CATS Aeronautical College Incorporated

GLEC 229: GE Elective I

Short Research

Research Title:
Short Research on Developmental Psychology

Submitted by:
Gerold Miguel D. Gallego

In Partial Submission for

GLEC 229: GE Elective I

Submitted to:
Sir Benjie Torres

1
 CATS Aeronautical College Incorporated
GLEC 229: GE Elective I
Short Research

The aim of this research paper is to explore an in depth understanding of Developmental

Psychology in the views and perspectives of Richard M. Learner, M. Ann Easterbrooks, Jayanthi
Mistry, Irving B. Weiner from the Handbook of Psychology Vol. 6 Developmental Psychology,
and Peter E. Langford from Vygotsky’s developmental and educational psychology.

One of the most influential and significant psychologists of the 20th century is Lev
Vygotsky (1896-1934). According to Vygotsky’s developmental and educational psychology,
the development of human species is classified into two parts: cultural development and
biological development. Cultural development is transforming from early tribal society into the
modern industrial societies. Biological development is the production of the original human
biological type through biological evolution. Vygotsky believes that the biological development
was finished when the human social evolution started. This statement is challenged on the basis
that there was a probability that an evolution of social characteristics between the homo habilis
and the present. However, even if there was an overlap between the biological and social
evolution, it would not be a fundamental problem to Vygotsky’s main point that biological
evolution stopped long ago and the social evolution since tribalism has occurred since the end of
biological evolution.

Outline of the underlying model

There are three overall dimensions that states through which the individual’s social
system can pass are determined. These dimensions provide as a map of the places that an
individual can go in development. The first dimension is the levels of activity: signs, language,
consciousness; self-consciousness; use of tools and practice; and the social relations of work.
The second dimension is the motivation the individual has; the third is the relation between the
inner and outer aspects of the personality. The levels of activity and the motivation that the
individual has are the primary dimensions of developmental advance.

In the first dimension, it contains four steps for each level of activity. Tools and practice
have four steps which are: develop from the use of tools based on the human body, designed by
intuitive estimation, to the construction of machines using the abstract scientific concepts, with
two steps in between. Motivation contains five steps because it contains an extra step in infancy.

2
 CATS Aeronautical College Incorporated
GLEC 229: GE Elective I
Short Research

It goes through two steps where they are determined on what other people think and on the final
state where it is generated by the synthesis of the social and the biological.

Developmental dynamics is essential in order to pass through the places by the map of
development. It specifies the motive forces that urges the individual and their social system
forward or in some cases backwards. Vygotsky’s perspective does not offer the big picture where
everything that participates in the development advances it forward. On the other hand, his
perspective presents particular points in some activities and functions that are dynamic and are
driving the system forward, while others lack forward dynamism and are sluggish.

Vygotsky’s dynamic model stresses on the long-term shifts of emphasis along the first
dimension. During tribalism and biological development, development is advanced by practice.
After the first level, signs and self-consciousness take place as the dynamic forces in
development. “Signs” refer to the broad meaning of anything that can communicate such as
gestures, expressions, speech or writing., At the final period of development, Vygotsky focuses
on modern capitalism. The practice and signs are synthesized in advanced concepts that provide
the dynamic origin for development.

“It is a distinctive feature of Vygotsky’s theory that signs provide the main dynamism for
the historical development of production in its middle period, roughly between tribalism and
capitalism. This distinguishes him in particular from Marx, who changed his emphasis, but at no
stage advocated a stress on signs. He believed in his later period that top-down influences from
consciousness emerge directly from the practice of production, with language only becoming a
significant dynamic force in the final period, roughly coinciding with the rise of capitalism,
when production came to be based on science (Engels, 1878, Part 2; Marx, 1867, Chs 7, 15).
This was the starting point for the view of Vygotsky’s rival, A. N. Leont’ev (1948, 1960, 1974).”

The statement above presents the difference of Vygotsky’s perspectives compared to

Marx’s perspective. Marx says in his book The German ideology (1846a, Part1) that:
‘Consciousness can never be anything other than conscious existence, and the existence of men
is their actual life-process.’ He simply means that the human consciousness can never be a
3
 CATS Aeronautical College Incorporated
GLEC 229: GE Elective I
Short Research
precedent of human action. Vygotsky’s main argument is stating that if the
historical development of human

capacities is not based on the view of biological evolution, then it must be based on cultural
evolution. Even as we explore in the early historical development, the culture of production
needed cognitive complexities which could only be developed and passed on through the transfer
of meaning by signs.

Biological Development

Vygotsky’s view of the stages of biological development was taken from Karl Buhler. Buhler
was not the first to suggest this sequence but it had provided an authoritative collection of
material on the topic Vygotsky is exploring. There are three stages and these are:

 Instinct
 Associative learning
 Thought

Before there was any associative learning, instinct was what dominated among the animals.
This was conceived as a natural response or reaction that is automatic and innate in manner to a
specific stimulus. An example of this is a sea anemone, when pricked, will close up in order to
protect its delicate parts to avoid damage.

In associative learning, conditioning is possible. This stage reveals that the stimulus and the
response are not integrally linked with one another but they must be brought together. An
example for this statement would be Pavlov’s (1897) dogs who regularly heard the ringing of the
bell before feeding. Instinctively, the dogs salivated when the food was put in their mouths, but
as time went by the dogs salivated upon hearing the ringing of the bell. Therefore, the bell was
originally separated from the response of the salivation of the dogs, but through a process that is
highly adaptive from a biological point of view, the stimulus and the response was brought
together. However, this process has no deliberate goal-seeking motivation because salivation is
not the goal that is aimed to be achieved rather it just happens through passive associations if we
look at it in the psychological point of view.

4
 CATS Aeronautical College Incorporated
GLEC 229: GE Elective I
Short Research
The third stage is constituted of the natural and biological thought. This was
particularly believed to be the domain of the apes which was studied by Kohler (1917). On the
other hand,

thought is also found to be lower in the animal kingdom in animals such as rats and dogs;
although in Vygotsky’s view, he believes that they ae just subordinate to conditioned reflexes.

Vygotsky is not mainly concerned on which animals can achieve what, but he uses the
experiment of Pavlov’s dogs as the perfect example of an animal that is dominated by
conditioned reflexes (Vygotsky, 1931b, Ch. 3).

In the three biological stages, motivation and cognition have become progressively separated.
A stimulus pattern produces a response pattern which is according to instinct. This is visible in
some species of young birds that instinctively open their mouths when they see the shape and
color of their parents’ beaks or human infant instinctively that turns their mouth towards
anything that brushes its cheek. In this example, the stimulus produces the response without the
need for either thought or motivation. The reaction is a complete pattern that encloses both action
and the setting of a goal in which both are built into the reaction. Cognition and motivation are
closely tied when it comes to associative learning. In conclusion, the natural thought we find is
that the stimulus is more clearly separated from response and cognition from motivation. There
was an experiment with apes done by Kohler (1917) where fruit is placed out of their reach,
outside the cage and a stick is placed inside the cage. The problem of the apes is to get the fruit.
The workable solution would be to pick up the stick and use it to get the fruit. In order to do this
action, they must envision the goal first and then consider the variables in the ways that they
could attain it. With this example there is a motivation to reach a clearly envisioned goal which
was not present in the previous examples from Pevlov.

“The main driving force in development at the biological level is practical action, which is as
yet unallied to language and only influenced by consciousness in a preliminary way (Vygotsky,
1930k, 1931b, pp. 28–30, 67–68).”

Historical Development

5
 CATS Aeronautical College Incorporated
GLEC 229: GE Elective I
Short Research
Vygotsky agree with Marx’s claim that history developed human
capacities through the proactive activity needed to produce the things that human beings use and
consume. An example of this is that production was originally done mainly by using visual and
other kinds of intuitive

estimation to state whether something was in the right size, shape, weight so on and so forth.
This proves that people needed the skills of visual and other corresponding forms of estimation,
as a way of estimating the amounts. In order to found out if the handle of a tool would fit into the
socket in the head, one must be able to inspect visually if it could fit and it would be assessed by
trial and error. There are more precise methods of counting and measuring things as the
production became more scientific. The handle and the head of a tool would be measured
accordingly to avoid adjusting them when they are being put together. Thus, people were able to
acquire these certain skills and concepts that allowed the development of the recent machines
that we have today.

Conclusion on Biological and Historical Development

Vygotsky’s view on Developmental Psychology discusses the means of development

throughout history ad on the basis of necessity. We can clearly see in his example through
Pevlov’s dogs and the experiment done on Kohler’s apes the influence of the biology of the
species to the processing of thought and action. Instinct, associative learning, and thought were
an integral part in explaining the process of the psychological development of the subjects.

Indeed, there are several stages and factors to be considered in developmental

psychology. Both the biological and the historical aspect of the development are significant.
However, this research data would not be perfect either. We are going to explore another
perspective in the next part of this research. We were introduced to the idea of conditioning in
Pevlov’s dogs that shows the stimulus pattern and the reaction pattern that the dogs do whenever
they hear the sound of the bell. This was an example used by Vygotsky in order to build on the
stages of the biological development. While it does demonstrate the instinctiveness of the dogs it
does not show any goal-driven motivation which is the reason why Kohler’s apes were used in

6
 CATS Aeronautical College Incorporated
GLEC 229: GE Elective I
Short Research
his ideas because the apes had a particular goal that they should envision in order
to give the right action

Marx’s idea about the historical development of human capacities through the
development of production was adopted by Vygotsky. This idea was made possible through the
four levels of activity with motivation.

Development Across the Life Span

7
 CATS Aeronautical College Incorporated
GLEC 229: GE Elective I
Short Research
Figure 1: The development of the person: levels pf transformational and
variational change emerging through embodies action in sociocultural and physical world.

Transformational and variational change are the two fundamental types of change that
gives the broadest conceptualization of developmental change (see Figure 1). Transformational
change is the change in the form, organization, or structure of any system. For an instance, a

caterpillar transforms into a butterfly, a seed transforming into a plant, an ice cube turning into
gas, cells forming an organism. This also includes the human psyche and all nonlinear dynamic
systems. As the forms change, they become more complex. Therefore, we could say that this
complexity is not linear, an additive complexity of elements. It is because of this factor that new
patterns are formed which is why transformational change is not completely explained because it
cannot be predicted from its earlier components (indicated by the four “person” cubes on the left
side of Figure 1). Qualitative change or the emergence of novelty is a change that cannot be
represented as purely additive. These features of transformational change are worth recognizing
because it is very important to consider the various notions of the stages or the levels of
development. The features are the theoretical concepts that refer to transformational change with
the associated qualitative change, emergent novelty, and discontinuity. A philosopher named E.
Nigel was able to capture the nature of transformational change when he subjected the concept of
development into two fundamental features: a) “the notion of a system, possessing a definite
structure”; and b) “the notion of a set of sequential changes in the system yielding relatively
permanent but novel increments not only in its structures but in its modes of operation as well”
(1957, p. 17).

The other fundamental type of change is the variational change. It refers to the degree or
limit that a change varies from a standard, a norm, or an average (see the arrow on the right side
of Figure 1). For an instance, let us consider the pecking of the pigeon; changes in where, when,
and how rapidly pecking occurs are variational changes. The infant’s reaching behavior, a
toddler’s improvement in balance and precision. The developmental variational change is

8
 CATS Aeronautical College Incorporated
GLEC 229: GE Elective I
Short Research
relative to skill and ability in its process of becoming more accurate and more
precise. This type of change is a quantitative change and it can be represented as linear.

Given that there are two types of change, three metatheoretical solutions are proposed to
show their correlation in development. The first and the most prominent solution is to treat the
variation as the impetus reality of development. This first solution encompasses transformational
change as a mere description. It claims that all transformational change or the nonlinear change
will ultimately be explained as our empirical knowledge progresses over time as a product of
variation and only variation. One important consequence of this solution is that the metamethods

that will be used can assess the linear additives in the change, however it limits the methods from
assessing the nonlinear processes present in the change.

The second metatheoretical solution treats the transformational change as the foundation
reality and limits the significance of variation. In this solution, variation is seen as an irrelevant
noise produced in the transformational system. According to Erik Erikson’s (1968) theory of
psychological development, the importance of the variational change seems to disappear below
the horizon as the transformational change is elevated to a point.

The third metatheoretical solution approaches the two types of change as fundamentally
real, necessary, and interrelated features of development. This solution assumes that the reality is
that both transformational and variational change have different functional roles but is directly
correlated by each other. Transformational systems create variations and the variation transforms
the system (this solution is illustrated in Figure 1).

Conclusion on Transformational and Variational Change

The types of change indicated in this book, Handbook of Psychology Vol. 6, presents a
significant point on how we fundamentally develop in the course of time. It is a different
approach from Vygotsky’s discussions in biological and historical development. Although it
would seem that it is related to the transformational and variational change explored in this book.

9
 CATS Aeronautical College Incorporated
GLEC 229: GE Elective I
Short Research
The information that comprises this idea is the fundamental concept that drives the
pursuit of knowledge regarding developmental psychology.

There is still a lot of research that is needed to be done in order to be able to grasp the
idea of developmental psychology. As it was stated in transformational change, it is nonlinear
meaning it cannot be thoroughly explained because it is unpredictable in its nature. There a lot of
factors to consider regarding change and observing these changes can be challenging because not
all of these factors can be observed through the five senses. It is for that reason that
developmental psychology has been developing theoretical concepts that could explain the
changes that happen during development.

Documentation

Langford, P. (2013). Vygotskys developmental and educational psychology. Hove: Psychology

Press.

Lerner, R. M., Easterbrooks, M. A., & Mistry, J. (2003). Handbook of psychology. Vol. 6:

Developmental psychology. New York: John Wiley and Sons.

10