ABSTRACT
The sociocultural approach originating in the work of Vygotsky and Luria offered a very different perspective by conceptualizing human psychological functions as dynamic sociocultural constructions rather than natural objects. The child's reasoning, for example, is understood as a construction created through the child's involvement in specific sociocultural activities that are mediated by symbolic tools. The sociocultural model is based on a number of theoretical assumptions: Psychological functions are sociocultural rather than natural; To investigate the function means to uncover its origin, dynamics and modification; and The formation of psychological functions is mediated by the available symbolic tools and sociocultural activities. The unique sociocultural situation of this region in the late 1920s and early 1930s was determined by a very rapid invasion of Soviet power into an otherwise very traditional and mostly non-literate agricultural society. This chapter shows how a cognitive process that appears as a simple product of maturation reveals its sociocultural constructive nature when approached in a non-reductionist way.
