Interaction in Human Development

Marc H. Bornstein, Jerome S. Bruner

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317786047
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Interaction in Human Development unites theoretical essays and empirical accounts bearing directly on the nature of interactions as a principal factor and organizing feature in human mental and social development. The papers discuss all areas of interaction including genetic, environmental, life-span, interpersonal, and cultural. Ideal as a text for students and as a reference for professionals in personality, developmental, educational, and environmental psychology, psychotherapy, behavioral medicine, and language.

I
Interaction in Cognitive Development

2
Peer Influences on Cognitive Development: Piagetian and Vygotskian Perspectives

Jonathan Tudge
Barbara Rogoff
Department of Psychology University of Utah

Introduction

Psychologists have become increasingly interested in the effects of the social context on individuals' cognitive development, influenced by the work of Piaget and Vygotsky. Although Piaget was primarily concerned with individual development, he believed that discussion between children has a role to play in cognitive development. Vygotsky's theory places a central focus on social interaction as a medium in which children develop, with people who are more skilled in the intellectual technologies of a culture assisting children in learning.

Following a discussion ol similarities and differences in these theories, we examine research on the effects of social interaction between peers. Our goal is to suggest the circumstances under which peer interaction can foster children's cognitive development, and to place these suggestions in the context of the theories of Piaget and Vygotsky.

We suggest that shared thinking involving coordination of joint activity is central to the benefits of social interaction. We consider that social interaction does not carry blanket benefits, as is often assumed, but that social interaction facilitates development under certain circumstances that need more specification. One of the most important of these appears to be the possibility for the participants to understand another perspective or participate in a more advanced skill, either through active observation or through joint involvement in problem solving.

Theoretical Perspectives on the Role of Social Interaction:
Piaget and Vygotsky

In some ways Piaget and Vygotsky have striking similarities of approach. This is perhaps not surprising; the intellectual world in which they moved was similar. Both cited the work of the same major figures in the field, such as Baldwin, Buhler, Janet, and Stern. Piaget did not know of Vygotsky's work before the latter's death in 1934, and was only able to read it 25 years later (Piaget, 1962). But Vygotsky was very familiar with Piaget's work, and wrote an introduction (which eventually became a chapter in Thinking and Speech, 1987) to the Russian translation of Language and Thought of the Child.

Piaget and Vygotsky both argued for the importance of the genetic approach, studying psychological processes as they develop, either in microgenesis or ontogenesis. They also believed that development involves qualitative transformations rather than gradual growth increments. Piaget argued that children progress through a series of qualitatively distinct stages, applicable across all cognitive problems, in invariant order. Vygotsky's view of development did not involve such a general stagelike unidirectional progression, but his approach resembled Piaget's in seeing change as a "revolutionary" rather than an evolutionary process (Vygotsky, 1981b, p. 171).

Both theones have a dialectical basis in their conception of the developmental process and of the relation between the individual and society (Butterworth, 1982; Davydov & Radzikhovskii, 1985; Wozniak, 1975; Youniss, 1978). Moreover, both regarded the roles of the individual and the environment as inseparable. Piaget (1936/1952) described the interrelation of organism and environment in his discussion of assimilation and accommodation; Vygotsky's approach to the mutuality of individual and environment involves analysis of the embedded levels of phylogenetic development, sociohistorical development, ontogenetic development, and microgenetic development (Wertsch, 1985). Piaget and Vygotsky also shared the belief that children are active in their own development, that they arrive at knowledge of the world through activity.

Although both Piaget and Vygotsky acknowledged the role that the social world plays in cognitive development, they differed in emphasis on the integration of the social world and individual development, the theorized causal mechanisms relating social interaction to cognitive development, the timing in ontogenesis of the effectiveness of such interaction, the ideal role relations and type of social partner presumed optimal, and the possibility of regression as well as progression resulting from social interaction.

The Role of Social Interaction

Piaget's theory incorporates the view that the social world in which children develop has an important role to play in the developmental process. For example, in 1927, he argued that the development of the child is an adaptation as much to the social as to the physical milieu. "Social life is a necessary condition for the development of logic. We thus believe that social life transforms the individual's very nature." (Piaget, 1928/1977, p. 239). Toward the end of his life he declared that "the most remarkable aspect of the way in which human knowledge is built up ... is that it has a collective as well as an individual nature" (1967/ 1971, p. 359).

However, despite these statements, social influences on development are not central to Piaget's theory, which focuses on the interaction of the child and the physical environment. The bulk of his genetic epistemology concerned the ways in which children come to understand physical and logical properties of the world while acting on it as individuals. His theory only touched occasionally on social factors, and he did not direct the work of his laboratory to investigate social influences (Forman & Kraker, 1985). Moreover, when Piaget summed up his thinking and his life's work (Piaget & Inhelder, 1966/1969; Piaget, 1970/1983), he emphasized the role played by equilibration; maturation, experience, and social interaction were accorded less significance. Here he downplayed the formative role of social interaction by stating that the importance of the social environment is restricted to accelerating or retarding the age at which children pass through the stages of development (Piaget, 1970/1983, p. 119). Nevertheless, Piaget's speculations have inspired a number of scholars working in the Piagetian tradition to cultivate the seeds of Piagetian social interactionism (e.g., Ames & Murray, 1982; Bearison, in press; Doise & Mugny, 1984; Murray, 1982; Perret-Clermont, 1980).

In contrast with Piaget's theory, Vygotsky s theory was built on the premise that individual development cannot be understood without reference to the social milieu, both institutional and interpersonal, in which the child is embedded. Vygotsky's theory stresses the channeling of individual thinking by social institutions and technologies developed over social history (such as schooling, literacy, mathematical systems, and mnemonic strategies). These enveloping social solutions for cognitive processing are made available to children through interaction with people who are more skilled than they, according to Vygotsky's "general genetic law of cultural development," "Any function in the child's cultural development appears twice, or on two planes. First it appears on the social plane, and then on the psychological plane" (Vygotsky, 1981b, p. 163). Vygotsky did not believe that every aspect of a child's psychological functioning was purely social. He distinguished between elementary (or natural) processes (such as involuntary attention and recognition memory) that are shared with animals, and higher mental processes. Higher mental processes distinguish humans from animals; they are inherently social, mediated by the cultural context in which humans live. For example, the difference between natural memory 'e.g., recognition) and mediated memory (e.g., strategic recall) is that only the latter is influenced by sociocultural factors. The mediators, whether they are words, notches on sticks, numerical systems, and so on, are considered psychological "tools," which "are social, not organic or individual .... They are the product of historical development and are a form of behavior unique to humans" (Vygotsky, 1981a, p. 137).

Thus Vygotsky argued that rather than deriving explanations of psychological activity from the individual's characteristics plus secondary social influences, the unit of analysis should be social activity, from which individual functioning advances to a higher plane. Piaget's approach is the reverse—a focus on the individual as the unit of analysis, with social influence overlaid upon the individual's activity. Vygotsky noted this difference in approaches, stating that "Piaget thinks of the biological as primal, initial, and self-contained within the child. He views the biological as forming the child's substance. In contrast, the social acts through compulsion or constraint as an external force which is foreign to the child himself" (Vygotsky, 1987, p. 82), and, "In contrast to Piaget, we hypothesize that development does not proceed toward socialization, but toward the conversion of social relations into mental functions" (Vygotsky, 1981b, p. 165).

Mechanisms of Social Influence

The two theories also differ in their expectations of the means by which social influence impacts cognitive development. In Piaget's theory equilibration is the primary factor in cognitive development (Piaget, 1970/1983, pp. 122-123). Children are seen as striving to deal with discrepancies between their own ways of viewing the world (their schemes) and new information that comes their way, and reform their ways of thinking to provide a better fit with reality. When the scheme is altered so that the new experience fits more easily, equilibrium is reestablished at a higher level.

For the most part Piaget focused on the "cognitive conflict ' brought about by the disequilibrium that occurs as an individual acts on the physical and logical environment. However, in early work, Piaget (1932, 1928-1945/1977) argued that cognitive conflict could arise in the course of social interaction, in discussions between children who hold different views on an intellectual or moral issue. Such logical discussion allows children to see that there is a different perspective that may not easily fit into their own preexisting perspectives.

Piaget believed that the same logical relations that children become able to understand regarding the physical world (the laws of "groupement") are practiced in social relations: "The social relations equilibrated in cooperation thus constitute 'groupements' of operations, exactly like all the logical operations exercised by the individual on the external world" (Piaget, 1945/1977, p. 159). Hence Piaget emphasized cooperation as the ideal form of social interaction promoting development. He conceived of cooperation as a parallel form of logic in which children would discuss propositions provoking cognitive conflict. Such discussion would lead to disequilibrium in the individual and attempts by the individual child to reach logical resolution of their internal cognitive conflict, leading to cognitive advances.

In Vygotsky's efforts to explicate the mechanisms that transform what is social (external to the child) into individual development, he argued that properties of social processes are not simply transferred into the individual. He held instead that the individual's appropriation of what had been practiced in social interaction involves active transformation. What had been social and what had been internal both undergo a process of dialectical transformation to become something qualitatively new. The child's understanding is not the accretion of thoughts or behaviors practiced socially, but rather involves qualitative transformations of social activities to fit the child's growing comprehension.

How does this occur? A central concept of Vygotsky's theory is mediation— that what is social is not directly converted into what is individual but passes through a link, a "psychological tool." One such mediating link is the "sign," of which words are the prime example in Vygotsky's theory. Words that already have meaning for the mature members of a community come to have the same meaning for the young in the process of social interaction.

Much of Vygotsky's (1987) discussion of egocentric speech is an explanation of the ways in which social processes are gradually internalized by children, eventually existing in purely internal form as inner speech. Even the actual process of interaction used initially to direct a child's attention may be later utilized as an aid to self-direction, when the child may engage in dialogue with her- or himself either aloud (in egocentric speech) or silently (in inner speech) (Vygotsky, 1987).

Higher mental processes, such as meaning or voluntary attention, are thus created and sustained by social interaction. Vygotsky believed that social interaction is important not only at the initial stages of development of an idea; arriving at a shared meaning of a gesture or word occurs in the process of actual interaction, but the social nature of the gesture or word always remains. In this way culturally available meanings are made known to children, are taken over by them, in time to be passed on to others.

A concept that vygotsky (1978, 1987) proposed for understanding the social interactional nature of children's development is the "zone of proximal development," where children perform beyond the limits of their individual skill, supported by a more experienced person. In social interaction in the zone of proximal development, children are able to participate in more advanced problem solving than they are capable of independently, and in so doing they practice skills that they internalize to advance what they can do independently.

Piaget and Vygotsky shared an emphasis on the importance of partners' understanding of each other. For Piaget, the partners must have a common language and system of ideas, and grant reciprocity in attempting to examine and adjust for differences in their opinions. Piaget's emphasis on such reciprocity and intellectual exchange calls into question some interpretations of Piaget's view of cognitive conflict that focus more on the fact of disagreement (as an indicator of cognitive conflict) or even on contentiousness, than on the process of resolving those disagreements (e.g., Azmitia, 1988; Bearison, Magzamen & Filardo, 1986; Damon & Killen, 1982; Damon & Phelps, 1987). Piaget (1928/1977) emphasized the cooperative working out of differences of opinion through coming to understand the different perspectives and logically comparing their value. For Vygotsky, the child is assumed to be interested in gaining from the more expert partner and the expert is seen as responsible for adjusting the dialogue to fit within the child's zone of proximal development, where understanding is achieved with a stretch leading to growth. Both of these perspectives are similar in stressing the importance of a match between partners involving shared thinking.

The idea of cooperation in sharing thought processes, which appears in both Piaget's and Vygotsky's theories, is related to the linguistic concept of intersubjectivity (Rommetveit, 1976, 1985; Trevarthen, 1980). Intersubjectivity focuses on the joint understanding of a topic achieved by people working together and taking each other's perspective into account. The concept of intersubjectivity has appeared in discussions of both neo-Vygotskian and neo-Piagetian scholars (Gauvain & Rogoff, in press; Perret-Clermont & Schubauer-Leoni, 1981; Wertsch, 1984; Youniss, 1987).

Ag...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• series
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Series Prologue
• Contributors
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 On Interaction
• Part I Interaction in Cognitive Development
• Part II Interaction in Language Acquisition
• Part III Child-Caretaker Interaction
• Part IV How to Formulate the Interaction Problem?
• About the Authors
• Author Index
• Subject Index