[xmca] LSV on the preschool stage

[Martin Packer <packer@duq.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times in T&L (on self-directed speech, and on the formation of complexes), the chapter on the crisis at age 3 in the unpublished manuscript on child development, in at least 2 chapters of HDHMF, and in the paper on play.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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