Portrait of L. S. "ygotsky at age .

35
 tIL, .;J(~ ".';
!!!,;>-:;).'
(r alae c./}-., ;(£a-t:ifj
0 ' . •

,,14' •

"Lt£!.,a~pi/(4 I ~~~~.
jui.J~1I 'I'll ~J~ I,.ff!,/UU(.. Fragment of Vygotsky's note

9t; ~ t'.;'1.1 .a .II' £td! lL.v.jt 4?-

first suggesting mediation as the
basis of higher psychological
processes. ("NB. The essence of
4(.{t~. f/kp!-.kd4 It/~t,u!... the instrumental method resides
in the functionally different use
!LiJ-·£<"1.f!.tu4. -,> c of two stimuli, which differen..
tially determine behavior; from
this results the mastery of one's
kIP/{fL.tOUdd{ 1t4-k, own psychological operations.
Always assuming two stimuli, we

UdA..y.z:tU~ d--IcJf1\ ~
HUlSt answer the following
questions: 1. How does one
remember stimulus 81 with the
h Utr/4..iA · (nm-fLUfUf.t. ~ . aid of stimulus 82 (where SI is
the object and S2 is the instru..
/t<L-~k ~ 2cfh~ &1.(/ nlent).2. How is attention
directed to 51 with the aid of 82.

te~;we cR,u:t feU ~

'.J,
. 3. How is a word associated
with s. retrieved via 82 and
so on.")
t. 1/a.« J~..LiAUL.Jb
J~M~~
~. ~ J; -O,ft-
~.
2., £'04C. ~ak;Z~.t«
. Ju~ At( 4 a HflM /lAJ4
~ J,.J.
J. 'i~dA. . '~ 'frit4
~.~ JlA!,P
Uje£:J Jz) ott --
I·f·~
 L. S. VYGOTSKY
"

Mind in Society/
The Development :7
of Higher
Psychological Processes

Edited by. Michael Cole

Vera John-Steiner
Sylvia Scribner
Ellen Souberman

Harvard University Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
 NewlY)
'BF
3 I I

.VCf3
1978
c.. ~

Copyright © 1978 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

All right reserved
Second printing, 1979
Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Vygotskii, Lev Semenovich, 1896-1934.
Mind in society.
Includes index.
1. Cognition. 2. Cognition in children.
I. Cole, Michael, 1938- rr, Title.
BF31I.V93 1978 155.4'13 77-26023
ISBN 0-674-57628-4
 To the memory of

Alexander Romanovich Luria

 Editors' Preface

Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky has figured prominently in American

psychology since the publication in 1962 of his monograph Thought and
Language. Five years ago, at the urging of Vygotsky's student Alexander
Luria, we agreed to edit a collection of Vygotsky's essays which would
reflect the general theoretical enterprise of which the study of the rela-
tion between thought and language was one important aspect. Luria
made available to us rough translations of two of Vygotsky's works. The
first, "Tool and Symbol in Children's Development') (1930), had never
been published. The second was a translation of a monograph entitled
The History, of the Development of Higher Psychological Functions,
which appeared in the second volume of Vygotsky's writings published
in Moscow in 1960. A cursory study of these essays quickly convinced us
that the scope of Vygotsky's work reached considerably beyond Thought
and Language. Furthermore, we came to believe that the image of
Vygotsky as a sort of early neobehaviorist of cognitive development-an
impression held by many of our colleagues-was strongly belied by these
two works.
We have constructed the first four chapters of this volume from
"Tool and Symbol." The fifth chapter summarizes the major theoretical
and methodological points made in "Tool and Symbol" and applies them
to a classic problem in cognitive psychology, the nature of choice reac-
tion. This chapter was taken from section 3 of The History of the De-
velopment of Higher Psychological Functions. Chapters 6 and 8 (learn-
ing and development, and the developmental precursors of writing) are
from a posthumously published collection of essays entitled Mental De-
velopment of Children and the Process of Learning (1935). Chapter 7,
ix
EditMS' Preiace

on play, is based on a lecture delivered at the Leningrad Pedagogical

Institute in 1933 and published in Voprosi Psikhologii (Problems of Psy-
chology) in 1966. Complete references are given in the list of Vygotsky's
works that follows the text of this volume.
At several places we have inserted material from additional sources
in order to more fully explicate the meaning of the text. In most cases
these importations are from sections of The History of the Development
of Higher Psychological Functions other than the one included here; the
rest are taken from other essays which appear in either the 1956 or the
1960 volumes of collected works. In a few cases passages have been taken
from the work of Vygotsky's students or collaborators which provide
concrete examples of experimental procedures or results which the orig-
inal text describes with extreme brevity. References to these sources are
given in the notes.
In putting separate essays together we have taken significant lib-
erties. The reader will encounter here not a literal translation of Vygot-
sky but rather our edited translation of Vygotsky, from which we have
omitted material that seemed redundant and to which we have added
material that seemed to make his points clearer. As other editors have
noted, Vygotsky's style is extremely difficult. He wrote copiously and
many of his manuscripts have never been properly edited. In addition,
during frequent periods of illness he would dictate his papers-a prac-
tice which resulted in repetitions and dense or elliptical prose. Gaps in
the original manuscripts make them even less accessible now than they
might have been at the time they were written. Because proper refer-
ences were rarely given, we have supplied our best guess as to the exact
sources to which Vygotsky referred. The process of tracking down and
reading these sources has itself proved a very rewarding enterprise;
many of his contemporaries were fascinatingly modern in important
respects. We realize that in tampering with the original we may have
distorted history; however, we hope that by stating out procedures and
by adhering as closely as possible to the principles and content of the
work, we have not distorted Vygotsky's meaning.
We owe a special debt to the late Alexander R. Luria for providing
an initial translation of much of the material included in chapters 1-5,
for tirelessly tracking down references and expanding upon details of
experiments, and for reading our manuscript. Chapters 6 and 7 were
translated by Martin Lopez-Morillas. Chapter 5 and parts of chapters
1-5 were translated by Michael Cole. We wish to thank James Wertsch
for his assistance in translating and interpreting especially difficult pas-
sages.
 Editors' Preface
xi

The editing of these writings has occupied us for several years.

Working in separate locations, educated in differing intellectual tradi-
tions, each team of editors found certain material of special interest.
Since there is not one but many issues to be illuminated by such a com-
plex body of thought, we have written two essays reflecting various
aspects of "reading Vygotsky."

Vera John-Steiner Michael Cole

Ellen Souberman Sylvia Scribner
University of New Mexico The Rockefeller University
 Contents

Introduction 1
Michael Cole and Sylvia Scribner
Biographical Note on L. S. Vygotsky 15

Basic Theory and Data

1. Tool and Symbol in Child Development 19
2. The Development of Perception and Attention 31
3. Mastery of Memory and Thinking 38
4. Internalization of Higher Psychological Functions 52
5. Problems of Method 58

Educational Implications
6. Interaction between Learning and Development 79
7. The Role of Play in Development 92
8. The Prehistory of Written Language 105

Afterword 121
Vera [ohn-Steiner and Ellen Souberman
Notes 135
Vygotsky's Works 141
Index 153
The spider carries out operations reminiscent of a weaver and the
boxes which bees build in the sky could disgrace the work of many
architects. But even the worst architect differs from the most able bee
from the very outset in that before he builds a box out of boards he
has already constructed it in his head. At the end of the work process
he obtains a result which already existed in his mind before he began
to build. The architect not only changes the form given to him by
nature, within the constraints imposed by nature, he also carries out
a purpose of his own which defines the means and the character of
the activity to which he must subordinate his will.
Karl Marx, Capital

It is precisely the alteration of nature by men;t not nature as such,

which is the most essential and immediate basis of human thought.
Friedrich Engels, Dialectics of Nature
 Introduction
MICHAEL COLE AND SYLVIA SCRIBNER

Educated as a lawyer and philologist, Lev S. Vygotsky had already

made several contributions to literary criticism when he began his
career as a psychologist following the Russian Revolution in 1917. He
was a student in the heyday of Wilhelm Wundt, the founder of experi-
mental psychology, and William James, the American pragmatist. His
scientific contemporaries included Ivan Pavlov, Vladimir Bekhterev,
and John B. Watson, popularizers of stimulus-response theories of
behavior, as well as Wertheimer, Kohler, Koffka, and Lewin, the found-
ers of the Gestalt psychology movement. The reader might expect,
then, that Vygotsky's work will prove to be primarily of historical
interest-perhaps as a glimpse of the way in which modem psychology's
founding fathers influenced Soviet psychology in postrevolutionary
Russia. These essays are certainly of interest from the perspective of
intellectual history, but they are not historical relics. Rather, we offer
them as a contribution to quandaries and discussions in contemporary
psychology.
In order to understand how the ideas in this volume can retain their
relevance across the reaches of time and culture that separate us from
Vygotsky, we have repeatedly found ourselves reflecting upon the state
of European psychology which provided the initial setting for Vygotsky's
theories. We have also found it helpful to examine the condition of
psychology and society in postrevolutionary Russia, since they were the
source of the immediate problems facing Vygotsky as well as a source
of inspiration as he and his colleagues sought to develop a Marxist
theory of human intellectual functioning.
1
Introduction

NINETEENTH-CENTURY BEGINNINGS
Until the latter half of the nineteenth century the study of man's
nature was the province of philosophy. The intellectual descendants of
John Locke in England had developed his empiricist explanation of
mind, which emphasized the origin of ideas from environmentally
produced sensations. The major problem of psychological analysis for
these British empiricists was to describe the laws of association by
which simple sensations combine to produce complex ideas. On the
continent the followers of Immanuel Kant argued that ideas of space
and time and concepts of quantity, quality, and relation originate in the
human mind and cannot be decomposed into simpler elements. Neither
side budged from its armchair. Both of these philosophical traditions
were operating under the assumption, dating from the work of Rene
Descartes, that the scientific study of man could apply only to his
physical body. To philosophy was assigned the study of his soul.
While the conflict between these two approaches reaches down to
the present day, in the 1860s the terms of this discussion were changed
irrevocably by the almost simultaneous publication of three 'books. Most
famous was Darwin's Origin of Species, which argued the essential
continuity of man and other animals. One immediate consequence of
this assertion was an effort by many scholars to establish discontinuities
that set human adults off from their lower relatives (both ontogenetically
and phylogenetically). The second book was Gustav Fechner's Die
Psuchophqsik, which provided a detailed, mathematically sophisticated
description of the relation between changes in specifiable physical
events and verbalizable "psychic" responses. Fechner claimed no less
than an objective, quantitative description of the contents of the human
mind. The third book was a slim volume entitled Reflexes of the Brain,
written by a Moscow physician, I. M. Sechenov. Sechenov, who had
studied with some of Europe's leading physiologists, had advanced
understanding of simple sensory-motor reflexes by using techniques that
isolated nerve-muscle preparations from the living organism. Sechenov
was convinced that the processes he observed in the isolated tissue of
frogs were the same in principle as those that take place in the central
nervous systems of intact organisms, including humans. If responses of
leg muscles could be accounted for by processes of inhibition and exci-
tation, might not the same laws apply to the operations of the human
cerebral cortex? Although he lacked direct evidence for these specula-
tions, Sechenov's ideas suggested
.- the physiological basis for linking
the natural scientific study of animals with the heretofore philosophical
 Introduction
3

study of humans. The tsar's censor seemed to understand the revolu-

tionary, materialist implications of Sechenov's thesis; he banned pub-
lication of the book for as long as he could. When the book appeared, it
bore a dedication to Charles Darwin.
These books by Darwin, Fechner, and Sechenov can be viewed as
essential constituents of psychological thought at the end of the nine-·
teenth century. Darwin linked animals and humans in a single con-
ceptual system regulated by natural laws; Fechner provided an example
of what a natural law describing the relationship between physical
events and human mental functioning might look like; Sechenov, extrap-
olating from muscle twitches in frogs, proposed a physiological theory of
how such mental processes worked within the normally functioning
individual. None of these authors considered themselves (or were
considered by their contemporaries) to be psychologists. But they pro-
vided the central questions with which the young science of psychology
became concerned in the second half of the century: What are the
relationships between animal and human behavior? Environmental
and mental events? Physiological and psychological processes? Various
schools of psychology attacked one or another of these questions,
providing partial answers within theoretically limited perspectives.
The first such school was established by Wilhelm Wundt in 1880.
Wundt took as his task the description of the contents of human con-
sciousness and their relation to external stimulation. His method con-
sisted of analyzing various states of consciousness into their constituent
elements, which he defined as simple sensations. On a priori grounds,
he ruled out such sensations as "feelings of awareness" or "perception
of relations" as elements of consciousness, considering these phenomena
to be "nothing more than" the by-product of faulty methods of obser-
vation (introspection). Indeed, Wundt propounded the explicit view that
complex mental functions, or as they were then known, "higher psycho-
logical processes" (voluntary remembering and deductive reasoning, for
example), could not in principle be studied by experimental psycholo-
gists. They could only be investigated, he maintained, by historical
studies of cultural products such as folktales, customs, and language.
By the beginning of World War I introspective studies of human
conscious processes came under attack from two directions. In the
United States and Russia psychologists discontented with the contro-
versies surrounding the correct introspective descriptions of sensations,
and with the sterility of the research this position had produced, re-
nounced the study of consciousness in favor of the study of behavior.
Exploiting the potential suggested by Pavlov's study of conditioned
Introduction
4

reflexes (which built upon Sechenov) and Darwin's assertion of the

continuity of man and beast, they opened up many areas of animal and
human behavior to scientific study. In one important respect, however,
they agreed with their introspective antagonists: their basic strategy
was to identify the simple building blocks of human activity (substi-
tuting stimulus-response bonds for sensations) and then to specify the
rules by which these elements combined to produce more complex
phenomena. This strategy led to a concentration on processes shared
by animals and humans and, again, to a neglect of higher processes-
thought, language, and volitional behavior. The second line of attack
on descriptions of the contents of consciousness came from a group of
psychologists who objected to the one point upon which Wundt and
the behaviorists agreed: the appropriateness of analyzing psychological
processes into their basic constituents. This movement, which came to
be known as Gestalt psychology, demonstrated that many intellectual
phenomena ( Kohler's studies with anthropoid apes were an example)
and perceptual phenomena (Wertheimer's studies of apparent movement
of flickering lights, for example) could not be accounted for in terms of
either the basic elements of consciousness postulated by Wundt or
simple stimulus-response theories of behavior. The Gestalt psychologists
.rejected, In principle, the possibility of accounting for complex processes
in terms of simple ones.
Such, in great brevity, was the situation in European psychology
when Vygotsky first appeared on the scene. The situation was not very
different in Russia.

POSTREVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY IN RUSSIA

In the early decades of the twentieth century psychology in Russia,
as in Europe, was torn between contending schools, each of which
offered partial explanations of a limited range of phenomena. In 1923 at
the first all-Russian psychoneurological congress K. N. Kornilov initiated
the first major organizational and intellectual shift in psychology follow-
ing the revolution. At that time the prestigious Institute of Psychology
in Moscow was headed by G. I. Chelpanov, an adherent of Wundt's
introspective psychology and a foe of behaviorism. (He had published
the sixth edition of his book, The Mind of Man, a critique of materialist
theories of the mind, in 1917, just before the revolution..) Chelpanov
assigned a restricted role to Marxism in psychology, asserting it could
help explain the social organization
,. of consciousness but not the prop-
erties of indivi~ual consciousness. In a talk entitled "Contemporary
 Introduction
5

Psychology and Marxism" Kornilov criticized Chelpanov both for the

idealistic basis of his psychological theory and for the restricted role he
assigned to Marxism in psychology. Kornilov, who caned his own ap-
proach reactology, sought to subsume all branches of psychology within
a Marxist framework that used behavioral reactions as the basic data.
Kornilov's critique of Chelpanov in 1923 won the day. Chelpanov:
was removed as director of the Institute of Psychology and was replaced
by Kornilov, who immediately brought together a corps of young
scientists dedicated to formulating and promoting a behavioral, Marxist
theory of psychology. Vygotsky must have produced quite a sensation
one year later at the second psychoneurological meeting when he gave
a talk entitled "Consciousness as an Object of the Psychology of Be-
havior." Whatever else one extracted from Kornilov's reactological
approach, it quite clearly did not feature the role of consciousness in
human activity, nor did it accord the concept of consciousness a role in
psychological science."
Vygotsky was dissenting from newly established authority. He
was not, however, promoting a return to the position advocated by
Chelpanov. In his initial speech and a series of subsequent publications,
he made it clear that in his view none of the existing schools of psychol-
ogy provided a firm foundation for establishing a unified theory of
human psychological processes. Borrowing a phrase from his German
contemporaries, he often referred to the "crisis in psychology" and set
himself the task of achieving a synthesis of contending views on a
completely new theoretical basis.
For Vygotsky's Gestalt contemporaries, a crisis existed because
established theories (primarily Wundt's and Watsonian behaviorism)
could not, in their view, explain complex perceptual and problem-
solving behaviors. For Vygotsky, the crisis went much deeper. He shared
the Gestalt psychologists' dissatisfaction with psychological analysis
that began by reducing all phenomena to a set of psychological "atoms."
But he felt that the Gestalt psychologists failed to move beyond the
description of complex phenomena to the explanation. of them. Even if
one were to accept the Gestalt criticisms of previous approaches, a
crisis would still exist because psychology would remain split into two
irreconcilable halves: a "natural science" branch that could explain
elementary sensory and reflex processes, and a "mental science" half
that could describe emergent properties of higher psychological proc-
esses. What Vygotsky sought was a comprehensive approach that
would make possible description and explanation of higher psychological
functions in terms acceptable to natural science. To Vygotsky, explana-
Introduction
6

tion meant a great deal. It included identification of the brain mechan-

isms underlying a particular function; it included a detailed explication
of their developmental history to establish the relation between simple
and complex forms of what appeared to be the" same behavior; and,
importantly, it included specification of the societal context in which
the behavior developed. Vygotsky's goals were extremely ambitious,
perhaps unreasonably so. He did not achieve these goals (as he was well
aware). But he did succeed in providing us with an astute and prescient
analysis of modern psychology.
A major reason for the continued relevance of Vygotsky's work is
that in 1924 and the following decade he constructed a penetrating
critique of the notion that an understanding of the higher psychological
functions in humans can be found by a multiplication and complication
of principles derived from animal psychology, in particular those prin-
ciples that represent the mechanical combination of stimulus-response
laws. At the same time he provided a devastating critique of theories
which claim that the properties of adult intellectual functions arise from
maturation alone, or are in any way preformed in the child and simply
waiting for an opportunity to manifest themselves.
In stressing the social origins of language and thinking, Vygotsky
was following the lead of influential French sociologists, but to our
knowledge he was the first modem psychologist to suggest the mechan-
isms by which culture becomes a part of each person's nature. Insisting
that psychological functions are a product of the brain's activity, he
became an early advocate of combining experimental cognitive psychol-
ogy with neurology and physiology. Finally, by claiming that all of
these should be understood in terms of a Marxist theory of the history of
human society) he laid the foundation for a unified behavioral science.

MARXIST THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Contrary to the stereotype of Soviet scholars scurrying to make
their theories conform to the Politburo's most recent interpretation of
Marxism, Vygotsky clearly viewed Marxist thought as a valuable scien-
tific resource from very early in his career. "A psychologically relevant
application of dialectical and historical materialism'> would be one
accurate summary of Vygotsky's sociocultural theory of higher mental
processes.
Vygotsky saw in the methods and principles of dialectical materi-
alism a solution to key scientific paradoxes facing his contemporaries. A
central tenet of this method is that all phenomena be studied as processes
 Introduction
7

in motion and in change. In terms of the subject matter of psychology,

the scientist's task is to reconstruct the origin and course of development
of behavior and consciousness. Not only does every phenomenon have
its history, but this history is characterized by changes both qualitative
(changes in form and structure and basic characteristics) and quanti-
tative. Vygotsky applied this line of reasoning to explain the transforma-:
tion of elementary psychological processes into complex ones. The
schism between natural scientific studies of elementary processes and
speculative reflection on cultural forms of behavior might be bridged
by tracing the qualitative changes in behavior occuring in the course of
development. Thus, when Vygotsky speaks of his approach as "develop-
menta}," this is not to be confused with a theory of child development.
The developmental method, in Vygotsky's view, is the central method
of psychological science.
Marx's theory of society (known as historical materialism) also
played a fundamental role in Vygotsky's thinking. According to Marx,
historical changes in society and material life produce changes in
"human nature" (consciousness and behavior). Although this general
proposition had been echoed by others, Vygotsky was the first to
attempt to relate it to concrete psychological questions. In this effort he
creatively elaborated on Engels' concept of human labor and tool use
as the means' by which man changes nature and, in so doing, transforms
himself. In chapters 1 through 4 below, Vygotsky exploits the concept of
a tool in a fashien that finds its direct antecedents in Engels: "The
specialization of the hand-this implies the tool, and the tool implies
specific human activity, the transforming reaction of man on nature";2
"the animal merely uses external nature, and brings about changes in it
simply by his presence; man, by his changes, makes it serve his ends,
masters it. This is the final, essential distinction between man and other
animals" (p. 291). Vygotsky brilliantly extended this concept of media-
tion in human-environment interaction to the use of signs as well as tools.
Like tool systems, sign systems (language, writing, number systems) are
created by societies over the course of human history and change with
the form of society and the level of its cultural development. Vygotsky
believed that the internalization of culturally produced sign systems
brings about behavioral transformations and forms the bridge between
early and later forms of individual development. Thus for Vygotsky,
in the tradition of Marx and Engels, the mechanism of individual
developmental change is rooted in society and culture.
In later chapters (especially chapter 5) Vygotsky generalizes his
conception of the origin of higher psychological functions in a way that
Introduction
8

reveals the close relationship between their fundamentally mediated

nature and the dialectical, materialist conception of historical change.
Citations of Marxist classics were sometimes used to excess by
certain Soviet psychologists as they sought a means for building a Marx-
ist psychology from the chaos of competing schools of thought. Yet
in unpublished notes Vygotsky repudiated the "quotation method" of
relating Marxism to psychology and made explicit the way in which he
. thought its basic methodological principles might contribute to theory-
building in psychology:
I don't want to discover the nature of mind by patching together a lot of
quotations. I want to find out how science has to be built, to approach
the study of the mind having learned the whole of Marx's method.
. . . In order to create such an enabling theory-method in the generally
accepted scientific manner, it is necessary to discover the essence of
the given area of phenomena, the laws according to which they change,
their qualitative and quantitative characteristics, their causes. It is
necessary to formulate the categories and concepts that are specifically
relevant to them-in other words, to create one's own Capital.
The whole of Capital is written according to the following method: Marx
analyzes a single living "cell" of capitalist society-for example, the
nature of value. Within this cell he discovers the structure of the entire
system and all of its economic institutions. He says that to a layman this
analysis may seem a murky tangle of tiny details. Indeed, there may be
tiny details, but they are exactly those which are essential to "micro-
anatomy." Anyone who could discover what a "psychological" cell is-
the mechanism producing even a single response--would thereby find
the key to psychology as a whole. [from unpublished notebooks]
A. careful reading of this manuscript provides convincing proof of
both Vygotsky's sincerity and the fruitfulness of the framework he
developed.

THE INTELLECTIJAL AND SOCIAL SETTING

Developmental and historical approaches to the study of human
nature were not unique to Vygotsky in the Soviet Union in the 1920s.
Within psychology, an older colleague, P. P. Blonsky, had already
adopted the position that an understanding of complex mental functions
requires developmental analysis," From Blonsky Vygotsky adopted the
notion that "behavior can be understood only as the history of behavior."
Blonsky was also an early advocate of the view that the technological
activities of people were a Jeey to understanding their psychological
makeup, a view that Vygotsky exploited in great detail.
 Introduction
9

Vygotsky and many other Soviet theorists of the day were also
heavily influenced by the work of western European sociologists and
anthropologists, like Thurnwald and Levy-Bruhl.t who were interested
in the history of mental processes as reconstructed from anthropological
evidence of the intellectual activity of primitive peoples. The scant
references in this book are a pale reflection of the extent of Vygotsky's
interest in the development of mental processes understood historically.
This aspect of his work received special attention in a publication
titled Studies in the History of Behavior published jointly with A. R.
Luria in 1930. It served as the impetus for Luria's two expeditions to
Central Asia in 1931 and 1932, the results of which were published
long after Vygotsky's death,"
This historical emphasis was also popular in Soviet linguistics,
where interest centered on the problem of the origin of language and its
influence on the development of thought. Discussions in linguistics dealt
with concepts similar to Vygotsky's and also similar to the work of Sapir
and Whorf, who were then becoming influential in the United States.
While an acquaintance with academic issues of the 1930s is helpful
to understanding Vygotsky's approach to human cognition, a considera-
tion of sociopolitical conditions during this time in the Soviet Union is
essential as well. Vygotsky worked within a society that put a premium
on science and had high hopes for the ability of science to solve the
pressing economic and social problems of the Soviet people. Psycho-
logical theory could not be pursued apart from the practical demands
made on scientists by the government, and the broad spectrum of Vygot-
sky's work clearly shows his concern with producing a psychology that
would have relevance for education and medical practice. For Vygotsky,
the need to carryon theoretical work in an applied context posed no
contradiction whatsoever. He had begun his career as a teacher of litera-
ture, and many of his early articles had dealt with problems of educa-
tional practice, especially education of the mentally and physically
handicapped. He had been a founder of the Institute of Defectology in
Moscow, with which he was associated throughout his working life. In
such medical problems as congenital blindness, aphasia, and severe
mental retardation Vygotsky saw opportunities both for understanding
the mental processes of all people and for establishing programs of
treatment and remediation. Thus, it was consistent with his general
theoretical view that his work should be carried out in a society that
sought the elimination of illiteracy and the founding of educational
programs to maximize the potential of individual children.
Vygotsky's participation in the debates surrounding the formulation
Introduction
10

of a Marxist psychology embroiled him in fierce disputes in the late

1920s and early 1930s. In these discussions ideology, psychology, and
policy were intricately intertwined, as different groups vied for the
right to represent psychology. With Kornilov's ouster from the Institute
of Psychology in 1930, Vygotsky and his students were for a brief time in
the ascendancy, but he was never recognized as the official leader.
In the years just prior to his death Vygotsky lectured and wrote
extensively on problems of education, often using the term "pedol-
ogy," which roughly translates as "educational psychology." In general
he was scornful of pedology that emphasized tests of intellectual ability
patterned after the IQ tests then gaining prominence in western Europe
and the United States. It was his ambition to reform pedology along
the lines suggested in chapter 6 in this volume, but his ambition far
exceeded his grasp. Vygotsky was mistakenly accused of advocating
mass psychological testing and criticized as a "Great Russian chauvin-
ist" for suggesting that nonliterate peoples (such as those living in
nonindustrialized sections of central Asia) had not yet developed the
intellectual capacities associated with modern civilization. Two years
following his death the Central Committee of the Communist Party
issued a decree halting all psychological testing in the Soviet Union.
At the same time all leading psychological journals ceased publication
for almost twenty years. A period of intellectual ferment and experi-
mentation was at an end.
But by no means did Vygotsky's ideas die with him. Even before
his death he and his students established a laboratory in Kharkov headed
by A. N. Leontiev (currently Dean of the Psychology Faculty at Mos-
cow University) and later by A. V. Zaporozhets (now Director of the
Institute of Preschool Education). Luria completed his medical train-
ing in the latter half of the 1930s and went on to carry out his world-
famous pioneering work in developmental and neuropsychology. Many
of Vygotsky's former students hold leading positions in the Institute
of Defectology and the Institute of Psychology within the Soviet Acad-
emy of Pedagogical Sciences, as well as university departments of psy-
chology such as that at Moscow University.
As inspection of any compendium of Soviet psychological research
will show, Vygotsky continued and continues to influence research in
a wide variety of basic and applied areas related to cognitive processes,
their development and dissolution. His ideas have not gone unchal-
lenged, even- by his students, but they remain a living part of Soviet
psychological thought. •
 Introduction
11

VYGOTSKYS USE OF THE EXPERIMENTAL METHOD

Vygotsky's references in the text to experiments conducted in his
laboratory sometimes leave readers with a sense of unease. He pre-
sents almost no raw data and' summaries are quite general. Where are
the statistical tests that record whether or not observations reflect
"real" effects? What do these studies prove? Do they in fact lend any
support to Vygotsky's general theories, or is he, in spite of his dis-
claimers, conducting psychology in a speculative manner without sub-
jecting his central propositions to empirical test? Those steeped in the
methodology of experimental psychology as practiced in most American
laboratories may be inclined to withhold the term "experiment" from
Vygotsky's studies and consider them to be little more than interesting
demonstrations or pilot studies. And so, in many respects, they were.
We have found it useful to keep in mind the nature of the manu-
scripts that are the basis of this book. They do not constitute a report of
a series of research studies from which general propositions are ex-
trapolated. Rather, in these writings Vygotsky was concerned with pre-
senting the basic principles of his theory and method. He drew upon the
very limited pool of empirical work available to him in order to illus-
trate and support these principles. The description of specific studies
is schematic and findings are often given as general conclusions rather
than as raw data. Some of the studies referred to have been published
in greater detail by his students and a few are available in English."
Most studies, however, were conducted by students as pilot investiga-
tions and were never prepared for publication. Vygotsky's laboratory
existed for only a decade and his death from tuberculosis was expected
at any time. The implications of his theory were so many and varied,
and time was so short, that all energy was concentrated on opening up
new lines of investigation rather than pursuing any particular line to
the fullest. That task remained for Vygotsky's students and their suc-
cessors, who adopted his views in varying ways, incorporating them into
new lines of research." However, the style of experimentation in these
essays represents more than a response to the urgent conditions in which
they were conducted. Vygotsky's concept of the experiment differed
from that of American psychology, and understanding this difference is
important for an appreciation of Vygotsky's contribution to contempo-
rary cognitive psychology.
As every student of an introductory experimental course knows,
the purpose of an experiment as conventionally presented is to deter-
Introduction
12

mine the conditions controlling behavior. Methodology follows from

this objective: the experimental hypothesis predicts aspects of the stimu-
lus materials or task that will determine particular aspects of the re-
sponse; the experimenter seeks maximum control over materials, task,
and response in order to test the prediction. Quantification of responses
provides the basis for comparison across experiments and for drawing
inferences about cause-and-effect relationships. The experiment, in
short, is designed to produce a certain performance under conditions
that maximize its interpretability.
For Vygotsky, the object of experimentation is quite different. The
principles of his basic approach (presented in chapter 5 of this volume)
do not stem from a purely methodological critique of established ex-
perimental practices; they How from 'his theory of the nature of higher
psychological processes and the task of scientific explanation in psy-
chology. If higher psychological processes arise and undergo changes
in the course of learning and development, psychology will only fully
understand them by determining their origin and mapping their history.
At first sight it would appear that such a task precludes the experimental
method and requires study of individual behavior over long periods of
time, But Vygotsky believed (and ingeniously demonstrated) that the
experiment could serve an important role by making visible processes
that are ordinarily hidden beneath the surface of habitual behavior. He
wrote that in a properly conceived experiment the investigator could
create processes that "telescope the actual course of development of a
given function." He called this method of investigation the "experi-
mental-genetic" method, a term he shared with Heinz Werner, an out-
standing contemporary whose developmental, comparative approach
to psychology was well-known to Vygotsky.
To serve as an effective means of studying "the course of develop-
ment of process," the experiment must provide maximum opportunity
for the subject to engage in a variety of activities that can be observed,
not just rigidly controlled. One technique Vygotsky effectively used for
this purpose was to introduce obstacles or difficulties into the task that
disrupted routine methods of problem solving. For example, in study-
ing children's communication and the function of egocentric speech
Vygotsky set up a task situation that required children to engage in co-
operative activity with others who did not share their language (foreign-
speaking or deaf children). Another method was to provide alternative
routes to problem solving, including a variety of materials (Vygotsky
called them "external aids") that could be used in different ways to
satisfy the demands of the ta;k. By careful observation of the uses made
 Introduction
13

of these external aids by children at different ages under different condi-

tions of task difficulty, Vygotsky sought to reconstruct the series of
changes in intellectual operations that normally unfold during the
course of the child's biographical development. A third technique was to
set a task before the child that exceeded his knowledge and abilities, in
order to discover the rudimentary beginnings of new skills. This pro- .
cedure is well illustrated in studies on writing (chapter 7), in which
young toddlers were provided with pencil and paper and asked to make
representations of events, thus disclosing to the investigator the child's
earliest understanding of the nature of graphic symbolism.
With all these procedures the critical data furnished by the experi-
ment is not performance level as such but the methods by which the per-
formance is achieved. The contrast between conventional experimental
work (focusing on performance) and Vygotsky's work (focusing on
process) has its contemporary expression in recent studies on children's
memory by American investigators. Many studies (including a number
of our own) have presented children of various ages with lists of words
to be remembered and have analyzed such performance measures as
number of words recalled and the order of recall. From these indicators
the investigators have sought to make inferences about whether or not,
and to what extent, young ~hildren engage in organizing activities as
a memory strategy. On the other hand, John Flavell and his colleagues,
using procedures very much like those of Vygotsky's students, provided
children the materials to be remembered, and instructed them to do
whatever they wanted to help them remember. They then observed
children's attempts at classifying the items, the kinds of grouping they
made, and other indices of children's tendency to use organizational
strategies in remembering. As with Vygotsky, the central question is:
What are the children doing? How are they trying to satisfy task
demands?
In this connection we would like to clarify a basic concept of
Vygotsky's theoretical approach and experimental method that we be-
lieve has been widely misinterpreted. In several places in the text Vygot-
sky, in referring to the structure of behavior, uses a term that we have
translated as "mediated." Occasionally this term is accompanied by a fig-
ure depicting a stimulus, a response, and a "mediating link" between
them (for example, S-X-R). The same term, and virtually the same dia-
gram, were introduced into American learning theory in the late 1930s
and became very popular in the 1950s as attempts were made to extend
stimulus-response theories of learning to complex human behavior,
especially language. It is important to keep in mind that Vygotsky was
Introduction
14

not a stimulus-response learning theorist and did not intend his idea
of mediated behavior to be thought of in this context. What he did
intend to convey by this notion was that in higher forms of human be-
havior, the individual actively modifies the stimulus situation as a
part of the process of responding to it. It was the entire structure of this
activity which produced the behavior that Vygotsky attempted to de-
note by the term "mediating."
Several implications follow from Vygotsky's theoretical approach
and method of experimentation. One is that experimental results will
be qualitative as well as quantitative in nature. Detailed descriptions,
based on careful observation, will constitute an important part of
experimental findings. To some, such findings may seem merely anec-
dotal; Vygotsky maintained that if carried out objectively and with
scientific rigor, such observations have the status of validated fact.
Another consequence of this new approach to experimentation is
to break down some of the barriers that are traditionally erected be ..
tween "laboratory" and "field." Experimental interventions and obser..
vations may often be as well or better executed in play, school, and
clinical settings than in the psychologist's laboratory. The sensitive ob-
servations and imaginative interventions reported in this book attest
to this possibility.
Finally, an experimental method that seeks to trace the history of
the development of psychological functions sits more comfortably than
the classical method alongside other methods in the social sciences con-
cerned with history-including the history of culture and society as
well as the history of the child. To Vygotsky, anthropological and
sociological studies were partners with observation and experiment in
the grand enterprise of accounting for the progress of human conscious-
ness and intellect.
 Biographical Note on
L. S. Vygotsky

Lev Semyonovitch Vygotsky was born November 5, 1896, in the

town of Orsha, northeast of Minsk in Byelorussia. In 1913 he completed
gymnasium in Gomel with a gold medal. In 1917, after graduating from
Moscow University with a specialization in literature, he began his
literary research.
From 1917 to 1923 Vygotsky taught literature and psychology in a
school in Gomel, where he also directed the theater section of the adult
education center and gave many speeches and lectures on problems
of literature and science. During this period Vygotsky founded' the
literary journal Verask. Here he published his flrst literary research, later
reissued as The Psychology of Art. He also founded a psychological
laboratory in the Teacher Training Institute, where he gave a course
on psychology, the contents of which were later published in Pedagogi-
cal Psychology.
In 1924 Vygotsky moved to Moscow and began to work first at the
Institute of Psychology and then in the Institute of Defectology, which
he founded. At the same time he directed a department for the educa-
tion of physically defective and mentally retarded children in Nar-
compros (Peoples Committee on Education), and taught courses in the
Krupskaya Academy of Communist Education, the Second Moscow
State University (later the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute), and
the Hertzen Pedagogical Institute in Leningrad. Between 1925 and 1934
Vygotsky gathered around him a large group of young scientists work-
ing in the areas of psychology, defectology, and mental abnormality,
An interest in medicine led Vygotsky simultaneously to undertake medi-
cal training, first in the medical institute in Moscow and later in Kharkov,
15
Biographical Note
16

where he gave a psychology course in the Ukrainian Psychoneurologi-

cal Academy. Not long before his death Vygotsky was invited to head
the department of psychology in the All-Union Institute of Experi-
mental Medicine. He died of tuberculosis June 11, 1934.
A.R.Luria
Part One / Mind in Society

Basic Theory
and Data
 Tool and Symbol in
Child Development

The primary purpose of this book is to characterize the uniquely

human aspects of behavior, and to offer hypotheses about the way these
traits have been formed in the course of human history and the way
they develop over an individual's lifetime.
This analysis will be concerned with three fundamental issues: (1)
What is the relation between human beings and their environment,
both physical and social? (2) What new forms of activity were responsi-
ble for establishing labor as the fundamental means of relating humans
to nature and what are the psychological consequences of these forms
of activity? (3) What is the nature of the relationship between the use
of tools and the development of speech? None of these questions has
been fully treated by scholars concerned with understanding animal I
and human psychology.
Karl Stumpf, a prominent German psychologist in the early years of
the twentieth century, based his studies on a set of premises completely
different from those I will employ here.! He compared the study of
children to the study of botany, and stressed the botanical character of
development, which he associated with maturation of the whole or-
ganism.
The fact is that maturation per se is a secondary factor in the de-
velopment of the most complex, unique forms of human behavior. The
development of these behaviors is characterized by complicated, quali-
tative transformations of one form of behavior into another (or, as
Hegel would phrase it, a transformation of quantity into quality). The
conception of maturation as a passive process cannot adequately de-
scribe these complex phenomena. Nevertheless, as A. Gesell has aptly
19
Mind in Society
.20

pointed out, in our approaches to development we continue to use the

botanical analogy in our description of child development (for example,
we say that the early education of children takes place in a "kinder-
garten").2 Recently several psychologists have suggested that this botan-
ical model must be abandoned.
In response to this kind of criticism, modern psychology has
ascended the ladder of science by adopting zoological models as the
basis for a new general approach to understanding the development of
children. Once the captive of botany, child psychology is now mes-
merized by zoology. The observations on which these newer models
draw come almost entirely from the animal kingdom, and answers to
questions about children are sought in experiments carried out on
animals. Both the results of experiments with animals and the proce-
dures used to obtain these results are finding their way from the
animal laboratory into the nursery.
This convergence of child and animal psychology has contributed
_significantly to the study of the biological basis of human behavior.
Many links between child and animal behavior, particularly in the
study of elementary psychological processes, have been established. But
a paradox has now emerged. When the botanical model was fashionable,
psychologists emphasized the unique character of higher psychological
functions and the difficulty of studying them by experimental means.
But this zoological approach to the higher intellectual processes-those
processes that are uniquely human-has led psychologists to interpret
the higher intellectual functions as a direct continuation of correspond-
ing processes in animals. This style of theorizing is particularly apparent
in the analysis of practical intelligence in children, the most important
aspect of which concerns the child's use of tools.

PRACTICAL INTELLIGENCE IN ANIMALS

AND CHILDREN
The work of Wolfgang Kohler is particularly significant in the study
of practical intelligence." He conducted many experiments with apes
during World War I, and occasionally compared some of his observa-
tions of chimpanzees> behavior with particular kinds of responses in
children. This direct analogy between practical intelligence in the child
and similar response by apes became the guiding principle of experi-
mental work in the field.
K. Buhler's research *also sought to establish similarities between
child and ape." He studied the way in which. young children grasp ob-
 Tool and Symbol in Child Development
21

jects, their ability to make detours while pursuing a goal, and the
manner in which they use pr!niitive tools: ·These observations, as well
as his experiment in which a youngchild i;'" asked to remove a ring from
a stick, illustrate an approach akin to Kohler's. Buhler interpreted the
manifestations of practical intelligence in children as being of exactly
the same type as those we are familiar with in chimpanzees. Indeed,'
there is a phase in the life of the child that Buhler designated the
"chimpanzee age" (p. 48). One ten-month-old infant whom he studied
was able to pull a string to obtain a cookie that was attached to it. The
ability to remove a ring from a post by lifting it rather than trying to
pull it sideways did not appear until the middle of the second year."
Although these experiments were interpreted as support for the analogy
between the child and apes, they also led Buhler to the important dis-
covery, which will be explicated in later sections, that the beginnings
of practical intelligence in the child (he termed it "technical thinking"),
as well as the actions of the chimpanzee, are independent of speech.
Charlotte Buhler's detailed observations of infants during their
first year of life gave further support to this conclusion." She found the
first manifestations of practical intelligence took place at the very
young age of six months, However, it is not only tool use that develops
at this point in a child's history but also systematic movement and
perception, the brain and hands-in fact, the child's entire organism.
Consequently, the child's system of activity is determined at each specific
stage both by the child's degree of organic development and by his or
her degree of mastery in the use of tools.
K. Buhler established the developmentallyimportant principle that
the beginnings of intelligent speech are preceded by technical thinking,
and technical thinking comprises the initial phase of cognitive develop-
ment. His lead in emphasizing the chimpanzee-like features of children's
behavior has been followed by many others. It is in extrapolating this
idea that the dangers of zoological models and analogies between human
and animal behaviors find their clearest expression. The pitfalls are
slight in research that focuses on the preverbal period in the child's
development, as Buhler's did. However, he drew a questionable conclu-
sion from his work with very young children when he stated, "The
achievements of the chimpanzee are quite independent of language
and in the case of man, even in later life, technical thinking, or think-
ing in terms of tools, is far less closely bound up with language and
concepts than other forms of thinking."?
Buhler proceeded from the assumption that the relationship be-
tween practical intelligence and speech that characterizes the ten-
Mind in Society
.2.2

month-old child remains intact throughout her lifetime. This analysis

postulating the independence of intelligent action from speech runs
contrary to our own Bndings, which reveal the integration of speech
and practical thinking in the course of development.
Shapiro and Gerke offer an important analysis of the development
of practical thinking in children based upon experiments modeled after
Kohler's problem-solving studies with chimpanzees." They theorize
that children's practical thinking is similar to adult thought in certain
respects and different in others, and emphasize the dominant role of
social experience in human development. In their view, social experience
exerts its effect through imitation; .when the child imitates the way
adults use tools and objects, she masters the very principle involved
in a particular activity. They suggest that repeated actions pile up, one
upon another, as in a multi-exposure photograph; the common traits
become clear and the differences become blurred. The result is a crys-
talized scheme, a definite principle of activity. The child, as she be-
comes more experienced, acquires a greater number of models that
she understands. These models represent, as it were, a refined cumula-
tive design of all similar actions; at the same time, they are also a rough
blueprint for possible types of action in the future.
However, Shapiro and Gerke's notion of adaptation is too firmly
linked to a mechanical conception of repetition. For them, social ex-
perience serves only to furnish the child with motor schemas; they do
not take into account the changes occurring in the internal structure
of the child's intellectual operations. In their descriptions of children's
problem solving, the authors are forced to note the "specific role ful-
filled by speech" in the practical and adaptive efforts of the growing
child. But their description of this role is a strange one. "Speech," they
say, "replaces and compensates for real adaptation; it does not serve as
a bridge leading to past experience but to a purely social adaptation
which is achieved via the experimenter." This analysis does not allow
for the contribution speech makes to the development of a new struc-
tural organization of practical activity.
Guillaume and Meyerson offer a different conclusion regarding the
role of speech in the inception of uniquely human forms of behavior.":
From their extremely interesting experiments on tool use among apes,
they concluded that the methods used by apes to accomplish a given
task are similar in principle and coincide on certain essential points to
those used by people suffering from aphasia (that is, individuals who
are deprived of speechl.e'Their findings support my assumption that
 Tool and Symbol in Child Development
23

speech plays an essential role in the organization of higher psychological

functions. 10
These experimental examples bring us full circle to the beginning
of our review of psychological theories regarding child development.
Buhler's experiments indicate that the practical activity of the young
child prior to speech development is identical to that of the ape, and'
Guillaume and Meyerson suggest that the ape's behavior is akin to that
observed in people who are deprived of speech. Both of these lines of
work focus our attention on the importance of understanding the practi-
cal activity of children at the age when they are just beginning to speak.
My own work as well as that of my collaborators is directed at these
same problems. But our premises differ from those of previous investi-
gators. Our primary concern is to describe and specify the development
of those forms of practical intelligence that are specifically human.

RELATION BETWEEN SPEECH AND TOOL USE

In his classic experiments with apes Kohler demonstrated the
futility of attempting to develop even the most elementary sign and
symbolic operations in animals. He concluded that tool use among
apes is independent of symbolic activity. Further attempts to cultivate
productive speech in the ape have also produced negative results. These
experiments showed once more that the purposive behavior of the ani-
mal is independent of any speech or sign-using activity.
The study of tool use in isolation from sign use is common in re-
search work on the natural history of practical intellect, and psychol-
ogists who studied the .development of symbolic processes in the child
have followed the same procedure. Consequently, the origin and de-
velopment of speech, as well as all other sign-using activity, were treated
as independent of the organization of the child's practical activity.
Psychologists preferred to study the development of sign use as an
example of pure intellect and not as the product of the child's develop-
mental history. They often attributed sign use to the child's spontaneous
discovery of the relation between signs and their meanings. As W. Stern
stated, recognition of the fact that verbal signs have meaning constitutes
"the greatest discovery in the child's life."11 A number of authors fix
this happy "moment" at the juncture of the child's first and second
year, regarding it as the product of the child's mental activity. De-
tailed examination of the development of speech and other forms of sign
use was assumed to be unnecessary. Instead, it has routinely been as-
Mind in Society
24

sumed that the child's mind contains all stages of furore intellectual
development; they exist in complete form, awaiting the proper moment
to emerge.
Not only were speech and practical intelligence assumed to have
different origins, but their joint participation in common operations
was considered to be of no basic psychological importance (as in the
work of Shapiro and Gerke). Even when speech and the use of tools
were closely linked in one operation, they were still studied as separate
processes belonging to two completely different classes of phenomena.
At best, their simultaneous occurrence was considered a consequence
of accidental, external factors.
The students of practical intelligence as well as those who study
speech development often fail to recognize the interweaving of these
two functions. Consequently, the children's adaptive behavior and sign-
using activity are treated as parallel phenomena-a view that leads to
Piaget's concept of "egocentric" speech.P He did not attribute an
Important role to speech in the organization of the child's activities,
nor did he stress its communicative functions, although he was obliged
to admit its practical importance.
Although practical intelligence and sign use can operate inde-
pendently of each other in young children, the dialectical unity of these
systems in the human adult is the very essence of complex human be-
havior. Our analysis accords symbolic activity a specific organizing
function that penetrates the process of tool use and produces funda-
mentally new forms of behavior.

SOCIAL INTERACTION AND THE TRANSFORMAnON

OF PRACTICAL ACTIVITY
Based on the discussion in the previous section, and illustrated by
experimental work to be described later, the following conclusion may
be made: the most significant moment in the course of intellectual de-
velopment, 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.
Although children's use of tools during their preverbal period is com-
parable to that of apes, as soon as speech and the use of signs are
incorporated into any action, the action becomes transformed and or-
ganized along entirely new lines. The specifically human use of tools is
thus realized, going beyond the more limited use of tools possible among
the higher animals.
 Tool and Symbol in Child Development
25

Prior to mastering his own behavior, the child begins to master his
surroundings with the help of speech. This produces new relations with
the environment in addition 'to the new organization of behavior itself.
The creation of these uniquely human forms of behavior later produce
the intellect and become the basis of productive work: the specifically
human fonn of the use of tools.
Observations of children in an experimental situation similar to
that of Kohler's apes show that the children not only a.¢Jn attempting
to achieve a goal but also speak. As a rule this speech arises spontane-
ously and continues almost without interruption throughout the experi-
ment. It increases and is more persistent every time the situation be-
comes more complicated and the goal more difficult to attain. Attempts
to block it (as the experiments of my collaborator R. E. Levina have
shown) are either futile or lead the child to "freeze up."
Levina posed practical problems for four- and five-year-old children
such as obtaining a piece of candy from a cupboard. The candy was
placed out of reach so the child could not obtain it directly. As the child
got more and more involved in trying to obtain the candy, "egocentric"
speech began to manifest itself as part of her active striving. At first
this speech consisted of a description and analysis of the situation, but
it gradually took on a "planful" character, reflecting possible paths to
solution of the problem. Finally, it was included as part of the solution.
For example, a four-and-a-half-year-old girl was asked to get candy
from a cupboard with a stool and a stick as possible tools. Levina's
description reads as follows: (Stands on a stool, quietly looking, feeling
along a shelf with stick.) "On the stool." (Glances at experimenter. Puts
stick in other hand.) "Is that really the candy?" (Hesitates.) cCI can get it
from that other stool, stand and get it." (Gets second stool.) "No, that
doesn't get it. I could use the stick." (Takes stick, knocks at the candy.)
C'It will move now." (Knocks candy.) celt moved, I couldn't get it with
the stool, but the, but the stick worked."13
In such circumstances it seems both natural and necessary for
children to speak while they act; in our research we have f~und that
speech not only accompanies practical activity but also plays a specific
role in carrying it out. Our experiments demonstrate two important
facts:
(1) A child's speech is as important as the role of action in attaining
the goal. Children not only speak about what they are doing; their
speech and action are part of one and the same complex psychological
function, directed toward the solution of the problem at hand.
(2) The more complex the action demanded by the situation and
Mind in Society
26

the less direct its solution, the greater the importance played by speech
in the operation as a whole. Sometimes speech becomes of such. vital
importance that, if not permitted to use it, young children cannot ac-
complish the given task.
These observations lead me to the conclusion that children solve
practical tasks with the help of their speech, as well as their eyes and
hands. This unity of perception, speech, and action, which ultimately
produces internalization of the visual field, constitutes the central sub-
ject matter for any analysis of the origin of uniquely human forms of
behavior.
To develop the first of these two points, we must ask: What is it that,
really distinguishes the actions of the speaking child from the actions
of an ape when solving practical problems?
The first thing that strikes the experimenter is the incomparably
greater freedom of children's operations, their greater independence
from the structure of the concrete, visual situation. Children, with the
aid of speech, create greater possibilities than apes can accomplish
through action. One important manifestation of this greater flexibility
is that the child is able to ignore the direct line between actor and goal.
Instead, he engages in a number of preliminary acts, using what we
speak of as .IDstrumental, or mediated (indirect), methods. In the process
of solving a task the child is able to include sti;muli that do not lie within
the immediate visual field. Using words (one class of such stimuli) to
create a specific plan, the child achieves a much broader range of
activity, applying as tools not only those objects that lie near at hand,
but searching for and preparing such stimuli as can be useful in the
solution of the task, and planning future actions.
Second, the practical operations of a child who can speak become
much less impulsive and spontaneous than those of the ape. The ape
typically makes a series of uncontrolled attempts to solve the given
problem. In contrast, the child who uses speech divides the activity into
two consecutive parts. She plans how to solve the problem through
speech and then carries out the prepared solution through overt ac-
tivity. Direct manipulation is replaced by a complex psychological
process through which- inner motivation and intentions, postponed in
time, stimulate their own development and realization. This new kind
of psychological structure is absent in apes, even in rudimentary forms.
Finally, it is decisively important that speech not only facilitates the
child's effective manipulation of objects .but also controls the child's own
behavior. Thus, with the help of speech children, unlike apes, acquire
the capacity to be both the subjects and objects of their own behavior.
\
 Tool and Symbol in Child Development
27

Experimental investigation of the egocentric speech of children en-

gaged in various activities such as that illustrated by Levina produced
the second fact of great importance demonstrated by our experiments:
the relative amount of egocentric speech, as measured by Piaget's meth-
ods, increases in relation to the difficulty of the child's task.> On the
basis of these experiments my collaborators and I developed the
hypothesis that children's egocentric speech should be regarded as
the transitional form between external and internal speech. Functionally,
egocentric speech is the basis for inner speech, while in its external
form it is embedded in communicative speech.
One way to increase the production of egocentric speech is to
complicate a task in such a way that the child cannot make direct use of
tools for its solution. When faced with such a challenge, the children's
emotional use of language increases as well as their efforts to achieve a
less automatic, more intelligent solution. They search verbally for a
new plan, and their utterances reveal the close connection between ego-
centric and socialized speech. This is best seen when the experimenter
leaves the room or fails to answer the children's appeals for help. Upon
being deprived of the opportunity to engage in social speech, children
immediately switch over to egocentric speech.
While the interrelationship of these two functions of language is
apparent in this setting, it is important to remember that egocentric
speech is linked to children's social speech by many transitional forms.
The first significant illustration of the link between these two language
functions occurs when children find that they are unable to solve a prob-
lem by themselves. They then turn to an adult und verbally describe the
method that they cannot carry out by themselves. The greatest change
in children's capacity to use language as a problem-solving tool takes
place somewhat later in their development, when socialized speech
(which has previously been used to address an adult) is turned inuiard.
Instead of appealing to the adult, children appeal to themselves; lan-
guage thus takes on an intrapersonal function in addition to its inter-
personal use. When children develop a method of behavior for guid-
ing themselves that had previously been used in relation to another
person, when they organize their own activities according to a social
form of behavior, they succeed in applying a social attitude to them-
selves. The history of the process of the internalization of social speech
is also the history of the socialization of children's practical intellect.
The relation between speech and action is a dynamic one in the
course of children's development. The structural relation can shift even
during an experiment. The crucial change occurs as follows: At an
Mind in Society
28

early stage speech accompanies the child's actions and reflects the
vicissitudes of problem solving in a disrupted and chaotic form. At
a later stage speech moves more and more toward the starting point of
the process, so that it comes to precede action. It functions then as an
aid to a plan that has been conceived but not yet realized in behavior.
An interesting analogy can be found in children's speech while drawing
(see also chapter 8). Young children name their drawings only after
they have completed them; they need to see them before they can decide
what they are. As children get older they can decide in advance what
they are going to draw. This displacement of the naming process signifies
a change in the function of speech. Initially speech follows actions, is
provoked by and dominated by activity. At a later stage, however, when
speech is moved to the starting point of an activity, a new relation be-
tween word and action emerges. Now speech guides, determines, and
dominates the course of action; the planning function of speech comes
into being in addition to the already existing function of language to
reflect the external world."
Just as a mold gives shape to a substance, words can shape an
activity into a structure. However, that structure may be changed or
reshaped when children learn touse Ianguage in ways that allow them
to go beyond previous experiences when planning future action. In
contrast to the notion of sudden discovery popularized by Stern, we
envisage verbal, intellectual activity as a series of stages in which the
emotional and communicative functions of speech are expanded by the
addition of the planning function. As a result the child acquires the abil-
ity to engage in complex operations extending over time.
Unlike the ape, which Kohler tells us is "the slave of its own visual
field," children acquire an independence with respect to their concrete
surroundings; they cease to act in the immediately given and evident
space. Once children learn how to use the planning function of their
language effectively, their psychological field changes radically. A
view of the future is now an integral part of their approaches to their
surroundings. In subsequent chapters, I will-describe the developmental
course of some of these central psychological functions in greater detail.
To summarize what has been said thus far in this section: The
specifically human capacity for language enables children to provide
for auxiliary tools in the solution of difficult tasks, to overcome impulsive
action, to plan a solution to a problem prior to its execution, and to
master their own behavior. Signs and words serve children first and
foremost as a means of social contact with other people. The cognitive
and communicative functions of language then become the basis of a
 Tool and Symbol in Child Development
29

new and superior form of activity in children, distinguishing them from

animals.
The changes I have described do not occur in a one-dimensional,
even fashion. Our research has shown that very small children solve
problems using unique mixtures of processes. In contrast with adults,
who react differently to objects and to people, young children are likely
to fuse action and speech when responding to both objects and social
beings. This fusion of activity is analagous to syncretism in perception,
which has been described by many developmental psychologists.
The unevenness I am speaking of is seen quite clearly in a situation
where small children, when unable to solve the task before them easily,
combine direct attempts to obtain the desired end with a reliance upon
emotional speech. At times speech expresses the children's desires, while
at other times it serves as a substitute for actually achieving the goal.
The 'Child may attempt to solve the task through verbal formulations
and by appeals to the experimenter for help. This mixture of diverse
forms of activity was at first bewildering; but further observations drew
our attention to a sequence of actions that clarify the meaning of the
children's behavior in such circumstances, For example, after completing
a number of intelligent and interrelated actions that should help him
solve a particular problem successfully, the child suddenly, upon
meeting a difficulty, ceases all attempts and turns for help to the experi-
menter. Any obstacle to the child's efforts at solving the problem may
interrupt his activity. The child's verbal appeal to another person is an
effort to fill the hiatus his activity has revealed. By asking a question, the
child indicates that he has, in fact, formulated a plan to solve the task
before him, but is unable to perform all the necessary operations.
Through repeated experiences of this type, children learn covertly
(mentally) to plan their activities. At the same time they enlist the assist-
ance of another person in accordance with the requirements of the
problem posed for them. The child's ability to control another person's
behavior becomes a necessary part of the child's practical activity.
Initially this problem solving in conjunction with another person is
not differentiated with respect to the roles played by the child and his
helper; it is a general, syncretic whole. We have more than once ob-
served that in the course of solving a task, children get confused because
they begin to merge the logic of what they are doing with the logic of
the same problem as it has to be solved with the cooperation of another
person. Sometimes syncretic action manifests itself when children realize
the hopelessness of their direct efforts to solve a problem. As in the
example from Levina's work, children address the objects of their atten-
Mind in Society
30

tion equally with words and sticks, demonstrating the fundamental and
inseparable tie between speech and action in the child's activity; this
unity becomes particularly clear when compared with the separation of
these processes in adults.
In summary, children confronted with a problem that is slightly too
complicated for them exhibit . a complex variety of responses including
direct attempts at attaining the goal, the use of tools, speech directed
toward the person conducting the experiment or speech that simply
accompanies the action, and direct, verbal appeals to the object of
attention itself.
If analyzed dynamically, this alloy of speech and action has a very
specific function in the history of the child's development; it also demon-
strates the logic of its own genesis. From the very first days of the child's
development his activities acquire a meaning of their own in a system of
social behavior and, being directed towards a definite purpose, are re-
fracted through the prism of the child's environment. The path from
object to child and from child to object passes through another person.
This complex human structure is the product of a developmental process
deeply rooted in the links between individual and social history.
 2

The Development of
Perception and Attention

The linkage between tool use and speech affects several psycho-
logical functions, in particular perception, sensory-motor operations,
and attention, each of which is part of a dynamic system of behavior.
Experimental-developmental research indicates that the connections
and relations among functions constitute systems that change as radically
in the course of a child's development as do the individual functions
themselves. Considering each function in turn, I will examine how
speech introduces qualitative changes in both its form and its relation to
other functions.
Kohler's work emphasized the importance of the structure of the
visual field in organizing the ape's practical behavior. The entire process
of problem solving is essentially determined by perception. In this
respect Kohler had ample grounds for believing that these animals are
bound by their sensory field to a much greater extent than adult humans.
They are incapable of modifying their sensory field by means of volun-
tary effort, Indeed, it would probably be useful to view as a general law
the dependence of all natural forms of perception on the structure of
the sensory field.
However, a child's perception, because it is human, does not develop
as a direct continuation and further perfection of the forms of animal
perception, not even of those animals that stand nearest to humankind.
Experiments conducted to clarify this problem led us to discover some
basic laws that characterize the higher human forms of perception.
The first set of experiments concerned developmental stages of
picture perception in children. Similar experiments describing specific
aspects of young children's perception and its dependence On higher
31
Mind in Society
32

psychological mechanisms had been carried out earlier by Binet and

analyzed in detail by Stern.' Both authors found that the way small
children describe pictures differs at successive developmental stages. A
two-year-old usually limits his description to separate objects within the
picture. Older children describe actions and indicate the complex rela-
tions among the separate objects within the picture. Stern inferred from
these observations that a stage when children perceive separate objects
precedes the stage when they perceive actions and relations in addition
to objects, that is, when they perceive the picture as a whole. However,
many psychological observations suggest that the child's perceptual
processes are initially fused and only later become more differentiated.
We resolved the contradiction between these two positions through
an experiment replicating Stern's study of children's descriptions of
pictures, in which we asked children to communicate the contents of a
picture without using speech. We suggested that the description be
made in pantomime. The two-year-old child, who according to Stem's
schema is still at the separate "object" stage of development, perceived
the dynamic features of the picture and reproduced them with ease
through pantomime. What Stem regarded as a characteristic of the
child's perceptual skills proved to be a product of the limitations of her
language development or, in other words, a feature of her verbalized
perception.
A series of related observations revealed that labeling is the primary
function of speech used by young children. Labeling enables the child
to choose a specific object, to single it out from the entire situation he is
perceiving. Simultaneously, however, the child embellishes his first
words with very expressive gestures, which compensate for his diffi-
culties in communicating meaningfully through language. By means of
words children single out separate elements, thereby overcoming the
natural structure of the sensory field and forming new (artifically
introduced and dynamic) structural centers. The·child begins to perceive
the world not only through his eyes but also through his speech. As a
result, the immediacy of "natural" perception is supplanted by a complex
mediated process; as such, speech becomes an essential part of the
child's cognitive development.
Later, the intellectual mechanisms related to speech acquire a new
function; verbalized perception in the child is no longer limited to
labeling. At this next stage of development, speech acquires a synthe-
sizing function, which in turn is instrumental in achieving more complex
forms of cognitive perception. These changes give human perception an
 The Development of Perception and Attention
33

entirely new character, quite distinct from the analogous processes in

higher animals.
The role of language in perception is striking because of the oppos-
ing tendencies implicit in the nature of visual perception and language.
The independent elements in a visual field are simultaneously perceived;
in this sense, visual perception is integral. Speech, on the other hand,
requires sequential processing. Each element is separately labeled and
then connected in a sentence structure, making speech essentially
analytical.
Our research has shown that even at very early stages of develop-
ment, language and perception are linked. In the solution of nonverbal
tasks, even if a problem is solved without a sound being uttered, lan-
guage plays a role in the outcome. These findings substantiate the thesis
of psychological linguistics as formulated many years ago by A. Poteb-
nya, who argued for the inevitable interdependence between human
thought and language,"
A special feature of human perception-which arises at. a very
young age-is the perception of real objects. This is something for which
there is no analogy in animal perception. By this term I mean that I do
not see the world simply in color and shape but also as a world with
sense and meaning. I do not merely see something round and black with
two hands; I see a clock and I can distinguish one hand from the other.
Some brain-injured patients say, when they see a clock, that they are
seeing something round and white with two thin steel strips, but they do
not know it is a clock; such people have lost their real relationship with
objects. These observations suggest that all human perception consists
of categorized rather than isolated perceptions.
The developmental transition to qualitatively new forms of behavior
is not confined to changes in perception alone. Perception is part of a
dynamic system of behavior; hence, the relation between transforma-
tions of perceptual processes and transformations in other intellectual
activities is of primary importance. This point is illustrated by our studies
on choice behavior, which show the changing relation between percep-
tion and motor action in young children.

STUDIES OF CHOICE BEHAVIOR IN CHILDREN

We requested four- and five-year-old children to press one of five
keys on a keyboard as they identified each one of a series of picture
stimuli assigned to each key. Because this task exceeds the capabilities
Mind in Society
34

of the children, it causes serious difficulties and more intensive efforts to

solve the problem. Perhaps the most remarkable result is that the entire
process of selection by the child is external, and concentrated in the
motor sphere, thus allowing the experimenter to observe the very nature
of the choice process itself in the child's movements. The child does her
selecting while carrying out whatever movements the choice requires.
The structure of the child's decision does not in the least resemble
the adult process. Adults make a preliminary decision internally and
subsequently carry out the choice in the for~ of a single movement
that executes the plan. The child's choice resembles a somewhat delayed
selection among his own movements. Vascillations in perception are
directly reflected in the structure of movement. The child's movements
are replete with diffuse gropings that interrupt and succeed one another.
A mere glance at the chart tracing the child's movements is sufficient to
convince one of the basic motor nature of the process.
The main difference between the choice processes in the child and
in the adult is that for the child the series of tentative movements consti-
tute the selection process. The child does not choose the stimulus (the
necessary key) as the starting point for the consequent movement but
rather selects the movement, using the instruction as a guide to check
the results. Thus, the child resolves her choice not through a direct
process of visual perception but through movement, hesitating between
two stimuli, her fingers hovering above and moving from one key to an-
other, going half-way and then coming back. When the child transfers
her attention to a new location, thereby creating a new focus in the
\
dynamic structure of perception, her hand obediently moves toward this
new center, in unison with the eye. In short, movement is not separated
from perception: the processes coincide almost exactly.
In the behavior of the higher animals, visual perception forms part
of a more complex whole in a similar way. The ape does not perceive
the visual situation passively; a complex behavioral structure consisting
of reflexive, affective, motor, and intellectual factors is directed toward
acquiring the object that attracts it. The ape's movements constitute an
immediate dynamic continuation of its perception. In human children,
this early, diffusely structured response undergoes a fundamental change
as soon as a more complex psychological function is utilized in the choice
process. The natural process present in animals is then transformed into
a higher psychological operation.
Subsequent to the experiment described above we attempted to sim-
plify the task of selection-by marking each key with a corresponding
 The Development of Perception and Attention
35

sign to serve as an additional stimulus that could direct and organize

the choice process. The child was asked, upon the appearance of a target
stimulus, to press the key marked with the corresponding sign. As early
as age five or six the child is able to fulfill this task easily. The addition
of this new ingredient radically changes the structure of the choice
process. The elementary, "natural" operation is replaced by a new and
more complicated one. The simpler task evokes a more complexly struc-
tured response. When the child attends to the auxiliary sign in order to
find the key corresponding to the given stimulus, he no longer exhibits
those motor impulses that arise directly from perception. There are no
uncertain groping movements in the air such as we observed in the
earlier choice reaction when auxiliary aids were not used.
The use of auxiliary signs breaks up the fusion of the sensory field
and the motor system and thus makes new kinds of behavior possible. A
"functional barrier" is created between the initial and final moments
of the choice response; the direct impulse to move is shunted by pre-
liminary circuits. The child who formerly solved the problem impulsively
now solves it through an internally established connection between the
stimulus and the corresponding auxiliary sign. The movement that
previously had been the choice now serves only to fulfill the prepared
operation. The system of signs restructures the whole psychological
process and enables the child to master her movement. It reconstructs
the choice process on a totally new basis. Movement detaches itself from
direct perception and comes under the control of sign functions included
in the choice response. This development represents a fundamental
break with the natural history of behavior and initiates the transition
from the primitive behavior of animals to the higher intellectual activ-
ities of humans.
Attention should be given first place among the major functions in
the psychological structure underlying the use of tools. Beginning with
Kohler, scholars have noted that the ability or inability to direct one's
attention is an essential determinant of the success or failure of any
practical operation. However, the difference between the practical intel-
ligence of children and animals is that children are capable of recon-
structing their perception and thus freeing themselves from the given
structure of the field. With the help of the indicative function of words,
the child begins to master his attention" creating new structural centers
in the perceived situation. As K. Ko£fka so aptly put it, the child is able
to determine for herself the «center of gravity" of her perceptual field;
her behavior is not regulated solely by the salience of individual ele-
Mind in Society
36

ments within it. The child evaluates the relative importance of these
elements, singling out new CCfigures" from the background and thus
widening the possibilities for controlling her activities."
In addition to reorganizing the visual-spatial field, the child, with
the help of speech, creates a time field that is just as perceptible and
real to him as the visual one. The speaking child has the ability to
direct his attention in a dynamic way. He can view changes in his
immediate situation from the point of view of past activities, and he can
act in the present from the.viewpoint of the future.
For the ape, the task 'is unsolvable unless the goal and the object
needed to reach it are both simultaneously in view. For the child, this
gap is easily overcome by verbally controlling her attention and thereby
reorganizing her perceptual field. The ape will perceive a stick one
moment, but cease to pay attention to it after its visual field has changed
and the goal comes into view. The ape must see his stick in order to pay
attention to it; the child may pay attention in order to see.
Thus, the child's field of attention embraces not one but a whole
series of potential perceptual fields that form successive, dynamic
structures over time. The transition from the simultaneous structure of
the visual field to the successive structure of the dynamic field of atten-
tion is achieved through the reconstruction of the separate activities that
are a part of the required operations. When this occurs, we can say that
the field of attention has detached itself from the perceptual field and
unfolded itself in time, as one component of a dynamic series of psycho-
logical activities.
The possibility of combining elements of the past and present visual
fields (for instance, tool and goal) in one field of attention leads in turn
to a basic reconstruction of another vital function, memory. (See chapter
3.) Through verbal formulations of past situations and activities, the
child frees himself from the limitations of direct recall; he succeeds in
synthesizing the past and present to suit his purposes. The changes that
occur in memory are similar to those that occur in the child's perceptual
field where centers of gravity are shifted and figure and ground rela-
tionship are altered. The child's memory not only makes fragments of the
past more available, but also results in a new method of uniting the
elements of past experience with the present.
Created with the help of speech, the time field for action extends
both forward and backward. Future activity that can be included in an
ongoing activity is represented by signs. As in the case of memory and
attention, the inclusion of signs in temporal perception does not lead to
a simple lengthening of the operation in time; rather, it creates the
 The Development of Perception and Attention
37

conditions for the development of a single system that includes effective

elements of the past, present, and future. This emerging psychological
system in the child now encompasses two new functions: intentions and
symbolic representations of purposeful action.
This change in the structure of the child's behavior is related to
basic alterations in the child's needs and motivations. When Lindner
compared the methods by which deaf children solved tasks to the
methods used by Kohler's ape, he noted that the motives guiding the
ape and those guiding the child to achieve mastery of a goal were not
the same." The "instinctive" urges predominating in the animal become
secondary in the child. New motives, socially rooted and intense, pro-
vide the child with direction. K. Lewin described these motives as
Quasi-Beduerinisse (quasi-needs) and argued that their inclusion in any
given task leads to the reorganization of the child's whole affective and
voluntary system." He believed that with the development of these quasi-
needs, the child's emotional thrust is shifted from a preoccupation with
the outcome to the nature of the solution. In essence, the "task" (Aufgabe)
in experiments with apes exists only in the eyes of the experimenter; as
far as the animal is concerned there exists only the bait and the obstacles
standing in his way. The child, however, strives to solve the given prob-
lem and thus has an entirely different purpose. Because he is able to
form quasi-needs, the child is capable of breaking the operation into its
separate parts, each of which becomes an independent problem that he
formulates for himself with the help of speech.
In his excellent analysis of the psychology of purposeful activity,
Lewin gives a clear-cut definition of voluntary activity as a product of
the historical-cultural development of behavior and as a unique feature
of human psychology. The fact that man displays extraordinary freedom
with respect to even the most senseless intention is astounding in itself,
he asserts. This freedom is incomparably less characteristic of children
and probably of nonliterate humans, too. There is reason to believe that
voluntary activity, more than highly developed intellect, distinguishes
humans from the animals which stand closest to them.
 Mastery of Memory
and Thinking

In the light of what my collaborators and I had learned about the

functions of speech in reorganizing perception and creating new relations
among psychological functions, we undertook a broad study of other
forms of sign-using activity in children in all its concrete manifestations
(drawing pictures, writing, reading, using number systems, and- so on).
We also considered whether other operations not related to practical
intellect would show the same laws of development we had discovered
when analyzing practical intellect.
Several series of experiments carried out by my colleagues and
myself dealt with these problems, and now, based on the data we ob-
tained from them, we are able to describe in schematic form the basic
laws that characterize the structure and development of the child's sign
operations. These will be presented through a discussion of memory,
which is exceptionally appropriate for study of the changes that signs
introduce into basic psychological functions because it clearly reveals
the social origin of signs as well as their crucial role in the individual's
development,

SOCIAL ORIGINS OF INDIRECT (MEDIATED) MEMORY

A comparative investigation of human memory reveals that, even at
the earliest stages of social development, there are two, principally
different, types of memory. One, dominating in the behavior of non-
literate peoples, is characterized by the nonmediated impression of
materials, by the retention of actual experiences as the basis of mnemonic
(memory) traces. We call this natural memory, and it is clearly iIIus-

38
 Maste1'Y of Memory and Thinking

39

trated in E. R. jaensch's studies of eidetic imagery.' This kind of memory

is very close to perception, because it arises out of the direct influence
of external stimuli upon human beings. From the point of view of struc-
ture, the entire process is characterized by a quality of immediacy.
Natural memory is not the only kind, however, even in the case of
nonIiterate men and women. On the contrary, other types of memory
belonging to a completely different developmental line coexist with
natural memory. The use of notched sticks and knots.s the beginnings of
writing and simple memory aids all demonstrate that even at early
stages of historical development humans went beyond the limits of the
psychological functions given to them by nature and proceeded to a new
culturally-elaborated organization oftheir behavior. Comparative analy-
sis shows that such activity is absent in even the highest species of
animals; we believe that these sign operations are the product of specific
conditions of social development.
Even such comparatively simple operations as tying a knot or mark-
ing a stick as a reminder change the psychological structure of the
memory process. They extend the operation of memory beyond the
biological dimensions of the human nervous system and permit it to in-
corporate artificial, or self-generated, stimuli, which we call signs. This
merger, unique to human beings, signifies an entirely new fonn of
behavior. The essential difference between it and the elementary func-
tions is to be found in the structure of the stimulus-response relations of
each. The central characteristic of elementary functions is that they arc
totally and directly determined by stimulation from the environment.
For higher functions, the central feature is self-generated stimulation,
that is, the creation and use of artificial stimuli which become the
immediate causes of behavior,

STRUCTURE OF SIGN OPERATIONS

Every elementary form of behavior presupposes a direct reaction
to the task set before the organism (which can be expressed by the
simple S )R formula). But the structure of sign operations re-
quires an intermediate link between the stimulus and the response. This
intermediate link is a second order stimulus (sign) that is drawn into the
operation where it fulfills a special function; it creates a new relation
between Sand R. The term "drawn into" indicates that an individual
must be actively engaged in establishing such a link. This sign also pos-
sesses the important characteristic of reverse action (that is, it operates
on the individual, not the environment).
Mind in Society
40

Consequently, the simple stimulus-response process is replaced

by a complex, mediated act, which we picture as:

s R

x
Figure 1

In this new process the direct impulse to react is inhibited, and an

auxiliary stimulus that facilitates the completion of the operation by
indirect means is incorporated.
Careful studies demonstrate that this type of organization is basic
to all higher psychological processes, although in much more sophisti-
cated forms than that shown above. The intermediate link in this formula
is not simply a method of improving the previously existing operation,
nor is it a mere additional link in an S-R chain. Because this auxiliary
stimulus possesses the specific function of reverse action, it transfers the
psychological operation to higher and qualitatively new forms and per-
mits humans, by the aid of extrinsic stimuli, to control their behavior
from the outside. The use of signs leads humans to a specific structure of
behavior that breaks away from biological development and creates
new forms of a culturally-based psychological process.

EARLY SIGN OPERATIONS IN CHILDREN

The following experiments, conducted under A. N. Leontiev in our
laboratories, demonstrate with particular clarity the role of signs in
voluntary attention and memory."
Children were asked to playa game in which they were to answer
a set of questions without using certain words in their answers. As a rule
each child was presented three or'four tasks differing in the constraints
placed upon answers and the kinds of potential stimulus aids the child
could use. In each task the child was asked eighteen questions, seven of
which had to do with color (for example, "What color is ... ?"). The
child was asked to answer each question promptly using a single word.
The initial task was conducted in exactly this fashion. With the second
task, we began to introduce additional rules that the child had to follow
in order to succeed. For example, there were two color names the child
 MQ8tery of Memory and Thinking
41

was forbidden to use, and no color name could be used twice. The third
task had the same rules as the second, but the child was given nine
colored cards as aids to playing the game ("these cards can help you to
win"). The fourth task was like the third and was used in cases where
the child either failed to use the color cards or began to do so only late
in the third task. Before and after each task we asked the child questions .
to determine if she remembered and understood the instructions.
A set of questions for a typical task is the following (in this case
green and yellow are the forbidden colors): (1) Have you a playmate?
(2) What color is your shirt? (3) Did you ever go in a train? (4) What color
are the railway-carriages? (5) Do you want to be big? (6) Were you
ever at the theater? (7) Do you like to play in the room? (8) What color
is the floor? (9) And the walls? (10) Can you write? (11) Have you seen
lilac? (12) What color is lilac? (13) Do you like sweet things? (14) Were
you ever in the country? (15) What colors can leaves be? (16) Can you
swim? (17) What is your favorite color? (18) What does one do with a
pencil?
For the third and fourth tasks the following color cards were pro-
vided as aids: black, white, red, blue, yellow, green, lilac, brown, and
gray.
The results for thirty subjects ranging in age from five to twenty-
seven years are summarized in table 1, which contains the average
number of errors on tasks 2 and 3 and the difference between the two
tasks. Looking first at the data from task 2, we see a slight decrease in
errors from ages five to thirteen and a sharp drop in adulthood. For
task 3 the sharpest drop occurs between the Hve-tc-six and eight-to-nine-
year-old groups. The difference between tasks 2 and 3 is small for both

Table 1. Errors on forbidden colors task.

Number of Errors (average)

Age subjects Task 2 Task 3 Difference
5-6 7 3.9 3.6 0.3
8-9 7 3.3 1.5 1.8
10-13 8 3.1 0.3 2.8
22-27 8 1.4 0.6 0.8

the preschool children and the adults. The difference is largest for the
school-age children.
The processes that give rise to the summary figures are most readily
revealed by looking at transcripts representative of children in the difler-
Mind in Society
42

ent groups. The preschool children (age five to six years) were generally
unable to discover how to use the auxiliary color cards and had a great
deal of trouble with both tasks. Even when we tried to explain to them
how the color cards could help them, children at this age were incapable
of using these external stimuli in order to organize their own behavior.
The following transcript is from a five-year-old boy;

Task 4. Forbidden colors: blue and red (with cards).

2. What color are houses? Red [without looking at forbidden
colors].
3. Is the sun shining brightly? Yes.
4. What color is the sky? White [without looking at card; but
after replying, searches for white
card]. Here it is! [Picks it up and
keeps it in his hand.]
8. What colors are tomatoes? Red. [Glances at cards.]
9. And what color are exercise White-like this! [pointing to white
books? card].
12. What color are balls? White [looking at card].
13. Do you live in the town? No.

Do you think you have won? Don't know-s-yes.

What must you not do if you Mustn't say red or blue.
want to win?
And what else? Mustn't say the same word twice.

This transcript suggests that the "aids" actually hindered this child.
His repeated use of "white" as a response occurred when his attention
was fixed on the white card. The aids are only an accidental feature of
the situation for him. Still, there is no doubt that preschool children
sometimes demonstrate precursors of the use of external signs. From this
point of view certain cases are of special interest. For example, after we
suggested to a child that he use the cards to carry out his task ("take the
cards, they will help you to win"), he searched for the forbidden colors
and put all such cards out of his sight, as if trying to prevent himself
from naming them.
In spite of their apparent variety, methods for using the cards can
be reduced to two basic types. First the child may put forbidden colors
out of sight, display the remainder, and, as he answers the questions,
place the colors already named to one side. This is the less effective but
 Mastery of Memory and Thinking
43

the earliest method used. The card in this case serves only to register the
named color. Initially, children often do not turn to the cards before they
answer the question about color, and only after it is named do they
search among the cards, turn over, move, or put away the one named.
This is undoubtedly the simplest act of memorization with the help of
external means. It is only later that the conditions of the experiment .
bestow a new, second function on the cards. Before naming a color the
child makes a selection with the help of the cards. It makes no difference
whether the child looks at the cards so far unused or whether she attends
to the colors she has already named. In either case the cards are inter-
posed in the process and serve as a means of regulating her activity. The
preliminary hiding of forbidden colors, which is a distinguishing char-
acteristic of the first method for using the cards, does not yet lead to the
complete substitution of a less mature operation by a more complex one;
it represents merely a step in that direction. Its occurrence is explained
partly by the greater simplicity of this operation in mastering memory
and partly by a "magical" attitude toward various potential problem-
solving aids that children frequently display.
The following examples from a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl illus-
trate these points:

Task 2. Forbidden colors: green and yellow (without cards).

1. Have you playmates? Yes.
2. What color is your blouse? Gray.
3. Have you been in a train? Yes.
4. What color are railway carriages? Gray. [Notices that she has re-
peated the same~color twice, Iaughs.]
5. Do you want to be a big girl? Yes.
6. Were you ever in a theater? Yes.
7. Do you like to play in the room? Yes.
8. What color is the Hoor? Gray. [Hesitates.] Again-I repeated
it.
9. And the walls? White.
10. Can you write? Yes.
11. Have you seen lilac? Yes.
12. What color is lilac? Lilac color.
13. Do you like sweets? Yes.
14. Were you ever in the country? Yes.
Mind in Society
44

Task 2. Forbidden colors: green and yellow (without cards)---cont.

15. And what color were the leaves? Green-no, shouldn't have said
green-brown, red, sometimes.
16. Can you swim? Yes.
17. What is your favorite color? Yellow! I can't! [Throws up hands
behind head.]
18. What do you do with a pencil? Write.
What do you think, did you
win or lose? Lost.
What should you not have said? Green and yellow.
And what else? Shouldn't repeat.

Task 3. Forbidden colors: blue and red (with cards).

The subject puts forbidden colors to one side and spreads out the remainder
in a row before her.
1. Do you go for walks in the street? Yes.
2. What color are the houses? Gray. [After answering, looks at the
cards and turned over the gray one.]
3. Is the sun shining brightly? Brightly.
4. What color is the sky? White. [First looks at card and then
turns it over.]
5. Do you like candy? Yes.
6. Have you seen a rose? Yes.
7. Do you like vegetables? Yes.
8. What color are tomatoes? Green. [Turns over card.]
9. And exercise books? Yellow. [Turns over card.]
10. Have you any toys? No.
11. Do you play ball? Yes.
12. And what color are balls? Gray [without glancing at cards;
after answering, glances and notices
mistake].
13. Do you live in the town? Yes.
14. Did you see the demonstration? Yes.
15. What color are flags? Black. [First looks at cards and then
turns one over.]
16. Have you any books? Yes.
17. What colors are their covers? Lilac [turning over card] .
18. When does it get dark? At night.
 Mastery of Memory and Thinking
45

Our results as reflected in the transcripts and table 1 indicate three

basic stages in the development of mediated remembering. At the first
stage (preschool age) the child is not capable of mastering his behavior
by organizing special stimuli. The colored cards that might help the
child in his task do not increase to any considerable extent the effective-
ness of this operation. Although they act as stimuli, they do not acquire .
an instrumental function. The second stage of development is charac-
terized by a sharp difference in the indices in both of the main tasks.
The introduction of cards as a system of auxiliary, external stimuli raises
the effectiveness of the child's activity considerably. At this stage the
external sign predominates. The auxiliary stimulus is a psychological
instrument acting from the outside. At the third stage (among adults)
the diHerence between their performance in the two tasks decreases and
their coefficients become more nearly equal, but now on a new and
higher basis. This does not mean that the behavior of adults again
becomes direct and natural. At this higher stage of development behav-
ior remains mediated. But now we see that in the third task the auxiliary
stimuli are emancipated from primary external forms. What takes place
is what we have called internalization; the external sign that school
children require has been transformed into an internal sign produced by
the adult as a means of remembering. This series of tasks applied to
people of different ages shows how the external forms of mediated
behavior develop.

THE NATURAL mSTORY OF SIGN OPERATIONS

Although the indirect (or mediated) aspect of psychological opera-
tions is an essential feature of higher mental processes, it would be a
great mistake, as I pointed out with respect to the beginnings of speech,
to believe that indirect operations appear as the result of a pure logic.
They are not invented or discovered by the child in the form of a sudden
insight or lightning-quick guess (the so-called "aha" reaction). The
child does not suddenly and irrevocably deduce the relation between
the sign and the method for using it. Nor does she intuitively develop an
abstract attitude derived, so to speak, from "the depths of the child's own
mind." This metaphysical view, according to which inherent psycho-
logical schemata exist prior to any experience, leads inevitably to an
a priori conception of higher psychological functions.
Our research has led us to quite different conclusions. We have
found that sign operations appear as a result of a complex and prolonged
process subject to all the basic laws of psychological evolution. This
Mind in Society
46

means that sign-using activity in children is neither simply invented nor

passed down by adults; rather it arises from something that is originally
not a sign operation and becomes one only after a series of qualitative
transformations. Each of these transformations provides the conditions
for the next stage and is itself conditioned by the preceding one; thus,
transformations are linked like stages of a single process, and are his-
torical in nature. In this respect, the higher psychological functions are
no exception to the general rule that applies to elementary processes;
they, too, are subject to the fundamental law of development which
knows no exceptions, and appear in the general course of the child's
psychological development as the outcome of the same dialectical
process, not as something introduced from without or from within.
If we include this history of higher psychological functions as a
factor in psychological development, we must arrive at a new concept of
development itself. Within a general process of development, two
qualitatively diHerent lines of development, differing in origin, can be
distinguished: the elementary processes, which are of biological origin,
on the one hand, and the higher psychological functions, of sociocultural
origin, on the other. The history of child behavior is born from the inter-
weaving of these tuio lines. The history of the development of the higher
psychological functions is impossible without a study of their prehistory,
their biological roots, and their organic disposition. The developmental
roots of two fundamental, cultural forms of behavior arise during
infancy: the use of tools and human speech. This alone places infancy
at the center of the prehistory of cultural development.
The potential for complex sign operations is embedded in the
earliest stages of individual development. However, observations show
that between the initial level (elementary behavior) and the higher
levels (mediated.forms of behavior) many transitional psychological sys-
tems occur. In the history of behavior these transitional systems lie be-
tween the biologically given and the culturally acquired. We refer to
this process as the natural history of the sign.
Another experimental paradigm designed to study mediated memo-
rizing provides the opportunity to observe this natural history of the
sign. N. G. Morozova presented children with words to remember and.
auxiliary pictures that could be used as mediators," She found that during
the preschool years the idea of purposefully using the auxiliary picture
(sign) asa means of memorizing is still foreign to the child. Even if the
child did tum to the auxiliary picture in order to memorize a given
word, it was not necessarily easy for him to execute the reverse operation.
At this stage the learner does not usually recall the primary stimulus
 Mastery of Memory and Thinking
47

when being shown- the auxiliary stimulus. Rather, the sign evokes a
new associative or syncretic series represented by the following scheme:

A~
X
Figure 2

The operation has not yet progressed to the more advanced level which
is mediated in form using culturally elaborated features. In contrast with
figure 2, the usual scheme for mediated memorizing can be represented
by the following:

Figure 3

During the process represented by figure 2, Y may lead to a whole

series of new associations, among which the subject may arrive at the
starting point A. However, this sequence is still devoid of its purposeful
and instrumental character. In the second scheme, the word's auxiliary
sign, X, possesses the quality of reverse action, so that the subject can
reliably retrieve A.
The steps leading from the scheme in figure 2 to the scheme in
figure 3 cap be illustrated by the following examples taken from the
work of my students. L. V. Zankov demonstrated that younger children,
particularly between the ages of four and six, must rely on meaningful,
ready-made links between the "reminder" sign and the word to be re-
membered." If meaningless figures were presented as memory aids,
the children would~often refuse to make use of them; they would make
no attempt to make up connections between the picture cue and the
word they were supposed to remember. Rather, they would attempt
to turn these figures into direct copies of the to-be-remembered word.
For example, the figure Q ,presented as a reminder of the
word "bucket," was turned upside down by the children and served to
remind them of the word only when the figure D really began to
resemble a bucket. Similarly, the figure t:=:::1 became the sign of the
word "bench" only when turned upside down ( r:::=::::J). In all these
Mind in Society
48

cases, children linked the figures to the word stimuli by changing the
meaning of the sign instead of using the mediating link offered by the
experimenter. The introduction of these meaningless figures encouraged
the children to engage in active mnemonic activity instead of relying on
already formed links, but it also led them to treat the sign stimulus as
the direct representation of the object to be remembered. When this
proved impossible, the child refused to memorize.
A similar phenomenon is apparent in u. C. Yussevich's unpublished
study with small children. The auxiliary stimuli, which were pictures
that bore no direct relation to the word presented, were rarely used as
signs. The child looked at the picture and tried to see in it the object
she had to remember. For example, when asked to remember the word
"sun" with the help of a picture showing an axe, one child did it very
easily; she pointed to a small yellow spot in the drawing and said, "There
it is, the sun." This child replaced potentially complex instrumental
memorization by a search for a direct representation of the stimulus
(akin to an eidetic image). The child sought an eidetic-like representation
in the auxiliary sign. In both the Zankov and Yussevich examples, the
child reproduced the required word through a process of direct repre-
sentation rather than mediated symbolization.
The laws describing the role of sign oper~tions at this stage of de-
velopment are completely different from the laws describing how the
child links up a word with a sign in fully developed sign operations.
Children in the experiments just described illustrate a stage of de-
velopment between the elementary and the completely instrumental
process from which fully mediated operations will later develop.
Leontiev's work on the development of sign operations in memory
provides examples supporting the theoretical points discussed above
as well as later stages in the development of sign operations in memory.P
He gave a set of twenty words for recall to children of different ages and
levels of mental ability. The materials were presented in three ways.
First, the words were simply spoken at intervals of about three seconds
and the child was told to recall them, In a second task the child was
given a set of twenty pictures and told to lise them to help recall the
words. The pictures were not replicas of the words but were associated
with them. In the third series twenty pictures bearing no obvious rela-
tion to the to-be-remembered words were used. The basic questions
in this research were to what extent can children convert their remem-
bering into a mediated activity using pictures as auxiliary memory aids
and how does their success depend upon the different degrees of diffi-
culty represented by the two, potentially mediated, series.
As we might expect, the results differed depending upon the group
 Mastery of Memory and Thinking
49

of children and the difficulty of the recall task. Normal children (ten
to twelve years of age) recalled twice as many words when the pictures
were available as memory aids as they did without them. They were
able to make use of both picture series equally well. Mildly retarded
children of the same age benefited little, if at all, from the presence of
the pictures; and for severely retarded children, the auxiliary stimuli .
actually interfered with performance.
The original transcripts from this study clearly show intermediate
levels of functioning in which the child attends to the auxiliary picture
stimulus and even associates it with the word to be recalled but cannot
integrate the stimulus into his system of remembering. Thus, one child
selected a picture of an onion to recall the word "dinner." When asked
why she chose the picture, she gave the perfectly satisfactory answer,
"Because I eat an onion." However, she was unable to recall the word
"dinner" during the experiment. This example shows that the ability to
form elementary associations is not sufficient to ensure that the associa-
tive relation will fulfill the instrumental function necessary to produce
recall. This kind of evidence leads us to conclude that the development
of mediated psychological functions (in this case, mediated memory)
represents a special line of development that does not wholly coincide
with the development of elementary processes.
I should mention also that the addition of pictures as memory aids
did not facilitate recall of adults. The reason for the "failure" is directly
opposite to the reasons underlying the failure of memory aids to affect
the severely retarded children. In the case of adults, the process of
mediated memorizing is so fully developed that it occurs even in the
absence of special external aids.

MEMORY AND THINKING

Remembering activities do not simply change as the child grows
older; the role of these activities in the system of psychological functions
also changes, Nonmediated memory takes place in the context of psy-
chological operations that may have nothing at all in common with the
psychological operations that accompany mediated remembering; con-
sequently, experimental results may make it appear that some psycho-
logical functions are replaced by others. In other words, with a change
in developmental level there occurs a change not so much in the struc-
ture of a single function (which, for example, we may call memory) as
in the character of those functions with the aid of which remembering
takes place; what changes is the interfunctional relations that connect
memory with other functions.
Mind in Society
50

The memory of older children is not only different from the memory
of younger children; it also plays a different role in the older child's
cognitive activity. Memory in early childhood is one of the central
psychological functions upon which all the other functions are built.
OUf analyses suggest that thinking in the very young child is in many

respects determined by his memory, and is certainly not the same thing
as the thinking of the more mature child. For the very young child, to
think means to remember; at no time after very early childhood do
we see such a close connection between these two psychological func-
tions.
I will give three examples. The first is the definition of concepts in
children, which are based on their recollections. If you ask a child to tell
you what a snail is, he will say that it is little, it slithers, and it sticks
out its foot; if you ask him to tell you what a grandmother is, he is likely
to reply, "She has a soft lap." In both cases the child gives a very clear
summary of the impressions which the topic has made upon him and
which he recollects~ The content of the thinking act in the child when
defining such concepts is determined not so much· by the logicai struc-
ture of the concept itself as by the child's concrete recollections. It is
syncretic in ch~racter and reflects the fact that the child's thinking de-
pends first of allan his memory.
Another example is the development of visual concepts in very
young children. Investigations of children's thinking when they are re-
quired to transpose a relation learned with one set of stimuli to a similar
set have shown that their transfer is nothing more than remembering
with respect to isolated instances. Their general representations of
the world are based on the recall of concrete instances and do not yet
possess the ch'aracter of an abstraction."
The last example concerns the analysis of word meaning. Investi-
gations in this area show that the connections underlying words are
fundamentally different in the young child and in the adult. Children's
concepts relate to a series of examples and are constructed in a manner
similar to the way we represent family names. To name words for
them is not so much to indicate familiar concepts as to name familiar
families or whole groups of visual things connected by visual ties. In
this way the experience of the child and the "unmediated" influence of
the child's experience are documented in his memory and directly deter-
mine the entire structure of the young child's thought.
All these facts suggest that, from the point of view of psychological
development, memory rather than abstract thought is the definitive
 Mastery of Memory and Thinking
51

characteristic of the early stages of cognitive development. However, in

the course of development a transformation occurs, especially in adoles-
cence. Investigations of memory at this age have shown that toward
the end of childhood the interfunctional relations involving memory
reverse their direction. For the young child, to think means to recall;
but for the adolescent, to recall means to think. Her memory is so
"logicalized" that remembering is reduced to establishing and finding
logical relations; recognizing consists in discovering that element which
the task indicates has to be found.
This logicalization is indicative of how relations among cognitive
functions change in the course of development. At the transitional age all
ideas and concepts, all mental structures, cease to be organized accord-
ing to family types and become organized as abstract concepts.
There can be no doubt that to remember an item when thinking
in concepts is a completely different task from thinking in complexes,
although the processes are compatible with each other." Therefore, the
development of children's memory must be studied not only with respect
to changes happening within memory itself, but also with respect to
the relation between memory and other functions.

When a human being ties a knot in her handkerchief as a reminder,

she is, in essence, constructing the process of memorizing by forcing an
external object to remind her of something; she transforms remembering
into an external activity. This fact alone is enough to demonstrate the
fundamental characteristic of the higher forms of behavior. In the ele-
mentary form something is remembered; in the higher form humans
remember something. In the first case a temporary link is formed owing
to the simultaneous occurrence of two stimuli that affect the organism;
in the second case humans personally create a temporary link through
an artificial combination of stimuli.
The very essence of human memory consists in the fact that human
beings actively remember with the help of signs. It may be said that
the basic characteristic of human behavior in general is that humans
personally influence their relations with the environment and through
that environment personally change their behavior, subjugating it to
their control. .It has been remarked that the very essence of civilization
consists of purposely building monuments so as not to forget. In both
the knot and the monument we have manifestations of the most funda-
mental and characteristic feature distinguishing human from animal
memory.
 4

Internalization of Higher
Psychological Functions

When comparing the principles regulating unconditioned and con-

ditioned reflexes, Pavlov uses the example of a telephone call. One possi-
bility is for the call to connect two points directly via a special line. This
corresponds to an unconditioned reflex. The other possibility is for the
phone call to be relayed through a special, central station with the help
of temporary and limitlessly variable connections. This corresponds to a
conditioned reflex. The cerebral cortex, as the organ that closes the
conditioned reflex circuit, plays the role of such a central station.
The fundamental message of our analysis of the processes that
underlie the creation of signs (signalization) may be expressed by a
more generalized form of the same metaphor. Let us take the case of
tying a knot as a reminder or drawing lots as a means of decision making.
There is no doubt that in both cases a temporary conditioned connection
is formed, that is, a connection of Pavlov's second type. But if we wish
to grasp the essentials of what is happening here, we are forced to take
into consideration not only the function of the telephone mechanism but
also of the operator who plugged in and thus connected the line. In our
example, the connection was established by the person who tied the
knot. This feature distinguishes the higher forms of behavior {rom the
lower.
The invention and use of signs as auxiliary means of solving a given
psychological problem (to remember, compare something, report,
choose, and so on) is analogous to the invention and use of tools in one
psychological respect. The sign acts as an instrument of psychological
activity in a manner analggous to the' role of a tool in labor. But this
analogy, like any other, does not imply the identity of these similar
52
 Internalization of Higher Psychological Functions
53

concepts. We should not expect to find many similarities with tools in

those means of adaptation we call signs. What's more, in addition to the
similar and common feature shared by the two kinds of activity, we see
very essential differences.
Here we want to be as precise as possible. Leaning for support on
the term's figurative meaning, some psychologists have used the word'
"tool" when referring to the indirect function of an object as the means
for accomplishing some activity. Expressions such as "the tongue is
the tool of thought" or "aides de memoire" are usually bereft of any
definite content and hardly mean more than what they really are:
simple metaphors and more colorful ways of expressing the fact that
certain objects or operations play an auxiliary role in psychological
activity.
On the other hand, there have been many attempts to invest such
expressions with a literal meaning, to equate the sign with the tool. By
erasing the fundamental distinction between them, this approach loses
the specific characteristics of each type of activity and leaves us with
one general psychological form of determination. This is the position
adopted by Dewey, one of pragmatism's representatives. He defines the
tongue as the tool of tools, transposing Aristotle's definition of the human
hand to speech.
I wish it to be clear that the analogy between sign and tool that I
propose is diHerent from either of the approaches just discussed. The
uncertain, indistinct meaning that is usually read into the figurative
use of the word "tool" in no way eases the researcher's task. His task is
to uncover the real relationship, not the figurative one, that exists be-
tween behavior and its auxiliary means. Should we conceive of thought
or memory as being analogous to external activity? Do the "means of
activity" simply play the indefinite role of supporting the psychological
process that leans on them? What is the nature of this support? What in
general does it mean to be a "means" of thought or of memory? Psychol-
ogists who so enjoy using these fuzzy expressions furnish us with no
answer to these questions.
But the position of those psychologists who treat such expressions
literally turns out to be even fuzzier. Concepts that have a psychological
aspect but do not actuaIly belong to psychology-such as "technique"-
are psychologized without any grounds whatsoever. Equating psycho-
logical and nonpsychological phenomena is possible only if one ignores
the essence of each form of activity, as well as the differences between
their historic roles and nature. Distinctions between tools as a means of
labor, of mastering nature, and language as a means of social intercourse
Mind in Society
54

become dissolved in the general concept of artifacts or artificial adapta-

tions.
We seek to understand the behavioral role of the sign in all its
uniqueness. This goal has motivated our empirical studies of how both
tool and sign use are mutually linked and yet separate in the child's
cultural development. We have adopted three conditions as a starting
point for this work. The first pertains to the analogy and common points
of the two types of activity, the second clarifies their basic differences,
and the third attempts to demonstrate the real psychological link exist-
ing between the one and the other, or at least to hint at its existence.
As we have already noted, the basic analogy between sign and tool
rests on the mediating function that characterizes each of them. They
may, therefore, from the psychological perspective, be subsumed under
the same category. We can express the logical relationship between
the use of signs and of tools using the schema in figure 4, which shows
each concept subsumed under the more general concept of indirect
(mediated) activity.

I Mediated activity I
ISign/""
I ITool I
Figure 4

That concept, quite justly, was invested with the broadest general
meaning by Hegel, who saw in it a characteristic feature of human
reason: "Reason," he wrote, "is just as cunning as she is powerful. Her
cunning consists principally in her mediating activity which, by causing
objects to act and react on each other in accordance with their own
nature, in this way, without any direct interference in the process, car-
ries out reasons' intentions."! Marx cites that definition when speaking of
working tools, to show that man "uses the mechanical, physical, and
chemical properties of objects so as to make them act as forces that affect
other objects in order to fulfill his personal goals."2
This analysis provides a sound basis for assigning the use of signs
to the category of mediated activity, for the essence of sign use consists
in man's affecting behavior through signs. In both cases the indirect
(mediated) function comes to the forefront. I shall not define further the
relation of these jointly subsumed concepts to each other, or their rela-
tion to the more generic concept of mediated activity. I should only
 Internalization of High~ Psychological Functions
55

like to note that neither can, under any circumstance, be considered iso-
morphic with respect to the functions they perform, nor can they be
seen as fully exhausting the concept of mediated activity. A host of
other mediated activities might be named; cognitive activity is not
limited to the use of tools or signs.
On the purely logical plane of the relation between the two con- .
cepts, our schema represents the two means of adaptation as diverging
lines of mediated activity. This divergence is the basis for our second
point. A .most essential difference between sign and tool, and the basis
for the real divergence of the two lines, is the different ways that they
orient human behavior. The tool's function is to serve as the conductor
of human influence on the object of activity; it is externally oriented;
it must lead to changes in objects. It is a means by which human external
activity is aimed at mastering, and triumphing over, nature. The sign, on
the other hand, changes nothing in the object of a psychological opera-
tion. It is a means of internal activity aimed at mastering oneself; the
sign is internally oriented. These activities are so different from each
other that the nature of the means they use cannot be the same in both
cases.
Finally, the third point pertains to the real tie .between these activi-
ties and, hence, to the real tie of their development in phylo- and onto-
genesis. The mastering of nature and the mastering of behavior are
mutually linked, just as man's alteration of nature alters man's own
nature. In phylogenesis we can reconstruct this link through fragmentary
but convincing documentary evidence, while in ontogenesis we can
trace it experimentally.
One thing is already certain. Just as the first use of tools refutes the
notion that development represents the mere unfolding of the child's
organically predetermined system of activity, so the first use of signs
demonstrates that there cannot be a single organically predetermined
internal system of activity that exists for each psychological function.
The use of artificial means, the transition to mediated activity, funda-
mentally changes all psychological operations just as the use of tools
limitlessly broadens the range of activities within which the new
psychological functions may operate. In this context, we can use the
term higher psychological function, or higher behavior as referring to
the combination of tool and sign in psychological activity.
Several phases in the use of sign operations have been described
thus far. In the initial phase reliance upon external signs is crucial to the
child's effort. But through development these operations undergo radi-
cal changes: the entire operation of mediated activity (for example,
Mind in Society
56

memorizing) begins to take place as a purely internal process. Para-

doxically, late stages of the child's behavior appear to be the same as
early stages of memorizing, which were characterized by a direct
process. The very young child does not rely upon external means; rather
he uses a "natural,' "eidetic" approach. Judging only from external
appearances, it seems that the older child has simply begun to memorize
more and better; that she has somehow perfected and developed her
old methods of memorizing. At the highest levels she appears to have
abandoned any reliance upon signs. However, this appearance is only
illusory. Development, as often happens, proceeds here not in a circle
but in, a spiral, passing through the same point at each new revolution
while advancing to a higher level.
We call the internal reconstruction of an external operation in-
ternalization. A good example of this process may be found in the
development of pointing. Initially, this gesture is nothing more than an
unsuccessful attempt to grasp something, a movement aimed at a certain
object which designates forthcoming activity. The child attempts to
grasp an object placed beyond his reach; his hands, stretched toward
that object, remain poised in the air. His fingers make grasping move-
ments. At this initial stage pointi.ng is represented by the child's move-
ment, which seems to be pointing to an object-that and nothing more.
When the mother comes to the child's aid and realizes his move-
ment indicates something, the situation changes fundamentally. Pointing
becomes a gesture for others. The child's unsuccessful attempt engenders
a reaction not from the object he seeks but from another person. Conse-
quently, the primary meaning of that unsuccessful grasping movement
is established by others. Only later, when the child can link his unsuc-
cessful grasping movement to the objective situation as a whole, does he
begin to understand this movement as pointing. At this juncture there
occurs a change in that movement's function: from an object-oriented
movement it becomes a movement aimed at another person, a means of
establishing relations. The grasping movement changes to the act of
pointing. As a result of this change, the movement itself is then physi-
cally simplified, and what results is the form of pointing that we may
call a true gesture. It becomes a true gesture only after it objectively
manifests all the functions of pointing for others and is understood by
others as such a gesture. Its meaning and functions are created at first
by all objective situation and then by people who surround the child.
As the above description of pointing illustrates, the process of
internalization consists of a-series of transformations:
(a) An operation that initially represents an external activity is
 Internalization of Higher Psychological Functions
57

reconstructed and begins to occur internally. Of particular importance

to the development of higher mental processes is the transformation of
sign-using activity, the history and characteristics of which are illus-
trated by the development of practical intelligence, voluntary attention,
and memory.
(b) An interpersonal process is transformed into an intrapersonal
one. Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice:
first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between
people (interpsychological), and then inside the child (intrapsychologi-
cal). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and
to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual
relations between human individuals.
(c) The transformation of an interpersonal process into an intraper-
sonal one is the result of a long series of developmental events. The
process being transformed continues to exist and to change as an external
form of activity for a long time before definitively turning inward. For
many functions, the stage of external signs lasts forever, that is, it is their
final stage of development. Other functions develop further and gradu-
ally become inner functions. However, they take on the character of
inner processes only as a result of a prolonged development. Their
transfer inward is linked with changes in the laws governing their ac-
tivity; they are incorporated into a new system with its own laws.
The internalization of cultural forms of behavior involves the re-
construction of psychological activity on the basis of sign operations.
Psychological processes as they appear in animals actually cease to exist;
they are incorporated into this system of behavior and are culturally
reconstituted and developed to form a new psychological entity. The
use of external signs is also radically reconstructed. The developmental
changes in sign operations are akin to those that occur in language.
Aspects of external or communicative speech as well as egocentric
speech turn "inward" to become the basis of inner speech.
The internalization of socially rooted and historically developed ac-
tivities is the distinguishing feature of human psychology, the basis of
the qualitative leap from animal to human psychology. As yet, the
barest outline of this process is known.
 5

Problems of Method

In general, any fundamentally new approach to a scientific problem

inevitably leads to new methods of investigation and analysis. The in-
vention of new methods that are adequate to the new ways in which
problems are posed requires far more than a simple modification of
previously accepted methods. Contemporary psychological experimen-
tation is no exception in this respect; its methods have always reflected
the ways in which fundamental psychological problems were viewed
and solved. Therefore, our criticism of current views concerning the
essential nature and development of psychological processes must
inevitably result in a reexamination of methods of research.
Despite great diversity in procedural details, virtually all psycho-
logical experiments rely on what We shall term a stimulus-response
framework. By this we mean that no matter what psychological process
is under discussion, the psychologist seeks to confront the subject with
some kind of stimulus situation designed to influence him in a particular
way, and then the psychologist examines and analyzes the response(s)
elicited by that stimulating situation. After all, the very essence of
experimentation is to evoke the phenomenon under study in an artificial
(and thereby controllable) way and to study the variations in response
that occur in conjunction with various changes in the stimulus.
On the surface it may appear that various schools of psychology
could not possibly agree on this methodology. The objective psychology
of Watson, Bekhterev, and others, for example, was constructed in
opposition to the subjective theories of Wundt and the Wiirzburg school.
But closer examination of the differences between schools of psychology
reveals that those differences arise out of the theoretical interpretation

58
 Problems of Method
59

psychologists want to assign to the consequences of various stimulating

environments and not out of variations in the general methodological
approach within which observations are made.
Reliance on a stimulus-response framework is an obvious feature
of those schools of psychology whose theories as well as experiments are
based on stimulus-response interpretations of behavior. Pavlovian
theory, for example, has utilized the notion of cortical excitation incited
by various stimuli to explain how connections are formed in the brain
that enable the organism to learn to respond to hitherto neutral stimuli.
It may be less obvious that exactly the same framework applies to intro-
spective psychology as well, since the framework and the theory do
not seem to coincide. However, taking Wundt as an example, we find
that the stimulus-response framework provided the context within which
the experimenter-theorist could obtain descriptions of the processes
presumed to have been elicited by the stimulus.
The adoption of a stimulus-response framework by introspective
psychology in the 1880s was a revolutionary step forward for psychology
because it brought psychology closer to the method and spirit of the
natural sciences and prepared the way for the objective psychological
approaches that followed. But to claim that both introspective and ob-
jective psychology share a common methodological framework does
not in any way imply that there are no important differences between
them. I am emphasizing their common methodological framework be-
cause its recognition helps us to appreciate the fact that introspective
psychology was rooted in the firm soil of natural sciences and that
psychological processes have long been understood within a reactive
context.
It is also important to realize that the experimental method was first
formulated by introspective psychologists in that area of psychophysics
and psychophysiology that dealt with the simplest psychological phe-
nomena, phenomena that could plausibly be interpreted as directly and
uniquely linked to external agents. Wundt, for example, saw the very
essence of psychological method as the systematic alteration of the
stimuli that generate a change in the psychological process linked to
them. He sought the maximally objective way to record the external
manifestations of these internal processes, which is what he believed the
subject's introspective reports to be.
At the same time, it is important to keep in mind that for Wundt
the stimulus and response functioned only to set up the framework
within which the important events, psychological processes, could be
studied in a reliable and controlled way. Introspective reports of these
Mind in Society
60

processes remained the paramount evidence concerning their nature-

an interpretation not shared by later investigators.
Our description of the basic framework of psychological experi-
mentation as practiced by Wundt implies limitations on its application:
such experimentation was considered adequate only to the study of
elementary processes of a psychophysiological character. The higher
psychological functions did not allow study in this form and thus
remained a closed book as far as experimental psychology was con-
cerned. If we recall the kinds of experimentation on the cognitive de-
velopment of children that characterized the research reviewed in earlier
chapters of this book, we can easily understand why previous investi-
gators concentrated on elementary psychological functions; this limita-
tion is a built-in feature of the experimental method as it was generally
accepted in psychology. Wundt understood and accepted this fact,
which is why he eschewed experimental studies of higher psychological
functions.
From the foregoing it should be clear that a stimulus-response
framework for constructing experimental observations cannot serve as
the basis for the adequate study of the higher, specifically human forms
of behavior. At best it can only help us to record the existence of the
lower, subordinated' forms, which do not capture the essence of the
higher forms. Using current methods, we can only determine quanti-
tative variation in the complexity of stimuli and in the responses of
different animals and humans at different stages of development.
It is my belief, based upon a dialectical materialist approach to
the analysis of human history, that human behavior differs qualitatively
from animal behavior to the same extent that the adaptability and his-
torical development of humans differ from the adaptability and de-
velopment of animals. The psychological development of humans is
part of the general historical development of our species and must be
so understood. Acceptance of this proposition means that we must find
a new methodology for psychological experimentation.
The keystone of OUf method, which I will try to describe analyti-
cally in the following sections, follows directly from the contrast Engels
drew between naturalistic and dialectical approaches to the under-
standing of human history. Naturalism in historical analysis, according
to Engels, manifests itself in the assumption that only nature affects
human beings and only natural conditions determine historical develop-
ment. The dialectical approach, while admitting the influence of nature
on man, asserts that man, in turn, affects nature and creates through his
changes in nature new natural conditions for his existence.' This posi-
 Problems of Method
61

tion is the keystone of our approach to the study and interpretation

of man's higher psychological functions and serves as the basis for the
new methods of experimentation and analysis that we advocate.
All stimulus-response methods share the inadequacy that Engels
ascribes to naturalistic approaches to history. Both see the relation
between human behavior and nature as unidirectionally reactive. My
collaborators and I, however, believe that human behavior comes to
have that "transforming reaction on nature" which Engels attributed to
tools. We must, then, seek methods adequate to our conception. In
conjunction with new methods, we also need a new analytic framework.
I have emphasized that a basic goal of our research is to provide an
analysis of the higher forms of behavior, but the situation in contempo-
rary psychology is such that the problem of analysis itself must be dis-
cussed if our approach is to be generalized beyond the specific examples
presented.
Three principles form the basis of our approach to the analysis of
higher psychological functions.

Analyzing process, not objects. The first principle leads us to dis-

tinguish between the analysis of an object and of a process. As Ko£fka
put it, psychological analysis has almost always treated the processes
it analyzes as stable, fixed objects. The task of analysis consisted in
breaking these forms down into their components. Psychological anal-
ysis of objects should be contrasted with the analysis of processes, which
requires a dynamic display of the main points making up the processes'
history. Consequently, developmental psychology, not experimental
psychology, provides the new approach to analysis that we need. Like
Werner, we are advocating the developmental approach as an essential
addition to experimental psychology.f Any psychological process,
whether the development of thought or voluntary behavior, is a process
undergoing changes right before one's eyes. The development in ques-
tion can be limited to only a few seconds, or even fractions of seconds (as
is the case in normal perception). It can also (as in the case of complex
mental processes) last many days and even weeks. Under certain condi-
tions it becomes possible to trace this development. Werner's work
furnishes one example of how a developmental viewpoint may be
applied to experimental research. Using such an approach, one can,
under laboratory conditions, provoke development.
Our method may be called experimental-developmental in the
sense that it artificially provokes or creates a process of psychological
development. This approach is equally appropriate to the basic aim of
Mind in Society
62

dynamic analysis. If we replace object analysis by process analysis, then

the basic task of research obviously becomes a reconstruction of each
stage in the development of th~ process: the process must be turned
back to its initial stages.

Explanation versus description. In associationistic and introspective

psychology, analysis is essentially description and not explanation as
we understand it. Mere description does not reveal the actual causal-
dynamic relations that underlie phenomena.
K. Lewin contrasts phenomenological analysis, which is based on
external features (phenotypes), with what he calls genotypic analysis,
wherein a phenomenon is explained on the basis of its origin rather than
its outer appearance." The difference between these two points of view
can be elucidated by any biological example. A whale, from the point of
view of its outer appearance, stands closer to the fish family than to the
mammal, but in its biological nature it is closer to a cow or a deer than
to a pike or a shark. Following Lewin, we can apply this distinction
between the phenotypic (descriptive) and genotypic (explanatory)
viewpoints to psychology. By a developmental study of a problem, I
mean the disclosure of its genesis, its causal dynamic basis. By pheno-
typic I mean the analysis that begins directly with an object's current
features and manifestations. It is possible to furnish many examples from
psychology where serious errors have been committed because these
viewpoints have been confused. In our study of the development of
speech, we have emphasized the importance of the distinction between
phenotypic and genotypic similarities.
In their external, descriptive aspects, the first manifestation of
speech in the one-and-a-half to two-year-old child are similar to adult
speech. On the basis of this similarity, such serious researchers as Stern
come to the conclusion that in essence the eighteen-month-old child is
already conscious of the relation between sign and meaning." In other
words, he classes together phenomena that have absolutely nothing in
common from the developmental point of view. On the other hand, ego-
centric speech-which in its outer manifestations differs from internal
speech in essential ways-must be classed together with internal speech
from the developmental point of view.
Our research on young children's speech brings us to the basic
principle formulated by Lewin: two phenotypically identical or similar
processes may be radically different from each other in their causal-
dynamic aspects and vice versa; two processes that are very close in
their causal-dynamic nature may be very different phenotypically.
 Problems of Method
63

I have said that the phenotypic approach categorizes processes ac-

cording to their external similarities. Marx commented on the pheno-
typic appr~ach in a most general form when he stated that "if the
essence of objects coincided with the form of their outer manifestations,
then every science would be superfluous-c-an extremely reasonable
observation." If every object was phenotypically and genotypically'
equivalent (that is, if the true principles of its construction and opera-
tion were expressed by its outer manifestation), then everyday experi-
ence would fully suffice to replace scientific analysis. Everything we
saw would be the subject of our scientific knowledge.
In reality, psychology teaches us at every step that though two
types of activity can have the same external manifestation, whether in
origin or essence, their nature may differ most profoundly. In such cases
special means of scientific analysis are necessary in order to lay bare
internal differences that are hidden by external similarities. It is the
task of analysis to reveal these relations. In that sense, real scientific
analysis differs radically from subjective, introspective analysis, which
by its very nature cannot hope to go beyond pure description. The kind
of objective analysis we advocate seeks to lay bare the essence rather
than the perceived characteristics of psychological phenomena.
For example, we are not interested in a description of the immedi-
ate experience elicited by a flashing light as it is revealed to us by intro-
spective analysis; rather we seek to understand the real links between
the external stimuli and internal responses that underlie the higher form
of behavior named by introspective descriptions. Thus, psychological
analysis in our sense rejects nominal descriptions and seeks instead to
determine causal-dynamic relations. However, such explanation would
also be impossible if we ignored the external manifestations of things.
By necessity, objective analysis includes a scientific explanation of both
external manifestations and the process under study. Analysis is not
limited to a developmental perspective. It does not repudiate the expla-
nation of current phenotypical idiosyncrasies, but rather subordinates
them to the discovery of their" actual origin.
The problem of "fossilizedbehavior," The third principle under-
lying our analytic approach is based on the fact that in psychology we
often meet with processes that have already died away, that is, processes
that have gone through a very long stage of historical development and
have become fossilized. These fossilized forms of behavior are most
easily found in the so-called automated or mechanized psychological
processes which, owing to their ancient origins, are now being repeated
Mind in Society
64

for the millionth time and have become mechanized. They have lost
their original appearance, and their outer appearance tells us nothing
whatsoever about their internal nature. Their automatic character 'cre-
ates great difficulties for psychological analysis.
The processes that have traditionally been referred to as voluntary
and involuntary attention provide an elementary example that demon-
strates how essentially different processes acquire outer similarity as
a result of this automation. Developmentally speaking, these two pro-
cesses differ very profoundly. But in experimental psychology it is con-
sidered a fact, as formulated by Titchener, that voluntary attention,
once established, functions just like involuntary attention." In Titchener's
terms, "secondary" attention constantly changes into "primary" attention.
Having described and contrasted the two types of attention, Titchener
then says, "There exists, however, a third stage in the development of
attention, and it consists in nothing less than a return to the first stage."
The last and highest stage in the development of any process may
demonstrate a purely phenotypic similarity with the first or primary
stages, and if we take a phenotypic approach, it is impossible to dis-
tinguish between higher and lower forms of this process. The only way
to study this third and highest stage in the development of attention is to
understand it in all its idiosyncrasies and differences. In short, we need
to understand its origin. It follows, then, that we need to concentrate
not on the product of development but on the very process by which
higher forms are established. To do so the researcher is often forced
to alter the automatic, mechanized, fossilized character of the higher
form of behavior and to turn it back to its source through the experiment.
This is the aim of dynamic analysis.
Inactive, rudimentary functions stand not as the living remnants of
biological evolution but as those of the historical development of be-
havior. Consequently, the study of rudimentary functions must be the
point of departure for evolving a historical perspective in psychological
experiments. It is here that the past and the present are fused and the
present is seen in the light of history. Here r~e find ourselves simultane-
ously on two planes: that which is and that which was. The fossilized
form is the end of the thread that ties the present to the past, the higher
stages of development to the primary ones.
The concept of a historically based psychology is misunderstood
by most researchers who study child development. For them, to study
something historically means, by definition, to study some past event.
Hence, they naively imagine an insurmountable barrier between his-
toric study and study of present-day behavioral forms. To study some-
 Problems of Method
65

thing historically means to study it in the process of change; that is the

dialectical method's basic demand. To encompass in research the process
of a given thing's development in all its phases and changes-from birth
to death-s-fundamentally means to discover its nature, its essence, for "it
is only in movement that a body shows what it is." Thus, the historical
study of behavior is not an auxiliary aspect of theoretical study, but
rather forms its very base. As P. P. Blonsky has stated, "Behavior can be
understood only as the history of behavior."?
The search for method becomes one of the most important prob-
lems of the entire enterprise of understanding the uniquely human forms
of psychological activity. In this case, the method is simultaneously pre-
requisite and product, the tool and the result of the study.
In summary, then, the aim of psychological analysis and its essen-
tial factors are as follows: (1) process analysis as opposed to object anal-
ysis; (2) analysis that reveals real, causal or dynamic relations as op-
posed to enumeration of a process's outer features, that is, explanatory,
not descriptive, analysis; and (3) developmental analysis that returns to
the source and reconstructs all the points in the development of a given
structure. The result of development will be neither a purely psycho-
logical structure such as descriptive psychology considers the result to
be, nor a simple sum of elementary processes such as associationistic
psychology saw it, but a qualitatively new form that appears in the
process of development.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF COMPLEX ·CHOICE RESPONSES

In order to illustrate the contrasting approaches to psychological
analysis, I will discuss in some detail two different analyses of one task.
In the task I have chosen, the subject is presented one or more stimuli
(visually or auditorily as a rule). TIle required response differs according
to the number of stimuli and the interests of the investigator: some
approaches seek to break the reaction down into a series of elementary
processes whose durations can be added and subtracted to establish the
laws of their combination; others seek to describe the emotional reaction
of the subject as he responds to the stimulus. In either case, the subjects'
introspective analyses of their responses are used as basic data. In these
experiments the inadequacies of prior formulations provide useful illus-
trations of our basic analytic principles."
It is also characteristic of these analyses that complex and simple
responses are distinguished primarily by the quantitative complexity of
the stimuli: a simple reaction is said to occur when a single stimulus is
Mind in Society
66

presented, and the complexity of the response is said to increase with

an increasing number of stimuli. An essential presumption in this line
of thinking is that the complexity of the task is identical to the com-
plexity of the subject's internal response.
This identity is clearly expressed in the algebraic formulas com-
monly used in the analysis of responses to such tasks. If we present a
single stimulus, we can write an equation in which the complex reac-
tion is equivalent to a simple reaction (sensory recognition): R t = R,
where R, is the response time for the total, complex reaction and R s is the
response time for a single recognition reaction. If we present two or
more stimuli, from which the subject must select one, this equation be-
comes: R, = R, + D, where P is the time taken to discriminate between
the target stimulus and the remainder. Using these two equations, we
could establish the time required both for a simple reaction and for the
discriminative reaction. If we complicate the task by requiring the sub-
ject to choose a different response for each stimulus (for example, press
the left-hand key for stimulus A and the right-hand key for stimulus B),
we obtain the classical choice reaction formula: R t = R, +D + C,
where C is the time required to choose the correct movement, for ex-
ample, to press the key corresponding to the stimulus presented.
A verbal description of the theory underlying this set of formulas
would be the following: the discrimination response is a simple reaction
plus discrimination; the choice reaction is a simple reaction plus dis-
crimination plus choice. The higher, more complex response is Seen as
the arithmetic sum of its elementary components.
Proponents of this analytic approach apply it quite widely. Thus,
for example, Cattell believes that by subtracting the time needed to
comprehend and name a word from the time needed to comprehend,
translate a word into another language, and name it, we can obtain a
pure measure of the translation process." In short, even higher processes
such as speech comprehension and production can be analyzed by these
methods. A more mechanical notion of the complex, higher forms of
behavior would be hard to imagine.
However, this analytic approach has been shown to lead to a variety
of difficulties. The most basic, empirical observation that contradicts
this theory comes from Titchener, who pointed out that the time to
execute a carefully prepared choice reaction may be equal to the reaction
time for a simple, sensory response. By the logic of the analysis summa-
rized in the equations given above, this state of affairs is impossible.
In our view, the basic premise underlying this entire line of analysis
, of a chain of
is incorrect. It is not true that a complex reaction consists
 Problem« of Method
67

separate processes which may be arbitrarily added and subtracted. Any

such reaction reflects processes that depend upon the entire process of
learning at every level of practice. This mechanical analysis substi-
tutes relations existing between stimuli for the real relations under-
lying the process of choosing. This kind of substitution reflects a general
intellectualism in psychology which seeks to understand psychological
processes in, the manipulations that make up the experiment itself;
experimental procedures become surrogates for psychological processes.
While various scholars have demonstrated the inadequacy of psy-
chological analysis based upon a mechanical decomposition of responses
into their elements, these critics face the problem that their introspective
analyses of complex reactions must be restricted to description: the
description of external responses is replaced by the description of inter-
nal feelings. In either case, we are restricted to phenotypical psychologi-
cal analysis.
Introspective analysis in which highly trained observers are in-
structed to note every aspect of their own conscious experience cannot
carry us very far. A curious result of this work, as Ach put it in discussing
choice reaction studies, has been the discovery that there are no con-
scious feelings of choice in the choice reaction. to Titchener emphasized
that one must keep in mind the fact that the names given to a complex
or simple reaction (for example, "differentiation" or "choice") refer to
the external conditions of the task. We do not differentiate in the diHer-
entiation reaction and we do not choose in the choice reaction.
This kind of analysis broke the identity between experimental pro-
cedures and psychological processes. Process names like "choosing" and
"differentiating" were treated as leftovers from a previous era of psy-
chology when experimentation was still unknown: introspective ob-
servers were trained to make a clear distinction between process names
and their conscious experience in order to circumvent this problem.
These introspective studies resulted in the conclusion that a situation
which seems to require choice processes furnishes no grounds for speak-
ing of a psychological choice response; talk of such responses was
replaced by a description of the subjects' feelings during the experiment.
But no one could provide evidence that these feelings were an integral
part of the particular response process. It seems more likely that they
are only one of its components, and require explanation themselves; we
are led to conclude that introspection is often unable to provide an
accurate description, let alone a correct explanation) for even the sub-
jective aspect of the response. For the same reasons, the frequent
discrepancies among the introspective descriptions of various observers
Mind in Society
68

which plague this area of research might be expected. It should be clear

that introspective analysis cannot provide a real causal or dynamic
explanation of a process; for that to occur, we must give up reliance on
phenotypic appearances and move to a developmental viewpoint.
Research on complex reactions also illustrates psychology's reliance
on the analysis of processes only after they have become fossilized.
This point was noted by Titchener, who remarked that researchers
have concentrated on the reaction time of the responses they study, not
on the learning processes or the content of the reaction itself. This same
conclusion is seen clearly in the standard practice of discarding the
data from early sessions when the response is being established. Uni-
formity was sought, so that it was never possible to grasp the process in
flight; instead, researchers routinely discarded the critical time when a
reaction appears and when its functional links are established and
adjusted. Such practices lead us to characterize the responses as "fossil-
ized." They reflect the fact that these psychologists were not interested
in complex reactions as a process of development. This approach is also
a major cause of the confusions which arose concerning complex and
simple reactions that have surface similarities. It might be said that
complex reactions have been studied postmortem.
Another perspective on this issue can be gained from comparing
complex reactions with reflexes, which are psychologically different in
many respects. One point of comparison will suffice for purposes of
illustration. It is well known that the latent period for a complex re-
action is longer than the latent period for a reflex. But Wundt long ago
established that the latent period of a complex reaction decreases with
'practice. As a result, the latency of the complex reaction and the simple
reflex become equivalent. The most important differences between a
complex reaction and a reflex are usually most apparent when" the
reaction is in its early stages; as practice proceeds, the differences
become more and more obscured. Therefore, the differences between
these two forms of behavior should be sought in the analysis of their
development. But instead of increasing the discernible differences be-
tween them, investigations of well-practiced choice reactions and reflexes
hide these differences. The preparatory trials demanded by standard
experimental methods often last for several long sessions. When these
data are then discarded or ignored, the researcher is left with an automa-
tized reaction that has lost its developmental difference from a reflex
and has acquired a surface, phenotypical similarity to it. These factors
have led to our assertion that previous researchers have studied reactions
in psychological experiments only after they have become fossilized.
 Problems of Method
69

This discussion of traditional analyses of complex reaction defines,

albeit negatively, the basic tasks confronting us. In order to obtain the
kind of causal-dynamic analysis we have been advocating, we will have
to shift the focus of our research.

A CAUSAL-DYNAMIC STUDY OF CHOICE REACTIONS

Obviously, the early sessions during which a reaction is formed are
of crucial concern because only data from this period will reveal the
reaction's true origin and its links to other processes. Through an
objective study of the entire history of the reaction, we can obtain an
integrated explanation of both its internal and surface manifestations.
Thus, we will want to study the reaction as it appears initially, as it
takes shape, and after it is firmly formed, constantly keeping in mind the
dynamic flow of the entire process of its development.
From my previous discussion, another part of the task is clear: the
complex reaction must be studied as a living process, not as an object.
We must transform the reaction back to its source if we encounter it in
automatized fonn.
When we examine the experimental procedures used in complex
reactions, we find that all are restricted to meaningless connections
between stimuli and responses. The subject is presented several stimuli
to which he must respond in different ways: neither the relations
between the stimuli and the required responses nor the sequence in
which the stimuli are presented have any significance from the subject's
point of view. When a motor response, such as a key press, is required,
subjects may make the movement in any way they like. These conven-
tions render the relations among the elements of the problem mechanical
in principle and place the procedures on a plane with the research on
memory that uses nonsense stimuli.
This analogy between choice reaction and memory studies can be
extended by considering the similarity of the role of repetition in the two
tasks. Although no one has dwelt on a study of the practice trials in
choice reaction studies, it is safe to conclude that if the reaction is
formed through repeated training (or training plus written or oral
instruction), it has been learned by rote, just as learning the connection
between two nonsense syllables is a rate process. If simple reactions
were involved and the subject was given extensive explanation ahead of
time so that the relation between stimulus and response were meaningful
(for example, push key number 1 when I say "one,' push key number 2
when I say "two"), we would be dealing with already existing links. In
Mind in Society
70

neither case could we study the process of organizing the reaction,

during which its underlying links would be discoverable.
To make all of this clear, let us trace the stages through which the
choice reaction moves, first in experiments with adults and then with
children.
If we set up a relatively simple choice reaction, say, pressing a
button with the left hand when a red stimulus is shown and pressing
with the right hand when a green stimulus is shown, adults quickly
acquire a stable response. Suppose, however, we increase the number
.of stimuli and responses to five or six and diversify the responses so
that the subject has to respond not only with both hands, but sometimes
pressing a button and sometimes simply by moving a finger. With this
larger number of stimulus-response pairings, the task is considerably
more difficult. Suppose further that instead of a lengthy pretraining
period in which the subject is allowed to learn the stimulus-response
relations, we give only minimal instructions. Faced with this situation,
adults often refused even to attempt to deal with the problem, objecting
that they could not remember what to do. Even after the session started,
they, kept repeating the instructions to themselves, asked about aspects
of the task they had forgotten, and generally sought to master the entire
system of relations as a whole before they settled down to the task as it is
usually conceived.
However, if we placed additional stimuli on the response buttons
and keys in a manner analogous to the procedures in previously de-
scribed memory studies, the adults immediately used these auxiliary
means to remember the necessary stimulus-response relations.
Among young children, a different picture emerged. We first pre-
sented the problem as we did with adults, by asking the child to make a
number of different responses to different stimuli. Unlike the adults,
children six to eight years of age often started right into the task after
listening to the instructions and attempted to follow them without the
slightest hesitation. As soon as the experiment began, most children
found themselves in great difficulty. If a child recalled one or two of the
required relations and responded correctly to those stimuli, he would
naively ask about the remaining stimuli, treating each of them in isola-
tion from each other. This behavior contrasted with that of the adults
who generally failed to deal effectively with the individual stimuli until
all the necessary relations were mastered. We view this behavior on the
part of the children as evidence that they are in the stage of responding
to the task in a natural or primitive manner because they rely on unmedi-
ated memory for the task elements. The fact that children would unhesi-
 Pl'oblems of Method
71

tatingly accept the challenge of establishing a complex choice response

to as many as ten stimuli suggests that they do .not yet know their own
capacities and limitations. They operate with complex tasks in the same
way they operate with simple ones.
The child's behavior also differs from adult behavior when we
introduce auxiliary stimuli, although we can discern the beginnings of
the restructuring that characterize the adult.
First, we introduce auxiliary stimuli that bear a clear relation to
the primary stimuli with which we began. For example, if the primary
stimulus was a horse, in response to which the child was supposed to
press a key with his left index finger, we pasted a picture of a sleigh on
that key. On the key corresponding to a loaf of bread we pasted a picture
of a knife. In this case, the child understands that sleigh goes with horse,
the knife with- bread, and so on. Choice reactions are smoothly estab-
lished from the outset. Furthermore, it does not matter how many stimuli
and responses are involved; the qualitative features of responding re-
main the same. The child quickly works out a rule for the problem's
solution and makes his choice on the basis of this rule.
It would be incorrect, however, to assume that the child has mas-
tered a mediated system of behavior in its full, adult form. We need only
to change the relations among the primary and auxiliary stimuli to
discover the limits of the child's response system. If we pair the stimuli
in a different way (say, horse with knife, bread with sleigh) the child will
no longer use the auxiliary stimuli in a proper way. The child recalls
only that horse helped to find sleigh in some way. He reveals by his
responses that he had been using the conventional association of horse
and sleigh to guide the choice, but had not mastered the internal logic of
using one stimulus to mediate the response to another.
If we continue our experiment long enough, we will begin to see
changes in the way the child responds. In the first stage of responding
to arbitrarily related stimuli, the child has insufficient experience with
the task to organize his behavior effectively. He uses experience naively,
But in the course of the experiment, he gains experience necessary for
restructuring his behavior. Just as naive physical knowledge is acquired
as the child operates with objects, knowledge of psychological operations
is acquired as the child strives to carry out the choice reaction task. As
he attempts to recall which stimuli are linked to which responses, the
child begins to learn what remembering in this situation consists of and
begins to use one or another of the auxiliary stimuli effectively. The child
begins to realize that certain relations among the stimuli and auxiliary
pictures produce correct choice responses, while others do not. He soon
Mind in Society
72

begins to object to the arrangement of pictures, asking that the pictures

on the keys be arranged to fit the primary stimuli that are associated
with the key. When told to press the bread key in response to the horse
picture, the child answers 4:'No, I want the sleigh key." This shows that
the child is accumulating experience which is changing the structure of
his own memorizing.
Having naively comprehended what the memorizing operations
require, the child moves to the following stage. If presented with primary
and auxiliary stimuli in an arrangement that seems haphazard, the child
will ask to put them in a special order, thus personally establishing a
specific relation between them. At this point the child is showing that
he knows that certain signs will help to achieve certain operations. In
short, he is beginning to memorize through the use of signs.
Once this happens, the child no longer experiences difficulties in
creating relations and using them. Given some pairing of primary and
auxiliary stimuli, the child is no longer restricted to using already avail-
able relations (such as horse-sleigh) but can create relations of his own.
This may be called the stage of external sign use. It is characterized" by
the independent formation of new relations in the child's internal opera-
tions using externally presented signs. Now the child is organizing
external stimuli to carry out its responses. This fundamental stage is
then followed by the stage at which the child begins to organize stimuli
of an internal nature.
These changes are manifested in the course of the choice reaction
experiment. After considerable practice in the choice experiment, the
reaction time begins to grow shorter and shorter. If the reaction time to
a particular stimulus had been 500 milliseconds or more, it reduces to a
mere 200 milliseconds. The longer reaction time reflected the fact that
the child was using external means to carry out the operations of
remembering which key to push. Gradually, the child casts off the
external stimuli, no longer paying attention to them. The response to
the external auxiliary stimuli is replaced by a response to internally
produced stimuli. In its most developed form, this internal operation
co.nsists of the child grasping the very structure of the process, learning
to understand the laws according to which external signs must be used.
When this stage is reached, the child will say, "I don't need pictures
anymore. I'll do it myself."

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE NEW MEmOD

I have attempted to demonstrate that the course of child develop-
ment is characterized by a radical alteration in the very structure of
 Problems of Method
13

behavior; at each new stage the child changes not only her response
but carries out that response in new ways, drawing on new "instruments'
of behavior and replacing one psychological function by another. Psy-
chological operations that were achieved through direct forms of adapta-
tion at early stages are later accomplished through indirect means. The
growing complexity of children's behavior is reflected in the changed.
means they use to fulfill new tasks and the corresponding reconstruction
of their psychological processes..
Our concept of development implies a rejection of the frequently
held view that cognitive development results from the gradual accumu-
lation of separate changes. We believe that child development is a
complex dialectical process characterized by periodicity, unevenness in'
the development of different functions, metamorphosis or qualitative
transfo;rmation of one form into another, intertwining of external and
internal factors, and adaptive processes which overcome impediments
that the child encounters. Steeped in the notion of evolutionary change,
most workers in child psychology ignore those turning points, those
spasmodic and revolutionary changes that are so frequent in the history
of child development. To the naive mind, revolution and evolution seem
incompatible and historic development continues only so long as it
follows a straight line. Where upheavals occur, where the historical
fabric is ruptured, the naive mind sees only catastrophe, gaps, and dis-
continuity. History seems to stop dead, until it once again takes the
direct, linear path of development.
Scientific thought, on the contrary, sees revolution and evolution as
two forms of development that are mutually related and mutually
presuppose each other. Leaps in the child's development are seen by the
scientific mind as no more than a moment in the general line of
development.
As I have repeatedly emphasized, an essential mechanism of the
reconstructive processes that take place during a child's development is
the creation and use of a number of artificial stimuli. These play an
auxiliary role that permits human beings to master their own behavior,
at first by external means and later by more complex inner operations.
Our approach to the study of cognitive functioning does not require
the experimenter to furnish subjects with ready-made, external or arti-
ficial means in order that they may successfully complete the given
task. The experiment is equally valid if, instead of giving children
artificial means, the experimenter waits until they spontaneously apply
some new auxiliary method or symbol that they then incorporate into
their operations.
The specific area to which we apply this approach is not important.
Mind in Society
74

We might study the development of memorizing in children by making

available to them new means for solving the given task and then observ-
ing the degree and character of their problem-solving efforts. We
might use this method to study how children organize their active
attention with the aid of external means. We might trace the develop-
ment of arithmetic skills in young children by making them manipulate
objects and apply methods either suggested to them or "invented" by
them. What is crucial is that in all these cases we must adhere to one
principle. We study not only the final effect of the operation, but its
specific psychological structure. In all these cases, the psychological
structure of the development appears with much greater richness and
variety than in the classic method of the simple stimulus-response ex-
periment. Although stimulus-response methodology makes it extremely
easy to ascertain subjects' responses, it proves ,useless when our objective
is to discover the means and methods that subjects use to organize their
own behavior.
Our approach to the study of these processes is to use what we call
the functional method of double stimulation. The task facing the child
in the experimental context is, as a rule, beyond his present capabilities
and cannot be solved by existing skills. In such cases a neutral object is
placed near the child, and frequently we are able to observe how the
neutral stimulus is drawn into the situation and takes on the function of
a sign. Thus, the child actively incorporates these neutral objects into
the task of problem solving. We might say that when difficulties arise,
neutral stimuli take on the function of a sign and from that point on the
operation's structure assumes an essentially different character.
By using this approach, we do not limit ourselves to the usual
method of offering the subject simple stimuli to which we expect a
direct response. Rather, we simultaneously offer a second series of
stimuli that have a special function. In this way, we are able to study the
process of accomplishing a task by the aid of specific auxiliary means;
thus we are-also able to discover the inner structure and development of
the higher psychological processes.
The method of double stimulation elicits manifestations of the
crucial processes in the behavior of people of all ages. Tying a knot as a
reminder, in both children and adults, is but one example of a pervasive
regulatory principle of human behavior, that of signification, wherein
people create temporary links and give significance to previously neutral
stimuli in the context of their problem-solving efforts.
We regard our method as important because it helps to objectify
inner psychological processes; stimulus-response methods are objective,
 Problems of Method
15

but they are limited to the study of external responses that are usually
in the subject's repertoire to begin with. We believe that our approach
to objectifying inner psychological processes is much more adequate,
where the goals of psychological research are concerned, than the
method of studying preexisting, objective responses.'! Only the objecti-
fication of the inner process guarantees access to specific forms of higher
behavior as opposed to subordinate forms.
Part Two / Mind in Society

Educational
Implications
 6

Interaction between
Learning and Development

The problems encountered in the psychological analysis of teaching

cannot be correctly resolved or even formulated without addressing the
relation between learning and development in school-age children. Yet
it is the most unclear of all the basic issues on which the application of
child development theories to educational processes depends. Needless
to say, the lack of theoretical clarity does not mean that the issue is
removed altogether from current research efforts into learning; not one
study can avoid this central theoretical issue. But the relation between
learning and development remains methodologically unclear because
concrete research studies have embodied theoretically vague, critically
unevaluated, and sometimes internally contradictory postulates, prem-
ises, and peculiar solutions to the problem of this fundamental relation-
ship; and these, of course, result in a variety of errors.
Essentially, all current conceptions of the relation between develop-
ment and learning in children can be reduced to three major theoretical
positions.
The first centers on the assumption that processes of child develop-
ment are independent of learning. Learning is considered a purely
external process that is not actively involved in development. It merely
utilizes the achievements of development rather than providing an
impetus for modifying its course.
In experimental investigations of the development of thinking in
school children, it has been assumed that processes such as deduction
and understanding, evolution of notions about the world, interpretation
of physical causality, and mastery of logical forms of thought and ab-
stract logic all occur by themselves, without any .influence from school

79
Mind in Society
80

learning. An example of such a theory is Piaget's extremely complex and

interesting theoretical principles, which also shape the experimental
methodology he employs. The questions Piaget uses in the course of his
"clinical conversations" with children clearly illustrate his approach.
When a five-year-old is asked "why doesn't the sun fall?" it is assumed
that the child has neither a ready answer for such a question nor the
general capabilities for generating one. The point of asking questions
that are so far beyond the reach of the child's intellectual skills is to
eliminate the influence of previous experience and knowledge. The
experimenter seeks to obtain the tendencies of children's thinking in
"pure" form, entirely independent of learning.'
Similarly, the classics of psychological literature, such as the works
by Binet and others, assume that development is always a prerequisite
for learning and that if a child's mental functions (intellectual operations)
have not matured to the extent that he is capable of learning a particular
subject, then no instruction will prove useful. They especially feared
premature instruction, the teaching of a subject before the child was
ready for it. All effort was concentrated on finding the lower threshold of
learning ability, the age at which a particular kind of learning first
becomes possible.
Because this approach is based on the premise that learning trails
behind development, that development always outruns learning, it
precludes the notion that learning may playa role in the course of the
development or maturation of those functions activated in the course of
learning. Development or maturation is viewed as a precondition of
learning but never the result of it. To summarize this position: Learning
forms a superstructure over development, leaving the latter essentially
unaltered.
The second major theoretical position is that learning is develop-
ment. This identity is the essence of a group of theories that are quite
diverse in origin.
One such theory is based on the concept of reflex, an essentially
old notion that has been extensively revived recently. Whether reading,
writing, or arithmetic is being considered, development is viewed' as the
mastery of conditioned reflexes; that is, the process of learning is com-
pletely and inseparably blended with the process of development. This
notion was elaborated by James, who reduced the learning process to
habit formation and identified the learning process with development.
Reflex theories have at least one thing in common with theories '"
such as Piaget's: in both, development is conceived of as the elaboration
and substitution of innate responses. As James expressed it, "Education,
 Interaction between Learning and Development
81

in short, cannot be better described than by calling it the organization

of acquired habits of conduct and tendencies to behavior."2 Develop-
ment itself is reduced primarily to the accumulation of all possible
responses. Any acquired response is considered either a more complex
form of or a substitute for the innate response.
But despite the similarity between the first and second theoretical
positions, there is a major difference in their assumptions about the
temporal relationship between learning and developmental processes.
Theorists who hold the first view assert that developmental cycles pre-
cede learning cycles; maturation precedes learning and instruction must
lag behind mental growth. For the second group of theorists, both
processes occur simultaneously; learning and development coincide at
all points in the same way that two 'identical geometrical figures coincide
when superimposed.
The third theoretical position on the relation between learning and
development attempts to overcome the extremes of the other two by
simply combining them. A clear example of this approach is Koflka's
theory, in which development is based on two inherently different but
related processes, each of which influences the other," On the one hand
is maturation, which depends directly on the development of the nervous
system; on the other hand is learning, which itself is also a developmental
process. _
Three aspects of this theory are new. First, as we already noted, is
the combination of two seemingly opposite viewpoints, each of which
has been encountered separately in the history of science. The very fact
that these two viewpoints can be combined into one theory indicates
that they are not opposing and mutually exclusive but have something
essential in common. Also new is the idea that the two processes that
make up development are mutually dependent and interactive. Of
course, the nature of the interaction is left virtually unexplored in
Koflka's work, which is limited solely to very general remarks regarding
the relation between these two processes. It is clear that for Koffka the
process of maturation prepares and makes possible a specific process of
learning. The learning process then stimulates and pushes forward the
maturation process. The third and most important new aspect of thiS'
theory is the expanded role it ascribes to learning in child developmentl
This emphasis leads us directly to an old pedagogical problem, that of
formal discipline and the problem of transfer.
Pedagogical movements that have emphasized formal discipline and
urged the teaching of classical languages, ancient civilizations, and
mathematics have assumed that regardless of the irrelevance of these
Mind in Society
82

particular subjects for daily living, they were of the greatest value for
the pupil's mental development. A variety of studies have called into
question the soundness of this idea. It has been shown that learning in
one area has very little influence on overall development. For example,
reflex theorists Woodworth and Thorndike found that adults who, after
special exercises, had achieved considerable success in determining the
length of short lines, had made virtually no progress in their ability to
determine the length of long lines. These same adults were successfully
trained to estimate the size of a given two-dimensional figure, but this
training did not make them successful in estimating the size of a series
of other two-dimensional figures of various sizes and shapes.
According to Thorndike, theoreticians in psychology and education
believe that every particular response acquisition directly enhances
overall ability in equal measure.' Teachers believed and acted on the
basis of the theory that the mind is a complex of abilities-powers of
observation, attention, memory, thinking, and so forth-and that any
improvement in any specific ability results in a general improvement in
all abilities. According to this theory, if the student increased the atten-
tion he paid to Latin grammar, he would increase his abilities to focus
attention on any task. The words "accuracy," "quick-wittedness,' "ability
to reason," "memory,' "power of observation," "attention," "concentra-
tion," and so forth are said to denote actual fundamental capabilities
that vary in accordance with the material with which they operate; these
basic abilities are substantially modified by studying particular subjects,
and they retain these modifications when they tum to other areas. There-
fore, if someone learns to do any single thing well, he will also be able
to do other entirely unrelated things well as a result of some secret
connection. It is assumed that mental capabilities function indepen-
dently of the material with which they operate, and that the development
of one ability entails the development of others.
Thorndike himself opposed this point of view. Through a variety of
studies he showed that particular forms of activity, such as spelling,
are dependent on the maste!y of specific skills and material necessary for
the performance of that particular task. The development of one particu-
lar capability seldom means the development of others. Thorndike
argued that specialization of abilities is even greater than superficial
observation may indicate. For example, if, out of a hundred individuals
we choose ten who display the ability to detect spelling errors or to
measure lengths, it is unlikely that these ten will display better abilities
regarding, for example, the' estimation of the weight of objects. In the
 Interaction between Learning and Development
83

same way, speed and accuracy in adding numbers are entirely unrelated
to speed and accuracy in being able to think up antonyms.
This research shows that the mind is not a complex network of
general capabilities such as observation, attention, memory, judgment,
and so forth, but a set of specific capabilities, each of which is, to some
extent, independent of the others and is developed independently.
Learning is more than the acquisition of the ability to think; it is the
acquisition of many specialized abilities for thinking about a variety of
things. Learning does not alter our overall ability to focus attention but
rather develops various abilities to focus attention on a variety of things.
According to this view, special training affects overall development only
when its elements, material, and processes are similar across specific
domains, habit governs us. This leads to the conclusion that because
each activity depends on the material with which it operates, the
development of consciousness is the development of a set of particular,
independent capabilities or of a set of particular habits. Improvement
of one function of consciousness or one aspect of its activity can affect
the development of another only to the extent that there are elements
common to both functions or activities.
Developmental theorists such as KoHka and the Gestalt School-who
hold to the third theoretical position outlined earlier-oppose Thorn-
dike's point of view. They assert that the influence of learning is never
specific. From their study of structural principles, they argue that the
learning process can never be reduced simply to the formation of skills
but embodies an intellectual order that makes it possible to transfer
general principles discovered in solving one task to a variety of other
tasks. From this point of view, the child, while learning a particular
operation, acquires the ability to create structures of a certain type,
regardless of the diverse materials with which she is working and regard-
less of the particular elements involved. Thus, Koffka does not conceive
of learning as limited to a process of habit and skill acquisition. The
relationship he posits between learning and development is not that of
an identity but of a more complex relationship. According to Thorndike,
learning and development coincide at all points, but for Koffka, develop-
ment is always a larger set than learning. Schematically, the relationship
between the two processes could be depicted by two concentric circles,
the smaller symbolizing the learning process and the larger the develop-
mental process evoked by learning.
Once a child has learned to perform an operation, he thus assimilates
some structural principle whose sphere of application is other than just
Mind in Society
84

the operations of the type on whose basis the principle was assimilated.
Consequently, in making one step in learning, a child makes two steps in
development, that is, learning and development do not coincide. This
, concept is the essential aspect of the third group of theories we have
discussed.

ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT:

A NEW APPROACH
Although we reject all three theoretical positions discussed above,
analyzing them leads us to a more adequate view of the relation between
learning and development. The question to be framed in arriving at a
solution to this problem is complex. It consists of two separate issues:
first, the general relation between learning and development; and
second, the specific features of this relationship when children reach
school age.
That children's learning begins long before they attend school is
the starting point of this discussion. Any learning a child encounters in
school always has a previous history. For example, children begin to
study arithmetic in school, but long beforehand they have had some
experience with quantity-they have had to deal with operations of
division, addition, subtraction, and determination of size. Consequently,
children have their own preschool arithmetic, which only myopic
psychologists could ignore.
It goes without saying that learning as it occurs in the preschool
years differs markedly from school learning, which is concerned with the
assimilation of the fundamentals of scientific knowledge. But even when,
in the period of her first questions, a child assimilates the names of
objects in her environment, she is learning. Indeed, can it be doubted
that children learn speech from adults; or that, through asking questions
and giving answers, children acquire a variety of information; or that,
through imitating adults and through being instructed about how to
act, children develop an entire repository of skillsi'll.earning and devel-
opment are interrelated from the child's very first day of life. 1
KoHka, attempting to clarify the laws of child learning and their
relation to mental development, concentrates his attention on the sim-
plest learning processes, those that occur in the preschool years. His error
is that, while seeing a similarity between preschool andschool learning,
he fails to discern the difference-he does not see the specifically new
elements that school learning introduces. He and others assume that
the difference between preschool and school learning consists of non-
 Interaction between Learning and Development
85

systematic learning in one case and systematic learning in the other.

But "systematicness" is not the only issue; there is also the fact that
school learning introduces something fundamentally new into the child's
development. In order to elaborate the dimensions of schoolleaming, we
will describe a new and exceptionally important concept without which
the issue cannot be resolved: the zone of proximal development.
A well known and empirically established fact is that learning
should be matched in some manner with the child's developmental level.
For example, it has been established that the teaching of reading, writ-
ing, and arithmetic should be initiated at a specific age level. Only
recently, however, has attention been directed to the fact that we cannot
limit ourselves merely to determining developmental levels if we wish to
discover the actual relations of the developmental process to learning
capabilities. We must determine at least two developmental levels.
The first level can be called the actual developmental level, that is,
the level of development of a child's mental functions that has been
established as a result of certain already completed developmental
cycles. When we determine a child's mental age by using tests, we are
almost always dealing with the actual developmental level. In studies
of children's mental development it is generally assumed that only those
things that children can do on their own are indicative of mental abilities.
We give children a battery of tests or a variety of tasks of varying
degrees of difficulty, and we judge the extent of their mental develop-
ment on the basis of how they solve them and at what level of difficulty.
On the other hand, if we offer leading questions or show how the problem
is to be solved and the child then solves it, or if the teacher initiates
the solution and the child completes it or solves it in collaboration with
other children-in short, if the child barely misses an independent
solution of the problem-the solution is not regarded as indicative of his
mental development. This "truth" was familiar and reinforced by com-
mon sense. Over a decade even the profoundest thinkers never ques-
tioned the assumption; they never entertained the notion that what
children can do with the assistance of others might be in some sense
even more indicative of their mental development than what they can
do alone.
Let us take a simple example. Suppose I investigate two children
upon entrance into school, both of whom are ten years old chronologi-
cally and eight years old in terms of mental development. Can I say that
they are the same age mentally? Of course. What does this mean? It
means that they can independently deal with tasks up to the degree of
difficulty that has been standardized for the eight-year-old level. If I
Mind in Society
86

stop at this point, people would imagine that the subsequent course of
mental development and of school learning for these children will be
the same, because it depends on their intellect. Of course, there may be
other factors, for example, if one child was sick for half a year while
the other was never absent from school; but generally speaking, the fate
of these children should be the same. Now imagine that I do not
terminate my study at this point, but only begin it. These children seem I

to be capable of handling problems up to an eight-year-old's level, but

not beyond that. Suppose that I show them various ways of dealing with
the problem. Different experimenters might employ different modes of
demonstration in different cases: some might run through an entire dem-
onstration and ask the children to repeat it, others might initiate the
solution and ask the child to finish it, or offer leading questions. In short,
in some way or another I propose that the children solve the problem
with my assistance. Under these circumstances it turns out that the first
child can deal with problems up to a twelve-year-old's level, the second
up to a nine-year-old's. Now, are these children mentally the same?
When it was first shown that the capability of children with equal
levels of mental development to learn under a teacher's guidance
l

varied to a high degree, it became apparent that those children were not
mentally the same age and that the subsequent course of their learning
would obviously be different. This difference between twelve and eight,
or between nine and eight, is what we call the zone of proximal develop-
ment. It is the distance between the actual developmental level as de-
termined by independent problem solving and the level of potential
development as determined through problem solving under adult
guidance or in collaboration tvith more capable peers.
If we naively ask what the actual developmental level is, or, to put it
more simply, what more independent problem solving reveals, the most
common answer would be that a child's actual developmental level
defines functions that have already matured, that is, the end products of
development. If a child can do such-and-such independently, it means
that the functions for such-and-such have matured in her. What, then,
is defined by the zone of proximal development, as determined through
problems that children cannot solve independently but only with ~s­
sistance? The zone of proximal development defines those functions that
have not yet matured but are in the process of maturation, functions that
will mature tomorrow but are currently in an embryonic state. These
I functions could be termed the "buds" or "flowers" of development
rather than the "fruits' of development. The actual developmental level
characterizes mental development retrospectively, while the zone of
 Interaction between Learning and Development
81

proximal development characterizes mental development prospectively.

The zone of proximal development furnishes psychologists and
educators with a tool through which the internal course of development
can be understood. By using this method we can take account of not
only the cycles and maturation processes that have already been com-
pleted but also those processes that are currently in a state of formation,
that are just beginning to mature and develop. Thus, the zone of proximal
development permits us to delineate the child's immediate future and his
. dynamic developmental state, allowing not only for what already has
been achieved developmentally but also for what is in the course of
maturing. The two children in our example displayed the same mental
age from the viewpoint of developmental cycles already completed, but
the developmental dynamics of the two were entirely different. The
state of a child's mental development can be determined only by clarify-
ing its two levels: the actual developmental level and the zone of
proximal development.
I will discuss one study of preschool children to demonstrate that
what is in the zone of proximal development today will be the actual
developmental level tomorrow-that is, what a child can do with as-
sistance today she will be able to do by herself tomorrow.
The American researcher Dorothea McCarthy showed that among
children between the ages of three and five there are two groups of
functions: those the children already possess, and those they can perform
under guidance, in groups, and in collaboration with one another but
which they have not mastered independently. McCarthy's study dem-
onstrated that this second group of functions is at the actual develop-
mental level of Hve-to-seven-year-olds. What her subjects could do only
under guidance, in collaboration, and in groups at the age of three-to-five
years they could do independently when they reached the age of five-to-
seven years." Thus, if we were to determine only mental age-that is,
only functions that have matured-we would have but a summary of
completed development, while !f we determine the maturing functions,
we can predict what will happen to these children between five and
seven, provided the same developmental conditions are maintained. The
zone of proximal development can become a powerful concept in devel-
opmental research, one that can markedly enhance the effectiveness
and utility of the application of diagnostics of mental development to
educational problems.
A full understanding of the concept of the zone of proximal
development must result in reevaluation of the role of imitation in learn-
ing. An unshakable tenet of classical psychology is that only the inde-
Mind in Society
88

pendent activity of children, not their imitative activity, indicates their

level of mental development. This view is expressed in all current
testing systems. In evaluating mental development, consideration is
given to only those solutions to test problems which the child reaches
without the assistance of others, without demonstrations, and without
leading questions. Imitation and learning are thought of as purely
mechanical processes. But recently psychologists have shown that a
person can imitate only that which is within her developmental level.
For example, if a child is having difficulty With a problem in arithmetic
and the teacher solves it on the blackboard, the child may grasp the
solution in an instant. But if the teacher were to solve a problem in
higher mathematics, the child would not be able to understand the
solution no matter how many times she imitated it.
Animal psychologists, and in particular Kohler, have dealt with this
question of imitation quite well." Kohler's experiments sought to deter-
mine whether primates are capable of graphic thought. The principal
question was whether primates solved problems independently or
whether they merely imitated solutions they had seen performed earlier,
for example, watching other animals or humans use sticks and other
tools and then imitating them. Kohler's special experiments, designed
to determine what primates could imitate, reveal that primates can use
imitation to solve only those problems that are of the same degree of
difficulty as those they can solve alone. However, Kohler failed to take
account of an important fact, namely, that primates cannot be taught (in
the human sense of the word) through imitation, nor can their intellect
be developed, because they have no zone of proximal development. A
primate can learn a great deal through training by using its mechanical
and mental skills, but it cannot be made more intelligent, that is, it
cannot be taught to solve a variety of more advanced problems inde-
pendently. For this reason animals are incapable of learning in the
human sense of the term; human learning presupposes a specific social
nature and a process by which children grow into the intellectual life of
those around them. \
Children can imitate a variety of actions that go well beyond the
limits of their own capabilities. Using imitation, children are capable
of doing much more in collective activity or under the guidance of
adults. This fact, which seems to be of little significance in itself, is of
fundamental importance in that it demands a radical alteration of the
entire doctrine concerning the relation between learning and develop-
ment in children. One direct'consequence is a change in conclusions that
may be drawn from diagnostic tests of development.
 Interaction between Learning and Development
89

Formerly, it was believed that by using tests, we determine the

mental development level with which education should reckon and
whose limits it should not exceed. This procedure oriented learning
toward yesterday's development, toward developmental stages already
completed. The error of this view was discovered earlier in practice
than in theory. It is demonstrated most clearly in the teaching of
mentally retarded children. Studies have established that mentally
retarded children are not very capable of abstract thinking. From this
the pedagogy of the special school drew the seemingly correct con-
clusion that all teaching of such children should be based on the
use of concrete, look-and-do methods. And yet a considerable amount
of experience with this method resulted in profound disillusionment.
It turned out that a teaching system based solely on concreteness-
one that eliminated from teaching everything associated with- abstract
thinking-not only failed to help retarded children overcome their
innate handicaps but also reinforced their handicaps by accustoming
children exclusively to concrete thinking and thus suppressing the
rudiments of any abstract thought that such children still have. Pre-
cisely because retarded children, when left to themselves, will never
achieve well-elaborated forms of abstract thought) the school should
make every effort to push them in that direction and to develop in
them what is intrinsically lacking in their own development. In the
current practices of special schools for retarded children, we can ob-
serve a beneficial shift away from this concept of concreteness, one that
restores look-and-do methods to their proper role. Concreteness is now
seen as necessary and unavoidable only as a stepping stone for develop-
ing abstract thinking-as a means, not as an end in itself.
-Similarly, in normal children, learning which is oriented toward de-
velopmental levels that have already been reached is ineffective from
the viewpoint of a child's overall development. It does not aim for
a new stage of the developmental process but rather lags behind this
process. Thus, the notion of a zone of proximal .development enables us
to propound a new formula, namely that the only "good learning" is
that which is in advance of development.
The acquisition of language can provide a paradigm for the entire
problem of the relation between learning and development. Language
arises initially as a means of communication between the child and the
people in his environment, Only subsequently, upon conversion to
internal speech, does it come to organize the child's thought, that is,
become an internal. mental function. Piaget and others have shown
that reasoning occurs in a children's group as an argument intended
Mind in Society
90

to prove one's own point of view before it occurs as an internal activity

whose distinctive feature is that the child begins to perceive and check
the basis of his thoughts. Such observations prompted Piaget to con-
clude that communication produces the need for checking and confirm-
ing thoughts, a process that is characteristic of adult thought." In the
same way that internal speech and reflective thought arise from the
'interactions between the child and persons in her environment, these
interactions provide the source of development of a child's voluntary
behavior. Piaget has shown that cooperation provides the basis for the
development of a child's moral judgment. Earlier research established
that a child first becomes able to subordinate her behavior to rules in
group play and only later does voluntary self-regulation of behavior
arise as an internal function.
These individual examples illustrate a general developmental law
for the higher mental functions that we feel can be applied in its en-
tirety to children's learning processes. We propose that ~ essential
feature of learning is that it creates the zone of proximal development;
that is, learning awakens a variety of internal developmental processes
that are able to operate only when the child is interacting with people
in his environment and in cooperation with his peers~Once these pro-
cesses are internalized, they become part of the child's independent
developmental achievement.
From this point of view, learning is not development; however,
properly organized learning results in mental development and sets in
motion a variety of developmental processes that would be impossible
apart from learning. Thus, learning is a necessary and universal aspect
of the process of developing culturally organized, specifically human,
psychological functions.
To summarize, the most essential feature of our hypothesis is the
notion that developmental processes do not coincide with learning
processes. Rather, the developmental process lags behind the learning
process; this sequence then results in zones of proximal development.
Our analysis alters the traditional view <that at the moment a child
assimilates the meaning of a word, or masters an operation such as
addition or written language, her developmental processes are basically
completed. In fact, they have only just begun at that moment. The
major consequence of analyzing the educational process in this manner
is to show that the initial mastery of, for example, the four arithmetic
operations provides the basis for the subsequent development of a
variety of highly complex internal processes in children's thinking.
Our hypothesis establishes the unity but not the identity of learning
 Interaction between Learning and Development
91

processes and internal developmental processes. It presupposes that the

one is converted into the other. Therefore, it becomes an important con-
cern of psychological research to show how external knowledge and
abilities in children become internalized.
Any investigation explores some sphere of reality. An aim of the
psychological analysis of development is to describe the internal rela-
tions of the intellectual processes awakened by school learning. In this
respect, such analysis will be directed inward and is analogous to the
use of x-rays. If successful, it should reveal to the teacher how develop-
mental processes stimulated by the course of school learning are carried
through inside the head of each individual child. The revelation of this
internal, subterranean developmental network of school subjects is a task
of primary importance for psychological and educational analysis.
A second essential feature of our hypothesis is the notion that,
although learning is directly related to the course of child development,
the two are never accomplished in equal measure or in parallel. De-
velopment in children never follows school learning the way a shadow
follows the object that casts it. In actuality, there are highly complex
dynamic relations between developmental and learning processes that
cannot be encompassed by an unchanging hypothetical formulation.
Each school subject has its own specific relation to the course of
child development, a relation that varies as the child goes from one
stage to another. This leads us directly to a reexamination of the prob-
lem of formal discipline, that is, to the significance of each particular
subject from the viewpoint of overall mental development. Clearly, the
problem cannot be solved by using anyone formula; extensive and
highly diverse concrete research based on the concept of the zone of
proximal development is necessary to resolve the issue.
 7

The Role of Play

in Development

To define playas an activity that gives pleasure to the child is

inaccurate for two reasons. First, many activities give the child much
keener experiences of pleasure than play, for example, sucking a paci-
fier, even though the child is not being satiated. And second, there are
games in which the activity itself is not pleasurable, for example, games,
predominantly at the end of preschool and the beginning of school age,
that give pleasure only if the child finds the result interesting. Sporting
games (not only athletic sports, but other games that can be won or
lost) are very often accompanied by displeasure when the outcome is
unfavorable to the child.
But while-pleasure cannot be regarded as the defining characteristic
of play, it seems to me that theories which ignore the fact that play fulfills
children's needs result in a pedantic intellectualization of play. In speak-
ing of child development in more general terms, many theorists mis-
takenly disregard the child's needs-understood in the broadest sense to
include everything that is a motive for action. We often describe a
child's development as the development of his intellectual functions;
every child stands before us as a theoretician who, characterized by
a higher or lower level of intellectual development, moves from one
stage to another. But if we ignore the child's needs, and the incentives
which are effective in getting him to act, we will never be able to under-
stand his advance from one developmental stage to the next, because
every advance is connected with a marked change in motives, inclina-
tions, and incentives. That which is of the greatest interest to the infant
has almost ceased to interest the toddler. The maturing of needs is a
dominant issue in this discussion because it is impossible to ignore the

92
 The Role of Play in Development
93

fact that the child satisfies certain needs in play. If we do not under-
stand the special character of these needs, we cannot understand the
uniqueness of playas a form of activity.
A very young child tends to gratify her desires immediately; nor-
mally the interval between a desire and its fulfillment is extremely short.
No one has met a child under three years old who wants to do something
a few days in the future. However, at the preschool age, a great many
unrealizable tendencies and desires emerge. It is my belief that if needs
that could not be realized immediately did not develop during the school
years, there would be no play, because play seems to be invented at the
point when the child begins to experience unrealizable tendencies. Sup-
pose that a very young (perhaps two-and-a-half-year-old) child wants
something-for example, to occupy her mother's role. She wants it at
once. If she cannot have it, she may throw a temper tantrum, but she
can usually be sidetracked and pacified so that she forgets her desire.
Toward the beginning of preschool age, when desires that cannot be
immediately gratified or forgotten make their appearance and the tend-
ency to immediate fulfillment of desires, characteristic of the preceding
stage, is retained, the child's behavior changes. To resolve this tension,
the preschool child enters an imaginary, illusory world in which the
unrealizable desires can be realized, and this world is what we call
play. Imagination is a new psychological process for the child; it is not
present in the consciousness of the very young child, is totally absent in
animals, and represents a specifically human form of conscious activity.
Like all functions of consciousness, it originally arises from action. The
old adage that child's play is imagination in action must be reversed:
we can say that imagination in adolescents and school children is play
without action.
From this perspective it is clear that the pleasure derived from
preschool play is controlled by different motives than simple sucking
on a pacifier. This is not to say that play arises as the result of every
unsatisfied desire (as when, for example, the child wants to ride in the
cab, but the wish is not immediately gratified, so the child goes into her
room and pretends she is riding in a cab). It rarely happens in just this
way. Nor does the presence of such generalized emotions in play mean
that the child herself understands the motives giving rise to the game.
In this respect play differs substantially from work and other forms of
activity.
Thus, in establishing criteria for distinguishing a child's play from
other forms of activity, we conclude that in play a child creates an
imaginary situation. This is not a new idea, in the sense that imaginary
Mind in Society
94

situations in play have always been recognized; but they were previ-
ously regarded as only one example of play activities. The imaginary
situation was not considered the defining characteristic of play in general
but was treated as an attribute of specific subcategories of play.
I find previous ideas unsatisfactory in three respects. First, if play
is understood as symbolic, there is the danger that. it might come to be
viewed as an activity akin to algebra; that is, play, like algebra, might
be considered a system of signs that generalize reality, with no char-
acteristics that I consider specific to play. The child would be seen as
an unsuccessful algebraist who cannot yet write the symbols but can
depict them in action. I believe that play is not symbolic action in the
proper sense of the term, so it becomes essential to show the role of
motivation in play. Second, this argument stressing the importance of
cognitive processes neglects not only the motivation for, but also the
circumstances of, the child's activity. And third, previous approaches
do not help us to understand the role of play in later development.
If all play is really the realization in play fonn of tendencies that
cannot be immediately gratified, then elements of imaginary situations
will automatically be a part of the emotional tone of play itself. Con-
sider the child's activity during play. What does a child's behavior in an
imaginary situation mean? We know that the development of playing
games with rules begins in the late preschool period and develops
during school age. A number of investigators, although not belonging
to the camp of dialectical materialists, have approached this issue along
the lines recommended by Marx when he said that "the anatomy of
man is the key to the anatomy of the ape." They have begun their exami-
nation of early play in the light of later rule-based play and have con-
cluded from this that play involving an imaginary situation is, in fact,
rule-based play.
One could go even further and propose that there is no such thing
as play without rules. The imaginary situation of any form of play
already contains rules of behavior, although it may not be a game
with formulated rules laid down in advance. The child imagines himself
to be the mother and the doll to be the child, so he must obey the rules
of maternal behavior. Sully early noted that, remarkably, young chil-
dren could make the play situation and reality coincide.' He described
a case where two sisters, aged five and seven, said to each other, "Let's
play sisters." They were playing at reality. In certain cases, I have found
it easy to elicit such play in children. It is very easy, for example, to have
a child play at being a chiljl while the mother is playing the role of
mother, that is, playing at what is actually true. The vital difference,
 The Role of Play in Development
95

as Sully describes it, is that the child in playing tries to be what she thinks
a sister should be. In life the child behaves without thinking that she is
her sister's sister. In the game of sisters playing at "sisters," however,
they are both concerned with displaying their sisterhood; the fact that
two sisters decided to play sisters induces them both to acquire rules
of behavior. Only actions that fit these rules are acceptable to the play
situation: they dress alike, talk alike, in short, they enact whatever
emphasizes their relationship as sisters vis-a-vis adults and strangers.
The elder, holding the younger by the hand, may keep telling her about
other people: "That is theirs, not ours." This means: "My sister and I
act the same, we are treated the same, but others are treated differently."
In this example the emphasis is on the sameness of everything that is
connected with the child's concept of a sister; as a result of playing, the
child comes to understand that sisters possess a different relationship to
each other than to other people. What passes unnoticed by the child in
real life becomes a rule of behavior in play.
What would remain if play were structured in such a way that there
were no imaginary situation? The rules would remain. Whenever there
is an imaginary situation in play, there are rules-not rules that are
formulated in advance and change during the course of the game but
ones that stem from an imaginary situation. Therefore, the notion that
a child can behave in an imaginary situation without rules is simply
inaccurate. If the child is playing the role of a mother, then she has rules
of maternal behavior. The role the child fulfills, and her relation to the
object (if the object has changed its meaning), will always stem from
the rules.
At first it seemed that the investigator's only task in analyzing play
was to disclose the hidden rules in all play, but it has been demonstrated
that the so-called pure games with rules are essentially games with
imaginary situations. Just as the imaginary situation has to contain rules
of behavior, so every game with rules contains an imaginary situation.
For example, playing chess creates an imaginary situation. Why? Be-
cause the knight, king, queen, and so forth can only move In specified
ways; because covering and taking pieces are purely chess concepts.
Although in the chess game there is no direct substitute for real-life
relationships, it is a kind of imaginary situation nevertheless. The sim-
plest game with rules immediately turns into an imaginary situation in
the sense that as soon as the game is regulated by certain rules, a number
of possibilities for action are ruled out.
Just as we were able to show at the beginning that every imaginary
situation contains rules in a concealed form, we have also demonstrated
Mind in Society
96

the reverse-that every game with rules contains an imaginary situa-

tion in a concealed form. The development from games with an overt
imaginary situation and covert rules to games with overt rules and a
covert imaginary situation outlines the evolution of children's play.

ACTION AND MEANING IN PLAY

The influence of play on a child's development is enormous. Play in
an imaginary situation is essentially impossible for a child under three in
that it is a novel form of behavior liberating the child from constraints.
To a considerable extent the behavior of a very young child-and to an
absolute extent, that of an infant-s-is determined by the conditions in
which the activity takes place, as the experiments of Lewin and others
have shown.s For example, Lewin's demonstration of the great difficulty
a small child has in realizing that he must first turn his back to a
stone in order to sit on it illustrates the extent to which a very young
child is bound in every action by situational constraints. It is hard to
imagine a greater contrast to Lewin's experiments showing the situa-
tional constraints on activity than what we observe in play. It is here
that the child learns to act in a cognitive, rather than an externally
· visual, realm by relying on internal tendencies and motives and not on
incentives supplied by external things. A study by Lewin on the moti-
vating nature of things for a very young child concludes that things
dictate to the child what he must do: a door demands to be opened and
closed, a staircase to be climbed, a bell to be rung. In short, things have
such an inherent motivating force with respect to a very young child's
actions and so extensively determine the child's behavior that Lewin
arrived at the notion of creating a psychological topology: he expressed
mathematically the trajectory of the child's movement in a field accord-
ing to the distribution of things with varying attracting or repelling
forces.
The root of situational constraints upon a child lies in a central fact
of consciousness characteristic of early childhood: the union of motives
and perception. At this age perception is generally not an independent
but rather an integrated feature of a motor reaction. Every perception is
a stimulus to activity. Since a situation is communicated psychologically
through perception, and since perception is not separated from motiva-
tional and motor activity, it is understandable that with her conscious-
ness so structured, the child is constrained by the situation in which she
finds herself.
But in play, things lose their determining force. The child sees one
 The Role of Play in Development
97

thing but acts differently in relation to what he sees. Thus, a condition

is reached in which the child begins to act independently of what he
sees. Certain brain-damaged patients lose the ability to act indepen-
dently of what they see. In considering such patients one can appreciate
that the freedom of action adults and more mature children enjoy is not
acquired in a Hash but has to go through a long process of development.
Action in an imaginary situation teaches the child to guide her
behavior not only by immediate perception of objects or by the situation
immediately affecting her but also by the meaning of this situation.
Experiments and day-to-day observation clearly show that it is impos-
sible for very young children to separate the field of meaning from the
visual field because there is such intimate fusion between meaning and
what is seen. Even a child of two years, when asked to repeat the sen-
tence "Tanya is standing up" when Tanya is sitting in front of her,
will change it to "Tanya is sitting down." In certain diseases, exactly
the same situation is encountered. Goldstein and Gelb described a
number of patients who were unable to state something that was not
true." Gelb has data on one patient who was left-handed and incapable
of writing the sentence "I can write well with my right hand." When
looking out of the window on a fine day he was unable to repeat "The
weather is nasty today," but would say "The weather is fine." Often we
find that a patient with a speech disturbance is incapable of repeating
senseless phrases, for example, "Snow is black," while other phrases
equally difficult in their grammatical and semantic construction can be
repeated. This tie between perception and meaning can be seen in
the process of children's speech development. You say to the child,
"clock," and he starts looking for the clock. The word originally signi-
fies a particular spatiallocation.
A divergence between the fields of meaning and vision first occurs
at preschool age. In play thought is separated from objects and action
arises from ideas rather than from things: a piece of wood begins to be
a doll and a stick becomes a horse. Action according to rules begins to
be determined by ideas and not by objects themselves. This is such a
reversal of the child's relation to the real, immediate, concrete situation
that it is hard to underestimate its full significance. The child does not
do this all at once because it is terribly difficult for a child to sever
thought (the meaning of a word) from object.
Play provides a transitional stage in this direction whenever an
object (for example, a stick) becomes a pivot for severing the meaning
of horse from a real horse. The child cannot as yet detach thought from
object. The child's weakness is that in order to imagine a horse, he needs
Mind in Society
98

to define his action by means of using "the-horse-in-the-stick" as the

pivot. But all the same, the basic structure determining the child's
relation to reality is radically changed at this crucial point, because the
structure of his perceptions changes.
As I discussed in earlier chapters, a special feature of human per-
ception (one arising at a very early age) is the so-called perception of
real objects, that is, the perception of not only colors and shapes, but also
meaning. This is something to which there is no analogy in animal per-
ception. Humans do not merely see something round and black with
two hands; they see a clock and can distinguish one thing from another.
Thus, the structure of human perception could be figuratively expressed
as a ratio in which the object is the numerator and the meaning is the
denominator (object/meaning). This ratio symbolizes the idea that all
human perception is made up of generalized rather than isolated per-
ceptions. For the child the object dominates in the object/meaning ratio
and meaning is subordinated to it. At the crucial moment when a stick
becomes the pivot for detaching the meaning of horse from a real
horse, this ratio is inverted and meaning predominates, giving meaning/
object.
This is not to say that properties of things as such have no meaning.
Any stick can be a horse but, for example, a postcard cannot be a horse
for a child. Goethe's contention that in play any thing can be anything
for a child is incorrect. Of course, for adults who can make conscious
use of symbols, a postcard can be a horse. If I want to show the location
of something, I can put down a match and sa.y, "This is a horse." That
would be enough. For a child it cannot be a horse because one must use
a stick; because of the lack of free substitution, the child's activity is
play and not symbolism. A symbol is a sign, but the stick does not func-
tion as the sign of a horse for the child, who retains the properties of
things but changes their meaning. Their meaning, in play, becomes the
central point and objects are moved from a dominant to a subordinate
position.
The child at play operates with meanings detached from their
usual objects and actions; however, a highly interesting contradiction
arises in which he fuses real actions and real objects. This characterizes
the transitional nature of play; it is a stage between the purely situa-
tional constraints of early childhood and adult thought, which can be
totally free of real situations.
When the stick becomes the pivot for detaching the meaning of
"horse" from a real horse, the-child makes one object influence another
semantically. He cannot detach meaning from an object, or a word from
 The Role of Play in Development
99

an object, except by finding a pivot in something else. Transfer of

meanings is facilitated by the fact that the child accepts a word as the
property of a thing; he sees not the word but the thing it designates.
For a child, the word "horse" applied to the stick means "there is a
horse," because mentally he sees the object standing behind the word.
A vital transitional stage toward operating with meanings occurs when
a child first acts With meanings as with objects (as when he acts with the
stick as though it were a horse). Later he carries out these acts con-
sciously. This change is seen, too, in the fact that before a child has
acquired grammatical and written language, he knows how to do things
but does not know that he knows. He does not master these activities
voluntarily. In playa child spontaneously makes use of his ability to
separate meaning from an object without knowing he is doing it, just
as he does not know he is speaking in prose but talks without paying
attention to the words. Thus, through play the child achieves a functional
definition of concepts or objects, and words become parts of a thing.
The creation of an imaginary situation is not a fortuitous fact in a
child's life, but is rather the first manifestation of the child's emancipa-
tion from situational constraints. The primary paradox of play is that the
child operates with an alienated meaning in a real situation. The second
paradox is that in play she adopts the line of least resistance-she does
what she most feels like doing because play is connected with pleasure
-and at the same time she learns to follow the line of greatest resist-
ance by subordinating herself to rules and thereby renouncing what she
wants, since subjection to rules and renunciation of impulsive action
constitute the path to maximum pleasure in play.
Play continually creates demands on the child to act against im-
mediate impulse. At every step the child is faced with a conflict between
the rules of the game and what he would do if he could suddenly act
spontaneously. In the game he acts counter to the way he wants to
act. A child's greatest self-control occurs in play. He achieves the maxi-
mum display of willpower when he renounces an immediate attraction
in the game (such as candy, which by the rules of the game he is for-
bidden to eat because it represents something inedible). Ordinarily a
childexperiences subordination to rules in the renunciation of something
he wants, but here subordination to a rule and renunciation of action on
immediate impulse are the means to maximum pleasure.
Thus, the essential attribute of play is a rule that has become a
desire, Spinoza's notions of "an idea which has become a desire, a con-
cept which has turned into a passion" finds its prototype in play, which
is the realm of spontaneity and freedom. To carry out the rule is a source
Mind in Society
100

of pleasure. The rule wins because it is the strongest impulse. Such a rule
is an internal nile, a rule of self-restraint and self-determination, as
Piaget says, and not a rule the child obeys like a physical law. In short,
play gives a child a new form of desires. It teaches her to desire by relat-
ing her desires to a fictitious "I," to her role in the game and its rules. In
this way a child's greatest achievements are possible in play, achieve-
ments that tomorrow will become her basic level of real action and
morality.

SEPARATING ACTION AND MEANING

Now we can say the same thing about the child's activity that we
said about objects. Just as we had the obje~t ratio, we also have
meanmg
the action. ra t'10. Wh ereas action
. ominates earIy IP.
domi . d eve Iopment ,
meamng
this structure is inverted; meaning becomes the numerator, while action
takes the place of the denominator.
In a child of preschool age, action is initially dominant over meaning
and is incompletely understood. The child is able to do more than he can
understand. But it is at this age that an action structure first arises in
which meaning is the determinant, although meaning must influence
the child's behavior within constraints provided by structural features
of the action. Children, in playing at eating from a plate, have been
shown to perform actions with their hands reminiscent of real eating,
while all actions that did not designate eating were impossible. Throw-
ing one's hands back instead of stretching them toward the plate turned
out to be impossible, for such an action would have a destructive effect
on the game. A child does not behave in a purely symbolic fashion in
play; rather he wishes and realizes his wishes by letting the basic cate-
gories of reality pass through his experience. The child, in wishing,
carries out his wishes. In thinking, he acts. Internal and external action
are inseparable: imagination, interpretation, and will are the internal
processes carried by external action. What was said about detaching
meaning from objects applies equally well to the child's own actions. A
child who stamps on the ground and imagines herself riding a horse has
t h ere bvy iinverte d t h e action ratio. to meaning ·
meaning action
The developmental history of the relation between meaning and
action is analogous to the development history of the meaning/ object
relation. In order to detach. the meaning of the action from the real
action (riding a horse, without the opportunity to do so), the child re-
 The Role of Play in Development
101

quires a pivot in the form of an action to replace the real one. While
action begins as the numerator of the acti~n structure, now the
meaning
structure is inverted and meaning becomes the numerator. Action
retreats to second place and becomes the pivot; meaning is again de-
tached from action by means of a different action. This is another exam-
ple of the way in which human behavior comes to depend upon opera-
tions based on meanings where the motive that initiates the behavior is
sharply separated from fulfillment. The separation of meaning from
objects and action has different consequences, however. Just as operat-
ing with the meaning of things leads to abstract thought, we find that
the development of will, the ability to make conscious choices, occurs
when the child operates with the meaning of actions. In play, an action
replaces another action just as an object replaces another object.
How does the child float from one object to another, from one action
to another? This is accomplished by movement in the field of meaning-
which subordinates all real objects and actions to itself. Behavior is not
bound by the immediate perceptual field. This movement in the field
of meaning predominates in play. On the one hand, it represents move-
ment in an abstract field (which thus makes an appearance in play prior
to the appearance of voluntary operation with meanings). On the other
hand, the method of movement is situational and concrete. (It is an
affective, not a logical change). In other words, the field of meaning
appears, but action within it occurs just as in reality. Herein lies the
main developmental contradiction of play.

CONCLUSION
I would like to close this discussion of play by first showing that
play is not the predominant feature of childhood but it is a leading
factor in development. Second, I want to demonstrate the significance of
the change from predominance of the imaginary situation to predomi-
nance of rules in the development of play itself. And third, I want to
point out internal transformations in the child's development brought
about by play,

How does play relate to developrnentf In fundamental, everyday

situations a child's behavior is the opposite of his behavior in play. In
play, action is subordinated to meaning, but in real life, of course, action
dominates meaning. Therefore, to consider playas the prototype of a
child's everyday activity and its predominant form is completely in-
correct.
Mind in Society
102

This is the main flaw in Koffka's theory. He considers playas the

child's other world." Everything that concerns a child is play reality,
while everything that concerns an adult is serious reality. A given object
has one meaning in play and another outside of it. In a child's world
the logic of wishes and of satisfying urges dominates, and not real logic.
The illusory nature of play is transferred to life. This would all be true
if play were indeed the predominant fonn of a child's activity. But it is
difficult to accept the insane picture that comes to mind if the form of
activity we have been speaking of were to become the predominant
form of a child's everyday activity, even if only partially transferred to
real life.
Koffka gives a number of examples to show how a child transfers
a situation from play into life. But the ubiquitous transference of play
behavior to real life could only be regarded as an unhealthy symptom.
To behave in a real situation as in an illusory one is the first sign of
delirium. Play behavior in real life is normally seen only in the type of
game when children begin to play at what they are in fact doing, evi-
dently creating associations that facilitate the execution of an unpleasant
action (as when children who do not want to go to bed say, "Let's play
that it's nighttime and we have to go to sleep"). Thus, it seems to me
that play is not the predominant type of activity at preschool age. Only
theories which maintain that a child does not have to satisfy the basic
requirements of life but. can live in search of pleasure could possibly
suggest that a child's world is a play world.
Looking at the matter from the opposite perspective, could one
suppose that a child's behavior is always guided by meaning, that a
preschooler's behavior is so arid that he never behaves spontaneously
simply because he thinks he should behave otherwise? This strict
subordination to rules is quite impossible in life, but ill: play it does
become possible: thus, play creates a zone of proximal development of
the child. In playa child always behaves beyond his average age, above
his daily behavior; in play it is as though he were a head taller than
himself. As in the focus of a magnifying glass, play contains all de-
velopmental tendencies in a condensed form and is itself a major source
of development.
Though the play-development relationship can be compared to the
instruction-development relationship, play provides a much wider back-
ground for changes in needs and consciousness. Action in the imagina-
tive sphere, in an imaginary situation, the creation of voluntary inten-
tions, and the formation of .real-life plans and volitional motives-all
appear in play and make it the highest level of preschool development.
 The Role of Play in Development
103

The child moves forward essentially through play activity. Only in this
sense can play be considered a leading activity that determines the
child's development.

How does play change? It is remarkable that the child starts with
an imaginary situation that initially is so very close to the real one. A
reproduction of the real situation takes place. For example, a child play-
ing with a doll repeats almost exactly what his mother does with him.
This means that in the original situation rules operate in a condensed
and compressed form. There is very little of the imaginary. It is an
imaginary situation, but it is only comprehensible in the light of a real
situation that has just occurred. Play is more nearly recollection of some-
thing that has actually happened than imagination. It is more memory
in action than a novel imaginary situation.
As play develops, we see a movement toward the conscious realiza-
tion of its purpose. It is incorrect to conceive of playas activity without
purpose. In athletic games one can win or lose; in a race one can come in
first, second, or last. In short, the purpose decides the game and justifies
the activity. Purpose, as the ultimate goal, determines the child's affective
attitude to play. When running a race, a child can be highly agitated
or distressed and little pleasure may remain because she finds it physi-
cally painful to run, and if she is overtaken she will experience little
functional pleasure. In sports the purpose of the game is one of its domi-
nant features, without which there would be no point-like examining
a piece of candy, putting it into one's mouth, chewing it, and then
spitting it out. In such play, the object, which is to win, is recognized
in advance.
At the end of development, rules emerge, and the more rigid they
are the greater the demands on the child's application, the greater the
regulation of the child's activity, the more tense and acute play becomes.
Simply running around without purpose or rules is boring and does
not appeal to children. Consequently, a complex of originally unde-
veloped features comes to the fore at the end of play development-
features that had been secondary or incidental in the beginning occupy
a central position. at the end, and vice versa.
In one sense a child at play is free to determine his own actions. But
in another sense this is an illusory freedom, for his actions are in fact
subordinated to the meanings of things, and he acts accordingly.
From the point of view of development, creating an imaginary
situation can be regarded as a means of developing abstract thought.
\ The corresponding development of rules leads to actions on the basis
Mind in Society
104

of which the division between work and play becomes possible, a

division encountered at school age as a fundamental fact.
As figuratively expressed by one investigator, play for a child under
three is a serious game, just as it is for an adolescent, although, of course,
in a different sense of the word; serious play for a very young child
means that she plays without separating the imaginary situation from
the real one. For the school child, play becomes a more limited form
of activity, predominantly of the athletic type, which fills a specific
role in the school child's development but lacks the significance of play
for the preschooler. At school age play does not die away but permeates
the attitude toward reality. It has its own inner continuation in' school
instruction and work (compulsory activity based on rules). It is the es-
sence of play that a new relation is created between the field of mean-
ing and the visual field-that is, between situations in thought and real
situations.
Superficially, play bears little resemblance to the complex, medi-
ated form of thought and volition it leads to. Only a profound internal
analysis makes it possible to determine its course of change and its
role in development.
 8

The Prehistory of
Written Language

Until now, writing has occupied too narrow a place in school prac-
tice as compared to the enormous role that it plays in children's cultural
development. The teaching of writing has been conceived in narrowly
practical terms. Children are taught to trace out letters and make words
out of them, but they are not taught written language. The mechanics of
reading what is written are so emphasized that they overshadow written
language as such.
Something similar has happened in teaching spoken language to
deaf-mutes. Attention has been concentrated entirely on correct produc-
tion of particular letters and distinct articulation of them. In this case,
teachers of deaf-mutes have not discerned spoken language behind these
pronunciation techniques, and the result has been dead speech.
This situation is to be explained primarily by historical factors:
specifically, by the fact that practical pedagogy, despite the existence
of many methods for teaching reading and writing, has yet to work out
an effective, scientific procedure for teaching children written language.
Unlike the teaching of spoken language, into which children grow of
their own accord, teaching of written language is based on artificial
training. Such training requires an enormous amount of attention and
effort on the part of teacher and pupil and thus becomes something
self-contained, relegating living written language to the background.
Instead of being founded on the needs of children as they naturally
develop and on their own activity, writing is given to them from without,
from the teacher's hands. This situation recalls the development of a
technical skill such as piano-playing: the pupil develops finger dexterity
105
Mind in Society
106

and learns to strike the keys while reading music, but he is in no way
involved in the essence of the music itself.
Such one-sided enthusiasm for the mechanics of writing has had an
impact not only on the practice of teaching but on the theoretical state-
ment of the problem as well. Up to this point, psychology has conceived
of writing as a complicated motor skill. It has paid remarkably little
attention to the question of written language as such, that is, a particular
system of symbols and signs whose mastery heralds a critical tuming-
point in the entire cultural development of the child.
A feature of this system is that it is second-order symbolism, which
gradually becomes direct symbolism. This means that written language
consists of a system of signs that designate the sounds and words of
spoken language, which, in turn, are signs for real entities and relations.
Gradually this intermediate link, spoken language, disappears, and
written language is converted into a system of signs that directly sym-
bolize the entities and relations between them. It seems clear that
mastery of such a complex sign system cannot be accomplished in a
purely mechanical and external manner; rather it is the culmination of a
long process of development of complex behavioral functions in the
child. Only by understanding the entire history of sign development in
the child and the place of writing in it can we approach a correct solution
of the psychology of writing.
The developmental history of written language, however, poses
enormous difficulties for research. As far as we can judge from the avail-
able material, it does not follow a single direct line in which something
like a clear continuity of forms is maintained. Instead, it offers the most
unexpected metamorphoses, that is, transformations of particular forms
of written language into others. To quote Baldwin's apt expression re-
garding the development of things, it is as much involution as evolution.'
This means that, together with processes of development, forward
motion, and appearance of new forms, we can discern processes of
curtailment, disappearance, and reverse development of old forms at
each step. The developmental history of written language among chil-
dren is full of such discontinuities. Its line of development seems to
disappear altogether; then suddenly, as if from nowhere, a new line
begins, and at first it seems that there is absolutely no continuity between
the old and the new. But only a naive view of development as a purely
evolutionary process involving nothing but the gradual accumulation of
small changes and the gradual conversion of one form into another can
conceal from us the true nature of these processes. This revolutionary
type of development is in no way new for science in general; it is new
 The Prehistory of Written Language
107

only for child psychology. Therefore, despite a few daring attempts,

child psychology does not have a cogent view of the development of
written language as a historical process, as a unified process of develop-
ment.
The first task of a scientific investigation is to reveal this prehistory
of children's written language, to show what leads children to writing,
through what important points this prehistorical development passes,
and in what relationship it stands to school learning. At the present time,
in spite of a variety of research studies, we are in no position to write a
coherent or complete history of written language in children. We can
only discern the most important points in this development and discuss
its major changes. This history begins with the appearance of the
gesture as a visual sign for the child.

GESTURES AND VISUAL SIGNS

The gesture is the initial visual sign that contains the child's future
writing as an acorn contains a future oak. Gestures, it has been correctly
said, are writing in air, and written signs frequently are simply gestures
that have been fixed.
Wurth pointed out the link between gesture and pictorial or picto-
graphic writing in discussing the development of writing in human
history.P He showed that figurative gestures often simply denote the
reproduction of a graphic sign; on the other hand, signs are often the
fixation of gestures. An indicating line employed in pictographic writing
denotes the index finger in fixed position. All these symbolic designations
in pictorial writing, according to Wurth, can be explained only by
derivation from gesture language, even if they subsequently become
detached from it and can function independently.
There are two other domains in which gestures are linked to the
origin of written signs. The first concerns children's scribbles. We have
observed in experiments on drawing that children frequently switch to
dramatization, depicting by gestures what they should show on the
drawing; the pencil-marks are only a supplement to this gestural repre-
sentation. I could cite many instances. A child who has to depict running
begins by depicting the motion with her fingers, and she regards the
resultant marks and dots on paper as a representation of running. When
she goes on to depict jumping, her hand begins to make movements
depicting jumps; what appears on paper remains the same. In general,
we are inclined to view children's first drawings and scribbles rather as
gestures than as drawing in the true sense of the word. We are also
Mind in Society
108

inclined to ascribe to the same phenomenon the experimentally demon-

strated fact that, in drawing complex objects, children do not render
their parts but rather general qualities, such as an impression of round-
ness and so forth. When a child depicts a cylindrical can as a closed
curve that resembles -a circle, she thus depicts something round. This
developmental phase coincides nicely with the general motor set that
characterizes children of this age and governs the entire style and nature
of their first drawings. Children behave in the same way in depicting
concepts that are at all complex or abstract. Children do not draw, they
indicate, and the pencil merely fixes the indicatory gesture. When asked
to draw good weather, a child will indicate the bottom of the page by
making a horizontal motion of the hand, explaining, "This is the earth,"
and then, after a number of confused upward hatchwise motions, "And
this is good weather." We have had the occasion to verify more pre-
cisely, in experiments, the kinship between gestural depiction and
depiction by drawing, and have obtained symbolic and graphic depiction
through gestures in flve-year-olds.

DEVELOPMENT OF SYMBOLISM IN PLAY

The second realm that links gestures and written language is
children's games. For children some objects can readily denote others,
replacing them and becoming signs for them, and the degree of similarity
between a plaything and the object it denotes is unimportant. What is
most important is the utilization of the plaything and the possibility of
executing a representational gesture with it. This is the key to the entire
symbolic function of children's play. A pile of clothes or piece of wood
becomes a baby in a game because the same gestures that depict holding
a baby in one's hands or feeding a baby can apply to them: The child's
self-motion, his own gestures, are what assign the function of sign to the
object and give it meaning. All symbolic representational activity is full
of such indicatory gestures; for instance, a stick becomes a riding-horse
for a child because it can be placed between the legs and a gesture can
be employed that communicates that the stick designates a horse in this
instance.
From this point of view, therefore, children's symbolic play can be
understood as a very complex system of "speech" through gestures that
communicate and indicate the meaning of playthings. It is only on the
basis of these indicatory gestures that playthings themselves gradually
acquire their meaning-s-justcas drawing, while initially supported by
gesture, becomes an independent sign.
 The Prehistory of Written Language
109

We attempted experimentally to establish this particular special

stage of object writing in children. We conducted play experiments in
which, in a joking manner, we began to designate things and people
involved in the play by familiar objects. For example, a book off to one
side designated a house, keys meant children, a pencil meant a nurse-
maid, a pocket watch a drugstore, a knife a doctor, an inkwell cover a
horse-drawn carriage, and so forth. Then the children were given a
simple story through figurative gestures involving these objects. They
could read it with great ease. For example, a doctor arrives at a house in
a carriage, knocks at the door, the nursemaid opens, he examines the
children, he writes a prescription and leaves, the nursemaid goes to
the drugstore, comes back, and administers medicine to the children.
Most three-year-olds can read this symbolic notation with great ease.
Four-or-five-year-olds can read more complex notation: a man is walking
in the forest and is attacked by a wolf, which bites him; the man extricates
himself by running, a doctor gives him aid, and he goes to the drugstore
and then home; a hunter sets out for the forest to kill the wolf.
What is noteworthy is that perceptual similarity of objects plays no
noticeable part in the understanding of the symbolic notation. All that
matters is that the objects admit the appropriate gesture and can func-
tion as a point of application for it. Hence, things with which this
gestural structure cannot be performed are absolutely rejected by chil-
dren. For example, in this game, which is conducted at a table and which
involves small items on the table, children will absolutely refuse to
play if we take their fingers, put them on a book, and say, "Now, as a
joke, these will be children." They object that there is no such game.
Fingers are too connected with their own bodies for them to be an
object for a corresponding indicatory gesture. In the same way, a piece
of furniture in the room or one of the people in the game cannot become
involved. The object itself performs a substitution function: a pencil
substitutes for a nursemaid or a watch for a drugstore, but only the
relevant gesture endows them with this meaning. However, under the
influence of this gesture, older children begin to make one exceptionally
important discovery-that objects can indicate the things they denote as
well as substitute for them. For example, when we put down a book with
a dark cover and say that this will be a forest, a child will spontaneously
add, "Yes, it's a forest because it's black and dark." She thus isolates one
of the features of the object, which for her is an indication of the fact
that the book is supposed to mean a forest. In the same way, when a
metal inkwell cover denotes a carriage, a child will point and say, "This
is the seat." When a pocket watch is to denote a drugstore, one child
Mind in Society
110

might point to the numbers on the face and say, "This is medicine in the
drugstore"; another might point to the ring and say, "This is the en-
trance." Referring to a bottle that is playing the part of a wolf, a child
will point to the neck and say, "And this is his mouth." If the experi-
menter asks, pointing to the stopper, "And what is this?" the child an-
swers, "He's caught the stopper and is holding it in his teeth."
In all these examples we see the same thing, namely, that the cus-
tomary structure of things is modified under the impact of the new
meaning it has acquired. In response to the fact that a watch denotes a
drugstore, a feature of the watch is isolated and assumes the function
of a new sign or indication of how the watch denotes a drugstore, either
through the feature of medicine or of the entrance. The customary
structure of things (stopper in a bottle) begins to be reflected in the new
structure (wolf holds stopper in teeth), and this structural modification
becomes so strong that in a number of experiments we sometimes in-
stilled a particular symbolic meaning of an object in the children. For
example, a pocket watch denoted a drugstore in all our play sessions.
whereas other objects changed meaning rapidly and frequently. In
taking up a new game, we would put down the same watch and explain,
in accordance with the new procedures, "Now this is a bakery." One
child immediately placed a pen edgewise across the watch, dividing it
in half, and, indicating one half, said, "All right, here is the drugstore,
and here is the bakery." The old meaning thus became independent and
functioned as a means for a new one. We could also discern this acqui-
sition of independent meaning outside the immediate game; if a knife
fell, a child would exclaim, "The doctor has fallen." Thus, the object
acquires a sign function with a developmental history of its own that is
now independent of the child's gesture. This is second-order symbolism,
and because it develops in play, we see make-believe playas a major
contributor to the development of written language-a system of second-
order symbolism.
As in play, so too in drawing, representation of meaning initially
arises as first-order symbolism, As we have already pointed out, the
first drawings arise from gestures of the (pencil-equipped) hand, and
the gesture constitutes the first representation of meaning. Only later on
does the graphic representation begin independently to denote some
object. The nature of this relationship is that the marks already made on
paper are given an appropriate name.
H. Hetzer undertook to study experimentally how symbolic repre-
sentation of things-so important in learning to write-develops in three-
to-six-year-old children," Her experiments involved four basic series. The
 The Pl'ehisto.,y of Written Language
111

first investigated the function of symbols in children's play. Children

were to portray, in play, a father or mother doing what they do in the
course of a day. During this game a make-believe interpretation of par-
ticular objects was given, making it possible for the researcher to trace
the symbolic function assigned to things during the game. The second
series involved building materials, and the third involved drawing with
colored pencils, Particular attention in both these experiments was paid
to the point at which the appropriate meaning was named. The fourth
series undertook to investigate, in the form of a game of post office, the
extent to which children can perceive purely arbitrary combinations of
signs. The game used pieces of paper of various colors to denote different
types of mail: telegrams, newspapers, money orders, packages, letters,
postcards, and so forth. Thus, the experiments explicitly related these
different forms of activity, whose only common feature is that a sym-
bolic function is involved in all of them, and attempted to link them all
with the development of written language, as we did in our experiments.
Hetzer was able to show clearly which symbolic meanings arise in
play via figurative gestures and which via words. Children's egocentric
language was widely manifest in these games. Whereas some children
depicted everything by using movements and mimicry, not employing
speech as a symbolic resource at all, for other children actions were
accompanied by speech: the child both spoke and acted. For a third
group, purely verbal expression not supported by any activity began to
predominate. Finally, a fourth group of children did not play at all, and
speech became the sole mode of representation, with mimicry and
gestures receding into the background. The percentage of purely play
actions decreased with age, while speech gradually predominated. The
most important conclusion drawn from this developmental investigation,
as the author says, is that the difference in play activity between three-
year-olds and six-year-olds is not in the perception of symbols but in
the mode in which various forms of representation are used. In our
opinion, this is a highly important conclusion; it indicates that symbolic
representation in play is essentially a particular form of speech at an
earlier stage, one which leads directly to written language.
As development proceeds, the general process of naming shifts
farther and farther toward the beginning of the process, and thus the
process itself is tantamount to the writing of a word that has just been
named. Even a three-year-old understands the representational function
of a toy construction, while a four-year-old names his creations even
before he begins to construct them. Similarly, we see in drawing that a
three-year-old is still unaware of the symbolic meaning of a drawing; it
Mind in Society
112

is only around age seven that all children master this completely. At the
same time, our analysis of children's drawings definitely shows that, from
the psychological point of view, we should regard such drawings as a
particular kind of child speech.

DEVELOPMENT OF SYMBOLISM IN DRAWING

K. Buhler correctly notes that drawing begins in children when
spoken speech has already made great progress and has become habit-
ual." Subsequently, he says, speech predominates in general and shapes
the greater part of inner life in accordance with its laws. This includes
drawing.
Children initially draw from memory. If asked to draw their
mother sitting opposite them or some object before them, they draw
without ever looking at the original-not what they see but what they
know. Often children's drawings not only disregard but also directly
contradict the actual perception of the object. We find what Buhler calls
"x-ray drawings." A child will draw a clothed figure, but at the same time
will include his legs, stomach, wallet in his pocket, and even the money
in the wallet-that is, things he knows about but which cannot be seen
in the case in question. In drawing a figure in profile, a child will add a
second eye or will include a second leg on a horseman in profile. Finally,
very important parts of the object will be omitted; for instance, a child
will draw legs that grow straight out of the head, omitting the neck and
torso, or will combine individual parts of a figure.
As Sully showed, children do not strive for representation; they are
much more symbolists than naturalists and are in no way concerned with
complete and exact similarity, desiring only the most superficial indi-
cations." We cannot assume that children know people no better than
they depict them; rather they try more to name and designate than to
represent. A child's memory does not yield a simple depiction of repre-
sentational images at this age. Rather, it yields predispositions to judg-
ments that are invested with speech or capable of being so invested. We
see that when a child unburdens his repository of memory in drawing,
he does so in the mode of speech-telling a story. A major feature of this
mode is a certain degree of abstraction, which any verbal representation
necessarily entails. Thus we see that drawing is graphic speech that
arises on the basi.s of verbal speech. The schemes that distinguish
children's first drawings are reminiscent in this sense of verbal concepts
that communicate only the ~ssential features of objects. This gives us
 The Prehistory of Written Language
113

grounds for regarding children's drawing as a preliminary stage in the

development of written language.
The further development of children's drawing, however, is not
something self-understood and purely mechanical. There is a critical
moment in going from simple mark-making on paper to the use of
pencil-marks as signs that depict or mean something. All psychologists'
agree that the child must discover that the lines he makes can signify
something. Sully illustrates this discovery using the example of a child
who haphazardly drew a spiral line, without any meaning, suddenly
grasped a certain similarity, and joyfully exclaimed, "Smoke, smoke!"
Although this process of recognizing what is drawn is encountered
in early childhood, it is still not equivalent to the discovery of symbolic
function, as observations have shown. Initially, even if a child perceives
a similarity in a drawing, he takes the drawing to be an object that is
similar or of the same kind, not as a representation or symbol of the
object.
When a girl who was shown a drawing of her doll exclaimed, "A
doll just like mine!" it is possible that she had in mind another object
just like hers. According to Hetzer, there is no evidence that forces us to
assume that assimilation of the drawing to an object means at the same
time an understanding that the drawing is a representation of the object.
For the girl, the drawing is not a representation of a doll but another
doll just like hers. Proof of this is 'provided by the fact that for a long
time children relate to drawings as if they were objects. For example,
when a drawing shows a boy with his back to the observer, the child
will turn the sheet over to try to see the face. Even among Hve-year-olds
we always observed that, in response to the question, 'Where is his face
and nose?" children would turn the drawing over, and only then would
answer, "It's not there, its's not drawn."
We feel that Hetzer is most justified in asserting that primary
symbolic representation should be ascribed to speech, and that it is on
the basis of speech that all the other sign systems are created. Indeed,
the continuing shift toward the beginning in the moment of naming a
drawing is also evidence of the strong impact of speech on the develop-
ment of children's drawing.
We have had the opportunity of observing experimentally how
children's drawing becomes real written language by giving them the
task of symbolically depicting some more or less complex phrase. What
was most clear in these experiments was a tendency on the part of
school-age children to change from purely pictographic to ideographic
Mind in Society
114

writing, that is, to represent individual relations and meaning by ab-

stract symbolic signs. We observed this dominance of speech over writ-
ing in one school child who wrote each word of the phrase in question as
a separate drawing. For example, the phrase "I do not see the sheep, but
they are there" was recorded as follows: a figure of a person ("]"), the
same figure with its eyes covered ("don't see"), two sheep ("the sheep"),
an index finger and several trees behind which the sheep can be seen
("but they are there"), The phrase "I respect you" was rendered as
follows: a head ("I"), two human figures, one of which has his hat in
hand ("respect") and another head ("you:").
Thus, we see how the drawing obediently follows the phrase and
how spoken language intrudes into children's drawings. In this process,
the children frequently had to make genuine discoveries in inventing
an appropriate mode of representation, and we were able to see that this
is decisive in the development of writing and drawing in children.

SYMBOLISM IN WRITING
In connection with our general research, Luria undertook to create
this moment of discovery of the symbolics of writing so as to be able to
study it systematically." In his experiments children who were as yet
unable to write were confronted with the task of making some simple
fonn of notation. The children were told to remember a certain number
of phrases that greatly exceeded their natural memory capacity. When
each child became convinced that he would not be able to remember
them all, he was given a sheet of paper and asked to mark down or
record the words presented in some fashion.
Frequently, the children were bewildered by this suggestion, saying
that they could not write, but the experimenter furnished the child with
a certain procedure and examined the extent to which the child was
able to master it and extent to which the pencil-marks ceased to be
simple playthings and became symbols for recalling the appropriate
phrases. In the three-to-four-year-old stage, the child's notations are
of no assistance in remembering the phrases; in recalling them, the child
does not look at the paper. But we occasionally encountered some seem-
ingly astonishing cases that were sharply at variance with this general
observation. In these cases, the child also makes meaningless and un-
differentiated squiggles and lines, but when he reproduces phrases it
seems as though he is reading them; he refers to certain specific marks
and can repeatedly indicate, without error, which marks denote which
phrase. An entirely new relationship to these marks and a self-reinforc-
 The Prehistory of Written Language
115

ing motor activity arise: for the first time the marks become mnemo-
technic symbols. For example, the children place individual marks on
different parts of the page in such a way as to associate a certain phrase
with each mark. A characteristic kind of topography arises-one mark
in one comer means a cow, while another farther up means a chimney-
sweep. Thus the marks are primitive indicatory signs for memory
purposes.
We are fully justified in seeing the first precursor of future writing
in this mnemotechnic stage. Children gradually transform these undif-
ferentiated marks. Indicatory signs and symbolizing marks and scribbles
are replaced by little figures and pictures, and these in turn give way to-
signs. Experiments have made it possible not only to describe the very
moment of discovery itself but also to follow how the process occurs as a
function of certain factors. For example, the content and forms intro-
duced into the phrases in question first break down the meaningless
nature of the notation. If we introduce quantity into the material, we
can readily evoke a notation that reflects this quantity, even in four-
and- Bve-year-olds. (It was the need for recording quantity, perhaps, that
historically first gave rise to writing.) In the same way, the introduction
of color and form are conducive to the child's discovery of the principle
of writing. For example, phrases such as "like black," "black smoke
from a chimney," "there is white snow in winter," "a mouse with a long
tail,' or "Lyalya has two eyes and one nose" rapidly cause the child to
change over from writing that functions as indicatory gesture to writing
that contains the rudiments of representation.
It is easy to see that the written signs are entirely first-order symbols
at this point, directly denoting objects or actions, and the child has yet
to reach second-order symbolism, which involves the creation of written
signs for the spoken symbols of words. For this the child must make a
basic discovery-namely that one can draw not only things but also
speech. It was only this discovery that led humanity to the brilliant
method of writing by words and letters; the same thing leads children to
letter writing. From the pedagogical point of view, this transition should
be arranged by shifting the child's activity from drawing things to
drawing speech. It is difficult to specify how this shift takes place, since
the appropriate research has yet to lead to definite conclusions, and the
generally accepted methods of teaching writing do not permit the
observation of it. One thing only is certain-that the written language
of children develops in this fashion, shifting from drawings of things to
drawing of words. Various methods of teaching writing perform this in
various ways. Many of them employ auxiliary gestures as a means of
Mind in Society
116

uniting the written and spoken symbol; others employ drawings that
depict the appropriate objects. The entire secret of teaching written
language is to prepare and organize this natural transition appropriately.
As soon as it is achieved, the child has mastered the principle of written
language and then it remains only to perfect this method.
Given the current state of psychological knowledge, our notion that
make-believe play, drawing, and writing can be viewed as different
moments in an essentially unified process of development of written
language will appear to be very much overstated. The discontinuities
and jumps from one mode of activity to another are too great for the
relationship to seem evident. But experiments and psychological analysis
lead us to this very conclusion. They show that, however complex the
process of development of written language may seem, or however
erratic, disjointed, and confused it may appear superficially, there is in
fact a unified historical line that leads to the highest forms of written
language. This higher form, which we will mention only in passing,
involves the reversion of written language from second-order symbolism
to first-order symbolism. As second-order symbols, written symbols
function as designations for verbal ones. Understanding of written
language is first effected through spoken language, but gradually this
path is curtailed and spoken language disappears as the intermediate
link. To judge from all the available evidence, written language be-
comes direct symbolism that is perceived in the same way as spoken
language. We need only try to imagine the enormous changes in the
cultural development of children that occur as a result of mastery of
written language and the· ability to read-and of thus becoming aware
of everything that human genius has created in the realm of the
written word.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS
An overview of the entire developmental history of written lan-
guage in children leads us naturally to three exceptionally important
practical conclusions.
The first is that, from our point of view, it would be natural to
transfer the teaching of writing to the preschool years. Indeed, if
younger children are capable of discovering the symbolic function of
writing, as Hetzer's experiments have shown, then the teaching of
writing should be made the responsibility of preschool education, In-
deed, we see a variety of, circumstances which indicate that in the
 The Prehistory of Written Language
111

Soviet Union the teaching of writing clearly comes too late from the
psychological point of view. At the same time, we know that the teach-
ing of reading and writing generally begins at age six in most European
and American countries.
Hetzer's research indicates that eighty percent of three-year-oIds
can master an arbitrary combination of sign and meaning, while almost
all six-year-olds are capable of this operation. On the basis of her ob-
servations, one may conclude that development between three and six
involves not so much mastery of arbitrary signs as it involves progress
in attention and memory. Therefore, Hetzer favors beginning to teach
reading at earlier ages. To be sure, she disregards the fact that writing is
second-order symbolism, whereas what she studied was first-order
symbolism.
Burt reports that although compulsory schooling begins at age five
in England, children between three and five are allowed into school if
there is room and are taught the alphabet," The great majority of chil-
dren can read at four-and-a-half. Montessori is particularly in favor of
teaching reading and writing at an earlier age." In the course of game
situations, generally through preparatory exercises, all the children in
her kindergartens in Italy begin to write at four and can read as well as
first-graders at age five.
But Montessori's example best shows that the situation is much
more complex than it may appear at first glance. If we temporarily
ignore the correctness and beauty of the letters her children draw and
focus on the content of what they write, we find messages like the
following: "Happy Easter to Engineer Talani and Headmistress Montes-
sori. Best wishes to the director, the teacher, and to Doctor Montessori.
Children's House, Via Campania," and so forth. We do not deny the
possibility of teaching reading and writing to preschool children; we
even regard it as desirable that a younger child enter school if he is
able to read and write. But the teaching should be organized in such a
way that reading and writing are necessary for something. If they are
used only to write official greetings to the staff or whatever the teacher
thinks up (and clearly suggests to them), then the exercise will be
purely mechanical and may soon bore the child; his activity will not be
manifest in his writing and his -budding personality will not grow.
Reading and writing must be something the child needs. Here we have
the most vivid example of the basic contradiction that appears in the
teaching of writing not only in Montessori's school but in most other
schools as well, namely, that writing is taught as a motor skill and not
Mind in Society
118

as a complex cultural activity. Therefore, the issue of teaching writing

in the preschool years necessarily entails a second requirement: writing
must be "relevant to life"-in the same way that we require a "relevant"
arithmetic.
A second conclusion, then, is that writing should be meaningful
for children, that an intrinsic need should be aroused in them, and that
writing should be incorporated into a task that is necessary and relevant
for life. Only then can we be certain that it will develop not as a matter
of hand and finger habits but as a really new and complex form of
speech.
The third point that we are trying to advance as a practical conclu-
sion is the requirement that writing be taught naturally. In this respect,
Montessori has done a great deal. She has shown that the motor aspect
of this activity can indeed be engaged in in the course of children's
play, and that writing should be "cultivated" rather than "imposed." She
offers a well-motivated approach to the development of writing.
Following this path, a child approaches writing as a natural moment
in her development, and not as training from without. Montessori has
shown that kindergarten is the appropriate setting for teaching reading
and writing, and this means that the best method is one in which chil-
dren do not learn to read and write but in which both these skills are
found in play situations. For this it is necessary that letters become
elements of children's life in the same way, for instance, that speech is.
In the same way as children learn to speak, they should be able to learn
to read and write. Natural methods of teaching reading and writing
involve appropriate operations on the child's environment. Reading and
writing should become necessary for her in her play. But what Mon-
tessori has done as regards the motor aspects of this skill should now be
done in relation to the internal aspect of written language and its func-
tional assimilation. Of course, it is also necessary to bring the child to an
inner understanding of writing and to arrange that writing will be
organized development rather than learning. For this we can indicate
only an extremely general approach: in the same way that manual labor
and mastery of line-drawing are preparatory exercises for Montessori in
developing writing skills, drawing and play should be preparatory
stages in the development of children's written language. Educators
should organize all these actions and the entire complex process of
transition from one mode of written language to another. They should
follow it through its critical moments up to the discovery of the fact that
 The Prehistory of Written Language
119

one can draw not only objects but also speech. If we wished to sum-
marize all these practical requirements and express them as a single one,
we could say that children should be taught written language, not just
the writing of letters.
The great basic idea that the world is not to be viewed as a complex of
fully fashioned objects, but as a complex of processes, in which appar-
ently stable objects, no less than the images of them inside our heads (our
concepts), are undergoing incessant changes . . .
In the eyes of dialectical philosophy, nothing is established for all
time, nothing is absolute or sacred. On everything and in everything it
sees the stamp of inevitable decline; nothing can resist it save the un-
ceasing process of formation and destruction, the unending ascent from
lower to the higher-a process of which that philosophy itself is only a
simple reflection within the thinking brain.
Friedrich Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach
 Afterword
VERA JOHN-STEINER AND ELLEN SOUBERMA~

In this essay we hope to highlight several of Vygotsky's major

theoretical assumptions, in particular those that could be the source of
contemporary psychological research. After working for several years
with the manuscripts and lectures that make up this volume, we came to
recognize that Vygotsky's theory was primarily inductive, constructed
midstream as he explored diverse phenomena such as memory, inner
speech, and play. Our purpose is to explore in a systematic way those
concepts that have had the greatest impact on us personally and intel-
lectually while editing Vygotsky's manuscripts. and preparing this work.
As readers, we discovered that the consequences of internalizing
Vygotsky's ideas have a dynamic of their own. At first, an increasing
familiarity with his ideas helps one go beyond the polarities of contem-
porary psychological writings; he offers a model for new psychological
thought and research to those who are dissatisfied with the tension be-
tween traditional behaviorists and nativists. To some readers Vygotsky
may seem to represent an intermediary position; but a careful reading
reveals his emphasis on the complex transformations that constitute
human growth, the understanding of which requires active participation
on the part of the reader.
To Vygotsky, development was not merely a slow accumulation of
unitary changes, but rather, as he wrote, "a complex dialectical process,
characterized by periodicity, unevenness.in the development of dif-
ferent functions, metamorphosis or qualitative transformation of one
form into another, intertwining of external and internal factors, and

121
Afterw01'd
122

adaptive processes" (chapter 5). And indeed, in this sense, his views of
the history of the individt)al~,Jhe-history_Qf_cultur_e_ were similar. In
both cases Vygotsky rejects the concept of linear development and in-
corporates into his conceptualization both evolutionary and revolution-
ary change. The recognition of these two interrelated forms of develop-
ment is for him a necessary component of scientific thought.
Because it is not easy to conceptualize a dialectical process of
change, we found that his concepts did not make their full impact until
we attempted to combine our own research with his seminal ideas.'
This process required working through, again and again, the expansion
of his condensed but powerful concepts and applying them either to
our work or to daily observations of human behavior. The cryptic nature
of Vygotsky's writing, though it can be explained by the conditions of
his life during his last years, forced us to search deeply for his most sig-
nificant concepts. In this way we isolated those ideas that were strikingly
original and which, forty years after his death, still offer new and un-
fulfilled promise for both psychology and education.

CONCEPTS OF DEVELOPMENT
Each chapter of this volume deals with some aspect of developmen-
tal change as Vygotsky conceived it. Although he is clearly committed
to a theoretical position distinct from those of his influential contem-
poraries-Thorndike, Piaget, Koffka-he constantly returns to and ana-
lyzes their thinking in order to enrich and sharpen his own. While his
contemporaries also addressed the issue of development, Vygotsky's
approach differed from theirs in that he focused upon the historically
shaped and culturally transmitted psychology of human beings. His
analysis also differs from that of the early behaviorists. Vygotsky wrote:
In spite of the significant advances attributable to behaviorist method-
ology, that method nevertheless is seriously limited. The psychologist's
most vital challenge is that of uncovering and bringing to light the hidden
mechanisms underlying complex human psychology. Though the be-
haviorist method is objective and adequate to the study of simple re-
flexive acts, it clearly fails when applied to the study of complex psycho-
logical processes. The inner mechanisms characteristic of these processes
remain hidden.
The naturalistic approach to behavior in general does not take into
account the qualitative difference between human history and that of
animals. The experimental ramification of this kind of analysis is that
human behavior is studied without regard to the general history of human
development.P ..
 Afterword
123

In contrast, Vygotsky emphasizes a theoretical approach, and con-

sequently a methodology, that telescopes change. His effort in charting
developmental change is, in part, to show the psychological implications
of the fact that humans are active, vigorous participants in their own
existence and that at each stage of development children acquire the
means by which they can competently affect their world and them-
selves. Therefore, a crucial aspect of human mastery, beginning in in-
fancy, is the creation and use of auxiliary or "artificial" stimuli; through
such stimuli an immediate situation and the reaction linked to it are
altered by active human intervention.
These auxiliary stimuli created by humans have no inherent relation
to the existing situation; rather, humans introduce them as a means of
active adaptation. Vygotsky views auxiliary stimuli as highly diverse:
they include the tools of the culture into which the child is born, the
language of those who relate to the child, and the ingenious means pro-
duced by the child himself, including the use of his own body. One of
the most striking examples of this sort of tool use can be seen in the play
activity of poor children who do not have access to prefabricated toys
but who, nevertheless, are able to play house, train, and so on with
whatever resources are available to them~ Theoretical explorations of
these activities in a developmental context are a recurrent theme of this
volume, for Vygotsky sees playas the primary means of children's cul-
tural development.
Piaget shares Vygotsky's emphasis upon an active organism. They
share, as well, the ability to observe children astutely. However, Vygot-
sky's skills of observation were enhanced by his knowledge of dialectical
materialism and his view of the human organism as highly plastic and
of the environment as historically and culturally shifting contexts into
which children are born and which they, too, will eventually change.
While Piaget stresses biologically supported, universal stages of devel-
opment, Vygotsky's emphasis is on the interaction between changing
social conditions and the biological substrata of behavior. He wrote that
"in order to study development in children, one must begin with an
understanding of the dialectical unity of two principally different lines
[the biological and the cultural], to adequately study this process, then,
an experimenter must study both components and the Jaws which gov-
ern their interlacement at each stage of a child's development/?
Although the work of a great number of psychological theorists,
including Piaget, has been characterized as interactionist, the premises
of such an approach are still lacking full formulation. Some of the con-
cepts described in this volume constitute the basis for a more fully
Afterword
124

articulated interactionist-dialectical analysis of development. One of the

critical issues in any theory of development is the relation between the
biological bases of behavior and the social conditions in and through
which human activity takes place. A key concept Vygotsky proposed
to represent this important interaction is the functional learning system.
In the development of this notion he departed significantly both from
the then-existing psychology and from concepts of learning strongly
bound up with the study of animal behavior.
Vygotsky recognized, as had others before him, that functional
systems are rooted in the most basic adaptive responses of the organism,
such as unconditioned and conditioned reflexes. His theoretical contri-
bution, however, is based on. his description of the relation among these
diverse processes:
They are characterized by a new integration and co-relation of their
parts. The whole and its parts develop parallel to each other and to-
gether. We shall call the first structures elementary; they are psycho-
logical wholes, conditioned chiefly by biological determinants. The latter
structures which emerge in the process of cultural development are called
higher structures . . . The initial stage is followed by that first structure's
destruction, reconstruction, and transition to structures of the higher
type. Unlike the direct, reactive processes, these latter structures are
constructed on the basis of the use of signs and tools; these new forma-
tions unite both the direct and indirect means of adaptation.s
Vygotsky argued that in the course of development psychological sys-
tems arise which unite separate functions into new combinations and
complexes. This concept was further elaborated by Luria, who states
that the components and relations into which these unitary functions
enter are formed during each individual's development and are de-
pendent upon the social experiences of the child. The functional sys-
tems of an adult, then, are shaped essentially by her prior experiences as
a child, the social aspects of which are more determinative than in tra-
ditional cognitive theory (including that of Piaget).
In this theory perhaps the most fundamental characteristic of de-
velopmental change is the manner in which previously separate and
elementary functions are integrated into new functional learning sys-
terns: "Higher psychological functions are not superimposed as a second
story over the elementary processes; they represent new psychological
systems." These systems are changeable and are optimally adaptive to
the particular tasks confronting the child as well as to the child's stage
of development. Even though it may appear that children are learning
in a purely external manner, that is, mastering new skills, the learning
of any new operation is in fa~t the result of, and dependent on, a child's
 Afterword
125

process of development. The formation of new functional learning sys-

tems includes a process akin to that of nourishment in body growth,
wherein at any particular time certain nutrients are digested and assimi-
lated while others are rejected.
An approach analogous to Vygotsky's has emerged from the con-
temporary discussions of the role of nutrition in development. Birch and,
Gussow, who conducted many cross-cultural studies of physical and
intellectual growth, have advanced the following interactionist theory:
"The effective environment of any organism is never merely the ob-
jective situation in which he finds himself, but is rather the product of
an interaction between his unique organismic characteristics and what-
ever opportunities for experience his objective surroundings may pro-
vide/" In a similar vein, Vygotsky argues that because the historical
conditions which determine to a large extent the opportunities for
human experience are constantly changing, there can be no universal
schema that adequately represents the dynamic relation between in-
ternal and external aspects of development. Therefore, a functional
learning system of one child may not be identical to that of another,
though there may be similarities at certain stages of development. Here,
too, Vygotsky's analysis is different from that of Piaget, who describes
universal stages that are identical for all children as a function of age.
This point of view, which alms at linking the biological substrata
of development to the study of functions culturally and historically
achieved, may be oversimplified and give rise to misunderstandings.
Luria, Vygotsky's student and collaborator, sought to clarify the com-
plex physiological implications of this view of the cognitive evolution
of Homo sapiens:
The fact that in the course of history man has developed new functions
does not mean that each one relies on a new group of nerve cells and that
new "centers" of higher nervous functions appear like those so eagerly
sought by neurologists during the last third of the nineteenth century.
The development of new "functional organs" occurs through the forma-
tion of new functional systems, which is a means for the unlimited de-
velopment of cerebral activity. The human cerebral cortex, thanks to this
principle, becomes an organ of civilization in which are hidden boundless
possibilities, and does not require new morphological apparatuses every
time history creates the need for a new function.f
The focus upon socially elaborated learning in Vygotsky's work
emerges most clearly in his studies of mediated memory. It is in the
course of interaction between children and adults that young learners
identify effective means for remembering-means made accessible to
them by those with more highly developed memory skills. The lack of
AfterwMd

126

recognition among educators of this social process, of the many ways in

which an experienced learner can share his knowledge with a less ad~
vanced learner, limits the intellectual development of many students;
their capabilities are viewed as biologically determined rather than
socially facilitated. In addition to these studies of memory (chapter 3),
Vygotsky explores the role of social and cultural experiences through
an examination of children's play (chapter 7). In their play children
both depend on and imaginatively transform those socially produced
objects and forms of behavior made available to them in their particular
environment. An ever-present theme in this volume is the Marxian con-
cept of a historically determined human psychology. Some of Vygotsky's
other writings, which are still unavailable in English, develop further
his fundamental hypothesis that the higher mental functions are socially
formed and culturally transmitted: "If one changes the tools of thinking
available to a child, his mind will have a radically different structure."?
Through signs children are able to internalize the adaptive social
means already available to them from society at large. For Vygotsky,
one of the essential aspects of development is the increasing ability of
children to control and direct their own behavior, a mastery made possi-
ble by the development of new psychological forms and functions and
by the use of signs and tools in this process. At a later age children ex-
tend the boundaries of their understanding by integrating socially
elaborated symbols (such as social values and beliefs, the cumulative
knowledge of their culture, and the scientifically expanded. concepts
of reality) into their own consciousness. '
In Thought and Language Vygotsky presents a sophisticated argu-
ment demonstrating that language, the very means by which reflection
and elaboration of experience takes place, is a highly personal and at
the same time a profoundly social human process. He sees the relation
between the individual and the society as a dialectical process which,
like a river and its tributaries, combines and separates the different ele-
ments of human life. They are never frozen polarities to him.
By far the most important sign-using behavior in children's de-
velopment is human speech. Through speech children free themselves
of many of the immediate constraints of their environment. They pre-
pare themselves for future activity; they plan, order, and control their
own behavior as well as that of others. Speech is also an excellent exam-
ple of sign usage which, once internalized, becomes a pervasive and
profound part of the higher psychological processes; speech acts to
organize, unify, and integrate many disparate aspects of children's
behavior, such as perception,·memory, and problem solving (chapter 4).
 Afte1'Wo.,d
127

He offers the contemporary reader a provocative avenue for dealing

with a recurrent controversial issue, the relation between overt and
covert processes.
Like words, tools and nonverbal signs provide learners with ways
to become more efficient in their adaptive and problem-solving efforts.
Vygotsky often illustrates the varied means of human adaptation with,
examples drawn from nonindustrialized societies:
Counting fingers was once an important cultural triumph of humankind.
It served as a bridge between immediate quantitative perception and
counting. Thus, the Papuas of New Guinea began to count with the pinky
of their left hand, follow through with the remaining left hand fingers,
then add the left hand, forearm, elbow, shoulder, right shoulder, and so
on, finishing with the pinky of the right hand. When this was insufficient
they often used another person's fingers, or their own toes, or sticks,
shells, and other small portable objects. In early counting systems, we
may observe in developed and active form the same process that is pres-
ent in rudimentary form during the development of a child's arithmetical
reasoning.
Similarly, the tying of knots as a reminder not to forget something
is related to the psychology of everyday life. A person must remember
something, to fulfill some request, do this or that, pick up some object.
Not trusting his memory and unwilling to go by it, he often ties his
hanky into a knot or uses a similar device, such as sticking a little piece
of paper under the cover of his pocket watch. Later on, the knot is sup-
posed to remind him of what he was supposed to do. And, this device
often successfully carries out that function.
Here, again, is an operation that is unthinkable and impossible
in the case of animals. In the very fact of the introduction of an artificial,
auxiliary means of memorizing, in the active creation and use of a stim-
ulus as a tool for memory, we see a principally new and specifically
human feature of behavior."
The use of tools and signs share some important properties; both
involve mediated activity. But they also diverge from each other: signs
are internally oriented, according to Vygotsky, a means of psychological
influence aimed at mastering oneself; tools, on the other hand, are
externally oriented, aimed at mastering and triumphing over nature.
The distinction between signs and tools is a good example of Vygotsky's
analytical capacity to interweave diverse and similar aspects of human
experience. Some other examples are thought and language, immedi-
ate and mediated memory, and, on a broader scale, the biological and
the cultural, the individual and the social.
In a concise passage in which he describes a two-stage psychological
transformation that captures the way in which the child internalizes
her social experience, Vygotsky also depicts a dynamic that he believes
Afterw01'd
128

is present throughout the entire span of a human life: "Every function

in the child's cultural development appears twice, on two levels. First,
on the social, and later on the psychological level; first, between people
as an interpsychological category, and then inside the child, as an
intrapsychological category. This applies equally to voluntary attention,
to logical memory and to the formation of concepts. The actual rela-
tions between human individuals underlie all the higher functions"
( chapter 4). In the buzzing confusion that surrounds the infant during
the first few months of her life, parents assist her by pointing and
carrying the child close to objects and places of adaptive significance
(toys, refrigerator, cupboard, playpen), thus helping the child to ignore
other irrelevant features of the environment (such adult objects as
books, tools, and so on). This socially mediated attention develops into
the child's more independent and voluntary attention, which she will
come to use to classify her surroundings.
In contrast with the well-known formulation by J. B. Watson, who
wrote of thought as "subvocal language," Vygotsky, in Thought and
Language, describes how the growing child internalizes social language
and makes it personal and how these two aspects of cognition, first in-
dependent of each other, are later joined: "Up to a certain point in
time the two follow different lines, independently of each other ... At a
certain point these lines meet, whereupon thought becomes verbal and
speech rational" (p. 44). In this way Vygotsky demonstrates the effec-
tiveness of conceptualizing related functions not as an identity but as
the unity of two diverse processes.
We believe this conception of human growth in its many varied
manifestations is of value to contemporary psychological investigations.
Though Vygotsky focused much of his research energies on the study of
children, to view this great Russian psychologist as primarily a student
of child development would be an error; he emphasized the study of
development because he believed it to be the primary theoretical and
methodological means necessary to unravel complex human processes,
a view of human psychology that distinguishes him from his and our
contemporaries. There was, for him, no real distinction between devel-
opmental psychology and basic psychological inquiry. Moreover, he
recognized that an abstract theory is insuffiicent to capture the critical
moments of change; and he demonstrated that the researcher must
be an astute observer of children's play, their efforts at learning,
their responses to teaching. The ingenuity of Vygotsky's experiments
was a product of his skill ~nd interest as both observer and experi-
menter.
 Afterword
129

EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS
Throughout this volume Vygotsky explores the various temporal
dimensions of human life. He never equates the historical development
of humankind to the stages of individual growth, since he is opposed to
the biogenetic theory of recapitulation. Rather, his concern is with the
consequences of human activity as it transforms both nature and so-
ciety. Although the labor of men and women to improve their world is
rooted in the material conditions of their era, it is also affected by their
capacity to learn from the past, to imagine, and to plan for the future.
These specifically human abilities are absent in newborns, but by the
age of three young children may already experience the tension between
desires that can be fulfilled only in the future and demands for immedi-
ate gratification. Through play this contradiction is explored and tem-
porarily resolved. And so Vygotsky places the beginnings of human
imagination at the age of three: "Imagination is a new formation which
is not present in the consciousness of the very young child, is totally
absent in animals, and represents a specifically human form of con-
scious activity. Like all functions of consciousness, it originally arises
from action. The old adage that child's play is imagination in action can
be reversed: we can say that imagination in adolescents and school-
children is play without action" (chapter 7).
In their play children project themselves into the adult activities
of their culture and rehearse their future roles and values. Thus, play is
in advance of development, for in this manner children begin to acquire
the motivation, skills, and attitudes necessary for their social participa-
tion, which can be fully achieved only with the assistance of their
peers and elders.
During preschool and school years the conceptual abilities of chil-
dren are stretched through play and the use of their imagination. In the
course of their varied games they acquire and invent rules, or as Vygot-
sky describes it, "In playa child is always above his average age, above
his daily behavior, in play it is as though he were a head taller than
himself" (chapter 7). While imitating their elders in culturally pat-
terned activities, children generate opportunities for intellectual de-
velopment. Initially, their games are recollections and reenactments of
real situations; but through the dynamics of their imagination and the
recognition of implicit rules governing the activities they have repro-
duced in their games, children achieve an elementary mastery of ab-
stract thought. In this sense, Vygotsky argued, play leads development.
Similarly, school instruction and learning is in advance of chil-
Afterword
130

dren's cognitive development. Vygotsky proposes a parallel between

play and school instruction: both create a "zone of proximal develop-
ment" (chapters 6 and 7), and in both contexts children elaborate
socially available skills and knowledge that they will come to internal-
ize. While in play all aspects of children's lives become themes in their
games, in school both the content of what is being taught as well as the
role of the specially trained adult who teaches them is carefully planned
and more narrowly focused.
In an essay on the psychological ideas of L. S. Vygotsky, Leontiev
and Luria summarize some of the specific features of classroom
education:
School education is qualitatively different from education in the broad
sense. At school the child is faced with a particular task: to grasp the
bases of scientific studies, i.e., a system of scientific conceptions.
In the process of school education the child starts off from what
have become his own complex generalizations and significances; but he
does not so much proceed from them, as proceed onto a new path to-
gether with them, onto the path of intellectual analysis, comparison,
unification, and establishment of logical relations. He reasons, follow-
ing the explanations given to him and then reproducing new, for him,
logical operations of transition from one generalization to other generali-
zations. The early concepts that have been built in the child in the
process of living and which were assisted by rapport with his social
environment (Vygotsky called them "everyday" or "spontaneous" con-
cepts, spontaneous in the sense that they are formed aside from any
process specially aimed at mastering them) are now switched to a new
process, to a new specially cognitive relationship to the world, and so
in this process the child's concepts are transformed and their structure
changes. In the development of a child's consciousness the grasping of
the bases of a science-system of concepts now takes the lead.?
In Vygotsky's lifetime he and Luria initiated studies aimed at
examining the cognitive consequences of rapid social change and the
specific impact of schooling.!" In addition to his interest in cognitive
development among nonliterate peoples, his concern encompassed
other aspects of the social and educational transformations brought
about by the October Revolution. These concerns occupy many con-
temporary educators in countries undergoing rapid modernization and
urbanization. Even in the United States, where the concept of public
education is two centuries old, similar issues arise because large
groups of people have not yet been integrated into or benefited from
mass education. Some of the issues of concern to Vygotsky that are still
alive today are the length-and scope of public education, the use of
standardized tests to assess the educational potential of children, and
effective models of teaching and curriculum.
 Afterword
131

Through the concept of the zone of proximal development as ad-

vanced by Vygotsky during intense educational debates in the 1930s, he
telescopes, from the point of view of instruction, central tenets of his
cognitive theory: the transformation of an interpersonal (social) proc-
ess to an intrapersonal one; the stages of internalization; and the role of
experienced learners. The zone of proxima] development, he wrote, is
"the distance between the [child's] actual developmental level as de-
termined by independent problem solving and the level of potential
development as determined through problem solving under adult guid-
ance or in collaboration with more capable peers" (chapter 6).
Many educators, recognizing that the rate of learning may vary
from child to child, isolate particularly "slow learners" from their
teachers as well as their peers through the use of programmed and fre-
quently mechanized instruction. In contrast, Vygotsky, because he
views learning as a profoundly social process, emphasizes dialogue and
the varied roles that language plays in instruction and in mediated cog-
nitive growth. The mere exposure of students to new materials through
oral lectures neither allows for adult guidance nor for collaboration
with peers. To implement the concept of the zone of proximal develop-
ment in instruction, psychologists and educators must collaborate in
the analysis of the internal ("subtefranean") developmental processes
which are stimulated by teaching and which are needed for subsequent
learning. In this theory, then, teaching represents the means through
which development is advanced; that is, the socially elaborated con-
tents of human knowledge and the cognitive strategies necessary for
their internalization are evoked in the learners -according to their "actual
developmental levels." Vygotsky criticizes educational intervention that
lags behind developed psychological processes instead of focusing upon
emerging functions and capabilities. A particularly imaginative appli-
cation of these principles are Paolo Freire's literacy campaigns in Third
World countries. Because he adapted his educational methods to the
specific historical and cultural setting in which his students lived, they
were able to combine their "spontaneous" concepts (those based on
social practice) with those introduced by teachers in instructional
settings.'!

VYGOTSKY'S HISTORICAL-CULTURAL APPROACH ~

Perhaps the most distinguishing theme of Vygotsky's writings is

his emphasis on the unique qualities of OUf species, how as human
beings we actively realize and change ourselves in the varied contexts -4
of culture and history. Repeatedly in this volume Vygotsky differenti-
Afterword
132

ates the adaptive capabilities of animals from those of humans. The

critical factor on which this distinction is based is the historically
created and culturally elaborated dimensions of human life that are
absent from the social organization of animals. In the development of
higher functions-that is, in the internalization of the processes of
knowing-the particulars of human social existence are reflected in
human cognition: an individual has the capacity to externalize and
share with other members cf her social group her understanding of
their shared experience.
The relative immaturity of the human infant, in contrast with
other species, necessitates a lengthy reliance on caretaking adults, a
circumstance that creates a basic psychological contradiction for the
infant": on the one hand he is totally dependent on organisms vastly
more experienced than himself, and on the other hand he reaps the
benefits of a socially developed and optimal setting for learning. Al-
though children are dependent on lengthy nurturance and caretaking,
they are active participants in their own learning within the supportive
contexts of family and community. As Edward E. Berg pointed out:

Just as the tools of labor change historically, so the tools' of thinking

change historically. And just as new tools of labor give rise to new social
structures, new tools of thinking give rise to new mental structures.
Traditionally, it was thought that such things as the family and the state
always existed in more or less their present form. Likewise, one also
tends to view the structure of the mind as something universal and eter-
nal. To Vygotsky, however, both social structures and mental structures
turn out to have very definite historical roots, and are quite specific
products of certain levels of tool development.P

Vygotsky's study of human development was deeply influenced

by Friedrich Engels, who stressed the critical role of labor and tools in
transforming the relation between human beings and their environment.
The role of tools in human development was described by En-
gels as follows: "The tool specifically symbolizes human activity,
man's transformation of nature: production."13 Such an approach re-
quires an understanding of the active role of history in human psycho-
logical development. In The Dialectics of Nature Engels presented
some key concepts that were elaborated by Vygotsky. They both criti-
cized psychologists and philosophers who held the view "that only
nature affects man and only natural conditions determine man's historic
development," and emphasized that in the course of history man, too,
"affects nature, changes it, -creates for himself new natural conditions
of existence."14 Furthermore, Vygotsky argued that the effect of tool
 Afterword
133

use upon humans is fundamental not only because it has helped them
relate more effectively to their external environment but also because
tool use has had important effects upon internal and functional rela-
tionships within the human brain.
Although Engels and Vygotsky based their theories on the limited
archaeological findings available to them during the years in which they
wrote, contemporary archaeologists and physical anthropologists such
as the Leakeys and Sherwood Washburn have interpreted more recent
findings in a manner consistent with Engels' and Vygotsky's point of
View. Washburn states, "It was the success of the simplest tools that
started the whole trend of human evolution and led to the civilization
of today." Most likely Vygotsky would have agreed with Washburn,
who views the evolution of human life from our primate ancestors as
resulting in "intelligent, exploratory, playful, and vigorous primates ...
and that tools, hunting, fire, complex social speech, the human way and
the brain evolved together to produce ancient man."'15 These archaeo-
logical discoveries support Vygotsky's concepts of what it is to be
human.
The impact of Vygotsky's work-as that of great theoreticians
everywhere-is both general and specific. Cognitive psychologists as
well as educators are interested in exploring the present-day implica-
tions of his notions, whether they refer to play, to the genesis of scien-
tific concepts, or to the relation of language and thought. The men and
women who were his students forty years ago still debate his ideas with
the intensity and vigor due a contemporary-and we who worked as
his editors found many possible, sometimes contradictory, interpreta-
tions of his work. But there is a powerful tlplead drawing together Vy-
gotsky's diverse and stimulating writings: it is the way in which his
mind worked. His legacy in an increasingly destructive and alienating
world is to offer through his theoretical formulations a powerful tool for
restructuring human life with an aim toward survival."
 Notes

INTRODUCTION
1. K. N. Kornilov, "Psychology and Marxism," in K. N. Kornilov, ed.,
Psychology and Marxism (Leningrad: State Publishing House, 1925), pp. 9-
24. L. S. Vygotsky, "Consciousness as a Problem in the Psychology of Be-
havior," in Komilov, ed., Psychology and Marxism, pp. 175-198. See also
K. N. Kornilov, "Psychology in the Light of Dialectical Materialism," in C.
Murchison, ed., Psychologies of 1930 (Worcester: Clark University Press,
1930; rpt., New York: Arno Press, 1973).
2. Friedrich Engels, Dialectics of Nature (New York: International Pub-
lishers, 1940), p. 40.
3. P. P. Blonsky, Studies in Scientific Psychology (Moscow: State Pub-
lishing House, 1911).
4. R. Thumwald, "Psychologic des primitiven Menschen," in Handbuch
der uergleichenden Psychologie (Munich, 1922). L. Levy-Bruhl, Primitive
Mentality (New York: Macmillan, 1923).
5. A. R. Luria, Cognitive Development: Its Cultural and Social Founda-
tions (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976).
6. Z. M. Istomina, "The Development of Voluntary Memory in Pre-
school Age Children," Soviet Psychology, 13, no. 4 (1975): 5-64.
7. M. Cole and I. Maltzman, eds., A Handbook of Contemporary Soviet
Psychology (New York: Basic Books, 1969). A. V. Zaporozhets and D. B.
Elkonin, eds., The Psychology of Preschool Children (Cambridge: MIT Press,
1971).

CHAPTER,l
1. K. Stumpf, "Zur Methodik der Kinderpsychologie," Zeitsch. f. pddag.
Psychol., 2 (1900).
2. A. Gesell, The Mental Growth of the Preschool Child (New York:
Macmillan, 1925; Russian ed., Moscow-Leningrad: Gosizdat., 1930).

135
Notes to Pages 20-37
136

3. W. Kohler, The Mentality of Apes (New York: Harcourt, Brace,

1925) .
4. K. Buhler, The Mental Development of the Child (New York: Har-
court, Brace, 1930; Russion ed., 1924).
5. This particular experiment was described by D. E. Berlyne, "Chil-
dren's Reasoning and Thinking," in Carmichael's Manual of Child Psychology,
3rd ed., Paul H. Mussen, ed. (New York: John Wiley, 1970), pp. 939-981.
6. C. Buhler, The First Year of Life (New York: Day, 1930).
7. K. Buhler, Mental Development, pp. 49-51. See also C. Buhler, First
Year. The linguistic capabilities of chimpanzees are currently the subject of
controversy among psychologists and linguists. It seems clear that chimpanzees
are capable of more complex signing than expected at the time Buhler and
Vygotsky wrote these passages. However, the inferences about cognitive and
linguistic competence warranted by these observations are still hotly debated.
8. S. A. Shapiro and E. D. Gerke, described in M. Ya. Basov, Fundamen-
tals of General Pedology (Moscow-Leningrad: Gosizdat., 1928).
9. P. Guillaume and I. Meyerson, "Recherches sur l'usage de l'instrument
chez les singes," Journal de Psychologie, 27 (1930): 177-236.
10. Research on aphasia was barely begun by Vygotsky during his own
lifetime. The error of this conclusion and subsequent changes in his theory
regarding aphasia may be found in the work of A. R. Luria; see Traumatic
Aphasia (The Hague: Mouton, 1970).
11. W. Stem, Psychology of Early Childhood up to the Sixth Year of Age
(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1924; Russian ed., Petrograd, 1915).
12. J. Piaget, The Language and Thought of the Child (New York:
Meridian Books, 1955; also International Library of Psychology, 1925). The
differences between Vygotsky's and Piaget's views of early language develop-
ment and the role of egocentric speech is treated extensively in chapter 3 of
Vygotsky's Thought and Language (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1962) and in
Piaget's volume of essays, Six Psychological Studies (New York: Random
House, 1967).
13. See R. E. Levina, for L. S. Vygotsky's ideas on the planning role of
speech in children, Voprosi Psikhologii, 14 (1938): 105-115. Although
Levina made these observations in the late 1920s, they remain unpublished
except for this brief explication.
14. Piaget, Language and Thought, p. 110.
15. A fuller description of these experiments is presented in chapter 7 of
Thought and Language.

CHAPTER 2
1. A. Binet, "Perception de'enfants," Revue Philosophique, 30 (1890):
582--611. Stern, Psychology of Early Childhood.
2. A. A. Potebnya, Thought and Language (Kharkhov, 1892), p. 6.
3. K. KoHka, The Growth of the Mind (London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1924).
4. R. Lindner, Gas Taubsiumme Kind in Vergleich mit vollstandigen
Kinder (Leipzig, 1925).
 Notes to Pages 37-66

137

5. K. Lewin, Wille, Vorsatz und Beduerfniss (Berlin: Springer, 1926).

CHAPTER 3
1. E. R. Jaensch, Eidetic Imagery (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1930).
2. Vygotsky is referring here to the technique of using knotted rope as a
mnemonic device among Peruvian Indians. No reference is given in the text,
but from other manuscripts it appears that the writing of E. B. Taylor and
Levy-Bruhl provided these examples.
3. These observations are taken from an article by A. N. Leontiev,
"Studies on the Cultural Development of the Child," Journal of Genetic
Psychology, 40 (1932): 52-83.
4. A fuller description of this technique may be found in A. R. Luria,
"The Development of Mental Functions in Twins," Character and Personality,
5 (1937): 35-47.
5. L. V. Zankov, Memory (Moscow: Uchpedgiz., 1949).
6. A. N. Leontiev, "The Development of Mediated Memory," Problemi
Defektologiga, no. 4 (1928).
7. See H. Werner, Comparative Psychology of Mental Development
(New York: Science Editions, 1961), pp. 216ff.
8. See Vygotsky, Thought and Language, chapter 6, for a more extensive
discussion of the distinction.

CHAPTER 4
1. G. Hegel, "Encyklopadie, Erster Theil. Die Logik" (Berlin, 1840),
p. 382, cited in K. Marx, Capital (Modem Library Edition, 1936).
2. Marx, Capital, p. 199.

CHAPTER 5
1. Engels, Dialectics of Nature, p. 172.
2. H. Werner, The Comparative Psychology of Mental Development
(New York: International Universities Press, 1948).
3. K. Lewin, A Dynamic Theory of Personality (New York: McGraw-
Hill, 1935).
4. Stern, Psyclwlogy of Early Childhood.
5. Exact references are not included, but in his other writings, Vygotsky
quotes extensively from Capital, vol. 1.
6. E. Titchener, Textbook of Psychology (Moscow, 1914, in Russian).
7. P. P. Blonsky, Essays in Scientific Psychology (Moscow: State Publish-
ing House, 1921).
8. For an extended discussion of the importance of reaction time experi-
ments in early twentieth-century psychology, see E. G. Boring, "The Psychol-
ogy of Controversy," Psychological Review, 36 (1929): 97-121.
9. Several of Cattell's papers on the reaction time study are reprinted in
W. Dennis, Readings in the History of Psychology (New York: Appleton-
Century-Crofts, 1948).
Notes to Pages 67-121
138

10. N. Ach Uber die Willenstatigkeit und das Denken (1905).

11. For an outstanding application of these ideas to the development of
voluntary memory in preschool age children, see the article by Istomina in
Soviet Psychology, 12, no. 4 (1975): 5--64.

CHAPTER 6
1. Piaget, Language and Thought.
2. William James, Talks to Teachers (New York: Norton, 1958), pp.
36-37.
3. Koffka, Growth of the Mind.
4. E. L. Thorndike, The Psychology of Learning (New York: Teachers
College Press, 1914).
5. Dorothea McCarthy, The Language Development of the Pre-school
Child (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1930).
6. Kohler, Mentality of Apes.
7. Piaget, Language and Thought.

CHAPTER 7
1. J. Sully, Studies of Childhood (Moscow, 1904, in Russian), p. 48.
2. Lewin, Dynamic Theory of Personality, p. 96.
3. See K. Goldstein, Language and Language Disorders (New York:
Greene and Stratton, 1948).
4. Koffka, Growth of the Mind, pp. 381ff.

CHAPTER 8
1. J. M. Baldwin, Mental Development in the Child and the Race (New
York, 1895; Russian ed., 1912).
2. Wurth (reference not available).
3. H. Hetzer, Die Symbolische Darstelling in der fruhen Windhert,
(Vienna: Deutscher Verlag fur Jugend und Yolk, 1926), p. 92.
4. K. Buhler, Mental Development of the Child.
5. J. Sully, Studies of Childhood (London, 1895).
6. A. R. Luria, "Materials on the Development of Writing in Children,"
Problemi Marksistkogo Vospitaniya, I (1929): 143-176.
7. C. Burt, Distribution of Educational Abilities (London: P. S. King
and Sons, 1917).
8. M. Montessori, Spontaneous .Activity in Education (New York:
Schocken, 1965).

AFTERWORD
1. See Nan Elsasser and Vera John-Steiner, (CAn Interactionist Approach
to Advancing Literacy," Harvard Educational Review, 47, no. 3 (August
1977): 355-370. ..
 Notes to Pages 122-126
139

2. Translation of passage from ''Tool and Symbol" and Development of

Higher Psychological Functions not included in this text. Vygotsky used the
term "natural" widely; see pp. 38-39, above.
3. In this volume, the editors have interpreted Vygotsky's use of
"natural" aspects of behavior to mean biologically given features, such as
reflexes present at birth. An additional interpretation of "natural" can be
gained from the following passage taken from A. N. Leontiev's, A. R. Luria's,
and B. M. Teplov's preface to Vygotsky's Development of Higher Psychologi-
cal Functions.
His attempt to show that it was impossible to reduce the formation of
man's higher mental functions to 'the process of the development of their
elementary forms leads to the false division at the genetic plane and at
the plane of coexistence at higher levels of development. Thus, for ex-
ample, memory development is presented as going through two stages:
the stage of purely natural memory which terminates at a preschool age
and the following stage of development of a higher, mediated memory.
The development of co-existing forms of memory is treated in the same
way. One form rests exclusively on biological foundations, and others
are the product of the child's social and cultural development. This op-
position which appears in L. S. Vygotsky's writings and in the research
of his collaborators justifiably was criticized in its time. It is truly with-
out foundation: after all, even in very young children psychological
processes are formed under the influence of verbal interaction with
adults and consequently are not "natural." The young child's memory
processes are not "natural" because they already have changed as a
result of language acquisition. We can say the same with regard to
cases of the preservation of a sharply distinguished "natural" eidetic
memory which turns out to be subject to transformation in man.
While pointing out the inadequacy of Vygotsky's false contrast between
natural (organic) and higher (cultural) forms of mental processes, we must
emphasize that this contrast in no way is implied from his general theoretical
position.
Although Vygotsky has been criticized for- posing this artificial duality
between the natural and the cultural, as Leontiev and Luria point out, the
distinction is in fact an abstraction, a vehicle for describing a very complex
process. "The child's mental development is a continuous process of gaining
active control over initially passive mental functions. To gain this control
the child learns to use signs and thus converts these 'natural' mental functions
into sign-mediated, cultural functions." Edward E. Berg, "L, S. Vygotsky's
Theory of the Social and Historical Origins of Consciousness" (Ph.D. Diss.,
University of Wisconsin, 1970), p. 164.
4. This passage is from the unedited translation of "Tool and Symbol."
5. Herbert G. Birch and Joan Dye Gussow, Disadvantaged Children:
Health, Nutrition and School Failure (New York: Harcourt, Brace and
World, 1970), p. 7.
6. A. R. Luria, "L. S. Vygotsky and the Problem of Functional Locali-
zation," Soviet Psychology, 5, no. 3 (1967): 53-57.
7. E. Berg, "Vygotsky's Theory," p. 46.
8. Translation of passage from Development of Higher Psychological
Functions not included in text.
Notes to Pages 127-133
140

9. A. N. Leontiev and A. R. Luria, "The Psychological Ideas of L. S.

Vygotskii," in B. B. Wolman, ed., Historical Roots of Contemporary Psychol-
ogy (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), pp. 338-367.
10. A. R. Luria, Cognitive Development: Its Cultural and Social Foun-
dations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 197-6).
11. P. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Seabury, 1970).
12. "Vygotsky's Theory," pp. 45-46.
13. K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works (Moscow: 1953), p. 63.
14. Engels, Dialectics of Nature (New York: International Publishers,
1940), p. 172.
15. "Tools and Human Evolution," Scientific American, 203, no, 3
(1960): 63-75.
16. We would especially like to thank .Stan Steiner and Ricardo Maez
for their continued support through our many years of work on this volume
and for their recognition of the importance of Vygotsky's writings to our
joint futures.
Vygotsky's Works

IN RUSSIAN

1915
"The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark." Private archives of L. S. Vy-
gotsky. Manuscript.

1916
"Literary Remarks on Petersburg by Andrey Biely." The New Way, 1916, no.
47, pp. 27-32.
Review of Petersburg by Andrey Biely. Chronicle, 1916, no. 12, pp. 327-328.
Review of Fumnos and Bounds by Vyacheslav Ivanov published in (Musatet,
1916). Chronicle, 1916, no. 10, pp. 351-352.
"The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark." Private archives of L. S. Vy-
gotsky. Manuscript.

1917
Review of loy Will Be (a play) by D. Merezhkovsky (published in The Lights,
1916). Chronicle, 1917, no. 1, pp. 309-310.
Foreword to and remarks on "The Priest" (a poem) by N. L. Brodsky.
Chronicle, 1917, nos. 5-6, pp. 366-367.

1922
"About the Methods of Teaching Literature in Secondary Schools."
Report on the District Scientific Methodological Conference, Aug. 7,
1922. Private archives of L. S. Vygotsky. Manuscript, 17 pp.

1923
"The Investigation of the Processes of Language Comprehension Using Mul-
tiple Translation of Text from One Language to Another." Private
archives of L. S. Vygotsky. Manuscript, 8 pp.

141
Vygotsky's Works
142

1924
Vygotsky, L. S., ed. Problems of Education of Blind, Deaf-Dumb and Re-
tarded Children. Moscow: SPON NKP Publishing House, 1924.
"Methods of Reflexological and Psychological Investigation." Report of
the National Meeting of Psychoneurology, Leningrad, Jan. 2, 1924. In
The Problems of Contemporary Psychology, 11,26-46. Leningrad: Gov-
ernment Publishing House, 1926.
"Psychology and Education of Defective Children." In Problems of Education
of Blind, Deaf-Dumb and Retarded Children, pp. 5-30. Moscow: SPON
NKP Publishing House, 1924.
Foreword to Problems of Education of Blind, Deaf-Dumb and Retarded Chil-
dren. Moscow: SPON NKP Publishing House, 1924.
"The Principles of Education of Physically Defective Children." Report of
the Second Meeting of SPON, Dec. 1924. Public Education, 1925, no. 1,
pp. 112-120.

1925
Review of The Auxiliary School by A. N. Graborov. Public Education, 1925,
no. 9, pp.17Q-171.
'Foreword to Beyond the Pleasure Principle by S. Freud. Moscow: Contempo-
rary Problems, 1925. (With A. R. Luria.)
Foreword to General and Experimental Psychology by A. F. Lasursky. Lenin-
grad: Government Publishing House, 1925.
"The Principles of Social Education of Deaf-Dumb Children." Private arch..
ives of L. S. Vygotsky. Manuscript, 26 pp.
The Psychology of Art. Moscow: Moscow Art Publishing House, 1965 (379
pp.); 2nd ed., 1968 (576 pp.).
"The Conscious as a Problem of the Psychology of Behavior." In Psychology
and Marxism, I, 175-198. Moscow-Leningrad: Government Publishing
House, 1925.

1926-1927
Graphics of Bikhovsky. Moscow: Contemporary Russia Publishing House,
1926.
"Methods of Teaching Psychology." (Course program.) The State Archives of
Moscow District, fo!' 948, vol. I, set 613, p. 25.
"About the Influence of Speech Rhythm on Breathing." In Problems of Con-
temporary Psychology, II, 169-173. Leningrad: Government Publishing
House, 1926.
Pedagogical Psychology. Moscow: The Worker of Education Publishing
House, 1926.
"Introspection" by Koffka. In Problems of Contemporary Psychology, pp. 17~
178. Moscow-Leningrad: Government Publishing House, 1926.
Foreword to Principles of Learning Based upon Psychology by E. L. Thorn-
dike (tr, from the English), pp. 5-23. Moscow: The Worker of Education
Publishing House, 1926.
Foreword to The Practice of Experimental Psychology, Education and Psy-
chotechnics by R. Schulz (tr. from the German), pp. 3-5. Moscow: Prob-
lems of Labor Publishing House, 1926. (With A. R. Luria.)
 Vygotsky's Works
143

"The Problem- of Dominant Reactions." In Problems of Contemporary Psy-

chology, II, 100-123. Leningrad: Government Publishing House, 1926.
Review of The Psyche of Proletarian Children by Otto RuIle (Moscow-
Leningrad, 1926). Private archives of L. S. Vygotsky. Manuscript, 3 pp.
"The Biogenetic Law in Psychology and Education." The Great Soviet
Encyclopedia, 1927, vol. VI, cols. 275-279.
"Defect and Supercompensation." In Retardation, Blindness and Mutisni,
pp. 51-76. Moscow: Down with Illiteracy Publishing House, 1927.
"The Historical Meaning of the Crisis in Psychology." Private archives of L.
S. Vygotsky. Manuscript, 430 pp.
The Manual of Experimental Psychology. Moscow: Government Publishing
House, 1927. (With V. A. Artomov, N. A. Bernshtein, N. F. Dobrinin,
and A. R. Luria.)
Readings in Psychology. Moscow-Leningrad: Government Publishing House,
1927. (With V. A. Artomov, N. F. Dobrinin, and A. R. Luria.)
Review of The Method of Psychological Observation of Children by M. Y.
Basov (Moscow-Leningrad: Government Publishing House, 1926).
Teacher of the People, 1927, no. 1, p. 152.
"Contemporary Psychology and Art." Soviet Art, 1927, no. 8, pp. ~; 1928,
no. 1, pp. 5-7.

1928
"Anomalies of Cultural Development of the Child." Report to the Department
of Defectology, Institute of Education of the Second Moscow State Uni-
versity, April 28, 1928. Problems of Defectology, 1929, no. 2 (8), pp.
106-107.
"Behaviorism." The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1928, vol. III, cols. 483-486.
"Sick Children." Pedagogical Encyclopedia, 1928, vol. II, cols. 396-397.
"The Will and Its Disturbances." The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1928, vol.
V, cols. 590-600.
"The Education of Blind-Deaf-Mute Children." Pedagogical Encyclopedia,
1928, vol. II, cols. 395-396.
"Report of the Conference of Methods of Psychology Teaching in Teachers'
College," April 10, 1928. The State Archives of Moscow District, fol.
948, vol. I, pp. 13-15.
"The Genesis of Cultural Forms of Behavior." Lecture, Dec. 7, 1928. Private
archives of L. S. Vygotsky. Stenography, 28 pp.
"Defect and Compensation." Pedagogical Encyclopaedia, 1928, vol. II, cols.
391-392.
"The Instrumental Method in Psychology." In The Main Problems of Pedology
in the USSR, pp. 158-159. Moscow, 1928.
"The Results of a Meeting." Public Education, 1928, no. 2, pp. 56-67.
"Invalids." Pedagogical Encyclopaedia, 1928, vol. II, col. 396.
"The Question of the Dynamics of Children's Character. In Pedology and
Education, pp. 99-119. Moscow: The Worker of Education Publishing
House, 1928.
"The Question Concerning the Duration of Childhood in the Retarded
Child." Report to the Meeting of Defectology Department by the Insti-
Vygotsky's Works
144

tute of Pedagogics of the Second Moscow State University, Dec. 18,

1928. Problems of Defectology, 1929, no. 2(8), p. Ill.
"The Question of Multilingualism in Childhood." Private archives of L. S.
Vygotsky. Manuscript, 32 pp.
"Lectures on the Psychology of Development." Private archives of L. S.
Vygotsky. Stenography, 54 pp.
"The Methods of Investigating Retarded Children." Report to the First
National Conference of Auxiliary School Workers. Archives of the
Institute of Defectology, Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, USSR.
'Manuscript, 1 p.
"On the Intersections of Soviet and Foreign Education." Problems of De-
fectology, 1928, no. 1, pp. 18-26.
"To the Memory of V. M. Bekhterev." Public Education, 1928, no. 2, pp.
68-70.
The Pedology of School-age Children. Lectures 1-8. Moscow: Extension
Division of the Second Moscow State University, 1928.
"The Problem of the Cultural Development of Children." Pedology, 1928, no.
1, pp. 58-77.
"Psychological Science in the USSR." In The Social Sciences of the USSR
(1917-1927), pp. 25-46. Moscow: The Worker of Education Publishing
House, 1928.
"The Psychological Basis for Teaching Dumb-Mute Children." Pedagogical
Encyclopaedia, 1928, vol. II, col. 395.
"The Psychological Basis for Teaching Blind Children." Pedagogical Encyclo-
paedia, 1928, vol. II, cols. 394-395.
"Psychophysiological Basis for Teaching Abnormal Children." Pedagogical
Encyclopaedia, 1928, vol. II, cols. 392-393.
"The Investigation of the Development of the Difficult Child." In Leading
Problems of Pedology in the USSR, pp. 132-136. Moscow, 1928.
"Abnormal and Normal Children." Pedagogical Encyclopaedia, 1928, vol. II,
col. 398.
"The Sociopsychological Basis for Teaching the Abnormal Child." Peda-
gogical Encyclopaedia, 1928, vol. II, cols. 393-394.
"The Three Main Types of Abnormality." Pedagogical Encyclopaedia, 1928,
vol. II, col. 392.
"Difficult Childhood." Lectures 3 and 4. Archives of the Institute of De-
fectology, Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, USSR. Stenography, 9 pp.
"The Retarded Child." Pedagogical Encyclopaedia, 1928, vol. II, eols. 397-
398.

- 1929
"Lectures on Abnormal Childhood." Problems of Defectology, 1929 (1930),
no. 2 (8), pp. 108-112.
"Developmental Roots of Thinking and Speech." Natural Science and Marx-
ism, 1929, no. 1, pp. 106-133.
"Genius." The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1929, vol. VI, cols. 612-613.
"About the Plan of Research Work for the Pedology of National Minorities."
Pedology, 1929, no. 3, pp. 367-377.
 Vygotsky's Works
145

"The Intellect of Anthropoids in the Work of W. Kohler." Natural Science

and Marxism, 1929, no. 2, pp. 131-153.
"Some Methodological Questions." The Archives of the Academy of Peda-
gogical Science, USSR, fo1. 4, vol. I, no. 103, pp. 51-52, 73-74.
"The Main Postulates of the Plan for Pedagogical Research Work Concern-
ing Difficult Children." Pedology, 1929, no. 3, pp. 333-342.
"The Main Problems of Contemporary Defectology." Report to the Defee-
tological Section of the Institute of Education, Moscow State University.
In The Works of the Second Moscow State University, I, 77-106. Mos-
cow, 1929.
"History of the Cultural Development of the Normal and Abnormal Child."
Private archives of L. S. Vygotsky. 1929-1930. Manuscript.
The Pedology of Teenagers. Lectures 1-4, 5-8. Moscow: Extension Division
of the Second Moscow State University, 1929.
Subject and Methods of Contemporary Psychology. Moscow: Extension Divi-
sion of the Second Moscow State University, 1929.
"The Problem of Cultural Age." Lecture, Feb. 15, 1929. Private archives of
L. S. Vygotsky. Stenography, 18 pp.
"The Development of Active Attention during Childhood." In Problems of
Marxist Education, I, 112-142. Moscow: Academy of Communist Educa-
tion, 1929. Also in Selected Psychological Investigations, pp. 389-426.
Moscow: Academy of Pedagogical Sciences Publishing House, 1956.
Review of School Dramatic Work as the Basis for Investigation of the Child's
Creativity by Dimitrieva, Oldenburg, and Perekrestova (Moscow: Gov-
ernment Publishing House, 1929). Art in the School, 1929, no. 8, pp.
29-31.
Review of Contemporary Advances in Animal Psychology by D. N. Kash-
karov (Moscow: Government Publishing House, 1928). Natural Science
and Marxism, 1929, no. 2, pp. 209-211. .
Review of The Language of Children by C. Stern and W. Stern (Leipzig:
Barth, 1928). Natural Science and Marxism, 1929, no. 3, pp. 185-192.
Review of Means of Educational Influence by S. M. Rives (Moscow: The
Worker of Education Publishing House, 1929). Pedology, 1929, no. 4,
pp. 645-646.
"The Structure of Interests in Adolescence and the Interests of the Teenage
Worker. In Problems of Pedology of the Teenage Worker, IV, pp. 2~8.
Moscow, 1929.

1930
"The Biological Base of Affect." 1 Want to Know.Everything, 1930, nos. 15-
16, pp. 480-481.
Foreword to materials collected by workers of the Institute of Scientific Edu-
cation, April 13, 1930. Archives of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences,
USSR, fo1. 4, vol. I, no. 103, pp. 81-82.
"Is It Possible to Simulate Extraordinary Memory?" I Want to Know Every-
thing, 1930, no. 24, pp. 700-703.
Vygotsky's 'Works
146

"Imagination and Creativity in Childhood." Private archives of L. S. Vygot-

sky, Manuscript.
Problems of Defectology, VI. L. S. Vygotsky, ed. 1930. (With D. I. Asbukhin
and L. V. Zankov.)
Foreword to The Essay of Spiritual Development of the Child by K. Buhler.
Moscow: The Worker of Education Publishing House, 1930.
"Extraordinary Memory." I Want to Know Everything, 1930, no. 19, pp. 553-
554.
"The Instrumental Method in Psychology." Report in the Academy of Com-
munist Education. Private archives of L. S. Vygotsky. Manuscript.
"The Question of Speech Development and Education of the Deaf-Mute
Child. Report to the Second National Conference of School Workers.
Archives of the Institute of Defectology, Academy of Pedagogical Sci-
ences, USSR. Manuscript, 2 pp.
"The Problem of the Development of Interests in Adolescence." Education of
Workers, 1930, nos. 7-8, pp. 63-81.
"The Cultural Development of Abnormal and Retarded Children." Report to
the First Meeting for Investigation of Human Behavior, Moscow, Feb.
1, 1930. In Psychological Sciences in the USSR, pp. 195-196. Moscow-
Leningrad: Medgiz, 1930.
"New Developments in Psychological Research." Report to the Third
National Meeting of Child Care, May 1930. The Internat, 1930, no. 7,
pp.22-27.
"Psychological Systems." Report to the Neurology Clinic of the First Moscow
State University, Oct. 9, 1930. Private archives of L. S. Vygotsky. Stenog-
raphy.
"Tool and Sign." Private archives of L. S. Vygotsky. Manuscript.
"The Connection between Labor Activity and the Intellectual Development
of the Child." Pedology, 1930, nos. 5-6, pp. 588-596.
"The Behavior of Man and Animals." Private archives of L. S. Vygotsky,
1929-1930. Manuscript.
Foreword to Teachers" Guide to the Investigation of the Educational Process
by B. R. Bekingem. Moscow: The WorJ<er of Education Publishing
House, 1930.
Foreword to Investigation of the Intellect of Anthropoids by W. Kohler.
Moscow: Publishing House of the Communist Academy, 1930. .
"The Problem of the Higher Intellectual Functions in the System of Psycho-
logical Investigation.' Psychology and Psychophysiology of Labor, vol.
3 (1930), no. 5, pp. 374-384.
"The Mind, Consciousness, Unconsciousness." In Elements of General Psy-
chology, 4th ed., pp. 48-61. Moscow: Extension Division of the Second
Moscow State University, 1930.
"The Development of the Highest Patterns of Behavior in Childhood." Report
to the First Meeting of Human Behavior, Jan. 28, 1930. In Psychoneuro-
logical Sciences in the USSR, pp. 138-139. Moscow-Leningrad: Medgiz,
1930.
"The Development of Consciousness in Childhood." Private archives of L.
S. Vygotsky. Stenography.
 Vygotsky's Works
147

"Sleep and Dreams." In Elements of General Psychology, pp. 62-75. Moscow:

Extension Division of the Second Moscow State University, 1930.
"The Communist Reconstruction of Man." Varnitso, 1930, nos. 9-10, pp.
36-44.
"Structural Psychology." In Main Trends in Contemporary Psychology by L.
S. Vygotsky and S. Gellershtein, pp. 84-125. Moscow-Leningrad: Gov-
ernment Publishing House, 1930. .
"Eidetics." In Main Trends in Contemporary Psychology by L. S. Vygotsky
and S. Cellershtein, pp. 178-205. Moscow-Leningrad: Government Pub-
lishing House, 1930.
"Experimental Investigation of the Highest Processes of Behavior." Report to
the First Meeting for Studying Human Behavior, Jan. 28, 1930. In
Psychoneurological Sciences in the USSR. Moscow-Leningrad: Medgiz,
1930.

1931
Buhler, C., et aI. The Social-Psychological Study of the Child During the
First Year of Life. L. S. Vygotsky, ed. Moscow-Leningrad: Medgiz, 1931.
(With A. R. Luria.)
"Report of the Reactological Discussion,. 1931." Archives of the Institute of
General and Pedagogical Psychology, Academy of Pedagogical Sciences,
USSR, fol. 82, vol. I, pp. 5-15. Stenography (corrected by L. S. Vygot-
sky).
The Diagnosis- of Development and Pedological Clinics for Difficult Chil-
dren. Moscow: Publishing House of the Experimental Defectology Insti-
tute, 1936.
"The History of the Development of Higher Psychological Functions." In
Development of Higher Psychological Functions by L. S. Vygotsky,
pp. 13-223. Moscow: Academy of Pedogogical Sciences, RSFSR, 1960.
"The Question of Compensatory Processes in the Development of the Re-
tarded Child." Report to the Conference of the Workers of Auxiliary
Schools, Leningrad, May 23, 1931. Private archives of L. S. Vygotsky.
Stenography, 48 pp.
"Problems of Pedology and Related Sciences." Pedology, 1931, no. 3, pp.
52-58.
"The Collective as a Factor of Development in the Abnormal Child." In Prob-
lems of Defectology, 1931, nos. 1-2, pp. 8-17; no. 3, pp. 3-18.
"Thinking." The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1931, vol. XIX, cols. 414-426.
The Pedology of Teenagers. Lectures 9-16. Moscow-Leningrad: Extension
Division of the Second Moscow State University, 1931.
"Practical Activity and Thinking in the Development of the Child in Con-
nection with a Problem of Politechnism." Private archives of L. S. Vygot-
sky. Manuscript, 4 pp.
Foreword to Development of Memory by A. N. Leontiev. Moscow-Leningrad:
Uchpedgiz, 1931. ..
Foreword to Essay on the Behavior and Education of the Deaf-Mute Child
by Y. K. Zvelfel. Moscow-Leningrad: Uchpedgiz, 1931.
Vygotsky's Works
148

The Psychological Dictionary. Moscow: Uchpedgiz, 1931. (With B. E. Var-

shava.)
"Psychotechnics and Pedology." Report to the Meeting of the Communist
Academy, Nov. 21, 1930. Archives of the Institute of General and Peda-
gogical Psychology, Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, USSR, fo1. 82,
vol. I, no. 3, pp. 23-57.

1932
"The Problem of Creativity in Actors." In The Psychology of the Stage Feel-
ings of an Actor by P. M. jakobson, pp. 197-211. Moscow: Government
Publishing House, 1936.
"Toward a Psychology of Schizophrenia." Soviet Neuropathology, Psychiatry
and Psychohygiene, vol. 1 (1932), no. 8, pp. 352--361.
"Toward a Psychology of Schizophrenia." In Contemporary Problems of
Schizophrenia, pp. 19-28. Moscow: Medgiz, 1933.
"Lectures on Psychology." Leningrad Pedagogical Institute, March-April
1932. Archives of the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute. Stenography.
Also in Development of Higher Psychological Functions, pp. 235-363.
Moscow: Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, RSFSR, 1960.
"Infancy." Private archives of L. S. Vygotsky, Manuscript, 78 pp.
Foreword to Education and Teaching of the Retarded Child by E. K. Gra-
cheva, Moscow-Leningrad: Uchpedgiz, 1932.
Foreword to Development of Memory by A. N. Leontiev. Moscow, 1932.
(With A. N. Leontiev.)
"The Problem of Development of the Child in the Research of Arnold Gesell."
In Education and Childhood by A. Gesell, pp. 3-14. Moscow-Leningrad:
Uchpedgiz, 1932.
"Problem of the Speech andThinking of the Child in the Teachings of Pia-
get." In Language and Thought of the Child by J. Piaget, pp. 3-54.
Moscow-Leningrad: Uchpedgiz, 1932.
"Early Childhood." Lecture, Leningrad Pedagogical Institute, Dec. 15, 1932.
Archives of the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute. Stenography, 50 pp.
"Contemporary Directions in Psychology." Report to the Communist Acad-
emy, June 26, 1932. In Development of Higher Psychological Functions
by L. S. Vygotsky, pp. 458-481. Moscow: Academy of Pedagogical
Sciences, RSFSR, 1960.

1933
"Introductory Lecture about Age-Psychology." The Central House of Art
Education of Children, Dec. 19, 1933. Archives of the Leningrad Peda-
gogical Institute. Stenography, 34 pp.
"Dynamics of Mental Development of School Children in Connection with
Education.'" Report to the Meeting of the Department of Defectology
of Bubnov Pedagogical institute, Dec. 23, 1933. In Mental Develop-
ment of Children during Education by L. S. Vygotsky, pp. 33-52. Mos-
cow-Leningrad: Government Publishing House, 1935.
 Vygotsky's Works
149

"Preschool Age." Lecture, Leningrad Pedagogical Institute, Dec. 13-14, 1933.

Private archives of L. S. Vygotsky. Stenography, 15 pp.
"Play and Its Role in the Psychological Development of the Child." Lecture,
Leningrad Pedagogical Institute, 1933. Problems of Psychology, 1966,
no. 6, pp. 62-76.
"Questions about the Dynamics of Development of the Intellect of the Normal
and Abnonnal Child." Lecture, Bubnov Pedagogical Institute, Dec. 23,
1933. Private archives of L. S. Vygotsky. Stenography.
"Crisis of the First Year of Life." Lecture, Leningrad Pedagogical Institute.
Archives 'of the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute. Stenography, 37 pp.
"Critical Ages." Lecture, Leningrad Pedagogical Institute, June 26, 1933.
Archives of the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute. Manuscript, 15 pp.
"The Negative Phase of Adolescence." Lecture, Leningrad Pedagogical Insti-
tute, June 26, 1933. Archives of the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute.
Manuscript, 17 pp.
"Study of Schoolwork in School Children." Report to the Leningrad Peda-
gogical Institute, Jan. 31, 1933. Private archives of L. S. Vygotsky.
Stenography.
"Pedological Study of the Pedagogical Process." Report to the Experimental
Defectological Institute, March 17, 1933. In Mental Development of
Children during Education by L. S. Vygotsky, pp. 116-134. Moscow-
Leningrad: Uchpedgiz, 1935.
"Adolescence." Lecture, Leningrad Pedagogical Institute, June 25, 1933.
Archives of the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute. Stenography, 19 pp.
"Pedology of Preschool Age." Lecture, Leningrad Pedagogical Institute, Jan.
31, 1933. Archives of the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute. Stenography,
16pp.
Foreword to Difficult Children in Schoolwork by L. V. Zankov, M. S. Pevs-
ner, and V. F. Shmidt. Moscow-Leningrad: Uchpedgiz, 1933.
"Problems of Age: Play." Concluding speech to the Seminar of the Leningrad
Pedagogical Institute, March 23, 1933. Archives of the Leningrad Peda-
gogical Institute. Stenography, 39 pp.
"Problems of Development." Lecture, Leningrad Pedagogical Institute, Nov.
27, 1933. Archives of the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute. Stenography,
17pp.
"The Problem of Consciousness.'> Report after the speech of A. R. Luria on
Dec. 5 and 9, 1933. In Psychology of Grammar, pp. 178-196. Moscow:
Moscow State University, 1968.
"Development of Common Sense and Scientific Ideas during School Age."
Report to the Scientific Conference, Leningrad Pedagogical Institute,
May 20, 1933. In Mental Development of Children during Education,
pp. 96-115. Moscow-Leningrad: Uchpedgiz, 1935.
"Study of Emotions." Private archives of L. S. Vygotsky, 1933. Manuscript.
555 pp. Also "The Study of Emotions in the Light of Contemporary
Psychoneurology." Questions of Philosophy, 1970, no. 6, pp. 110-130.
See also, "Two Directions in the Comprehension of the Nature of Emo-
tions in Foreign Psychology in the beginning of the Twentieth Century."
Problems of Psychology, 1968, no. 2, pp. 149-156.
Vygotsky's Works
150

1934
"Dementia during Pick's Disease." Soviet Neuropathology, Psychiatry, Psy-
chohygiene, vol. 3 (1934), no. 6, pp. 97-136. (With G. V. Birenbaum
and N. V. Samukhin.)
"Development of Scientific Ideas during Childhood." In The Development of
Scientific Ideas of School Children by Zh. I. Shif, pp. 3-17. Moscow-
Leningrad: Uchpedgiz, 1935.
"Infancy and Early Age." Lecture, Leningrad Pedagogical Institute, Feb. 23,
1934. Archives of the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute. Stenography,
24pp.
Thought and Language. Moscow-Leningrad: Sozekgiz, 1934.
"The Thinking of School Children." Lecture, Leningrad Pedagogical In-
stitute, May 3, 1934. Archives of the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute.
Stenography, 11 pp.
Fundamentals of Pedology. Moscow: Second Moscow Medical Institute,
1934.
"Adolescence." Lecture, Leningrad Pedagogical Institute, March 25, 1934.
Archives of the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute. Stenography.
"Problems of Age." Private archives of L. S. Vygotsky. Manuscript, 95 pp.
Also in Problems of Psychology, 1972, no. 2, pp. 114-123.
"Problems of Education and Mental Development in School Age." I~ Mental
Development of Children during Education by L. S. Vygotsky, pp. 3-19.
Moscow-Leningrad: Uchpedgiz, 1935.
"Problem of Development in Structural Psychology." In Fundamentals of
Psychological Development by K. Koffka, pp. ix-Ixi, Moscow-Leningrad:
Sozekgiz, 1934.
"Problem of Development and Destruction of the Higher Psychological
Functions." In Development of Higher Psychological Functions by L. S.
Vygotsky, pp. 364-383. Moscow: Academy of Pedagogical Sciences,
RSFSR, 1960. (Vygotsky's last report, prepared one month before his
death.)
"Psychology and Teaching of Localization." In Reports of the First Ukranian
Meeting of Neuropathologists and Psychiatrists, pp. 34-41. Kharkov,
1934.
"Dementia during Pick's Disease." Private archives of L. S. Vygotsky, 1934.
Manuscript, 4 pp.
Fascism in Psychoneurology. Moscow-Leningrad: Biomedgiz, 1934. (With V.
A. Giljarovsky et al.)
"School Age." Private archives of D. B. Elkonin, 1934. Manuscript, 42 pp.
"School Age." Lecture, Leningrad Pedagogical Institute, Feb. 23, 1934.
Archives of the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute. Stenography, 61 pp.
"Experimental Investigation of the Teaching of New Speech Reflexes by the
Method of Attachment with Complexes." Private archives of L. S.
Vygotsky. Manuscript.

1935
"Education and Development during School Age." Report to the National
 Vygotsky's Works
lSI

Conference of Preschool Education. In Mental Development of Childrei

during Education, pp. 20-32. Moscow-Leningrad: Uchpedgiz, 1935.
"Problem of Dementia." In The Retarded Child, pp. 7-34. Moscow-Lenin-
grad: Uchpedgiz, 1935.
The Retarded Child. L. S. Vygotsky, edt Moscow-Leningrad: Uchpedgiz,
1935.

Works of Various Years

Pedology of Youth: Features of the Behavior of the Teenager. Lessons 6-9.
Moscow: Extension Division of the Faculty of Education, Second Mos-
cow State University.
"Problem of the Cultural Development of the Child." Private archives of L. S.
Vygotsky. Manuscript, 81 pp.
'''The Blind Child." Private archives of L. S. Vygotsky. Manuscript, 3 pp.
Difficult Childhood. Moscow: Extension Division of the Faculty of Education,
Second Moscow State University.

IN ENGLISH

"The Principles of Social Education of Deaf and Dumb Children in Rus-

sia." In International Conference on the Education of the Deaf, pp.
227-237. London, 1925.
"The Problem of the Cultural Development of the Child." lournal of Genetic
Psychology, 1929, vol. 36, pp. 415-434.
"Thought in Schizophrenia." Archives of Neurological Psychiatry, 1934, vol.
31.
"Thought and Speech." Psychiatry, 1939, vol. 2, pp. 29-54. Rpt. in S. Saporta,
ed., Psycholinguistics: A Book of Readings, pp. 509-537. New York:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961.
Thought and Language. Cambridge: MIT Press and Wiley, 1962. (Originally
published in Russian in 1934.) -
"Psychology and Localization of Functions." Neuropsychologia, 1965, vol.
3, pp. 381-386. (Originally published in Russian in 1934.)
"Development of the Higher Mental Functions." In A. Leontiev, A. Luria,
and A. Smirnov, eds., Psychological Research in the USSR, vol. I, pp.
11-46. Progress Publishing, 1966. (Abridged.)
"Play and Its Role in the Mental Development of the Child." Soviet Psychol-
ogy, 1967, vol. 3. (Vygotsky memorial issue. Includes preface by J. S.
Bruner and articles by Soviet psychologists Luria, Davydov, El'konin,
Gal'perin, and Zaporozhetz. Article based on 1933 lecture.)
The Psychology of Art. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1971. (Collected writings of
literary and art criticism spanning several decades.)
"Spinoza's Theory of the Emotions in Light of Contemporary Psychoneurol-
ogy." Soviet Studies in Philosophy, 1972, vol. 10, pp. 362-382.
 Index

Ach,N.,67 America, see United States

Action: repetition of, 22; purposeful, Analysis: developmental, 8, 61-62, 65
symbolic representations of, 37; ( see also Behavior); of process vs.
-meaning ratio, 100--101; play and, objects (experimental-developmental),
129. See also Gestures; Linguistics; 61-62, 65; explanatory vs, descriptive
Play; Symbolism ( genotypic vs. phenotypic), 62-63,
Adaptation: and children's adaptive be- 65, 67, 68; aim of, 63, 64, 65;
havior, 22, 24; sign and tool use as introspective, 63, 65--68; "fos-
means of, 53, 55, 123, 124, 127 (see silized" behavior and, 63-65, 68;
also Signs, use of; Tools, use of); and of choice reaction, 6~69 (see also
adaptability of animals, 60, 132 (see Choice behavior and responses) ;
also Animals) of teaching, 79; of educational
Adolescence, see Age process, 90-91
Age: "chimpanzee," 21 (see also Ani- Animals:" study of, linked with human
mals )"; and practical intelligence/ studies, 2-3,4, 6, 60, 122, 124; and
thought, 21-22, 23, 24, 51, 79-80, 97; use of tools, 7, 22,23,24,88; Kohler's
andspeedh, 25-26,28,29, 32, 62; and ape studies, 20-23 (passim), 25, 28,
perception, 31-32,33,97,98; and 31,37,88; and child-ape compari-
choice behavior/response, 33, 70; sons; 20-23, 26, 28,34,36, 37; and
and color-task errors, 41-45; infancy, sign use, 23, 39; and linguistics, 23,
and roots of cultural behavior, 46; and 136n.7; and perception, 31, 32-33,
memory, 47-49, 50, 56, 139n.3; adoles- 34, 35, 36, 37; and attention, 36; and
cence, 61, 83, 104, 129; mental, 85-88, voluntary activity, 37; and memory
89; and play, 92-94, 102, 104, 111, aids, 39, 51, 127; and internalization,
129; and situational constraints, 96, 57; and adaptability / adaptation, 60,
98-99; and action vs. meaning, 100- 132; and learning, 88; and imagina-
101; and graphic depiction, 108 (see tion,93,129
also Gestures) ; and symbolic notation, Aphasia, 9, 22. See also Linguistics
109-112, 113, 114, 115; and reading, Aristotle, 53
writing, 117; and imagination, 129. Attention: in problem solving (of
See also Child development; Linguis- child), 35-36; role of signs in, 40;
tics; Maturation; Tests and testing development of, 57; voluntary and
All-Union Institute of Experimental involuntary «('secondary," primary"),
Medicine (USSR), 16 64

153
Index
154

Baldwin,]. M., 106 Age); maturing of needs in, 92 (see

Behavior: beginning of study of, 3-4; also Maturation); role of play in, 92-
Marxist approach to, 4-5; Vygotsky 104,116,118,123,126,129-130 (see
and unified science of, ~; animal vs. also Play) ; imagination in, 93-99
human, 6, 23, 25, 124 (see also Ani- (passim), 103, 104, 126; and situa-
mals); "developmental" approach to, tional constaints, 96, 98--99. See also
7,8,12,19-20,21,30,33,61,62,65; Choice behavior and responses; Deaf-
history of, 8,46,64-65; "botanical" ness; Experimentation; Linguistics;
vs. "zoological" models of, 19-20, 21; Memory; Perception; Problem solv-
speech and, 26-30 (see also Linguis- ing; Retardation; Signs, use of;
tics); and voluntary activity, 37, 90; Thought; Tools, use of; Writing
outside control of (extrinsic stimuli), Choice behavior and responses: of chil-
40,51; "higher," 52,55,61,64, 75; dren, 33-37, 70-72,101; and decision
naturalistic approach to, 60-61, 122, making, 52; psychology of, 65-69;
132, 139nn.2, 3; "Fossilized," 63-65, causal-dynamic study of, 69-72. See
68 (see also Analysis). See also also Problem solving
Choice behavior and responses; Medi- Color: in sign-operation experimenta-
ation concept; Play; Problem solving; tion,40--45
Stimulus-response theories Communication (by children): and
Bekhterev, V. M., 1,58 "egocentric speech," 12,27; Piaget
Berg, E. E., 132 and, 24, 90; language and, 28, 89 (see
Binet, A., 32, 80 also Linguistics); gestures and, 32,
Birch, H. C., 125 108, 111 (see also Gestures) . See also
Blonsky, P. P., 8, 65 Drawing; Writing
Botany: vs. zoology in child studies, Communist Party, Central Committee
19-20, 21. See also Child development of, 10
Buhler, C., 21 Conditioning, see Reflexes
Buhler, K., 20-21, 23, 112 Counting systems, 127. See also Culture
Burt, C., 117 "Crisis in psychology," 5
Culture: historical investigations of, 3;
Capital (Marx), 8 Vygotsky's theory of, 6, 7; and cul-
Cattell,]. M., 66 tural development, 27, 57, 131; in-
Chelpanov, C. 1.,5; The Mind of Man, 4 fancy and, 46; written language and,
Child development: and "preformation" 106 (see also Linguistics; Writing);
of intellectual functions, 6, 24; vs. reading and, 116; counting systems
"developmental' approach, 7 (see also and,127
Behavior); and commtinication, 12,
24,27,28,32,56,89,90,108 (see Darwin, C. R., 4; Origin of Species, 2-3
also Gestures); and graphic sym- Deafness, 12,37, 105
bolism, 13, 112, 115-116 (see also Decision making, see Choice behavior
Drawing; Symbolism); botanical vs. and responses; Problem solving
zoological models of, 19-20, 21; ani- Descartes, Rene, 2
mal behavior and intelligence com- Development, child, see Child
pared to, 20--21,23,25,26,28--29, development
31,34, 35,36, 37; inter- and intra- Developmental approach, see Behavior
personal, 27, 57, 131; attention in, Dewey, J., 53
35-36, 40, 57; history and historic Dialectical materialism, 6, 8, 94, 120,
study of, 46, 64; as dialectical process, 123 (see also Marx, K.); and dialecti-
73-75; relationship of learning to, cal method / process, 46, 60, 65,73,
79-91,124-125, 129-130; and devel- 121, 122, 126. See also Engels, F.
opmentallevels, zone of proximal Dialectics of Nature, The (Engels), 132
development, 84-91,102, 130, 131; Drawing: children's speech and, 28,
mental age in, 85-88, 89 (see also 112; as sign-using activity, 38, 108
 Index
155

Drawing-continued experiments, 72, 137n,8; Piaget's

(see also Signs, use of); gestures as methodology of, 80; and object writ-
precursors of, 107-108 (see also Ges- ing/symbolic notation, 109-111, 114,
tures); "x-ray," 112; development of 115,116 (see also Writing). See also
symbolism in, 112-114; as object (vs. Methodology
representation of object), 113;
impact of speech on, 113-114; as Fechner, G., 3; Die Psuchophusik, 2
preliminary to writing, 113-114,116, Flavell, J., 13
118 (see also Writing) France: and French sociologists, 6
Freire, P., 131
Education: Vygotsky's concern for,
9-10, 129-131; and "pedology" ("ed- Game(s): color-testing, 40-45; sporting,
ucational psychology"), 10; and child 92, 103; with rules, 95-96, 99-100,
development-learning relationship, 103, 104, 129; symbolism in, 108, 109,
79-91,124-125,129-130; premature, 110, 111. See also Play
80; James's description of, 80-81; Gelb, A., 97
formal discipline in, 81-84, 91; and Gerke, E. D., 22,24
Gestalt theory of learning process, 83; Gesell, A., 19
preschool vs. school, 84; imitation in Gestalt psychology, 1,4,5,83
learning, 84, 87-88 (see also Imita- Gestures: as communication, 32, 108,
tion); and testing, 88-89 (see also 111; pointing, 56, 128; as precursors
Tests and testing); of retarded chil- of drawing/writing, 107-108, 110,
dren, 89; and internalization of 115; symbolic, 108, 109, 110
learning processes, 90-91, 130, 131, Goethe, J., 98
132; and teaching of spoken language, Goldstein, K., 97
105; and teaching of writing, reading, Gomel (USSR): Teacher Training
105~ 115-119; compulsory, in Eng- Institute at, 15
land, 117; public, in U.S., 130; of Guillaume, P., 22, 23
"slow learners" (language and), 131; Cussow, J. D., 125
Third World literacy campaigns, 131
Eidetic imagery, see Memory Handicaps, see Deafness; Retardation
Empiricism, 2, 54 Hegel, G. W. F., 19, 54
Engels, F., 7, 60-61, 633; Ludwig Hertzen Pedagogical Institute (Lenin-
F euerbach (quoted). 120; The Dia- grad, 15
lectics of Nature, 132 Hetzer, H" 110,111, 113,116, 117
England, 2, 117 Historical materialism, 6, 7. See also
Europe: psychological studies in, 1,4, 9; Dialectical materialism
IQ tests in, 10; teaching in, 117
Experimentation: Vygotsky and, 11-14; Imagination: the child and, 93-94,
on child development, 12-13,60, 97-99, 103, 104, 126, 129; and games
73-74,97; Kohler's, with apes, 20-23 with rules, 95-96
(passim), 25, 28, 31,37,88; and Imitation: of social experience, 22, 129;
child-animal comparisons, 20--23, 25, in learning, 84, 87-88. See also
31 (see also Child development); Memory
and speech, 27; and choice reaction, Institute of Defectology (Moscow), 9,
33-37, 70-72 (see also Choice be- 10, 15
havior and responses); and early sign Institute of Preschool Education, 10
operations, 40-45, 46-49 (see also Institute of Psychology (Moscow), 4, 5,
Signs, use of); and experimentaI- 10,15
developmental approach, ·51; and Intelligence: tests (IQ), 10 (see also
stimulus-response framework, 58-61, Tests and testing); child-ape analogy,
69-72; problems of method in, 58-75; 20-23 (see also Child development) ;
procedure in, 67; and reaction time as "technical thinking," 21 (see also
Index
156

Intelligence--continued and "planful" speech, 25-29; and

Thought, thinking and); and speech, language as problem-solving tool, 21,
21-24 (see also Linguistics); percep- 33; and internalization of speech, 27,
tion and, 35 (see also Perception) ; 89-90, 126, 128; and verbalized per-
sign-using activity and, 57 (see also ception, 32, 33; and child's develop-
Signs, use of); primates and, 88 ment of speech, 46, 84, 112, 118; and
Intention: in psychological system, 37 word meanings for children, 50, 90,
"Interactionist" approach, 12~124, 125 98-99; and phenotypical speech, 62;
Internalization: of visual field, 26; of and translation process, 66; and
child's social speech, 27,89-90, 126, teaching of language, 105 (see also
128 (see also Linguistics) ; in memory, Education); and other sign systems,
45; pointing as illustration of, 56 (see 113-114; and speech as sign usage,
also Gestures); process of, 56-57, 127; 113, 126; and language as auxiliary
of learning processes, 90-91, 130, stimulus, 123; language and learning,
131,132, 131. See also Culture; Writing
Introspective psychology: experimental Locke, J., 2
methods of, 59-60, 62. See also Ludwig Feuerbacb (Engels), 120
Analysis Luria, A. H., 10, 16,114,124,125,130,
139n.3; Studies in the History of
Jaensch, E. B., 39 Behavior, 9
James, W., 1,80-81
Marx, K.: and theory of human intellec-
Kant, I., 2 tual functioning, I; and role of Marx-
Kharkov, 10, 15 ism in psychology, 4-5,6,8, 10, 126;
Koffka,K.,1,35,61,81,83,84,102, 122 and historical materialism, 6, 7;
Kohler, W., 1,4, 35; experiments with Capital, 8; quoted, 54, 63, 94
apes, 20-23 (passim), 25, 28, 31, 37, Maturation: as precondition of learning,
88 6, 80, 81; botanical vs. zoological
Kornilov, K. N.,4-5, 10 analogies of, 19-20,21; and zone of
proximal development, 86-87 (see
Labeling, 32, 33. See also Linguistics also Child development); and matur-
Language, see Linguistics ing of needs in child development, 92.
Leakey family, 133 See also Education
Learning, see Education; Intelligence; McCarthy, D., 87
Memory; Stimulus-response theories; Mediation concept, 7, 54-55; and "medi-
Thought, thinking and ated" behavior, 13-14,26,32,45,55,
Leningrad: Hertzen Pedagogical Insti- 127, 128, 139n.3; and nonmediated
tute in, 15 vs. mediated memory, 38--39, 40, 45,
Leontiev, A. N., 10,40,48, 130, 139n.3 46-50, 70-72, 125, 127 (see also
Levina, R. E., 25, 27, 29 Memory)
Levy-Bruhl, L., 9 Memory: in child development, 13, 36,
Lewin, K., 1,37, 62, 96 40-51,56-57,70-72,103,125,126,
Lindner, R., 37 139n.3; mnemonic activity and, 38,
Linguistics: and language as social 48, 115; natural (nonmediated) vs.
process, 6, 126; Soviet, 9; and "ego- use of signs (mediated), 38-39, 40,
centric" speech, 12, ~4, 25, 27, 57, 62, 45, 46-50, 7Q-72, 125, 127; aids to,
111; and stimulus-response theories 39,42,47,48-49,51,52,53,72,74,
applied to language, 13; and intel1i- 114-115, 127 (see also Signs, use of);
gence-speech relationship, 21-23, 24; eidetic imagery and, 39, 48, 56,
and speech-tool use relationship, 22, 1390.3; human vs. animal, 39, 51,
23--24" 31,53; and speech-action re- 127; and internalization, 45; age and,
lationship, 22,25-30,36, 111, 112, 47-49, 50, 56, 139n.3; and thinking,
113, 126; animals and, 23, 136n.7; 49--51 (see also Thought, thinking
 Index
157

Memory-continued also Tests and testing); vs. sporting

and); "logicalization" of, 51; civiliza- games, 92, 103; child's need for,
tion and, 51; and choice reactions, 92-95; age and, 92-94, 102, 104, Ill,
69-72 (see also Choice behavior and 129; imagination and, 93-96, 103,
responses) ; and child's drawings, 112 104, 126, 129; symbolism and, 94, 98,
( see also Imitation) 100, 108-112; rule-based, 94-96,99-
Methodology, 12,58-75; and "quotation 100, 103, 104, 129; action and mean- .
method" (Marxism and), 8; and ing in, 96-101; and relation to
search for method, 65, 74; stimulus- development, 101-104,116, 118, 123,
response,74 (see also Stimulus- 126,129-130
response theories); and functional Pointing, see Gestures
method of double stimulation, 74-75; Potebnya, A. A., 33
learning-development, 79 (see also Problem solving: Vygotsky's studies of,
Education); of Piaget, 80; of 2; role of speech/language in, 22,
Vygotsky, 123, 128 25-30,33,36,126; perception and, 26,
Meyerson, I., 22, 23 31, 35; by primates, 31, 88; attention
Mind of Man, The (Chelpanov ), 4 and, 35--36; motives / quasi-needs in,
Mnemonic activity, see Memory 37; neutral stimuli in, 75; and mental
Montessori, M., 117, 118 age, 86; zone of proximal development
Morozova, N. G., 46 and, 86, 131. See also Choice behavior
Moscow: Institute of Psychology, 4, 5, and responses; Tests and testing; Zone
10, 15; Institute of Defectology, 9, 10, of proximal development
15; State Pedagogical Institute, 15 Psychology of Art, The (Vygotsky}, 15
Moscow University, 10, 15 Psychophysik, Die (Fechner), 2
Naming: (by child) of drawings, con- Reactions, complex: vs. reflexes, 68;
structions, 28, 111, 112, 113. See also study of, 69; and reaction time, 72,
Linguistics 137n.8. See also Choice behavior and
Naturalism, see Behavior responses
October Revolution, 130 "Reactology," 5. See also Behavior
Origin of Species (Darwin), 2 Reading: teaching of, 105, 117, 118; of
symbolic notation, 109, 114-115; and
Papuans, 127 cultural development, 116. See also
Pavlov, I. P., 1,3-4, 52, 59 Education; Writing
Pedagogical Psychology, 15 Reflexes: conditioned, 3-4,52, 124; un-
Pedagogy, see Education conditioned/Ynatural," 68, 124,
"Pedology," 10. See also Education 139n.3; and learning process, 80 (see
Perception: and problem solving, 26,31, also Education)
34-35; syncretism in, 29; human vs. Reflexes of the Brain (Sechenov), 2
animal, 31, 32-33, 34, 35, 36, 37; age Relationship(s): intelligence-speech,
and, 31-32, 33,97,98; verbalized 21-23,24; speech-tool use, 22, 23-24,
(vs. "natural"), 32; role of language 31,53; speech-action, 22, 27-30,36,
in, 33, 126; "center of gravity" of, 35, 111; of language functions (egocen-
36; as stimulus to activity, 96; fusion tric, social), 27; of sign use and tool
of, with meaning, 97; and children's use, 52-55; nature-human behavior,
drawings, 112 61; child development-learning, 79-
Peruvian Indians, 137~.2 91, 12~125; action-meaning, 100-
Piaget, J., 24, 27, 80, 89-90, 100, 122- 101; individual-society, 126
125 (passim) Retardation, 9; and memory aids, 49;
Planning, 129; and children's "planful" and abstract thought, 89
speech, 2~29. See also Problem Russia, prerevolutionary, 3, 4. See also
solving Soviet Union
Play: and color-testing game, 40-45 (see Russian Revolution, 1, 130
Index
158

Sapir, E., 9 Teacher Training Institute (Cornel), 15

Sechenov, I. M., 3, 4; Reflexes of the Teaching, see Education
Brain, 2 "Technical thinking," 21. See also Intel-
Shapiro, S. A., 22, 24 ligence; Thought, thinking and
Signs, use of: vs. practical activity, 23, Tests and testing, 130; IQ, 10; psycho-
24; animals and, 23, 39; by children, logical, halted in Soviet Union, 10;
28,38,55,56,72,108,124,126, color-task, 40-45; of mental age,
139n.3; and social origin of signs, 85-86, 88, 89. See also Education;
38-39 (see also Writing); and mem- Experimentation; Problem solving
ory, 39, 72 (see also Memory); and Thorndike, E. L., 82, 83, 122
structure of operations ("S-R" for- Thought, thinking and: social origin of,
mula), 39-40; early stages of, 40-45; 6; "technical:' 21 (see also Intelli-
natural history of, 45-49; and signali- gence); age and, 21-22, 23,24,51,
zation/signification, 52,74; as psycho- 79-80, 97; preceding speech, 21-22;
logical tool, 52-55, 127; speech as and language, interdependence be-
basis of, 113, 126. See also Drawing; tween, 33; memory and, 49-51 (see
Gestures also Memory); learning and, 83;
Situational constraints, 96, 98-99. See graphic, primates and, 88; abstract,
also Age 89, 129; child development and,
Soviet Academy of Pedagogical Sciences, 89-90, 126; and action vs. meaning,
10 100; imagination and, 103, 129 (see
Soviet Union: psychology in, 1,4,5, also Imagination)
~9; Marxism and, 6, 8 (see also Thought and Language (Vygotsky ),
Marx, K.); linguistics in, 9; and halt of 126,128
testing and publications, 10; teaching Thurnwald, R., 9
of writing in, 116 Titchener, E., 64, 66, 67, 68
Speech, see Linguistics Tools, use of, 7, 132-133; by child,
Spinoza, B., 99 20--26 (passim), 28, 30,31,46,55,
Stem, W., 23, 28, 32, 62 123, 124, 126; by ape, 22,23, 24,88;
Stimulus-response theories, 1, 4; Vygot- relationship of, to speech, 22, 23-24,
sky and, 6, 13-14; and u.s. learning 31,53; and language as problem-solv-
theory (1930s), 13; diagrams/for- ing tool, 27, 33; and sign use as
mulae of, 66; and framework of exper- psychological tool, 52-55, 127
iments, 58--61,69-72, 139n.2; and
double stimulation, 74. See also
Ukrainian Psychoneurological Academy,
Behavior
16
Studies in the History of Behavior (Vy-
United States: behavior studies begun
gotsky and Luria), 9
in, 3; linguistic studies in, 9; IQ tests
Stumpf, K., 19
in, 10; experimental methodology in,
Sully, J., 94, 95, 112, 113
11; and stimulus-response theories of
Symbolism: graphic, child's understand-
learning, 13; teaching of reading and
ing of, 13,112, 115-116; and symbolic
writing in, 117; public education in,
activity in tool use vs. sign use, 23,
130
24; and symbolic representation of
purposeful action, 37; in memory aids,
48, 115 (see aha Memory); in child's Yerask (literary journal), 15
play, 94, 98, 100, 108-112; and Voluntary activity: defined, 37. See also
written/pictorial language, 106, 107, Behavior
116,117; of gestures, 108, 109,110; Vygotsky, Lev S.: early life, career of, 1,
and symbolic notation, 109-112, 114- 4, 9, 15-16; and Marxist thought,
115; development of, in drawing, I, 6-8, 10; as founder of unified be-
112-114 (see also Drawing; Writing) havioral science, ~; influences on, 9,
 Index
159

Vygotsky-continued 114-116, 117; gestures and, 107-108,

122, 132; and concern for education, 11 0~115 (see also Gestures); naming
9-10, 129-131; laboratories and stu- process and, 111; drawing as prelim-
dents of, 10, 11, 13, 15, 133; experi- inary to, 113-114, 116, 118 (see also
mental method of and studies by, Drawing); dominance of speech over,
11-14, 123-133; historical-cultural 114
approach of, 131-133; writings of: Wundt, W., 1, 3, 58, 68; and behavior-
Studies in the History of Behavior ism, 4, 5; and stimulus-response
( co-author), 9; The Psychology of framework, 59-60
Art, 15; Thought and Language, 126, Wurth (and studies of pictorial writing},
128 107
Wiirzburg school, 58
Washburn, S., 133
Watson,]. B., 1, 5, 58, 128 Yussevich, U. C., 48
Werner, H., 12,50,61
Wertheimer, M., 1, 4 Zankov, L. V., 47, 48
Whorf, B. L., 9 Zaporozhets, A. V., 10
Woodsworth, R. S., 82 Zone of proximal development, 84-91,
Writing: as sign-using activity, 38 (see 102,130, 131; defined, 86
also Signs, use of); teaching of, 105, Zoology: and zoological models in be-
11~118; prehistory of, 10~118; havior studies, 19-20,21. See also
symbolism and, 106, 107, 109-112, Animals; Child development