Comments week 4

We call this withdrawal of the operation within, this reconstruction of the higher psychological functions related to new structural changes, the process of interiorization, meaning, mainly, the following: the fact that at their first stages, the higher psychological functions are built as outer forms of behaviour and find support in the outer sign is by no means accidental; on the contrary, it is determined by the very psychological nature of the higher function which, as we have mentioned above, does not appear as a direct continuation of elementary processes but is a social method of behaviour applied by itself to itself....
Herein lies the reason for this operation not becoming at once an inner process of behaviour when being transformed from an inter-psychological to an intra-psychological operation. For a long time, it continues to exist and to change as an external form of activity, before definitively turning inward. For many functions, this stage of external sign lasts forever as the final stage of their development. Bur other functions go further in their development and gradually become inner functions. They take on the character of inner processes as a result of a prolonged development. Their transfer inward is coupled once more to changes in their laws of activity, and they are again incorporated into a new system where new laws rule.
We cannot dwell on the details of this transition of higher functions from the system of external activity to the system of inner activity. 
I am most interested in this process of internalization (and interiorization) that Vygotsky very briefly describes. What are the mental mechanisms involved in the transformation from physical actions performed in the inter-psychological plane to abstractions in the intra-psychological plane? Vygotsky discusses memory, specifically direct and indirect memorization, as two important mental functions in the process of internalization. What else does Vygotsky have to say about learning and the construction and adaptation of cognitive structures in the context of internalization? From my understanding, just with the processes of memorization, children can mimic behavior and recite statements, but to what extent do the processes of memorization account for deeper learning, applications of techniques and concepts in contexts independent of that in which they were originally experienced? 

Correction to a statement I made last week. 
Last week, I do believe I said information processing theory satisfies the first principle of constructivism (according to he-who-must-not-be-named). This was incorrect. Information processing was discussed at length at the conference from which the book Constructivism in Education (Steffe & Gale, eds.) was created, but Paul Ernest provides a nice argument for why information processing fails to meet even this first principle.

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