Adolescent Pedagogy Lev Vygotsky 1931
The theory of the purely quantitative evolution of thinking in adolescence and a criticism of this theory. – Evolution of the form and content of thinking in adolescence. – Theory of the development of higher psychological functions and the problem of intellectual development of the adolescent. – The formation of concepts regarded as the main factor characterizing adolescent psychology. – Methods of studying these concepts. – Ach’s and Rimat’s studies. – Functional methodology of double stimulation and the investigation of concept formation. – Investigation of the concept formation process. – Three stages in the development of the concept formation process: the stage of syncretic images; the stage of concrete complexes and the stage of potential concepts. – The structure and process of the formation of real concepts. – Changes in the content of thinking in connection with concept formation. – Comparative studies of the thinking structures in children and in adolescents.
1 Read the text and make up a plan and summary of the whole chapter.
2 Making use of the concept definition method, compare the answers to the same questions (about a number of different concrete and abstract concepts) given by a pre-school, a school age and an adolescent child and analyse these answers in the light of the account given in this chapter.
3 Study the three stages in the formation of concepts in the thinking process of a young child, a pre-school child, a school age child and an adolescent which are described in the text of the project.
4 Look for the presence of syncretism in the pre-school child’s explanations, of verbal syncretism in the school age child’s statement and for the disappearance of these phenomena in the adolescent’s answers.
5 Think about what conclusions can be drawn, based on the data obtained about the particular features of the intellectual development of adolescents, which might serve as a basis for an educational methodology, from the point of view of thinking content and form. 6 Using the method of completion of sentences by subordinate clauses after ‘because although . . .’, etc., determine at what stage full control of logical modes of thinking is achieved.
Currently, the history of thought development in adolescence, the age of transition, also finds itself in a somewhat transitional stage between old concepts and a new level of understanding of the process of intellectual maturation which has been formulated on the basis of new theoretical approaches to the psychological nature of speech and thinking, and on the development and functional and structural inter-relation of these processes. At the present time, in an article devoted to the study of adolescent thinking, paedology at the time of puberty is able to overcome the basic and fundamental prejudices and the disastrous misunderstandings which stand in the way of the development of accurate ideas about the crisis accompanying intellectual maturation which makes up the substance of adolescent thought development. This error is generally expressed in the statement that there is nothing fundamentally new in adolescent thinking as compared with the thought processes of the younger child. Some writers even take the extreme view, in defending the idea that puberty does not really mark the appearance of any sort of new intellectual operation in the thinking sphere which cannot already be found in a three-year-old child.
Looking at it from this point of view, the development of thinking has no central place in the maturation process. The vital momentous transformations which occur in literally all parts of the adolescent’s organism and personality during this crucial period, the uncovering of new deep layers of his personality and the development of the higher forms of his organic and cultural life – all this, when looked at from this perspective, does not in any way affect adolescent thinking. All these changes occur in other areas and spheres of the personality. The result is that the role of intellectual changes in the overall process of the maturation crisis in adolescence are disparaged and presented as having no significance.
Firstly, if one were to follow this point of view consistently, the very process of the intellectual changes which occur at this age is reduced to a simple quantitative accumulation of the same particular features which are already present in the thinking of a three year old and to a further purely quantitative growth to which, strictly speaking, the word ‘development’ can not really be applied.
In recent times this point of view has been most consistently followed by Ch. Bühler in her theory of adolescence in which, among others, a continuing, orderly development of the intellect during the period of pubescence is ascertained. This theory assigns an extremely insignificant role to the intellect within the overall system of these transformations and in the general structure of the processes which exemplify maturation, without recognizing the enormous positive significance of intellectual development for the fundamental and most profound transformation of the whole personality system of the adolescent. ‘Generally speaking’, says this author,
one can surmise that during puberty a more marked separation of dialectic and abstract thinking from perception occurs. For the belief that any intellectual operation only appears for the first time during the age of puberty belongs to those tales which child psychology has discredited. All possibilities for the later development of thinking are essentially already present in a child of three or four.[1]
To support these ideas, the author refers to K. Bühler’s study, which pursues the point of view that the most essential features of intellectual development, in the sense of a gradual ripening of the basic intellectual processes, take shape already at a very early age. Ch. Bühler thinks that the difference between thinking in young children and of adolescents is the fact that in the case of the child, visual perception and thinking are generally much more closely affiliated. She says:
A child rarely thinks in purely verbal or abstract terms. Even very talkative and verbally gifted children always proceed from a starting point of some concrete experience, and in cases where they are just carried away by a desire to speak, they generally chatter away without thinking. The mechanism is being exercised, without seemingly pursuing any other function. Furthermore, the fact that children draw conclusions and make judgements solely within the confines of their own concrete experience, and that their plans, in relation to their own short-term goals, are enclosed in a tight circle of visual perception, is well accepted and has given rise to the false assumption that children are completely incapable of abstract thinking.
This opinion has long since been refuted as it has been possible to establish that, from a very early age, a child perceives, whilst abstracting and selecting, and mentally rounds out with a kind of hazy general content, concepts such as good, bad, sweet, etc., as well as being able to develop other concepts through abstraction, to draw conclusions, etc. However, there can be no doubt that, in large measure, all these things are closely dependent on his visual perceptions and impressions.[2]
In adolescents, on the contrary, thinking becomes less constrained and less concrete than the sensory source on which it is based. Therefore we observe that the rejection of the idea of any essential changes in the intellectual development of the adolescent, inevitably leads to an affirmation of a process of simple growth of the intellect during puberty and its growing independence from sensory material. One ‘Way in which this idea could be formulated is that adolescent thinking acquires a sort of new quality in comparison with the thinking of young children as it becomes less concrete and furthermore, it intensifies and becomes strengthened, it increases and grows when compared with the thinking of a three year old; however, not a single .intellectual function has its origin during this entire transitional period and therefore thinking itself is not of any critical or decisive importance for the adolescent’s development in general, and it appears to occupy only an extremely insignificant place in the overall system during this critical period of maturation.
This view has to be considered the most traditional one and, unfortunately, is also the most widespread and the one which is not interpreted critically by the majority of contemporary theories of adolescence. Nonetheless, in the light of contemporary scientific data regarding adolescent psychology, this opinion strikes us as profoundly inadequate; its roots reach way back to old fashioned research, which dealt with nothing but the most external, superficial and obvious features, i.e. the change in the emotional state, among all the psychological changes taking place in a child undergoing the metamorphosis to adolescence.
In this sense, traditional adolescent psychology has a tendency to see the emotional changes as the central core and principal content of the whole crisis and to contrapose the development of the adolescent’s emotional life with the intellectual development of a school aged child. It seems to us that when the question is put in this way, everything appears turned on its head, and everything regarded in the light of that theory seems to us to be turned inside out: it is precisely when we see young children as the very emotional creatures which they are, in whose whole being emotion plays a pre-eminent role, that the adolescent appears to us, above all, as a thinking being. The traditional view is expressed most comprehensively and, at the same time, most concisely by Giese. He says: ‘Whilst the psychological development of a child before puberty primarily includes the functions of the senses, memory store, intellect and attention, the period of puberty is characterized by the development of an emotional life’.[3]
The logical course followed by this point of view leads to the banal approach to adolescents which tends to ascribe the entire psychological aspect of maturation to their heightened emotional state, dreaminess, outbursts and other such semi-dreamlike products of emotional life. The fact that the period of puberty is a time of striking growth of intellectual development and that, for the first time during that period thinking comes to the fore, not only remains unnoticed when this question is formulated in such a way, but it even takes on a mysterious and inexplicable hue in the light of this theory.
Other writers also hold the same view, for example Kroh who, like Bühler, regards all the variations found in adolescent thinking from that of younger children to be due to the fact that the visual basis of thinking which plays such an important role in childhood, recedes into the background during the period of puberty. This author derogates the importance of this difference even more, when, with good cause, he points out that often, between the concrete and the abstract forms of thinking, a transitional fleeting stage in the development process which is characteristic for adolescence manifests itself. This writer gives the fullest positive expression to this theory, shared by Bühler, when he writes: ‘We cannot expect a school aged child to progress to entirely new forms of thinking in the area of judgement. Differentiation, subtlety, a significant degree of self-assurance and awareness in the use of forms of expression already available at an earlier stage, should also be regarded as most essential challenges of development at this stage’.[4]
Kroh then summarizes the same point of view which brings together the development of the thinking process and the subsequent refinement of the previously existing forms in the following way:
To summarize what has been discussed so far, we can establish that both in the realm of the systems which process perceptions (selection, set, categorical perception and processing classification) and in the sphere of logical connections (concept, judgement, inference, criticism), no completely new forms of psychological functions and actions appear in children of school age. All these are in existence earlier, but during school age they undergo considerable development, which can be seen in their being used in a more differentiated, subtle and frequently even more conscious fashion.
If one is to render the meaning of this theory in one sentence, one could say that the appearance of new shades of nuances, more specialized and cognizant application contributes to the differences found in the thinking process of an adolescent as compared with that of a child.
Essentially the same view is developed in our literature by Rubinstein, who systematically considers all changes in the realm of thinking which occur during adolescence to be a continuation of a journey along a trail which has already been blazed in the thinking of the young child. In this respect Rubinstein is in complete agreement with Bühler.
Whilst rejecting Meumann’s stand, who believes that the ability to draw conclusions only fully develops in children at the age of 14, Rubinstein declares that not a single form of intellectual activity, not even the ability to draw conclusions, makes it, appearance for the first time in adolescence. This writer claims that the view which proclaims that, in the sphere of mental development, childhood can be differentiated from youth by the fact that the central thinking action, namely the ability to draw conclusions in the true sense of the word, only appears in adolescence, is entirely false. In actual fact, this is entirely untrue. There is no doubt that the central thinking process, including the ability to draw conclusions, is already to be found in children.
The only difference between the thinking of a child and that of an adolescent, is that what we as adults understand to be objectively immaterial, circumstantial and superficial, children interpret as essential qualities. ‘It is only in adolescence that the major premises as well as the personal definitions and judgements begin to be furnished with essential attributes and, in any case, the framework of the tendency to find them and not to be simply guided by the first superficial feature, becomes clearly apparent.'[5]
So the whole difference can be ascribed to the fact that among children and adolescents the same modes of thinking are provided with a different content. Rubinstein even talks about an expansion of awareness. In children, these forms are filled with non-material attributes; in adolescents a tendency to fill them with material attributes first appears. Therefore, the whole difference is in the material, in the content and in the filling. The forms remain the same and, at best, undergo a process of further development and consolidation. Among such new shades and nuances, Rubinstein includes the ability to think to the point, a markedly increased steadfastness in the direction of the thinking process, greater flexibility, a wider scope and mobility of thought and other similar characteristics.
The reason why this theory is of particular interest can easily be seen from the retort which its author directs toward all those who have a tendency to deny that a sharp rise and intensification occurs in the mental development of adolescents and young people. This is how Rubinstein defends the idea that the intellectual development of the adolescent is characterized by just such a marked improvement and intensification:
Observations of fact point to this and theoretical considerations lead us in the same direction, otherwise we would have to assume that the influx of new experiences, of new content and new relationships contributes nothing at all and that the causes remain without effects. Thus, one has to look for typical signs of an intensification of mental development not only in the appearance of new interests and inquiry, but also in the deepening and broadening of old ones, in their range and in the entire reach of life’s concerns.
In this speculation Rubinstein exhibits the same internal contradiction which, in equal measure, is present in all the theories which want to deny the appearance of anything essentially new in the thinking process during the period of sexual maturation. However, all writers who deny the emergence of new forms of thinking in adolescence, agree about one thing, namely that the amplification of this process of thinking, its content and the material with which it operates, the objectives towards which it strives, in other words the adolescent’s thinking from the point of view of its contents, are undergoing a real revolution.
This gap in the evolution of form and content of the process of thinking is very characteristic of any dualistic and metaphysical psychological system incapable of formulating an evolutionary theory of the forms and content in thinking in a dialectically unified manner. This fact is so deeply symptomatic, that the most consistently idealist system of adolescent psychology which is developed in Spranger’s book, passes over in complete silence the subject of the development of thinking during adolescence. [6]
Not a single chapter in the book is devoted to this problem, but at the same time the entire book, which is dominated by one prevalent idea, is given over to the discovery of the process which, according to Spranger, forms the basis of maturation and which is called the adolescent’s growing into the culture of his time. One chapter after another is devoted to the examination of how the content of adolescent thinking changes, how this thinking obtains completely new material and how it infiltrates entirely new cultural spheres. For Spranger, the adolescent’s penetration into the spheres of law and politics, professional life and morality, science and ideology, all make up the central core of the maturation process, but the adolescent’s intellectual functions themselves, the patterns of thought, its composition, structure and the type of activity which is part of his intellectual operations, remain constant and timeless.
When one gives these theories some more careful consideration, it is difficult to get rid of the sensation that they are based on a very rough, simplistic and psychologically elementary concept of form and content in the thinking process. According to this concept, the relationship between the form and the content of thinking are quite reminiscent of the relationship between a vessel and the liquid which it contains: the same mechanical filling of an empty, hollow form, the same prospect of filling up the same unchanging form with ever new content, the same internal incoherence, mechanical contraposition of the vessel and the liquid, i.e. the form and the substance filling it.
From the point of view of this theory, the profound revolution in the content of the adolescent’s thinking which is wholly renewing itself at all points, is in no way connected with the development of those intellectual operations which are indispensable for the formation of any sort of thinking process.
According to many writers, this revolution occurs either from the outside, in such a way that the same unchangeable forms of thinking, always duplicating themselves at every new stage of development depending on the level of enriched experience and wider association with the environment, are being replenished with ever new content, or the driving mechanism of this revolution is concealed beneath a veil of thought in the adolescent’s emotional life. It is capable of mechanically plugging in this thought into a completely new system and directing it, like a simple mechanism, towards a new content.
In both cases the evolution of the thinking content turns out to be an unbridgeable chasm which keeps the evolution of intellectual forms apart. The fact that, without exception, any theory which consistently strives in this direction comes up against such internal contradictions, can be easily demonstrated by the plain example that not a single one of the above mentioned theories denies – and cannot deny – that a profound and fundamental revolution in the realm of the content of adolescent thinking, and a complete renewal of the entire material composition which fills up the empty forms, does indeed take place.
So, Bühler, who finds all the basic intellectual operations peculiar to adolescents already present in a three year old, confines her statement to the purely formal aspect of the problem in question. As far as the content of thinking is concerned she would, of course, refuse to take seriously any statement which would maintain that, in the realm of content of adolescent thinking, nothing evolves which is significantly new in comparison with what is already present in the thinking process of a three-year-old child.
So Bühler cannot deny the fact that only with the advent of adolescence, a transition to a formal logical thinking process is achieved. She refers to Ormian’s painstaking study in this field, who was able to demonstrate that a turning point towards a strictly formal mode of thinking can only be observed at about 11 years of age.[7] As far as the content of thinking is concerned she, too, like Spranger, devotes a significant part of her work to the elucidation of new layers of ethical contents, religious concepts and the rudiments of ideology in adolescent development.
In exactly the same way, Kroh points out the fact that, along with the new variations which he associates with the development of thinking during school age, it is only in adolescence that the ability to handle logical concepts manifests itself. Referring to Berger’s study, which deals with the problem of categorical perception and its pedagogic significance, he comes to the conclusion that the perceiving and regulating function of psychological categories first appears in an explicit fashion in experiences and memories only during puberty.
It seems, therefore, that all the writers agree that, whilst they all deny the presence of any new configurations in the realm of intellectual forms, any investigator is forced to admit that there occurs a situation of complete renewal of the entire content of the thinking process during adolescence.
The reason why we have analysed and criticized this point of view in such detail is that without overthrowing it decisively, without disclosure of this theoretical foundation and without contrasting it with new points of view, we can see no other way of finding a methodological and theoretical key to the whole problem of the development of thinking in adolescence. This is why, for us, to understand the details of the theoretical foundations on which all these different (albeit similar from the point of view of their central essence) theories are constructed is of primary importance.
As has been mentioned above, the main cause of this theoretical muddle is the gap between the evolution of form and content of thinking. In its turn, this gap is a result of another fundamental failing of the older psychology and child psychology in particular, namely that until recently child psychology had no real scientific concept of the nature of the higher psychological functions.
The observed phenomenon where higher psychological functions are not seen simply as a continuation of the basic functions and their automatic combination, but as an intrinsically new psychological creation whose development follows very special rules and which conforms to entirely different natural laws, has till now not succeeded in becoming part of child psychology.
Higher psychological functions are the product of the historical development of humanity and its phylogenetic plan, but they also have their special ontogenic record. This history of the development of higher forms of behaviour reveals a direct and close dependence on the organic and biological development of the child and on the growth of his elementary psycho-physiological functions. But in this instance, association and dependence are not one and the same thing.
It is for this reason that in our study we must demarcate the line of development of higher forms of behaviour in the ontogenetic sphere and trace it along all the stages of its conformity to natural laws, not forgetting for one moment about its association with the general organic development of the child. At the beginning of our course, we had already developed the idea that human behaviour in its present form is not only the product of biological evolution, which has resulted in the creation of a human type with all its existing psycho-physiological functions, but is equally a product of a historical development of behaviour or cultural development. Behavioural development did not stop at the beginning of the history of human existence, but neither did it simply continue along the same road as the biological development of behaviour.
The historical development of behaviour was an organic part of the whole process of human social development and fundamentally it conformed to those natural laws which define the progress of historical human development in general. Similarly, in the ontogeny of the development of a child, we should be able to distinguish both lines of the development of behaviour, albeit represented in an interlocked way and in a complicated dynamic synthesis. However, a study which would fully correspond o the real complexity of this synthesis and which would not, at all costs, strive to simplify the issue, would necessarily have to take into account the whole distinctive framework of higher forms of behaviour which are the product of child development. In contrast to Spranger, serious scientific studies show that during cultural behavioural development not only did the content of the thinking process undergo a change but its form did as well, and new mechanisms, new functions, new operations, new spheres of activity, unknown at earlier stages of historical development, were coming into being and falling into place. In the same way, the process of the child’s cultural development does not simply include the process of growing into one or other cultural sphere, and does not only represent the filling up of thought with ever new cultural content, but, alongside the development of the content, involves a step by step development of the form of thinking, as well as those higher forms and spheres of activity which originated in the historical Past and whose development makes up the necessary conditions for this process of growing into culture.
In actual fact, any truly serious study brings home to us the reality of the unity and indivisibility of form and content, i.e. structure and function, and it shows how any new step forward in the realm of development of the content of thinking, is also inextricably linked with the acquisition of, new mechanisms of behaviour and with the raising of intellectual operations to a higher stage.
Certain contents can only be adequately represented with the help of certain forms. Thus, the content of our dreams cannot be adequately expressed in the form of logical thinking, or in the form of logical connections and attitudes, and it is inseparably linked with pertinent archaic, ancient, primitive forms or ways of thinking. And the opposite is true as well: the content of one or other science, the adoption of a complex system, for example mastery of modern algebra, does not suggest a straightforward filling up with appropriate contents of the same forms which already exist in a three-year-old child; this new content cannot come into being without new forms. The dialectical unity of form and content in the evolution of thinking is the beginning and end of contemporary scientific theory of speech and thought.
Actually, is it not rather puzzling from the point of view of theories (outlined above) which deny that adolescent thinking reaches a new qualitative stage, that contemporary research has worked out standards for mental development which require, like, for example, in the case of the Binet-Simon tests (in the version of Burt-Blonsky),[8] a description and explanation of a painting from a child of 12, solutions to some major problems in life from a 13-year old, a definition of abstract terms from a 14-year-old adolescent, at the age of 15 the pointing out of differences between abstract terms, and at 16 years old the ability to grasp the meaning of a philosophical argument?
Is it possible for these empirically established symptoms of intellectual development to become comprehensible from the point of view of a theory which allows for nothing more than new variations arising in adolescent thinking? From the point of view of nuances, how is one to account for the circumstance where the average 16-year-old adolescent reaches the stage of mental development where the understanding of the meaning of a philosophical argument can serve as a significant indicator and symptom?
Only an inability to distinguish between the evolution of elementary and higher functions of thinking and between forms of intellectual activity which are chiefly biologically conditioned and those which are mainly historically derived, could lead one to deny a qualitatively new stage in the development of adolescent intellect. It is perfectly true that new elementary functions do not appear in adolescence. This situation, as has been rightly pointed out by K. Bühler, is fully confirmed by biological data in relation to the increase in weight of the brain. Edinger, one of the outstanding brain experts, has formulated the following general thesis: ‘Anyone who knows the brain structure in the animal domain will have become convinced that the appearance of any new skills is always connected with the appearance of new parts of the brain or with the enlargement of existing ones’.[9]
Edinger’s thesis, which he developed for the phylogeny of the psyche, is now frequently and readily applied to ontology as well, in an attempt to grasp the parallelism between the development of the brain, as far as this is testified to by its increase in weight, and the appearance of new skills. But it is often overlooked that the parallelism can only apply to elementary functions and abilities which are the product of biological behavioural evolution like the brain itself, but, as it happens, the essence of historical evolution of behaviour is precisely dependent on the appearance of new skills, which are not connected with the development of new parts of the brain nor with the growth of existing ones.
There are good reasons to assume that the historical development of behaviour from its primitive form to the most complex and highest, did not occur as a result of the development of new parts of the brain or the growth of existing ones. This is the essential characteristic of adolescence, as it is, for the most part, the age of cultural development and the development of higher psychological functions. Blonsky is absolutely correct when he makes the following comment about it: ‘The period of the eruption of permanent teeth can be regarded as the child’s civilizing age, the era when he acquires a store of contemporary knowledge, beginning with the ability to write and when he comes into contact with modern technology. Civilization is still much too recent an acquisition of humanity for it to be hereditary’.[10]
So it would be unreasonable to expect the evolution of higher psychological functions to progress in a parallel manner with the development of the brain, which is mainly brought about by hereditary forces. According to Pfister’s findings, the brain doubles its original weight during the first nine months and it trebles it by the end of the third year; however, throughout the entire developmental period, the brain only quadruples in size. ‘One of the phenomena of child psychology’, says Bühler, ‘fully concurs with this finding. The child acquires all the basic mental functions during the first three or four years of life, but never again during the rest of his life does he achieve the same sort of mental progress as, for example, during the time he is learning how to speak.'
We wish to emphasize again that this parallelism can only apply to the maturing of the elementary functions which are the product of biological evolution and which emerge along with the growth of the brain and its parts. It is for this reason that we must agree with Bühler’s thesis only to a limited extent when he says: ‘We dare to hope that some day we will be able to discover physiological grounds for every major stage of progress in the mental life of a normal child within the development of the structure of the large brain.’ [12]
We feel bound to put a restriction on this thesis because it is basically applicable to changes in the development of the psyche which are determined by heredity, but the complex syntheses which take place during the process of a child’s or adolescent’s cultural development have their roots in other factors, and these, above all, include social relationships, cultural development and children’s and adolescents’ work activities.
Granted, some people hold the view that the most profound intellectual leaps served during this transitional period are due to an intensification of the development of the brain which occurs during adolescence. Blonsky’s hypothesis states that ‘ the milk tooth stage of childhood, in contrast to the preceding and the following stages, is not characterized by any intensive development of thought and speech, but rather it is a phase of the development of motor and co-ordination skills and emotions.’ Blonsky links this phenomenon with the fact that during the milk tooth stage, intensive growth of the spinal cord and cerebellum occurs, in contrast with the toothless and school age stages, which are mainly characterized by intensive cortical (intellectual) development. Observations of the dramatic transformation of the forehead in the pre-pubertal age, lead this author to the conclusion that during school age the primary site of development is to be found in the frontal part of the cerebral cortex. However, based on the same evidence which Blonsky relies on and which he, himself, calls shaky and not very reliable, we feel justified in drawing conclusions about the intensive development of the brain only in relation to the pre-pubertal, i.e. primary school age.
But there are no factual data available to support these proposals with respect to the age of puberty or adolescents. It is true that, according to the findings of Vyazemsky,[13] quite a significant increase in the weight of the brain can be observed at age 14-15, then after a brief pause and slackening, slight new rises at age 17-19 and 19-20 occur. But if we take the latest data into account, we will see that there is only an insignificant increase in the weight of the brain during the whole period of development from age 14-20. So, we have to look for new ways of explaining the intensive intellectual development which takes place during the period of puberty.
As a result, the changeover from research largely based on external phenomena and on phenotypical likeness to a more profound investigation of the genetic, functional and structural nature of thinking for the different age groups, inevitably forces us to reject the traditional view, which tends to identify adolescent thinking with that of a three year old. And that is not all: even that part of those theories which admits the existence of qualitative differences between the thinking processes of a young child and that of an adolescent, makes the mistake of listing first the positive achievement, and only later the really new phenomena which emerge during that period.
As can be seen from new research data, the assertion that the abstract is out of touch with the concrete and the hypothetical with the visual in adolescent thinking is incorrect; the dynamics of thinking during this period are not characterized by the fact that the connections between intellect and its material base where it originates are severed, but rather by the emergence of a completely new form of relationship between the abstract and the concrete aspects of the thinking process, a new form of fusion or synthesis, and we now see such elementary, long since crystallized functions like the child’s visual thought, perception or practical intellect in a completely new way.
This is why Bühler’s and some other theories prove untenable not only in respect to what they deny, but also in what they affirm, not only in their negative aspect, but in the positive parts as well. The opposite is also true: not only do completely new and hitherto non-existing complex synthetic forms, absolutely unknown to a three year old, appear in the adolescent’s thinking process, but even these elementary primitive forms which the child acquires already at the age of three, transform themselves into entirely new principles during adolescence. It is not only that new forms appear during the period of puberty, but it is precisely on account of their appearance that the old ones are transformed according to a completely new principle.
So, whilst summarizing what has been discussed above, we come to the conclusion that the most serious methodological weakness to be found in traditional theory consists of the flagrant internal contradiction between the affirmation of a profound revolution which is taking place in the realm of the content of the adolescent thinking process, and the refutation of any sort of real breakthrough in the evolution of its intellectual function, in its inability to correlate form and content in the development of thinking.
As we have attempted to demonstrate, this rift is, in its turn, caused by the inability to distinguish between two lines in the development of behaviour, i.e. the line of development of the elementary and that of the higher psychological functions. At the present time we feel we are in a position to formulate the main idea which has constantly guided our critical investigations, based on the conclusions which we have drawn.
We could say that this fatal rift between form and content inevitably stems from the situation that the evolution of the thought content is always considered to be a process of cultural development which, first and foremost, is conditioned by historical and social factors, whereas development of the form is normally looked upon as a biological process conditioned by the level of the child’s organic maturation and parallel to the increase in the weight of the brain. When we talk about the content of the thinking process and the changes which it undergoes, we have in mind a historically variable, socially conditioned quantity which originates in the process of cultural development; but when we are discussing the forms of thinking and their dynamics, because of the misunderstandings arising from traditional psychology, we usually mean either metaphysically inert psychic functions or biologically conditioned, organically generated forms of activity.
So a great chasm continues to gape between these two concepts. The historical and the biological aspect of the child’s development end up separated from one another and it is impossible to build a bridge of any sort between them, which might help us unite facts and data pertaining to the dynamics of form in the thinking process with the facts or data about the dynamics of the content which fills this form.
It is only with the introduction of the principles of higher forms of behaviour which are the product of historical evolution, and the marking out of a particular line of historical development, or the development of higher psychological function in the ontogeny of behaviour, that it will become possible to fill in this abyss, to throw a bridge across it and to begin to study the dynamics of form and content of the thinking process in their dialectic unity. We can then correlate the dynamics of content and form through their common historical character which, in equal measure, will identify both the content of our thoughts and their higher psychological functions.
Therefore, to proceed from these ideas, which in their totality comprise the principles of the child’s cultural development expounded by us elsewhere, we can find the key for a correct formulation and thus a correct solution to the problem of the development of adolescent thinking.
According to a number of research findings, the key to the whole problem of the development of thinking during adolescence is the established fact that an adolescent masters the process of concept formation for the first time and that he progresses to a new and higher form of intellectual activity, i.e. to thinking in concepts.
This central phenomenon of the entire adolescent period and the underestimation of the significance of the intellectual development of the adolescent, the tendency inherent in the majority of contemporary theories of adolescence to relegate the changes which have an intellectual character to the background, as compared with the emotional and other aspects of this age group, can be explained, firstly, by the fact that the formation of concepts is an extremely complex process which, by no means, can be considered to be analogous to the simple maturation of elementary intellectual functions, and for this reason resists any attempt to explain it by using superficial examples or rough eye estimates. The changes which occur in the thinking process of an adolescent who has mastered thinking in concepts, are to a large extent changes of an internal, intimate, structural nature, frequently not externally visible in any clear way and not always evident to an outside observer.
And if we are to limit ourselves only to such externally observable changes, we will have to agree with those researchers who suggest that nothing appears for the first time in adolescent thinking and that it just grows quantitatively, in a constant and gradual way, filling up with continually new content and becoming ever more accurate, more logical and closer to reality. But one only needs to proceed from a purely external observation to an internal investigation in depth to see this whole teaching crumble to dust. As has been mentioned already, the formation of concepts takes centre stage in the whole developmental process of thinking during the period of puberty. This process is indeed a herald of revolutionary changes to come, both in the realm of content as well as in that of forms of thinking. We have already discussed the fact that from the methodological point of view, the rift between the form and the content of thinking which underpins the majority of theories like an unspoken premise, is untenable. The reality is that form and content in the thinking process represent two aspects of one single integral process, two aspects which are internally bound up with one another by an essential, not an accidental bond.
There exist particular types of thought contents which can be properly understood, assimilated and perceived and are generally conceivable only in certain forms of intellectual activity. But there are also other contents which cannot be adequately reproduced in the same form, but require different forms of thinking which, together, make up one indivisible whole. So, for example, the contents of our dreams cannot be adequately communicated within the system of logically singular verbalization, within the forms of verbal, logical intellect; any attempt to reproduce the content of a dream through imagery in the form of logical speech, inevitably results in a misrepresentation of that content.
The same applies to scientific knowledge; for example mathematics, natural sciences and social sciences cannot be adequately communicated and represented in any other way except in the form of logical verbal thought. Content, therefore, turns out to be closely bound up with form, and when we say that the adolescent achieves a higher level in his thinking process and masters the art of concept formation, we are certainly pointing out a new domain of forms of intellectual activity and an equally new world of thought content which, at that time, unfolds for the adolescent.
So, by the very presence of the formation of concepts, we find a solution to the contradiction between the abrupt changes in the thought content and the immobility of its forms during adolescence which had inevitably arisen in several of the theories which were examined above. A number of contemporary studies bring us to the incontrovertible conclusion that it is precisely the formation of concepts which constitutes the basic core around which all the essential changes in adolescent thinking congregate.
Ach, the author of one of the most interesting studies on the formation of concepts, whose book dominates a whole era of research related to this problem, whilst attempting to elaborate the complex picture of the ontogeny of the formation of concepts, picks out the age of adolescence as being just such a borderline critical moment which marks a decisive qualitative turning point in the development of the thinking process. This is what he says:
We are able to establish one more swiftly passing phase in the process of the intellectualization of mental development. As a rule, it tends to coincide with the period of puberty. Up to the time of sexual maturity, the child often lacks the ability to form abstract concepts, as, for example, has been demonstrated by Eng’s observations. But thanks to the influence of instruction, using educational material which, for the most part, necessarily consists of general concepts which express some sort of laws or rules, attention tends to turn more and more in the direction of abstract associations under the influence of speech and thus results in the formation of abstract concepts.[14]
As the two basic factors leading up to the formation of abstract concepts, Ach mentions, on the one hand, the influence of the material of assimilated learning and, on the other, the guiding influence of speech on the adolescent’s consciousness. He cites Gregor’s studies, which have shown the enormous influence of learning on the development of abstract thinking.
This gives us an indication of the genetic role of the new content which is now becoming part of the adolescent’s thinking process, and which obliges him to progress towards new forms and faces him with problems which are soluble only with the help of formed concepts. On the other hand, functional changes in the direction of awareness which are achieved with the help of speech also appear. A climax in the development of thinking and the progression to conceptual thinking is thus brought about, both by a change of function, and by the new problems which now face the adolescent’s thought process in connection with the necessity of having to master new abstract material.
According to Ach, as a result of the progression to this higher stage, both the process of intellectualization and the progression to conceptual thinking, increasingly narrow down the orbit of visual thinking and thinking in images. This brings about atrophy of the type of thought inherent in childhood, which now the child has to abandon and replace with the creation of a completely new form or type of intellect.
In connection with this, Ach points out a problem to which we intend to return in the next section. He asks whether this reality of the progression from imagistic thinking to conceptual thinking may not be responsible for the circumstance that the eidetic tendency, investigated by Jaensch, is much less frequently encountered in this age group than in childhood.[15]
Until recent times, the main difficulty in the area of concept investigation was that no proper experimental methods had been devised which could be used for attempting a deeper analysis of the process of the formation of concepts and studies of its psychological nature.
All the traditional methods of investigating concepts fall into two basic groups. A typical example of methodology belonging to the first group is the so-called definition method and all its indirect variations. This method is characterized by the investigation of the child’s already functional and formed concepts by verbal definition of their content. It is precisely this method which has been adopted by the majority of test-based research. Despite its wide use, this method suffers from two basic shortcomings which make it impossible to rely on it in cases where a deep investigation of the process is called for.
1 It deals with the result of a previously completed process of concept formation, with a finished product, but does not catch the dynamics of this process, its development, nor its course, beginning and end. This is rather an investigation of a product than of a process which has led up to the formation of this product. Because of this, when we define ready made concepts, very often we are dealing not so much with the child’s thought process, as with a replica, a reproduction of ready made information and definitions apprehended ready made. When we analyse the definition given by the child for this or that concept, we frequently learn much more about the child’s awareness, experience and the level of his speech development than about his thinking in the true sense of the word.
2 The definition method operates almost exclusively by using words, forgetting that, particularly for a child, a concept is closely linked with sensory material, from whose perception and reworking process it comes into being; both the sensory material and the word are indispensable features of the process of concept formation, and words which are cut off from this material transform this whole process of the definition of the concept into a purely verbal plan which is not natural for a child. It is for this reason that, when this method is used, one is hardly ever able to establish the relationships which exist between the meaning which the child assigns to the word using a purely verbal definition, and its true, real meaning which corresponds to the word in the process of its living relationships with the objective reality which it signifies.
For all this, the most essential thing for a concept, i.e. its relationship to reality, remains unexplored; we tried to get near the meaning of a word by using another word, and what we get as a result of this operation can sooner be applied to relationships which exist between separate adopted verbal clusters than to a true reflection of childish concepts.
The second group of methods includes those for the study of abstractions which attempt to overcome the shortcomings of the purely verbal definition method, and which try to understand the psychological functions and processes which lie at the foundation of the concept formation process and the sorting out of the visual experience from which concepts arise. They all present the child with the problem of selecting any general feature from a number of concrete impressions, of segregating and abstracting this feature or attribute from a number of others which are merged with it in the process of perception, and to generalize the characteristic which is common to a large number of impressions.
This set of methods has the drawback that in place of the complex synthetic process, they substitute an elementary one which is part of it and ignore the role of words or signs in the process of concept formation, by which means they infinitely oversimplify the very process of abstraction, treating it as if it were outside the special and characteristic relationship which the concept formation process happens to have with words which represent the central distinctive signs of the entire process. So it appears that traditional methods of research into concepts are both equally characterized by a withdrawal of the word from the objective material – they operate either with words but without the objective material, or with the objective material but without words.
A great step forward in the field of research into concepts was the creation of an experimental method which made a successful attempt to reflect the process of concept formation, which includes both these features, i.e. material on the basis of which the concept is developed, and the word, which helps it to come into existence.
We will not dwell upon the complex history of the development of this new method of research into concepts; suffice it to say that when it was introduced, a whole new world opened up for the researchers – they began to study not just ready made concepts, but the very process of their formation. In particular this method, in the form in which it was used by Ach, can justifiably be called a syntheticgenetic method, as it investigates the process of the establishment of the concept, the synthesization of a number of signs which make it up and the process of its development.
The underlying principle of this method is the introduction into the experiment of non-existent words, which are initially meaningless to the subject and which are not connected with the child’s earlier experiences, and also of artificial concepts which are specially constructed for experimental purposes by combining a number of features never found in the realm of our normal concepts, and which are given meaning during speech in this particular association. So, for example, in Ach’s experiments the word ‘Gazun’, which, to begin with, the subject finds meaningless, gradually acquires meaning in the course of experience and begins to carry a meaning which amounts to something big and heavy; or the word ‘fal’ begins to signify something small and light.
In the process of acquiring experience before the experiment, the whole routine of trying to make sense of the meaningless word, the acquisition of a meaning for the word and the working out of the concept begins. Thanks to the introduction of nonexistent words and artificial concepts, this method frees itself of one of the most serious weaknesses which pervade other methods, namely, it does not assume any previous experience or knowledge and therefore, in this respect, it puts young children on a par with adults for the purposes of solving the problem which faces the experimental subject.
Ach applied his method in exactly the same way to a five year old and to an adult, putting them on a par with one another from the point of view of their knowledge. As a result, his method is also applicable to adults and allows the investigation of the process of concept formation in its pure form.
One of the main faults of the definition method is that the concept breaks away from its natural connection and it is examined in a congealed static form, outside its association with real thought processes in which it is normally found and in which it originates and resides. The experimenter takes an isolated word and the child is supposed to define it, but this definition of an extracted, isolated word which is taken in a congealed form does not, in the least, tell us how it is understood in action, how the child manages it in a living situation of problem solving and how he uses it when a real live need arises.
According to Ach, this ignoring of the functional factor is, in essence, a refusal to take into consideration that a concept does not live in isolation and that it does not represent a congealed immovable phenomenon, but on the contrary, it is always found within a living, more or less complex thinking process and it always fulfils either a communicative, an interpretative or a comprehending function, or attempts to solve a problem.
But the new method does not suffer from this shortcoming, as it gives a central place to precisely these functional aspects of concept formation. It approaches a concept in connection with one or other problem or requirement generated by the thinking process, in connection with comprehension or communication, in a direction or problem solving situation which cannot be implemented without concepts being formed. All these things taken together mark this new method as an important and valuable tool for understanding the development of concepts. And even though Ach himself did not devote any special study to the question of concept formation in adolescence, nevertheless, whilst relying on the results of his investigations, he could not have failed to notice the dual revolution, embracing both the content and form of thought, which occurs during the period of the adolescent’s intellectual development and signifies the transition to thinking in concepts.
Rimat devoted a special, very thoroughly elaborated study to the process of concept formation in adolescence, which he conducted with the help of a slightly modified version of Ach’s method. The basic conclusion reached as a result of this research can be summarized by saying that concept formation appears only with the coming of adolescence and up till that time it is inaccessible to a child. ‘We can say with certainty’, he writes, ‘that only beginning at the age of 12 a marked improvement in the ability to independently form general objective concepts appears. I think that it is important to take account of this fact. Thinking in concepts which is a function remote from visual experiences, makes demands which exceed a child’s psychological capabilities ... until the 12th year of life.’ [16]
We are not going to go into the methods used in carrying out this experiment, nor into any other theoretical conclusions and results which its author was able to draw from it. We are going to limit ourselves to pointing out the basic result which indicates that despite the views of some psychologists, who disallow the appearance of any new intellectual function in adolescence and who maintain that every child of three is already in possession of all the intellectual operations which make up the adolescent’s thinking process – despite this assertion, specific investigations show that only after the age of 12, i.e. only at the beginning of the pubescent period and after the end of the primary school age, do the processes which lead to the formation of concepts and abstract thinking begin to develop in children.
One of the basic conclusions we can draw from Ach’s and Rimat’s studies, is to refute the associative point of view in relation to concept formation. Ach’s investigation has shown that no matter how numerous and durable the associative connections among various verbal signs and various objects might be, just this fact alone is an entirely inadequate cause for concept formation to occur. Therefore, the old idea that a concept arises purely by following an associative path due to the greatest reinforcements of certain associative connections which correspond to attributes common to a number of objects, and the weakening of other associations which correspond to attributes in which these objects differ, has not been confirmed by experimental evidence.
Ach’s experiments have shown that the process of concept formation always has a productive rather than reproductive character. The concept comes into being and is formed through a complex operation which is directed toward a solution of a problem, and the presence of only external circumstances and a mechanical establishment of a connection between a word and an object is not sufficient cause for it to come into being. Along with the establishment of this non-associative and productive character of the process of concept formation, these experiments have led to another, no less important conclusion, namely the establishment of a fundamental factor defining the whole course of this process in general. According to Ach, this factor is the so-called determining tendency.
Ach assigns this term to the tendency which regulates the course of our conceptions and actions, which originates in our notion of a goal for whose attainment all the striving of this trend is directed, beginning with the problem toward whose solution all the observed activity is directed. Before Ach, psychologists differentiated between two basic tendencies which are subordinated to the flow of our perception, the reproductive or associative tendency and the persevering tendency. The first of these signifies the tendency, in the succession of ideas, to evoke those which were associatively connected with information from earlier experiences; the second points to the tendency of each conception to keep returning and repeatedly to infiltrate the tide of conceptions.
In his earlier investigations Ach has demonstrated that both these tendencies are insufficient grounds for explaining both the purposeful and consciously regulated thinking acts which are directed toward solving problems, and that these are regulated, not so much by reproduction of concepts according to an associative connection and the tendency of each conception to infiltrate the consciousness again and again, but rather by a particular determining tendency which originates from a conception of a goal. In his investigation of concepts, Ach again demonstrates that the central feature without which no new concept can arise, is the regulating action of the determining tendency, which originates from the problem which the experimental subject is presented with.
So, according to Ach’s scheme, concept formation is not formed according to a chain of associations, where one link calls up and brings along with it the next one to which it is connected by association, but rather according to a type of purposeful process which consists of a number of operations which play a role of means in relationship to the solution to the basic problem. The learning by heart of words and the association of them with objects, in itself does not lead to concept formation; it is necessary for the experimental subject to be faced with a problem, which cannot be solved any other way except with the help of concept formation, in order for this process to be set in motion.
As has already been mentioned above, Ach made a great stride forward in comparison with former researchers, in the sense that the processes of concept formation were included within the structure of a resolution of a particular problem, and in the sense that the functional meaning and the role of this feature were investigated. However, this is not enough, because the objective which is the problem in itself, of course, makes up the one absolutely necessary feature for the process, which is functionally linked with its solution, to arise; pre-school and primary school children have goals as well, but neither a child from this latter age group nor from the former, nor generally speaking (as has already been said) any child below the age of 12, who is perfectly capable of realizing that a problem exists, is, however, as yet capable of working out a new concept.
And even Ach himself also showed in his studies that pre-school children, whilst trying to solve a problem with which they are faced, differ from adults and adolescents in their approach, not because they apprehend the goal more or less fully or correctly, but because they go about developing the whole process of attempting to solve the problem in a totally different manner. In a complex experimental investigation of concept formation in pre-school, children, which we discuss below, Usnadze has demonstrated that a pre-school child attacks problems in precisely this functional matter in exactly the same way as an adult when the latter is operating with concepts, but the child solves these problems in a completely different way. Just like the adult, the child uses words as a tool; therefore, for him words are linked with the function of communication in exactly the same way as for an adult.
It therefore appears that it is not the problem itself, the goal or the determining tendencies which result from it, that condition the essential genetic differences between thinking in images and other forms of thinking in the adult as opposed to the young child, but some other factors which have not been mentioned by this researcher.
Usnadze drew particular attention to one of the functional aspects which Ach’s investigations had brought to the fore, i.e. the instant of communication, of mutual understanding among people with the aid of speech. ‘Words serve as a tool for mutual understanding among people’, says Usnadze,
It is precisely this circumstance which plays the decisive role in concept formation: when the necessity of mutual understanding arises, a specific sound complex takes on a specific meaning and so it becomes a word or a concept. Without this functional aspect of mutual understanding it would not be possible for any sound complex to become the carrier of any meaning whatsoever and no concept could be formed.[17]
It is a known fact that contact between a child and his surroundings is established extremely early; right from the very start the child grows up in an ambient atmosphere of speech and he himself begins to apply the mechanism of speech already during the second year of his life. ‘There is no doubt that these are not senseless sound complexes, but real words, and as he matures, he learns how to associate more differentiated meanings with them.'[18] But at the same time we are certain that children reach the stage of socialization of thinking, which is necessary for the working out of fully developed concepts, relatively late.
So, we can see that, on the one hand, the fully fledged concepts which assume a higher level of socialization of the child’s thinking process, develop relatively late, while, on the other hand, children begin to use words and to reach the stage of mutual understanding with adults and among themselves by using them relatively early. Therefore, it is clear that words which have not yet reached the stage of fully developed concepts, take over the function of the latter and can serve as a means of communication between speaking individuals. A special investigation of the appropriate age group should tell us how these forms of thinking which have to be interpreted not so much as concepts but as their functional equivalents, develop and how they manage to reach the stage which can be considered to represent fully developed thinking.[19]
Usnadze’s entire study shows that these forms of thinking which amount to functional equivalents of thinking in concepts, differ sharply (from the qualitative and structural point of view) from the more developed thinking of an adolescent or an adult. At the same time, this difference cannot be based on the factor suggested by Ach, because it is precisely from the functional point of view, in the sense of providing solutions to particular problems, and in the sense of determining tendencies which originate in goal conceptions, that these forms, as Usnadze has shown, amount to equivalent concepts.
So we end up with the following situation: it turns out that the problem and the goal conceptions which arise from it are accessible to a child at relatively early stages of his development; it is precisely because both in a child and in the adult the problems of understanding and communication are principally identical that the functional equivalents of concepts in children develop extremely early; but even though the problems are identical and the functional features equivalent, the forms of thinking themselves which function during the process of problem solving, are fundamentally different in children and in adults, because of their composition, their structure and by the way they operate.
It becomes obvious that it is not the problem, and the goal conception which is part of it, that in themselves determine and regulate the whole process, but some new factor which Ach had ignored; it is also evident that the problem, and the determining tendencies which are connected with it, cannot adequately explain the genetic and structural differences which we can observe in the functionally equivalent forms of thinking among children and adults.
The general goal cannot provide the answer to this. Granted that without the existence of a goal there cannot be any goal directed action, yet the presence of this goal cannot in any way explain the whole process of reaching it in its development and its structure. In Ach’s own words, due to earlier actions, the goal and the determining tendencies which it engenders, set the process in motion, but do not regulate it; the presence of the goal and of the problems is a necessary but insufficient cause for goal directed activity to arise; no goal directed activity can arise, without the presence of a goal or a problem which sets this process in motion and gives it direction.
But the presence of a goal and a problem do not yet guarantee that a genuinely goal directed activity will be brought to life and, in any case, it does not possess any magical powers to define and regulate the process and structure of such activity. Both the child’s and the adult’s experiences are full of numerous incidents where, at certain stages of development, the individual is faced with unanswered questions, unresolved or incompletely worked out problems, or unattained or unattainable goals, without, however, any guarantee of success merely as a result of their being there. As a general rule it seems that we should use the goal as a starting point, but without limiting ourselves to it, in cases where an attempt to explain the nature of the psychological process which leads to problem solving is involved.
The goal, as has already been said, cannot explain the process. The most important and basic problem connected with the process of concept formation and the process of goal directed activity as a whole is the problem of the means used to carry out some psychological operation, to accomplish some goal directed activity.
In the same way as we cannot give a satisfactory explanation of human goal directed activity, labour, by saying that it is elicited by certain goals and certain problems which human beings encounter, and must explain it by referring to tool use and the application of special means without which labour activity could not come into being, in the same way the problem of the means by which man masters the process of his own behaviour is the central problem encountered when we attempt to explain all the higher forms of behaviour.
Investigations, which we are not going to discuss here, have shown that all higher psychological functions are united by one common characteristic, namely that they are mediated processes, i.e. that they incorporate in their structure, as the central and basic part of the process in general, the use of the sign as a basic means for directing and mastering the psychological processes.
In the context of the problem of concept formation with which we are concerned here, this sign is represented by words which play the role of instruments of concept formation and later become its symbols. The only way of ever discovering the key to understanding the process of concept formation, is to study the functional use of words and their development and the varied forms of their usage, multifarious, quantitatively distinct at different ages, but genetically related to one another.
The main weakness in Ach’s method is that it does not allow us to explain the genetic process of concept formation, but only confirms the presence or absence of this process. By the way that the experiment is organized, the assumption that the means with whose help the concepts are formed, i.e. the experimental words which play the role of signs, which are given at the very beginning, become a constant quality which does not change throughout the whole course of the experiment and, in addition, the way that they are to be used is stipulated in the instructions beforehand; the words do not appear in the role of signs from the very beginning and they do not principally differ from any other number of stimuli produced by objects with which they are affiliated and which appear in the course of the experiment; for the sake of his critical and polemical ambitions, in an attempt to prove that a simple associative connection between words and objects is insufficient grounds for the emergence of meaning, and that the meaning of a word or concept is not equal to the associative connection between a sound complex and a number of objects, Ach retains the traditional course of the whole process of concept formation in its entirety and he subordinates it to the well recognized scheme which can be expressed in the following way: from the bottom up and from separate concrete objects to a few concepts which embrace their meaning.
However, as Ach himself admits, an experimental course such as this sharply contradicts the real path of the process of concept formation which, as we shall see below, is by no means constructed on the basis of a number of associative chains. Quoting the now famous statement by Vogel, it is not equivalent to climbing up the concept pyramid and to a transition from the concrete to the ever more abstract.
This is exactly one of the fundamental results to which Ach’s and Rimat’s investigations had led them; it disclosed the inaccuracy of the associative approach to the concept formation process, pointed to the productive and creative character of the concept, explained the fundamental role of the functional aspect of concept formation, underlined the fact that only where a specific need or demand for a concept exists, only during the course of some intelligent activity directed toward the attainment of a specific goal or the solution of a particular problem, can a concept come into being and take form.
These studies, having once and for all buried the idea of a mechanical conception of concept formation, nevertheless did not manage to disclose the essential genetic, functional and structural nature of this process, and strayed onto the path of purely teleological explanation of these higher functions, which essentially can be reduced to the assertion that the goal itself, with the aid of determining tendencies, creates an appropriate and goal directed activity, and that the problem. contains the solution within itself.
As already pointed out, apart from being generally philosophically and methodologically unsound, from the purely factual point of view this kind of explanation leads to insoluble contradictions and to the impossibility of explaining why, even though the functional aspects of problems and goals are identical, the forms of thinking which make it possible for the child to solve these problems, are fundamentally dissimilar at every age.
Looking from this vantage point, the fact that thinking forms undergo development appears entirely incomprehensible. This is why Ach’s and Rimat’s experiments, which undoubtedly began a new epoch in the study of concepts, have nevertheless left this problem completely open, in terms of its causal and dynamic solution, and an experimental study should have investigated the concept formation process during its development in its causal and dynamic conditionality.
In our attempt to solve this problem, we relied on a particular method of experimental investigation, which can be described as the functional method of double stimulation. The essential feature of this method is that it investigates the development and activity of higher psychological functions using two groups of stimuli, each of which plays a different role in relationship to the behaviour of the experimental subject. One group of stimuli has the function of a task toward which the activity of the experimental subject is directed, whilst the other takes on the function of signs which help to organize this activity.
At this stage we have no intention of providing a detailed description of how this method was applied to the investigation of the process of concept formation, as this has already been done by our colleague Sakharov;[20] we will merely limit ourselves to pointing out the basic features which may be of fundamental importance in connection with everything which has been discussed above in a general way. Because the object of this experiment was to discover the role of words and the character of their functional usage in the process of concept formation, in a certain sense this whole experiment had to be designed in the opposite way to Ach’s experiment.
The beginning of Ach’s study shows the period of learning by heart, which consists of the experimental subject (who has not yet been given a problem by the researcher but possesses all the means, i.e. words which are necessary for the solution of the ensuing problem), memorizing the names of all the objects put in front of him, by picking them up one by one and examining them.
Thus, the problem is not presented at the very beginning but is introduced later, which results in a turning point occurring in the whole course of the experiment. However, the means (words) are given right from the start, but in a direct associative connection with the stimuli objects. As it happens, by using the method of double stimulation, both these aspects are resolved in reverse manner. The problem is fully disclosed to the experimental subject from the very start of the experiment and it remains unchanged throughout every stage of the experiment.
We do this because we proceed from the assumption that the formulation of this problem and the emergence of the goal are necessary prerequisites for the process as a whole to come into being; but the means are introduced into the problem gradually, along with every new attempt on the part of the experimental subject to solve the problem in a situation where the previously provided words prove insufficient; the period of learning by heart is not there at all. So, by converting the means required for solving the problem, i.e. the stimuli signs or words into a variable quantity, and making the problem into a constant quantity, we are able to investigate how the experimental subject uses these signs as means to guide his intellectual operations, and how, depending on the way that these words are used, the process of concept formation as a whole emerges and develops from its functional application.
At the same time we consider one aspect (discussed in detail below) to be most significant and of primary importance within the context of this investigation, namely that when the experiment is organized in this way, the concept pyramid ends up standing on its head. The process of the solution of the experimental problem corresponds to the real genetic process of concept formation, which, as we will see below, is not constructed in a mechanically quantitative way like Galton’s collective photograph, by a gradual transition from the concrete to the abstract, but is one where the movement downwards, from the general to the particular, from the top of the pyramid to its base, is just as characteristic as is the reverse process of ascending to the heights of abstract thinking.
Finally, the functional aspect discussed by Ach is also of primary importance; the concept is examined not in its static and isolated state, but within living, thinking processes and problem solving situations in such a way, that the investigation as a whole breaks up into a number of separate stages, each of which includes the investigation of the concept in action, in one of its functional applications within the thinking process. At the beginning we have the process of the working out of the concept, then the process of transferring the worked out concept to new tasks, then using the concept in the process of free association and, finally, the application of the new concept to the drawing of conclusions [making of judgements] and the definition of newly worked out concepts.
The experimental process proceeds as follows: on a special board divided into separate sections, rows of shapes of different colour, form, height and size are arranged in front of the experimental subject in a random manner. All these shapes are depicted in a schematic way in figure 9.1. Figures, on the reverse side of which the experimental subject reads a meaningless word, are uncovered one at a time in front of him.
The subject is asked to move all the shapes on to the next section of the board which he considers to have the same word written on them; after every attempt by the subject to solve the problem, whilst checking him, the experimenter uncovers a new figure which carries either the same name as one previously uncovered, but different from it in a number of ways and the same in a number of others, or is marked with a different attribute, whilst again being similar to a previously uncovered figure in some respects and different from it in some others.
It can be seen that after each new attempt at a solution, the number of uncovered shapes is increased and along with it the number of attributes which denote them, and, depending on this basic factor, it becomes possible for the experimenter to follow the changes in the character of the solution to the problem, which remains constant at all stages of the experiment. Every word is placed on shapes which refer to one and the same general experimental concept, denoted by that particular word.
In our laboratory, a number of investigations dealing with concept formation were initiated by Sakharov and continued and completed by us in co-operation with Kotelova and Pashkovskaya.[21] These investigations involved about 300 persons in all, children, adolescents and adults, and also persons suffering from various pathological disorders in their intellectual and speech functions.
The basic conclusions which these investigations have led us to, are directly related to a subject which is presently of great interest to us. Whilst observing the genetic process of concept formation in different age groups, and comparing and appraising this process which takes place under exactly the same conditions in a child, an adolescent child and an adult, based on these experimental investigations we were able to explain the fundamental laws which govern the development of this process.
The basic conclusion of our investigation in the genetic context can be formulated as a general rule’, which says that the roots of development of the processes which afterwards lead to concept formation, reach back to early childhood, but they reach maturity only in adolescence, and those intellectual functions which form and develop are the ones which, in their particular combinations, make up the psychological basis of the process of concept formation. It is only when the child turns into an adolescent, that the final transition into the realm of thinking in concepts can occur.
Before this age we find special intellectual phenomena which appear superficially to resemble real concepts, and a cursory analysis may result in this superficial resemblance being taken as a sign of the presence of true concepts already at a very early age. These intellectual aspects really do appear comparable to the true concepts which, in their functional capacity, tend to mature considerably later.
This must mean that they fulfil a similar function to that of concepts in solving similar problems, but an experimental analysis reveals that these equivalents of our concepts, in their psychological nature, their composition, their structure and the type of function they perform, have the same relationship to the latter as an embryo to the mature organism. To identify one with the other would be to ignore the lengthy process of development and to place an equals sign between its beginning and its final stage.
It is no exaggeration to say that to identify the intellectual operations which appear in adolescence with the thinking of a three-year-old child, as has been done by many psychologists, would be just as unsound as to deny that the secondary school age is the age of puberty because elements of future sexuality, the partial ingredients of the future drive, can already be observed in infancy.
Below we will take the opportunity to make a more detailed comparison between true concepts which appear in adolescence and analogous phenomena which can be found in the thinking of pre-school and school children. By this comparison we will be able to establish that which is really new and original in the realm of adolescent thinking, and that which promotes concept formation into the centre of psychological changes which comprise the substance of the completion of maturation. But first we wish to explain, in the most general terms, the psychological nature of the process of concept formation and to disclose why it is that not until the age of puberty is it possible to master this process.
Experimental investigations of the process of concept formation have revealed that the functional use of words or other signs as means for actively directing attention, the breakdown and apportionment of attributes and abstracting and synthesizing them, is a basic and indispensable part of the process as a whole. The formation of a concept or the acquisition of meaning by a word results from a complex dynamic activity (operation by word or sign), in which all the basic intellectual functions take part in their peculiar combinations.
In view of this we may formulate a basic thesis, to which we are led by this investigation; it shows that concept formation is a particular, distinctive process of thinking and that the most likely factor to shed light on the development of this new kind of thinking, is neither association as supposed by many writers, nor directed attention as suggested by Müller,[22] nor judgement and idea working in concert, as Bühler’s theory of concept formation suggests, nor the determining tendency which Ach points out; all these factors and all the processes take part in concept formation, but not a single one of them encompasses the determining and essential feature which could adequately explain the appearance of a new form of thinking, which is qualitatively original and not comparable to any other elementary intellectual operations.
We would like to reiterate that not a single one of these processes undergoes any kind of noticeable change during adolescence, because none of the elementary intellectual functions appear for the first time and can be regarded as a really new acquisition in adolescence. As far as the elementary functions are concerned, the opinion of many psychologists discussed above is perfectly justified. They maintain that nothing really fundamentally new makes its appearance in an adolescent’s intellect in comparison with what is already present in a child, and that what we are observing is a continuous, regular development of the same functions which were established and matured a lot earlier.
The process of concept formation cannot be reduced to associations, attention, conception, judgement and determining tendencies, even though all these functions are indispensable in order for this synthesis to occur, which, in effect, amounts to the process of concept formation. The most essential feature of this process, as the investigations have disclosed, is the functional use of signs or words as means with which the adolescent takes charge of his own psychological processes, and with whose aid he masters the flow of his own psychological processes and directs their activity for the purpose of solving the problems he is faced with.
All the commonly discussed elementary psychological functions take part in the process of concept formation, but they do so in a completely different form, not so much as independent processes which develop according to the rules of their individual logic, but ones which are mediated by signs or words, processes which are directed toward the solution of a specific problem and which end up in new combinations, a new synthesis, and it is only as part of this synthesis that every one of those partial processes is capable of achieving its true functional significance.
Applied to the problem of concept development, it means that neither the accumulation of associations, nor the development of the range and reliability of attention, the accumulation of groups of conceptions nor the determining tendencies – not a single one of these processes on its own, no matter how far it has progressed in its development, is able to bring about the process of concept formation and, therefore, not one of the processes is a developmental factor which can be regarded as a fundamental and essential agent determining concept formation. Concepts cannot exist without words and thinking in concepts is not possible outside verbal thinking, and the new, essential, central feature of the entire process, which should basically be regarded as the primary cause responsible for concept development, is the specific use of words and the functional application of signs as means for concept formation.
Whilst discussing the methods used in our investigations, we mentioned that just stating the problem and the creation of a requirement for concepts cannot be regarded as sufficient grounds for the induction of this process, because even though such conditions are able to initiate the process, they cannot guarantee its implementation for the solution of the problem. And regarding the goal as the driving force which plays a decisive role in the process of concept formation, also fails to explain fully the real causal, dynamic and genetic relationships and associations which form the basis of this complex process, in the same way as it would be difficult to explain the flight of a cannon ball from the vantage point of its final target.
This final target, in so far as it is consciously taken into account beforehand by he who is aiming the cannon is, of course, part of the general aggregate of features which determine the real trajectory of the cannon ball; in exactly the same way the character of the problem and the goal facing the adolescent, which is attainable only with the help of concept formation, undoubtedly comprise one of the functional aspects without which we would not be able to give a complete scientific explanation of the whole process of concept formation. It is precisely because of the presence of the problems raised, the reality of the created and stimulating necessity and the goals which are being put before him, that the social environment stimulates and encourages the adolescent to make this decisive step forward in the development of his thinking.
In contrast to the process of maturation of instincts and inborn drives, the impelling force which determines the start of any process or initiates any evolving mechanism of behaviour and propels it forward along the path of further development, is not to be found inside, but outside the adolescent and, in this sense, the problems thrown up in front of the maturing adolescent by the society around him, which are connected with the process of growing into the cultural, professional and social life of adults, are extremely important functional aspects which continually depend on the reciprocal conditionality and the organic coherence and internal unity of form and content in the development of thinking.
In our discussion of the general factors connected with cultural development in adolescence outlined below, we will have to consider the long established and scientifically observed fact that where the environment fails to present appropriate problems, does not come up with new requirements and does not stimulate and create development of the intellect with the help of new goals, the adolescent’s thinking does not develop according to all the available potential, and it does not reach its higher forms, or only achieves them at an exceptionally late stage.
It would therefore be wrong to ignore completely or even to underestimate the importance of the functional aspect of life’s problems as one of the real and powerful factors which fuel and guide the whole process of intellectual development in adolescence; but it would be just as mistaken to perceive in this functional aspect a causal-dynamic explanation, and to treat it as a revelation of the very mechanism of development and the genetic key to the problem of the development of concepts.
The problem facing this investigation is to discover the inner link between these two aspects and to reveal concept formation which is genetically linked to adolescence, as a function of the social and cultural development of the adolescent and which includes both the content and the mechanism of thinking. A new significative use of words, i.e. its use as a means of concept formation – all these things amount to the most likely psychological reasons for the intellectual revolution which takes place on the boundary of childhood and adolescence.
If there is no sign at this time of any new basic functions, which are totally unlike any previously observed ones, it would still be incorrect to conclude that no changes are taking place in these basic functions. They are being incorporated into a new structure, entering a new synthesis and becoming part of a new complex entity as subordinate instances, whose laws also define the fate of each of their individual parts. The process of concept formation entails a mastery of the course of one’s own psychological processes with the help of the functional use of words or signs as part of its basic and central substance. This mastery of the processes of one’s own behaviour is only able to reach the final stage of its development in adolescence, supported by other factors.
Experimental results have shown that concept formation is not the same thing as the development of any other habit, no matter how complicated. Experimental investigations of concept formation in adults, as well as the light we have been able to shed upon these processes during childhood, and studies of their disintegration in cases of pathological disturbances of intellectual activity, bring us to the conclusion that the hypothesis regarding the identification of the psychological nature of higher intellectual processes with the elementary and purely associative processes of the formation of connections or habits, which has been suggested and developed by Thorndike, is in sharp contradiction with factual data about the composition, functional structure and genesis of the process of concept formation.
Accordingly, these investigations disclose that the process of concept formation, like any other higher form of intellectual activity, is not just an exceptionally more complex lower form quantitatively, and that it differs from the purely associative activity not by the number of associations, but that it represents a new, basically different type of activity which cannot be reduced to just any range of associative connections qualitatively, and where the fundamental difference can be said to be a result of the transition from indirect intellectual processes to operations which are mediated by signs.
The significative structure (connected with active use of signs) which represents the general rule guiding the formation of higher forms of behaviour, is not identical with the associative structure of elementary processes. The mere accumulation of associative connections can never result in the appearance of a higher form of intellectual activity. It is impossible to explain the real differences in the higher forms of thinking on the basis of quantitative changes in association. In his theory of the nature of intellect, Thorndike maintains that ‘the higher forms of intellectual operations are identical to the purely associative activity or the formation of associations and they depend on physiological associations of the same type, but they require a much greater number of them’.[23]
From this point of view, the difference between the adolescent intellect and that of a child, can be reduced entirely to the number of associations. To quote Thorndike, ‘a person who has a greater, higher or better intellect than another, in the final analysis differs from the latter not by the fact that he possesses a new kind of physiological process, but simply due to a larger number of associations of the most ordinary sort’.
As has already been said above, this hypothesis cannot be confirmed by experimental analysis of the process of concept formation, or by studying concept development, or by the picture presented by cases where they are in a state of disintegration. Thorndike’s position which proclaims that ‘it appears that both the phylogenesis and the ontogenesis of intellect show that selection, analysis, abstraction, generalization and reflection originate as a direct result of an increase in the number of associations’, cannot be confirmed by experimentally organized and carefully investigated ontogenesis of concepts in children and adolescents. This investigation of the ontogenesis of concepts shows that development from lower to higher planes does not follow the road of a quantitative increase in associations, but is achieved by qualitatively new formations; in particular, speech, which is one of the basic features of the higher forms of intellectual activity, is included not in an associative manner like a function with a parallel course, but in a functional way, like a means which is utilized in a rational manner.
Speech itself is not based on purely associative connections but requires a basically different relationship between signs and the structure of intellectual processes, which happens to be very characteristic of higher intellectual operations as a whole. The phylogenesis of intellect, as far as this can be ascertained on the basis of psychological studies of primitive man and his thinking processes, also fails to shed any light on the developmental path from lower to higher forms, as was assumed by Thorndike, through a quantitative increase of associations, at least in its historical part. Following the famous investigations by Koehler, Yerkes and others, there is no reason to expect that the biological evolution of the intellect will be able to affirm the identical nature of thinking and associations.
If one were to attempt to make any schematic inferences from our research, they would basically reveal that the road which leads to concept development consists of three intrinsic stages, each of which, in its turn, can also be subdivided into several separate parts or phases.
The first stage of concept formation which most frequently can be observed in young children’s behaviour, is the appearance of an as yet unorganized and unregulated quantity, an ability to distinguish a mass of random objects, at a time when the child is faced with a problem which we, as adults, normally manage to solve by forming a new concept. This stockpile of objects picked out by the child, which is consolidated without any adequate inner substance, without any sufficient inherent similarity and relationship between its constituent parts, presupposes a diffuse, nondirected dissemination of the meaning of words, or their equivalent signs, to a number of superficially connected, but intrinsically disconnected elements in the child’s experience.
At this stage of development, the meaning of a word conjures up a not fully defined, unorganized syncretic chain of separate objects, connected with one another in certain ways in the child’s imagination and perception, and forming one combined image. The decisive role in the formation of this image is played by the syncretism of the child’s perception or action, and for this reason the image tends to be extremely unstable.
It is a well known fact that children reveal this kind of tendency to correlate the most diverse and unconnected elements on the basis of a single impression in their perception, thinking and also in their actions, creating from them a closed, consolidated image; Claparede has named this tendency the syncretism of childhood perception, and Blonsky called it the disconnected coherence of childish thinking. Elsewhere, we have already described this same phenomenon as the tendency on the part of the child to replace the lack of objective associations by an abundance of subjective connections, and to take the association of impressions and thoughts for associations between things. Of course, this over-production of subjective associations has an enormous significance as a factor in the subsequent development of childish thinking, as it constitutes the basis for any further process of selection of the applicable realities and connections which can be verified in practice. Superficially, the meaning of some words uttered by children who have reached a certain stage in their conceptual development can, indeed, remind one of the meaning of words uttered by adults.
Children are able to communicate with adults by using words which have certain meanings; within this superabundance of syncretic associations and the unregulated syncretic stockpiles of themes which have been formed with the help of words, objective connections are also reflected to a great degree, in so far as they correspond to the connections between the child’s impressions and perceptions. Therefore, in many instances, the meaning of the words which children utter can partially coincide with the meanings these same words have acquired in adult speech, particularly when they refer to the real objects of the child’s surroundings.
In this way children’s words often conform in meaning to those of adults or, more precisely, the meaning of one and the same word can often coincide in one and the same real object in the speech of children and adults, and this fact proves sufficient grounds for mutual understanding between them. But the psychological path which leads up to the point of understanding in the thinking of adults and children is totally different, and even in cases where the meaning of a child’s words partially coincides with that of an adult, it is due to completely different, unique operations, and it is a product of the syncretic mixture of images which are the source of children’s words.
In its turn, this stage in the process of the formation of concepts in children can be divided into three phases, which we had the opportunity to investigate in detail.
The first phase of the creation of the syncretic image or stockpile of objects which correspond to the meaning of a word, fully coincides with the period of trial and error in childish thinking. The child then takes up a group of new objects at random, and this is accompanied by individual trials which replace one another when their inaccuracy becomes apparent.
This phase is succeeded by a second one, where the spatial arrangement of shapes in the staged conditions of our experiment and, what is more, purely syncretic laws of perception of the visual field and the organization of childish perception, play a decisive role. The syncretic image or the stockpile of objects forms, on the basis of space and time, meetings between individual elements, or indirect contact, or some other more complicated relationship arising between them within the process of indirect perception. But what remains essential for this particular period is that the child is guided, not by objective association which he discovers in things, but by subjective connections suggested to him by his own perceptions. The objects begin gradually to line up and are gathered under one general meaning, not because of any prevalent features which are inherent in them or been singled out by the child, but because of the similarities between them in the child’s perception.
Finally, the third and leading phase of this stage, one which signifies its end and the transition to the second stage in concept formation; this is the phase where the syncretic image, which is equivalent to the concept, emerges on a more complex basis and is dependent on the ability to gather specimens from various groups, which have previously already become unified in the child’s perception, under a single meaning.
In this way, every one of the separate elements of the new syncretic series or stockpile represents some group of objects previously unified in the child’s perception, but all of them taken together are in no way intrinsically connected with one another, and they represent the same kind of disjointed connectedness as in the stockpile, as was the case with the concept equivalents during the two previous phases.
The only difference and complication is due to the fact that the associations which children utilize to form the meaning of a new word, stem not just from one single perception but, it seems, from a two-stage processing of the syncretic associations; first of all syncretic groups are formed, from which individual specimens subsequently emerge and become syncretically united all over again. At this stage it is no longer the plane, the perspective, the double series of associations, or the double structure of the groups which can explain the meaning of the child’s words, but these double series and double structures are still unable to rise above the formulation of the unregulated quantity or, speaking metaphorically, the stockpile.
A child who, by virtue of having reached this third phase, completes the entire first stage in the development of concepts, and gives up the stockpile which has hitherto represented the basic form of the meaning of words, proceeds to the second stage which, conditionally, we call the stage of the formation of complexes.
The second important stage in the development of concepts includes many types of this generically identical mode of thinking which vary greatly from the functional, structural and genetic points of view. This manner of thinking, as well as all the remaining ones, leads to the creation of associations, to the establishment of relationships between different actual experiences, to the unification and generalization of individual themes and to the regulation and systematization of the child’s entire previous experience.
But the manner of the unification of different real objects into general groups, the character of the connections which becomes established during this process, the structure of the affinities which arise on the basis of such thinking, which is characterized by the relationship of each individual object having become part of the composition of the group, to the group as a whole – all this is fundamentally different by its nature and the manner of its operation from thinking in concepts, which only develops at the time of puberty.
There is no more appropriate way in which we could have identified this particular mode of thinking than by naming it ‘thinking in complexes’. This means that the generalizations which are achieved with the help of this mode of thinking, by its structure, represent complexes of individual real objects or things, which are already united not only because of the subjective associations which can be established in the child’s imagination, but on the basis of objective connections, which actually exist between these objects.
If, as was said above, the first stage in the development of thinking is characterized by the building of syncretic images, which in a child are the equivalent of our concepts, so the second stage is characterized by the building of complexes which have the same functional significance. This represents a new step forward along the path leading to the mastery of concepts, and a new stage in the development of the child’s thought process, which stands head and shoulders above the one which precedes it. Without question it signifies considerable progress in the life of the child. This transition to a higher type of thinking consists of the fact that in place of the ‘disjointed connectedness’, which lies at the foundation of the syncretic image, the child begins to unify similar objects into a common group and finally to combine them according to the rules of objective connections which he is able to discover in things.
The child who is in the process of evolving this type of thinking, is able to overcome his egocentrism[24] to some extent. He gives up taking the connections from his own experience for the actual connections between things and he takes a decisive step forward along the road of rejecting syncretism and along the path of success of objective thinking.
Thinking in complexes is by its nature associative thinking and, at the same time, objective thinking. These are the two essential features which raise it high above the previous stage, but at the same time this connectedness in its turn and this objectivity are still not the connectedness and objectivity which characterize thinking in concepts achieved finally by the adolescent.
The difference of this second stage of concept development from the third and final one, which contains the whole ontogenesis of concepts, lies in the fact that the complexes formed at this stage are built according to entirely different laws of thinking than those which apply to concepts. As has already been mentioned, they reflect objective connections, but in a different form and manner than in concepts.
Adult speech also shows many remnants of thinking in complexes. The best example to illustrate this basic law of the structure of various types of thought complex in our speech is the family name. Every family name, for example ‘the Petrovs’, includes this kind of complex of individual themes, which is the nearest thing to the complex character of childish thinking. In a certain sense, one might say that at this stage of his development, it is as if a child thinks in family names, or to put it another way, from his point of view the world of individual themes coalesces and organizes itself into groups of separate, but mutually affiliated, family names.
This idea could be formulated in yet another way by saying that the meaning of words at this stage of development can be defined most accurately as the family names of objects which have been combined into complexes or groups.
For the formation of a complex, the most essential underlying feature is a concrete and factual connection between the separate elements which are part of its composition, rather than an abstract and logical one. And so we can never decide whether a certain person has anything to do with the family name Petrov, and whether he can he called by that name, based simply on the logical relationship with the other carriers of the same family name. This question can only be resolved on the basis of a factual affiliation or a factual kinship between people.
The complex is founded on factual associations which can be revealed through direct experience. It is for this reason that this complex represents, first of all, an actual unification of a group of objects according to their mutual actual proximity, and all remaining aspects of this way of thinking are a result of this. The most important of these can be described as follows: as such complexes lie in the realm of concrete and factual thinking and not in the abstract and logical sphere, they do not diverge from the unity of these associations which constitute the support on which their very existence depends.
A complex, like a concept, is a generalization or blend of various real heterogeneous themes. But the association with whose help this generalization is formed, can be of many different types. Any association can result in the inclusion in the complex of a certain element, as long as it is available, and this is the most characteristic feature of the complex building process. Whilst associations of a single type which are logically identical to one another form the foundation of concepts, the ones found at the root of complexes include many varied factual associations, which frequently have nothing at all to do with one another. In a concept, the objects are generalized according to one feature, but in a complex they are based on various factual grounds. Therefore, material and uniform associations and affiliations between objects are reflected in concepts, whilst complexes present factual, random and concrete ones.
The diversity of associations which underpin complexes constitutes their main difference from concepts, which are characterized by the uniformity of the associations which make them up. This means that each individual object incorporated in the generalized concept is included in this generalization on an identical basis with all the other objects. All these elements are connected to the whole by associations of the same type, expressed in a concept and, through it, unified by a single image.
In contrast to this, every element of a complex can be connected with the whole by the most diversified associations, expressed in the complex and with separate elements which make up its composition. Basically, in concepts, these associations represent the relationship between the general and the particular, and the particular with another particular via the general. In a complex, these associations can vary just as much as any factual contiguity and factual semblance of the most diverse objects which are found in any real relationship with one another.
In our investigations we have mapped out five basic forms of complex systems which make up the basis of generalizations which arise in the child’s thought process at this stage of development.
The first type of complex we have named the associative one, because any associative connection with any one of the attributes which a child may notice in an object which is part of the experiment, makes up its essence and forms the nucleus of the future complex. The child is able to build a whole complex around this nucleus and to include within it the most diverse objects; some because they have an identical colour to this object, others, because of their shape, still others, due to their size and so on, or perhaps because of some distinctive feature which attracts the child’s attention. Any actual relationship which the child discovers, any associative connection between the nucleus and the element of the complex, is enough reason for the child to include this object in a group selected by him, and for it to be designated by a common family name.
These elements can also exist in a totally disunited state. The only principle guiding the process of their generalization is their factual affiliation with the primary nucleus of the complex. At the same time, their connection with the latter can be any associative link. An element may turn out to have an affiliation with the nucleus of a future complex because of its colour and another because of its form, etc. If one takes into account that this connection can be the most incongruous one, not only because of its attributes, but also because of the character of the very relationship between the two objects, it will become clear how variegated, disorderly, inadequately systematized and not properly unified is the alternation of the multitudes of material features revealed every time in the process of thinking in complexes, albeit it is based on objective connections. And at the roots of this multitude, there can be found not merely a consistent identification of the attributes, but also their similarities and contrasts and their associations by mere contact, etc., but always and without fail, a real association.
For a child, finding himself at this stage of development, words cease to be signifiers of separate objects or proper names. For him, they have now become family names. During this period, to provide a child with a word, means to point out a family of things which are intimately connected with one another according to a great variety of types of kinship. To call an object by a proper name as understood by the child is to relegate it to a specific real complex with which it is associated. For a child, to name an object at this stage means to give it a family name.
The second phase in the development of thinking in complexes is formed by the joining up of objects and actual impressions of things into special groups which, because of their structure, remind one, above all, of what is commonly referred to as collections. Here, various real objects become unified on the basis of a mutual complementing of one another according to some feature, and they form a single whole which consists of different, mutually complementary parts. It is precisely this heterogeneity of their composition and the mutual process of completion and joining together using a collection, which characterizes this stage in the development of thinking.
Under experimental conditions, the child selects other shapes to match a given standard and which differ from the given pattern in their colour, form, size or some other way. However, he does not pick them out in a chaotic and random fashion, but is guided by some attribute marking this difference and a complementary aspect of this attribute which is contained in the model and apprehended by him as grounds for the unification. The collection which comes into being as a result of this assembly, forms an assortment of various objects which differ according to colour or shape, and represent a selection of the basic colours or the basic shapes which are to be found among the experimental material.
An essential difference between this form of thinking in complexes and associative complexes is that recurring examples of objects with the same attribute are not included in the collection. It is as if individual examples representative of the whole group are selected from each group of objects. It is association by contrast rather than by similarity which is observed here. It is true that this form of thinking frequently goes together with the associative form described above. In such cases we have a collection which is put together on the basis of different attributes. The child does not consistently hold up the principle which he has designated as the foundation of complex formation in the process of putting together the collection, but he combines different attributes by association, and he still puts each attribute at the base of the collection.
This lengthy and persistent phase in the development of childish thinking has very deep roots in the entire range of actual, visual and practical experience of the child. In his visual and practical thinking, the child always deals with specific collections of things which complement each other, as well as with a specific whole. The most frequent form of generalization of actual experience the child learns from his visual experience. It includes the incorporation of individual objects into a collection and the selection of mutually complementary subjects which are significant from the practical point of view and functionally belong together. A cup, a saucer and a spoon make up a unified set, which also includes a fork, a knife, spoons and plates; the child’s clothes as well, all these things are examples of natural complex collections which the child comes up against in his daily life.
Because of this, it becomes natural and obvious for the child to construct such complex collections in his verbal thinking, by matching objects and concrete groups according to the attributes of their functional supplementary function. Furthermore, it appears that such forms of complex formations which are structured on collections, can also play an extremely important role in the thinking of adults, particularly in the thinking of nervous and mental patients. Often, when an adult speaks about crockery or clothing, in his actual expressions he has in mind not so much the parallel abstract concept, as the corresponding sets of actual objects which comprise the collection.
If, for the most part, emotional subjective associations between experiences which the child perceives as associations between things, form the basis of syncretic images, and if the recurring and obtrusive similarity of attributes of separate objects is the foundation of the associative complex, then the collection is based on associations and relationships between things which are established by the practical active and visual experience of the child. One could even say that a complex collection is a generalization of things according to their complicity in a single practical operation, on the basis of their functional co-operation.
But, at this moment, all three of these different forms of thinking are of interest to us, not so much for their own sakes, but rather as different genetic paths leading towards one goal – the formation of concepts.
If one is to follow the logic of experimental analysis, one should place the chain complex, which is also an indispensable stage in the process of the child’s ascent to mastering concepts, after the second phase in the development of thinking in complexes in children.
The chain complex is constructed according to the principle of a dynamic, temporary unification of individual links into a single chain and of the transmission of meaning along the separate links of this chain. This type of complex is usually represented in an experimental situation in the following way: the child matches one or several objects which have some definite associative relationship with a given model; after that the child continues to select real objects into a single complex, but at this stage following some other peripheral attribute of a previously selected object, an attribute which is not at all present in the pattern.
For example, the child matches several angular shapes to the pattern, which is a yellow triangle, and then if the last of these selected shapes happens to be blue, he matches up other blue shapes, for example half circles or circles with it. And this again proves sufficient reason in order to incorporate a new attribute and to select further objects, now using the attribute of roundness. During the process of complex formation, there is a continuous transfer of one attribute to another.
In the same way, the meaning of words moves along the links of the complex chain. Every link is connected on one side with the previous link, and on the other with the following one, and the most important distinction of this type of complex can be described by the fact that the character of the association or the manner of the connection of the same link with the preceding and the following one can be entirely different.
Yet again we find that associative connections between separate concrete elements form the basis of the complex, but this time the associative connection is not required to connect every individual link with the standard. Each link, whilst becoming part of the complex, turns into the same sort of varied member of this complex like the pattern itself, and whilst following an associative attribute it may again become the centre of attraction for a number of real objects.
Here we can see very clearly to what extent thinking in complexes can have a visual-concrete and figurative character. An object, when it is included in a complex due to its associative attributes, becomes Part of it as a given real object with all its attributes, but by no means as a carrier of only one defined attribute by whose virtue it has been accepted into this particular complex. This latter attribute is not segregated by the child from all the remaining ones. It does not play any specific role in comparison with all the others. It does not stand out because of its functional meaning and it remains equal among equals, one amongst many other attributes.
At this stage we can take the opportunity to discover the really tangible and essential peculiarity of the whole realm of thinking in complexes, which differentiates it from concept thinking. This peculiarity consists of the fact that, in contrast to concepts, there is an absence of any hierarchical connections and hierarchical relationships between attributes in complexes. All the attributes are basically equal in their functional meaning. The relation of the general to the particular, i.e. of the complex to each separate concrete element entering into its composition, and the relationships of the elements to each other, as well as the principles governing the structure of the whole generalization process, differ significantly from all the features found within the concept structure.
In a chain complex, the structural centre can be entirely absent. The individual concrete elements are able to form relationships with each other, whilst bypassing the central element or standard. It is therefore possible for them to have nothing in common with any of the other elements, but they can nevertheless belong to the same complex just on the basis of having a common attribute with some other element, and this other element, in its turn, is connected with a third one, etc. But the first and third elements may not have any other connection between them except that they both, each according to its own attribute, have a connection with the second one.
Therefore, we feel justified in considering the chain complex to represent the purest form of thinking in complexes because, in contrast to the associative complex, where some sort of centre capable of being fille