Which one of these is central to a cognitive process approach to child development?

Vygotsky's Position

Numerous theories of inner speech have been formulated. Vygotsky's theory, which emphasizes culture, language, and internalization, arguably represents the most complete, original, and coherent view available. In Vygotsky's system, children's cognitive development is affected by culture in two ways. First, children acquire most of their knowledge (the contents of thought) through culture. In addition, not only does culture teach children what to think but also how to think. Intellectual growth emerges out of a dialectical process in which problem-solving experiences are shared with parents, teachers, siblings, peers, etc. Children can solve some problems by themselves, yet other more challenging problems require help from social agents. Vygotsky named the difference between what children can and cannot do by themselves as the zone of proximal development. He insisted that not respecting this zone, either by helping children on tasks they can complete on their own, or by not helping enough on difficult tasks, impedes cognitive development. Ideally, people interacting with children initially should guide most of the problem-solving process and eventually transfer this responsibility to the child. Language represents the core type of interaction which allows social agents to convey information to children. Gradually, children's own language becomes their principal tool of intellectual growth, first as speech-for-self emitted aloud (private speech) to guide and control their own actions and eventually as silent self-talk (inner speech). Vygostky called this internalization – the process of using an instrument of thought (inner speech) that was at first located outside children (social speech). Much of Vygotsky's theorizing has lead to empirical predictions and most have received support.

The Socratic method

A teaching method that is compatible with constructivism, complexity theory, Vygotsky and heutagogy, is the Socratic method. Vygotsky’s view is that social interaction plays a fundamental role in the development of cognition, or thinking. While the Socratic method of inquiry is frequently used in philosophy, it is also useful to create opportunities for self- reflection (Schön) and collaborative information creation. This method is known to encourage critical and imaginative thinking, and is useful in any discipline with a broad humanistic or liberal arts perspective, as it asks questions rather than providing answers, encouraging debate, so that learners can find out for themselves the complexity and difficulty of certain issues. In this mode, learners also discover their own preconceptions, which may colour their understanding. Logically, also, students must work to be consistent in their answers and in this way, they deepen their understanding. By making learners’ thinking processes visible, students can then use the information as a metacognitive formative assessment to monitor, modify, or refine their responses for any potential biases, pre-conceptions or value inconsistencies (Bransford et al., 2000). An interesting multimedia example of this can be found at The Virtual Philosopher (Hornsby and Maki, 2008, [online] //web.uncg.edu/dcl/courses/viceCrime/vp/vp.html).

a Does regulation by others foster self-regulation?

Despite the growing number of studies addressed to elements of Vygotsky's theory, evidence of direct causal connections between social guidance and cognitive functioning is surprisingly meager (Day et al., 1989; Freund, 1990; Rogoff, 1990). Even less is known about effects on metacognition. The reason, in part, is that many studies have not included assessments of the child's independent performance, and therefore they have provided no way of knowing whether the child has internalized aspects of the external guidance. However, the studies that included assessments of the effects of social interaction on subsequent independent performance have yielded inconsistent findings. For example, Kontos (1983) found that children interacting with their parents on a puzzle task performed no better on a subsequent task than children working alone, but Freund (1990) and Baker, Gilat, and Sonnenschein (1990) found that children performed better on categorization and concept learning tasks after working with their mothers than when working alone. My interpretation of the difference in findings is that children are more likely to benefit from adult guidance when the task is such that self-discovery is unlikely to lead to correct problem solution.

Rogoff (1990) identified other task-related inconsistencies in the literature that warrant a second explanation. Specifically, she found that younger children do not seem to benefit from working with more capable individuals on planning tasks, but they do benefit on memory tasks. She suggested that social interaction does not automatically foster development, perhaps because “some cognitive processes, such as planning, may be less accessible both to reflection by the individual and to discussion or joint attention in action” (p. 163). Rogoff attributed the differential findings to the greater abstractness of planning tasks relative to memory tasks. Older children, presumably more capable of abstract thinking, benefit from working with more knowledgeable others on both types of tasks. A distinction not articulated by Rogoff, but which is particularly relevant in the present context, is that planning is a metacognitive process, undertaken to guide progress, and memory is a cognitive process. Is it more difficult to foster metacognitive growth than cognitive growth? This question deserves further consideration, especially given the suggestion that metacognitive skills may be more amenable to social transmission than cognitive skills (Azmitia & Perlmutter, 1990; Hartup, 1985).

Contextual perspectives (sociocultural theory)

Some theorists have concentrated on the role of contextual factors in human development. For example the sociocultural theory that places particular emphasis on the impact of social and cultural experience on child development. Vygotsky's theory (1962) proposes that the child's development is best understood in relation to social and cultural experience. Social interaction, in particular, is seen as a critical force in development. Through the assistance provided by more experienced people in the social environment, the child gradually learns to function intellectually on her own. Thus, the social world mediates individual cognitive development. By emphasizing the socially mediated nature of cognitive processes, this approach offers new ways of assessing children's cognitive potential and of teaching reading, mathematics, and writing. Sociocultural theory has also increased our appreciation of the profound importance of cultural variation in development. The ways in which adults support and direct child development are influenced by culture, especially the values and practices and organize what and how adults and children think and work together and use cultural tools to understand the world and solve cognitive problems. These tools are devised by cultures and take a variety of forms, including language, mathematical symbols, literacy, and technology. As children develop, different tools help them function more effectively in solving problems and understanding the world. Thus, tools of thinking, which are products of culture, become incorporated into the ways individuals think about and act in the world (Parke and Gauvain, 2009).

Cognitive Approaches

In contrast to discrete emotions theory, cognitive theories of emotion (Oatley and Johnson-Laird, 1987) propose that an infant's ability to experience and communicate discrete emotions is connected to the development of cognitive abilities. Thus, although infants cry and have a nonsocial smile at birth, not all approaches accept that infants possess an innate ability to experience emotions. Rather, within the cognitive approach, the experience of distress and happiness emerges at 2–3 months of age, as cognitive skills develop.

Among the cognitive-centered approaches to early social and emotional development is Vygotsky's theory of social development. Vygotsky is best known for introducing concepts such as the zone of proximal development, which refers to the range of capacities and problem solving that the infant can achieve independently as contrasted with those that the infant can achieve in collaboration with adult support and scaffolding, which refers to the behaviors that parents and other older interactive partners employ to enhance the infant's capacities. Central to Vygotsky's theory is the idea that infants develop new social and cognitive skills through interactions with older individuals. Vygotsky believed that, as an infant and caregiver participate in an activity, the adult begins by guiding and leading the experience (i.e., scaffolding the infant's experience), slowly giving more control to the infant. Vygotsky proposed that infants collect ‘tools’ to help them learn and grow. The older individuals in an infant's social network are some of these ‘tools’. Thus, the older individuals in the child's world teach him or her not only about objects in the environment, but about the social context in which specific objects are employed and the kinds of social interactions that can be expected. Emotional experiences are interpreted within this social framework.

Vygotsky Psychology

The efforts of Vygotsky and his colleagues to build a new Soviet psychology led them into diverse areas of investigation. All of these areas were linked to the same core ideas of his theory and were drawn from and tested with empirical studies, many performed with innovative techniques. Because Vygotsky's work on creativity flows from and is closely related to his cultural historical theory of psychology, it is important to introduce key elements of that theory before discussing how they relate to creativity.

According to Luria, Vygotsky liked to call his approach “instrumental,” “cultural” and “historical” psychology. Each term reflected a different feature of a new approach to psychology that Vygotsky proposed to explain the development of higher psychological functions. The term instrumental reflected the fundamental idea of the mediated nature of higher psychological functions. Unlike basic reflexes, which could be analyzed as a simple stimuli-response situation, complex psychological functions incorporate in their structure new elements– internal and external tools–that transform the whole structure of mental functioning. The analysis of tools, which individuals actively use as instruments to modify and master their own behaviors, became a necessary part of Vygotsky's new approach.

The term cultural emphasized that aspect of Vygotsky theory that views cultural development as a unique direction in the development of the child, reflecting socially constructed ways in which society organizes the various types of tasks faced by a growing child and the physical and mental tools that society provides to the young child to master those tasks. The historical aspect of Vygotsky's theory is closely connected to the cultural aspect. The set of tools provided by a given culture were invented and developed during the long course of human history. Thus, tools like language, arithmetic or algebraic systems, maps, and signs have a long history of development and accumulation of their social influence before they become available as special instruments for a child's individual development. Because the invention and development of cultural tools continues, historical also means not only something from the past, but also contemporary aspects of life that are in process of change, linking the past and the future.

The historical method of psychological analysis differs greatly from the traditional methods used in the West. Vygotsky wrote that the concept of historically based psychology is misunderstood by most researchers. For them to study something historically means, by definition, to study some past event, and hence they naively imagine an insurmountable barrier between historic study and the study of the present-day behavioral forms. In Vygotsky's view, to study something historically means to study it in the process of change. That is why he argued that the historical study of behavior is not an auxiliary aspect of theoretical study, but rather forms its very base. In fact, studying something in the process of change is the basic demand of the dialectic method, which is an essential element of Vygotsky's theory.

The dialectical method, incorporated by Vygotsky in his work owes much to Hegel's dialectic concept, which was later used by Marx and Engels. The Hegelian dialectic concept views things as in constant change and movement. It is concerned with interrelations and interactions. The sources for constant movement and development, the driving force of change, are conflicts and tensions between the contradictory aspects of things. As a result of these conflicts and tensions, development was viewed as constant transformation: nothing can be stable, everything is in a constant process of becoming.

Vygotsky viewed the very essence of psychic development as lying in the change of the interfunctional structure of consciousness. He criticized the atomistic and functional models of analysis, which treat psychological processes in isolation while ignoring their interdependence and their organization in the structure of consciousness as a whole. Rejecting methods of research perfected to study separate functions, Vygotsky suggested that psychology's main problem for investigation should be the changing relationships between psychological functions and their developmental changes. The basic characteristics of Vygotsky's theory are summarized in Table I. As this framework shows, Vygotsky separated higher psychological functions (like creativity) from natural psychological functions, then compared them based on their origins, structure, functioning, and complexity.

As Table I shows, natural psychological functions are genetically inherited (their origin), they are unmediated (their structure), they are involuntary (their way of functioning), and they are isolated from each other (their relation to other mental functions). In contrast, higher mental functions are socially acquired, “instrumental,” mediated by social means, voluntarily coconstructed and controlled, and exist as a part of a broad system of functions rather than as separate elements (see Table I).

SI, Naturalistic Inquiry, and Qualitative Methods: Conclusion

The charge of this article has been to demonstrate the relevance of SI as a paradigm for educators and educational researchers. Space limits preclude discussion of theoretical and research advances into the micro-aspects of conduct (cognition and emotion) or the macro-processes and structures conditioning meaning-making (power, class, and culture). Interactionist's alignments with other traditions, including semiotics, critical theory, Vygotsky's sociocultural approach, and feminism as well as the recent interactionist responses to criticisms of the naturalist approach (e.g., issues of generalizability, utility for policy advocacy and practice, and the rhetoric of science writing), cannot be reviewed.

SI represents a distinctive tradition of scientific inquiry and applied science offering educators an assumptive base supportive of interpretive, engaged, and practical theorizing about human subjectivity and situated conduct; an opus of work rich with grounded theories, methodological innovations, and naturalistic studies; a set of exemplary theorists and researchers; a framework for the amelioration of educational problems and betterment of educational institutions; and an approach to inquiry that can make sense of the qualities (immediacy, complexity, uniqueness, and symbolic mediation) related to the perspectives, actions, and interaction of members of diverse learning communities.

1.5 Pedagogical Context of Tutoring

Another aspect of concern for the social nature of learning—and for a crucial way in which it is supported by culture—is instructional dialog or conversation. This term refers to a discursive activity in classrooms that permits the co-construction of meaning between teachers and students, tutors and tutees, the more and the less experienced. Consistent with Vygotsky's theory of the constructive role played by adults in children's acquisition of knowledge, the teacher's goal of assistance can be seen as trying to get the students to share his or her understanding and knowledge. However, because of the asymmetrical distribution of knowledge between teachers and students, understanding might be expected to be less jointly constructed in instructional conversation than it is observed to be in peer-cooperative dialog. Actions that tutors or teachers can take in order to elicit responses, including some co-constructive behavior from a tutee, are, for example, described in literature on reciprocal teaching and on cognitive apprenticeship (Collins et al. 1989). They can be subsumed under two broad categories: (a) modeling, scaffolding, and fading as content-specific ways of providing hints, strategies, and situational forms of coaching and guidance that are tailored to the needs of individual students; and (b) prompting as a more content-neutral invitation by the tutor to elicit elaborations, reflections, and self-explanations from students (Chi 1996).

Informal and Formal Learning

Vygotsky also considered imaginative play as an activity that provides children with experience in the zone of proximal development. There are two ways that imaginative play allows the child to function beyond her actual developmental level (Göncü and Gaskins, 2010). First, the rules of play (e.g., when playing doctor) serve as support for the child and create a ZPD where the child can function beyond her existing level of development. Second, in play the child separates the usual meaning of objects and actions (e.g., a stick might become a horse) and, thus, the child comes to understand she can use one object to represent the meaning of another object, again extending current understanding.

Vygotsky's theory has profound implications for applied psychologists, especially for researchers concerned with education and classroom learning. For example, ‘scaffolding’, a form of instruction inspired by Vygotsky's ideas, is the process by which the more knowledgeable partner adjusts the amount and type of support he or she offers to the child so that it fits with the child's learning needs over the course of the interaction. By careful monitoring of the child's progress, the teacher adjusts the task to make it manageable for the child and provides assistance as needed. In scaffolding, the teacher gradually reduces the amount of support as the child becomes more skilled, so that eventually the child can execute the task independent of the more experienced partner's help.

Learners benefit from participating in this type of classroom arrangement, and extensions of this idea can be found in the method of ‘reciprocal instruction’ introduced by A. Palinscar and A. Brown (Palinscar, 2013). This tutoring approach, which is based on the ideas of the zone of proximal development and scaffolding, enhances children's reading comprehension by having the learner work in close and supportive collaboration with more experienced partners who help children develop skills critical to comprehension, such as explication and elaboration. A. Brown and her colleagues also introduced a related classroom application called the ‘community of learners model’ (National Academy of Sciences, 2018). In this approach, adults and children work together in shared activities, peers learn from each other, and the teacher serves as an expert guide who facilitates the processes by which the children learn. The teacher uses the technique of scaffolding to support children's learning and the students, who vary in knowledge and ability, actively help each other learn through their interchanges. Other extensions of the idea of the ZPD are evident in educational practices that use resources from home and community settings, such as linguistic and cultural experiences, to support or scaffold children's classroom learning (Moll, 2014).

Parent-Child Interaction

Research has demonstrated the importance of positive parent-child interactions across the first few years of life for cognitive development as well as social and emotional growth (e.g., Carew, 1980; Clark-Stewart, 1973; Hart & Risley, 1995). Two specific cognitive activities influenced by engagement with parents are play and language skills. The classic theory of cognitive development proposed by Lev Vygotsky underscores how social interaction can facilitate the development for play, language, and other cognitive skills, such as attention and memory. While Vygotsky's theory focuses on social interaction with any individual more advanced than the child, his position is pertinent to the types of engagement that may occur between parents and children. Of particular relevance, Vygotsky discusses the zone of proximal development, or the distance between the child's current developmental level and the level of their potential development (Vygotsky, 1978). Vygotsky proposed that, within the zone of proximal development, interactions with others lead to internalization of cognitive processes first achieved in the social context (Vygotsky, 1978). The child will be able to utilize these cognitive skills on their own in new contexts once they are mastered through social interaction. Vygotsky's theory is reflected in modern research findings demonstrating that interactions with a parent can provide “scaffolding” to enhance the child's cognitive abilities (e.g., Dodici, Draper, & Peterson, 2003; Fiese, 1990; Slade, 1987).

In this way, parent-child interaction plays an important role in the development of early language and literacy skills. Hart and Risley's (1992, 1995) seminal longitudinal study of language exposure during the first 3 years of life found that greater amounts of parental language input correlated with better language outcomes in their children, such as larger vocabulary size and stronger cognitive abilities in general. Similarly, the amount of language used during the first 3 years, along with parental responsiveness and guidance, has been associated with positive literacy outcomes for low-income children entering kindergarten (Dodici et al., 2003). Beyond the amount of parental language input, the quality of social exchanges is also important for language acquisition. In particular, many studies have indicated that parental language input is most beneficial when it is contingent to the child's communicative bids, as demonstrated by positive effects of sensitive and responsive parenting behaviors and conversational turn-taking (e.g., Golinkoff, Can, Soderstrom, & Hirsh-Pasek, 2015; Hoff-Ginsberg, 1990; Masur, Flynn, & Eichorst, 2005; Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2001; Zimmerman et al., 2009). Hart and Risley (1999) describe the combination of parental responsiveness, turn-taking, and talkativeness when engaging with their child in conversation as the “social dance” of American families. They argue that this dance between parent and child is crucial for children's successful language development.

A second area in which parent interaction can have a significant impact is young children's play. Play is a valuable activity that yields positive outcomes for cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development (for a review, see Ginsburg, 2007). Parents may enhance the positive effects of play by engaging with their child. In fact, parent-child interaction has been shown to increase both the quantity and quality of play in young children. For instance, both free-play and structured play sessions with the mother led to more advanced symbolic play compared to solitary play for children between 1 and 2 years of age (Fiese, 1990). Similarly, for preschoolers, maternal behaviors such as physical and verbal stimulation, involvement, and positive tone were associated with more mature play and better interactions with peers and caregivers (Alessandri, 1992). Active parental interaction (e.g., focusing on the child, showing interest, initiating, or extending play) has also been associated with longer play episodes and move advanced symbolic play (Slade, 1987). Thus, early cognitive development appears to be enhanced to the extent that parents enrich the play experience by actively engaging their children in these ways.

While some parental behaviors directed toward children appear to be beneficial for their early development, others lead to negative outcomes. For instance, behaviors by parents such as intrusiveness and questioning or instructing in a way that directs the child's attention have been associated with decreases in children's symbolic play (Fiese, 1990). Likewise, restricting children's behavior by terminating their activity or redirecting their attention to a new task has been associated with slower rates of cognitive and social development, which contrasts with supportive behaviors, such as maintaining children's focus on an activity, that are associated with faster rates of cognitive and social development (Landry, Smith, Miller-Loncar, & Swank, 1997).

Taken together, research and theory on early parent-child interaction point to many ways in which parental engagement can benefit cognitive growth. The social interaction between parents and children during the early years of development has a powerful influence on children's development of cognitive skills, such as language. Certain parental behaviors support children's development during play as well, which can be crucial for development since children spend much of their day in this activity. While there is opportunity for parent-child interaction to be supportive, parental behaviors such as interrupting or redirecting attention can be detrimental.