Some Soviet Research on Learning and Perception in Children

Abstract

relating motor movements to perception. Along with the Pavlovian physiological trend, there is a philosophical trend underlying this work. The philosophy is, of course, that of Marx as modified by Lenin. Although one might think upon first exposure to the Russian psychological literature that mere lip service is given to Marx, there is, in fact, a definite guiding influence of this philosophy on the directions taken in research. In particular, the materialism of Marx would suggest that there is a real world; we learn about this real world through the interaction of ourselves and our bodies with the objects in the real world. Lenin's modifications would suggest that, in perceiving the real world and getting information about it, we are coming into closer contact with what is really there. We are getting a real representation in the sense of a copy or image. This obraz is a copy in the sense of a photographic copy; it is not a coded copy, at least this is one current hypothesis in Soviet psychology. The reason that Soviet psychologists are not willing to accept a coded copy or the equivalent amount of information in some coded form, but instead prefer a more realistic representation of what is in the world, is that the coded aspect would represent the deviation of that they reject. They accept neither idealism nor a logical positivism. Since the material world is really out there and really exists, we must have a real copy of it. The way we develop this real copy is by combination of input through our receptors with feedback from our own motor movements. The orienting reflex enters this system in that, when we make an orienting response to the real object, it is purely reflexive. Our movements are guided by the real object, and the movements we make are important in the perception. If our movements are guided by this real object, then they will reproduce this real object, so that we generate an actual physical projection of some sort in the brain as a result of feedback from our eye movements around the physical contours of the real object. The model works very well for tactual perception. If we encounter a physical object, we