Re: [xmca] LSV on the preschool stage

[Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>]

Hi Eric,

My reading is that at each stage there is development of awareness and deliberate control of a specific aspect of the child's relationship to the world. The infant develops mastery of the Great-we, the toddler develops mastery of a world of affordances, the preschooler  is mastering the field of meaning, the school-age child comes to master the 'inner field' of their psychological functions, while the adolescent masters the field of possibilities.

Martin

On Oct 14, 2010, at 10:29 AM, ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org wrote:

> The general law of development says that awareness and deliberate control 
> appear only during a very advanced stage in the development of a mental 
> function, after it has been used and practiced unconsciously and 
> spontaneously. In order to subject a function to intellectual and 
> volitional control, we must first possess it (Vygotsky, 1999, pg. 168).
> This is just one more thought on Vygotsky's belief about the development 
> of interiorization.  That prior to deliberate control the developmental 
> process of thinking occurs in fits and starts of speech.  Paula's video of 
> the block experiement is a perfect example of this.
> 
> eric
> 
> 
> 
> From:   ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org
> To:     "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date:   10/14/2010 09:24 AM
> Subject:        Re: [xmca] LSV on the preschool stage
> Sent by:        xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
> 
> 
> 
> 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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