Endnote for Lecture 5: The General Laws of Child Psychological Development
In this lecture, Vygotsky begins by noting that the lecture title is oxymoronic—perhaps even
contradictory—because our investigation of development seems to yield no general laws that cover all
forms of development, and instead forces us to "dismember" development into separate processes.
To show how this can be done, he looks forward—briefly, and only in the introduction to the lecture—
to the second lecture series (to be published in 2016 by 사림터) on the problem of age periods. Age
periods appear as a particular case of some general laws that he has developed throughout: the
unevenness of development, the restructuring of inter-functional links, and the reversal of
dependencies. The undifferentiated psychology of infancy gives way to a toddlerhood dominated by
what Vygotsky calls “affective perception” (for in fact perception is not yet fully differentiated from
feeling). This in turn gives way to memory.
Just when we imagine that Vygotsky will lay out an orderly set of ages and stages as Piaget did,
however, he warns us not to imagine that functions are differentiated according to an orderly timetable (5-42). The fact of development brings into being new functions which greatly complicate
differentiation, so that the means of development itself must develop. The mechanism by which future
functions are differentiated changes, precisely because of the existence of already differentiated
functions. So it turns out that psychological development too does not have any general laws that can
define the process as a whole!
Once again, we divide the lecture into three parts. The first section, an introduction, reminds us of the
general laws of development (proportionality and restructuration) and offers examples of
undifferentiated functions from the age of infancy and early childhood: the development of perception,
thinking, and emotion (5-1~5-22). The next section lays out three basic laws: the consecutive and
non-homogenous differentiation of functions, the centrality and dominance of certain functions during
certain periods and the maximal development of the dominant function. (5-23~5-36). The conclusion
then introduces a completely new method by which functions may be differentiated, necessary
because of the increasing complexity of interfunctional links (5-37~5-48).
I Introduction: Do General Laws of Development Exist at All? Vygotsky begins by establishing the
necessity of differentiation, and shows how this can be done without violating the holism of analysis
into units by the example of age periods. (5-1~5-22).
A) Vygotsky notes that although development is whole, its uneven quality means that there can
be no general law covering all aspects of development. As a result, it is necessary to
differentiate development into different aspects. But of course, following the method of
analysis into units, we must ensure that the differentiated aspects have the basic properties
of the whole under investigation. This means that development, which is a process, can only
be differentiated into component processes, such as psychological development (covered in
this lecture) and physiological development (covered in the final two lectures). However, this
process of differentiation once again raises the old problem: there does not appear to be, in
either psychological development or physiological development, any general law covering all
aspects. Instead there seem to be a set of quite distinct stages linked in development. These
stages linked in development, are the age periods, in which one particular type of
development appears to dominate other types of development. (5-1~5-5)
B) Vygotsky reminds us that whether we are talking about psychological development or
physiological development, what develops is the relationship between systems and not
simply the systems themselves. For example, when the endocrine system develops, what
develops is not simply each individual gland but the relationship, the specific weight and the
proportion of the system occupied by the individual gland. Vygotsky complains that this rule,
quite generally recognized in physiological development (every mother knows that the
proportion of the child’s arms, legs, torso and head must change during development) has
been quite generally ignored in psychological development. It is, Vygotsky says, the whole
and the relationship of its parts that brings about development, rather than the growth of
individual parts that develops the whole. (5-6~5-9)
C) Vygotsky then illustrates this with three examples drawn from the problem of age periods.
1. During infancy, consciousness is largely undifferentiated: the infant certainly has memory
(and in fact the child has a great deal to take in and to remember, e.g. the faces of
caregivers, feeding routines, the precise details of the surroundings, voices, etc.).But that
memory is not separable from other activities of consciousness; it only occurs in
conjunction with perception as stimulus and affect as a response, and as a result it
cannot be voluntarily called to mind: a child cannot simply decide to remember something
and then remember it without any external stimulus at all. In other words, the function is
not externally differentiated by volition (5-10~5-13).
2. During infancy, memory itself is largely undifferentiated: the child remembers the
experience of drinking milk from a bottle of a certain color and shape, and will not drink if
given a bottle of a different color or shape. This suggests that the baby does not
differentiate the memory of the milk from the bottle, or the bottle from the color and the
shape. The baby remembers drinking square-blue-bottled milk. In other words, the
function is not internally differentiated by distinguishing between component functions of
memory. (5-14)
3. During infancy, the baby does not differentiate moving one limb and another; if given
something pleasant, the whole body and all of the limbs reach out towards the treat, and
if given something unpleasant, the whole body and all of the limbs move away. Vygotsky
argues that the most important moment in developing motor skills is the ability to
differentiate movement in one limb from another.
D) Vygotsky then asks how such differentiation takes place. He answers, first, that differentiation
takes place one group of functions at a time. For example, the first psychological function to
be differentiated is what is called “affective perception”. What he means by this is that
affective perception can operate separate (the child can see and appreciate a pleasant treat,
or shy away from an unpleasant experience without invoking any other psychological
functions) but other functions, such as memory, do not operate independently; the child
cannot and does not remember without the participation of perception (the child sees
something and remembers, but cannot simply remember without seeing). Similarly, the
emotions of the child depend on perception; it is for this reason that the child seems
uninterested in visible treats and forgets unpleasantness as soon as it is no longer visible (515~5-22).
II Three Basic Laws. Vygotsky then introduces three basic laws of differentiation: non-homogeneity,
dominance, and the maximal period of development.
A) The first law is that functions are externally differentiated consecutively rather than all
together, that they differentiate one by one rather than all at once (e.g. first affective
perception and then memory, rather than affective perception and memory differentiating
themselves simultaneously). There is internal differentiation within a function as well: the
components (e.g. differentiation between perception of visual from auditory perception, or
color from vision). (5-23~5-26).
B) The second law is that functions do not simply become independent, they become dominant.
So for example when affective perception is differentiated, it dominates functions like memory
and thinking, which are not related to each other, but mutually subordinated to affective
perception. (5-27~5-30).
C) The third law is that the period of dominance is also the period of maximum development. So
for example, from one and a half years to five years of age, speech develops more than
during other ages, during early childhood perception develops more than at any other time,
and during adolescence, sexual maturation develops more strongly than during other
periods. (5-31~5-36).
III Conclusion: Another Way that Differentiation Happens. Vygotsky now adds a fourth law, which
has the effect of limiting the application of the previous three laws to the very first years of life.
A) Vygotsky asks what is new when the new psychological system dominated by memory
arises in preschool and what is the same. (5-37~5-45).
1. The fact of the emergence of one function that then masters the others is the same.
For example, thinking becomes dominated by memory just as it was previously
dominated by affective perception. This new dominant function is not itself internally
differentiated. Just as affect and perception did not operate independently in affective
perception, we find that the memory in early preschool is quite holistic and concrete; it is
not of a long-term, selective nature as it is in adults, but rather short-term and still highly
colored by perception. (5-37~5-42)
2. The new facts are first of all that memory must REVERSE the dependency that existed
between affective perception and itself. When affective perception first arose from
undifferentiated conscoiusness in infancy, no such reversal is necessary; affective
perception had no competitor. (5-43), Secondly, memory must RESUBORDINATE all of
the functions which were previously assigned to affective perception; instead of replacing
general undifferentiated consciousness with the child's first system, one psychological
system based on affective perception is replaced with a different psychological system
based on memory (5-44~5-45).
B) Vygotsky describes the ascendance of the new psychological system as a kind of
treason: the new system begins as part of the old and initially supports it (that is, memory
begins as a loyal component of the system established by affective perception). He notes
that on the boundary between early childhood and preschool, it is hard to say which
dominates. (5-46)
C) As we proceed through further ages, beyond that of preschool, the situation grows far
more complex. Perception and memory are now differentiated and operate independently of
each other and of other functions; more, they have an internal differentiation as well
(perception of color is different from perception of shape, and perceptual memory is different
from verbal memory). All of the remaining functions have therefore served two different
masters, first being subordinated to affective perception and then to memory. Vygotsky
concludes that this re-subordination in itself has the power to change the interfunctional
links. This means that a new method of differentiation which does not pass through
dominance arises (5-47~5-48).
D) Previously, functions were externally differentiated by dominance. So for example,
affective perception becomes a dominant function with respect to the previously
undifferentiated forms of infant consciousness through an interaction of the child's
physiological sensory-motor development and the child's increasing ability to influence his or
her environment through gesture and speech. But now, functions may be externally and also
internally differentiated without becoming dominant functions, merely by being dominated by
pre-existing functions. For example, learning a second language is made very different by
the very fact that one already has a first one in place. (5-49~5-50).