Crusile
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Under a Vygotskian conception, cultural practices and knowledge are passed down and developed through social—not genetic—means. Being that culture is transmitted through language, symbols, signs, and artifacts, they then mediate human cognitive processes and influence how people think and act. Thus, culture is constructed through the use of these specific tools, and is NOT an expression of a group’s genes. Since people internalize cultural patterns through social learning, what start as external and social activities then become internalized (think of the concept of private speech). Thus, this undermines the idea that culture is genetic, since it shows culture as something they’d learned, adapted, and integrated into one’s cognitive framework through social interactions (more specifically, social interactions with more knowledgeable others). Since human development is historically situated, this means that the cultural context that one grows and develops in shapes one’s cognitive and behavioral development. This shows how culture changes over time, too quickly for the genetic explanation to work.