The Problem of Instruction and Development in the Works of L. S. Vygotsky.

I. in the last few years interest has grown both in this country and abroad in the problem of instruction and the mental development of children. A clear sign of this was the recent XVIII International Congress of Psychology which met in Moscow, where the problem was discussed not only in special symposia by specialists in child psychology (J. Piaget, B. Inhelder, J. Bruner, P. Ya. Gal'perin, N. A. Menchinskaya, G. S. Kostyuk, R. Ojemann, N. F. Talyzina, J. Linhart, H. Aebli, etc.), but it also arose - and this is particularly interesting - at symposia not directly concerned with these matters. Examples of this were the following papers: A. D. Slonim, "The Environment of Post-Natal Development and Innate Behavioral Programs in Mammals"; D. Krech, "Heredity, Environment, the Brain, and Intellectual Activity"; M. Rosenzweig, "Anatomical and Chemical Changes in the Brain During Primary Learning"; A. Jacobson, "The Transfer of Learning by Injections of RNA Extracted from the Brains of Trained Animals"; R. Held, "Plasticity in Sensorimotor Coordination"; L. Lipsitt, "Learning in Human Newborns"; and many others. of course, the research presented at the symposia could not arrive at a unity of opinion. Instead, the various positions were more clearly formulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]