A. F. Lazursky. About natural experiment

A.P. Nechaev. Psychological foundations different types reading process in children

K. N. Kornilov. Biogenetic principle and its significance in pedagogy

M. Ya.Basov. Illustrative diagram of specific manifestations of qualitative features of mental functions in the behavior of a preschool child

L. S. Vygotsky. To the psychology and pedagogy of child disability

N.N. Dobrynin. Nurturing attention

A. A. Krogius. Experimental research intellectual functions of students

A.P. Nechaev. Experimental psychological study of preschool children

L. S. Vygotsky. Pedagogical psychology

A. A. Smirnov. Children's drawings

B. M. Bekhterev, N. M. Shchelovanov. To the substantiation of genetic reflexology

L. Wilson. Deaf-blind-mute training in Soviet Russia

L. S. Vygotsky. On the issue of multilingualism in childhood

L. S. Vygotsky. Background written speech

A. N. Leontiev. The problem of the dialectical method in the psychology of memory

A.R. Luria. Materials for the genesis of writing in a child

V. E. Smirnov. Manifestation of ability in adolescence

P.O. E frau her and. The world of perception and thinking of the child

L. S. Vygotsky. On the connection between work activity and the intellectual development of a child

D. N. Uznadze. Development of concepts in before school age

ChapterII. Works of the period 1931-1935

M. Ya.Basov. Human development problem

L. S. Vygotsky. Dynamics and structure of the personality of a teenager

P. P. Blonsky. The psychology of proof and its features in children

N.A. Menchinskaya. Dialectics of the emergence of numerical representations

B.G. Ananiev. The psychological situation of the survey in the lesson

A. N. Leontiev. Mastering students of scientific concepts as a problem educational psychology

ChapterIII. Works of the period 1936-1945

C. L. Rubinstein. Education and development

P. Ya. Halperin. Functional differences between tool and tool

A. A. Smirnov. The value of purposefulness when memorizing

R.G. Natadze. Experimental methods for the formation of real concepts

V. I. Asnin. On the conditions for the reliability of a psychological experiment

A. V. Zaporozhets. The role of elements of practice and speech in the development of thinking in children (based on the material of deaf-mute children)

P.I. Zinchenko. Forgetting and reproducing school knowledge

E.V. Guryanov. Psychophysiological foundations of human skills

A.R. Luria. The scientific significance of the experience of I. A. Sokolyansky

F. A. Pay. On the education and training of the deaf-blind and dumb

A. N Leontiev. On the experience of teaching the deaf-blind and dumb

D. B. Elkonin. Development of oral and written speech of students

A. V. Zaporozhets. Features and development of the process of perception

K.V. Khomenko. Understanding artistic image young children

A. S. Prangishvili. Recollection and Attitude (Basics of Confidence in Recollection)

L. I. Bozhovich. Psychological analysis of formalism in the assimilation of school knowledge

Foreword

The real reader is study guide on the courses of theory and history of developmental and educational psychology for university students and pedagogical institutes specializing in the specified field of psychology. It presents works reflecting the initial period of the formation and development of these psychological disciplines in our country immediately after October revolution and up to the mid 40s.

The next two books will include works by Soviet authors from 1946 to 1979, as well as works reflecting the history and state of the art foreign developmental and educational psychology.

The works included in the first book refer to an important period in the history of Russian psychology, marked by the beginning of research into the problems of psychological science on the basis of Marxist-Leninist theory. In the first three decades after the October Socialist Revolution, a difficult and fundamental restructuring of psychological knowledge took place in all areas of psychology. In the field of learning and developmental psychology, the struggle for Marxist psychology has been particularly acute. It was here that the main line of struggle took place, which predetermined the choice of cardinal directions in organizing the education and training of new generations of socialist society.

This anthology has three sections in accordance with the three stages of development of psychology during this period in our country. At each stage, the interpretation of the nature of the development and functioning of the psyche underwent a change. The first section presents the work of the stage of the transition to the construction of psychology on the basis of Marxist-Leninist philosophy (from 1918 to the end of the 1920s). The works of KN Kornilov, M. Ya. Basov, L.S.Vygotsky, P.P. Blonsky, and I.A. The works of the latter are not cited, but important evidence was given, which appeared in the foreign press, about the restructuring of the education of deaf-blind children in Soviet Russia (L. Wilson).

The second section contains works of the next stage related to the beginning of specific research based on a new methodology (from the end of the 1920s to the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on pedological perversions in the People's Commissariat for Education in 1936). The main achievements of this stage were associated with the research of L. S. Vygotsky and his collaborators A. R. Luria, A. N. Leontyev, N. A. Menchinskaya, and others; with the work of S. L. Rubinstein on the ontogeny of consciousness; with the study of DN Uznadze of the formation of concepts in preschoolers.

Finally, the third section contains works characterizing the subsequent development of Soviet developmental and educational psychology in the pre-war and war years, during which a certain limitation in the development of theory and research methods in the works of the first two stages was overcome and new theoretical knowledge was built up, which formed the basis for further intensive development of psychology in our country. In the works of this period, the idea of ​​the unity of consciousness and activity was determined and became the leading methodological position. It received experimental confirmation in studies of the development of cognitive activity in a child conducted by A.V. Zaporozhets and his collaborators, in the idea of ​​a formative experiment implemented in the works of R.G. Natadze, A.V. Asnin.

All material in the anthology is mainly systematized chronologically. All other principles were found to be unsuitable. Thus, it was difficult to separate work on developmental psychology from work on educational psychology. During the period under review, studies in these areas were inextricably linked. For almost every author, the genetic and functional aspects of the research appeared in an organic unity, which was their undoubted merit. The grouping of works according to other criteria also turned out to be inappropriate: on the problems of ontogenetic development (factors and driving forces of development, periodization of development, features of development by age, etc.) and on such aspects of the psychology of learning as the assimilation of a certain subject content (psychology of teaching reading, writing, mathematics, etc.), as well as on certain aspects of the psychology of education (psychology of relationships, motivation, character, etc.). Therefore, in each section, the works of various authors are presented in chronological order without special systematization of them according to other criteria, except for the article by A.N. Leontyev, published in 1947, which, in order to more comprehensively analyze the problem of teaching deaf-blind children, supplements the works related to 1940. (A.R. Luria, F.A.Rau).

The compilers tried to reflect as fully as possible in this anthology the front of research on child, developmental and educational psychology carried out in the period under review. In this regard, along with the works that determined the main directions of restructuring the theory and methods of research, there are works that have the character of private research that did not deviate from the traditions of classical experimental psychology.

A number of works of fundamental importance for developmental and educational psychology, carried out in the period under review, remained unpublished and are first printed selectively in this issue of the anthology. These include a report by A. N. Leontyev, speeches by A. R. Luria and F. A. Rau, Ph.D. theses by P. Ya. Galperin and D. B. Elkonin. Articles by A. V. Zaporozhets and V. I. Asnin are published in Russian for the first time. Their translation from Ukrainian language was performed by V.F.Morgun. The compilers thank him for his kind help. We are deeply grateful to N.F. Dobrynin, P. Ya. Gal'perin, A.V. Zaporozhets, A.A. valuable advice on the selection of works for inclusion in this edition of the anthology.

I. I. ILYASOV, V. Ya. LYAUDIS

B6TO88.1 X 91

Compiled by Cand. psychol. sciences L.M. Semenyuk

Edited by Dr. psychol. Sciences, prof. D.AND.Feldstein

NS 91 Reader on developmental psychology. Textbook for students: Comp. L. M. Semenyuk. Ed. D.I.Feldshtein. - 2nd edition, supplemented. M .: Institute of Practical Psychology, 1996.-304 p.

The reader was compiled in relation to the program of the course of developmental psychology. The texts are excerpts and extracts from the works of leading Russian psychologists. The book is equipped with a scientific and reference apparatus

0303050000-14

BBK 88.1

Institute of Practical Psychology, 1996.

FOREWORD

This anthology is a textbook for the course of developmental psychology for students studying this branch of psychological science in Russian universities.

The main purpose of the manual is to assist students in mastering the basic positions of Russian psychology in its specific area, in revealing the content, meaning, structure of the process and the laws of mental development.

Particular attention in the anthology is paid to the presentation of the leading principles of the approach to the explanation and understanding of mental development, the formation of a growing person as a person.

We are talking, first, about the socio-historical approach to understanding the nature of the human psyche; secondly, about the patterns of development of activity as the basis and mechanism of personal development; thirdly, on the scientific periodization of mental development; fourthly, about the characteristics of individual age periods, which differ not by a simple combination of various psychological characteristics, but by a special personality structure, specific developmental tendencies.

This led to the selection of texts.

The anthology includes the works of Russian psychologists, reflecting not only the main problems of developmental psychology, but also its most important concepts, theoretical positions and experimental attitudes.

The selected texts give a fairly complete and concretized idea of ​​the scientific position of the authors who develop one or another aspect of developmental psychology and at the same time characterize the important role and its special place in the system of world psychological science.

The subject of special consideration in the anthology was works that are effective in nature, revealing the conditions and mechanisms for activating the process of mental development of children both at certain age periods and at the entire distance of modern childhood.

All texts included in the anthology are published with abbreviations. At the same time, when giving fragments of works, we tried not to break their general logic, leaving in the texts everything that is most important that is necessary for mastering the corresponding section of the curriculum.

L.M. Semenyuk

Section I mental development

A. N. Leontiev TO THE THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT OF CHILD PSYCHE

Let us try, first of all, to imagine a picture of those changes as a whole that characterize the mental development of the child within the boundaries of the stage.

The first and most general proposition that can be put forward here is that the changes in the processes of the child's mental life observed within the boundaries of each stage do not occur independently of one of the other, but are internally linked to each other. In other words, they do not represent independent lines of development of individual processes (perception, memory, thinking, etc.). Although these lines of development can be isolated, but in their analysis it is impossible to directly find those relations that drive their development. For example, the development of memory forms, of course, a coherent series of changes, but their necessity is determined not by relations that arise within the development of memory itself, but by relations that depend on the place that memory occupies in the child's activity at a given Stage of his development.

So, at the stage of preschool childhood, one of the changes in memory is that the child develops voluntary memorization and recollection. The previous development of memory is a necessary prerequisite for this change to occur, but it is determined not by this, but by the fact that special goals are allocated in the child's consciousness — to remember, to recall. In this regard, memory processes change their place in the mental life of the child. Previously, memory acted only as a function of service

"Leontiev A. N. Problems of the development of the psyche. M., 1972.

one or another process; now memorization becomes a special purposeful process - an internal action, taking a new place in the structure of the child's activity.

On the whole, one can characterize as follows the general picture of the development of individual processes of the child's mental life within a stage. The development of the leading activity that characterizes this stage, and the associated development of other types of child activity determine the allocation of new goals in his consciousness and the formation of new actions corresponding to them. Because further development of these actions is limited to the operations that the child already possesses, and the already existing level of development of his psychophysiological functions, then there is a certain discrepancy between the one and the other, which is resolved by "pulling" operations and functions to the level, required by the development of new actions. So, preschool-type play, role-playing, is initially limited almost exclusively to external actions carried out with the help of motor operations, which are prepared by playing-manipulation in preschool childhood. But the new preschool type of play and the content of new actions that develop in it require completely different ways of their implementation. Indeed, they are formed extremely quickly (as they usually say, by “push”); in particular, the child's internal mental operations are quickly formed at this time.

Thus, the process of changes within the stages as a whole proceeds, figuratively speaking, in two opposite directions. The main, decisive direction of these changes - from the primary changes in the circle of life relationships of the child, the circle of his activities to the development of actions, operations, functions. Another direction is the direction from the secondary restructuring of functions and operations to the development of this circle of the child's activity. Within a stage, the process of changes going in this direction is limited by the requirements of the range of activities that characterize this stage. Crossing this border means a transition to another, higher stage of mental development.

Interstage transitions are characterized by opposite features. The relationships that a child enters into with the world around him are, by their very nature, social relationships. After all, it is society that constitutes the actual and primary condition of a child's life, which determines its content and its motivation. Therefore, each child's activity expresses not only his attitude to objective reality, in each of his activities the existing social relations are also objectively expressed.

Developing, the child finally turns into a member of society, bearing all the responsibilities that it imposes on him. Successive stages in its development are nothing more than separate stages of this transformation.

But the child not only actually changes his place in the system of social relations. He is also aware of these relationships, comprehends them. The development of his consciousness finds its expression in a change in the motivation of his activity: the old motives lose their incentive power, new motives are born, leading to a rethinking of his previous actions. The activity that previously played a leading role begins to become obsolete and recede into the background. A new leading activity arises, and together with it a new stage of development begins. Such transitions, in contrast to intrastage changes, go further - from changes in actions, operations, functions to changes in activities as a whole.

So, no matter what particular process of the child's mental life we ​​take, the analysis of the driving forces of his development inevitably leads us to the main types of activities of the child, to their motives, and, consequently, to what meaning is revealed to the child in objects, the phenomena of the world around him. From this side, the content of the child's mental development consists precisely in the fact that the place of private mental processes in the child's activity is changing, and this determines his characteristics, which these particular processes acquire at different stages of development. In conclusion of this essay, the following should be emphasized: we were able to consider in it mental development only from the procedural, so to speak, side of the psyche, almost completely omitting the most important question of the internal interrelationships of changes in activity with the development of a picture, an image of the world in the mind of a child,

with a change in the structure of his consciousness. Coverage of this issue requires a preliminary presentation of the psychological problem of the unity of the development of sensory contents, consciousness and those categories that do not coincide with each other, which we convey in terms of “meaning” and “meaning”. Therefore, this question could not fall within the scope of this article.

M. I AM - Basov THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT"

Problem development together with the problem of the subject and methodological forms the basis of psychology. These three problems form one whole, from which the developed system scientific knowledge arises in the same way as any complex organism develops from one original cell. We first clarified the very essence of this foundation, that is, the subject, and then, proceeding from the latter, we moved on to the methodological problem. Now we have to act in a similar way: based on the subject of psychology, try to determine, at least in the very general view the nature of the patterns of development of this subject. In posing the question in this way, we proceed from the position that the development of an object is determined by the nature and properties of the object itself. No matter what development we are talking about, there should always be two main questions: 1) what is the subject of this development, that is, what is developing; 2) what is the development of a given subject, that is, how this development occurs. A certain understanding of the subject may exclude the idea of ​​any development, this is well known from the history of all science, since this idea is a relatively recent property of the scientific world outlook. But the field of psychology, and in this case, can present the best, so to speak, classic in terms of the purity of the negation of the moment of development, models of thinking. This is undoubtedly the concept of the soul. The latter is a sample of such an understanding of the

B a s o v M I Selected psychological works M,

meta of psychology, which precisely excludes the possibility of development by its very existence, the soul is an eternal, constant and unchanging essence This essence is of irrational origin, and as such it is absolutely alien to development *.

Empirical psychology, with its new formula defining the subject of psychology as mental or mental phenomena, did not make any significant change in the position of the problem of development. True, it somewhat liberated this problem from the bonds of the soul with its attributes of eternity and immutability and made it possible to develop empirical research in the field of child psychology. But the era of this psychology could not and did not create the present theory of mental development, just as the attributes that excluded development, nevertheless, and now to such an extent still remained associated with the views of the past, that for the development of the fundamental questions of mental development of the necessary conditions, this view did not create the problem of psychogenesis in the form in which it could be posed by empirical psychology , in fact, has no real basis under itself and therefore it is doomed to deviations or to an idealistic met aphysics or on the path of positive science, undoubtedly connected with the problem of human development and very important for its development, but still different from the own paths of psychology as such. So, Wundt, speaking "about the organic development of mental functions", treats in detail the issues related to the development of the "substrate" of mental functions, ie. nervous system; as for the development

"As a particular illustration, it can be noted that for Kantian philosophy with its unknowable" thing-in-itself "the idea of ​​development was the true Achilles' heel of Plekhanov in connection with this question (note 7 to Engels's" Ludwig Feuerbach ") leads, among other things, the following reasoning by F Vek “I don’t know how the philosophers who adhere to the Kantian theory of knowledge deal with the doctrine of development. For Kant, the human soul was a constant value given in its elements. the rest, and not about showing the origin of these abilities But if we proceed from her axiom that a person has gradually developed from a small block of protoplasm, then it will be necessary to derive from the elementary life manifestations of the cell exactly what for Kant was the basis of the entire world of phenomena ".

tions of the mental functions themselves, then this whole problem comes down to the establishment of the state that the connection in states of consciousness with the course of development becomes more and more, capturing ever longer intervals of time, and this is established on the introspective experience of individual consciousness and hence carried over to the entire phylogeny.

The danger of deviating from the problem of development to alien, although, perhaps, positive paths, also threatens “psychology as a science of behavior” if this formula is considered as a complete one and the problem of development is set precisely on the basis of this form - ly. It in itself does not open the prerequisites for identifying specific patterns of human development proper and therefore condemns to one-sided biologism, which ultimately leads through modernized physiological anthropocentrism to idealism. The prerequisites for this are clearly expressed in the constructions of some modern American behaviorists, like Watson, Lashley, Weiss, and others. Some of these authors seek to deduce all human activity from physiological mechanisms, while others, like Weiss, go even further and strive to gram-centimeter-second measurement of human behavior based on the electron-proton theory and biophysics. Human behavior, being a very complex subject, can be an object for a number of sciences, each of which can study it from its own special point of view. As a result, why is it impossible to study the biophysical or electron-proton fundamentals of behavior? But this has nothing to do with human psychology, it has its own special tasks.

The main drawback, which is usually observed in the formulation of the problem of mental development and which must be overcome, is that they seek to understand and deduce this development from within the person himself, without due regard to the fact that in reality it is the result of human interaction. - ka with the naturally organized reality surrounding him. However, the last proposition in itself is so elementary that it is usually always as if they proceed from it, but this is only the semblance of understanding the essence of the issue, since objective, regularly organized reality in such cases is most often presented in the form of an amorphous medium, which 10

limits the role of some factor that stimulates, nourishes, promotes or inhibits the course of development, but no more, that is, does not determine the very laws of this development. The laws of development are thought in such cases entirely in the person himself - in his psyche or in his physiological organization, sometimes in both at the same time.

But the correct formulation of the problem should be different. The view of development as a result of human interaction with the surrounding reality should remain the original one. However, we believe that it obliges us to draw different conclusions than is usually thought. Let us first turn to the very formula that determines the subject of development. It should be at the level of the specified initial moment, which means that it should not reduce the subject of development to any moment in the person himself, be it the psyche or physiological mechanisms, etc., but should put it on a wider base. It is this goal that the formula “a person as an active figure in the environment” serves (better:

“A person as an active agent in an objective, lawfully organized activity”). The purpose of this formula is entirely to take all the phenomena, the development of which interests us, in the holistic context in which they actually always reside and in which their development actually takes place. A person as an active agent in the objective reality surrounding him and interacting with him denotes this context with a sufficient degree of correctness and clarity.

The stated formulation of the question leads to the need for certain conclusions. The first and main conclusion: mental development should not be confused or identified with the development of the human body as such. In fact, there are two different problems here, although, of course, they are related to each other. The difference between the one and the other development lies in the fact that the development of an organism is basically based on a mechanism that is biologically fixed in the organism itself. Due to this, the process of development here goes along the same path and leads to the transformation of the initial, embryonic cell into a mature organism of a certain type, in this case, into a human organism. As for the environment, although without connection with it and without its certain assistance, this process 11

development cannot be realized, nevertheless, the source of the regularity of development lies not in it, but in the organism itself. The development of a person as an agent in the environment occurs under completely different conditions, and therefore its results are completely different; depending on the conditions of development in relation to each individual person, a huge variety and all the contrasts that are only conceivable in a given development are possible here. True, this position is not absolute;

certain influences and restrictions on the development process are exerted by the human body itself, but this does not in the least change the essence of our formulation of the question, since it remains unconditionally correct within the limits of the possibilities that a person has as an organism at a certain stage of its development - tiya or at one or another certain state by it.

Here, an analogy is possible with the natural course of social development and with the role of the geographic environment in it, in the conditions of which the development of a given society is carried out. The geographic environment also creates well-known prerequisites and exerts its influence on the course of development of society, but the logic of this development, its objective regularity is determined not by it, but by other factors - the state of productive forces and production relations that exist within a given society ...

What is the essence or inner meaning of a person's development as an active agent in the environment? In effective penetration into this environment and in mastering it by means of effective cognition of it. This inner meaning remains the same, no matter how insignificant the segment of cognizable reality and, consequently, the segment of the path of development may be. Does a person know the properties of any particular body, which enables him to act with his nature; whether he learns to breed plants, the fruits of which he eats; whether he notices the correctness in the alternation of separate natural phenomena, and accordingly organizes his own life; on the other hand, does a small child know the concept of number and elementary operations with it, which give him the opportunity to establish his relationship with the environment on the basis of an exact measurement, whether he knows the physical structure of the world around him or the history of the society of which he is a member is, - in all these and them

In such cases, the basis is the penetration of a person into reality, mastery of the latter through knowledge of it, and at the same time in all these cases we have real segments of the path of development of a person as an agent in the environment, ie, mental development. Thus, in essence, the path of human mental development is unlimited, just like the world. This distinguishes it from the biological development of the organism, the latter has the final task of creating organisms of a certain type, and since this result is achieved, so far the development ends. Psychic development itself can go to the infinity of the universe. But it does not exist outside the limited organism, and therefore practically becomes also limited. This limitation occurs not only from the side of time, that is, not only by the limited life of the human body, but also by the content, since each organism has limited, and, moreover, certain properties that make it suitable for penetration into certain areas of reality and unsuitable for penetration into others The one who was born deaf will never be a doer in the world of sounds, and the blind is forever deprived of the opportunity to rely in his activity and, consequently, in his development on the properties of the world that are open to our sight.

The fundamental question is: how does this development take place, how is it directed and what brings into it the regularity that it actually possesses? Turning to the development of an organism as such, we seem to immediately receive a clear indication: if in one case development is based on a mechanism that is biologically fixed in the organism itself, and in the other it is not, then it follows that in the second case the source of regularity must look outside the organism, that is, in the surrounding objective reality. Despite this, until now, the idea of ​​the course of human mental development is usually exclusively influenced by the regularity that exists in the biological development of the organism. The pattern of mental development is usually thought of as a pattern of the same type as a biological pattern, or as the same. This means that I consider the organism itself, everything in itself, inside it, as the source of regularity. At the same time, depending on the tendencies of the general worldview, some will try to find the sources of regularities in 13

physiological mechanisms or in the biophysical foundations of the organism, while others - in the original principles of psyche.

The expression of this kind of ideas is, among other things, the fact that mental and biological characteristics and qualities of a person are combined as equal in characterizing a certain stage of development. So, for example, characterizing a seven-year-old child, they endow him, firstly, with a number of biological signs, which are various anthropometric indicators, the functional state of individual organs, etc., including up to the state of the teeth, and, in -second, psychological signs that should characterize the child as a figure in the environment. At the same time, those and other signs are thought to arise on the basis of regularities of a general type and are considered mandatory for a given age.

This view is based on a fundamental error. The meaning of the latter lies in the illusion of our perception of our own organism as a source of all and all kinds of regularities, as a result of which the main, main source of such, which is all lawfully organized reality, is not noticed. But the development of a person as a doer in the environment brings him into direct contact and interaction with this reality and therefore subordinates him to the latter. Turning to the specific facts of psychological development, we find in them a general confirmation of this position, which is that each person as an agent in the environment is limited in his capabilities by what he received from the environment in which his development took place. This means that there is no internal predetermination similar to that which exists in the biological development of an organism. However, these evidences are not enough for us, since they do not reveal the inner side of the development of a person as an agent in the environment under the influence of the objective laws of the environment itself. Therefore, it is necessary to take the question deeper, and for this to put it concretely; further, it is necessary to direct it to such concrete phenomena in which the party of interest to us came out with the greatest clarity. We proceed from the formula “a person as an active agent in the environment”. But this is the most general definition of our subject, an abstraction from which all elements of the concrete are removed. To

To analyze the subject in depth, it is necessary to find a solid point of support for it in concrete reality. Obviously, in the vast area of ​​human labor, in the diversity of its professional differences - this is where it is necessary to look for a fulcrum for analyzing the development of man as an agent in the environment. And we are addressing precisely here, to the professional labor activity of people.

To begin with, let's take what is closer to us - the area of ​​scientific activity of any particular specialty. This means that we must clearly imagine the process of human development as a certain scientific specialist, for example, as a mathematician.

The first thing that we must state when dealing with such a process is that it occurs in a strictly regular way. In the course of it, there is a strict sequence of the course of phenomena, a sequence of stages of development, which are located in a certain order. Indeed, after all, any science is comprehended by a person studying it in exactly this way; no arbitrariness or disorder is allowed here. If we take some complex of mathematical truths related to each other, then we cannot master this complex, that is, we cannot pass our development through it except in a strictly defined order, starting from one, passing to the next, etc. Violation of this order turns out to be impossible. Why is this happening? We usually say in such cases that, without knowing one theorem, we cannot understand another. We indicate this, as it were, a subjective basis for a given course of development, but if you carefully ponder the essence of the issue, it becomes clear that the subjective state here is only a reflection of a broken objective connection between two or more objective mathematical factors. This position has the quality of an obvious truth to us. But it is quite clear that what we have seen now in the small mirror of one mathematical complex reflects the truth of all mathematics and all scientific knowledge as a whole. Every science has its own logic, its own regularity, which determines the process of man's penetration into this science, that is, the process of his psychological development as an agent in a given environment. But where does the logic and regularity of science come from? What are its sources? Is it not clear that such

are objective reality and its laws. The laws of reality, directing the course of our knowledge of nature, are projected due to this into the system of this knowledge, that is, into science, and subsequently determine the course of development of people through science as well as directly by themselves. Thus, the objective logic of nature is projected into the logic of natural science, and the objective logic of the historical process of the development of human society is reflected in the logic of scientific social science. There will be no mistake if we say that such a course of development takes place in all those cases where a person, adapting to the environment, influences the latter and, transforming it in his work, based on tools, adapts it to himself, that is, where he is exactly a person. An animal, as a rule, is only capable of adapting itself to the environment, therefore it is not an active agent in the environment and is not capable of creating any “science” in the broadest sense of the word.

When the objective regularity of the world acts in the process of human development through the medium of science, into which it is projected with the natural course of human cognition, then this process of development proceeds, as it were, in a facilitated course in comparison with the one as if the same regularities determined it directly from reality itself. This alone explains the fact that under the conditions of cultural development, one person during his short life can penetrate with his development into the structure of the world as deeply as all of humanity could achieve this in the entire past history... But it is important for us to realize clearly that, basically, the natural character of the process of human development remains the same, regardless of whether it (the process) is directly determined by the objective laws of the world, when a person comprehends them himself in their practically effective experience, or the same laws affect this process through the medium of "science" in the broadest sense of the word. Of course, in both methods of influence there are many peculiar features, and the whole set of results of influence on a person in either way is obtained in both cases very different; for us, however, only the deepest basis of the course of development, the most important

the source of the regularity of the latter, in which both methods of influence, with all their differences, turn out to be identical ...

What is the role of a biological factor in the course of a person's psychological development and what are its relationships with the objective laws of this development? We have already answered this question in general terms.

The biological factor, that is, the organization of the organism itself, is precisely the factor of psychological development that serves the process of development with an apparatus of appropriate quality and power. This apparatus itself is also in development: the latter, in view of the fact that the apparatus of our organism is based on the laws that determine the development of the whole organism, that is, on those that are biologically fixed in itself. But at the same time, the very activity of this apparatus, which unfolds in interrelations with the environment, of course, does not remain without influence on the course of its development.

There is no doubt that the real line of psychological development of a person is some result / reward of both factors that determine it, that is, what is brought into development by the source of objective regularity that is outside the body, and what is brought into the organism itself. We did not reveal the mechanism of the relationship between these two moments, posing the question as if one-sidedly, but our task was, firstly, to draw attention to the special complexity of this mechanism, which is greater than is usually presented, and, second, as a prerequisite for a correct understanding of the mechanism of interaction, we consider it necessary to establish the significance of the interacting moments in themselves, each in their own function in the course of development.

V.M.Bekhterev,N. M. Schelovanov

TO JUSTIFICATION OF GENETICThREFLEXOLOGY"

From the empirical part of the report, we present the following conclusions:

"New in reflexology and physiology of the nervous system. M. - L., 1928.

1. In a newborn child, along with innate simple and complex specific reflexes and general nonspecific reactions, there are innate reactions of the dominant type - this is the food dominant and the dominant of the position.

2. The first essential stage in the development of a child is the emergence of dominants from other perceiving surfaces, of which the most significant are visual and auditory dominants.

3. For the development and further improvement of these dominants, it is important to exercise them through the influence of external influences.

4. Subsequent dominants from the organ of sight and hearing develop on the basis of a gradual functional complication of the initially local reflexes, which are already obtained in a newborn from the same perceiving surfaces.

5. Dominant correlations of the functioning of complex nervous mechanisms are the main conditions for the formation of differentiated motor reactions formed on the basis of the primary existing general motor reactions and simple reflexes, as well as through the further formation of new functional connections, which leads to the emergence in the field of movements of higher reactions such as combined reflexes.

6. The time and order of genetically earliest combination reflexes formation correspond to the same ones in the emergence of dominants. The establishment of new functional connections, that is, the formation of combined reflexes, is possible only in the presence of dominant processes of a general nature (concentration) occurring not only in the cerebral cortex, but also simultaneously in the lower parts of the nervous system, and due to which the mechanism of combination reflexes is not limited only to cortical processes. Therefore, the formation of combined reflexes and their work is also influenced by the subcortical regions, as well as by other parts of the body that are innervated by them: the vascular system, glands, etc. divisions, such as the occurrence of a food reaction in the feeding position already within the first month.

7. As one of the essential problems, genetic

the method raises the problem of the development of wakefulness as such a functional state, which is the main prerequisite for all higher reactions in general.

8. In the genesis, the primary is the state of sleep or, rather, the absence of wakefulness, therefore, in genetic study, it is possible to trace both the quantitative increase in wakefulness and to find out the external and internal conditions of its emergence and development. Hence, it is clear that the problem of sleep can be completely resolved only in connection with the elucidation of the nature of wakefulness, since sleep occurs when the conditions necessary for the emergence and support of wakefulness are eliminated. "

G. S. Kostyuk DEVELOPMENT PRINCIPLE IN PSYCHOLOGY"

The personality develops in connection with those arising in it! life by internal contradictions. They are conditioned by her relationship to the environment, her successes and failures, imbalances between the individual and society. But external contradictions, which even acquire a conflicting nature (for example, conflicts between a child and parents), themselves do not yet become the engine of development. Only by internalizing, causing in the individual himself the opposite tendencies entering into struggle with each other, they become the source of his activity aimed at resolving internal contradictions by developing new ways of behavior. Contradictions are resolved through activities that lead to the formation of new properties and qualities of the personality. Some contradictions, being overcome, are replaced by others. If they do not find their resolution, there are developmental delays, “crisis” phenomena, and in those cases when they relate to the motivational sphere of the personality - and painful disorders, psychoneuroses (Myasishchev, 1960).

"Methodological and theoretical problems of psychology. M

The dialectical nature of development finds its expression in the formation of both individual aspects of a personality and her mental life as a whole. The development of cognitive activity is characterized by dialectical transitions from sensory to conceptual forms. The development of her emotional-volitional, need-based sphere is moving by specific internal contradictions. One of the main internal contradictions, manifested in their own way at various stages of personality development, is the discrepancy between the new needs, aspirations and the achieved level of mastery of the means necessary for their satisfaction. In the social conditions of a person's life, the first aspect of it is ahead of the second. The emerging discrepancies induce a person to be active, aimed at assimilating new forms of behavior, mastering new ways of action. They are identified and resolved in the child's story game and other types of his activities. "

In connection with the emergence of a developing personality of distant, promising goals, new internal motivations for activity aimed at achieving them come into play. A prospective goal is a source of expectations of a person for future joy, for the sake of which she is ready to sacrifice the joys of the present. The ideal is the anticipation by the person of his future, to which she aspires. From the comparison of the expected and the present, her actions arise, through which somehow the approach of what is, to what is expected, her efforts are born, on - aimed at overcoming external and internal joys on the way to distant goals.

In this process, the dialectic of freedom and necessity is manifested. The freedom of action of the individual is gradually formed as a result of her awareness of the need. In essence, it is not isolation from objective conditions, but a deeper and more selective penetration into them, the development of the ability to subordinate the immediate, personal urges to action to more distant, social motives, which are perceived as something necessary, due, and delay, inhibit inappropriate acts of behavior. This

"Psychology of personality and activity of preschooler M, 1965.

the ability develops gradually, not without difficulties, by overcoming internal conflicts. The moral will of the individual is strengthened by his own victories over internal difficulties.

In the development of a personality, contradictions arise between the level of mental development achieved by her and her way of life, her place in the system of social relations, and the social functions she performs. The personality outgrows its way of life, the latter lags behind its capabilities, does not satisfy it. A growing personality strives for a new position, new types of socially significant activity (at school, outside school, in a work collective, etc.) and in the implementation of jtiix aspirations finds new sources of its development

The development of chicity is characterized by the struggle of many oppositely directed tendencies. So, in it, the analytical dismemberment of cognizable objects, their fragmentation, the allocation of various signs and properties comes into conflict with the ability of the brain to hold a huge mass of information obtained in this way. I.M.Sechenov at one time noted that the mind of a developing Chechen individual overcomes this contradiction by developing various methods of synthesizing millions of similar individual characteristics of objects, combining them with the help of words, terms into groups, classes, by revealing the same - military in the different, the general in the particular and the individual (Sechenov, 1947).

There are contradictions between the tendency towards inertia, stereotypy, stability and the tendency towards mobility, variability. In the first of them, the desire of a living system to preserve tested and justified connections, methods of action is manifested, in the second, the need to modify them under the influence of new life situations. I.P. Pavlov, noting the importance of the inertia of the nervous system, wrote that without it “we would live in seconds, moments, we would not have any memory, there would be no learning, there would be no habits” (Pavlov, 1952). At the same time, he emphasized the enormous importance of the plasticity of the nervous system, which manifests itself in the formation of personality traits. The contradictions between these two tendencies are resolved by developing more co-

perfect ways of regulating the interaction of a developing individual with the environment, characterized by dynamic stereotypy, high stability. Such methods are generalized knowledge, the ability to solve various problems arising in the life of a person, systems of generalized and reversible operations used in various situations. Their development characterizes the forward movement of a person from lower to higher levels of his intellectual development. Generalizations are also formed in the development of the motivational sphere of the individual, providing a stable logic of her behavior in changing life situations.

The driving forces of development develop themselves in the course of this process, acquiring at each of its stages a new content and new forms of their manifestation. At the initial stages of development, the contradictions between various tendencies arising in the life of an individual are not recognized by her, they do not exist for her yet. At later stages, they become the subject of consciousness and self-awareness of the individual, experienced by him in the form of dissatisfaction, dissatisfaction with himself, the desire to overcome contradictions. The new arises in the old through the activity of the subject.

Education and upbringing contribute not only to the successful overcoming of internal contradictions arising in the life of an individual, but also to their emergence. Upbringing confronts the individual with new goals and objectives that are realized and accepted by him, become the goals and objectives of his own activities. There are discrepancies between them and the personality's level of mastering the means of achieving them, prompting it to self-movement. By creating optimal measures of these discrepancies, education and upbringing successfully form new actions and the motives necessary for them, help an individual to find forms of manifestation of his desire for independence, for self-affirmation that correspond to the requirements of society and its own ideals. True management of personality development requires knowledge of this complex dialectic, which is necessary in order to facilitate the resolution of internal contradictions in the direction necessary for society.

L. V. Zaporozhets

CONDITIONS AND DRIVING CAUSES OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT OF A CHILD 4

One of the most important problems of child psychology is the problem of conditions and driving reasons for the development of the child's psyche. For a long time, this problem was considered (and is now being considered by many psychologists) in terms of a metaphysical theory of two factors (heredity and the quality of external and unchanging forces supposedly fatally predetermines the course of development of the child's psyche. At the same time, some authors believed that the factor of heredity was of decisive importance, others attributed the leading role to the environment, and finally, still others assumed that both factors interact, “converge” with each other (V. Stern). All these arguments were usually made purely speculatively and with complete ignoring the requirements of materialistic dialectics, without any analysis of the nature and specifics of the studied development process itself and without clarifying how certain external conditions enter this process, are transformed into its internal components.

Psychologists (Vygotsky, Rubinstein, Leont'ev, etc.), relying on a number of theoretical and experimental studies, laid the foundations of the theory of mental development of the child and found out the specific difference between this process and ontogenesis of the animal psyche. In the individual development of the psyche of animals, the manifestation and accumulation of two forms of experience is of fundamental importance: species experience (which is passed on to subsequent generations in the form of hereditarily fixed morphological properties of the nervous system) and individual experience, acquired by an individual by adapting to the existing conditions of existence. - nii. In contrast, in the development of the child, along with the two previous ones, one more, completely special form experience. This is a social experience, embodied in the products of material and spiritual production, which is assimilated by a child throughout his childhood.

1 Actual problems of developmental psychology. M., 1978.

In the process of assimilating this experience, children not only acquire certain knowledge and skills, but also develop their abilities and shape their personality.

The child is introduced to the spiritual and material culture created by society, not passively, but actively, in the process of activity, the nature of which and the characteristics of the relationship that he has with the people around him largely determines the process of forming his personality.

According to this understanding of the ontogeny of the human psyche, it becomes necessary to distinguish between previously confused concepts of driving causes and conditions of development. Thus, the study of the role of the innate properties of the organism and its maturation are a necessary condition, but not the driving cause of the process under consideration. It creates anatomical and physiological prerequisites for the formation of new types of mental activity, but does not determine either their content or their structure.

Having recognized the importance for the mental development of the child, his general human and individual organic characteristics, as well as the course of their maturation in ontogenesis, it is necessary at the same time to emphasize that these features are only conditions, only necessary prerequisites, and not the driving reasons for the formation human psyche. As LS Vygotsky rightly pointed out, none of the specifically human mental qualities, such as logical thinking, creative imagination, volitional regulation of actions, etc., can arise through the maturation of organic inclinations. For the formation of such qualities, certain social conditions of life and upbringing are required.

The problem of the role of the environment in the mental development of a child is solved in different ways, depending on the understanding of the general nature of the studied genetic process ... those ... authors who recognize the important role of the social environment in the development of the human individual .. Considering it metaphysically ... it is believed that it affects the child in the same way as the biological environment affects young animals. In fact, “in both cases, not only the environment is different, but also the ways of its influence on the development process. The social environment (and nature transformed by human labor) is not 24

just an external condition, but a genuine source of the child's development, since it contains all those material and spiritual values ​​in which ... the abilities of the human race are embodied and which an individual must master in the process of his development.

Social experience, embodied in tools of labor, in language, in works of science and art, etc., children do not master independently, but with the help of adults, in the process of communication with people around them. In this regard, an important and little-studied problem in child psychology arises - the problem of communication between a child and other people and the role of this communication in the mental development of children at different genetic stages. Studies (MI Lisina et al.) Show that the nature of a child's communication with adults and peers changes and becomes more complex throughout childhood, acquiring the form of either direct, emotional contact, or verbal communication, or joint activity. The development of communication, the complication and enrichment of its forms open up for the child all new possibilities of assimilating various kinds of knowledge and skills from others, which is of paramount importance for the entire course of mental development.

The assimilation of social experience by children occurs not through passive perception, but in an active form. The problem of the role of various types of activity in the mental development of a child is being intensively developed in child psychology. A study was made of the psychological characteristics of play, study and work in children of different ages and the influence of these types of activity on the development of individual mental processes and the formation of the child's personality as a whole. Studies of the orientational part of the activity made it possible to penetrate more deeply into its structure and to clarify in more detail its role in the assimilation of new experience. It was found that the orienting components of one or another Integral activity perform the function of “assimilation”, “modeling” of those material or ideal objects with which the child acts, and lead to the creation of adequate representations or concepts about these objects. The special organization of the orienting activities of children plays an essential role in the process of pedagogical guidance of various types of activities of children.

The dialectical-materialistic approach to the mental development of a child raises the problem of the “spontaneity” of this development, the presence of self-movement motives in it. Recognition of the determinism of mental development by the conditions of life and upbringing does not deny the special logic of this development, the presence in it of a certain self-movement. "Each new stage of the child's mental development naturally follows the previous one; and the transition from one to another is due not only to external but also internal reasons.As in any dialectical process, in the process of child development, contradictions arise associated with the transition from one stage to another.One of the main contradictions of this kind is the contradiction between the increased physiological and mental capabilities of the child earlier types of relationships with people around and forms of activity. age grade of mental times ornate.

L. S. Vygotsky

IMAGINATION AND ITS DEVELOPMENT IN CHILDREN 2

Studies indicate that children who are delayed in their speech development turn out to be extremely lagging behind in the development of their imaginations. Children whose speech development follows an ugly path, like, say, deaf children, who, by virtue of this, remain half

“It is necessary to strictly distinguish between the meaning, on the one hand, used by representatives of ... biologic concepts of the term“ spontaneity of development ”(as supposedly independent of the conditions of life and fatally predetermined by internal genetic factors) and the dialectical-materialistic concept of“ spontaneously development "as a process in the course of which internal contradictions arise, which are its internal driving reasons

2 Vygotsky L S. Development of higher mental functions;

children or partially dumb children, deprived of verbal communication, turn out at the same time to be children with extreme poverty, scarcity, and sometimes positively rudimentary forms of imagination ...

Thus, observation of the development of imagination revealed the dependence of this function on the development of speech. A delay in the development of speech, as it has been established, also marks a delay in the development of imagination ...

Speech frees the child from direct impressions, contributes to the formation of his ideas about the object, it gives the child the opportunity to imagine this or that object, which he did not see, and think about it.

With the help of speech, the child gets the opportunity to free himself from the power of direct impressions, going beyond them. The child can also express in words that which does not coincide with the exact combination of real objects or corresponding representations. This enables the child to be extremely free to address the realm of impressions indicated by words.

Further research showed that not only speech, but also further steps the child's life serves to develop his imagination; such a role is played, for example, by the school, where the child can painstakingly think in an imaginary way before doing something. This undoubtedly underlies the fact that it is during school age that the primary forms of daydreaming in the proper sense of this word are laid, that is, the ability and ability to more or less consciously surrender to certain mental constructions, regardless of the function that is associated with realistic thinking. Finally, the formation of concepts, which marks the onset of adolescence, is an extremely important factor in the development of the most diverse, most complex combinations, connections and connections that can already be established in the conceptual thinking of a teenager between individual elements of experience. In other words, we see that not only the very appearance of speech, but also the most important moments in the development of speech are at the same time the key moments in the development of children's imagination.

Thus, the factual research does not only fail to support the fact that the child's imagination

thought is a form of speechless autistic, undirected thought, but, on the contrary, at every step they show that the course of development of children's imagination, like the course of development of other higher mental functions, is essentially connected with the speech of the child, with the main psychological form of his treatment with others, that is, with the main form of collective social activity of the child's consciousness ...

If we take the so-called utopian constructions, that is, such deliberately fantastic ideas that are perfectly differentiated in consciousness from realistic plans in the exact sense of the word, then they are nevertheless performed not in the least subconsciously, but completely consciously, with a clear the attitude to build a well-known fantastic image, referring to the future or to the past. If we take the field of artistic creativity, which very early becomes available to a child, the emergence of products of this creativity, say, in a drawing, in a story, then we will see that here the imagination is directed in nature, that is, it is not a subconscious activity ...

If, finally, we turn to the so-called constructive imagination of the child, to all the creative activity of consciousness, which is associated with a real transformation, say, with technical constructive or construction activity, then we will see everywhere and everywhere that, as in the present inventor, imagination is one of the main functions with which he works, and in all cases the activity of fantasy is extremely directed, that is, it is directed from beginning to end to a specific goal, which is pursued by a person. The same applies to the plans of the child's own behavior, relating to the future, etc. ...

The psychology of childhood has noted an important moment for the activity of imagination, which in psychology is called the law of real feeling in the activity of fantasy. Its essence is simple, it is based on factual observation. The movement of our senses is very closely connected with the activity of the imagination. Very often in our country, both constructions turn out to be unrealistic from the point of view of rational moments that underlie fantastic images, but they are real in an emotional sense.

Using an old crude example, we could say: if I, entering a room, mistake a hanged dress for a robber, then I know that my frightened imagination is false, but my feeling of fear is a real experience, and not a fantasy about to a real sense of fear. This is indeed one of the fundamental points that explains a lot in the uniqueness of the development of imagination in childhood. The essence of this fact is that imagination is an activity extremely rich in emotional moments ...

But it is worth turning to the other two points in order to see that the combination with emotional moments is not or does not constitute the exclusive basis of imagination and imagination is not exhausted by this form.

Realistic thinking of a person, when it is associated with an important task for a person, which is somehow rooted in the center of the personality of the person himself, brings to life and awakens a number of emotional experiences, of a much more significant and genuine character than imagination and daydreaming. If we take the realistic thinking of a revolutionary pondering ... some complex political situation, going deeper into it, in a word, if we take thinking that is aimed at resolving a task that is vitally important for a given personality, we see that emotions associated with such realistic thinking, very often are immeasurably deeper, stronger, moving, meaningful in the system of thinking than those emotions associated with daydreaming. Another way of combining emotional and thought processes turns out to be essential here. If in the dreamy imagination the originality lies in the fact that thinking appears in a form that serves emotional interests, then in the case of realistic thinking we do not have a specific dominance of the logic of feelings. There are complex relationships in this thinking. individual functions between themselves. If we take that form of imagination, which is associated with invention and influence on reality, then we will see that here the duration of imagination is not subject to the subjective whims of emotional logic.

The inventor who imagines the devil

The tag or plan of what he should do is not like a person who in his thinking moves according to the subjective logic of emotions, in both cases we find different systems and different types of complex activities.

If we approach the issue from a classification point of view, then it would be wrong to consider imagination as a special function in a number of other functions, as a certain uniform and regularly repeated form of brain activity. Imagination should be considered as a more complex form of mental activity, which is a real combination of several functions in their peculiar relationships.

For such complex forms of activity that go beyond those processes that we are accustomed to call "functions", it would be correct to use the name psychological system, bearing in mind its complex functional structure. This system is characterized by inter-functional connections and relationships that dominate within it.

Analysis of the activity of imagination in its various forms and analysis of the activity of thinking shows that only by approaching these types of activity as systems, we find an opportunity to describe those most important changes that occur in them, those dependencies and connections that are found in them. .. At the same time, we observe two more extremely important points that characterize the relationship of interest to us between thinking from the positive side, and not only from the critical side.

These two points are as follows. On the one hand, we note an extraordinary kinship, an extraordinary closeness of the processes of thinking and processes of imagination. We see that both processes show their main successes at the same genetic moments. Just as in the development of children's thinking, in the development of imagination, the main turning point coincides with the appearance of speech. School age is a turning point in the development of children's and realistic and autistic thinking. In other words, we see that logical thinking and autistic thinking develop in an extremely close relationship. A more thorough analysis would allow us to venture into a bolder formulation: we could say that both of them develop in unity, that, in essence,

thief, in independent life in the development of both, we do not observe at all Moreover, observing such forms of imagination that are associated with creativity aimed at reality, we see that the line between realistic thinking and imagination is erased, that imagination is an absolutely necessary, integral part of realistic thinking ... Here contradictions arise that are natural from the point of view of the basic state of things: correct cognition of reality is impossible without a certain element of imagination, without departure from reality, from those direct, concrete, unified impressions that represent this reality in the elementary acts of our consciousness. Take, for example, the problem of invention, the problem of artistic creation; here you will see that the solution of the problem to a great extent requires the participation of realistic thinking in the process of imagination, that they work in unity.

However, despite this, it would be completely wrong to identify one with the other or not see the real opposition that exists between them. It consists, as one of the best researchers of the imagination says, in the following: the imagination is characterized by not much connection with the emotional side, no less degree of consciousness, no less and no great degree concreteness; these features are also manifested at various stages of the development of thinking. Essential for the imagination is the direction of consciousness, which consists in a departure from reality into a certain relative autonomous activity of consciousness, which differs from direct cognition of reality. Along with the images that are built in the process of direct cognition of reality, a person builds a number of images that are perceived as an area built by the imagination. At a high level of development of thinking, the construction of images takes place, which we do not find ready-made in the surrounding reality. From this, it becomes clear that the complex relationship that actually exists between the activity of Realistic thinking and the activity of imagination in its highest forms and at all stages of its development, it becomes clear how each step in conquering a deeper penetration into reality

is achieved by the child at the same time that the child is freed to a certain extent from the more primitive form of cognition of reality, which was known to him before.

Any deeper penetration into reality required a freer relationship of consciousness to the elements of this reality, a departure from the visible external side of reality, which is directly given in primary perception, the possibility of more and more complex processes with the help of which the knowledge of reality becomes more complex and rich.

I AM. WITH.Leites

AGE BACKGROUND OF MIND ABILITY 1

In this article, we are not talking about special abilities (for example, for music, for drawing), but about the so-called general, or mental, abilities (mind, intellect). In the context of a general education school, it is the mental abilities of students that come to the fore ...

It is clear which assessment of the mental merits of a child involves taking into account his age. Thus, a judgment about the rate of mental growth of a student is possible only in relation to the advancement in development achieved by a given age period. At the same time, it is impossible, for example, to assess the learning ability of a junior pupil, a pupil of middle grades or a senior pupil in some unified, absolute units of measurement (after all, not only the volume but also the content of the assimilated changes;

there is a peculiarity mental development at different ages, so it is difficult to compare the rates of mental development of students of different ages).

When dealing with children, naturally, every time we are faced with the fact that under normal conditions of learning and upbringing, as the child grows older, his mental strength increases very noticeably.

"Soviet Pedagogy, 1974, No. 1, pp. 97-107.

At the same time, from the point of view of the age dynamics of the development of abilities, it is essential that the transition from one age stage to the next means a transition to qualitatively new age characteristics, which are not reduced to the mental level. It would be a mistake to believe that with age, the internal conditions of development become more favorable in all respects. It is known, for example, that younger schoolchildren are especially susceptible to environmental influences, and one can hardly think that their mental receptivity only increases as they grow older. In other words, in the manifestations of the intellect of schoolchildren, as they move from the previous years of schooling to the subsequent ones, there are shifts caused by both the rise of mental strength and the limitation or even loss of some valuable features of the passed age periods.

Not only an increasing level of mental development, but also internal preconditions this development at different age stages may be related to the formation and growth of abilities.

Age features as components of abilities. Each pepiod of childhood has its own special, unrepeatable merits, inherent only in a certain stage of development. Moreover, there is reason to believe that in certain periods of childhood there are increased, sometimes extraordinary opportunities for the development of the psyche in one direction or another, then such a possible one! and gradually or sharply weaken. This deserves the most intimate attention ...

Many fakurs point to the importance of “age sensitivity” as a prerequisite for the formation of abilities and as a component of the abilities themselves. For example, the period of children's mastery of speech is very indicative, when every normal child is distinguished by a special sensitivity to language, activity in relation to linguistic forms, elements of linguistic creativity ... At the same time, another thing is noted: a special disposition to language, having fulfilled its vital function, making it possible to quickly master the forms of language and thinking, then it begins to decline. It is known that if, due to some exceptional circumstances, acquaintance with the language in these early years is delayed, then the development of speech is then extremely difficult ...

This is the case not only with speech abilities -

mi. The manifestations of very general mental qualities are also confined to the age periods of childhood: special curiosity; freshness, sharpness of perception; vivid imagination, manifested, in particular, in creative games; traits of clarity, concreteness of thinking, etc. The traits of the child's psyche that are very significant for the development of mental abilities seem to come and go, due to a certain age stage.

Let us point out some of the features characteristic of the main periods of school childhood, which are already much more complex, which can be attributed to internal conditions conducive to the growth of general abilities. So, the youngest schoolchildren are distinguished by a special readiness to learn, trusting submission to authority, belief in the truth of everything that is taught - all these are unique prerequisites for learning at primary school age (but the same properties, if they are inherent in the child further, can become a source of formalism, schooling, that is, negative qualities). Schoolchildren who have entered adolescence are distinguished by the rise of energy and the breadth of inclinations, the need to experience, to use their growing strength, the desire for self-affirmation. From a new perspective, such age lines open up opportunities for general development. Among older schoolchildren, first of all, attention is drawn to a new level of consciousness, the enrichment of the moral sphere, the search for a life perspective; for high school students, a tendency towards self-education becomes characteristic. Mental growth during early adolescence is also favored by the strengthening of more special interests and inclinations ...

There is nothing unusual in the noted age characteristics, these are normal features of a growing person, which make it possible to understand how, in the corresponding age period, one or another of the psyche is activated and the general development is prepared ...

It should be especially noted that the most common mental properties are activity and self-regulation. These two sides fundamentals abilities quite definitely change from one age level to another. Increased mental activity is a characteristic age trait of children and adolescents, it largely expresses a naturally conditioned need

and mental impressions and mental efforts ... In younger schoolchildren, it appears primarily in immediate curiosity, which is, as it were, the primary source of future research thought. At the middle school age, mental activity is combined with increasing persistence, is found in the breadth and variability of hobbies (in children and adolescents, general activity noticeably outstrips the development of more special interests and inclinations). In older schoolchildren, it is already largely selective and turns out to be more closely related to the meaningful aspirations of the individual. It is significant that age differences also relate to such manifestations of activity that do not increase from the lower grades to the older ones, for example, the ease of its awakening, the immediacy of reactions to the environment during age development is clearly declining. It is important to keep in mind that the development of abilities is associated with the age-related characteristics of activity ...

Another important prerequisite for development and the side of mental abilities - features self-regulation. Self-regulation, like activity, appears in all mental acts (the vital role of the psyche is precisely in the regulation of behavior and activity). Undoubtedly, the features of a child's self-regulation are inseparable from the properties of age and are not limited to the results of the study. In the years of school childhood, together with the growth of the nervous capabilities of a person, the ability to self-regulation increases and qualitatively transforms. The consistent change in the levels and originality of self-regulation that occurs in the course of age-related development is very noticeable, again when comparing students of younger, middle and senior school age. Thus, the spontaneity, haste, and imitativeness in the actions of younger schoolchildren are replaced in the middle grades by the readiness for more prolonged efforts, the gravitation towards activities that require gradual mastery and independence; older schoolchildren are distinguished by a special disposition to conscious self-regulation. In contrast to the course of development of some traits of mental activity, the possibilities of self-regulation in all respects increase, increase with age.

Age properties in each period of childhood are

"Jump" over any of them. The school years of life fully relate to the words of A.V. Zaporozhets about the special logic of mental development, about the presence in it of a certain self-movement, about the fact that each new stage of the child's mental development naturally follows the previous one, and the transition from one - Noah to the other is due not only to external, but also to internal conditions ...

The course of age development andnno abilities. Observations of changes in the mental appearance of students often draw attention to cases of uneven age-related mental development: a decrease or slowdown in mental growth, unexpected rises or delays. Features of the course of development of this kind, which distinguish students of the same age from each other, can be found in relatively similar conditions.< обучения и воспитания. Различия в темпе и ритме приближения к зрелости, существование различных вариантов самого хода возрастного разви- тия -важная сторона проблемы становления способно- стей...

Cases when a child develops very quickly mentally and, other things being equal, is far ahead of his peers, are not so rare. In every generation there are children with an early flowering of mental powers. What is the development of their abilities?

Since olden times, along with enthusiastic admiration for such children, a very critical, distrustful attitude towards them developed and then began to prevail. The views became widespread that the very early development of mental abilities is a painful phenomenon or the result of "coaching";

it was believed, almost established, that the "geeks" do not keep their talents in the future. The skeptical and wary attitude towards children, who stood out for their talented gami, was a kind of reaction to immoderate enthusiasm and had real reasons: disappointing recessions in the course of their development, very noticeable cases of discrepancy between the “declared” in childhood and reached in the years of adulthood. But in recent decades, there has been a transition to a more grounded and at the same time more optimistic attitude towards children with an early rise in mental strength. Accumulated evidence suggests that these children are

Most of them, contrary to popular belief, do not differ in soreness, a tendency to first breakdowns and by no means lag behind in physical development. Their early success in classes and the scope of their activity, as a rule, cannot be explained by “coaching”, since the rapid growth of their mental powers often occurs in unfavorable conditions and against the wishes of their elders. Along with the facts that reveal a subsequent slowdown in the pace and “leveling” in children with very rapid mental development, another thing is known: many outstanding people in various fields of activity were early ripe in degeneration. Apparently, “being ahead of peers, other things being equal, may indicate a full-fledged and promising variant of age development.

However, perhaps only in music, painting and some sports, where a great deal of experience in educating gifted children has been accumulated, the child's early achievements are perceived as a possible omen of his future achievements. As for children with unusually rapid mental development, not only in everyday life, but also for a practicing teacher, they often turn out to be primarily something dubious and, as it were, unnecessary, sometimes evoke an ironic attitude. But this attitude is unjustified. Of course, the advance of age indicators, no matter how significant it may be, does not give grounds for sensations, it cannot fully predetermine the properties of the mind in the future, but there are certain grounds to believe that rapid mental growth (if, of course, it is due to the characteristics of the child himself) is a sign, in any case, a favorable one.

With regard to children with an early flowering of intelligence, it is especially important to take into account the relationship between the manifestations of abilities and age characteristics. As A. V. Petrovsky correctly notes, “focusing attention on the first part of the word 'child prodigy', we involuntarily consign the second part to oblivion. At the same time, the most essential thing for understanding this interesting (and, by the way, not so rare) phenomenon is that all these prodigies remain children with their own childish characteristics ”.

The materials of special observations show that such children not only retain, but also especially clearly show the dignity of their age (age

ability components) discussed above. But this is not enough: even the most complete development in a child of the virtues of his own age alone cannot explain the amazing wealth of possibilities that some children shine with: the greatest acceleration of mental development occurs in cases when the virtues of the subsequent age are revealed ahead of time! ..

It is another matter whether the beneficial effect of the combination of age components of abilities will continue. It is known that the further development of children who have such a combination can proceed in different ways. The very possibility of the appearance of children “stepping over” the classes (without any extraordinary external circumstances), and the subsequent decrease in the rate of mental development in many of them can be considered as confirmation that the manifestations of abilities are caused precisely by age, i.e. That is, at a certain time in life, emerging, largely transient features.

The type of age-related mental development, which is directly opposite to that considered, is also well known; somewhat slowed down, stretched out, when gradually, gradually, there is an accumulation of certain advantages of the intellect. It is interesting that such a path of age-related development, at first glance, less favorable, associated with the prolongation, delay of the traits of childhood, may turn out to be promising and cause the subsequent rise of mental strength. The lack of early achievements does not mean that the prerequisites for very great or outstanding abilities will not be able to emerge in the future. It is indicative, for example, that in senior grades there are pupils who, for the first time at this age, often to the surprise of teachers and fellow practitioners, begin to discover a sharply increased level of mental abilities. We do not mean those cases when an unexpected rise in academic success is associated with health improvement, elimination of gaps in knowledge, an increase in time devoted to classes, etc. As the observations show, significant shifts in mental development of some Some of the students are the result of increased sensitivity to what was previously indifferent. This kind of "reorientation" of susceptibility and, accordingly, activity, judging by the available materials,

may significantly depend on the characteristics of the course of age development ...

It is characteristic for both of the considered ways of the formation of intelligence that the unevenness of the course of age-related development appears in the very level of the abilities shown by children (early and late, in relation to school childhood, the rise of abilities). But the variants of age-related development with less abrupt shifts, when the acceleration or slowness of age-related changes are revealed not so much in the level, but in the peculiarity of the mental abilities of gay people, are also of significant interest. Differences of this kind between schoolchildren are especially noticeable in the turning years of adolescence (among middle school students), when some students, in their interests and attitude towards the environment, already gravitate towards older adolescents, while others draw attention to themselves with the features of childhood. It should be borne in mind that one or another rate of age development often affects different aspects of the personality in different ways: an increase in maturity in some respects can be combined with the preservation of infantility in others.

The available evidence suggests that the retention of traits at an earlier age does not necessarily mean an overall mental retardation;

schoolchildren gravitating towards the previous age period are also found among the strongest pupils. Lingering traits of childhood can appear in some of these students as a virtue, even as an advantage (this is not so surprising, given the special disposition of younger students to perceive and assimilate) ...

In children with signs of lagging behind age in the development of personality, apparently, it is more often possible to find some mental limitation. But it is also very important that the signs of the period passed can affect primarily the originality, and not the level of intelligence. They should not be considered a disadvantage, for it is quite natural that there are different options for the course of age development and associated mental characteristics.

The role that advances in advance can play is not unambiguous either. Of course, advancing age means accelerated development, but often "leading to premature limitation of the merits of

its age, that is, some of the prerequisites for general development (which may not affect immediately, but later), it has only a relative value ...

It should be emphasized that in all the cases considered, we are talking about the unevenness of the very course of age development. It is known that completely different psychological traits are the result, for example, of attempts to speed up the development of a child with an exorbitant load, or, conversely, attempts to preserve childhood by isolating the child, etc. Of course, the most complete age-related development is not that , in which childhood is artificially prolonged, stretched or, on the contrary, deliberately excessively compressed, and one where each of its periods fully contributes to the formation of the personality.

Age features do not pass without leaving a trace: they not only displace each other, but to one degree or another are fixed in the personality. Wherein varying degrees The expression of these properties and belonging to a certain variant of the course of age-related development, apparently, can indicate the emerging traits of individuality. Individual differences in mental ability are not something external to the age-related components of ability. The formation of individual abilities occurs in the course of age-related development, and much depends on what will be taken, developed from those properties that appear in different periods of childhood, the features of what age and to what extent will affect the features of the Intellect.

At the same time, there is no doubt that already initially there are actually individual prerequisites for development (the so-called individual inclinations), which also undergo certain age-related changes. Of paramount importance is the deep interpenetration of age and individual moments proper ...

The age components of abilities inherent in all children indicate that versatile and high development of intelligence is a normal expression of human capabilities, as well as how important timely the formation of certain psychological qualities ...

f Exploring school years life allows us to judge the state of affairs only about the significance of the age-related origins of the formation

abilities, but also about the meaning of an individual-specific course of age development. In the years of a long climb up the “age ladder” and very distinct age-related changes, the unity of the age and the individual in the personality of a growing person is revealed.

Education and upbringing, the driving forces of mental development, exert a formative influence on the personality of the student not directly, but through the internal conditions of development.

B. M. Warmly e ABILITY AND GIFT 4

Three features, it seems to me, always lie in the concept of "ability" when used in a practically reasonable context.

First, by abilities we mean individual psychological characteristics that distinguish one person from another, no one will talk about abilities where it is about properties in relation to which all people are equal.

Secondly, not all individual characteristics are called abilities, but only those that are related to the success of some activity or many activities. Properties such as hot temper, lethargy, slowness, which are undoubtedly the individual characteristics of some people, are usually not called abilities, because they are not considered as conditions for the success of any activity.

Thirdly, the concept of “ability” is not limited to those knowledge, skills or abilities that have already been developed in a given person. It often happens that the teacher is not satisfied with the student's work, although the latter discovers knowledge no less than some of his comrades, whose successes delight the same teacher. The teacher motivates his dissatisfaction with those

"Teplov BM Problems of individual differences. M.,

That this student, “taking into account his abilities”, could have had much more knowledge. Identical knowledge and skills in the field, for example, mathematics for an experienced teacher can mean completely different for different students: for one, with brilliant abilities in mathematics, they indicate completely insufficient work, for another, they can indicate great achievements.

We cannot understand abilities as innate capabilities of an individual, because we have defined abilities as “individual psychological characteristics of a person,” and these latter, by the very essence of the matter, cannot be innate. Only anatomical and physiological features can be innate, that is, the inclinations that underlie the development of abilities, while the abilities themselves are always the result of development.

Thus, having rejected the understanding of abilities as innate features of a person, we, however, do not in the least reject the fact that in most cases the development of abilities is based on some innate features, inclinations.

The concept of “innate”, sometimes expressed in other words - “innate,” “natural,” “given from nature,” etc., is very often associated in practical analysis with abilities.

It is only important to firmly establish that in all cases we mean the innate nature not of the abilities themselves, but of the inclinations underlying their development. Yes, hardly anyone, and in practical use of words, understands anything else when speaking about the innateness of one or another ability.

Further, it must be emphasized that ability, by its very essence, is a dynamic concept. Ability exists only in movement, only in development. Psychologically, one cannot talk about the ability as it exists. before the beginning its development, just as it is impossible to talk about the ability that has reached its development, just as it is impossible to talk about the ability that has reached its complete development that has completed its development.

Having understood that the ability exists only in development, we should not lose sight of the fact that this development is carried out only in the process of one or another practical and theoretical activity. And from here 43

it follows that the ability cannot arise outside the corresponding concrete activity. It is only in the course of psychological analysis that we distinguish them from each other. It is impossible to understand the matter in such a way that the ability exists before the corresponding activity begins, and is only used in this latter. Absolute pitch as an ability does not exist in a child before he first began to recognize the pitch before the task. Before that, there was only a problem as an anatomical and physiological fact.

The development of abilities, like any development in general, does not proceed in a straightforward manner: its driving force is the struggle of contradictions, therefore, at certain stages of development, contradictions between abilities and inclinations are quite possible. But from the recognition of the possibility of such contradictions does not at all follow the recognition that inclinations can arise and develop independently of abilities, or, conversely, abilities, independently of inclinations.

Above, I have already indicated that abilities can be called only those individual psychological characteristics that are related to the success of a particular activity. However, it is not individual abilities as such that directly determine the possibility of successful performance of any activity, but only that peculiar combination of these abilities that characterizes a given personality.

One of the most important features of the human psyche is the possibility of an extremely wide compensation of some properties with others, as a result of which the relative weakness of any one ability does not at all exclude the possibility of successfully performing even such an activity that is most closely related to this ability. The lack of ability can be compensated within a very wide range by others, highly developed in a given person. It is necessary to recognize the merit of a number of foreign psychologists, and first of all Stern in his "Differential Psychology", the advancement and development of the concept of compensation of abilities and properties.

It is precisely because of the wide possibility of compensation that all attempts to reduce, for example, musical talent, musical talent, musicality, and the like, to any one ability, are doomed to failure.

To illustrate this idea, I will give one very elementary example. A kind of musical ability is the so-called absolute pitch, which is expressed in the fact that a person with ego ability can recognize the height individual sounds, without resorting to comparing them with other sounds, the height of which is known. There are good reasons to see in perfect pitch a typical example of “innate ability,” that is, an ability that is based on innate inclinations. However, it is also possible for persons who do not have perfect pitch to develop the ability to recognize the pitch of individual sounds. This does not mean that these persons will have perfect pitch, but this means that in the absence of absolute pitch, it is possible, relying on other abilities - relative hearing, timbre hearing, etc., - to develop such a skill, which in other cases is carried out on the basis of absolute hearing. Mental mechanisms for recognizing the pitch of sounds with real absolute pitch and with specially developed so-called "pseudo-absolut" hearing will be completely different , but the practical results may in some cases be exactly the same.

It must be remembered that individual abilities do not just coexist side by side and independently of each other. Each ability changes, acquires a qualitatively different character depending on the presence and degree of development of other abilities

Based on these considerations, we cannot directly move from individual abilities to the question of the possibility of a given person's successful performance of a particular activity. This transition can only be made through another, more synthetic concept. This concept is "giftedness", understood as a qualitatively unique combination of abilities, on which depended the possibility of achieving more or less success. \a in performing one or another activity

The peculiarity of the concepts of "giftedness" and "ability" lies in the fact that the properties of a person are considered in them from the point of view of the requirements that one or another practical activity makes to him. Therefore, one cannot speak of giftedness in general. One can only talk about giftedness for something, for some kind of activity.This circumstance has

especially important when considering the issue of the so-called "general giftedness", which we will touch upon a little later.

The correlation with concrete practical activity, which is necessarily contained in the very concept of "giftedness", determines the historical character of this concept. The concept of “giftedness” essentially depends on what value is attached to one or another type of activity and what is meant by “successful” performance of each specific activity.

A. N. Leontiev O FORMING ABILITYTh "

It is necessary from the very beginning to clearly distinguish between two series of abilities in a person: firstly, natural abilities, or natural, basically biological, and secondly, abilities specifically human, which have a socio-historical origin ...

By abilities of the first kind, I mean such abilities as the ability to quickly form and differentiate conditioned connections, or to resist the effects of negative stimuli, or even the ability to analyze, for example, sound signals, etc. Many of these abilities are common in humans and higher animals. ... Although this kind of ability is directly related to innate inclinations, they are not the same as inclinations.

According to the generally accepted definition proposed in our country by BM Teplov, inclinations are innate anatomical and physiological features. These are features that represent only one of the conditions of certain abilities, namely, an internal condition that lies in the subject himself. Thus, the inclinations in general are not a psychological category (Teplov, 1941).

Abilities are another matter, including abilities that I call natural. These are not the makings themselves, but that

"Questions of Psychology", I960, No. 1.

what is formed on their basis. A widely accepted definition of abilities is that these are the properties of an individual, the ensemble of which determines the success of a certain activity. This refers to the properties that develop ontogenetically, in the activity itself and, therefore, depending on external conditions.

As an example of natural abilities, the above is the ability to quickly form conditional connections. Of course, every normal person, like animals, has the anatomical and physiological conditions necessary for this. However, the following fact is well known: in animals that have extensive "laboratory experience," the development of artificial conditioned reflexes and differentiations proceeds faster than in animals that do not have such experience. This means that in the course of the acquisition of laboratory experience by animals, something changes in its capabilities, some internal changes arise - the animal acquires the ability to more successfully solve laboratory problems (Leontyev, Bobneva, 1953).

The same is observed in the case when it comes to innate typological features of the nervous system. They can also appear in development not quite unambiguously: it is enough to refer to the frequently cited facts characterizing animals raised under normal conditions and animals with “prison education”. Finally, this position remains true even when we turn to the development of sensory abilities. Is it not, in principle, even such crude facts as, for example, obtained in the well-known old experiments of Berger testify to this?

So, even the analysis of the simplest facts indicates the need to preserve the difference in inclinations and abilities proper in relation to natural abilities.

It is necessary to clearly distinguish abilities of the second kind from natural abilities, which I called specifically human. Such, for example, are the abilities of speech, music, design, etc. This has to be specially emphasized, because the fundamental uniqueness of specifically human abilities has not yet been sufficiently revealed.

What is the difference between specifically human

abilities and natural abilities inherent in humans in terms of their origin and conditions of formation?

Let us consider from this side, first of all, natural, elementary abilities. They are formed on the basis of innate inclinations in the course of the development of activity processes, including the processes of learning, which, in addition to the formation of connections, abilities, skills, also give a certain “formal” result, namely, a change in those internal prerequisites or conditions from which further possibilities of carrying out the activity depend. In a word, their development proceeds due to a kind of “involvement” of the inclinations (or already changed in the development of internal conditions) in the activity and, as it is said in the thesis of S. L. Rubinstein's report, occurs in a spiral (Rubinstein, 1959 ).

It is quite obvious that the described process is a real process that characterizes the development of human abilities; a similar process also exists in animals, in which, in the course of ontogenetic development, the internal conditions of behavior also change

The main question, however, is whether what has been said about the development of abilities applies to all human abilities, it has only a limited meaning in relation to humans and does not exhaust the essential features of nature in the formation of human-specific abilities, that is, such , which are inherent exclusively to humans and which, when speaking about human abilities, we usually mean.

Specifically, human abilities have a different origin, are formed substantially differently from natural abilities, and, therefore, have a different, as it is sometimes said, determination.

What has been said necessarily follows from the analysis of the process of social historical development human abilities.

It can be recognized as scientifically established that from the moment of the appearance of a modern type of man, the process of morphogenesis itself stops. This means that the further development of a person is no longer due to morphological consolidation, the action of selection and hereditary transmission of changes in his nature that are slowly accumulating in generations, that is, his heredity; that although the operation of the laws of biological

However, these laws cease to serve the process of the historical development of mankind and man, and they do not govern it. The development process from this moment begins to be governed by new laws - socio-historical laws, which apply both to the development of society and to the development of the individuals that form it. In other words, in contrast to the previous period - the period of human formation, the action of socio-historical laws is no longer limited by the success of his morphological development, and these laws receive full scope for their manifestation.

This constitutes the point which is the key to the whole problem and which must be fully understood. We are talking about the following alternative: either, in contrast to what has been said, it is assumed that the acquisitions of a person in the process of socio-historical development (such as, for example, speech hearing, instrumental actions or theoretical thinking) are fixed and transmitted hereditarily in the form of corresponding inclinations and that, therefore, people differ significantly from each other in inclinations that directly express these historical acquisitions of humanity; or it is assumed that, although the inclinations, that is, the anatomical and physiological characteristics of people, are not equal (which also creates an inequality of their natural abilities), they do not record and do not directly carry such abilities that correspond to specific historical acquisitions of people, and that, consequently, abilities of this kind can be reproduced only in the order of their ontogenetic formation, that is, as new formations during their lifetime.

As for the first of these provisions, despite the numerous attempts made to provide its scientific substantiation, it remains unproven, since its argumentation, in particular, by the factual data of special studies, invariably turns out to be imaginary, it is enough to refer, for example, F. Mail's study, which completely exposed the otological data of R. Wien, allegedly indicating the presence of histological differences in the structure of the cortex in representatives of the white and black races, or on the established fundamentally identical distribution

the increase in the indicators of "intellectual coefficients" of native and adopted children in families of different social status, which, in essence, overturns the idea of ​​the existence of a direct connection between these coefficients and hereditary characteristics.

But the point is not only in the scientific lack of proof of the position that the achievements of socio-historical development are fixed hereditarily. The main thing is that this position logically necessarily leads to the admission of differentiation of people according to their birth. given inclinations on the "primitive", on the one hand, and "supermen" - on the other, that it is resolutely refuted by the practice of the giant shifts taking place before our eyes in the level of spiritual development of entire peoples, when countries used to be almost complete illiteracy for the shortest historical segment are transformed into countries of advanced culture with numerous intelligentsia, and when, at the same time, intraracial and intra-national differences are completely erased in this respect, allegedly fatally prescribing some for physical labor, and others for professions requiring so-called “higher” abilities ...

Another opposite position comes from the fact that continuity in the historical development of man is not determined by the action of biological inheritance, but is carried out due to a special form of transferring the achievement of previous generations to subsequent generations that arises only in human society.

The fact is that these achievements are recorded not in morphological changes, further transmitted to offspring, but in objective products of human activity - material and ideal, - in the form of human creations: in tools, in material industry, in language (in a system of concepts, in science) and in works of art.

Behind all these creations of people, from the first tool created by a human hand to the latest technology, from a primitive word to modern highly developed languages, lies the aggregate labor of specific people, their material and spiritual activity, which in its product takes on the form of objectivity ... But this means that what is manifested in activity

a person, that is, his essential properties, abilities, is embodied in the product.

On the other hand, developing in society, each individual person meets with the world, transformed and created by the activities of previous generations, with the world that embodied the achievements of the socio-historical development of human abilities.

But a person does not just "stand" in front of this world, but must live, act in it, he must use tools and instruments, use the language and logic developed by social practice; finally, he does not remain indifferent to the works of art and enters into an aesthetic attitude towards them.

He, however, does not have the ready inclinations to, for example, speak a certain language or perceive geometric relationships. Although, of course, he is endowed with inclinations, but only inclinations for abilities, which I called natural; These inclinations are, as it were, “faceless” in relation to the historically emerging types of human activity, that is, they are not specific to them. They are in a fundamentally different relation to the possibility of developing abilities to carry out these specifically human activities than the relation in which they stand to abilities of the first kind, manifesting themselves in them directly.

A person's abilities for socially and historically established forms of activity, that is, his specifically human abilities, are genuine new formations that form in his individual development, and not the identification and modification of what is inherent in him by heredity. This is the main feature of the abilities, the specificity of 1 | for a person, abilities that have a social-historical origin, a social nature.

\ The formation of specifically human abilities - GTen is a very complex process, on which T "opoM must be specially stopped.

The development of these abilities in a separate individual C "occurs in the process of mastering him. (... appropriating them) what was created by mankind in its historical development - BIiT ™, which was created by society ...

I want to emphasize that the process of assimilation or assimilation should not be confused with the process of acquiring individual experience, that the difference between them is absolutely fundamental.

The process of acquiring individual experience is, as is known, the result of an individual's adaptation to changing environmental conditions on the basis of innate, inherited species experience, experience that expresses the nature of his species, this process is characteristic of the entire animal world

In contrast to this, the process of appropriation, which does not exist at all in animals, is the process of human acquisition of species experience, but not the phylogenetic experience of his animal ancestors, but human species experience, that is, the social and historical experience of previous generations of people.This does not lie in the hereditary organization a person, not inside, but outside - in the external objective world, in the human objects and phenomena surrounding a person.This world - the world of industry, science and art - expresses in itself a truly human nature, the result of its socio-historical transformation, it carries in itself to a person - a human

The mastery of this world, the appropriation of it by man is the process, as a result of which the higher human abilities embodied in the external form become the internal property of his personality, his abilities, genuine "organs of his individuality"

The idea of ​​the special character of human mental development as a process based on the transmission and assimilation by individuals of what has been accumulated by previous generations is more and more widely accepted in psychology (see, for example, Pieron)

What is the very process of appropriation by individual people of the achievements of the development of human society, embodied, crystallized in objective products of collective activity - a process that is at the same time a process of formation of specifically human abilities ^

First, it must be emphasized that this is always an active process on the part of the subject.To master the product of human activity, it is necessary to carry out an activity adequate to the one embodied in this product.

Secondly, it is a process taken not only from the side of its so-called “material” result, but first of all from the side of its “formal” effect, i.e. a process that creates new prerequisites for further development of activity, creates a new ability, or function Therefore, when, for example, we say that a small child first mastered a tool, this means that in the process of his activity he has developed the ability to carry out tool operations

However, the ability for these operations cannot be formed in a child under the influence of the day itself.Although these operations are objectively embodied in a tool, for a child, subjectively, they are only given in him.They are revealed to him only due to the fact that his relationship to the objective world is mediated his attitude to people Adults show the child a way of working with a tool, help him to use it adequately, that is, they build a tool opera for him | ration This is what to keep in mind early stages development - they rebuild, as it were, the very logic of the child's movements and create in him, as a new formation, the ability for instrumental actions

Of course, the situation is no different when the child is faced with the task of mastering a word, concept, knowledge, that is, ideal phenomena.

Note, by the way, that the implementation of the assignment process | constitutes the function of human learning that qualitatively distinguishes it from animal education, the only function of which is adaptation | It is necessary to make one more remark in connection with (the question of the relationship between inclinations and natural abilities, on the one hand, and higher, specifically human abilities, on the other relation to the second This means that, although they | and make up a prerequisite for the development of higher, specifically human abilities, they do not positively determine their content For example, for (the development of speech hearing, of course, the presence of certain inclinations is necessary, but will the child develop [the ability of specific timbre analysis, necessary for speech perception sounds, is determined not directly by these inclinations, but by the nature of the language that the given child masters, as for 53

the role of the inclinations themselves, then they determine only some individual characteristics of both the course of the very process of formation of this ability, and its final product. In this case, the broadest possibilities of the so-called monosystem compensation are revealed, so that one and the same specific ability can have, as its natural basis, different ensembles of inclinations and the corresponding natural abilities.

All these provisions determine, however, only the most general approach to the problem of the formation of specifically human abilities. However, the implementation of this approach in research runs into rather serious difficulties and raises a number of questions that require specific development.

One of the most important issues requiring special research is the question of the nature of specific mechanisms that form the basis of the abilities that develop in humans in the order of vital neoplasms.

This question arises from the following controversy. On the one hand, as has been said, specifically human abilities are not transmitted in the order of action of biological heredity, that is, in the form of inclinations. On the other hand, it is impossible, of course, to admit the existence of such abilities that would not have their material substrate, their own organ. After all, ability is a property ready for manifestation, for functioning.

But then the question arises, what exactly functions when it comes to specifically human abilities that do not have their own special and direct basis in congenital morphological organs - germs?

The solution to this complex issue was prepared by the successes in the development of the physiology of higher nervous activity (I mean, first of all, the classical works of IP Pavlov and his school, as well as the work of AA Ukhtomsky). It was also prepared by many psychological studies devoted to the formation and structure of the higher mental functions of a person.

The fundamental answer to this question is that in the process of the formation of a person's activity, adequate to objects and phenomena that embody a person

venerable abilities, in his life, the functional brain organs capable of carrying out this activity are also formed, which are stable reflex associations or systems, which are characterized by new special dispatches.

Although we find the possibility of the vital formation of functional cerebral organs already in higher animals, it is only in humans that they first become realizing new formations, and their formation becomes the most important principle of ontogenetic development.

In order to experimentally trace the formation of mechanisms of specifically human abilities and study their structure, we have been engaged in the research of specifically human dryness in our laboratory in recent years. We reasoned thus. A person lives in the world of sounds created by people - in the world of music, in the world of audible speech. Therefore, he develops a special human hearing, that is, the ability to analyze the specific features of this - human - world of sounds.

I will not dwell on the details and will go straight to the most important results that we have obtained. It turned out, firstly, that the sound-altitude distinctive thresholds of interest to us fell sharply in these subjects. Secondly, we got the phenomenon of transferring to the sounds of another timbre. Finally, thirdly, the loud chanting of the compared sounds began to naturally give way to singing "to oneself" with an undoubted tendency to the formation of an internal, mental "representation", in the words of BM Teplov (Teplov, 1947) , the pitch of sounds, that is, the very ability that is a necessary condition for musical activity.

Thus, we were able to see in the laboratory, in the conditions of accurate records and measurements, the birth, the formation of a genuine neoplasm, a truly new ability for these subjects, which was based on a new fundamental mechanism of ana-

"from the main pitch of complex multi-timbral sounds. f f J

At the same time, we became convinced that this ability, in cases where it was not spontaneously formed by itself, can be actively built.

The above, of course, does not exhaust the problem of ability. At the same time, I think that the proposition I put forward about the special nature and the special process of the formation of specific abilities of a person as formations developing during their lifetime has not only a general, abstract meaning, but also makes it possible to orient specific research in this most difficult area. ...

The point is not to be limited to the analysis of ready-made, already established abilities or a description of the process of their ontogenetic development in conditions when the corresponding ability has already been actually determined, but to conduct research further, experimentally studying the mechanisms of their formation.

It is precisely the studies following this path that, apparently, will have the last word in the controversial issues of the problem of higher human abilities.

S. L. Rubinstein

PROBLEM ABILITYThAND ISSUES PSYCHOLOGICALThTHEORY"

The first general proposition that I would like to formulate is that the question of ability should be merged with the question of development, the question of intelligence with the question of mental development.

Human development, in contrast to the accumulation of "experience", the mastery of knowledge, abilities, skills, is the development of his abilities, and the development of human abilities is what development as such is, in contrast to the accumulation of knowledge and skills. (I am not touching on other equally important aspects of personality development here.)

Decisive for the theory of abilities is the question of the determination of their development - the main question of the theory of any phenomena.

"" Questions of Psychology ", 1960, no. 3.

To link, as we have done, the problems of abilities with the question of development means to admit, on the one hand, that abilities cannot be simply implanted from the outside, that the individual must have preconditions, internal conditions for their organic growth, and, on the other the sides that they are not predetermined, not given ready-made before and outside of any development.

The interrelation of external and internal conditions for the development of abilities is the starting point and theoretical basis for solving the fundamental controversial issues of the theory of abilities. It is no coincidence that this question of determination is linked to the entire discussion on the question of abilities. The theory of the innateness of abilities transfers their determination entirely inside the individual and takes it outside of his development. As is known, this theory is opposed by theories that place the determination of development entirely outside the individual. These are various versions of theories that attribute the determination of abilities and their development entirely to external conditions - the external environment and external influences. Theories of the second type have become widespread in our country as well. This is understandable: they are obviously materialistic in nature and have a progressive meaning, since they open up the fundamental possibility of developing abilities by changing external conditions. However, the mechanical nature of these concepts, breaking the interconnection and interdependence of external and internal conditions, makes both theoretically and practically untenable and undermines the significance of their above-mentioned advantages.

To the number of theories that one-sidedly and therefore incorrectly emphasizing the role of external factors, should, in my opinion, include the theory that has recently become widespread in our country, which declares the “internalization” of external actions to be the main “mechanism” of mental development. The concrete and "meaningful" expression of this theory is the statement or assumption that the material Action determines the composition of the mental action (P. Ya. Galperin), that the mental action reproduces, somehow modifying them, the composition of those material Actions from which it occurs In this position, which gives definiteness to the theory of interiorization, at the same time its weakest harrow is revealed. It is wrong to think that every mental 57

“Action” has its prototype in material action, and the fact that a prerequisite for the emergence of a mental action is an appeal to the “corresponding” material action, which it “reproduces” in the mental plane or from which it emanates.

The theory of interiorization is undoubtedly the most refined version of theories that assert the external determination of human development. Therefore, we will focus our criticism on it. This theory one-sidedly emphasizes the determination of the internal by the external, without revealing the internal conditioning of this external determination. It is not by chance that mental activity is reduced by the supporters of this point of view in the final analysis to the functioning of operations, which are included according to predetermined signs. It is no coincidence, further, that cognition is reduced to orienting activity: for the implementation of mental activity, so understood, there is no need for any comprehensive analysis and cognition of reality; it is enough to “orientate” according to this signal, sign. ”With such a one-sided determination from the outside, mental activity inevitably loses its inner mental content.

According to this concept, "the formation in ontogeny ... of intellectual abilities - mathematical, logical and others" is reduced to "the assimilation of historically developed operations"; in the ability, the processes that are built "from the outside" are projected. This means that abilities for mathematics, languages, etc. arise only as a result of mastering operations, as a result of training; there is supposedly nothing in the individuals themselves, due to which the learning of some is better, more successful than others; ignores-

"There is, of course, no doubt that cognitive activity allows you to orient yourself in the environment, but this does not mean that you can replace the term (or characteristic.)" Indicative "concept cognitive activities... Such a substitution means at first an attempt to define cognitive activity only by the “pragmatic” effect that it gives, without revealing what it itself represents; but further behind this inevitably lies a certain idea of ​​the nature of cognitive activity. The characterization of cognitive activity as an indicative one actually includes the isolation of the orientational component of cognitive activity associated with the tendency to push back the characterization of cognitive activity as an analytical-synthetic activity.

the initial general dependence of learning on learning, on the premises underlying the subject of learning;

the commendable desire not to miss feedbacks - certainly really existing and important - obscures the ability of the supporters of this theory to see direct, initial relationships. Everything seems to come only from the object, from the outside, and only the internalization of the external fills the internal emptiness. As a result of training, since it also gives a “formal” effect (this is recognized), internal prerequisites for further learning arise, but initially - according to the logic of this concept - learning does not have any initial internal prerequisites in the individual; learning is only a condition for the formation of abilities; it itself is not conditioned by them in any way; ability is only a product of learning; they do not appear at all. among its initial premises. In fact, in the process of learning and assimilation, abilities develop and are specified, but in an undeveloped and general form, they also form the initial prerequisites for learning to assimilate them. In fact, it is necessary to talk not only about abilities as products of mastering objects of activity, but also about these objects themselves, as products of the historical development of abilities, that is, rejecting the assertion about the one-sided dependence of the development of people and their abilities on external products their activities, proceed from the relationship and interdependence of the internal development of people themselves, their own nature, their abilities and external objectified products of their activities. The consciousness of these latter has both as its consequence and as its condition a change in the nature of people, their abilities. Man and the objective world should be considered in their interaction, and consideration of their interaction cannot be limited only to the sphere of assimilation, completely outside the sphere of production.

The abilities of people are formed not only in the process of assimilating products created by man in the course of historical development, but also in the process of their creation; the process of man's creation of the objective world is at the same time the development of his own nature.

It is sometimes argued that with the beginning of historical development, the role of natural, natural development ceases. But this last position could mean

only that in the course of historical development organic, natural, in particular physiological, conditions play unchanging, that is, a permanent role, not that they play no role. Or in other words: this means that they cannot by themselves explain changes in the mental activity of a person, but this in no way means that they drop out as a condition from the explanation of this very activity. In addition, the truth of the position according to which with the beginning of human history natural development the person stops, is very limited; the historical development of mankind in no way removes the natural, organic development of each person in the process of his individual development. It is not only necessary, when speaking about the internal prerequisites and natural foundations of abilities, to create a false alternative to objects outside and morphology inside as “contributors” of abilities; within, there is also activity in relation to external objects. The development of man and his abilities is indisputably fundamentally different from the development of animals; this fundamental difference is due precisely to the fact that the results of human activity are deposited in the form of objectified products that cement the continuity of the historical development of mankind and mediate the individual development of children.

It does not follow from this, however, that it is possible - continuing, apparently, the concept of natural and cultural development - the very ability of a person to split into natural, natural (biological) and proper-human - social and, recognizing internal numerical conditioning and development "in a spiral" for the former, in relation to the latter, to put forward only determination from the outside. The whole concept of determining abilities from the outside, extracting them from the objects in which they are deposited, has as its prerequisite precisely this recognition, at least in relation to the doctrine of abilities, of the dual nature of man, supposedly disintegrating and forming from two separate alien parts. Without this prerequisite for unified abilities, which are not split into two, the idea that a person's abilities are built from the outside would be too obviously untenable. But this premise itself cannot improve matters, since it is difficult to defend the idea that a person has human

(“Truly” human) and inhuman abilities. In a person - if he really is a person - everything is human.

The correct position on the social conditionality of human thinking and human abilities is overlapped in the theory of interiorization by a mechanistic “understanding of this social determination, breaking any interdependence of external and internal, etching out any dialectic of external and internal, social and natural in a person 2.

The results of human activity, condensing in the course of historical development, are deposited in its products. Their mastery by man is a necessary and essential condition for the development of human abilities. This conditioning by historically formed products of human activity is a specific feature of human development. The development of people's abilities occurs in the process of creating and assimilating the products of the historical development of human activity, but the development of abilities is not their assimilation, assimilation of finished products; abilities are not projected in a person from things, but are realized in him in the process of his interaction with things and objects, products of historical development.

The process of development of a person's abilities is a process of development of a person, and not of the things that he generates. Any reasoning that does not go beyond the limits of the alternative is wrong: either everything from within, or weight from outside, - any reasoning that does not relate in a certain way the external and the internal. Nothing develops purely immanently only from within, irrespective of

“In the“ refutation ”of our characterization of the theory of interiorization, one can seem to object that, according to this theory, the internalization of the external is mediated by the activity of the subject in assimilation of the given from the outside. abilities, since the very activity of the subject is thought of as determined only by the object, only from the outside.

2 Justice demands to recognize that A. N. Leont'ev himself sometimes, in particular in his polemics against D. N. Bogoyavlensky and N. A. Menchipskaya, emphasized the role of the internal laws of development, but, putting forward this position in polemics against others, A. N. Leont'ev did not take it into account properly, defending the theory of interiorization.

in relation to something external, but nothing enters the process of development from the outside without any internal conditions for that.

A person's assimilation of certain knowledge and methods of action has as its prerequisite, its internal condition, a certain level of mental development, the development of mental abilities; in turn, it leads to the creation of internal conditions for the assimilation of knowledge and methods of action more high order... The development of an ability occurs in a spiral: the realization of an opportunity, which represents an ability of one level, opens up new opportunities for further development, for the development of abilities of a higher level. A person's giftedness is determined by the range of new possibilities that are opened up by the realization of available possibilities. A person's abilities are the internal conditions of his development, which, like other internal conditions, are formed under the influence of external ones - in the process of a person's interaction with the outside world.

Before going any further, it is necessary to clarify the very concept of ability. Abilities are usually understood as the properties or qualities of a person that make him fit for the successful performance of any of the types of socially useful activities that have developed in the course of socio-historical development. These complex, complex properties for the most part are considered without connection with those properties common to all people, which, using the term of Marx, can be called “generic” properties of a person - such as, for example, sensitivity, say, auditory. musical (pitch) or speech (mostly timbre). The separation of abilities from these initial human properties and the laws of their formation immediately excludes the possibility of explaining the development of abilities and leads to mystified ideas about them. (There is no way to explain and understand, say, the development of the abilities of a great musician, without starting from the laws of auditory perception.)

The nature of abilities and these "generic" properties is common. The reflex concept extends to one as well as the others. Their common neurological basis is, in the words of A. A. Ukhtomsky, a functional organ-system of reflex-functioning connections. In this combination of abilities 62

In their usual understanding of the “generic” properties of the human, I agree with A. N Leont'ev and consider the experimental study he is conducting very important V , “Tsyazi, ignore their unconditional reflexive | | basis as an internal condition that mediates special- || “The duality of the effect of an object's influence on this system. (This is essentially the same question: one hundred | 4 More emphasis on external determination without correlating it with internal.)

But before us as the main one is the question of ability in the usual, proper sense.

The very term "abilities" characterizes what he means only from the point of view of what this something gives to a person, but does not directly define in any way, does not reveal that this something itself is. It is necessary to somehow determine the composition, structure of abilities

In the composition of each ability that makes a person fit to perform a certain activity, there are always some operations or methods of action by means of which this activity is carried out. Not a single ability is an actual, real ability until it has organically absorbed the system of corresponding socially developed operations; but the core of the ability is not an assimilated, not an automated operation, but those mental processes by means of which these operations, their functioning, are regulated, the quality of these processes

Any operation (logical, grammatical - word formation and inflection) is always based on certain relationships that it implements. Therefore, the generalization of eshh relations, and hence the isolation of these relations and their analysis, is a necessary condition for the successful functioning of the operations based on them. This is the conclusion to which a theoretical analysis already leads. An analysis of the empirical summer cottages of a recently published study by VA Krutitsky confirms this conclusion. Studying schoolchildren who showed aptitude for mathematics, V.A.

Tetsky leads the convolution of reasoning. But our research has shown that the measure of the collapse of the thinking processes is a derivative expression of the ratio of generalization and analysis: the thinking process is all the more "collapsed" the more it operates with already established or rapidly emerging generalizations that remove the need for analysis in some links, it is the more developed, the longer a person, through analysis, goes to new generalizations. Thus, according to our research, the second indicator does not go beyond the first. It would be easy to show that the third indicator that appears in Krutetskii — the easy reversibility of relations — can also be reduced to the first, if only, speaking of generalization, we emphasize the generalization of relations.

So, there are some theoretical and empirical grounds - to accept as a preliminary hypothesis for further research that the core or common component of various mental abilities, each of which has its own special characteristics, is the quality of the analysis processes characteristic of a given person (which means , and synthesis) and generalization of relations. The generalization of relations of subject content then appears and is perceived as the generalization of operations performed on the generalized subject content; generalization and consolidation in the individual of these generalized operations lead to the formation of the individual's corresponding abilities.

Due to the fact that the degree of differentiation, and differentiability, for the same person in relation to different areas can be and usually actually happens to be different, the same people also have different generalizability of relations in different areas. ... Although, say, for both linguistic and mathematical abilities, the generalization of the corresponding material is essential, in some cases we are talking about the generalization of phonetic and grammatical relations (defining the rules by which word formation and inflection are performed), in other quantitative or ordinal relations. Therefore, despite the fact that the quality of generalization is a common component of all mental abilities, the same person

may have different abilities in different areas.

If our hypothesis about the role of the quality of the processes of analysis and generalization is correct, then it is clear that the study of the dynamics of these processes and the patterns of their interdependence, on which our study of thinking is mainly focused, is at the same time the threshold of the path that we we gradually pass ourselves on to the study of the mental abilities of people and, therefore, in the future - to their formation.

So, the analysis of the composition (and structure) of abilities led us to distinguish two components in the actual ability: a more or less well-coordinated and well-developed set of operations - the ways in which the corresponding activity is carried out, and the quality of the processes that regulate the functioning of these operations.

This structure of abilities explains the difficulties that usually in life and in research are faced with judgments about the abilities of people. A person's abilities are usually judged by their productivity. The latter is directly dependent on the presence of a person with a well-coordinated and properly, smoothly functioning system of appropriate operations or skills, methods of action in this area. But, observing people in life, one cannot get rid of the impression that people, apparently gifted in general, sometimes turn out to be not very productive, give not as much as they promised, and, on the contrary, people seem to be less gifted, turn out to be more productive than one might think. These discrepancies are explained by different relationships between the perfection with which the processes of analysis and generalization are carried out in a person, and the sophistication, coherence of the operations that are built on this basis, mastered by the individual. In some cases, it happens that on the basis of generalization processes that open up great opportunities, a poorly worked out and uncoordinated system of operations is built on and due to the imperfection of this component of abilities, as well as conditions of the characterological and emotional-volitional order, productivity turns out relatively insignificant; in other cases, on the contrary, on the basis of generalization, analytical and synthetic processes of a lower level, greater productivity is achieved due to greater

operations based on this base of operations. The productivity of activity, of course, is important in itself, but it does not directly, does not unambiguously determine the inner capabilities of a person, his abilities.

With this discrepancy or not a direct, ambiguous correspondence, coincidence is connected, yes. more, the fact that it is impossible to determine the mental abilities of a person's intellect by the mere result of his activity, without revealing the process of thinking that leads to it. In an attempt to approach the definition of intelligence, that is, the mental abilities of people, this is the root defect of conventional test definitions of intelligence.

This or that understanding of mental abilities is inextricably linked with this or that understanding of thinking.

In general, we share the point of view of V.N. Myasishchev, G. S. Kostyuk and many other psychologists, according to which the “interconnection of motivational qualities and personality abilities” (G. S. Kostyuk) is affirmed and it is considered necessary “to overcome rupture of abilities and character, potency and tendencies, human relationships and mechanisms of brain activity ”(VN Myasishchev). But here we, in the order of scientific abstraction, dwell specifically on one side of the issue - on the connection between abilities and thinking.

Now two approaches to the problem of thinking are opposed to each other, two concepts of thinking, radically different from one another precisely at the point most directly related to the issue of abilities in their development.

According to one of these concepts, which come out in n different versions, softened and sharpened, thinking is, for the most part, operating in a ready-made form with the obtained generalizations; mental activity is the functioning of operations that are automatically activated according to predetermined criteria. The problem of thinking is reduced to the problem of study, the lasting assimilation of knowledge presented to students in a finished form as a result of the processing of educational material carried out by the teacher; thinking, therefore, deeds) only a teacher, not a student!

Subordinating the entire problem of thinking to the task of assimilating knowledge, this concept inevitably focuses psychological research mainly on the results.

„„ .Ax of mental activity; the study of the very process of thinking recedes into the background; to that - the main attitude towards the assimilation of knowledge artificially emphasizes the receptive aspect of thinking - the ability to assimilate the given - and masks its active, creative aspect - the ability to discover new things.

It goes without saying that by this we in no way reject the indisputable legitimacy and necessity of the psychological study of the assimilation of knowledge, but only point out the danger posed by the subordination of this attitude to the entire psychology of thinking.

Subordination psychological theory thinking to the problem of assimilating knowledge becomes especially detrimental when it is combined with a mechanical and illusory representation - as if the knowledge that the teacher teaches the student is mechanically projected into his consciousness and out of sight, thus, the student's thinking work falls out, which assimilation is mediated. And here the position remains in force according to which the effect of any external influence depends on the internal conditions through which these influences are refracted.

The tendency outlined here finds its sharpened expression in the reduction of thinking to functioning in a finished form of these operations, which are included according to predetermined features. To organize mental activity as a set of well-developed operations, which are included according to predetermined characteristics, means, of course, to greatly simplify the task of learning and ensure a faster and easier achievement of an immediate, strictly organized educational result. But at what cost? At the cost of etching proper thinking from the so-called mental activity. By going this way, undoubtedly, it is possible (there is nothing tricky in this!) To achieve a certain effect in each individual case. But what will be the final overall result? The transformation of a person into the creature of a teacher, into a person who knows how to live only by cribs, to do only what the teacher is “requested” in him. He will be able to reproduce what is invested in him, but do not expect more from him!

This concept of thinking obviously means, in relation to the question of mental abilities, the reduction of the abilities to the set of Operations and the exclusion of what constitutes the ability itself. This 4 * 67

the concept knows only thinking-skill, but not washing-laziness-ability.

In the second concept, the emphasis is on the study of the process of thinking and it is explored not only there. and when it operates with ready-made generalizations and also — and even especially — when it moves towards new generalizations with the analysis of subject relations and a new synthesis of the elements identified by the analysis.

This second path is followed by research, which for several recent years conducted by me c a team of my employees. General attitudes and some of the results of these studies have already been highlighted by me in print, and therefore there is no need to expound them here. I will highlight only one very briefly. The main fact, in my opinion, established in our research is the following: the possibility of mastering and using by a person the knowledge presented to him from the outside - conceptual generalizations and methods of action or operations - depends on how much internal conditions for their development and use. This empirical position, generally expressing specific research facts, is at the same time a particular, concrete expression of a very general theoretical position, according to which the effect of external influences also depends on internal conditions. Knowledge and methods of action that cannot be used in the early stages are included in the thought process and turn into means of its further movement. For the effective use of knowledge and ready-made methods for solving the problem (operations), for their development and use, in which they could become means (methods) of the further movement of thoughts, a necessary condition is some own preliminary work of thought. This means that it is not enough to provide students with ready-made schemes of action (although without this, one cannot eat). It is also necessary to think about creating internal conditions for their productive use (not to mention the possibility of finding new generalizations, new methods, new ways of action-operation). In order to successfully form thinking, it is necessary to take into account this / interconnection of external and internal conditions in the determination of thinking.

The results of our research in terms of educational, pedagogical indicate that it is wrong to think that G8

as if the teacher's help to the student can only consist in communicating ready-made answers to him or the decision - q ^ o any pedagogical work should be reduced to "direct teaching and training, to teaching in narrow

sense of the word.

There is another, of course, more difficult, but also more fruitful way — the way of guiding students' independent thinking work. In contrast to direct study, this is the path of education, the path of the actual development of independent thinking. This is also the way to form the mental abilities of students. In previous years, our school has made a certain bias towards learning, the maximum load of students with knowledge; - not enough attention has been paid to the development of thinking. This roll must be corrected.

In the course of our research, we often got off the ground and set in motion again the stuck thinking process of our subjects, using “clues” of a special kind. These “hints”, which consisted only in the formulated, intonational or visual highlighting - underlining - of a certain element of the task, determined only the direction in which the analysis had to go, leaving its implementation to the subject himself. In the methodology of our experiments, using appropriately dosed auxiliary tasks, we focused on identifying and creating internal conditions for the independent mental work of our subjects.

We proceeded in our interpretation of thinking as from its methodological basis from the dialectical-materialistic understanding of its determination, according to which all external conditions, these influences on thinking determine the results of the thinking process, only refracted through its internal conditions.

We tried to embody this general methodological position in the methodology of our research, using auxiliary tasks that introduce, one after another, separate links of the main task to be solved, and “hints” of the above type to determine through such “probing” the prevailing in the course of Thinking of the internal conditions of its further independent movement and guidance of this process of the student's own thinking.

I think that this method of researching thinking

with the appropriate didactic and methodical gn processing, which would bring it in line with tre. With the knowledge of not only experiment, but also a lesson, she could later find some application for herself in teaching methods.

In any case, one thing is clear: the two concepts of thinking about which I have spoken correspond to the two sub. progress towards the tasks of mental education. At the same time, one point of view is aimed only at the external refinement and coherence of operations that a person is equipped with, leaving out of his field of vision the culture of those internal processes, the quality of which actually constitutes the ability as such. Only with the second approach, which puts forward the task of the development of thinking proper, and not just learning, can one seriously talk about the development of people's mental abilities. Nothing is such an obvious indicator of mental giftedness as the constant emergence of new thoughts in a person.

1. Leontiev A.N. To the theory of the development of the child's psyche / Leontiev A.N. - 5-8
2. Basov M. Ya. The problem of human development / Basov M. Ya. - 8-19
3. Bekhterev V.M. To the substantiation of genetic reflexology / Bekhterev V.M., Schelovanov N.M. - 19-20
4. Kostyuk G. S. The principle of development in psychology / Kostyuk G. S. - 21-25
5. Feldshtein D.I. Childhood as a socio-psychological phenomenon of society and a special state of development / Feldshtein D.I. - 25-53
6. Zaporozhets A.V. Conditions and driving causes of mental development of a child / Zaporozhets A.V. - 53-57
7. Vygotsky L.S.Imagination and its development in childhood / Vygotsky L.S. - 57-64
8. Leites N. S. Age prerequisites of mental abilities / Leites N. S. - 64-75
9. Teplov B. M. Abilities and giftedness / Teplov B. M. - 75-80
10. Leontiev A. N. About the formation of abilities / Leontiev A. N. - 80-91
11. Rubinshtein S.L. The problem of abilities and questions of psychological theory / Rubinshtein S.L. - 91-107
12. Leontiev A. N. Individual and personality / Leontiev A. N. - 108-114
13. Ananiev B.G. Genetic and structural relationships in personality development / Ananiev B.G. - 115-122
14. Feldshtein D.I.Socialization and individualization - the content of the process of social maturation / Feldshtein D.I. - 123-135
15. Zaporozhets A.V. Value early periods childhood for the formation of a child's personality / Zaporozhets A. V. - 135-138
16. Bozhovich L. I. Stages of personality formation in ontogenesis / Bozhovich L. I. - 138-151
17. Rubinshtein S.L. Personality orientation / Rubinshtein S.L. - 151-155
18. Kon I.S.Constancy of personality: myth or reality / Kon I.S. - 155-166
19. Leontiev A.N. General concept about the activity / Leontiev A. N. - 167-178
20. Feldshtein D. I. Patterns of development of activity as the basis of personality development / Feldshtein D. I. - 178-194
21. Lisina M.I. Communication with adults in children of the first seven years of life / Lisina M.I. - 194-203
22. Elkonin D. B. The main unit of the expanded form of game activity. The social nature of role play / Elkonin D. B. - 203-209
23. Luria A.R. Changes in the structure of the game in connection with the development of speech / Luria A.R., Yudovich F.Ya. - 209-213
24. Itelson L.B. Educational activity, its sources, structure and conditions / Itelson L.B. - 213-219
25. Elkonin D. B. Psychological issues of formation learning activities at primary school age / Elkonin D. B. - 219-222
26. Davydov V.V. Psychological problems process of teaching younger students / Davydov V.V. - 222-226
27. Feldshtein D.I.Peculiarities of the leading activity of children adolescence/ Feldshtein D.I. - 226-231
28. Elkonin D. B. On the problem of periodization of mental development in childhood / Elkonin D. B. - 232-240
29. Feldshtein D.I.Stadial characteristics of socialization - individualization and levels of personality formation / Feldshtein D.I. - 240-277
30. Bozhovich L. I. The transition period from infancy to early age / Bozhovich L. I., Slavina L.S. - 278-283
31. Lisina M.I. Stages of the genesis of speech as a means of communication / Lisina M.I. - 283-307
32. Lyublinskaya A.A.Activity and focus of a preschooler / Lyublinskaya A.A. - 307-322
33. Krutetskiy V.A. Psychological features junior student / Krutetsky V.A. - 322-325
34. Vygotsky L.S. Dynamics and structure of the personality of a teenager / Vygotsky L.S. - 325-330
35. Dragunova T. V. "The crisis was explained in different ways / Dragunova T. V. - 330-332
36. Kon I.S. Adolescence as a stage of life and some psychological and pedagogical characteristics transitional age/ Kon I. S., Feldshtein D. I. - 333-342
37. Feldshtein D.I.Peculiarities of the stages of personality development on the example of adolescence / Feldshtein D.I. - 343-355
38. Kon I.S.Psychology of a high school student / Kon I.S. - 355-363
39. Mudrik A. V. Modern high school student / Mudrik A. V. - 364-372
40. Ananiev B.G. The structure of the development of psychophysiological functions of an adult / Ananiev B.G. - 373-382
41. Rybalko E.F.Dynamics of the main characteristics of a person in different periods of his maturity / Rybalko E.F. - 382-396

To paraphrase Montaigne, we can say that in this book I only made a bouquet of other people's flowers, and mine here is just a ribbon that connects them.

Developmental psychology and developmental psychology helped me choose the "color" for this ribbon.

Naturally, all the problems are not equally reflected in the work, since I used the author's right to choose from the boundless sea of ​​psychological information what I myself considered the most significant and interesting for my potential readers.

The workshop is intended for specialists working with the concept of the norm of mental development, and for students studying this concept.

A specialist using this concept is a teacher, doctor, lawyer, psychologist, Social worker- solves the problems of a specific person. These can be the tasks of setting or clarifying the diagnosis, the task of determining the level of a person's readiness for a certain type of activity (educational, professional, family life, etc.).

"The norm of mental development" is the way of thinking of a researcher or a practice about individual life a specific person, about the laws of this life.

This concept itself is based on the concept of life, which is implicit in the way of thinking of any researcher or practitioner. For the concept of "norms of mental development" to acquire the content of the concept, and not to remain an empty phrase (simulacrum), the researcher must master the phenomenology of mental development. This can be achieved by mastering the existing in psychology methods of analyzing the integrative characteristics of psychic reality, which have the most important property, namely, the ability to generate new qualities in it.

The workshop is structured in such a way that in the course of work on assignments and when performing experiments, the reader has the ability to "see" the integrative qualities of psychic reality. This skill allows you to make more informed decisions about how to obtain psychological information and its content when deciding specific tasks specific person.

It is for this purpose that the selection of scientific texts was carried out, which are presented in the form of an introduction to each chapter. The texts are given in the form of abstract-retellings or as quotations from works of authorship. One of the tasks is to acquaint the reader with textbook texts in the field of developmental psychology for understanding contemporary problems both scientific, academic and practical psychology.

The most important goal of the workshop-reader is to show the reader the possibilities methodological solution the question of the level and norm of mental development of a particular person.

From the very first pages, I would like to draw the reader's attention to the fact that the personal significance of solving the question of compliance or non-compliance with a certain norm increases sharply for a person in those situations where decisions that are responsible for his life are made. For example, about readiness for a certain type of activity, about an expert assessment of his activities, about a person's ability to be responsible for himself.

V modern conditions when the work of people evaluating the "normative" indicators of the human psyche acquires more and more importance, their theoretical and methodological level becomes not only a personal issue of professional maturity, but also a socially significant phenomenon - the concretization of the value of various properties of mental reality.

For example, one of the first indicators of a child's readiness for school is the nature of the "student's internal attitude". A favorable variant of the "internal position" is associated with the orientation of the child to the content side school life: wants to study (or studies), because you need to read, write, etc. well. In the statements of these children there is an orientation towards self-education (“I will be able, know, I can”, etc.). An unfavorable variant of the "student's internal position" is associated with an orientation towards the formal aspects of school life: he wants to study because they will buy (have) a portfolio, pencil case; there is no need to sleep at school, as in kindergarten, and etc.

The “internal position of a student” is one of the integrative characteristics of a child at primary school age; it reflects qualitative changes in his relationship with other people and with himself. This is due to the emergence of a new form of generalization of one's place among other people. Such integrative formations in the psychic reality of a person have been identified and investigated enough to date to talk about the existence of prognostic psychodiagnostics and justified corrective (if necessary) work of an adult with a child or a mature person with himself (or together with a specialist) on a directed change in the parameters of mental reality ...

The main questions are - what, how and why study to characterize the psychic reality of a person - and are discussed in this workshop.

The reader can complete tasks, reproduce classical experiments, compare their data with already known patterns. Perhaps he will have conditions in order to trace the peculiarities of changes in the revealed characteristics of his subjects over a long period of time and thereby assess the accuracy of psychological predictions.

The material presented in the text will allow students studying psychology as a specialty,

know: basic methodological principles modern psychology development, the content of the scientific concept of the norm of mental development;

be able to analyze the content of the concept of the norm of mental development and fix by various methods the facts of its manifestation in the mental reality of a person;

own: psychodiagnostic techniques and methods of creating batteries of techniques for the study of indicators of normal mental development of a person from the standpoint cultural and historical theory of L. S. Vygotsky.

As I write this chapter today, developmental psychology is often listed on the list of psychological majors instead of developmental psychology. This does not mean that the reality studied by developmental psychology has disappeared. Simply by changing the name, it has become more definite: the subject of research is the indicators and patterns of human mental development.

It is they who determine the range of problems that distinguish this area of ​​knowledge about a person from the entire volume of various information that has been accumulated in culture about a person and his life.

The specificity of this knowledge is that it is used in one form or another (scientific or everyday) by every person and in this sense is universal, universal knowledge.

Scientific knowledge about the laws of human mental development becomes when the person receiving it takes a research position - the position of a scientist. The essence of this position is that a person is aware of his own thinking as a means and method of obtaining psychological information, as a means and a way of generalizing it to obtain patterns and formulate laws.

The research position allows a person to solve the problem of the dependence of the content of the information received on his own thinking. This creates the necessary prerequisites for discussing the criteria for the truth of psychological knowledge, for example, through its generally accepted in science, etc.

The existence in science of different research schools, their historical continuity is possible because they are studying the same subject. Today this subject could be described as a psychic reality. Its existence is associated with the presence of such properties and qualities that other realities do not have - physical, chemical, historical, etc. Suffice it to say that even time in this reality is not identical with the physical. It is so individual that one and the same physical minute for one person may seem like an eternity, while for another it may remain completely unnoticed.