The Child and his Behavior

Works of A. R. Luria The Child and his Behavior Written: c. 1930; Source: Ape, Primitive Man, and Child: Essays in the History of Behaviour. A. R. Luria and L. S. Vygotsky. Chapters 1 & 2 are by Vygotsky; Chapter 3, reproduced here, is by Luria; Published: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992. Translated by Evelyn Rossiter; Transcribed: Andy Blunden.

Approaching the Psychology of the Adult WHEN seeking to study the psychology of the civilized adult, we must remember that it is the result of a complex evolution, in which at least three paths converge. The first of these is biological evolution from animal to man; the second, historico-cultural development, by means of which contemporary civilized man gradually evolved from the primitives; and the third, the individual development of each person (ontogenesis), whereby the tiny new-born, proceeding through a number of phases, develops into a child of school age, and later into a civilized adult. Some scientists (supporters of the so-called biogenetic law) believe that we should not study each of these paths of development separately and in isolation; that the developing child, in all essential respects, repeats the developmental traits of his species, and during the few years of his own individual life follows the path taken by that species for many thousands and tens of thousands of years. We do not hold this view. We believe that the development of the ape into man, of the primitive into a representative of the civilized era, and of the child into the adult takes a substantially different course, under the influence of unique

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factors, and passes through unique, and often unreproducible forms and phases of development. That is why, as we approach the study of the civilized adult, we must consider, in addition to the evolution of the behavior of animals and primitive man, the path taken by the development of the behavior in the child. How does the process of thinking take place in the child? What laws does the child follow in arriving at conclusions and forming judgments? All that we have said so far makes it abundantly clear that from the childs point of view there is no such thing as highly developed logic, with all the limitations it imposes on thought, and with all its complex conditions and patterns. The primitive precultural thinking of the child has a far simpler structure: it is a direct reflection of the naively perceived world. All the child needs is one detail or one incomplete observation to draw the corresponding (though entirely wrong) conclusion. Whereas adult thinking is governed by the laws of a complex combination of accumulated experience and conclusions drawn from general premises, and is subordinate to the laws of inductive-deductive logic, the thinking of the small child, on the other hand, is what the German psychologist Stern has described as transductive. It does not proceed from the particular to the general, nor from the general to the particular; it merely concludes from case to case, each time on the basis of new, readily evident features. In the mind of the child each phenomenon receives a corresponding explanation which is supplied immediately, bypassing any logical stages or generalizations. Steps Toward Culture We have discussed what is characteristic of the primitive perception of the small child and his primitive thinking. However, the child develops rapidly, moving ahead and shifting to new forms of activity; the infant turns into a child, the child into an adolescent, while the adult merely remembers that he once passed through childhood, and that at one time he thought, felt and perceived the world quite differently.

The Child and his Behavior

The childs primitive forms of behavior are gradually replaced by other, adult, or civilized forms. New skills and new forms of thinking and logic are developed, together with new attitudes towards the world; science must then consider the question of the paths along which the childs primitive psyche gradually changes into the psyche of the civilized adult. The developing, the child not only grows and matures, but also and this is the essential point we wish to make in our analysis of the evolution of the childs psyche he receives a number of new skills and new forms of behavior. In the process of development the child not only matures, but is re-armed. It is this re-arming that accounts for a great deal of the development and changes we can observe as we follow the transition from child to civilized adult. It is precisely in this respect that human development differs from that of the animals. Let us consider the paths of development of animals, and their adaptation to the conditions in which they live. We may say that in the process of evolution, all changes in the behavior of animals really amount to two basic elements: their natural, innate properties develop; and new skills acquired through individual experience the conditioned reflexes make their appearance. If we examine an animal which has been obliged to adapt to living conditions in the forest: we will find that all of its sensory organs, which help it ward off danger, have become exceptionally sensitive. Its eyesight is keen, its sense of smell is astonishingly well developed and its hearing can, on occasion, strike us as incredible. Moreover, we will see the subtlety and agility of the system in which all of the animals organs of perception are combined with its movements, and see how they may be mobilized and activated by any sign familiar to the animal. This is how an animal adapts to nature, by altering its organism, increasing the subtlety of all its organs of perception, and mobilizing all its motor capabilities. One would imagine that in the process of evolution, with the transition to ever higher levels of development, these natural properties (vision, hearing, smell, memory, etc.) would become increasingly enhanced; one would accordingly

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expect all these functions to be exceptionally highly developed in man. If we were to expect this to be so, however, we would be deeply disappointed. Detailed study of the condition of numerous innate human properties will inevitably compel us to conclude that very many of them, far from reaching stages of development more advanced than those found in animals, have at best stagnated; while in most of them there is clear evidence of worsening, degradation and regression. How is it possible to compare human vision with that of the eagle or hawk, or human hearing with that of the dog, which is capable of identifying slight rustling sounds or differences in tone far beyond the perceptive capacity of civilized adults, or, lastly, human smell, touch and muscular sensation with the development of such systems of perception in other, lower animals? 1[23] Moreover, when one compares these processes in civilized man say, in an average contemporary Parisian with their condition in some Australian aborigine at a very primitive level of development, one finds that civilized man is inferior in respect of virtually all the simplest mental functions. The stories told by travelling ethnographers abound with reports of astonishingly well developed hearing and vision in primitives, of their amazing memory, and their exceptional ability to simultaneously perceive and judge the size of a host of objects (for example, to tell when a single sheep is missing from a flock). In all of these natural functions the primitive stands incomparably higher than civilized man; yet we all know that the latter has a far richer psychic life, that he is far more powerful, and that he frequently shows superior orientation in the circumstances of life and a superior ability to subjugate surrounding phenomena. What is the answer to the riddle of the evolution of the psyche from the animal to man, from the primitive to the representative of a civilized people?
1

Studies done by the school of Academician I. N. Pavlov have objectively shown that a dog is capable of unerringly distinguishing one eighth of a tone, whereas very few humans are capable of such a feat

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We believe that it lies in the evolution of the existential conditions in which each of us lives, and at the same time in the evolution of those forms of behavior that are determined and caused by such external conditions. Contemporary civilized man does not need to adapt to the external environment in the same way as an animal or a primitive. He has subjugated nature, and now applies his tools to the functions once performed by feet or hands, eyes or ears. Civilized man does not need to strain his eyes to see a far-off object he can put on glasses, look through binoculars or use a telescope; he does not need to strain his ears and run at top speed in order to transmit news he now performs all those functions using tools and means of communication and locomotion that carry out his will. All artificial tools and the entire cultural environment promote the expansion of our senses, and contemporary civilized man can afford to have worse natural properties, while supplementing them with artificial adaptations that enable him to cope with the external world better than primitive man, who makes direct use of his natural endowment.
[24]

Primitive man might break up a tree by

smashing it against a rock, whereas civilized man would pick up an axe or a mechanical saw and do the job faster, better and with a lower expenditure of energy. The differences between civilized and primitive man transcend these limits, however. The productive and cultural environment gradually alter man himself; indeed man as we know him is like a stone that has been repeatedly rounded and reshaped under the influence of that productive and cultural environment. In response to external conditions, the ape stood up on its hind limbs and its body straightened out; those same conditions also caused its extremities to become differentiated and its hand to develop, in due course, into the human hand. In the opinion of Engels, at that point the ape turned into something similar to a human being. Yet the influence of productive and cultural conditions did not end there. After the hand, the brain had to change, and the need arose at the same

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time for subtler, more dynamic forms of human adaptation to the environment. Altered conditions naturally required new forms of adaptation, and, with the passage of time, such new forms were elaborated. Under direct pressure from the external conditions of existence, and in an active struggle with the external world, man learned not to make direct use of his natural endowment in the struggle to survive, but to elaborate devices, of varying complexity, to help him in that struggle. In the process of evolution, man invented tools and created a cultural productive environment; yet that same productive environment altered man himself, supplanting primitive forms of behavior with complex, cultural forms. Man gradually learned to make rational use of the properties he had inherited from nature. The influence of the environment created in man a large number of new mechanisms not found in animals; the environment, as it were, turned inwards, and behavior became social and cultural by virtue not only of its content, but also of its mechanisms and devices. Instead of directly remembering something of particular importance to him, man now elaborated a system of associative and structural memory; his speech and thinking developed, the abstract concept came to be elaborated, a series of cultural skills and techniques of adaptation were created and instead of the primitive, we have civilized man. While the natural innate functions of both are identical, or sometimes even weakened in the course of development, on the other hand what makes civilized man so vastly different from primitive man is his possession of an enormous stock of psychological mechanisms, created in the course of cultural development, including skills, behavioral devices, cultural symbols and adaptations, as well as the fact that his psyche has been altered under the impact of the complex conditions that brought him into being. Our digression from our analysis of the childs psyche has been deliberate. It was intended to show in which areas we should expect to find the serious and profound changes that occur in the behavior of the child as he turns into an adult.

The Child and his Behavior

As we have already noted, we are not at all inclined to equate the development of the species, to which we have just referred, with that of the child, or even to establish some strict parallel between them. The child is born in a ready cultural and productive environment, and therein lies the decisive, radical difference between him and the primitive. However, when born, the child is not in contact with that environment and is incorporated into it only gradually. That incorporation into cultural conditions is in no way reminiscent of putting on a new set of clothes: as it happens, profound changes occur in the childs behavior, which forms new, fundamental and specific mechanisms. It is, therefore, perfectly natural for each child to have his own precultural primitive period; while that period lasts the structure of the childs mental life is marked by certain special features and by peculiar primitive traits in the perception of thinking. Upon inclusion in the appropriate environment, the child soon begins to change and develop new traits: this happens extraordinarily fast because the ready socio-cultural environment creates in him the necessary forms of adaptation, which have been formed long ago in the adults around him. The childs behavior as a whole is altered.. He grows accustomed to inhibiting the immediate satisfaction of his needs and attractions, and restraining immediate responses to external stimuli, in order to master the given situation better and more easily, by means of roundabout paths and suitable cultural devices. It is precisely this inhibition of primitive functions, and the elaboration of complex cultural forms of adaptation that constitutes the essence of the transition from primitive childlike forms of behavior to the behavior of the civilized adult. Mastery of Tools In the upper reaches of the animal world, but below the human level, we have already noted an interesting fact: in some instances the ape would adapt to new and difficult conditions not directly, but by using external tools (sticks, boxes, etc.).[25]

The Child and his Behavior

This phenomenon, which points to quite highly developed forms of behavior, is not yet discernible in the small child. The child needs to develop to the age of 1 1/2 years before he can, for the first time, use external objects as tools, and assess any given external object not merely as such, but as an object that can be used to achieve some goal. The first functional attitude to objects is the first step towards an active, rather than a merely mechanical, connection between the child and the external world. It is not surprising that the child, having just begun to assimilate the external world, and finding it still alien and associated with various fantastic representations, should still have only a limited ability to act upon it in an organized manner, or to use individual objects of the external world as tools for his own purposes. In order to enter into such complex mutual relationships with the objects of the external world, and realize that they may be used not only for the immediate satisfaction of instincts (an apple the child may eat, or a toy that he may play with), but also as tools, for a specific purpose, the childs development has yet to travel a very long way. For this to happen, instinctive immediate activity has to be replaced by intellectual activity, guided by complex intentions and carried out by organized acts. Let us consider those first instances in which the child begins to use the objects of the external world as tools, thereby taking the first steps in the transition towards complex intellectual behavior. As we know, a small child already eats from a spoon, uses a plate and wipes himself with a towel. In so doing, however, he is merely imitating adults, while his spontaneous use of objects as tools is limited, indeed practically zero. In all these instances the spoon, plate and towel are so inseparably linked to the act of eating or washing that they merge with it to form one habitual, integral situation. On the other hand we all know how difficult it is for a child aged 1 1/2 years to learn to use a spoon, or to cut something with a knife (rather than tearing it apart), etc. Mastery of tools is a sign of high psychological development; and we may safely assume that the processes leading to mastery of the tools of the

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external world, and to the unique elaboration of internal psychological devices, together with the ability to make functional use of ones own behavior, are all characteristic elements of the cultural development of the childs psyche. The Cultural Development of Special Functions: Memory We have seen how the small child, for whom the world of external objects was initially alien, gradually comes closer to it, and begins to master those objects and make functional use of them as tools. This is the first phase in cultural development, in which new forms of behavior and new behavioral devices come into being as an aid for both the innate and the simplest acquired movements. In the second phase of cultural development, intermediate processes make their appearance in the childs behavior, altering that behavior through the use of stimulus symbols. These behavioral devices, acquired in the process of cultural experience, alter the fundamental psychological functions of the child, arm them with new weapons and develop them. The study of these devices enables us, in some instances, to resolve issues that had previously seemed enigmatic. In numerous experiments, we have been able to monitor the development of these cultural devices linked to the memory of the child, and the manner in which that memory grows and is strengthened and re armed until it gradually reaches the level found in adults. For a long time, psychologists viewed the question of the paths of development of the childs memory as extremely obscure, almost enigmatic. Does the childs memory really develop at all? Do we adults have better memories than children? This question turns out to be not as simple as it first seems. We can say that the child follows a similar path (Note: natural means*), the only difference being that primitive man invented his own memorization systems, whereas the developing child more often than not is supplied with ready systems that help him memorize; he merely assimilates them, and learns how to use and master them, thereby transforming his natural processes.

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We have confirmed, under experimental conditions, that this transition to cultural forms of memory is based on the use of various devices capable of greatly and rapidly enhancing the power of memory. We read out ten figures, one after the other, to a boy aged 6-7, seated before us. When we asked the boy, after the experiment, about the figures he had remembered, it turned out that he had memorized only two or three of them, or at most four. When he was convinced that memorizing ten figures was extremely difficult, we altered the experiment. We gave him some object, such as a piece of paper or string, or some wood shavings, etc., and told him that the object in question would help him memorize the figures we were to read out. We set him the task of using the object as a means towards a certain end, as a means of memorizing figures. Thereafter, the sequence of events usually went as follows: at first the child could not understand precisely how he could functionally use a piece of paper for memorization. It did not occur to him that the piece of paper, on the one hand, and the proposed figures, on the other, could have anything in common. The functional use of things the notion that one thing could be used artificially for some process or other, to serve a purpose was often too much for him to comprehend. Admittedly, he knew how to use a spoon when eating, or a towel to wipe himself dry, but these are all familiar processes, of which the object in question is itself an integral part. The child still lacked the ability to invent the use of auxiliary tools in those cases where some new, extraneous object was being used to assist some process or other, while the functional use of psychological auxiliaries posed even greater problems for him. For this reason, the child of this age, more often than not, simply gives up, saying that the piece of paper does not help him remernber numbers. We are still faced with the task of ensuring that the child masters the material put before him as an aid to memorization, and discovers the functional use of some symbol for purposes of memorization.

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In all of these instances, the child performs external manipulations in order to master the internal process of memory, which is exactly what characterizes a primary cultural device used to aid the natural psychic functions. one important point should be noted: in the transition from the system of immediate memorization to that of recording by means of certain marks, the output of memory rose sharply: a certain .fiction of its development occurred. A child who could remember three to four numbers using his natural technique of immediate imprinting was of course able to memorize a virtually endless quantity of numbers once he had transferred to the method of recording. This was because his memory, having been supplanted by new devices invented he himself had invented, began to work in a new mode yielding quantitatively maximum results. The further development of the childs memory centers less on its natural improvement than on the alteration of those devices, on the replacement of primitive devices by other better ones, elaborated in the process of historical evolution. the use of external symbols now also begins to alter the internal processes; whereas at the lowest ages, memorization without external means was mechanical, the school child now already begins to use certain internal devices: he no longer memorizes mechanically, but associatively and logically. In actual fact, his natural memory begins to lose its natural character and becomes a cultural memory; and in this cultural transformation of primitive processes we are inclined to see an explanation for the considerable level of development found in natural memorization in childhood. This is how culture works, by nurturing in us more and more new devices, converting natural into cultural memory; and school works the same way, by grafting on a series of subtle and complex auxiliary devices and opening up a number of new possibilities for a natural function of man. We have deliberately explored in some detail the function of memory, since it provides us with an opportunity to illustrate, by means of a concrete

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example, the relationship between the natural innate forms of mental activity and the cultural form acquired in the process of social experience. Here we have seen how development proves to be more than mere maturation: it means cultural metamorphoses and cultural re-armament. If we now wished to consider the memory of the civilized adult, we would have to take it as created not by nature, but by culture. After all, it would be quite wrong to limit it to those laws, pertaining to the strengthening and reproduction of experience, that are inherent in the natural mnemic functions. The Cultural Development of Special Functions: Attention We shall now dwell very briefly on the phases of the development of attention in the child. We know that attention performs a most important function in the life of the organism: that of the organization of behavior, the creation of a suitable disposition preparing the individual for action or perception. This kind of attention characteristically is not arbitrary; any sudden, powerful stimulus promptly attracts the attention of the child and alters his behavior. On the other hand, as soon as there is any weakening of the stimulus (which may, for example, be internal or instinctive), the organizing role of attention fades away, and organized behavior again yields to unorganized, undifferentiated behavior. Such a natural type of attention cannot, of course, generate any durable, stable form of organized behavior. Each new stimulus would repeatedly disrupt the disposition, causing repeated changes in behavior. These conditions clearly fail to satisfy the organism until it is removed from social demands, away from the community and from work. However, when certain demands begin to be made on the individual, when he is obliged to perform a certain organized task, however primitive, his primitive non-arbitrary attention proves inadequate, and it proves necessary to elaborate new and more stable forms of behavior. Such further development of attention can clearly not involve the development of non-arbitrary attention. In order to perform the task required of him, the individual must first elaborate a mode of behavior that will be the exact

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opposite of his former mode. Previously, each powerful stimulus had been able to organize behavior on its own terms, by generating a certain disposition; now, however, weaker but biologically or socially important stimuli, requiring a lengthy organized chain of reactions, would need to do the same. Natural forms of attention could not satisfy these demands, so certain other artificial, acquired mechanisms would have to develop alongside them, in order to resolve the situation. There was a need for arbitrary artificial that is, civilized attention, which is the essential component of any work. Let us now try to explore the process of transition to such forms of attention, if only with regard to the solution of certain problems. None of the conditions influencing non-arbitrary, natural attention has any effect on the student in this instance. The problems proposed are not in themselves a stimulus powerful enough to focus the attention and they do not fall into the area of some instinctive process capable of organizing all of the behavior of the personality; yet the student can resolve minor problems in quite an organized way and for quite a long time by concentrating on them alone, with no distractions. From the standpoint of natural forms of behavior, this may seem enigmatic. We can find the key to this enigma only by finding certain forces that bolster attention while certain work is in progress and whose effect is long-lasting. The cultural stimuli thus generated enable the individual to concentrate on a certain activity, sometimes overcoming even serious distracting obstacles. However, besides complicating the dynamic conditions and creating new needs in the form of culturally grafted attractions, the influence of the historical environment also acts by organizing in one further respect. The child develops specific devices, that enable him to control his psychological operations, to separate the substantial from the insubstantial, and to perceive complex situations as being subject to certain basic central factors. By developing culturally, the child himself also becomes able to create such stimuli, which will in due course influence him, organize his behavior, and attract his attention.

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How can his attention be strengthened, and how can he be helped to master his behavior without departing from any of the conditions he has to meet? The experiment showed that the only way this could be done was by shifting from immediate to mediate attention, which resorts to the use of certain external devices. To help the child solve the problem we offer him colored cards that he may use as notes, as external conditions for the organization of his attention. We thereby hand him a certain device, which he quickly masters. His external actions help him to organize his attention: by operating with these cards externally, he organizes his internal processes. As a rule, however, this psychological method of organizing the attention fails to yield the desired results: to be successful, the child, instead of removing the forbidden elements from the sphere of his attention, must make the process of attention mediate, concentrating precisely on those forbidden elements.

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The use of cards as auxiliary symbols does not, however, end there: in order to solve the second problem, not to repeat the same colors twice, the child selects from the cards in front of him, one corresponding to the question asked (for example, a yellow one), and, as a way of signalling that that color has already been mentioned, he moves the card slightly lower down; then before answering the questions, he looks at both rows of forbidden colors (C, rows a and c), and then, having made the process mediate, he successfully avoids all the pitfalls in the experiment. External operations transform and organize the process of attention. Yet the process goes further than this. If we were to give the child the same game to play several times, we would probably notice changes in his behavior. He would soon stop using the cards, and begin to solve the problem without external auxiliary devices, returning, as it were, to the previous natural application of attention. This is only apparently so, however. We can see that the

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child now succeeds in solving a problem that he had previously been unable to resolve: he successfully circumvents all the obstacles placed in his way by the rules. How is one to account for this change in the childs behavior? On closer examination we find that the process of his attention is still mediate; however, instead of externally mediate, it has now become internally mediate. Having learned how to use auxiliary tools in the form of the external material of the cards, the child elaborates a series of internal auxiliary devices. Instead of spreading out the forbidden cards before him, he mentally records those two forbidden colors (optically, or, better still, vocally) and then makes his answers on the basis of those two recorded colors. A device elaborated in external operations thus alters the internal structure of the process, by elaborating a system of internal stimuli and devices. Two factors make this version of the transformation of external into internal processes highly plausible: 1) the similar transformation of the process of mnemotechnical memorization, that we have observed in our experiments; and 2) the behavior of the older child, who substitutes internal recording for the external manipulation of cards when solving the same problem. These devices, its mediate character and the fact of internal recording are specific features of the process of cultural attention which seemed rather incomprehensible to us for a long time. The Cultural Development of Special Functions: Abstraction One of the most powerful tools nurtured by cultural development in the human psyche is abstraction. It would be wrong to assume that in the psyche of the civilized adult, abstraction is some kind of specific process or special function which combines with others to form our intellectual life. It would be much truer to argue that in the psyche of civilized man it is a necessary component of any thinking, a device nurtured in the process of personal development which is a crucial requirement, and an indispensable tool of his thinking. Better than any other process, the development of abstraction, that pivotal condition of our thinking, exemplifies the way that a certain type of

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operation of our neuropsychic apparatus is entirely created, as a product of cultural development, and how, once it has been created, it transforms numerous psychological processes. The development of the process of abstraction, which occurs only within the process of the childs growth and cultural development, is closely linked to the beginning of the use of external tools and the elaboration of complex forms of behavior. Abstraction itself may here be viewed as one of the cultural devices grafted onto the child during the process of his development. We can explore the primary emergence of this process through a concrete example, where the mutual relationship between the primitive, integral perception of external objects, and the incipient abstraction crucial to any cultural psychological process, becomes particularly obvious. The Cultural Development of Special Functions: Speech and Thinking We need to make some concluding remarks about the paths followed by the development of thinking in the child. In the light of the material included in our study, a brief summary should be easy; yet we have still not said enough to offer a general characterization of the development of thinking in the child. To do that, the question needs to be linked to a mechanism we have not yet discussed one that is surely the most important means of thinking: speech. The notion that speech plays an enormous, decisive role in thinking has become established in recent psychological literature. There are many reasons for believing that the question is far more complicated that this theory assumes. First we can point out that thinking and speech have undeniably different roots, and that in the earliest phases of development one can very often exist without the other. In other words, intellect and thinking, as complex planned forms of behavior, may either arise in the period before speech, or they may develop quite separately from speech.

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The most primitive form of speech is, of course, the shout and other vocal reactions, occurring in connection with movement, powerful emotions, etc. These include exclamations and interjections at work, crying or laughter, shrieks of delight after a victory, or of terror during persecution. Are these related in any way to intellect or thinking? They certainly are not. At their root lies a simple tendency to discharge tension built up in the organism; they cannot claim a greater role than that of simple expressive movements. Their basis is emotional; they do nothing to help man resolve complex real-life problems in an organized manner. They do not serve to plan the behavior of the subject, as they take place on another, non-intellectual plane. On the other hand, many types of speech found in the civilized adult are not directly related to thinking, for example, emotional speech, which serves, as we have noted, merely as a means of expression, and speech in its simplest communicative functions. Speech and thinking may therefore occur separately also in the adult, though this does not mean that the two processes do not meet and have no influence on each other. On the contrary, the meeting between speech and thinking is a major event in the development of the individual; in fact, it is this connection that raises human thinking to extraordinary heights. Speech occupies the commanding heights and becomes the most commonly used cultural device, while enriching and stimulating thinking; and the childs psyche acquires a new structure. The verbal mechanisms that were vividly expressed during the period of active speech, or initial accumulation now shift to internal, inaudible speech, which in turn becomes one of the major auxiliary tools of thinking. After all, how many complex and subtle intellectual problems would remain insoluble, were it not for our internal speech, by means of which thinking may cloak itself in precise and clear forms, and it becomes possible for us to test and plan various solutions on a verbal (or rather, intellectual) basis. Whereas, in Marxs classic comparison, the architect, unlike the bee, builds an entire structure after careful consideration, planning and calculation, to a

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great extent we owe this vast advantage of intellect over instinct to the mechanism of internal speech. The role of speech mechanisms in human behavior far exceeds that of mere expressive reactions. They fundamentally differ from all other reactions in that they play a specific functional role: their action is addressed to the organization of the further behavior of the personality, and preliminary verbal planning is the sphere in which man achieves the highest cultural forms of intellectual behavior. By turning inwards, speech forms a most important psychological function as the representative of the external environment within us, stimulating thinking and, in the opinion of several authors, also laying the foundation for the development of consciousness.

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Alexander Luria There is no hope of finding the sources of free action in the lofty realms of the mind or in the depths of the brain. The idealist approach of the phenomenologists is as hopeless as the positive approach of the naturalists. To discover the sources of free action it is necessary to go outside the limits of the organism, not into the intimate sphere of the mind, but into the objective forms of social life; it is necessary to seek the sources of human consciousness and freedom in the social history of humanity. To find the soul it is necessary to lose it". A.R Luria

ALEXANDER LURIA was born in Kazan, an old Russian University town east of Moscow. He entered Kazan University at the age of 16 and obtained his degree in 1921 at the age of 19. While still a student, he established the Kazan Psychoanalytic Association, and planned on a career in psychology. His earliest research sought to establish objective methods for assessing Freudian ideas about abnormalities of thought and the effects of fatigue on mental processes. In 1924 Luria met Lev Semionovich Vygotsky, whose influence was decisive in shaping his future career. Together with Vygotsky and Alexei Nikolaivitch Leontiev, Luria sought to establish an approach to psychology that would enable them to discover the way natural processes such as physical maturation and sensory mechanisms become intertwined with culturally determined processes to produce the psychological functions of adults (Luria, 1979, p. 43). Vygotsky and his colleagues referred to this new approach variably

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as cultural, historical, and instrumental psychology. These three labels all index the centrality of cultural mediation in the constitution of specifically human psychological processes, and the role of the social environment in structuring the processes by which children appropriate the cultural tools of their society in the process of ontogeny. An especially heavy emphasis was placed on the role of language, the tool of tools in this process: the acquisition of language was seen as the pivotal moment when phylogeny and cultural history are merged to form specifically human forms of thought, feeling, and action. From the late 1920's until his death, in 1977, Luria sought to elaborate this synthetic, cultural-historical psychology in different content areas of psychology. In the early 1930's he led two expeditions to Central Asia where he investigated changes in perception, problem solving, and memory associated with historical changes in economic activity and schooling. During this same period he carried out studies of identical and fraternal twins raised in a large residential school to reveal the dynamic relations between phylogenetic and cultural-historical factors in the development of language and thought. Luria Archive http://www.marxists.org/archive/luria/works/1930/child/index.htm