Speech and the Development of Mental Processes in the Child: An Experimental Investigation (Penguin papers in education) by A.R. Luria

by Alexander R. Luria

Excerpt from Speech and the Development of Mental Processes in the ChildBut at one particular point in that monologue we find language Operating differently. She talks of things she wants, things that are not there in front of her first 'the cage and then 'the zoo man and having spoken of him, off she goes to get him. This indicates what really amounts to a fourth kind of repte-t scutation. Just as movement-cum-perception provided the basis from which the second stage was reached, that of perception freed from movement, so language tied to the here-and-now forms the basis from which there develops linguistic representation freed from these bonds, freed from its dependence upon move ment and perception. At this fourth stage words come to be used not with objects but in place of them. As our example directly,» suggests, the ability to use words in this way further assists exploratory activity by breaking out of Things previously experienced may be tion, as the zoo man ideas derived brought to bear upon present problems. The result is a wide ex-q tension of a child's activities, the enrichment of the possibilities of the here-and-now by drawing upon the resources of the 'nota' here' and the 'not-now'.

Paperback

First published January 1, 1959

About the author

Alexander Romanovich Luria (Russian: Алекса́ндр Рома́нович Лу́рия ) was a famous Soviet neuropsychologist and developmental psychologist. He was one of the founders of cultural-historical psychology and the leaders of the Vygotsky Circle. Apart from his work with Vygotsky, he is widely known for his later work with two extraordinary psychological case studies, his study of a man with a highly advanced memory published as The Mind of a Mnemonist, and the study of a man with traumatic brain injury published in The Man with a Shattered World.