Vygotsky's theory of cognition and development

Vygotsky’s theory of cognition and development  

- influenced by Piaget

- greed that children’s development occurred in sequences and children have different abilities at different ages

- but, Vygotsky said cognitive development is a social process – through social experiences

- also interested in the role of culture – is the main determinant of individual development. 

- Vygotsky sought to explain higher mental functions such as reasoning and understanding

differences to Piaget 

- cognitive development is driven by a child’s bio maturation but is also, more importantly, a product of a child’s interactions with others

- highlights the importance of language, culture and an ‘expert’ other as the key driving force

- Vygotsky – although children can acquire some concepts through their own unaided play, they require the mechanisms of thinking and learning as a result of the social interactions between themselves and the MKOs around them

- this replaces Piaget’s idea of the ‘child as a scientist’ with the ‘child as an apprentice’

internalisation and the social nature of thinking 

- the ability to think and reason is referred to as inner speech or verbal thought

- infants are born as social being capable of interacting with others but unable to think by themselves

- for Vygotsky, cognitive development involves active internalisation of problem-solving processes, taking place as a result of interactions 

- social experiences depend on language, enabling higher mental functions to develop

mental functioning  

- children are born with innate abilities (Piaget agreed but focused on sensory and motor functions) which Vygotsky called ‘elementary’ mental functions

- these include attention, perception, memory and sensation

- these are transformed into higher mental functions (such as those of mathematical systems, focused attention) by the influence of social interaction and culture/language

- higher mental functions are exclusively human

- cognitive functions, even those carried out alone, as affected by the beliefs, values and tools of intellectual adaptation of the culture in which a person develops and therefore socio-culturally determined

AO3 - strength of mental functioning: evidence for the role of culture

- animal research Savage-Rumbaugh (1991), has exposed Bonobo apes to language rich culture

- the apes are ‘spoken’ to all the time using lexigram

- ‘Kanzi’ is thought to have developed a human like language

role of others: experts / more knowledgeable others (MKOs)

- a child learns through problem solving experiences shared with someone else, e.g. teacher

- the expert may model behaviours and/or provide verbal instructions for the child

- Vygotsky refers to this as cooperative or collaborative dialogue

- all people with greater knowledge act as ‘experts’ to the child

- to begin with the ‘expert’ interacting with the child assumes most of the responsibility for guiding the problem-solving activity, but gradually this responsibility transfers to the child

- learning is a social and collaborative process

AO3 - limitation of the role of others: fewer studies

- compared to Piaget, Vygotsky’s theory has received less attention from researchers

- this may be because the concepts in Vygotsky’s theory are more abstract and difficult to understand

language  

- culture is transmitted by ‘experts’ to the child using semiotics, e.g. language and mathematical symbols

- knowledge is first intermental. to being with, language take the form of shared dialogues between the adult and child (pre-intellectual speech). 

- knowledge is then intramental. as the child develops the skill of mental representation, they begin to communicate with themselves (private speech with aids development). 

in this way, language enables intellectual development – it accelerates our understanding

AO3 - strength of language: evidence for the role of language

- Carmichael et al. (1932) who gave pps one of two labels for certain drawings. for kidney bean or that it was a canoe. when pps were subsequently asked to draw the shape, it differed according to which label they had been given. this shows that words can affect the way we think about and remember things. 

- COUNTER: Sinclair-de-Zwart (1969) tried to teach children who couldn’t conserve to use comparative terms (little success) which criticises Vygotsky’s role of language aspect of his theory

the role of culture

- to transform elementary mental functions into higher mental functions

- cultural influences come from interactions with others and through language

- there will be cultural differences in cognitive abilities because children will have different social experiences

- children benefit from the knowledge of the previous generation – attitudes and beliefs are passed on generation to generation

- Gredler (1992)

Gredler (1992)

- In Papua New Guinea they use a primitive counting system which is an example of how culture can lead to cognitive development

- counting is done by starting on the thumb of one hand and going up the arm and down to other fingers, ending in 37

- this system makes it very difficult to add and subtract large numbers, a limiting factor for cognitive development in this culture

cultural tools

- children ‘inherit’ cultural tools: technological (clocks, bicycles, other physical devices), psych (language and theories, concepts and symbols), values 

- (for Vygotsky, language is the most important cultural tool)

zone of proximal development (ZPD) 

- the area between the child’s actual development level regarding what they could achieve alone and the potential level which could be achieved with the help of MKOs

- full development of the ZPD depends upon full social interaction

- the idea is that a child is only able to take the next step in their cognitive development if another person (typically an adult) supports, guides and prompts them to do so. this sort of assistance is called scaffolding. 

- the knowledge must be appropriate for the child’s level of comprehension. anything that’s too complicated for the child to learn, i.e. that it isn’t in the ZPD 

AO3 - strength of ZPD: supporting evidence

- McNaughton and Leyland (1990) observed young children working with their mothers on a series of jigsaw puzzles (increasing difficulty)

- the mother offered help in line with Vygotsky’s predictions

- in the case of easy puzzles, mothers intervened little (below their ZPD), if the puzzle was moderate, mother encouraged the child to solve the problem by themself. if the puzzle was difficult the mother would provide a lot of help.

- this shows that experts adjust their input according to where the learner is in their ZPD

scaffolding

- not mentioned by Vygotsky himself, but developed by Wood, Bruner and other psychologists

- scaffolding refers to the help that adults provide to help a child cross the ZPD, with children being given clues as to how to solve a problem, rather than being given the solution. 

- adults adjust the amount of help they give depending on their progress

- e.g. a child learning to walk might at first have both their hands held and pulled upwards. as they learn to support their own weight, the mother might hold both their hands loosely. then she might just hold one hand, then eventually nothing. 

- an important aspect of scaffolding is that there’s a gradual withdrawal of support as the child’s knowledge and confidence increases

education

Vygotsky suggests understanding can be increased and accelerated through guidance from experts, e.g. peer tutoring and classroom assistants