Vocate: Luria Developmental and Dissolutiona;

During the approximately 20 years before his next English publication on the verbal regulation of behavior, Luria expanded and refined his concept of speech being the mechanism whereby behavior is directed. A twopart article appeared in Word ( 1959) entitled "The Directive Function of Speech in Development and Dissolution." As might be anticipated, the two parts reflect his two fundamental strategies: Part I presents the developmental view, and Part II is concerned with the pathological view.
In "Part I: Development of the Directive Function of Speech in Early Childhood" ( 1959a), Luria outlines the stages by which verbal signals gradually supplant the directive influence of the immediate visual signal for the child. Speech has both an excitatory and an inhibitory function; and developmentally, the excitatory precedes the inhibitory. Due to the insufficient mobility of the 3-31/2 year-old child's neurodynamics, the excitatory is still strongest so that if one alternates excitatory and inhibitory

stimuli to a child of that age, the excitatory will come to dominate and motor perseveration will result.
The impulsive or excitatory aspect of speech continues to dominate until approximately 4-41/2 years. Then,
as soon as the directive role passes to the semantic aspect of speech and that aspect becomes dominant, external speech becomes superfluous. The directive role is taken over by those inner connections which lie behind the word, and they now begin to display their selective effect in directing the further motor responses of the child. ( Luria, 1959a, p. 351)
In "Part II: Dissolution of the Regulative Function of Speech in Pathological States of the Brain" ( 1959b), Luria maintains that for external speech to influence behavior, the subject must not only hear the verbal instruction but also:
A number of further conditions must be fulfilled; important among them is the maintenance of the strength, the equilibrium,