On the Cultural-Historical Origins of Goal-Setting Within Voluntary and Volitional Regulation

The paper discusses the patterns of development of voluntary and volitional organisation and regulation of actions and the corresponding features of goal-setting. The following central lines in the development of human forms of goal-setting in anthropogenesis can be traced: 1) the change in the ways of establishing motivational relations; 2) the need to distribute and coordinate goals and corresponding actions in time perspective; 3) the need to create sociocultural means of organizing individual motivation and goal-setting when performing actions that meet public expectations and requirements. It is shown that human forms of goal-setting are determined by the laws of cultural-historical development of higher mental functions and cannot be explained by constructing information processing models or by analysing neurophysiologi cal functions development. These functions are certainly necessary, but they cannot be considered as the sources or the reasons for the development of human goal-setting.