Child Development Theories and Examples

Cognitive Development And Modes Of Social Interaction

A third promising direction in the study of cognitive development addresses the question of how social interaction dynamically constitutes a favorable climate for the growth of the mind. In the past, psychologists' answers to related questions have often over- or underestimated the contribution of social interaction to normal cognitive development. Recently, renewed interest in the problem has produced a burst of naturalistic and seminaturalistic studies of parent-child and teacher-student interactions.
This new research has begun to chart a middle course between two extreme views of the role of social interaction in cognitive development. The first of these extremes can be called the social learning straw man. It holds that most cognitive development is a result of imitation, which is construed as mere mimicry rather than cognitive reconstruction. The second extreme can be called the little scientist straw man. This position holds that most cognitive development is a result of autonomous inventions, cognitive reconstructions in which social interaction plays no formative role. Both of these views are caricatures of human development. A minimal task for cognitive developmentalists is to portray the role of social interaction without resorting to either caricature.
The words that best depict the middle-course alternative emerging from recent research are guided reinvention (Lock, 1980; see also Karplus, 1981; Resnick, 1976), which acknowledges the social learning theorists' insistence that social guidance is ubiquitous, both within and outside the classroom. They also acknowledge, however, the Piagetian insight that to understand is to reconstruct. Thus, the guided reinvention perspective elaborates the theme that normal cognitive development must be understood as a collaborative phenomenon.
In classical writings on cognitive development, Vygotsky (1934/1962, 1934/1978) seems to have best anticipated the guided reinvention perspective. For Vygotsky, an analysis of modes of social interaction is essential for explaining cognitive development. In addition, he argued that an explanation of guided reinvention must use the historical-reconstructive method, which is similar to what Piaget called the ''genetic'' method. For Vygotsky, Piaget's "to understand is to reconstruct" was as apt a summary of the successful theorist's efforts as it was a summary of the child's efforts. Vygotsky argued that developmentalists need to study the dynamics of the developmental process directly, rather than continuing merely to draw inferences about the process from structural analyses of the products of development.
What would a reconstructive understanding of social interaction involve? One of Vygotsky's central tenets was that social interaction is organized on a number of planes and that each successive plane is associated with greater cognitive powers. One way of conceiving these planes is schematized in Table 3-3, adapted from a convergence rate hierarchy proposed in Bullock (1983) as a synthesis of both Vygotskyan and social learning (Bandura, 1971) principles.