ives of children's social environment, supply them with so-called psychological tools, which are acquired and internalized and then come to mediate children's mental processes. Systematic use of tools, which mediates the entire human activity, requires a higher new level of mental process that serves this activity. "The major characteristic of human mental processes is that they, just like human labor, are mediated by tools. These, however, are special, psychological tools such as language, concepts, signs and symbols...Rather than being born with such tools, children acquire and master them."3 The development of mental processes is mediated by adults in the context of social interactions with children. Thus, Vygotsky considers mediation in the context of social interactions to be the major determinant of children's development. The starting point in the development of a new higher mental process in children can be found in interpersonal communication with adults. The second component of the process of children's mastery psychological tools deals with the internalization of these tools. When adults are presenting a new psychological tool to the child, they inevitably "externalize" this tool and present it to the child in the form of an external device. The child appropriates this tool and uses it initially in the same form as it was presented to him. As the child begins to master the tool, it gets internalized and turns into an internal mediator of child's high metal process.
             Yuriy Karpov provides the neo-Vygotskian's theory that seems to present the most comprehensive approach to the problem of determinants of child development known in contemporary development psychology. Karpov elaborated his developmental ideas into a theory that in
             ...