VYGOTSKY’S CONCEPTS OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT Flashcards
L.S Vygotsky theory
often referred to as contextualist, argued that development can be understood only within a social framework. He proposed that the study of cognitive development must take as its unit of analysis the child in activity in a setting.
Vygotsky meaning of cognitive development
Rather than thinking of individuals acting with their environments, he suggests that meaning derives from the child’s social, historical and cultural contexts as well as from the child’s biological maturation. The child and the culture are intricately interwoven through the process of social interaction.
Interpersonal part in cognitive development
New levels of understanding begin at the interpersonal level as two individuals, initially an infant and adult, coordinate their interactions. Eventually, interpersonal collaboration becomes internalized to make up the child’s internal mental framework.
Three central concepts in Vygotsky -
1.Culture as a Mediator of Cognitive Structuring
2.Movement From Intermental To Intramental
3. Zone Of Proximal Development
Culture as a Mediator of Cognitive Structuring (Tools and Signs)
Culture consists of physical settings, tools and technologies, and a patterned system of customs, beliefs, information and social relationships. When Vygotsky argued that cognitive development can be understood in the context of culture, he brought attention to the pervasive sense of culture. Of the many elements of culture that shape cognition, he had a special interest in tools and signs as human inventions that shape thought. Technical tools like plows, cars and weapons and signs, sometimes referred to as psychological tools, like symbolic systems, counting systems and strategies for remembering, modify the child’s relationship with the environment. Through the use of tools, humans change how they organize and think about the world. Vygotsky viewed tools as a means by which the human mind has been shaped and modified over the course of history.
Three central concepts in Vygotsky - Culture as a Mediator of Cognitive Structuring (Language)
In particular, he emphasized language as a sign system that dramatically alters human cognition. Language, which begins as a primarily social process linking individuals, ultimately guides mental functioning. Through language, children can recall the past, create problem-solving strategies, organize and categorize their experiences, and talk about, and plan for, the future. The most significant moment in the course of intellectual development, which gives birth to the purely human forms of practical and abstract intelligence, occurs when speech and practical activity, two previously completely independent lines of development, converge.”
Movement From Intermental To Intramental
Perhaps contrary to common sense, Vygotsky argued that high-level mental functions begin in external activity that is gradually reconstructed and internalized. “Every function in a child’s cultural development appears twice: first on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first between people (interpsychological), then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All higher functions originate as actual relations between human individuals.”
- Zone Of Proximal Development
Taking the idea of internalization a step further, Vygtsky (1978) offered this concept as the immediate framework through which learning and development converge. The zone is “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.” We have all had the experience of being unable to solve a task by ourselves, but being successful with the assistance and advice of someon else What is more, cognitive development grows in the direction of the intellectual characteristics of those who people the child’s world. In a very immediate and direct way, the culture and the social context guide the direction of new learning and promote development. Learning within the ZPD sets into motion the reorganization and internalization of existing developmental competences, which then become synthesized at a new and higher intramental level.
Example of zone of proximal development
Children watch older children perform tasks, and they copy the strategy, children ask their parents and teachers for help when get stuck in a task; parents and teachers give children suggestions about how to organize a task or how to use resources that will help them complete an assignment.In these and many other instances, children expand the level of their independent problem-solving capacities by drawing on the expertise of others. Vygotsky suggested that the level of functioning a child can reach when taking advantage of the guidance of others reflect the cognitive capacities that are in the process of maturing, as compared to those that have already matured.
