INTELLECTUAL FUNCTIONING
AND DEVELOPMENT IN SOCIAL
AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS
So far all discussion of integrated understanding focuses on the individual
person. It may leave an impression that integration of cognition, emotion,
and motivation is very much an intra-personal process, and has little to do
with social and cultural contexts. However, from Vygotsky’s (1978) and
other socialcultural theories, not only emotions, and motivation, and inten-
tions but higher cognitive functions such as reasoning and conceptual learn-
ing are socially constructed and enculturated. Integration of motivation,
emotion, and cognition is necessary precisely because of the at least partially
situatednature of cognition. The person is engaged in an often socially struc-
tured and culturally sanctioned activity that has personal significance and
consequence.
Piaget (1950), who is often criticized for neglecting social factors in intel-
lectual development (see Lourenço & Machado, 1996), questioned the likeli-
hood of maintaining a coherent system of thoughts and beliefs by oneself
alone. He had this to say:
In fact, it is precisely by a constant interchange of thought with others that we
are able to decentralise ourselves in this way, to co-ordinate internally relations
deriving from different viewpoints. In particular, it is very difficult to see how
concepts could conserve their permanent meanings and their definitions were it
not for co-operation. (Piaget, 1950, p. 180)The last statement sounds almost Vygotskian! What is implied in the mes-
sage is that social interaction is not only a necessary condition for the emer-
gence of more complex forms of intelligence, it also provides a necessary
shared symbolic platform on which the individual mind can operate intel-
lectually.
Social Context as Integral Part of Intellectual Functioning
Building on the legacy of Piaget, Hatano (1988) saw dialogical interaction as
a necessary condition in engendering cognitive incongruity in the form of sur-
prise, perplexity, and discoordination (i.e., variations of disequilibrium, to
use Piaget’s term), and motivating comprehension activity which, in turn,
leads to conceptual development. In this formulation, both motivational and
cognitive processes are socially engendered (see also Hatano & Inagaki,
2003). What is unique about Hatano’s approach is that he sees the means–
end structure of a socially organized activity as inherently determining the
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