The dialogic mind: A dialogic approach to the higher mental functions

doi:10.1016/0732-118X(95)00024-B

New Ideas in Psychology

Volume 14, Issue 1, March 1996, Pages 47-62

https://doi.org/10.1016/0732-118X(95)00024-B Get rights and content

Abstract

Drawing on the work of Vygotsky, Bakhtin, Wertsch and others, I outline a framework for the study of the higher mental functions that views them as dialogic processes derived from interpersonal activity. According to this view, the higher mental functions develop through the progressive internalization of semiotically manifested perspectives on reality, such that mature functioning involves the simultaneous coming-into-conflict of differing internalized perspectives. I suggest that such an approach goes some way to account for the open-ended and unconstrained nature of higher mental functioning. I also consider some implications of this approach for current research in developmental psychology, with particular reference to the role of care-givers in mental development, the emergence of perspective-taking and mentalizing abilities in early childhood, and the deficits associated with early childhood autism.

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ArticleThe dialogic mind: A dialogic approach to the higher mental functions

Abstract

Cognition

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

Developing Theories of Mind

Discover in the novel

Bedtime soliloquies and linguistic competence in autism

Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders

Sharing a perspective precedes the understanding of that perspective

Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Situations and Attitudes

Children's private speech: An overview of theory and the status of research

Thinking as creation: Introduction to the logic of mental dialogue

Soviet Psychology

Dialogic mind: The infant and adult in protoconversation

Social-emotional and auto-operational roots of cultural (peer) learning

Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Theories of memory and the problems of development: Activity, growth, and knowledge

Pronoun errors in autistic children: Support for a social explanation

British Journal of Disorders of Communication

Little Dorrit

Children's Minds

Social and private speech as determinants of early cognitive functioning

The influence of security of attachment on young children's understanding of other minds

Le language privé

Bulletin de Psychologie

The Modularity of Mind

The capacity for understanding mental states: The reflective self in parent and child and its significance for security of attachment

Infant Mental Health Journal

The Emmanuel Miller Memorial Lecture 1992: The theory and practice of resilience

Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry

Autism: Explaining the enigma

The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays

The structure of analogical models in science

B.B.N. Technical Report No. 4454

The Berkeley adult attachment interview

In and Out of the Black Box: On the Philosophy of Cognition

Precursors of symbol formation and childhood autism

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

Literature and Cognition

On acquiring knowledge about people and the capacity to pretend: Response to Leslie (1987)

Psychological Review

Autism and the Development of Mind

On acquiring the concept of “persons”

Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Emotion-related and abstract concepts in autistic people: Evidence from the British Picture Vocabulary Scale

Journal of Autism and Development Disorders

Glossary to Bakhtin (1981)

Dialogism: Bakhtin and his World

Autistic children's difficulty with mental disengagement from an object: Its implications for theories of autism

Developmental Psychology

Autistic disturbances of affective contact

Nervous Child

Studies on the cultural development of the child

Journal of Genetic Psychology

The theory of mind impairment in autism: Evidence for a modular mechanism of development?

Spontaneous, instructed and elicited play in relatively able autistic children

British Journal of Developmental Psychology

Joint attention in autism and developmental language delay

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

Article
The dialogic mind: A dialogic approach to the higher mental functions