Re: [xmca] LSV on the preschool stage

[ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org]

Martin:

Extremely thought provoking post.  I would agree whole-heartedly that the 
three year old is not thinking (in the sense of how an adult comprehends 
thinking, however I do believe there to be the autist perceptions 
occurring) unless they are talking.  I would even go so far as to say even 
adults who are at a complex level are only thinking as they speak or in 
your case as you were writing the post.  Would it be fair to say you now 
have a deeper understanding of how to teach developmental psychology as a 
result of typing it?

I agree with mike cole, there is a two way spiral that spreads 
understanding both outwards and inwards.  Unfortunately that spiral may be 
slippery and others will fall off or it may by course and cut too deeply.

eric



From:   Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
To:     "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Date:   10/13/2010 04:35 PM
Subject:        [xmca] LSV on the preschool stage
Sent by:        xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.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unpublished manuscript on child development, in at least 2 chapters of 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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