Development of perception
Perception is a holistic reflection of objects, situations and events that occurs with the direct impact of physical stimuli on the receptor surfaces of the sense organs. Perception is the basis of all living things. Unlike sensations, perception reflects not individual properties, but objects as a whole, this is a qualitatively higher level of cognition. There are five sensory channels of perception: visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile and kinesthetic - this classification is based on differences in the analyzers involved in perception. There is another classification of perception: perception of space, perception of time and perception of movement. Perception is a life-forming system of perceptual actions, with the help of which children build an image of the surrounding reality and then orient themselves in it. Thus, the familiar world is only a description, a program of perception, which is laid in the human mind from childhood.
The most important properties of perception are objectivity, integrity, constancy and generalization. All these properties are not innate and develop throughout a person's life.
For example, in a small child, the objects surrounding him do not retain constant characteristics, i.e., the constancy of size, weight, volume. Thus, in a 2-3-year-old child, the constancy of perception is still very imperfect: the perceived dimensions of objects decrease with their distance, but by the age of 10 they are set at the level of an adult. Objectivity in him is also still weakly expressed, since the child does not distinguish himself well from the environment, he is, as it were, merged with the world of external objects.
In younger students, perception is already well developed. They not only distinguish the color, shape, size of objects and their position in space, but they can also correctly name the proposed shapes and colors, and correctly correlate objects by their size. They can draw the simplest shapes and paint them in a given color. However, in the first and at the beginning of the second grade, perception is still very imperfect and superficial. Children do not yet know how to look at objects well. Another feature of the perception of younger students is its close connection with actions. For a younger student, to perceive an object means to do something with it, somehow change it, take it, touch it.
Nativism and empiricism
In the 17th and 18th centuries, two theories fought in psychology - empiricists and nativists. Nativists argued that in the human soul there is a certain stock of innate ideas. The empiricists, on the other hand, taught that there were no innate ideas, that the human soul at the time of birth was a tabula rasa, a white sheet that could be filled with whatever content it wanted. The empiricists include: F. Bacon, T. Hobbes, further development and direct application to psychology of the principles of empirical philosophy are obtained from John Locke. Along with sensation, the source of knowledge of the external world, Locke recognizes "internal feeling", or reflection, reflecting in our consciousness its own internal activity; it gives us "an inner unconscious perception that we exist."
Johann Müller, a German physiologist, belongs to the nativists.
Equally false is the assertion of the empiricists that there is nothing innate in our soul, and the opinion of the nativists of the old school that the stock of innate ideas in the human soul seems to be unchanged from time to time. The latest psychological research has proved the existence of a law of heredity in the realm of the spirit: the mental activity of every person, like that of every animal individual, is a continuation of the mental activity of a number of previous generations. We inherit from our ancestors not only the anatomical structure of their body and physiological organization, but also psychological features, because the psychic side of our being is in close connection with its physiological structure. Psychological observations have established the fact that every person and animal has a whole range of ideas and instincts inherited from their ancestors. The instinctive fear that a chick feels when it sees a kite for the first time is not the result of individual experience, but the result of the experience of previous generations, which has established an inseparable association between the idea of a large bird and the idea of threatening danger. Both in the animal and in man there are many such representations - instincts, and therefore, in which the nativists are quite right, there are innate ideas. The mistake of the nativists was only that they imagined this stock of innate ideas as a constant and unchanging quantity.
Perception of space and time
The perception of space consists of the perception of size, shape, volume, distance, location of objects and their movement.
The perception of the size and shape of objects is carried out as a result of a combination of visual, tactile and kinesthetic (musculo-motor) sensations in a person's experience.
The perception of volume and distance of objects is carried out due to binocular vision (vision with two eyes). The perception of an object depends not only on the size of its image on the retina, but also on the tension of the eye muscles, which varies depending on the distance of the object. Essential for the perception of the remoteness of an object is the comparison of its size with the well-known size of other objects.
The spatial movement of objects, their movement is perceived depending on their distance and speed of movement.
The ability to correctly assess spatial relationships is called the eye.
The ability to see the smallest objects is called visual acuity or resolving power of the eye.
The perception of time is a reflection of the duration, speed and sequence of phenomena.
The physiological mechanism of time perception is a certain state of nerve cells. With prolonged action of stimuli, the excitation of nerve cells increases (due to the summation of successive effects). The perception of time, like any mental reflection, is a subjective image. objective reality. For example, a period of time associated with interesting, significant events seems to be shorter (and when remembered, on the contrary, longer). At positive emotions time is underestimated, and with negative - overestimated. The underestimation of time is always the result of the dominance of excitation over inhibition. The exaggeration of time is associated with the predominance of inhibition, which arises from monotonous, insignificant stimuli. The perception of time is associated with various cyclical phenomena of nature and in the human body.
The perception of space and time is associated with learning, assimilation by the child of speech and accepted standards.
Types of memory
Memory is the ability to reproduce past experience, one of the main properties of the nervous system, expressed in the ability to store information about the events of the external world and the reactions of the body for a long time. Memory is at the heart of all mental processes. Memory is the second most important basis for human development after perception. There are several classifications of memory. According to the duration of information storage, memory can be - short-term, operational, long-term. According to the nature of mental activity, memory is divided into - emotional, figurative, verbal-logical and motor. According to the nature of the goals and methods of memorization, memory can be - arbitrary and involuntary. Arbitrary memory - is characterized by the obligatory presence of a special goal when memorizing. And not arbitrary memory is memorization and reproduction, in which there is no special goal for memorization. Short-term memory is characterized by its limited volume (average 7 ± 2). When a person's short-term memory is full, newly incoming information partially replaces the information stored there, and the latter disappears forever. Short-term memory acts as a mandatory intermediate storage and filter that processes the largest amount of information, immediately sifting out unnecessary and leaving potentially useful.
A feature of long-term memory is that it can be practically unlimited in terms of the volume and duration of information storage in it.
Emotional memory is a memory for various emotions and feelings, its content is the emotional states that a person experienced in the past. Figurative memory is the memorization, preservation and reproduction of ideas, sounds, tastes, etc. Motor - is the memorization, preservation and reproduction of various movements and their systems.
Phases of the act of memory and their features
The act of memory includes three phases: 1st phase - memorization, 2nd phase - preservation, 3rd phase - reproduction.
The original form of memorization is unintentional or involuntary memorization, i.e. memorization without a predetermined goal, without the use of any techniques. It is a mere imprint of what has acted, the preservation of some trace of excitation in the cerebral cortex. A lot of things that a person encounters in life are involuntarily remembered: surrounding objects, phenomena, events of everyday life, although not all of them are remembered equally well. It is best to remember what is of vital importance to a person. Even involuntary memorization is selective, determined by the attitude to the environment. Arbitrary memorization is a special complex mental activity, subordinated to the task of remembering. Saving - can be dynamic and static. Dynamic storage is manifested in RAM, and static - in long-term. With dynamic preservation, the material changes little, with static preservation, on the contrary, it necessarily undergoes reconstruction, processing.
Reproduction - can take place in the form of sequential recall, this is an active volitional process. Recall is an arbitrary, deliberate reproduction: a person has the goal of remembering in advance and for this he applies the efforts of thought and will. Involuntary reproduction occurs as if by itself. It is based on associations by contiguity in time or space, in some cases also associations by similarity and contrast. Distinguish between direct and indirect reproduction. The immediate proceeds without intermediate associations (this is how, for example, the multiplication table is reproduced). In the mediated one, a person relies on intermediate associations - words, images, feelings, actions, with which the object of reproduction is associated.
Development of arbitrary memory
Qualitative changes in the work of memory can occur throughout the entire early period of a child's development, but only under the condition of specially organized, purposeful training in logical memorization programs.
The development of arbitrary memory involves the following steps:
1. Teaching the ability to accept a mnemonic task. For this, the most effective are the conditions of play activity, when the goals to remember and remember have a very specific and relevant meaning for the child. Active memorization of the necessary information involves mastering the elementary form of repetition as a memorization technique. This form of repetition simply accompanies the process of accepting the task: the child immediately in the course of giving this task, as if by inertia, repeats after the adult what should be remembered (for example, when an adult asks a child to remember items that need to be bought in a store - the game "Buy in a store. .."). Such repetition is usually easily recognized by children and quickly acquired as a memorization technique. Active reproduction is an internal search, a mental return to the situation of memorization. In the absence of the desire to remember, the child usually immediately states that he has forgotten the necessary information, and turns to an adult for help. Learning active reproduction is learning the ability to act independently in a situation of reproduction, first turn to yourself, to your memory and "get" at least some forgotten information from it. Mastering the ability to accept a mnemonic task is a necessary condition for the transition from involuntary memorization and reproduction to arbitrary.
2. Mastering mnemonic techniques aimed at achieving the conscious goal of memorization and reproduction. At this stage, the main attention should first be paid to the further development of the “repetition” technique, since it is the easiest to form and mastering it does not require prior training in any mental actions. The technique of repetition must here acquire a new function - the function of reproduction. "Reproducing repetition" is a repetition not in the course of perception of the task, but after it has been received. Such repetition has a more active form, since it involves the child's independent reproduction of the task.
3. Development of the ability to control the results of performing a mnemonic task, i.e. carry out a self-check. The psychological basis of self-examination is the ability of a person to correlate, compare the result obtained in the process of performing any activity with a given sample.
By the age of 5 - 6, the significance of the technique of "repetition" as a way of remembering, children can realize on their own, without the help of adults. However, organized training in this technique greatly expands the possibilities and effectiveness of its use. In particular, it is important to teach the baby to distribute repetitions in time, to make them diverse, to carry them out not only externally (repetition aloud, in a whisper, or silently, only moving his lips), but also internally (mentally, without any external manifestations) .
The first stage - you need to name aloud the objects that need to be remembered. It is necessary to see, hear and feel the object.
The second stage is learning to simply repeat the memorized information. In this case, the repeated naming of each item.
The third stage is learning to repeat, highlighting the various features of the memorized subject.
The fourth stage, the most important and most difficult stage for the child, is learning to self-check what has been remembered. After the repetition is done, invite the baby to check himself - how well he remembered the objects. Let him close his eyes and try to name them. If everything is reproduced without errors, it means that you remember it well (in order to consolidate, such reproduction "with your eyes closed" can be repeated again).
At the age of 5 - 7 years, emphasis is placed on the development of mnemonic techniques "grouping" and "semantic correlation".
You can start learning the mnemonic device "grouping" only when the child has mastered the mental device "generalization".
Imagination
Imagination is a cognitive process of creating new images (representations), objects and phenomena based on the processing of mental reconstruction of representations left by a person from past experience. Imagination can be expressed in the construction of an image, in the creation of a program of behavior, in the creation of images that correspond to the description of objects. The role of imagination in human life is very great, it is necessary to move forward, to create something new, only by transforming one's experience and knowledge, a person can create something that was not there before. For example, if we take creative imagination, then it manifests itself in the creation of new original ideas, images, objects and actions.
In adults, the imagination is much better developed than in children, because. they have a lot of experience and different knowledge, but in a child, imagination manifests itself much more often, because. it is one way of knowing the world.
Imagination is arbitrary and involuntary. Involuntary imagination is passive. It manifests itself in the emergence and combination of representations without conscious intention. It often occurs when conscious control is weakened, for example, dreams, daydreams, dreams. Arbitrary imagination, being active, consists in the deliberate generation of new images in connection with a certain activity.
Development of attention
Attention is the focus and concentration of mental activity on a particular object. Attention is the dynamic side of all cognitive processes. It is always selectively directed at one or another object. Behind attention there are always interests and needs. Attention is divided into voluntary, involuntary and post-voluntary. Arbitrary attention requires conscious volitional efforts and is characterized by purposefulness, organization and stability, this attention is due to the awareness of the goal, the presence of motives, interests. Involuntary attention arises directly under the influence of external stimuli that are acting at the moment and causing optimal excitation in certain areas of the cerebral cortex; such attention does not require prior readiness for this perception or action, and it proceeds, as a rule, suddenly and for a short time. Post-voluntary attention occurs in those cases when the need for volitional effort to maintain voluntary attention disappears, and the effectiveness of cognitive processes is preserved. Attention is characterized by a number of properties: volume, concentration, stability, switchability, mobility and distribution. The peculiarity of the attention of a child of preschool age is such that while he is interested, he is concentrated. Up to 4-5 years, the child is involved only involuntary attention. The development of voluntary attention is one of the conditions for the development of will in a child. Voluntary attention forms the maturation of the child, he learns to subordinate his emotions to certain goals. The development of voluntary attention lies outside the personality of the child; it is organized, developed and directed by an adult. Since the basis of involuntary attention is interests, in order to develop a sufficiently fruitful involuntary attention, it is necessary first of all to develop sufficiently broad and properly directed interests.
Development of emotions
Emotion - a subjective reaction - a mental experience, emotional excitement that occurs in a person or animal as a result of exposure to external and internal stimuli. In the first year of a child's life, it is impossible to consider his mental development outside of his constant interaction with close people, primarily the mother, who is the mediator and organizer of almost all of his contacts with the environment. A child in the early stages of development is dependent on his mother, not only physically, as a source of realization of all his vital needs for satiety, warmth, security, etc., but also as a regulator of his affective state: she can calm him down, relax, invigorate him , console, increase endurance and set to complicate relationships with the outside world.
The most important condition for this is the possibility of synchronizing their emotional states: infection with a smile, syntony in mood and experience of what is happening around. Therefore, it is so important for the child to calm and self-confidence of the mother, giving him a sense of reliability. This is how the baby's primary need for stability and emotional comfort is realized. Stages of emotional development include the following features:
- the first emotional reactions begin to appear already in the newborn, at about 1 month, the child, when he sees his mother, stops looking at her face, throws up his arms, quickly moves his legs, begins to smile, this violent emotional reaction was called the revitalization complex. In the first 3-4 months, children manifest a variety of emotional states: surprise in response to surprise, anxiety in case of physical discomfort (crying, increased heart rate). After 3-4 months, the child can smile at just familiar people. At 7-8 months, there is anxiety when strangers appear. Between 7 and 11, the so-called "fear of parting" appears. By the end of the first year, the baby strives not only for purely emotional contacts, but also for joint actions.
- early age is characterized by vivid emotional reactions associated with the immediate desires of the child. At the end of the period of infancy, affective reactions to the difficulties that the child faces are observed. The reason for anger or crying may be the lack of attention to the child from significant adults.
- Preschool childhood is characterized by a generally calm emotionality, the absence of strong affective outbursts and conflicts on minor occasions. The child's actions are no longer directly related to an attractive object, but are built on the basis of ideas about the object, about the desired result, about the possibility of achieving it in the near future. The emotions associated with the performance make it possible to anticipate the results of the child's actions, the satisfaction of his desires. During this period, the structure of emotional processes changes. In early childhood, autonomic and motor reactions were included in their composition, these reactions are preserved in preschoolers, although outwardly the expression of emotions becomes more restrained. Now, in addition to vegetative and motor components, the structure of emotional processes now also includes complex forms of perception, imaginative thinking, and imagination. The child rejoices and is sad not only about what is happening to him at the moment, but also about what he still has to do. The circle of emotions expands.
POSTED IN CHILD PSYCHOLOGY
Perception is the result of the activity of the system of analyzers and arises on the basis of sensations. Perception differs from sensation in the following respects. Sensations reflect all the properties of objects available to the analyzers, and perception singles out the main ones from them and is distracted from the unimportant ones. Feelings reflect individual qualities of reality, while perception creates an integral picture of reality.
The physiological mechanisms of sensations (receptors, afferent nerves, sensory, or primary, fields of the cerebral cortex) are elements of the physiological system that ensures the functioning of the perception process. In addition, secondary or integrative fields of the cerebral cortex play a significant role in the functioning of the perception process. They combine information received from various sensations into a single whole. Experimental studies show that, in addition to sensations, memory, thinking, speech, etc. are involved in the formation of the image of a real world object. Therefore, perception is often referred to as a perceptual activity - i.e. a set of mental processes that provide an adequate reflection in the mind of a person of the reality surrounding him.
L.S. Vygotsky writes that at the early stages of child development, perception is directly related to motility, it constitutes only one of the moments in the integral sensorimotor process, and only gradually, over the years, does it begin to acquire significant independence.
A.V. Zaporozhets and V.P. Zinchenko note that motor skills are involved in perception not only externally, but also in essence. It constitutes texture, a means of developing and improving perceptual actions.
The decisive role of eye movement in visual perception was noted by I. M. Sechenov, but this was experimentally proved only recently by a number of psychophysiological studies that showed that a fixed eye practically cannot perceive complex objects steadily and that complex object perception always involves the use of active search eye movements that highlight the desired features and only gradually take on a convoluted character. Sechenov also saw the sense of touch as an activity by which a person perceives the objects of the surrounding world. This is the activity of feeling, representing a kind of scanning of the image through the spatio-temporal relationship of the fingers and the contours of the object. With kinesthetic perception, a kind of feedback occurs that provides control and correction of hand movements. The act of feeling is one of the types of objective action and perception, the structure of which includes masses of various micromovements of the hands, among which there are measuring, gnostic, modeling, working-executive, etc.
sensory development forms the basis of the overall mental development of the child. In the second or third year of life, the tasks of sensory education become much more complicated. Although a young child is not yet ready to assimilate sensory standards, he begins to accumulate ideas about the color, shape, size and other properties of objects. It is important that these representations are sufficiently diverse. And this means that the child should be introduced to all the main varieties of properties - the six colors of the spectrum (blue should be excluded, since children do not distinguish it well from blue), white and black, with shapes such as circle, square, oval, rectangle .
Manipulating objects, children second year of life continue to get acquainted with a variety of properties: size, shape, color. In most cases, initially the child performs the task by chance, autodidacticism is triggered. A ball can only be pushed into a round hole, a cube into a square hole, etc. The child is interested in the moment the object disappears, and he repeats these actions many times.
At the second stage, through trial and error, children place inserts of different sizes or different shapes in the appropriate nests. Here, too, autodidacticism plays a significant role. The child manipulates objects for a long time, trying to squeeze a large round insert into a small hole, etc. Gradually, from repeated chaotic actions, he proceeds to preliminary trying on the inserts. The kid compares the size or shape of the liner with different nests, looking for an identical one. Preliminary fitting indicates a new stage in the child's sensory development.
Ultimately, children begin to compare objects visually: they repeatedly look from one object to another, carefully choosing the inserts of the required size or shape. The pinnacle of the achievements of children of the second year of life is the fulfillment of tasks for correlating dissimilar objects by color. There is no longer that autodidacticism that took place when correlating objects according to size or shape. Only repeated purely visual comparison allows the child to perform the task correctly. The movements of the hands of children become more complex. If earlier the child simply laid out objects or placed rather large liners in the appropriate nests, now, in order to “plant” a fungus in a small hole, subtle hand movements are needed under the control of sight and touch.
For children third year of life tasks are provided, in the course of which the ability to group homogeneous objects by size, shape, color is fixed.
Tasks for sensory education are included not only in the subject, but also in elementary productive activities - drawing, laying out a mosaic. Given the increased opportunities for children, they are invited to choose two varieties of objects out of four possible.
The fulfillment of tasks for correlating heterogeneous objects simultaneously in size and shape is quite accessible to children of the third year of life. Making individual mistakes, the baby can correct them himself if an adult asks him the question: “Look, what is wrong?”
Placement of tabs of different sizes and shapes is carried out by children in two ways. In the first case, objects of the same variety are first selected, then the remaining liners are laid out in nests. This method is not only simpler, but also more time-saving. In the second case, the children take the liners in a row and look for the corresponding nest for each. It is desirable that every child learn both ways. Children who do not master the second method subsequently find it difficult to alternate objects according to one or another attribute.
Laying out the mosaic, the child not only takes into account the various sensory properties of objects, but also carries out rather subtle movements of the fingers. Even more complex hand movements are needed when performing drawing tasks.
By the end of the third year of life, children accumulate a certain sensory experience, which is used when drawing, especially according to the plan, laying out the mosaic, etc.
When conducting games-classes, the educator uses a brief speech instruction, without distracting the children from the tasks with unnecessary words. An adult should not require children to memorize and independently use the names of colors and shapes. It is important that the child actively perform tasks, taking into account these properties, since it is in the process of practical work that the accumulation of ideas about the properties of objects occurs.
Elementary forms of perception begin to develop very early, in the first months of a child's life, as he develops conditioned reflexes to complex stimuli. The differentiation of complex stimuli in children of the first years of life is still very imperfect and differs significantly from the differentiation that occurs at an older age. This is due to the fact that in children the processes of excitation prevail over inhibition.
At the same time, there is a great instability of both processes, their wide irradiation and, as a consequence of this, the inaccuracy and inconstancy of differentiation. Children of preschool and primary school age are characterized by low detailing of perceptions and their high emotional richness.
A small child, first of all, highlights shiny and moving objects, unusual sounds and smells, that is, everything that causes his emotional and orienting reactions. Due to lack of experience, he still cannot distinguish the main and essential features of objects from secondary ones. The conditioned reflex connections necessary for this arise only as you act with objects in the process of playing and practicing.
Direct connection of perceptions with actions - a characteristic feature and a necessary condition for the development of perception in children. Seeing a new object, the child reaches out to it, picks it up and, manipulating it, gradually highlights its individual properties and aspects.
Hence the great importance of the child's actions with objects for the formation of a correct and more and more detailed perception of them. Great difficulties for children are the perception of the spatial properties of objects. The connection of visual, kinesthetic and tactile sensations necessary for their perception is formed in children as they become practically acquainted with the size and shape of objects, operating with them, and the ability to distinguish between distances develops when the child begins to walk independently and move more or less significant distances.
Due to insufficient practice, visual-motor connections in young children are still imperfect. Hence the inaccuracy of their linear and deep eye. Especially often children are mistaken in the size of distant objects, and the perception of perspective in the drawing is achieved only by the end of preschool age and often requires special exercises.
Abstract geometric shapes (circle, square, triangle) are associated in the perception of preschoolers with the shape of certain objects (children often call a triangle a "house", a circle - a "wheel", etc.); and only later, when they learn the name of geometric figures, do they have a general idea of the given form and its correct distinction, regardless of other features of objects.
Even greater difficulties for the child is the perception of time. In children 2-2.5 years old, it is still quite vague, undifferentiated. The correct use by children of such concepts as “yesterday”, “tomorrow”, “earlier”, “later”, etc., in most cases, is noted only for about 4 years, while the duration of individual periods of time (an hour, half an hour, 5-10 minutes ) are often confused and six - seven year old children.
Significant shifts in the development of perception in a child occur under the influence of verbal communication with adults. . Adults introduce the child to the surrounding objects, help to highlight their most important and characteristic aspects, teach how to act with them, and answer numerous questions about these objects.
Learning the names of objects and their individual parts, children learn to generalize and differentiate objects according to the most important features. To a large extent, children's perceptions depend on their previous experience. The more often a child encounters various objects, the more he learns about them, the more fully he can perceive and in the future more correctly reflect the connections and relationships between them.
The incompleteness of children's experience, in particular, explains the fact that when perceiving little-known things or drawings, young children often confine themselves to listing and describing individual objects or their parts and find it difficult to explain their meaning as a whole.
Psychologists Binet, Stern and others, who noticed this fact, made the wrong conclusion from it that there are strict standards for the age characteristics of perception, regardless of the content of what is perceived.
Such, for example, is Binet's scheme, which establishes three age levels of children's perception of pictures: at the age of 3 to 7 years - the stage of listing individual objects, at the age of 7 to 12 years - the stage of description and from 12 years - the stage of explanation, or interpretation.
The artificiality of such schemes is easily revealed if children are presented with pictures with close, familiar content. In this case, even three-year-old children are not limited to a simple enumeration of objects, but give a more or less coherent story, albeit with an admixture of fictional, fantastic explanations (given by S. Rubinshtein and Ovsepyan).
Thus, the qualitative originality of the content of children's perception is caused, first of all, by the limitedness of children's experience, the inadequacy of the systems of temporary connections formed in past experience, and the inaccuracy of differentiations developed earlier.
The patterns of formation of conditioned reflex connections also explain close connection of children's perception with the actions and movements of the child.
The first years of children's life is the period of development of the main interanalyzer conditioned reflex connections (for example, visual-motor, visual-tactile, etc.), the formation of which requires direct movements and actions with objects.
At this age, children, examining objects, at the same time feel and touch them. In the future, when these connections become stronger and more differentiated, direct actions with objects are less necessary, and visual perception becomes a relatively independent process in which the motor component participates in a latent form (mainly eye movements are performed).
Both of these stages are always noted, but it is impossible to associate them with a strictly defined age, since they depend on the living conditions, upbringing and education of the child.
The game is important for the development of perception and observation in preschool and primary school age. . In the game, children differentiate various properties of objects - their color, shape, size, weight, and since all this is associated with the actions and movements of children, thereby favorable conditions are created in the game for the interaction of various analyzers and for creating a multilateral idea of objects.
Of great importance for the development of perception and observation is drawing and modeling, during which children learn to correctly convey the contours of objects, distinguish shades of colors, etc. In the process of playing, drawing and performing other tasks, children learn to independently set themselves the task of observation. Thus, already at the older preschool age, perception becomes more organized and manageable.
At school age, perception becomes even more complex, multilateral and purposeful. The school, with its various educational and extracurricular activities, reveals to students a complex picture of natural and social phenomena, forms their perception and observation.
The development of perception at school age is especially facilitated by the visibility of learning. . Systematic practical and laboratory classes, extensive use of visual aids, excursions, familiarization with different types production activities - all this provides enormous material for the development of perceptions and observation of students.
The development of perceptions in schoolchildren requires considerable attention and guidance from teachers and educators. This is especially true for elementary school students, who, due to lack of life experience, often cannot distinguish the main and essential in the observed phenomena, find it difficult to describe them, miss important details, and are distracted by random, insignificant details.
The task of the teacher is to carefully prepare students for the perception of the objects being studied, to provide the necessary information about them that would facilitate and direct the perception of students in the direction of highlighting the most important features of the objects.
Demonstration of visual aids (drawings, diagrams, diagrams, etc.), conducting laboratory work and excursions only achieve the goal when students are clearly aware of the task of observation. Without this, they can look at objects and still not see the most important thing.
At one of the lessons in the 1st grade, the teacher was talking about squirrels. She hung up a picture of two squirrels and talked about their way of life, but said nothing about their appearance. Then, having removed the picture, she invited the students to draw on the cardboard stencil the missing details of the image of the squirrel and color the drawing. Quite unexpectedly, this turned out to be a difficult task for the children. Questions poured in: what color is the squirrel, what are her eyes, does she have a mustache, does she have eyebrows, etc. Thus, although the children looked at the picture, they noticed very little in it (from the observations of M. Skatkin).
In the process of schoolwork, in order to develop perception, careful comparisons of objects, their individual aspects, an indication of the similarities and differences between them are necessary. Of paramount importance are the independent actions of students with objects and the participation of various analyzers (in particular, not only sight and hearing, but also touch).
Active, purposeful actions with objects, consistency and systematicity in the accumulation of facts, their careful analysis and generalization - these are the main requirements for observation that must be strictly observed by students and teachers.
Particular attention must be paid to the correctness of observations. At first, schoolchildren's observations may not be detailed enough (which is natural when they first get acquainted with an object or phenomenon), but observations should never be replaced by a distortion of facts and their arbitrary interpretation.
1" See: Kanicheva R. A. Color influence on size perception // Psychological research / Ed. B. G. Ananyeva. L., 1939. T. IX.
Perception is the reflection in the mind of a person of objects or phenomena with their direct impact on the senses. In the course of perception, there is an ordering and unification of individual sensations into integral images of things.
Unlike sensations, which reflect the individual properties of the stimulus, perception reflects the object as a whole, in the aggregate of its properties. At the same time, perception is not reduced to the sum of individual sensations, but represents a qualitatively new stage of sensory cognition with its inherent features. The most important features of perception are objectivity, integrity, structure, constancy and meaningfulness.
Perception depends not only on irritation, but also on the perceiving subject himself. It is not an isolated eye or ear itself that perceives, but a specific living person, and perception always affects the personality of the perceiver, his attitude to the perceived, needs, interests, aspirations, desires and feelings. The dependence of perception on the content of a person's mental life, on the characteristics of his personality, is called apperception.
Numerous data show that the picture perceived by the subject is not just the sum of instantaneous sensations; it often contains details that are not even on the retina at the moment, but which the person sees, as it were, on the basis of previous experience.
Perception is an active process that uses information to generate and test hypotheses. The nature of these hypotheses is determined by the content of the personality's past experience. As the results of the research showed, when subjects are presented with unfamiliar figures representing an arbitrary combination of straight and curved lines, already in the first phases of perception, a search is made for those standards to which the perceived object could be attributed. In the process of perception, hypotheses about the belonging of an object to a particular category are put forward and tested.
Thus, when an object is perceived, traces of past perceptions are also activated. Therefore, it is natural that the same object can be perceived and reproduced differently by different people. The richer the experience of a person, the more knowledge he has, the richer his perception, the more he will see in the subject.
The content of perception is determined by the task set for a person and the motives of his activity. For example, when listening to a piece of music performed by an orchestra, we perceive the entire musical fabric as a whole, without singling out the sound of each instrument in it. Only by setting a goal to highlight the sound of any instrument, this can be done. Then the sound of this instrument will come to the fore, become the object of perception, while the rest will be the background of perception.
Emotions are also involved in the process of perception, which can change the content of perception. The important role of emotional reactions in perception is confirmed by a number of different experiments. All that has been said about the influence on the perception of the past experience of the subject, the motives and tasks of his activity, attitude, emotional state (this also includes beliefs, a person’s worldview, his interests, etc.) show that perception is an active process that can be controlled .
Reader on sensation and perception / Ed. Yu.B.Gippenreiter, M.B.Mikhalevskoy. M.: Publishing House of Moscow. un-ta, 1975. S.197-204.
Perception, while orienting the practical activity of the subject, at the same time depends in its development on the conditions and nature of this activity. That is why in the study of the genesis, structure and function of perceptual processes, the “praxeological”, as J. Piaget puts it, approach to the problem becomes important. The interrelation of perception and activity for a long time was actually ignored in psychology and either perception was studied outside of practical activity (various areas of subjective mentalistic psychology), or activity was considered independently of perception (strict behaviorists).
Only in recent decades have the genetic and functional relationships between them become the subject of psychological research. Based on the well-known philosophical provisions of dialectical materialism regarding the role of practice in the cognition of the surrounding reality, Soviet psychologists (B.G. Ananiev, P.Ya. Galperin, A.N. Leontiev, A.R. Luria, B.M. Teplov, etc. ) in the early 1930s. began to study the dependence of perception on the nature of the subject's activity. The ontogenetic study of perception, carried out by us together with colleagues at the Institute of Psychology and at the Institute of Preschool Education of the APN, also proceeded in this direction.
The peculiarities of a child's practical activity and its age-related changes apparently have a significant influence on the ontogeny of human perception. The development of both the activity as a whole and the perceptual processes included in it does not occur spontaneously. It is determined by the conditions of life and education, during which, as L.S. Vygotsky rightly pointed out, the child learns the social experience accumulated by previous generations. In particular, specifically human sensory learning involves not only the adaptation of perceptual processes to individual conditions of existence, but also the assimilation of systems of sensory standards developed by society (which include, for example, the generally accepted scale of musical sounds, phoneme grids of various languages, systems of geometric shapes, etc.). d.). A separate individual uses the learned standards to examine the perceived object and evaluate its properties. Such standards become operational units of perception, mediate the child's perceptual actions, just as his practical activity is mediated by a tool, and his mental activity is mediated by a word.
According to our assumption, perceptual actions not only reflect the present situation, but to a certain extent anticipate its transformations that may occur as a result of practical actions. Thanks to this sensory anticipation (substantially different, of course, from intellectual anticipation), perceptual actions are able to find out the immediate prospects for behavior and regulate it in accordance with the conditions and tasks facing the subject.
Although we have mainly studied the processes of sight and touch in a child, the established regularities, apparently, have more general meaning and, as the studies of our employees show, they manifest themselves in a peculiar way in other sensory modalities (in the field of hearing, kinesthetic perceptions, etc.). We studied the dependence of perception on the nature of the activity:
a) in terms of ontogenetic development of the child and b) in the course of functional development (in the process of formation of certain perceptual actions under the influence of sensory learning).
Studies of the ontogenesis of perception, carried out by us, as well as by other authors, indicate that there are complex relationships between perception and action that change in the course of a child's development.
In the first months of a child's life, according to N.M. Shchelovanov, the development of sensory functions (in particular, the functions of distant receptors) outstrips the ontogeny of somatic movements and has a significant impact on the formation of the latter. M.I. Lisina discovered that the infant's orienting reactions to new stimuli very early reach great complexity and are carried out by a whole complex of different analyzers.
Despite the fact that at this stage, orienting movements (for example, orienting eye movements) reach a relatively high level, according to our data, they perform only an orienting-setting function (setting the receptor for the perception of a certain kind of signals), but not an orienting-exploratory function (not survey the object and do not model its properties).
As studies by L.A. Wenger, R. Fantz and others have shown, with the help of such reactions, already in the first months of life, a rather subtle “indicative” distinction between old and new objects (which differ from each other in size, color, shape, etc.) .), but the formation of constant, objective perceptual images, which are necessary to control complex changeable forms of behavior, is not yet taking place.
Later, starting from the age of 3-4 months, the child develops the simplest practical actions related to grasping and manipulating objects, moving in space, etc. The peculiarity of these actions is that they are directly carried out by the organs of one's own body (mouth, hands, feet) without the help of any tools.
Sensory functions are included in the maintenance of these practical actions, are reorganized on their basis, and gradually acquire the character of a kind of orienting-exploratory, perceptual actions.
Thus, studies by G.L. Vygotskaya, H.M. Haleverson and others reveal that the formation of grasping movements, which begins approximately from the third month of life, has a significant impact on the development of perception of the shape and size of an object. Similarly, the progress in depth perception in children aged 6-18 months, discovered by R. Walk and E. Gibson. associated, according to our observations, with the practice of moving the child in space.
The peculiar, direct nature of the infant's practical actions determines the characteristics of his orienting, perceptual actions. According to L.A. Wenger, the latter mainly anticipate the dynamic relationship between the child’s own body and the objective situation. This takes place, for example, when the infant visually anticipates the route of his movement under given conditions, the prospects of grabbing a visible object with his hand.
At this stage of development, the child primarily identifies those properties of the object that are directly addressed to him and which his actions directly encounter, while the totality of others that are not directly related to him is perceived globally, indivisibly.
Later, starting from the second year of life, the child, under the influence of adults, begins to master the simplest tools, influences one object on another. As a result, his perception changes. At this genetic stage, it becomes possible to anticipate perceptually not only the dynamic relationships between one's own body and the objective situation, but also certain transformations of interobjective relations (for example, the foresight of the possibility of dragging a given object through a certain hole, moving one object with the help of another, etc.). Images of perception lose the globality and fragmentation that were characteristic of the previous stage, and at the same time acquire a clearer and more adequate to the perceived object. structural organization. So, for example, in the field of perception of form, the general configuration of the contour gradually begins to stand out, which, firstly, limits one object from another, and secondly, determines some possibilities for their spatial interaction (rapprochement, overlap, capture of one object by another, etc.). d.).
Moving from early to preschool age(3-7 years old), children, with appropriate training, begin to master some types of specifically human productive activities aimed not only at using existing ones, but also at creating new objects (the simplest types of manual labor, designing, drawing, modeling, etc. ). Productive activity poses new perceptual tasks for the child.
Studies of the role of constructive activity (A.R. Luria, N.N. Poddyakov, V.P. Sokhina and others), as well as drawing (Z.M. Boguslavskaya, N.P. Sakulina and others) in the development of visual perception show that under the influence of these activities, children develop complex types of visual analysis and synthesis, the ability to divide a visible object into parts and then combine them into a single whole before such operations are performed in practical terms. Accordingly, the perceptual images of the form acquire a new content. In addition to further refinement of the contour of the object, its structure, spatial features and correlations of its constituent parts begin to stand out, to which the child had paid almost no attention before.
These are some of the experimental data that testify to the dependence of the ontogeny of perception on the nature of the practical activity of children of different ages.
As we have already pointed out, the development of the child does not occur spontaneously, but under the influence of training. Ontogenetic and functional development continuously interact with each other. In this regard, we can consider the problem of "perception and action" in another aspect, in the aspect of the formation of perceptual actions during sensory learning. Although this process acquires very different specific features depending on the previous experience and age of the child, however, at all stages of ontogeny, it obeys certain general patterns and goes through certain stages, reminiscent in some respects of those established by P. Ya. Galperin and others in the study formation of mental actions and concepts.
At the first stage the formation of new perceptual actions (i.e., in those cases when the child encounters a completely new, previously unknown class of perceptual tasks), the process begins with the fact that the problem is solved in practical terms, with the help of external, material actions with objects.
At the second stage sensory processes, having been rearranged under the influence of practical activity, themselves turn into peculiar perceptual actions, which are carried out with the help of movements of the receptor apparatus and anticipate subsequent practical actions.<...>
At the third stage perceptual actions are curtailed, their duration is reduced, their effector links are inhibited, and perception begins to give the impression of a passive, inactive process.
Facts, patterns and results of research on sensations and perception
Color perception. Theories of color vision.