Re: [xmca] Fwd: Private Speech and Self Regulatiion

[Steve Gabosch <stevegabosch@me.com>]

True about not being able to do it all.  What Luria did do was amazing.

This passage in Luria's The Working Brain seems to be a partial answer  
to my question about how did he evaluate Vygotsky's suggestion for a  
sign-mediated neural connection.

"Many years have passed since psychologists regarded mental functions  
as isolated *faculties*, each of which could be localized in a certain  
part of the brain. However, the time has also passed when it was  
thought that mental processes could be represented by models of a  
*reflex arc*, the first part of which was purely afferent in character  
and performed the function of sensation and perception, while the  
second, effector part, was entirely concerned with movement and action."

That helps a lot.  That clearly explains why Vgotsky's S-R framework  
is out of use.  I think I've run into that explanation before, but  
this time it is sinking in.  At the same time, the question of how do  
objects and signs get processed at the neuropsychological level still  
seems to be a good one.  Perhaps Luria addressed that concept from a  
different angle?  And perhaps it was not within the grasp of the  
technology of his time to get very far with it.  How all those neurons  
and connections organize themselves is still very dimly understood,  
but a great deal more is known today than in the mid-20th Century.   
Perhaps what is missing is a cultural-historical approach.  What Luria  
might have been able to do with an MRI!  With so many in modern  
psychology today looking to brain activity patterns and  
neurotransmitters as direct explanations for behavior, Vygotsky's idea  
that neuronal versions of objects and signs are always found together  
in the operations of the higher functions seems especially refreshing  
and potentially fruitful.

- Steve


On Jul 30, 2010, at 8:12 PM, mike cole wrote:

> I think all of this is closely related to what Tolman wrote about the
> division of (specifically human) labor giving rise to conscious  
> action,
> consciousness, which appears as a special kind of co-knowledge,
> Steve.
>
> Luria theorized mediation in a really interesting way, combining
> phylogenetic and cultural lines of development in one of the only  
> ways left
> open to him after about 1934. He was not, i believe, focused on the  
> level of
> local activities or how these activities are linked to their large
> socio-cultural context, except in ritual speech.
>
> We can't do it all! We can't get it all right.
> I think he understood this perfectly.
> mike

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