Reading :: The Cultural-Historical Development of Verbal Thinking

The Cultural-Historical Development of Verbal Thinking
By Peeter Tulviste

I've seen this book referenced many times, mainly as a replication of Luria's 1930s study of cognition and literacy. Yes, Tulviste does reproduce that study, but there's much more to this book. It turned out to be thought-provoking along a range of issues.

First, I wanted to note an oddity in this particular book. I often buy books used on Amazon, especially in a case like this, when the book has been circulating for years (this one was published in 1991). This one came to me basically pristine -- except that the cover was glued on upside down. 

But what a small price to pay for this book. Tulviste is mainly interested in the question of studying "the so-called 'higher' mental processes": psychologists studying the "lower" processes through experiments with rats have had great success, but that success does not translate well to "higher" processes because they are less tractable to biological and physiological factors (p.2). To give an example, unlike rats, human beings have three types of memory:

• hereditary
• individual
• cultural (p.3)

and cultural memory, though not "seriously considered by psychologists" (p.3), is closely related to what Tulviste calls higher mental processes. Tulviste appeals to Vygotsky and Luria's cultural-historical school here. He adds that if "substantive differences are found in comparative studies of thinking in people of different cultures and cultural groups, then these indicate the significance of the conditions in the establishment and development of verbal thinking in the individual" (p.5). 

To undertake this project, he presents four long chapters:

1. He considers and compares various "theoretical conceptions of the historical development of thinking" (p.8), including those of Spencer, Levy-Bruhl, Vygotsky, Levi-Strauss, Bruner, and Cole.
2. He examines "certain theoretical problems of the historical development of thinking" (p.8), drawing from Vygotsky and Piaget.
3. He presents an empirical case comparing people who did and did not go to school in Kirghizia, contrasting these results with those produced by Luria, Cole, Scribner, and others.
4. He compares differences in thinking due to features of language vs. features of activity.

The book is rich, and I won't be going through every note I have. Here are some important notes:

In chapter 1, Tulviste summarizes Vygotsky's understanding of higher mental processes (p.28). Vygotsky understood these processes as mediated by signs and determined by social factors, and thus turned to culture as a new explanatory principle (p.28). In higher mental processes, cultural signs/sign systems, like tools, reinforce and transform natural processes. Tulviste claims that higher mental processes are subject only to such a cultural-historical explanation (p.30). He goes on to argue that Vygotsky's ideas about the cultural determination of higher mental processes was defined concretely by Leontiev (p.31). Interestingly, at the end of the 1920s, Vygotsky had planned research on the pedology of national minorities (p.35). 

In chapter 2, Tulviste summarizes Rubinshtein and Leontiev's activity approach, in which psyche is understood as being generated via activity to carry it out (p.69). Thinking along these lines, it seems natural and normal that cross-cultural differences and historical changes in verbal thinking will appear (p.71). Taking Vygotsky's view, the spread of schooling yields the spread of conscious reflection and new thinking operations (p.105). 

In chapter 3, Tulviste turns to cross-cultural studies of literacy, including those of Luria, Cole, Scribner, and himself. He characterizes Luria as wanting to study, not the character of thinking, but the transformation of thinking due to cultural changes (p.114). Tulviste also notes Vygotsky's literacy hypothesis: that in learning to write, we make words the objects of activity and cognition, and thus words become extractable from context and manipulable -- and Tulviste finds this hypothesis inadequate (p.159). 

Overall, I found this to be a fascinating book that ranged far wider than the replication study (of which I've said very little here). If you're interested in the relationship between language and cognition, or cross-cultural studies, or verbal thinking, or Vygotskian theory, definitely pick it up.