is an offbeat and inventive retelling of the story tht
> > will
> > "enchant readers young and old" (a nice tip, that; they are
> > going to aim
> > at two audiences, the paying and the non-paying. I wonder who
> > will get
> > priority?)
> >
> > Now, the original story of the Three Bears, by Robert Southey,
> > is not
> > about Goldilocks at all; it's really about three bears  (all
> > male; it's
> > not a family) who resist the intruder, a rude, mannerless old
> > crone, who
> > is collared by the local bailiff for vagrancy. Like most tales
> > of its time
> > (1838) it's a pretty vicious anti-working class diatribe (the
> > Lake Poets,
> > including Southey, were what we would call neo-Cons today). But
> > the
> > Marshall version is not at all "off beat" and it's nowhere near
> > as
> > inventive or appealing as the original, of which it is
> > apparently unaware.
> > The funniest it gets is when baby bear tastes the porridge and
> > says "I'm
> > dying" at which Mama Bear suggests "That's quite enough. Let's
> > go for a
> > walk."
> >
> > Part of the problem is precisely this unawareness, this loss of
> > track
> > changes. Of course, we all know that it is perfectly possible to
> > understand the original of something through the parody. Many of
> > us have
> > read Don Quixote without reading Amadis de Gaul, and more of us
> > know
> > Goldilocks as a heroine than as a villain.
> >
> > But parody is always a very BACKWARD looking understanding; in
> > many ways
> > like the replacement of sense with meaning of which you speak
> > (meaning
> > SUBSUMES sense, but in so doing a lot of the vigor and
> > liveliness and
> > directness of sense is lost). And when the original is entirely
> > lost sight
> > of, the child has sacrificed sense and gained no meaning in
> > return; we
> > have somehow managed to produce disenchantment without having
> > any
> > enchantment in the first place.
> >
> > David Kellogg
> > Seoul National University of Education
> >
> > --- On Tue, 2/2/10, Rod Parker-Rees <R.Parker-
> > Rees@plymouth.ac.uk> wrote:
> >
> >
> > From: Rod Parker-Rees <R.Parker-Rees@plymouth.ac.uk>
> > Subject: RE: [xmca] Lindqvist on Leontiev on Play - collision
> > between
> > making sense and made sense
> > To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> > Date: Tuesday, February 2, 2010, 3:36 AM
> >
> >
> > I have always been struck by Vygotsky's reference (in 'The
> > development of
> > higher mental functions') to the collision between the creative
> > meaning
> > making of children and the created meanings available to them in
> > the
> > culture in which they swim:
> >
> > "The very essence of cultural development is in the collision of
> > mature
> > cultural forms of behaviour with the primitive forms that
> > characterise the
> > child's behaviour." (not sure about the translation here).
> >
> > For me it is the active making of sense which each new
> > generation
> > contributes which keeps the 'made sense' of culture alive and
> > responsive
> > to changing circumstances. There is also an argument that the
> > made culture
> > feeds back into the process in that oral cultures tend to be
> > much more
> > conservative, keen to maintain and preserve their lore, than
> > literate
> > cultures which can rely on books to 'keep track' of changes and
> > allow us
> > to go back if we find that changes don't work out too well. New
> > technologies which allow massive amounts of information to be
> > stored,
> > including endless versions with all their 'track changes'
> > annotations and
> > commentaries should make us more open to the sparks struck by
> > collisions
> > with children's 'outsider' perspective but I wonder whether they
> > might
> > also tend to exclude these 'naïve' contributions, much as
> > literacy tends
> > to shut out the preliterate and the illiterate.
> >
> > All the best,
> >
> > Rod
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-
> > bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
> > Behalf Of David Kellogg
> > Sent: 02 February 2010 05:24
> > To: xmca
> > Subject: [xmca] Lindqvist on Leontiev on Play
> >
> > Or rather, Monica Nilsson on the magnificent Gunilla Lindvist on
> > Leontiev
> > on play, writing in one of the papers in the current issue of MCA:
> >
> > "Lindqvist is critical of how Vygotsky's successors came to
> > interpret his
> > theory of play. Vygotsky emphasized teh dialectics expressed
> > through the
> > relation between the adult world and the child's world and also
> > between
> > the will and the emotion. She writes that Leontiev sees no
> > tension between
> > the adult world and the child's world and that play, for him, is
> > about a
> > child's inability to acquire adult roles. When a child can't
> > perform adult
> > actions he instead creates a fictitious situation. This
> > situation,
> > Lindqvist writes, is, for Leontiev, the most significant sign of
> > play.
> > Thus play is the sign of the child's inferiority, and hence play
> > is in
> > fact an infantile activity because, as Lindqvist states, from
> > this
> > perspective, the child will gradually grow into the adult world
> > and play
> > is diected toward the future. Moreover, she claims that the
> > implication is
> > a stress on reproduction (of adult roles) at the expense of
> > creativity.
> > Therefore, she attempts to
> > reinterpret Vygotsky's play theory, based on his original
> > thoughts in The
> > Psychology of Art, and his inquires (sic) into creativity and
> > imagination.
> > According to Lindqvist, Vygotsky's idesas give rise to a
> > creative
> > pedagogical approach instead of an instrumental one. This is
> > because
> > Vygotsky shows how children interpret and perform their
> > experiences by
> > creating new meaning and how emotions characterize their
> > interpretations,
> > that is, how emotion and thought unit in the process of
> > knowledge
> > construction." (p. 16).
> >
> > Kozulin remarks (on p. 25 of HIS magnificent book, Psychological
> > Tools, on
> > how Leontiev's emphasis on practical activity instead of
> > semiotic tools
> > led him into a kind of "Piagtian program of exploring the
> > internalization
> > of sensorimotor actions".
> >
> > But it really took Gunilla Lindqvist to point out the terrible
> > consequences that a neo-Piagetian program like Leontiev's might
> > have
> > for children at precisely the age that Piaget called "sensorimotor".
> >
> > David Kellogg
> > Seoul National University of Education
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > xmca mailing list
> > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> > _______________________________________________
> > xmca mailing list
> > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > xmca mailing list
> > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> > _______________________________________________
> > xmca mailing list
> > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > xmca mailing list
> > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >
> _______________________________________________
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> xmca mailing list
> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
>
_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca