Cognitive Development

¶ … Patricia H. Miller's book "Theories of Developmental Psychology (fifth edition)," "Vygotsky and the Sociocultural Approach," provides information concerning the Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky and his tendency to place development as a concept during which individuals involved in one's upbringing play an important role in shaping the way that the person develops. The chapter proceeds to describe Vygotsky's development and influential theories that shaped the way he understood development. Miller also goes at presenting a sort of contrast between Vygotsky's views and views that are generally promoted in the Western World.

The text portrays Vygotsky as a person whose thinking was ahead of his time and whose theories played an important role in theories devised in the contemporary society. Even with this, Vygotsky's theories are also shown as being limited by the fact that the sociocultural approach did not receive wide recognition in the past and because the Soviet psychologists was inclined to act in agreement with Soviet legislations.

In spite of his remarkable work, Vygostky did not receive significant attention from the international community during his lifetime because, unlike great thinkers contemporary to him (such as Freud, Skinner, and Piaget), he was limited by the political ideology dominating his home country of Belarus. While Western psychology did not necessarily ignore the important role that the environment played in a person's upbringing, Vygotsky went more in-depth and addressed ideas related to how it was wrong to separate the person from the surrounding environment when considering his or her upbringing.

"Instead, a single unit exists: Individuals and cultural communities mutually create each-other." (Miller 171) Vygotsky basically wanted society to understand that persons act because they interact with the outside environment and feel that it would only be normal for them to adopt particular attitudes in certain circumstances because their experiences with the environment provide them with education. Miller's example concerning a child and his mother having a conversation after they went to the beach is especially clarifying when considering Vygotsky's reasoning.

Hudson's text provides information concerning how there is a strong connection between the child's memories and his mother. It is not necessarily that the child would be unable to remember what he experienced without his mother, as his mother plays a pivotal role in assisting the child in being able to access his memories more effectively.

Vygostsky acknowledged the importance of studying cross-cultural psychology, but he wanted individuals to comprehend how individual psychology should not necessarily be regarded as a dependent variable, considering that it is heavily influenced by external factors. "Culture cannot be separated and treated as an external factor; culture is everywhere, and it serves to organize all experience." (Miller 174) Vygostsky's thinking can practically be addressed from a perspective involving the nature vs. nurture debate. The Soviet psychologist did not believe that a person's development could only be shaped by his or her genes.

Instead, he considered that in many cases the surrounding environment enables the individual to distinguish between right and wrong and to come to hold a series of thoughts that he or she would unlikely come across otherwise. The zone of proximal development stands as one of Vygotsky's most important theories that, as he emphasized the difference between the individual developing without receiving outside support and the individual developing as he or she receives support from his or her surrounding environment.

Vygotsky used this conception in order to have people realize the important role that outside factors play in a person's development, as he or she is significantly assisted as he or she tries to learn more about the world as a whole. a. Vygotsky's theory enabled me to get a more complex understanding of the exact influence that educational institutes had on my development.

Even with the fact that I consider nature to play an important role in the attitudes that a person adopts throughout his or her life, I believe that experiences are essential in shaping one's personality. An individual could not possibly think the way that he or she thinks if it were not for a series of events to assist the respective person in making certain decisions. Life is similar to a series of phases that a person goes through as he or she develops.

However, by simply being confined to a room without interacting with other environments or other individuals, a person is likely to have great difficulty reaching conclusions that individuals in the contemporary society reach with the assistance of their peers or of educational institutes. Educational institutes thus represent an extremely important concept in a person's development, taking into account that they practically stand by the respective individual as he or she comes to acknowledge a series of truths.

The zone of proximal development basically represents a key aspect of the idea of evolution in general. Evolution is made possible as the individual interact with several environments and as he or she learns important lessons as a consequence of these respective interactions. b. The reading and its main points provided me with a particularized perspective concerning the idea of teaching.

While it would be wrong to say that a teacher compensates for an individual's failure to use his or her own abilities to learn more about the world, it is nonetheless essential to see a teacher as a concept that creates a connection between ideas and the individual. A teacher is not necessarily the person who feeds information to students, as he or she is the person who enables students to gain the ability to learn more.