Vygotsky, information processing and the learning theories

Transcript

SoheeA six-year-old is sitting on the floor with a jigsaw puzzle. Her older cousin sits beside her and says, start with the corners and the edges. A few weeks later, the cousin is gone, and you can hear the little girl muttering to herself. First, find the corner and edge pieces.

RyanA month after that, she's silent. She just does it.

SoheeAnd that quiet progression, from someone else's words, to her own words out loud, to thought, is the heart of Lev Vygotsky's theory.

RyanWelcome to EPPP Prep, the podcast. I'm Ryan.

SoheeI'm Sohee. Today we cover the theories that put learning in a social world: Vygotsky, information processing, and the learning theories of Pavlov, Skinner, and Bandura.

RyanVygotsky first. He was a Russian psychologist who developed his theory around the same time as Piaget. He died in his thirties, and his work wasn't widely known outside Russia until the 1970s, when it became very influential.

SoheeHis sociocultural theory says children develop cognitively through their interactions with caregivers, other adults, peers, and the culture at large.

RyanLike Piaget, Vygotsky assumed children construct their own knowledge. But Lifespan Development says he made a stronger claim, that the cultural and social environment is an inseparable part of learning.

SoheeAnd culture hands children tools. The textbook lists language, systems of counting, memory techniques, art, writing, maps, and now computers and phones.

RyanSo here's a clean contrast for the exam. Piaget's theory focused on a child's step-like journey, stage by stage, of coming to understand the world. Vygotsky saw development as supported and propelled by social tools and by other people.

SoheeNow the concept everyone remembers: the zone of proximal development, or ZPD. It's the gap between what a child can do now and their further potential. More precisely, the activities a child can't complete alone, but can accomplish with help from a more skilled adult or peer.

RyanThat helper is often called the more knowledgeable other. And notice Vygotsky's point. A child who struggles with a task doesn't necessarily lack ability. He wanted us to look at learning potential, not only at what's already mastered, which the textbook says is what standardized tests do.

SoheeThen scaffolding. That's temporary support from a more knowledgeable person that gradually decreases as the learner becomes more capable.

RyanLifespan Development's example is learning to ride a bike. Training wheels, or a caregiver holding the seat and running alongside. As the child gets their balance, the training wheels come off and the caregiver lets go.

SoheeA little trivia that one of the textbook sections points out. Scaffolding is closely tied to Vygotsky's ideas, but Vygotsky himself didn't use that word. It became part of social constructivism later.

RyanSo keep the two straight. The ZPD is the zone, the range of what's learnable with help. Scaffolding is what the helper does inside that zone, support that's gradually withdrawn.

SoheeNow back to our muttering puzzle-solver. Vygotsky saw language as a tool that guides thinking. The helper uses social speech. Over time children talk to themselves as they work through a challenge. That's private speech, aloud at first and then silent.

RyanIn short, they've internalized the skills they gained through scaffolding. And it isn't just kids. If you've rehearsed a grocery list out loud, or used PEMDAS to remember the order of operations, you've used language to support your thinking.

SoheeOne more social learning tool in infancy: social referencing. That's using information from other people to decide how to respond. A baby looks at a parent's stern face before deciding whether to climb over the baby gate.

RyanPause and think. A second grader can't solve two-step word problems alone, but she can when her teacher asks guiding questions. Over the next weeks the teacher asks fewer and fewer questions until she's solving them on her own. Name both concepts.

SoheeThe range of problems she can solve only with help is her zone of proximal development. The teacher's guiding questions, faded out over time, are scaffolding.

RyanLifespan Development adds a related perspective from Barbara Rogoff. Her research shows children's thinking develops partly by observing and contributing to ongoing home and community activities, which is especially common in Indigenous communities of the Americas.

SoheeShe calls it pitching in. Children take part in household and community work from a young age. Rogoff calls the approach Learning by Observing and Pitching In, and contrasts it with assembly-line instruction, which she sees as more controlling and isolating, and typical of most Westernized schools.

RyanLet's switch to the information processing approach. From the 1960s on, psychologists began using the computer as a metaphor. Information flows into the brain, is processed, and leaves as behavior, like data in a computer.

SoheeAnd development, from this view, happens as the parts of that system mature and gain efficiency. Attention, memory, and executive function, the skills of planning, organizing, and impulse control.

RyanHere's the exam distinction. Piaget's development is step-like, with qualitative changes. Lifespan Development says that in information processing theory, the quantity of information is a significant factor. So it's a more continuous view.

SoheeBut the textbook calls them complementary. Both agree a five-year-old won't understand algebra. Maturation lets us think differently, like upgrading to a more powerful processor.

RyanInformation processing also gave researchers tools for studying babies. Habituation is decreased interest in a stimulus that's presented over and over. And faster habituation has been associated with better performance on later intelligence assessments.

SoheeNow the behaviorist perspective, also called learning theory. It focuses on the environment's role in shaping behavior. Three kinds of learning.

RyanClassical conditioning, which Ivan Pavlov discovered while studying digestion in dogs. A neutral stimulus, like a bell, gets paired with a natural stimulus, like food, until the bell alone produces salivation.

SoheeThe natural stimulus is the unconditioned stimulus, and the once-neutral trigger becomes the conditioned stimulus. And the textbook ties it to development. A toddler sees an apple and hears the word apple at the same time, and soon links the word to the object.

RyanOperant conditioning, from B. F. Skinner, building on Thorndike's law of effect. Behaviors are strengthened or weakened by their consequences: reinforcement, punishment, or no response.

SoheeAnd shaping builds complex behavior by rewarding closer and closer approximations. The toddler says appah, and the caregiver cheers. A week later, the cheering waits for something closer, like ahpul. Speech gets shaped over time.

RyanAnd observational learning, from Albert Bandura. We learn by watching others and the consequences of their actions. That's vicarious learning. The textbook notes his original Bobo doll study, which showed that children who were already frustrated may be more likely to model aggressive behavior they'd seen from adults.

SoheePause and think, second one. A toddler starts saying please after his parents smile and hand him what he wants each time he says it. His older brother starts saying please after watching the toddler get rewarded. Which is which?

RyanThe toddler's please is operant conditioning. His behavior is strengthened by its consequence. The brother's is observational learning. He learned vicariously, by watching someone else's behavior get reinforced.

SoheeHow does the exam test these? With scenarios. Learning that happens only with help from a more skilled person points to the ZPD. Help that's gradually removed is scaffolding. A child talking themselves through a task is private speech.

RyanWatch for the tempting wrong answer that treats private speech as just a sign of immaturity. In Vygotsky's theory, it's a tool for guiding thinking that becomes internalized.

SoheeAnd if a stem stresses the social and cultural context of learning, think Vygotsky. If it stresses step-like, qualitative stages of thinking, think Piaget.

RyanLet's recap. Vygotsky: development through social interaction and cultural tools. The ZPD is what a child can do with help but not yet alone. Scaffolding is support that fades.

SoheePrivate speech moves from aloud to silent as skills are internalized. Social referencing uses other people's reactions as a guide. Rogoff adds learning by observing and pitching in.

RyanInformation processing sees development as a more continuous gain in efficiency of attention, memory, and executive function.

SoheeAnd the learning theories: classical conditioning pairs stimuli, operant conditioning works through consequences and shaping, and observational learning works by watching others.

RyanAnd here's the nice part. This podcast is a kind of scaffold. You're working in your own zone of proximal development right now, and every time you explain a concept to yourself out loud, that's private speech doing its job.

SoheeKeep at it, and let the support fade as you grow. Thanks for listening to EPPP Prep.

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