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REVIEW
published: 07 August 2019
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01515
Edited by:
Manuel Carreiras,
Basque Center on Cognition, Brain
and Language, Spain
Reviewed by:
Ion Juvina,
Wright State University,
United States
Ageliki Nicolopoulou,
Lehigh University, United States
*Correspondence:
Olga Vasileva
ovasilev@sfu.ca
Natalia Balyasnikova
n.balyasnikova@ubc.ca
Specialty section:
This article was submitted to
Cognitive Science,
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Frontiers in Psychology
Received: 01 July 2018
Accepted: 17 June 2019
Published: 07 August 2019
Citation:
Vasileva O and Balyasnikova N (2019)
(Re)Introducing Vygotsky’s Thought:
From Historical Overview to
Contemporary Psychology.
Front. Psychol. 10:1515.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01515
(Re)Introducing Vygotsky’s Thought:
From Historical Overview to
Contemporary Psychology
OlgaVasileva1
* and NataliaBalyasnikova2
*
1Psychology Department, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 2 Department of Language and Literacy
Education, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Theories formulated by Russian psychologist and educator Lev Vygotsky currently range
from being applied and celebrated across multiple contexts to beconsidered outdated. In
this paper, wemaintain that such inconsistency in application stems from the overreliance
on translated or reformulated Vygotskian theories, the attempts to understand these ideas
in isolation from the scientic historical context of their development, and the impact of
Vygotsky’s personal life circumstances on the development of his scholarship. It is known
that Vygotsky’s untimely death prevented him from elaborating on his theoretical views and
expanding his early empirical work. Wesuggest that Vygotsky’s scholarship could bebetter
understood in light of the core principles that transcend all aspects of his work. In this paper,
weelaborate on two such core principles: theories of language development and their relation
to the integrated systemic approach to psychological development. Weargue that although
linguistic and historical boundaries have shaped the common perception of Vygotskian
theories in anglophone research in a specic way, there is a potential for a renewed application
of these theories to modern psychology that might beespecially relevant in light of the
increasingly interdisciplinary character of the modern science. To support our argument,
weprovide a brief overview and examples of potential connections between Vygotsky’s
scholarship with contemporary landscape in psychological science. The paper presents a
brief introduction to the topic of Vygotskian work and its application to modern psychology,
rather than an addition to the eld of Vygotskian scholarship. It is geared toward non-Vygotskian
scholars and invites researchers working in interdisciplinary areas of psychology.
Keywords: psychological science, history of psychology, Vygotsky, systems approach, language development,
culture, developmental science
INTRODUCTION
Concepts developed by Vygotsky have transcended time and geographical boundaries. Today,
his work is widely applied to many elds of inquiry ranging from psychology (Saxe, 1990/2015;
Burman, 2016) to language education (Lantolf, 1994; Lantolf et al., 2018). While this embrace
of the Soviet psychologist’s thought is a cause for celebration, a number of scholars have
stressed the lack of application of Vygotskian thought to contemporary psychological research
(Stetsenko, 2016). As scholars working in interdisciplinary elds ourselves, we believe in the
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potential for broader applications of Vygotsky’s work. At the
same time, we would like to acknowledge an extensive eld
of Vygotskian scholarship that exists to this day. Indeed, those
specialists who have in-depth knowledge of his work and theory
will not likely nd anything new or surprising in this paper.
Our intent is not to outline the Vygotskian project in its
entirety, as his research embraced topics spanning from clinical
aspects of development to applied aspects of educational practices;
neither do we provide a nuanced application of Vygotsky’s
work to specic research questions nor present a detailed review
of how Vygotsky’s work has been implemented previously.
Rather, we seek to inspire interdisciplinary conversations and
encourage non-Vygotskian specialists to engage with his work
and consider its relevance for their own research. In fact,
we have intentionally situated this article in an open access
journal as an act of knowledge brokering between these dierent
disciplines and dierent scholars. With this intent in mind,
we do not limit our discussion to one particular aspect of
Vygotsky’s work. We intentionally organized our paper around
broadly dened research themes. We hope that this would
help the readers to identify those areas of research where they
could apply Vygotsky’s work or engage with Vygotsky’s ideas.
To assist our readers, we begin with a brief overview of
the context of Vygotsky’s work that had signicant inuence
on the way it can be understood today. We maintain that
Vygotsky’s work should be conceptualized holistically, as a
research program that was broad in scope and governed by
fundamental research questions on the nature and development
of the human mind. To this end, we address the two core
principles of Vygotsky’s work: the systemic approach to the
study of mind and the social origin of the mind. We conclude
with some recommendations regarding pertinent applications
of Vygotsky’s work as it relates to contemporary research in
psychology. e end result is thus a text that is rather eclectic
conceptually. We encourage our readers to address dierent
parts of the text that they might nd more relevant or interesting
and further engage with some in-depth accounts of his work
provided by Vygotskian scholars.
APPLICATIONS OF VYGOTSKY’S WORK:
ISSUES AND CHALLENGES
Vygotsky has been dubbed the “Mozart of psychology” (Toulmin,
1978). However, his original work has oen being rewritten
or modied by other “composers” by adjusting or sampling
the original work, especially in cases of translation. erefore,
it might be useful to understand how Vygotsky’s work has
been taken up by the global research community and, to
continue the metaphor, how his music (that is, his theoretical
contribution and research questions) was performed and by
whom. For example, we have observed that translated works
of Vygotsky that are widely available today are oen a
de-contextualized aggregation of texts, which had a complex
history of publication in their original Russian. While the
historical context of his scholarship is fascinating and warrants
a separate discussion beyond the limits of this paper, we feel
that a brief historical overview of Vygotskian research is needed
to situate this paper within modern psychological discourse.
First, as noted by Van der Veer and Yasnitsky (2016a,b)
and Zavershneva (2016), a complete and accurate bibliography
of Vygotsky’s work is yet to becreated. e existing Vygotsky’s
bibliographies oen contain signicant limitations (Van der
Veer and Yasnitsky, 2016a,b). As the result, wecannot accurately
establish how much Vygotsky wrote himself. It is known
that Vygotsky’s texts were not always written and sometimes
consisted of notes rather than well-formulated and
polished texts, and a signicant portion of what is known
as Vygotsky’s work was published posthumously. In other
words, Vygotsky did not collect and organize these specic
pieces of text in the order in which they are found today.
Moreover, as noted by Yasnitsky (2011a), some texts that
appear under Vygotsky’s name were redacted prior to
publication while in other texts portions from dierent
manuscripts were inserted. Furthermore, a signicant portion
of Vygotsky’s work has not been published at all, and these
archival works have become accessible to a broader audience
only recently (Zavershneva, 2010, 2014, 2016).
Second, Vygotsky’s texts underwent various levels of censorship
during his life and posthumously. It is a well-known fact that
in the Soviet Union, research papers were severely censored
to make them more agreeable to Marxist ideology. In fact,
Vygotsky’s own students censored some of his texts when they
rose to prominence in the eld during the 1960s and 1970s
(e.g., Luria, Leontiev). Consequently, these scholars used
Vygotsky’s texts to promote their own work, omitting the parts
that were less relevant to their respective research paradigms
and in so doing contributed to the establishment of so-called
canon of “Vygotsky school” (Fraser and Yasnitsky, 2016;
Yasnitsky, 2016a).
ird, publications of Vygotsky’s work in the Western press
resulted in signicant changes to the original work due to
language editing. For example, Cole, John-Steiner, Scribner and
Souberman, the editors of Mind in Society (Cole et al., 1978)
acknowledged that they took “signicant liberties” with the
original texts while preparing them for publication. is appears
to have been done partly to make them more “digestible” and
understandable for a Western audience.
e notion of translation is extremely important for the
appropriate presentation of Vygotsky’s ideas to a non-Russian-
speaking audience, and careful translations of Vygotsky’s texts
are currently becoming an area of study in its own right.
We refer interested readers to the work of Van der Veer and
Yasnitsky (2016a,b) for a review of core Vygotskian semantics.
Readers can also refer to Zavershneva (2014) for a “phraseological
toolkit” that can assist a reader with essential terminology of
Vygotskian texts. More signicantly, in our opinion, the
translation of Vygotsky’s original Russian texts into other
languages adds a layer of diculty to the accurate application
of his work. We maintain that Vygotskian texts could bebetter
understood if studied within the context of the Russian school
of psychology and the specic terminology and apparatus of
this school. For example, dierences in the semantics of the
core concepts “mind,” “psyche,” and “cognition” in Russian and
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English open the door for interpretation, as was highlighted
by Bruner (1962), who used the word “image” for the Russian
word “znak.” We feel that the usage of “image” in this context
could lead readers to dierent connotations that are rather
distant from the more appropriate word “sign.”
In sum, when Vygotsky’s texts were adapted by his students,
translated, and published in international journals and books,
some pieces of his “music material” were omitted. Other pieces
“sang” too loudly. However, this situation is not the only
obstacle to interpreting Vygotsky for Western readers. What
is crucially important is that Vygotsky was writing his “music”
during a particular time. is period is important both in the
larger historical context and the specic context of developments
in the eld of psychology, which occurred dierently in the
West and Soviet Union. As a result, some notes and musical
pieces might be unclear to listeners unaware of the specic
contexts of their creation.
THE CONTEXTS OF VYGOTSKY’S WORK
Researchers have dened at least three major periods of Vygotsky
work. e early period took place at the start of the 1920s.
e middle period began in the mid-1920s and continued
until late 1927 or early 1928 at which time Vygotsky signicantly
reevaluated his earlier ideas. e nal and arguably the most
productive period began in 1929 and continued until mid-1934.
By this point, Vygotsky’s health was rapidly deteriorating, and
he was well aware that he might not live long enough to
nish his work. is period for Vygotsky was characterized
by a more focused theoretical work and less concern for the
meticulous testing of newly developed hypotheses. We suggest
that the seemingly lack of precise experimental work is not
attributed to any perceived unimportance on Vygotsky’s part.
Indeed, this focus on theoretical work in the last period of
his life may be better explained by his desire to leave enough
theoretical instruments and ideas to his students, who could
in turn develop and test his ideas experimentally.
Regarding the specics of Vygotsky’s life as a researcher,
we suggest that a reader of early and late Vygotsky will not
necessarily encounter the same scholar. e three major periods
of Vygotsky’s work demonstrate varied levels of focus on dierent
topics, changing research programs, and shiing theoretical
perspectives. Consequently, we suggest that a single, unied,
well-developed theory of Vygotskian theory and methodology
is untenable. Rather, there are “several Vygotskies” (Van der
Veer and Yasnitsky, 2016a,b), depending on the period of
Vygotsky’s work. Moreover, as Toulmin (1978) notes, Vygotsky’s
work in psychology was unnished; he did not have an
opportunity to rene his ideas and present them in any nal,
exhaustive theoretical form. However, our interpretation of
Vygotsky suggests that while his career took dierent turns
over the years, it was always guided by general, fundamental
questions, such as the structure and origins of human mind.
We maintain that other aspects of Vygotsky’s work, such as
his interest in defectology, abnormal psychology, and experimental
work in comparative psychology, should be understood as
leading to an answer for his ultimate research puzzle: the
genesis of human mind.
In our opinion, a more accurate understanding of Vygotsky
is impossible without an appreciation of the temporal context,
which framed Vygotsky’s work and the global social contexts
of psychological sciences at that time1. Webegin our discussion
with the focus on temporal contexts.
Temporal Contexts
Vygotsky started his research career soon aer the October
Revolution of 1917, which impacted the entire trajectory of
his career. e revolution brought tremendous changes to every
aspect of Russian social life, including research and academic
endeavors. e revolution impacted science and academia in
Soviet society in at least two major ways: the newly established
government threw their support behind scientic research,
including research on child development, and established a
political ideology that impacted all aspects of Russian society,
including science. Since the government established the rules,
the new ideology dened what a “right” or “correct” society
was expected to look like, how it was supposed to function,
and what individuals in the society were supposed to do. In
the academy, limits were imposed on what scientists could
claim in their research, how phenomena could be examined
and explained, and what conclusions were in line with the
established ideological framework2.
Guided by the ideology of the time, Vygotsky embarked
on a metaphorical boat that was sailing toward a new goal –
the creation of a new man in a new socialist society. Large
populations, such as factory workers, women, and agricultural
workers, who previously had limited access to schooling, were
now able to pursue an education. Tasked with educating such
a large number of people who were illiterate or minimally
literate, the Soviet educational system grew exponentially. is
increase in the number of individuals seeking an education
required innovative scientic approaches, both regarding general
science of child development and applied approaches. e old
ways of being had been abolished and the new society required
dierent approaches to education, namely a shi in the science
of child development. Within this context, Vygotsky’s work
was marked by a signicant paradigm shi, both in the system
of social class interaction and by fundamental shis in
scientic inquiry.
roughout his entire career, Vygotsky’s work was inuenced
and constrained by the changing political climate. For example,
1
A complete description of the scientic landscape available to Vygotsky during
his lifetime is beyond the scope of this paper. ere are some excellent
publications on the topic (e.g. Van der Veer and Yasnitsky, 2016a,b;
Yasnitsky, 2016a).
2
is situation might rightfully beviewed as restrictive and limiting to scientic
inquiry. However, in our opinion, it would be incorrect to suggest that this
context erases any value of research conducted during that historical period.
Science has never been free from the ideological and political climate of the
time. Consequently, scientists were never completely immune from any given
political and ideological climate (Aleksandrov and Kirdina, 2012). We believe
that rather than perceiving Vygotsky’s work as limited by existing ideology, it
may be more accurate to highlight specic aspects that were shaped by this
historical period of time.
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in 1929, heembarked on a research expedition to Soviet Central
Asia together with Luria and a group of students. Despite
coming to interesting results, upon completion of the research,
Vygotsky was unable to publish and share his work. Even
Luria himself, as a well-respected scholar in the Soviet academy,
could not publish their joint conclusions until many years
later (Lamdan and Yasnitsky, 2016). A possible cause for this
stagnation was that the interpretation of the data was not
likely favorable for the young Soviet government and did not
meet the guidelines set by the ideology of the political changes
in the region. Another example of the contextual limitations
on Vygotsky’s work was the fact that it could not bepublished
due to the naming of specic individuals in his manuscripts.
e 1930s and the decade that followed were characterized
by increasing tendencies of isolation from Western science.
is led to the demise of extensive reliance on foreign research
programs, methods, and theories by Soviet scholars. At the
time, extensive citation of foreign names in the work of Soviet
scholars was perceived as unpatriotic and in certain contexts
could in fact be detrimental to one’s career. Readers are likely
familiar with the name Leon Trotsky, a once celebrated communist
who was subsequently proclaimed an enemy of the regime.
Vygotsky cited Trotsky in some of his manuscripts, and it is
apparently this citation that barred the work from publication
(Fraser and Yasnitsky, 2016). It is necessary to note, however,
that although this situation impacted Vygotsky’s work, it cannot
beperceived as an absolute. Vygotsky himself (and his students
aer his death) collaborated with foreign scholars. us, their
research never developed in complete isolation from Western
psychology (Yasnitsky, 2012a,b, 2016b).
Further examples of contextual inuences can be seen in
the trajectory of Vygotsky’s research on child development. As
mentioned above, the Soviet educational system was tasked
with educating large groups of underprivileged children (war
orphans, poor or working-class children, and the homeless).
All these children had to become new members of the society:
they had to be educated, socialized, and provided with
professional training that could make them into productive
members of the society. As such, the Bolshevik government
supported scientic research, discovery and understanding of
the basic laws of development, and application of this knowledge
for the development of practical methods of education and
rehabilitation for underprivileged children. is led to
development of a new research discipline – pedology. e
science of pedology – a particular direction in Soviet research,
which aimed to unite the approaches of various sciences
(medicine, biology, psychology, etc.) to the method of child
development – was tasked with meeting this challenge. Pedology
provided a scientic foundation for the entire educational
system, aiming to discover and understand the basic laws of
development. Pedology sought to apply this knowledge to
practical methods of education and rehabilitation for
underprivileged children. e mandate was to make these
children “normal” members of society despite their initial
impoverished backgrounds. e belief was that should these
children be provided with the right social environment, such
as an educational system attuned to their needs, the hardships
the children have experienced might not have profound,
unchangeable consequences for their future.
Overall, the relationship between Vygotsky’s work and political
climate of the time was a tumultuous one. e primacy of
the environment over innate tendencies was dear to the Bolshevik
government. us, Vygotsky’s work, with its focus on the social
origins of the mind and the environmental impact upon it,
was initially well received. With governmental support,
pedological institutions were established throughout the country
and new classes for teachers and educators were opened.
Vygotsky himself considered pedology of the utmost importance
in his own work, as the discipline dealt with questions that
were central to his interests. However, despite such a favorable
start, the discipline of pedology failed to thrive in the Soviet
Union (Kozulin, 1984). It became an outcast, and the government
halted pedological research.
Regardless of the government’s reasoning, the decline of
pedology had a profound impact on Vygotsky’s work. Researchers
with a vested interest in pedology had to disassociate themselves
from the discipline. Some shied their research programs to
defectology (a discipline more closely aligned with special
education and investigating development of children with visual,
hearing, and mental impairments); some focused on child
clinical psychology and psychiatry; and others turned to
physiology or pedagogical research (Yaroshevsky, 1993). is
massive departure from pedology did not occur rapidly; however,
it had a profound impact on the careers of many researchers.
Previous research programs were not halted entirely but had
to be signicantly transformed. Scholars were required to
reformulate their research questions and methodology and
corroborate with new host disciplines. Much more signicant
was the fragmentation of previously established research groups.
Members now found themselves in dierent institutions aliated
with dierent disciplines. As a result of these changes, the
close-knit Vygotskian Circle formed in 1927–1931 eventually
dispersed throughout dierent disciplines and geographical
locations (Yasnitsky, 2016b).
erefore, weconclude that the context of time had a deep
impact on the development of Vygotsky’s school of thought.
By decontextualizing Vygotskian theories, contemporary
researchers might overlook the ideology which guided his work.
Moreover, by selectively applying Vygotsky’s ideas to the contexts
of their work, many researchers may risk overlooking the
changes that Vygotsky made to his own theories.
Social Contexts
e nature of Vygotsky’s collaboration with colleagues and
students had a profound impact on his science. is is why
we argue that one needs to acknowledge the social context
of Vygotsky’s work as foundational to the development of
his theories.
First, it is known that Vygotsky worked closely with a number
of like-minded researchers – both his peers and students – and
conducted joint experiments with them. e core of the so-called
Vygotskian Circle consisted of the Big ree – Vygotsky himself,
Luria, and Leontiev – and the Big Five – rst generation students
of the three: Zaporozhets, Bozhovich, Levina, Morozova, and
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Slavina. All of them spent years working intensely with Vygotsky
and were clearly inuenced by his ideas3. e cross-pollination
of ideas sometimes gets omitted in viewing Vygotsky as an
autonomous, independent thinker.
Second, it is important to consider the trajectory of Vygotsky’s
work as it was taken up aer his death. Aer Vygotsky’s passing
in 1934, his colleagues continued working on their own research
programs, bringing Vygotskian thinking to wider audiences.
Vygotsky’s ideas and fundamental beliefs did not truly vanish
with the author’s death but continued to develop in later years.
e Vygotskian Circle was instrumental in publishing and
promoting Vygotsky work posthumously (especially Luria, who
contributed to translating Vygotsky’s work in English and
disseminating those ideas to the international research
community). Several of Vygotsky’s students published their
own works shortly aer his death (see for example Sa kha ro v,
1994). Although these students published content under their
own names, the works were based on close collaboration with
Vygotsky or research he conducted himself. Consequently,
we can consider some of these publications to be Vygotsky’s
work to a large extent. By focusing exclusively on works
authored by Vygotsky alone, we could be excluding a large
corpus of research that is de facto an extension of his
original thought.
All Vygotskian Circle researchers have developed their own
research programs, as wehave mentioned earlier. For example,
Luria further worked in clinical psychology and psychopathology,
studying memory and aphasia, and Leontiev developed his
Activity eory (Leontiev, 1978). us, not all aspects of the
Vygotskian Circle are a direct continuation of Vygotsky’s ideas.
Some features of their theories are less dependent on Vygotsky
and represent a departure from his way of thinking. In some
cases, this separation started even before Vygotsky’s death and
was known to Vygotsky himself. For example, scholars working
with the Vygotsky archive (Zavershneva, 2010, 2016) have found
notes, stating that he perceived Leontiev’s development of
Activity eory as a departure from Vygotsky’s own ideas.
We would like to reiterate that the Vygotskian Circle can and
should be viewed as a development of Vygotsky’s thinking
and not simply as its linear extension. Indeed, within the works
of the members of the Circle, there are multiple varied
engagements with Vygotsky’s original thought. While some of
Vygotsky’s colleagues stayed close to his original ideas, others
took a signicant departure from them.
CORE PRINCIPLES OF VYGOTSKY’S
WORK
In section 3 of the paper, wediscussed various reasons preventing
Vygotsky from nalizing his theory in the complete operational
form. We suggest, however, that despite changes and shiing
focuses in research, Vygotsky has always followed two core
3
Some of the works that showcase the productivity of these collaborations
include: Vygotsky and Luria (1993), Vygotsky and Leontiev (1932), and
Leontiev (1931).
principles: systemic approach to the development of mind and
the role of language in this process. In our opinion, these
principles are crucial for understanding Vygotsky’s overall
theoretical standing and the motivation for his work. us,
we suggest that those who are embarking on the application
of Vygotskian work in their own practice might benet primarily
from understanding and operationalizing these core principles,
instead of addressing specic aspects of Vygotsky’s work or
rely on his published texts. Moreover, we suggest that
incorporation of these two principles has profound implications
for about every aspect of psychology. To this end, we discuss
how these principles can be applied in various branches of
modern psychology as well as other disciplines, such as education
and language studies.
The First Core Principle: Systemic
Approach to the Development of the Mind
e rst core principle of Vygotsky’s approach to the research
of psychological functioning is the application of a systems
perspective. Vygotsky continuously stressed that it is a mistake
to study psychological functions individually, e.g., to study
development of memory or development of perception. Heargued
that researchers should address the change in the relationships
between various functions (Luria and Vygotsky, 1930/1992). In
other words, according to Vygotsky, the new object of research
should be not individual functions, but psychological systems.
A systemic approach in the sciences generally stands in
opposition to the reductionist approach (Toomela, 2015). In
the eld of psychology, for example, the reductionist approach
is commonly associated with Cartesian thinking and modular
approaches (Toomela, 2003). While a discussion of this
opposition is beyond the scope of this paper, it is worth
noting that Cartesian thinking generally postulates a separation
of studies of mind and body, which in modern scientic
discourse means an opposition between psychological and
biological processes. What is important to consider, given the
focus of this paper, is that Vygotsky clearly did not embrace
this dichotomy. For him, a developing organism (for example,
a human being) could not be reduced to either its biological
or social environment. A comprehensive study of child
development for Vygotsky had to employ a systemic approach
that included both bio-social and bio-psychological aspects
of development.
Drawing on a systemic approach in sciences, Vygotsky viewed
a unied system as consisting of interdependent elements
(Toomela, 2015). In this system, every element has properties
that are subject to that system’s function, and no element can
be changed without aecting the whole system. At the same
time, the system itself is viewed as more than a collection of
its individual elements, which change properties when they
become parts of a system. Following the systemic principle,
Vygotsky saw elements of the human mind as having precursors
in animal cognition (Zorina and Smirnova, 2006). However,
heargued that the human mind becomes qualitatively dierent
once it becomes semiotically mediated. at is, the basic
processes of psychological functioning (e.g., memory, decision-
making, formation of behavioral programs) acquire new
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properties as they are mediated through symbols. Emotions,
aect, decision-making, and memory acquire specic qualities
once they become a part of the general cognitive system. An
important aspect of a system is its hierarchical organization.
is means that elements comprising a system are interdependent
and organized in a particular manner, with some elements
being subordinate to other either structurally or functionally.
In the earlier period of his work, Vygotsky believed that
psychological functions in the human mind are also organized
in a hierarchical system. Hedistinguished between elementary,
primitive, lower psychological functions (LPF) that humans
share with other animals (e.g., mammals), such as memory
and concept formation, and higher psychological functions
(HPF) that are characterized by semiotically mediated processes
and include decision-making, speech and language, and cultural
transmission of knowledge. Vygotsky suggested that in the
course of individual development, initially isolated LPF merge
with developmentally older HPF.
Some criticism of Vygotsky’s work might stem from ignoring
or misinterpreting the systemic principle. For example, Wertsch
and Tulviste (1992) take issue with Vygotsky for not explaining
how LPF aect HPF in development. As Toomela (2014a) points
out, such criticism in fact ignores the systemic approach taken
by Vygotsky and applies Cartesian cause-eect thinking. In
Vygotsky’s interpretation, mental functions comprising the system
change qualitatively in development. is is why within this
framework it is impossible to state with certainty how LPF
aect HPF, as the former cease to exist in the previous form
and become dierent, culturally mediated psychological processes.
e application of a systemic approach lead Vygotsky to
another very important conclusion: since psychological functions
are organized in hierarchical systems, developmental processes
become central for understanding the human mind. e crucial
role of developmental processes in the system as a way to
understand the system itself is a direct consequence of a
principle of systemic organization: when a component becomes
part of a system, both the properties of the new whole and
the properties of the component change (Vygotsky, 1932/1960;
Koa, 1935; Kohler, 1947). Vygotsky argued that once new
components enter the system, they aect the system in general
and all other components of this system accordingly. For
example, once a child masters language, its psychological
functions become semiotically mediated and thus change their
qualities, becoming higher psychological functions. is principle
was essential for Vygotsky, who maintained that the structure
of the mind cannot be understood by researching the mind
of an adult. To know what a mind system is, we need to
observe mind development in a child. It is not enough to
observe only the nal product of these processes. e system
structure and functionality can only be understood through
system development. In the following section, wehighlight how
Vygotsky’s systemic approach to understanding of developmental
processes has been utilized across disciplines.
Applications of the First Principle
As mentioned above, Vygotsky stressed the importance of
understanding developmental processes as a system. Indeed, this
is relevant to several psychological disciplines and
interdisciplinary research today.
e rst area where systemic principle is applicable is
developmental research. In contemporary developmental
psychology, Vygotsky’s systemic perspective comes in contrast
with nativism, which suggests that pre-linguistic infants possess
a number of psychological abilities in the early stages of
development (Onishi and Baillargeon, 2005; Hamlin, 2013, etc.).
Nativist studies are unied by a core-knowledge theory
framework, postulating that human psychological abilities are
largely innate or pre-formed. Nativists postulate that psychological
processes in individual development increase quantitatively
rather than change qualitatively. According to Vygotsky’s systemic
perspective, psychological processes are organized as hierarchical
and interconnected dynamic systems, which provide for the
heterogeneous nature of the human mind (Vygotsky,
1931/1983a,b; Vygotsky and Luria, 1931/1994). As such,
he suggested that not all psychological mechanisms emerge
simultaneously but that one’s existing psychological abilities
develop qualitatively. Since the nativist perspective suggests
that psychological processes change quantitatively, from a
systemic perspective, it is a-developmental. If psychological
abilities are present from birth and development is conceptualized
as quantitative addition of computational power, nativist
perspective has diculties explaining observed variations in
development. As Subbotsky (2014) puts it, it is not clear, why
a 6-year-old does not demonstrate certain reasoning abilities,
when an infant (according to the nativist perspective) does.
Similarly, a number of scholars (e.g., Carpendale et al., 2013)
expressed criticism to the nativist approach, suggesting that it
lacks an explanation of truly developmental processes.
Taking up Vygotsky’s theories, memory development in a
2-year-old, a 3-year-old, and a 5-year-old cannot simply
be measured by “how much” memory is “added” at each
developmental stage. In the systemic framework, the structure
of memory for a 5-year-old is qualitatively dierent from the
memory of a 3-year-old. erefore, instead of studying the
development of memory, as a uniform ability throughout
childhood, in Vygotskian framework researchers can address
formation of “qualitatively dierent memories.” A systemic
framework also calls into question a common approach adopted
by nativism research methodology, namely, the search for the
initial stages of a given psychological ability in development.
Questions such as at what age morality appears or whether
preverbal infants understand false-beliefs – adopted by this
framework – are meaningless in a systemic perspective. e
“morality” of an 8-month-old infant is structurally and
functionally dierent from the morality of a 5-year-old, and
both would dier from that of an adult. In a systemic approach,
rather than questioning the age at which ability X emerges,
it is more appropriate to investigate which aspects of ability
X change as they enter other functional systems, to what extend
do they change, and under what environmental inuences.
e problem of qualitative change in development discussed
by Vygotsky relates to a hotly debated question in psychology:
whether or not the discipline has methodological tools that
can adequately capture developmental processes. Vygotsky (1997)
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noted that in an attempt to analyze the mind, psychological
science tends to dissect its higher forms and structures into
primary elements, ignoring the problem of quality, which cannot
be reduced to quantitative dierences. We believe modern
psychology would benet from applying the Vygotskian standard
to research. Valsiner and Van der Veer (2014) suggest that
the application of Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development
(ZPD) at the conceptual level might provide developmental
psychologists and educators with a new approach to assessing
and measuring developmental processes. Valsiner and Van der
Veer’s suggestions echo the current discussion of the replication
crisis in psychology (Earp and Tramow, 2015) and a call for
revisioning methods and statistical apparatus widely used in
psychology today. Some researchers suggest this crisis might
be resolved with improvements in general theory and the
adoption of alternative statistical techniques. For example,
Valsiner and Van der Veer (2014) and Toomela (2015) argue
that psychology has adopted inferential statistics that are
conceptually inadequate for investigating psychological processes.
Similarly, a number of developmental researchers (van de Schoot
et al., 2014) argue for the adoption of Bayesian statistics in
developmental research.
At least two major discussions in Vygotsky’s neuroscientic
approach are the structural composition of the brain and the
relationship between the brain and its environment.
Advancements in modern neuropsychology and neuroscience
are indeed remarkable; however, some researchers criticize
modern neuropsychology for its reductionist approach to human
cognition (Toomela, 2014b). Specically, this criticism focuses
on two main aspects of reductionism: the structural organization
of psychological processes in the brain and an implied assumption
that a careful description of the brain’s structure can beenough
for our understanding of human psychology. We suggest that
Vygotsky’s scholarship can beuseful in addressing such criticism.
As Toomela (2014b) suggests, in the search for a neurological
basis of behavior, researchers tend to focus on determining
which area of the brain is responsible for processing psychological
function X. is approach is associated with a modular account
of the human brain structure and the assumption that it is
possible to determine (more or less precisely) a relationship
between specic brain areas and respective psychological
processes. eories on the “modular mind” vary from the more
extreme (e.g., “the Swiss-army knife”) model of the mind
(Pinker, 1997) to more inclusive (Gazzaniga, 2004; Geary, 2005).
However, the underlying assumptions tend to remain the same.
Research programs aim to localize precise areas of the cortex
responsible for processing specic information or genes that
are expressed in a given brain region and in turn aect formation
of a particular behavioral program. Such genocentric and
modular approaches to the human mind clearly collide with
Vygotsky and Luria’s thinking. ey suggest that HPF – the
most developed, complex, and semiotically mediated
psychological processes – are not strictly localized in the brain
but are rather dynamically distributed. is approach does not
suggest that no localized processes exist in a brain whatsoever.
However, similar to modern evidence (Anderson, 2014), it
suggests that many complex psychological processes are neither
functionally nor structurally localized in the brain. Vygotsky
was critical of Pavlov, who associated cognition with the
prefrontal cortex and the frontal lobes of the brain. Vygotsky
argued that while frontal lobes are important for cognitive
processes, some aspects of these processes could be more
precisely localized by activating a given area in the brain.
According to Vygotsky, real-time processes activate the whole
brain and the body, as they activate various functional systems.
In this paradigm, complex cognition is not an entity that can
be located “somewhere” but rather a process taking part at
dierent locations. For Vygotsky, an appropriate question about
cognition is not “where” it can be located but rather “how”
it is processed. Vygotsky (1997) wrote that “…no specic
function is ever connected with the activity of one single brain
center. It is always the product of the integral activity of strictly
dierentiated, hierarchically interconnected centers.” (p.140). In
other words, psychological processes are better explained not
by “where” in the brain they are localized, but how dierent
functional brain networks interact with each other in real time.
A similar perspective was taken by a number of researchers,
including Goldberg (1995), who focused on gradiental approach
to neocortical organization and Anokhin (1971), who studied
the theory of functional systems, investigating connections
between the formation of functional systems and learning.
Indeed, modern day neurological research supports Vygotsky’s
arguments and shows that many areas of the brain process
various types of information (Anderson, 2014). Moreover, studies
show that specic areas of the brain – associative cortices –
seem to specialize in information synthesis, it is a-modal
representation and processing.
Vygotsky (1982) understood the process of development
from the neurological perspective, in which the brain reorganizes
neuronal connections and creates new, functional systems. In
this framework, psychological structures on a neurological level
become functional relations between neurons, whereas complex
functional systems “do not mature by themselves but are formed
in the process of communication and material activity of a
child” (Luria, 1969, p. 34). is is how the brain, developing
as a biological organ, also becomes a cultural organ (Toomela,
2014b). Child interaction with language, cultural tools, artifacts,
and social environment leads to changes in the brain, developing
new functional systems. Not surprisingly, a prolonged ontogenetic
period that in humans is necessary for learning cultural
knowledge from conspecics coincides on a neurological level
with a series of massive rewiring events in the brain
(de Graaf-Peters and Hadders-Algra, 2006).
e hierarchical nature of functional systems allows for a
fresh perspective on understanding impairments in brain damage
and developmental disorders. If we conceptualize the damage
as impairment in a functional system instead of a broken
module, it is possible to separate primary and secondary defects
that might aect dierent levels of the system. Damage to a
hierarchically superior level will aect abilities at a lower level
as well. Similarly, damage to a lower level of the system will
have some eect on that system’s higher levels. For example,
Vygotsky demonstrated that impairments in visual perception
are related to impairments in language development, verbal
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thinking, and, in turn, visual thinking (Vygotsky, 1995). What
matters is that compensatory mechanisms developed by the
brain in each case might dier, depending on the age at which
damage to the system occurred (hence the stage of functional
system formation). Symptoms that are similar on the surface
level might be produced by dierent psychological processes
(e.g., in case of brain lateralization and phonological processing;
Stiles etal., 1998). As Akhutina and Shereshevsky (2014) suggest,
some modern theoretical perspectives on disabilities, such as
neuroconstructivism (Johnson and Karmilo-Smith, 2004), are
frequently in agreement with aspects of Vygotsky and Luria’s
work. Drawing on the work of Jean Piaget and systems theorists,
neuroconstructivism aims to reconceptualize how weunderstand
development and change from the perspective of a brain. In
such reconceptualization, neuroconstructivism applies the
systemic thinking so prominent in Vygotsky and Luria’s work
with regard to both typical and abnormal development.
ird, systemic approach can benet cultural research.
roughout the 20th century, psychological research focused
heavily on the search for “universals” in the human mind.
ese could beuniversal rules of learning and stimuli response
in behaviorism; the genetic foundation of behavior; innate
computational processes in cognitive science and innate modules
in evolutionary psychology; and brain structures and processes
in neuroscience and neuropsychology. However, recently, cross-
cultural researchers have questioned this quest for “universal
human nature.” For example, in their seminal paper, Henrich
et al. (2010) demonstrate that the majority of samples in
psychology research papers come from so-called WEIRD
populations. e acronym stands for populations coming from
Western Educated Industrialized Rich and Democratic societies.
In other words, close to 90% of papers published in psychology
are based on investigations of about 12% of the global population.
Similarly, Nielsen et al. (2017) have analyzed publications in
major developmental psychology journals (Child Development,
Developmental Science, and Developmental Psychology),
concluding that the majority of all samples in published studies
come from North America and Western Europe and are based
on English-speaking participants. is situation is troubling.
A closer look at “human universals” demonstrates that
psychological abilities vary between cultures: executive function
(Benson and Sabbagh, 2010), mirror self-recognition (Broesch
etal., 2011), infant-directed speech (Broesch and Bryant, 2018),
and population-level dierences in developmental trajectories
by children (Henrich et al., 2010), to name a few.
Vygotskian cultural-historical psychology provides a route
for understanding how culture can form mental structures in
a more mechanistic way. Specically, how something shared
and social can become individual and private. Remembering
that Vygotsky denes culture and cultural tools in a particular
way is crucial to understanding this point. To illustrate the
specicity of his approach, we focus on two perspectives that
dene culture: cultural-historical psychology based on Vygotskian
theory and the socio-cultural approach that is in-line with
contemporary Anglo-Saxon and neo-Vygotskian thinking
(Matusov, 2008). e socio-cultural approach commonly denes
culture as a human-created environment, artifacts, and practices.
Toomela (2014b) calls such an approach a-cognitive and
a-developmental, as it does not explain how mind structures
change qualitatively in development with the use of a cultural
tool. Sociocultural schools assign major inuence to the formation
of behavior to environment. Consequently, since from the
perspective of sociocultural school environment determines
behavior, there is no need to study individual cognitive levels,
as such levels are not informative for the understanding of
individual dierences in psychological processes. In this
framework, development can beexplained solely by describing
dierences in cultural practices. However, as Toomela (2014a,b)
discusses, this approach ignores the fact that the same practices
are interpreted uniquely by dierent individuals. is suggests
that wecannot understand the source of individual dierences
solely by relying on the description of cultural practices and
avoiding any analysis on an individual cognitive level. In the
systemic perspective, an analysis that neglects the individual
cognitive level becomes a-developmental. is happens because
non-systemic approach does not analyze the individual cognitive
development and implies that during development, the mind
does not necessarily change qualitatively. Rather, the complexity
with which a child interacts with its environment increases.
What we wish to highlight is not that cultural psychologists
deny that the human mind changes in development, but that
the discipline as a whole lacks a mechanistic explanation of
how this change happens through interaction with cultural
tools. Researchers tend to focus on describing increasingly
complex patterns of behavior for a given activity, e.g., social
cognition, without necessarily linking these changes to other
domains of the mind.
In discussing Vygotsky’s paradigm of cross-cultural research,
it is important to mention that Vygotsky’s work was criticized
as “ethnocentric” (Matusov, 2008). Vygotsky and Luria’s
expeditions to Central Asia, and later Luria’s research with
urban, rural, and homeless children (Luria, 1930/1978), aimed
to demonstrate developmental changes in cognition introduced
by formal education. is work suggested that people indeed
tend to apply dierent problem-solving strategies to a situation
depending on whether or not they had formal education
(however, see Van der Veer and Yasnitsky (2016a,b) for a
critical analysis of these expeditions). Researchers were able
to replicate the results of many of these ndings later (e.g.,
Tulviste and Hall, 1991; Subbotsky and Quinteros, 2002).
Additionally, modern research acknowledges that the presence
or absence of formal education is associated with variability
in various psychological phenomena (Saxe, 1990/2015). As
Matusov (2008) suggests, the socio-cultural approach opposes
Vygotsky’s interpretation of cross-cultural dierences. In this
framework, humans in dierent cultures utilize essentially the
same psychological mechanisms.
We believe that such criticism of Vygotsky is fair, but only
if we do not apply the systemic principle to this problem. In
a hierarchically organized mind, some psychological processes
are developmentally early, and some emerge later in life.
Psychological processes that are associated with the
implementation of population-wide formal education, such as
reliance on abstract “scientic” concepts of abstract categorization,
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are developmentally older. In most cultures and for most
individuals, all these psychological processes are available, but
utilized to varying degrees. In culture A, people may largely
rely on developmentally early strategies to solve a specic task,
while in culture B the same task is commonly solved by means
of a developmentally older mechanism. e fact that the mechanism
utilized in culture A is developmentally younger than the
mechanism utilized in culture B does not make it in any way
inferior. In such a framework, ethnocentrism can be avoided,
as long as we acknowledge (1) the diversity of psychological
mechanisms and (2) the absence of the superiority of one
mechanism over another based on its developmental emergence.
In some cases, developmentally early mechanisms might bemore
useful for individuals living in a given environment. For example,
research demonstrated that in comparison to people living in
the West, people with limited formal education in non-Western
societies tend to be more accurate at perceptual constancy.
Such results might be explained by increased demands to
interpret complex spatial environment for the latter group
(Ardila and Keating, 2007).
We believe that Vygotsky’s view on culture and its role in
the formation of the human mind might generate some interest
from within the eld of cultural evolution, which focuses on
an evolutionary understanding of social change. Cultural
evolution is a young discipline and is still subject to debates
that include the notions of progress in cultural development,
cultural relativism, etc. Cultural evolution aims to understand
the relationship between culture, environment, and human
mind. Importantly, the eld attempts to unify behavior, culture,
and biology on a conceptual level by studying human
development more holistically. It suggests that cultural rather
than biological changes have signicant eect on both human
evolution and the individual development of the human mind.
Although the discipline does not rely on Vygotsky’s work
explicitly, it raises similar concerns such as the extent to
which the human mind and human behavior evolve from
cultural processes. Webelieve researchers working in the eld
of cultural evolution could nd Vygotsky’s view on culture
and its role in the formation of the human mind relevant
for their work.
The Second Core Principle: Language and
the Social Origins of the Mind
e second core principle of Vygotsky’s work is the social
origin of the human semiotically mediated mind and the role
of language in this formation. Language is one of the central
topics of Vygotsky’s research, and his writings on language
development have received much attention on a global scale
(Lantolf and Aljaafreh, 1995; Frawley, 1997; Goodman and
Goodman, 2014). In this paper, we aim to highlight the
connection between Vygotsky’s view of language development
and his systemic approach to the development of the mind.
It is important to reiterate that specic words and terms coined
by Vygotsky (e.g., “sign as a tool”) are not mere metaphors
but carry profound meaning and can be better understood in
the context of Vygotsky’s general theoretical views. While hesaw
language as a universal feature of the human species, Vygotsky
was mostly interested in the role it played in human development
at both the evolutionary and individual levels.
Vygotsky viewed language as an essential component of the
human experience, a part of human interaction with the
environment, of human behavior and mind and argued that
the appearance of language was a driving factor in human
development (Vygotsky, 1929/1956). He stressed that through
language human psychological processes became semiotically
mediated and thus human cognition is fundamentally dierent
from animal one. He also addressed dierences in cognition
of children before and aer they begin to talk. Vygotsky saw
a linguistic sign (a word) as a cultural tool closely related to
the behavior of a developing organism. He argued that words
were a tool similar to physical tools used by children in joint
activity with others, as they advance in their development.
Importantly, the processes of activity are rst mastered with
an adult and later become internalized at the mental level.
As such, psychological functions are initially interpsychic as
an activity between a child and an adult or a more knowledgeable
peer and only later become intrapsychic as individual thinking
of a child. Consequently, Vygotsky devoted much attention to
the concept of “inner speech” as a special type of psychological
activity and suggests that speech develops rst in the social
environment and later becomes internalized into mental processes
(Friedrich, 2014).
In addition, Vygotsky argued that all linguistic signs are
dual in nature. On the one hand, their meaning is internalized
on the individual level – they become part of the internal
psychological processes (Vygotsky, 1931/1983a; Vygotsky, 1960).
On the other hand, signs are used in an external activity for
social communication and in engagement with others. erefore,
Vygotsky stressed that tools (including linguistic signs) are
produced and culturally conventionalized (Arievitch and
Stetsenko, 2014). If we accept that meaning of a particular
sign is socially conventional then wecan conclude that humans
can “share minds” by relying on internal psychological processes
with socially constructed meanings. Moreover, human cognition
develops on the basis of extracerebral connections. In Vygotsky’s
framework, these connections form the basis of regularities
created in the socio-cultural semiotic environment (Vygotsky,
1982). We believe it is important to understand the dierence
between this specic conceptualization of the role of language
in the development of the mind and a more general notion
that humans learn from their social environment.
It was important for Vygotsky to study his research subjects
without isolating them from their cultural-developmental
context (Toulmin, 1978). Seeing a child’s development as a
complex process that happens in a close interaction with his
social medium, Vygotsky introduced a new, comprehensive
approach that allowed him to observe the child’s psychological
and linguistic development during interactions with others
(Cole and Gajdamaschko, 2010; Karimi-Aghdam, 2016).
Originally, Vygotsky believed that thought and speech performed
dierent functions and evolved relatively independently.
He mentions a dened pre-speech phase in the development
of intelligence and pre-intellectual phase in the development
of speech. Hesaw similarities in how groups of young children
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or higher animals communicate without speech (symbols and
signs): expressive movements, gestures, facial expressions, etc.
However, heemphasized that ways of thinking not associated
with speech exist. Vygotsky believed that the age of two is
a critical and crucial point in a child’s development. Since
at that stage, thought and speech begin to intertwine. Vygotsky
observed that this stage is characterized by the rapid increase
in the communicative vocabulary of the child. A child rst
discovers the symbolic function of language, understands the
meaning of generalization as a means of communication, and
begins to use it for communication and problem solving. As
Toomela (2014b) stresses, such an understanding of sign
interiorization brings new potential to dierent research. e
concept of “inner speech” as a form of linguistically associated
psychological process proposed by Vygotsky has found strong
empirical support and is an active eld of modern research
(Alderson-Day and Fernyhough, 2015; for an excellent review
see Sawyer, 2016).
e conceptualization of human environment as rst and
foremost a social and cultural one is a hallmark of Vygotsky’s
work (Stetsenko and Arievitch, 2010; Arievitch and Stetsenko,
2014) and manifests itself in the work of modern developmental
researchers (Tomasello, 1999; Rochat, 2001). Tomasello’s work
in particular is a prime example of researchers’ focus on social
processes and their role in development. Tomasello argues
that human-specic psychological abilities develop in human
infants due largely to the specicity of a cooperative social
environment (Moll and Tomasello, 2007). Quite tellingly, hecalls
this hypothesis the “Vygotskian Intelligence Hypothesis.” e
Vygotskian thesis of the importance of a social environment
for the formation of the human mind is concordant with
modern research of shared activities, joint attention, development
of theory of the mind, development of these abilities through
co-joint actions, embodied experiences, and shared routines.
Carpendale and Lewis (2004), Racine and Carpendale (2007),
and Nelson (2007) argue from a constructivist perspective
that the social environment, including a communicative one,
actively shapes the mind. Shared routines that are structured,
embodied, and rich in meaning provide a foundation for
creating shared meaning, knowledge, and feelings. A child’s
mind originates in such shared routines that are culturally
and linguistically mediated and collaborative (e.g., for an
elaborate account of early lexicon development through shared
routines, see Nelson, 2003). Such an approach suggests that
a child experiences the environment as cultural and semantic
from the very onset of life. As Arievitch and Stetsenko (2014)
point out, such a view of development is still unorthodox in
modern psychology. However, it is a viable approach, if
conceptualized through constructivist relations and is in line
with Vygotskian thinking.
Applications of the Second Principle
As Vygotsky articulated the importance of societal context for
education and possible implications for his theory in education,
the second principle has been recognized in various disciplines,
namely educational research. Vygotsky argued that learning is
a step ahead, enduring the further development. While completing
a challenging task with the help of a teacher or peers, a child
develops and learns. Vygotsky’s thinking has a clear application
to educational research, for it highlights the agency of various
learners and the educational value of a child’s interaction with
the environment. e role of the teacher, therefore, is to sustain
this interaction and not simply relay decontextualized knowledge.
We believe this is a promising expansion of current work in
the psychology of learning and classroom research (Moll, 1992,
2013; John-Steiner and Mahn, 2003; Tudge and Scrimsher,
2003; Wells and Claxton, 2008). However, there is a wider
application of Vygotsky’s ideas in education far beyond
developmental psychology and the theory of childhood speech
(Davydov, 1995; Prior and Welling, 2001).
Since Vygotsky was interested in how social medium shapes
the cultural values of an individual, his theory is being applied
in intercultural language studies. Human cultural and linguistic
development, Vygotsky writes, passes two stages – rst social
and then psychological or individual. is transition inwards
has its structure and function, as language and culture become
internal and fossilized. e most important takeaway from
Vygotsky’s theoretical framework for educational research,
we believe, is that language structures and speech patterns are
internalized through a child’s development. In addition, from
this perspective, culture is seen as an aggregate of both material
and spiritual values manifested in human behavior. As such,
application of Vygotsky’s ideas to the analysis of miscommunication
in language teaching allows researchers to postulate that the
main cause of misunderstanding does not lie solely in language
prociency. Communication is in itself an expression of one’s
lived experience, represented in a symbolic system. While
interlocutors might share the code, their use of this code could
vary signicantly. e underlying source of miscommunication
is oen the dierence in styles of speech and patterns of behavior
fossilized in communicants, which interlocutors might beunaware
of. Vygotsky called attention to the fact that communication
between two individuals is in itself a communication of
consciousness that occurs in the mind of a carrier of a particular
culture and seeks to comprehend the symbols of a dierent culture.
Moreover, Vygotsky’s focus on the role of the societal
context is relevant for modern developmental science. Vygotsky
proposes two lines of development in a child – a natural
line and a cultural one. Such a distinction reects a conceptual
question that transcends psychological science throughout
time: the extent to which biology and environment contribute
to the development of the mind. Nativism and mainstream
cognitivism have been criticized (sometimes explicitly) for
separating these lines of development. Followers of alternative
perspectives such as constructivism and Developmental Systems
eory (e.g., Oyama, 2000; Gottlieb, 2007; Nelson, 2007;
Griths etal., 2012) attempt to demonstrate, both theoretically
and empirically, that environment cannot be strictly separated
from the internal biology of an organism. Rather, the human
mind is constructed by active involvement in the environment
in which it develops. Gottlieb (2007) describes development
as processes interacting at dierent levels, from cellular to
social. Development in this case becomes probabilistic, and
any observed patterns can be explained by similarities in
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developmental contexts rather than hardwired, genetically
determined programs. Variations in an environment and its
relationship to an individual organism aect the formation
of mind structures. In such a framework, there is no one-on-one
relation between an organism and environment. Similarly,
Vygotsky (1931/1983b) and Vygotsky (1933/1934) argued that
environment should be studied not in absolute terms as is,
but in relation to a child. e same environment can bedierent
for a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old, as they perceive it dierently
on an individual level and through dierent psychological
mechanisms. A strong emphasis on environment as a factor
in formation of the mind in modern day research is utilized
in the ecological approach to cognition (He, 2001) and
embodied cognition (Shapiro, 2010) and is in line with
Vygotsky’s thinking (Karpov, 2005; Falikman, 2014). Webelieve
Vygotskian approach can be applied to DST framework, and
an excellent example of such application was developed by
Stetsenko (2009).
Furthermore, modern neuroscience is oen associated with
the question of whether an understanding of human brain is
sucient to fully understand the human mind. e answer to
this question for many contemporary researchers (e.g., Carpendale
etal., 2010; Karmilo-Smith, 2018) (and wespeculate Vygotsky
as well) is “no.” As Toomela (2014b) suggests, reductionist
approach to neuropsychology tends to focus on the brain and
ignore its relationship with the environment. But in this case,
we cannot understand the development of the human mind
as it develops during constant interactions between the brain
and environment. e results of multiple studies convincingly
demonstrate that particular experiences with environment are
reected in brain processing, e.g., a canonical study of an
increased hippocampus in London taxi drivers (Maguire et al.,
2000); a study by Gaser and Schlaug (2003) on dierences in
brain structure associated with music training (for a detailed
discussion, see Kotik-Friedgut and Ardila, 2014). Importantly,
since human environment is a cultural one, an ecologically
valid neuropsychology should incorporate disciplines such as
anthropology and semiotics, as these disciplines explain the
cultural regularities and cultural environment that the human
brain reacts during development (Toomela, 2014b). e discipline
of cultural neuroscience (Chiao, 2009) specically focuses on
the relationship between brain development and culture. It
investigates dierences in the brain processes of participants
with varied cultural backgrounds (Han and Humphreys, 2016).
We believe that the Vygotskian tradition in cultural-historical
neuropsychology is in line with recent developments in brain
research. For Vygotsky, culture is dened as an environment
of sign and language (Vygotsky, 1929/1994; Vygotsky, 1932/1960;
Vygotsky, 1935/1994). In cultural development, the sign is
“internalized” and becomes a part of cognition. A human mind,
according to Vygotsky, starts with a cultural line of development,
when children do not simply learn knowledge from adults but
internalize human-specic cultural tools – linguistic signs. As
Bakhtin and Holquist (1981) notes “becoming a human being
… is the process of selectively assimilating the words of others”
(p. 341). Based on the conceptualization of cultural tools by
Vygotsky (contrary to more traditional socio-cultural schools),
it follows that a child can beenculturated from birth. Children
are not only born in a human-created environment, but in a
linguistically mediated environment that becomes internalized
through development. is notion was crucial for Vygotsky.
Similarly, an answer to the question of whether animals have
culture would dier depending on how one denes culture.
is answer can be armative if culture is dened as the
manufacturing and usage of tools and the ability to modify
the environment in which an animal lives (Snowdon, 2017).
However, to Vygotsky, the answer would likely be negative, as
for him, culture is mainly a semiosphere, socially shared
information coded in symbols (Toomela, 1996). In our opinion,
Vygotsky’s focus on social processes as sources for individual
cognitive development are in line with the modern approaches
to cultural research treating culture as inseparable from human
biology and recognition of the fact that an individual brain
is immersed in a world of social environment. Not surprisingly,
contemporary attempts to study culture in a more comprehensive
way have led to the emergence of interdisciplinary elds of
neuroanthropology (Dias, 2010), neuropsychology (Brickman
etal., 2006), neurosociology (TenHouten, 1997), and psychological
anthropology (Bock and Leavitt, 2018).
CONCLUSION
In this paper, we sought out to demonstrate that Vygotskian
thinking can beapplied to contemporary psychological research
and there is a potential for such an application. To this end,
we rst reviewed historical, social, and temporal contexts of
Vygotskian work. Knowledge of these contexts is useful for
understanding aspects of Vygotskian thinking. Following this
review, we outlined two core principles transcending every
aspect of Vygotskian theory, which in our opinion have the
most profound implication for understanding his approach.
We suggest that these principles are useful for modern day
psychology and are in fact developed by many researchers,
although such application does not necessarily rely explicitly
on Vygotskian work. Consequently, we discuss how these
core principles can beapplied to modern psychological research
and can assist psychology in solving problems that are still
important for the discipline (just as they were important for
Vygotsky). In doing so, weintentionally do not provide our
readers with direct precise instructions on how Vygotskian
approach can be applied to their work. We maintain that
our readers are in a better position to develop specic
applications of Vygotskian work to their areas of interest.
Our goal was to outline potential avenues for such applications
and to invite our readers to further dialog on questions that
were of interest to Vygotsky himself (such as development
and structure of the mind, and the role of culture and
language in it).
In conclusion, wesuggest that although Vygotsky’s research
took place a century ago and every branch of science has
made tremendous advancements since then, some of the questions
hewas working on are still le unanswered. Despite limitations
and outdated aspects of his work, there is a potential for
Vasileva and Balyasnikova Vygotsky’s Thought
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 12 August 2019 | Volume 10 | Article 1515
incorporating Vygotskian thinking into modern psychological
research across disciplines.
We would like to leave the readers with the following reection.
Vygotsky envisioned the success of psychology as a science
only if it sustained its holistic and interdisciplinary nature:
Such a system [of an interdisciplinary holistic
psychology] has not yet been created. Wecan say with
condence that it will not arise out of the ruins of
empirical psychology or in the laboratories of
reexologists. It will come as a broad biosocial synthesis
of the theory of animal behavior and societal man. is
new psychology will bea branch of general biology and
at the same time the basis of all sociological sciences. It
will bethe knot that ties the science of nature and the
science of man together. It will therefore, indeed,
bemost intimately connected with philosophy, but with
a strictly scientic philosophy which represents the
combined theory of scientic knowledge and not with
the speculative philosophy that preceded scientic
generalizations (Vygotsky, 1925/1997, p. 61; c.f.
Yasnitsky, 2011b).
While a comprehensive reconstruction of Vygotsky’s work
is yet to be completed, many of the questions he was working
on are still relevant to contemporary research. Indeed, there
are new perspectives that support early theorizations of Vygotsky
(see Newman and Holzman, 2013; Subbotsky, 2014; Alfredo,
2016). We invite scholars working in these interdisciplinary
areas to engage with Vygotskian thinking, to explore aspects
of his thinking by consulting the work of Vygotskian scholars,
and to develop their own nuanced applications of Vygotsky
work in their specic research areas.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
OV and NB conceived the idea for the article and the scope
of the review, discussed the results, and contributed to the
nal manuscript. OV carried out the main literature review.
NB veried the analytical conclusions.
FUNDING
is open-access publication was funded by e SFU Central
Open Access Fund.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
e authors thank Timothy Mossman, Justin Stacy, and the
reviewers for their comments on the initial stages of
this manuscript.
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as a potential conict of interest.
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