Vygotskyan Theory of Play and its Application in Developmental Neuropsychology
Prof. Glozman J.M.
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My name is Janna Glozman. I am a neuropsychologist, a professor of
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SLIDE 2 To understand Vygotskyan Theory of Play and its Application in Developmental Neuropsychology we must start with some main concepts of the Cultural-Historical Psychology to pass then to the play concepts in Cultural Historical Psychology. I will show you then how a play underdevelopment provokes learning disabilities. To help these children we use Vygotskyan approach to remediation of learning disable children. An important part of this approach is the play remediation of learning disabilities. This is the general framework of the actual lecture.
I use the term neuropsychological remediation and not the term neurorehabilitation, which is not adequate for developmental neuropsychology, because we can rehabilitate the functions that were already formed. In children, including learning disable pupils, mental functions are in the process of development. The task of a neuropsychologist is to stimulate and remediate the development, to compensate the underdeveloped mental functions and skills, to overcome the negative emotional consequences of learning disabilities.
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SLIDE 3 Let me start with Vygotsky’s note from his diary first explaining the instrumental method and suggesting mediation as the basis of the development of higher psychological processes. “The essence of the instrumental method resides in the functionally different use of two stimuli, which differently determine behavior; from this results the mastery of one’s own psychological operations. Always assuming two stimuli, we must answer the following questions:
1. How does one remember stimulus S1 with the aid of stimulus S2 (where S1 is the object and S2 is the instrument.
2. How is attention directed to S1 with the aid of S2.
3. How is a word associated with S1 retrieved via S2 and so on.”
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SLIDE 4. This is the famous principle of “DOUBLING EXPERIENCE”
“A sign is always originally a means used for social purposes, a means of influencing others, and only later becomes a means of influencing oneself…the function is its social function; and if we want to trace how it functions in the behavior of an individual, we must consider how it is used to function in social behaviour”. (J. Wertsch, 1985)
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SLIDE 6. This social-historical approach in neuropsychology looks for origins of human conscience and mental activity not inside the brain, nor in the mechanisms of nervous processes but in the human social life. One should distinguish the natural and cultural components in human behavior.
The Vygotsky’s principle of “doubling experience” is primordial to understand this correlation and the specific nature of human behaviour and consciousness.
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SLIDE 7 As L.S. Vygotsky wrote: "It may be said that the basic characteristic of human behavior in general is that humans personally influence their relations with the environment and through the environment personally change their behavior, subjugating it to their control" (Vygotsky L.S. Mind in society, Mastery of memory and thinking, 1978, p. 51).
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SLIDE 8. It should be mentioned, that these concepts of cultural-historical psychology were worked out both by L.S.Vygotsky and A.R. Luria. In 1922, two years before meeting Vygotsky, Luria wrote his first large (more than 200 pages) book “Principles of a real psychology”, that was not published and the manuscript was in Luria’s archives until 2003 when it was included in the book of the selected writings by A.R. Luria in general psychology, untitled “The psychological tribute”. It is really fantastic that a 20 years old psychologist, recently graduated from the University, formulated in this book the main principles of a PSYCHOLOGICAL study, that are still valuable and even heuristic for the psychology of XXI century:
· To deal with the concrete personality, the living human being, as a biological, social and psychological unity.
· To study individual regularities, unique determined sequences, that is to combine a description of individual, unique processes with a study of lawful, regular processes.
· To study an individual human mind as a whole and the particular mental phenomena as functions, elements of this whole, developing in this concrete human personality, possible to change through transformation of social conditions.
· To study individual value of the examined psychological phenomena for the life of the actual personality.
A.R. Luria Principles of a real psychology. Introduction
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SLIDE 9.With this, as Vygotsky wrote “In the whole multitude of stimuli one group clearly stands out for me, the group of social stimuli coming from people. It stands out because I myself can reconstruct these stimuli, because they very soon become reversible for me and thus determine my behaviour in another way from all others. They make me comparable to another and identical to myself. The source of social behaviour and consciousness lies in speech in the broad sense of the word”.
Vygotsky L.S. Consciousness as a Subject of Psychology of Behaviour.
That is a word is considered to be an external material sign, a psychological tool for organization of human behaviour
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SLIDE 10. According to L.S. Vygotsky and A.R. Luria: the natural processes such as physical maturation and sensory mechanisms become intervened with culturally determined processes to produce the psychological functions of adults and the variety of ways the functions are carried out, through “A BIFURCATION IN THE COURSE OF A CHILD’S BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT INTO NATURAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL AND CULTURAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT”
L.S. Vygotsky & A.R. Luria Studies on the history of behavior.
These new formations have a cultural origin, a dynamic psychological structure, and a dynamic brain (body) organization as well. So a word is considered to be an external material sign, a psychological tool for organization of human behavior.
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SLIDE 11. With this, “The mentality should be considered not as special processes above and outside the cerebral processes or between them, but it is their subjective expression, a particular aspect, particular feature of the higher cerebral functions” (Vygotsky, 1930, p. 137).
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SLIDE 12. Assuming these theoretical foundations let us pass to the play concepts in Cultural Historical Psychology.
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SLIDE 14 It was said in developmental psychology, that the period of childhood is given with the only aim to let the child play (K.Groos, 1899).
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SLIDE 15 According to D.B. El’konin “the play is a specific form of child’s activity, the object of which is an adult – his activity and the system of his interrelations with others“(El’konin, 1978, p. 11). The child reproduces adults’ life and doing so – appropriates it. It is not imitation, but an active appropriation.
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SLIDE 16 “The play is not a world of fantasy, of an arrangement – it is an unconditioned world of reality, reproduced by specific means” (El’konin, 1978, p. 221).
D.B. El’konin also underlined, that the play derives from a change of child’s role in the system of social relations. This is an expression of the social nature of play.
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1. The play is a realization of child’s generalized affectations, based upon the system of relations with adults.
2. The constituting feature of a play is a creation of an imaginary situation and floating from one object to another.
3. Each play with an imaginary situation is a play with self-limiting rules.
4. All internal processes and meanings in the play are expressed by external actions
5. In the play a child overcomes immediate impulses and attractions to follow the rule of the game.
6. The play is the leading form of activity at preschool age.
Let me give more details on these enumerated features trough some citations from L.S. Vygotsky.
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SLIDE 18 “How does the child float from one object to another, from one action to another? This is accomplished by movement in the field of meaning – which subordinates all real objects and actions to itself… This movement in the field of meaning predominates in play. On the one hand, it represents movement in an abstract field (which thus makes an appearance in play prior to the appearance of voluntary operation with meanings). On the other hand, the method of movement is situational and concrete” (Vygotsky 1978, p. 101). In other words, abstract internal processes are expressed in external concrete actions.
SLIDE 19 Lev Vygotsky stressed the importance of these main psychological features for child development “This strict subordination to rules is quite impossible in life, but in play it does become possible: thus, play creates a zone of proximal development of the child. In play a child always behaves beyond his average age, above his daily behavior; in play it is as though he were a head taller than himself. As in the focus of a magnifying glass, play contains all developmental tendencies in a condensed form and is itself a major source of development” (Vygotsky, 1978, p.102).
SLIDE 20 Different forms of play have specific constituting features, like: the combination of items (or pictures of them) by sense for director’s play, of images for image play, of two roles with opposite functions in a plot-role play and of rules for a play with rules (E.E. Kravtsova). In a plot-role play the child’s meanings structure and self-regulation abilities increase a lot. A plot becomes a means to reflect the Other’s image and own relations with him, corresponding with the playing role, not always coinciding to real relations with him or her.
At each step of play development the child’s motivation in the play also changes: in the same game “hide and seek” a schoolboy is motivated by a desire to win in accordance with the game rules, while a preschooler wants most of all to communicate with an adult, that is why, if he simulates not to find the child he is crying “I am here!”.
SLIDE 21 Besides, “the development of play passes from a concrete action with an object to a generalized play action and then to a play role action: to eat with a spoon – to feed a doll with a spoon – to feed a doll like the mommy – this is the scheme of role play development ”(El’konin, 1978, p. 187). A generalized and reduced character of play actions is upon D. El’konin a primordial condition for modeling social relations in play activity.
SLIDE 22 With this the author distinguishes the subject and the content of the play. The subject of the play is a fragment of reality reproduced by a playing child. Specific aspects of adults’ interrelations reproduced by a playing child form the content of the play. Larger are the child’s knowledge and representations about adults’ activity and relations more rich becomes the subject of the play and deeper is child’s appropriation of the adults’ world. The subject of the play develops with age from a reproduction of external characteristics of phenomena to an expression of their meaning and personal sense. The content age dynamics is related with a degree of logical sequence of actions and with verbal expression of interpersonal relations. The content is very depending from social, emotional and physical conditions of the playing child life. A child with vision problems put spectacles on a mouse he play with, an abused child introduces aggression in own play and so on. So, the play is a means of self-expression for a child.
SLIDE 23 “A personal sense of the play changes with age: it is in actions of somebody, a small child is representing in play, in his relations to the others for a bigger child and at the next age step - in typical relations of the person the role of which the child is playing” (D. El’konin, 1978, p. 202).
SLIDE 24 An important role in play formation belongs to a friendly adult, introducing the child to the play, proposing examples of actions, guiding and supporting the child’s play activity, providing an emotional feedback (approval or disapproval); stimulating child’s self -development.
SLIDE 25 Necessary conditions for play formation are:
- Sensory and motor development of the child;
- Emotional development;
- Development of imagination;
- Development of attention;
- Development of space orientation;
- Speech development;
- Communication with adults;
- Communication with peers.
The prove is difficulties and slowness of play formation in deaf or mentally retarded children (G.L. Vygotskaya, 1966) or in socially isolated children from orphanages.
SLIDE 26 What is not play? A criterion of play activity, as it was already said, is an appearance of an imaginary situation, which is a discrepancy between perceived and semantic fields, when a child’s actions and behavior are determined only by the imaginary, not perceived situation. The content of the imaginary situation proves that it origins from the adults’ world (L. S. Vygotsky, 1982). D.B. El’konin (1957, 1978) suggested that in a play a child perceives himself through the accepted role of an adult but realizes that he is still not adult.
In a play a child is situational and at the same time is above-situational (E.E. Kravtsova, 2003).
SLIDE 27 The imaginary position provides a succession of the play, the perceived position is necessary for a regulation of the play. It presupposes the awareness of own self as a player in the same time as the awareness of own self as a non player, a realizing of the difference between “I want” and “I should”. The rules of the play make the child situational, a competition included in most of plays make the child above-situational. At early age, the succession of a play is more important, that its result. It is the contrary for bigger children, but the result is considered in accordance with the given rules of the play.
SLIDE 28 It is important to point out, that L.S. Vygotsky distinguishes the play as a form of self-valuable activity and as a form of life-activity. The play may be used in education (remediation) only as a form of life-activity (after it was a self-valuable activity).
SLIDE 29 A question appears: What happens if the play activity as a self-valuable activity was underdeveloped? The theoretical analysis done above permits to suggest, that the play activity at preschool age influences further development of a child and his/her school performance later on
SLIDE 30 Let’s discuss now how a play underdevelopment provokes learning disabilities.
SLIDE 31 We all know, that learning is vital for everyone. The access to education, in and by itself, is not enough. We see that not everyone learns the same way. Today one of the critical issues we face is the increase of share of primary school children who are on the borderline between norm and pathology; in other words, children who do not have a definite clinical diagnosis, yet demonstrate evident learning and behavior problems in public schools.
To understand the causes of learning disabilities is crucial for finding efficient means to help the learning disable children. Our studies prove two causes to be of primordial value: underdevelopment or atypical development of some mental functions and deficient play activity in early childhood.
SLIDE 32 A study of child’s play activity can be an important diagnostic means to determine the level of the child’s development. A failure in play mirrors the mechanisms and specific features of a failure at school and it indicates also the zone of this child proximal development. Abnormal development as a rule is a misbalance between imaginary and perceived situations in play, like an underdevelopment of imaginary position after affective disturbances or inability to act in perceived situation in autistic children, or a not differentiation of real and imaginary worlds in the conscience of internet dependent subjects.
The idea of play activity at preschool age influencing child's success at school is based upon Vygotskyan concepts and on the data of experimental work at the Moscow Research Center of Developmental Neuropsychology.
SLIDE 33 A study of the play activity in 150 primary school children with learning problems had been conducting in our Center from 2000 to 2009 years. (A.E. Soboleva, 2009).
We have performed a special diagnostic complex which included:
● Method of experimental psychological observation of children’s play activity;
● Method of Lurian neuropsychological assessment that includes a study of neurodynamics of mental processes (the level of general brain activity), of movements and actions, of memory, reasoning and speech organization;
● Psychological and pedagogical study of children’s personality through projective drawing test («Draw-A-Human» test);
● Scholarship documentation analysis, children‘s school skills assessment;
§ Questionnaires for parents.
SLIDE 34 Experimental study of play activity in primary school children proved that the play activity of most (107- 73.3%) of unsuccessful pupils wasn’t properly formed in such important play abilities as:
● The use of substitute objects (in 91,5% of pupils);
● A rule compliance during the game (in 80,9% of pupils);
● An ability for cooperation during the game (in 65,9% of pupils),
while the understanding and acceptance of the play rules were relatively preserved.
Moreover, children with play activity deficit demonstrate lower school performance, when compared to the children without play activity deficit.
So, there was indeed a direct correlation between play development deficit in early childhood and learning problems later on. It reminds me the words by V.P. Zinchenko, that “play dystrophy” rests for the rest of the life.
SLIDE 35 An analysis of neuropsychological assessments data before we started any remedial work proved that the low score for mental abilities were revealed in 79% of unsuccessful children with play deficit (experimental group) and they were much higher (about twice as many), than in unsuccessful children without play deficit (control group). Executive functions were deficient in 90%, general mental activity in 89 %, the successive movement organization and space orientation in 82%, reasoning in 66% of children with underdeveloped play abilities and learning problems at school.
These data indicate that a forming of play activity is crucial for the development of all mental functions, especially for the executive ones. The similar results were shown by M. Wells in studies of reading achievement.
SLIDE 36 We also studied the differences in personality traits and emotional development in both groups. An analysis of drawings («Draw-A-Human» test) revealed a high score of aggression and of low communicative abilities and also symptoms of lack of self-confidence and anxiety in pupils with play deficiencies. It is well known, that these emotional skills that are critical for good school performance, such as attention and alertness, ability to focus, self-control, and proper behavior.
SLIDE 37 To understand problems of a child with learning disability is only part of what neuropsychologist is concerned with. Our main goal was now, that we pinpointed the problem, to find a proper solution, to find a way to help children with play activity deficit, that is to offer them and their parents not a brochure, not a pill, but a way out of this situation, a remedy that will have lasting effect and – ideally – no negative side effects.
So, we pass to the problems of remediation for learning disable children.
SLIDE 38 L .S Vygotsky proved that the education leads development. A remediating education determines development.
I repeat, that I use the term neuropsychological remediation and not the term neurorehabilitation, because we can rehabilitate the functions that were already formed. In children, including learning disable pupils, mental functions are in the process of development.
SLIDE 39. The remediating education differs from the general one in their aims. The aim of general education is to acquire knowledge, the remediation is aimed to form new functional organs or a new functional system that make possible to perform a mental process. For a learning disable child a remediation must precede the general school education and create a base for future education. New basic functional systems formed during remediation make possible an independent learning by the child in the future.
SLIDE 40 These basic systems include voluntary regulation and control of own behavior, space orientation, phonemic and kinesthetic verbal analysis and syntheses, motor ability, volume and stability of verbal and visual memory, logic reasoning and communicative skills. Some of these systems should be already formed by the moment to enter primary school, the others, like space orientation, are in the process of formation.
SLIDE 41 The main task of remediation is to create together with a child the means of compensation and overcoming an underdevelopment of some mental functions, using the "strong" components of mentality to compensate the weak ones.
SLIDE 42 Who needs a remediation?
- Pupils unsuccessful at school because of underdevelopment (retardation) in some mental functions (sometimes, talented in some others);
- Children with low neurodynamic capacities in mental functioning;
- Children with poor executive functioning;
- Children with problems of behavior and social communication;
- Pupils achieving a success at school interfering with their general health.
SLIDE 43 Some common features or psychological consequences of academic failure unify these children, such as:
- Negative attitude to scholarship;
- Fear of an unsuccess;
- Low self-appraisal and self-credit.
SLIDE 44 Therefore remediation process is oriented to the following tasks:
- cognitive development and increasing success at school;
- correction of negative traits of personality and emotional reactions;
- improving of behavior at school and at home;
- development of communicative skills;
- psychological assistance to parents.
A multitude of remediation tasks necessitates a complex approach to its solution. This approach is based on Vygotsky's and Luria's principles of neuropsychological rehabilitation and remediation:
SLIDE 45 The first principle is Neuropsychological qualification of child's problems – a systemic neuropsychological assessment revealing both deficits and strengths in child's development, his zone of proximal development, that is upon Vygotsky the possibilities and conditions to improve the results with a help of an examiner. It is only possible if we use Luria's principle of dialogue assessment, including components of education – a base for individual program of remediation. So, Lurian assessment in contrast to psychometric methods measures not an achieved level of education (retrospective aspect), but a potential to education (prospective aspect). Luria's tests are oriented not at the result of the assessment (pass or fall), but at its process and possibilities to make it more efficient.
SLIDE 46 The second principle of complex remediation means a combination at each play session of cognitive, motor, respiratory and emotional methods that form together the same mental function.
For instance, to develop space orientation in the motor part of the remediation session a child has to move oriented by 2 toys that must be always at the level of his waist. In the cognitive part of play remediation, in the game “fly” the task is to follow the “flight” in accordance with teacher’s instructions – two rows up, one to the right and so on, - and “catch” the fly at the moment when it get out the cage. The respiratory method “blow-ball” not only increases the general activation, but also trains orientation in the space of the table, mutual interaction and adequate emotional reactions to success and unsuccess.
SLIDE 47. The third principle of systemic remediation means that the program for each child does not look for surmounting of an isolated defect but tries to balance the whole mentality and personality of the child. It does not exclude the need of choice of the main orientation and specific techniques at each step of remediation for every one child, based upon the data of his neuropsychological assessment and his personal needs. This principle provides the efficiency of neuropsychological remediation for learning disable children.
SLIDE 48. Play remediation favors emotional involvement and motivation of the child in the remediation process. Games, competitions, small gifts and so on increase significantly the efficiency of remediation. It provides that the child becomes a subject instead of an object of remediation.
SLIDE 49. The most important in neuropsychological remediation is not to teach something but to stimulate a desire to learn this thing. To realize it, the proposed tasks should be interesting and accessible for the child, taking account of his age and life experience, the falls in play should not follow one other but the successes will not be achieved without efforts.
If a child is a subject of own remediation, it forms "the affective basis of education", that is upon Vygotsky "the alfa and omega, the beginning and the end, the prologue and epilogue of each mental development (Vygotsky, 1984, p. 297). A child with a chronic unsuccess at school must experience a feeling of success to increase own self-estimation and self-credit.
SLIDE 50. It results in the fifth principle of an individualized remediation of each one child. Each problematic child has own problems. For instance, in the last book of our Center of developmental neuropsychology: APPLIED NEUROPSYCHOLOGY. REMEDIATION OF LEARNING DISABLED CHILDREN there are 4 parts, the first of them has the title:
Part 1. Each child with problems has individualized concerns.
In the second part It is never too early or too late we discuss the problem at what age psychologists can begin the neuropsychological remediation and if there is a limit time for it in teenagers.
Part 3. If the child “does not want”? examines emotional problems in learning disable children and the Part 4. Individual or group remediation? shares our experience in dyadic and group remediation. I am glad to present this book to my friends from
SLIDE 51. Let me pass to the principle 6. The weak components of mental functions are developed through a support of the strong ones. It means that at the beginning of play remediation the teacher performs himself the functions of the weak components, and then gradually transfer them to the child following the rules of interiorization, described by L.S. Vygotsky: from common activity to an independent one, from an action mediated with external means to an internal one, from step by step analytic action to a global automatized one.
SLIDE 52. The cultural-historical approach in neuropsychological remediation of learning disable children consists in further development of the theory of mediation. And this is the seventh principle of play remediation. L.S. Vygotsky proved that mediation is a natural way of cognitive development in children and of the psychological compensation of cognitive and physical deterioration in children. This last principle results in a search for mediation methods in remediation instead of direct training of underdeveloped functions.
SLIDE 53. We used the following methods of mediation:
VISUAL:
External marks for space orientation
§ Frames for writing;
§ Externalized numbers or signs for counting and attention.
SEMANTIC:
§ Logical analysis in counting and problem solving;
§ Actualization of words semantic relations for memorization;
§ Actualization of image and word relations for vocabulary and
§ memorization.
EMOTIONAL:
§ Computer games for space orientation and vocabulary;
§ Competition situations;
§ Feedback.
SLIDE 54. For instance, external means (toys, indicative of the needed position of a “horse” in the space, a touch on the hand during a game saying "Stop and think about") help the child with learning problems to form a system of orientation in the play and an ability of self-control for own movements and actions. A play with an internalized rule included in the role (I am a car, the car is moving) transforms into a play with an externalized rule (the car is moving when I hear two whistles). “A diary of achievements”, where the teacher together with the student put the results of each session (note! only achievement) was a good method to provide a feedback to the child and to overcome negative attitudes for learning.
SLIDE 55. Mediating in teams or co-mediation (principle 8) in group and dyadic remediation may present different characteristics and challenges compared to mediations conducted by a single individual. I already said, that communicative abilities underdevelopment often due to play deficit in early childhood (as a rule accompanied by weak executive functions) is one of mechanisms of academic failure as well as behavioral and emotional problems. The communicative abilities are always socially formed; therefore their remediation is only possible in group. Group remediation permits:
- a common control of a good realization of the given role in the play and critical attitude to own play activity;
- an analysis and amelioration of own behavior and personality through group interaction;
- conditions and place to meet the need for communication, common for each child;
- appropriation in a protected and controlled environment of new communicative skills: how to propose a help, how to indicate a mistake or praise the peer, how to protect own independence and so on;
- feedback and emotional support from peers;
- new experience in solving interpersonal and intrafamily problems,
-increased self-appreciation.
SLIDE 56 So, group remediation has 3 main interrelated components: emotional (self-acceptance and stimulation of self-development);Cognitive (knowledge about communication, oneself and others), behavioral (development of communicative skills and own problems solving).
SLIDE 57 Quoting D.B. El’konin: “The play becomes a school of moral, not of a represented moral, but of moral in actions” (D. El’konin, 1978, p. 288)
SLIDE 58 Let us give details to dyadic remediation – a new method recently worked out in our Center of Developmental Neuropsychology
SLIDE 59 In dyadic motor remediation (for instance, when a task is to reach the ball first or the last – for an hyperactive kid) each child should take account of his partner actions, it favors his self-control and skills of mutual interaction
SLIDE 60 It is possible to differentiate the following types of dyadic interaction:
Cooperation
- of both children in achieving common goal;
- of one child with the teacher aimed to help another child
Competition
- of one child with the other when the teacher becomes a judge;
- of both children against the teacher in a common game.
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SLIDE 62 Let me pass to the next principle of play remediation (both individual and in groups) determining for a great deal its efficiency - optimal teaching strategies: participative-guided and peer-collaborative strategies are more efficient than classical-expositive, optimal individualized choice of mediating means and also interfunctional mediation (semantic/visual) is in most subjects more efficient, than intrafunctional with some limitation for patients with specific features of interhemispheric interaction.
So, SLIDE 63 the teaching strategies are not only a way to learn culture; to form or to remediate mental functions - they are cultural instruments by themselves. It is the reason, why upon Vygotsky, “The higher mental function is a social means of behavior, converted to himself”
(L.S. Vygotsky, 1978).
SLIDE 64 All play methods follow the didactic principle: from simple to complicated. But in remediation this way from simple to complicated takes account of the weak components in mental functioning of this child in all verbal and nonverbal functions including these components. The help of the psychologist must be interactive, that is reduced or enlarged in accordance with the kid's achievements. In other words the specialist always works in the zone of this child's proximal development.
Next principle: SLIDE 65 The remediation is efficient only in interaction with the child's parents. I will enumerate here only some main preoccupations, such as emotional support to parents. The task of the psychologist is to help the parents to realize the positive changes in their child after remediation and to accept the new child”; It is necessary to stimulate the parents to participate in remediation process and also to create and maintain an active and optimistic life attitude of parents and the family unity, as we call it “ the family we”.
SLIDE 66 To help the parents our Center publishes special books for them. Here is a small number of recently published books for specialists in remediation and for parents of children with learning problems. We also published 2 books named: “How to play with a child 1-5 years old to develop his motor and cognitive functions and to prevent possible learning problems at school.
SLIDE 67 The last principle is Team approach (an interaction with medical and pedagogical stuff) that favors also the efficiency of remediation. Each specialist contributes in common task using own methods.
SLIDE 68 As it was already said the neuropsychological remediation is based predominantly on playing activity. Many of Vygotskyan theoretical concepts of play were already discussed during analysis of principles of neuropsychological remediation. Here I will summarize some problems of play remediation of learning disabilities.
SLIDE 69 The play techniques include motor, cognitive and respiratory games. Here are just a few examples of what we do:
- respiratory exercises aimed to increase the level of general cerebral activity (to make it a play, the child competes with his previous results);
- games with a ball, when the “race” starts and stops on special signals forms executive functions or the “horse” should follow a given itinerary to develop space orientation;
- combinations of words according given rules to develop verbal functions.
SLIDE 70 - Reproducing different animals movements using own body parts to stimulate general brain activity, attention and interhemispheric coordination.
- The game “blow-ball” – a kind of football, but the tennis ball is moved to the peer’s gate by blowing out. This game increases the general cerebral activation, but and also trains orientation in the space of the table, mutual interaction and emotional functions - adequate emotional reactions to success and unsuccess. So, each play favors development of different mental functions and abilities of the child.
SLIDE 71 Specific form of play remediation is a didactic play:
- It follows learning and development tasks;
- It includes child’s play experience in learning situation;
- It is a kind of activity, which combines pleasure and knowledge, necessary to realize the play subject;
- It is characterized by a high level of pupil’s motivation;
- It activates different mental abilities: reasoning, memory, attention, imagination and others;
- The result of a didactic play must be always evident and concrete;
- The learning task is not externalized, therefore, the learning is involuntary, and by this more efficient.
Depending on the material used in the didactic plays one can differ verbal games, games with objects and computer games. Didactic play can be individual (in this case the child computes with his previous result) or performed in group. In the last case the competition becomes more active and efficient for learning.
SLIDE 72 Didactic play is not the same as didactic exercises, because the first includes: Play idea; Didactic task; Play actions and Rules. Play idea and corresponding play actions make the didactic play activity emotional and attractive for the child. Play idea may be expressed by a play title or by a given play task. The child realizes in a didactic play, that to achieve this task and to win in this play he needs some knowledge. The rules provide regulation of children behavior and interrelations and critical attitude to own and peer’s actions.
SLIDE 73 Child’s activity in a game is oriented by different motivations: Competition motivation – a desire to win, to reveal own potentials and consequently to do own best to achieve the task. Altruistic motivation – a desire to help the peer and assisting the other the child becomes more self confident and self respected. Play motivation – child’s attention is detracted from cognitive and motor abilities trained in a play, makes them involuntary and easy and forms (upon L.S. Vygotsky) the unity of affective and intellectual parts of activity. Besides, play is primordial for executive functions development.
Let me cite again L.S. Vygotsky:
SLIDE 74 “Play continually creates demands on the child to act against immediate impulse. At every step the child is faced with a conflict between the rules of the game and what he would do if he could suddenly act spontaneously…
A Child’s greatest self-control occurs in play. He achieves the maximum display of willpower when he renounces an immediate attraction in the game (such as candy, which by the rules of the game he is forbidden to eat because it represents something inedible). Ordinarily child experiences subordination to rules in the renunciation of something he wants, but here subordination to a rule and renunciation of action on immediate impulse are the means to maximum pleasure. (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 99).
SLIDE 75 If we return to the main criterion of the play – appearance of two positions: perceived (above-situational) and imaginary (situational) – we can conclude, that if a child became a subject of remediation, he realizes own behavior in the play as well as the behaviors of his partners, he distributes the roles in accordance to the play situation, being in the above-situational position in the play and he admires the game being in imaginary, situational position. So, the imaginary position makes a pleasure from a game and the perceived situation ensures its regulation. Step by step, external regulation of rules fulfillment by the teacher is replaced by an internal regulation by the child himself first in play situation, later in home and school activity.
SLIDE 76 It is very important that a play with rules becomes for a child a model of future scholarship. As L.S. Vygotsky wrote in one of his letters to D.B. El’konin: “Rules – School of willpower (school activity), Imaginary situation – Way to abstraction” (D. El’konin, 1978, p. 7). According to D.B. Elkonin, readiness to school is an ability to realize a conditioned nature of a rule and a symbolic nature of a sign. The images, constructed in play become the means to appropriate the phenomena of the real world (Marjanovic-Shane & Beljanski-Ristic, 2003). Experimental formation of plot-role play in mentally retarded and stuttering children favored a lot the development of verbal functions in these kids.
SLIDE 77 In play methods the effects may concern the cognitive and motor abilities, the linguistic formulation of knowledge, the permanence in memory, the transfer to concrete situations, the links to other fields and situations, and the motivation and attitude disposition of learners. The transfer to other situations is due to the fact, that a play with rules makes necessary a creation of schematic plans, perspectives for play continuation, sequences in realization of the play content.
SLIDE 78 What are the most efficient forms of games in play remediation? These are first games with fixed rules and roles, that become for a child a school of social interaction and second, games – competitions that provide an involuntary acquisition of knowledge. So, these games permit a best option for an harmonic combination of upbringing and education (Plomin et al., 1988).
It was also confirmed in our experimental study. After the course of treatment that was based on our play techniques we ran the tests once again to see the dynamic in children in both groups. It is interesting that the positive dynamic in the experimental group was definitely better than the dynamic of the control group. In other words, if we see a much better response in children with play development deficit, it means that our technique addresses their particular needs and works for them.
SLIDE 79 It is important, that play remediation has multimodal effect:
• Formation of executive abilities;
• Development of cognitive functions and abilities: verbal and visual memory, attention, visual and spatial images, vocabulary, imagination, creativity, general knowledge and others;
• Development of motor skills, coordination and agility;
• Increase in general cerebral activity;
• Development of interhemispheric interaction.
• Amelioration of the emotional state, overcoming fears of learning activity and egocentrism, formation of self-image or, upon Vygotsky, “learning of self in the play”.
SLIDE 80 The last point can be well illustrated through comparison of children drawings before and after play remediation of learning problems at school.
SLIDE 81 To be efficient, the play remediation must follow some organization requirements:
1. The neuropsychologist must create the two positional (imaginary + perceived) structure of the play. Otherwise it will be not a play, but the didactic exercises with rules. This requirement can be achieved through organization of competitions (with a win, defeat and awards) between two or more children, between a child and his teacher, of this child’s actual and previous achievements. The rewarding (candies, stickers and so on) can be performed at the end of the play as well as at its different stages. The teacher must not be too kind with the pupil, providing him a permanent success without big efforts, but also it is necessary for a child, unsuccessful at school to have an experience of a success especially at the beginning of remediation process. Therefore, in group remediation, if a child is below competition with regard to other participants of the play, we use sometimes a system of double scoring of the results of this weak player to provide him an approval and a reward and protect his self-evaluation. An approval is a strong stimulus for new achievements while disapproval impedes the realization of child’s potentials. From the other side it is very important for the emotional development of the pupil to teach him how to perceive and to support a defeat. It makes him more stress resistant for future.
E.E. Kravtsova suggests that the teacher should detract the child’s attention from the process of the play to its emotional identification with a play personage. “To be a doctor the child should not only do injections or examine the patient – the kid must feel himself a doctor who takes care of somebody, wants to help him” (Kravtsova 2001, p. 309).
2. Introducing of a didactic play. The teacher announces first the name of the play. Then, he shows to pupils the objects, which will be used in the play. It is important to create a necessary psychological attitude for this play and increase attention to its rules. While explaining the rules, the psychologist must be very precise, avoid too long and complicated expressions. For small children with limited volume of acoustic and visual perception, the instructions should be divided into sub instructions, and it is better to present the didactic material successively instead of simultaneously. Often we show the child a fragment of a play action. We stimulate and approve the participation of children in the discussion of the play rules, proposals of new (more complicated) rules and criteria of win.
3. Interactive role of the psychologist: he reduces or enlarges his leadership, participation and control in accordance with the kid's achievements. He can be a judge or a real participant of the play with common discussion of the results. But it is mandatory for the teacher to reveal and approve each one, even small achievement of every player and to stimulate the self-organization of the play, all initiatives by the pupils in roles and leader fixing, in rules modifications, in new plays proposals and so on.
4. The play should not be too long, not to cause fatigue and satiety.
5. It is necessary to alternate games at table with active motor plays. All learning disable children have a low level of cerebral activity; therefore they need this alternation of activities.
6. It is also necessary to alternate simple and complicated games in the way to avoid fatigue and to increase the motivation for a new play through a success in a previous one. It is better to say children, that a new game is more complicated to make them more attentive and concentrated on the play.
7. The children select themselves the rhythm of the play – it is useless or even harmful to speed them. It is also harmful to stop unfinished play. If it is necessary, the teacher should find a reasonable explanation: the shop is closed for a break, the doctor is called for an emergency and so on.
9. Dynamic strategy of the teacher: he should consider all previous achievements or defeats of pupils when organizing each new play. With this new tasks must go a little bit ahead the achieved level, that is to be in the zone of child’s proximal development.
10. The number of players does not determine the quality of the didactic play: it can be a play in a big group or a competition of a child with own previous result. “A play of two pupils can reach a very high level, while in a big group the level of the play can be lower. We have all reasons to suggest, that in a dyad a qualitative evolution of the play appears if the given roles reproduce the system of social relation and a consecutive enlargement of the number of players is not important” (El’konin, 1978, p. 170).
12. Personal features of the teacher (or parent) are primordial for the success of play remediation. He must be able to see and hear each player, be master of patience and tact, of imagination and fantasy, of creative abilities.
Let me pass to the concluding part
SLIDE 82 First of all, the poor school performance of many primary school children results from neuropsychological problems which may be remediated with the help of play techniques.
Secondly, there is a clear connection between the development of general learning abilities and the quality of play stage in a child’s early development. We know that skills like control, self-regulation, and overall mental activity are crucial for school performance; and these skills are being developed during the play stage.
SLIDE 83 Thirdly, play techniques can be tailored to address individual needs of a particular child, and thus used to remedy the underdeveloped mental abilities. It results in better learning abilities in these children.
And finally, the use of play techniques in neuropsychological work with a child results in the improvement of neuropsychological functions, as well as better school performance and behavior and improvement in personality traits. The play techniques boost communication skills and help to overcome aggression, fears, lack of confidence, and shyness.
SLIDE 84 To conclude, it is necessary to point out, that remediation is not a correction – it is a creation. The play helps, the play develops only if it is a common creative activity, a partnership of a child with adults (psychologist + parents) based on child’s readiness to play.
Psychologist must understand and overcome everything interfering with child’s successful adjustment to the society
SLIDE 85 So, the ideas of Vygotsky retain their relevance across the reaches of time and culture that separate us from Vygotsky (Michael Cole & Sylvia Scribner, 1978).
SLIDE 86-88 That is why many Vygotsky international conferences took place in Moscow
SLIDE 89 It is important to underline, that Vygotsky-Luria’s approach is a scientific phenomenon the value of which cannot be limited by the deeds realized by the authors themselves but it opens up potentials for development in new branches and orientations.
SLIDE 90 I would like to finish with the words of the daughter of Lev Vygotsky – Gita Vygotsky, who passed away in July 2010: “All humans are mortal – it’s inevitable, but some ones acquire immortality”.
SLIDE 91 Thank you for your attention
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