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These are excerpts and elaborations from my book "The Nature of Consciousness"
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From The Social To The Personal By studying the behavior of
chimpanzees, the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotskyreached the conclusion that
thought and speech originate from different processes, and then evolve in
parallel but independently of each other. The close correspondence between
thought and speech is unique to adult humans. Children initially behave
like chimpanzees: language and thought are unrelated (language is irrational,
thought is nonverbal). They learn the names of objects only when told so. At
some point the attitude changes: it is the child who becomes curious about the
names of things. At that point the child's vocabulary increases dramatically,
with much less coaching from adults. The child has learned that objects have
names, or, equivalently, that one of the properties of an object is its name.
At this point in the development of the child, thought and speech merge. Vygotskyredrew Piaget's theory of egocentric speech (the kind of speech that ignores the
rest of the world) in pre-school children. One generally becomes aware of
her/his actions when they are interrupted. Speech is an expression of the
process of becoming aware of one's actions. The egocentric child is no
exception: its egocentric speech is the sign of a process of becoming aware
after something disrupted the action underway. In other words, the child is
thinking aloud. A few years later this process has become silent: when the
child needs to find a solution to a problem, the "thinking" is no
longer aloud, has become an inner conversation. When egocentric speech
disappears, it still exists, but has moved inside. The reason it is no longer
"vocal" is because it does not serve a social function anymore (it
does not need to be heard by others). According to Piaget, social speech follows egocentric speech, but Vygotskybelieves that speech is
originally social in nature, and egocentric speech is a specialization of it
used when the child has to reflect. Egocentric speech is an evolution of social
speech that eventually becomes silent thought. Cognitive faculties are internalized
versions of social processes. The unit of verbal thought
is word meaning, which also represents the fusion of thought and speech. Adults
and children use the same word to refer to the same object, but Vygotskybelieves that the meanings are
different. Vygotsky believes that the meanings of words evolve during
childhood. Word meanings are dynamic, not static, entities. Thought is therefore
determined by language. And both are determined by society. Language provides a
semiotic mediation of knowledge. Language guides the child's cognitive growth.
Cognition thus develops in different ways depending on the cultural conditions. Vygotskythinks that higher mental
functions, too, have social origins. Language is a system of
signs that the individual needs in order to interact with the environment and
it is only after this that it is interiorized and can be utilized to express
thought. The meaning of a word is initially a purely emotional fact. Only with
time will it acquire a precise reference to an object and then an abstract
meaning. Child development is a
sequence of stages that lead to the transformation of an interpersonal process
into an intrapersonal process. Children think by
memorizing, while adults memorize by thinking. In children something is
memorized, in adults the individual memorizes something. In the former case a
link is created because of the simultaneous occurrence of two stimuli. In the
latter case the individual creates that link. Remembering is transformed into
an external activity. Humans are then able to influence their relation with the
environment and through that environment change their own behavior. The
mastering of nature and the mastering of behavior are interdependent. Lev Vygotsky was also influential in understanding the importance of play for the development of social skills ("The role of play in development", 1930), an idea also elaborated by the British psychologist Ian Suttie ("The Origins of Love and Hate", 1935) and the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga (who spoke of "Homo Ludens"); as well as, in more recent times, by the US neurologist Paul MacLean and the Estonian psychologist Jaak Panksepp. Back to the beginning of the chapter "Memory" | Back to the index of all chapters |
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