Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory

1. Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory • Vygotsky was a contemporary of Piaget, but he died at age 37. • Shared Piaget’s view that children actively construct knowledge. • Gave much more emphasis than Piaget did on social interaction and culture on cognitive development. Thought you couldn’t develop cognitively without the help and guidance of others more knowledgeable than yourself.

2. How a child learns, according to Vygotsky • Child’s development is limited or enhanced by his culture. How much access to technology, books, etc. does the child have? • Knowledge is NOT generated within an individual but is constructed through interaction with other people and objects in one’s culture. • Must have cooperation and interaction with more skilled adults and peers in order to grow.

3. Zone of proximal development (Vygotsky) • All that you could conceivably know (limited by your access to education and the wisdom of your teachers, parents, and peers). • Zone of current development: all that you currently know. • Important educational implications.

4. Scaffolding (Vygotsky) • The process by which an adult teaches a child • Goal of scaffolding is to keep the child’s attention and adapt the process to the child’s appropriate zone of proximal development (learning should be targeted at a child’s developmental level) • Example of scaffolding: adults helping children sound out words when learning to read

5. Behavioral/learning theories • Three types of learning • Classical conditioning • Operant conditioning • Social learning (aka observational learning or modeling)

6. Classical conditioning • Earliest form of learning (begins at birth) in which you come to associate a previously neutral stimulus with something good or bad. • Babies come to prefer mothers and fathers over all others because they associate parents with comfort, security, and food. • First associated with Ivan Pavlov (ring bell, and dogs salivate because they know they’re about to get fed)

7. Operant conditioning • A form of learning in which a behavior is either strengthened or weakened due to the consequences it produces. • When you do something, you can either be rewarded or punished. The outcome determines how likely you are to engage in the behavior again. • Associated with B.F. Skinner (Skinner boxes…teaching pigeons to get food by pressing levers)

8. Social learning • Learning by observing others and mimicking their actions. • Even animals do this. • We can learn social skills, manners, aggressive behaviors, problem-solving skills, and virtually anything else by watching others. • Babies do this from a very young age. • Associated with Albert Bandura (children become aggressive by watching adults be mean to a Bobo doll).

9. Ethology • Associated with the work of European zoologists, especially Konrad Lorenz. • Stresses that behavior is biologically determined. • We can only appreciate a person’s behavior if we recognize that it’s tied to evolution. • Early experience plays an important role in development and is potentially irreversible. • Precursor to attachment theory.

10. Lorenz • Worked with geese and hatched goslings. • Noted that goslings followed the first creature they saw, whether it was their mother or Lorenz. • This behavior pattern is called imprinting—rapid, innate learning within a limited critical period of time which involves attachment to the first moving object seen.

11. Critical vs. sensitive periods • Lorenz’s work forced American developmental psychologists to consider the importance of the biological bases of behavior. • The idea of a “critical period,” however, seemed a bit too overdrawn to be considered in human behavior. • Instead, developmentalists focused on a sensitive period, which is a more flexible band of time for behavior to optimally emerge. Could be months or years rather than days or weeks.

12. Evolutionary Developmental Psychology • Associated with Darwin and more recently, with David Buss. • A very new, dynamic field that until 2002 hasn’t had much of a developmental focus. • There are now a number of main points that are being researched, including natural selection, survival of the fittest, mate selection, need for adolescence, importance of childhood, maladaptive evolved trends, and the evolutionary explanation of aging.

13. Natural selection • Adaptive behavior (that which helps us survive) is strengthened over time, and behaviors that hurt us are bred out. • Natural selection favors those most fit to survive, so these people pass their “hardy” genes on to their offspring.

14. Survival of the fittest and altruism • We help others because they, in turn, may one day help us or our kin, thus ensuring the continuation of our gene pool. • Kin selection—we are more likely to help our own family because they share our genes.

15. Mate selection • Men are attracted to young, fertile-looking women who can easily reproduce. • Males are motivated to “spread their seed,” and have less “parental investment” than women do. • Women have to carry and bear children, so they have greater parental investment. Thus, they look for a mate who can offer wealth and security and who won’t likely abandon them and their children.

16. Adolescence • Humans have longer childhoods and adolescence than other species because we have larger brains and more complex social relationships. • It takes a lot of time to learn these things, so reproductive maturity is delayed until we’re more competent at functioning in society.

17. Childhood as practice for adulthood • Many aspects of childhood are practice for adulthood. • Gender differences emerge. Girls play with dolls in preparation for their caregiver roles. • Boys are more aggressive and like rough-and-tumble play. • Both of these trends may be a throwback to the days when males were the hunters and fighters and women stayed home and took care of the children.

18. Maladaptive trends • Some evolved mechanisms aren’t adaptive in society any more. • Example: Obesity. • Ancestors often faced a scant food supply, so they developed a tendency to store fat when food was available. • Now our bodies like to carry around extra fat, and we’re resistant to losing weight (e.g., slower metabolisms when dieting)

19. Aging: Why does natural selection favor it? • Old people can no longer reproduce, so it would seem that once a person is past his reproductive potential, natural selection would have no use for him any more. • However, evolutionary psychologists believe that the wisdom of older people (and the fact that they’re often caregivers of younger generation) is adaptive, and therefore the “longevity gene” is considered a gene worthy of being passed down.