Concept Develope

《Thinking and Speech》Chapter 5: An Experimental Study of Concept Development
袁之琦

01.
◎ Concept 研究最大的問題是 lack of experimental methods
◎ 研究「概念」的傳統方法，可以分為兩大類：
方法1: 以verbal definition的方法，研究fully developed and fully formed concepts. (定義法)
方法2: 避免 pure verbal definition 的不恰當處，改以focusing on the mental functions and process that underline the formation of concepts. 研究concrete experience 如何轉化為concept. (抽象研究法)
◎ 方法1的缺點有二：Isolating the word from the objective material
(1) This method deals with the results of the completed process of concept formation, with the ready-made product of that process. 即未看到思考與發展的歷程，僅看到結果。
(2) The method of definition depends almost exclusively on the word. 概念的形成不只是與sensual material 有關，且與word 的發展有關。
◎ 方法2的缺點：Isolating the objective material from the word
They replace a complex synthetic process with an elementary one that constitutes only one part of the whole. The role of the word or sign in the process of concept formation is ignored. The result is that the process of abstraction is radically oversimplified.
◎ Ach: Synthetic-genetic method 用 (1) artificial words, (2) artificial concepts 來研究概念形成
例如："gatsun" = big and heavy, "fal" = small and light.
◎ Rimat (1925): 12 years old is the transitional age -- independent formation of general objective representation.
◎ Dual Transition: (1) concept of thinking, (2) form of thinking.
◎ Ach & Rimat 皆反對association perspective on concept formation. 認為 connections between objects and the word is not sufficient for the emergence of the concept.
◎ Ach 認為兒童與成人的概念，不是量的差異，而是質的差異。
◎ Uznadze (1966), Ach 認為，具有溝通作用的sound 才會轉化為有意義的word & concept
◎ Vygotsky: Concept formation, this sign is the word. … Only the investigation of the functional use of the word and its development from one age to the next provides the key to the formation of concepts.
◎ Vygotsky 認為Ach 只設定goal-oriented activity 是不夠的。Ach & Rimat failed to offer a causal-dynamic explanation of concept formation.

02.
◎ Vygotsky 所用的方法叫做 "functional method of dual stimulation." 由Sahkarov (1930)所開發。(1) One set of stimuli fulfills the function of the object on which the subject's activity is directed. (2) The second function as signs that facilitate the organization of this activity.
◎ Figure 1: 受試者的作業是要將寫有相同字的積木挑選出來。以此觀察Subject概念形成的歷程。

03.
◎ Sakharov, Kotelova, Pashkovska 施測300位正常兒童，及許多位智力或語言障礙的兒童。
◎ In Genetic terms, the basic conclusion is: The development of the processes that eventually lead to the formation of concepts has its roots in the earliest stages of childhood. However, these processes mature only in the transitional age. It is only at this point that the intellectual functions which form the mental basis for the process of concept formation are constituted and developed.
◎ The formation of the concept and the acquisition of word meaning is the result of a complex activity.
◎ The process of concept formation cannot be reduced to the processes of association, attention, representation, judgment, or determining tendencies, though all of these functions are indispensable for the complex synthetic process involved in concept formation.
◎ The feature that can be viewed as the proximal cause of the maturation of concepts, is a specific way of using the word, specifically, the functional application of the sign as means for forming concepts.
◎ Vygotsky: The basic difference between these two qualitatively different kinds of intellectual activity consists in the transition from unmediated intellectual processes to operations that are mediated by signs.
◎ Thorndike: takes the position that selectivity, analysis, abstraction, generalization, and reasoning arise as a direct consequence of an increase in the quantity of connections in both the phylogenesis and ontogenesis of intellect.

04.
◎ Three basic stages of conceptual development:
1) Heap of objects: Unordered and unformed collection.
(1) formation of syncretic image coincides with the trial and error period in the child's thinking.
(2) it is the spatial distribution of the objects in the experiment that plays the decisive role.
(3) signifies its completion and the transition to the second stage of the process of concept formation.
2) Complexive thinking / Complex-Collection (uniting concrete objects): Includes several different types of what is a single mode of thinking. These types very functionally, structurally and genetically.
* the nature of the connections that are established among the objects in the group differs from that characteristic of concepts.
* as defined by the relationship of each object in the group to the group as a whole, the structure of the unified group differs profoundly in type and mode of activity from that based on conceptual thinking.
(1) Association Complex
(2) Complex collection
(3) Chained complex / unified complex: is constructed in accordance with the principle of a dynamic, temporal unification of isolated elements in a unified chain, and a transfer of meaning through the elements of that chain.
(4) Diffuse complex
3) Potential Concept
4) Genuine Concept

05.
◎ 第二階段 2) Complexive thinking / Complex-Collection (uniting concrete objects): Includes several different types of what is a single mode of thinking. These types very functionally, structurally and genetically.
(1) the nature of the connections that are established among the objects in the group differs from that characteristic of concepts.
(2) as defined by the relationship of each object in the group to the group as a whole, the structure of the unified group differs profoundly in type and mode of activity from that based on conceptual thinking.
◎ The first stage in the development of thinking is characterized by the construction of syncretic images that are the child's equivalent of adult concepts. Correspondingly, the second state is characterized by the construction of complexes which have the same functional significance.
◎ Stage 1: "unconnected connectedness"
Stage 2: "united homogeneous objects"
◎ The first type of complex as an associative complex because it is based on an associative connection between an object that is included in the complex and any of the features that the child notices in the object that acts as the complex's nucleus. However the complex is always based on concrete connections.

06.
◎ The second phase of the development of complexive thinking consists of the unification of objects and concrete images of things in groups that are reminiscent of what is commonly called a collection.
◎ The characteristic of the second stage in the development of thinking is the heterogeneous nature of the constituents, their reciprocal supplementation, and their unification on the basis of a collection.
◎ The complex-collection is a generalization of things based on their co-participation in a single practical operation, a generalization of things based on their functional collaboration.

07.
◎ In correspondence with the logic of experimental analysis, the phase of the complex-collection is followed by the chained complex. The chained complex is also an inevitable step in the child's movement toward the mastery of concepts.
◎ The chained complex is constructed in accordance with the principle of a dynamic, temporal unification of isolated elements in a unified chain, and a transfer of meaning through the elements of that chain.
◎ There may be no structural center in the chained complex.
◎ Here a remote, vague impression of some commonality between the objects, rather than any real similarity, may lie at the foundation of connection.

08.
◎ The diffuse complex constitutes the fourth phase in the development of complexive thinking.
◎ In this fourth type of complex, the feature that unifies the separate concrete elements in the complex is diffuse, undefined, and vague.
◎ 可謂已學會建構出prototype，例如：兩家族之照片，可分辨出是哪一家族。

09.
◎ Complex stage 為 pseudo-concept
◎ (1) Phenotypically, on the basis of its external appearance and external characteristics, the pseudo-concept corresponds completely to the concept. (2) However, genotypically, in accordance with its emergence, its development, and the causal-dynamic connections which underlie it, the pseudo-concept is clearly not a concept.
◎ pseudo-concept stage is the critical moment for child to develop a true thinking.

10.
◎ 三歲小孩可以和成人對話，並不表示小孩概念與大人一樣成熟，那只是達成「溝通之功能」。The problem is nearly inaccessible to a purely formal phenotypal analysis.
◎ This masking of complexive thinking that arises from the external similarity between pseudo-concepts and true concepts is serious obstacle for the genetic analysis of thinking.
◎ On the one hand, this contradiction presents a tremendous obstacle for the scientific investigation of the pseudo-concept. On the other, this contradiction is shy the pseudo-concept is of such extraordinary functional and genetic significance, why it is such a critical moment in the development of the child's thinking.
◎ This stage in the development of the child's thinking acquires a unique genetic significance. It serves as a link unifying complexive and conceptual thinking.
◎ The concept "in itself" and "for others" develops earlier in the child than the concept "for itself". The concept "in itself" and "for others" is already contained in the pseudo-concept.
◎ It is the bridge that lies between the child's concrete and abstract thinking.

11.
◎ Engels's well known definition, the logical method of investigation is itself an historical method.
◎ Applying this general methodological position to our own research, we can say that even the basic forms of concrete thinking that we have enumerated are the central features of development in their most mature stages, in their classical and true form taken to its logical limits.
◎ One contemporary psychologist has noted that in the absence of genetic analysis a morphological analysis of complex mental formations and manifestations will inevitably be incomplete.

12.
◎ 研究方法：If the child's complex differs from the concept, the activity of thinking in complexes will unfold differently than the activity of thinking in concepts.
◎ The fact that the child uses the word "before" to designate the temporal relationships "before" and "after", or uses the word "tomorrow" to designate both "tomorrow" and "yesterday", in analogous to the fact that two contradictory meanings are often united in a single word in ancient languages.
◎ 又例：小孩會有over-expansion language "vau-vau" 指所有會叫的四隻腳寵物

13.
◎ Child 與 primitive people 之language development 相似

14.
◎ Peterson: It is important to make the distinction between word meaning and object relatedness.
◎ Historical speech study: 俄語月亮有兩個字，一代表「無常」的意思，另一代表「測時工具」，故知語言與概念並非有絕對的聯結關係。The name is never conceptual in origin. 我們不過是透過語言來研究思考而已。
◎ Essential to this kind of transfer of names is the fact that the word is not fulfilling a semasiological function or a function involving the attribution of meaning. It this context, the word's function is nominative or indicative.

15.
◎ Deaf and mute children provide a particularly interesting example of complexive thinking because they lack that which underlies the formation of children's pseudo-concepts.
◎ We find in our living speech are not concepts in the true sense of the word. They are actually general representations of things. There is no doubt, however, that these representations are a transitional stage between complexes or pseudo-concepts and true concepts.

16.
◎ The child's complexive thinking constitutes only the first of two roots underlying the development of concepts. The second root constitutes a third stage in the development of the child's thinking. Like the second, it consists of a series of separate phases. Thus, the pseudo-concept constitutes a transitional stage between complexive thinking and this second root or source of the development of the child's concepts.
◎ Goethe: analysis and synthesis presupposed on another, just as inspiration and expiration presupposed one another. This is true in the construction of the individual concept and in conceptual thinking generally.
◎ 第三階段的出現未必一定在第二階段之後
◎ Kulpe's school called positive and negative abstraction have emerged.
◎ 此第三階段稱為"process of abstraction" (3-1)

17.
◎ During stage of "potential concepts",(3-2) the child operating under experimental conditions usually isolates a group of objects that are unified in accordance with a single common feature.
◎ However the potential concept and the pseudo-concept are fundamentally different.
◎ Groos: The potential concept can be nothing other than a habitual action. Our initial potential concepts are pre-intellectual.
◎ Child's first words are potential, first, because of their practical relatedness to a certain circle of objects and, second, because of the isolating abstractions that underlie them. They have the potential for being concepts, but this potential has not been realized.
◎ Buhler: Child 與 ape 相似
◎ Kohler: 猴子原先知道木棍，其後知道木棍可以銜接起來(有硬度)
◎ 小孩說："Intelligence is when I am thirsty but do not drink from a dirty pond." 仍然只屬於 potential concept.
◎ Potential concepts often remain at this stage of development, not making the transition to true concepts. Nonetheless, they play an extremely important role in the development of the child's concepts.
◎ The word is a sign and a sign can be used in various ways.

18.
◎ The most important conclusion is that it is only in the transitional age that the child completes the third stage in the development of his intellect, that he reaches the point where he is thinking in concepts.
◎ The transitional age, then is not one of completion but one of crisis and maturation.
◎ Psychological law of genuine thinking: (1) We should note the profound divergence manifested in the experiment between the concept's formation and its very definition. (2) The existence of a concept does not coincide with consciousness of that concept either in the moment of its appearance or in its mode of functioning.
◎ The adolescent uses the word as a concept, but defines it as a complex. This type of oscillation between thinking in complexes and thinking in concepts is characteristic of the transitional age.
◎ Buhler's theory on the formation of concepts: (1) the unification of the child's representations in isolated groups and the merging of these groups in complex associative connections that are formed among the groups of representations and among the elements constituting each group. (2) The function of judgment.
◎ Vygotsky: The concept does indeed develop along two different channels. (1) We have tried to show how the function of combining or connecting a series of separate objects through a common family name is basic to the child's complexive thinking. (2) We have also tried to show how potential concepts, concepts which are based on the isolation of several common features, develop in parallel with complexes and constitute the second channel. These two forms constitute the dual roots of concept formation.
◎ 指出Buhler 四項錯誤：
(1) Ignoring the role of the word in the complexive unifications that precede concepts, that of attempting to derive the concept from a purely natural form of the development of impressions.
(2) Same mistake as first in his analysis of the second root of concepts, that which lay in the processes of judgment and thinking.
(3) Ignoring the differences between forms of thinking. In particular, he is ignoring the differences between biological and historical, natural and cultural, lower and higher, and nonverbal and verbal forms of thinking.
(4) Forgets what is central to concept formation.
◎ Vygotsky 主要貢獻：
1) Show how the use of the word acts as a means of forming the concept.
2) Four concepts: (1) Syncretic images and connections,
(2) Complexive thinking
(3) Potential concepts
(4) Unique signifying structure that we may call a concept in the true sense of the word.
◎ 下一章：scientific concepts