A Study of the Influence of Sociohistorical Conditions on Child Development (Comparative Investigation, 1929 and 1966)

In the late 1920s, primarily in connection with L. S. Vygotsky's theory concerning the social and historical antecedents of the development of the mind, there was great interest in comparing the development of children reared in different social and cultural environments. One such study was A. R. Luria's Speech and intellect of rural, urban, and orphan children (Moscow, 1930). Zaporozhets, and then Luria, made trips to Central Asia as a part of this research effort. Although cross-cultural studies of human development enjoy some popularity in Western European and American psychology, this is one of the rare published accounts of such work from the USSR.