Child psychology

Child psychology, as an independent subsection of the science of general psychology, studies and investigates the totality of the age-related development and mental state of the child. The most important subject for in-depth analysis is considered to be the conditions of the ontogenetic dynamics of mental processes, including the environment for the formation of the child’s basic abilities.

The two most important processes in the development of a child’s personality include the following: innate (natural) and acquired (depending on upbringing and social environment) traits of mental behavior.

Without exaggeration, from the very first day of birth, the child has individual innate traits passed on to him genetically. These include the rate of adaptation to environmental conditions, distinctive features of motor skills, the ability to assess the surrounding world, mental abilities, as well as various biological and physical characteristics of the newborn.

Acquired mental characteristics begin to form literally from the moment of birth. The process of formation is most deeply formed in childhood and many development factors depend to a large extent on parents, since in the early age period the child’s brain most actively grasps, analyzes and remembers the information given to him, deeply perceives attention, care, love, attitude towards him the surrounding world. At this age, children often experience all kinds of psychological trauma, which in the future can have different effects on adaptation processes, perception and endurance in various life situations. It is safe to say that 90% of a child’s development depends on his parents, educators and teachers. It is also very important to note that the child must have a socially adapted, full-fledged family, in which both parents must be involved in raising the child.

It happens that parents cannot cope with the psychological problems of their child on their own, then it is necessary to seek help from a qualified specialist. Consultation with a psychologist can be obtained here.

Thus, summing up all the information presented above, we can conclude that child psychology occupies a very important place in our lives, while helping to understand the characteristics of the mental formation and development of each individual individually. This science helps to create the necessary environment in the family and society for the correct formation of the child’s personality, to develop developmental and educational programs for kindergartens, schools and independent learning at home.

Each child is unique and different from the others. But how then can we find general rules, techniques, and advice that suit everyone?

Child psychology establishes general patterns, identifies the main groups of children by temperament, character, etc., and based on this gives certain advice to parents on raising their children.

But be sure to remember that only you - his parents - can understand your child best. Listen to advice, but always act soberly, choose what is right for you, taking into account the inclinations and characteristics of your baby.

Today, experts do not have any single version or theory that can give a comprehensive and indisputable idea of ​​how a child’s mental development occurs.

Child psychology- this is a section that studies the spiritual and mental development of children, the patterns of ongoing processes, studying instinctive and voluntary actions and developmental features starting from the birth of a child until maturity at 12-14 years.

Psychologists divide childhood into periods; the periodization of children’s mental development is based on the concept of leading activity, characterized by three main features:

Firstly, it must necessarily be meaningful, carry a semantic load for the child, for example, previously incomprehensible and meaningless things acquire a certain meaning for a three-year-old child only in the context of the game. Consequently, play is a leading activity and a means of meaning formation.

Secondly, basic relationships with peers and adults develop in the context of this activity.

AND, Thirdly, in connection with the development of this leading activity, the main new formations of age appear and develop, that range of abilities that allow this activity to be realized, for example, speech or other skills.

Leading activity is of decisive importance at each specific stage of children's mental development, while other types of activity do not disappear. They may become non-mainstream.

Stable periods and crises

Each child develops unevenly, going through relatively calm, stable periods, followed by critical, crisis ones. During periods of stability, the child accumulates quantitative changes. This happens slowly and is not very noticeable to others.

Critical periods or crises in the psychological development of children are discovered empirically, and in a random order. First, the crisis of seven years was discovered, then three, then 13 years, and only then the first year and the crisis of birth.

During crises, a child changes quickly in a short period of time, and the main features of his personality change. These changes in child psychology can be called revolutionary, they are so fast-paced and significant in the meaning and significance of the changes taking place. Critical periods are characterized by the following features:

• age-related crises in children arise unnoticed and it is very difficult to determine the moments of their onset and end. The boundaries between periods are unclear; in the middle of the crisis there is a sharp escalation;
• During a crisis, a child is difficult to educate, often conflicts with others, attentive parents feel his distress, despite the fact that at this time he is obstinate and unyielding. School performance and productivity decrease and, conversely, fatigue increases;
• the outwardly seemingly negative nature of the development of the crisis, destructive work occurs.

The child does not gain, but only loses from what he acquired before. At this time, adults should understand that the emergence of something new in development almost always means the death of the old. By looking closely at the child’s emotional state, one can observe constructive development processes even during critical periods.

The sequence of any period is determined by the alternation of critical and stable periods.
The child’s interaction with the surrounding social environment is the source of his development. Everything a child learns is given to him by the people around him. At the same time, in child psychology it is necessary that learning proceeds ahead of schedule.

Age characteristics of children

Each age of a child has its own characteristics that cannot be ignored.

Newborn crisis (0-2 months)

This is the first crisis in a child’s life; the symptoms of a crisis in a child are weight loss in the first days of life. At this age, a child is a maximally social being; he is unable to satisfy his needs and is completely dependent and, at the same time, deprived of means of communication, or rather, does not know how to communicate. His life begins to become individual, separate from the mother’s body. As the child adapts to others, a new formation appears in the form of a complex of revival, which includes reactions: motor excitement at the sight of approaching familiar adults; using crying to attract attention to oneself, i.e., attempts to communicate; smiles, enthusiastic “cooing” with the mother.

The revitalization complex serves as a kind of boundary for the critical period of the newborn. The timing of its appearance serves as the main indicator of the normality of the child’s mental development and appears earlier in those children whose mothers not only simply satisfy the child’s needs, but also communicate with him, talk, and play.

Infant age (2 months – 1 year)

At this age, the leading type of activity is direct emotional communication with adults.

The development of children in the first year of life lays the foundation for its further formation as a personality.

Dependence on them is still comprehensive; all cognitive processes are realized in relationships with the mother.

By the first year of life, the child pronounces the first words, i.e. the structure of speech action emerges. Voluntary actions with objects of the surrounding world are mastered.

Until one year of age, a child’s speech is passive. He has learned to understand intonation and frequently repeated phrases, but he himself still cannot speak. In child psychology, it is during this period that all the foundations of speech skills are laid; children themselves try to establish contacts with adults through crying, cooing, babbling, gestures, and first words.

After a year, active speech is formed. By the age of 1 year, a child’s vocabulary reaches 30, almost all of them have the nature of actions, verbs: give, take, drink, eat, sleep, etc.

During this time, adults should speak to children clearly and distinctly to impart correct speech skills. The process of language acquisition occurs more successfully if parents show and name objects and tell fairy tales.

The child’s objective activity is associated with the development of movements.

There is a general pattern in the sequence of movement development:

• moving eye, the child learns to focus on an object;
• expressive movements - a complex of revitalization;
• moving in space - the child consistently learns to roll over, raise his head, and sit down. Each movement opens up new boundaries of space for the child.
• crawling – this stage is skipped by some children;
• grasping, by 6 months this movement from random grasping turns into purposeful;
• object manipulation;
• a pointing gesture, a completely meaningful way to express a desire.

As soon as a child begins to walk, the boundaries of the world accessible to him rapidly expand. The child learns from adults and gradually begins to master human actions: the purpose of an object, methods of acting with a given object, the technique of performing these actions. Toys are of great importance in the assimilation of these actions.

At this age, mental development begins and a sense of attachment is formed.

Crises in the psychological development of one-year-old children are associated with a contradiction between the biological system and the verbal situation. The child does not know how to control his behavior, sleep disturbances, loss of appetite, moodiness, touchiness, and tearfulness begin to appear. However, the crisis is not considered acute.

Early childhood (1-3 years)

At this age, the lines of mental development of boys and girls are separated. Children develop a more complete self-identification and understanding of gender. Self-awareness arises, claims for recognition from adults, a desire to earn praise and a positive assessment develop.

Speech develops further, and by the age of three the vocabulary reaches 1,000 words.

Further mental development occurs, the first fears appear, which can be aggravated by parental irritability, anger and can contribute to the child’s feeling of rejection. Excessive care from adults does not help either. A more effective method is when adults teach a child how to handle an object that causes fear using clear examples.

At this age, the basic need is tactile contact; the child masters sensations.

Crisis of three years

The crisis is acute, symptoms of a crisis in a child: response to adult proposals, stubbornness, impersonal obstinacy, self-will, protest-rebellion against others, despotism. A symptom of devaluation manifests itself in the fact that the child begins to call his parents names, tease, and swear.

The meaning of the crisis is that the child is trying to learn to make a choice and ceases to need the full care of his parents. The sluggish current crisis indicates a delay in the development of will.

It is necessary to determine for a growing child some area of ​​activity where he can act independently, for example, in a game he can test his independence.

Preschool childhood (3-7 years old)

At this age, the child’s play moves from simple manipulation of objects to story-based play - becoming a doctor, a salesman, an astronaut. Child psychology notes that at this stage, role identification and separation of roles begin to appear. Closer to 6-7 years, games according to the rules appear. Games are of great importance in the mental and emotional development of a child, they help cope with fears, teach them to take a leading role, and shape the child’s character and his attitude to reality.

New formations of preschool age are complexes of readiness for learning at school:

• personal readiness;
• communicative readiness means that the child knows how to interact with others according to norms and rules;
• cognitive readiness presupposes the level of development of cognitive processes: attention, imagination, thinking;
• technological equipment - that minimum of knowledge and skills that allows you to study at school;
• level of emotional development, ability to manage situational emotions and feelings.

Crisis 7 years

The crisis of seven years is reminiscent of the crisis of one year, the child begins to make demands and claims for attention to his person, his behavior can become demonstrative, slightly pretentious or even caricatured. He still does not know how to control his feelings well. The most important thing that parents can show is respect for the child. He should be encouraged for independence and initiative, and vice versa, not punished too harshly for failures, because this can lead to a lack of initiative and irresponsibility.

Junior school age (7-13 years old)

At this age, the child’s main activity is learning, and learning in general and learning at school may not coincide. For the process to be more successful, learning should be akin to a game. Child psychology considers this period of development as the most important.

The main neoplasms at this age:

• intellectual reflection – the ability to remember information, systematize it, store it in memory, retrieve and apply it at the right moments appears;
• personal reflection , the number of factors influencing self-esteem expands, and an idea of ​​oneself develops. The warmer the relationship with parents, the higher the self-esteem.

In mental development, the period of concretized mental operations begins. Egocentrism gradually decreases, the ability to focus on several signs at once, the ability to compare them, and track changes appears.

The development and behavior of a child is influenced by relationships in the family and the behavior style of adults. With authoritarian behavior, children develop less successfully than with democratic, friendly communication.

Learning to communicate with peers, the ability to adapt, and hence, to collective cooperation continues. The game is still necessary, it begins to take on personal motives: prejudice, leadership - submission, justice - injustice, loyalty - betrayal. Games have a social component; children like to come up with secret societies, passwords, codes, and certain rituals. The rules of the game and the distribution of roles help to assimilate the rules and norms of the adult world.

Emotional development depends to a large extent on experiences gained outside the home. Fictitious fears of early childhood are replaced by concrete ones: fear of injections, natural phenomena, anxiety about the nature of relationships with peers, etc. Sometimes there is a reluctance to go to school, and headaches, vomiting, and abdominal cramps may appear. There is no need to take this as a simulation; perhaps it is a fear of some kind of conflict situation with teachers or peers. You should have a friendly conversation with the child, find out the reason for the reluctance to go to school, try to resolve the situation and motivate the child for good luck and successful development. The lack of democratic communication in the family can contribute to the development of school age.

Crisis 13 years

In child psychology, age-related crises in children of thirteen years are crises of social development. It is very similar to the crisis of 3 years: “I myself!”. Contradiction between the personal self and the surrounding world. It is characterized by a decline in performance and performance at school, disharmony in the internal personal structure and is one of the most acute crises.

Symptoms of a crisis in a child during this period:

• negativism , the child is hostile to the entire world around him, aggressive, prone to conflicts and at the same time to self-isolation and loneliness, and is dissatisfied with everything. Boys are more susceptible to negativism than girls;
• drop in productivity , ability and interest in learning, a slowdown in creative processes, even in those areas in which the child is gifted and has previously shown great interest. All assigned work is performed mechanically.

The crisis of this age is mainly associated with the transition to a new stage of intellectual development - the transition from visualization to deduction and understanding. Concrete thinking is replaced by logical thinking. This is clearly manifested in the constant demand for evidence and criticism.

The teenager develops an interest in the abstract - music, philosophical issues, etc. The world begins to divide into objective reality and internal personal experiences. The foundations of a teenager’s worldview and personality are intensively laid.

Adolescence (13-16 years old)

During this period, rapid growth, maturation, and development of secondary sexual characteristics occur. The phase of biological maturation coincides with the phase of development of new interests and disappointment with previous habits and interests.

At the same time, the skills and established mechanisms of behavior do not change. There arises, especially in boys, acute sexual interests, as they say, they begin to “become naughty.” The process of painful separation from childhood begins.

The leading activity during this period is intimate and personal communication with peers. There is a weakening of ties with family.

Main neoplasms:

• concept is being formed "We" — there is a division into communities “friends and strangers.” In the teenage environment, the division of territories and spheres of living space begins.
• formation of reference groups. At the beginning of formation, these are same-sex groups, over time they become mixed, then the company is divided into pairs and consists of interrelated pairs. The opinions and values ​​of the group, almost always oppositional or even hostile to the adult world, become dominant for the teenager. The influence of adults is difficult due to the closed nature of the groups. Each member of the group is not critical of the general opinion or the opinion of the leader, dissent is excluded. Expulsion from the group is equivalent to complete collapse.
• emotional development is manifested by a sense of adulthood. In a sense, it is still false and biased. In fact, this is only a tendency towards adulthood. Appears in:
  • emancipation - the requirement for independence.
  • a new attitude towards learning - a desire for greater self-education, and complete indifference to school grades. There is often a discrepancy between the teenager’s intelligence and the grades in the diary.
  • the emergence of romantic relationships with representatives of the opposite sex.
  • change in appearance and manner of dressing.

Emotionally, the teenager experiences great difficulties and worries, and feels unhappy. Typical teenage phobias appear: shyness, dissatisfaction with one's appearance, anxiety.

The child’s games transformed into the teenager’s fantasy and became more creative. This is expressed in writing poems or songs, keeping diaries. Children's fantasies are turned inward, into the intimate sphere, and are hidden from others.

The urgent need at this age is understanding.

Parental mistakes in raising teenagers include emotional rejection (indifference to the child’s inner world), emotional indulgence (the child is considered exceptional and is protected from the outside world), authoritarian control (manifested in numerous prohibitions and excessive severity). The crisis of adolescence is further aggravated by permissive laissez-faire (lack or weakening of control, when the child is left to his own devices and is completely independent in all decisions).

It differs from all stages of child development; all anomalies of personal development that originated and developed earlier are manifested and are expressed in behavioral (more often in boys) and emotional (in girls) disorders. Most children experience disorders on their own, but some require the help of a psychologist.

Raising children requires a lot of strength, patience and peace of mind of adults. At the same time, this is the only opportunity to express your wisdom and depth of love for your child. When raising our children, we need to remember that we have an individual in front of us, and she grows up the way we raised her. In all matters, try to take the child’s position, then it will be easier to understand him.

However, studying the same object - mental development - genetic and child psychology represent two different psychological sciences. Genetic psychology is interested in problems of the emergence and development of mental processes. It answers the questions “how does this or that psychological movement occur, manifested by a feeling, sensation, idea, involuntary or voluntary movement, how do those processes occur, the result of which is a thought” (I.M. Sechenov). Genetic psychology or, what is the same thing, developmental psychology, analyzing the formation of mental processes, can rely on the results of studies carried out on children, but children themselves do not form the subject of study of genetic psychology. Genetic studies can also be carried out on adults. A well-known example of genetic research is the study of the formation of pitch hearing. In a specially organized experiment in which subjects had to adjust their voice to a given pitch, it was possible to observe the development of the ability to distinguish pitches.

To recreate, make, shape a mental phenomenon—this is the main strategy of genetic psychology. The path of experimental formation of mental processes was first outlined by L. S. Vygotsky. “The method we use,” wrote L. S. Vygotsky, “can be called an experimental-genetic method in the sense that it artificially induces and creates a genetic process of mental development... An attempt at such an experiment is to melt every frozen and fossilized psychological form, turn it into a moving, flowing stream of individual moments replacing each other... The task of such an analysis comes down to experimentally presenting any higher form of behavior not as a thing, but as a process, to take it in motion, to go not from a thing to its parts, but from the process to its individual moments."

Among many researchers of the development process, the most prominent representatives of genetic psychology are L. S. Vygotsky, J. Piaget, P. Ya. Galperin. Their theories, developed on the basis of experiments with children, relate entirely to general genetic psychology. The famous book by J. Piaget “The Psychology of Intelligence” is not a book about a child, it is a book about intelligence. P. Ya. Galperin created the theory of the planned and step-by-step formation of mental actions as the basis for the formation of mental processes. Genetic psychology includes the experimental study of concepts carried out by L. S. Vygotsky.

Child psychology differs from any other psychology in that it deals with special units of analysis - this is age, or the period of development. It should be emphasized that age is not reduced to the sum of individual mental processes; it is not a calendar date. Age, according to L. S. Vygotsky’s definition, is a relatively closed cycle of child development, which has its own structure and dynamics. The duration of an age is determined by its internal content: there are periods of development and, in some cases, “epochs” equal to one year, three, five years. Chronological and psychological ages do not coincide. Chronological or passport age is only a reference coordinate, that external grid against the background of which the process of mental development of the child, the formation of his personality, takes place.

Unlike genetic psychology, child psychology is the study of periods of child development, their changes and transitions from one age to another. Therefore, following L. S. Vygotsky, it is more correct to say about this area of ​​psychology: child, developmental psychology. Typically child psychologists were L. S. Vygotsky, A. Vallon, Z. Freud, D. B. Elkonin. As D. B. Elkonin figuratively said, general psychology is the chemistry of the psyche, and child psychology is rather physics, since it deals with larger and specifically organized “bodies” of the psyche. When materials from child psychology are used in general psychology, they reveal the chemistry of the process and say nothing about the child.

The distinction between genetic and child psychology indicates that the very subject of child psychology has changed historically. At present, the subject of child psychology is the disclosure of general patterns of mental development in ontogenesis, the establishment of age periods of this development and the reasons for the transition from one period to another. Progress in solving the theoretical problems of child psychology expands the possibilities of its practical implementation. In addition to activating the processes of training and education , a new area of ​​practice has emerged. This is control over the processes of child development, which should be distinguished from the tasks of diagnosing and selecting children for special institutions. Just as a pediatrician monitors the physical health of children, a child psychologist must say whether the child’s psyche is developing and functioning correctly. and if it is wrong, then what are the deviations and how should they be compensated. All this can be done only on the basis of a deep and accurate theory that reveals the specific mechanisms and dynamics of the development of the child’s psyche.

3. Specifics of the child’s mental development.

What is development? How is it characterized? What is the fundamental difference between development and any other changes in an object? As you know, an object can change, but not develop. Growth, for example, is a quantitative change in a given object, including a mental process. There are processes that fluctuate within the “less-more” range. These are processes of growth in the proper and true sense of the word. Growth occurs over time and is measured in time coordinates. The main characteristic of growth is the process of quantitative changes in the internal structure and composition of the individual elements included in an object, without significant changes in the structure of individual processes. For example, when measuring the physical growth of a child, we see a quantitative increase. L. S. Vygotsky emphasized that there are phenomena of growth in mental processes. For example, an increase in vocabulary without changing speech functions.

But behind these processes of quantitative growth, other phenomena and processes may occur. Then growth processes become only symptoms, behind which significant changes in the system and structure of processes are hidden. During such periods, jumps in the growth line are observed, which indicate significant changes in the body itself. For example, the endocrine glands mature, and profound changes occur in the physical development of the adolescent. In such cases, when significant changes occur in the structure and properties of a phenomenon, we are dealing with development.

Development, first of all, is characterized by qualitative changes, the emergence of new formations, new mechanisms, new processes, new structures. X. Werner, L. S. Vygotsky and other psychologists described the main signs of development. The most important among them are: differentiation, the dismemberment of a previously unified element; the emergence of new sides, new elements in development itself; restructuring of connections between the sides of an object. As psychological examples, we can mention the differentiation of the natural conditioned reflex to the position under the breast and the revitalization complex; the appearance of the sign function in infancy; changes in the systemic and semantic structure of consciousness throughout childhood. Each of these processes meets the listed development criteria.

As L. S. Vygotsky showed, there are many different types of development. Therefore, it is important to correctly find the place that the child’s mental development occupies among them, that is, to determine the specifics of mental development among other developmental processes. L. S. Vygotsky distinguished between: reformed and non-reformed types of development. A preformed type is a type when, at the very beginning, both the stages that the phenomenon (organism) will go through and the final result that the phenomenon will achieve are specified, fixed, and recorded. Everything is given here from the very beginning. An example is embryonic development. Despite the fact that embryogenesis has its own history (there is a tendency to reduce the underlying stages, the newest stage influences the previous stages), but this does not change the type of development. In psychology, there was an attempt to represent mental development according to the principle of embryonic development. This is the concept of Art. Holla. It is based on Haeckel's biogenetic law: ontogeny is a brief repetition of phylogeny. Mental development was considered by Art. Hall as a brief repetition of the stages of mental development of animals and the ancestors of modern humans.

The untransformed type of development is the most common on our planet. It also includes the development of the Galaxy, the development of the Earth, the process of biological evolution, and the development of society. The process of a child’s mental development also belongs to this type of process. The unreformed path of development is not predetermined. Children of different eras develop differently and reach different levels of development. From the very beginning, from the moment the child is born, neither the stages through which he must go, nor the result that he must achieve are given. Child development is an Untransformed type of development, but this is a completely special process - a process that is determined not from below, but from above, by the form of practical and theoretical activity that exists at a given level of development of society (As the poet said: “Only born, already Shakespeare is waiting for us." This is a feature of child development. Its final forms are not given, but given. Not a single development process, except ontogenetic, is carried out according to a ready-made model. Human development follows the pattern that exists in society. According to L. S. Vygotsky, the process of mental development is a process of interaction between real and ideal forms. The task of a child psychologist is to trace the logic of mastering ideal forms. A child does not immediately master the spiritual and material wealth of humanity. But without the process of mastering ideal forms, development is generally impossible. Therefore, within the untransformed type of development, the mental development of a child is a special process. The process of ontogenetic development is a process unlike anything else, an extremely unique process that takes place in the form of assimilation.

4. Strategies for studying a child’s mental development

The level of theory development determines the research strategy in science. This fully applies to child psychology, where the level of theory forms the goals and objectives of this science. At first, the task of child psychology was to accumulate facts and arrange them in time sequence. The observation strategy corresponded to this task. Of course, even then researchers were trying to understand the driving forces of development, and every psychologist dreamed of this. But there were no objective possibilities for solving this problem... The strategy of observing the real course of child development in the conditions in which it spontaneously develops led to the accumulation of various facts that needed to be brought into the system, to highlight the stages and stages of development in order to then identify the main trends and general patterns of the development process itself and ultimately understand its cause.

To solve these problems, psychologists used the strategy of a natural scientific ascertaining experiment, which makes it possible to establish the presence or absence of the phenomenon under study under certain controlled conditions, measure its quantitative characteristics and give a qualitative description. Both strategies - observation and ascertaining experiment - are widespread in child psychology. But their limitations become more and more obvious as it becomes clear that they do not lead to an understanding of the driving causes of human mental development. This happens because neither observation nor ascertaining experiment can actively influence the development process, and its study proceeds only passively.

Currently, a new research strategy is being intensively developed - a strategy for the formation of mental processes, active intervention, construction of a process with given properties. It is precisely because the strategy for the formation of mental processes leads to the intended result that one can judge its cause. Thus, the criterion for identifying the cause of development can be the success of the formative experiment.

Each of these strategies has its own history of development. As already mentioned, child psychology began with simple observation. Huge factual material about the development of a child at an early age was collected by parents, famous psychologists as a result of long-term observations of the development of their own children (V Preyer, V. Stern, J. Piaget, N. A. Rybnikov, N. A. Menchinskaya, A. N. Gvozdev, V.S. Mukhina, M. Kechki, etc.). ON THE. Rybnikov, in his work “Children's Diaries as Material on Child Psychology” (1946), gave a historical outline of this basic method of studying the child. Analyzing the significance of the first foreign diaries (I. Ten, 1876;

H Darwin, 1877; V. Preyer, 1882), the appearance of which became a turning point in the development of child psychology, N.A. Rybnikov noted that Russian psychologists can rightfully claim primacy, since A.S. Already in 1861, Simonovich conducted systematic observations of the speech development of a child from birth to 17 years.

Long-term systematic observation of the same child, daily recording of behavior, thorough knowledge of the entire history of the child's development, closeness to the child, good emotional contact with him - all this constitutes the positive aspects of the observations. However, observations by different authors were carried out for different purposes, so it is difficult to compare them with each other. In addition, as a rule, in the first diaries there was no unified observation technique, and their interpretation was often subjective. For example, during registration they often described not the fact itself, but the attitude towards it.

The Soviet psychologist M. Ya. Basov developed a system of objective observation - this is the main, from his point of view, method of child psychology. Emphasizing the importance of naturalness and normality of observation conditions, he described as a caricature such a situation when an observer comes to a children's group with paper and pencil in his hands, fixes his gaze on the child and constantly writes something down. “No matter how much the child changes his position, no matter how he moves in the surrounding space, the gaze of the observer, and sometimes he with his whole person, follows him and is always looking for something, while all the time he is silent and writes something” M. Ya. Basov correctly believed that research work with children should be carried out by the teacher himself, raising and teaching children in a team of which the observed child is a member.

Currently, most psychologists are skeptical about the observation method as the main method of studying children. But, as D.B. Elkonin often said, “a sharp psychological eye is more important than a stupid experiment.” The remarkable thing about the experimental method is that it “thinks” for the experimenter. Facts obtained by observation are very valuable. V. Stern, as a result of observing the development of his daughters, prepared a two-volume study on the development of speech. A. N. Gvozdev also published a two-volume monograph on the development of children’s speech based on observations of the development of his only son.

In 1925, in Leningrad, under the leadership of N. M. Shchelovanov, a clinic for the normal development of children was created. There they watched the child 24 hours a day and it was there that all the basic facts characterizing the first year of the child’s life were discovered. It is well known that the concept of the development of sensorimotor intelligence was built by J. Piaget based on observations of his three children. A long-term (over three years) study of adolescents from the same class allowed D. B. Elkonin and T. V. Dragunova to give a psychological description of adolescence. Hungarian psychologists L. Garai and M. Keczki, observing the development of their own children, traced how the differentiation of the child’s social position occurs in the family. V.S. Mukhina was the first to describe the development of behavior of two twin sons. These examples can be continued, although from what has already been said it is clear that the observation method as the initial stage of research has not outlived its usefulness and cannot be treated with disdain. It is important, however, to remember that with the help of this method only phenomena, external symptoms of development can be identified.

At the beginning of the century, the first attempts were made to experimentally study the mental development of children. The French Ministry of Education ordered the famous psychologist A. Binet to develop a methodology for selecting children for special schools. And already in 1908, testing of the child began, and measuring scales for mental development appeared. A. Binet created a method of standardized tasks for each age. A little later, the American psychologist L. Termen proposed a formula for measuring intelligence quotient.

It seemed that child psychology had entered a new path of development - mental abilities could be reproduced and measured with the help of special tasks (tests). But these hopes were not justified. It soon became clear that in an examination situation it is unknown which of the mental abilities is being examined using tests. In the 30s, Soviet psychologist V.I. Asnin emphasized that the condition for the reliability of a psychological experiment is not the average level of problem solving, but how the child accepts the problem, what problem he solves. In addition, IQ has long been considered by psychologists as an indicator of hereditary talent, which remains unchanged throughout a person’s life. To date, the idea of ​​a constant IQ has been greatly shaken, and it is practically not used in scientific psychology.

A lot of research has been carried out using the test method in child psychology, but they are constantly criticized for the fact that they always present the average child as an abstract bearer of psychological properties characteristic of the majority of the population of the corresponding age, identified using the cross-sectional method. With this measurement, the development process looks like a uniformly increasing straight line, where all qualitative new formations are hidden.

Having noticed the shortcomings of the cross-sectional method for studying the development process, researchers supplemented it with the method of longitudinal (“longitudinal”) study of the same children over a long period of time. This gave some advantage - it became possible to calculate the individual development curve of each child and determine whether his development corresponds to the age norm or whether it is above or below the average level. The longitudinal method made it possible to detect turning points on the development curve at which sharp qualitative shifts occur. However, this method is not free from drawbacks. Having received two points on the development curve, it is still impossible to answer the question of what happens between them. This method also does not make it possible to penetrate behind the phenomena and understand the mechanism of mental phenomena. The facts obtained by this method can be explained by various hypotheses. The necessary accuracy in their interpretation is lacking. Thus, despite all the subtleties of the experimental technique that ensure the reliability of the experiment, the statement strategy does not answer the main question: what happens between two points on the development curve? This question can only be answered by the strategy of experimental formation of mental phenomena.

We owe the introduction of formation strategies into child psychology to L. S. Vygotsky. He applied his theory about the indirect structure of higher mental functions to form his own ability to remember. According to eyewitnesses, L. S. Vygotsky could demonstrate in front of a large audience the memorization of about 400 randomly named words. For this purpose, he used auxiliary means - he associated each word with one of the Volga cities. Then, following the river in his mind, he could reproduce each word by its associated city. This method was called by L. S. Vygotsky the experimental genetic method, which allows one to identify qualitative features of the development of higher mental functions.

The strategy of forming mental processes eventually became widespread in Soviet psychology. Today there are several ideas for implementing this strategy, which can be summarized as follows:

The cultural-historical concept of L. S. Vygotsky, according to which the interpsychic becomes intrapsychic. The genesis of higher mental functions is associated with the use of a sign by two people in the process of their communication; without fulfilling this role, a sign cannot become a means of individual mental activity.

A. N. Leontiev’s theory of activity: every activity acts as a conscious action, then as an operation and, as it is formed, becomes a function. The movement here is carried out from top to bottom - from activity to function.

The theory of the formation of mental actions by P. Ya. Galperin:

the formation of mental functions occurs on the basis of an objective action and comes from the material execution of the action, and then through its speech form passes into the mental plane. This is the most developed concept of formation. However, everything obtained with its help acts as a laboratory experiment. How do the data of a laboratory experiment relate to real ontogenesis? The problem of the relationship between experimental genesis and real genesis is one of the most serious and still unresolved. Its importance for child psychology was pointed out by A.V. Zaporozhets and D.B. Elkonin. A certain weakness of the formation strategy is that it has so far been applied only to the formation of the cognitive sphere of the individual, while emotional-volitional processes and needs have remained outside of experimental research.

The concept of educational activity is the research of D. B. Elkonin and V. V. Davydov, in which a strategy for personality formation was developed not in laboratory conditions, but in real life - through the creation of experimental schools.

The theory of “initial humanization” by I. A. Sokolyansky and A. I. Meshcheryakov, which outlines the initial stages of the formation of the psyche in deaf-blind children.

The strategy for the formation of mental processes is one of the achievements of Soviet child psychology. This is the most adequate strategy for the modern understanding of the subject of child psychology. Thanks to the strategy of forming mental processes, it is possible to penetrate into the essence of the child’s mental development. But this does not mean that other research methods can be neglected. Any science proceeds from a phenomenon to the discovery of its nature.

TOPICS FOR WORKSHOP SESSIONS

Childhood as a sociohistorical phenomenon

Reasons for the emergence of child psychology as a science

Historical changes in the subject of child (age) psychology

The concept of “development” and its criteria in relation to child development

Strategies, methods and techniques for researching child development.

TASKS FOR INDEPENDENT WORK

Select examples of the specifics of childhood in Russian culture.

Consider the Convention on the Rights of the Child from the perspective of a historical approach to the analysis of childhood

Provide specific examples of the use of various strategies and methods in child research

LITERATURE

Lenin V I On the conditions of reliability of a psychological experiment Reader on developmental and educational psychology. Part I, M., 1980.

Vygotsky L. S. Collected Works. T.3, M, 1983, p. 641

Galperin P. Ya. The method of “slices” and the method of stage-by-stage formation in the study of children's thinking // Questions of psychology, 1966, No. 4. Convention on the Rights of the Child (see appendix)

Klyuchevsky 8 O. Portraits of historical figures. M, 1993

Elkonin B D Introduction to developmental psychology M., 1995.

Chapter II. OVERCOMING BIOGENETIC APPROACHES TO STUDYING THE CHILD'S PSYCHE

1. Biogenetic principle in psychology

Pedagogy continually turned to child psychology with questions about what the process of child development is and what its basic laws are. Attempts to explain this process made by child psychology have always been conditioned by the general level of psychological knowledge. At first, child psychology was a descriptive, phenomenalistic science, unable to reveal the internal laws of development. Gradually, psychology, as well as medicine, moved from symptoms to syndromes, and then to a true causal explanation of the process. As already noted, changes in ideas about the mental development of a child have always been associated with the development of new research methods. “The problem of method is the beginning and basis, the alpha and omega of the entire history of the child’s cultural development,” wrote L. S. Vygotsky. It is important to emphasize that we are talking specifically about the method, because a specific methodology, according to L. S. Vygotsky, can take various forms depending on the content of a particular problem, on the nature of the research, on the personality of the subject.

The emergence of the first concepts of child development was greatly influenced by Charles Darwin's theory, which for the first time clearly formulated the idea that development, genesis, is subject to a certain law. Subsequently, any major psychological concept has always been associated with the search for the laws of child development.

Early psychological theories include the concept of recapitulation. E. Haeckel formulated a biogenetic law in relation to embryogenesis: ontogeny is a short and rapid repetition of phylogeny. This law was transferred to the process of ontogenetic development of the child. American psychologist St. Hall believed that the child's development briefly repeats the development of the human race. In his opinion, children often wake up at night in fear, even in horror, and then cannot sleep for a long time. He explained this by atavism: the child finds himself in a long-past era, when a person slept alone in the forest, exposed to all sorts of dangers, and suddenly woke up. Art. Hall believed that a child's play is a necessary exercise for the complete loss of rudimentary and now useless functions; the child is practicing. They are like a tadpole that continuously moves its tail so that it falls off. Art. Hall also assumed that the development of children's drawing reflects the stages that visual creativity has passed through in the history of mankind.

These provisions of Art. Hall, naturally, attracted criticism from many psychologists. Thus, S. L. Rubinstein emphasized that such analogies are untenable: an adult, no matter how primitive he may be. was, enters into a relationship with nature, into the struggle for existence as a ready, mature individual; The child has a completely different relationship with the surrounding reality. Therefore, what appears to be similar, caused by different reasons, is a different phenomenon. “It would be anti-evolutionary to force a child to experience all the delusions of the human intellect,” another scientist, P. P. Blonsky, wittily noted.

However, under the influence of the works of St. Hall, the study of child psychology attracted many and took on an unusually wide scale. “In America they like to do everything in a big way!” - wrote the Swiss psychologist E. Claparède. In order to quickly achieve the desired goal and obtain a large amount of factual material, the development of various questionnaires began, the benefits of which were often questionable. Teachers did not have time to answer questionnaires sent out by pedagogical magazines, and for this they were condemned, considered backward. “But science is not created as quickly as cities are built, even in America, and the mistakes of this feverish and artificial activity soon made themselves felt,” E. Claparède stated already at that time.

The theoretical inconsistency of the concept of recapitulation in psychology was recognized before a critical attitude to this concept appeared in embryology. I. and. Schmalhausen showed that in phylogenesis, a decisive restructuring of the entire embryogenesis as a whole occurs, and the decisive moments of development occur. E. Haeckel's criticism, based on enormous factual material, raises the problem of the history of embryogenesis.

Despite the limitations and naivety of the concept of recapitulation, the biogenetic principle in psychology is interesting because it was a search for law. As D. B. Elkonin emphasized, this was an incorrect theoretical concept, but it was precisely a theoretical concept. And if it had not existed, there would have been no other theoretical concepts for a long time. In the concept of Art. Hall was the first to attempt to show that there is a connection between historical and individual development that has not yet been sufficiently traced.

The theory of recapitulation did not remain in the center of attention of scientists for long, but the ideas of Art. Hall had a significant influence on child psychology through the research of two of his famous students - A. Gesell and L. Theremin.

2. Normative approach to the study of child development.

A. Gesell, like many other prominent psychologists, received a pedagogical and medical education and then worked for more than thirty years at the Yale Psychoclinic, on the basis of which the now well-known Gesell Institute of Child Development was later created. The ontogenesis of the psyche is studied there to this day, and clinical and pedagogical research is conducted. A. Gesell's contribution to child psychology is significant. He developed a practical system for diagnosing the mental development of a child from birth to adolescence, which is based on systematic comparative studies (forms and various forms of pathology) using film and photo recording of age-related changes in motor activity, speech, adaptive reactions and social contacts of the child. For the objectivity of observations, he was the first to use semi-permeable glass (the famous “Gesell mirror”).

A. Gesell introduced into psychology the method of longitudinal, longitudinal study of the mental development of the same children from birth to adolescence. He studied monozygotic twins and was one of the first to use the twin method to analyze the relationship between maturation and learning. In the last years of his life, A. Gesell studied the mental development of a blind child in order to more deeply understand the features of normal development. In clinical practice, the Atlas of Infant Behavior compiled by A. Gesell is widely used, containing 3200 (!) photographs recording the motor activity and social behavior of a child from birth to two years.

However, in his research, A. Gesell limited himself to a purely quantitative study of comparative sections of child development, reducing development to a simple increase, “increase in behavior,” without analyzing qualitative transformations during the transition from one stage of development to another, emphasizing the dependence of development only on the maturation of the organism. Trying to formulate a general law of child development, A. Gesell drew attention to the decrease in the rate of development with age: the younger the child, the faster changes in his behavior occur. But what is hidden behind the change in the pace of development? It is difficult to find the answer to this question in the works of A. Gesell. This is understandable, because the consequence of the cross-sectional (transverse and longitudinal) research methods he used was the identification of development and growth.

The works of A. Gesell were critically analyzed by L. S. Vygotsky, who called A. Gesell’s concept “the theory of empirical evolutionism,” revealing the social development of a child as a simple variety of biological, as a child’s adaptation in his environment. However, A. Gesell’s call for the need for control beyond the normal course of a child’s mental development and the phenomenology of development (growth) created by him from birth to 16 years of age have not lost their significance to this day.

In 1916, L. Theremin standardized A. Binet’s tests on American children and, expanding the scale, created a new version of tests for measuring mental abilities, introduced the concept of intelligence quotient (1Q) and tried to substantiate on the basis of facts the position that it remains constant throughout life. Using tests, he obtained a curve of normal distribution of abilities in the population and began numerous correlation studies, which aimed to identify the dependence of intelligence parameters on age, gender, birth order, race, socioeconomic status of the family, and parental education. L. Theremin carried out one of the longest longitudinal studies in psychology, which lasted for fifty years. In 1921, L. Theremin selected 1,500 gifted children whose IQ was 140 or higher and tracked their development. The research ended in the mid-70s after the death of L. Theremin. Contrary to expectations, this study did not lead to anything significant except the most trivial conclusions. According to L. Theremin, “genius” is associated with better health, higher mental performance and higher educational achievements than in the rest of the population.

Theremin considered a child with a high IQ to be gifted. Psychologists of the younger generation (J. Guilford, E. Torrance, etc.) pointed out deep differences between intelligence indicators and creativity. The basis for this distinction was Guilford's description of convergent and divergent thinking.

Convergent thinking is solving a problem that has one correct answer. Divergent thinking is the solution to a problem that has many answers in the case where none of the answers can be considered the only correct one. The most important components of divergent thinking: the number of answers within a certain period of time, flexibility, originality.

Based on Guilford's ideas, Torrance and his colleagues developed tests of creative thinking (CTTM) at the University of Minnesota and used them in a study of several thousand schoolchildren. These studies have shown that children with developed creative abilities may have significantly lower IQ scores compared to their peers. If you measure children's creativity on the basis of intelligence tests, Torrance emphasized, you will have to exclude about 70 percent of the most gifted children from consideration. This percentage is stable and practically does not depend on either the method of measuring intelligence or the educational level of the subjects.

An extensive talent research project was developed. Research program: studying the relationship between intelligence and creativity; identifying personality traits of creative children; study of environmental factors influencing the development of creative abilities: the relationship between parents and children, birth order and gender differences; relationships between gifted children and their peers; social and cultural factors.

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