the child and his behaviour
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The Child and his Behavior
Works of A. R. Luria
The Child and his Behavior
Written: c. 1930;
Source:Ape, Primitive Man, and Child: Essays in the History of Behaviour. A. R.
Luria and L. S. Vygotsky. Chapters 1 & 2 are by Vygotsky; Chapter 3, reproduced
here, is by Luria;
Published: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992. Translated by Evelyn Rossiter;
Transcribed: Andy Blunden.
Approaching the Psychology of the Adult
WHEN seeking to study the psychology of the civilized adult, we
must remember that it is the result of a complex evolution, in which at least three
paths converge. The first of these is biological evolution from animal to man; the
second, historico-cultural development, by means of which contemporary civilized
man gradually evolved from the primitives; and the third, the individual
development of each person (ontogenesis), whereby the tiny new-born,
proceeding through a number of phases, develops into a child of school age, andlater into a civilized adult.
Some scientists (supporters of the so-called biogenetic law) believe
that we should not study each of these paths of development separately and in
isolation; that the developing child, in all essential respects, repeats the
developmental traits of his species, and during the few years of his own individual
life follows the path taken by that species for many thousands and tens of
thousands of years.
We do not hold this view. We believe that the development of the ape
into man, of the primitive into a representative of the civilized era, and of the child
into the adult takes a substantially different course, under the influence of unique
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factors, and passes through unique, and often unreproducible forms and phases of
development.
That is why, as we approach the study of the civilized adult, we must
consider, in addition to the evolution of the behavior of animals and primitive man,
the path taken by the development of the behavior in the child.
How does the process of thinking take place in the child? What laws
does the child follow in arriving at conclusions and forming judgments? All that we
have said so far makes it abundantly clear that from the childs point of view there
is no such thing as highly developed logic, with all the limitations it imposes on
thought, and with all its complex conditions and patterns. The primitive precultural
thinking of the child has a far simpler structure: it is a direct reflection of the naivelyperceived world. All the child needs is one detail or one incomplete observation to
draw the corresponding (though entirely wrong) conclusion. Whereas adult thinking
is governed by the laws of a complex combination of accumulated experience and
conclusions drawn from general premises, and is subordinate to the laws of
inductive-deductive logic, the thinking of the small child, on the other hand, is what
the German psychologist Stern has described as transductive. It does not
proceed from the particular to the general, nor from the general to the particular; it
merely concludes from case to case, each time on the basis of new, readily evident
features. In the mind of the child each phenomenon receives a corresponding
explanation which is supplied immediately, bypassing any logical stages or
generalizations.
Steps Toward Culture
We have discussed what is characteristic of the primitive perception
of the small child and his primitive thinking. However, the child develops rapidly,
moving ahead and shifting to new forms of activity; the infant turns into a child, the
child into an adolescent, while the adult merely remembers that he once passed
through childhood, and that at one time he thought, felt and perceived the world
quite differently.
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The childs primitive forms of behavior are gradually replaced by
other, adult, or civilized forms. New skills and new forms of thinking and logic are
developed, together with new attitudes towards the world; science must then
consider the question of the paths along which the childs primitive psyche
gradually changes into the psyche of the civilized adult.
The developing, the child not only grows and matures, but also and
this is the essential point we wish to make in our analysis of the evolution of the
childs psyche he receives a number of new skills and new forms of behavior. In
the process of development the child not only matures, but is re-armed. It is this
re-arming that accounts for a great deal of the development and changes we can
observe as we follow the transition from child to civilized adult. It is precisely in thisrespect that human development differs from that of the animals.
Let us consider the paths of development of animals, and their
adaptation to the conditions in which they live. We may say that in the process of
evolution, all changes in the behavior of animals really amount to two basic
elements: their natural, innate properties develop; and new skills acquired through
individual experience the conditioned reflexes make their appearance.
If we examine an animal which has been obliged to adapt to living
conditions in the forest: we will find that all of its sensory organs, which help it ward
off danger, have become exceptionally sensitive. Its eyesight is keen, its sense of
smell is astonishingly well developed and its hearing can, on occasion, strike us as
incredible. Moreover, we will see the subtlety and agility of the system in which all
of the animals organs of perception are combined with its movements, and see
how they may be mobilized and activated by any sign familiar to the animal.
This is how an animal adapts to nature, by altering its organism,
increasing the subtlety of all its organs of perception, and mobilizing all its motor
capabilities.
One would imagine that in the process of evolution, with the transition
to ever higher levels of development, these natural properties (vision, hearing,
smell, memory, etc.) would become increasingly enhanced; one would accordingly
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expect all these functions to be exceptionally highly developed in man. If we were
to expect this to be so, however, we would be deeply disappointed. Detailed study
of the condition of numerous innate human properties will inevitably compel us to
conclude that very many of them, far from reaching stages of development more
advanced than those found in animals, have at best stagnated; while in most of
them there is clear evidence of worsening, degradation and regression.
How is it possible to compare human vision with that of the eagle or
hawk, or human hearing with that of the dog, which is capable of identifying slight
rustling sounds or differences in tone far beyond the perceptive capacity of civilized
adults, or, lastly, human smell, touch and muscular sensation with the
development of such systems of perception in other, lower animals?
1[23]
Moreover, when one compares these processes in civilized man
say, in an average contemporary Parisian with their condition in some Australian
aborigine at a very primitive level of development, one finds that civilized man is
inferior in respect of virtually all the simplest mental functions. The stories told by
travelling ethnographers abound with reports of astonishingly well developed
hearing and vision in primitives, of their amazing memory, and their exceptional
ability to simultaneously perceive and judge the size of a host of objects (for
example, to tell when a single sheep is missing from a flock). In all of these natural
functions the primitive stands incomparably higher than civilized man; yet we all
know that the latter has a far richer psychic life, that he is far more powerful, and
that he frequently shows superior orientation in the circumstances of life and a
superior ability to subjugate surrounding phenomena.
What is the answer to the riddle of the evolution of the psyche from
the animal to man, from the primitive to the representative of a civilized people?
1 Studies done by the school of Academician I. N. Pavlov have
objectively shown that a dog is capable of unerringly distinguishing
one eighth of a tone, whereas very few humans are capable of such a
feat
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We believe that it lies in the evolution of the existential conditions in
which each of us lives, and at the same time in the evolution of those forms of
behavior that are determined and caused by such external conditions.
Contemporary civilized man does not need to adapt to the external environment in
the same way as an animal or a primitive. He has subjugated nature, and now
applies his tools to the functions once performed by feet or hands, eyes or ears.
Civilized man does not need to strain his eyes to see a far-off object he can put
on glasses, look through binoculars or use a telescope; he does not need to strain
his ears and run at top speed in order to transmit news he now performs all those
functions using tools and means of communication and locomotion that carry out
his will. All artificial tools and the entire cultural environment promote theexpansion of our senses, and contemporary civilized man can afford to have
worse natural properties, while supplementing them with artificial adaptations that
enable him to cope with the external world better than primitive man, who makes
direct use of his natural endowment. [24] Primitive man might break up a tree by
smashing it against a rock, whereas civilized man would pick up an axe or a
mechanical saw and do the job faster, better and with a lower expenditure of
energy.
The differences between civilized and primitive man transcend these
limits, however. The productive and cultural environment gradually alter man
himself; indeed man as we know him is like a stone that has been repeatedly
rounded and reshaped under the influence of that productive and cultural
environment.
In response to external conditions, the ape stood up on its hind limbs
and its body straightened out; those same conditions also caused its extremities to
become differentiated and its hand to develop, in due course, into the human
hand. In the opinion of Engels, at that point the ape turned into something similar
to a human being.
Yet the influence of productive and cultural conditions did not end
there. After the hand, the brain had to change, and the need arose at the same
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time for subtler, more dynamic forms of human adaptation to the environment.
Altered conditions naturally required new forms of adaptation, and, with the
passage of time, such new forms were elaborated. Under direct pressure from the
external conditions of existence, and in an active struggle with the external world,
man learned not to make direct use of his natural endowment in the struggle to
survive, but to elaborate devices, of varying complexity, to help him in that
struggle. In the process of evolution, man invented tools and created a cultural
productive environment; yet that same productive environment altered man
himself, supplanting primitive forms of behavior with complex, cultural forms. Man
gradually learned to make rational use of the properties he had inherited from
nature. The influence of the environment created in man a large number of newmechanisms not found in animals; the environment, as it were, turned inwards, and
behavior became social and cultural by virtue not only of its content, but also of its
mechanisms and devices. Instead of directly remembering something of particular
importance to him, man now elaborated a system of associative and structural
memory; his speech and thinking developed, the abstract concept came to be
elaborated, a series of cultural skills and techniques of adaptation were created
and instead of the primitive, we have civilized man. While the natural innate
functions of both are identical, or sometimes even weakened in the course of
development, on the other hand what makes civilized man so vastly different from
primitive man is his possession of an enormous stock of psychological
mechanisms, created in the course of cultural development, including skills,
behavioral devices, cultural symbols and adaptations, as well as the fact that his
psyche has been altered under the impact of the complex conditions that brought
him into being.
Our digression from our analysis of the childs psyche has been
deliberate. It was intended to show in which areas we should expect to find the
serious and profound changes that occur in the behavior of the child as he turns
into an adult.
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As we have already noted, we are not at all inclined to equate the
development of the species, to which we have just referred, with that of the child,
or even to establish some strict parallel between them. The child is born in a ready
cultural and productive environment, and therein lies the decisive, radical
difference between him and the primitive. However, when born, the child is not in
contact with that environment and is incorporated into it only gradually. That
incorporation into cultural conditions is in no way reminiscent of putting on a new
set of clothes: as it happens, profound changes occur in the childs behavior, which
forms new, fundamental and specific mechanisms. It is, therefore, perfectly natural
for each child to have his own precultural primitive period; while that period lasts
the structure of the childs mental life is marked by certain special features and bypeculiar primitive traits in the perception of thinking. Upon inclusion in the
appropriate environment, the child soon begins to change and develop new traits:
this happens extraordinarily fast because the ready socio-cultural environment
creates in him the necessary forms of adaptation, which have been formed long
ago in the adults around him.
The childs behavior as a whole is altered.. He grows accustomed to
inhibiting the immediate satisfaction of his needs and attractions, and restraining
immediate responses to external stimuli, in order to master the given situation
better and more easily, by means of roundabout paths and suitable cultural
devices.
It is precisely this inhibition of primitive functions, and the elaboration
of complex cultural forms of adaptation that constitutes the essence of the
transition from primitive childlike forms of behavior to the behavior of the civilized
adult.
Mastery of Tools
In the upper reaches of the animal world, but below the human level,
we have already noted an interesting fact: in some instances the ape would adapt
to new and difficult conditions not directly, but by using external tools (sticks,
boxes, etc.).[25]
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This phenomenon, which points to quite highly developed forms of
behavior, is not yet discernible in the small child. The child needs to develop to the
age of 1 1/2 years before he can, for the first time, use external objects as tools,
and assess any given external object not merely as such, but as an object that can
be used to achieve some goal. The first functional attitude to objects is the first
step towards an active, rather than a merely mechanical, connection between the
child and the external world.
It is not surprising that the child, having just begun to assimilate the
external world, and finding it still alien and associated with various fantastic
representations, should still have only a limited ability to act upon it in an organized
manner, or to use individual objects of the external world as tools for his ownpurposes. In order to enter into such complex mutual relationships with the objects
of the external world, and realize that they may be used not only for the immediate
satisfaction of instincts (an apple the child may eat, or a toy that he may play with),
but also as tools, for a specific purpose, the childs development has yet to travel a
very long way. For this to happen, instinctive immediate activity has to be replaced
by intellectual activity, guided by complex intentions and carried out by organized
acts.
Let us consider those first instances in which the child begins to use
the objects of the external world as tools, thereby taking the first steps in the
transition towards complex intellectual behavior.
As we know, a small child already eats from a spoon, uses a plate
and wipes himself with a towel. In so doing, however, he is merely imitating adults,
while his spontaneous use of objects as tools is limited, indeed practically zero. In
all these instances the spoon, plate and towel are so inseparably linked to the act
of eating or washing that they merge with it to form one habitual, integral situation.
On the other hand we all know how difficult it is for a child aged 1 1/2 years to learn
to use a spoon, or to cut something with a knife (rather than tearing it apart), etc.
Mastery of tools is a sign of high psychological development; and we
may safely assume that the processes leading to mastery of the tools of the
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external world, and to the unique elaboration of internal psychological devices,
together with the ability to make functional use of ones own behavior, are all
characteristic elements of the cultural development of the childs psyche.
The Cultural Development of Special Functions: Memory
We have seen how the small child, for whom the world of external
objects was initially alien, gradually comes closer to it, and begins to master those
objects and make functional use of them as tools. This is the first phase in cultural
development, in which new forms of behavior and new behavioral devices come
into being as an aid for both the innate and the simplest acquired movements.
In the second phase of cultural development, intermediate processes
make their appearance in the childs behavior, altering that behavior through theuse of stimulus symbols. These behavioral devices, acquired in the process of
cultural experience, alter the fundamental psychological functions of the child, arm
them with new weapons and develop them. The study of these devices enables us,
in some instances, to resolve issues that had previously seemed enigmatic.
In numerous experiments, we have been able to monitor the
development of these cultural devices linked to the memory of the child, and the
manner in which that memory grows and is strengthened and re armed until it
gradually reaches the level found in adults.
For a long time, psychologists viewed the question of the
paths of development of the childs memory as extremely obscure, almost
enigmatic. Does the childs memory really develop at all? Do we adults have
better memories than children? This question turns out to be not as simple
as it first seems.
We can say that the child follows a similar path (Note: natural
means*), the only difference being that primitive man invented his own
memorization systems, whereas the developing child more often than not is
supplied with ready systems that help him memorize; he merely assimilates them,
and learns how to use and master them, thereby transforming his natural
processes.
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We have confirmed, under experimental conditions, that this
transition to cultural forms of memory is based on the use of various devices
capable of greatly and rapidly enhancing the power of memory.
We read out ten figures, one after the other, to a boy aged 6-7,
seated before us. When we asked the boy, after the experiment, about the figures
he had remembered, it turned out that he had memorized only two or three of
them, or at most four.
When he was convinced that memorizing ten figures was extremely
difficult, we altered the experiment. We gave him some object, such as a piece of
paper or string, or some wood shavings, etc., and told him that the object in
question would help him memorize the figures we were to read out. We set him thetask of using the object as a means towards a certain end, as a means of
memorizing figures.
Thereafter, the sequence of events usually went as follows: at first
the child could not understand precisely how he could functionally use a piece of
paper for memorization. It did not occur to him that the piece of paper, on the one
hand, and the proposed figures, on the other, could have anything in common. The
functional use of things the notion that one thing could be used artificially for
some process or other, to serve a purpose was often too much for him to
comprehend. Admittedly, he knew how to use a spoon when eating, or a towel to
wipe himself dry, but these are all familiar processes, of which the object in
question is itself an integral part. The child still lacked the ability to invent the use
of auxiliary tools in those cases where some new, extraneous object was being
used to assist some process or other, while the functional use of psychological
auxiliaries posed even greater problems for him.
For this reason, the child of this age, more often than not, simply
gives up, saying that the piece of paper does not help him remernber numbers. We
are still faced with the task of ensuring that the child masters the material put
before him as an aid to memorization, and discovers the functional use of some
symbol for purposes of memorization.
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In all of these instances, the child performs external manipulations in
order to master the internal process of memory, which is exactly what
characterizes a primary cultural device used to aid the natural psychic functions.
one important point should be noted: in the transition from the
system of immediate memorization to that of recording by means of certain
marks, the output of memory rose sharply: a certain .fiction of its development
occurred. A child who could remember three to four numbers using his natural
technique of immediate imprinting was of course able to memorize a virtually
endless quantity of numbers once he had transferred to the method of recording.
This was because his memory, having been supplanted by new devices invented
he himself had invented, began to work in a new mode yielding quantitativelymaximum results.
The further development of the childs memory centers less on its
natural improvement than on the alteration of those devices, on the replacement of
primitive devices by other better ones, elaborated in the process of historical
evolution.
the use of external symbols now also begins to alter the internal
processes; whereas at the lowest ages, memorization without external means was
mechanical, the school child now already begins to use certain internal devices: he
no longer memorizes mechanically, but associatively and logically. In actual fact,
his natural memory begins to lose its natural character and becomes a cultural
memory; and in this cultural transformation of primitive processes we are inclined
to see an explanation for the considerable level of development found in natural
memorization in childhood.
This is how culture works, by nurturing in us more and more new
devices, converting natural into cultural memory; and school works the same
way, by grafting on a series of subtle and complex auxiliary devices and opening
up a number of new possibilities for a natural function of man.
We have deliberately explored in some detail the function of memory,
since it provides us with an opportunity to illustrate, by means of a concrete
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example, the relationship between the natural innate forms of mental activity and
the cultural form acquired in the process of social experience. Here we have seen
how development proves to be more than mere maturation: it means cultural
metamorphoses and cultural re-armament. If we now wished to consider the
memory of the civilized adult, we would have to take it as created not by nature,
but by culture. After all, it would be quite wrong to limit it to those laws, pertaining
to the strengthening and reproduction of experience, that are inherent in the
natural mnemic functions.
The Cultural Development of Special Functions: Attention
We shall now dwell very briefly on the phases of the development of
attention in the child. We know that attention performs a most important function inthe life of the organism: that of the organization of behavior, the creation of a
suitable disposition preparing the individual for action or perception.
This kind of attention characteristically is not arbitrary; any sudden,
powerful stimulus promptly attracts the attention of the child and alters his
behavior. On the other hand, as soon as there is any weakening of the stimulus
(which may, for example, be internal or instinctive), the organizing role of attention
fades away, and organized behavior again yields to unorganized, undifferentiated
behavior.
Such a natural type of attention cannot, of course, generate any
durable, stable form of organized behavior. Each new stimulus would repeatedly
disrupt the disposition, causing repeated changes in behavior. These conditions
clearly fail to satisfy the organism until it is removed from social demands, away
from the community and from work. However, when certain demands begin to be
made on the individual, when he is obliged to perform a certain organized task,
however primitive, his primitive non-arbitrary attention proves inadequate, and it
proves necessary to elaborate new and more stable forms of behavior.
Such further development of attention can clearly not involve the
development of non-arbitrary attention. In order to perform the task required of
him, the individual must first elaborate a mode of behavior that will be the exact
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opposite of his former mode. Previously, each powerful stimulus had been able to
organize behavior on its own terms, by generating a certain disposition; now,
however, weaker but biologically or socially important stimuli, requiring a lengthy
organized chain of reactions, would need to do the same. Natural forms of
attention could not satisfy these demands, so certain other artificial, acquired
mechanisms would have to develop alongside them, in order to resolve the
situation. There was a need for arbitrary artificial that is, civilized attention,
which is the essential component of any work.
Let us now try to explore the process of transition to such forms of
attention, if only with regard to the solution of certain problems. None of the
conditions influencing non-arbitrary, natural attention has any effect on the studentin this instance. The problems proposed are not in themselves a stimulus powerful
enough to focus the attention and they do not fall into the area of some instinctive
process capable of organizing all of the behavior of the personality; yet the student
can resolve minor problems in quite an organized way and for quite a long time by
concentrating on them alone, with no distractions. From the standpoint of natural
forms of behavior, this may seem enigmatic. We can find the key to this enigma
only by finding certain forces that bolster attention while certain work is in progress
and whose effect is long-lasting.
The cultural stimuli thus generated enable the individual to
concentrate on a certain activity, sometimes overcoming even serious distracting
obstacles. However, besides complicating the dynamic conditions and creating
new needs in the form of culturally grafted attractions, the influence of the
historical environment also acts by organizing in one further respect. The child
develops specific devices, that enable him to control his psychological operations,
to separate the substantial from the insubstantial, and to perceive complex
situations as being subject to certain basic central factors. By developing culturally,
the child himself also becomes able to create such stimuli, which will in due course
influence him, organize his behavior, and attract his attention.
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How can his attention be strengthened, and how can he be helped
to master his behavior without departing from any of the conditions he has to
meet? The experiment showed that the only way this could be done was by shifting
from immediate to mediate attention, which resorts to the use of certain external
devices.
To help the child solve the problem we offer him colored cards that
he may use as notes, as external conditions for the organization of his attention.
We thereby hand him a certain device, which he quickly masters. His external
actions help him to organize his attention: by operating with these cards externally,
he organizes his internal processes.
As a rule, however, this psychological method of organizing theattention fails to yield the desired results: to be successful, the child, instead of
removing the forbidden elements from the sphere of his attention, must make the
process of attention mediate, concentrating precisely on those forbidden
elements.
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The use of cards as auxiliary symbols does not, however, end there:
in order to solve the second problem, not to repeat the same colors twice, the child
selects from the cards in front of him, one corresponding to the question asked (for
example, a yellow one), and, as a way of signalling that that color has already
been mentioned, he moves the card slightly lower down; then before answering the
questions, he looks at both rows of forbidden colors (C, rows a and c), and then,
having made the process mediate, he successfully avoids all the pitfalls in the
experiment. External operations transform and organize the process of attention.
Yet the process goes further than this. If we were to give the child thesame game to play several times, we would probably notice changes in his
behavior. He would soon stop using the cards, and begin to solve the problem
without external auxiliary devices, returning, as it were, to the previous natural
application of attention. This is only apparently so, however. We can see that the
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operation of our neuropsychic apparatus is entirely created, as a product of cultural
development, and how, once it has been created, it transforms numerous
psychological processes.
The development of the process of abstraction, which occurs only
within the process of the childs growth and cultural development, is closely linked
to the beginning of the use of external tools and the elaboration of complex forms
of behavior. Abstraction itself may here be viewed as one of the cultural devices
grafted onto the child during the process of his development. We can explore the
primary emergence of this process through a concrete example, where the mutual
relationship between the primitive, integral perception of external objects, and the
incipient abstraction crucial to any cultural psychological process, becomesparticularly obvious.
The Cultural Development of Special Functions: Speech and
Thinking
We need to make some concluding remarks about the paths followed
by the development of thinking in the child. In the light of the material included in
our study, a brief summary should be easy; yet we have still not said enough to
offer a general characterization of the development of thinking in the child. To do
that, the question needs to be linked to a mechanism we have not yet discussed
one that is surely the most important means of thinking: speech.
The notion that speech plays an enormous, decisive role in thinking
has become established in recent psychological literature.
There are many reasons for believing that the question is far more
complicated that this theory assumes.
First we can point out that thinking and speech have undeniably
different roots, and that in the earliest phases of development one can very often
exist without the other.
In other words, intellect and thinking, as complex planned forms of
behavior, may either arise in the period before speech, or they may develop quite
separately from speech.
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The most primitive form of speech is, of course, the shout and other
vocal reactions, occurring in connection with movement, powerful emotions, etc.
These include exclamations and interjections at work, crying or laughter, shrieks of
delight after a victory, or of terror during persecution.
Are these related in any way to intellect or thinking? They certainly
are not. At their root lies a simple tendency to discharge tension built up in the
organism; they cannot claim a greater role than that of simple expressive
movements. Their basis is emotional; they do nothing to help man resolve complex
real-life problems in an organized manner. They do not serve to plan the behavior
of the subject, as they take place on another, non-intellectual plane.
On the other hand, many types of speech found in the civilized adultare not directly related to thinking, for example, emotional speech, which serves,
as we have noted, merely as a means of expression, and speech in its simplest
communicative functions.
Speech and thinking may therefore occur separately also in the adult,
though this does not mean that the two processes do not meet and have no
influence on each other. On the contrary, the meeting between speech and
thinking is a major event in the development of the individual; in fact, it is this
connection that raises human thinking to extraordinary heights.
Speech occupies the commanding heights and becomes the most
commonly used cultural device, while enriching and stimulating thinking; and the
childs psyche acquires a new structure. The verbal mechanisms that were vividly
expressed during the period of active speech, or initial accumulation now shift to
internal, inaudible speech, which in turn becomes one of the major auxiliary tools
of thinking. After all, how many complex and subtle intellectual problems would
remain insoluble, were it not for our internal speech, by means of which thinking
may cloak itself in precise and clear forms, and it becomes possible for us to test
and plan various solutions on a verbal (or rather, intellectual) basis.
Whereas, in Marxs classic comparison, the architect, unlike the bee,
builds an entire structure after careful consideration, planning and calculation, to a
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great extent we owe this vast advantage of intellect over instinct to the mechanism
of internal speech. The role of speech mechanisms in human behavior far exceeds
that of mere expressive reactions. They fundamentally differ from all other
reactions in that they play a specific functional role: their action is addressed to the
organization of the further behavior of the personality, and preliminary verbal
planning is the sphere in which man achieves the highest cultural forms of
intellectual behavior.
By turning inwards, speech forms a most important psychological
function as the representative of the external environment within us, stimulating
thinking and, in the opinion of several authors, also laying the foundation for the
development of consciousness.
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Alexander Luria
There is no hope of finding the sources of free action in
the lofty realms of the mind or in the depths of the brain.
The idealist approach of the phenomenologists is as
hopeless as the positive approach of the naturalists. To
discover the sources of free action it is necessary to go
outside the limits of the organism, not into the intimate
sphere of the mind, but into the objective forms of social life;
it is necessary to seek the sources of human consciousness
and freedom in the social history of humanity. To find the
soul it is necessary to lose it". A.R Luria
ALEXANDER LURIA was born in Kazan, an old Russian University
town east of Moscow. He entered Kazan University at the age of 16 and obtained
his degree in 1921 at the age of 19. While still a student, he established the Kazan
Psychoanalytic Association, and planned on a career in psychology. His earliest
research sought to establish objective methods for assessing Freudian ideas about
abnormalities of thought and the effects of fatigue on mental processes.
In 1924 Luria met Lev Semionovich Vygotsky, whose influence was
decisive in shaping his future career. Together with Vygotsky and Alexei
Nikolaivitch Leontiev, Luria sought to establish an approach to psychology that
would enable them to discover the way natural processes such as physical
maturation and sensory mechanisms become intertwined with culturally
determined processes to produce the psychological functions of adults (Luria,
1979, p. 43). Vygotsky and his colleagues referred to this new approach variably
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as cultural, historical, and instrumental psychology. These three labels all
index the centrality of cultural mediation in the constitution of specifically human
psychological processes, and the role of the social environment in structuring the
processes by which children appropriate the cultural tools of their society in the
process of ontogeny. An especially heavy emphasis was placed on the role of
language, the tool of tools in this process: the acquisition of language was seen
as the pivotal moment when phylogeny and cultural history are merged to form
specifically human forms of thought, feeling, and action.
From the late 1920's until his death, in 1977, Luria sought to
elaborate this synthetic, cultural-historical psychology in different content areas of
psychology. In the early 1930's he led two expeditions to Central Asia where heinvestigated changes in perception, problem solving, and memory associated with
historical changes in economic activity and schooling. During this same period he
carried out studies of identical and fraternal twins raised in a large residential
school to reveal the dynamic relations between phylogenetic and cultural-historical
factors in the development of language and thought.
Luria Archive
http://www.marxists.org/archive/luria/works/1930/child/index.htm
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