SUPERIOR PSYCHOLOGICAL FUNCTIONS: SOCIAL ORIGIN ANO MEDIATED NATURE

Abstract

During a long time, in face of the studies of Piaget, too much emphasis was p/aced in the process of construction of the consciousness as a se/f-structured phenomenon. Although we do not disagree with the subject's activity being basic for this end, we have reasons to believe that the origins of the consciousness and the abstract thought must be looked in the interaction of the organism with the conditions of social life, and in the social-historie forms of activities of our species. The typica!ly human mental processes are mediated by the language and structuralized not in fixed anatomical localizations in the brain, but in functional, dynamic and historica!ly changeable systems. Thus, the language is an instrument of the human thought, so far as humans acquire concepts and signs. The plan of the consciousness does not preexist, but it is constructed on the basis of social­-occupational interactions. ln this approach of the superior psychological functions,we do a synthesis of their origin and nature, based on findings of contemporary Psycho/ogy and Neuropsychology, particularly on the ideas of Vygotsky and Luria.