Leo Semionovich Vygotsky

Leo Semionovich Vygotsky (1896-1934) argued that language integrated the cognitive and social development of the child. "The most significant moment in the course of intellectual development, which gives birth to the purely human forms of practical and abstract intelligence, occurs when speech and practical activity, two previously completely independent line of development, converge. ..... Speech was considered to be intimately involved in children mastering their behavior and in applying some degree of control over the surroundings: the more complex the behavior the more dependent it was on language. The meanings attached to words passed through emotional and concrete stages before becoming abstract. "Thought and language, which reflect reality in a way different from that of perception, are the key to the nature of human consciousness. Words pay a central part not only in the development of thought but in the historical growth of consciousness as a whole." ........

. . . . He brought consciousness back into materialistic psychology by stressing its importance to the historical development of society. It is ironic that Vygotsky, who emphasized the social dimension of speech, should have his own works banned by society in which he lived. His work remained essentially unknown to the West until the translation of 'Thought and Language' s-f-walker.org.uk/pubsebooks/pdfs/Vygotsky_Thought_and_Language.pdf in 1962 (Originally published in 1934). Since then his ideas have received an enthusiastic reception and his attempts to find a middle road between the covertness of physiological and covertness of descriptive psychologies correspond to contemporary concerns. ~ Page 175