From the point of view of the Swiss psychologist J. Piaget, the intellect, like any other living structure, does not just react to a stimulus, it grows, changing and adapting to the world. Actually, the goal of development is adaptation to the environment. The field of knowledge he created is correctly called genetic epistemology, which combined biology with epistemology (the field of philosophy that studies the origin of knowledge, the mechanisms and conditions for the formation of concepts, cognitive operations, etc.), J. Piaget's research began with his joint work with Simon and Binet to improve the scale of intelligence. Analyzing the test results, J. Piaget became interested in the patterns he discovered in the wrong answers. He suggested that the differences between children and adults are not limited to the amount of knowledge, but are explained by differences in the ways of knowing.

Rejecting the quantitative (testological) approach to the study of intelligence, J. Piaget developed a clinical interview technique, when the child must answer questions or manipulate stimulus material. This approach made it possible not only to reveal the knowledge accumulated by the child, but also to discover internal processes - thinking processes - in the course of answers. The results of these interviews led J. Piaget to the conclusion that logical models can be used to describe the development of integrated thinking processes in children. To illustrate his theory, J. Piaget came up with a famous experiment to indicate the child's awareness that physical substances (volume, mass, quantity) remain constant, despite changes in its shape or appearance. Piaget, in front of a child, poured liquid from one glass (wide and low) into another (high and narrow). He then asked how much liquid was in the tall glass. Most children aged 6-7 years and older answered that the amount of liquid remained the same, but children under 6 years of age claimed that there was more liquid in a tall glass.

Piaget concluded that before reaching a certain stage of development, children form their judgments based on perceptual rather than logical processes. In other words, they believe their eyes. Younger children see that the level of liquid is higher in a tall glass, and therefore they believe that there is more liquid. On the other hand, children six years of age and older respond to Piaget's question with a glance at the glasses. They already know that the amount of liquid remains the same, regardless of the size or shape of the glass in which it is poured. When children demonstrate this ability, psychologists say that the concept of conservation is available to them. These children do not base their judgments solely on perception, but use logic. Their knowledge comes as much from within as it does from external sources.

According to Piaget, the intellect is neither a blank slate on which knowledge can be written nor a mirror reflecting the perceived world. If the information received by a person, perceptual images or subjective experiences correspond to the structure of his intellect, then these information, images and experiences are “understood”, or, in the language of Piaget, assimilated. If the information does not correspond to the structure of the intellect, he rejects it (and in the case when his structure is ready for change, it adapts to new information). In Piaget's terminology, assimilation1 is the interpretation of new experience on the basis of existing mental structures without any change in them. On the other hand, accommodation2 is the alteration of existing mental structures in order to combine old and new experiences.

Thus, according to Piaget, the external world in the course of ontogenetic development begins to appear before the child in the form of objects not immediately, but as a result of active interaction with him. In the course of an ever more complete and deep interaction between the subject and the object, as the author believed, their mutual enrichment takes place: more and more new aspects and characteristics are distinguished in the object, and the subject develops more and more adequate, subtle and complex ways of influencing the world with the aim of knowledge and achievement of consciously set goals.

The intellect always strives to establish a balance between assimilation and accommodation, i.e., to the best adaptation to the environment, which is manifested in the elimination of the discrepancy between reality and its reflection created in the mind. Equilibrium, however, should not be understood as a state of rest. It is a state of continuous activity during which the organism compensates or levels out both real and expected

1 Assimilation - in Piaget's theory - is the process of incorporating new information as an integral part of the schemes already existing in the individual.

2 Accommodation is Piaget's term for the act of changing our thought processes, when new object or the idea does not fit into our concepts.

Influences that bring the system out of equilibrium. This means that compensation can be either the correction of a defect or preparation for an impact that could lead to such a defect if nothing is done.

According to J. Piaget, the process of balancing (achieving equilibrium between the environment and internal structures) underlies human and, in fact, any biological adaptation. For Piaget, the development of intelligence is simply an important example of biological adaptation. He believed that these invariant adaptation functions, i.e., assimilation and accommodation, "form the basis of human intellectual adaptation to the external environment and allow a person to survive as a species. J. Piaget described the balancing mechanism in humans in terms of mental structures.

Piaget used the term schema to refer to mental structures. Schemas are ways of processing information that change as a person grows and gains more knowledge. There are two types of schemas: sensorimotor schemas, or actions, and cognitive schemas, which are more like concepts. We rearrange our schemas to accommodate (accommodate) new information and simultaneously integrate (assimilate) new knowledge into old schemas.

Having defined the main working concepts of J. Piaget, let's move on to describing his two main discoveries - the stages of development of the intellect and egocentrism of children's thinking.

A source: Ermolaeva M. V. Developmental Psychology: Methodological Guide for Students of Correspondence and Distance Forms of Education. 2003(original)

One of the most famous systems belongs to Jean Piaget, who based his system on the analysis of the development of thinking. According to Piaget, the intellect, as a living structure, grows, changes and adapts to the world. The differences between children and adults are due not only to the fact that children know less, but also to the fact that the way children learn is different from that of adults. Piaget suggested that children have some cognitive (thinking) limitations. As a person grows and acquires more knowledge, the ways of processing information in his cognitive structures become more complicated. The scientist identified three main periods in the mental development of the child, within each period there are several stages. All children go through periods and stages of development in a certain sequence, each new stage is based on the previous one, and this order is the same for all children.

The first period of development is called sensorimotor by Piaget, because at the age of two years, children get to know the world mainly through sensations - looking, grasping, sucking, biting, chewing, etc.

The second period - specific operations, includes two stages: preoperative and operational. The first stage is preoperative, typical for the age from two to six years. At this age, children form concepts and use symbols, but do so based on their experience. Unlike adults, children can only see things from their point of view (egocentrism) and focus on one relationship at a time (centration). Often the child cannot think through the consequences of a particular chain of events. At the beginning of this stage, children take names so seriously that sometimes they cannot separate their literal meaning from the essence of this thing. So, a child can call the water in the mug “to drink”, and the water in the bathroom with another word, which means “to bathe” in his lexicon.

In cases where the phenomenon that is happening does not fit into the child's experience, he can resort to "magic" ideas about causes and effects - for example, attempt to "spell" the bus so that he will come sooner. Also, the thinking of children of this age is characterized by "animism" (Latin "anima" - soul) - the animation of surrounding objects. For example, a child may decide that the elevator was "angry" with him and therefore slammed the door on the floor of his coat. At this stage, the child often has difficulty classifying objects and concepts.

At the second stage - the operating room (from seven to eleven or twelve years old), children begin to use logic in thinking, to classify objects according to several criteria. The thinking of the child at this stage takes into account the hierarchy of classes. So, a car is a large group, within which there are subgroups of car brands, and even smaller subgroups can exist within these subgroups. Logical operations are successfully applied to actions with specific objects.

The third period - formal operations, from twelve years or a little later. The adolescent's thinking develops to such an extent that he is able to operate with abstract concepts that are not based on visual images. Teenagers are not only able to think and talk about freedom, love, justice; they can build their conclusions and put forward hypotheses, reason by analogy and metaphorically, generalize and analyze their experience.

In the theory of cognitive development created by J. Piaget, the differences between the form and content of cognition are indicated. The content of children's knowledge is everything that is acquired through experience and observation. The form of cognition is a special structure of human mental activity. As Piaget says, a person assimilates what surrounds him, but he assimilates it according to his "mental chemistry". Cognition of reality always depends on the dominant mental structures. One and the same knowledge can be of different value depending on what mental structures it relies on. The most important pedagogical principle for Piaget is the recognition of the child as an "active explorer" who comprehends the world according to his own mental structure.

Studying the development of thinking, Piaget pointed to the interaction of the moral sense with the developing mental structures and the gradually expanding social experience of the child. The development of the moral sense according to Piaget is carried out in two stages. At the stage of moral realism, children are sure that the existing moral prescriptions are absolute and the degree of violation of these prescriptions is directly proportional to the quantitative assessment of what happened. Thus, a child will consider a girl who sets the table and accidentally breaks twelve plates as more guilty than a girl who deliberately breaks only two plates in a fit of anger at her sister (following Piaget's example). Later, children reach the stage of moral relativism. Now they understand that the existing rules in some situations can be significantly adjusted and the morality of an act depends not on its consequences, but on intentions. This Piagetian theory of two stages of moral development was developed considerably by Lawrence Kohlberg (see below).

6. Jean Piaget (1896-1980) - Swiss psychologist, founder of the Geneva school of genetic psychology. In the initial period of his activity, he described the features of children's ideas about the world. Later, J. Piaget turned to the study of the development of the intellect, in which he saw the result of the internalization of external actions and put forward the concept of the phasic development of the psyche.

Supporters biogenetic concept developments believe that the basic mental properties of a person are embedded in the very nature of a person (biological principle), which determines his life destiny. They consider intelligence, immoral personality traits, etc. to be genetically programmed.

The first step towards the emergence of biogenetic concepts was the theory of Charles Darwin that development is genesis- obeys a certain law. In the future, any major psychological concept has always been associated with the search for laws child development.

The German naturalist E. Haeckel (1834–1919) and the German physiologist J. Müller (1801–1958) formulated a biogenetic law according to which an animal and a person during fetal development briefly repeat the stages that this species in phylogeny. This process was transferred to the process of ontogenetic development of the child. The American psychologist S. Hall (1846-1924) believed that the child in his development briefly repeats the development of the human race. The basis for the appearance of this law was the observation of children, as a result of which the following stages of development were distinguished: cave, when the child digs in the sand, the stage of hunting, exchange, etc. Hall also assumed that the development children's drawing reflects the stages that the fine arts went through in the history of mankind.

theories mental development associated with the idea of ​​repetition in this development of human history are called recapitulation theories.

The outstanding Russian physiologist I.P. Pavlov (1849-1936) proved that there are acquired forms of behavior based on conditioned reflexes. This gave rise to the point of view that human development is reduced to the manifestation of instinct and training. The German psychologist W. Koehler (1887–1967), conducting experiments on anthropoid apes, discovered that they have intelligence. This fact formed the basis of the theory, according to which the psyche goes through three stages in its development: 1) instinct; 2) training; 3) intelligence.

The Austrian psychologist K. Buhler (1879–1963), based on the theory of W. Köhler and under the influence of the works of the founder of psychoanalysis, the Austrian psychiatrist and psychologist Z. Freud (1856–1939), put forward the principle of pleasure as the basic principle of the development of all living things. He associated the stages of instinct, training and intelligence not only with the maturation of the brain and the complication of relations with environment, but also with the development of affective states - the experience of pleasure and the action associated with it. Buhler argued that at the first stage of development - the stage of instinct - due to the satisfaction of an instinctive need, the so-called "functional pleasure" occurs, which is a consequence of the performance of an action. And at the stage of intellectual problem solving, a state arises that anticipates pleasure.

V. Koehler, studying the development of the child with the help of a zoopsychological experiment, noticed a similarity in the primitive use of tools in humans and monkeys.

A diametrically opposite approach to the development of the child's psyche is held by supporters of sociogenetic (sociological) concept. They believe that there is nothing innate in human behavior and each of his actions is only a product of external influence. Therefore, by manipulating external influences, you can achieve any results.

Back in the 17th century. English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) believed that a child is born with a pure soul, like a white sheet of paper on which you can write anything you like, and the child will grow up the way his parents and relatives want to see him. According to this point of view, heredity plays no role in the development of the psyche and behavior of the child.

The American psychologist J. B. Watson (1878–1958) put forward the slogan: “Stop studying what a person thinks, let's study what a person does!”. He believed that there is nothing innate in human behavior and that each of his actions is a product of external stimulation. Consequently, by manipulating external stimuli, it is possible to "create" a person of any type. In learning studies that took into account the experimental results obtained by I.P. Pavlov, the idea of ​​a combination of stimulus and reaction, conditioned and unconditioned stimuli came to the fore, the time parameter of this connection was singled out. This formed the basis associationist concept of learning J. Watson and E. Gasri, which became the first program of behaviorism. Behaviorism is a direction in American psychology of the 20th century that denies consciousness as a subject of scientific research and reduces the psyche to various forms of behavior, understood as a set of reactions of the body to environmental stimuli. According to J. Watson, "all such terms as consciousness, sensation, perception, imagination or will can be excluded from the description of human activity." He identified human behavior with animal behavior. Man, according to Watson, is a biological being that can be studied like any other animal. Thus, in classical behaviorism, the emphasis is on the process of learning based on the presence or absence of reinforcement under the influence of the environment.

Representatives of neobehaviorism, American psychologists E. Thorndike (1874-1949) and B. Skinner (1904-1990) created the concept of learning, which was called "operant learning". This type of learning is characterized by the fact that in establishing a new associative stimulus-reactive connection important role play the functions of an unconditioned stimulus, i.e., the main emphasis is on the value of the reinforcement.

N. Miller and American psychologist K.L. Hull (1884-1952) - the authors of the theory, in which the answer was given to the question: does learning, i.e., the establishment of a connection between a stimulus and a response, depend on such states of the subject as hunger, thirst, pain.

On the basis of existing theories, it can be concluded that in sociogenetic theories, the environment is considered as the main factor in the development of the psyche, and the activity of the child is not taken into account.

The theory of convergence, or, as it is also called, the theory of two factors, was developed by the German psychologist W. Stern (1975–1938), who was a specialist in the field of differential psychology, which considers the relationship between biological and social factors. The essence of this theory lies in the fact that the mental development of the child is seen as a process taking shape under the influence of heredity and the environment. The main question of the theory of convergence is to establish how acquired forms of behavior arise and what influence heredity and the environment have on them.

At the same time, there were two theoretical concepts in psychology, empiricism (“man is a blank slate”) and nativism (there are innate ideas). Stern believed that if there are grounds for the existence of these two opposing points of view, then the truth lies in their combination. He believed that mental development is a combination of internal data with external conditions, but the leading value still remains with the innate factor. An example of this is the following fact: the world provides the child with material for play, but how and when he will play depends on the innate components of the instinct to play.

V. Stern was a supporter of the concept of recapitulation and said that the child in the first months of the infantile period is at the stage of a mammal: this is confirmed by an incomprehensible reflex and impulsive behavior; in the second half of life, he reaches the stage of a higher mammal (monkey) due to the development of grasping objects and imitation; later, having mastered upright posture and speech, he reaches the initial stages of the human condition; in the first five years of play and fairy tales, he stands at the level of primitive peoples; a new stage - entering school - is associated with the mastery of social responsibilities more high level. First school years associated with the simple content of the ancient and Old Testament worlds, the middle classes - with Christian culture, and the years of maturity - with the culture of modern times.

The theory of convergence of development is confirmed by the statements that "the apple does not fall far from the tree" and "with whom you behave, you will gain from that." The English psychologist G. Eysenck (1916–1997) believed that intelligence is 80% determined by the influence of heredity and 20% by the influence of the environment.

Austrian psychologist 3. Freud created structural theory of personality the basis of which was the conflict between the instinctive sphere of human mental life and the requirements of society. He believed that every person is born with innate sexual desires, which are subsequently controlled by the "Super-I" and "It". “It” is an internal mental instance, which, under the influence of prohibitions, releases a small piece of “I” from itself. "Super-I" is an instance that limits human desires. It turns out that the “I” is pressed by “It” and “Super-I”. This is a typical scheme of two factors of development.

Psychologists were able to establish the influence of biological and social aspects on the development process by observing twins and comparing the results obtained. This method was called twin method. As shown by D.B. Elkonin, from a methodological point of view, there is one serious flaw in the study of twins: the problem of the hereditary fund is considered from the standpoint of identity or non-identity, and the problem of environmental influences is always considered from the standpoint of identity. But there is no one (identical) social environment in which twins are brought up - it is necessary to take into account what elements of the environment the child actively interacts with. Therefore, to obtain reliable results, it is necessary to choose such situations in which the equation contains not one, but two unknowns. This leads to the conclusion that with this method individual differences can be studied rather than developmental problems.

Psychoanalysis originally arose as a method of treatment, but was soon adopted as a means of obtaining psychological facts, which formed the basis of a new psychological system.

3. Freud, analyzing the free associations of patients, came to the conclusion that the diseases of an adult are reduced to childhood experiences. basis theoretical concept psychoanalysis is the discovery unconscious and sexual beginning. To the unconscious, the scientist attributed the inability of patients to understand the true meaning of what they say and what they do. Childhood experiences, according to Freud, are of a sexual nature. This is a feeling of love and hatred for a father or mother, jealousy for a brother or sister, etc.

In the model of personality, Freud identified three main components: "It", "I" and "Super-I". "It" is the bearer of instincts, the "seething cauldron of drives." Being irrational and unconscious, "It" obeys the principle of pleasure. "I" follows the principle of reality and takes into account the features of the external world, its properties and relations. "Super-I" is a critic, a censor and a bearer of moral norms. The requirements for the “I” from the side of the “It”, “Super-I” and reality are incompatible, therefore an internal conflict arises that can be resolved with the help of “protective mechanisms”, such as repression, projection, regression, sublimation.

In Freud's understanding, personality is the interaction of motivating and restraining forces. All stages of human mental development, in his opinion, are associated with sexual development. Let's look at these stages.

oral stage(from birth to 1 year). Freud believed that at this stage the main source of pleasure is concentrated in the zone of activity associated with feeding. The oral stage consists of two phases - early and late, occupying the first and second six months of life. In the early phase there is a sucking action, in the late phase there is a biting action. The source of displeasure is connected with the inability of the mother to immediately satisfy the desire of the child. At this stage, the "I" is gradually disconnected from the "It". The erogenous zone is the mouth.

anal stage(1–3 years). It consists of two phases. Libido is concentrated around the anus, which becomes the object of attention of the child, accustomed to cleanliness. The "I" of the child learns to resolve conflicts, finding compromises between the desire for pleasure and reality. At this stage, the instance of "I" is fully formed, and it can control the impulses of "It". Social coercion, parental punishment, and the fear of losing their love force the child to mentally imagine prohibitions. The "Super-I" begins to form.

phallic stage(3–5 years). This is the highest stage of children's sexuality, the genital organs are the main erogenous zone. Parents of the opposite sex with the child are the first to attract their attention as an object of love. 3. Freud called such attachment in boys the “oedipal complex”, and in girls the “Electra complex”. According to Freud, the Greek myth of Oedipus Rex, who was killed by his own son and subsequently married to his mother, contains the key to the sexual complex: the boy loves his mother, perceiving his father as a rival, causing both hatred and fear. But at the end of this stage there is a release from the "oedipal complex" due to the fear of castration, the child is forced to give up attraction to the mother and identify with the father. After that, the instance of the "Super-I" is completely differentiated.

Latent stage(5-12 years old). There is a decrease in sexual interest, the instance of "I" completely controls the needs of "It". The energy of libido (attraction) is transferred to the establishment of friendly relations with peers and adults, to the development of universal human experience.

genital stage(12–18 years old). 3. Freud believed that a teenager strives for one goal - normal sexual intercourse; during this period, all erogenous zones are combined. If the implementation of normal sexual intercourse is difficult, then phenomena of fixation or regression to one of the previous stages can be observed. At this stage, the instance of the "I" must fight against the aggressive impulses of the "It", which again makes itself felt.

Normal development occurs through the mechanism of sublimation. Other mechanisms give rise to pathological characters.

3. Freud's concept of development is a dynamic concept, which shows that in human development leading role the other person is playing, not the objects that surround him. This is one of its main advantages.

An outstanding domestic psychologist L.S. Vygotsky (1896–1934) in this concept considered it valuable to establish the fact of the subconscious determinability of the series mental phenomena(for example, neuroses) and the fact of latent sexuality, but criticized the transformation of sexuality into a metaphysical principle that has penetrated various branches of psychology.

Psychoanalysis was carried out by such scientists as K. Jung, A. Adler, K. Horney. S.D. Smirnov analyzed driving forces and conditions of personality development in foreign concepts. The following data was received:

According to 3. Freud, the basis of individual and personal development are innate drives and instincts, where biological attraction (libido) is recognized as the only source of mental energy;

According to K. Jung, development is "individualization" as differentiation from the community. The ultimate goal of individualization is to achieve the highest point of "selfhood", integrity and complete unity of all mental structures;

According to A. Adler, a “sense of community” or “social feeling” is inherent in a person from birth, which encourages him to enter society, overcome the feeling of his own inferiority, which usually occurs in the first years of life, and achieve superiority due to various kinds of compensation;

According to K. Horney, the main source of energy for the development of a personality is a feeling of anxiety, discomfort, “radical anxiety” and the desire for security generated by it, etc.

3. Freud's daughter Anna Freud (1895–1982) continued and developed the classical theory and practice of psychoanalysis. In the instinctive part of the personality, she singled out the sexual and aggressive components. She also believed that each phase of the development of the child is the result of resolving the conflict between internal instinctive drives and the limitations of the social environment. Child development, in her opinion, is a process of gradual child socialization, subject to the law of transition from the pleasure principle to the reality principle. Progress from one principle to another is possible only when the various functions of the ego have reached certain stages of development. An example of this is the following: with the development of memory, the child can act on the basis of experience and foresight, the acquisition of speech makes him a member of society, logic contributes to the understanding of cause and effect, and therefore adaptation to the world becomes conscious and adequate. The formation of the principle of reality and thought processes opens the way to the emergence of new mechanisms of socialization: imitation (imitation), identification (assuming a role), introjection (taking on the feelings of another person). These mechanisms contribute to the formation of "Super-I". The emergence of this instance means for the child a decisive progress in his socialization.

It has also been shown that the development of the child is influenced by the individual likes and dislikes of the mother.

According to A. Freud, inharmonious personal development is based on the following reasons: uneven progress along the line of development, unevenly lasting regressions, features of isolation of internal instances from each other and the formation of links between them, etc. “Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that individual differences between human beings are so great, the deviations from the straight line of development go so far, and the definitions of a strict norm are so unsatisfactory. The constant interplay of progress and regression brings with it innumerable variations within normal development."

The emergence of the personality theory of the American psychoanalyst E. Erickson (1904–1994) was facilitated by works on psychoanalysis. Erickson accepted the personality structure of 3. Freud and created a psychoanalytic concept about the relationship between the "I" and society. He paid special attention to the role of the "I" in the development of the individual, believing that the foundations of the human "I" lie in the social organization of society.

He came to this conclusion by observing the personal changes that occurred with people in post-war America. People have become more anxious, tougher, prone to apathy, confusion. Having accepted the idea of ​​unconscious motivation, Erickson in his research paid special attention to the processes of socialization.

Erickson's work marks the beginning of a new method of studying the psyche - psychohistorical, which is the application of psychoanalysis to the study of the development of the individual, taking into account the historical period in which he lives. Using this method, Erickson analyzed the biographies of Martin Luther, Mahatma Gandhi, Bernard Shaw, Thomas Jefferson and other prominent people, as well as the life histories of contemporaries - adults and children. The psychohistorical method demands equal attention both to the psychology of the individual and to the character of the society in which the individual lives. Erickson's main task was to develop a new psychohistorical theory of personality development, taking into account a specific cultural environment.

In conducting ethnographic field studies of child rearing in two Indian tribes and comparing it to child rearing in US urban families, Erickson found that every culture has its own particular style of motherhood, which each mother perceives as the only correct one. However, as Erickson emphasized, the style of motherhood is always determined by what exactly the social group to which he belongs - his tribe, class or caste - expects from the child in the future. Each stage of development corresponds to its own expectations inherent in a given society, which an individual can justify or not justify, and then he is either included in society or rejected by it. These considerations of E. Erickson formed the basis of the two most important concepts of his concept - group identity and ego-identity.

Group identity is based on the fact that from the first day of life, the upbringing of the child is focused on including him in this social group and on the development of the worldview inherent in this group.

ego identity is formed in parallel with the group and creates in the subject a sense of stability and continuity of his "I", despite the changes that occur with a person in the process of his growth and development.

Based on his works, E. Erickson singled out the stages life path personality. For each stage life cycle characterized by a specific task that is put forward by society. Society also determines the content of development at different stages of the life cycle. However, the solution of the problem, according to Erickson, depends on the already achieved level of psychomotor development of the individual, and on the general spiritual atmosphere of the society in which this individual lives.

In table. 2 shows the stages of a person's life path according to E. Erickson.

table 2

The crisis of development is accompanied by the formation of all forms of identity. According to E. Erickson, the main identity crisis belongs to adolescence. If the development processes go well, then there is an acquisition "adult identity" and when there are developmental difficulties, there is a delay in identity.

Erickson called the interval between adolescence and adulthood a "psychosocial moratorium." This is the time when a young person, through trial and error, seeks to find his place in life. The turbulence of this crisis depends on how successfully the previous crises (trust, independence, activity, etc.) were resolved and on the spiritual atmosphere in society. If the crisis is not successfully dealt with in the early stages, there may be a delay in identity.

E. Erickson introduced the concept of ritualization into psychology. ritualization in behavior, it is an interaction built on an agreement between two or more people, which can be renewed at certain intervals in repeating circumstances (a ritual of mutual recognition, greetings, criticism, etc.). The ritual, having once arisen, is successively included in the system that arises at higher levels, becoming a part of subsequent stages.

E. Erickson's concept is called epigenetic concept of the life path of the individual, according to which everything that grows has a common plan. Proceeding from this general plan, separate parts develop, and each of them has the most favorable period for development. This happens until all the parts, having developed, form a functional whole.

Erickson believed that the sequence of stages is the result of biological maturation, and the content of development is determined by what society expects from a person. He admitted that his periodization cannot be considered as a theory of personality, it is only the key to building such a theory.

The concept of social learning shows how a child adapts to modern world how he learns the habits and norms of modern society. Representatives of this trend believe that along with classical conditioning and operant learning, there is also learning by imitation and imitation. Such learning began to be regarded in American psychology as a new, third form of learning. It should be noted that in the theory of social learning the problem of development is posed from the position of the initial antagonism of the child and society, borrowed from Freudianism.

Scientists have introduced such a thing as socialization. Socialization- this is the process and result of the assimilation and active reproduction of social experience by the individual, carried out in communication and activity. Socialization can occur both under conditions of spontaneous influence on the personality of various circumstances of life in society, which sometimes have the character of multidirectional factors, and in conditions of upbringing, i.e., the purposeful formation of the personality. Education is the leading and defining beginning of socialization. This concept was introduced into social psychology in the 1940s-1950s. in the works of A. Bandura, J. Kolman and others. In different scientific schools, the concept of socialization has received a different interpretation: in neobehaviorism it is interpreted as social learning; in the school of symbolic interactionism - as a result of social interaction; in "humanistic psychology" - as self-actualization of the "I-concept". The phenomenon of socialization is multidimensional, therefore each of these areas focuses on one of the sides of the phenomenon under study.

The American psychologists A. Bandura, R. Sears, B. Skinner and other scientists dealt with the problem of social learning. Let's take a closer look at some of their theories.

A. Bandura (1925) believed that in order to form a new behavior, reward and punishment are not enough. Therefore, he opposed the transfer of results obtained on animals to the analysis of human behavior. He believed that children acquire new behavior through observation and imitation, i.e., imitating people significant to them, and identification, i.e., by borrowing the feelings and actions of another authority figure.

Bandura conducted research on child and adolescent aggressiveness. A group of children were shown films in which different patterns of adult behavior (aggressive and non-aggressive) were presented, which had different consequences (reward or punishment). So, in the film they showed how an adult aggressively handles toys. After watching the movie, the children were left alone and played with toys similar to the ones they 30 seen in the movie. As a result, aggressive behavior in children who watched the film increased and occurred more frequently than in children who did not watch it. While aggressive behavior was rewarded in the film, aggressiveness in children's behavior also increased. In another group of children who watched a film where the aggressive behavior of adults was punished, it decreased.

Bandura singled out the dyad "stimulus-response" and introduced four intermediate processes into this scheme to explain how imitation of the model leads to the formation of new behavior in children:

1) attention to the action of the model;

2) memory about the influences of the model;

3) motor skills that allow you to reproduce what you see;

4) motivation, which determines the desire of the child to reproduce what he saw.

Thus, A. Bandura recognized the role of cognitive processes in the formation and regulation of behavior based on imitation.

The famous American psychologist R. Sears (1908–1998) proposed the principle of dyadic analysis of personality development. This principle lies in the fact that many personality traits are initially formed in the so-called "dyadic situations", because a person's actions depend on another person and are focused on him. Dyadic relationships include the relationship of mother and child, teacher and student, son and father, etc. The scientist believed that there are no strictly fixed and unchanging personality traits, since human behavior always depends on the personal properties of another member of the dyad. Sears identified three phases of child development:

1) the phase of rudimentary behavior - based on innate needs and learning in early childhood, in the first months of life);

2) the phase of primary motivational systems - learning within the family (the main phase of socialization);

3) the phase of secondary motivational systems - learning outside the family (goes beyond early age and associated with schooling).

Obviously, Sears considered the influence of parents on the upbringing of children to be the main thing in the process of socialization.

Sears considered the central component of learning addiction, i.e., the need of the child, which cannot be ignored. It is known that the first dependence that occurs in a child is dependence on the mother, the peak of which falls on early childhood. Sears identified five forms of addictive behavior.

1. "Search for negative attention" - the child tries to attract the attention of adults with the help of quarrels, disobedience, breaking up relationships. The reason for this may be the low requirements and insufficiency of restrictions in relation to the child.

2. "Search for permanent confirmation" is an apology, a request, an unnecessary promise or a search for protection, comfort, consolation. The reason is the excessive demands on the child, especially regarding his achievements on the part of both parents.

3. "Search for positive attention" - expressed in the search for praise, the desire to join the group or leave it.

4. "Staying around" - the constant presence near another child or group of children, adults. This form can be called an "immature", passive form of manifestation in the behavior of positive dependence.

5. "Touching and holding" is non-aggressive touching, hugging or holding others. Here we can talk about "immature" dependent form of behavior.

R. Sears believed that parents need to find a middle path in education. We must adhere to the following rule: not too strong, not too weak dependence; not too strong, not too weak identification.

The role of reward and punishment in the formation of new behavior was considered by the American neo-behaviorist psychologist B. Skinner (1904–1990). The main concept of his concept is reinforcement, i.e., decreasing or increasing the likelihood that a given behavior will be repeated. He also considered the role of reward in this process, but shared the role of reinforcement and reward in the formation of new behavior, believing that reinforcement enhances behavior, and reward does not always contribute to this. In his opinion, reinforcement can be positive and negative, primary (food, water, cold) and conditional (money, signs of love, attention, etc.).

B. Skinner opposed punishment and believed that it could not give a stable and lasting effect and ignoring bad behavior can replace punishment.

The American psychologist J. Gewirtz paid great attention to studying the conditions for the emergence of social motivation and attachment of an infant to an adult, and an adult to a child. It was based on advances in social psychology and the ideas of Sears and Skinner. Gewirtz came to the conclusion that the source of motivation for the child's behavior is the stimulating effect of the environment and reinforcement-based learning, as well as the various reactions of the child, for example, laughter, tears, smile, etc.

The American psychologist W. Bronfenbrenner believed that the results of laboratory tests should be checked in natural conditions, that is, in a family or group of peers. He paid special attention to the structure of the family and other social institutions as the most important factors in the development of children's behavior. Therefore, he conducted his research by observing families.

Bronfenbrenner studied the origin of the phenomenon of "age segregation" in American families. This phenomenon lies in the fact that young people cannot find their place in society. As a result, a person feels cut off from the people around him and even experiences hostility towards them. Having finally found something to his liking, he does not get satisfaction from the work, and interest in it soon fades away. This fact of isolation of young people from other people and the real thing in American psychology is called alienation.

Bronfenbrenner sees the roots of alienation in the following features of modern families:

The work of mothers;

An increase in the number of divorces and, accordingly, the number of children growing up without fathers;

Lack of communication between children and fathers due to the employment of the latter at work;

Insufficient communication with parents due to the appearance of televisions and separate rooms;

Rare contact with relatives and neighbors.

All these and many other, even more unfavorable conditions affect the mental development of the child, which leads to alienation, the causes of which are in the disorganization of the family. However, according to Bronfenbrenner, the disorganizing forces do not initially originate in the family itself, but in the way of life of the whole society and in the objective circumstances that families face.

The task set by the outstanding Swiss psychologist J. Piaget (1896–1980) was to reveal psychological mechanisms integral logical structures. But first, he studied hidden mental tendencies and outlined the mechanisms of their emergence and change.

With the help of the clinical method, J. Piaget investigated the content and forms of children's thought: 1) the child's ideas about the world, peculiar in their content; 2) qualitative features of children's logic; 3) the egocentric nature of children's thought.

Piaget's main achievement is the discovery of the child's egocentrism as a central feature of thinking, a hidden mental position. The peculiarity of children's logic, children's speech, children's ideas about the world is only a consequence of this egocentric mental position.

The peculiarity of the child's view of the world consists in the fact that at a certain stage of his development he considers objects as they are given by perception, and does not see things in their internal relations. For example, a child thinks that the moon follows him when he walks, stops when he stops, runs after him when he runs. This phenomenon J. Piaget called realism. It is this realism that prevents the child from considering things independently of the subject, in their internal interconnection. The child considers his instantaneous perception to be absolutely true. This happens because children cannot separate their "I" from the world around them, from things.

Realism is of two types: intellectual and moral. For example, a child is sure that the branches of trees make the wind. This intellectual realism. Moral realism is expressed in the fact that the child does not take into account the inner intention in evaluating the act and judges the act only by the external effect, the material result.

Piaget believed that the development of ideas about the world goes in three directions: 1) from realism to objectivity; 2) from realism to reciprocity (reciprocity); 3) from realism to relativism.

The development of children's ideas, what is happening from realism to objectivity, thing is this development goes through several stages: participation(communion), animism(universal animation) and artificalism(understanding of natural phenomena by analogy with human activity), on which the egocentric relationship between the "I" and the world is gradually reduced. Only after realizing his own position among things, the inner world of the child stands out and is opposed to the outside world.

Parallel to the evolution of children's ideas about the world, directed from realism to objectivity, there is a development of children's ideas from realism to reciprocity(reciprocity). At this stage, the child discovers for himself the points of view of other people, ascribes to them the same meaning as his own, establishes a certain correspondence between them. From that moment on, he begins to see reality not only as directly given to himself, but as if established through the coordination of all points of view taken together.

The child's thought develops in the third direction - from realism to relativism. At first, the child thinks that there are absolute substances and absolute qualities. Later, he realizes that the phenomena are interconnected, and our assessments are relative. For example, at first the child thinks that in every moving object there is a motor, thanks to which this object moves, but then he understands that the movement of an individual body is the influence of external forces.

Along with the qualitative originality of the content of children's thought, egocentrism causes the following features of children's logic: syncretism (the tendency to connect everything with everything), juxtaposition (lack of a causal relationship between judgments), transduction (transition in reasoning from the particular to the particular, bypassing the general position), insensitivity to contradiction, etc. All these features of children's thinking have one common feature, which is also internally dependent on egocentrism. It consists in the fact that a child under 7-8 years old is not able to perform logical operations addition and multiplication class. Logical addition is finding a class that is least common to two other classes, but contains both of these classes in itself, for example:

"animals = vertebrates + invertebrates".

Logical multiplication is an operation that consists in finding the largest class contained simultaneously in two classes, i.e., finding a set of elements common to two classes, for example:

"Genevians + Protestants = Genevan Protestants".

This inability is reflected in how children define concepts. It was experimentally established that each child concept is determined by a large number of heterogeneous elements that are in no way connected by hierarchical relations. For example, a child, giving a definition of strength, says: "Strength is when you can carry a lot of things." It is especially difficult for him to define relative concepts - such as brother, right and left hand, family, etc.

The inability to perform logical addition and multiplication leads not only to the fact that children give incorrect definitions of concepts, but also to the inconsistency of these definitions. Piaget saw the reason for this in the absence of equilibrium: the concept gets rid of contradiction when equilibrium is reached. He considered the criterion of stable equilibrium to be the appearance reversibility of thought. In his opinion, each mental action corresponds to a symmetrical action that allows you to return to the starting point.

In his early work, Piaget associated the lack of reversibility of thought with the child's egocentrism. But before turning to the characteristics of this central phenomenon, let us dwell on one more important feature of the child's psyche - the phenomenon of egocentric speech.

Piaget believed that children's speech is egocentric because the child speaks only "from his own point of view" and does not try to understand the position of the interlocutor. For him, anyone he meets is an interlocutor. The child only cares about the appearance of interest. Verbal egocentrism is manifested in the fact that the child speaks without trying to influence the other and without realizing the difference between his point of view and the point of view of the interlocutor.

Egocentric speech does not cover the entire speech of the child, its share depends, firstly, on the activity of the child himself, and secondly, on the type of social relations established both between the child and the adult and between children of the same age. Where adult authority and coercive relations dominate, egocentric speech occupies a significant place. In a peer environment where discussions and disputes can take place, the percentage of such speech decreases. But with age, the coefficient of egocentric speech decreases regardless of the environment. At the age of three, it reaches its maximum value - 75%, from three to six years, egocentric speech gradually decreases, and after seven years it completely disappears.

The significance of the experimental facts obtained in Piaget's research lies in the fact that thanks to them, the most important psychological phenomenon, which remained little studied and unrecognized for a long time, is revealed - mental position of the child, which determines his attitude to reality.

Piaget paid special attention to the egocentrism of knowledge. He considered egocentrism as the inability of an individual to change his cognitive position in relation to some object, opinion or idea. The roots of egocentrism, according to him, lie in the subject's misunderstanding of the existence of a point of view that is different from his point of view. This happens because the subject is confident in the identity of the psychological organization of other people and his own.

Egocentrism can be cognitive, moral, communicative. Informative egocentrism characterizes the processes of perception and thinking. moral egocentrism reflects the inability to perceive the moral actions and actions of other people. Communicative egocentrism is observed when transmitting information to other people and denies the existence of another meaning in the transmitted information.

The original egocentrism of cognition is not a hypertrophy of awareness of the “I”, but, on the contrary, a direct relationship to objects, where the subject, ignoring the “I”, cannot leave the “I” in order to find his place in the world of relations, freed from subjective ties. Piaget believed that the decrease in egocentrism is not associated with an increase in knowledge, but with the ability of the subject to correlate his point of view with others.

The transition from egocentrism (or, as Piaget later called it, centralization) to decentration characterizes knowledge at all levels of development. The universality and inevitability of this process allowed Piaget to call it the law of development.

To overcome egocentrism, it is necessary: ​​1) to realize your "I" as a subject and separate the subject from the object; 2) coordinate your own point of view with others.

According to Piaget, the development of knowledge about oneself occurs in the subject only during social interaction, that is, under the influence of the developing social relationships of individuals. Piaget considers society as it appears to the child, that is, as the sum of social relations, among which two extreme types can be distinguished: relations of coercion and relations of cooperation.

Relationship coercion do not contribute to the change of mental positions. In order to realize one's "I", one must be free from coercion, in addition, an interaction of opinions is necessary. But an adult and a child at first cannot achieve such interaction - the inequality between them is too great. Only individuals who consider themselves equal can exercise "developmental" mutual control. Such relationships are possible among representatives of the same age, for example, in a children's team, where relationships begin to form on the basis of cooperation.

Relationship cooperation built on the basis of mutual respect. Immediately there is a need to adapt to another person and the need to realize the existence of a different point of view. As a result, rational elements are formed in logic and ethics.

Another important concept that exists in the system of psychological views is socialization. According to Piaget, socialization is a process of adaptation to the social environment, consisting in the fact that the child, having reached certain level development, becomes capable of cooperation with other people by sharing and coordinating his point of view and the points of view of other people. Socialization causes a decisive turn in the mental development of the child - the transition from an egocentric position to an objective one. This transition occurs by 7-8 years.

When studying the psychology of a developing child, great attention has always been paid to thinking and speech, because they form the basis of intelligence. This problem was dealt with by L.S. Vygotsky, N.B. Shumakova, J. Piaget, J. Bruner and others. Let us dwell in more detail on the theory of J. Piaget.

Piaget studied in detail the development of thinking up to the moment when it is combined with speech, especially visual-active and visual-figurative thinking. He believed that thinking takes shape long before it becomes verbal. Piaget were singled out logical structures thinking called operations. Operation- this is a mental action that has the property of reversibility, i.e. if the child has completed the necessary task, then he can return to its beginning by performing the opposite action. (Paired mathematical operations can be classified as reversible.) According to Piaget, the essence of a child's intellectual development lies in mastering operations.

Knowledge for J. Piaget it is a process. To know means to act in accordance with existing knowledge. Actions can be done mentally or practically.

Piaget believed that the main goal of rational behavior, or thinking, is adaptation to the environment. Ways of adaptation are called by him schemes. Scheme is a repetitive structure or organization of actions in certain situations. It can be simple movements, a complex of motor skills, skills or mental actions.

Piaget called assimilation, accommodation and balance the main mechanisms by which a child moves from one stage of development to another. Assimilation- this is an action with new objects based on already established skills and abilities. Accommodation- the desire to change their skills as a result of changing conditions and in accordance with them. Accommodation, restoring the disturbed equilibrium in the psyche and behavior, eliminates the discrepancy between the existing skills, abilities and conditions for performing actions.

Piaget believed that one should strive to ensure that assimilation and accommodation are always in balance, because when assimilation dominates accommodation, thinking becomes rigid, behavior inflexible. And if accommodation prevails over assimilation, the behavior of children becomes inconsistent and unorganized, there is a delay in the formation of stable and economical adaptive mental actions and operations, i.e., problems arise in learning. The balance between assimilation and accommodation ensures reasonable behavior. Achieving balance is a difficult task. The success of its solution will depend on the intellectual level of the subject, on the new problems that he will face. It is necessary to strive for balance, and it is important that it be present at all levels of intellectual development.

Thanks to assimilation, accommodation and balance, cognitive development occurs, continuing throughout a person's life.

Based on the theory of development, in which the main law is the desire of the subject to balance with reality, Piaget put forward a hypothesis about the existence stages of intellectual development. This is the next (after egocentrism) Piaget's major achievement in the field of child psychology. According to Piaget, there are four such stages: sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operations stage, formal operations stage.

sensorimotor The stage lasts from birth to 18-24 months. During this period, the child becomes capable of elementary symbolic actions. There is a psychological separation of oneself from the outside world, knowledge of oneself as a subject of action, volitional control of one’s behavior begins, an understanding of the stability and constancy of external objects appears, the realization that objects continue to exist and be in their places even when they are not perceived through the senses .

Preoperative the stage covers the period from 18–24 months to 7 years. Children of this age begin to use symbols and speech, they can represent objects and images in words, describe them. Basically, the child uses these objects and images in the game, in the process of imitation. It is difficult for him to imagine how others perceive what he observes and sees himself. This expresses the egocentrism of thinking, that is, it is difficult for a child to take the position of another person, to see phenomena and things through his eyes. At this age, children can classify objects according to individual characteristics, cope with solving specific problems related to real relationships between people - the difficulty lies only in the fact that it is difficult for them to express all this in verbal form.

Stage specific operations runs from 7 to 12 years. This age is called so because the child, using concepts, associates them with specific objects.

This stage is characterized by the fact that children can perform flexible and reversible operations performed in accordance with logical rules, logically explain the actions performed, consider different points of view, they become more objective in their assessments, come to an intuitive understanding of the following logical principles: if A= V and V= WITH, then A= C; A+ V= V+ A. At 6 years old, ideas about the conservation of number are assimilated, at 7 years old - mass, about 9 years old - the weight of objects. Children begin to classify objects according to certain essential features, to distinguish subclasses from them.

Consider the development of the child's seriation on the following example. Children are asked to arrange the sticks by size, from the shortest to the longest. In children, this operation is formed gradually, passing through a series of stages. At the initial stage, children claim that all sticks are the same. They then divide them into two categories, large and small, without further ordering. Then the children note that among the sticks there are large, small and medium. Then the child tries to arrange the sticks by trial and error, based on his experience, but again incorrectly. And only at the last stage does he resort to the method of seriation: first he chooses the largest stick and puts it on the table, then he looks for the largest of the remaining ones, etc., correctly lining up the series.

At this age, children can arrange objects according to various criteria (height or weight), imagine in their mind and name a series of actions performed, performed or those that still need to be performed. A seven-year-old child can remember a difficult path, but is only able to reproduce it graphically at 8 years old.

Stage formal operations begins after 12 years and continues throughout a person's life. At this stage, thinking becomes more flexible, the reversibility of mental operations and reasoning is realized, the ability to reason using abstract concepts appears; the ability to systematically search for ways to solve problems with viewing many solutions and evaluating the effectiveness of each of them develops.

Piaget believed that the development of the child's intellect is influenced by maturation, experience and the actual social environment (training, upbringing). He believed that the biological maturation of the body plays a certain role in intellectual development, and the effect of maturation itself is to open up new possibilities for the development of the body.

Piaget also believed that the success of learning depends on the level of intellectual development already achieved by the child.

This concept was developed by L.S. Vygotsky with a group of scientists such as A.N. Leontiev, A.R. Luria, L.I. Bozhovich, A.V. Zaporozhets and others. Their experimental studies formed the basis of a cultural-historical theory, according to which the development of mental functions (attention, memory, thinking, and others) has a social, cultural, lifetime origin and is mediated by special means - signs that arise in the course of human history. According to L.S. Vygotsky, a sign is a social tool for a person, a “psychological tool”. He wrote: "... a sign that is outside the body, like a tool, is distant from the individual and serves, in essence, as a public organ or social tool." (Here and below in 2.8 cit. from: Solodilova O.P., 2004).

At the initial stage of creating this theory, L.S. Vygotsky believed that the “elementary functions” of a child are of a natural hereditary nature, that is, they are not yet mediated by cultural means - signs, but later he came to the following conclusion: “... Functions that are usually considered the most elementary, obey completely different laws in a child than at earlier stages of phylogenetic development, and are characterized by the same mediated psychological structure... A detailed analysis of the structure of individual mental processes. makes it possible to verify this and shows that even the doctrine of the structure of individual elementary processes of children's behavior needs a radical revision.

L.S. Vygotsky formulated the genetic law of the existence of any mental function of a person, any psychological mechanism of his behavior or activity: “. Any function in the cultural development of a child appears on the scene twice, on two planes: first, social, then psychological, first between people. then inside the child. Functions are first formed in the collective in the form of relations between children, then they become mental functions of the individual.

Vygotsky believed that there are two types of mental development: biological and historical (cultural). He believed that these types actually exist in a merged form and form a single process in ontogeny. In this, the scientist saw the greatest and fundamental originality of the mental development of the child. He wrote: "The growth of a normal child into civilization is usually a single fusion with the processes of its organic maturation."

According to Vygotsky, the idea of ​​maturation underlies special periods of heightened response - sensitive periods. Sensitive period of development called the period when it is most reasonable to start and lead the education and upbringing of children, since it is at this time that the best way psychological and behavioral properties are formed - the development of memory, thinking, attention, volitional qualities, etc. For example, intensive development there is talk at the age of one to eight years, and the intonational and grammatical structure of speech develops well at the age of 1.5 to 3 years, and phonetic hearing - at the age of 5 years.

Vygotsky's position on the formation of higher mental functions due to verbal communication of people refuted the notion of classical psychology about inner nature mental activity. The position on the "growing from outside to inside" of higher mental functions outlined new way their objective study and led to the creation of a new method - experimental genetic. It was used by L.S. Vygotsky in the study of the origin and development of voluntary attention, the development of concepts.

There are many approaches to the periodization of the mental development of a child, but the most acceptable is the periodization of development proposed by an outstanding specialist in the field of child and educational psychology D.B. Elkonin. It is a cross between the empirical periodization that has developed on the basis of the real life experience, and theoretical periodization, potentially possible under ideal conditions for the education and upbringing of children. Consider the concept of D.B. Elkonin in more detail.

Elkonin divided the period from birth to graduation into seven stages.

1. Infancy: from birth to 1 year of age.

2. Early childhood: from 1 year of life to 3 years.

3. Junior and middle preschool age: from 3 to 4-5 years.

4. Senior preschool age: from 4–5 to 6–7 years.

5. Junior school age: from 6-7 to 10-11 years old.

6. Adolescence: 10–11 to 14–15 years old.

7. Early adolescence: from 14-15 to 16-17 years.

The whole development process can be divided into three stages:

preschool childhood - from birth to 6-7 years; primary school age - from 6–7 to 10–11 years; middle and senior school age - from 10-11 to 16-17 years.

Each period of development has its own characteristics and boundaries, which can be seen by observing the child. At each psychological age, it is necessary to apply special techniques and methods of training and education, to build communication with the child, taking into account his age features. Age periods are accompanied by the development of interpersonal communication, aimed mainly at personal and intellectual development, characterized by the formation of knowledge, skills, and the implementation of the operational and technical capabilities of the child.

The transition from one stage of development to another occurs in situations resembling age crisis, i.e., with a discrepancy between the level of personal development achieved and the operational and technical capabilities of the child.

The personal development of children is carried out through the reproduction and modeling of interpersonal relations between adults and the personality traits manifested in them, as well as in the process of communication between the child and other children during role-playing games. Here he is faced with the need to master new objective actions, without which it is difficult to be understood by peers and look more mature.

The developmental process begins in infancy with the fact that the child begins to recognize the parents and perk up at their appearance. This is how a child communicates with an adult.

At the beginning of an early age, objects are manipulated and practical, sensorimotor intelligence begins to form. At the same time, there is an intensive development of verbal (speech) communication. The child uses speech to establish contact and cooperation with others, but not as an instrument of thinking. Objective actions serve as a way to establish interpersonal contacts.

In to school age role-playing game becomes the leading activity in which the child models relationships between people, as if fulfilling them social roles copying the behavior of adults. In progress role play there is a personal development of the child, he masters the objective activity and the initial skills of communication.

At primary school age, teaching becomes the main activity, as a result of which intellectual and cognitive abilities are formed. Through teaching, the whole system of relations between the child and adults is built.

In adolescence, labor activity and an intimate-personal form of communication arise and develop. Labor activity is the emergence of a joint passion for any business. Teenagers start thinking about future profession. Communication at this age comes to the fore and is built on the basis of the so-called “camaraderie code”. The "Code of Partnership" includes business and personal relationships similar to those of adults.

In senior school age, the processes of adolescence continue to develop, but intimate-personal communication becomes the leading one. High school students begin to think about the meaning of life, their position in society, professional and personal self-determination.

These are the main provisions of the development concept of D.B. El-horse. It was further developed in the works of D.I. Feldstein.

Rice.

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) (Fig. 2.9) - Swiss and French psychologist, studied the mechanisms cognitive activity child. As a result of his research on the study of thinking and speech in children, he came to the conclusion that mental development is the development of the intellect, and the stages of mental development are the stages of development of the intellect. The essence and purpose of development is adaptation to the surrounding reality in order to achieve balance with it.

Intelligence, according to Piaget, is a means of adapting to the living environment. Living in a social environment, a person constantly experiences its effects, which often lead the human body out of balance, disorientate, and maladjust it. Since any person strives to maintain harmonious relationships with the environment, i.e. has a need for adaptation, then in order to achieve balance (adaptation), a person must compensate for the imbalance that has arisen, solve constantly arising problems. According to J. Piaget, the intellect serves this very purpose.

Balancing mechanisms, according to Piaget, are accommodation and assimilation. Assimilation is an action with new objects in accordance with already established skills and abilities. Accommodation is the desire to change the skills themselves in accordance with changing conditions. As a result of accommodation and assimilation in the psyche and behavior, the disturbed balance is restored, and the discrepancy between the existing skills, habits and conditions is removed. As long as assimilation and accommodation are in a state of equilibrium, one can speak of rational behavior; otherwise it is lost and loses its intellectual properties. Achieving a fundamental balance between assimilation and accommodation is a difficult task, and its solution depends on the level of intellectual development of the subject.

Piaget regards the formation of the intellect as the pivotal line of the mental development of the child, on which all other mental processes depend. Piaget did not consider the child as intellectually "imperfect", he saw the originality of children's thinking and set a goal to study this originality, to understand its patterns.

Understanding that human thinking begins to take shape long before it becomes verbal, Piaget nevertheless paid special attention in his research to the study of children's speech. In a kindergarten, a study was conducted in which all the statements and actions of children during free activities (playing, drawing, designing) were systematically recorded. The data obtained by Piaget showed that children's statements can be divided into two groups:

• socialized speech, in which there is an interest in the response of the communication partner, its purpose is to influence the interlocutor. This speech may take the form of a question, answer, information, criticism, request, order, etc.;
• egocentric speech, which is characterized by the fact that the child reports what he is thinking at the moment, without being interested in whether they are listening to him, what is the point of view of the interlocutor. The form of these statements can be different: repetition, monologue, phrasal speech. Piaget believed that the function of egocentric speech is rather expressive - the pleasure of talking, accompaniment and rhythmization of actions.

The child's egocentric speech, manifested at a certain stage of development, is the most important proof of the qualitative originality of the child's thought. Egocentrism as the most important feature of children's thinking consists in judging the world exclusively from their own direct point of view and in the inability to take into account someone else's.

Egocentrism is expressed through other phenomena. Among them:

• realism characterized by the direct perception of objects as they are observed at the moment (“the wind blows because the trees are swaying”, “the one who wets his feet more is to blame”, etc.);
• animism - animation, endowing things with feelings, consciousness and vitality (a child ties a broken branch to a tree, an adult asks: “Why are you doing this?” - “It hurts, his arm is broken”);
• artificalism - understanding of the world as created by man or for man (the sun - “so that it would be light for us”, the river - “so that the boats sailed”).
• syncretism - unity of children's thinking; the perception of details, causes and effects as related (“when we opened the jar, and in the window the car was buzzing, and the beetle crawled away ...”);
• transduction - the transition from the particular to the particular, bypassing the general (“if she meows, and is fluffy, and she also has scratches, then she ... still has to drink milk”);
• insensitivity to contradiction.

These characteristics of children's thinking form a complex that determines the logic of the child, which is based on the egocentrism of speech and mental activity. Piaget believed that egocentric thinking is an intermediate form in the development of children's thinking and provides a transition from autonomous (unconscious, motivated by the satisfaction of elementary needs) to socialized, conscious, rational thinking.

To study children's thinking and speech, Piaget applied a new method - clinical conversation, which takes place in a free form without limiting the child to fixed standard questions. The content of the experimenter's communication with the child concerns everyday situations, reasoning about objects, events, actions, etc. The researcher asks a question, listens to the child's reasoning, and then formulates additional questions, each of which depends on the child's previous answer.

Piaget devoted the second stage of his scientific activity (since the 1950s) to the study of the operational side of children's thinking. He came to the conclusion that the development of thinking is the development of mental operations. He identified four stages in the intellectual development of children:

• sensorimotor stage (from the birth of a child to 1.5-2 years);
• preoperative stage (from 2 to 7 years);
• stage of concrete operations (from 7 to 12 years);
• stage of formal operations (after 12 years).

In the speed of passing through these stages in children, certain individual differences are observed, therefore, the age limits of the stages are determined approximately.

sensorimotor stage. From birth to 1.5-2 years, the dominant line of development of the child is associated with the formation of the sensorimotor sphere: he looks, listens, bites, touches, grabs, manipulates - all this is important and curious for him.

The criterion for the emergence of intelligence is the use by the child of certain actions as a means to achieve the goal. At the age of about 10 months, the child begins to associate his own action and its result - in order to get the red ball, which is in the glass under the white one, you must first pull out the white one.

Gradually, the child comes to the realization that objects continue to exist and stay in their places even when they are not directly perceived with the help of the senses.

preoperative stage. At this stage, there is an active assimilation of the language, the naming of objects and their images with words. The egocentrism of thinking is clearly manifested, expressed in the difficulty of becoming the position of another person, the inability to see phenomena and things through his eyes.

An illustrative example is the experiment with a model of three mountains: a child sat down at a table on which a model with three mountains was placed. different color and with additional distinguishing features (snow peak, house, tree). On the other hand, a doll was placed. The child was asked (in one of the variants of the task) to choose from the photographs presented to him the one that captures the view of the mountains as the doll sees them. Until the age of 6-7 years, children tend to choose a picture of what they see for themselves. Piaget explained this phenomenon as "egocentric illusion".

To trace how a child's thinking develops in ontogenesis, Piaget developed "tests for maintaining equality" - weight, length, volume, number - Piaget's tasks (see practical task No. 10). Usually, in children under 7 years old, the understanding of the preservation of the properties of objects during its perceptual transformation lags behind. Then the phenomenon of non-conservation is ascertained.

The preschooler evaluates the object, relying on the perception of it at the moment. He is “centered” on the present and unable to simultaneously think about how objects looked before; does not see that the action performed can be reversible (water poured from a wide glass into a narrow one, in which the water level is higher, is perceived by the child not as the same amount of water, but as “other water, which is more”) Piaget regards the phenomenon of non-conservation as evidence the inability of the child (before reaching the age of 7) to decentration and inability to build logical reasoning.

Stage of specific operations. The child develops the ability to elementary logical reasoning about objects and events. There is an assimilation of ideas about the preservation of the number (about 6 years), mass (age about 7 years) and weight of objects (about 9 years). At this age, the child is able to classify objects according to certain essential features.

The social and cultural environment of the child, the process of education and upbringing can speed up or slow down the speed of passing through this stage of development. In this case, the child's own activity is especially important. Also, for the development of thinking (and especially for the development of awareness of other points of view), the exchange of ideas, discussion and argument with peers and adults is important.

The transition to concrete-operational thinking restructures all mental processes, moral judgments and the ability to cooperate with other people.

Stage of formal operations. At this stage, the child is able to think logically, using abstract concepts, he can perform direct and inverse operations in his mind, reason, formulate and test hypothetical hypotheses.

New hypothetical-deductive means of comprehending the world sharply expand the boundaries of the adolescent's inner life: his world is filled with ideal constructions, hypotheses about himself, those around him, and humanity as a whole. Adolescents overcome the "everyday" naive egocentrism of young children, they are captured by the diversity of points of view that has opened up to them.

Formal mental operations are the basis of the logic of an adult, elementary scientific thinking, functioning with the help of hypotheses and deductions.

According to Piaget, the functioning of the intellect is hereditary and therefore inherent in all people. This explains why all children go through the various stages in the same sequence, with some going through all stages while others are retarded or blocked at some stage due to a lack of one or more necessary factors. Piaget recognized the essential role of education for mental development, however, in the history of science, underestimation of the influence of education on the mental development of a child is associated with his name. On this occasion, in particular, L.S. argued with Piaget. Vygotsky.

However, Piaget's ideas provided the impetus for many other theoretical and empirical studies of intelligence. Piaget's contribution to child psychology is enormous: he was one of the first to pose the problem of children's thinking as qualitatively unique and having unique merits, traced the genesis of thinking, discovered the phenomena of children's thinking ("Piaget's phenomena"), and developed methods for its study ("Piaget's problems").

Chapter V

1. Stages of scientific biography.

Jean Piaget belonged to those rare scientists who, at the very beginning research work managed to pose the central problem and outline the main way to solve it, to whom time and extraordinary efficiency made it possible to build a theory that covered many problems related to the main line of research general patterns intelligence development. His main theme was the study of the origins of scientific knowledge. In terms of the number of questions posed, books and articles written, erudition in various fields of knowledge, influence on research in different countries, and, finally, in terms of the number of followers and opponents of his ideas among the most prominent psychologists of today, perhaps there is no equal to Piaget. Truly, he was the first among equals.

Piaget's teaching, in our opinion, is the highest achievement of the psychology of the 20th century. There is a well-known paradox, according to which the authority of a scientist is best determined by how much he has slowed down the development of science in his field. Modern foreign psychology of children's thinking is literally blocked by Piaget's ideas. A lot of research concerns the clarification of empirical facts, and there are almost no works devoted to the analysis of his theory. Many interpreters of Piaget are known, but none of them manage to break out of the limits of the system he developed. Using the appropriate method, the facts obtained by Piaget can be reproduced by any researcher. Therefore, according to the American psychologist D. Elkind, these are the most reliable facts in child psychology.

There is a huge gap between what was in child psychology at the beginning of the century before the work of Piaget, and the level of development of theory that exists now, thanks to his work. Piaget is a psychologist who paved new paths in science. He created new methods, discovered the laws of the spiritual life of the child, unknown before him.

Piaget came to psychology because his biological, philosophical and logical interests crossed in it. In his youth, under the influence of A. Bergson, a new side of the problem of cognition opened up for him - the possibility of its biological explanation. Piaget believed that this problem could not be solved directly, by reasoning, because between biology and theory; There is a gap in knowledge that can be filled by psychology, and not by philosophy, as A. Bergson thought. Based on the prospect of creating genetic epistemology - the science of the origin and development of scientific knowledge, Piaget transferred the traditional questions of the theory of knowledge to the field of child psychology and proceeded to their experimental solution.

The activity of J. Piaget as a psychologist began in 1920 in Paris in collaboration with G. Lipps and E. Bleyer. Since 1921, at the invitation of E. Claparede, he began to conduct scientific and teaching work at the Institute named after J. J. Rousseau in Geneva, and after a few years he became a professor at the University of Geneva. In Paris, he worked a lot in the clinic, studied logic, philosophy, psychology, and conducted experimental studies on children, begun without much enthusiasm. However, Piaget soon found his own field of study. This was the end of the theoretical and the beginning of the experimental period in the work of Piaget as a psychologist.

Philosophical reflections led Piaget to the idea that logic is not innate from the beginning, but develops gradually, and that it is psychology that opens up the possibility of studying the ontogenetic development of logic. Already the first facts from the field of psychology, obtained by Piaget in experiments with children on the standardization of the so-called "reasoning tests" by K. Bert, confirmed this his idea. The facts obtained showed the possibility of studying the mental processes underlying logical operations. Since then, Piaget's central task has been to study the psychological mechanisms of logical operations, to establish the gradual emergence of stable logical integral structures of the intellect. The possibility of directly investigating problems of logic was in line with Piaget's early philosophical interests.

The study of the "embryology of the intellect" also coincided with his biological interests. The period 1921-1925 is the beginning of Piaget's work on a systematic study of the genesis of intelligence. It was precisely on the basis of this general goal that he first singled out and investigated a particular problem - he studied the hidden mental tendencies that give a qualitative originality to children's thinking, and outlined the mechanisms for their emergence and change. With the help of the clinical method, Piaget established new facts in the field of child development. The most important of them are the discovery of the egocentric nature of children's speech, the qualitative features of children's logic, and the child's ideas about the world that are unique in their content. However, Piaget's main achievement, which made him a world famous scientist, was the discovery of the child's egocentrism. Egocentrism is the main feature of thinking, the hidden mental position of the child. The originality of children's logic, children's speech, children's ideas about the world are only a consequence of this egocentric mental position.

The results of Piaget's research of this period are contained in his first five books on child psychology. They were perceived by the scientific community as the last word in this field, although Piaget considered them only source material for subsequent work. He saw the disadvantage of these books in that the research presented in them was limited only to the study of speech and the thought expressed in speech. It turned out that the speech directly reflected the action. Piaget was well aware that thought is formed on the basis of action, however, Piaget looked for the source of integral logical structures of the intellect in the socialization of the individual, which he, following the traditions of the French sociological school, then understood as communication between individual minds. This, according to Piaget, also refers to the shortcomings of the studies mentioned.

In 1925-1929, Piaget studied the history of science, tracing and comparing the development of basic scientific categories and ideas in science and in the intellectual development of the child. This period of Piaget's scientific work is characterized by the emergence of a new direction in the study of the evolution of intelligence. It begins with a study of the development of the child in the first two years of life, when behavior (the actions of the child, not verbal reasoning) acts as an indicator of mental development. In this regard, the research technique also changed: Piaget gave the child objects with which he could manipulate. The central point of the study was the structure of actions and reasoning about the child's manipulation of these objects. And although the technique of experiments has changed, the method of research has remained the same.

The problem has remained, only the aspect of its study has changed. Piaget now set himself the task of freeing himself from the verbal side of action in order to understand the real functioning of the intellect.

The research results of this period were published in three volumes. They reflect the genesis of intellectual behavior, the picture of the world (the child's ideas about the permanent volume, space, causality), the emergence of symbolic behavior (imitation, play). These studies show that intelligence occurs in a child before mastering speech. Higher-level intellectual operations are prepared by sensorimotor action. Piaget saw the task of the psychologist in tracing step by step the transformation of innate inherited reflexes into various forms of complex behavior. Then the following task arose: to trace the path from the emergence of the idea of ​​the constancy of an object to the ideas about the preservation of the physical properties of an object (weight, mass, etc.). These studies, carried out in collaboration with B. Inelder and A. Sheminskaya, confirmed the basic law of child development formulated by Piaget in his early works - the law of transition from general egocentricity to intellectual decentration, a more objective mental position.

The decade from 1929 to 1939 was the years of fruitful scientific research. Together with Inelder and Sheminsky Piaget, he conducted research on the genesis of number, quantity, space, time, movement, etc. These studies made it possible to study the stage of specific operations, and, most importantly, to see in them the desired operational holistic logical structures of the intellect. For an accurate interpretation of the facts obtained, Piaget decided to use the achievements of operator logic in psychology. At the same time, he did not limit himself to the apparatus of formal logic, but used mathematical logic, modernized logic, taking into account the requirements put forward by psychological facts. Piaget introduced the concept of grouping into psychology.

Before the child establishes logical operations, he performs groupings - combines actions and objects according to their similarity and difference, which, in turn, generate arithmetic, geometric and elementary physical groups. The true unit of thought, according to Piaget, is not only a concept or an isolated judgment, a class or a separately perceived relationship, but each classification in its entirety, each series of objects arranged according to their relation, each system of genealogical connections, each scale of values, in other words, - every grouping. Therefore, Piaget chose the grouping as a unit of thought and began to study it.

The difficulty of this psychological study was that it is impossible to directly trace how groupings are formed in the head of a thinking subject, so the psychologist had to build a model, turn to the deductive theory of groupings.

From a formal point of view, grouping is a closed reversible system in which all operations are combined into one whole and obey five formal laws, grouping criteria. Grouping is such an axiomatic model that a psychologist can use to interpret his facts.

Since the advent of this hypothesis, Piaget's interests have been divided. On the one hand, the diversity and richness of psychological facts were revealed, on the other hand, there was a need for their rigorous interpretation with the help of axiomatic models taken from logic, and the further development of these models. This is also the subject of several of Piaget's works.

In 1939 - 1950, Piaget continued his research in the field of the psychology of thinking. He studied the formation of the concepts of movement, speed, time, the child's ideas about space and geometry. Together with M. Lambersier, a study of perception was begun, which interested Piaget in connection with the development of the intellect. The main problem that occupied Piaget during these years was the relationship between intelligence and perception. This problem concerns the difference and similarity between these two structures of knowledge, the relationship between perception and concept. Piaget raises the question of the significance of perception in cognitive activity in general. One of the tasks was to test the conclusions of Gestalt theory, which did not satisfy Piaget in connection with understanding the problem of intelligence. Based on an experimental study of perceptual processes, he showed the probabilistic nature of perception.

In the same period, Piaget carried out an experimental study of the transition from the thinking of a child to the thinking of a teenager, a description of the formal-operational

thinking,

formulated

general epistemological concept of "genetic epistemology". The main publications of this time are the three volumes of "Introduction to Genetic Epistemology".

Thus, after thirty years, having written more than twenty volumes psychological research, Piaget again returned to his central philosophical idea - genetic epistemology, based on psychology.

Since 1955, a new period of Piaget's activity began. In the same year, the International Center for Genetic Epistemology was established in Geneva, in which specialists from many fields of knowledge from different countries began to cooperate. Piaget became the head of this Center. Conducting annual discussions on the problems of psychology, logic, biology, epistemology and their generalization allowed Piaget and. his staff to publish more than thirty volumes of material. Center.

In the same year, Piaget developed a hypothesis about the stages of intellectual development of the child and adolescent. According to this hypothesis, three large periods can be distinguished in intellectual development: the sensorimotor period, the period of preparation, and the period of implementation of specific operations, formal operations. These periods, in turn, are divided into sub-periods of preparation and implementation of intelligence structures characteristic of the period as a whole. In each sub-period, Piaget described age stages developments that made it possible to trace the achievement of intellectual operations step by step. Piaget's further works, published over the next 25 years, were devoted to the development of memory, the formation of a mental image in a child, general problems of biology and psychology, theory of knowledge (epistemology) and philosophy, and analysis of the development of consciousness in a child. Like perception, Piaget also considered the processes of memory and imagination in their relation to the intellect. Therefore, the stages of intellectual development - outlined by Piaget, can be interpreted as stages of mental development as a whole, since the development of all mental functions at all stages is subordinated to the intellect and determined by it.

The main idea developed in all Piaget's works is that intellectual operations are carried out in the form of integral structures. These structures are formed due to the equilibrium towards which evolution strives. The study of intellectual structures, the analysis of their relationship to nervous structures, on the one hand, and to mathematical, logical and linguistic structures, on the other, serves as a preparation for the creation of a general theory of structures. This is the subject of one of Piaget's generalizing works.

L.F.Obukhov. Child (age) psychology. M., 1996.