Process Structure of Semiotic Mediation in Human Development

Abstract

Development of semiotic mediation of psychological functions entails construction and use of signs to regulate both interpersonal and intrapersonal psychological processes. The latter can be viewed as regulated through a hierarchy of semiotic mechanisms. It is demonstrated that semiotic mediation leads to the creation of psychological problems as well as to their solutions. Semiotic mediation guarantees both flexibility and inflexibility of the human psychological system, through the processes of abstracting generalization and contextualizing specification, which operate through the layers of the semiotic regulation hierarchy. Context specificity of psychological phenomena is an indication of general mechanisms that generate variability. Much has been written about the role of signs – semiotic mediators – in psychology over recent decades. Usually more or less elaborate claims in favor of the importance of signs – semiotic mediators, words, ‘voices’, meanings – in human psychological worlds have been made [Cole, 1996; Shweder, 1995; Wertsch, 1991, 1998]. That importance is here taken for granted, and the question addressed moves beyond the discourse about the social nature of the human individual psyche [Valsiner & Van der Veer, 2000]. In which ways could one conceptualize the functioning of signs in the regulation of psychological processes? The present elaboration is based on previous work along similar lines [Valsiner, 1996, 1997a, 1998a, 1999]. By a focus on regulation, a systemic perspective is immediately evoked. The system that is being regulated entails psychological processes of intra- and interpsychological communication. These processes are mutually related in a hierarchical organizational order – some of them (higher psychological functions, based on the operation of signs) controlling others (lower, nonintentional psychological functions, or flow of personal experience). The hierarchy can be viewed as open to changes [including reversals, or formation of intransitive order – see Valsiner, 1997d]. The person is viewed as inclusively separated from its environment [Valsiner, 1997a, 1998c]. The intrapsychological system is cultural through the inclusion of semiotic regulators into the hierarchy of psychological processes [Valsiner, 1998a]. How that system works in its immediate relatedness with the environment is the target of the present theoretical construction.