Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Aleksandr R. Luria, Michael Cole - The Selected Writings of A. R. Luria-M. E. Sharpe (1978)
Aleksandr R. Luria, Michael Cole - The Selected Writings of A. R. Luria-M. E. Sharpe (1978)
'
· . // ;,._., t;
r.. :.
The
Selected
Writings
of
A.R.Luria
The
Selected
Writings
of
A.R.Luria
Michael Cole
M. E. Sharpe INC.
WHITE PLAINS, NEW YORK
Copyright © 1978 by M. E. Sharpe, Inc.
901 North Broadway, White Plains, New York 10603
This anthology is drawn from Soviet Psychology, Soviet Neurology & Psy
chiatry, and Soviet Psychology & Psychiatry, quarterly journals published by
M. E. Sharpe, Inc. (formerly International Arts and Sciences Press, Inc.).
Translations ©1964, 1967, 1968, 1974, 1976 by International Arts and
Sciences Press, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
without permission of the pul:ilisher.
Articles beginning on pages 3, 45, 78, 145, 229 and 319 are published by arrange
ment with VAAP, the Soviet Copyright Agency.
vii Introduction
Michael Cole
I. Early beginnings
The art ic les in this volume are a samp le of the ideas con
structed and facts c ollected by Alexander Romanovich Luria
( 1902 -19 77 ) during more than half a century of psychological re
search . I bec ame ac quainted with parts of the work during the
late 19 50s . I studied with Luria in 1962 -6 3 and at various other
periods in the last 15 years . Despite th is long assoc iation, the
scope of his contributions to our understanding of human nature
has been difficult for me to grasp . "Half a century" is an easy
enough concept to understand formally , but the living substance
of the phrase when applied to a sc ientist's work is rarely, if
eve r, accessible to others . The expos ition that follows is cer
tain ly inc omplete and probably inaccurate; it is the best that the
facts at hand will permit.
Alexande r Romanovich began his profess ional era at a tumul
tuous moment in human history. The Bolshevik Revolution had
inte rrupted his high-school c are e r, in the provinc ial Russian
c ommercial cente r of K azan . Changes in educational regula
tions and cu rricula left him free to acc ele rate his pas sage
through the acc rediting process, and w ithin three years he had
c omp leted the formal requirements for a college degree .
With little guidance from a facu lty in disarray ( owing to the
abrupt change in the inte llectual and political c limate ) , Luria
was allowed to fashion his own education. The product may not
have been ideally systematic, but it rep resented a fasc inating
amalgam of the leading ideas in the soc ial sc iences of the times .
Luria was interested in Utop ian soc ialism and , particularly,
vii
viii Michael C ole
the pr oblem of change : What was the source of ideas about so
ciety ? How can one use such ideas to bring about social change ?
His social thinking (and hence the medium for his social activi
tie s) was , from the beginning, focused on the individual. How
can the individual be linked to larger social units ?
In his search for an answer to this questi on, Luria was drawn
to read the ne o-Kantian social -science philosophers of the late
19th century - Dilthey, Richert, and Windelbandt, for whom the
relationship between psychology and history was a pi votal issue .
Although Wundt had set up a psychol ogy laboratory i n 1880, there
was nothing approaching a consensus about what kind of science
psychol ogy could, in principle, represent. E ven Wundt, who
maintained that the experimental method was an appropriate tool
of psychol ogy, did not believe that laboratory methods were ap
propriate to all aspe cts of the science. Rather, experimental
methods could be used to study only elementary psychological
processes; fol klore and ethnography had to be relied upon to
supply information about higher psychological functions.
Dilthey and his colleagues were not willing to concede this in
terpretation of either part of Wundt's enterpris e . One of their
central questi ons was what kind of laws were possible from the
study of human psychological processes. Should one strive for
general ("nomothetic") laws that des cribe "Man" but are unable
to account for the specific behaviors of any individual "man" ?
This was the model of the natural sciences (Naturwi ssenschaf
ten) and the model adopted by Wundt for the study of sensory
processes . Or should psychol ogy attempt only to des cribe the
intricate complex reality of individ uals , providing "idiographic"
accounts in the tradition of the humane sciences (Geisteswis
sens chaften) such as history ?
Luria' s interest in these matters was not narr owly academic.
Ca ught up in the romantic enthusiasm of the re vol uti on, he sought
a scientific basis for infl uencing human affair s . Perhaps for
this reason, he was not satisfied with the choice between an idi
ographic, des criptive psychology and a nomothetic, generalizing
psychology. The generalizing, "scientific" psychol ogy of Wundt,
Brentano, and other laboratory psychologi sts seemed too remote
Introduction ix
from any real-life process that one could observe outside the
laboratory. It was bloodless, artificial, and of no use whatever
in dealing with the problems facing humanity.
But the neo-Kantians offered no usable alte rnative. They
could, to be sure , provide much m ore illuminating des criptions
of re cognizable psychological processes. But their method left
them hand cuffed as scientists ; they could not lawfully influence
the objects of obse rvations. They were helpless to initiate or
guide change .
What the situation seemed to require was a new kind of psy
chology that could deal with the richness of individual psycho
logical experience but admit of generalizations of the sort that
m ade the natural sciences powerful. For several years psycho
analysis seemed to Luria a promising basis on which to found
the kind of psychology he sought. Freud ' s writings were the
s ource of many interesting hypotheses about the motivat ional
s ource s of behavior, but his hypothe ses about various symbolic
processes seemed overly abstract and difficult to study by ob
jective means. Jung's studies using the free -association method,
however, appeared a promising tool that could make the motiva
ti onal determinants of individual beha vior acces sible to analysis.
By elaborating the bas ic free-associat ion technique, Luria hoped
to create an experimental science of individual mental life , a
science that would be both idiographic and nomothetic.
These early spe culations about the future direction of psychol
ogy we re never published , although Luria prepared a manuscript
on the subje ct, when he was 19 years old , that he kept throughout
his career. They did, however, guide his ea rly clinical and ex
perimental work. He spent time at Kazan' s psychiatric hospital,
where, using Jung's free-association method, he interviewed pa
tients . Accepting a position in a laboratory de voted to in creas
ing the efficiency of industrial workers, he carried out studies
of the effe ct of fatigue on mental acti vity. It was in the course
of this work that he developed the first, rudimenta ry te chniques
for combining experimental procedures with the free-as socia
tion technique; he used an old Hipp chronoscope to meas ure the
reaction time of worke rs, at different levels of fatigue, who were
x Michael Cole
Luria was not exempted from this general requirement, all the
more so since he had been ass ociated with a school of ps ychol
ogy that had come u nder special scr utiny in the past . From ap
proximatel y 193 7 through 194 7 he left the study of cognitive de
velopment and embarked on a career as a neurologist (the fruits
of this work are surveyed in the third section of this book).
About 194 8 , however, he was told to leave the Institute of Neuro
surgery, where he had been working for several years, and was
assigned to the Institute of Defe ctol ogy, an institution that had
been founded by Vygotsky about twenty years earlier. There he
turned once again to the problems that had occupied him earlier
in his career, b ut it was not possible to approach them in the
style he had come to adopt i n the 193 0 s .
What Luria fashioned was an experimental approach that has
its cl osest parallel in studies contained in The nature of human
conflicts, but with a conceptual structure that grew directl y out
of the basic principles of the sociohistorical school and a lan
guage that was thoroughl y Pavl ovian. Thus, the basic method is
the c ombined- m otor method, but with a ver y careful concentra
ti on on the way the verbal and m otor components of a child' s re
sponse e nter into complex functi onal systems to enable the child
to meet the requireme nts of the task. Critical here is the issue
of whether speech c omes to pre cede and guide the motor re
sponse (which is possible onl y whe n its excitator y and i nhibitory
c omponents are well i ntegrated) or whether it onl y accompanies
action. This issue has its direct parallel in the studies of writ
ing, c arried out 2 0 years earlier, in which it was important
to discern when the child' s writing came to precede and guide
his activity instead of following or accompanying it.
It is somewhat ir oni c that this work, which in some respe cts
camouflaged Luria' s mai n lines of concern, generated e normous
interest in his work among American psychol ogists. One cannot
be certain, but I suspect that the Pavlovian framework L uria
used to describe and m otivate this work, espe ciall y the promise
that reflex theories could be extended to the study of language
(Pavl ov' s "second-signal system") were the c ause of the work 's
popularity in the United States. The late 1950s a nd earl y 196 0s
xx Michael Cole
Reference s
Michael Cole
PART ONE
Early
Beginnings
A. R. Luria
PSYCHOANALYSIS AS A SYSTEM
OF MONISTIC PSYCHOLOGY
3
4 A. R. Luria
II
III
nuity between' the life of the child and the mind of the adult human
being; instead of "extrasocial" man in general , studied in ab
s tra ction from the social conditions forming him, psychoanalysis
endeavors to link many of the deepest-lying workings of the hu
man mind to the influences of social groups ; and finally, instead
of naive, empiricist satisfaction with a description of the phe
nomena of cons ciousness "as they are given to us, " it starts
out with the principle that the internal, hidden factors determin
ing phenomena must be studied analytically "not as they are
given to us, " but as they become acce ssible to us through methods
of obje ctive analysis.
Proceeding from these principles, psychoanalysis constructed
its system of psychology; and this system is, in our view, in
comparably more in line with the methodological requirements
of positive s cience, which dialectical materialism has formu
lated in their clearest form .
Let us take a look at the foundations of psychoanalysis from
the viewpoint just des cribed to determine where its method
coincides with the method of Marxism.
In their reaction to atomizing, experimental psychology, ap
plied psychology, and psychoanalysis (�) have come forward
with the resolve to study the whole human personality, and in
this respect are following in the foots teps of Marxism, which
had expressed the same intention earlier.
True, in its early stages Marxism did not have a finished,
pure, psycholbgical theory of the personality; its interests lay
elsewhere, mainly in the problems of society and the develop
ment of the various forms of society. The problem of the per
sonality, the motive forces underlying individual behavior, and
the interests impelling people to create ideological systems for
themselves were all questions with which the founders of Marx
ism were intimately concerned, perhaps because of their tre
mendous practical i mportance. One need only throw a cursory
glance at the maj or works in Marxist philosophy to see how in
terested Marx and Engels were in these topics. (10)
We need only look a bit more closely at the premises of the
Marxist approach to personality to see that with respect to
12 A. R. Luria
* * *
* * *
patron' s question about the place of God in his system with the
observation, "Your Excellency, I am able to do without this
hypothesis . "
This approach has enabled psychoanalysis to reexamine the
question of individual mental functions and to place them in their
organic relationship to the indivictual as a biological being.
greate st role in defining the unique, whole per son psychologi sts
are just now getting around to studying, and so these drives are
ordinarily defined as the interests of the particular person.
The sex drives have been studied much more thoroughly by
psychoanalysis . This has been due principally to the fact that
psychologists of the classical school , who studied the mind in
isolation, in abstraction from the various bodily functions out
side the brain, paid little attention to the influence of sexual
activity on the mind. Perhaps what was partly to blame here
was some false sense of shame that previously hindered an ob
jective approach to the study of human sexual experience . On
the other hand, we owe the especially well developed theory of
sexual drives in psychoanalysis to the fact that the whole of
psychoanalysis was based primarily on a study of nervous dis
eases (conversion neuroses) , in which sex drives play an especially
important role and are particularly accessible to inquiry. (3 2)
This group· of drive s, which is doubtless of endogenous origin
(33) and hence is one of the most rudimentary aspe cts of the
personality (34), is, again, not regarded by psychoanalysis as a
purely mental phenomenon, but rather as being of an organic
order and, indeed, rather alien to the cons cious mind in the
strict sense of that term as understood by ordinary psychology ..
These drives exert their influence on the cons cious mind only
in closest connection with various other bodily functions .
In its definition of sexual dri.ves, psychoanalysis includes
factors that quite patently demonstrate the organic nature of
psychoanalytic psychology, which we shall now discuss.
Sexuality has not been exhaustively defined by Freud. (3 5)
He does, however, distinguish the following components oiit:
functions associated with the differentiation of the sexes and
with the perpetuation of the species , although the latter are not
necessary (36 ); the pleasure derived from functions as sociated
with this organic drive ; a certain attraction to obj ects stimula
ting this drive ; in brief, the relation to things that we call love
and that, by analogy with hunger, is given the narrower label of
"libido" in psychoanalysis (3 7) i s accorded a central place on a
par with that of an organic substrate . We have already pointed
Psychoanalysis as Monistic Psychology 23
out that the sex drive has a very clearly nonpsychological and
biological sense in psychoanalysi s . In comparing the theory of
the libido with biological theories of sexuality, Freud di scovered
the close affinitie s this theory had with the findings of some of
the most re cent studies in the area of sexual biology, especially
those stre ssing the influence of sexual secretions on the brain
and the nervous system (in particular , the findings of Steinach
and his s chool) . This leads us to presume that the time is not
far off when psychoanalysi s will be able to operate with a ter
minology of sexuality and sex drives that will include the real
content of the specific sexual chemistry distinguishing these
drives from others , e.g., ego drives . . . .
What do we really mean when we say that pleasure is an es
sential feature of the sex drive ? Is not this factor extremely
psychological, subj ective ? And if not, how does psychoanalysi s
conceive it ? Is it in this pleasure principle that we shall find
that organic obj ectivity of which we spoke earlier, or doe s it
indeed represent an ultrapsychological teleology, a theory that
these drives are created with the purpose of striving to attain
pleasure ? Let us try to outline briefly the place that pleasure
occupies in the general system of psychoanalysi s .
The doctrine of pleasure doubtless oc cupies a central place
in psychoanalysis. It is viewed as a principal determining fac
tor, a maj or tendency, a principle of the organism ' s viability.
The entire organism, both its cons cious and unconscious parts ,
is guided by this inclination to seek maximum pleasure by sat
isfying drive s .
But in this respect the pleasure principle plays a very spe
cific role . We know that subj ectively gratification, pleasure,
is only a state of cons cious mental activity. But with its plea
sure principle psychoanalysis goe s far beyond the limi ts set on
the concept by the subj ective "psychology of consciousness" and
transforms pleasure into an organic concept, into a universal
biological principle of the functioning organism .
What appears to cons ciousness as pleasure conceals deeper
lying organi c impulses ; the organi sm follows these impulses
in its struggle for existence and self-preservation. Psychoanal-
24 A. R. Luria
human pers onality not on the basis of some subj e ctive men
tal qualities, not by means of a purely external analogy with
biological laws (57), but on an organic basis, by tracing the
primitive foundations of complex personality traits to the ac
tivity of the organs of the human body and their effects on
man's mental makeup.
The principle of the interrelation of the organs, including
the brain, is a component part of this theory and makes it pos
sibl e to materialize, to use Binswanger 's term (5 8), the theory
of personality and to place it on a positive foundation.
* * *
Notes
Developmental
Studies
A. R. Luria
45
46 A . R. Luria
this second part, our aim will be to shed some light on the so
cial factors involved in this process . Again, our emphasis will
be on the psychological aspects of speech rather than on its
phonetic and grammatical aspects . We shall attempt to explore
the psychological aspects of the speech of children from differ
ent social groups, and o n the . basis of this material w e hope to
be able to ascertain some of the distinctive features of the
speech pattern (and to a certain extent the thought patterns) of
children reared in different social environments .
More than any other aspect of our behavior, speech is the
product of the specific historic al circumstanc es in which it de
velops . Since its primary function is to promote communic ation,
an individual's speech develops under conditions of maximum
interaction with others . The more intimate, the more lively this
interaction, the more rapidly will speech develop , and the richer
will be its content . Drawing its content, as it does, from direct
social experience, speech naturally reflects the richness or bar
renness of the social environment in which the experience takes
place; accordingly, it should not be surprising if the speech of
children from different social c lasses were not at all similar .
Indeed, if we examine the speech of these children, we find that
it faithfully reflects the distinctive features of the environment
from which it has sprung .
Social conditions play a tremendously important role in shap
ing speech; indeed, speech is social in nature, and communic ative
in both function and origin. But this is not the only reason why
speech is so dependent on social factors; it is, in fact, also an
extrem ely vital tool of thought; it is intimately involved in all of
a child 's intellectual operations - indeed, in all his intellectual
experienc e . And since this intellectual experience is di rectly
linked with specific features of the social environment, it is
reasonable to assume that the particular environment in which
a child grows up also plays a maximum role in the development
of speech, which in turn gives shape and form to the individual's
social experience . Accordingly, it should occasion no surprise
that the speech of a working -clas s child in a large city, the
speech of a child from a backward country area, and the speech
The Environment and Children's Speech 47
Table 1
Average Speed of Speech Responses in Children
of Different Social Environments
Response time
Subjects (sec)
City children 9-12 years (44 subjects ) 1 .9
Rural children 10-12 years (40 subjects) 2 . 34
Homeless children 10-12 years (46 subjects) 3.01
The Environment and Children 's Speech 51
Table 2
Types of Speech Responses
of Children of Different
Social Groups (in %)
Inappro- Appro-
priate priate
respon- respon- Appro-
Rural children
1 0 - 1 2 yrs 35 65 G 15 20 30 35
Urban children
8 - 1 0 yrs 42. 5 52.5 2.5 27.5 12.5 24. 5 23.5
Urban children
51.7 35.2
I
1 3 - 1 6 yrs 11 83 1.6 5.8 1. 7
Homeless children
1 0 - 1 2 yrs 20.4 76.4 1. 7 15 3.7 31 . 5 39.9
Table 3
Homogeneity of Collec tive Experience of Children
from Different Social Groups (in %)
Homogeneity
of collective Individual
Subj ect experience Variety Responses
Rural child 35.7 49 .6 15
Urban child
(yoWlger) 16 67 54
Urban child (older) 1 9 .2 47.5 33.9
Homeless urchin 17 56 41
from the district capital, and from the railroad. The environ
ment in such a village is characteristically monotonous and un
changing, and these conditions will yield results like those just
discuss ed.
We were also able to make another study, not included in this
essay, on children of a large village located near a railroad and
of a regional city on which the economy of the village was eco
nomically dependent. This difference was enough to give us a
completely different picture. Instead of 35% uniform responses ,
we obtained a figure of only 24 %; on the other hand, the variety
of the responses increased sharply. Of cours e, our uniformity
index of collective experience was still higher than that of the
urban schoolchildren, but it was far lower than that obtained
for children from a typical country village, isolated from the
influences of the city.
However, we may go even further in our analys is. We may
ask ourselves whether all spheres of experience are of equal
social significance for children. Will we find that the percent
age of responses that are the s ame for the entire group is the
s ame for every test word , regardless of from what area of ex
perience that word has been taken ? O r , on the contrary, will
we find that conditions to which the children of the group are
ac customed and which influence the entire group in the same
way will give us the maximal number of uniform responses whereas
words taken from strange areas of experience to which not all
the children have been exposed will give the most individual
responses , showing a wide range of variation and randomness
for the group as a whole ? It is reasonable to assume that where
environmental influences are restricted to a narrow range of
s ituations , such a difference will be great and that, on the other
hand , if the child' s environment has provided him with a suffi
ciently rich and varied experience , these differences will be
minor.
To begin, we shall compare the responses of rural children
with those of the older urban children, on the one hand, and with
homeless children, on the other.
T able 4 shows us the indices of s ameness of collective exper-
62 A . R. Luria
ience for children from different social groups , but this time
the figures refer to the values obtained when the test words are
taken from different areas of social experience rather than to
the aggregate indices. The question we posed for ourselves
was: How uniform will the children's (rural, urban, ho meles s )
respons es be when they are given test words from home , s chool,
city life , etc. ?
Table 4
Uniformity of Collective Experience as Reflected in
Responses to Different Types of Stimuli (in %)
Social
Subjects Home School City life Nature
Rural children 40 40 16 20 16
Urban children
(older) 16.5 14 14 12.5 16.5
Homeless chil-
dren 19 20.8 18 1 6 .3 12
The data in Table 4 give u s an interesting picture.
We see that when pres ented stimuli taken from home and
s chool life , the group of rural children had an extremely high
uniformity index: 40% of all rural children gave identical re
sponses; in the sameness and uniformity of their experience,
thes e subj ects far outstripped the others. But if we look at the
figures for test words assoc iated with city life , we find that the
number of children who responded with identical answers de
creas ed to 1 6 %, i. e. , more than twofold. The figures here show
that everything associated with a primitive home and s chool en
vironment was part of the collective experience of rural children
and that the monotonous environment was a major influence for
all of them. None of the responses to test words associated with
the city and with social life derived from such a uniform exper
ience , and hence the number of identical responses was consid
erably less.
But city children and homeless urchins did not exhibit such
The Environment and Children 's Speech 63
Table 5
Number of Individual (Nonrecurrent) Responses
to Different Sets of Test Words (in %)
Social
Subj ects H ome School City life
---
Nature
Rural children 22 20 48 44 24
Urban children
(older) 42 50 50 48 42
H omeless chil -
dren 55 53 60 59 54
dividual responses is higher for these children than for the ru
ral children, the diffe rences in indices obtained for different
types of test words are not at all great. Obvious ly, school stud
ies and the influences of city life expose the child to experiences
in all spheres of life , and there is practically nothing that is
totally foreign to him. The material to which he is exposed in
his schoolwork makes nature and society just as acces s ible to
him as the direct impressions he receives from his environ
ment. For the city child the world of immediate impressions
begins to give way to more mediated forms of experience, to a
wo rld of facts assimilated through communication, books , and
cultural influences.
It is enough to compare the respons es of the rural child with
those of the older urban s choolchild to observe this phenomenon
directly. Let us dwell on a few examples in which the responses
of a city child who has already had long exposure to the influ
ences of school are compared with those of a 10-1 2 -year-old
rural child to the same test words .
T able 6
Analysis of Responses to the W ord "School " (in %)
Index of
Index of Index of individual
Subj ects commonality diversity responding
Rural children 3 7- 50 15 5
Urban children (younger) 14 60 46
Urban children (older) 11 61 53
Our first example is· the word "school" itself; the indices for
this word showed a wide range of variation for the rural, urban,
and street children. Table 6 presents a summary of these data;
we see essentially opposite pictures for urban and rural chil
dren: whereas most of the responses of the rural children to
this word were of two kinds ("a building, " "learning") and, more
over, a total of only 6 different respons es were given (in a group
The Environment and Children 's Speech 65
Table 8
"Rake" "Cart"
tration of the rural child 's res pons es was significant: when 20-21
children respond as one voice, "rake" - "to rake" and "cart" -
"to ride ," two things stand out: the primitive action-word type
of respons e manifested here , and - more important - the high
degree of s ameness in the nature of the responses for the en
tire group. We almost never find such uniformity among ur
ban children. Such results can be generated only by a primitive
and unchanging environment. In these cases the rural children
typically had an unusually small number of nonrecurrent an
swers (only 4 for "rake" and only 6 for "cart") , whereas the
number of such answers among the urban children was far high
er ( 1 2 fo r "rake" and 1 4 for "cart").
However, we find a completely different picture when we look
at the respons es to words not derived from the immediate ex
pe rience of the rural child , i.e. , words that are still largely
strange to him . Let us again take two words - this time "union"
and "truth" - to illustrate what we mean. The first of
these is from social life, whereas the second is an abstract
term for the rural child.
The marked differences between the two cases are obvious .
T he rural children displayed an extremely varied pattern of re
sponses to both words. Thirty different answers to the word
"union" were obtained from 40 children, and 22 of these occur
red only once; about the s ame picture is seen in the case of the
word "truth. "
The content o f the responses in the two instances is also quite
typical. T he rural children understood the word "union" in the
s ense of a cooperative union, a shop, where they could buy cal
ico, boots , etc. , whereas the urban children, without exception,
understood union to refer to a social or political organization.
T he responses of the rural children to the word "truth" were
also inappropriate in the vast majority of cases , whereas those
of the urban children clearly demonstrated that they had an ade
quate grasp of the word' s meaning.
But in this study we were not interested in the children' s
ideas ; we wished only to point out the considerable value of an
association test for the purposes we had set forth inasmuch as
68 A. R. Luria
Table 9
"Union" "Truth"
Table 1 0
"House"
Table 11
"Kettle"
the rural children are associated with eating and the prepara
tion of food (I cook, fill it up, put it on, etc. ) whereas for the
street children we can distinguish at least three completely dif
ferent situations with which the word was associated (eating,
street kettles around which the homeles s and abandoned gather
to keep warm; travel - the boilers or kettles on a ship or train,
the "section" into which they get stuffed, and numerous other
s ituations specific to their lives). On the other hand - and this
s hould even go without saying - the street child and the rural
child are direct opposites as far as the uniformity of collective
experience is concerned. A constant environment identical for
all the rural children and a kaleidoscopically changing, individ
ual, unstable , and diversified yet organized environment for the
street children are the distinguishing marks of the two groups.
T his is why the diversity of the res ponses of the street children
is two and a half times greater than that found in the correspond
ing group of rural children.
We s hall not dwell further on the street child, his collective
experience, and his individuality; that will be dealt with els e
where.
Let us merely make one comment of a methodological nature:
it is absolutely meaningless to study children divorced from
the environmental factors that s hape their mental makeup. How
ever, most of the methods us ed in such studies have not been
sufficiently obj ective. The questionnaire , the survey, the inter
view , o r studies of the "set of ideas " of a group have always
yielded results whose obje ctivity is open to serious question.
A study of a child's fund of associations such as we have carried
out, an evaluation of his collective experience and level of
socialization, and the uniformity of the responses of his entire
so cial group give us a good idea of those aspects of a child' s ex
perience that are socialized and allow us at least to make indi
rect inferences about the nature of the environment that has
s haped the child. We have gathered all our information fro m
"nonarbitrary" data rather than by posing questions to the child
directly; this of course enhances the clinical value of our data
74 A. R. Luria
Table 13 (in %)
Inappro- Appro-
Nature of Index of : Index of priate priate
test word diversity uniformity responses responses
Notes
Translated by
Michel Vale
A. R. Luria
EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT
78
Experimental Psychology and Child Development 79
How does the young child perceive the external world ? Re
sear ch psychologists have been able only to venture good gue sses
as to what processes may be regarded as characteristi c of a
child' s primitive per ception of the external world.
Whatever we per ceive of the world is per ceived in a stru c
tured fashion, i . e . , as a pattern of stimuli. We react and adapt
to these external stimuli, and indeed our entire behavior amounts
essentially to some more or less apt ac commodation to the di
verse stru ctures of the external world. To adapt effectively to
the se conditions the individual must per ceive the various situa
tions of the external world in as clear and as differentiated a
manner as pos sible, distinguish among them, and single out from
among the whole complex system of forms acting on him those
that for him are the most essential . The more differentiated
80 A. R. Luria
and subtle are our mental capacities in this re spect, the more our
minds will be able to dis criminate among the forms per ceived.
May we reasonably expe ct to find in the infant any measure
of distinct per ception of situations or of clear dis crimination of
forms ? There are no grounds to assume so, and indeed every
thing indicates that the world of a child' s per ceptions differ s
quite sharply from ours a s adults and that, during the first
months of life, an infant doe s not per ceive dis tinct forms and
hen ce is unable to accommodate his behavior to them in any way.
Actually, a number of obje ctively and carefully performed
studies have shown that a child passes the first we eks of life in
a diffuse state between sleep and wakefulness . This primitive,
semisomnolent state and the child' s total isolation from the out
side world are further exaggerated by the fact that the receptor s
necessary to per ceive the external world do not begin to operate
until rather late . For example, a child doe s not begin to fix his
gaze on shining objects until the age of 3 weeks, the eye begins
to follow a moving obje ct only at about the 4 th- 5th week, and ac
tive eye movements and sear ch for an object that has vanished
do not appear until the age of 3 -4 months (Blonsky}. The upshot
is that until the age of 3 or 4 months , a child is sort of mentally
blind and does not perceive the external world in any distinct
forms . In fact, this chaotic, blurred nature of infantile per cep
tion still lingers on for many months . The first thing to pene
trate the shroud separating the child from the outside world
seems, judging from experimental findings, to be color and dis
crete colored spots. In a series of ingenious experiments Katz
showed that a child of 3 -6 years may still completely ignore
shape and give marked preference to colors . In his experiments
Katz gave his child subjects a number of shapes ( cir cles, trian
gles, squares} of different colors and asked the children to
mat ch them . Remarkably enough, in almost no case did the
young children match shape s, but mat ched colors instead . Ap
parently, this color re sponse is more elementary and manage
able for the child than a response to shape . In his inkblot tests
Rors chach (!) found that both children and primitive peoples saw
mainly combinations of shades of color in the blots and that only
Experimental Psychology and Child Development 81
DODOO 0 0
see these two figures as two basi
o a 0 0 0
cally different stru cture s : one would
0 0Do 0 0 D
0 0 0
D D 0 0
have no order to it at all , and the ob
00000
a server could remove one, two, or
B A
even three pie ces from it without
harm, whereas the se cond would be
Figure 1 a self- contained whole, in which the
elements were arranged to form one
single stru cture that in a sense resisted any attempt to break it
up, i . e . , the Gestalt factor, linking the elements into one single
integral system, would be operative .
Doe s a child per ceive a square of this sort as an integral
stru cture, or is it still for him nothing more than a group of ran
dom pie ces ? Would we be able to observe the same resistance
to ·breaking up an integral figure in a child as in an adult ?
Let us find out. fu the course of play, we had a child find
from among the others a block onto which we had pasted red pa
per on the bottom, promising him a pie ce of candy if he found it.
We arranged the blocks in such a way that together they formed
a specifi c stru cture, one block being "extra. "
Figure 2 shows this arrangement . We then be- lgooo(i l
gan our game . r:; [_]
tJ 0
It is evident that if the blocks arranged in oonoCJ ,1
a square were not per ceived by the child as a ------·-
use the term, his entire behavior on them. This process is now
mu ch more intelligible to us. fudeed, it is at about thi s time that
the outside world begins to be perceived by a child as something
with a definite stru cture ; and it is quite clear that a child' s per
ception begins to discriminate certain stru ctures in it that are
the most prominent while others that are less stru ctured begin
to function as background. The se stru cture s, which emerge from
a general background and coordinate the child' s behavior around
them, stand out as a "field of clear cons ciousne ss, " if we may
use a subj ective phrase . Only when certain stimuli of a situation
are singled out in this way does organized accommodation to
them first be come possible .
But what we have just des cribed here are nothing other than
the chara cteristic features of attention . It is chara cteri stic of
attention that it singles out some elements from a general back
ground and allows others to re cede ; attention is marked, above
all, by the replacement of unorganized, diffuse behavior by orga
nized response s concentrated on specifi c stimuli. Indeed, some
psychologists have corre ctly observed that our attention is only
the subj ective expression of the organization of our per ceptions
into particular stru ctures.
For instance, let us take a set of lines arranged parallel with
one another, as in Figure 4A, and compare the m with the configu-
ration in Figure B; in
-
both cases , A and B, the
r--
. ' '
number of lines is the
I I sam e ; but in A they are
I I
laid out in a uniform way ,
whereas in B a certain
stru cture has been given
A B
to them. A s a resul t, a
pe culiar change takes
Figure 4 place in perception :
whereas in A our gaze
glides smoothly over the pattern, di s criminating nothing against
the ba ckground of these monotonous lines, in B it concentrate s
on the two middle lines, which appear as a kind of pathway at the
Experimental Psychology and Child Development 85
0
j e cts to count all the blocks . We were not par
0 ticularly interested in the actual counting (call
0 CJ 0 .0 0 ing out the numbers), but in the order in whi ch
0 the child moved his finger from one block to the
0
0
next. The degree and nature of the order in this
process would show us, we thought, how a child
Figure 5 accommodated to a regular but relatively com
plex stru cture at differ ent stages of development,
i.e . , how this stru cture determined the child's actions .
We gave 2-3-year-olds this task. We immediately noti ced that
a regular structure still did not elicit methodi cal , ordered behav
ior at this age : when he counted the blocks , a child would point
to one block and then another in no order, jumping from one row
to another, leaving out some and counting others twi ce . His ad
aptation to structure was clearly unsystematic. We have observed
the same type of behavior in many retarded children of much
older age , but at lower levels of development . This unordered,
unsystematic ac commodation later gives way to regular, orga
nized, systemati c forms of behavior, although not all at once ;
one may say that first only the simplest stru ctures begin to
elicit organized forms of behavior . A child of 3 -4 years is able
to count a series of blocks arranged in a straight l ine correctly
and systematically (Figure 6 A), but still cannot respond in any
organized fashion to the stru cture of a broken line (Figure 6 B) ;
and the ability to respond
correctly to the structure of
a cros s, whi ch require s a 0 00 0 000
systematic switchover from
one intersecting line to an
other, appear s even later . A
ooocoOJ
OOOGO 0 (counting the blocks at the interse ctions twi ce,
0
or counting unsystematically, in no order) in
creased to 100% for the pres choolers (5 -6- year
Figure 7 olds) and remained at a high level even for the
88 A. R. Luria
Figure 8
But the development of counting in the child does not stop with
this. Clearly, though this elementary devi ce (sofas, tables, mau
solea) helped the child count, it also limited counting and consti
tuted an obstacle to its further development . The most impor
tant limitation a shape used as a devi ce for di vision places on
counting is that it does not allow for any quantitative operations ;
it only enables the di vision to be made in one fell swoop, that is
all . If a "sofa11 a child uses for his division consists of six
pie ces , these pieces will always figure as a single whol e; no oth
er element can be added to them , just as no element can be sub
tracted . This makes the process of division extremely constric
ted; and if a child uses such shapes for comparing and che cking
to see if the apportionment he has made is corre ct , he will have
each time to invent new shapes in suitable quantity in terms of
the number of elements going to each playmate.
Indeed, because of the primitiveness of this form of counting,
using obj e cts and shapes , the child is obliged to take the next
step toward developing counting by numbers and to make the
transition from obje cts to spatial figures . In this stage, a pe cu
liar change takes place in the devi ces a child uses in counting:
instead of building figure s out of the blocks and then dis tributing
them to his playmates, the child puts the blocks in some spatial
order (column, row, etc . ) and then distributes the number of such
figures required to each of his playmates . These spatial forms
give the child considerably more freedom with regard to quanti
tative operations . They are no longer spe cifi c sofas or tractors
to whi ch nothing can be added or from which nothing can be taken
away. The columns and rows are distinguished by the fact that
any number of elements can be added to or subtracted from them.
They are therefore no longer simple models of con crete figures,
but represent a transition to the spatial symbolization of quantity
in general . A child who has constru cted su ch shapes can move
elements from one figure to another to even them out and in this
way divide as accurately as possible.
This use of spatial , serial shapes, which we find among 5-6-
year- olds, not only is a further step toward achieving ultimate
mastery over arithmetic but al so marks a transition from con-
92 A. R. Luria
Development of Writing
Group attitudes develop rather late in the child �), so that this
se cond function of writing does not figure in when writing is still
in its embryonic stages. As a means of remembering and re
cording material, writing passes through a series of specific
stage s before it achieves an adequate level of development.
Writing is one of the typical cultural functions of human behav
ior . In the first place, it presupposes the functional use of cer
tain obj ects and devices as signs and symbol s . Instead of dire ct
ly storing some idea in his memory, a person writes it down,
re cords it, by making a mark that when observed will bring the
recorded idea to mind. Direct accommodation to the task is re
placed by a complex, mediated te chnique .
This ability to use an obj ect or sign, mark or symbol, func
tionally develops rather late in the child, and in the pres chool
period we still are able to observe children whose way of coping
with certain problems is clearly primitive and unmediated, chil
dren for whom the functional use of a sign is still a stage beyond
their reach.
For example, we may ask a 3 -4-year- old in the course of play
to note down in some way some material he has to remember .
In most cas es we find that even the mere thought of using some
obj ect or action to record, or not to forget, some item is still
wholly alien to the child. Without making. any attempt on his own
to record anything, the child will confidently as sure us that he
"can remember better that way. " The ability to mediate hi s
memory, to use some notation or mark, some "mnemo�otech
ni cal 11 device , as it is called, in place of direct memorization
is lacking in a child at this level of development . . . . *
In our laboratory we have observed how a child devises prim
itive mnemonote chnical and differentiated des criptive forms of
notation. Once symbolic writing has been invented, the situation
be comes mu ch more complex; and we are not yet able to say
with certainty whether a child would be able to invent su ch a
complex system on his own without outside influences . But all
toward the devices he had mostly used during the preschool pe
riod changed radically. When we gave a pres chooler grains or
pellets and asked him to use them to note numbers, he would do
this quite easily, setting off the required number of grains, etc . ,
in a separate pile. But a school-age child would solve this same
problem in a completely different way. From the grains or pel
lets he would constru ct a symbolic representation of the digits ;
and when the process was made more difficult ( e . g., if the pel
lets did not keep together, sliding over the smooth glas s surface
provided ) , the child would be more inclined to give up complete
ly than revert back to old dis carded forms once he had used a
quantitative form of notation.
The development of the cultural skill s of counting and writing
involves a series of stages in which one technique is continually
dis carded for another . Each subsequent stage supersedes and
supplants the previous one ; and only after he has gone through
the stages of inventing his own devices and has learned the cul
tural systems evolved over the centuries does a child arrive at
the stage of development that is characteristic of advanced, civ
ilized man .
But a child does not develop at the same pace in all respects .
He may learn and invent cultural forms of coping in one area,
but remain at previous, more primitive level s in other areas of
activity. His cultural development is often uneven, and experi
ments indicate that traces of primitive thinking often show up
even in quite developed children.
But for those involved in the practical tasks of child- rearing
and edu cation, the detection of these peculiar remnants of earli
er stages of cultural development is a matter of primary importance .
When he enters school , a child is not a tabula rasa the teacher
may fashion any way he wishe s . This tablet already contains
the marks of those te chniques the child has used in learning to
cope with the complex problems of his environment . When a
child enters school he is already equipped, he already has his
own cultural skills . But this equipment is primitive and archaic;
it has been forged not by the systemati c influence of a pedagog
ical environment, but by the child's own primitive attempts to
96 A. R. Luria
Notes
PATHS OF DEVELOPME NT OF
THOUGHT IN THE CHILD (!)
Primitive Behavior
child under complex condtions and give us some idea of the ba
sic factors determining that behavior.
Lipmann actually only repeated with children Kohler ' s exper
iments on primate intelligence, with certain modifications. The
simplest of these experiments went as follows: The experimenter
placed a toy on the upper edge of a blackboard, and the child was
supposed to get it. The edge of the blackboard was too high for the
child to reach with his hand. A stick lay near the blackboard, how
ever, and with it the c h:ild could easily knock the toy down and get it .
Lipmann observed the behavior of children of different levels
of mental retardation in this experiment. He was thus able to
define the most primitive forms of child behavior, behavior that,
as we shall see , displayed distinctly conservative features, an
obstinate resistance to routine ways of resolving a complex
problem, and an inability to discard immediately methods that
were unsuitable in the particular situation and replace them
with others that were more appropriate .
Here are two protocols describing the behavior of two chil
dren of different levels of development in this situation:
ing any more complicated ones (e .g., using the stick to get the
toy), which would require curbing direct impulses and switching
to more complex, no longer instinctive, but cultural actions,
which are possible only for more developed children (protocol B) .
The most primitive forms of behavior in young children and
in retarded children are, at first glance, quite simple and ste
reotyped. We might say that this persistent attempt to perform
a complex task by means of conservative repetition of the same
natural re sponses, regardless of changing conditions, is very
typi cal of a young child' s behavior. This stage predominates un
til the age of 3, but frequently lasts even considerably longer .
We may observe a number of similar examples i n the behav
ior of animal s, and they all show that this instinctive way of
coping with a problem is extremely me chanical and very rigid
and unvarying in its choice of means, quite independent of the
changing conditions .
Kohler performed similar experiments with a chicken. He
placed it behind a partition con
sisting of three screens (Figure
1 ) and scattered grain on the
ground outside . The chicken was
unable to suppress his immedi
ate impul ses and go around the
partition to get the grain; instead ,
he battered his head against the
screen in attempts to get directly Figure 1
at the grain and though, of course,
failing completely, persisted in this primitive blind behavior .
The chicken was incapable of checking these impulsive attempts
and going in the opposite direction, 180 degrees from the goal ,
in order thus to reach it.
It is interesting that the resistance and strength of these chicken
impulses could be measured, and Kohler managed to curb the di
rect impulses and lead the chicken into the detour by turning the
partition so that the bird would have to make only a 90-degree
rather than a 1 80- degree turn to get the grain; this meant that the
chicken could make the detour without losing sight of the grain.
104 A. R. Luria
an obj ect acquires new functions in the child 's behavior, and
the child begins to relate to it differently.
In Kohler ' s primate experiments we already notice the begin
nings of this dynamic, functional. relationship to things that de
pends on the situation in which an object is found; a stick that a
monkey had earlier tossed about in a play situation assumes the
role of a pole on which the animal can climb, and in another sit
uation may serve as an implement for getting a banana lying
some distance away. A hat with a wide brim as shield against
the sun in another situation becomes an obj ect for rolling a fruit
toward the animal, for getting at a stick, etc .
In short, a dynamic, functional relationship to an object as a
tool takes the place of an unvarying, absolute relationship; and
behavior becomes incomparably more flexible than at the lower
levels of the historical ladder.
But even these dialectical. aspects of behavior take time to de
velop; the individual begins to use some things functionally, but
by no means al.ways with complete success .
This is because the functional. use of things usually develops
much earlier than an understanding of the actual me chanism of
dealing with them, i.e ., of the situation in which things really
may be rationally used as implements . The use of wood to make
a fire by rubbing was known to man at the dawn of civilization;
however, an understanding of the proce ss taking place in this,
the conditions under which it would take place most effectively
and those in which it would be impossible - all occurred much
later; and the ultimate view of this process required scientific
development. �) Clearly, when a device or technique is used
without understanding it, failures will occur that are rooted in
ignorance of the laws of their operation and in inadequate as
ses sment of the conditions under which they operate . Behavior
al. devices are not always used with succes s; and often if they
are employed primitively, their use is awkward and ineffective .
A dialectical. command of things and of one' s own behavior re
quires time, and an analysis of the deficiencies and mistakes
made by a primitive creature in performing operations with
things provides a very illuminating picture of this phase in the
The Deve lopment of Thought 107
form the task without any helping marks . When asked how they
expected to be abl e to hit the right key at the right moment, the
children would point to the arrows, saying, "The arrows will
show me . "
What does this experiment tell u s ? The children knew that
the arrows were there to show the way. In the initial experi
ments a child would observe that the arrows did indeed show
which key was related to which mark. But the mechanism of
this empirically observed fact remained unintelligible to him;
and failing completely to take into ac count all the relevant con
ditions, the child figured that the arrows in themselves would fa
cilitate his task and show him which key to hit. The empirical
experience, the absence of any analysis, and the inability to take
all the conditions into account induced the child to ascribe some
power to the arrows to show the right way. The fact that sever
al completely identical arrows were pasted on the front of the
piano did not confound the child, and to each instruction he would
answer confidently that the arrow would help him remember
which key to hit and when.
This incomplete appreciation of the conditions involved and
belief in the independent action (power) of a sign were not a ran
dom occurrence among our 5 - 7- year- old subj ects ; we noted it
in another situation in the same experiment.
In the first series of experiments the marks we had the chil
dren use to remember which keys to hit were pictures easy to
associate with the pictures that served as cues for hitting the
keys (for example, if the cue was a bell, the hint was a gong;
if the cue was an axe, the hint was a little boy cutting wood; if
the cue was a chair, the hint was a monkey sitting on a chair,
etc . ) . The children were able to perform the task successfully
using these hints .
To test the children' s relationship to the reminder pictures,
in the second series of experiments we had them choose their
own reminders from among several small objects we made
available (nails, buttons, feathers, etc .). Once again, among the
5 - 7- year- olds we found the same peculiar phenomenon confirm
ing their primitive, magical relationship to a sign; the children
1 10 A. R. Luria
A sister is a girl .
What is neces sary to be a sister ?
I don't know.
'
The Nai ve Substantivism of a Child 's Thought
S . (4 years, 6 months )
Look what I am doing ( experimenter squeezes the ball,
directing the stream of air to the child' s face ) . What is
this ?
The wind blows when you move your hand.
Where does it come from ?
From the street.
Is it still there ( the ball is completely compressed, all
the air has been squeezed out of it ) ?
No.
Where did it go ?
It went away.
Where ?
Through the window .
How ?
When it was open.
120 A. R. Luria
Figure 4
122 A. R. Luria
to him does not serve as material for dedu ction. In his behav
ior he does not use his thoughts for drawing conclusions . He
prefers to form his judgments directly, without a system of log
ical constructs .
But a child learns ; he acquires experience and makes judg
ments. If this is not logical thought, what is the basis of this
cognitive activity ? What is the logic corre sponding to this stage
in his behavior ?
A child learns from case to case; his judgments go from fact
to fact. Whereas an adult's judgments are ne ce ssary conclusions
from particular premises, the judgments of a child are direct
responses to obvious stimuli . The role played by logical prem
ises in an adult' s reasoning is secondary to that of external stimuli
in the thought of the child. Instead of a logical process of rea
soning, in the child we find a direct reaction to an object. (23 )
This kind of thinking creates its own logic, a logic that i s ig
norant of the common laws of neces sity; in fact - if one may
use su ch an expression - it is a prelogical logic. Claparecte
and Piaget called this logic transductive logic, borrowing a term
from Stern.
Whereas inductive logic involves drawing conclusions from
the particular to the general and deductive logic goes from the
general to the particular, transductive logic dispenses with this
middle stage entirely. Transductive logic draws a conclu sion
directly from the perceived event; it is a logic that is ignorant
of the category of "rules" as a means of logical reasoning. A
child' s reasoning is only outwardly such: actually, it is com
posed of a series of direct reactions to conspicuous objects,
with no elements of reasoning present at all and, as we have
s een, with total disregard of the binding nature of facts that are
taken as premi ses . . . .
T ransductive logic is a logic of direct relations to an obj ect,
not the logic of reasoning; it is a logic of particular conc lusions
that does not yet employ the derivation of general laws from a
knowledge of particular cases as a method of thinking; and, fi
nally, it is a logic that does not require verification, because it
is untroubled by and oblivious of contradictions. Indeed, if the
130 A. R. Luria
pauses, which are the first signs that the child is reasoning to
himself. Direct judgments, "short- circuits, " begin to be re
strained, held back; judgments begin to be separated from stim
uli by short intervals during which internal reasoning takes
place, and thought begins to precede action. Verbal thinking,
engendered by dialectics, assumes certain essential organizing
functions in the child' s behavior, and he begins his metamor
phosis from a bee to an architect.
similar experiments in which the child subj ects had to get a toy
with the aid of a stick. From his observations of how the chil
dren tackled the task by proceeding directly to the act, Lipmann
concluded that a child would be able to arrive at a solution to the
problem only after an object that could serve as an implement
was placed in his visual field along with (or right after) the ob
j ect the child was supposed to get . The operation would then
flow directly from the perceived situation; the situation deter
mined the action directly.
To determine the role speech could play in problem solving,
Lipmann introduced one modification into these experiments .
Sometimes he would stop a child who had begun to act and sug
gest that he first solve the problem verbally, that is, that he tell
in words how he was going to get the obj ect. This radically
transformed the child' s behavior . Instead of proceeding grop
ingly, by directly reacting to the situation, the child would first
work out the necessary combinations in words, devise a verbal
plan for solving the problem, and then put it into action in an or
ganized fashion. By working out a plan of action verbally the
child was freed from the random encumbering influences of the
situation; he was no longer restricted to what was directly
placed before him . He took the stick (needed to get the toy) , but
this time did not have to wait until it caught his eye, but actively
began to look for it since he had already de cided to use it as a
tool . Verbal planning does indeed help to alter the function of
thought in a child' s behavior ; it transforms it from a reactive
me chanism, bound to the situation, to a me chanism that plans
behavior .
Some interesting experiments by Vygotsky illustrate this or
ganizing role of speech quite well . Six- year- olds were placed
in a similar situation (the subjects had to get an orange with the
aid of certain tools), and 3 - year- olds had to observe the entire
process . The older children first tried to get the orange with
their hands, reached for it, stood on a chair, and made a number
of unsu ccessful movements . After some time they would finally
get the stick and roll the orange toward them .
When a 3 � - year- old was given the same task, he did not pro-
136 A. R. Luria
The appearance of analytic thought frees the child from his di
rect perception of a situation and from all its chance attributes ;
hence we would say that the stage in which a child des cribes a
picture, called by Stern the first and most primitive, the stage
in which the child names individual figures, is already a very
high stage ; in any case, it is not the first stage in the develop
ment of analytic thought. In singling out a particular obje ct
from its general background, the child replaces his global per
ception with an analytic, discriminating perception, and this
prepares him for acting in the situation in an organized way.
Finally, and this is perhaps the most important point, with the
development of the forms of verbal thinking, the child acquires
a powerful set of tools with which he can fashion a series of log
ical concepts to aid him in abstracting from the concrete diver
sity of his perception of the world and to unders tand phenomena
in their mutual relationship, in terms of an ordered system .
. When Stern's 3 � - year- old asked, "Is today tomorrow ? Is now
today ? " we can see that she was trying with the aid of verbal
terms she knew to get a grasp on complicated time relationships
that still seemed chaotic to her . The child did not accomplish
this all at once . At the age of 4 year s, 3 months, Stern' s daugh
ter was still confusing the term yesterday with the term today;
she grasped what they had in common (one day away from today),
but could not yet see the differences : "Today we 'll pack, and
yesterday we'll leave ." She did not have a complete grasp of
these concepts until the age of 5 � , when she expressed them in
a specific combination : "After the day after tomorrow is the
tomorrow of the day after tomorrow." (2 9) These logical exper
iments are possible only after quite distinct and rich forms of
speech have appeared, and by mastering speech the child is able
also to gain command of his thought processes . . . .
The acquisition of certain tools of thought - we have dis
cussed only speech here - transforms a child's thought pro
cesses; thought and action now shift places, and the very func
tions of thought are altered. A child' s behavior in complex situ
ations for the first time is mediated by certain preceding pro
cesses coming in between. Involvement in a verbal field takes
The Development of Thought 139
the place of direct actions and prepares the child for coping with
complex situations in a planned way. A child' s life experience
and logical experimentation cause primitive syncretic and trans
ducti ve logic to fade from the picture, since they have no means
of dealing with the lawful, causal arrangement of things . Inner
speech is the next stage following egocentric and socialized
spee.ch; and once it is acquired, the child, for the first time, is
able to organize his thinking in the ways learned in his verbal
contact with other people (dialectic) and in coping with problems
(logical experimentation) . Thinking acquires ordered, organized
features .
ally the case, and that Engels was unquestionably right when he
placed the examination of the nature of one ' s own concepts
among the later stages of development of thinking. (3 0)
There are a number of reasons why an awareness of one ' s
own psychological processes should develop s o late .
Claparecte (3 1 ) studied these proce sses in the small child and
made a number of observations that led him to speak of general
laws governing the difficulty experienced by the child in acquir
ing awareness of some phenomena (la loi de prise de conscience) .
Ac cording to his observations, a child becomes cons cious of a
process when in the course of carrying out some action he en
counter s an obstacle . Processes that do not encounter any ob
stacles along the way may take place without the child' s acquir
ing full awareness of them, and an analysis of automatic actions
confirms this. We may ask in exactly what cases the child en
counters su ch obstacles . Everything we know about the behav
ior of the young child indicates that he reacts dire ctly to each
situation and that preliminary reflection does not play the same
role for him as for adults , that he acts first and reasons after
ward. Of course, all the difficulties and obstacles occur on the
level of direct action, not in thought, and his awareness is di
rected toward them . The child begins to be aware of and to
evaluate the mechanisms of the external world much earlier
than the me chanisms of his own psychological processes . . . .
The pos sibility of becoming cons cious of one ' s own psycho
logical processes initially arises when a child' s actions begin
to be preceded by some preliminary activity or work, when the
child begins to resolve difficulties and obstacles at the verbal
and conceptual levels rather than by direct action.
But the first definitive turn toward an examination of the na
ture of one ' s own concepts is not pos sible until external speech,
which arises from the child' s encounter with operations and in
contact with other people, begins to "grow inward, " i . e . , when
it begins to be replaced by "internal speech . "
A number of studies by Ameri can psychologists have shown
that the process of gaining awareness is very closely connected
with the process of speech, and that the unconsciou s element in
The Development of Thought 14 1
Note s
145
146 A. R. Luria
II
The best way to study this prehistory of writing and the vari
ous tendencies and factors involved in it is to describe the stages
we observe as a child develops his ability to write and the factor s
that enable him to pass from one stage to another, higher stage .
In contrast to a number of other psychological functions, writ
ing may be described as a culturally mediated function. The
first, most fundamental condition required for a child to be able
to "write down" some notion, concept, or phrase is that some
particular stimulus or cue, which in itself has nothing to do with
this idea, concept, or phrase, is employed as an auxiliary sign
The Development of Writing in the Child 147
III
IV
fle eted in the mere outward form of writing if only the child un
derstood the actual purpose and me chanism of writing things
down, and its necessary connection with the meaning of what is
to be written. Neither the number of items (five pencils, two
I ,/
")� .
�vIA : IJ \ )'. .1-J
7. f/(
/A,
,
. / j,
JI.
,
I c
.
,·
� �·'.,�
'(__\�
\/1,., / \
I
('-\
The result is shown in Figure 4 . "\..., )
__ long tails .
Despite its uniqueness of form, this .�.,,
This is the first form of "writing, " in the proper sense. The
actual ins criptions are still undifferentiated, but the functional
relation to writing is unmistakable . Be cause the writing is un
differentiated, it is variabl e . After using it once , a child may
a few days later have forgotten it, and revert back to me chani
cal scribbling unrelated to the task. But this is the first rudi
ment of what is later to be come writing in the child; in it we see
for the first time the psychological elements from whi ch writ
ing will take shape . The child now recalls the material by as
sociating it with a spe cific mark rather than just mechanically,
and this mark will remind him of the parti cular sentence and
The Development of Writing in the Child 16 1
help him to re call it . All this and the presence of certain te ch
niques of undifferentiated topographical writing in primitive peo
ples spurred our interest in this undifferentiated te chnical aid
to memory, the precursor of real writing.
What role actually is played by the little mark the child makes
on a piece of paper ? We saw that it had two main features: it
organized the child' s behavior, but did not yet have a content of
its own; it indicated the presence of some meaning, but did not
yet tell us what this meaning was . We could say that this first
sign plays the role of an ostensive sign or, in other words, the
primary sign to "take note . " (!) The mark jotted down by the
child creates a certain set and serves as an additional cue that
some sentences have been dictated, but provides no hints as to
how to dis cover the content of those sentences .
An experiment demons trated that this interpretation of a pri
mary sign was unquestionably the right one . We can des cribe a
number of cas es to prove this . A child at this stage of develop
ment in his relationship to a sign tries to use the marks he has
made to guide him in recalling. Frequently, these "sentences"
have nothing in common with those dictated, but the child will
formally fulfill his as signment and for each cue find the "match
ing word. "
� /(
A A
(Given content Recalled content}
x
(Auxiliary sign}
is the best expres sion of the structure of such a process .
The situation with respect to a primitive mark su ch as
we have just been discussing is completely different . It
only signals that some content written down by means of
it exists, but does not lead us to it; it is only a cue evok
ing some (as sociative) reaction in the subj ect. We actu
ally do not have in it the complex instrumental structure
of an act, and it may be des cribed by the following formula:
(Given content) A-X
X-N (Recalled association}
(Primitive mark)
The Development of Writing in the Child 163
VI
VII
the ideas, they did not even give the effe ct of writing, and
we concluded that this kind of mechanical graphic produ c
tion hindered rather than helped memory.
We then introdu ced the factor of quantity into a number
of experiments to determine how the altered conditions
would affect the development of graphic activity. We were
immediately able to note the beginnings of differentiation.
y ..A Jl -4 w -- - - - _f � 'l/lt
2. H.-0�
2. P'1 """ "'
l \
'J ..IL4 """ 2 � � l/\/VytM
Y ...l 4 -U.\ I �c . - - - - - -
�
Indeed, graphic production changed sharply under the
influence of this factor (especially if one compares it with
the sample in Figure 2 ) . We now see a clear differentia
tion, linked to the particular task. For the first time each
s crawl refle cts a particular content . Of course, the dif
ferentiation is still primitive : what differentiates "one
nose" from "two eyes" is that the scribble s representing
the former are much smaller . Quantity is still not clear
ly expressed, but relations are . The sentence "Lilya has
two hands and two legs " was perceived and re corded in a
differentiated fashion : "two hands " and "two legs " each
had their own s cribble . But most important, this differen
tiation appeared in a child who had just produ ced some to
tally undifferentiated s cribblings, not betraying even the
The Development of Writing in the Child 169
�W0'v .. . . . u� � g11w<-."'"
Joo�...
Figure 6
172 A. R. Luria
Both the protocol and the writing itself in Figure 6 show that the
generally undifferentiated writing acquires an expressive charac
ter in only two cases (4 and 6 ), in which "black smoke 1 1 and ''black
coal " are depicted with heavy black line s . For the first time the
s crawls on paper assume some of the features of true writing.
The effect be comes clear when we see how the subj ect re calls
what he has written. When asked to recall what he has written, he
refuses to re call anything at all . It seems that he has forgotten
everything, and hi s scribblings tell him nothing. But after exam
ining the scrawls, he suddenly stops at one of them and says, spon
taneou sly: "This is coal . " This is the first time such spontaneou s
reading occurs in this child, and the fact that he had not only pro
duced something differentiated in his graphic activity but al so was
able to recall what it repre sented fully confirms that he had taken
the first step toward using writing as a means of remembering.
This sort of differentiation was achieved in 4 - and 5- year olds ,
and i t is quite pos sible that i n some cas es i t can occur even
much earlier . The most important thing about all this is that
the emergence of the conditions ne cessary for writing, the dis
covery of pi ctographic writing, the first use of writing as a
means of expres sion, occurred before our eyes . We can say
with assurance that after observing with our own eyes, in our
laboratory, how a child gropingly repeated the first primitive
steps of culture, many elements and factors in the emergence
of writing be came incomparably clearer for us. Sometimes, in
the same experiment , we were able to observe the sequence of
a whole series of inventions carrying the child forward to one
new stage after another in the cultural use of signs .
The best thing to do, perhaps, is to pre sent a protocol from
one of our experiments in its entirety. We have therefore sele c
ted a record for a 5 - year-old girl in which we may follow step
by step her dis covery of cultural signs . We have purposely
chosen a subject whose undifferentiated, mnemotechnical writ
ing we have presented earlier (Figure 5 ) .
..-
,,,..-
---
Figure 7B
The Development of Writing in the Child 177
the large dog with four pups became a large line with four
smaller ones. Thus, in the recall test she no longer proceeded
completely from memory, but read what she had written, each
time pointing to her drawing. The only case of failure was
"There are many stars in the sky. " In the te st session this was
replaced with a new drawing in which the stars were represented
by circle s, not line s.
Differentiation continued in the fourth ses sion, in which the
length of the column was represented by a long line and the tree
and bottle were drawn directly. Of particular interest is her at
tempt to differentiate her writing in another direction, mentioned
above: when Brina had difficulty expressing a complex formula
tion, she wrote down the dictated sentence semimechanically,
rhythmically breaking it down into words, each of which was rep
resented by a line (monkey - long - tail, winter - cold) . She
continued to use this technique for some time; we have observed
the same technique in 7- 8-year- old children. This technique was
le ss successful than the technique of real , differentiated writing,
however, and hence is a special case . After writing "It is .cold
in winter" with two long lines, the subject began to recall them
as the nmonkey with the long tail, " declaring that she had pur
posely drawn the long line and that without it she would have
been unable to remember the monkey' s long tail . We see here
how a technique that has been used ineffectively is reworked and
acquires an attribute corresponding to one of the ideas ; the line
is then interpreted differently and is transformed into a sign.
After having started with undifferentiated play writing, before
our very eyes the subject discovered the instrumental nature of such
writing and worked out her own system of expressive marks, by
means of which she was able to transform the entire remembering
process . Play was transformed into elementary writing, and
writing was now able to assimilate the child' s repre sentational
experience . We have reached the thre shold of pictographic writing.
VITI
/;
--·
J'
Figure 8
The Development of Writing in the Child 179
and you should write them down on the paper so you can
remember them better . Here is a pencil .
Subje ct : How should I write it ? House and girl, right ?
(Begins to write "girl "; see Figure 8 , 1 . )
Experimenter : ( 1 ) Listen . Subject: A little cow, a
Write that a cow has four real little cow. I think I'd
legs and a tail . better draw the girl instead .
(Experimenter repeats I don't know how (draws
the instructions .) the girl ) .
(2 ) Chimney sweeps are Black . A little box . I
black. don't know how to draw a
chimney (draws a box, then
begins to draw a flower).
(Figure 8, 2 and 3a ["This
is a flower."] )
(3 ) Yesterday evening it It was wet. I put on my
rained. galoshes . There was a lit
tle drizzle . Here it is
(makes a few light lines on
the paper [ Figure 8, 3 ] ) .
I can draw snow, too. Here
it is (draws a star, Figure
8, 3 a).
(4 ) We had a tasty soup Soup , tasty ( Figure 8 , 4 ) ;
for lunch. they go together .
(5 ) The dog is running Dog, little (draws a dog).
about the yard.
(6 ) The boat is sailing Here's the boat (draws ) .
the sea .
IX
What does this extract tell us ? The subj ect has difficulty in
representing pi ctographically the sentence "There are many
stars in the sky," and she creates her own unique way to get
around the problem : she does not draw the image given her, but
instead portrays an entire situation in which she saw stars. She
depi cts the sky, the window through which she saw the stars,
etc. Instead of the part, she reprodu ces the entire situation,
and in this way solves the problem .
�·.'� :l
f2E
I J
l
I I
Figure 9
A similar situation was en countered with another subject,
Petya U., 6� years old. Here is an extract from the record.
We see here the diffi culty of an image that does not lend it
self well to graphi c representation, so that the subj ect tries to
get around the problem by depicting other, related obj ects .
These children had insufficient ability to use drawing as a
sign or a means , and this was complicated by their attitude to
ward drawing as a self-contained game . Hence, the representa
tion is extended from a single image to a whole situation in which
this image was perceived; it is given new roots. In this situa
tion, however, the indirect path is purely of the most primitive
sort. The whole instead of the part is the first indirect devi ce
used in early childhood; we shall be able to understand it if we
take into ac count the diffuse, holistic, poorly differentiated na
ture of a child' s perceptions . �) At the very last stages, these
in.direct means acquire another, more differentiated and more
highly developed nature .
It is hardly ne cessary to present all the instances in whi ch a
child chooses an indirect means and, instead of a whole that he
finds difficult to depict, draws some part of it, whi ch is easier .
These features of all infantile drawing that is already at a more
differentiated stage have been des cribed many times, and are
well known to all . Two tendencie s are characteristic of the pic
tographic writing of a child at a relatively advanced stage : the
object to be depicted may be replaced either by some part of it
or by its general contours or outline . In either case the child
has already gone beyond the aforementioned tendency to depi ct
an obj ect in its entirety, in all its details, and is in the process
of acquiring the psychological skills on whose basis the las t
form , symbolic writing, will develop. Let us give ju st one more
example of the first appearance of this kind of representational
drawing in a child. This is the "part instead of the whole" de
vi ce we observed in the experiments involving writing a number .
Clearly, the two stars here were a sign for a large quantity.
It would be wrong, however, to assume that su ch a small child
was capable of using the "part for the whole" device . We had
occasion to observe a number of children who wrote the sentence
about 1 ,000 star s with so many "stars," i .e., marks, that after
demurring several minutes, we finally had simply to stop this
procedure, which looked as though it were going to end with a
thousand stars . A considerable degree of intelle ctual develop
ment and abstraction are ne ces sary to be able to depict a whole
group by one or two repres entatives ; a child who is capable of
this is already at the verge of symbolic writing.
period, when the child has not completely mastered the new
skills but also has not completely outgrown the old, that a num
ber of psychological patterns of particular interest emerge .
How does a child write who, although he is still unable to
write, knows some of the elements of the alphabet ? How does
he relate to these letters , and how does he (psychologically) try
to use them in his primitive practice ? These are the questions
that interest us.
Let us first describe some extremely interesting patterns we
observed in our material . Writing by no means develops along
a straight line, with continuous growth and improvement. Like
any other cultural psychological function, the development of writ
ing depends to a considerable extent on the writing techniques
used and amounts essentially to the replacement of one such
technique by another . Development in this case may be described
as a gradual improvement in the process of writing, within the
means of each technique, and sharp turning points marking a
transition from one such technique to another. But the profound
ly dialectical uniqueness of this process means that the transi
tion to a new technique initially sets the process of writing back
considerably, after which it then develops further at the new and
higher level . Let us try to see what this interesting pattern
means, since without it, in our opinion, it would be impossible
for such cultural psychological functions to develop .
We saw that the prehistory of infantile writing traces a path
of gradual differentiation of the symbols used. At first the child
relates to writing things without understanding the significance
of writing; in the first stage, writing is for him not a means of
recording some specific content, but a self-contained process
involving imitation of an adult activity but having no functional
significance in itself . This phase is characterized by undiffer
entiated scribblings; the child records any idea with exactly the
same scrawl s . Later - and we saw how this develops - differ
entiation begins : the symbols acquire a functional significance and
begin graphically to reflect the content the child is to write down.
At this stage the child begins to learn how to read : he knows
individual letters, and he knows that these letters record some
The Development of Writing in the Child 187
Little Vasya G., a village boy 6 years old, could not yet
write, but knew the individual letters A and I. When we
asked him to remember and write down some sentences
we dictated, he easily did so. In his movements he showed
total confidence that he would be able to write down and
remember the dictated sentences . The results are shown
in the following re cord.
1. A cow has four legs Subje ct: I know he has four
and a tail. legs, and this (writes) is 11 I . 11
2 . Chimney sweeps are (Writes) and this is 11A . 11
black.
3. Yesterday evening it Here's rain. Here's "I"
rained. (writes).
4. There are many trees Subject: (writes) Here is "u ."
in the woods .
5. The steamer is sailing The steam goes like this
down the river . (makes a mark). Here's "I. "
The result was a column of alternate I's and A's having noth
ing to do with the dictated sentences . Obviously, the subject had
not yet learned how to make su cl\ a connection, so that in the
188 A. R. Luria
I�
attitude toward writing. Here is an example :
Session II:
1 . Monkeys (Makes two
have long marks .)
tails.
2 . There is a (Two
high column marks.)
on the street.
3 . The night (Two
is dark. marks .)
4 . There is (I'll write
one bottle down a bot-
and two tle.)
glas ses.
5. One big (Makes two
dog and one marks.)
small dog.
6 . Wood is (I'll write
thick. down wood.)
Session III:
1 . There is a column. (The subje ct draws something,)
2 . The night is dark. I'll put a cir cle for the night
(draws a filled- in cir cle) .
3. The bird is flying. (The subje ct draws something.)
4. Smoke is coming from I'll draw a hou se with smoke
the chimney. (draws) .
5. The fish is swimming. Fish . . . fish. . . . I'll draw a fish.
6. The girl wants to eat. I'll draw a girl . . . . She wants to
eat (makes a mark) - there it is
�
- she wants to eat (Figure 13 ,6 , 7) .
Notes
195
196 A. R. Luria
Structure Model
the child . This i s accomplished by giving the child only the out
line of the model he must constru ct, or else - and this is even
better - a model made by the teacher is covered with thick
white paper that conceals its individual components (Figure 2 ) .
Structure Model
Figure 2 . An example of building f rom a model figure .
As is evident from the figure, the model gives the child a spe
cific task, but does not tell him how to ac complish it. Any part
of the model (wall, roof) may be made from different elements,
and to accomplish the task the child must find different alterna
tive s of the required solution. Psychologically this kind of con
stru ctive play differs sharply from both of the forms described
above .
The model gives the child a completely defined task to per
form. Be cause the model does not also offer a ready-made so
lution to the task and the child must himself find the required
solutions, the task is interesting and often holds the child' s at
tention for a long time . However, in seeking the right solution
the child is always obliged to remain within the framework of
constru ctive activity. He must find the required constructive
solutions and exer cise his analytical reason to determine which
elements can be used to construct a straight wall, for example .
With the model at hand he is continually able to measure his so
lution against it and to assess whether it is corre ct. E ven slight
discrepancies in dimensions or shape will always be noticeable
to the child when he compares the model and the structure he
has built from it. Thus, in performing this task a child always
remains within the framework of genuinely constructive thinking
and runs no risk of drifting into a merely nominal labeling of the
elements (window, roof) of whi ch the structure is composed, in
which his constru ctive activity would degenerate into simple
202 A. R. Luria
A c
Table 1
Control Construction Tasks for Groups E and M
Figure
reproduced Figure
Figure adequately reproduced
reproduced but not completely
incorre ctly pre cisely adequately
Experiment Group (% ) (% ) (% )
A. Elemental M 0 .0 13 .3 86 . 7
figure E 6 .6 66 .6 26 .8
B. Model M 6 .0 2 0 .0 74 .0
figure E 80 .0 2 0 .0 0 .0
Table 2
Control Building Test for Groups E and M
Direct, Methodical,
impulsive planlike
building building
Experiment Group (% ) (% )
A. Figure composed M 13 .3 86 . 7
of elements E 73 .4 26 .6
B. Solid model figure M 6 .6 93 .4
E 66 .7 3 3 .3
Table 3
Analysis of the Mistakes Made in
Building by Groups E and M
Noticed
Did not mistakes, but Noticed and
noti ce could not cor- corrected
mistakes rect them mistakes
Experiment Group (% ) (% ) (% )
Building from M 1 1 .2 0 88.8
elements E 85.6 0 14 .4
Building solid M 0 26 .6 73 .4
models E 46 .0 4 0 .0 13 .4
Model Materials
Subject E
Figure 4 . Examples of structures built by children
in groups E and M in "missing element " experiments .
result was either too large o r too small . This fixation on their
immediate perceptions and total inability to modify them occurred
with most of the children in group E, but with none of those
Table 5
Reproduction of Simple Geometric
Figures by Groups E and M
with the problem, although he was still unable to find the ne ces
sary relationships .
r::J
�
Subj ect
Lun. (M)
Q
{j
B � ubject
Lun . (E )
�O Q
n Subj ect
c''' Mer . (E )
Table 6
Percentage of Corre ct Solutions by Groups M
and E of a Problem Involving Copying a Drawing
Table 7
Pinpointing a Spe cific Point in a Uniform Field
by Children in Groups M and E
M E
Unable to Voluntary Unable to Voluntary
dis criminate di s crimination di s criminate discrimination
(% ) (% ) (% ) (% )
Average
by group 0 100 66 34
Table 8
Isolation of a Figure from a Uniform
Field by Groups M and E
Figures 1 2 3
Subje cts M E M E M E
Corre ctly done (% ) 100 40 80 20 60 20
2 18 A. R. Luri a
I222I
K&2>1
D2J 8 CT
; 2 3
disc riminate ten complex figures by cir cling the m with a pencil .
Becau se of the difficulty of the task, they were given an u nlim
ited amount of time . As is evident from Table 9, the two groups
differed significantly.
Table 9
Di s cri mination of C omplex Shapes
by Children in Groups M and E
M E
Average per centage
of correct solutions 82 .5 53 .0
The D eve lopment of C onstructive Activity 2 19
Table 10
Movement o f Geom etric Shapes
by Children in Groups M and E
M E
Average per centage
of correct solutions 82 .8 2 5 .4
[]
whereas those i n group E did so
in only 25 .4 % of the cases . In
deed, some of the children were
completely unable to cope with
the task. Model
Analogous re sults were ob
tained in another, easier ex
periment . The children were
pres ented a model of a hou s e
with a small wing attached on
the right. The model was built
Subject
of blocks . The door s and win Pol. (M)
dows in the hou s e (see Figure
12) were situated at the ends
of a diagonal running from top
to bottom and right to left . The
�
children were asked to draw the
mirror image of this hou s e . A
child was shown visually what
Subject Subject
he was supposed to do, although
Kost. (M) Kost. (E)
no drawings were shown to Figur e 12. Exam ples of
illustrate the desired resul t . mi rro r- image drawing by
Usually the two groups o f twins in groups M and E .
The D eve lopment of C onstruc tive Activity 22 1
Table 11
Experiment with T ransposition
of Relationships in Figures (% )
Incomplete Partial Full
Group transposition transposition transposition
M 0 40 60
E 40 60 0
they were doing step b y step, one would say that they were oper
ating a c cording to a definite plan . The initial de sign be came
more detailed as they went along, and it was only at the very end
of the building that a completed whole emerged.
The children in group E went about their building activity in a
totally different way. Usually they did not have a clear idea of
what they wanted to build at the very outset . There was nothing
distin ctly purpose ful or goal- dir e ct ed about their cons tructive
a ctivity. One part was set up and other pie ces added to it, and
i t was difficult to discern the unfolding of any clear plan in the
r elatively complex pile of el ements they had put together . Some
ti mes the building ended up as nothing but a complex �epetition
of individual parts , and the initial intention was formulated in
word s rather than embodied in any tangible constru ction .
M twin, and how randomly and uns ystemati cally the group- E
twin piled together all the pieces without any cl early defined goal
or plan. Thus, there were distinct psychological differences in
the creative a ctivity of the two twins .
Subject
Subject
Kost. (E)
Kost. (M)
Subject Subject
N. M N. 00
Figure 15. Control constru ctions by twins in
groups M and E li years after practic e .
Table 12
. The fir s t two columns in the table show results obtained in ex
periments in which a figure was dis criminated against a plain
background. The columns for this group ref er to experiments
in whi ch the subj e cts singled out
figur es mentally on a che cker
s! •
YiifH
Lun. (M )
Subject
board (first experiment) and from
a complex s tru ctured ba ckground
(se cond exper iment ) .
The last colu mns in the table r e
Lun. (E )
f e r t o experiments de signed t o a s
p�
sess mobility o f pe r ception and the
w
children ' s ability to shift the posi
tion of the per ceived figures in
space mentally . The first column
�
8"bj•d
Kost. (M)
,.wt
r efers to transposition of elemen
* * *
Notes
229
2 30 0. K . Tikhomirov
Red
{0 Z2�---,
I
light
51 5J 55 �-�··�, ,-,-5.9.,..., __
, ,5.,t_____,
�r--v- �------, -v-----,r-.r--.r---v--.r-.r--v
Red
light
Red
light
Table 1
With impulsive
Silently speech Silently
3 -4 years 71 29 31
4 - 5 years 50 11 17
2 38 0 . K. Tikhomirov
Table 2
Motor Speech
3 -4 years 41 10
4 - 5 years 28 1
T able 3
* * *
240 0. K . Tikhomirov
carrying out the order "Squeeze onc e , " a subj ect then given a
long signal would squeez e the bulb several times . In such
cas es the movements are controlled not by the verbal instruc
tion, but by the direct signal its elf. Repeated demonstrations
and repetitions of the instruction did not eliminate this phenom
enon in many subjects . The stimuli that evoked a wave of dif
fus e excitation and, so to speak, imparted impulses to the
movement during the duration of their pre sentation turned out to
be a stronger factor than the trace effect of the instruction.
Thus , when a signal conflicts with the requirements of an
instruction, the subj ect ' s difficulties are presumably explained
by the fact that the traces of the verbal instruction do not form
a sufficiently stable afferentation to oppos e the direct influenc e
of the stimulus . If this is so, we should be able to strengthen
the speech afferentation of the motor response by requiring
the subj ect to say a word that will give additional afferentation
and an auxiliary impulse to the movement . To confirm this
hypothesis we conducted a series of experiments in which the
motor respons es were combined with the impulsive speech re
sponse described above . When the signal was presented, the
subj ect had to pronounce the syllable "tu" and squeez e the
bulb. When this was done, the selective motor response was
broken off by pronunciation of "tu." Hence, in the conflict be
tween the direct signal and the traces of the verbal instruction,
the instruction was reinforced by pronunciation of the syllable .
It turned out that this method could be used to overcome the
movements ' dependence on the duration of the signal.
Let us consider an experiment with Valya S. (age 4 years ,
4 months ) . She can correctly carry out the instruction "Squeeze
and immediately let go" in response to a direct order and short
signals ; however, upon presentation of longer signals she begins
to assimilate the movement to the signal, and tonal response s
arise (Figure 3A, Nos . 13 - 14) . When the subj ect is again
shown that it is necessary to squeeze, she again correctly car
ries out the instruction in response to the direct order "Squeeze "
(Figure 3A, after No . 14), but upon presentation of longer sig
nals, makes tonal responses. After this series is conducted in
The Formation of Voluntary Movements 243
Red
light -,____!_:!__..r-,.
_ __,------,__:.:___,----,_,...,_....:.:___,---,____,-��.r--..,___,---._____:_:_
3 -4 years 90 49 85
4-5 years 93 33 51
Red light
lMJ�1�JJ�!LJAM1(Jjt
,!__,.--..__ -����
Green light --- Z 4 6
Instruction
repeated
7.5 %
Red light
JO
�c_r-.,_,----,, ,_, .-----. ,.---
Green light
Nos . 26-30. After this the positive signal is once again pre
s ented (No. 30), and the subj ect says "Must" and does not
squeeze in respons e to pres entation of a positive signal. This
also happens in response to signals Nos . 3 1-34 . After repeti
tion of the instruction, on presentation of positive signals
Nos . 3 5 -36 the subj ect says "Must" and makes a motor re
sponse ; and then in response to inhibitory signal No. 32 says
"Must not" yet once again makes a motor response.
Thus , in the experiments in which the signal meaning of the
stimulus is pronounced aloud, the words "Must not" evoke a
motor respons e to an inhibitory signal; but with the extinction
of this response the word "Must" also ceases to evoke a motor
respons e to a positive signal. Hence any regulation of motor
responses by the s emantic aspect of the voic ed speech that ac
c ompanies the respons es to both stimuli is clearly absent. We
obs erved this abs ence of regulation in most of the children; in
a third of the children the number of errors even increased
when speech accompanied the motor response.
How should we interpret this ? Why does a child saying the
words "Must not" respond with an action that is just the oppo
s ite of his words (squeeze the bulb); and why when this incor
rect response extinguishes does he fail to squeeze the bulb
while saying the word "Must , " i. e . , again act contrary to the
meaning of the word ?
Let us analyze the response to the positive signal from the
beginning. On presentation of the positive signal the subj ect
who follows instructions says "Must" and squeezes the bulb .
Like every word, the word "Must" has to be viewed as a com
plex stimulus that can have both a direct and impulsive influ
ence and a s elective influence. The selective influence of the
word "Must" is positive - "Must squeez e the bulb"; the im
pulsive influence of the word is also positive : the verbal re
sponse is achieved, and creates a corresponding center of ex
c itation. Thus , the selective and the impulsive influences of
the word here coincide in sign. Because of this we do not know
which aspect of the word produces regulation of the motor re
sponses to the positive signals .
2 50 0. K. Tikhomirov
This is not at all the cas e with the second half of the instruc
tion. On presentation of an inhibitory signal the subj ect says
"Must not . " The selective influence of this phras e is inhibi
tory ("Must not squeez e the bulb"); but, like the first word, it
evokes a center of excitation in the speech part of the cortex,
since the speech response is made and is not delayed. Hence
the selective and the impulsive influences of the words have
opposite signs . They not only do not coincide, as in the first
case, but are in conflict . For this reason we can suppose that
when the child says "Must not" and simultaneously squeezes
the bulb, the words have a regulatory influence on the motor
response not by means of any systematic , selective (inhibitory)
connections , but simply because they serve as a supplementary
center of excitation.
Thus , in 3-4-year -olds in the complex speech responses
"Must not ," in which there is a conflict between the selective
and the impulsive influences of the words , the stronger com
ponent is more often the direct and impuls ive influenc e of
speech, which regulates the flow of the motor responses , pro
ducing disinhibition of the differentiation in spite of the mean
ing of the words . In cases of stable disinhibition of differenti
ation under the influence of the words "Must not , " by means
of many repetitions during continuous presentation of inhibi
tory signals , we could achieve a situation in which the subj ect,
pronouncing these words , did not squeeze the bulb, i.e . , in
spite of the positive, impulsive influence of the verbal response,
the subj ect made an inhibitory motor respons e . In this case
the response was formed as a result of direct reinforcement
of the inhibitory process, and was not under the influence of
the selective effect of the words . In subsequent presentations
of the positive signal, the subject said "Must" but still did not
squeeze the bulb, i.e. , he made an inhibitory motor response
contrary to the speech response . Here , as well, the direct,
impulsive influence of the word predominates . On the whole ,
the data from the experiments attempting to regulate a system
of differentiated responses by means of pronouncing the signal
meaning of stimuli show that, in a majority of 3 -year-olds and
The Formation of Voluntary Movements 251
* * *
Red light
Green light -----< ,..----, �--�
Instruction
repeated
LJ--------------�----,c;r.-----..._,-..-.:.r-\-T"-
Red light
Green light ___ "
c I
* * *
29!
Table 5
Motor and
Single Single speech Single
motor speech responses motor
responses responses combined responses
3-4 years 47 4 20 34
. 4 - 5 years 58 2 25 60
Table 6
Motor and
Single speech Single
motor Speech responses motor
responses responses combined responses
Table 7
Serezha O. Disinhibited
(4 years, 6 responses (%) 43 80 0
months )
Latency (sec ) 0.5 1.6
Serezha K. Disinhibited
(4 years) responses (%) 37 77 66
Latency (sec) 0.6 0.6 2.0 0.6
* * *
2 62 0. K. Tikhomirov
36
Table 8
Silently 50 0.4 13 15
With speech 10 0.5 7.5 6
Table 9
Responses to an
inhibitory signal in carrying out an
instruction under various
conditions (%)
Number of Age
children (years) Silently With speech Silently
10 3-4 40 60 37
10 4-5 56 52 42
10 5-6 57 30 38
Table 10
8 48 22 9
Neuropsychology
A . R . Luria
2 73
2 74 A. R. Luria
*He made a special analysis of this crisis, but it has not been
published .
2 76 A. R. Luria
that this structure has its own sociohistorical genesis and has
acqui red new functional attributes peculiar to man. Speech ac
tivity ceased to be regarded as an isolated process only indi
rectly connected with perception, attention, memory, and thought.
It actually became possible to explain the processes of abstract
thought and voluntary action scientifically . What had previously
been considered isolated "functions" or even irresolvable prop
erties now emerged as highly complex functional systems formed
in the past and changing in the course of lifetime development .
When communicating with adults, reorganizing his behavior on
the basis of obj ective activity and speech, and gaining knowledge,
a child not only acquires new forms of relationship to the exter
nal world but also works out new ways of regulating his behavior
and establishes new functional systems enabling him to master
new forms of perception and rec all, new ways of thinking, and
new methods of organizing voluntary actions .
Vygotsky's ideas radic ally altered our view of the nature and
structure of mental processes. Fixed and immutable "mental
functions " were transformed into complex and mobile functional
systems that change during development; psychology emerged
from its constricting naturalistic boundaries and became the
science of the social formation of natural phenomena.
One question, however - perhaps the most essential one -
remained open: How is the material substratum to be under
stood ? What conceptions of the working of the brain should un
derlie our view of the material bases of mental activity ?
The problem of localizing mental functions in the cerebral
hemispheres (and the question of the cerebral bases of mental
activity was formulated in precisely this way) underwent a pe
riod of acute crisis i n the 192 0s, reflecting to a large extent the
general crisis in psychology . On the one hand, neurology con
tinued to assert its naive ideas of the localization of complex
mental functions in limited areas of the cerebral cortex - ideas
originally crystallized in the great discoveries of the 18 70s . On
the basis of the simplified views of mental functions then current
in psychology, neurologists assumed that in addition to the cor
tical sensory and motor "centers, " analogous centers could be
Vygotsky and Functional Localization 2 77
TWO APPROACHES TO AN
EVALUATION OF THE RE LIABILITY
OF PSYCHOLOGICAL INVE STIGATIONS
(Reliability of a Fact and Syndrome Analysis)*
282
Evaluating Reliability of Psychological Investigations 283
pl
(C) = ����-=-�����-
P(B/C) P(C) + P(B/C) ( 1 - P(C))
·
(2)
(C) = P(B/C) P(BlC) P(C)
·
p 2
P(B /C) P(BlC) P(C) + P(B/C) P(BlC) ( 1 - P(C))
ence of factor C :
Let P (C ) = 0. 5, P (B/C ) = 1, P (Bi/C) = 0 . 5, with B 1, B2 , . . . ,
B l O occurring empirically,
P 0 (C) = 0. 5
P l (C) = 0. 5 �·�.2 5 o. 7=
(4)
294
Effects of Frontal Lobe Lesions 295
References
302
Neuropsychological Analysi s of Speech 303
how should I say it? . . . what the devil ! . . . No, I don't know . . . "
[ da . . . i . . . kak by eto skazat' . . . chert voz 'mi . . . net ya ne znayu ] .
We recall a patient with a bullet wound in the lower part of
the posterior area of the left frontal lobe who tried to compose
an oral composition on the subject "The North. " After 10 min
of unsuccessful attempts, he was able to say only: " There are
bears in the North . " With further encouragement, he added:
'Which I shall tell you about."
Another patient with an analogous syndrome who attempted to
present a more elaborate composition on the subj ect "The
North" proved to be totally incapable of doing so and solved the
problem by reciting Lermontov's well-known poem ''In the Wild
North . "
The syndrome of dynamic aphasia does exist, but its detailed
mechanisms are still unclear . The purpose of the present ex
periment was to attempt to collate certain data for an analysis
of the disorders underlying this type of speech defect.
The Problem
nism used by the subj ect for the transition from the initial
conception to an expanded verbal statement . There is rea
son to suppose that it is precisely inner speech with its
predicative functions that participates in the formation of the
structure or scheme of sentences and that is disturbed in
cases of dynamic aphasia.
The first evidence supporting this hypothesis can be obtained
in an experiment that determines whether patients with dynamic
aphasia are able to find the names of obj ects (nouns) and the
names of actions (verbs) with equal facility . If the predicative
function of speech in these patients is, indeed, disturbed, it will
be far more difficult for them to find the names of actions than
the names of obj ects .
Fifteen patients with dynamic aphasia and 15 control subj ects
participated in this experiment. They were asked to give as
many names of objects and actions as possible within 1 min
(with their eyes closed) .
The controls experienced no perceivable difficulties in
solving either problem, nor were there any marked differ
ences in the ease with which they found names for obj ects
and actions .
The patients with temporal (sensor) aphasia had serious dif
ficulty in naming both obj ects and actions ; moreover, it was
sometimes even less difficult for them to name actions than
obj ects .
The patients with dynamic aphasia can be divided into three
groups . The first group was composed of patients with a syn
drome of severe dynamic aphasia. They could not find names
of either objects or actions, and instead of providing the re
quired names produced verbal stereotypes .
The second group was able to find the names of nine or
ten obj ects within 1 min, but could not name even a few
actions .
The third group, made up of patients who showed good re
covery from dynamic aphasia, exhibited no disorders in the
naming of objects, but experienced marked difficulties in find
ing the names of actions . The data are given in Table 1.
306 A. R. Luria & L. S. Tzvetkova
Table 1
Number of Number of
obj ect names action names
Table 2
Number of Number of
obj ect names action nam es
1. Pim . (27237) 10 2
2. Mor . (36309) 8 2
3. Bog. (2472 5) 11 3
4. Kr. (33957) 12 2
5. Ilm . (337 58) 9 4
6. Sklyar . (337 5 5) 12 3
Total 62 16
References
Translated by
Michel Vale
A . R. Luria, N. K . Kiyashchenko,
L. I. Moskovichyute, T . 0. Faller,
and N. A . Fillippycheva
3 19
320 A. R. Luria et al.
References
330
Eye Movements in Normal and Pathological Vision 33 1
a b
Figure 1 . Eye movements in examination of
a rectangle (a) and a portrait (b). (Patient D.)
334 Luria, Pravdina -Vinarskaya, & Iarbus
General Data
Spatial orientation and acts that can be perfo rmed only on the
basis of visual perception were difficult for him . For example,
he would mi ss a chai r he was looking at while attempting to
seat himself on it, and was compelled to calculate this act fo r
a long time and to perform it "by fee l." He could bend directly
over a disposal urn and yet miss it in discarding a cigarette
butt. Reaching for an overhead support in a trolleybus, he would
miss it and bang the heads of others . All these difficulties could
be overcome only when the patient abandoned attempts at visual
motor coordination and oriented himself by proprioc eptive per
ception . According to his desc ription, when walking he had "not
so much to see as to sense the way with his foot ." When walking
down a staircase, he could refrain from holding the bannister,
but could not get out of the way of anyone he met. Nor could he
read, because he extracted from the text only isolated and unre
lated words . He had no trouble in writing isolated letters or
syllables, but writing as a process was disordered because he
could not simultaneously perceive the line and his pencil, "and
one line was written over the next ."
In February 1958, R. began to experience headaches, and after
a while he found that it was difficult for him to dress: he con
fused his right and left boots, and was unable to find the sleeves
of his jacket immediately . In April of the same year he encoun
tered even greater difficulties in reading : he found himself ca
pable of recognizing only single letter s and could not immedi
ately grasp combinations of them . His handwriting also changed .
The progress of the disease led to considerable disturbances in
visual perception and the patient 's orientation in spac e ; and after
a brief stay in one of the regional hospitals, R. was sent to the
Institute of Neurosurgery bec ause of suspicion of a tumor of the
occipito -parietal portion of the brain . In the institute , the fol
lowing was observed . The patient maintained contact, knew
where he was, and had good time orientation . Sometimes he
displayed affective outbursts in inadequate relations with people
in his environment, but usually he very quickly recognized that
he was wrong and begged pardon for his improper reactions .
His memory of past events was not entirely intact, and he was
336 Luria, Pravdina-Vinarskaya, & Iarbus
The experiment shows that the patient was able, after a very
short display, to perc eive both objects and their image s; but as
a rule he recognized them by some identifying characteristic ..
Hence perception of relatively simple obj ects and images with
clear -cut identifying characteristics was easy, but recognition
of more complex obj ects or images containing a number of de
tails (9, for example) was quite difficu lt . Adequate perception
of images incorporating several identical elements ( 13 , for ex
ample) was beyond the capacities of the patient .
These experiments enabled us to conclude that in patient R.
Eye Movements in Normal and Pathological Vision 34 1
\
Figure 2 . Eye movements in tracking one moving point .
(Patient R.)
(b)
Text specimen:
'What is your last name ? " "My name is Ivanova."
'What is your first name ? " "My first name is Nedezhda. "
' What is your patronymic ? " "My patronymic is
Vasil 'evna. "
tracking the text with the aid of a ruler below it, and finally with
the aid of a finger moving along the line . Thi s approach, the re
sult of which was to shift the leading role in the act of reading
to the mechanism of kinesthetic tracking, proved to be the sole
means of attaining a certain recovery of the act of reading on
the part of the patient .
Conc lusion
References
351