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History and Systems of Psychology PSY502

Lesson 26

HISTORICO-EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY

Alexei Leontiev (1904-1979)

Alexei Leontiev

Alexei Leontiev was born in 1904 and he died in 1979. He worked with Vygotsky from 1924 to 1930,

collaborating on the development of a new school in psychology as a response to behaviorism and the

focus on stimulus-response mechanism as explanation for human behavior. Leontiev left Vygotsky's group

in Moscow in 1931. He continued to work with Vygotsky for some time but, eventually, there was a split,

although they continued to communicate with one another on scientific matters. Leontiev returned to

Moscow in 1950 as Head of the Psychology Department at the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State

University. In 1966, Leontiev became the first ever Dean of the newly established Faculty of Psychology at

the Moscow State University, where he worked until his death in 1979. He died of a heart attack

Leontiev also tried to look at how consciousness developed in human beings. Therefore, he is also included

among the Historico-Evolutionary psychologists. Historico-Evolutionary Psychology tried to see how

consciousness in humans developed, what exact role it played in different historical stages of man's

development and how it impacts behavior.

To answer these questions related to the development of consciousness of man, Leontiev put forward the

view that consciousness is a product of sensitivity to symbolic stimuli. When the body receives stimuli from

the environment, it reacts to them. Leontiev classified these stimuli into two categories. The first category

was of the ordinary stimuli which were, for example, touching something hot, seeing something coming

towards you etc. Humans tend to respond to these stimuli. Leontiev classified another kind of stimuli which

he called the symbolic stimuli. The symbolic stimuli were related to the ordinary stimuli but they

represented something different. For example, the ringing of bell might be considered as dangerous. This

means that the bell is a symbolic stimulus which symbolizes danger. Another example of a symbolic

stimulus is that when a person hears about food, his or her mouth starts to water. Therefore, hearing about

food represents a symbolic stimulus.

A parallel explanation could be seen between the concept of learning by conditioning given by Pavlov and

the explanation of development of consciousness given by Leontiev. According to Leontiev we learn these

symbolic stimuli by conditioning. Pavlov conducted experiments on dogs. He associated the ringing of a

bell with food. When the dog was given food, a bell was rung. The food caused the dog to salivate. Later it

was seen that the dog had started to expect food with the ringing of the bell as it salivated every time the

bell was rung, even though food was not presented to it. The response of the dog was said to be a

conditioned response. Similarly, Leontiev said that man also learns these symbolic stimuli through

conditioning. As a person finds that whenever any danger appeared a bell is rung, he starts to associate the

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History and Systems of Psychology PSY502

ringing of a bell with the danger. Therefore, the ringing of the bell serves as the symbolic stimulus for him.

Only hearing the bell would make him alert, and this response of his would be a conditioned response to

the symbolic stimulus. This is how man learnt these through conditioning according to Leontiev.

Leontiev also showed by pointing toward various stages of mans development that man learnt by

conditioning according to a set pattern. The order of learning is as follows:

Man first learnt lower order things and functions

ii. And later the higher functions

This means that in the development of man's consciousness, the first step was to learn the lower order

things, which means the basic functions of the body such as eating, drinking etc. These represented the

basic needs of a person. Later the development of the higher order functions took place, which actually

differentiated man from animals. These higher order functions include functions of consciousness such as

thinking, contemplating, understanding, ability to communicate, etc. This is the reason for man being

different from animals. In other words, Leontiev showed that we do not inherit our mental functions and

faculties but learn them by conditioning during our growth and development.

K.M Bykov

Another prominent Soviet psychologist was K.M Bykov, born in 1886 and died in 1959. His quest was the

same as other Historico-evolutionary psychologists i.e. to discover how consciousness developed and the

various milestones in the development of consciousness.

Bykov pointed out that in the historical development of man the sensory signal system changed into verbal

system. First man reacted to sensations later he learnt by conditioning to react to words also. In other

words, the initial stage in development of the consciousness was that man started to acknowledge the

sensory stimuli. These stimuli caused him to react. As pointed out by Leontiev, this was the stage when the

lower order functions started to develop. Man started to respond stimuli such as temperature etc. Later,

when man's consciousness further developed, he was able to understand and interpret things. According to

Leontiev this was the stage when higher order functions developed. Therefore, Bykov points out the

development of verbal communication and man's ability to respond to verbal stimulus as a milestone in the

development of consciousness.

Bykov also showed that we come to have verbally conditioned responses. This means that when we hear a

bad news, we respond to it accordingly. Humans tend to respond in the same manner to bad news.

Therefore, humans are conditioned to the verbal stimuli. His contribution of showing how sensory

conditioning develops into verbal conditioning was a major contribution to that overall Historico-

Evolutionary psychology.