Lecture 4 Notes: Vygotsky's Theory of Sociocultural Development

Vygotsky and his Sociocultural Approach

Lecture Outline

• Background on Vygotsky
• Vygotsky’s theory
• The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
• Individual differences in tutoring styles
• What is private speech?
• Evaluating Vygotsky’s views on private speech
• Is there any such thing as a non-verbal task?

Lev Semeonovich Vygotsky

• Born in Gomel in 1896, a town within the pale, about 400 miles from Moscow.
• Second of 8 children.
• Unconventional early education with the tutor Solomon Ashpiz, a mathematician with a passion for Russian poetry and literature.
• Entered the Russian gymnasium at around 16 and graduated with honors and a gold medal.

Jewish Quotas & Early Career

• Jewish quotas for Russia’s universities were small:
  • 3% St. Petersburg
  • 5% all universities outside the pale
  • 10% within the pale
• In his graduation year, the system was changed to selection by casting lots.
• First essay was completed in 1916, although not published until 1968.
• Graduated from Moscow University in 1917, returned to teach in Gomel and experienced the famine and Civil War at first hand.

Health Issues & Career

• 1920: first attack of TB, and crisis between 1921 & '23.
• Preoccupation with death, and sent manuscripts to his literary mentor for posthumous publication.
• 1924: Paper presented at the Second Psychoneurological Congress in Leningrad.
• Invited to join the Moscow Institute of Psychology.
• Died of TB in 1934.

Suppression of Works & Impact

• Vygotsky’s works suppressed after his death.
• Thought and Language (Myshlenie i Rech) was unpublished in the West until 1962.
• Only relatively recently that a significant proportion of his works have been translated.
• The impact of his ideas only felt in Western psychology in the last 30 years.

Vygotsky’s Theory

• Sociocultural approach
• Develop a theory that did justice to the social origin of mental processes.
• Mental processes can only be understood by looking at what they develop from & into.
• Interpersonal (social) interaction very important.

Wertsch’s 3 Themes

• Reliance on genetic method – higher mental functions (HMFs) vs. elementary mental functions (EMFs)
• Semiotic mediation – HMF mediated by culturally-derived sign systems (primarily words)
• Social origin of the higher mental functions, as revealed in the general genetic law of cultural development

Elementary Mental Functions (EMFs)

• Develop along natural (or biological) line.
• Not specific to humans.
• Inaccessible to consciousness.
• Non-mediated
  • e.g., natural memory, non-voluntary attention

Higher Mental Functions (HMFs)

• Develop along cultural line via social interaction.
• Specific to humans.
• Accessible to consciousness.
• Mediated by sign systems (e.g., language)
  • e.g., mediated memory, problem-solving

Semiotic Mediation

• Mediation of thought processes by words or other culturally-derived signs to create the HMFs.
• Interaction with others enables us to acquire knowledge of language or other sign systems.
• Signs fulfill the role of psychological tools – they help us to think better!

Forbidden Colors Task

• Leont’ev (1932) – see V, 1978, ch. 3
• Children asked questions, including some about color.
• 2 colors become ‘forbidden’; each color can only be used once.
• Child given 9 colored cards.

Forbidden Colors Task - Results

• 5- to 6-yr-olds: lots of errors and cards no help
• 8- to 9-yr-olds & 10- to 13-year-olds: cards result in improvement
• Adults: few errors & cards no help

Implications for Language-Disordered Individuals

• What are the implications of semiotically-mediated development of HMF for deaf and language-disordered individuals?
• Can they develop HMF?

Social Origin

• The idea of thinking as a ‘conversation in the head’ has great appeal (see Fernyhough, 1996)
• One implication of the social origin theme is that the unit of analysis for psychological investigation should be the dyad, rather than the individual.

General Genetic Law of Cultural Development

• Any function in the child’s cultural development appears twice, or on two planes.
• First, it appears on the social plane, and then on the psychological plane.
• First, it appears between people as an interpsychological category, and then within the child as an intrapsychological category.
• Social relations or relations among people genetically underlie all higher functions and their relationships (1981, p. 163).

Conclusions

• Learn more about children’s potential for development from their performance in collaboration with an expert other than from solo performance.
• Note use of expert other – not necessarily adult.
• Hence the notion of the ZPD.

The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

• The distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem-solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem-solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 86).

Vygotsky & ZPD

• Focus on potential developmental level.
• ZPD enables characterization of prospective development – ‘the buds or flowers of development rather than the fruits’ (V, 1978, p. 86).

Main Implication for Tutoring

• Instruction is only good when it proceeds ahead of development. It then awakens and arouses to life those functions which are in a stage of maturing, which lie in the ZPD (V, 1956, p. 278).
• Egalitarian and idealistic.
• True for children of all developmental levels, including those who are developmentally delayed.

Predictions

• Tutors need to be able to identify ZPD in order to pitch interventions accordingly.
• We should see evidence for a shift from other- to self-regulation in children’s task performance.
• Individual differences in tutoring styles, particularly sensitivity to ZPD, will be reflected in different learning outcomes.

Shift from Other- to Self-Regulation

• Expect children to become more effective at problem-solving as they get older.
• Wertsch et al. (1980) – 18 mother-child dyads (2.5, 3.5 & 4.5 years) engaged in copying a truck jigsaw puzzle.
• Analysis of children’s gazes showed an increase in self-regulation with age.
• Older children’s gazes also more effective.

Wertsch & Hickman (1987)

• Showed transfer from other-to self-regulation could occur within a very short period of time.
• Episode 9
  • M: Now what’s the next color we need?
  • C: [looks at model] White. It’s white.
• Episode 11
  • M: Goodness. You’re almost done with your truck.
  • C: [looks at model] Now purple. Purple.

Individual Differences in Tutoring Styles

• Notion of scaffolding (Bruner, 1975) – adjustments made to task in order to bring it within the child’s ZPD or ‘region of sensitivity to instruction’ (Wood et al., 1976).
• What determines how well a caregiver can scaffold a task?

Meins (1997)

• Vygotsky’s theory assumes the majority of interactions proceed in optimal ZPD fashion.
• Investigated whether the security of the attachment relationship related to mothers’ tutoring strategies.

Meins (1997) - Method

• Attachment security assessed at 12m.
• Tutoring task at age 3.
• Mothers were told they could give “as much or as little help as they liked”.
• Assessed extent to which mothers used feedback on child’s performance to alter level of specificity of instruction.

Assessing Instructions in ZPD

• How would you assess whether mothers were pitching their instructions within the child’s ZPD?
• Rules for ZPD interaction?

Security-Related Differences

• Secure group mothers pitched intervention in ZPD, using feedback from child to alter the level of specificity of their instructions.
• Insecure group mothers kept comments too vague or were too intrusive and failed to use feedback from child’s performance.

Wood et al. (1978)

• Researcher taught a child how to complete a complex pyramid-construction task.
• The researcher varied the extent to which tutoring was pitched within the ZPD.
• The child was required to complete the task without help in a post-test.

Results

• Children who had experienced ZPD-targeted tutoring performed better in the post-test condition.

Conclusions on Shared Thinking

• Thinking can be a shared activity, not always contained within an individual’s head.
• Children are apprentices (Rogoff, 1990) in the intellectual technologies of the culture.
• Individual differences in whether caregivers and teachers tailor their interaction to the child’s ZPD can thus have far-reaching consequences for the child’s development.

The Phenomenon of Private Speech

• Piaget (1923): 45% of the utterances of two 6-year-old boys had no apparent communicative function
• Remarks that are not addressed to anyone… and that… evoke no reaction adapted to them on the part of anyone to whom they may chance to be addressed (Piaget, 1926, p. 35)

Egocentric Speech (Piaget)

• Piaget believed this speech was further evidence for the child’s egocentricity.
• Support:
  • Incidence drops off in middle childhood when children reach the concrete operational stage.
  • Peak incidence is 3-7 years.

Note on Terminology

• Piaget & Vygotsky both used the term egocentric speech.
• More recent challenges to Piaget’s egocentricity position led to the substitution of the term private speech (Flavell, 1966).
• The two terms are synonymous.

Vygotsky’s (1934) Account

• Maintained that all functions develop from the first days of life, including language.
• Development of thought & language are separate, parallel systems for the first two years of life.
• At age 2, the systems begin to inter-penetrate one another.
  • Speech rational, thought verbal
• From then on, speech mediates our thoughts.

Vygotsky’s Account Continued

• Speech begins as a social activity & is later internalized to create the individual intellect.
• PS is an essential mid-point stage in this internalization, indicating the use of words (psychological tools) to control behavior.
• Vygotsky, therefore, makes the same prediction as Piaget about PS dying away, but for very different reasons.

Piaget's View

• Egocentrism → Socialized intellect
• Private speech → Social speech

Vygotsky's View

• Social interaction → Social speech
• Private Speech (PS) → Inner speech → Individual intellect

Predictions About Private Speech

• PS will be used to regulate one’s behavior (self-regulatory) because it is the verbal manifestation of thought.
• There should be evidence of it ‘going underground’ and being internalized to form inner speech.
• It will be parasocial because it is derived from social speech.
• It should be seen universally.

Evidence for Self-Regulation

• Deliberate introduction of obstacles to child’s activity → coefficient of PS almost doubled
• Where’s the pencil? I need a blue pencil. Never mind, I’ll draw with the red one and wet it with water; it will become dark and look like blue (V, 1934/86, p. 30)

Example of Private Speech

• It’s very high… We have a tall cupboard… Papa puts things up there, and I can’t get them… No, I can’t reach it with my hand… I’m still little (stands on chair) There we go… I can get it better from the chair (swings stick to get candy) (Levina, 1981, p. 286)

Practical Task & Speech

• The child solves a practical task with the help of not only eyes and hands, but also speech (Vygotsky & Luria, 1993, p. 109).

Internalization of Speech

• Should see qualitative similarities between PS and inner speech as children get older.
• Inner speech is more abbreviated – it’s not in complete sentences.
• PS becomes less and less intelligible with age.

Evidence for Abbreviation

• Evidence for abbreviation in 74% of utterances in 41/2-year-olds : this one, fits, done (Goudena, 1992)

Parasocial Nature

• Removing the impression of the audience should reduce the incidence of PS.
  • Deaf-mute children or foreign language speakers
  • Isolating children in a room
  • Orchestra
• PS reduced sharply.

Modern Research

• Berk (1992) and Winsler, Fernyhough, and Montero (2009) suggest evidence is largely supportive of Vygotsky's view.

Self-Regulatory Function

• Evidence here most equivocal.
• Some haven’t found PS to increase with increasing task difficulty.
• Some haven’t found PS to relate to task success.

Considerations

• If a child is finding a task difficult, PS expressions of frustration may be associated with failure.
• If the task is too easy, PS may be unnecessary for its completion.

Therefore, We Need To

• To distinguish between:
  • Task-relevant (i.e., self-guiding) utterances
  • Utterances involved in emotional expression
• To pitch task difficulty accurately.

Fernyhough and Fradley (2005)

• Assessed children's PS during the Tower of London (an executive planning task).

Tower of London Task (Shallice, 1982)

• Example configurations provided showing initial position, goal position (2 moves), goal position (4 moves), goal position (5 moves).

Fernyhough and Fradley (2005) - Results

• Self-regulatory PS was most common on puzzles of moderate difficulty.
• Levels of self-regulatory PS were positively associated with concurrent task success.

Al-Namlah and Meins

• What happens to task success if one tries to prevent children from using PS?

Internalization - Evidence

• Plenty of evidence that PS decreases with age (supports both P & V).
• But contra Piaget, PS doesn’t just cease; instead increase external manifestations of inner speech (whispering, lip movements, inaudible muttering).

Berk (1986) Scheme

• Developed three-level scheme to indicate internalization level:
  • Level 1: task-irrelevant PS
  • Level 2: task-relevant, overt PS
  • Level 3: external manifestations of task-relevant inner speech (inaudible muttering, whispering, verbal lip movements)

Conclusion on Private Speech

• PS is turning into something else, rather than dying away altogether.

Parasocial Nature - Correlations

• PS is positively correlated with social speech (Kohlberg et al., 1968; Berk & Garvin, 1984).
• PS is dialogic in nature (e.g., Bivens & Hagstrom, 1992), thus mimicking conversations in social speech.

Parasocial Nature - Socioeconomic Factors

• Low-income Appalachian children, where adult-child verbal communication is restricted, show delays in PS (Berk & Garvin, 1984).
• Same pattern in low-income families with a history of abuse (Diaz et al., 1991).
• Conversely, children with richer early social environments (having an imaginary companion) use more level 3 PS (Davis, Meins, & Fernyhough, 2013).

Universality of Private Speech

• Winsler et al. (2003) – 93% of American children engage in PS
• Al-Namlah, Fernyhough, & Meins (2006) – 95% of British & 90% of Saudi Arabian children engage in PS
• Even in non-supportive circumstances (Appalachian & abused children), there is a delay in PS, not a lack of PS
• Children with specific language impairment (SLI) use it to regulate their behavior (Lidstone, Meins, & Fernyhough, 2012)

Shortcomings

• Is self-regulation the only function of PS?

Berk & Garvin’s (1984) Scheme of Private Speech

• Egocentric communication
• Affect expression
• Word play & repetition
• Fantasy play
• Remarks addressed to nonhuman objects
• Describing own activity & self-guidance
• Self-answered questions
• Reading aloud
• Inaudible muttering

Reconciliation

• Were Piaget and Vygotsky describing different subtypes of PS?
• We now concede that PS has many different functions, so Piaget & Vygotsky may simply have focused on two different aspects of this diverse phenomenon.

A Tool for Thought

• Language isn’t just helpful for ‘verbal’ tasks.
• Used to help remember information (working memory).
• Also used in so-called ‘non-verbal’ tasks, such as recall of designs, at rates similar to those on the Tower of London (Lidstone et al., 2011).

Blue-Walled Room Experiments

• Test of spatial memory.
• Navigating a rectangular room is difficult after disorientation for adults.
• Does having one wall painted blue help navigation?

Blue-Walled Room - Results

• Observe reward being hidden before disorientation.
• Adult rats at chance for finding reward.
• Children up to age 4 behave like rats (Hermer, 1997; Hermer & Spelke, 1994, 1996).
• Human adults use the blue wall to aid accurate search.
• Children begin to search like adults at age 5–7 (Hermer-Vazquez et al. (2001).

Making Students Act Like Rats

• Hermer-Vazquez et al. (1999)
• Blue-walled room in regular test conditions.
• Re-test while having to shadow speech during hiding phase.
• In shadowing condition, students behave just like adult rats.

Shadowing a Rhythm

• Shadowing a rhythm(clapping hands) had no impact on students’ search accuracy.
• Why? You can still talk to yourself while clapping.

Final Conclusions

• As well as being used for communication and creativity, we use speech throughout the lifespan to regulate our behavior.
• There may be no such thing as a ‘non-verbal’ task. Thanks for listening!