THE AUTHORITY OF CULTURAL TOOLS IN A SOCIOCULTURAL APPROACH TO MEDIATED AGENCY

Most laboratory studies on the nature of adult-child interactions have focused on the unidirectionality of influence from adult to child and have neglected to address the question of the child's influence on th e adult. This study focuses on the importance of task situation defini tion in naturalistic settings where adults and children interact toget her, not in isolated dyads, and the children play a much more active r ole and contribute actively to the flow of discourse. Naturalistic dat a taken from one child's activities and discourse during an entire day in the home, at school, and in other social settings are presented an d analyzed. These data provide evidence for the heterogeneity of speec h events and for the use of cultural tools in order to change the auth oritative structure of the discourse. An expanded interpretation of th e sociocultural approach requires that authority and value should be a ssumed as essential properties of both intermental and in intramental functioning.