Vygotsky Turtle Technique Child Development

The Turtle Technique improves a child’s emotion/self regulation capacity, by building stronger connects between developmental neurocognitive control structures (i.e., language and executive function skills) and the emotional arousal system (Greenberg, 2006; Izard, 2002). Vygotsky posits that self-regulation (i.e., cognition and action) develops (i.e., learned) in the context of social interactions. Vygotsky argued, "learning is a necessary and universal aspect of the process of developing culturally organized, specifically human psychological function" (1978, p. 90). A medium for learning is through the acquisition of language, and language plays a role in regulation (or control) of action. The Turtle Technique teaches children how to use
The social development model posits that young children learn both prosocial and antisocial patterns of behaviour from their social surroundings. It specifies that opportunities for involvement in social interactions, build skills and influence how children engage with their families and peers in and out of school and what types of attachments, commitments, and beliefs they form, as well as what types of choices they make (Catalano & Hawkins, 1996). The model suggests that social bonds between a child and a particular group such as individuals at a school, encourage the child to act in accordance with the values, norms and belief systems that are part of that group. The Turtle Technique changes the events happening within the classroom so that the teacher and the child’s peers reward appropriate behaviour (i.e., prosocial behaviour) and ignore disruptive behaviour (i.e., antisocial behaviour). Bonds are created between the child and their peers, for example, when the child does the ‘turtle’ and is supported (e.g., clapping). In this scenario, the child is getting peer approval for attention and controlling himself/herself. In addition, the ‘social pressure’ from teacher and peers will cause the disruptive child to do the turtle instead of an inappropriate behaviour. Social cognitive theory asserts that behaviour is determined by an individual’s beliefs about the social and physical
Social learning theory posits that social interactions, including role modeling, verbal instruction, and supervised feedback and support, influence the acquisition of a new behaviour (Bandura, Adams, & Beyer, 1977). How information is perceived, acquired, retained, accessed, and used depends on how that information is presented (McGuire, 1972). The Theories of Information Processing have provided approaches for optimizing short- and long-term memory, and thus, enhance the retention and accessibility of new information (Goldman, 1977). With respect to social skills, the social information-processing theorizes that how children interpret social cues and make decisions is based on their past experiences, goals for the situation, the outcomes they anticipate and their self-efficacy (Crick & Dodge, 1994). To optimize this process, the elaboration likelihood model emphasizes the importance of making information to learners salient, rehearsing new information, categorizing it in meaningful ways, and associating it with visual images (Petty, Barden, Wheeler, 2009; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). With respect to the Turtle Technique, young children review and practice applying these strategies in various real-life and fictitious scenarios. The rich visualization of Tucker the turtle helps