# LLMs and the ZPD

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.12016 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.12016/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 1 of its 28 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 May 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [LLMs and the Human Condition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.08403/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

One hundred years ago Vygotsky and his circle were exploring the nature of consciousness and defining what would become psychology in the Soviet Union. They concluded that children develop "scientific thinking" through interacting with enculturated adults in Zones of Proximal Development or ZPDs. The proposal is that, contrary to the claims of some, the LLM mechanism is not doing thinking with "distributed representations," but rather the completion model is doing "primitive thinking" in terms of *practices*. Viewed from this perspective, it would seem our large language models don't hallucinate, but rather dream, and that what is needed is not "guard rails" but an investigation of the set of cognitive tools that enable us to do things that look like common-sense. The proposal here is that *interaction* is core to human communication rather than just an add-on to "real" understanding.