I thought the most interesting part of Vygotsky’s chapters was his assertion that externalization of memory—the use of “signs”—is “unique to humans” (Vygotsky, 1978, pg. 39). Reid, et al. (2012) suggests that slime molds use externalized memory to navigate a simple choice tube. Ants also use forms of externalized memory to “remember” pathways to food sources and shelter (Gordon, 2010). If the truly brainless slime mold and the fairly simple (if comparatively neuron-dense) ant can externalize memory, I wonder what other organisms might.
I found it difficult to think about Vygotsky’s assertion that “for the very young child, to think means to remember”—because I am not a very young child and my brain has moved on from thinking in this way. I thought that listening to the first RadioLab episode might help, but it left me with more questions. The idea that language allows you to construct and develop more complex thoughts makes sense, but if kids don’t use spatial language to understand relations until they’re about six years old, do they/how do they make meaning before that? The RadioLab episode said that they don’t: “Very young children don’t think.” I think Vygotsky would agree: very young children don’t think, they remember. And now I’ve written the word “think” enough times that it has ceased to have meaning.
Relatedly, Vygotsky says “The preschool children (age five to six years) were generally unable to discover how to use the auxiliary color cards and had a great deal of trouble with both tasks” (pg. 42). If children don’t make use of spatial language until six, and that, when they are younger, groups of words do exist as disconnected islands in their minds, it follows that the use of a sign/memory aid like the colored cards wouldn’t be apparent to them because they can’t yet link the islands of thoughts to signs.
To fully grasp Vygotsky’s proposed explanation of memory and language development, I feel that I might need to undergo a stroke-like event that wipes my brain back to the elementary level of individual development (like what the person in the RadioLab episode experienced). It’s amazing to me that Vygotsky was able to conceive of this progression without his adult brain getting in the way.
Bailey,
I, too, have many of the same questions. Thank you for providing the examples of non-humans that use external signs to remember things. I wonder how this would influence his research and/or explanations.
While I don’t remember how I thought when I was very young, I do have an 8 year old who I have watched develop thinking skills. One memory that sticks out is taking her to visit my grandmother at 4 days old, J taking her hand to her pacifier and throwing it across the room, and Mema looking at J and saying “You shouldn’t be aware yet. You should be too little to realize that the pacifier is not a part of you, but you are aware. You know what you did.” And then telling me that I would have my hands full because this little girl was already self-aware at 4 days old.
I have watched her learn language and learn the signs that represent language – and they are definitely 2 different things. She could talk in detailed narrative by 2 where non-parents could easily understand her, but reading (associating the signs with the language) has been much more difficult for her to do. Once that clicked, the association of the word with the language, she has been able to read with no problem, but it was almost like magic watching her go from not reading to reading. It reminded me of the description of the man learning language in the first pod cast. One minute he did not have it, the next, he did.
Bailey,
I also had some trouble trying to reconcile the way I think now to how he suggests young children think. I don’t have a child myself, but it seems a little weird to me that children younger than 6 only “remember”. I’ve seen pre-school age children solve simple puzzles, and problem-solve socially among themselves. This seems to me to show some kind of thinking going on past just “remembering.”
It is curious too that 6 is usually the age for entrance into kindergarten as well. I wonder if studies like this led to that decision.