Re: [xmca] LSV on the preschool stage

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Because the social-cultural-(historical) is already constructivist, Martin?
A part-whole issue?
mike

On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 2:48 PM, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:

> Ageliki and Jeff make some good points. It's not clear to me that Piaget's
> approach can be retrofitted to incorporate culture, and they note some of
> the problems with the attempt.
>
> The only place I'd take issue is with their proposal that an "integration"
> of sociocultural and constructivist perspectives is "required." I've argued,
> in various places, that the sociocultural can do all that is needed for an
> adequate account of cognitive development.
>
> Martin
>
> On Oct 16, 2010, at 5:05 PM, mike cole wrote:
>
> > Attached is a commentary on the Psaltis et al article by members of XMCA.
> > Note that Anne-Nelly is on the MCA editorial board. Perhaps these are
> issues
> > that should be more extensively discussed in that forum?
> > Whither...?
> > mike
> >
> > On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 4:00 PM, Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>
> 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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> >>> xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
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> >>>
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>
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