The concept of "image of the world" was introduced by A.N. Leontiev, considering the problems of perception. In his opinion, perception is not only a reflection of reality, it includes not only a picture of the world, but also concepts in which objects of reality can be described. That is, in the process of constructing an image of an object or situation, not individual sensory impressions, but the image of the world as a whole, are of primary importance.
Development of the concept of "image of the world" by A.N. Leontiev is connected with his general psychological theory of activity. According to A.V. Petrovsky, the formation of the image of the world occurs in the process of interactions of the subject with the world, that is, through activity.
The psychology of the image, in the understanding of A.N. Leontiev, this is specifically scientific knowledge about how, in the process of their activity, individuals build an image of the world - the world in which they live, act, which they themselves remake and partially realize; it is also knowledge about how the image of the world functions, mediating their activity in the objective real world. He noted that the image of the world, in addition to the four dimensions of the reality of space-time, also has a fifth quasi-dimension - the meaning of the objective world reflected for the subject in the cognized objective intrasystemic connections of the objective world.
A.N. Leontiev, speaking about the "image of the world", wanted to emphasize the difference between the concepts of "world of images" and "image of the world", as he addressed the researchers of perception. If we consider other forms of emotional reflection of the world, then other terms could be used, such as, for example, "the world of experiences" (or feelings) and "experience (feeling) of the world. And if we use the representation process to describe this concept, then we can use the concept of "representation of the world."
Further discussion of the problem of the "image of the world" led to the emergence of two theoretical propositions. The first proposition includes the notion that any mental phenomenon or the process has its carrier, the subject. That is, a person perceives and cognizes the world as an integral mental being. When modeling even individual aspects of the functioning of particular cognitive processes, cognitive processes are taken into account. The second position complements the first. According to him, any human activity is mediated by his individual picture of the world and his place in this world.
V.V. Petukhov believes that the perception of any object or situation, a specific person or an abstract idea is determined by a holistic image of the world, and he - by the whole experience of a person's life in the world, his social practice. Thus, the image (or representation) of the world reflects that specific historical - ecological, social, cultural - background against which (or within which) all human mental activity unfolds. From this position, activity is described from the point of view of the requirements that are imposed on perception, attention, memory, thinking, etc., when it is performed.
According to S.D. Smirnova real world is reflected in consciousness as an image of the world in the form of a multi-level system of human ideas about the world, other people, oneself and one's activity. The image of the world is "a universal form of knowledge organization that determines the possibilities of cognition and behavior control."
A.A. Leontiev distinguishes two forms of the image of the world:
1. situational (or fragmentary) - i.e. an image of the world that is not included in the perception of the world, but is completely reflective, distant from our action in the world, in particular, perception (as, for example, during the work of memory or imagination);
2. extra-situational (or global) - i.e. an image of an integral world, a kind of scheme (image) of the universe.
From this point of view, the image of the world is a reflection, that is, comprehension. The image of the universe A.N. Leontiev considers it as an education associated with human activity. And the image of the world as a component of personal meaning, as a subsystem of consciousness. Moreover, according to E.Yu. Artemyeva, the image of the world is born simultaneously in consciousness and in the unconscious.
The image of the world acts as a source of subjective certainty, which makes it possible to unambiguously perceive objectively ambiguous situations. The system of apperceptive expectations arising on the basis of the image of the world in a particular situation affects the content of perceptions and representations, generating illusions and perception errors, and also determining the nature of the perception of ambiguous stimuli in such a way that the actually perceived or represented content corresponds to the integral image of the world, its semantic structures and structures. interpretations, attributions and forecasts arising from it regarding this situation, as well as actual semantic attitudes.
In the works of E.Yu. Artemyev's image of the world is understood as an "integrator" of traces of human interaction with objective reality. "From the standpoint of modern psychology, the image of the world is defined as an integral multi-level system of a person's ideas about the world, other people, about himself and his activity, a system that" mediates, refracts through itself any external influence". The image of the world is generated by all cognitive processes, being in this sense their integral characteristic.
The concept of "image of the world" is found in a number of works by foreign psychologists, among which the founder of analytical psychology, K.G. Cabin boy. In his concept, the image of the world appears as a dynamic formation: it can change all the time, just like a person’s opinion of himself. Each discovery, each new thought gives the image of the world new outlines.
S.D. Smirnov brings out the main qualities inherent in the image of the world - integrity and consistency, as well as complex hierarchical dynamics. S.D. Smirnov proposes to distinguish between nuclear and surface structures of the image of the world. He believes that the image of the world is a nuclear formation in relation to what appears on the surface as a sensually (modally) formed picture of the world.
The concept of "picture of the world" is often replaced by a number of terms - "image of the world", "scheme of reality", "model of the universe", "cognitive map". In the studies of psychologists, the following concepts are correlated: "picture of the world", "model of the world", "image of the world", "information model of reality", "conceptual model".
The picture of the world includes historical component, worldview and attitude of a person, holistic and spiritual content, emotional attitude of a person to the world. The image reflects not only the personal-ideological and emotional component of the personality, but also a special component - this is the spiritual state of the era, ideology.
The picture of the world is formed as a representation of the world, its external and internal structure. The picture of the world, in contrast to the worldview, is the totality of worldview knowledge about the world, the totality of knowledge about the objects and phenomena of reality. To understand the structure of the picture of the world, it is necessary to understand the ways of its formation and development.
G.A. Berulaeva notes that in the conscious picture of the world, 3 layers of consciousness are distinguished: its sensual fabric (sensory images); meanings, the carriers of which are sign systems, formed on the basis of the internalization of subject and operational meanings; personal meaning.
The first layer is the sensory fabric of consciousness - these are sensory experiences.
The second layer of consciousness is meanings. The bearers of meanings are objects of material and spiritual culture, norms and patterns of behavior fixed in rituals and traditions, sign systems and, above all, language. In meaning, socially developed ways of acting with reality and in reality are fixed. The internalization of operational and objective meanings on the basis of sign systems leads to the emergence of concepts (verbal meanings).
The third layer of consciousness is formed by personal meanings. Objective content, which is carried by specific events, phenomena or concepts, i.e. what they mean for society as a whole, and for the psychologist in particular, may not substantially coincide with what the individual discovers in them. A person not only reflects the objective content of certain events and phenomena, but at the same time fixes his attitude towards them, experienced in the form of interest, emotions. The concept of meaning is not associated with the context, but with a subtext that appeals to the affective-volitional sphere. The system of meanings is constantly changing and developing, ultimately determining the meaning of any individual activity and life as a whole, while science is mainly engaged in the production of meanings.
So, the image of the world is understood as a certain aggregate or an ordered multi-level system of human knowledge about the world, about oneself, about other people, which mediates, refracts through itself any external influence.
The image of the world is a personally conditioned, initially unreflexed, holistic attitude of the subject to himself and to the world around him, which carries the irrational attitudes that a person has.
In the mental image, personal significance is hidden, the personal meaning of the information imprinted in it.
The image of the world is largely mythological, that is, it is real only for the person whose image it is.
Of course, all Soviet authors proceed from the fundamental provisions of Marxism, such as the recognition of the primacy of matter and the secondary nature of spirit, consciousness, and the psyche; from the position that sensations and perceptions are a reflection of objective reality and a function of the brain. But we are talking about something else: about the embodiment of these provisions in their concrete content, in the practice of research psychological work; about their creative development in the very, figuratively speaking, flesh of perception studies. And this requires a radical transformation of the very formulation of the problem of wear psychology and the rejection of a number of imaginary postulates that persist by inertia. The possibility of such a transformation of the problem of perception in psychology will be discussed.
The general proposition which I will try to defend today is that the problem of perception must be posed and developed as a problem of the psychology of the image of the world.(I note By the way, that the theory of reflection in German is Bildtheori, that is, the image.)
This means that every thing is initially posited objectively - in the objective connections of the objective world; that it - secondarily posits itself also in subjectivity, human sensibility, and in human consciousness (in its ideal forms). It is necessary to proceed from this in the psychological study of the image, the process of generation and functioning.
Animals, humans live in the objective world, which from the very beginning acts as a four-dimensional: three-dimensional space and time (movement), which is "objectively real forms of being"
This proposition should by no means remain for psychology only a general philosophical premise, allegedly not directly affecting the concrete psychological study of perception, the understanding of mechanisms. On the contrary, it forces us to see many things differently, not as it has developed within the framework of Western psychology. This also applies to understanding the development of the sense organs in the course of biological evolution.
Life of animals with from the very beginning takes place in the four-dimensional objective world, the adaptation of animals occurs as an adaptation to the connections that fill the world of things, their changes in time, their movement, which, accordingly, the evolution of the sense organs reflects the development of adaptation to the four-dimensionality of the world as it is, and not in its individual elements.
Turning to man, to the consciousness of man, I must introduce one more concept - the concept of the fifth quasi-dimension, in which the objective world opens up to man. This is - semantic field, system of meanings.
The introduction of this concept requires a more detailed explanation.
The fact is that when I perceive an object, I perceive it not only in its spatial dimensions and in time, but also in its meaning. When, for example, I cast a glance at a wrist watch, then, strictly speaking, I have no image of the individual attributes of this object, their sum, their "associative set." This, by the way, is the basis of the criticism of associative theories of perception. It is also not enough to say that I have, first of all, a picture of their form, as Gestalt psychologists insist on this. I perceive not the form, but an object that is a watch.
Of course, in the presence of an appropriate perceptual task, I can isolate and realize their form, their individual features - elements, their connections. Otherwise, although all this is included in invoice image, in his sensual fabric, but this texture can be curtailed, obscured, replaced without destroying or distorting the objectivity of the image.
The thesis I have stated is proved by many facts, both obtained in experiments and known from everyday life. It is not necessary for perceptual psychologists to enumerate these facts. I will only note that they appear especially brightly in images-representations.
The traditional interpretation here is to attribute to the perception itself such properties as meaningfulness or categoriality. As for the explanation of these properties of perception, they, as R. Gregory (1) rightly says about this, at best remain within the boundaries of the theory of G. Helmholtz. I note at once that the deeply hidden danger here lies in the logical necessity to appeal in the final analysis to innate categories.
The general idea I am defending can be expressed in two propositions. The first is that the properties of meaningfulness, categorization are the characteristics of the conscious image of the world, not immanent in the image itself, his consciousness. They, these characteristics, express the objectivity revealed by the total social practice, idealized in a system of meanings that each individual finds as "out-of-his-existence"- perceived, assimilated - and therefore the same as what is included in his image of the world.
Let me put it another way: meanings appear not as something that lies in front of things, but as something that lies behind the shape of things- in the cognized objective connections of the objective world, in various systems in which they only exist, only reveal their properties. Values thus carry a special dimension. This is the dimension intrasystem connections of the objective objective world. She is the fifth quasi-dimension of it!
Let's summarize.
The thesis I defend is that in psychology the problem of perception should be posed as the problem of building in the mind of an individual a multidimensional image of the world, an image of reality. That, in other words, the psychology of the image (perception) is a concrete scientific knowledge of how, in the process of their activity, individuals build an image of the world - the world in which they live, act, which they themselves remake and partially create; it is knowledge also about how the image of the world functions, mediating their activity in objectively real the world.
Here I must interrupt myself with some illustrative digressions. I am reminded of a dispute between one of our philosophers and J. Piaget when he visited us.
You get, - this philosopher said, referring to Piaget, - that the child, the subject in general, builds the world with the help of a system of operations. How can you stand on such a point of view? This is idealism.
I do not at all adhere to this point of view, - replied J. Piaget, - in this problem my views coincide with Marxism, and it is absolutely wrong to consider me an idealist!
But how then do you assert that for the child the world is the way his logic constructs it?
Piaget did not give a clear answer to this question.
There is an answer, however, and a very simple one. We are really building, but not the World, but the Image, actively “scooping out” it, as I usually say, from objective reality. The process of perception is the process, the means of this “scooping out”, and the main thing is not how, with the help of what means this process proceeds, but what is obtained as a result of this process. I answer: the image of the objective world, objective reality. The image is more adequate or less adequate, more complete or less complete ... sometimes even false ...
Let me make one more digression of a completely different kind.
The fact is that the understanding of perception as a process by which an image of a multidimensional world is built, by each of its links, acts, moments, each sensory mechanism, comes into conflict with the inevitable analyticism of scientific psychological and psychophysiological research, with the inevitable abstractions of a laboratory experiment.
We isolate and investigate the perception of distance, the distinction of forms, the constancy of color, apparent movement, etc., etc. With careful experiments and the most precise measurements, we seem to be drilling deep, but narrow wells that penetrate into the depths of perception. True, we do not often succeed in laying “communication channels” between them, but we continue and continue this drilling of wells and scoop out of them a huge amount of information - useful, as well as of little use and even completely useless. As a result, whole heaps of incomprehensible facts have now formed in psychology, which mask the true scientific relief of the problems of perception.
It goes without saying that by this I do not at all deny the need and even the inevitability of analytical study, the isolation of certain particular processes and even individual perceptual phenomena for the purpose of their study in vitro. You just can't do without it! My idea is completely different, namely, that by isolating the process under study in the experiment, we are dealing with some abstraction, therefore, the problem of returning to the integral subject of study in its real nature, origin and specific functioning immediately arises.
In relation to the study of perception, this is a return to the construction of an image in the mind of an individual. external multidimensional world, peace as he is, in which we live, in which we act, but in which our abstractions in themselves do not “dwell”, just as, for example, the so thoroughly studied and carefully measured “phi-movement” does not dwell in it (2).
Here again I have to make a digression.
For many decades, research in the psychology of perception has dealt primarily with the perception of two-dimensional objects - lines, geometric shapes, in general, images on a plane. On this basis, the main direction in the psychology of the image arose - Gestalt psychology.
At first it was singled out as a special "quality of form"; then in the integrity of the form they saw the key to solving the problem of the image. The law of "good form", the law of pregnancy, the law of figure and background were formulated.
This psychological theory, generated by the study of flat images, turned out to be "flat" itself. In essence, it closed the possibility of the "real world - psychic gestalt" movement, as well as the "psychic gestalt - brain" movement. Meaningful processes turned out to be substituted by the relations of projectivity and isomorphism. V. Koehler publishes the book “Physical Gestalts” (it seems that K. Goldstein wrote about them for the first time), and K. Koffka already directly states that the solution to the controversy of spirit and matter, psyche and brain is that the third is primary and this is the third there is a qestalt - form. Far from the best solution is offered in the Leipzig version of Gestalt psychology: form is a subjective a priori category.
And how is the perception of three-dimensional things interpreted in Gestalt psychology? The answer is simple: it lies in the transfer to the perception of three-dimensional things of the laws of perception of projections on the plane. Things of the three-dimensional world, thus, act as closed planes. The main law of the field of perception is the law of "figure and background". But this is not a law of perception at all, but a phenomenon of perception of a two-dimensional figure on a two-dimensional background. It refers not to the perception of things in the three-dimensional world, but to some of their abstraction, which is their contour*. In the real world, however, the definiteness of an integral thing emerges through its connections with other things, and not through its “contouring”**.
In other words, with its abstractions, Gestalt theory replaced the concept of objective peace notion fields.
It took years in psychology to experimentally separate and oppose them. It seems that J. Gibson did this best of all at first, who found a way to see the surrounding objects, the surrounding environment as consisting of planes, but then this environment became ghostly, lost its reality for the observer. It was possible to subjectively create precisely the "field", it turned out, however, to be inhabited by ghosts. Thus, a very important distinction arose in the psychology of perception: the “visible field” and the “visible world”.
In recent years, in particular in studies conducted at the Department of General Psychology, this distinction has received fundamental theoretical coverage, and the discrepancy between the projection picture and the objective image has received a fairly convincing experimental justification (3).
I settled on the Gestalt theory of perception, because it especially clearly affects the results of reducing the image of the objective world to individual phenomena, relationships, characteristics, abstracted from the real process of its generation in the human mind, the process taken in its entirety. Therefore, it is necessary to return to this process, the necessity of which lies in the life of a person, in the development of his activity in an objectively multidimensional world. The starting point for this should be the world itself, and not the subjective phenomena it causes.
Here I come to the most difficult, one might say, the critical point of the train of thought I am trying out.
I want to state this point right away in the form of a categorical thesis, deliberately omitting all the necessary reservations.
This thesis is that the world in its remoteness from the subject is amodal. We are talking, of course, about the meaning of the term "modality", which it has in psychophysics, psychophysiology and psychology, when, for example, we are talking about the form of an object given in a visual or tactile modality, or in modalities together.
Putting forward this thesis, I proceed from a very simple and, in my opinion, completely justified distinction between properties of two kinds.
One is such properties of inanimate things that are found in interactions with things (with "other" things), i.e., in the interaction "object - object". Some properties are revealed in interaction with things of a special kind - with living sentient organisms, that is, in the interaction "object - subject". They are found in specific effects, depending on the properties of the recipient organs of the subject. In this sense, they are modal, that is, subjective.
The smoothness of the surface of an object in the interaction "object-object" reveals itself, say, in the physical phenomenon of friction reduction. When palpated by hand - in the modal phenomenon of a tactile sensation of smoothness. The same property of the surface appears in the visual modality.
So, the fact is that the same property - in this case, the physical property of the body - causes, acting on a person, impressions that are completely different in modality. After all, “shine” is not like “smoothness”, and “dullness” is not like “roughness”.
Therefore, sensory modalities cannot be given a "permanent registration" in the external objective world. I emphasize external, because man, with all his sensations, himself also belongs to the objective world, there is also a thing among things.
In his experiments, subjects were shown a square of hard plastic through a reducing lens. “The subject took the square with his fingers from below, through a piece of cloth, so that he could not see his hand, otherwise he could understand that he was looking through a reducing lens. We asked him to report his impression of the size of the square... We asked some of the subjects to draw as accurately as possible a square of the appropriate size, which requires the participation of both sight and touch. Others had to choose a square of equal size from a series of squares presented only visually, and still others - from a series of squares, the size of which could only be determined by touch ...
The subjects had a definite holistic impression of the size of the square. The perceived size of the square was approximately the same as in the control experiment with only visual perception" (4).
Thus, the objective world, taken as a system of only "object-object" connections (ie, the world without animals, before animals and humans), is amodal. Only with the emergence of subject-object relationships, interactions, various modalities arise, which also change from species to species (meaning a zoological species).
That is why, as soon as we digress from subject-object interactions, sensory modalities fall out of our descriptions of reality.
From the duality of bonds, interactions "O-O" and "O-S", subject to their coexistence, the well-known duality of characteristics occurs: for example, such and such a section of the spectrum of electromagnetic waves and, say, red light. At the same time, one should not only lose sight of the fact that both characteristics express "a physical relationship between physical things" "
Here I must repeat my main idea: in psychology, it should be solved as a problem of the phylogenetic development of the image of the world, because:
A) an “orienting basis” of behavior is needed, and this is an image;
B) this or that way of life creates the need for an appropriate orienting, controlling, mediating image of it in the objective world.
Briefly speaking. We must proceed not from comparative anatomy and physiology, but from ecology in its relation to the morphology of the sense organs, etc., Engels writes: "What is light and what is non-light depends on whether the animal is nocturnal or diurnal."
The question of "combinations" is of particular interest.
1. Combination (of modalities) becomes, but in relation to feelings, an image; she is his condition. (Just as an object is a "knot of properties", so an image is a "knot of modal sensations".)
2. Compatibility expresses spatiality things as a form of their existence).
3. But it also expresses their existence in time, so the image is fundamentally a product not only of the simultaneous, but also successive combinations, mergers**. The most characteristic phenomenon of combining viewpoints is children's drawings!
General conclusion: any actual influence fits into the image of the world, i.e. into some "whole" 14 .
When I say that every actual, i.e., now acting on perceptive systems, property "fits" into the image of the world, then this is not an empty, but a very meaningful position; it means that:
(1) the boundary of the object is established on the object, i.e., its separation takes place not at the sensory site, but at the intersections of the visual axes. Therefore, when using the probe, the sensor shifts. This means that there is no objectification of sensations, perceptions! Behind the criticism of "objectification", that is, the attribution of secondary features to the real world, lies the criticism of subjective-idealistic concepts. In other words, I stand by the fact that it is not perception that posits itself in the object, but the object- through activities- puts himself in the image. Perception is his “subjective positing”.(Position for the subject!);
(2) inscription in the image of the world also expresses the fact that the object does not consist of “sides”; he acts for us as single continuous; discontinuity is only its moment. There is a phenomenon of the "core" of the object. This phenomenon expresses objectivity perception. The processes of perception are subject to this nucleus. Psychological proof: a) in the brilliant observation of G. Helmholtz: “not everything that is given in sensation is included in the “image of representation” (equivalent to the fall of subjective idealism in the style of Johannes Müller); b) in the phenomenon of additions to the pseudoscopic image (I see edges coming from a plane suspended in space) and in experiments with inversion, with adaptation to an optically distorted world.
So far, I have dealt with the characteristics of the image of the world that are common to animals and humans. But the process of generating a picture of the world, like the picture of the world itself, its characteristics change qualitatively when we move on to a person.
In man the world acquires the fifth quasi-dimension in the image. It is by no means subjectively ascribed to the world! This is the transition through sensibility beyond the boundaries of sensibility, through sensory modalities to the amodal world. The objective world appears in meaning, i.e. the picture of the world is filled with meanings.
The deepening of knowledge requires the removal of modalities and consists in such a removal, therefore science does not speak the language of modalities, this language is expelled in it.
The picture of the world includes invisible properties of objects: a) amodal- discovered by industry, experiment, thinking; b) "supersensible"- functional properties, qualities, such as "cost", which are not contained in the substrate of the object. They are represented in the values!
Here it is especially important to emphasize that the nature of meaning is not only not in the body of the sign, but also not in formal sign operations, not in the operations of meaning. She is - in the totality of human practice, which in its idealized forms enters the picture of the world.
Otherwise, it can be said like this: knowledge, thinking are not separated from the process of forming a sensual image of the world, but enter into it, adding to sensibility. [Knowledge enters, science does not!]
Some general conclusions
1. The formation of the image of the world in a person is his transition beyond the "directly sensual picture." An image is not a picture!
2. Sensuality, sensual modalities are becoming more and more "indifferent". The image of the world of the deaf-blind is not different from the image of the world of the sighted-hearing, but is created from a different building material, from the material of other modalities, woven from a different sensory fabric. Therefore, it retains its simultaneity, and this is a problem for research!
3. The "depersonalization" of modality is not at all the same as the impersonality of the sign in relation to the meaning.
Sensory modalities in no way encode reality. They carry it with them. That is why the disintegration of sensibility (its perversion) gives rise to the psychological unreality of the world, the phenomenon of its "disappearance". This is known and proven.
4. Sensual modalities form the obligatory texture of the image of the world. But the texture of the image is not equivalent to the image itself. So in painting, an object shines through behind smears of oil. When I look at the depicted object, I do not see strokes. The texture, the material is removed by the image, and not destroyed in it.
The image, the picture of the world, does not include the image, but the depicted (image, reflection is revealed only by reflection, and this is important!).
So, the inclusion of living organisms, the system of processes of their organs, their brain in the objective, subject-discrete world leads to the fact that the system of these processes is endowed with a content different from their own content, a content that belongs to the objective world itself.
The problem of such "endowment" gives rise to the subject of psychological science!
1. Gregory R. Reasonable eye. M., 1972.
2. Gregory R. Eye and brain. M., 1970, p. 124-125.
* Or, if you like, a plane.
**T. e. operations of selection and vision of the form.
3. Logvinenko A. D., Stolin V. V. Study of perception under conditions of inversion of the field of vision. - Ergonomics: Proceedings of VNIITE, 1973, no. 6.
4. Rock I., Harris Ch. Vision and touch. - In the book: Perception. Mechanisms and models. M., 1974. pp. 276-279.
The structure of conscious images (according to A. N. Leontiev)
The foregoing gives the impression that we have come to the solution of the problem of consciousness. But, alas, we only imagined it. Consciousness has eluded us, just as the soul has always eluded scientific analysis. We have not received the main thing - the description of the very phenomenon of consciousness, from which any analysis should begin. If consciousness is a part of the psyche (albeit a higher one, albeit a special one), then we should see the differences between this part and the rest of the psyche. What new appears in the psyche as a process and result when it becomes consciousness? What they have in common is that they open the external world to the subject, but what is special about the psyche when it becomes consciousness and begins to reveal to the subject not only the world, but the content of its own psyche (i.e., itself)? What is the peculiarity of the discovery of the external world in unconscious sensory images and in a conscious image?
Perhaps a comparison of sensory sensory-perceptual images and images constructed and presented to us in consciousness will help us? Such an analysis would give us differences in images, but there is one difficulty that prevents us from doing this. The fact is that we know the world only through our conscious images. We do not observe unconscious sensory images and cannot compare them with conscious images. And the conscious image is, most likely, not just a sensual one, which is given to us in consciousness, but new look, consciously and intentionally built by the subject of activity according to other rules. The primary sensory image is intended to reflect not the world and the environment as they are, but only the objective conditions of activity that are important for life. A conscious conceptual image should give us correct knowledge about the structure of the world. So a direct comparison of a sensory-perceptual sensory image and a sensory-conscious image is impossible, and one must look for workarounds to see the differences.
Let us therefore try to turn to the structure of the conscious image. A. N. Leontiev describes the structure of consciousness, but from the text of his book it is clear that we are talking about the structure of a conscious image. Therefore, when V.P. Zinchenko begins to analyze the structure of conscious movement, he finds himself forced to replace the first component of the image - sensual tissue - with biodynamic tissue.
Note that A. N. Leontiev distinguishes three components of a conscious sensory image: sensual fabric, meaning and personal meaning.
The sensory fabric of the conscious image
Sensory tissue is the primary subjective experience of a certain modality, on which, as a basis, a sensory-perceptual image of objects is built, i.e. a certain subject content is formed on the sensory fabric, which is set by ecology and the corresponding activity of a living being.
There are rules for constructing some properties of the image, determined by ecology and the laws of physics. In particular, visual perception begins with the processing of the image of an object on the retina of the human eye, which is inverted due to the laws of optics, then an image of the object adequate to the environment is built, where top part the object, as in life, is at the top. These rules are either set by genetics, or are the result of early learning, but in a person the relationship "sensory tissue - subject content" is not rigidly set once and for all. When the conditions of perception change, appropriate amendments are made to the process of constructing the image of an object, ensuring an adequate and habitual perception of the environment for activity.
For example, Stretton's glasses flip the image (swap top and bottom) and the image appears straight on the retina. As a result, a person sees objects upside down. Sensual tissue is not amenable to correction - a subjectively experienced picture arises automatically in accordance with the image on the retina. And if a person stops his activity and movement in space (and walking in an environment where everything is visually upside down is impossible without help), then he continues to see everything upside down. But if, with the help of another person, a subject with Stretton's glasses in front of his eyes lives a normal life, actively moving around in the environment, then after a while (several days) he suddenly begins to see everything "correctly", i.e. like all other people. There is a restructuring of the process of conscious perception. Activity in new conditions gives new criteria for constructing an adequate, or rather plausible, image. Removing the glasses after this can lead to a new inversion of the images, which quickly disappears, and some subjects with glasses on their eyes then begin to see objects at will, either straight or upside down.
In this restructuring, the main place belongs to the active movement of a person in space and the adequate use of objects, although at first with the help of another person, who ensures the correct behavior and confirms the adequacy of actions with objects. Similar results were obtained with other distortions of the conditions of perception.
A person is put on glasses that "break" straight lines drawn on paper and are forced to trace the lines with a pointer. When following the pointer along the "broken" part of the line, the subject is punished and encouraged if, contrary to what seems to be the case, he goes with the pointer along the real direction of the line. After a while, a person begins to see lines without distortion.
Animals in conditions of visual distortion freeze, not trying to act, or constantly fail - a chicken with goggles that shift the target to the side continues to constantly peck away from the grain lying in front of it.
Experiments with a pseudoscope showed that a person constructs, for example, visual images not in accordance with the laws of optics, as a sensual sensory-perceptual image is built under terrestrial conditions, but in accordance with general principles arrangements of the world in which he believes. Therefore, the likelihood rule, i.e. following these principles, wins in the conditions of conflict between the optics of perception and the known principles of the structure of the world.
For example, when a subject looks through a pseudoscope from above at a cup of water, then, according to the laws of optics, the cup is seen with the bottom towards the person. But there is water in the cup, which, according to the laws of physics, cannot stay on a convex surface. Consciousness finds an outlet in the transformation of water into jelly stuck to the surface of the cup. Equally indicative are examples of perception in the "Ames room" or perception through a pseudoscope of a face mask and a real person's face. The mask of the face "turns out" when viewed through a pseudoscope, but never the real face of a person.
The same non-rigid relationship exists between the sensory fabric and the content of consciousness, its fullness of knowledge about the world. For conceptual knowledge, the sensory fabric is, first of all, a means of delivering information about objects (about their changes in the directed interaction of objects). Therefore, deaf-blind people trained to receive information through the tactile channel (another sensory tissue) can achieve the same developmental progress as people with normal vision and hearing. This is proved by the examples of E. Keller, O. Skorokhodova, L. Suvorov, S. Sirotkin - people who lost their lives in early childhood sight and hearing. Special training allowed them to get a good education and live a fulfilling life. Of course, the defects of their sensory affect their sensory-conscious images - they do not have color images, they cannot tell about the shades of red and green, the timbre of the voice, but their ideas about the structure of the world differ from the ideas of other people only as a variation of the norm.
A. N. Leontiev believed that the function of the sensory tissue in consciousness is to provide a sense of the reality of the perceived world. He is trying to confirm this opinion with data on the perception of the world by sappers who lost their hands and eyesight as a result of the mine explosion. After an operation to form “claws” from the radius bones of the arm with a change in the position of the muscles of the shoulder girdle, patients begin to complain about the loss of a sense of the reality of the world. But such a result can be explained by a violation of tactile sensitivity, which, to a greater extent than other types of sensitivity, gives a feeling of the presence of a real object in the environment. The action of a new limb with an object does not coincide with the previous experience, and this may be the reason for the loss of a sense of the reality of the world.
The function of the sensory tissue in a conscious perceptual image may be different - to be a sensory language for describing the sensory side of the conscious image, or, in other words, a sensory "screen" on which the "pattern" of the perceived object is built ("embroidered").
- A pseudoscope is an optical device built in 1852 by the English physicist Wheatstone, which creates a reverse perspective. The relief "turns inside out" - the convex seems concave and vice versa.
- The Ames room is built to create an optical illusion. Read more about it in chapter 17.
Plan
Introduction
1. creative path A.N. Leontief
2. The teachings of A.N. Leontief
Conclusion
Bibliography
Introduction
Alexey Nikolaevich Leontiev (1903-1979) - Russian psychologist; doctor of psychological sciences, professor, active member of the ANP of the RSFSR (1950), APS of the USSR (1968), Honorary Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1937), Honorary Doctor of the University of Paris (1968). Developed a general psychological theory of activity. Main scientific works: “The Development of Memory” (1931), “Restoration of Movement” together with A.V. Zaporozhets (1945), "Essay on the development of the psyche" (1947), "Needs and motives of activity" (1956), "Problems of the development of the psyche" (! 959, 1965), "On a historical approach to the study of the human psyche" (1959), " Needs, motives and emotions” (1971), “Activity. Consciousness. Personality" (1975).
1. The creative path of A.N. Leontief
Alexei Nikolaevich Leontiev made activity the subject and method psychological research. He called the categories of activity of consciousness and personality as "the most important for building a consistent system of psychology as a specific science of the generation, functioning and structure of the mental reflection of reality, which mediates the life of individuals." The general psychological theory of activity developed by Leontiev is the most important achievement of Soviet psychological science, and Leontiev himself - a major theorist, one of the founders of Soviet psychology. Based on the material of theoretical and experimental studies, he showed the explanatory power of activity for understanding the central psychological problems: the essence and development of the psyche of consciousness, the functioning of various forms of mental reflection of the personality. In developing the problem of activity, Leontiev proceeded from the cultural-historical concept of the psyche of L.S. Vygotsky. He believed that the Marxist-Leninist methodology allows one to penetrate into the real nature of the psyche, human consciousness, and in the theory of activity he saw the concretization of the Marxist-Leninist methodology in the field of psychology.
The origins of his research date back to the early 1930s, when Leontiev headed a group of psychologists in Kharkov. It included A.V. Zaporozhets, L.I. Bozhovich, P.Ya. Galperin, P.I. Zinchenko, G.D. Lukov, V.I. Asnin. For them, the problem of practical activity and consciousness became central, which was considered by Leontiev as "a necessary line of movement in psychological research." The structure of children's activity, its means, goals, motives and changes in the process of child development were studied.
At the end of the 30s. A.N. Leontiev addresses the problems of the development of the psyche: he studies the genesis of sensitivity, the development of the psyche of animals. The result of these works was his doctoral dissertation "Development of the psyche" (1946). Here the concept of the phasic development of the psyche in the process of evolution of the animal world was developed, based on the change in this process of the nature of the connections of animals with environmental conditions. Each new step was considered as a transition to new conditions of existence and a step in the complication physical organization animals. The stages identified by Leontiev in the development of the psyche - the elementary sensory psyche, the perceptual and the stages of intelligence - were further developed and concretized in subsequent studies.
During the Great Patriotic War A.N. Leontiev, being the scientific director of the evacuation hospital in the Urals, led the work to restore the lost gnostic sensitivity and movements after injuries through a special organization of meaningful objective activity of the wounded. Although this cycle of research pursued practical goals, at the same time it led to a systematic study of the theoretical problem of the decisive role of activity and action in mental development.
In the articles of 1944-1947 devoted to the development of the psyche in ontogeny, the problem of activity receives a special treatment. The concept of leading activity was formulated, which was the basis for the study of periodization mental development child (A.B. Elkonin), the game was studied as a leading activity in preschool age. A distinction was made between activity (and motive) and action (and purpose), operations or methods of performing an action, the dynamics of their relationship in the process of the child's real life was described; the mechanism of shifting the motive to the goal was revealed as the mechanism of the process of the birth of new activities; a distinction was introduced between "only understood motives" and motives that really prevail. The transformation of an action into an operation was described. On the example of educational activity, the psychological characteristics of consciousness were revealed, in particular, the irreducibility of consciousness to knowledge of meaning to meaning was shown.
These studies formed the basis of A.N. Leontiev about activity, its structure, its dynamics, its various forms and types, the final version of which is given in the work “Activity. Consciousness. Personality". According to this concept, the activity of the subject is that meaningful process in which real connections of the subject with the objective world are carried out and which mediates the connections between the influencing object and the subject. Activity included in the system social conditions. The main characteristic of activity is its objectivity - activity is determined by the object, obeys, becomes like it: the objective world is "drawn" into the activity and is reflected in its image, including in the emotional-required sphere. The image is generated by objective activity. Thus, the psyche is considered as the processes of subjective reflection of the objective world generated by material practical activity. The form of existence of the image in the individual consciousness are the meanings of the language. Sensory tissue is also found in consciousness, i.e. sensual images and personal meanings that give consciousness a biased character. The study of all these components of consciousness is reflected in a number of publications.
The activity has a complex structure. activity and the motive corresponding to it, action and the corresponding goal, operations and the methods of carrying out the action corresponding to them, physiological mechanisms, implementers of the activity are distinguished. There are transitions and transformations between the components of activity. An analysis of the units forming the activity led to the conclusion that the structure of the external and internal activities the form in which the psychic exists. The transitions from external to internal activity (internalization) and from internal to external activity (exteriorization) are shown. Thus the mystification of the psyche and consciousness was overcome.
Activity presupposes a subject of activity, a personality. In the context of the theory of activity, the formations “individual” and “personality” are distinguished. Personality is the product of all human relations to the world, realized by the totality of all various activities. The main parameters of personality are the breadth of a person's connections with the world, the degree of their hierarchization and their general structure. The approach to the study of personality from the standpoint of activity theory is successfully developing in Soviet psychology.
2. The teachings of A.N. Leontief
The main theoretical provisions of the teachings of A.N. Leontief:
Psychology is a specific science about the generation, functioning and structure of the mental reflection of reality, which mediates the life of individuals;
· objective criterion of the psyche is the ability of living organisms to respond to abiotic (or biologically neutral) influences;
abiotic influences perform a signaling function in relation to biologically significant stimuli:
· irritability is the ability of living organisms to respond to biologically significant impacts, and sensitivity- this is the ability of organisms to reflect effects that are biologically neutral, but objectively related to biological properties;
· in the evolutionary development of the psyche, three stages are distinguished: 1) the stage of the elementary sensory psyche, 2) the stage of the perceptual psyche, 3) the stage of intellect;
The development of the psyche of animals is a process of development of activity;
Features of animal activity are:
a) all animal activity is determined by biological models;
b) all animal activity is limited by the framework of visual concrete situations;
c) the basis of animal behavior in all spheres of life, including language and communication, is hereditary species programs. Learning from them is limited to the acquisition of individual experience, thanks to which the specific programs adapt to the specific conditions of the individual's existence;
d) animals lack the consolidation, accumulation and transfer of experience in a material form, i.e. in the form of material culture;
· the activity of the subject is the content process in which real connections of the subject with the objective world are carried out and which mediates the connections between the object and the subject acting on it;
human activity is included in the system public relations and conditions;
The main characteristic of activity is its objectivity; activity is determined by the object, obeys, becomes like it;
· activity - this is the process of interaction of a living being with the outside world, allowing him to satisfy his vital needs;
Consciousness cannot be considered as closed in itself: it must be introduced into the activity of the subject;
Behavior, activity cannot be considered in isolation from human consciousness ( the principle of unity of consciousness and behavior, consciousness and activity);
activity is an active, purposeful process ( activity principle);
human actions are objective; they fulfill social goals ( the principle of objectivity of human activity and the principle of its social conditionality).
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Alexei Nikolaevich Leontiev (late 1930s).
Early works of A.N. Leontiev and his path to the psychology of activity
Breakthrough in the second half of the 1980s. The ideological "Iron Curtain", which largely fenced off the Soviet humanities, including psychology, from the world, caused a natural explosion of interest in previously forbidden fruits - foreign psychological theories and methodological approaches. The development of the world heritage was accompanied by a loss of interest in the seemingly already bored domestic approaches and theories, which at some point became fashionable to consider as a legacy of totalitarian ideology. But a decade has passed, the foam has settled, and in the last few years a revival of interest in the theoretical and methodological heritage of Russian authors has clearly become noticeable. In many respects, this coincided with a number of centenary anniversaries of leading domestic psychologists - L.S. Vygotsky (1996), B.V. Zeigarnik (2000), P.Ya. Galperin (2002), A.R. Luria (2002), in connection with which large international conferences were held. But the interest in the scientific heritage of leading Russian scientists is by no means only of an anniversary nature; For the fourth year now, the Psychological Institute of the Russian State Humanitarian University has been holding annual readings in memory of L.S. Vygotsky, books by L.S. Vygotsky, B.M. Teplova, A.N. Leontiev, A.R. Luria, S.L. Rubinstein, A.F. Lazursky, B.G. Ananiev, V.M. Bekhtereva, P.Ya. Galperin, B.V. Zeigarnik and other creators of domestic traditions in psychology.
This year we celebrate the centenary of Alexei Nikolaevich Leontiev, one of those scientists who to the greatest extent determined the appearance of Soviet and Russian psychology in the second half of the 20th century. Although his work continues to be a mainstay of curricula in general and developmental psychology, most of it was out of print for about 20 years, with the exception of a collection of writings on the phylogeny of the mind. Family and students of A.N. Leontiev, however, after his death, continued work on his scientific archive, which has preserved many unpublished works that have not only historical, but also considerable theoretical significance. More than a dozen manuscripts from the archive of A.N. Leontiev was published over the years in scientific journals and collections, as well as in a two-volume edition of his selected works and in a collection that consisted entirely of works that were not published during his lifetime. Recently, with the support of the Open Society Institute, his course of lectures on general psychology was also published. In 2001, a collection of early works by A.N. Leontiev, edited by G. Ryukrim with a preface by E.E. Sokolova. The time has come to prepare a balanced and representative meeting of all the main scientific papers A.N. Leontiev.
This edition is the first volume of such a collection; This project is expected to be fully implemented by the end of the decade. The principle of formation of the volumes is chosen as a mixed, thematic-chronological one, so that each volume is an independent completed gestalt. This volume, dedicated to the formation of A.N. Leontiev, covers the period from the mid-1920s to the end of the 1930s. and includes his early work; it also includes three later articles in which the author narrates retrospectively about this period.
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For scientists, it is the early works of this or that author that can often give much more to understand his concept (and the mechanisms of scientific creativity in general) than his later “classical” works, in which everything is already “combed” and “smoothed”.Many of the works included in this volume were not published by the author at the time - they were either published in the last two decades, after the death of the author, or (there are many of them) are published in this edition for the first time. A.N. Leontiev was not distinguished by a "light pen". Chased style of it scientific articles it was not easy for him; he was extremely demanding of himself and worked for a long time on each text, crossing out and correcting it, and was in no hurry to give insufficiently finalized, in his opinion, work to print. In addition, when it comes to the legacy of a scientist whose formation took place in the 1920s and 30s, a political and ideological context is also added to the purely scientific. A number of texts of those times were not published, not because they were not intended for publication, and not because the author did not consider them worthy, but because for one reason or another (sometimes insignificant) they did not fit into the dominant ideological line (and more often conjuncture) and their publication was impossible.
Content this volume broken down into several sections. The section "Research of higher mental functions" includes works performed in line with the cultural-historical approach of L.S. Vygotsky, to whom Leontiev joined in the late 1920s. The section "Dialogues with Vygotsky" covers the period from 1932 to 1937, when Leontiev, developing Vygotsky's ideas, began to discuss with him the most promising ways of developing the cultural-historical approach. The section "The Formation of the Idea of Activity" contains the works of 1933-1935, in which the contours of what would later become known as the activity approach in psychology were gradually emerging. The “Results” section presents generalizing texts of 1938–41, in which A.N. Leontiev formulates the methodological and theoretical foundations of his approach. Finally, the last section contains a retrospective analysis of A.N. Leontiev events and scientific discussions of this period.
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Scientific way of A.N. Leontiev began immediately after completing his studies at the philosophical department of the FON - the Faculty of Social Sciences of Moscow University (1921-1923), where he began to specialize in psychology. The Faculty of Social Sciences was organized at Moscow University in 1919 on the basis of the former Faculty of History and Philology; the Psychological Institute operated under it, headed by its founder Georgy Ivanovich Chelpanov (1862–1936). Thanks to the efforts of Chelpanov, the training system at the Institute provided both a deep theoretical education and good experimental training based on the best instruments in the world at that time, manufactured at the Zeiss factories. It was under the influence of G.I. Chelpanov Leontiev began to specialize in the field of psychology. During the student period A.N. Leontiev showed particular interest in the problem of emotions, which was devoted to his graduate work performed under the direction of Chelpanov.From January 1, 1924 A.N. Leontiev works at the Psychological Institute as an employee (he was left at the institute "to prepare for a professorship"). The position occupied by Leontiev - a researcher of the second category - was freelance, that is, he did not receive a salary. A.N. Leontiev actually worked under the guidance of A.R. Luria (1902–1977), who headed the Laboratory for the Study of Affective Reactions. In this laboratory, they studied the time and intensity of motor reactions in various functional states, in particular, under conditions of affect. As Luria later recalled, Leontiev became "his hands", showing extraordinary ingenuity in technical support experiments in which the experimenter might not even be present.
Meeting with L.S. Vygotsky, who had worked at the Psychological Institute since 1924, was a decisive event in Leontiev's life - by his own admission, he came to Vygotsky "methodologically empty." It was Vygotsky who became for A.N. Leontiev in psychology as the Teacher that every young scientist dreams of. Scientific program of L.S. Vygotsky was based on Marxist philosophy. Vygotsky saw the way to build a new system of psychological science not in the direct application of individual propositions of Marxism taken out of context to psychological empiricism, but in the creation of a psychological “Capital”, that is, a concrete scientific “philosophy of psychology” (general theory and methodology of psychological science) with based on Marxist methodology. Vygotsky's cultural-historical concept was the first attempt to create such a general psychological theory. According to some recollections, its first scheme existed already by the end of 1924 - the beginning of 1925.
The concept of L.S. Vygotsky this period of his work is well known. Nevertheless, let us recall its main provisions, since the works of A.N. Leontiev published in the first section of this volume.
"Alpha and Omega" of L.S. Vygotsky was the problem of consciousness. According to Leontiev, consciousness was "discovered" by Vygotsky for concrete scientific study. The traditional psychological science contemporary to Vygotsky, calling itself the “psychology of consciousness,” never was it, since consciousness appeared in it as something without quality, having only “formal” characteristics (more or less clarity, more or less volume, etc.) . In Vygotsky's concept, consciousness appeared not as an "immediate given", but as a thing of a fundamentally different ("essential") order. The properties of consciousness should be explained by the specific features of a person's lifestyle in his "human" world. The “system-forming” factor of human life is, first of all, labor activity, mediated by tools. various kinds. Hypothesis L.S. Vygotsky was that mental processes change in a person in the same way as the processes of his practical activity change, that is, they also become mediated. But the tools themselves, being "non-psychological" things, cannot mediate mental processes. Consequently, there must be special "psychological tools" - "tools of spiritual production." These psychological tools are various sign systems - language, mathematical signs, mnemonic techniques, etc.
A sign system (sign) is a tool developed by mankind in the process of people communicating with each other. This is a means (instrument) of influence, on the one hand, on another person, and on the other hand, on oneself. At school L.S. Vygotsky’s study of the sign began precisely with the study of this instrumental" function. The original form of the existence of a sign is always external. Then the sign turns into an internal means of organizing mental processes, which arises as a result of a complex step-by-step process of “growing” the sign. At the same time, this also means “growing” relationships between people. If the primary “order” (for example, to remember something) and “execution” (memorization itself) are divided between two people, then both actions are then performed by the same person.
It is necessary to single out two lines of the child's mental development - "natural" and "cultural" development. The "natural" (initial) mental functions of an individual are by their nature direct and involuntary, determined primarily by biological factors (organic maturation and functioning of the brain). In the process of mastering systems of signs by the subject (line " cultural development”), natural mental functions are transformed into new - higher - mental functions, which are characterized by three main properties: 1) sociality; 2) mediation; 3) arbitrariness. At the same time, in the process of cultural development, not only individual functions change - new systems of higher mental functions arise that are qualitatively different from each other at different stages of ontogenesis (consciousness has a “systemic structure”). Thus, in the course of ontogenetic development, the child's perception is freed from its initial dependence on the affective-need sphere of a person and begins to enter into close ties with memory, and subsequently with thinking. Thus, the "primary" connections between functions that have developed in the course of evolution are replaced by secondary connections built "artificially" - due to the mastery of sign means by a person. The most important principle of L.S. Vygotsky is the principle of historicism, and the main method of studying higher mental functions is the method of their formation.
These provisions of the cultural-historical concept of L.S. Vygotsky developed into a more or less integral system by 1927-28. By this time, he had become the unconditionally recognized ideological leader of the "troika" Vygotsky - Luria - Leontiev, and research began aimed at the experimental development of a new approach. A large cycle of experimental works by A.N. Leontiev (only about 1200 subjects of different age groups took part in memory studies), which were basically completed, as evidenced by the dating of the experimental protocols, by 1928 and published in the monograph "The Development of Memory" (1932; see current ed., pp. 27–198), as well as in several small works (see pp. 207–228 of this ed.), served, by all accounts, as the main experimental substantiation of cultural-historical theory at the first stage of its development.
Consider the main provisions of the book "The Development of Memory".
In the center of it were two most important mental processes - memory and attention (most of the book is devoted to memory). In it, Leontiev still fully shares Vygotsky's position on two lines of development of mental processes - natural and cultural, with which he later argued. The mechanism of direct and involuntary memorization is based on the mechanism of imprinting and reproduction of traces, which is inherent in both humans and animals. Some random stimulus is enough for mechanically fixed traces to be resurrected in memory. This form is called "natural biological" memory and is identified by Leontiev in this book with physiological processes; later he abandoned this identification. Higher forms of memory have different properties and are constructed differently. They are arbitrary and mediated in nature, social and historical in origin. The essence of both forms of memory is revealed by Leontiev not only on the basis of a generalization of the studies known by that time in psychology, but also on the example of his own experiments. In the analysis of attention, to which the fourth chapter of the book is devoted, A.N. Leontiev adheres to the same general approach.
However, A.N. Leontiev quickly corrected this point of view, which is reflected in one of the works, which is also published in this collection (pp. 226–228). It's about about the "instructive letter" of the seminary for the study of the psychology of "culturally peculiar" peoples of the USSR, published in 1930. It directly speaks of the need psychological studies of memory at the lower stages of development, and the qualitative originality of memory at these stages is explained not by any organic causes, but the originality of the psychological tasks solved by the subject; at the same time, Leontiev directly states that “the various requirements that life conditions place on a person’s memory and perception give rise to their various forms” (present edition, p. 226). A.N. left Leontiev and from the idea of the identity of "natural" mental processes in animals and humans. If during the period under review this was the general point of view of the entire school of L.S. Vygotsky, then later A.N. Leontiev and other authors constantly emphasized the essential differences not only of higher, but also of "lower" processes of the human psyche from the corresponding formations in the psyche of animals. Leontiev solves the problem of correlation between higher and lower forms of memory dialectically: arising on the basis of lower, higher forms memories carry them in themselves “in a sublimated form” and at the same time are not reduced to them: “building on top of the old form, any new form inevitably changes the form that preceded it ... old forms continue not only to coexist with new forms, but are also contained in them , forming their natural basis” (present ed., pp. 100, 118).
The development of the highest form of memory, according to Leontiev, follows two lines - separate, but interconnected with each other. This development occurs, firstly, along the line of improving external means of memorization (in the history of mankind, this line can be traced primarily in the appearance and development of writing, and it is not the subject of study here); secondly, along the line of development of the higher logical memory itself, which simultaneously leads to a corresponding "weakening" of the "natural" memory. The need for a transition to mediated memory arises when the subject solves new problems in conditions of collective joint activity (society instructs the individual to remember something). Similarly, arbitrary attention arises for the solution of special social problems.
One of the graphs, which visually presented the results of some conducted under the guidance of A.N. Leontiev's experiments, was called the "parallelogram of development" (see this ed., pp. 83, 85) and was included in many psychology textbooks. This graph is a generalization of the results, first of all, of the second and third series of experiments - a series of memorizing words without the use of external aids (pictures) and a series of memorizing similar words with the help of these tools - on three groups of subjects (preschoolers, younger schoolchildren and students). In preschoolers, memorization for both series was equally direct, since even with the presence of a card, the child did not know how to use it in an instrumental function; in adults, memorization, on the contrary, was equally mediated, since even without cards, an adult memorized material using internal means. For younger schoolchildren, the process of memorization with the help of external means led to a significant increase in its efficiency, while memorization without external means was not much more effective than for preschoolers, since younger schoolchildren still lacked internal means of memorization. A similar "parallelogram" was obtained by generalizing the results of experiments on attention. Thus, the empirical studies of A.N. Leontiev convincingly confirmed the hypothesis of L.S. Vygotsky that the development of higher forms of mental processes proceeds through the use of stimuli-signs. The stimuli-signs themselves in the process of this development are transformed from external to internal.
However, Leontiev did not simply state the use of stimuli-means in solving memory problems, but singled out and analyzed qualitatively different operations that determine the choice of means for memorization at different stages of mental development. Thus, a path was outlined for studying not so much the sign in its instrumental function, but rather the "inner side" of the sign operation - meaning.
The first stage in the development of the operation of mediation in the process of memorization was named by A.N. Leontiev pre-associative - the picture was chosen by the child without any connection with the presented word (for example, the word "mouse" was followed by the picture "wash basin", for "lunch" - "picture", etc.). The sign-means has not yet appeared here in any function, even instrumental. The next (second) stage is the stage of choice associatively determined by the word. In most cases, even among preschoolers, the picture was chosen already taking into account the presented word - for example, the picture “school” was selected for the word “lunch”. Although the picture is associated with the word, it is chosen without taking into account the subsequent reproduction of the word. Thus, the choice of a picture is still at the stage of a natural act, since the mechanism of organization of the second stimulus (stimulus-means) is not subordinated to the purpose of the operation as a whole. Finally, at the third stage, the structure of the mediation operation changes - the picture is selected taking into account the subsequent reproduction of the word behind it, i.e., the choice of the card here is already subordinate to the operation itself, can be understood only from the point of view of its ultimate goal. Thus, the “inner side” of the selection operation is that the formation of a connection between a word and a picture is already a reaction not to real, and on future situation. Such a choice already has all the signs of an intellectual operation. It was proved that the card acquires the conditional meaning of a “mnemonic sign” only in the process of replacing visual-figurative connections with non-visual ones, which is carried out in speech. After the child has mastered the process of memorization with the help of an external means, another process begins - the process of instilling auxiliary stimuli-means, i.e., the transition to internally mediated memorization.
Leontiev's research confirmed on empirical material such an important idea of Vygotsky as the systemic structure of consciousness, showing the real "interaction" of individual mental functions with each other. The most important conclusion that A.N. Leontiev, is that their emergence, functioning and development should always be studied in relation to the personality as a whole (see this edition, p. 198).
From the work of A.N. Leontiev also followed important pedagogical conclusions: 1) a prerequisite for the assimilation of sign systems by a child is his joint activity with an adult; 2) an increase in the efficiency of memorization is ensured primarily by the formation in a person of methods of mediated memorization; 3) the education of memorization techniques should take into account, first of all, the activity of the pupil himself - therefore, it is necessary to create conditions under which this activity will be ensured during mastering educational material; 4) ensuring the activity of the child is possible, in turn, when the action of memorization is included in an activity that is meaningful for him.
At the end of the book, Leontiev touches upon a very important, but little considered in the analysis of the works of the Vygotsky school, the question of the need to distinguish between the forms of “natural” processes that underlie higher ones. In this book, Leontiev distinguishes two types of "lower" memory processes - "memory-skill" and figurative memory based on eidetic mechanisms. From his point of view, both types of natural processes are subject to "removal" in the process of formation of higher - logical - forms of memory, but in different ways. The first form of the lower processes - "speech-movement habits" - organically enters as components into the higher forms of memorization, although it loses its independence in the process. On the contrary, the primary figurative memory, constituting the immediate basis of the higher conscious memory, at the same time is itself destroyed.
Soon after the publication of the book "The Development of Memory" was awarded the first prize of Glavnauka and TsEKUBU (Central Commission for the Improvement of the Life of Scientists under the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR). A.N. Leontiev was very critical of his work. In one of the letters L.S. Vygotsky in the summer of 1930, he called his book “a mouse born from a mountain.” L.S. Vygotsky, on the contrary, highly appreciated this study, noting that it reflected the “main core” of a new approach to memory (and to other mental processes). It's even more obvious now than it was then.
At the time when the book actually came out (that is, in 1932), A.N. Leontiev was forced to write (together with L.S. Vygotsky) another preface to it (see current ed., pp. 199–206), where, in the spirit of the times, he subjected his own work to “severe self-criticism” for “mistakes” and “ retreat from Marxism. This preface was a small pamphlet, which was enclosed in a completely finished book. If you do not pay attention to some "ideological flavor" of the self-criticism presented in the preface, then in it you can see, firstly, the allocation by both authors of the really "bottlenecks" of the cultural-historical concept and, secondly, the prospects for the further development of the ideas of the new , "non-classical" psychology, the foundations of which were laid by L.S. Vygotsky and then began to be developed in the works of his students and followers.
Thus, this preface to the book by A.N. Leontiev records not only the completion of a certain stage in the development of the psychological views of Leontiev himself, but also a new stage in the work of L.S. Vygotsky, who at that time (that is, at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s), in fact, was overcoming the cultural-historical concept. This once again confirms the opinion that has been expressed more than once, including by the authors of this introductory article, that cultural-historical theory is only a stage scientific biography L.S. Vygotsky, and not the content of his entire work, as is sometimes claimed.
