Lev Vygotsky: A mind cannot be independent of culture.

The internal voice of our thoughts is a blend of all of the external voices from our childhood. Parents, siblings, relatives, and culture!

Look at this transcript from the podcast Radiolab, titled “Inner Voices”:

JAD: We’ve all seen kids do this, right? Where they narrate every single thing they’re doing? “Put the ball in the box. Take the ball out of the box.”

CHARLES FERNYHOUGH: Now what then happens is a few years further down the line …

JAD: These kids who are narrating everything they’re doing then go to school, and the teachers tell them, “Shh! Don’t talk out loud.”

CHARLES FERNYHOUGH: So they get the message that they need to start doing this internally.

JAD: So they start to whisper to themselves out loud, and then eventually they whisper to themselves silently because the words are now in their head. And that …

CHARLES FERNYHOUGH: That, according to Vygotsky’s theory, that is thinking.

JAD: Only then, he says, is the child having a thought. Now forgetting the particulars for a second, the main point here is that those thoughts that are humming along silently in your mind, those thoughts began as a duo with your mom, or a trio with your mom and your dad, or a quartet with your mom and your dad and your sister. In other words, those thoughts began as a crowd.

Lev Vygotsky was a seminal Russian psychologist best known for his sociocultural theory. He believed that social interaction plays a critical role in children’s learning — a continuous process that is profoundly influenced by culture. Imitation, guided learning, and collaborative learning feature prominently in his theory.

One of his main contributions was The Social Origin of Mind: Vygotsky believed that human mental and cognitive abilities are not biologically determined, but instead created and shaped by the use of language and tools in the process of interacting and constructing the cultural and social environment.