Psychology of early age. Mental characteristics of young children

The development of a child up to 3 years old can be divided into: the period of infancy (newborn, infancy and crisis of 1 year), the period of early childhood from 1 to 3 years (crisis of 3 years).

Infancy

Newborn- transitional stage. Newborn crisis. Adaptation with the help of hereditarily fixed mechanisms - the system of food reflexes (food concentration). Unconditioned reflexes - protective and indicative. By the end of the first month, the first conditioned reflexes appear (the baby begins to respond to the feeding position), but in general they develop later.

Mental life. The brain continues to develop, it is not fully formed, therefore mental life is connected mainly with the subcortical centers, as well as with an insufficiently mature cortex. The sensations of a newborn are undifferentiated and inextricably fused with emotions, which made it possible for L.S. Vygotsky speaks of “sensory emotional states or emotionally emphasized states of sensations.” Important events are the emergence of auditory (2 - 3 weeks) and visual (3 - 5 weeks) concentration. Specific social situation of development - helplessness, biological connection with the mother, dependence on an adult.

At about 1 month - the “revitalization complex” - a violent emotional reaction to the appearance of the mother, including a smile, which means the first social need - the need for communication. This marks a new psychological period. Infancy proper begins.

Infancy

Cognitive development of the region: perception- by 4 months not just sees, but already looks, actively reacts to what he sees, moves. Perceives the shape of objects, identifies the contour and their other elements, and is able to navigate many parameters of objects (movements, contrasts, etc.). React to color. Spatial perception develops, in particular depth perception. For development, it is necessary to satisfy his need for new impressions, trying to ensure that the environment around him is not monotonous and uninteresting. The baby has a holistic picture of the world.

Movement and actions. Hand movements directed towards an object and feeling an object appear at about 4 months of life. At 5 - 6 months, an object is grabbed, which requires complex hand-eye coordination - the first purposeful action. Chains of identical, repeating actions unfold, which J. Piaget called circular reactions. After 7 months, “correlating” actions occur: putting small objects into large ones, opening and closing the lids of boxes. After 10 months, the first functional actions appear, but they are not yet objective (imitation of adults).

Perception and action make it possible to judge the initial forms of visual-effective thinking. The cognitive tasks that the child is able to solve become more complex, first only in terms of perception, then using motor activity.

Memory. Recognition comes first. A 4-month-old baby distinguishes a familiar face from an unfamiliar one. After 8 months, reproduction appears - restoration of the image in memory.

Emotional development. In the first 3 - 4 months. Various emotional states appear: surprise in response to the unexpected (inhibition of movements, decreased heart rate), anxiety in response to physical discomfort (increased movements, increased heart rate, squinting of the eyes, crying), relaxation when a need is satisfied. After 3 - 4 months, he smiles at acquaintances, but is somewhat lost at the sight of an unfamiliar adult. At 7-8 months, anxiety when strangers appear increases sharply. Around the same time, between 7 and 11 months, the so-called “fear of separation” appears. By the end of 1 year, he strives not only for emotional contacts, but also for joint actions.

Speech. In the first half of the year, speech hearing is formed. Booming. In the second half of the year - babbling, usually combined with expressive gestures. By the end of 1 year, the child understands 10-20 words spoken by adults, and he himself pronounces one or several of his first words, similar in sound to the words of adult speech. With the appearance of the first words, a new stage in the child’s mental development begins.

Year 1 crisis

Transitional period between infancy and early childhood. A surge of independence, the appearance of affective reactions (when parents do not understand his wishes). The main acquisition of the transition period is autonomous speech (Vygotsky). The baby has his own logic, and his words become ambiguous and situational.

Bottom line. Walks or at least tries to walk; performs various actions with objects; his actions and perceptions can be organized with the help of speech, since he understands the words of adults addressed to him. He begins to speak, his speech is situational and ambiguous. Cognitive and emotional development is based primarily on the need to communicate with adults - the central neoplasm of this age period. Becomes biologically independent.

Early age (from 1 year to 3 years)

The next stage - psychological separation from the mother - begins in early childhood. This is due to the fact that the child not only develops new physical capabilities, but also develops psychologically intensively. functions, and by the end of the period the initial foundations (rudiments) of self-awareness appear.

Development of mental functions. Sensitive period for speech acquisition.

Speech. By the age of 3, a child’s speech acquires a substantive meaning and, in connection with this, substantive generalizations appear. Active and passive vocabulary is growing rapidly. By the age of 3, a child understands almost everything. Speaks 1000 - 1500 words.

Perception. At an early age, other mental functions develop - perception, thinking, memory, attention. Perception dominates. This means a certain dependence of other mental processes on it. This manifests itself - young children are maximally connected to the current situation. Their behavior is spontaneous and impulsive; nothing that lies outside the visual situation attracts them. Until the age of 2, a child cannot act at all without relying on perception. Elementary forms of imagination. A small child is not capable of inventing something or lying. Perception is affectively colored - impulsive behavior. Observed objects really “attract” the child, causing him to have a strong emotional reaction. The affective nature of perception leads to sensorimotor unity. The child sees a thing, he is attracted to it, and thanks to this, impulsive behavior begins to unfold - to get it, to do something with it.

Memory. Basically, this is recognition, there is no reliance on past experience.

Actions and thinking. Thinking in this age period is usually called visually effective. It is based on the perceptions and actions carried out by the child. And although at approximately 2 years of age the child develops an internal plan of action, throughout early childhood, objective activity remains an important basis and source of intellectual development. In joint activities with an adult, the child learns ways of acting with a variety of objects.

Thinking initially manifests itself in the very process of practical activity, therefore, according to domestic psychologists, it lags behind it in terms of the general level of development and the composition of operations. The objective actions themselves are also improved. The mastered actions are transferred to other conditions.

The leading activity during this period is object-manipulative. The child does not play, but manipulates objects, including toys, focusing on the actions with them. However, at the end of early childhood, play with a plot still appears in its original forms. This is the so-called director's game, in which the objects used by the child are endowed with playful meaning. For the development of play, the appearance of symbolic or substitutive actions is important.

Emotional development. The development of mental functions is inseparable from the development of the emotional-need sphere of the child. The dominant perception at an early age is affectively colored. The child reacts emotionally only to what he directly perceives. The child’s desires are unstable and quickly passing, he cannot control and restrain them; They are limited only by punishments and rewards from adults. All desires have equal strength: in early childhood there is no subordination of motives. The child still cannot choose or settle on one thing - he is not able to make a decision.

The development of the emotional-need sphere depends on the nature of the child’s communication with adults and peers. In communication with close adults who help the child explore the world of “adult” objects, the motives of cooperation predominate, although purely emotional communication, which is necessary at all age stages, also remains. A young child, when communicating with children, always proceeds from his own desires, completely disregarding the desires of others. Egocentrism. Doesn't know how to empathize. Early childhood is characterized by vivid emotional reactions associated with the child’s immediate desires. At the end of this period, when approaching the 3-year crisis, affective reactions to the difficulties faced by the child are observed. A young child is easily distracted. If he is really upset, it is enough for an adult to show him a favorite or a new toy, offer to do something interesting with him - and the child, for whom one desire is easily replaced by another, instantly switches and is happy to do a new activity. The development of the child’s emotional-need sphere is closely related to the emerging self-awareness at this time. At about 2 years old, the child begins to recognize himself in the mirror. Self-recognition is the simplest, primary form of self-awareness. The consciousness of “I”, “I am good”, “I myself” and the emergence of personal actions propel the child to a new level of development. The transition period begins - a crisis of 3 years.

Crisis 3 years

One of the most difficult moments in a child's life. This is destruction, a revision of the old system of social relations, a crisis of identifying one’s “I,” according to D.B. Elkonin. The child, separating from adults, tries to establish new, deeper relationships with them. L.S. Vygotsky describes 7 characteristics of a 3-year crisis. Negativism- a negative reaction not to the action itself, which he refuses to perform, but to the demand or request of an adult. The main motive for action is to do the opposite.

The motivation for the child’s behavior changes. At the age of 3, he first becomes able to act contrary to his immediate desire. The child’s behavior is determined not by this desire, but by the relationship with another, adult person. The motive for behavior is already outside the situation given to the child. Stubbornness. This is the reaction of a child who insists on something not because he really wants it, but because he himself told adults about it and demands that his opinion be taken into account. Obstinacy. It is directed not against a specific adult, but against the entire system of relationships that developed in early childhood, against the norms of upbringing accepted in the family.

The tendency towards independence is clearly manifested: the child wants to do everything and decide for himself. In principle, this is a positive phenomenon, but during a crisis, an exaggerated tendency towards independence leads to self-will, it is often inadequate to the child’s capabilities and causes additional conflicts with adults.

For some children, conflicts with their parents become regular; they seem to be constantly at war with adults. In these cases we talk about protest-riot. In a family with an only child, it may appear despotism. If there are several children in a family, instead of despotism, it usually occurs jealousy: the same tendency towards power here acts as a source of a jealous, intolerant attitude towards other children who have almost no rights in the family, from the point of view of the young despot.

Depreciation. A 3-year-old child may begin to swear (old rules of behavior are devalued), throw away or even break a favorite toy offered at the wrong time (old attachments to things are devalued), etc. The child's attitude towards other people and towards himself changes. He is psychologically separated from close adults.

In early childhood, a child actively learns about the world of objects around him and, together with adults, masters ways of operating with them. Its leading Activity is object-manipulative, within the framework of which the first primitive games arise. By the age of 3, personal actions and the consciousness of “I myself” appear - the central new formation of this period. A purely emotional inflated self-esteem arises. At 3 years old, a child’s behavior begins to be motivated not only by the content of the situation in which he is immersed, but also by relationships with other people. Although his behavior remains impulsive, actions appear that are associated not with immediate momentary desires, but with the manifestation of the child’s “I”.

Childhood, as a sociocultural phenomenon, is of a specific historical nature and has its own history of development. The nature and content of individual periods of childhood are influenced by the specific socio-economic and ethnocultural characteristics of the society where the child grows up, and, first of all, by the system of public education. Within successively changing types of children's activities, the child appropriates historically developed human abilities. Modern science has abundant evidence that the psychological new formations that develop in childhood are of enduring importance for the development of abilities and the formation of personality.

Preschool age is a stage of mental development of children, covering the period from 3 to 6-7 years, characterized by the fact that the leading activity is play, and is very important for the formation of the child’s personality. Within its framework, three periods are distinguished:

1. junior preschool age - from 3 to 4 years;
2. average preschool age - from 4 to 5 years;
3. senior preschool age - from 5 to 7 years.

During preschool age, a child discovers, with the help of an adult, the world of human relationships and different types of activities.

The purpose of the study is the psychology of preschool children.

The object of the study is a preschool child.

The subject of the study is the human psyche, the psyche of a preschool child.

1. Three-year crisis: seven stars of symptoms

The first symptom that characterizes the onset of a crisis is the emergence of negativism. We must clearly imagine what we are talking about here. When talking about children's negativism, it must be distinguished from ordinary disobedience. With negativism, all the child’s behavior runs counter to what adults offer him. If a child does not want to do something because it is unpleasant for him (for example, he plays, but they force him to go to bed, he doesn’t want to sleep), this will not be negativism. The child wants to do what he is drawn to, what he has aspirations for, but he is forbidden; if he does do this, it will not be negativism. This will be a negative reaction to the adult's demand, a reaction that is motivated by the child's strong desire.

Negativism refers to such manifestations in a child’s behavior when he does not want to do something just because one of the adults suggested it, i.e. This is a reaction not to the content of the action, but to the adults’ proposal itself. Negativism includes, as a distinguishing feature from ordinary disobedience, what the child does not do because he was asked to do so. The child is playing in the yard, and he doesn’t want to go into the room. He is called to sleep, but he does not obey, despite the fact that his mother asks him to do so. And if she had asked for something else, he would have done what pleased him. With a negativity reaction, the child does not do something precisely because he is asked to do it. There is a kind of shift in motivations here.

Let me give you a typical example of behavior. A girl in her 4th year of life, with a prolonged crisis of three years and pronounced negativism, wants to be taken to a conference where children are discussed. The girl is even planning to go there. I'm inviting a girl. But since I call her, she won't come for anything. She resists with all her might. “Well, then go to your place.” She doesn't go. “Well, come here” - she doesn’t come here either. When she is left alone, she begins to cry. She's upset that she wasn't accepted. Thus, negativism forces the child to act contrary to his affective desire. The girl would like to go, but because she was asked to do it, she will never do it.

With a sharp form of negativism, it comes to the point that you can get the opposite answer to any proposal made in an authoritative tone. A number of authors have beautifully described similar experiments. For example, an adult, approaching a child, says in an authoritative tone: “This dress is black,” and receives the answer: “No, it is white.” And when they say: “It’s white,” the child replies: “No, it’s black.” The desire to contradict, the desire to do the opposite of what one is told is negativism in the proper sense of the word.

A negative reaction differs from ordinary disobedience in two significant ways. Firstly, here the social attitude, the attitude towards another person, comes to the fore. In this case, the reaction to a certain action of the child was not motivated by the content of the situation itself: whether or not the child wants to do what he is asked to do. Negativism is an act of a social nature: it is primarily addressed to the person, and not to the content of what the child is asked for. And the second significant point is the child’s new attitude towards his own affect. The child does not act directly under the influence of passion, but acts contrary to his tendency. Regarding the attitude to affect, let me remind you of early childhood before the crisis of three years. What is most characteristic of early childhood, from the point of view of all research, is the complete unity of affect and activity. The child is completely in the grip of affect, completely inside the situation. In preschool age, a motive also appears in relation to other people, which directly follows from the affect associated with other situations. If the child’s refusal, the motivation for the refusal lies in the situation, if he does not do it because he does not want to do it or wants to do something else, then this will not be negativism. Negativism is a reaction, a tendency where the motive is outside the given situation.

The second symptom of the three-year crisis is stubbornness. If negativism must be distinguished from ordinary stubbornness, then stubbornness must be distinguished from perseverance. For example, a child wants something and persistently strives to get it done. This is not stubbornness; this occurs even before the crisis of three years. For example, a child wants to have a thing, but cannot immediately get it. He insists on having this thing given to him. This is not stubbornness. Stubbornness is a reaction of a child when he insists on something not because he really wants it, but because he demanded it. He insists on his demand. Let's say a child is called from the yard into the house; he refuses, they give him arguments that convince him, but because he has already refused, he does not go. The motive behind stubbornness is that the child is bound by his original decision. Only this will be stubbornness.

Two things distinguish stubbornness from ordinary persistence. The first point is common with negativism and has to do with motivation. If a child insists on what he now wants, this will not be stubbornness. For example, he loves sledding and therefore will strive to be outside all day.

And the second point. If negativism is characterized by a social tendency, i.e. a child does something opposite to what adults tell him, then here, with stubbornness, a tendency towards himself is characteristic. It cannot be said that a child freely moves from one affect to another, no, he does this only because he said so, he sticks to it. We have a different relationship of motivations to the child’s own personality than before the crisis.

The third point is usually called the German word "trotz" (Trotz). The symptom is considered so central to age that the entire critical age is called trotz alter, in Russian - the age of obstinacy.

Obstinacy differs from negativism in that it is impersonal. Negativism is always directed against the adult who is now encouraging the child to take one action or another. And obstinacy is, rather, directed against the norms of upbringing established for the child, against the way of life; it is expressed in a kind of childish discontent, causing “come on!”, with which the child responds to everything that is offered to him and what is done.

Here, an obstinate attitude is reflected not in relation to a person, but in relation to the entire way of life that developed before the age of 3, in relation to the norms that are proposed, to the toys that were previously of interest. Obstinacy differs from stubbornness in that it is directed outward, in relation to the external, and is caused by the desire to insist on one’s own desire.

It is quite understandable why in education obstinacy appears as the main symptom of the three-year crisis. Before that, the child was caressed, obedient, he was led by the hand, and suddenly he becomes an obstinate creature who is dissatisfied with everything. This is the opposite of a silky, smooth, soft child, this is something that constantly resists what is done to it.

Obstinacy differs from the child’s usual lack of compliance in that it is biased. The child rebels, his dissatisfaction, causing “come on!” tendentious in the sense that it is actually imbued with a hidden rebellion against what the child has dealt with before.

There remains a fourth symptom, which the Germans call Eigensinn, or self-will, self-will. It lies in the child’s tendency towards independence. This didn't happen before. Now the child wants to do everything himself.

Of the symptoms of the analyzed crisis, three more are indicated, but they are of secondary importance. The first is a protest-riot. Everything in the child’s behavior begins to have a protesting character in a number of individual manifestations, which could not have happened before. The child’s entire behavior takes on the features of protest, as if the child is at war with those around him, in constant conflict with them. Frequent quarrels between children and parents are common. Associated with this is the symptom of devaluation. For example, in a good family a child begins to swear. S. Buhler figuratively described the horror of the family when the mother heard from the child that she was a fool, which he could not say before.

The child tries to devalue the toy, refuses it, words and terms appear in his vocabulary that mean everything bad, negative, and all this refers to things that in themselves do not bring any trouble. And finally, they also point to a dual symptom that is found differently in different families. In a family with an only child, there is a desire for despotism. The child develops a desire to exercise despotic power over others. The mother should not leave the house, she should sit in the room, as he demands. He must get everything he demands; he won’t eat it, but will eat what he wants. The child seeks thousands of ways to demonstrate power over others. The child is now trying to return to the state that was in early childhood, when all his desires were actually fulfilled, and to become the master of the situation. In a family with several children, this symptom is called a symptom of jealousy: towards the younger or older ones, if there are more children in the family. Here the same tendency towards domination, despotism, and power appears as a source of jealous attitude towards other children.

These are the main symptoms that are replete with descriptions of the crisis of three years. It's not hard to see

Having considered these symptoms, the crisis appears mainly due to such features that make it possible to recognize in it a kind of rebellion against authoritarian upbringing, it is like a protest of a child demanding independence, having outgrown the norms and forms of guardianship that developed at an early age. The crisis in its typical symptoms is so obviously in the nature of a rebellion against the teacher that it catches the eye of all researchers.

In these symptoms, the child appears as difficult to educate. The child, who previously did not cause worries and difficulties, now acts as a being who becomes difficult for adults. This gives the impression that the child has changed dramatically over a short period of time. From a “baby” who was carried in his arms, he turned into a creature that was obstinate, stubborn, negative, denying, jealous or despotic, so that his entire appearance in the family immediately changed.

It is not difficult to see that in all the described symptoms there are also some changes in the child’s social relationships with his closest people. All the symptoms indicate the same thing: in the child’s relationship with the immediate family environment, with which he is connected by affective attachments, outside of which his existence would previously have been unthinkable, something changes dramatically.

A child in early childhood is a being who is always at the mercy of direct affective relationships with those around him with whom he is connected. In the crisis of three years, what is called a split occurs: there may be conflicts, the child may scold his mother, toys offered at the wrong moment, he may break them out of anger, a change in the affective-volitional sphere occurs, which indicates the child’s increased independence and activity . All symptoms revolve around the axis of the self and the people around it. These symptoms indicate that the child’s relationship with the people around him or with his own personality is changing.

In general, the symptoms taken together give the impression of emancipation of the child: as if adults had previously led him by the hand, but now he has a tendency to walk

on one's own. This is noted by researchers as a characteristic feature of the crisis. A child in early childhood is biologically separated, but psychologically he is not yet separated from the people around him. A child under 3 years of age is not socially separated from others, and in the crisis of three years we are dealing with a new stage of emancipation.

It is worth at least briefly talking about the so-called second zone of symptoms, i.e. about the consequences of the main symptoms and their further development. The second zone of symptoms is in turn divided into two groups. One is the symptoms that arise as a consequence of the child’s attitude toward independence. Thanks to changes in the child’s social relationships, his affective sphere, everything that is most dear to him, valuable, that affects his strongest, deepest experiences, the child enters into a number of external and internal conflicts, and we very often deal with neurotic reactions of children. These reactions are painful. In neuropathic children, it is precisely in the crisis of three years that we often see the appearance of neurotic reactions, for example enuresis, i.e. bed-wetting. A child accustomed to neatness, if the crisis progresses unfavorably, often returns in this regard to the early stage. Night terrors, restless sleep and other neuropathic symptoms, sometimes severe difficulties in speech, stuttering, extreme exacerbation of negativism, stubbornness, so-called hypobulic seizures, i.e. a peculiar type of seizures that superficially resemble seizures, but in fact are not painful seizures in the proper sense of the word (the child shakes, throws himself on the floor, knocks with his arms and legs), but represent extremely sharpened features of negativism, stubbornness, devaluation, and protest.

Let's draw some conclusions:

1. A negative reaction appears from the moment when the child is indifferent to your request or even wants to do what is asked of him, but he still refuses. The motive for refusal, the motive for the action lies not in the content of the activity itself to which you invite him, but in the relationship to you.
2. A negative reaction does not manifest itself in the child’s refusal to do the action that you ask him to do, but in the fact that you ask him to do it. Therefore, the true essence of a child’s negative attitude is to do the opposite, i.e. show an act of independent behavior in relation to what is asked of him.

It's the same with stubbornness. Mothers, complaining about difficult children, often say that they are stubborn and persistent. But persistence and stubbornness are two different things. If a child really wants to achieve something and he persistently strives for it, this has nothing to do with stubbornness. With stubbornness, the child insists on something that he does not want very much, or does not want at all, or has long ceased to want, so that it corresponds to the strength of the demand. The child insists not because of the content of the desire, but because he said it, i.e. There is a social motivation here.

The so-called seven-star crisis symptoms reveal: new features are always associated with the fact that the child begins to motivate his actions not by the content of the situation itself, but by relationships with other people.

If we generalize the actual picture of the symptoms of the three-year-old crisis, then the crisis, essentially speaking, proceeds primarily as a crisis of the child’s social relations.

What changes significantly during a crisis? Social position of the child according to

attitude towards other people, towards the authority of mother and father. There is also a crisis of personality - “I”, i.e. a series of actions arise, the motive of which is associated with the manifestation of the child’s personality, and not with a given instant desire; the motive is differentiated from the situation. Simply put, the crisis proceeds along the axis of restructuring the social relationships of the child’s personality and the people around him.

Social situation of personality development in the preschool period

According to Leontyev A.N., preschool childhood is the time of life when the world of human reality around him is increasingly opening up to the child. In play and other activities, the child masters the objective world as the world of human objects, reproducing human actions with them. Shagraeva O.A. notes that the child experiences his independence from the people immediately around him; he must take into account the demands that the people around him place on his behavior, because this really determines his interpersonal interactions with them. Not only do his successes and failures depend on these relationships, they themselves contain his joys and sorrows.

In the studies of Lisina M.I. the advanced initiative of the adult in changing the communicative activities of children is emphasized. The living process of communication is the context in which the child’s social behavior arises, takes shape and develops.

Communication with adults in preschool age is differentiated and takes on new forms and content; the child for the first time goes beyond the boundaries of his family circle, establishing new relationships with the wider world of not only adults, but also peers. For a preschooler, the attention of an adult and joint activities with him are no longer enough. Thanks to speech development, the possibilities of communication with others are significantly expanded. Now the child can communicate about both directly perceived objects and imagined, conceivable objects that are absent in a specific interaction situation. For the first time, the content of communication goes beyond the perceived situation, i.e. becomes non-situational.

M.I. Lisina identified two extra-situational forms of communication characteristic of preschool age: cognitive and personal.

In the first half of preschool age (3-5 years) An extra-situational-cognitive form of communication between a child and an adult appears. Children of this age are called "why" due to the child’s heightened need for knowledge and expansion of his range of interests. The child asks a variety of questions that cover all areas of knowledge about the world, nature and society. An adult appears to the child as a source of new knowledge, as an erudite, capable of resolving doubts and answering questions.

By the end of preschool age, a new and highest for preschool age non-situational-personal form of communication takes shape, the content of which becomes the world of people (children prefer to talk about themselves, their parents, friends, rules of behavior, joys and grievances).

In addition to the real adults surrounding the child, an ideal adult appears in the mind of the preschooler, who embodies the perfect image of some social function: an adult father, doctor, salesman, etc. and which becomes the motive for the child’s actions. A preschooler wants to be like this ideal adult, but he cannot really join adult life due to his limited capabilities.

The contradiction in the social situation of a preschool child's development lies in the gap between his desire to be like an adult and the inability to realize this desire directly. The only activity that allows one to resolve this contradiction is role-playing play, where the child interacts with aspects of life that are inaccessible to him in real practice. Thanks to the role-playing game, the norms of social relations are learned and the mechanisms of personal behavior are formed.

In addition to communication with adults, in preschool age communication with peers arises and develops, which has its own distinctive features:

1. variety of communicative actions;
2. extremely vivid emotional intensity;
3. non-standard and unregulated;
4. the predominance of proactive actions over reactive ones.

These features, reflecting the specifics of a child’s communication throughout preschool age, make it possible to identify forms of communication between preschoolers and peers, where a significant complication of communication can be traced at different stages of children’s development during preschool childhood.

The first form of communication between children and peers is emotional and practical. (2-4 years of life), which is characterized by situationality and dependence on the specific situation and practical actions of the partner. It is important for a child to have the participation and support of a peer in his fun.

The second form of peer communication is situational and business (4-6 years). This form of communication is characterized by business cooperation, which involves engaging in a common cause, the ability to coordinate one’s actions and take into account the activity of one’s partner to achieve a common result. Also important is the need for recognition

and peer respect.

The third form of communication is non-situational and business (6-7 years), which is characterized by communication against the background of a joint business (game, productive activity) and the non-situational nature of speech addresses to a peer. In the game, the rules of behavior of game characters and the correspondence of game events to real ones come to the fore. The competitive spirit remains, but along with this, the first shoots of friendship appear.

Along with communication, interpersonal relationships of preschoolers exist and manifest themselves, which can be considered as the motivational basis for communication and interaction between people. The development of a child’s relationships with peers in preschool age has certain age-related dynamics and is closely related to the development of self-awareness.

At early preschool age, a peer does not yet play a significant role in the child’s inner life and is not part of his self-awareness. Mid-preschool (4--5 years) the child begins to constantly compare his peer with himself, which allows him to evaluate and establish himself as the owner of certain merits in the eyes of another. By older preschool age, the child begins to perceive himself and others as a holistic personality, irreducible to individual qualities, which makes deeper interpersonal relationships possible for children.

Leading activity of a preschooler

Play activities help children learn to fully communicate and interact with each other.

Outstanding psychologists L.S. Vygotsky, A.V. Zaporozhets, A.N. Leontyev, L.A. Lyublinskaya, S.A. Rubinstein, D.B. Elkonin consider play to be the leading activity in preschool age, constituting the main content of a child’s life, thanks to which significant changes occur in his psyche, qualities are formed that prepare the transition to a new, higher stage of development. Among the games of preschoolers, the most prominent are role-playing games, director's games, dramatization games, games with rules, and didactic games. All aspects of the personality are involved in these games: the child moves, speaks, perceives, thinks; During the game, his imagination and memory actively work, emotional and volitional manifestations intensify. During the game, the basic techniques of instrumental activity and norms of social behavior are learned.

Gaming activity influences the formation of voluntariness of all mental processes: voluntary behavior, attention and memory develop. It is in the conditions of play that children focus better and remember more. The game also has a great influence on the intellectual development of a preschooler. Acting with substitute objects, the child begins to operate in a conceivable, conventional space. The substitute object becomes a support for thinking. Gradually, play activities are reduced, and the child begins to act internally, mentally. Thus, the game helps the child move on to thinking in images and ideas. In addition, in the game, playing different roles, the child takes on different points of view and begins to see the object from different sides. This contributes to the development of the most important human thinking ability, which allows you to imagine a different view and a different point of view. Play is of great importance for the overall mental development of a child.

It is in play that a child’s behavior first turns from field to role-playing; he himself begins to determine and regulate his actions, create an imaginary situation and act in it, realize and evaluate his actions, and much more. All this arises in play and puts it at the highest level of development in preschool age.

Play always involves communication and interaction between partners or groups of partners who are free to express themselves creatively. In play, the child is completely free and therefore does not copy people’s behavior, but even brings something original and unique into imitative actions.

Averin V.A. believes that a role-playing game has its own components, its own level of development. It presupposes a certain plot and adult roles that children play out. We can trace how the games of older preschoolers differ from the games of their younger friends.

Role-playing play is crucial for developing imagination. Game actions take place in an imaginary situation; real objects are used as other, imaginary ones; the child takes on the roles of absent characters. This practice of acting in an imaginary space contributes to the fact that children acquire the ability to creative imagination, which is one of the most important new developments of preschool age.

Imagination is the ability to recombine images, allowing a child to build and create something new and original, which was not previously in his experience and consists of a peculiar "departure" from reality. The preschooler creates an imaginary situation in the game, composes fantastic stories, and draws characters he has invented. During this period, the child does not just invent, he believes in his imaginary world and lives in it.

The second new development of preschool age is voluntary behavior, i.e. behavior mediated by norms and rules. By mastering and managing his behavior, the child compares it with an image that becomes a model. Comparison with a model is awareness of one's behavior.

Awareness of one's behavior and the beginning of personal self-awareness is also one of the main new formations characteristic of older preschool age. The child is aware of his actions, actions, internal experiences, determines his place in the system of relationships with other people.

All the main mental new formations of a given age: imagination, voluntary behavior, awareness of one’s behavior and the beginning of personal self-awareness develop, manifest themselves and function in various types of activities of the preschooler.

But play is not the only activity in preschool age.

During this period, various forms of productive activity of children arise. The child draws, sculpts, builds with cubes, and cuts out. According to Smirnova E.O., what is common to all these types of activities is that they are aimed at creating one or another result, a product - a drawing, construction, application. Each of these types of activities requires mastering a special way of acting, special skills and, most importantly, an idea of ​​what you want to do.

In addition to playful and productive activities, the child’s educational activities begin to take shape in preschool childhood. And although in its developed form this activity develops only outside of preschool age, its individual elements already appear here. The main feature of educational activity and its difference from productive activity is that it is aimed not at obtaining an external result, but at purposefully changing oneself - at acquiring new knowledge and methods of action.

The main psychological new formations of the personality of children of senior preschool age are:

1. Arbitrariness is the control of one’s behavior in accordance with certain ideas, rules, norms, one of the forms of volitional behavior, a new qualitative characteristic of self-regulation of a child’s behavior and activities.
2. Subordination of motives. In a child’s activity, the ability to identify the main motive and subordinate an entire system of actions to it arises, the dominance of motives for achieving success over external situational motives.
3. Independence is a quality of personality, a unique form of its activity, reflecting the current level of development of the child. It provides independent formulation and solution of problems that arise for the child in everyday behavior and activities.
4. Creativity is the ability to create. Indicators of creativity include: originality, variability, flexibility of thinking. The development of creativity depends on the level of development of the cognitive sphere (perception, thinking, memory, imagination), arbitrariness of activity and behavior, as well as the child’s awareness of the surrounding reality.
5. Changes in self-awareness and adequate self-esteem. Self-aware

education is an integral education of the individual, the result of the development of independence, initiative, and arbitrariness. During preschool childhood, children demonstrate the ability to constructively interact with others, which leads to the emergence of adequate self-esteem and awareness of their place in the world around them in relation to their peers and reality.

The age of 6-7 years is decisive in the process of personality formation. In older preschool age, there is an intensive amplification of the basic components of mental development, during which the leading personal formation is formed - children's competence. Preschool age is a period of improvement and development of personal new formations, which during the period of preschool age are enriched with individual parameters. The subordination of motives leads to children mastering new motives for activity, dominant value systems appear, and the nature of relationships with peers and adults changes. The child is able to evaluate himself in relation to the world around him in accordance with the norms and rules of society. The developed personal new formations of children of senior preschool age are voluntariness, creativity, children's competence, the formation of a moral position and

Conclusion

The development of the personality of preschool children includes two aspects:

• the child begins to understand the world around him and realize his place in it

The development of feelings and will ensures the action of behavioral motives.

Changes in the personal development of preschool children lead to the emergence of the following mental formations: arbitrariness of behavior, independence, creativity, self-awareness, child competence.

Nevertheless, the main personal education of preschool age is the development of the child’s self-awareness, which consists of assessing one’s skills, physical capabilities, moral qualities, and self-awareness over time. Gradually, the preschooler begins to become aware of his experiences and emotional state.

The emotional sphere helps the internal regulation of children's behavior through the experiences of positive and negative emotions. Changes in emotional development are associated with the inclusion of speech in emotional processes. Emotional comfort activates the child’s cognitive activity and encourages creativity.

Thus, in preschool age, play and speech intensively develop, which contributes to the formation of verbal and logical thinking, arbitrariness of mental processes, and the possibility of forming an assessment of one’s own actions and behavior.

Introduction

Early childhood (the period from one to three years) is a special period in a child’s life. At this time, rapid mental and physical development occurs, the foundation is laid for the further formation and development of the child as a person. The main achievements of early childhood, which determine the development of the child’s psyche, are: mastery of the body, mastery of speech, development of objective activity. The qualitative transformations that a child undergoes during the first three years are very significant.

The relevance of studying the psychology of a young child is due to the importance of the childhood period for the formation of the personality and abilities of an adult. Modern changes in economic and cultural life, as well as changes in society, require psychologists and teachers to develop new concepts for the education of personality and the development of a child’s mental abilities from a very early age. Currently, such developments at a high scientific level are clearly not enough.

Object: psychological development of a young child.

Subject: factors of child development during early childhood.

Purpose of the study: based on the study of special monographic literature, articles in periodicals, the use of one’s own practical experience in raising a child, to form a scientifically based idea about the psychology of a young child.

Objectives for studying the characteristics of child development during early childhood:

To study the features of the psychological development of a young child;

Identify problems in the upbringing of “cannots and musts” in a child, and the importance of educating the volitional component;

Show the importance of developing thinking in young children;

Analyze the special significance of speech and its formation in development

Young child

The research hypothesis consisted of the following assumptions: the period of early childhood is important in the development of the mental abilities and personality of the child, the development of the speech abilities of a young child contributes to the development of the emotional-volitional sphere, the mental and physical development of the child. Thus, the issue of normal speech development of children and the prevention of speech disorders is of great social significance.

Features and problems of development of a young child (from 1 to 3 years)

Features of the psychological development of a young child

Early age is the most crucial period of a person’s life, when the most fundamental abilities that determine the further development of a person are formed. During this period, such key qualities as cognitive activity, trust in the world, self-confidence, a friendly attitude towards people, creative possibilities, general vital activity and much more are formed. However, these qualities and abilities do not arise automatically as a result of physiological maturation.

Their formation requires adequate influence from adults, certain forms of communication and joint activities with the child. The origins of many problems that parents and teachers face (reduced cognitive activity, communication disorders, isolation and increased shyness, or, on the contrary, aggressiveness and hyperactivity of children, etc.) lie precisely in early childhood.

Correction and compensation of these deformations in preschool and school age presents significant difficulties and requires significantly more effort and costs than their prevention.

As a child develops, he not only masters a variety of actions, he not only learns to see the world and think. He also learns what is good and what is bad, gets used to subordinating his desires to necessity, absorbs the rules of behavior characteristic of people... The child’s personality, his inner world begins to take shape.

Children 2 - 3 years old are largely characterized by spontaneity, impulsiveness of behavior, that they act under the influence of their feelings and desires, and do not realize them, do not highlight the main thing - what is important to them is what concerns them at the moment.

An adult in the overwhelming majority of cases acts this way and not otherwise, because as a result of a long and purposeful upbringing he has developed a completely definite system of behavioral motives that meets social norms. He considers some motives more important, others less. And when two motives collide, he acts at the behest of a more important one. In everyday life we ​​see this at every step. I would like to have fun on my day off, but a friend asked me to help with urgent work. I'm tempted to go to the gym, but I need to prepare for the exam. They offer to go on an exciting trip, but you can’t leave home for a long time: your parents are sick. Actually, we judge the level of development of a person’s personality precisely by the extent to which he is able to balance his desires and aspirations with the more important motives of necessity and duty in the eyes of society, and whether he is able to sacrifice his interests for the benefit of others.

The child has yet to master all this. In the first years of life, one cannot expect that he will be aware of the motives of his behavior and arrange them in order of importance. Only gradually does such a social and moral framework of personality acquire the necessary form and sufficient stability.

But the child lives now, today. And today we demand “moral behavior” from him. In general, this is a correct requirement - it is only important to find the right way to make it understandable and accessible to the baby. And here exactly those psychological characteristics of the child that, it would seem, should interfere with you, will come to your aid - spontaneity and impulsiveness of behavior. Since we know that a child’s behavior is influenced by his feelings and desires, we will try to pay special attention to the development of such feelings in him that would encourage him to act in accordance with the demands of adults, to take into account the interests of other people - loved ones, peers. A two-year-old child is more likely to share his toys with another child if you create a feeling of sympathy for that child than if you simply demand and order him to do so. It will be easier for him to obey his mother and grandmother if he has learned to love them and sees that his obedience brings them joy, and his disobedience brings them grief.

That is why it is so important to ensure that positive emotions prevail in the baby - joy, sympathy, trust, and manifestations of negative emotions, such as resentment, fear, displeasure, anger, are noticed and extinguished in a timely manner.

PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF EARLY AGE FROM 1-3 YEARS

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Information grid on the use of diagnostic methods in working with young children from 1-3 years.

Literature on early age diagnostics

1. Shvantsara J. Diagnosis of mental development // Prague, 1978

The section “Early Ages” is devoted to the psychology of children from birth to 3 years. This age is the most sensitive for the formation of fundamental psychological formations. In the first three years of life, the foundations of self-awareness, personality, activity, and the child are formed. It is during this period that the child’s attitude towards the world, towards other people and towards himself is formed; basic forms of communication with adults and peers.

This age is divided into two periods:

first year of life (infancy); early age - from one to 3 years.

The psychology of infancy has been developing most intensively since the second half of the 20th century. This direction is being developed within the framework of the psychoanalytic concept (A. Freud, J. Dunn, Spitz, R. Sears), attachment theory (J. Bowlby, M. Ainsworth), social learning (Lewis, Lipsitt, Bijou, Baer), cognitive psychology ( J. Bruner, T. Bauer, R. Fanz, J. Piaget). In all of these directions, the baby is predominantly viewed as a natural, natural being who is socialized over time. In contrast, in Russian psychology, which is built on the basis of a cultural-historical concept, the infant is considered as a maximally social being living in a unique social developmental situation.

The bond and relationship of a child with his mother is the main subject of infancy psychology. In Russian psychology, the most famous researchers of infancy are.

At an early age, active mastery of active speech (its grammatical, lexical and other aspects) occurs, which becomes the most important means of communication. Within the framework of objective activity, which is leading at a given age, all basic mental processes and new types of activity develop: procedural play, purposefulness, independence, creativity, etc. The mental development of young children has been most successfully studied in the works of, etc.

Head of the "Early Age" section:
- Professor, Doctor of Psychology, Head of the Laboratory of Mental Development of Preschool Children of the Psychological Institute of the Russian Academy of Education, Head. Early childhood laboratory of Moscow State University of Psychology and Education.

Contacts: Tel.: (4
E-mail: *****@***ru

PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF EARLY AGES

(from 1 to 3 years)

Early age is an extremely important and responsible period of a child’s mental development. This is the age when everything is for the first time, everything is just beginning - speech, play, communication with peers, the first ideas about yourself, about others, about the world. In the first three years of life, the most important and fundamental human abilities are laid - cognitive activity, curiosity, self-confidence and trust in other people, focus and perseverance, imagination, creativity and much more. Moreover, all these abilities do not arise on their own, as a consequence of the child’s young age, but require the indispensable participation of an adult and age-appropriate forms of activity.

Communication and cooperation between a child and an adult

At an early age, the content of the joint activity of a child and an adult becomes mastering cultural ways of using objects . An adult becomes for a child not only a source of attention and goodwill, not only a “supplier” of the objects themselves, but also a model of human actions with objects. Such cooperation is no longer limited to direct assistance or demonstration of objects. Now the participation of an adult is necessary, simultaneous practical activity with him, doing the same thing. In the course of such cooperation, the child simultaneously receives the attention of an adult, his participation in the child’s actions and, most importantly, new, adequate ways of acting with objects. The adult now not only gives objects to the child, but also gives them along with the object. mode of action with him. In joint activities with a child, an adult performs several functions at once:

firstly, the adult gives the child the meaning of actions with the object, its social function; secondly, he organizes the child’s actions and movements, transfers to him the technical techniques for carrying out the action; thirdly, through encouragement and reprimand, he controls the progress of the child’s actions.

Early age is the period of the most intensive assimilation of ways of acting with objects. By the end of this period, thanks to cooperation with an adult, the child basically knows how to use household objects and play with toys.

Object activity and its role in the development of the baby

The new social situation of development corresponds to a new type of leading activity of the child - subject activity .

Objective activity is leading because it is in it that the development of all aspects of the child’s psyche and personality occurs. First of all, it is necessary to emphasize that in the baby’s objective activity development occurs perception, and the behavior and consciousness of children of this age is entirely determined by perception. Thus, memory at an early age exists in the form of recognition, that is, the perception of familiar objects. The thinking of a child under 3 years of age is predominantly immediate – the child establishes connections between perceived objects. He can only be attentive to what is in his field of perception. All the child’s experiences are also focused on perceived objects and phenomena.

Since actions with objects are aimed mainly at their properties such as shape and size , these are the signs that are most important for a child. Color is not particularly important for object recognition early in early childhood. The baby recognizes colored and uncolored images in exactly the same way, as well as images painted in the most unusual colors (for example, a green cat remains a cat). He focuses primarily on the form, on the general outline of the images. This does not mean that the child does not distinguish colors. However, color has not yet become a feature that characterizes an object and does not determine its recognition.

Of particular importance are the actions that are called correlative. These are actions with two or more objects in which it is necessary to take into account and correlate the properties of different objects - their shape, size, hardness, location, etc. without trying to arrange them in a certain order. Correlating actions require taking into account the size, shape, and location of various objects. It is characteristic that most toys intended for young children (pyramids, simple cubes, inserts, nesting dolls) involve correlative actions. When a child tries to carry out such an action, he selects and connects objects or their parts in accordance with their shape or size. So, to fold a pyramid, you need to hit the hole in the rings with a stick and take into account the ratio of the rings in size. When assembling a nesting doll, you need to select halves of the same size and perform actions in a certain order - first assemble the smallest one, and then put it into the larger one.

Initially, the baby can perform these actions only through practical tests, because he does not yet know how to visually compare the size and shape of objects. For example, when placing the lower half of a nesting doll on the upper one, he discovers that it does not fit and begins to try another. Sometimes he tries to achieve a result by force - to squeeze in inappropriate parts, but soon becomes convinced of the inconsistency of these attempts and proceeds to try on and try out different parts until he finds the right part.

From external indicative actions the baby moves to visual correlation properties of objects. This ability is manifested in the fact that the child selects the necessary details by eye and performs the correct action immediately, without preliminary practical tests. He can, for example, select rings or cups of the same or different sizes.

Throughout early childhood, perception is closely related to objective actions. A child can quite accurately determine the shape, size or color of an object, if this is necessary to perform a necessary and accessible action. In other cases, the perception may be quite vague and inaccurate.

In the third year of life they develop representation about the properties of things and these ideas are assigned to specific objects. To enrich a child’s understanding of the properties of objects, it is necessary for him to become familiar with the various characteristics and signs of things in specific practical actions. A rich and varied sensory environment with which the baby actively interacts is the most important prerequisite for the formation of an internal plan of action and mental development.

Already by the beginning of early childhood, the child has individual actions that can be considered manifestations of thinking. These are the actions in which the child discovers connection between individual objects or phenomena - for example, he pulls up the string to bring the toy closer to him. But in the process of mastering correlating actions, the child begins to focus not just on individual things, but on connection between objects , which further contributes to solving practical problems. The transition from using ready-made connections shown to adults to establishing them independently is an important step in the development of thinking.

First, the establishment of such connections occurs through practical tests. He tries different ways of opening a box, getting an attractive toy, or getting new experiences, and as a result of his trials, he accidentally gets an effect. For example, by accidentally pressing the nipple of a water bottle, he discovers a splashing stream, or by sliding the lid of a pencil case, he opens it and takes out a hidden object. The child’s thinking, which is carried out in the form of external indicative actions, is called visually effective. It is this form of thinking that is characteristic of young children. Kids actively use visual and effective thinking to discover and discover a wide variety of connections between things and phenomena in the objective world around them. Persistent reproduction of the same simple actions and obtaining the expected effect (opening and closing boxes, extracting sounds from sounding toys, comparing different objects, the action of some objects on others, etc.) give the baby an extremely important sensory experience, which forms the basis for more complex ones. , internal forms of thinking.

Cognitive activity and the development of thinking at an early age are manifested not only and not so much in the success of solving practical problems, but primarily in emotional involvement in such experimentation, in perseverance and in the pleasure that the child receives from his research activities. Such knowledge captivates the baby and brings him new, educational emotions - interest, curiosity, surprise, the joy of discovery.

Speech acquisition

One of the main events in the development of a young child is speech acquisition .

The situation in which speech occurs cannot be reduced to direct copying of speech sounds, but should represent the objective cooperation of the child with an adult. Behind each word there must be what it means, i.e. its meaning, some object. If there is no such object, the first words may not appear, no matter how much the mother talks to the child, and no matter how well he reproduces her words. If a child enthusiastically plays with objects, but prefers to do it alone, the child’s active words are also delayed: he does not have the need to name the object, turn to someone with a request, or express his impressions. The need and need to speak presupposes two main conditions: the need to communicate with an adult and the need for an object that needs to be named. Neither one nor the other separately leads to a word. And only the situation of objective cooperation between a child and an adult creates the need to name an object and, therefore, to pronounce one’s word.

In such substantive cooperation, the adult puts before the child speech task , which requires a restructuring of his entire behavior: in order to be understood, he must utter a very specific word. And this means that he must turn away from the desired object, turn to an adult, highlight the word he is pronouncing and use this artificial sign of a socio-historical nature (which is always a word) to influence others.

The child’s first active words appear in the second half of the second year of life. In the middle of the second year, a “speech explosion” occurs, which manifests itself in a sharp increase in the child’s vocabulary and increased interest in speech. The third year of life is characterized by a sharply increasing speech activity of the child. Children can already listen and understand not only speech addressed to them, but also listen to words that are not addressed to them. They already understand the content of simple fairy tales and poems and love to listen to them performed by adults. They easily remember short poems and fairy tales and reproduce them with great accuracy. They are already trying to tell adults about their impressions and about those objects that are not in the immediate vicinity. This means that speech begins to separate from the visual situation and becomes an independent means of communication and thinking for the child.

All these achievements become possible due to the fact that the child masters grammatical form of speech , which allows you to connect individual words with each other, regardless of the actual position of the objects they denote.

Mastering speech opens up the possibility arbitrary behavior of the child. The first step to voluntary behavior is following adult verbal instructions . When following verbal instructions, the child’s behavior is determined not by the perceived situation, but by the word of the adult. At the same time, the speech of an adult, even if the child understands it well, does not immediately become a regulator of the child’s behavior. It is important to emphasize that at an early age the word is a weaker stimulant and regulator of behavior than the child’s motor stereotypes and the directly perceived situation. Therefore, verbal instructions, calls or rules of behavior at an early age do not determine the child’s actions.

The development of speech as a means of communication and as a means of self-regulation are closely related: a lag in the development of communicative speech is accompanied by underdevelopment of its regulatory function. Mastering a word and separating it from a specific adult at an early age can be considered the first stage in the development of a child’s volition, at which situationality is overcome and a new step towards freedom from direct perception is taken.

Birth of the game

The actions of a small child with objects are not yet a game. The separation of objective-practical and play activities occurs only at the end of early childhood. At first, the child plays exclusively with realistic toys and reproduces familiar actions with them (combing the doll, putting it to bed, feeding it, rolling it in a stroller, etc.) At about 3 years old, thanks to the development of objective actions and speech, children appear in play game substitutions, when a new name for familiar objects determines the way they are used in play (a stick becomes a spoon or a comb or a thermometer, etc.). However, the formation of game substitutions does not occur immediately and not on its own. They require special introduction to the game, which is only possible in joint activities with those who already master the game and can construct an imaginary situation. Such communion gives rise to a new activity - story game , which becomes the leader in preschool age.

Symbolic play substitutions that arise at the end of early childhood open up enormous scope for the child’s imagination and naturally free him from the pressure of the current situation. Independent play images invented by the child are the first manifestations of childhood imagination.

The emergence of a need to communicate with peers

A very important acquisition at an early age is the development of communication with peers. The need to communicate with a peer develops in the third year of life and has a very specific content.

The content of contacts between young children, despite its apparent simplicity, does not fit into the usual framework of communication between adults or a child with an adult. Children’s communication with each other is associated with pronounced motor activity and is brightly emotionally colored; at the same time, children react weakly and superficially to the individuality of their partner; they strive mainly to identify themselves.

Communication among young children can be called emotional-practical interaction . The main characteristics of such interaction are: spontaneity, lack of substantive content; looseness, emotional richness, non-standard communication means, mirror reflection of the partner’s actions and movements. Children demonstrate and reproduce emotionally charged play actions in front of each other. They run, squeal, take bizarre poses, make unexpected sound combinations, etc. The commonality of actions and emotional expressions gives them self-confidence and brings vivid emotional experiences. Apparently, such interaction gives the child a feeling of his similarity with another, equal being, which causes intense joy. Receiving feedback and support from a peer in his games and undertakings, the child realizes his originality and uniqueness , which stimulates the most unpredictable initiative of the baby.

The development of the need to communicate with a peer goes through a number of stages. At first, children show attention and interest in each other; by the end of the second year of life, there is a desire to attract the attention of a peer and demonstrate to him your success; in the third year of life, children become sensitive to the attitude of their peers. The transition of children to subjective, actually communicative interaction becomes possible to a decisive extent thanks to an adult. It is the adult who helps the child identify a peer and see in him the same being as himself. The most effective way to do this is to organize subject interaction children, when an adult attracts children's attention to each other, emphasizes their commonality, their attractiveness, etc. The interest in toys characteristic of children of this age prevents the child from “catching” a peer. The toy seems to cover the human qualities of another child. A child can open them only with the help of an adult.

Crisis of 3 years

Serious successes of a child in objective activities, in speech development, in play and in other areas of his life, achieved during early childhood, qualitatively change his entire behavior. By the end of early childhood, the tendency towards independence, the desire to act independently of adults and without them, is rapidly growing. Towards the end of early childhood this finds expression in the words “I myself”, which are evidence crisis of 3 years.

Obvious symptoms of a crisis are negativism, stubbornness, self-will, obstinacy, etc. These symptoms reflect significant changes in the child’s relationship with close adults and with himself. The child is psychologically separated from close adults with whom he was previously inextricably linked, and is opposed to them in everything. The child’s own “I” is emancipated from adults and becomes the subject of his experiences. Characteristic statements appear: “I myself,” “I want,” “I can,” “I do.” It is characteristic that it was during this period that many children begin to use the pronoun “I” (before this they spoke about themselves in the third person: “Sasha is playing”, “Katya wants”). defines the new formation of the 3-year crisis as a personal action and consciousness “I myself.” But the child’s own “I” can stand out and be realized only by pushing away and opposing another “I”, different from his own. Separation (and distance) of oneself from an adult leads to the fact that the child begins to see and perceive the adult differently. Previously, the child was primarily interested in objects; he himself was directly absorbed in his objective actions and seemed to coincide with them. All his affects and desires lay precisely in this area. Objective actions covered the figure of the adult and the child’s own “I”. In the crisis of three years, adults with their attitude towards the child appear for the first time in the inner world of a child’s life. From a world limited by objects, the child moves into the world of adults, where his “I” takes a new place. Having separated from the adult, he enters into a new relationship with him.

At the age of three, the effective side of activity becomes significant for children, and recording of their successes by adults is a necessary moment of its implementation. Accordingly, the subjective value of one’s own achievements also increases, which causes new, affective forms of behavior: exaggeration of one’s merits, attempts to devalue one’s failures.

The child has a new vision of the world and himself in it.

The new vision of oneself consists in the fact that the child for the first time discovers the material embodiment of his Self, and his own specific capabilities and achievements can serve as its measure. The objective world becomes for the child not only the world of practical action and cognition, but the sphere where he tests his capabilities, realizes and asserts himself. Therefore, each result of activity also becomes a statement of one’s Self, which should be assessed not in general, but through its specific, material embodiment, that is, through its achievements in objective activity. The main source of such assessment is the adult. Therefore, the baby begins to perceive the adult’s attitude with particular predilection.

A new vision of the “I” through the prism of one’s achievements lays the foundation for the rapid development of children’s self-awareness. The child’s self, becoming objectified as a result of activity, appears before him as an object that does not coincide with him. This means that the child is already capable of carrying out elementary reflection, which does not unfold on an internal, ideal plane, but has an externally deployed character of assessing his achievement.

The formation of such a self-system, where the starting point is an achievement appreciated by others, marks the transition to preschool childhood.

Information grid on the use of diagnostic methods in working with primary preschool age 3-4 years.

Literature:

This manual is devoted to the extremely important, but little-studied problem of a child’s interpersonal relationships with other children.

Relationships with other people form the basic fabric of human life. According to the words, a person’s heart is all woven from his relationships with other people; The main content of a person’s mental, inner life is connected with them. It is these relationships that give rise to the most powerful experiences and actions. The attitude towards another is the center of the spiritual and moral development of the individual and largely determines the moral value of a person.

Relationships with other people begin and develop most intensively in childhood. The experience of these first relationships is the foundation for the further development of the child’s personality and largely determines the characteristics of a person’s self-awareness, his attitude to the world, his behavior and well-being among people.

The topic of the origin and formation of interpersonal relationships is extremely relevant, since many negative and destructive phenomena among young people observed recently (cruelty, increased aggressiveness, alienation, etc.) have their origins in early and preschool childhood. This prompts us to consider the development of children’s relationships with each other in the early stages of ontogenesis in order to understand their age-related patterns and the psychological nature of the deformations that arise along this path.

The purpose of this manual is to provide theoretical and practical guidelines for teachers and psychologists for working with preschoolers in this complex area, which is largely associated with the ambiguity of interpretations of the concept of “interpersonal relationships.”

Without pretending to comprehensively cover these interpretations, we will try to consider the main approaches associated with the study of children's relationships in preschool age.

DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO UNDERSTANDING INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS

The most common approach to understanding the interpersonal relationships of preschoolers is sociometric. Interpersonal relationships are considered as selective preferences of children in a peer group. Numerous studies (B. S. Mukhina et al.) have shown that during preschool age (from 3 to 7 years), the structure of the children's group rapidly increases - some children become increasingly preferred by the majority in the group, others increasingly occupy the position of outcasts. The content and rationale for the choices that children make vary from external qualities to personal characteristics. It was also found that the emotional well-being of children and their general attitude towards kindergarten largely depend on the nature of the child’s relationships with peers.

The main focus of these studies was the group of children, not the individual child. Interpersonal relationships were considered and assessed mainly quantitatively (by the number of choices, their stability and validity). The peer acted as a subject of emotional, conscious or business evaluation (). The subjective image of another person, the child’s ideas about a peer, and the qualitative characteristics of other people remained outside the scope of these studies.

This gap was partially filled in sociocognitive research, where interpersonal relationships were interpreted as understanding the qualities of other people and the ability to interpret and resolve conflict situations. In studies carried out on preschool children (V.M. Senchenko et al.), age-related characteristics of preschoolers’ perception of other people, understanding of a person’s emotional state, ways of solving problem situations, etc. were clarified. The main subject of these studies was perception, understanding and the child’s knowledge of other people and the relationships between them, which is reflected in the terms “social intelligence” or “social cognition.” The attitude towards the other acquired a clear cognitivist orientation: the other person was considered as an object of knowledge. It is characteristic that these studies were conducted in laboratory conditions outside the real context of children's communication and relationships. What was analyzed was primarily the child’s perception of images of other people or conflict situations, rather than a real, practical attitude towards them.

A significant number of experimental studies have been devoted to real contacts between children and their influence on the development of children's relationships. Among these studies, two main theoretical approaches can be distinguished:

The concept of activity-based mediation of interpersonal relationships ();

The concept of the genesis of communication, where the relationships of children were considered as a product of communication activity ().

In the theory of activity mediation, the main subject of consideration is the group, the collective. Joint activity is a system-forming feature of the team. The group realizes its goal through a specific object of activity and thereby changes itself, its structure and the system of interpersonal relations. The nature and direction of these changes depend on the content of the activity and the values ​​adopted by the group. From the point of view of this approach, joint activity determines interpersonal relationships, since it gives rise to them, influences their content and mediates the child’s entry into the community. It is in joint activity and communication that interpersonal relationships are realized and transformed.

It should be emphasized here that the study of children’s interpersonal relationships in most studies (especially foreign ones) comes down to studying the characteristics of their communication and interaction. The concepts of “communication” and “relationship”, as a rule, are not separated, and the terms themselves are used synonymously. It seems to us that these concepts should be distinguished.

COMMUNICATION AND ATTITUDE

In the concept, communication acts as a special communicative activity aimed at forming relationships. Other authors understand the relationship between these concepts in a similar way (-Slavskaya, YaL. Kolominsky). At the same time, relationships are not only the result of communication, but also its initial prerequisite, a stimulus that causes one or another type of interaction. Relationships are not only formed, but also realized and manifested in the interaction of people. At the same time, the attitude towards another, unlike communication, does not always have external manifestations. Attitude can also manifest itself in the absence of communicative acts; it can also be felt towards an absent or even fictitious, ideal character; it can also exist at the level of consciousness or inner mental life (in the form of experiences, ideas, images, etc.). If communication is carried out in one form or another of interaction with the help of some external means, then attitude is an aspect of internal, mental life, it is a characteristic of consciousness that does not imply fixed means of expression. But in real life, the attitude towards another person is manifested primarily in actions aimed at him, including in communication. Thus, relationships can be considered as the internal psychological basis of communication and interaction between people.

Research carried out under the leadership of M.I. Lisina showed that by about 4 years a peer becomes a more preferred communication partner than an adult. Communication with a peer is distinguished by a number of specific features, including the richness and variety of communicative actions, extreme emotional intensity, non-standard and unregulated communicative acts. At the same time, there is insensitivity to peer influences and a predominance of proactive actions over reactive ones.

The development of communication with peers in preschool age goes through a number of stages. In the first of them (2-4 years), a peer is a partner in emotional and practical interaction, which is based on imitation and emotional infection of the child. The main communicative need is the need for peer participation, which is expressed in parallel (simultaneous and identical) actions of children. At the second stage (4-6 years) there is a need for situational business cooperation with a peer. Cooperation, in contrast to complicity, involves the distribution of game roles and functions, and therefore taking into account the actions and influences of the partner. The content of communication becomes joint (mainly play) activity. At this same stage, another and largely opposite need for respect and recognition from a peer arises. At the third stage (at 6-7 years old), communication with a peer acquires the features of a non-situational nature - the content of communication is distracted from the visual situation, stable selective preferences between children begin to develop.

As the works of RA Smirnova and those carried out in line with this direction have shown, children’s selective attachments and preferences arise on the basis of communication. Children prefer those peers who adequately satisfy their communication needs. Moreover, the main one remains the need for friendly attention and respect from a peer.

Thus, in modern psychology there are various approaches to understanding interpersonal relationships, each of which has its own subject of study:

Sociometric (children's selective preferences);

Sociocognitive (cognition and assessment of others and solving social problems);

Activity (relationships as a result of communication and joint activities of children).

The variety of interpretations does not allow us to more or less clearly define the subject of education for interpersonal relationships. Such a definition is important not only for the clarity of scientific analysis, but also for the practice of raising children. In order to identify the peculiarities of the development of children's relationships and try to build a strategy for their upbringing, it is necessary to understand how they are expressed and what psychological reality is behind them. Without this, it remains unclear what exactly needs to be identified and educated: the child’s social status in the group; ability to analyze social characteristics; desire and ability to cooperate; need to communicate with a peer? Undoubtedly, all these points are important and require special attention from both researchers and educators. At the same time, the practice of education requires the identification of some central formation, which is of unconditional value and determines the specificity of interpersonal relationships in contrast to other forms of mental life (activity, cognition, emotional preferences, etc.) From our point of view, the qualitative originality of this reality lies in the inextricable connection of a person’s relationship with others and with himself.

CONNECTION OF INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS AND SELF-AWARENESS

In a person’s relationship to other people, his “I” always manifests itself and declares itself. It cannot only be cognitive; it always reflects the personality characteristics of the person himself. In relation to another, the main motives and life meanings of a person, his expectations and ideas, his perception of himself and his attitude towards himself are always expressed. That is why interpersonal relationships (especially with close people) are almost always emotionally intense and bring the most vivid experiences (both positive and negative).

and her students outlined a new approach to analyzing self-image. According to this approach, human self-awareness includes two levels - the core and the periphery, or the subjective and object components. The central nuclear formation contains the direct experience of oneself as a subject, as a person; the personal component of self-consciousness originates in it, which provides a person with the experience of constancy, identity of oneself, a holistic sense of oneself as the source of one’s will, one’s activity. In contrast, the periphery includes the subject’s private, specific ideas about himself, his abilities, capabilities and characteristics. The periphery of the self-image consists of a set of specific and finite qualities that belong to a person and form the object (or subject) component of self-awareness.

The same subject-object content also has a relationship with another person. On the one hand, you can treat another as a unique subject who has absolute value and cannot be reduced to his specific actions and qualities, and on the other hand, you can perceive and evaluate his external behavioral characteristics (the presence of objects in his activities, his words and actions etc.).

Thus, human relationships are based on two contradictory principles - objective (subject) and subjective (personal). In the first type of relationship, the other person is perceived as a circumstance in a person's life; he is the subject of comparison with himself or use to his advantage. In the personal type of relationship, the other is fundamentally irreducible to any finite, definite characteristics; his Self is unique, incomparable (has no similarity) and priceless (has absolute value); he can only be a subject of communication and circulation. A personal relationship generates an internal connection with others and various forms of involvement (empathy, sympathy, assistance). The objective principle sets the boundaries of one’s own self and emphasizes its difference from others and isolation, which gives rise to competition, competitiveness, and defense of one’s advantages.

In real human relationships, these two principles cannot exist in their pure form and constantly “flow” into one another. It is obvious that a person cannot live without comparing himself with others and using others, but at the same time, human relationships cannot be reduced only to competition and mutual use. The main problem of human relations is this duality of a person’s position among other people, in which a person is merged with others and internally attached to them and at the same time constantly evaluates them, compares them with himself and uses them in his own interests. The development of interpersonal relationships in preschool age is a complex interweaving of these two principles in the child’s relationship to himself and to others.

In addition to age-related characteristics, already in preschool age there are very significant individual variations in attitudes towards peers. This is exactly the area where the child’s personality manifests itself most clearly. Relationships with others are not always easy and harmonious. Already in the kindergarten group there are many conflicts between children, which are the result of a distorted path of development of interpersonal relationships. We believe that the psychological basis of individual variants of attitude towards a peer is the different expression and different content of the objective and personal principles. As a rule, problems and conflicts between children that give rise to difficult and acute experiences (resentment, hostility, envy, anger, fear) arise in cases where the objective, objective principle dominates, i.e. when the other child is perceived exclusively as a competitor , which must be surpassed as a condition of personal well-being or as a source of proper treatment. These expectations are never met, which gives rise to difficult, destructive feelings for the individual. Such childhood experiences can become a source of serious interpersonal and intrapersonal problems for an adult. Recognizing these dangerous tendencies in a timely manner and helping the child overcome them is the most important task of the educator, teacher and psychologist. We hope that this book will help you in solving this complex and important problem.

The manual consists of three parts. The first part presents a variety of techniques that can be used to identify the characteristics of children’s attitudes towards their peers. The purpose of such diagnostics is the timely detection of problematic, conflict forms in relation to other children.

The second part of the manual is specifically devoted to the psychological description of children with problems in relationships with peers. It presents psychological portraits of aggressive, touchy, shy, demonstrative children, as well as children raised without parents. We believe that these portraits will help to correctly recognize and qualify a child’s difficulties and understand the psychological nature of his problems.

The third part contains the author’s system of specific games and activities for preschoolers, aimed at correcting interpersonal relationships in the kindergarten group. This correctional program has been repeatedly tested in Moscow kindergartens and has shown its effectiveness.

Introduction

PART 1. Diagnosis of interpersonal relationships in preschool children

Methods that reveal an objective picture of interpersonal relationships

Sociometry

Observation method

Method of problem situations

Methods that identify subjective aspects of attitudes towards others

The child’s orientation in social reality and his social intelligence

Peculiarities of peer perception and child self-awareness

Questions and tasks

PART 2. Problematic forms of interpersonal relationships in preschoolers

Aggressive children

Manifestation of aggressiveness in a group of preschoolers

Individual options for children's aggressiveness

Touchy children

The phenomenon of children's resentment and criteria for identifying touchy children

Personality characteristics of touchy children

Shy children

Criteria for identifying shy children

Personality characteristics of shy children

Demonstrative children

Peculiarities of behavior of demonstrative children

Personal characteristics and the nature of the attitude towards peers of demonstrative children

Children without family

Psychological characteristics of children raised without parents

Peculiarities of behavior of children from an orphanage

Features of children with problematic forms of relationships with peers

Questions and tasks

PART 3. A system of games aimed at developing a friendly attitude among preschoolers

Psychological and pedagogical principles of education of interpersonal relationships
(stages of the development program)

1st stage. Communication without words

2nd stage. Attention to others

3rd stage. Consistency of action

4th stage. General experiences

5th stage. Mutual assistance in the game

6th stage. Kind words and wishes

7th stage. Help in joint activities

Questions and tasks

The manual is devoted to the psychological and pedagogical aspects of interpersonal relationships among preschool children. It is divided into the following sections: an introduction and 3 chapters; after each of the 3 parts, questions and assignments are written so that the reader can see if he understood everything; at the end of the manual there is an appendix and a list of recommended literature.

The introduction talks about different approaches to understanding interpersonal relationships, what communication and relationships are, and reveals the connection between interpersonal relationships and self-awareness.

The first part of the manual, called “Diagnostics of Interpersonal Relationships in Preschool Children,” presents various techniques that can be used to identify the characteristics of children’s relationships with their peers. This chapter covers methods that reveal an objective picture of interpersonal relationships: sociometry (this paragraph describes such techniques as “ship captain”, “two houses”, “verbal election method”), observation method, method of problem situations; And methods that reveal subjective aspects of attitudes towards others: the child’s orientation in social reality and his social intelligence (which describes the projective “Pictures” technique, the “Comprehension” subtest from the Wechsler test, the Rene Gilles technique, the Rosenzweig test, the children’s apperception test - SAT). This chapter also provides techniques for studying Peculiarities of peer perception and child self-awareness: “ladder”, “evaluate your qualities”, drawing “Me and my friend in kindergarten”, “story about a friend” technique. The first part of the manual ends with methodological recommendations for diagnosing interpersonal relationships.

The second part of the manual is called “Problematic forms of interpersonal relationships in preschoolers.” It talks about the 3 stages of development of children's interpersonal relationships in preschool age. The authors specifically devoted this chapter to a psychological description of children with problems in relationships with peers. Here are psychological portraits of aggressive, touchy, shy, demonstrative children, as well as children raised without parents. These portraits will help to correctly recognize and qualify a child’s difficulties and understand the psychological nature of his problems.

The third part is called “A system of games aimed at developing a friendly attitude among preschoolers.” It contains the author's system of specific games and activities for preschoolers, aimed at correcting interpersonal relationships in the kindergarten group. This correctional program has been repeatedly tested in Moscow kindergartens and has shown its effectiveness.

The appendix provides material for some of the techniques that were described in this book.

In general, this manual is intended for practical psychologists, but it may also be of interest to kindergarten teachers, methodologists, parents and all adults dealing with preschool children.

PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE AGE PERIOD 4-5 YEARS

Early age is the period from one to 3 years. At this time, the most important changes occur in the mental development of children - thinking is formed, the motor sphere is actively developing, and the first stable personality qualities emerge.

The leading activity at this age is objective activity, which affects all areas of the children’s psyche, largely determining the specifics of their communication with others. It arises gradually from the manipulative and instrumental activities of infants. This activity implies that the object is used as a tool according to the rules and norms established in a given culture (for example, eating with a spoon, digging with a spatula, and hammering nails with a hammer).

By identifying the most important properties of an object in the process of activity, the child begins to correlate these properties with certain operations that he performs, discovering which operations work best with a specific object. In this way, children learn to use objects so that they are not just an extension of their hand, but are used based on the logic of the object itself, i.e., from what is best for them to do. The stages of formation of such actions assigned to an object-tool were studied by P. Ya. Galperin.

He showed that at the first stage - targeted trials, the child varies his actions based not on the properties of the tool with which he wants, for example, to get the object he needs, but from the properties of this object itself. At the second stage - lying in wait - the child accidentally finds in In the process of his attempts, an effective way of acting with a tool and strives to repeat it. At the third stage, which Halperin called the stage of obsessive interference, the child actively tries to reproduce an effective way of acting with a tool and to master it. The fourth stage is objective regulation. At this stage, the child discovers methods of regulating/changing an action based on the objective conditions in which it has to be performed.

Halperin also proved that in the case when an adult immediately shows the child how to act with an object, the trial and error stage is bypassed, and children begin to act from the second stage.

When diagnosing the development of object actions in children, it is necessary to remember that instrumental actions also include object actions, since one of the variants of instrumental action is historically assigned to a given object. So, with a spoon you can dig, pour the contents from one container to another, eat soup and perform other instrumental actions, but only the last method of use is also objective, historically assigned to this tool. During the second year of life, children learn most object-based actions, and when studying their mental development, it is important to remember that instrumental actions, to a certain extent, can serve as an indicator of the intellectual development of children, while object-based actions to a greater extent reflect the degree of their learning and the breadth of contacts with adults .

The formation of sensory skills is of great importance for mental development at this age. It was mentioned above that studies by many scientists have shown that in the first years of life, the level of development of perception significantly affects thinking. This is explained by the fact that the actions of perception are associated with such operations of thinking as generalization, classification, subsuming a concept, etc. The leading role of perception, according to A.V. Zaporozhets, explains the features of the development of figurative memory and figurative thinking in this age period. He also argued that there are certain types of activities to which perception is sensitive (drawing, design), and showed how their formation affects the dynamics of the development of the cognitive sphere of children.

The development of perception is determined by three parameters - perceptual actions, sensory standards and correlation actions. Thus, the formation of perception consists in identifying the qualities (information points) that are most characteristic of a given object or situation, drawing up stable images (sensory standards) based on them, and correlating these standard images with objects in the surrounding world. When diagnosing the level of development of perception, it is important to determine the level of formation of all these three processes. It is also necessary to correlate the causes of errors made by the Child with these processes, since there are practically no children in whom all mental processes are disrupted. Therefore, as a rule, correction of one of the sides helps to correct the entire activity of perception.

Perceptual actions make it possible to study the basic properties and qualities of the perceived object, identifying the main and secondary ones in them. Based on this selection, the child perceives information. tive points in each of the objects of the surrounding world, which helps, upon repeated perception, to quickly recognize THIS object, assigning it to a certain class - a doll, a car, a plate, etc. Actions of perception, which are initially external and detailed (the child must not only look at an object, but also touch it with his hands, act with it), then move to the internal plane and are automated. Thus, the development of perceptual actions helps the formation of generalization and other mental operations, since the identification of the most significant qualities of each subject makes it possible to further combine them into classes and concepts.

At an early age, the formation of sensory standards also begins - initially objective (appearing by the end of infancy), which then, gradually generalizing, move to the sensory level. Thus, at first the child’s ideas about shape or color are associated with a specific object (for example, a round ball, green grass, etc.). Gradually, this quality is generalized and, detached from the object, becomes a standard - color, shape, size. It is these three main standards that are formed in children by the end of early childhood.

Correlating an object with a standard helps to systematize the knowledge that children receive when perceiving new objects. It is this knowledge that makes the image of the world holistic and permanent. At the same time, at an early age, children cannot yet divide a complex object into a number of standards of which it consists, but they can already find differences between a specific object and a standard (for example, saying that an apple is an irregular circle).

Due to the close connection between perception and thinking, some tests are used in the diagnosis of children of this age to study both processes.

At an early age, in addition to visual-effective thinking, visual-figurative thinking also begins to form. Since thinking presupposes orientation in connections and relationships between objects, A.V. Zaporozhets and L.A. Venger developed methods for studying and diagnosing thinking, based on the child’s ways of orienting himself in a situation. This orientation can occur through direct actions with objects, their visual study or verbal description, thereby determining the type of thinking - visual-effective, visual-figurative, visual-schematic, verbal-logical. Visual thinking appears at the end of the first year of life and is the leading type of thinking up to 3.5-4 years, visual-figurative thinking appears at 2.5-3 years and remains the main one until 6-6.5 years, visual-schematic thinking appears at 4.5-5 years and remains leading until 6-7 years; finally, verbal-logical thinking appears at 5.5-6 years old, becomes dominant from 7-8 years old, remaining the main form of thinking in most adults. Thus, at an early age, the main and almost until the end of this age the only type of thinking is visual-effective, which involves the child’s direct contact with objects and the search for the correct solution to a problem through trial and error. As is the case with the formation of objective actions, the help of an adult who shows the child what parameters of the situation it is necessary to pay attention to in order to correctly navigate and solve the problem correctly, helps the development of thinking and its transition to a higher, imaginative level. At the same time, when solving simple problems related to past experience, by the end of early childhood, all children should already be able to navigate almost instantly, without trial actions with objects, i.e., rely on imaginative thinking.

Studying the development of thinking at an early age, J. Piaget investigated the process of transition from external operations to internal, logical ones, as well as the formation of reversibility. In his experiments with young children, he analyzed their ability to find hidden things, including those that disappeared before their eyes. He paid special attention to the child's discovery of the fact that an object that has disappeared from sight can be discovered with the help of external operations that make the situation reversible (for example, when opening a box in which a handkerchief was hidden). Piaget’s data on children’s accumulation of knowledge and experience of acting with objects, which allows the child to move from sensorimotor thinking to figurative thinking, are also of interest.

A characteristic feature of the child’s thinking during this period is its syncretism (indivisibility) - the child tries to solve a problem without identifying individual parameters in it, but perceiving the situation as a holistic picture, all the details of which have the same meaning. Therefore, an adult’s help should be aimed primarily at analyzing and separating the details, from which the child (perhaps with the help of an adult) will then identify the main and minor ones. Thus, communication with an adult and joint subject activity can significantly accelerate and optimize the cognitive development of children; No wonder M. I. Lisina called the leading type of communication during this period situational and business.

The formation of speech becomes important for mental development during this period. While exploring the stages of mental development in children, Stern was the first to conduct systematic observation of speech formation. Having identified several periods in this process, he emphasized that the most important of them is the one associated with the discovery by children of the meaning of a word, the fact that each object has its own name (a child makes such a discovery at about one and a half years). This period, which Stern first spoke about, later became the starting point for the study of speech by almost all scientists who dealt with this problem. Having identified five main stages in the development of speech in children, Stern described them in detail, in fact developing the first standards for the development of speech in children under 5 years of age. He also identified the main trends that determine THIS development, the main ones of which are the transition from passive to active speech and from words to sentences.

Developing these ideas of Stern, L. S. Vygotsky showed that the transition from a word to a sentence is characteristic of the child’s external speech, while internal speech, on the contrary, develops from sentence to word. This is due to the fact that in the internal plane the word spoken by the child for him it means a whole phrase, for example, the child can associate the word “mother” with a request to give him something or help. As a rule, close adults guess the children’s wishes by the gestures and intonation that accompany these first words, coming to their aid. Over time, having learned to construct sentences externally, children assign each word its own meaning in internal speech, without expanding it into a whole phrase.

A slightly different interpretation of speech development is given in Bühler’s concept. Connecting speech with the process of creativity, which, in his opinion, is the leading line of development of the psyche, he put forward a heuristic theory of speech. Bühler believed that speech is not given to the child in a ready-made form, but is invented and invented by him in the process of communicating with adults. Thus, unlike other psychologists, Bühler insisted that the process of speech formation is a chain of discoveries.

In the first stage, the child discovers the meaning of words by observing the effect on adults of the sound complexes that the child invents. By manipulating an adult with the help of vocalization, the child realizes that certain sounds lead to a certain reaction from the adult (give, I'm afraid, I want, etc.), and begins to use these sound complexes purposefully. At the second stage, the child discovers that every thing has its own name, which expands his vocabulary, since he not only invents names for things himself, but also begins to ask adults questions about names. At the third stage, the child discovers the meaning of grammar, this also happens independently. Through observation, he comes to understand that the relationships between objects and their number can be expressed by changes in the sound side of the word, for example, by changing the ending (table - tables).

L. S. Vygotsky paid much attention to the study of speech development. In his works, he proved that the combination of two different processes - the formation of thinking and the formation of speech - occurs in children at one and a half years old. At this age, children’s vocabulary increases sharply, questions arise about the names of objects, i.e., as Stern wrote, “the child discovers the meaning of words.” Vygotsky explained this discovery by the fact that speech is combined with thinking, and thus the child begins to comprehend the sounds that the adult utters. From Vygotsky’s point of view, the word is the sign for thinking that turns visual-effective thinking into a higher mental function.

Psychologists of different directions have shown the existence of a connection between the formation of thinking and the sign function of consciousness. This manifests itself not only in the development of speech, as shown above, but also in the development of the ability to draw. Stern's works devoted to the study of the genesis of children's drawings revealed the role of the scheme in helping children move from ideas to concepts. This idea of ​​Stern, later developed by K. Buhler, helped to discover a new form of thinking - visual-schematic, or model, thinking, on the basis of which many modern concepts of developmental education for children have been developed.

Analyzing the connection between thinking and creativity, Buhler came to the idea that drawing has a direct impact on the intellectual development of children. He believed that a drawing is a graphic story built on the principle of oral speech, that is, a child’s drawing is not a copy of an action, but a story about it. This is why, Buhler noted, children love stories in pictures so much, they love to look at them and draw them themselves.

An analysis of children's drawings led Bühler, like Stern, to the concept of “scheme” and its significance in the development of the psyche. He said that if in speech a child uses a concept, then in a drawing he uses a diagram, which is a generalized image of an object, and not an exact copy of it. Thus, the scheme is like an intermediate concept, making it easier for children to master abstract knowledge. These provisions of Bühler are used in modern developmental programs (primarily designed for 3-6 year old children).

Communication with adults is of great importance not only for the formation of the cognitive sphere, but also for the development of the personality of young children. Those around them must remember that the self-image, the first self-esteem of children at this time is, in fact, an internalized assessment of an adult. Therefore, constant comments, ignoring, even if not always successful, attempts of children to do something on their own, underestimating his efforts can lead, even at this age, to self-doubt and a decrease in claims to success in the activity being carried out.

E. Erikson also spoke about this, proving that at an early age children develop a sense of independence, autonomy from an adult, or, in the case of an unfavorable direction of development, a feeling of dependence on him. The dominance of one of the two options is connected, in his opinion, with how adults react to the child’s first attempts to achieve independence. To some extent, Erikson’s description of this stage correlates with the description of the formation of the “I-Myself” neoplasm in Russian psychology. Thus, in the studies of D. B. Elkonin, L. I. Bozhovich and other psychologists, it was emphasized that by the end of early childhood, children develop the first ideas about themselves as individuals, different from others in the independence of their own actions.

At the same time, children experience the first signs of negativism, stubbornness and aggression, which are symptoms of the 3-year-old crisis. This is one of the most significant and emotionally intense crises in ontogenesis. Fixation at the negative stage of this crisis, the obstacles that arise during the formation of independence and activity of children (high degrees of guardianship - overprotection, authoritarianism, inflated demands, excessive criticism from adults) not only hinder the normal development of self-awareness and self-esteem of children, but also lead to the fact that negativism, stubbornness, aggression, as well as anxiety and isolation, become stable personality traits. These qualities naturally affect all types of children’s activities (their communication with others, studies) and can lead to serious deviations in school and especially adolescence.

Important characteristics of this age stage include the lability of the child’s emotional sphere. His emotions and feelings that are formed at this time, reflecting his attitude towards objects and people, are not yet fixed and can be changed when the situation changes. Fixation on the prohibition when another positive stimulus appears, the absence of a positive emotional reaction to a new toy and other indicators of rigidity of emotions, as well as fixation on negative emotions, are serious indicators of deviation not only in the development of the emotional sphere, but also in general mental development in this area. age. 8.3.