Psychological characteristics of cognitive activity. General characteristics of cognitive activity
Human cognitive activity is a concrete activity. Psychology as an abstract science studies only one of the structural levels of an organization. Therefore, if we leave the psychological meaning behind the concept of thinking, it cannot be identified with the concept of cognition, since thinking in this case will reflect only one of the structural levels of the organization of cognition, its psychological mechanism.
The characteristic of the learning process is based on the idea of an activity approach developed in Soviet psychology. Teaching is a system of cognitive actions of students aimed at solving educational problems. Proceeding from the position of Marxism on the role of labor in the formation of a person, Soviet psychology asserts that objective activity must change and does change the type of his behavior. At the same time, a person is characterized simultaneously with objective and internal mental activity, carried out with the help of verbal, digital and other signs. This activity leads to the mental development of the individual. A person especially actively masters various signs and material tools during specially organized training. The social relations of people, manifested, in particular, in education, lead to the development of their higher mental functions. Now it is customary to briefly convey this idea of L. S. Vygotsky in the form of a formula: "Learning goes ahead of development." The fundamental difference between Soviet educational psychology and many foreign concepts is that it focuses on the active formation of psychological functions, and not on their passive registration and adaptation to the existing level. Hence, the idea of such a construction of training that would take into account the zone of proximal development of the personality, that is, it is necessary to focus not on the current level of development, but on a slightly higher one, which the student can achieve under the guidance and with the help of a teacher, has a very important methodological significance.
Modern pedagogical psychology believes that for each age period there is its own, most characteristic leading type of activity: in preschool - play, in primary school - teaching, in middle school age - an expanded socially useful activity in all its variants (educational, labor, social organizational, artistic, sports, etc.).
Cognitive mental processes
Feel |
Reflection of individual properties of objects that directly affect our senses |
Perceptions |
Reflection of objects and phenomena that directly affect the senses as a whole, in the totality of the properties and signs of these objects |
Reflection of past experience or capture, preservation and reproduction of something |
|
Imagination |
Reflection of the future, creating a new image based on past experience |
Thinking |
The highest form of reflective activity, which allows you to understand the essence of objects and phenomena, their relationship, the pattern of development |
Student age is characterized by the highest level of such indicators as muscle strength, speed of reactions, motor agility, speed endurance, etc. As they say, this is the age of human physical perfection. Most sports records are set at this age. However, according to the data of the World Health Organization, it is students who are characterized by the worst indicators of physiological functions in their age group. They are leading in the number of patients with hypertension, tachycardia, diabetes, neuropsychiatric disorders. The reasons for this, as studies show, lie in the fact that in the process of university education, students experience strong mental stress, often destructive to health.
The teacher should take into account that these loads are especially high during the periods of control and evaluation. But it is precisely here that one of the grossest pedagogical mistakes is often made: a negative assessment of the results of assimilation curriculum the teacher transfers to the assessment of the student's personality as a whole, letting the student know with the help of facial expressions, gestures, and even in verbal form that he is stupid, lazy, irresponsible, etc. Making the student feel negative emotions, the teacher has a direct impact on the physical condition and health of the student.
Features of the cognitive sphere of personality are directly related to all its other substructures and personality as a whole. The successful educational activity of a student depends not only on the degree of mastery of the methods of intellectual activity; it is also determined by personal parameters learning activities- a stable system of student relations to the world around and to himself.
To characterize maturity (psychophysiological and psychological), the concept of optimal functioning is used, which allows assessing the state of functions based on the results of their implementation: the higher the indicators, the more they are close to optimal performance. According to some data, such an optimum for many psychophysiological and psychological functions falls on youth. At this age, according to the conclusions of the well-known Soviet psychologist B. G. Ananyev, the smallest values of the latent period of reactions to simple sensory, combined and verbal signals are noted. Early youth is characterized by optimum absolute and relative sensitivity of analyzers, the greatest plasticity and switchability of complex psychomotor skills. Compared with other ages, adolescence has the highest rate of random access memory, switching attention and maximum speed solving verbal-logical problems. At the same time, the volume of perception reaches its maximum by the age of 30 (T. M. Maryutina, 2005).
Along with this, intellectual development continues and changes throughout the life cycle. This is confirmed by the facts available in domestic and foreign psychology. BG Ananiev showed that the intensity of aging of intellectual functions depends on two factors: a person's giftedness (internal factor) and education (external factor). The formation of an integral functional basis of human intellectual activity occurs before the age of 35. In the period from 26 to 35 years, the integration of cross-functional systems increases, while between 35 and 46 years, the rigidity of connections between functions begins to increase. This means that along with the growth of intellectual activity and productivity in the usual professional activities, the opportunities for mastering new areas of knowledge and skills are difficult. This implies the need for a system of continuous education as a condition for the high efficiency of human intellectual functions.
A study of the dynamics of cognitive abilities (verbal and non-verbal) in people from 20 to 80 years old (Gamezo M. V., Gerasimova V. S., Gorelova G. G. et al., 1999) shows that mental abilities (such as vocabulary and mastery of abstract concepts) do not decrease until the age of 60 and change slightly by the age of 80. Studies conducted under the guidance of B. G. Ananiev showed that only 14.2% of people aged 18-35 experience periods of stagnation in psychological development, and their duration does not exceed 2-3 years. For the vast majority, this is the age of intensive development.
Numerous studies have shown that uneven development of mental functions is observed at different periods of a person's life. Thus, the highest degree of susceptibility to professional and social experience is observed at the age of 18 to 25 years. With a slight increase in general intelligence in the period from 18 to 46 years, the ratio of attention, memory and thinking undergo significant fluctuations. Thus, studies show that between the ages of 18 and 25, thinking has a higher level of performance, while attention is relatively low. From 26 to 29 years of age, the lowest scores are found in thinking, while the highest scores are found in attention. From 30 to 33 years old, there is a coincidence of levels of attention and thinking, and at 34-35 they decline. The points of decline in the level of development of attention and thinking coincide. Points of the highest rise in attention fall on 22 years, 24 years, 26 years, while the level of thinking decreases in these years. Points of highest rise in thinking are at 20 years, 23 years, 25 years and 32 years. The level of attention in these years, with the exception of 32 years, decreases.
A decrease or increase in functional mnemonic capabilities affects the nature of a person's mental search. A decrease in mnemonic potential leads to the fact that a person begins to turn to impulse search or risky decisions. The very first peak in the development of memory falls on 19 years. Between the ages of 20 and 26, there is unevenness in the development of memory and thinking, in subsequent years, an increase begins both in the development of memory and in the development of heuristic processes, however, the peak of memory falls at 30 years, while the peak of heuristic processes at 32 years. Memory decline begins at age 31, heuristic processes decline at age 33.
The highest level in the development of logical thinking is reached by 20-year-olds, in second place are 25-year-olds. The third and fourth places were shared by 19-year-olds and 32-year-olds. Next come the 24-year-olds and the 30-year-olds. The volume of short-term memory in terms of auditory modality in 20-year-olds is on the same level as 19-year-olds and slightly higher in 24-year-olds, who, in terms of the level of development of logical thinking, showed results below the average school grade. In 25-year-olds, the volume of verbal short-term memory in terms of auditory modality turned out to be at the lowest level. Thus, there is no direct influence of the level of development of short-term memory on hearing and the level of development of logical thinking.
As a rule, it is at student age that not only physical, but also psychological properties and higher mental functions reach their maximum in their development: perception, attention, memory, thinking, speech, emotions and feelings. This fact allowed B. G. Ananiev to conclude that this period of life is most favorable for education and training.
Thus, the study of memory in 18-21-year-olds showed that memory and its types at this age develop in different directions. A high level of mnemonic function is usually combined with a more even development of various processes and types of memory, which does not exclude large individual differences. Men's scale memory scores are more or less higher than women's memory scores.
Studies of age-related changes in thinking (18-21 years old) show that there is a complex unity between the types of thinking, indicating the connection of figurative, logical and effective components. If in 18-19-year-olds verbal-logical thinking is more closely connected with figurative thinking, then in 20-21-year-olds it is with practical thinking.
The volume and stability that unite individual properties around themselves act as the central properties of the attention of 18-21-year-olds. 18-year-olds show high rates of volume, switching, concentration and selectivity of attention, and the indicators of the last two properties slightly exceed those of the first. The attention span is most developed at this age. In 19-year-olds, resistance is slightly lower than in 18-year-olds. In 20-year-olds, the level of concentration increases (slightly), and the level of switching decreases more significantly. In 21-year-olds, the volume indicator increases slightly. Switching and stability turned out to be the least developed. These data indicate a wide range of changes in attention at student age.
The study of qualitative shifts in the development of intelligence in modern psychology is associated with the work of J. Piaget and his followers. According to Piaget, the age from 12 to 15 years is the period of the birth of hypothetical-deductive thinking, the ability to abstract concepts from reality, formulate and sort out alternative hypotheses and make one's own thought the subject of analysis. By the end of adolescence, a person is already able to separate logical operations from those objects on which they are produced, and classify statements, regardless of their content, according to the logical type (“if - then ...”), differences according to the “either-or” type, the inclusion of a particular case in the class of phenomena, the judgment of incompatibility, etc. .
Along with this, studies by Soviet and foreign psychologists (P. Ya. Galperin, V. V. Davydov, A. Arlin, R. Wason and others) show:
1. the mastery of certain mental operations cannot be separated from the learning process;
2. there is a wide range of individual differences (some people have hypothetical-deductive thinking as early as 10-11 years old, others are not capable of it even in adulthood);
3. many psychologists suggest that the stage of "problem solving" (according to Piaget's periodization) is followed by the stage of "finding and posing problems";
4. formal logical thinking is not a synonym for formal logic.
Piaget himself in his recent works emphasized that adolescents and young men use their new mental qualities selectively, to those areas of activity that are most significant and interesting for them, and in other cases they can get by with the same skills. Therefore, in order to reveal the real mental potential of a person, it is first necessary to single out the sphere of her primary interests, in which she reveals her abilities to the maximum, and formulate a task with an emphasis on these abilities. At the same time, the breadth of intellectual interests in early youth is often combined with dispersion, lack of a system and method. The amount of attention, the ability to maintain its intensity for a long time and switchability from one subject to another increase with age. At the same time, attention becomes also selective, dependent on the orientation of interests.
Studies of the nature of intellectual changes in students in the course of their studies at the university, which were carried out by domestic psychologists in the 70s of the XX century, showed that over the years of study at the university, the level of students' intelligence increases by 5 conventional units. units - from 116 to 121. For first-year students, the level of intellectual development coincided on average with the category "good norm" (110-119 conventional units), while for graduates this indicator rises to the category "high intelligence" (120-129 conventional units). .).
The development of intelligence is closely related to the development of creative abilities, which involve not just the assimilation of knowledge, but the manifestation of intellectual initiative and the creation of something new. American psychologists M. Parlof, L. Datta et al. (1968) compared the personality traits of groups of creative people (adults and young men) compared to less creative ones. The results showed that creative people, regardless of age and orientation of interests, were distinguished by a developed sense of individuality, the presence of spontaneous reactions, the desire to rely on own forces, emotional mobility, the desire to work independently, self-confidence, poise and assertiveness. Differences in creative adults and youths were found in a set of qualities (self-control, the need for achievement and a sense of well-being), which the researchers called "disciplined efficiency". Creative adults received lower scores for this group of qualities, while creative young men received higher scores. This is explained by the fact that youth is psychologically more mobile and prone to hobbies. To become creatively productive, a young man needs more intellectual discipline and composure, which differs from impulsive and scattered peers. Whereas an adult, involuntarily, gravitates towards the familiar, stable: the creative principle in him manifests itself in him in a less constrained organizational framework.
Thus, youth is an important stage in the development of a person's mental abilities: creative thinking, the ability to generalize intensively develops, and the ability to abstract thinking increases. At the forefront in youth is the ability to search for original, non-stereotypical solutions, the realization of one's worldview, the achievement of life goals. If the teacher does not develop precisely these abilities, the student may acquire the skill of semi-mechanical memorization of the material being studied, which leads to an increase in ostentatious erudition, but hinders the development of intelligence. The results of special surveys show that the majority of students have a very low level of development of such intellectual operations as comparison, classification, definition. The teacher often has to make great efforts to overcome the schoolchildren's attitude to learning: focusing only on the result of intellectual activity and indifference to the very process of thought movement. Only a little more than half of the students improve their intellectual development from the first year to the fifth, and, as a rule, such an increase is observed in weak and average students, and the best students often leave the university with the same level of intellectual abilities they came with (Dyachenko M. I., Kandybovich L. A., 1978).
The most important ability that a student must acquire at a university is, in fact, the ability to learn, which will radically affect his professional development, as it determines his opportunities in postgraduate continuous education. Even more important is the ability to acquire knowledge independently, based on creative thinking.
The first year of a child's life can be conditionally divided into two stages - the neonatal period, which lasts from four to six weeks and ends with the appearance of the revitalization complex, and the infancy period, which ends in a year.
The neonatal stage is the time of the child's adaptation to new, extra-uterine conditions of life, the lengthening of the period of wakefulness compared to the period of sleep, the formation of the first reactions necessary for mental development - visual and auditory concentration (the ability to focus on a sound or visual signal), the appearance of the first combination or conditioned reflexes, such as feeding position.
At the same time, a pattern begins to appear that is characteristic of the general direction of development of children in the first years of life and significantly distinguishes them from young animals. It lies in the fact that the development of sensory processes (vision, hearing, touch) significantly outstrips the development of motor skills in human infants, while in animals, on the contrary, movements develop earlier than the sense organs.
Visual and auditory concentration, which occur at 4-5 and 3 weeks, respectively, actually lay the foundation for the transition from sensations to perception, to the ability to see the object as a whole, in the totality of its properties, as well as follow the movement of the object with your eyes or turn your head behind a moving sound source. . These reactions develop according to the dominant principle - at the moment of concentration, all other reactions of the child stop, he freezes and concentrates only on the sound or object that attracted his attention. Based on these formed reactions, a revitalization complex is born, which is an indicator of the transition to a new stage of development - infancy. The revitalization complex also represents a kind of dominant, since at this moment all other needs for the child lose their significance. When an adult approaches him, he freezes, and then begins to vigorously move his arms and legs, smile, walk - in a word, do everything to attract attention to himself.
Such a reaction to an adult proves that loved ones are not just for the baby necessary condition development, but its source. This is also the essential difference between human infants and animal cubs - the environment, communication with adults, the surrounding culture, language not only accelerate or slow down the pace of development, favoring or, conversely, preventing the formation, formation of certain qualities, but also direct this development, enrich it new content that can significantly change the self-development of children. It is important to remember this for all adults who surround children from the first days of their lives.
The reaction to the adult is not only the child's first proper psychological reaction, but also his first social reaction. L. S. Vygotsky, speaking about the development of infants, wrote that this is the maximum social being, and this is partly true, since the child is completely dependent on an adult who satisfies all his needs. The child itself could never have survived; it is the adult, surrounding him with attention, care and care, that helps him to develop normally. Dependence on adult care is also associated with the fact that in the first months of life, sensory development dominates in human infants, while motor development dominates in animal cubs. The development of perception throughout the first years of life, in fact, the entire preschool age, is one of the most important mental processes. From the development of perception at this age, as will be shown later, other cognitive processes also largely depend, primarily thinking.
However, the role of an adult is not limited to caring for the child and creating favorable conditions for the development of perception. Studies by many psychologists (M.I. Lisina, L.I. Bozhovich, E. Erickson, A. Adler, A. Freud, J. Bowlby, etc.) have shown that in the first months of life, emotional contact and attachment are extremely important for a child. and the protection that comes from a close adult. Proving that the leading activity in infancy is emotional and personal communication with an adult, M.I. Lisina conducted a series of experiments in which she showed that cognitive development (and not just the development of emotions and speech) is largely determined by communication with an adult. Ethnopsychological studies have also shown that children who have constant tactile contact with their mother (for example, are tied behind her back, as in many African tribes), develop faster.
By the end of infancy, almost all the properties of children's perception are formed - constancy, correctness, objectivity, consistency. The appearance of these properties is associated with the development of children's locomotion, movement in space, thanks to which they learn to see an object from different angles of view, recognize it in different combinations, from different distances and from various angles of view. The first sensory standards appear - permanent images of surrounding objects. With these standards, children correlate new objects perceived in the world around them. Since the first standards are not yet generalized and reflect the properties of specific objects, they are called subject standards.
The main patterns and norms of the mental development of infants were established in the first decades of the 20th century. thanks to the research of N. M. Shchelovanov and A. Gesell.
A systematic study of the genesis of the development of the child's psyche was begun by N. M. Shchelovanov as early as 1922 with the opening of the laboratory of genetic reflexology. The method used in the laboratory consisted in continuous, systematic observation of the child with registration of all his reactions arising under the influence of external and internal stimuli. The method of the reflexological experiment was also used, i.e. the formation of artificial associative reflexes in infants (for example, a reflex to milk in a horn of a certain shape and color).
N.M. Shchelovanov and his collaborators N.L. Figurina and P. M. Denisova established the most important patterns of development of children during the periods of newborn and infancy. They recorded the dynamics of the transition from sleep to wakefulness, described the development of sensory analyzers, showed the possibility of the formation of the first conditioned reflexes in the second or third month of life. They discovered and described visual and auditory concentration, established standards for the development of memory and perception of infants, and identified the stages in the formation of motor skills and sensorimotor coordination in the first year of life. A revival (the term was introduced into psychology by these scientists) and a crisis of one year were discovered. On the basis of the data obtained, criteria for diagnosing the mental development of infants were developed, which are also used in modern practical psychology with some modifications.
A great contribution to the study of the mental development of infants was made by the American psychologist A.L. Gesell. Gesell - creator of the Yale Clinic of Normal Childhood, which studied the mental development of children early age- from birth to 3 years. The periods of infancy and early childhood were at the center of Gesell's scientific interests, since he believed that in the first 3 years of life, the child goes through most of their mental development, since the pace of this development is maximum in the first 3 years, and then gradually slows down with time.
Studies of the rate of mental development of children led another well-known psychologist, V. Stern, to the idea that the individual rate of mental development, which manifests itself primarily in the speed of learning, is one of the most important individual properties of the child. Proceeding from this, Stern, who was one of the founders of differential psychology, argued that there is not only a normativity common to all children of a certain age, but also an individual normativity that characterizes a particular child. Therefore, a violation of the individual pace of development can lead to serious deviations, including neurosis.
Gesell's studies, in contrast to the works of Shchelovanov, were not aimed at analyzing the patterns of development of the psyche in the first 3 years of life, but at establishing the normative nature of this development. The Gesell clinic developed special equipment for the objective diagnosis of the dynamics of the mental development of young children, including film and photography, the “Gesell mirror” (semi-permeable glass used for objective observation of the behavior of children). He also introduced new research methods into psychology - longitudinal (a method of studying the same children over a certain period of time, most often from birth to adolescence) and twin (comparative analysis of the mental development of monozygotic twins). On the basis of these studies, a system of tests was developed for children from 3 months to 6 years old according to the following parameters: motor skills, speech, adaptive behavior, personal and social behavior. In a modified form, these tests also underlie the modern diagnosis of the mental development of infants.
During the first year of life, not only perception and movement, but also memory are actively developing. It is at this time that all genetic types of memory are formed - emotional, motor, figurative, verbal. Emotional memory is, according to some sources, already in the fetus. In an infant, this type of memory is the main one in the first weeks of life, it helps him navigate reality, fixing his attention and directing his senses to the most emotionally important objects. At 7-9 weeks, motor memory also arises, the child can remember and repeat some movement, habitual gestures begin to form in him - the beginning of future operations. At 4 months, children develop a figurative memory (first in the form of recognition of familiar objects), and at 8-9 months - a reproduction of what the child saw earlier. As the emergence of motor memory contributes to the organization of movements, locomotion of children, so the appearance of figurative memory significantly affects his communication and the formation of the motivational sphere. With the development of recognition, the child begins to differentiate the surrounding adults, to recognize pleasant and unpleasant people. His reaction to them is also differentiated - animation and a smile on pleasant ones are replaced by crying at the sight of unpleasant faces. The development of reproduction stimulates the appearance of the first motives, or, as L. I. Bookovich calls them, motivating ideas of the child, which contribute to the formation of his personality, the development of independence from environment. If earlier an adult could regulate the child's behavior by changing the situation, removing, for example, unpleasant objects and offering the child pleasant ones, now, with the advent of reproduction, the child is less dependent on the surrounding conditions, since he develops stable desires associated with objects or situations, which are preserved in his memory. Thus, constant impulses or motives arise that direct the activity of the child.
The mindset of babies also develops. By the end of the first year of life, manual intelligence appears in children, or visual-effective thinking, which is built on the basis of trial and error and is associated with the “development of the first independent movements, locomotions of the child.” Of great importance is the development of orientation - reactions to new objects, the desire to examine them . No wonder A. V. Zaporozhets, who studied cognitive development in the first years of life, emphasized that various mental processes are, in fact, different types orientation in the environment. Thus, perception, in his opinion, is an orientation in the properties and qualities of objects, thinking - in the relationships and connections between them, and emotions - in their personal sense. Therefore, the time during which the child examines a new object, as well as the number of analyzers that participate in this process, is an important indicator of the infant's intellectual development. The longer the child examines a new toy, the more different qualities he discovers in it, the higher his intellectual level.
In the first year of life, speech begins to develop, primarily passive - the child listens and distinguishes sounds. Significant, autonomous speech of children also appears (we recall that at this age the development of external speech proceeds from word to sentence, and internal speech - from sentence to word).
Of great importance for understanding the mental development of children in the first year of life are the data obtained in the works of E. Erickson. From his point of view, each stage of the formation of identity not only forms a new one, necessary for social life quality, but also prepares the child for the next life period. All stages contribute to the formation of opposite qualities and character traits that a person realizes in himself and with which he begins to identify himself. Singling out the period of the year as the first stage of mental development, Erickson believed that at this time the psyche is determined mainly by close people, parents, who form in the child a sense of basic trust or distrust, that is, openness to the world or alertness, closeness. Basic trust subsequently allows children to treat others kindly, without fear and an internal barrier to communicate with new, unfamiliar people. To some extent, Erickson's work shows that the motivation for communication is laid during this period. In this, Erickson's concept is very close to M.I. Lisina's data on the importance of emotional communication with adults for the infant.
The English psychologist and psychiatrist J. Bowlby also wrote about this, proving that a close emotional connection between mother and child is established during infancy. Violation of this connection, as mentioned above, leads to serious deviations in the mental development of the child. In the 1950s in England, and later in other countries, Bowlby's work contributed to a change in the conditions of hospitalization of young children who are now not separated from their mother.
The development of perception, thinking, the formation of emotional contacts with others, as well as the emergence of one's own behavioral motives change the social situation of the development of the infant, which moves to a new level. Associated with this is the emergence of a critical period, including its negative components such as stubbornness, aggression, negativism, and resentment. As a rule, these manifestations are unstable and disappear with the end of the crisis, but if the aspirations and activity of the child are completely ignored, they can become the basis for the formation of stable negative personality traits.
The main neoplasm of the neonatal period is a kind of mental life. During the first weeks of life, a child learns to find a nipple, suck a fist, a leg, fix with a glance and track the movement of a moving object (at a distance of 30 cm - colored toys), smile at the sight of a human face, and also keep his head in a prone position. The neonatal period ends by the end of the first month of life. The psychological sign of the end of this period is the appearance of a smile at the sound of a human voice.
After the end of the neonatal period, the main mental neoplasm is a certain commonality, a special connection between the infant and the mother. This contact serves as the starting point for awareness of one's own personality. This is supported by 2 factors:
- 1. The baby cannot distinguish from the outside world and become aware of his own body (legs, arms, foreign objects). The mental life of an infant is devoid of its center of consciousness, therefore, it has no self-consciousness, but there are vaguely felt and experienced impressions.
- 2. It has been experimentally established that for an infant, social relations and attitudes towards objects are directly merged at the beginning. His interest in objects depends on the possibility of a shared situation with another person.
By the end of the fourth month of life, babies smile not only at the sight of a person. They may already put on a smile on their face in a situation that is far from unpleasant and begin to make sounds. Smiles are very often not similar to one another. Scientists have about 70 smiles of various kinds. Communication of an adult child in the first year of life is the leading type of child activity
The first motor reactions of a newborn are built on the basis of motor reflexes. A particularly important role is played by the mastery of active movement in space (crawling, and then walking), grasping objects and manipulating them. Crawling is the first type of independent movement of the child.
By the end of infancy, children show great imitation, repeating many actions after adults. Deliberate action and imitation testify to a rapidly developing intellect. Thus, the child learns to think in action, imitating his own and other people's movements.
By the end of infancy, the assimilation of speech acquires an active character, becoming one of the important means of expanding the possibilities of communication between a child and an adult. The beginning and end of autonomous speech mark the beginning and end of the crisis of the first year of life.
Thus, in the process of development, a unique individual identity of the individual is formed. They appear in functional features nervous system, in mental, emotional, moral, volitional qualities, in the needs, interests, abilities and character traits of children and adults. In the process of development, a unique individual identity of the individual is formed.
The mental development of a person goes through a series of periods that successively replace each other. Their consistent change is irreversible and predictable. Each period is a segment of a person's life path and at the same time a certain degree of his development as a person. Within the boundaries of each age period, not only quantitative, but also qualitative changes in the psyche occur, which give reason to single out certain stages in it, successively replace each other in the process of mental development and its results, there are typological and individual differences. They are manifested in the functional characteristics of the nervous system, in mental, emotional, moral, volitional qualities, in the needs, interests, abilities and character traits of children and adults.
Any person is in a permanent process of knowing the world: he thinks, reflects, speaks and understands the speech of other people, feels, shares sensations. All these abilities develop and improve not by themselves, but in active cognitive activity.
Preschool childhood - a period of knowledge and development of the world human relations. The child models them in a role-playing game, which becomes the leading activity for him. While playing, he learns to communicate with his peers.
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Psychological foundations of cognitive activity of preschool children
Any person is in a permanent process of knowing the world: he thinks, reflects, speaks and understands the speech of other people, feels, shares sensations. All these abilities develop and improve not by themselves, but in active cognitive activity.
Preschool childhood is a period of knowledge and development of the world of human relations. The child models them in a role-playing game, which becomes the leading activity for him. While playing, he learns to communicate with his peers.
This is also a period of creativity. The child learns speech, he develops imagination. The preschooler has his own, special logic of thinking, subject to the dynamics of figurative representations. This is the period of the initial formation of the personality, the emergence of emotional anticipation of the consequences of one's behavior, self-esteem, complication and awareness of experiences, enrichment with new feelings and motives, the emotional need sphere. The central neoformation of this age is the development of an inner position and self-awareness3.
The problem of cognitive activity of children of this age is extremely important for the system of preschool education. The need to competently navigate the growing volume of knowledge makes new demands on the upbringing of the younger generation. The tasks of developing the ability for active cognitive activity are put forward to the fore.
Mental development is a set of qualitative and quantitative changes that occur in thought processes in connection with age and under the influence of the environment, as well as specially organized educational and educational influences and the child's own experience. Mental development of children preschool age depends on a complex of social and biological factors, among which mental education and training play a guiding, enriching and systematizing role4.
Personal development is carried out as the child's appropriation of the centuries-old experience of mankind, captured in material culture, spiritual values, represented in knowledge, skills, abilities, ways of knowing, etc., during which the child acquires self-consciousness. The main function of the mental education of preschool children is the formation of cognitive activity, i.e. an activity in which the child learns to know the world around him. Mental education is a systematic, purposeful impact of adults on the mental development of children in order to communicate the knowledge necessary for versatile development, for adaptation to the surrounding life, the formation of cognitive processes on this basis, the ability to apply acquired knowledge in activities5.
Cognitive processes are mental processes by which a person learns the world around him, himself and other people. These processes include: sensations, perception, attention, memory, thinking and imagination. Cognition is impossible without speech and attention. The mental education of preschool children is aimed at the formation of cognitive motives, therefore one of the tasks is the education of curiosity and cognitive interests6.
The result of cognitive activity, regardless of the form of cognition in which it was carried out (with the help of thinking or perception), is knowledge. Based on this, A.V. Zaporozhets singled out a separate task of mental education - the formation of a system of elementary knowledge and phenomena of the surrounding life, as a condition for mental growth7.
For full-fledged mental development, it is important not only the timely formation of cognitive processes, but also their arbitrariness - the ability to focus attention on the object of knowledge, not to be distracted, to recall in time, not to succumb to difficulties, not to lose heart if it is not immediately possible to correctly solve a practical or mental problem.
Mental activity is not possible without speech. In his research, M.M. Alekseeva, V.I. Yashin8 rightly note: mastering speech, the child also acquires knowledge about objects, signs, actions and relationships, imprinted in the corresponding words. At the same time, he not only acquires knowledge, but also learns to think, since to think means to speak to oneself or aloud, and to speak means to think.
Children are inquisitive explorers of the world around them. This feature is inherent in them from birth. At one time, I.M. Sechenov spoke of "an inborn and extremely precious property of the neuropsychic organization of a child - an unconscious desire to understand the life around him." I.P. Pavlov called this property the “what is it?” reflex. Under the influence of this reflex, the child gets acquainted with the qualities of objects, establishes new connections between them. Subject research activity, characteristic of a child from an early age, develops and consolidates a cognitive attitude to the world around him. After children have mastered speech, their cognitive activity rises to a new qualitative level. With the help of speech, children's knowledge is generalized, the ability for analytical and synthetic activity is formed not only on the basis of direct perception of objects, but also on the basis of ideas.
Cognitive activity and cognitive interest of older preschool children
All cognitive processes are associated with the overall structure and functioning of the cognitive (cognitive) sphere of the child. Psychologists and educators have a special task: to form in children not only clear and precise knowledge, but also to reveal to them expanding horizons of knowledge. The processes of experimentation play an important role both in the interaction of the components of the cognitive sphere, and in their renewal and development. It is this structure and functioning of the cognitive sphere that creates internal contradictions: the unity of stability and instability, orderliness and disorder, which underlies the cognitive self-development of children. The structure of the cognitive sphere develops by the age of five or six. N.N. Poddyakov, in accordance with the principles outlined above, developed the structure of the motivational-need sphere of a preschooler. The central core in it includes well-established, stable needs and motives, and around it there are emerging new needs that have not yet found their subject. In such an active search activity of children, new motives for activity arise and develop. Quite far away, mental formations are outlined from the central core, from which fundamentally new needs and motives of the child's personality will then develop9.
After children have mastered speech, their cognitive activity rises to a new qualitative level. With the help of speech, children's knowledge is generalized, the ability for analytical and synthetic activity is formed not only on the basis of direct perception of objects, but also on the basis of ideas. The nature of the child's communication with adults is changing: personal and cognitive contacts begin to occupy a significant place. Communicating with parents, other family members, a teacher, the child acquires new knowledge, expands his horizons, clarifies personal experience.
The cognitive interest of the child is reflected in his games, drawings, stories, and other types of creative activity. Adults should provide conditions for the development of such activities. Cognitive interest and curiosity make children actively strive for knowledge, look for ways to satisfy the thirst for knowledge.
One source of development of the cognitive interest of older preschoolers, as V.V. Davydov and N.E. Veraksa10, the creative principle appears in the personality of a creative person. Creativity is considered as the activity of a person who creates new material and spiritual wealth that has social significance, where novelty and social significance are the main criteria for creativity.
S.V. Kozhakar and S.A. Kozlova11 identified pedagogical conditions that ensure fairly stable interests of preschoolers: the creation of an enriched subject-spatial environment for the beginning of the development of interest; organization of cognitive search for children; involvement in the performance of creative tasks; integration of diverse activities; the formation in children of the psychological attitude of the upcoming activity; creation of problem-search situations; inclusion of entertainment in the content; stimulating the manifestation of a positive-emotional attitude of the child to phenomena, objects and activities, the use of adequate means and methods at each stage of the formation of interest.
During the preschool years, a child attending a kindergarten masters two categories of knowledge. The first category is the knowledge that he acquires without special training, in everyday life, communicating with adults, peers, in the process of games, observations. They are often chaotic, unsystematic, random, and sometimes distortedly reflect reality. More complex knowledge related to the second category can be learned only in the process of special training in the classroom. In the classroom, the knowledge that children acquire on their own is clarified, systematized, generalized.
Conventionally, the means of developing cognitive activity and cognitive interest are divided into two groups: the activities of children and works of spiritual and material culture. In the early stages of a child's development, personal experience is the most important way to learn about the world around him. But very soon it becomes insufficient.
The activities of preschool children differ in types and content, and, consequently, in their ability to influence mental development. In various types of activity, the child faces various cognitive tasks, the solution of which is an organic part of this or that activity. The mental education of preschool children is carried out in game activities, in mobile, didactic games specially created by adults, various knowledge, mental operations, and mental actions that children must master are enclosed. Creative games are reflective in nature: in them, children reflect their impressions of the life around them, the knowledge they have learned earlier. During the game, this knowledge rises to a new level - it is translated into a speech plan, therefore, it is generalized, transformed, improved.
AT last years more and more actively as conditions for the development of mental abilities, cognitive activity are various forms of increasing cognitive activity and cognitive interest of preschool children. For example, such forms as educational entertainment (cultural and leisure activities), self-education of the child.
Based on the teachings of A.S. Vygotsky (4), domestic psychologists A.N. Leontiev (6), D.B. Davydov (15), L.V. Zankov (12), N.A. Menchinskaya (21), P.Ya.Galperin (6), developed theoretical basis educational activities that have a particularly favorable effect on the development of the intellectual, volitional, emotional and motivational spheres of the individual, and also ensure its equitable education.
Proceeding from the provisions of Marxism on the role of labor in the formation of man, Soviet psychology asserts that objective activity must change and does change the type of his behavior. At the same time, a person is characterized simultaneously with objective and internal psychological activity, carried out with the help of verbal, digital and other signs. This activity leads to psychological development personality.
A person especially actively masters various signs and material tools during special organized training. The social "relationships of people, manifested, in particular, in education, lead to the development of their higher mental functions. Now it is customary to briefly convey this idea of L.S. Vygotsky in the form of a formula: "Education goes ahead of development."
The fundamental difference between Soviet educational psychology and many foreign concepts is that it focuses on the active formation of psychological functions, and not on their passive registration and adaptation to the existing level. Hence, the idea of such a construction of training that would take into account the zone of proximal development of the personality, that is, has a very important methodological significance. it is necessary to focus not on the current level of development, but on a slightly higher one, which the student can achieve under the guidance and with the help of a teacher.
From the standpoint of the general theory of activity in Soviet psychology, the concepts of "learning activity" and "teaching" are distinguished. Educational activity is one of the main types of human activity, specifically aimed at mastering the methods of subject and cognitive actions, generalized theoretical knowledge. The concept of "learning activity" in relation to "teaching" is considered as a broader one, since it includes both the activity of the teacher and the activity of the student.
Teaching is the process of acquiring and consolidating methods of activity.
The teaching includes:
- A) the process of assimilation of information about the significant properties of the world, necessary for the successful organization of certain types of ideal and practical activities (the product of this process is knowledge);
- B) The process of mastering the techniques and operations that make up all these activities (the product of this process is skills);
- C) The process of mastering the ways of using the specified information for right choice and control of techniques and operations in accordance with the conditions of the task and the goal (the product of this process is skills).
Thus, learning takes place where a person's actions are controlled by the conscious goal of acquiring certain knowledge, skills, and abilities.
Educational activity equips a person with the knowledge, skills and abilities necessary for various kinds socially useful activity, it also forms in a person the ability to manage their mental processes, the ability to choose, organize and direct their actions and operations, skills and experience in accordance with the task being solved. Thus, it prepares a person for work.
Modern pedagogical psychology believes that for each age period there is its own, most characteristic leading type of activity: in preschool - play, in primary school - teaching, in middle school age - a developed socially useful activity in all its variants (educational, labor, social - organizational, artistic, sports, etc.). During this period, students actively master various forms of communication. At senior school age, a special form of educational activity becomes leading, which is already more career-oriented and colored by independent moral judgments and assessments. The foregoing does not mean that at each age the student should be engaged in the leading type of activity. It is important to constantly develop all the richness of activities that ensure the comprehensive development of the individual. At the same time, the recognition of the leading types of activity allows teachers to use and shape them more actively in communication and education.
Emphasizing the leading role of activity in the development of personality, some psychologists consider learning to be a type of activity. For didactics, the point of view of the Soviet psychologist B. G. Ananiev, who saw the special role of communication in human development, along with knowledge and work, is more practical. In accordance with this concept, it is necessary to single out, when describing the learning process, not only the activity aspect, but also the aspect of communication.
In the course of knowledge and work, active assimilation of knowledge is ensured, while communication creates conditions for assimilation and activates this process. Proper organization knowledge, learning and work - the most important condition for the successful functioning educational process, for the purpose of comprehensive development.
Educational and cognitive activity is accompanied by an internal mental process of assimilation of educational information by students.
In accordance with the activity approach, according to some psychologists, students should not form knowledge, but certain types of activities, in which knowledge is included as a certain element. For didactics, such an interpretation of the role of knowledge is incomplete, since it does not take into account the general logic of building goals and the content of education, where the formation of knowledge is singled out as a particularly important goal. In addition, it is known that knowledge exists objectively not only in the mind of the individual, but also in the form of information stored in books, "computer banks", etc., which becomes the property of the individual in the process of cognitive activity, at the same time, knowledge cannot be considered. out of connection with activity, because knowledge is needed, first of all, in order to act.
All of the above does not mean belittling the significance of the formation of various types of activities in students. This is provided for by the didactic requirements for the formation of practical, special and general educational skills and abilities in students, which also include knowledge about ways to improve these actions.
In psychology, several approaches have been developed to organize the processes of knowledge assimilation. For example, N. A. Menzhinskaya and D. N. Bogoyavlensky studied in particular detail the role of analytical and synthetic activities, comparisons, associations, generalizations based on specific knowledge, as well as the importance of independent search for signs of assimilated concepts and methods for solving new types of problems in the process of assimilation. N. A. Menzhinskaya (4) at the same time pays great attention to the development of learning, in which she includes the generalization of mental activity, the economy of thinking, the independence of thinking, the flexibility of thinking, semantic memory, the nature of the connection between visual-figurative and abstract components of thinking. By developing these qualities of thinking in the learning process, it is possible to ensure the development of learning ability, and on this basis the ability to increase the efficiency of the assimilation process as a whole.
D. B. Elkonin (21) and V. V. Davydov (6) studied such ways of assimilation in which generalizations appeared not traditionally: on the basis of the transition from the particular to the formally general, but on the basis of the initial acquaintance of schoolchildren with some more generalized theoretical provisions. (meaningful abstractions), in order to then deductively deduce from them more particular properties, more specific knowledge about the phenomena of an objective nature. For example, they first introduce younger schoolchildren to the concepts of quantities, teach the relationships between them (more, less, etc.), and then with the natural series of numbers. In the Russian language, first they teach linguistic analysis, then grammar and syntax.
The structure of the cycle of assimilation acquires new shades in the theory developed by P. Ya. the formation of an action in a material (or materialized with the help of people) form with the deployment of all the operations included in it; the formation of the action as externally speech; formation of action in external speech; the formation of action in inner speech, its transition into deep, convoluted processes of thinking. This whole chain of mental actions ensures the transition of actions from the external plane to the internal. This process is called inter - interization. This concept is more applicable to explanatory and illustrative, but not to problem-based learning, which does not always begin with subject education, but involves the comprehension of logical problems immediately in the verbal form of the external or internal plan. Despite a number of possible approaches to the characterization of learning activities, it is still possible to characterize some typical options for students under the guidance of a teacher and during completely independent learning activities, both in the classroom and at home.
Conventionally, two typical variants of the educational activity of schoolchildren can be distinguished. One of them takes place during a lesson or another form of teaching schoolchildren, where the leading, guiding role is played by the teacher, the second - during the independent work of students in the classroom or when doing homework.
In the case when educational activity proceeds under the guidance of a teacher, the following educational actions of schoolchildren can be distinguished:
- - acceptance of learning objectives and action plan proposed by the teacher;
- - implementation of training activities and operations to solve the tasks;
- - regulation of educational activities under the influence of teacher control and self-control;
- - analysis of the results of educational activities carried out under the guidance of a teacher.
In the course of independent learning activities carried out without direct guidance at the moment, the following actions are usually distinguished:
- - planning or specifying the tasks of their educational activities, planning methods, means and forms of educational activities;
- - self-organization of educational activities;
- - self-regulation of teaching; self-analysis of the results of educational activities.
The structural elements of educational activity are modified depending on the nature of the educational tasks being solved, on the leading methods that are used in this case. The structure of the educational activity of schoolchildren, with the direct control of it by the teacher, is fully consistent with the structure of the teacher's actions. If the teacher plans tasks, upcoming learning activities of students, stimulates them, then the student accepts these tasks and carries out the planned actions, based on the motives that arise under the influence of the stimulating effects of the teacher. If the teacher controls the actions of the students and regulates their learning activities, then the students, under the influence of the teacher, also regulate their actions. In the same way, the analysis of learning outcomes proceeds in conjunction with their self-analysis by the student himself. In this correspondence, the structure of actions of the teacher and students is the unity of the processes of teaching and learning, which is only called the learning process. The considered interaction of teaching and learning is also manifested in the case when the student is engaged in independent learning activities in the absence of a teacher or when performing independent work on lessons. In this case, the teacher indirectly directs the actions of students, since before that he set tasks for them, stimulated the completion of tasks.
Like any other human activity, learning activity is polymotivated.
Motives can be of two types - external and internal. External motives include incentives such as punishment and reward, threat and demand, group pressure, expectation of future benefits, etc. All of them are external to the immediate goal of the teaching. Knowledge and skills in these cases serve only as a means to achieve other main goals (avoidance of the unpleasant, achievement of social or personal success, satisfaction of ambition).
The very goal - teaching - in such situations can be indifferent or even repulsive. The doctrine is to some extent forced in nature and acts as an obstacle that must be overcome on the way to the main goal. This situation is characterized by the presence of opposing forces. In principle, it is a conflict, therefore it is associated with significant mental stress, requires internal efforts and sometimes the struggle of the individual with himself. When the conflict is very acute, there may be tendencies to “get out of the situation” (refusal, circumvention of difficulties, neurosis). Then the student drops out of school or "breaks down" - begins to break the rules, falls into apathy. A similar structure of the educational situation is often found in school practice.
Internal motives include those that induce a person to study as their goal. An example is interest in the classes themselves, curiosity, the desire to raise the cultural level. Learning situations with such motives do not contain an internal conflict, of course, they are also associated with overcoming the difficulties encountered in the course of learning and require strong-willed efforts. But these efforts are aimed at overcoming external obstacles, and not at fighting with oneself. Such situations are optimal from a pedagogical point of view; their creation is an important task for the teacher. They require the education of students, the formation of their goals, interests and ideals, and not just the management of their behavior.
A certain thing, event, situation or action become motives for activity if they are associated with the sources of a certain activity of a person. These sources can be divided into three main categories.
1. Internal sources. They are determined by human needs and can have both an innate character, expressing the organic needs of the organism, and an acquired character, expressing the social needs formed by society. The need for activity and the need for information are of particular importance for the stimulation of learning.
So, a child from the first days of life is in a state of continuous activity - he smiles, moves, moves his arms and legs, runs, plays, talks, asks endless questions. The actions themselves give him pleasure. A person's need for information is clearly manifested in experiments when the subjects are isolated from any influences of the outside world for a certain period, for example, they are placed in a dark soundproof chamber. As a result, there are serious intellectual, emotional and volitional disturbances, imbalance, melancholy, anger, apathy, loss of the ability to volitional actions, sometimes even the collapse of systematic thinking, hallucinations. In life conditions, the lack of activity and information (and sometimes their excess) gives rise to a negative state in a person, called fatigue and boredom.
Among socially formed needs, gnostic needs and positive social needs are of particular importance for stimulating learning activity. These include the need for knowledge, the desire to benefit society, the desire for socially valuable achievements, etc.
2. External sources. They are determined by the social conditions of human life. These sources include requirements, expectations, and opportunities.
Requirements offer a person certain types and forms of activity and behavior. So, parents require the child to eat with a spoon, sit on a chair, say "thank you". The school requires the student to appear at a certain time, listen to what the teacher says, and complete his tasks. Society requires the individual to observe certain moral norms and forms of people's communication in behavior, to perform certain work.
Expectations characterize the relationship of society to a person, associated with the proposal of what features of behavior and forms of activity it considers normal for a given individual. So, others consider it normal for a one-year-old child to start walking, they expect this from the baby and treat him accordingly. Unlike requirements, expectations create a general atmosphere for the implementation of activities, which stimulates more than an order.
Opportunities are those objective conditions of a certain activity that exist in a person's environment. For example, a good home library encourages reading because it provides such an opportunity. Psychological analysis shows that a person's behavior largely depends on objective possibilities (especially if his personality and leading life goals have not yet been formed). Thus, a book on geometry accidentally falling into the hands of a child can determine his inclination towards mathematics.
3. Personal sources. They are determined by the interests, aspirations, attitudes, beliefs and worldview of a person, his idea of himself, his attitude to society. These sources of activity are called values. Such values can be self-improvement, satisfaction of certain needs, life ideals and models.
The listed sources of activity in different combinations and modifications are observed in each person. But the activity generated by them is not always molded into the form of teaching. For this, it is necessary that the needs and drives of the individual, the requirements, expectations and opportunities presented to him by the environment, his personal values and attitudes, i.e. internal, external and personal stimuli of his behavior associated with one of the aspects of the teaching (result, goal, process) or with all. Then these aspects of the teaching will turn into motives that induce to the corresponding activity. This process is called motivation. How it is achieved depends on which side of the doctrine is put forward as a motive and with what sources of activity it is associated. For example, if the results of learning are put forward as a motive, and internal sources of activity are used for motivation, then motivation is achieved by linking educational success with a reward, social approval, usefulness for future work, etc. The use of external incentives is expressed in the requirement, trust, provision of suitable opportunities. An example of personal motivation for learning outcomes is linking them to an individual's self-assessment (praise). The variety of possible methods and combinations of motivation is as extensive as life itself, as those motives that determine human activity.