Figurative thinking is considered fundamental, and it can even be said that it is the main one among other types of thinking in preschool children. It is on figurative thinking that the level of preparedness of the child for entering the first grade, his mastering the school curriculum will depend. In order for your baby to be able to show imagination and ingenuity, you need to do as much as possible with him. How to do it? What method to work with? You will find the answers to these and many other questions in our article.

The need for the development of imaginative thinking

The development of figurative thinking in preschoolers of both younger and older age is essential in order to:

• to teach the child to find solutions to any problems, to use various images to visualize a particular situation;
• to instill in the baby love and craving for beauty, namely, for art, literature, music;
• develop the ability to visualize the story of another person, presenting it in pictures.

Imaginative thinking in children can be improved with the help of educational games

Ways to develop visual-figurative thinking

Thinking in preschoolers is usually formed in the following “direction”: the perception of information turns into visual-effective thinking, and then into visual-figurative and logical thinking, that is, at first the child tries to understand this or that situation, then he scrolls possible actions in his head, then represents, and only then tries to explain why it happens this way and not otherwise. The development of each of these types of thinking will be useful to the child when studying at school, will help him to better perceive and assimilate school subjects, and especially technical ones, such as physics or geometry. There are several basic ways and exercises through which you can help your child develop these skills. Let's look at each of them in more detail.

Basic Methods

The most effective ways to develop imaginative thinking in preschoolers are:

• walks in nature with a note of something interesting and special happening around you at a given moment in time;
• excursions to various museums, exhibitions;
• travel around the cities with the study of local attractions;
• games with mosaics and puzzles, both simple and complex;
• drawing from life or according to the description of any object;
• creating abstract drawings, for example, to draw something that cannot be seen - a melody, thought, taste, joy, sadness, delight;
• classes with plasticine, clay, plaster;
• comparison of objects of different shapes, sizes, colors;
• crafts from colored cardboard, paper, foil, wood;
• drawing using various materials: watercolors, pencils, oil crayons, gouache.

Development lessons should be built according to the following scheme:

• show the child how you coped with this or that task, for example, drew, blinded, saw;
• explain your actions;
• try to break classes into independent work and joint work;
• Invite the child to complete tasks without using an example.

A lesson with a preschooler should be held in a quiet and calm environment, motivating the child to achieve the desired result. Always praise your baby and encourage him.

Exercises

In order to develop visual-figurative thinking in a child, it is necessary to use various exercises carried out in a playful way. Next, we will consider the most effective and popular of them.

"Guess What It Is"

For this quest you will need the following items:

• box;
• small ball;
• doll;
• machine;
• cube;
• dog;
• bunny.

The adult takes the box and says to the baby: "Let's find out what is in it." Then he shows the child all the toys in turn and asks him to remember them. The teacher covers the ball, cube, doll, bunny and dog with a cloth or napkin and begins to describe one object, asking the child to guess what he is talking about. For example, "Round, rolls, jumps, they beat him, but he does not cry, only jumps higher, jumps higher." If the kid could not guess, then the adult needs to show this toy again and repeat the exercise. After the correct answer, the child needs to describe the subject chosen by him. This action should be carried out with each toy. This exercise perfectly trains memory, mindfulness and imaginative thinking.

"Who lives where?"

For this exercise, you need to prepare several pictures with animals and their habitats, for example, a bear - a den, a hare - a mink, a bird - a nest, a beaver - a dam. Show the child these images, explain the essence of the task and ask them to remember where a particular animal lives. Then ask: "Who lives where?", showing the pictures one by one. Such a task forms visual memory and broadens one's horizons.

"Looking for a ball"

To complete this task, you need to prepare 5 rubber balls of different sizes and colors: red and red with a white stripe (small and large), green with a white stripe (small and large), 1 large blue.

The teacher shows the child each ball in turn and asks them to remember. Then the balls are covered with a cloth. After that, one of the balls is described in the form of a simple story, for example, "Petya came into the yard with a big red ball - find the ball that Petya brought." The adult removes the cloth and gives the child time to think. After the kid has made his choice, he is asked to explain why he did this and not otherwise. This exercise trains visual memory and develops logical thinking.

"Guess and Draw"

To complete this task correctly, you need to prepare an album or piece of paper, pencils and interesting riddles about something. The teacher gives the child a word, it can be an animal, something edible, and then asks to guess. If the kid correctly answers the question, then the adult asks him to depict on a piece of paper the object that was thought of. Such an exercise perfectly trains the imagination, develops fantasy and imaginative thinking.

drawing helps develop imaginative thinking

"Find your soul mate"

To play the game "Find a Half" you need to print several pictures with different images and cut them in half. For example, it can be a mushroom, a car, geometric shapes. The teacher lays out these images on the table in a chaotic manner and asks the child to find their soul mate. This task trains attentiveness, ingenuity and a visual representation of something.

"What do they have in common?"

A simple logical task "What do they have in common?" is carried out with the aim of forming a child's visual memory, logical and figurative thinking. The teacher must prepare several items that have something in common, for example, a doll, a bear, a ball, a car are toys or an airplane, a car, a steamboat, a train are appliances. Thus, the child learns to classify objects, placing them in one group on the basis of some common features.

"Draw a picture"

For this exercise you will need: several cards with the image of birds, mammals, fish, as well as 3 envelopes and pencils. The teacher says: "Someone mixed up my pictures - help me sort them out." Then the child must arrange the cards in 3 envelopes, and so that they contain pictures that have something in common with each other. After the kid completes this task, the adult asks him to depict on each envelope what is in it. This game forms visual memory, teaches the child to be attentive and think visually.

"Where is the circle, and where is the oval?"

An adult calls the child various round and oval objects, and then asks which of the above can be called a circle and which an oval. For example, “An apple is round, and an egg is oval”, “What shape is an orange, melon, lemon?”. This exercise trains spatial thinking and teaches the baby to think.

"What can you eat and what can't you eat?"

To conduct this game, you need to prepare several pictures that will show edible and inedible objects, for example, a car, a pipe, a sausage, a carrot, a pen. The teacher shows the child one by one the pictures and asks them to say which of them can be eaten and what not. This task develops the child's intelligence, attentiveness and speed of thinking.

“What can be only below, and what can only be above?”

The adult invites the child to think and say what can only be above and what can be below. For example, “Look up, what do you see there? - that's right, a chandelier" or "Look down, what's there? - That's right, carpet. By analogy, the teacher asks the child to give similar examples. This exercise develops ingenuity, imagination and imaginative thinking.

"What is only sweet?"

The teacher asks the kid to name the child only what can only be sweet in the following format: “I name sweet foods, and if I say wrong, then you say stop.” For example, raspberry, candy, sugar, melon, lemon. The child should say: "Stop!" at the word "lemon". This exercise trains the speed of thinking and attentiveness.

"Quick answer"

For this task, you will need a small ball. So, you get up and say to the baby: “I will name different colors, and when I throw you a ball, you must name some object of this shade quickly, without hesitation.” For example, yellow, the child begins to look for something yellow in the room. You can also use not only shades, but also the materials from which objects are made, for example, wood, plastic. This game develops visual-figurative thinking, attention and ingenuity.

The teacher asks the kid to find two similar objects and talk about their common features. For example, you say: "Grass-cucumber." What do they have in common? The child should answer: "They are green" or "Sun-lemon" - they are round and yellow. This exercise forms a visual representation of a variety of objects, visual thinking and memory.

"Remove the excess"

The adult names a few words, for example, “cup, car, flower, dandelion, rose, clover, cornflower” and asks the child to remove the extra ones. The kid must answer that a cup and a car do not fit here, since everything else is flowers. Be sure to ask the child to justify his choice, that is, on what basis he grouped certain items. This exercise develops logical thinking, ingenuity and perseverance.

"What sound is that?"

The teacher asks the child to name the repeated sound. This is an exercise in mindfulness and ingenuity. For example, you say: “shi-shi-shi - I have pencils or but-but-but - here is a nest on a tree”, then ask: “What sound was repeated?”. The kid should answer: "W" or "H".

Classes on the development of imaginative thinking should be carried out regularly to consolidate the acquired knowledge. After all, the more often you work with your child, the faster the first result will appear. In our article, you met with fairly simple exercises that can be easily performed at home. The main thing is to be patient, and then you will succeed.

Development of visual-figurative thinking of children of middle preschool age

1. Issues of the development of visual-figurative thinking of children of middle preschool age in modern psychological and pedagogical literature

The highest level of knowledge is thinking. Human thinking not only includes various operations (analysis, synthesis, comparison, abstraction, generalization), but also proceeds at various levels, in various forms, which allows researchers to talk about the existence of various types of thinking. So, according to Karvasarsky B.D., depending on the nature of the problem being solved, on what the thought operates with, there are three types or levels of thinking:

object-effective, or manual, mental operations occur in actions with specific objects;

visual-figurative, in which the main unit of thinking is the image;

verbal-logical, or conceptual.

These types of thinking develop in the process of ontogenesis sequentially from the subject-active to the conceptual. The ontogenetic development of the child's thinking is carried out in the course of his objective activity and communication, the development of social experience, and the purposeful influence of an adult in the form of education and upbringing plays a special role.

In accordance with the transition of the leading type of thinking from the visual-active to the visual-figurative level, in contrast to the period of early childhood, at preschool age, thinking is based on ideas, when the child can think about what he does not perceive at the moment, but what he knows from his past experience, and operating with images and ideas makes the preschooler's thinking extra-situational, going beyond the perceived situation and significantly expanding the boundaries of knowledge.

Thus, according to the definition of Petrovsky A.V., visual-figurative thinking is a type of thinking associated with the presentation of situations and changes in them, with the help of which the whole variety of different actual characteristics of an object is most fully recreated - a vision of an object can be simultaneously recorded in the image from several points of view.

Acting in the mind with images, the child imagines a real action with an object and its result, and in this way solves the problem facing him. In cases where the properties of objects that are essential for solving the problem turn out to be hidden, they cannot be represented, but can be designated by words or other signs, the problem is solved with the help of abstract, logical thinking, which, according to the definition of Petrovsky A.V., is the latest stage of the historical and ontogenetic development of thinking, a type of thinking characterized by the use of concepts of logical constructions, functioning on the basis of linguistic means - verbal-logical thinking. According to J. Piaget (1969), L.S. Vygotsky (1982), mastering the signs of the development of a sign-symbolic function is one of the main directions in the mental development of a child.

Studies of the level of development of visual-figurative thinking in mass diagnostic examinations of children annually (since 1979) conducted by a team of employees led by D.B. Elkonin showed that children with a high level of figurative thinking later successfully study at school, their mental development school conditions are favorable, and for children with a low level of figurative thinking, formalism was subsequently characteristic in the assimilation of knowledge and methods of action, great difficulties were observed in the formation of logical thinking.

The role of figurative thinking is explained by the fact that it allows you to outline a possible course of action, based on the characteristics of a particular situation. With an insufficient level of development of figurative thinking, but a high level of logical thinking, the latter largely takes over the orientation in a particular situation.

The reasoning of a preschooler begins with the formulation of a question that testifies to the problematic nature of thinking and acquires a cognitive character in a preschooler. The observation of certain phenomena, their own experience of actions with objects allow preschoolers to clarify their ideas about the causes of phenomena, to come to a more correct understanding through reasoning. On the basis of a visual-effective form of thinking, children become capable of the first generalizations, based on the experience of their practical objective activity and fixed in the word, then by the end of preschool age, due to the fact that the images used by the child acquire a generalized character, reflecting not all the features subject, situation, but only those that are essential from the point of view of a particular task, it becomes possible to proceed to solving the problem in the mind.

At preschool age, the child develops a primary picture of the world and the rudiments of a worldview, despite the fact that the knowledge of reality occurs not in a conceptual, but in a visual-figurative form. It is the assimilation of forms of figurative cognition that leads the child to an understanding of the objective laws of logic, and contributes to the development of verbal-logical (conceptual) thinking. The restructuring between mental and practical actions is provided by the inclusion of speech, which begins to precede actions.

According to Kolominsky Ya.L., Panko E.A. The result of the intellectual development of a preschooler is the highest forms of visual-figurative thinking, based on which the child gets the opportunity to isolate the most essential properties, the relationship between objects of the surrounding reality, without much difficulty not only understand schematic images, but also successfully use them.

Poddyakov N.N., Govorkova A.F. summing up a series of experimental studies of the development of the plan of representations of preschool children in age dynamics, we came to the conclusion that in the conditions of specially organized imitative activity for 2-3 lessons, all children of preschool age formed the ability to imagine hidden movements of an object and, on their basis, orient their practical actions , and some (especially at the age of 4-5 years) experienced rapid leaps in the development of this ability - from the inability to solve even the most elementary two-way tasks in terms of visual-figurative thinking to the correct solution of problems with a volume of 5 actions. The researchers also identified as the prerequisites underlying the development of a plan of representations in children, the mastery of such relations as "part-whole" and "model-original".

Poddyakov N.N. and Govorkov A.F. came to the conclusion that thanks to specially organized imitative and modeling activities in all age groups of preschoolers, the volume of actions in the internal plan significantly increases, which allowed them to take this volume as a measure (criterion) of the formation of figurative thinking / 25,115 /.

Thus, we can conclude, following the numerous aspects of research scientists, about the need for the emergence and development of a visual-figurative form of thinking in preschool age, which ensures the knowledge of reality by the child in the present and the formation in the future of the highest - verbal-logical (conceptual) form of thinking.

According to Uruntaeva G.A., having actualized the ability to think, solve problematic problems in the figurative terms of representations, the child expands the boundaries of his knowledge: he learns to understand the objective laws of logic, posing problematic questions, building and testing his own theories. In practical activities, the child begins to identify and use the connections and relationships between objects and phenomena, actions. From highlighting simple connections, he moves on to more complex ones, reflecting the relationship of cause and effect. The child's experiences lead him to conclusions, generalized ideas.

Speech begins to precede action. The development of speech leads to the development of reasoning as a way of solving mental problems, an understanding of the causality of phenomena arises.

Studies have shown that the ability to operate with specific images of objects arises at the age of 4-5, and in conditions of specially organized imitative and modeling activities, these abilities become available to younger students (2 years 6 months - 3 years).

As many researchers have noted, an important feature of visual-figurative thinking is the ability to represent other situations related to the original problem, and to establish unusual and incredible combinations of figurative representations of objects and their properties, which includes in the process of thinking and imagination, opening up the prospects of creative creative thinking.

The assimilation of forms of figurative cognition forms, by the end of preschool age, the child's primary picture of the world and the rudiments of a worldview. In addition to participating in the formation of the foundations of the child's personality, visual-figurative thinking itself develops by the end of preschool age, reaches its highest form - visual-schematic thinking, a means for the child to create a generalized model of various objects and phenomena.

2. Conditions for the development of visual-figurative thinking of children of middle preschool age in the classroom for designing from paper (origami)

In the process of development of the child's sensorimotor (visual-effective) intellect, sensorimotor schemes are formed that provide a reflection of the essential properties of surrounding objects and phenomena, thereby creating the prerequisites for the transition to visual-figurative thinking. The leading role in the formation of such an opportunity is assigned to internal imitating activity, imitation. Playing and imitative activities play a leading role in the formation of figurative thinking. For the formation of visual-figurative thinking, orientation to the essential connections of the situation is of great importance - the assimilation of knowledge about the spatial relationships of things.

The ability to single out the most essential aspects of reality for solving the problem and establish certain connections and relationships between them necessary for the development of thinking are formed in the process of mastering the actions of visual-figurative modeling, the source of which is the modeling nature of design, play, drawing, application and other activities.

Children's attitude to design changes significantly when it becomes clear to them that certain toys can be made from paper, and by folding paper like origami, various crafts of animals, birds, flowers, and objects can be obtained. Constructing from paper, children create models of objects and objects of reality, displaying their characteristic features in a generalized form, distracting from secondary features and highlighting the most striking and attractive details. So the image acquires new features, an original interpretation, which is expressed in a somewhat conventional, angular form. This is due to the specifics of processing the material (paper) by bending, folding parts in a certain sequence. Despite the fact that handicrafts often only remotely resemble certain objects, this does not prevent the child from recognizing them, supplementing the missing details in his imagination.

Through various actions with paper, in the process of processing it, using different methods and techniques, children learn to comprehend the images of familiar objects, to convey them in visual activity, emphasizing the beauty and color of the external appearance in a transformed form.

Paper construction presents some difficulties for a preschooler, since paper - a flat material - must be converted into three-dimensional forms. Therefore, from the very beginning, you need to teach children the simplest folding techniques. Reproduction of actions shown by adults is not a simple mechanical operation for a child. He has to constantly think, measure his movements, make sure that when bending, opposite sides and angles coincide, which requires a certain volitional and mental effort. To achieve the greatest expressiveness of crafts, you should vary the color and size of the squares. At the same time, it must be remembered that the quality of products is affected not only by the choice of workpiece, but, first of all, by the thoroughness, accuracy and accuracy of folding and smoothing the folds. Therefore, first of all, you need to teach children the techniques of folding a square.

Many figures known in origami begin to fold in the same way up to a certain point. Identical blanks are basic forms, the ability to add them is the key to success in achieving the result. Crafts for children of middle preschool age are based on the basic forms of "triangle", "envelope", "kite".

In order to arouse children's interest in designing (origami) and emotionally set it up for it as a creative productive activity, which must be included in the semantic fields, that is, cultural and semantic contexts ("packaging") - the fields of manufacturing activity products for games and cognitive activities, the creation of collections, the creation of layouts, the manufacture of jewelry-souvenirs, the manufacture of items for the "theater". It is advisable to put all developmental tasks for engaging in productive activities in the framework of an interesting business. Also, the introduction of playable characters creates play motivation, causing emotions to spread throughout the situation and task. That is, the necessary emotional relation is created

The development of thinking of a preschooler is facilitated by all types of activities available to him, while conditions must be organized that contribute to in-depth knowledge of a particular object. A necessary condition for the development of creative thinking is the inclusion of children in activities.

3. List of used literature

1. Anastasi A. Psychological testing./Edited by K.M. Gurevich, V.I. Lubovsky.

2. Akhundzhanova S. The development of speech of preschoolers in productive activities.//Preschool education - 1983 - 36 - p.34-36.

3. Bodalev A.A., Stolin V.V., Avanesov V.S. General psychodiagnostics. - St. Petersburg: Speech - 2000 - 40s.

4. Bulycheva A. Solving cognitive problems: possible forms of classes / / Preschool education, 1996 - No. 4 - p.69-72.

5. Wenger L.A., Mukhina V.S. Development of thinking of a preschooler / / Preschool education - 1979-3 7 - p.20-37.

6. Galiguzova L. Early age: the development of a procedural game.//Preschool education. - 1993 - No. 4 - p.41-47

7. Galperin P.Ya. Formation of mental actions / / Reader in general psychology6 Psychology of thinking - M., 1981

8. Davidchuk A.N. Development of constructive creativity among preschoolers - M., 1976.

9. Lysyuk L.G. Empirical picture of the formation of productive goal setting in children 2-4 years old.//Questions of psychology; - 2000, - No. 1 - p.58-67

10. Karvasarsky B.D. Clinical psychology - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2007 - 959s.

11. Kolominsky Ya.L., Panko E.A. Teacher about the psychology of children of six years of age: A book for the teacher. - M.: Enlightenment, 1988-190s.

12. Komarova T.S. Visual activity in kindergarten, education and creativity - M., 1990.

13. Korotkova N. Productive activity of children of senior preschool age. / / Preschool education - 2001 - 311 - pp. 29-40

14. Kudryavtsev V. Innovative preschool education, experience, problems, development strategy // preschool education, 1996 - 3 10 - p.73-80.

15. Methods of psychological diagnostics. Issue 2-Edited by Voronin A.N. - Mu; 1994 - 202 p.

16. Mukhina V.S. Visual activity as a form of assimilation of social experience - M., 1981.

17. V.N.

18. Nemov R.S. Psychology - M.: VLADOS, 1999 - book 3: Psychodiagnostics. Introduction to scientific and psychological research with elements of mathematical statistics - 632 p.

19. Paramonova L., Uradovskikh G. The role of constructive tasks in the formation of mental activity (senior preschool age) / / Preschool education - 1985 - No. 7 - p.46-49

20. Psychology: Dictionary / Under the general editorship of A.V. Petrovsky, M.G. Yaroshevsky - M.: Politizdat, 1990 - 494 p.

21. The development of thinking and mental education of a preschooler / edited by N.N. Poddyakov, A.f.

22. Rogov E.I. Handbook of a practical psychologist: Textbook: in 2 books: Book 1: The system of work of a psychologist with young children. - M.: Vlados-Press / ID VLADOS, 2004 - 384 p.

23. Rubinstein S.L. Fundamentals of General Psychology - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2002 - 720s.

24. Sinelnikov V. Formation of mental activity of preschoolers in solving constructive problems // Preschool education. - 1996 - No. 8 - p. 93-100.

25. Trifonova G.E. About children's drawing as a form of play // Preschool education. - 1996 - No. 2 - 26. Trubnikov N.N. On the categories "goal", "means", "result", M., 1968.

27. Poddyakov N.N. Development of combinatorial abilities//Preschool education, 2001 - 310 - p.90-99.

28. Poddyakov N.N. Thinking of a preschooler - M., 1977

29. Uruntaeva G.A., Afonkina Yu.A. Workshop on preschool psychology - M.: Academy, 1998 - 304 p.

The significance of the first form of thinking, visual-effective, is that some mistakes that were made in the development of the child negatively affect his further mental development. Thus, visual-effective thinking for a small person entering this world is the starting point, which in the future will allow the brain to develop and move on to other, more complex forms of thinking.

When does it start to form?

Important. The visual-effective form of thinking is actively formed in children of the earliest and younger preschool age.

This process starts when the child is not yet able to plan anything on his own. The first "symptoms" of this form of thinking can be observed even in seven-month-old babies. The period when the child solves problems related to objects and toys gives information about the level of his development in a baby up to the age of three.

At three years old, a child can already plan something. Let this not yet the most daring and confident plans. From cubes and fragments of the designer, he can already build various structures - from houses to airplanes. Takes pieces of his toys to find out what they are from, "puts things in order" in home cabinets.

This is how, with visual-real thinking, a complex, but life-long cognitive path begins.

Development Features

Preschoolers

Preschoolers are ahead of the logic of logical thinking - "thinking with their hands."

1. At first, the child can understand the ultimate goal.
2. Then he begins to analyze the specific conditions of the assigned tasks.
3. And only then compares the conditions of the problem with the goal to be achieved.

This is how the whole chain of small decisions is built that will lead to the achievement of the final goal.

In young years

Important. A feature of thinking at four or five years old is its complete instability. It seems that the child wants to analyze everything that he sees around him, compares objects with each other and can already draw a conclusion about their relationships. But his judgments about objects are simply their enumeration.

Young children often act inappropriately and cannot be critical of themselves and their actions. They only understand the end goal (removing a candy from a tall vase, catching a toy fish), but they do not yet understand how to solve these problems. As soon as the child speaks, everything will change.

For elementary and middle school students

This transitional age - from childhood to adolescence - is an important and difficult stage in the development of the child. Physical abilities increase: movements and actions are more confident and varied. More and more meaningful contacts with peers are needed. At this age, children communicate on various issues and the range of these issues is much wider than that of babies.

Teenagers

With age, experience accumulates. Teenagers reason and are able to draw conclusions. They consider themselves adults. The guys have their own solutions, not always correct and adequate. At this stage, it is good for parents to pay attention to the development of thinking, while not forgetting about the psychological climate.

Diagnostic methods

To immerse a child in creativity is the main and right parental decision. Creative people are always looking for something new. You can notice the inclinations of a child at a very early age. The main thing is to love, develop and observe. And here's what you can see:

• bright emotions on toys;
• genuine interest in people;
• an acute desire to imitate, repeat after someone heard words and actions.

To assess the creative abilities of children in psychology, a number of criteria are used - for example:

• flexibility;
• originality;
• creative ideas and solutions.

How to develop it?

Depending on the age and preferences of the child himself, development methods should also be chosen. At three years old, it can be a pyramid and other collapsible toys.

1. To begin with, an adult demonstrates the process of disassembling and assembling them.
2. Then the child repeats these procedures.
3. Further, the tasks become more difficult. For example, a pyramid is taken with rings of different shapes, sizes and colors.

In older preschool age, the following methods can be used to develop thinking:

• Observe nature with a further description of what he saw.
• Compare objects of different sizes and shapes.
• Collect puzzles, mosaics, periodically complicating tasks.
• Draw.
• Sculpt (clay, plasticine).
• Go to museums, visit exhibitions.
• Create crafts from natural materials, cardboard, colored paper.

Adults should take an active part in all these processes. Any of these activities should not be a burden to the child. If the child felt tired, it is recommended to switch his attention, praising him, motivating him to perform more and more complex tasks.

In children with ADHD

If the ZPR is of cerebro-organic origin, then, as a rule, all types of thinking processes suffer. But the visual-effective is less affected. This is due to the fact that with such forms of development it is slowed down:

1. formation of locomotor functions;
2. hand-eye coordination;
3. there is a low level of ability to analyze, compare and generalize the properties of phenomena and objects.

Such special children can only talk about superficial, non-essential qualities, and even then not completely and accurately. In children with mental retardation, figurative thinking appears later than one and a half to two years (more about what figurative thinking is, why it is needed, read

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION OF THE CITY OF MOSCOW

State budget educational institution

higher professional education of the city of Moscow

MOSCOW CITY

PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY

Faculty "Educational Psychology"

COURSE WORK

The development of visual-figurative thinking in preschool age

Direction 050400.62 Psychological and pedagogical education

Profile Psychology and pedagogy of preschool education

Head Zinchenko E.A.

Student Sukhova T.A. 4 group, 1 course

Moscow, 2014

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1. General characteristics of the development of thinking in children of senior preschool age

1Theoretical foundations of visual-figurative thinking

1.2Psychological and pedagogical characteristics of senior preschool age

3Visual-figurative thinking is the basis of the cognitive activity of older preschoolers

Chapter 1 Conclusions

Chapter 2. Features of the development of visual-figurative thinking in preschool children

1 Stages of development of visual-figurative thinking in older preschoolers

2.2 Conditions for the development of visual-figurative thinking in children

Chapter 2 Conclusions

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION

At present, the problem of mental education of preschool children is of particular relevance. For a number of years, the main efforts of Soviet scientists who have studied the cognitive processes of preschool children have been concentrated on the study of two problems. One of them is the problem of the development of perception processes. The second problem is the problem of the formation of conceptual thinking. At the same time, the problem of the development of visual-figurative thinking in preschool children is much less developed. Important materials on this issue are contained in the works of A.V. Zaporozhets, A.A. Lyublinskaya, G.I. Minsky and others.

However, the main features of the formation and functioning of visual-figurative thinking have not yet been sufficiently studied. At present, it is indisputable that visual-effective and visual-figurative thinking are of great importance in the mental development of preschool children. The development of these forms of thinking largely determines the success of the transition to more complex, conceptual forms of thinking. In this connection, the study of the basic functions of these more elementary forms and the determination of their role in the general process of the child's mental development occupies an important place in contemporary psychological research. A number of studies have shown that the possibilities of these forms of thinking are extremely large and are far from being fully used.

With age, the content of thinking of preschoolers changes significantly, their relationships with other people become more complicated, play activity develops, various forms of productive activity arise, the implementation of which requires knowledge of new aspects and properties of objects. Such a change in the content of thinking also requires its more advanced forms, which provide the opportunity to transform the situation not only in terms of external material activity, but also in terms of the imagined one.

A number of studies (B.G. Ananiev, O.I. Galkina, L.L. Gurova, A.A. Lyublinskaya, I.S. Yakimanskaya and others) convincingly show the important role of imaginative thinking in performing various activities, solving both practical and educational tasks. Various types of images were identified and their function in the implementation of thought processes was investigated.

The problem of figurative thinking was intensively developed by a number of foreign scientists (R. Arnheim, D. Brown, D. Hebb, G. Hein, R. Hold, etc.) In a number of domestic studies, the structure of visual-figurative thinking is revealed and some features of its functioning are characterized ( B. G. Ananiev, L. L. Gurova, V. P. Zinchenko, T. V. Kudryavtsev, F. N. Limyakin, I. S. Yakimanskaya, and others). A. Lublinskaya, J. Piaget and others) consider the emergence of visual-figurative thinking as a key moment in the mental development of the child. However, the conditions for the formation of visual thinking in preschoolers, the mechanisms for its implementation are far from being fully studied. It should be noted that the ability to operate with ideas is not a direct result of the child's assimilation of knowledge and skills.

An analysis of a number of psychological studies suggests that this ability arises in the process of interaction between various lines of a child's psychological development - the development of objective and instrumental actions, speech, imitation, play activity, etc. An analysis of both domestic and foreign studies shows that development visual-figurative thinking is a complex and lengthy process, a comprehensive and complete study of which requires a cycle of experimental and theoretical work.

The object of the study is the visual-figurative thinking of preschool children.

The subject of the study is the process of development of visual-figurative thinking in preschoolers

The purpose of the study is to identify the features of the development of visual-figurative thinking in preschool children.

Research objectives:

Consider thinking as a mental process;

To analyze the available theoretical data and psychological and pedagogical literature.

Chapter I. General characteristics of the development of thinking in children of senior preschool age

1 Theoretical foundations of visual - figurative thinking

Thinking is the highest cognitive process. It is a product of new knowledge, an active form of creative reflection and transformation of reality.

Thinking is the most generalized and mediated form of mental reflection, establishing connections and relationships between cognizable objects.

The difference between thinking and other mental processes is that it is almost always associated with the presence of a problem situation, a task that needs to be solved, and an active change in the conditions in which this task is set. Thinking, unlike perception, goes beyond the limits of the sensually given, expands the boundaries of knowledge. In thinking based on sensory information, certain theoretical and practical conclusions are drawn. It reflects being not only in the form of separate things, phenomena and their properties, but also determines the connections that exist between them, which are most often not given directly, in the very perception of a person. The properties of things and phenomena, the connections between them are reflected in thinking in a generalized form, in the form of laws, entities.

Thinking as a separate mental process does not exist, it is invisibly present in all other cognitive processes: perception, attention, imagination, memory, speech. The higher forms of these processes are necessarily associated with thinking, and the degree of its participation in these cognitive processes determines their level of development.

In a number of studies B.G. Anan'eva, P.Ya. Galperin, A.V. Zaporozhets, V.P. Zinchenko, E.I. Ignatieva, S.L. Rubinstein, I.S. Yakimanskaya convincingly shows the important role of thinking in performing various activities, solving both practical and cognitive problems.

Thinking is the movement of ideas, revealing the essence of things. Its result is not an image, but some thought, an idea. A specific result of thinking can be a concept - a generalized reflection of a class of objects in their most general and essential features.

A person can think with varying degrees of generalization, to a greater or lesser extent rely in the process of thinking on perceptions, ideas or concepts. Depending on this, three main types of thinking are distinguished: subject-effective, visual-figurative and abstract.

Object-effective thinking is a type of thinking associated with practical actions on objects. In its elementary form, object-effective thinking is characteristic of young children, for whom thinking about objects means acting, manipulating with them.

Visual-figurative thinking is a type of thinking that relies on perception or representations. Thinking visually-figuratively, a person is attached to reality, and the images necessary for thinking are presented in his short-term and operative memory. This form of thinking is most fully and extensively presented in children of preschool and primary school age.

Abstract thinking, which mainly characterizes older schoolchildren and adults, is conceptual thinking, devoid of direct visualization, inherent in perception and ideas.

All of the listed types of thinking in humans coexist and can be represented in one and the same activity. However, depending on its nature and ultimate goals, one or another type of thinking dominates. On this basis, they all differ. According to the degree of their complexity, according to the requirements that they place on the intellectual and other abilities of a person, all these types of thinking are not inferior to each other.

Interaction with a cognizable object (or its model) is an important condition for the thought process. Such interaction can occur both in terms of practical transformations and in terms of visual perception. In the process of the latter, an image of a perceived object arises and various kinds of transformations of this image are carried out.

V.P. Zinchenko notes: “... there is not only reproductive, but also productive perception, and in the visual system there are mechanisms that ensure the generation of a new image.”

One of the types of visual-figurative thinking is visual.

“Visual thinking is a human activity, the product of which is the generation of new images, the creation of new visual forms that carry a certain semantic load and make the meaning visible. These images are distinguished by autonomy and freedom in relation to the objects of perception.

In research on visual thinking, a methodological approach has been developed that has made it possible to obtain important data that perceptual, identification and mnemonic actions are involved not only in the informational preparation of a mental act, but also in its implementation. These materials provide an opportunity to take a fresh look at the formation of figurative thinking in preschool children.

One of the main tasks of our study of visual-figurative thinking in preschoolers was to study the conditions for its occurrence, as well as to identify its role in the overall process of mental development of children. This form of thinking is not only a prerequisite for conceptual thinking, but also performs specific functions that cannot be performed by other forms of thinking.

Different forms of a child's thinking (visual-active, visual-figurative and conceptual) never function in isolation from each other. Thus, in conceptual thinking there are always figurative components; in the process of figurative thinking, concepts or related formations play an essential role. Therefore, when we talk about the figurative or conceptual thinking of children, this is to a certain extent an abstraction. In reality, the child's thinking acquires one character or another depending on the predominance of one or another of its components (figurative or conceptual). When solving certain classes of problems, the operation of images comes to the fore, and the whole process of thinking acquires specific features that distinguish it from conceptual thinking.

Visual-figurative thinking is essential not only for a child, but also for the successful implementation of many types of professional activities of adults - designers, operators, etc.

Within certain limits, visual-figurative thinking is characterized by special patterns of functioning and allows one to cognize such aspects and properties of objects that are actually inaccessible to conceptual thinking; it would be more correct to say that they are accessible, but only in close connection with figurative thinking. One of the features of the latter is that in its process objects are represented in our mind differently than in conceptual thinking. This determines the peculiarities of operating with the content reflected in the human mind.

In conceptual thinking, movement along an object is carried out in the logic of operating with concepts, where the main role is played by various kinds of judgments, conclusions, etc. Here, there is a strict regulation of the process by the structure of individual concepts and their relationships. Reality is reflected in concepts, a number of essential connections and relationships are highlighted in it, but some of the signs are omitted, which is the necessary result of abstraction. These omitted features cannot be filled with logical operations. It is necessary to return to reality itself and implement new forms of its transformation, in the course of which new images, new concepts are formed.

In the process of visual-figurative thinking, the variety of aspects of the subject, which appear not in logical, but in actual connections, is more fully reproduced. And in this aspect, visual-figurative thinking approaches thinking “in complexes”, studied by L. S. Vygotsky. The possibility of representing an object with all private and, in this system of analysis, secondary features can serve as the basis for rethinking the entire problem situation. These secondary properties can become the beginning of that line of analysis, which will allow us to see the object in a new plane, in a different system of connections, where these secondary properties and connections will act as essential.

Another important feature of visual-figurative thinking is the possibility of displaying movement in a sensual form, the interaction of several objects at once. There is reason to believe that it is this feature that underlies the figurative knowledge of preschool children of the main kinematic dependencies - the dependence of the distance traveled on the speed and time of movement, the dependence of the time of movement on the speed of the distance, etc.

V.P. Zinchenko, analyzing the specifics of visual-figurative (visual thinking), notes: "the main advantage of a visual image (as well as a visualized image) is the breadth of coverage of the displayed situation."

L.L. Gurova notes that visual-figurative thinking has its own logic, which cannot be considered as a primitive completion of undeveloped logic. Figurative logic is heuristic in nature, often leading to intuitive solutions.

2 Psychological and pedagogical characteristics of senior preschool age

Senior preschool age is designated in psychology as the age of formation of psychological readiness for schooling and the formation of its prerequisites. This period is characterized by a crisis of 6-7 years, described in the works of L.S. Vygotsky, L.I. Bozhovich, A.V. Zaporozhets.

So, L.S. Vygotsky noted that the older preschooler is characterized by mannerisms, capriciousness, fidgeting, clowning. He begins to pretend to be a jester, speaks “not in his own voice”, grimaces, and in general he is distinguished by a general unmotivated behavior, stubbornness, and negativism.

Analyzing these manifestations, the scientist explained them by the loss of childish spontaneity, involuntary behavior, which disappears as a result of the beginning differentiation of external and internal life. Another distinctive feature of this critical period of L.S. Vygotsky considered the emergence of a meaningful orientation in one's own experiences: the child suddenly discovers the fact of the presence of his own experiences, discovers that they belong to him and only him, and the experiences themselves acquire meaning for him. This is due to the appearance of a specific neoplasm - generalization of experience (intellectualization of affect): the world, as such, around the child is still the same, but the attitude towards it on the part of the child changes.

L.I. Bozhovich argues that the crisis of 6-7 years is associated with the emergence of a new, pivotal systemic neoplasm for the child's personality - an "internal position", which expresses a new level of self-awareness and reflection of the child. Up to 6-7 years old, the child hardly thinks about his place in life, purpose and does not seek to change it; but in older preschool age, in connection with his general advancement in mental and intellectual development, there appears a clearly expressed desire to take a new, “more adult” position in life and fulfill a new one, important not only for himself, but also for the people around him. activity. In other words, a child of this age has an awareness of his social "I". It was at this time that the games “to school” and the imitation of the “work” of adults appeared.

Almost all researchers of this period of development of children emphasize that it is essential for him to have a calm emotionality, devoid of affective outbursts and conflicts. This special character of the course of the emotional life of children is closely connected with the appearance of ideas in them.

S.L. Rubinshtein, P.Ya. Galperin, N.N. Poddyakov and other psychologists note that children's ideas are fragmented, unstable, and diffuse. However, in the preschool period, there is a process of their intensive development in various types of play and productive activities.

The development of various types of children's activities, such as construction, visual activity, as well as the complication of educational tasks in the classroom, create the need for older preschoolers to form sufficiently accurate, stable and arbitrarily updated ideas about the external properties of objects. Developing ideas leave an imprint on the entire process of mental development. Therefore, such forms of the psyche and components of psychophysiological functions as imagination, figurative memory and memorization of specific words develop faster.

Numerous studies of domestic psychologists E.F. Rybalko, A.V. Skripenko, S.A. Lukomskaya, E.I. Stepanova, L.A. Golovey, N.A. Grishchenko, L.N. Kuleshova, L.A. Wenger point to the complex nature of the development of cognitive processes in older preschool age.

The process of development of children's perception at preschool age was studied in detail by L.A. Wenger and described as follows. In older preschool age, under the influence of productive, design and artistic activities, the child develops complex types of perceptual, analytical and synthetic activities, in particular, the ability to mentally divide a visible object into parts and then combine them into a single whole. New content is also acquired by perceptual images related to the shape of objects. In addition to the contour, the structure of objects, spatial features and the ratio of its parts are also distinguished.

The child's attention at the beginning of preschool age reflects his interests in relation to the surrounding objects and the actions performed with them. The child is focused only until the interest fades. The appearance of a new object immediately causes a switch of attention to it. Therefore, children rarely do the same thing for a long time. During preschool age, due to the complication of children's activities and their progress in general mental development, attention acquires greater concentration and stability.

So, if younger preschoolers can play the same game for 30-50 minutes, then by the age of five or six, the duration of the game increases to one and a half hours. This is due to the fact that the game reflects more complex actions and relationships of people and interest in it is supported by the constant introduction of new situations. The stability of attention also increases when children look at pictures, listen to stories and fairy tales. Thus, the duration of looking at a picture approximately doubles by the end of preschool age; a six-year-old child is better aware of the picture than a younger preschooler, highlights more interesting sides and details in it.

But the main change in attention at the older preschool age is that children first begin to control their attention, consciously direct it to certain objects, phenomena, and hold on to them, using certain methods for this. The origins of voluntary attention lie outside the personality of the child. This means that the development of involuntary attention in itself does not lead to the emergence of voluntary attention. The latter is formed due to the fact that adults include the child in new activities and, with the help of certain means, direct and organize his attention.

Similar age patterns are observed in the process of memory development. Memory in older preschool age is involuntary. The child remembers better what is of greatest interest to him, gives the best impressions. Thus, the amount of recorded material is largely determined by the emotional attitude to a given object or phenomenon.

Z.M. Istomina analyzed that in the senior preschool age there is a gradual transition from involuntary to voluntary memorization and reproduction of material. At the same time, in the corresponding processes, special perceptual actions stand out and begin to develop relatively independently, mediating mnemonic processes and aimed at better remembering, more fully and accurately reproducing the material retained in memory. Compared with the younger and middle preschool age, the relative role of involuntary memorization in children of six to seven years of age is somewhat reduced, at the same time, the strength of memorization increases.

At the older preschool age, the child is able to reproduce the impressions received after a sufficiently long period of time. In a child of 5-7 years old, it is necessary to develop all types of memory - figurative and verbal-logical, short-term, long-term and operational. However, the main emphasis should be placed on the development of the arbitrariness of the processes of memorization and reproduction, since the development of these processes, as well as arbitrary forms of the psyche in general, is one of the most important prerequisites for the readiness of children to study at school.

According to a study by O. Tsyn, in children aged 5-6 years, the indicators of imagination are at the center of the structure of cognitive functions and various components of intelligence. In the development of the ideas of preschoolers, the word and action, the practical analysis of the objects of the world around us, are essential. Their accelerated development is facilitated by the general social context of the upbringing of the child. Actualizing in close connection with the knowledge functioning in the speech plane, these representations were successfully used by children in the general course of their cognitive activity.

At older preschool age, the child's speech becomes more connected and takes the form of a dialogue. The situational nature of speech, characteristic of young children, here gives way to contextual speech, the understanding of which by the listeners does not require correlation of the statement with the situation. At preschool age, the development of speech "to oneself" and inner speech is noted.

A number of studies have shown that at preschool age, one of the important forms of the child's internal activity is a plan of representations. He can anticipate future changes in the situation in the representation, visualize various transformations and changes in objects (A.V. Zaporozhets, A.A. Lyublinskaya, G.I. Minskaya) .

This plan does not appear as "pure ideas". It is included in the elementary forms of the child's conscious activity. The reality surrounding the child does not act for him as a chaos of disparate phenomena. He already has, albeit relatively simple, but still a system of specific and generalized ideas about surrounding things, fixed and objectified in speech form. This system serves as the basis for a fairly broad orientation in the world around the child, and allows for the correct qualification of perceived phenomena.

As A.N. Leontiev noted, didactic games contribute to the development of cognitive activity, intellectual operations, which are the basis of learning. Didactic games are characterized by the presence of a task of an educational nature - a learning task. Adults are guided by it, creating this or that didactic game, but clothe it in an entertaining form for children. Here are examples of learning tasks: to teach children to distinguish and correctly name colors (“Salute”, “Colored rugs”) or geometric shapes (“Ice drift”), to clarify ideas about tableware (“Katya doll is having lunch”) or clothes, to form the ability to compare objects according to external signs, location in space (What has changed, paired pictures), develop an eye and coordination of small movements (“Catch a fish”, “Flying caps”). The learning task is embodied by the creators of the game in the appropriate content, implemented with the help of game actions that children perform.

The child is attracted to the game not by the learning task that is inherent in it, but by the opportunity to be active, perform game actions, achieve results, win. However, if the participant in the game does not master the knowledge, mental operations that are determined by the learning task, he will not be able to successfully perform game actions and achieve results.

Thus, active participation, especially winning in a didactic game, depends on how much the child has mastered the knowledge and skills that are dictated by her teaching task. This encourages the child to be attentive, memorize, compare, classify, clarify their knowledge. This means that the didactic game will help him learn something in an easy, relaxed way. This unintentional learning is called autodidacticism.

The author of one of the first pedagogical systems of preschool education, F. Fröbel, was convinced that the task of primary education was not to teach, but to organize the game. While remaining a game, it must be permeated with a lesson. Froebel developed a system of didactic games, which is the basis of educational and educational work with children in kindergarten. This system included didactic games with different toys, materials (balls, cubes, balls, cylinders), arranged strictly sequentially according to the principle of increasing complexity of learning tasks and game actions. An obligatory element of most didactic games were poems, songs rhymed by F. Frebel and his students in order to enhance the educational impact of games.

Another world-famous system of didactic games, authored by M. Montessori, also received an ambiguous assessment. It is close to Froebel's position: the game must be educational, otherwise it is an "empty game" that does not affect the child.

The author of one of the first domestic pedagogical systems of preschool education E.I. Tiheeva announced a new approach to didactic games. According to Tikheeva, they are only one of the components of upbringing and educational work with children, along with reading, conversation, drawing, singing, gymnastics, and labor. The effectiveness of didactic games in the upbringing and education of children, E. I. Tikheeva directly made dependent on how they are in tune with the interests of the child, bring him joy, allow him to show his activity, independence. Learning tasks include the formation of mental operations (comparison, classification, generalization), improvement of speech (enrichment of the dictionary, description of objects, making riddles), development of the ability to navigate in distance, time, space. The content of didactic games was the surrounding life.

E.I. Tiheeva has developed didactic materials, board games, geometric mosaics, which are used in preschool institutions.

In Soviet pedagogy, the system of didactic games was created in the 60s. Its authors are well-known teachers and psychologists: L.A. Wenger, A.P. Usova, V.N. Avanesov. Recently, the search for scientists (Z.M. Boguslavskaya, O.M. Dyachenko, N.E. Veraks, E.O. Smirnova) has been directed towards creating a series of games for the full development of children's intellect, which are characterized by flexibility, initiative of thought processes, transfer formed mental actions for new content. In such games there are no fixed rules; on the contrary, children are faced with the need to choose ways to solve a problem. In preschool pedagogy, a traditional division of didactic games into games with objects, desktop-printed, and verbal games has developed.

A number of studies have shown that with age, the content of thinking of preschoolers changes significantly - their relationships with other people become more complicated, play activity develops, various forms of productive activity arise, the implementation of which requires knowledge of new aspects and properties of objects. Such a change in the content of thinking also requires its more advanced forms, which provide the opportunity to transform the situation not only in terms of external material activity, but also in terms of the imagined, ideal. In the process of visual-effective thinking, the prerequisites are formed for a more complex form of visual-figurative thinking, which is characterized by the fact that the solution of certain problems can be carried out by the child in terms of ideas, without the participation of practical actions.

3 Visual-figurative thinking is the basis of the cognitive activity of an older preschooler

Thinking is a very complex integral and at the same time a specific form of mental activity. The process of thinking is aimed at obtaining new information about the object, involves the use of only familiar methods of action.

The thinking of older preschool children is figurative in its essence. This thinking is specific in its reliance not on actions, but on representations and images: when solving problems, a preschooler can imagine a situation and mentally act in it.

J. Piaget, N.N. Poddyakov, L.I. Bozhovich, L.V. Zankov, D.B. Elkonin and dr. At preschool age, the child's thinking is based on his ideas. The child may think about what he does not perceive at the moment, but what he knows from his past experience. Operating with images and ideas makes the preschooler's thinking extra-situational, going beyond the perceived situation and significantly expanding the boundaries of knowledge.

An analysis of the children's ideas about the surrounding objects and phenomena makes it possible to single out two different but interrelated ways in which these ideas are formed.

The first way is the formation of ideas in the process of direct perception of objects, but without their practical transformation. On the basis of perceptual actions, children develop the ability to reproduce in the representation of various objects and phenomena that previously acted as objects of their perception.

The second way is the formation of children's ideas in the process of practical, transformative activity of the children themselves. Assimilated with the help of an adult, the methods of practical transformation of objects act as a powerful tool for understanding the surrounding world of things. These methods are of particular importance for discovering hidden, not directly perceived sides, properties and relationships of objects.

Thus, the plan of representations of children does not appear in a "pure form", it is included in the system of forms of social experience assimilated by the child, fixed in speech form.

However, there are two different lines of research, which from different angles lead us to one main conclusion that speech in one form or another takes part in this process. Research by A.N. Sokolova showed that in the process of visual-figurative thinking, hidden speech impulses arise. The results of these works suggest that visual-figurative thinking is in fact always associated with speech processes.

Another line of research leads us to the same conclusions, in which we studied the features of the formation in preschoolers of the ability to operate with their ideas. In the work of N.P. Sakulina showed that the operation of images of objects is formed in children in the process of a special organization of their cognitive activity.

Figurative thinking includes three thought processes: creating an image, operating it and orientation in space. All these three processes have a common basis, a foundation that does not depend on the type and content of human activity.

When studying various objects or their images, the child singles out certain relationships in them, depending on which of the substructures of figurative thinking is dominant in him (main, predominant, more developed, more often used). In general, this kind of thinking consists of five intersecting substructures.

According to the research of J. Piaget, the following substructures of figurative thinking are distinguished: topological, projective, ordinal, metric, compositional (algebraic).

With the help of the first substructure - topological - the child, first of all, isolates and more easily operates with such characteristics of objects as continuous-discontinuous, connected-disconnected, compact-non-compact, belongs-does not belong, establishes the areas of inclusion and intersection of spatial figures. It kind of “sculpts” the required image or the necessary visual transformations in the representation. Children operate with such characteristics as together, inside, outside, on a plane, on the border intersect, have (do not have) common points, the inner (outer) part of objects, their association. Those who are dominated by this substructure do not like to rush. They carry out each action in great detail, trying not to miss a single link in it. They “walk” through various labyrinths with great pleasure and at the same time never get tired, consistently moving a pencil or other object along intricate tangled lines, find out who is calling whom, and with great pleasure solve other similar tasks that require continuous coherent movement or transformation.

Those who are dominated by the projective substructure - this dominant provides the ability to recognize, create, represent, operate and navigate among visual objects or their graphic images from any point of reference, from different angles. It allows you to establish the similarity between a spatial object or its model (real or symbolic) with their various projections (images).

A favorite activity for children with this dominant substructure is to view and study an object from different points of view, from different angles. They are happy to establish the correspondence of a certain thing to its image and, conversely, the image is a thing. It is a great joy for them to look for and find various ways of using the object in practice, its everyday purpose and possibilities of application. Therefore, considering the given drawings, it is these children who, first of all, notice a different angle, a projection of the image.

Comparing and evaluating in a general qualitative form is preferred by those who are dominated by the ordinal substructure. Based on it, the child manages to isolate properties, establish and classify relationships on various grounds: size (bigger-smaller, longer-shorter), distance (closer-further, lower-higher), shape (round, rectangular, triangular), position in space (top-bottom, right-left, front-back, parallel-perpendicular, behind, between, side by side), the nature of movement (left to right-right to left, top-down-bottom-up, front-back), temporal spatial representations (first -then, before-after, earlier-later), etc. these children act logically, sequentially, in order. Working on an algorithm is their favorite pastime.

"Metris" (children with a dominant metric substructure) focus on quantitative characteristics and transformations. The main question for them is "how much?" what is the length, area, distance, value in numerical terms. They recalculate with great pleasure, determine specific numerical values ​​and measure lengths, distances, lengths, distances.

Children with a dominant compositional (or algebraic) substructure are constantly striving for all sorts of combinations and manipulations, isolating additional parts and assembling them into a single whole (single block), reduction (“folding”) and replacing several transformations with one, even without a direct need for this. , quickly and easily switch from direct to reverse action. These are the very "hurried" who do not want and with great difficulty force themselves to trace in detail, pronounce, explain all the steps of the decision or justify their own actions. These future (or real) Ostap Benders (“great schemers”) think and act quickly, but they often make mistakes.

From the described point of view (model), to form figurative thinking in children means to form in them each of the indicated substructures in their unity and interconnections.

Possession of knowledge about the structure of figurative thinking allows us to explain and understand many seemingly paradoxical and not entirely clear situations. For example, why does one think slowly but surely, and the other, although quickly, but often makes mistakes? It's all about the dominant substructure. The first in this case perceives the world and solves problems, isolating, first of all, topological relations, and acts consistently, in detail, without missing the slightest detail. Therefore, the process takes him a long time, but it is difficult for him to make a mistake. The second one, with a dominant compositional (algebraic) substructure, constantly "folds" (reduces) its actions, jumps, skips whole pieces. Therefore, it is natural for him not to replace something, to miss, but at the same time the process (due to numerous reductions) proceeds very quickly. It becomes clear why, of course, smart people sometimes behave extremely stupidly. After all, we evaluate the behavior and actions of another from our own position, from our own point of view, and we cannot switch to the substructure of the other.

Taking into account the indicated theoretical positions, it is easy to understand that it is not necessary, and indeed it is impossible, to demand from children always the unambiguous answer we expect. After all, depending on the dominant substructure of figurative thinking, various options are very often possible, sometimes not coinciding with the intended response of an adult. How often children confuse adults with their unexpected answers. There is no need to suppress the initiatives of the child, children must think independently, in their own ways, inherent in their dominant substructures.

The visual-figurative reflection of the reality surrounding the child is closely connected with speech. Objects and phenomena, as well as their individual properties and connections, are cognized in a figurative form and fixed in a speech plan, i.e. there is a simultaneous reproduction in the minds of children of various objects with the help of figurative and speech means.

Here one should distinguish between the speech and conceptual aspects of children's cognitive activity. Reflection in speech is no longer a figurative reflection, but also not a conceptual one. The meanings of words for a child undergo a long path of development before they reach the conceptual level.

Children's ideas can only accompany the speech plan, playing the role of simple illustrations. However, in a number of cases, the actualization of representations and their operation are carried out with the aim of a deeper and more complete knowledge of the object.

The interrelation of figurative and speech reflection of objects and phenomena is manifested in particular the actualization of their images. As a rule, when a person tries to present an object directly "on the forehead", he does not succeed well. The simple name of this subject is ineffective. However, the plane of representations is animated and begins to function actively in the course of reasoning about this subject - about its external features, its functional properties, etc. The representations that arise in this case can have a noticeable inverse effect on the very course of reasoning.

Conclusions for chapter 1

Senior preschool age is considered the age of formation of readiness for schooling. At this age, further development of cognitive processes takes place. One of the most complex processes is thinking - an indirect, generalized reflection of reality. A person can think with varying degrees of generalization, to a greater or lesser extent rely in the process of thinking on perceptions, ideas, concepts. Depending on this, three main types of thinking are distinguished: subject-effective, visual-figurative, abstract. In children of older preschool age, thinking is based on a plan of ideas, it is figurative in its essence.

A number of studies have shown that at preschool age, one of the important forms of the child's internal activity is a plan of representations. He can anticipate future changes in the situation in the representation, visualize various transformations and changes in objects.

In the process of visual-figurative thinking, the diversity of the sides of objects is more fully reproduced. Objects and phenomena, as well as their individual properties and connections, are cognized in a figurative form and fixed in a speech plan.

The child, informing an adult about his impressions, actions, objectifies in speech the results of his cognitive and practical activities. Receiving their assessment from an adult, the child himself learns to see and evaluate his actions as if from the outside, from socially developed positions.

With age, the content of thinking of preschoolers changes - their relationships with other people become more complicated, game activity develops, various forms of productive activity arise.

Didactic games contribute to the development of cognitive activity, intellectual operations, which are the basis of learning. Didactic games encourage children to be attentive, memorize, compare, classify, clarify their knowledge about the world around them.

CHAPTER II. FEATURES OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF VISUAL-FIGURE THINKING IN CHILDREN OF THE OLDER PRESCHOOL AGE

1 Stages of development of visual-figurative thinking in older preschoolers

At preschool age, there is a transition from visual-effective to visual-figurative thinking. According to P.N. Poddyakov, representations are an important basis, which largely determines the success of the formation of visual-figurative thinking in children. “The latter is characterized by the fact that children's cognition of various properties and connections of things occurs in the process of operating with the images of these things. But before operating with the image, it is necessary to be able to update it.

Poddyakov identified six stages in the development of thinking from the younger to the older preschool age. These steps are the following.

The child is not yet able to act in the mind, but is already able, with the help of hands, manipulating things, to solve problems in a visual-active plan, transforming the problem situation in an appropriate way,

Speech is already included in the process of solving a problem by the child, but he uses it only for naming objects with which he manipulates in a visual-effective way. Basically, the child still solves problems "with his hands and eyes", although in speech form he can already express and formulate the result of the performed practical action.

The problem is solved in a figurative way through the manipulation of representations of objects. Here, probably, the ways of performing actions aimed at transforming the situation in order to find a solution to the problem are understood and can be verbally indicated. At the same time, there is a differentiation in the internal plan of the final (theoretical) and intermediate (practical) goals of the action. An elementary form of reasoning aloud arises, not yet separated from the performance of a real practical action, but already aimed at a theoretical clarification of the method of transforming the situation or the conditions of the problem;

The task is solved by the child according to a pre-compiled, thought-out and internally presented plan. It is based on the memory and experience accumulated in the process of previous attempts to solve such problems.

The task is solved in terms of action in the mind, followed by the execution of the same task in a visual-active plan in order to reinforce the answer found in the mind and then formulate it in words.

The solution of the problem is carried out only in the internal plan with the issuance of a ready-made verbal solution without a subsequent return to real, practical actions with objects.

An important conclusion that was made by N.N. Poddyakov from studies of the development of children's thinking, lies in the fact that in children the stages passed and achievements in the improvement of mental actions and operations do not completely disappear, but are transformed, replaced by new, more advanced ones. They are transformed into "structural levels of the organization of the thinking process" and "act as functional steps in solving creative problems."

When a new problem situation or task arises, all these levels can again be included in the search for the process of its solution as relatively independent and at the same time as logical links of the integral process of searching for its solution. In other words, children's intellect already at this age functions on the basis of the principle of consistency. It presents and, if necessary, simultaneously includes all types and levels of thinking: visual-effective, visual-figurative and verbal-logical.

The projective substructure appears next in the child's figurative thinking. This is easy to detect if, for example, you invite children to fence the house with columns. Children under four years of age lay out a fence along a continuous, wavy path, not caring about its shape (as long as it is topologically continuous). After four years, they are already building a straight fence. Therefore, it becomes clear that it is premature to offer three-year-olds to assemble the pyramid according to the proposed scheme, which requires some kind of program. Such a task assumes that children have a projective substructure, which they do not yet have at this age. This fact is confirmed by the observations of I.Ya. Kaplunovich for the actions of children in the classroom.

The third in the discussed sequence appears the ordinal substructure. It is based on the "principle of conservation" with various transformations of lengths, volumes, etc., which appears in children after the age of five. Until the child has mastered the ordinal substructure and the principle of conservation (he has not begun to realize, for example, that after pouring from a narrow vessel into a wide vessel, the liquid has not become smaller, although the height of the column has noticeably decreased), to form in him measuring (quantitative) relationships, skills accounts are useless.

Only after the child has mastered ordinal relations can and should he proceed to the formation of a metric, and then a compositional (algebraic) substructure.

The above theoretical ideas about the stages of development of figurative thinking in preschool children allow us to draw the following conclusion: the topological substructure is the basis, the foundation for the development of subsequent substructures of figurative thinking in children, the initial “cell” for its formation. Experimental studies and the practice of preschool education show that at a low level of development, the further formation of other substructures (projective, ordinal, etc.) is extremely difficult. If, however, learning begins with the formation of a topological substructure and topological representations in children, then further progress in the assimilation of content and intellectual development is noticeably facilitated.

Moreover, within the framework of the formative experiment, the following feature was also discovered. When identifying difficulties in mastering educational material and understanding it, not only the method of correcting and “removing” the intellectual difficulties found in the child is more effective, but efforts aimed at a significant increase in the level of development of precisely the topological substructure. In other words, if a teacher has discovered intellectual difficulties in a child, then it makes sense to once again present to him the same material, content, but focusing on topological relations. Therefore, it becomes clear that, without having formed this substructure, it is impossible to proceed to work with the following ones.

The presence of a topological substructure in the child's figurative thinking contributes to the formation of other substructures and facilitates the further development of intellectual abilities. She is responsible for the ability of children to analyze, justify their conclusions, reason, draw conclusions. Thanks to it, children have the ability to act in stages, sequentially, continuously, when one judgment naturally follows from another in a chain of mental transformations.

Having achieved that children are able to freely isolate and operate with topological concepts and relations, in the middle group of a preschool institution, one should begin to form a projective substructure in four years. Further, at the age of five (the older group), children must master the first ordinal relations. Through this activity, they form the following corresponding substructure. And only by the end of the year in the older group does it make sense to master and operate with metric relations. Working with counting operations at an earlier age does not allow children to make quantitative transformations on numbers and quantities consciously. At best, they can memorize quantitative characteristics, develop a mechanical skill and perform some arithmetic operations on numbers, while not understanding the meaning, essence of the transformations being performed. Awareness is impossible, if only because of the absence of the well-known phenomenon of J. Piaget - the principle of conservation of quantity. Therefore, it is advisable to study the natural series of numbers earlier than in the second half of the senior group.

The presence of dominant substructures in figurative thinking must be taken into account in the process of cognitive activity of older preschool children. So, for example, in order to learn a new song, it is very important for a “topologist” to understand, comprehend both the text and the music, and somehow connect them.

It will be difficult for a child prone to ordering if he does not have the opportunity to imagine, dance, portray the situation described in the song (for example, a clubfoot bear or a trembling hare). "Order" first of all, must establish the sequence, the order of actions in the content of the song, the patterns of sounding instruments, the alternation of low and high, quiet and loud sounds, slow and fast rhythms. A “metrist” most likely will not start “working” on a piece of music and will not feel it until he hears or counts, for example, how many times a particular note is repeated in a piece of music, how many instruments are available or used how many children sing, etc. It is very difficult for children with a compositional dominant to repeat and reproduce a song several times. They often begin to be out of tune not because of a lack of hearing, but because of the constant desire to construct a new one (rhythm, they try to build a second or third voice, not even knowing that they exist). Given these individual characteristics of the children, the teacher manages to significantly facilitate the learning process for them.

And finally, in the preparatory group with six-year-old children, one can actively engage in the development of compositional relations and, accordingly, the formation of a compositional substructure.

The formation of the main substructures of figurative thinking in preschool children in the specified sequence gives them the opportunity to consciously and deeply learn about the world around them and its laws. This is explained by the fact that the described path corresponds to the psychological nature of the child's intellectual development, prepares him to overcome various difficulties and problems that he will face in the future.

The presence in the thinking of children of all five of these substructures is the most important indicator of their intellectual readiness for school. In addition, it shows that after this, the children are well oriented in all types of spatial relations that are adequate to the corresponding substructures (for example, they absolutely clearly distinguish between right and left). They have some manifestations of the conscious components of theoretical thinking, which traditionally appear for the first time with good effective training only at primary school age (for example, the action of planning). The proposed approach clearly implements the well-known position of D.B. Elkonin and V.V. Davydov that "in the logical and psychological terms, the content of educational material should be given to children in the form of structures of their activities."

For the development of the topological substructure, such games and tasks as "Labyrinth", "Choose the right path" are used. In addition to games, it is good to use attributes that are interesting for children (for example, toys from Kinder Surprises, models), since a preschool child will be happy to drive on paper not with a pencil or finger, but with a typewriter or doll.

For the development of the projective substructure, it makes sense to use various schematic representations, for example, a floor plan for finding a hidden object, a geographical map type scheme for choosing the right road, and the location of an object.

This kind of tasks very well develop the initiative, independence and imagination of children. They allow preschoolers to engage in meaningful activity, discover new properties of objects, notice their similarities and differences, learn to see its different sides in each object, starting from a separate feature of the object, and build its image as a whole. For these purposes, by the end of this age period, it is quite possible and necessary to offer children tasks for planning their own activities.

For the formation of an ordinal substructure of figurative thinking, various tasks for the development of observation are very effective.

Tasks for the development of the metric substructure of figurative thinking in children usually do not cause any difficulties. All of them are connected with operation and orientation in quantitative terms. Therefore, they should include teaching children to count, various tasks and examples like: “Where are there more objects and why?” etc.

The development of the compositional substructure is facilitated by various games with cubes and constructors. In addition, the development of this component of figurative thinking is facilitated by tasks for combining objects or concepts, comparing two objects, two phenomena, two concepts.

All these games and tasks contribute to the development of independent creative imaginative thinking of children, the formation of their intellectual readiness for schooling.

2 Conditions for the development of visual-figurative thinking in senior preschool age

thinking child preschool

The main condition for the development of thinking in a child is the position of an adult, which has its own specifics in each age period.

The area of ​​tasks that a child solves is expanded due to the knowledge received from an adult or in his own activities, observations. Therefore, the acquisition of knowledge is not an end in itself of mental education, but its means and, at the same time, a condition for the development of thinking. The child analyzes his experience, establishes analogies between the familiar and the unfamiliar, which leads him to peculiar conclusions.

It is the speech of an adult that guides the child's thinking, gives it generalization, purposefulness, problematicness, some organization, planning and criticality. The development and organization of the child's perception leads to the formation of his first mental operations - distinctions and comparisons. It is necessary to provide the baby with a certain independence so that he can actively act with objects.

An adult teaches a child to see and formulate a problem in speech - to raise a question, and also to reflect the results of cognition in it, although the baby still solves not really intellectual, but only practical problems.

At preschool age, in the context of extra-situational-cognitive communication with an adult, a special kind of “theoretical” activity arises. There are numerous children's questions relating to various fields of activity. The attitude of an adult to children's issues largely determines the further development of thinking. When answering them, it is necessary to provide the child with the opportunity, with the help of an adult, peers, or to independently find the required answer, and not rush to give knowledge in finished form. The main thing is to teach a preschooler to think, reason, and make attempts to resolve emerging issues. This position of an adult forms the independence of thinking, the inquisitiveness of the mind. Reliability, certainty and laconic answers, but at the same time their exhaustive nature, confirmed by examples and observations, contributes to the further development of curiosity among preschoolers.

An indifferent attitude to questions reduces the cognitive activity of a preschooler. It is necessary not only to treat children's questions carefully, respectfully and tactfully, but also to encourage children to ask.

It is necessary to teach the child to compare, generalize, analyze, organizing observations, experimentation, familiarization with fiction. When a preschooler is encouraged to explain in detail, in detail, phenomena and processes in nature, social life, then reasoning turns into a way of knowing and solving intellectual problems. And here it is important for an adult to show tolerance and understanding of the unusual explanations that a preschooler gives, in every possible way supporting his desire to penetrate into the essence of objects and phenomena, to establish cause-and-effect relationships, to find out hidden properties.

We emphasize that the development of coherent speech in a child contributes to the development of thinking, giving it a generalized and conscious character. If you do not teach the child to establish relationships, then he will long be at the level of sensually perceived facts.

Not only the mastery of ways of thinking, but also the assimilation of a system of knowledge allows a preschooler to more effectively solve intellectual problems. The principles of selection of such knowledge and their content are studied in detail in preschool pedagogy. We only emphasize that assimilation should be considered not as an end in itself, but as a means of developing thinking. Mechanical memorization of a variety of information, fragmentary and chaotic, copying adult reasoning does nothing for the development of the thinking of a preschooler. V.A. Sukhomlinsky wrote: “... Do not bring down an avalanche of knowledge on a child ... - inquisitiveness and curiosity can be buried under an avalanche of knowledge. Be able to open one thing in front of the child in the surrounding world, but open it in such a way that a piece of life plays in front of the children with all the colors of the rainbow. Always leave something unsaid so that the child wants to return to what he has learned again and again.

Cognitive activity is characterized by the fact that the solution of a specific cognitive task is the formulation of the next, perhaps more general task, and its solution, in turn, leads to the formulation of another task, and so on. The cognitive activity of a person determines his self-development.

To create a positive attitude towards cognitive activity in children, it is recommended to apply the "strategy of formation of success". It is necessary to take into account the child’s preferences for one or another content of education and accustom him to mental work on the educational material that is interesting to him, you should select those tasks that the child can objectively perform well, this will increase his self-esteem (you should give feasible tasks and help in necessary cases ), improve mood, increase readiness to participate in educational work, which contributes to the formation of a positive attitude towards learning. The content of the educational material should be interesting, emotional, use various forms of collective activity. In a word, encourage the child, his slightest success. There should be a qualitative analysis, emphasizing all the positive aspects, as well as adequately responding to mistakes, considering them a normal phenomenon - they learn from mistakes.

V.A. Sukhomlinsky wrote that the positive emotions associated with the experience of success are the child's belief in himself18.

The discovery of a new world of serious human activity induces in the child an active desire to participate in this life. In this regard, the life of a child of preschool age is characterized, firstly, by the relative separation of his activities from adults, secondly, by the expansion of living conditions, thirdly, by the discovery of the social functions of people and their relationships to each other, and fourthly by the active desire of the child participate in the lives of adults.

Figurative thinking also develops most vividly when perceiving fairy tales, stories, etc. brightness of ideas, liveliness, immediacy, the possibility of emotional assistance and empathy with the hero of a literary work, but not in terms of real participation in his activities, but in terms of ideas. All this helps the development of visual - figurative thinking.

Conclusions on chapter 2

Thus, visual-figurative thinking is the main type of thinking of an older preschooler, it is important for a wide variety of human activities. Representations are an important basis, which largely determines the success of the formation of visual-figurative thinking of children.

Visual-figurative thinking consists of five intersecting substructures: topological, projective, ordinal, metric, compositional (algebraic). The presence of dominant substructures in figurative thinking must be taken into account in the process of cognitive activity of older preschool children. The formation of substructures makes it possible for older preschoolers to consciously and deeply cognize the world around them and its laws.

Dominant substructures in figurative thinking must be taken into account in the learning process, as they give rise to individual ways of children's activities. The presence in the thinking of children of all five of these substructures is the most important indicator of their intellectual readiness for school.

Games and tasks aimed at the development of substructures contribute to the development of independent figurative thinking of children, the formation of readiness for schooling.

The main condition for the development of thinking in a child is the guidance of an adult. The area of ​​tasks that a child solves is expanded due to the knowledge received from an adult or in his own activities, observations.

As a result of cognitive communication with an adult, numerous children's questions arise that relate to various fields of activity. The attitude of an adult to children's issues largely determines the further development of thinking.

Children need to have a calm emotionality. Figurative thinking develops most vividly when perceiving fiction (emotional assistance and empathy of the child with a literary hero), as well as with the help of games, exercises, tasks.

All this helps the development of visual-figurative thinking. The world of adults opens before the child, which induces in him the desire to participate in the life of adults.

CONCLUSION

Thinking is the highest cognitive process. The difference between thinking and other cognitive processes is that it is almost always associated with the presence of a problem situation, a task that needs to be solved, and an active change in the conditions in which this task is set.

Thinking as a separate mental process does not exist, it is present in all other cognitive processes: perception, memory, attention, imagination, speech.

At the age of four to seven years, according to J. Piaget, there is a gradual conceptualization of mental activity, which brings the child of preschool age to pre-operational thinking. The preschooler's thinking remains largely visual, including elements of mental abstract operations, which can be seen as a progressive change compared to the previous early age.

An analysis of the psychological and pedagogical literature showed that A.V. Zaporozhets, A.A. Lyublinskaya, G.I. Minskaya, I.S. Yakimanskaya, L.L. Gurova, B.G. Ananiev, J. Piaget, D. Habb, D. Brown, R. Holt and others.

Both domestic and foreign studies show that the development of visual-figurative thinking is a complex and lengthy process. Analyzing the views of representatives of various approaches and schools regarding the dynamics of thinking in preschool age, we note significant age-related changes in this most important systemic function that ensures the child's adaptation to the conditions of life in the subject and social environment. The main change in the process of thinking in preschool age is the transition from external action to the internal plan, which ensures by the end of preschool childhood the ability to act in the mind.

Many authors consider the emergence of visual-figurative thinking as a key moment in the mental development of the child. However, the conditions for the formation of visual-figurative thinking in preschoolers, the mechanisms for its implementation are far from being fully studied.

Research by scientists and the results of an experimental study of visual-figurative thinking in preschool children allowed us to highlight the following features of the development of visual-figurative thinking in preschool age:

visual-figurative thinking is the main type of thinking of a preschooler. Already in the middle preschool age, children can master many of the possibilities associated with this type of thinking (mentally transform images of real objects, build visual models, plan their actions in the mind);

the emergence of visual-figurative thinking is a key moment in the mental development of the child;

the ability to operate with ideas arises in the process of interaction between various lines of the child's psychological development - the development of objective and instrumental actions, speech, imitation, play activity, etc.

the initial stages of the development of visual-figurative thinking are closely adjacent to the development of perception processes;

tasks in which connections essential for achieving the goal can be detected without trials, children of older preschool age usually solve in their minds, and then they perform an unmistakable practical action;

the success of the transition from an external to an internal plan of action in preschool children is determined by the level of orienting research activity aimed at identifying the significant connections of the situation.

Based on the results obtained, we have developed recommendations for parents and educators on the development of visual-figurative thinking in preschoolers.

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Similar works to - The development of visual-figurative thinking in preschool age

Anastasia Kondratieva
Thinking: forms, properties, types, methods of development in children

Thinking- the process of mediated and generalized cognition (reflection) of the surrounding world. Its essence is in reflection: 1) general and essential properties of objects and phenomena, including those properties that are not perceived directly; 2) essential relationships and regular connections between objects and phenomena.

Basic forms of thinking

There are three main forms of thinking: concept, judgment and inference.

A concept is a form of thinking that reflects the general and, moreover, essential properties of objects and phenomena.

Each object, each phenomenon has many different properties, signs. These properties, features can be divided into two categories - essential and non-essential.

Judgments reflect the connections and relationships between objects and phenomena of the surrounding world and their properties and features. A judgment is a form of thinking that contains the assertion or denial of a position regarding objects, phenomena or their properties.

Inference is a form of thinking in which a person, comparing and analyzing various judgments, derives a new judgment from them. A typical example of inference is the proof of geometric theorems.

Properties of thinking

The main properties of human thinking are its abstractness and generalization. The abstractness of thinking lies in the fact that, thinking about any objects and phenomena, establishing connections between them, we single out only those properties, signs that are important for solving the issue before us, abstracting from all other signs, in this case we not interested: listening to the explanation of the teacher in the lesson, the student tries to understand the content of the explanation, highlight the main thoughts, connect them with each other and with their past knowledge. At the same time, he is distracted from the sound of the teacher's voice, the style of his speech.

The abstractness of thinking is closely related to its generalization. Highlighting the most important aspects, connections and relationships that are essential from one point of view or another, we thereby focus our thoughts on the general thing that characterizes entire groups of objects and phenomena. Each object, each event, phenomenon, taken as a whole, is unique, as it has many different sides and signs.

Types of thinking

In psychology, the following simple and somewhat conditional classification of types of thinking is common: 1) visual-effective, 2) visual-figurative, and 3) abstract (theoretical) thinking. There are also intuitive and analytical thinking, theoretical, empirical, autistic and mythological thinking.

Visual-active thinking.

In the course of historical development, people solved the problems that confronted them, first in terms of practical activity, only then did theoretical activity stand out from it. Practical and theoretical activities are inextricably linked.

Only as practical activity develops does it stand out as a relatively independent theoretical mental activity.

Not only in the historical development of mankind, but also in the process of mental development of each child, the starting point will be not purely theoretical, but practical activity. It is within this latter that children's thinking first develops. At preschool age (up to three years inclusive) thinking is mainly visual and effective. The child analyzes and synthesizes cognizable objects as he practically separates, dismembers and reunites, correlates, connects with each other these or those objects perceived at the moment with his hands. Inquisitive children often break their toys in order to find out "what's inside."

Visual-figurative thinking.

In its simplest form, visual-figurative thinking occurs mainly in preschoolers, i.e., at the age of four to seven years. The connection between thinking and practical actions, although they retain, is not as close, direct and immediate as before. In the course of the analysis and synthesis of a cognizable object, the child does not necessarily and by no means always have to touch the object that interests him with his hands. In many cases, systematic practical manipulation (action) with the object is not required, but in all cases it is necessary to clearly perceive and visualize this object. In other words, preschoolers think only in visual images and do not yet master concepts (in the strict sense).

Distracted thinking.

On the basis of practical and visual-sensory experience, children at school age develop, at first in the simplest forms, abstract thinking, that is, thinking in the form of abstract concepts.

Mastering concepts in the course of assimilation by schoolchildren of the basics of various sciences - mathematics, physics, history - is of great importance in the mental development of children. The formation and assimilation of mathematical, geographical, physical, biological and many other concepts in the course of school education is the subject of numerous studies. The development of abstract thinking in schoolchildren in the course of assimilation of concepts does not at all mean that their visual-effective and visual-figurative thinking now ceases to develop or disappears altogether. On the contrary, these primary and initial forms of all mental activity continue to change and improve as before, developing together with abstract thinking and under its influence.

Intuitive and analytical thinking.

Analytical thinking is characterized by the fact that its individual stages are clearly expressed and the thinker can tell another person about them. An analytically thinking person is fully aware of both the content of his thoughts and their constituent operations. Analytic thinking in its extreme form takes the form of careful deductive (from general to particular) inference.

Intuitive thinking is characterized by the fact that it lacks clearly defined stages. It is usually based on a folded perception of the whole problem at once. The person in this case arrives at an answer, which may be right or wrong, with little or no awareness of the process by which he got that answer. Therefore, the conclusions of intuitive thinking need to be verified by analytical means.

Intuitive and analytical thinking complement each other Through intuitive thinking, a person can often solve problems that he would not solve at all or, at best, would solve more slowly through analytical thinking.

theoretical thinking.

Theoretical thinking is thinking that does not lead directly to practical action. Theoretical thinking is opposed to practical thinking, the conclusion of which is, in the words of Aristotle, an act. Theoretical thinking is guided by a special attitude and is always associated with the creation of a specific "theoretical world" and the drawing of a fairly clear boundary between it and the real world.

empirical thinking.

There are at least three vital functions of empirical thinking.

First, empirical thinking provides a person with an awareness of similar and different. The most important task of thinking when faced with an infinite variety of sensually given properties and relations of things is to separate them, to focus on similar and different, to single out a general idea of ​​\u200b\u200bobjects.

Secondly, empirical thinking allows the subject to determine the measure of similarity and difference. Depending on practical everyday tasks, a person can define the same objects, phenomena, situations as more or less similar and different.

Thirdly, empirical thinking makes it possible to group objects according to generic relations, to classify them.

Ways to develop thinking

The development of visual - effective thinking of children.

By the age of 5-6, children learn to perform actions in their minds. The objects of manipulation are no longer real objects, but their images. Most often, children present a visual, visual image of an object. Therefore, the thinking of the child is called visual-effective.

For the development of visual-effective thinking, the following methods of working with children should be used:

1) Teaching the analysis of a visual image (an adult can draw the child's attention to individual elements of objects, ask questions about similarities and differences).

2) Learn to determine the properties of objects (children do not immediately understand that different objects may have similar properties; for example: “Name 2 objects that have three features at once: white, soft, edible”).

3) Learning to recognize an object by describing possible actions with it (for example, riddles).

4) Learning to find alternative ways of acting (for example, "What if you need to know the weather outside?").

5) Learning to compose plot stories.

6) Learning to draw logical conclusions (for example, "Petya is older than Masha, and Masha is older than Kolya. Who is the oldest?").

Development of logical thinking of children.

To develop the logical thinking of preschool children, the following techniques are used:

1) Teaching the child to compare objects (for example, "Find 10 differences in the following pictures").

2) Teaching the child to classify objects (for example, the game "What is superfluous?").

3) Teaching the child to search for the same properties or signs of objects (for example, among toys, invite the child to find 2 identical ones).

Development of logical thinking of children of primary school age:

1) The use of exercises aimed at developing the ability to divide objects into classes (for example, “Read the words (lemon, orange, plum, apple, strawberry) and name the berries and fruits”).

2) Formation of the ability to define concepts.

3) Formation of the ability to highlight the essential features of objects.

Thinking acts mainly as a solution to problems, questions, problems that are constantly put forward before people by life. Solving problems should always give a person something new, new knowledge. The search for solutions is sometimes very difficult, so mental activity, as a rule, is an active activity that requires focused attention and patience. The real process of thought is always a cognitive process.

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