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- Fecha de creación julio 9, 2026
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Inteernalization of Higher Psychological Processes
What creates the zone of proximal development is an essential learning trait; that is, learning awakens a variety of internal developmental processes that are able to operate only when the child is interacting with people in his environment and in cooperation with his peers. Once these processes are internalized, they become part of the child’s independent developmental achievement. Our hypothesis establishes the unity but not the identity of learning processes and internal developmental processes. It presupposes that the one is converted into the other. From this point of view, learning is not development; however, properly organized learning results in mental development and sets in motion a variety of developmental processes that would be impossible apart from learning. Thus, learning is a necessary and universal aspect of the process of developing culturally organized, specifically human, psychological functions. Therefore, it becomes an important concern of psychological research to show how external knowledge and abilities in children become internalized.
We called the internal reconstruction of an external operation internalization. This process of internalization consists of a series of transformations:
a) An operation that initially represents an external activity is reconstructed and begins to occur internally. Of particular importance to the development of higher mental processes is the transformation of sign-using activity, the history and characteristic of which are illustrated by the development of practical intelligence, voluntary attention, and memory.
b) An interpersonal process is transformed into an intrapersonal one. Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological), and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relations between human individuals.
c) The transformation of an interpersonal process into an intrapersonal one is the result of a long series of developmental events. The process being transformed continues to exist and to change as an external form of activity for a long time before definitively turning inward. For many functions, the stage of external sign lasts for ever, that is, it is their final stage of development. Other functions develop further and gradually become inner functions. However, they take on the character of inner processes only as a result of a prolonged development. Their transfer inward is linked with changes in the laws governing their activity; they are incorporated into a new system with its own laws.
The internalization of socially rooted and historically developed activities is the distinguishing feature of human psychology, the basis of the qualitative leap from animal to human psychology
In zone of proximal development, teaching represents the means through which development progresses. If there are no internalization processes in teaching, there is no learning; and if there is no learning, there is no development. School education is qualitatively different from education in the broadest sense of the word. At School, the child is faced with certain task: to grasp the foundations of scientific study, that is, a system of scientific conceptions. If there are no internalization processes in the child, he will be not able to grasp the system of scientific conceptions that is needed as a basis for the study of a certain topic. So it is crucial that the internalization process takes place in school teaching.