Age periodization of mental development according to D.B. Elkonin. Age periodization of elkonin

Introduction

Infancy

Early age

preschool age

Junior school age

Adolescence

adolescence

Introduction

The periodizations of development, which consider the reasons and driving forces of development as a basis, traditionally include the periodizations of L.S. Vygotsky and D.B. Elkonin. Consider the periodization of the development of D.B. Elkonin as the most developed classification.

D.B. Elkonin considered the child as an integral person, actively learning about the world around him: the world of objects and the world of people. There are, therefore, two systems of relations: child-thing and child-adult. However, a thing, having certain physical properties, also carries socially developed ways of using it, ways of acting with it. Thus, a thing is a social object, the actions with which the child must learn with the help of an adult. An adult appears to the child not only as a person, but as a representative of a certain society, having social roles, attitudes, motives, action stereotypes, including upbringing stereotypes. Therefore, an adult is a social adult. The child's activity within the systems "child - social object" and "child - social adult" is a single process in which his personality is formed. However, making up a single process of mastering the systems "child - object" and "child - adult", within the framework of the leading activity of a given age, one of the systems comes to the fore, occupying a dominant position. Consequently, the leading activities replacing each other determine the sequential alternation of the predominantly “child-object” and “child-adult” systems.

Periodization of age development D.B. Elkonin

The child approaches each point in his development with a certain discrepancy between what he has learned from the system of relations man-man and what he has learned from the system man-object. It is precisely the moments when this discrepancy takes on the greatest magnitude that are called crises, after which the development of the side that lagged behind in the previous period takes place. But each side prepares the development of the other.

What is the theoretical and practical significance of the hypothesis about the periodicity of the processes of mental development?

Firstly, this periodization shows the relationship between intellectual (cognitive) development and the formation of a person's personality as a social individual. Secondly, this hypothesis makes it possible to consider the process of mental development not as linear, but as going in an ascending spiral. Thirdly, it opens the way to the study of the connections that exist between individual periods, to the establishment of the functional significance of any previous period for the onset of the next one. Fourthly, the hypothesis is aimed at such a division of mental development into epochs and stages, which corresponds to the internal laws of this human development.

Consider the periodization of D.B. Elkonin, dwelling in more detail at each stage of development, in order.

Infancy

The social situation of the inseparable unity of the child and the adult contains a contradiction: the child needs the adult to the maximum and, at the same time, has no specific means of influencing him. This contradiction is resolved throughout the entire period of infancy. The resolution of this contradiction leads to the destruction of the social situation of development that gave rise to it.

The social situation of the common life of the child with the mother leads to the emergence of a new type of activity - direct emotional communication between the child and the mother. As studies by D.B. Elkonin and M.I. Lisina, a specific feature of this type of activity is that the subject of this activity is another person. But if the subject of activity is another person, then this activity is communication. What matters is not what people do with each other, emphasized D.B. Elkonin, but the fact that another person becomes the subject of activity. Communication of this type in infancy is very pronounced. On the part of the adult, the child becomes the subject of activity. On the part of the child, one can observe the emergence of the first forms of influence on the adult. So, very soon the voice reactions of the child acquire the character of an emotionally active call, whimpering turns into a behavioral act directed at an adult. This is not yet speech in the proper sense of the word, as long as these are only emotionally expressive reactions.

Communication during this period should be emotionally positive. Thus, the child creates an emotionally positive tone, which is a sign of physical and mental health.

The specific reaction of a smile to the mother's face is an indication that the social situation of the child's mental development has already taken shape. This is a social situation of bonding between a child and an adult. L.S. Vygotsky called it a social situation "WE". According to L.S. Vygotsky, the child is like an adult paraplegic who says: "We ate", "We took a walk." Here we can talk about the inseparable unity of the child and the adult. The child is nothing can without an adult. The life and activities of the child are, as it were, woven into the life and activities of the adult caring for him. In general, this is a situation of comfort, and the central element of this comfort is an adult. As D. B. Elkonin noted, a pacifier and rocking are ersatz , substitutes for an adult, telling the child: “Everything is calm!”, “Everything is in order!”, “I am here.”

At first glance it seems that the development of actions is a spontaneous process. Indeed, it would seem that a child of the first year of life can hardly be taught anything, but a person turned out to be more cunning. D.B. Elkonin said that a man came up with programmed education for children of the first year of life a long time ago. These are toys in which the actions that the child must carry out with their help are programmed. Manipulating a child with toys is a covert cooperative activity. Here the adult is present not directly, but indirectly, as if programmed into the toy.

Grasping, directing towards an object stimulates the occurrence of sitting. When the child sits down, other objects open in front of him. There are objects that cannot be touched. Again, the law of anticipatory acquaintance of the child with the world, anticipatory orientation, manifests itself. The child reaches for the object, it is attractive, but it can only be obtained with the help of an adult.

The study of the emergence of a sign function in ontogenesis shows that for its formation it is necessary to develop sympractical communication, that is, communication in the course of “aggregate activity” (D.B. Elkonin’s term). Therefore, for child psychology, the search for the roots of the sign function depends on solving the problem of the formation of joint activity.

By 9 months (the beginning of the crisis of the 1st year), the child gets on his feet, begins to walk. As emphasized by D.B. Elkonin, the main thing in the act of walking is not only that the child's space expands, but also that the child separates himself from the adult. For the first time there is a fragmentation of a single social situation "We", now it is not the mother who leads the child, but he leads the mother wherever he wants. Walking is the first of the main neoplasms of infancy, marking a break in the old situation of development.

The second main neoplasm of this age is the appearance of the first word. The peculiarity of the first words is that they are in the nature of pointing gestures. Walking and enrichment of objective actions require speech that would satisfy communication about objects. Speech, like all neoplasms of age, is of a transitional nature. This is an autonomous, situational, emotionally colored speech, understandable only to relatives. This speech is specific in its structure, consisting of fragments of words. Researchers call it "the language of nannies." But whatever this speech may be, it represents a new quality that can serve as a criterion for the fact that the old social situation of the child's development has disintegrated. Where there was unity, there were two: an adult and a child. A new content has grown between them - objective activity.

Summing up the first stage of child development, we can say that from the very beginning there are two interrelated lines of human development: the line of development of orientation in the meanings of human activity and the line of development of orientation in the ways of human activity. The development of one opens up new opportunities for the development of the other. There is a clear, main line of development for each age. However, the main new formations, leading to the breakdown of the old social situation of development, are formed along a different line, which is not a guide in a given period, they appear, as it were, latently. But this orientation will determine development in the next age period. The main task of raising a child during this period (the period of infancy) is to maximize and develop the child's broad orientation in the surrounding reality. As D.B. Elkonin, any early creation of a finished functional system takes a piece in the central nervous system and then it needs to be rebuilt. It is important that functional systems are built on an enriched indicative basis.

Early age

As emphasized by D.B. Elkonin, at the end of the first year of life, the social situation of complete fusion of a child with an adult explodes from within. Two people appear in it: a child and an adult. This is the essence of the crisis of the first year of life. At this age, the child acquires a certain degree of independence: the first words appear, the child begins to walk, actions with objects develop. However, the range of possibilities of the child is still very limited. Firstly, speech is autonomous in nature: words are situational, they are only fragments of our words, words are polysemantic, polysemantic. In addition, the autonomous speech itself contains a contradiction. This speech is a means of communication addressed to another, but, as a rule, it is still devoid of permanent meanings. Secondly, in almost every action that a child performs with one or another object, it is as if an adult is present. And, above all, it is present through the construction of objects with which the child manipulates. As emphasized by D.B. Elkonin, this phenomenon is exceptional, it is observed only at the end of infancy. It does not occur at older ages. Not on a single human object, D.B. Elkonin, the method of using it is not written, the social method of using the object should always be disclosed to the child. But since it cannot yet be shown to an infant, objects have to be constructed that, by their physical properties, determine the way children act. While manipulating objects, focusing on their physical properties, the child, however, cannot himself discover socially developed ways of using objects.

The child himself, on his own, is never able to discover the social essence, the social function, the social way of using objects.

In the removed form, the tool contains the purpose for which it should be used. Ideas about the goal, about the final result, do not initially exist as data and orienting actions of the child. They arise only as a result of the implementation of the objective action itself. Only after the child drinks water from the cup does he have a goal - to drink water from the cup. Only after the child has learned to use a tool does he have goals that begin to orient the child's actions with objects. Thus, the goal must be isolated as a result of action in a particular situation.

In the joint objective action of the child and the adult, initially everything is merged. The very way of orienting the action, like the goal, is also not given in the form of some kind of abstract model, but exists within the action of the child with the adult; only a gradual division of action occurs in the course of development. All mental processes are formed on the basis of objective action, therefore, to understand objective action means to understand development.

In a joint objective action, its goal and object orientation, execution and evaluation are initially merged.

D.B. Elkonin considered the development of objective action at an early age in two main directions. This is, firstly, the development of an action from joint action with an adult to independent performance and, secondly, the development of means and methods for orienting the child himself in the conditions of the implementation of an objective action.

At the first stages of the development of objective action, mastering the social functions of the object and those goals that can be achieved with a certain socially established method of using the object is possible only in the course of joint activity.

As shown by I.A. Sokolyansky and A.I. Meshcheryakov, an adult takes the child's hands in his own and performs an action with them (brings a spoon to the child's mouth). And orientation, and execution, and control, and evaluation of the action are on the side of the adult. Then there is a partial or jointly divided action. The adult only starts the action, and the child finishes it. As soon as a divided action appears, we can say that the goal of the objective action has come to light: the child knows what will happen as a result of the performance of the action. Next, it becomes possible to perform an action based on the impression. This is an extremely important step. The adult has separated the orienting part of the action from the executive part and wants the child to do it too. This separation, as emphasized by D.B. Elkonin is produced by an adult, so the process is by no means spontaneous, not spontaneous.

D.B. Elkonin rightly noted that, along with tools, toys play an important role in mastering objective actions. A toy is an object that simulates any object in the adult world. In relation to toys, there is no rigid logic in their use, and an adult does not impose a way of acting with them on a child. Toys are multifunctional, you can do anything with them. Because of these properties of the toy, the orienting side of the action is separated from the executive side. Thanks to the action with the toy, the situation is also included in the orientation. As a result, further schematization of the action occurs. The child begins to compare his action with the actions of an adult, he begins to recognize in his action the actions of an adult, and for the first time begins to call himself the name of an adult: "Petya-dad." Thus, the transfer of action contributes to the separation of the child from the adult, comparing himself with him, identifying himself with the adult. The social situation thus begins to disintegrate. The role of an adult increases in the eyes of a child. The adult begins to be perceived by the child as a carrier of patterns of human action. This is possible only as a result of micro-changes in the objective action.

Finally, as a result of the transition of action from joint to independent, the adult retains control and evaluation of the action performed by the child, and they constitute the content of communication between the child and the adult about objective actions.

When the disintegration of a single objective action occurs and the adult is separated from the child, the child sees the adult and his actions as models for the first time. It turns out that the child acts like an adult, not with him, not under the guidance of an adult, but like him.

By the end of this age, the child uses his objective actions to establish contacts with an adult; with the help of an objective action, the child tries to call an adult for communication. When, with the help of a mastered action, a child calls an adult to play, communication again arises as an activity, the object of which for the child is an adult. In the same way as the objective action develops, D.B. Elkonin, the formation of speech also occurs. The word at an early age acts as a tool for the child, which, however, he uses much more often than any other tool. Precisely because the word at this age acts as a tool, there is an extremely intensive development of speech. In almost two or three years, a child masters his native language, and in a bilingual environment, two. Like the mastery of any other tool, the word is differentiated, saturated with objective meaning and, thanks to its transfer to other situations, is torn off from the object and generalized. The role of images and toys in this process is great. L.S. Vygotsky wrote that by the power of one thing it is necessary to steal the name from another. This is what happens in visual activity and play. To date, the following main trends in the development of speech in a young child are known.

Passive speech in development is ahead of active speech. The stock of passive speech affects the enrichment of the active vocabulary. First, the child understands the words-instructions, then he begins to understand the words-names, later comes the understanding of instructions and instructions, and finally, the understanding of stories, that is, the understanding of contextual speech.

The intensive development of speech at an early age indicates that speech, according to D.B. Elkonin, should be considered not as a function, but as a special object that the child masters in the same way as he masters other tools (spoon, pencil, etc.). The development of speech is a “twig” in the development of independent objective activity.

preschool age

D.B. Elkonin believed that the main psychological neoplasms of preschool age are:

1) The emergence of the first schematic outline of a whole child's worldview A child cannot live in disorder. Everything that he sees, the child tries to put in order, to see the regular relationships in which such a fickle world around him fits. J. Piaget showed that a child in preschool age develops an artificalist worldview: everything that surrounds the child, including natural phenomena, is the result of human activity. Such a worldview is linked to the entire structure of preschool age, in the center of which is a person.

Building a picture of the world, the child invents, invents a theoretical concept. He builds schemes of a global character, ideological schemes. D.B. Elkonin notices here the paradox between the low level of the child's intellectual abilities and the high level of his cognitive needs.

2) The emergence of primary ethical instances "What is good and what is bad" These ethical instances grow next to the aesthetic "Beautiful cannot be bad."

3) The emergence of subordination of motives. At this age, one can already observe the predominance of deliberate actions over impulsive ones. Overcoming immediate desires is determined not only by the expectation of a reward or punishment from the adult, but also by the child's own promise (the "given word" principle). Thanks to this, such personality traits as perseverance and the ability to overcome difficulties are formed; there is also a sense of duty towards other people.

4) The emergence of arbitrary behavior. Arbitrary behavior is behavior mediated by a particular representation. D.B. Elkonin noted that at preschool age, the image orienting behavior first exists in a specific visual form, but then it becomes more and more generalized, acting in the form of a rule or norm. Based on the formation of voluntary behavior in a child, according to D.B. Elkonin, there is a desire to control himself and his actions.

5) The emergence of personal inquiry - the emergence of consciousness of one's limited place in the system of relations with adults. The preschooler has an awareness of the possibilities of his actions, he begins to understand that not everything can (the beginning of self-esteem). Speaking of self-awareness, they often mean the awareness of one's personal qualities (good, kind, evil, etc.). In this case, we are talking about awareness of one's place in the system of social relations. 3 years - external "I myself", 6 years - personal self-consciousness. Here, the outside turns into the inside.

Under the leadership of D.B. Elkonin conducted an interesting experiment.

There are a lot of matches in front of the child. The experimenter asks to take one at a time and shift them to another place. The rules are deliberately made meaningless.

The subjects were children 5, 6, 7 years old. The experimenter watched the children through Gesell's mirror. Children who are getting ready for school scrupulously do this work and can sit at this lesson for an hour. Smaller children continue to move matches for a while, and then they begin to build something. The youngest bring their own task to these activities. When saturation occurs, the experimenter enters and asks to work more: “Let's agree, we’ll do this bunch of matches and that’s it.” And the older child continued this monotonous, meaningless work, because he agreed with the adult. The experimenter said to children of middle preschool age: "I will leave, but Pinocchio will remain." The child's behavior changed: he looked at Pinocchio and did everything right. If you perform this action several times with a substitute link, then even without Pinocchio, the children obey the rule. This experiment showed that behind the fulfillment of the rule lies a system of relations between a child and an adult. When a child obeys a rule, he meets the adult with joy.

So, for the implementation of the rule, D.B. Elkonin, there is a system of social relations between a child and an adult. First, the rules are executed in the presence of an adult, then with the support of an object that replaces the adult, and, finally, the rule becomes internal. If the observance of the rule did not include a system of relations with an adult, then no one would ever follow these rules. The readiness of the child for schooling involves the "growing" of the social rule, emphasized D.B. Elkonin, however, there is no special system for the formation of internal rules in the modern system of preschool education.

At this age, the phenomenon of egocentrism, or centering, appears. In order for the transition from pre-operational thinking to operational thinking to become possible, it is necessary for the child to move from centering to decentering. Centering means that the child can only see the whole world from his own point of view. There are no other points of view for the child at first. A child cannot take the standpoint of science and society.

Exploring the phenomenon of centration, D.B. Elkonin suggested that in the role-playing collective game, that is, in the leading type of activity of a preschool child, the main processes associated with overcoming "cognitive egocentrism" take place. Frequent switching from one role to another in a variety of children's games, the transition from the position of a child to the position of an adult leads to a systematic "shattering" of the child's ideas about the absoluteness of his position in the world of things and people and creates conditions for the coordination of different positions. This hypothesis was tested in the study by V.A. Nedospasova.

Thanks to decentration, children become different, the subject of their thoughts, their reasoning becomes the thought of another person. No learning is possible until the teacher's thought becomes the subject of the child's reasoning. Decentration is formed in such a way that at first many centrations are formed, then there is a differentiation of oneself from the other and his point of view without actually becoming aware of it, but only assuming it.

So, by the end of preschool age, we have three lines of development.

1 - line of formation of arbitrary behavior,

2 - the line of mastering the means and standards of cognitive activity,

3 - the line of transition from egocentrism to decentration. Development along these lines determines the child's readiness for schooling.

To these three lines, which were analyzed by D.B. Elkonin, it is necessary to add the child's motivational readiness for schooling. As shown by L.I. Bozovic, the child strives for the function of a student. So, for example, during the "playing school" children of younger ages take on the function of a teacher, older preschoolers prefer the role of students, since this role seems to them especially significant.

By the age of 7, a number of complex formations arise, which lead to the fact that the difficulties of behavior change dramatically and radically, they are fundamentally different from the difficulties of preschool age.

Such neoplasms as pride, self-esteem remain, but the symptoms of the crisis (manipulation, antics) are transient. In the crisis of seven years, due to the fact that differentiation of the internal and external arises, that for the first time a meaningful experience arises, an acute struggle of experiences also arises. A child who does not know whether to take bigger or sweeter candies is not in a state of internal struggle, although he hesitates. The internal struggle (contradictions of experiences and the choice of one's own experiences) becomes possible only now.

elkonin age mental neoplasm

Junior school age

Teaching is the leading activity for all school ages, but the specificity of each age is determined by which aspects of reality the child masters in the course of learning. This determines the leading activity of each school age. Thus, at primary school age, the child masters the "objective" reality, that is, the knowledge fixed in the training courses. In contrast to early childhood, at primary school age, the child masters, through teaching, that objective reality that goes far beyond the limits of his personal direct experience. Junior school age - the age of entry into educational activities, mastering its structural components

There is a restructuring of the entire system of the child's relationship with reality, as emphasized by D.B. Elkonin. A preschooler has two spheres of social relations: "child - adult" and "child - children". These systems are connected by game activity. The results of the game do not affect the relationship of the child with the parents, the relationship within the children's team also does not determine the relationship with the parents. These relationships exist in parallel, they are connected by hierarchical links. One way or another, it is important to consider that the well-being of the child depends on intra-family harmony.

A new structure of these relations emerges at school. The system "child - adult" is differentiated:

"child-teacher"

"child - adult"

"child - children" "child - parents"

Adolescence

Adolescence should be considered not as a separate stage, but in the dynamics of development, since without knowledge of the patterns of development of the child in ontogeny, the contradictions that make up the strength of this development, it is impossible to identify the mental characteristics of a teenager. Such a study is based on an activity approach, which considers the development of a personality, as a process the driving force of which is, firstly, the resolution of internal contradictions, and secondly, a change in types of activity, which determines the restructuring of existing needs and the emergence of new ones. In the process of studying

domestic psychologists (L.S. Vygodsky, A.N. Leontiev, D.B. Elkonin, etc.) found out that the leading activity for adolescence is the assimilation of the norms of relationships, which are most fully expressed in socially useful activities.

Thus, the study of adolescence is a very complex, long and multifaceted process that has not been completed to this day. Until now, there is no unambiguous understanding of all its features, disputes between psychologists do not stop. But, despite this, we can highlight the main points that determine the adolescent period of development, note its main characteristics.

As D.B. Elkonin, self-change in adolescence arises and begins to be realized first psychologically, as a result of the development of educational activity, the development of the cognitive sphere, and is only reinforced by physical changes. However, in our opinion, it is the psychophysiological changes that provoke changes in the cognitive sphere at the basic level, although D.B. Elkonin for the second time.

Consistently high indicators of variability in boys and a change in the ascillation coefficient in girls (a clear increase in the ascillation coefficient by 14.5 years and a decrease by 15.5 years). It was found that the individual indicators of variability of boys, significantly differing from each other, are generally stable, while the indicators of girls, which usually do not differ from each other by a high rate of ascillation, at 14.5 years old give the maximum values ​​of variability, increasing both in individual and in general terms. Such an abrupt manifestation of high variability in girls is expressed during a period of rapid pubertal growth, characterized by instability of interests, emotional outbursts, sudden mood swings, a moment of change, increased vulnerability and increasing potential of girls' personality. This age indicator in girls (14.5 years) coincides with the critical transition from adolescence to adolescence (according to the periodization of D.B. Elkonin).

According to the concept of D.B. Elkonin, adolescence, like any new period, is associated with neoplasms that arise from the leading activity of the previous period. Educational activity makes a “turn” from focusing on the world to focusing on oneself. By the end of primary school age, the child has new opportunities, but he does not yet know what he is. Solving the question "What am I?" can only be found by confronting reality. Features of the development of a teenager at this age are manifested in the following symptoms:

Difficulties arise again in relations with adults: negativism, stubbornness, indifference to the assessment of success, leaving school, since the main thing for the child now happens outside of school.

Children's companies (search for a friend, search for someone who can understand you).

The child begins to keep a diary. Many of the researchers reported on “secret notebooks and diaries” in which the teenager “finds an exceptionally free refuge, where no one and nothing constrains him. Left to himself, he freely and independently expresses his inner, sometimes deeply intimate experiences, exciting thoughts, doubts and observations.

Comparing himself with an adult, a teenager comes to the conclusion that there is no difference between him and an adult. He begins to demand from others that he is no longer considered small, he realizes that he also has rights. The central neoplasm of this age is the emergence of the idea of ​​oneself as “not a child”; a teenager begins to feel like an adult, strives to be and be considered an adult, he rejects his belonging to children, but he still does not have a feeling of genuine, full-fledged adulthood, but there is a huge need for recognition of his adulthood by others.

In the periodization of D.B. Elkonin, just as in the theory of L.S. Vygotsky, adolescence, like any psychological age, is associated with the emergence of something new in development. However, these new formations, in his opinion, arise from the leading activity of the previous period. Educational activity produces a “turn” of the child from focusing on the world to focusing on himself. By the end of primary school age, the child has new opportunities, but he does not yet know what he is. Solving the question "Who am I?" can only be found by confronting reality. At the beginning of adolescence, in the system of developmental education (according to Elkonin - Davydov), educational activity moves to a new, higher level. It becomes an activity aimed at self-education and self-improvement of students.

Objective adulthood is manifested in the readiness of the child to live in a society of adults as an equal participant.

· Elements of objective adulthood in adolescence can be seen in the attitude of adolescents to learning and work, to parents and peers, to children and the elderly. They reveal themselves:

o in the intellectual sphere - independence in the assimilation of knowledge, the desire for self-education;

o in the social and moral sphere - help and support for adults, defending one's own views, conformity of moral and ethical ideas to the real behavior of a teenager;

o in romantic relationships with peers of the opposite sex - forms of spending free time (dates, parties, dances);

in appearance - following the fashion in clothes, in behavior, in speech ("buzzwords").

Subjective adulthood, or a sense of adulthood, is characterized by the appearance of a teenager's attitude towards himself not as a small child, but as an adult. The main indicators of a sense of adulthood are:

o manifestations of the need for respect, trust, recognition of independence;

the desire to protect some areas of their lives from the intervention of adults;

o the presence of their own line of behavior, despite the disagreement of adults or peers.

adolescence

Adolescence is one of the most confused and controversial in psychological and pedagogical ideas and theories. The confusion and inconsistency of ideas can be explained (as well as adolescence) by the becoming character of age itself in the history of civilization. According to D.B. Elkonin (1996) about the historical content of childhood, both adolescence and adolescence are historically young and therefore have not acquired their cultural and historical form and development mechanisms. As a result, a researcher describing this age period is forced to speak either in the language of a project (“What is the “ideal” youthful age?”), Or to describe all the variety of paths of change that the “observed” boys and girls go through. In other words, the object of study itself is historically young and has not yet acquired its cultural and historical form.

That is why ideas about adolescence and youthful ages are not based on the results of scientific research, but only reflect the existing system of education and training, i.e. determined by educational institutions (D.B. Elkonin, 1971; L.S. Vygotsky, 1984; A.A. Markosyan, 1974; L.I. Bozhovich, 1995; D.I. Feldshtein, 1996, etc.)".

In Soviet psychology Elkonin D.B. considered the importance of communication in adolescence and senior school age from the standpoint of cultural-historical theory. Elkonin noted that in adolescence, communication is the leading activity, but even in adolescence it does not lose its significance. Thanks to communication, the guys build relationships, are included in various activities.

Elkonin calls the period from 11 to 17 years "adolescence", subdividing it into two phases. The leading activity of 11-15-year-olds (middle school age) Elkonin considers communication in the system of socially useful activities, including such collectively performed forms as social-organizational, sports, artistic and labor. Within this activity, adolescents acquire the ability to build communication depending on the various tasks and requirements of life, the ability to navigate in personal characteristics in the qualities of other people, the ability to consciously obey the norms adopted in the team. For 15-17 year olds (senior school age), educational and professional activities become the leading one (although communication still remains the leading one), thanks to which high school students form certain cognitive and professional interests, elements of research skills, the ability to build life plans and develop moral ideals, self-awareness.

This periodization is normative and expresses, first of all, the departmental point of view of the school, describing what a high school student should do. The inner world of the individual, her freedom, extracurricular activities, initiative (and not just the ability to “obey the norms”), friendship, love fall out of her as something insignificant, secondary, although the above is very significant at this age and affects the further development of the individual. But, along with this, the inner world of the individual, extracurricular activities, friendship, love fall out, in this concept, as something insignificant.

Despite the established ideas about high school students as people who are completely turned to the future, one can find a lot of evidence of their preoccupation with the present. Even self-determination, although directed with all its goals, expectations, hopes for the future, is nevertheless carried out as self-determination in the present - in the practice of living reality and about current events. From these positions, the importance of communication should also be assessed - an activity that occupies a huge place in the life of adolescents and older students and represents an independent value for them.

List of used literature

1. Elkonin D.B. Selected psychological works. Moscow, 1989

2. Elkonin B.D. Developmental Psychology: Textbook for Universities 2007, Academy of Information Center Series "Higher Professional Education"

3. Obukhova L.F., Doctor of Psychology. Child (age) psychology. Textbook. Moscow, Russian Pedagogical Agency. 1996

4. Elkonin B.D. Introduction to Developmental Psychology Moscow, 1995.

D. B. Elkonin substantiated his periodization by changing the leading types of activity and singled out stages different in content - epochs, phases, periods. Two types of phases of age-related development are singled out - the phases of mastering the motivational side of human activity and the phases of mastering the operational and technical side of activity.

It uses three criteria - the social situation of development, the leading activity and the central age-related neoplasm.

The social situation of development is a peculiar combination of what has been formed in the child's psyche and those relations that are established in the child with the social environment.

The concept of "leading activity" was introduced by Leontiev: an activity that at a given stage has the greatest influence on the development of the psyche.

Neoplasm - those qualitative features of the psyche that first appear in a given age period.

The hypothesis about the periodicity of zakl in the regular alternation of periods of predominant development of the affective-required, personal sphere and the operational-technical, mental sphere.

Periodization is built according to the following scheme: cycle, periods, phases of development. The holistic cycle includes two complementary periods: the period of development of the affective-required, personal sphere and the period of development of the operational-technical, mental sphere.

Restrictions:

In periodization. the period of prenatal development is not included, as other patterns.

There are no mature ages, since the assumption is about a fundamental change in the laws of development in adulthood.

era of early childhood.

Period Infancy (2-12 months)

The social situation "We" - the child is physically separated from the mother, but physiologically connected with her.

Leading activity Direct emotional communication and close adults. Walking, the emergence of motivated representations.

Crises 0-2 months. neonatal crisis (transition from prenatal to postnatal development, change in the type of life). 1 year - crisis of the first year of life (disintegration of Pra-We)

New formation of the crisis The emergence of individual mental life, the restructuring of the physiological mechanisms of existence.

Sphere of Development - Motivational-need.

Period Early age (1-3 years).

Social situation Disintegration of the "Great-We", the acquisition of relative independence, freedom of movement and autonomy of intentions.

Leading activity Subject-gun. Using an object as a weapon. Speech development is the central line of development.

Crises Crisis "I myself" (3 years).

Symptoms: negativism, stubbornness, obstinacy, self-will, depreciation of adults, the desire for despotism. The essence of the crisis: the restructuring of relations between a child and an adult, in favor of increasing the independence of the child.

Neoformation crisis The child calls himself, using the pronoun "I" - the formation of self-consciousness, pride in achievements. The birth of an autonomous personality with intentions and desires, a tendency to independent activity similar to that of an adult.

Sphere of development Cognitive-mental.

Age of childhood.

Period Preschool (3-7 years).

Social situation Disintegration of joint activities with an adult.

Leading activity Role-playing game. The development of the motivational-need sphere, the overcoming of egocentrism, the development of an ideal plan, the development of arbitrariness. New formation is visual-figurative thinking.

Crises Crisis 6-7 years. Symptoms: loss of spontaneity, mannerisms, bittersweet symptom.

The essence of the crisis: the formation of a world of inner experiences that mediate the child's attitude to the world

Neoformation of the crisis Entering into relations with society as a set of people carrying out mandatory, socially necessary and socially useful activities.

Sphere of development Motivational-need.

Period Junior school (7-11 years).

Social situation The child is a close adult” and “the child is a social adult”.

Leading activity Educational (involves mastering generalized methods of action in the system of scientific concepts). The central line is intellectualization.

Crises Crisis 12 years. Restructuring relationships with adults. The birth of a sense of maturity

Neoformation of the crisis The emergence of ideas about oneself as “not a child, a teenager begins to feel like an adult, strives to be an adult, there is no true adulthood, but there is a need for the recognition of adulthood by others.

Sphere of development Cognitive sphere, intellect.

Age of adolescence.

Period Younger adolescence (12-15 years).

Social situation Dominance of children's society over adults.

Leading activity Intimate and personal communication with peers. The norms of social behavior are mastered.

Crises Crisis 15 years. Formation of ego-identity, the birth of individual self-consciousness.

New formation of the crisis The discovery of "I", the emergence of reflection - on its basis of self-consciousness, awareness of one's individuality.

Sphere of development Motivation-need, assimilation of moral norms.

Period Senior adolescence (15-17 years).

Social situation A teenager is in a situation of a moratorium - he needs to determine himself.

Leading activity Educational and professional.

Crises Crisis 17 years. The end of the era of adolescence, the beginning of entry into adulthood.

Neoformation of the crisis Value orientations in the sphere of ideology and worldview, building life plans in a time perspective.

Sphere of development Cognitive activity. It becomes more specific, self-education appears.

Age crises are special, relatively short in time (up to a year) periods of ontogeny, characterized by sharp mental changes. They refer to the normative processes necessary for the normal progressive course of personal development (Erickson).

The form and duration of these periods, as well as the severity of the flow, depend on individual characteristics, social and microsocial conditions. In developmental psychology, there is no consensus about crises, their place and role in mental development. Some psychologists believe that development should be harmonious, crisis-free. Crises are an abnormal, “painful” phenomenon, the result of improper upbringing. Another part of psychologists argues that the presence of crises in development is natural. Moreover, according to some ideas in developmental psychology, a child who has not truly experienced a crisis will not fully develop further. Bozhovich, Polivanova, Gail Sheehy addressed this topic.

L.S. Vygotsky considers the dynamics of transitions from one age to another. At different stages, changes in the child's psyche can occur slowly and gradually, or they can happen quickly and abruptly. Stable and crisis stages of development are distinguished, their alternation is the law of child development. A stable period is characterized by a smooth course of the development process, without sharp shifts and changes in the Personality of the r-ka. Long in duration. Insignificant, minimal changes accumulate and at the end of the period give a qualitative leap in development: age-related neoplasms appear, stable, fixed in the structure of the Personality.

Crises do not last long, a few months, under unfavorable circumstances stretching up to a year or even two years. These are brief but turbulent stages. Significant shifts in development, the child changes dramatically in many of its features. Development can take on a catastrophic character at this time. The crisis begins and ends imperceptibly, its boundaries are blurred, indistinct. The aggravation occurs in the middle of the period. For the people around the child, it is associated with a change in behavior, the appearance of "difficulty in education". The child is out of control of adults. Affective outbursts, whims, conflicts with loved ones. Schoolchildren's working capacity decreases, interest in classes weakens, academic performance decreases, sometimes painful experiences and internal conflicts arise.

In a crisis, development acquires a negative character: what was formed at the previous stage disintegrates, disappears. But something new is also being created. Neoplasms turn out to be unstable and in the next stable period they transform, are absorbed by other neoplasms, dissolve in them, and thus die off.

D.B. Elkonin developed the ideas of L.S. Vygotsky on child development. “A child approaches each point in his development with a certain discrepancy between what he has learned from the system of relations man - man, and what he has learned from the system of relations man - object. It is precisely the moments when this discrepancy takes on the greatest magnitude that are called crises, after which the development of the side that lagged behind in the previous period takes place. But each of the parties is preparing the development of the other.

neonatal crisis. Associated with a sharp change in living conditions. A child from comfortable habitual conditions of life gets into difficult ones (new nutrition, breathing). Adaptation of the child to new conditions of life.

Crisis 1 year. It is associated with an increase in the child's capabilities and the emergence of new needs. A surge of independence, the emergence of affective reactions. Affective outbursts as a reaction to misunderstanding on the part of adults. The main acquisition of the transitional period is a kind of children's speech, called L.S. Vygotsky autonomous. It is significantly different from adult speech and in sound form. Words become ambiguous and situational.

Crisis 3 years. The border between early and preschool age is one of the most difficult moments in a child's life. This is destruction, a revision of the old system of social relations, a crisis in the allocation of one's "I", according to D.B. Elkonin. The child, separating from adults, tries to establish new, deeper relationships with them. The appearance of the phenomenon “I myself”, according to Vygotsky, is a new formation “the external I myself”. "The child is trying to establish new forms of relationship with others - a crisis of social relations."

L.S. Vygotsky describes 7 characteristics of a 3-year crisis. Negativism is a negative reaction not to the action itself, which he refuses to perform, but to the demand or request of an adult. The main motive for action is to do the opposite.

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

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

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

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

The crisis of 3 years is associated with the awareness of oneself as an active subject in the world of objects, the child for the first time can act contrary to his desires.

Crisis 7 years. It may start at age 7, or it may shift to 6 or 8 years. The discovery of the meaning of a new social position - the position of a schoolchild associated with the implementation of highly valued by adults educational work. The formation of an appropriate internal position radically changes his self-awareness. According to L.I. Bozovic is the period of the birth of social. "I" of the child. A change in self-consciousness leads to a reassessment of values. There are profound changes in terms of experiences - stable affective complexes. It appears that L.S. Vygotsky calls the generalization of experiences. A chain of failures or successes (in school, in broad communication), each time experienced by the child in approximately the same way, leads to the formation of a stable affective complex - a feeling of inferiority, humiliation, hurt pride or a sense of self-worth, competence, exclusivity. Thanks to the generalization of experiences, the logic of feelings appears. Experiences acquire a new meaning, connections are established between them, the struggle of experiences becomes possible.

This gives rise to the inner life of the child. The beginning of the differentiation of the external and internal life of the child is associated with a change in the structure of his behavior. A semantic orienting basis of an act appears - a link between the desire to do something and the unfolding actions. This is an intellectual moment that makes it possible to more or less adequately assess the future act in terms of its results and more distant consequences. Semantic orientation in one's own actions becomes an important aspect of inner life. At the same time, it excludes the impulsiveness and immediacy of the child's behavior. Thanks to this mechanism, the childish spontaneity is lost; the child thinks before acting, begins to hide his feelings and hesitations, tries not to show others that he is ill.

A purely crisis manifestation of the differentiation of the external and internal life of children usually becomes antics, mannerisms, artificial stiffness of behavior. These external features, as well as the tendency to whims, affective reactions, conflicts, begin to disappear when the child emerges from the crisis and enters a new age.

Neoplasm - arbitrariness and awareness of mental processes and their intellectualization.

Pubertal crisis (11 to 15 years old) associated with the restructuring of the child's body - puberty. The activation and complex interaction of growth hormones and sex hormones cause intense physical and physiological development. Secondary sexual characteristics appear. Adolescence is sometimes referred to as a protracted crisis. In connection with the rapid development, difficulties arise in the functioning of the heart, lungs, blood supply to the brain. In adolescence, the emotional background becomes uneven, unstable.

Emotional instability enhances the sexual arousal that accompanies puberty.

Gender identity reaches a new, higher level. Orientation to models of masculinity and femininity in behavior and manifestation of personal properties is clearly manifested.

Due to the rapid growth and restructuring of the body in adolescence, interest in one's appearance sharply increases. A new image of the physical "I" is being formed. Because of its hypertrophied significance, the child is acutely experiencing all the flaws in appearance, real and imaginary.

The image of the physical "I" and self-consciousness in general is influenced by the pace of puberty. Children with late maturation are in the least advantageous position; acceleration creates more favorable opportunities for personal development.

A sense of adulthood appears - a feeling of being an adult, the central neoplasm of younger adolescence. There is a passionate desire, if not to be, then at least to appear and be considered an adult. Defending his new rights, a teenager protects many areas of his life from the control of his parents and often comes into conflict with them. In addition to the desire for emancipation, a teenager has a strong need for communication with peers. Intimate-personal communication becomes the leading activity during this period. Adolescent friendships and association in informal groups appear. There are also bright, but usually successive hobbies.

Crisis 17 years (from 15 to 17 years). It arises exactly at the turn of the usual school and new adult life. It can move up to 15 years. At this time, the child is on the threshold of real adult life.

The majority of 17-year-old schoolchildren are oriented towards continuing their education, a few - towards job searches. The value of education is a great blessing, but at the same time, achieving the goal is difficult, and at the end of the 11th grade, emotional stress can increase dramatically.

For those who have been going through a crisis for 17 years, various fears are characteristic. Responsibility to yourself and your family for the choice, real achievements at this time is already a big burden. To this is added the fear of a new life, of the possibility of error, of failure when entering a university, and for young men, of the army. High anxiety and, against this background, pronounced fear can lead to neurotic reactions, such as fever before graduation or entrance exams, headaches, etc. An exacerbation of gastritis, neurodermatitis, or another chronic disease may begin.

A sharp change in lifestyle, inclusion in new activities, communication with new people cause significant tension. A new life situation requires adaptation to it. Two factors mainly help to adapt: ​​family support and self-confidence, a sense of competence.

Aspiration to the future. The period of stabilization of the Personality. At this time, a system of stable views on the world and one's place in it is formed - a worldview. Known associated with this youthful maximalism in assessments, passion in defending their point of view. Self-determination, professional and personal, becomes the central new formation of the period.

Crisis 30 years. Around the age of 30, sometimes a little later, most people experience a crisis. It is expressed in a change in ideas about one's life, sometimes in a complete loss of interest in what used to be the main thing in it, in some cases even in the destruction of the former way of life.

The crisis of 30 years arises due to the unrealized life plan. If at the same time there is a “reassessment of values” and a “revision of one's own Personality”, then we are talking about the fact that the life plan turned out to be wrong in general. If the life path is chosen correctly, then attachment “to a certain Activity, a certain way of life, certain values ​​and orientations” does not limit, but, on the contrary, develops his Personality.

The crisis of 30 years is often called the crisis of the meaning of life. It is with this period that the search for the meaning of existence is usually associated. This quest, like the whole crisis, marks the transition from youth to maturity.

The problem of meaning in all its variants, from private to global - the meaning of life - arises when the goal does not correspond to the motive, when its achievement does not lead to the achievement of the object of need, i.e. when the goal was set incorrectly. If we are talking about the meaning of life, then the general life goal turned out to be erroneous, i.e. life intention.

Some people in adulthood have another, “unscheduled” crisis, which does not coincide with the border of two stable periods of life, but arises within this period. This so-called crisis 40 years. It's like a repetition of the crisis of 30 years. It occurs when the crisis of 30 years has not led to a proper solution of existential problems.

A person is acutely experiencing dissatisfaction with his life, the discrepancy between life plans and their implementation. A.V. Tolstykh notes that a change in attitude on the part of colleagues at work is added to this: the time when one could be considered “promising”, “promising” is passing, and a person feels the need to “pay bills”.

In addition to the problems associated with professional activity, the crisis of 40 years is often caused by the aggravation of family relations. The loss of some close people, the loss of a very important common side of the life of spouses - direct participation in the lives of children, everyday care for them - contributes to the final understanding of the nature of marital relations. And if, apart from the children of the spouses, nothing significant connects both of them, the family may break up.

In the event of a crisis of 40 years, a person has to once again rebuild his life plan, develop a largely new “I-concept”. Serious changes in life can be associated with this crisis, up to a change in profession and the creation of a new family.

Retirement Crisis. First of all, the violation of the habitual regime and way of life has a negative effect, often combined with a sharp sense of contradiction between the remaining ability to work, the opportunity to be useful and their lack of demand. A person turns out to be, as it were, “thrown to the sidelines” of the current life without his active participation in the common life. The decline in one's social status, the loss of the life rhythm that has been preserved for decades, sometimes leads to a sharp deterioration in the general physical and mental state, and in some cases even to relatively quick death.

The crisis of retirement is often aggravated by the fact that around this time the second generation grows up and begins to live an independent life - grandchildren, which is especially painful for women who have devoted themselves mainly to the family.

Retirement, which often coincides with the acceleration of biological aging, is often associated with a worsening financial situation, sometimes a more secluded lifestyle. In addition, the crisis may be complicated by the death of a spouse, the loss of some close friends.

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Neonatal crisis. The neonatal crisis requires special methodological tools and techniques, sometimes beyond the psychological. Experimentation itself is difficult due to the rigidity (non-plasticity) of the behavioral forms of the newborn. In the Western tradition, the psychological study of the neonatal crisis is woven into other scientific fields - physiology, pathophysiology, etc. The approaches of domestic psychology are based on the ideas of cultural-historical and activity paradigms, on the general foundations of the theory of the genesis of communication.

L.S. Vygotsky singles out two essential moments that characterize the originality of the mental life of a newborn. The first is the predominance of undifferentiated, undifferentiated experiences, representing "as it were, an alloy of attraction, affect and sensation." The second - the psyche of the newborn "does not distinguish itself and its experiences from the perception of objective things, does not yet differentiate social and physical objects" . Analyzing the integrity and indivisibility of the child’s initial reactions, L.S. Vygotsky points out that “the law of structure or the allocation of figure and background is, apparently, the most primitive feature of mental life, which forms the starting point for the further development of consciousness” [ibid., With. 278]. As evidence of the transition to the next age period, a smile is named, which can be considered the first social reaction.

Further analysis of the first social reactions shows that the earliest mental manifestations of the child come from the affective sphere. A smile is a gesture addressed to another. It has an addressee, and on this basis, a social smile stands out from “gastric”, “autistic”, “reflex”. A smile, which marks the beginning of mental life itself, is one of the expressive-mimic means, i.e. considered as expressive, and in this sense expressive and addressed (to another).

The first smile arises against the background of general pleasure, but its psychological meaning is not limited to this. A smile and other expressive means “both arise and develop in the communication of a child with an adult and for the purposes of communication” (M Ch Lisina). Thus, emotional expressions perform two functions - both expressive and communicative (S.Yu. Meshcheryakova).

Smiling is usually preceded by eye contact between the child and the caretaker. Indeed, until about the third week of life, the child seems to others "looking inside himself." Can't catch his eye. By three weeks, the first eye contact, so pleasing to the parents, occurs: the child concentrates on the face of an adult for several seconds. Following this, after a week or two, the first smile appears.

In the works of Stern (D. Stern), devoted to the appearance of the first signs of mental life, the characteristics of the child's psyche recognized as innate in the first days and weeks of life are analyzed in detail. It is shown that development occurs along the line of dismemberment of integrity (patterns of stimulation), along the line of differentiation. In general, the logic of Stern's reasoning can be reconstructed as follows: from a holistic inseparability of perception to the separation of the opposition "I and the other (other)". An essential diagnostic sign (and, in this sense, an indicator of the emergence of mental life) is the emergence of reciprocity between the actions of an adult and the reactions of a child. (Reciprocity means reciprocity: the smile of an adult is the answer of a child, the smile of a child is the answer of an adult. Reciprocity indicates the coordination of the child's actions in relation to the actions of an adult or other environmental influences.)

This position is confirmed by many studies. For example, it was found that by the end of the first month, the child's gaze movements are localized at the border of a bright stimulus and the background (the border of a human face), by two months - in the area of ​​distinctive features inside the object (mainly in the area of ​​the eyes and mouth). At the same time, the intensity and duration of the examination itself increases. Thus, perception develops from grasping the general along its borders to analyzing the details within the object.

Comparing the positions of Vygotsky and his followers, on the one hand, and the work of Western researchers, on the other, we find that the beginning of a child’s mental life is described (with all the differences in approaches) as a moment of differentiation, isolation, and a kind of isolation.

The first days and weeks of a newborn's life are, as it were, an intermediate period between intrauterine and extrauterine life. The child is in a state of almost continuous drowsiness, retains the fetal position. But a lot changes by the month: “If we try to name the central and basic neoplasm of the neonatal period,” writes Vygotsky, “arising as a product of this peculiar stage of development and being the starting point for further development of the personality, we can say that such a neoplasm will be the individual mental life of the newborn. ". It is, as Vygotsky writes, an individual existence.

Crisis of one year. The crisis of one year also remains poorly understood. On the one hand, this crisis takes place in the family, does not manifest itself outside it in any educational institution, on the other hand, this crisis, according to the terminology of D.B. Elkonin, is among the “small ones”, it separates two periods of the same era - infancy and early age.

L.S. Vygotsky connects the crisis of one year with the emergence of autonomous speech and partly with the appearance of independent walking. In addition, special affective states are also distinguished - hypobulic reactions. According to Vygotsky, the emergence of autonomous children's speech leads to a change in the child's attitude to the environment, thereby bringing to life a new situation of development. "Speech plays the same role in relation to the child's social space as walking does in relation to the physical." However, Vygotsky points out that walking, appearing in one year, remains, improves, and autonomous speech disappears, being replaced by social speech. The fact that in this case we are dealing with a soon disappearing, “volatile” formation gives Vygotsky reason to single out autonomous speech as a key crisis neoplasm that characterizes the transition period. "The transitions that occur at critical ages, and in particular, autonomous children's speech, are infinitely interesting in that they represent areas of child development in which we see a naked dialectical pattern of development."

L.S. Vygotsky dates the beginning of the crisis of one year to 10 months: "... when ... the beginnings of further development of more complex forms of behavior are observed: the first use of tools and the use of words expressing desire." Prior to that, according to Vygotsky, the mental life of an infant is characterized by the dominance of affects, the most primitive in the underdevelopment of the rest of the mental apparatus. "We can say that the affect opens the process of mental development of the child ... and closes this process." By the end of the first year of life, we are confronted with the "affect of one's own personality, the first stage in the development of the child's will," which appears for the first time in a child. Thus, in describing the crisis of one year, Vygotsky singles out speech as the central neoplasm and points to dynamics in the area of ​​the affective sphere.

When describing the behavioral symptoms of a crisis of one year, hypobulic reactions are always indicated - bright emotional outbursts, manifested in the fact that the child, demanding what he wants, screams loudly, can throw himself on the floor, cry, stomp his feet. These reactions "are not differentiated according to will and affect." Hypobulic reactions are explained by the fact that with the emergence of autonomous speech, “difficulties in mutual understanding” appear.

The study of L.I. Bozhovich is also devoted to the analysis of the situation of development in one year, which is based on the clinical data of N.A. Menchinskaya and V.S. Mukhina. According to L.I. Bozhovich, in the first year of life, the child first of all presents “emotional components associated with the influences directly perceived by him” . The social situation of development in the first year of life is characterized by the fact that all needs are met by adults. As a result, the person (caretaker) becomes the center of every situation directly perceived by the child. Gradually, however, the needs begin to crystallize on objects in the environment, and these objects themselves acquire a motivating force.

The most important acquisition of the first year of life is the ability to act under the influence not only of directly perceived objects and situations, but also under the influence of images and ideas that pop up in memory. This leads to the fact that the child, prompted by an image that pops up in memory, persistently strives for the object of his need, discovering in these situations (the object of need remains out of reach) whims and other symptoms that fall under the definition of "hypobulic reaction". LI Bozhovich gives such affectively charged ideas the name "motivating ideas", believing them to be the central neoplasm of the first year of life. Their appearance fundamentally changes the relationship of the child with the surrounding reality, frees him from the dictates of external influences, i.e. turns him into a subject, although he is not yet aware of it. Further, L.I. Bozhovich concludes that the direct suppression of needs associated with motivating ideas “is the cause of the child’s frustration,” which causes all sorts of negative forms of behavior.

Crisis of three years. The crisis of three years in the concept of L.S. Vygotsky has been worked out in the most detail. The work “The Crisis of Three Years” is dedicated to him, in which the “seven-star symptoms” of this age transition are described.

The first symptom that L.S. Vygotsky draws attention to is negativism. This behavioral reaction consists in the fact that the child does not want to do something just because one of the adults suggests it. Negativism forces the child to act contrary to his affective desire.

The second symptom is stubbornness. Stubbornness, in contrast to persistence, consists in the fact that the child insists on something only because he demanded it. Compared with negativism, stubbornness is manifested in situations where the child himself initially made some demand.

The third symptom is obstinacy. Obstinacy is impersonal, it is directed rather at the whole situation of upbringing than at someone in particular. “Here comes the obstinate attitude towards the whole way of life that has developed before the age of three, in relation to the norms that are proposed, to the toys that were previously of interest.”

The fourth symptom is self-will. It lies in the "tendency towards independence." In contrast to the first three symptoms, self-will is not a protest, but rather, the desire for some action, object, situation.

The following three symptoms, according to the tears of L.S. Vygotsky, are of a secondary nature. This is a protest riot - the behavior begins to take on a protesting character; devaluation - for example, a negative attitude towards parents; despotism - the desire to exercise despotic power in relation to relatives.

In addition to these main symptoms, there are others, of a neurotic nature: possible enuresis, night terrors, sometimes severe difficulty in speech, hypobulic seizures. Having described all the seven main symptoms of children's behavior at the turn of early and preschool age, L.S. Vygotsky defines them as a whole as difficult to educate. Defining this concept, he speaks of changes in the social relations of the child with the closest adults. All symptoms, according to Vygotsky, revolve around the axis of "I" and the people around. All this makes us talk about "emancipation", about psychological separation from the closest adults.

Theoretically comprehending the data known from the literature and his own observations, L.S. Vygotsky draws the main conclusion: the specificity of behavior in a three-year-old crisis suggests that “a child motivates his actions not by the content of the situation itself, but by relationships with other people”: a three-year-old crisis it is “primarily a crisis of social relations; a series of actions arise, the motive of which is connected with the manifestation of the child's personality... the motive is differentiated from the situation” [ibid., pp. 375-376].

L.I. Bozhovich, considering the crisis of three years, connects it with the appearance of some systemic neoplasm, which is expressed in the emergence of the word "I". The dominant is the need for the realization and assertion of one's own self. The deprivation of this particular tendency causes the main difficulties in the behavior of children. After the emergence of the “I system”, as a result, other neoplasms arise, the most significant of which is self-esteem and the associated desire to meet the requirements of adults, to be “good”.

The appearance of self-esteem (the desire to be good) by the end of the third year of life leads to the complication of the child's inner life: on the one hand, there is a desire to act at one's own discretion, on the other hand, to meet the requirements of significant adults. This leads to the emergence of ambivalent behavioral tendencies.

According to L.I. Bozhovich, three years is an important milestone in the development of a child; The "self-system" includes some knowledge about the self. and attitude towards yourself. This is the true start of the development of self-awareness, which further at each age stage has specific features.

D. B. Elkonin in his work defines a neoplasm of an early age, taking shape at the age of three, - personal action and consciousness "I myself." Within the object-manipulative activity joint with the adult, the action of the child is a continuation of the situation of action. But by the age of three, there is a desire to act, to act at one's own discretion, to act contrary to the situation, contrary to the suggestion of an adult.

In his work Notes on the Development of Object Actions in Early Childhood, D. B. Elkonin writes: in the process of joint activity, “adults gradually pass on to the child the socially developed ways of using objects. In joint activities, adults organize the action of the child, and then carry out the functions of encouraging and controlling the course of the formation of these actions. In the process of mastering methods of action, a child of the second year of life, imitating the actions of adults, simultaneously emphasizes the correctness of his actions, pronouncing the word "So!". Based on the examples given by D.B. Elkonin, and on the basis of our own numerous observations, we can conclude that the child strives to as accurately as possible liken his action to the action of an adult. “The process of mastering an objective action is inextricably linked with the construction by the child himself of a model of this action, identical to the model that the adult is the bearer of (our italics. - K.L.).”

A child of an early age, mastering an objective action, goes through the stage of complete situational dependence of his own action. Performing the same action with different adults and in different situations, the child at first accurately reproduces not the action itself, but the whole situation, while the same action differs in its pattern depending on the situation in which it is included and with what it is carried out by adults. In the observations of D.B. Elkonin, this aspect is also present, but not accentuated. It can be further assumed that speech, the word becomes the means that allows you to identify and highlight the action as a single, cross-cutting for all situations of action.

Thus, at an early age, the child builds his action by assimilation to the action-model of an adult. By the age of three, when a child masters speech, his action is revealed to him as such, and not only as woven into the situation of joint activity with an adult. And there is a "personal action" and "I myself." A comparison of studies on objective actions and the crisis of three years suggests that D.B. Elkonin had in mind the differentiation of the initially integral situation of acting together with an adult, exactly according to the model presented by an adult; differentiation aimed at highlighting personal, “mine”, action.

The most detailed study of the crisis of three years was carried out by T.V. Guskova. Based on the analysis of domestic and foreign studies, it raises the main question of identifying the neoplasm of the crisis of three years as a constructive component of the age crisis, as opposed to describing the negative manifestations of this age transition.

T.V. Guskova focuses her attention on the crisis of development and distinguishes between an objective crisis (the appearance of a qualitatively new thing in the mental life of a child) and a subjective crisis (a general picture of symptoms accompanying an objective crisis). The crisis leads to the appearance of two of the most striking features in the child: vulnerability and unpredictability of behavior. By these external forms, one can judge the appearance of a new formation, which should collect in itself, connect three lines - attitudes towards objective reality, towards other people and towards oneself.

On the basis of these basic assumptions, T.V. Guskova distinguishes two “belts” of symptoms in the behavior of children: symptoms that are aimed at achieving in the subject-practical sphere, and symptoms that are concentrated around the relationship between the child and the adult.

The study of the symptoms of the crisis allows T.V. Guskova to introduce the idea of ​​the behavioral correlate of the central neoplasm of the crisis of three years - “pride in achievement”. In this definition, those characteristics that are given, in particular, by D.B. Elkonin (personal action), are “removed”, however, they are expanded and significantly enriched with factual material.

In the study by T.V. Guskova, for the first time, two methodological principles for studying critical ages were identified.

1. A provision has been introduced on changing the behavior of a child of critical age. With all the initial evidence of this requirement regarding the study of the behavioral picture of crises, it was T.V. Guskova who first introduced the principle of comparing the behavior of the same child in the same situations before the crisis (in the stable period) and at the time of the crisis. This makes her research embody L.S. Vygotsky’s idea of ​​relative difficulty in education: in a critical period, one cannot speak of some general external pattern of behavior, a child’s behavior can only be understood by comparing different forms of behavior in one child.

2. Analysis of habitual situations of action. The basis of clinical observation is situational analysis - a method in which the psychological ability, function is studied in relation to the conditions in which it arises or manifests itself.

So, by the age of three, the child isolates his own action as an essential moment of the situation, he has a personal action, the system “I myself” (D.B. Elkonin), “pride in achievement” (T.V. Guskova), “I system” (L.I. Bozhovich).

A.N. Leontiev, who defined personality as a special supersensible quality, as a hierarchy of motives, pays special attention to the first signs of a crisis of three years - the characteristic “I myself!”. “I myself,” says the child, and transforms the adult's mode of action into the content of his own action. This formula expresses the true essence of the psychological situation in which the child finds himself at the turn of this new stage of his development at the turn of preschool childhood. The essence of the analysis that A.N. Leontiev conducts in connection with this situation, new for the mental development of the child, lies in the discrepancy between the purpose of the action and its motive. The child wants to act independently, but the reality of his life makes this impossible. For the first time in a child's life, he has to act in a situation of separation of the motive (full participation in adult life) and the realized goal (play) of the action. This situation is the first step towards the formation of personality.

Crisis of seven years. L.S. Vygotsky in his work “The Crisis of Seven Years” highlights the symptoms of the crisis - mannerisms and antics. He points out that seven years is the age of "losing immediacy". The behavior of the child ceases to be direct, natural. He calls the reason for this the generalization of experiences - a special moment in development, leading to the retention of some experience, the "wedging" of the generalized experience into the child's behavior. The child's behavior ceases to be momentary, it is mediated by a generalized experience, in particular, by the idea of ​​one's own capabilities.

The works of L. I. Bozhovich and her collaborators - N. G. Morozova and L. S. Slavina were completed in the late 40s. Then there was a change in the age at which school began - from 8 to 7 years old, which raised the issue of children's readiness for school with particular acuteness. The research was carried out in line with the general logic of work on the development of the child's personality, which developed L.S. Vygotsky's ideas about experiencing. According to L. I. Bozhovich, behind the experience lies the world of the child's needs - his aspirations, desires, intentions in their complex interweaving with each other and in their relationship with the possibilities of satisfaction. But in order to understand the experience, it is also necessary to introduce the concept of the place that the child occupies in the system of social relations accessible to him, and of his own internal position.

Work on the study of the specifics of school readiness was carried out based on these basic ideas - about the experience and internal position, while the age transition was interpreted as the formation of a new internal position - the position of the student.

In children at the end of the 7th - beginning of the 8th year of life, such a specific mental neoplasm as the position of a schoolboy was found. This neoplasm does not appear immediately. The following sequence was found: at the age of 5-7 years, children begin to dream about school, at the same time “serious” affairs become attractive for them, children begin to get out of the kindergarten regime, and become burdened by the company of younger preschoolers. They have a need to acquire new knowledge, which can be implemented in teaching after entering school. But the following often happens: children who have already formed the position of a schoolboy, due to some circumstances, find themselves out of school for some time. Children discover a desire to go to school, striving to take a new position among others, preschool activities no longer satisfy them, they strive to recognize their new social position. However, the real position of the child before school in the family, the attitude towards him as a small one, causes protest. It is this situation that qualifies as a crisis.

Thus, the source of the crisis of development, according to L.I. Bozhovich, is the inconsistency of the new personal education - the position of the student - with the old system of relations characteristic of preschool childhood.

In the late 70s - early 80s, in connection with the transition to education from the age of six, a special interest arose in studying the psychological characteristics of children aged 6-7. Within the framework of the scientific school of D.B. Elkonin, ideas about the psychological specifics of this age period were expanded and refined, the motives for learning, the formation of the student’s position, features of self-esteem, regulation of the child’s actions by a model and rule, and features of the intellectual development of children were studied.

In continuation of the work on the study of the formation of the internal position of the student (L.I. Bozhovich, N.G. Morozova, L.S. Slavina), T.A. Nezhnova conducted a study of the formation of the position of the student as a process that goes through a number of regular stages. At the same time, it was assumed that the position of a schoolchild is a special system of needs associated with learning as a new socially significant activity. The study was conducted using the “conversation” technique (modified technique by L.I. Bozhovich and others). The children's answers to direct and indirect questions were compared in order to distinguish between the known (as an answer to a direct question) and the experienced (as an answer to a veiled indirect question) in the children's answers.

As a result, it was possible to identify the stages of formation of the student's position.
1. In the seventh year, children have a positive attitude towards school in the absence of orientation towards the meaningful moments of the school-educational reality. In fact, this position is still preschool, only transferred to school soil (the child wants to go to school, while striving to maintain a preschool lifestyle). The school attracts the child with its external accessories, he is interested in whether the school has a uniform, how they are evaluated, what are the rules of behavior at school.
2. At the next stage in the development of the student's position, an orientation toward the meaningful moments of school reality appears, but first of all, the child singles out not the actual educational aspects of this reality, but the social ones.
3. At the third stage, the actual position of the student arises, it combines a social orientation and an orientation towards the educational components of school life. But children reach this stage (on average) only by the end of the eighth year of life.

The development of the motivational sphere of children 6-7 years old was studied by M.R. Ginzburg. In this study, the role of individual motives that prompt the child to go to school was clarified. Possible types of motivations were analyzed. Were allocated a) cognitive (learning) motive, ascending directly to the cognitive need; b) broad social motives based on the acceptance of the social necessity of teaching; c) "positional" motive associated with the desire to take a new position in relations with others; d) “external” motives in relation to the study itself, for example, obedience to the requirements of adults; e) a game motive, inadequately transferred to a new, educational, sphere; f) the motive for getting a high mark. The study was based on the principle of personification of the motive. In the short story told to the child, each of the characters explains their desire to go to school in different ways (according to one of the listed motives). The subject chose one of the motivations.

It was found that six-year-olds have a much higher motivating force of the game motive (often in combination with others, for example, social or positional). At the same time, under learning conditions (six-year-olds who attended school), this motive gives way to positional and then cognitive one much more slowly than in the preschool type of life of a six-year-old child. In fact, these data indicate that the transfer of a child to school up to a certain point is unfavorable for his development. Thus, the position that the timely transition to school life is the prevention of the crisis is called into question.

At the turn of preschool and primary school age, there is also a cardinal change in the child's self-esteem. So, E.Z. Vasina in a study of various aspects of the child's attitude to himself, conducted using the Dembo-Rubin-Stein methodology, revealed the dynamics of self-attitude. The study by E.Z. Vasina shows that by the age of six, a child is characterized by an unconditionally positive attitude towards himself, regardless of the specific area in relation to which he must evaluate himself (on all the “Dembo rulers”, the child marks his place among “all people” as the highest , regardless of what quality this line corresponds to). In addition, if you ask a child to mark the real and desired (ideal) state of his mind, beauty, etc., then both the real state and the ideal state are marked on the upper end of the ruler. The child does not yet distinguish between the existing level and the desired state.

By the age of seven, the child's answers change dramatically: firstly, the I-real and I-ideal differ in all possible areas; secondly, the real self occupies its position slightly above the middle of the scale, which corresponds to the usual responses of healthy adults. And, finally, thirdly, the I-ideal remains at the upper end of the scale, which in principle reflects some infantilism in the answers of seven-year-olds.

Thus, by the end of the transitional period from preschool to primary school age, the child develops a distinction between the real I and the ideal I, while the real I, in comparison with the values ​​characteristic of six-year-olds, sharply decreases.

E.D. Wenger studied various patterns of child behavior in relation to close and unfamiliar adults. It was found that around the beginning of the seventh year of life, children begin to distinguish between their behavior in situations with close and outside adults. Children of six years old, answering the question of what an unfamiliar adult who met by chance can tell them, they say that he can offer to play, call for dinner, etc., i.e., they believe that the stranger will behave like a peer friend or as a close adult. In their minds, such a partner of interaction as an unfamiliar adult is not represented. Later (on average at 6 years and 2 months), children, in response to the question posed, offer options that make it possible to judge that they expect other forms of behavior from an unfamiliar adult (in particular, appeals) than from a peer or close adults. For example, a child says that an adult will ask for a name, address, etc., i.e. detects the difference between situations of communication.

The works of M.I. Lisina and her collaborators are devoted to communication between a child and an adult as a condition for development. According to the concept of M.I. Lisina, by the age of seven, a child develops extra-situational-personal communication with an adult, which serves the purpose of cognizing the social, and not the objective world, the world of people, not things (1978).

The study by A. G. Ruzskaya shows that the growth of an interested attitude towards an outsider at the turn of preschool and primary school age leads to a convergence of indicators of the intensity and, to some extent, the content of communication with close and outside adults. Comparing the data of E.D. Wenger and A.G. Ruzskaya, we can conclude that the emergence of a new, in comparison with preschool age, scheme of interaction between a child and an outsider is associated with the emergence of a child’s idea of ​​a new “world” - the world of adults , the world of social relations, a world regulated by some norms other than those in a close environment. Arising after five years (A. G. Ruzskaya), the idea of ​​an outside adult acquires the features of a behavior pattern (E. D. Wenger). In the study by A.L. Wenger, devoted to the formation of the mediation of a child's actions by a rule, in contrast to following a visually given model, it is shown that it is at the turn of school age that an opportunity arises to retain and master a certain rule, and the role of the rule grows, the role of the visual model decreases.

We find the development of this line of analysis in the works of E.A. Bugrimenko. She considers the formation of a positional, objective vision to be specific for primary school age, which can only be represented in a reduced form as a rule-conformity, regulation of action by a rule. The emergence of positional vision is not instantaneous, it goes through a series of stages. The child turns out to be able not only to act in a certain position given by an adult, but also to distinguish actions as corresponding to a certain position and even to restore a position from a known action. In the experimental study, the features of the action and the conditions for its implementation were traced.

In this vein, the transition from preschool to school age can be understood as the moment when the arbitrariness of action arises. It is the arbitrariness that is supposed to be the integral characteristic of the transition.

Even in the works carried out within the framework of the scientific school of A. V. Zaporozhets, it was shown that in the role-playing game by the senior preschool age, the prerequisites for the formation of a child's voluntary behavior arise. Thus, it was found that by the age of seven, children are already able to maintain the “sentry posture,” regardless of the situation in which this task is given.

By the end of preschool age, the child develops the ability to act arbitrarily in relation to the conditions of action in terms of behavior (voluntariness of behavior) and in terms of solving intellectual problems (arbitrariness of mental activity, positional action). Traditionally, these characteristics are considered necessary conditions for school maturity (readiness for school). Thanks to the experimental data accumulated in domestic psychology, we can assert that the formation of these abilities is associated with the emergence of a complex series of dissections in the child's mind. An idea arises of a new, outsider adult, the ability to act freely in relation to the conditions for presenting a task (positional action), the ability to arbitrarily hold a task (voluntary motor action), to isolate its essential characteristics in a holistic attractive school reality (the formation of a student’s position), to distinguish between the I-real and I-ideal, etc.

But all these abilities do not arise at once, they go through a series of stages in their development. In general, the formation of arbitrariness and the loss of immediacy, which L.S. Vygotsky pointed out, are embodied in multidirectional processes of differentiation of almost all aspects of the child's mental life. According to Vygotsky, the generalization of experiences and the emergence of inner mental life are indicators of the completion of a critical age.

Studies of the period of 6-7 years were mainly carried out along the line of studying some individual mental functions and processes, but there were practically no "field" studies in which we could see a behavioral portrait of a child of a critical period. The only exception is a small work by M.G. Elagina. Analyzing the real behavior of children of 6-7 years old, M.E. Elagina calls a child of this age a “social functionary”. The child, as it were, plays a certain social role, the role of an adult. The child defiantly defends his new rights and tests his new possibilities in the presence of close adults in familiar situations of action. This, although scattered, information about the behavior of the child is extremely important. They draw attention to a certain stage in the development of the child, when something new is discovered by him for himself, which, perhaps, should be recognized as a proper characteristic of the critical age.

The child learns to divide objects into classes.

From the year the process of perception, knowledge of the surrounding world begins to actively develop. A child from one to two years old uses different options to perform the same action, and from one and a half to two years old he has the ability to solve a problem by guessing (insight), i.e. the child suddenly finds a solution to this problem, avoiding trial and error method.

Having learned to influence one object on another, he is able to foresee the outcome of the situation.

The child can distinguish different shapes and primary colors.

Thanks to the development of perception, by the end of an early age, the child begins to develop mental activity. This is expressed in the emergence of the ability to generalize, to transfer the experience gained from the initial conditions to new ones, to establish a connection between objects through experimentation, memorizing them and using them in solving problems.

In early childhood, the development of thinking continues, which gradually passes from the visual-active into the visual-figurative, that is, actions with material objects are replaced by actions with images. The internal development of thinking proceeds in this way: intellectual operations develop and concepts are formed.

Memory development. By the age of two, a child develops working memory. Light logical and thematic games are available to him, he can draw up an action plan for a short period of time, does not forget the goal set a few minutes ago.

From 11 months, the transition from pre-phonemic to phonemic speech and the formation of phonemic hearing begins, which ends by two years, when the child can distinguish words that differ from each other by one phoneme.

During the second year of life, the child begins to learn the verbal designation of surrounding objects, and then the names of adults, the names of toys, and only then - parts of the body, i.e. nouns, and by the age of two, with normal development, understands the meaning of almost all words related to the surrounding reality . This is facilitated by the development of the semantic function of children's speech, i.e., the definition of the meaning of the word, its differentiation, clarification and assignment to words of generalized meanings that are associated with them in the language. Up to 1.5 years, the child learns from 30 to 100 words, but rarely uses them. By the age of 2, he knows 300 words, and by 3 - 1200-1500 words.

Self-awareness develops in early childhood. The development of self-awareness will lead to the formation of self-esteem.

Children begin to develop empathy - understanding the emotional state of another person.