Unwritten letters of an infant child. Age-related psychology

18.06.2019

Course work

Discipline name:

Developmental psychology and developmental psychology

Infancy

Introduction

1.2 Leading activity

Conclusion

Glossary

Introduction

Child psychology, along with other sciences (pedagogy, physiology, pediatrics, etc.), studies the child, but has its own special subject, which is the development of the psyche throughout childhood, i.e. the first seven years of life.

Child psychology shows the mechanisms of the transition from one age stage to another, the distinctive features of each period and their psychological content.

Mental development cannot be viewed as a decrease or increase in any indicators, as a simple repetition of what happened before. Mental development presupposes the emergence of new qualities and functions and at the same time a change in the already existing forms of the psyche. That is, mental development acts as a process of not only quantitative, but primarily qualitative changes, interrelatedly occurring in the field of activity, personality and cognition.

Psychological development presupposes not only growth, but also transformations, in which quantitative complications turn into qualitative ones. And the new quality creates the basis for further quantitative changes.

The mental development of a child proceeds according to the patterns that exist in society, being determined by those forms of activity that are characteristic of a given level of development of society. The forms and levels of mental development are not given biologically, but socially. But the biological factor plays a certain role in mental development, it includes hereditary and congenital characteristics. The social environment acts not as an environment, not as a condition for development, but as its source, since it contains in advance everything that the child must master, both positive and negative.

psychomotor development child infant

The conditions for the assimilation of social experience are the active activity of the child and his communication with the adult.

The topic of my work is the study of the problems of crisis in mental development. This problem is considered on the example of the mental development of infants. In preparing the work, I studied the works of famous Soviet and Russian scientists, psychologists and physiologists: Ananiev B.G., Vygotsky L.S., Pavlov I.P., Orbeli L.A, Elkin D.B., as well as foreign scientists - Erickson E.

This topic is of scientific interest, since problems arising in the mental development of a particular person are laid down at the stage of his infancy. The resolution of these problems at an early stage of the formation of the human individual will make it possible to achieve a stable mental state in adulthood.

1. Mental development of a newborn, baby

The first year of a child's life can be divided into two periods: newborn and infancy. Newborn period is called the time interval when the child is physically separated from the mother, but physiologically connected with her, and lasts from birth until the appearance of the "revitalization complex" (at 4-6 weeks). Period of infancy lasts from 4-6 weeks to one year.

The newborn crisis is the birth process itself. Psychologists consider it a difficult and turning point in a child's life. The reasons for this crisis are as follows:

) physiological. A child, being born, is physically separated from the mother, which is already a trauma, and in addition to this, it falls into completely different conditions (cold, air, bright light, the need to change food);

) psychological. Separating from the mother, the child ceases to feel her warmth, which leads to feelings of insecurity and anxiety.

The psyche of a newborn child has a set of innate unconditioned reflexes that help him in the first hours of life. These include sucking, breathing, protective, orienting, grasping ("grasping") reflexes. The last reflex came to us from the ancestors of animals, but, being not particularly necessary, it soon disappears.

The neonatal crisis is an intermediate period between the intrauterine and extrauterine lifestyle. This period is characterized by the fact that at this age the child is mostly asleep. Therefore, if there were no adults nearby, he might die after a while. Adults surround him with care and satisfy all his needs: food, drink, warmth, communication, restful sleep, care, hygiene, etc.

A child is considered not adapted to life, not only because he cannot satisfy his needs, but also because he does not yet have a single formed behavioral act. Observing him, you will notice that even sucking the baby has to be taught. He also lacks thermoregulation, but the instinct of self-preservation is developed: having taken an intrauterine position, he reduces the area of heat exchange.

1.1 Mental development of the child during the neonatal period

During this period, the child is able to distinguish between salty, bitter, sweet tastes and respond to sound stimuli. However, the most important moment in his mental development is the emergence of auditory and visual concentration. Auditory withconcentration occurs in 2-3 weeks. The child freezes and becomes silent at a sharp sound, for example, a slamming door. In the third or fourth week, he already reacts to the voice of a person. It manifests itself as follows: he not only freezes, but also turns his head towards its source. Visual concentration appears in the third to fifth week. It happens like this: the child freezes and briefly holds his gaze on a bright object that has come into his field of vision.

Consider the development of perception. By one year, there is such a property of perception as objectivity. Objectivity is the correlation of one's sensations and images with objects of the surrounding reality. The child can distinguish between timbre, loudness and pitch, he develops the ability to memorize and store images in their primary forms. Up to three to four months of age, he can store the image of a perceived object for no more than one second, later the preservation time increases, and gradually the baby will begin to recognize his mother at any time. At 8-12 months, he begins to highlight objects in the visual field, and not only as a whole, but also in parts.

At the age of three months, the perception of the shape and size of an object begins simultaneously with the formation of grasping movements. Further development of perception begins from the moment the object moves in space.

When studying the visual perception of children, it was found that objects located close to each other are perceived by the child as a whole. For example, taking a tower made of cubes by the top, the child wonders why not the whole tower, but only a part of it, was in his hands. A baby can try to take a flower from a mother's dress for a long time, not realizing that it is drawn.

As a result of observations of children, it was found that when they perceive objects, they are first guided by their shape, then by size, and only then by color (at the age of about 2 years).

Infants have a highly developed cognitive interest. They can look at objects for a long time, highlighting contours, contrasts, simple forms in them, moving from horizontal to vertical elements of the picture, paying special attention to color. They also have a pronounced tentative-research reaction to everything new.

In the first year of a child's life, memory is actively developing. All its genetic types develop: emotional, motor, figurative, verbal. Emotional memory helps him to navigate in reality, fixing attention and directing the senses to the most important emotionally objects. Motor memory appears at 7-9 weeks. The child can repeat any movement, gestures characteristic of him appear. Then, babies begin to develop imaginative memory. If at 4 months he can simply recognize the object, then at 8-9 months he is able to reproduce it from memory. If a child is asked where a certain object is, he begins to actively search for it, moving his gaze, turning his head, torso. The development of figurative memory affects his communication and the formation of the motivational sphere. When a child learns to recognize, he begins to divide adults into pleasant and unpleasant. He smiles pleasantly, and when he sees unpleasant ones, he shows negative emotions. Verbal memory begins to develop from 3-4 months, when the child begins to recognize the mother's voice. Then from 6 months he can correctly indicate the named object or find it if it is out of sight.

The development of reproduction leads to the appearance of the first motives. They contribute to the formation of his personality and the development of independence from others. Incentives and motives appear that begin to direct the child's activity.

At this age, the development of the infant's thinking takes place. So far, this is visual-active thinking, which is expressed in manipulative movements of the hands and the formation of operational structures. As a rule, the longer a child looks at a toy, the more different qualities he discovers in it, the higher his intellectual level.

Speech develops up to one month, passive speech is noted: the child simply listens and distinguishes sounds. At the age of about one month, he begins to pronounce simple sounds, for example, ah, oo, uh, uh. By the end of the first - the beginning of the second month of life, the child develops special attention to speech, called auditory concentration. Then, at 2-4 months, humming occurs, and at 4-6 months - humming, repetition of simple syllables. At 4 months old, the baby distinguishes between the speech of adults by intonation, which indicates the ability to use speech as a means of emotional communication. From 6 months, babbling is noted, in which you can distinguish some repetitive sound combinations, mainly associated with the actions of the child. He also focuses on the emotional tone, the nature of the statement and the rhythm. At 9-10 months, the baby pronounces the first words. By the end of the first year of life, he understands 10-20 words pronounced by adults.

L.S. Vygotsky called the speech of an infant autonomous, since it differs greatly from the speech of an adult, although in its sound it sometimes resembles "adult" words.

At this age, the child's psyche is developing. E. Erickson believed that in infancy, a feeling of trust or distrust in the world is formed, i.e. closeness or openness to the outside world. The main role in the emergence of this feeling is played by the parents, in particular the mother. It is this feeling that will subsequently help children adapt in the world around them, establish contacts with people and believe in the best.

This opinion was shared by the English psychologist and psychiatrist D. Bowlby, the author of the so-called "attachment theory". He believed that the close emotional bond established between the child and the mother from the first days of his life, forms in the infant a sense of security and safety. If the establishment of this connection is violated, then problems may arise in the mental development of the child, primarily in the structure of his personality. In order for him to have no problems in the future, in the first years of his life it is necessary to give children warmth and affection, which, according to D. Bowlby, are more important than any proper care and education for him.

These changes in the development of the child lead to the emergence of a critical period, which is accompanied by stubbornness, aggression, negativism, resentment. These qualities are not stable and disappear with the end of the crisis.

The crisis of one year occurs at the junction of two periods: the end of infancy and the beginning of early childhood. This crisis is accompanied by external manifestations and internal reasons. External manifestations are as follows: when an adult prohibits the child or does not understand him, he begins to worry, scream, cry, tries to show independence, and even affective states may arise. Internal reasons crises are as follows: there are growing contradictions between the needs for cognition of the surrounding world and the capabilities that the child possesses.

The essence of the crisis in the first year of life is that the child begins to feel more independent. The social situation of the fusion of a child with an adult disappears, two appear: a child and an adult. And this is justified, because the child begins to speak, walk, actions with objects develop. But his capabilities are still limited, because, firstly, the child's speech is autonomous, and secondly, the adult helps him in the implementation of any action. This is clearly expressed in the construction of objects that the child manipulates. D.B. Elkonin pointed out that the child must be revealed the social way of using objects. It is impossible to show this to a baby, so an adult has to construct objects himself.

1.2 Leading activity

The leading activity in infancy is emotional and personal communication. with adults, i.e. with those who mainly care for the baby: mother, father, grandmother, grandfather or other adult. A child cannot do without the help of an adult, since at this age he is weak and completely helpless. He is not able to satisfy any of his needs on his own: he is fed, bathed, dressed in dry and clean, moved in space (picked up and walked around the room, taken out for a walk, etc.), monitored his health and, which is very important, they just communicate with him - they talk. The need for communication arises in a child in 1-2 months. A revitalization complex that appears at the sight of a mother or another adult caring for a child indicates the emergence of a need for communication, which is necessary completely satisfy, since with positive emotional communication with an adult, the child develops increased activity, a joyful mood arises, which contributes to the development of his movements, perception, thinking and speech.

A child who is deprived of full-fledged communication with an adult (is alone in a hospital for treatment, placed in an orphanage, etc.) has a mental retardation. This is manifested in the following: the child has a meaningless and indifferent gaze directed upward, he moves little, lethargic, apathetic, does not feel interest in his surroundings. All this leads to a delay in physical development and late appearance of speech. Therefore, we must remember the following: in order for a child both psychologically and physically to develop normally, it is necessary not only to properly care for him, but also to communicate.

1.3 Neoplasm of infancy

Neoplasms of infancy are grasping, walking and the first word (speech). Let's consider each act in more detail.

Grabbing is the first organized action that occurs at about 5 months. It is organized by an adult and is born as a joint activity of an adult and a child. In order for grasping to occur, the baby's hand must turn into an organ of touch, in other words, “open”. The fact is that the baby's hand is clenched into a fist, so only when he can unclench it, the act of grasping will occur. The behavior of the child is very interesting: he looks at his hands, watches how the hand approaches the object.

This act gives him the opportunity to expand the possibilities of manipulation with objects: at the age of 4 to 7 months, the child begins to move objects, move, make sounds from them; at 7-10 months, correlated actions are formed, i.e. he manipulates two objects at once, moving them away from himself and correlating them with each other (he takes the object away from himself and brings it closer to another in order to put, put, string on it). From 10-11 to 14 months, the stage of functional actions begins: the child performs more perfect actions of stringing, opening, nesting, manipulating with all possible objects.

The act of grasping is of great importance for the development of object perception. The image of an object arises when there is a practical, effective contact between the image and the object. Thanks to grasping, the child begins to develop a sense of space, since in order to grab an object, one has to stretch out his hand. The space that appears in a child is the space of an outstretched arm. In addition, to grab an object, you must open your fist, which leads to the development of the hand.

The desire to reach the object and take it (grab) stimulates the sitting process, which, in turn, opens the world of other objects to the child. Objects appear that are impossible to reach, they can only be obtained with the help of adults. Therefore, a new type of communication arises between a child and an adult - communication that arises as a result of the child's desire to master an object that is currently inaccessible to him. M.I. Lisina called this communication situational-business .

With the change in communication, the way of influencing adults also changes: a pointing gesture appears . Regarding this gesture, L.S. Vygotsky wrote: “At first, the pointing gesture is simply a failed grasping movement directed at an object and indicating an upcoming action. The child tries to grab an object standing too far away, his hands, stretched out to the object, remain hanging in the air, his fingers make pointing movements. initial for further development. There is a movement that objectively indicates an object, and only. When the mother comes to the child's aid and interprets his movement as an indication, the situation changes significantly. The pointing gesture becomes a gesture for others. " The stages of development of grasping and movements of the infant are given in Appendix A

By the age of 9 months, the baby begins to walk. D.B. Elkonin considered the main thing in the act of walking, firstly, to expand the child's space, and secondly, that the child separates himself from the adult, and it is no longer the mother who leads him, but he leads the mother. This indicates a break in the old developmental situation.

The appearance of the first word (speech) is another neoplasm of this age. Speech is situational, autonomous, emotionally colored, understandable only to relatives, is specific in its structure and consists of scraps of words. Such speech is called "the language of nannies". Nevertheless, this speech is a new quality that can serve as a criterion for the fact that the old social situation of the child's development has exhausted itself and a different content has arisen between the adult and the child - objective activity.

2. Age patterns of psychomotor development of a child from birth to three years

The psychomotor development of a young child depends on many factors, primarily on the hereditary characteristics of the body, general health, gender, and environment. The sequence of psychomotor development is closely related to the stages of brain maturation and the increasingly complex conditions of the baby's interaction with the environment. In addition, development in early and preschool age is uneven, therefore, its assessment always requires dynamic observation.

The slowed down rate of age-related development can relate to one or several functions, be noted at one or several stages, be combined or not combined with various neurological disorders. Therefore, assessing the development of a child at an early age requires a professional approach.

Teachers and parents need to know the timing of the normal psychomotor development of the child in order to take a closer look at the baby, to create the most favorable conditions for its development.

One should be very careful in assessing the delay in psychomotor development in a premature or low-birth-weight child. If the temporal parameters of its development are in accordance with the degree of its prematurity and tend to normalize, this is a good prognostic sign, especially if, during a neurological examination, the doctor does not notice any abnormalities in the nervous system.

Assessment of the level of psychomotor development of a child in early preschool age should always be differentiated, taking into account the peculiarities of the development of general motor skills, fine motor skills of the hands, hand-eye coordination, perception, cognitive functions and speech. In addition, it is important to assess the characteristics of social and emotional development.

The psychomotor development of a child is characterized by a transition from one qualitative state to another, higher, which is associated with the development of the functions of the central nervous system.

There are several stages of early mental development of a child:

infant - from birth to one year;

preschool - from 1 year to 3 years

preschool - from 3 to 7 years old;

junior school - from 7 to 12 years old.

The periodization of a child's development is viewed as a gradual transition from one qualitative state to another, higher one.

It is assumed that at each level of development, specific features of the neuropsychic response prevail. These features of the response determine the age specificity of neuropsychic disorders in children.

Let's take a closer look at the first two stages of a child's development: infant and preschool.

In infancy (from birth to one year), it is important, first of all, to establish a close emotional interaction between the mother and the child. It is in the process of this communication that the foundations of all mental activity of the baby are formed.

The dynamics of psychomotor development in the first years of life depends on many factors, primarily on the hereditary characteristics of the organism, general health, gender, and the environment. In addition, development at an early age is uneven, so its assessment always requires dynamic observation.

In the first year of life, the child's brain has the highest rate of its development: by the end of the first year of life, a helpless newborn masters upright standing, walking, object-manipulative activity, an initial understanding of the speech addressed to him, in addition, he begins to utter the first babbling words and relate them to persons and objects. It was during this period that speech began to form as a means of communication. The first year of life is very important in the mental development of a child. It is in the first year of life that the prerequisites for the further education of the child are formed.

In the psychomotor development of a child of the first year of life, several periods are distinguished. Already in the first period - the neonatal period - in the first month of life, by 3-4 weeks, the first prerequisites for the so-called communicative behavior appear: oral attention, when the baby freezes to the gentle voice and smile of an adult, pulling his lips slightly forward, he seems to be listening with his lips. In addition, already during the neonatal period, the baby reacts faster to a voice than to a sounding toy.

In the first months of life, the baby's eyesight and hearing intensively develop: visual and auditory concentration, visual fixation and object tracking appear. By the age of 3 months, the child has already clearly expressed an emotional and expressive reaction to communication - a revitalization complex. The complex of revitalization is manifested in the fact that the child focuses his gaze on the face of the adult communicating with him, smiles at him, actively moves his arms and legs and makes quiet sounds. The emergence of a revitalization complex defines, as it were, the line between the neonatal period and infancy. Emotionally positive attitude of a child to an adult develops intensively during infancy: a smile appears, then laughter, by 4 - 5 months, communication between a child and an adult becomes selective. The child gradually begins to distinguish his own from others. By the age of 6 months, the child already clearly identifies the mother or the adult caring for him, examines the surrounding objects and people.

In the process of communicating with an adult, the child develops the prerequisites for mastering speech. In the presence of an adult, the child walks more actively, and then babbles; from the second half of his life he begins to imitate the syllables pronounced by adults.

Emotionally positive communication between an adult and an infant forms his communicative need and stimulates the development of speech.

By the end of the first half of the child's life, along with communicative behavior, sensory functions are intensively developing. First of all, the nature of visual tracking changes: if in the first months of life the baby followed the object without taking his eyes off, and having lost the object from the field of view, did not return to it again, then after 5 months the child, following the object, as if examines it, feels with a glance. If, at the same time, the child's attention is switched to another object or the face of an adult, then after a very short time he can return to the interrupted activity. The appearance of this function is an important indicator of the normal neuropsychic development of the child.

By the beginning of the second half of life, the visual analyzer begins to play an increasing role in the development of hand movements. According to N.L. Figurina and M.P. Denisova, the development of visual-motor coordination (eye - hand) ends with an act of grasping followed by holding the object. By the age of 6 months, the child quickly and accurately directs his hand to a toy in his field of vision. The toy becomes a means of communication and mental development of the child.

After the formation of the act of grasping, the development of movements passes into a new phase. According to N.L. Figurina and M.P. Denisova, the essence of this phase lies in the emergence and intensive development of various repetitive movements. The development of repeated movements begins with patting on an object, then the child begins to swing it, shift it from one hand to another, repeatedly push the object hanging over it, hit one object against another, etc.

G.L. Rosengart-Pupko points out that in the same period, active consideration of the toy that the child holds in his hands appears. Consideration of an object associated with manipulation consists in the fact that the child (of course, in addition to any deliberate desire) puts the object in more and more new positions and continues to remain focused until the possibilities of novelty are exhausted. The same holds true for repetitive movements, be it tapping on an object or tapping a rattle. Each time a new position of the object and a new, sometimes intensifying, then fading sound prompts the child to action and maintains a relatively long-term manipulation.

According to D.B. Elkonin, the actions of a child in the first year of life can be characterized as follows:

Manipulative actions appear when all the prerequisites for this arise: concentration, tracking, groping, listening, etc., developing in the first half of life, as well as coordinated movements regulated from the side of vision.

In connection with the formation of active grasping movements, the orientation-research activity of the child passes into a new form. Orientation towards the new, developing throughout the entire second half of life, is already a form of behavior, and not a simple reaction.

The new not only initiates the child's activity in relation to the subject, but also supports it. The actions of a child of the first year of life are prompted by the novelty of objects that open in the course of manipulating them. Exhaustion of the possibilities of novelty leads to the cessation of actions with the object.

Thus, Manipulative actions are elementary exercises in operating with a thing, in which the nature of the operations is specially set by the structure of the object. From this primary manipulative activity, various other types of activity arise, differentiating.

These are, first of all, objective activity, in which the mastery of socially developed actions with objects takes place, and "research", in which the child seeks new things in objects.

Subject activity is leading in the preschool (early) age (from 1 year to 3 years). The kid begins to use the objects around him correctly and for the intended purpose. On a personal level, he develops a will, a desire for independence, creative activity, and cognitive interest. Independent movement, active interaction with objects and toys contribute to the further development of sensory functions.

The most intensively developing function in preschool age is speech. By the age of 3, the child communicates with the surrounding detailed phrases. Its active vocabulary is expanding significantly. The child constantly comments on his actions, begins to ask questions.

The intensive development of speech at this age stage changes all mental processes of the child. Speech becomes the leading means of communication and the development of thinking.

By the age of 2, the so-called regulatory function of speech begins to develop, i.e. the child more and more begins to subordinate his actions to the verbal instructions of the adult. However, only in the third year of life, speech regulation of behavior becomes more constant. There is an intensive development of understanding of speech. The child not only sharply increases the number of words he understands, but he begins to act with objects according to the instructions of an adult, he develops an interest in listening to fairy tales, stories and poems, i.e. understanding of speech begins to go beyond the immediate situation of communication.

The rate of speech development in preschool age is very high. So, if by the end of the second year the child uses up to 300 words, then by the beginning of the third year their number increases sharply, reaching 1000-1500 words by the end of the third year. At the same time, the articulation of sounds is still far from perfect: many sounds are omitted or replaced by similar ones in articulation or sound. When pronouncing words, a child, first of all, is guided by their intonation and melodic characteristics.

An indicator of the normal development of children's speech at this age stage is the child's ability to build sentences of 3-4 words or more by the age of 3 and use familiar words in several grammatical forms. Many authors note the great dynamism of this process in children with normal speech development.

Early childhood is the period of formation of the actual object-related actions, the period of assimilation of socially developed ways of using objects.

Getting acquainted with objects and mastering them, the baby distinguishes their different signs, properties, which means that his perception also develops. He remembers objects, their signs, names - memory, speech develops. Trying to understand how to act with objects, the baby thinks, practically acting. At the same time, the development of small muscles, hand movements affects the development of his speech, intelligence.

Thus, the mental and physical development of a young child occurs in objective activity. Its content is the child's assimilation of the ways of using objects. Mastering it affects the development of other types of activity. After all, objective activity is the basis, the fontanel, from which play, labor, visual activity, etc. originate.

According to the research of F.R. Dunaevsky, every child, before he begins to perform certain actions, first gets acquainted with the object - examines, feels it, manipulates it, as if figuring out the possibilities that it provides for action.

D.B. Elkonin identifies the following stages in the development of objective action. At first, these are Manipulative actions (feeling, patting, pulling in the mouth, throwing, knocking, etc.). Then the productive ones (moved the toy from place to place, moved it). Then the actual object actions appear, which the kid performs in accordance with the purpose of the objects (he puts a cube on a cube, collects a pyramid, etc.). Later, tool actions appear, that is, the child uses objects as tools, with their help he acts on other objects (takes food with a spoon, combes a doll with a comb, etc.). Thus, the actions are gradually getting more complicated.

Thus, all development and communication with a young child should be built taking into account the leading type of activity of this period - objective activity.

From all of the above, we can conclude that early childhood is a period of formation of the primary forms of visual-active thinking that arise in the process of replacing manual operations with tools, as a result of the child's assimilation of social ways of using things, i.e. objective actions.

Conclusion

The part of child psychology that deals with the study of children in the first year of life (the psychology of infancy) is still very young. Until the beginning of the 20th century, the knowledge of psychologists about the baby was limited to everyday observations, was scattered and very few. The infant was treated as a future, but not a real person, as a being, ripening outside the mother's womb and leading a vegetable rather than a mental life. There were methodological difficulties in the study of children in the first year of life. Few facts have always been interpreted in the context of any particular scientific approach.

However, the role of an adult is not limited to caring for a child and creating favorable conditions for the development of perception. The studies of many psychologists (MI Lisin, LI Bozhovich, E. Erickson, A. Adler, A. Freud, J. Bowlby and others) have proved the importance of the child's mental development.

The child begins to learn from the moment of birth, when he gets into the social environment and the adult organizes his life and influences the baby with the help of objects created by mankind. Upbringing also begins immediately after the birth of a baby, when an adult, by his attitude towards him, lays the foundations for his personal development. I would also like to add that, choosing the profession of a child psychologist, a person takes on a great responsibility, since he deals with the child's psyche, and it has not yet formed, and the main thing here is to help the child correctly, and not to break it.

Glossary

Autonomous speech: words that phonetically do not coincide with the speech of an adult

Unconditioned reflexes: hereditarily fixed mechanisms

Revitalization complex: the child's emotional reaction to the appearance of an adult, expressed in head turning, humming, motor reaction

Crisis in the 1st year of life: a turning point in the life of a child, characterized by the formation of walking, the presence of a latent period in the formation of the child's speech, the manifestation of affects and will.

Thinking: an important stage of human cognition, it allows you to gain knowledge about objects, properties and relationships of the real world that cannot be directly perceived at the sensory level of cognition

Newborn: Infant from birth to four weeks of age. This period of a child's life is also called neonatal. Depending on the duration of pregnancy at the time of birth, a distinction is made between full-term, premature and post-term newborns.

Psyche: a special form of reflection by the subject of the environment

Early childhood: this is the period of formation of the actual object-related actions, the period of assimilation of socially developed ways of using objects.

Conditioned reflexes: the child's reactions that occur when a number of different actions are repeated

Objectivity: this is the correlation of one's sensations and images with objects of the surrounding reality.

Grasping: This is the first organized action that occurs at about 5 months.

List of sources used

1.Ananiev B.G. On the problems of modern human science. - SPb .: Peter, 2001., 544s.

2.Ananiev B.G. Man as a subject of knowledge. - SPb .: Peter, 2001., 288s.

.Ananiev B.G. Psychology and problems of human science. - M .: MODEK, 2005., 431s.

.Ananiev B.G. Personality, subject of activity, individuality. - M .: Direct-Media, 2008., 134s.

.Vygotsky L.S. Age problems. - Vygotsky L.S. Collected Works. In 6 volumes. Vol.4. - M .: Pedagogy, 1984 .-- p. 244 - 268.

.Vygotsky L.S. Questions of child psychology. - SPB .: 1997., 224s.

.Vygotsky L.S. Lectures on psychology. - SPb .: 1997., 144s.

.Lisina M.I. Formation of the child's personality in communication. - SPB .: Peter, 2009 .-- p. 320

.Elkonin D.B. Selected psychological works. - M .: Pedagogika, 1989 .-- p. 560.

.Elkonin D.B., Child Psychology. 3rd ed. - M .: Academy, 2006. - p. 384.

.Erickson E. Childhood and Society. Per. from English - SPb .: LENATO, AST, University Book Foundation. - 1996., 59

Appendix A

Development of movements and actions

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In this article, we will look at the most important aspects of child development during infancy. In infancy, the child grows and develops intensively. If a child develops normally, then in the first year of life in growth, he adds about twenty-five centimeters, and his weight doubles. But in addition to physical development, the child's outlook and cognitive activity grows and expands. Below is a table for what age and which movements correspond

Time of appearance of movements	Motor development
	lifts the chin
	lifts the chest
	reaches for an object, but usually misses
	sitting with support
	grabs objects
	sitting without support
	sits down without assistance
	stands with support, crawls on his stomach
	crawls, leaning on hands and knees; walks with two hands
	stands without support
	walks with one hand

Due to the fact that the child learns new movements from month to month, he has great opportunities in knowing the world around him. In the cognitive development of a child, the development of perception and subtle movements of the hands are of great importance (this means working with fingers with small objects).

Perception.

Even at the neonatal stage, the child learns to focus his attention on objects. After the second month, the child can keep his attention on the object for up to seven to eight seconds, it also becomes possible to trace the movement of objects with his eyes. At about four months, the child actively reacts to what he sees: jerking his arms, legs, or making various sounds. Observations show that already in infancy, the child reacts to various details. For example, if he is shown a white sheet with a wide black stripe, then his eyes will stop at the border of black and white colors. And if he is shown two images: one in pastel colors, and the other in black and white (sharply contrasting), then his gaze will linger on the second image. It was also noticed that the baby is more interested not in rectilinear forms, but in curved ones. It can be assumed that already in infancy, children are able to navigate in various parameters of objects. Babies may show an interest in new objects if these objects differ in some way from those they have seen before. But attention lingers on new subjects for a short while. And if the object is very different from those previously seen, this can cause a feeling of anxiety, or crying in the child. The child perceives objects visually and can distinguish them by color or shape. Observations show that a child can react to color as early as three to four months. If you feed him from a bottle of one color, then he will definitely choose it from the bottles offered to him. Conditioned reflex connections contribute to the formation of such a reaction. Also, in infancy, the perception of space begins to develop. American psychologists conducted an experiment to study depth perception. The "cliff" experiment involves placing the child on a transparent table, under which were placed two boards at different levels. The multilevel arrangement of the boards, which were covered with fabric in a large cage, creates a feeling of depth, a cliff. And a small child, placed on this transparent surface, tactilely (that is, with his hands) feeling the table, crawls towards his mother quite calmly, not noticing the depth. Upon reaching the age of eight months, many children react negatively to the “breakage”. They begin to cry and avoid the experiment in every possible way. It is believed that a child in infancy perceives holistic objects, and not disparate elements and color spots. As a result of the perception of objects as a whole, the child creates generalized images of objects and a holistic picture of the world is formed in him. The various impressions that a child receives in childhood contribute to his cognitive development. Therefore, adults caring for a child must create conditions for satisfying the child's need for new experiences. The environment around him should not be monotonous, uninteresting. It is noticed that the cognitive development of an infant in monotonous conditions is somewhat slowed down in comparison with children living in an interesting environment and receiving a large number of new impressions. The life of a child must be emotionally colored.

Movement and action.

Now we will talk about the cognitive development of the child and we need to pay attention to the development of hand movements. At about the fourth month of life, the baby draws his hands to the object, feeling it. At five to six months, a child can already grasp an object, and this action requires complex coordination of visual and motor skills. This moment is very significant, since grabbing is the first purposeful action of the child, which is the basis for mastering the manipulation of objects. In the second half of the year, the movements of the hands and the corresponding actions are intensively developed. The child grabs objects, waves them, throws them, shifts them from place to place. The so-called “related” actions appear: the baby begins to put small objects into large ones, opens and closes the lids of jars and boxes. It is good at this age to offer the child either special pyramids from jars nesting into each other or plastic jars of creams of various sizes. Closer to the year, at about eleven months, the first functional actions appear. They imply the correct use of objects - children roll the car, not beat it on the drum. By the end of the year, the child learns better and better the world of human things and actions with them. Various manipulations with objects lead the child to discover new and new properties of the surrounding objects. The child, orienting himself in the surrounding reality, asks the question not only "What is this?", But also "What can be done with this?"

Perception and action.

Perception and action - in infancy is the basis of visual-action thinking. During the first year of life, cognitive tasks that can be solved by a child become more complicated. Solution of the simplest cognitive tasks in infancy. align = "left">

A child can find an object completely covered with a scarf

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The child searches for an object where he found it before, ignoring the place where this object was hidden before his eyes.

Age in months
		When an object is hidden in front of a child, no specific actions are observed
	The child follows with his gaze a moving object that moves behind the screen. Can learn to trace an object from one place to another.	The child continues to follow a moving object after it stops. Looks for an item in the same location when it sees it moving to a new location.
	The child no longer makes the mistakes that are typical for 2-4 months. He finds an object partially covered by a handkerchief.	The child cannot find an object that is completely covered with a scarf.

Memory.

In the process of a child's cognitive development, the activation of memory mechanisms is assumed, at first of its simplest types. The first step is recognition. Even in infancy, children can relate the information they receive to what they already have. If a child is given a new toy, then for some time he will look at it and the next day he can remember it. At about four months of age, a baby can tell the difference between a familiar face and a stranger. By the age of one, a child can already remember something, even if there is no similar object in front of him. In infancy, along with the development of cognitive processes, the development of the emotional sphere also occurs. Emotional development, like cognitive development, directly depends on communication with close adults. At about three to four months, the first emotional reactions appear in children: surprise in response to unexpectedness (the child can freeze, change his facial expression), anxiety (which is manifested by crying, increased heart rate, physical activity). After three to four months, the child smiles not only at his mother, but also at his acquaintances. Can be embarrassed in the presence of a stranger, but if the person is kind to the child, the alertness can be replaced by joy. Later, in the second half of the child's life, anxiety at the sight of strangers increases. Also, after six months, the so-called "fear of separation" appears. It manifests itself in fright or low mood if mom is not there for a long time. If we talk about the “fear of parting”, then it is exacerbated in the second year, somewhere from 15 to 18 months. But later, as the child grows up, it weakens. Actively communicating with adults, by the end of the first year of life, a child begins to use them to satisfy his needs: to get something from the shelf, to examine a high-hanging picture. That is, the child uses an adult to achieve his goals, since he himself is not yet able to do a lot. In addition to the development of the cognitive, emotional and motor spheres, speech development also occurs in infancy. In the first half of the year - this is humming and the formation of speech hearing. In the second, babbling occurs, in which you can hear individual repetitive sounds. Babbling is usually accompanied by active gestures. The child still cannot say much, so he helps himself with his hands. By the end of the first year of life, a child may have uttered one or more of the first words that are similar to adult speech. And as soon as the child begins to form speech, a new stage begins in the child's mental development.

INTRODUCTION

Child psychology shows the mechanisms of the transition from one age stage to another, the distinctive features of each period and their psychological content.

The conditions for the assimilation of social experience are the active activity of the child and his communication with the adult.

1. THEORETICAL PART

1.1. The main features of infancy.

Infancy begins with the neonatal period, from 2 months and ends at 12 months (L.S.Vygodsky). In a newborn, only congenital, instinctive forms of behavior are observed - unconditioned reflexes that are important for his survival. As the infant grows and develops, instinctive forms of behavior are lost, which makes it possible for an almost limitless formation of new, social forms of behavior that are developed throughout life.

Conditioned reflexes are formed on the basis of visual and auditory focus on the face and voice of an adult, which occurs during feeding and caring for a child. Such concentration contributes to the fact that wakefulness becomes active, and the child's motor activity is rebuilt. Fixing the object with the eyes, turning the head towards sound, inhibition of chaotic movements connect the child with the outside world, act as the first motor acts that have the character of behavior. An adult stimulates the formation of new emotions in a child, social needs for cognition and communication. In response to the benevolent attention, love and care of an adult, the baby has positive social experiences. The first social emotion, the first social gesture, is the smile of a child in response to an adult's conversation with him. She says that the baby has highlighted the first object to which he directed his activity. An adult is such an object. A smile indicates that the neonatal period is ending and a new stage of development begins - the period of infancy. A feature of the infant's mental development is the fact that the development of the sense organs is ahead of the development of bodily movements and creates the preconditions for their formation.

1.2. Characteristics of infancy in different psychological schools.

Behaviorism. At the center of the theory of social learning is the social environment, the influences of which shape a person and are the source of his mental development. The subject of research is not the inner world of a person (not his emotions, experiences and mental actions), but externally observed behavior. J. Watson believed that upbringing should be based on scientific research of children, and psychological care for a child is more important than physical, since the former forms character. Studying the behavior of infants, Watson considered mental development as the acquisition of new forms of behavior, the formation of new connections between stimuli and reactions, the acquisition of any knowledge, skills, and abilities. Advantages of the theory: clarity, objectivity, and measurability were introduced into psychology. The method of measuring behavioral reactions has become one of the main in psychology.

Cons: the consciousness of a person, his will and his own activity are not taken into account.

Psychoanalysis. The child is born with innate instinctive drives (Freud called them "libido" or "it"). This theory contains the idea of development, i.e. qualitatively unique and natural stages of the formation of the psyche. The main motive of the child's behavior is the satisfaction of instinctive desires (in Freud's concept - "the principle of pleasure"). During infancy, the most important needs are associated with sucking and feeding, with the mouth (oral developmental stage) becoming the main source of pleasure for the child. Erickson considers not only the breastfeeding procedure, which brings the baby directly oral pleasure, but also the general context of the relationship between the baby and the mother. The mother's tenderness, sensitivity and caring give birth to a feeling of trust in the world in the baby, which becomes the basis for further development. The absence of the necessary relationships for the infant generates a feeling of distrust, which leaves an imprint on the next stages of development.

Gestalt psychology. Studying the mental processes of babies, scientists argued that the main properties of mental processes are formed gradually, with the maturation of gestalts. This is how the constancy and correctness of this or that mental process, as well as its meaningfulness, appear. So, at birth, children have a vague image of a person, whose gestalt includes his voice, face, hair, and characteristic movements. Therefore, a baby may not even recognize a close adult if he abruptly changes his hairstyle or changes his usual clothes. By the end of the first half of the year, this vague image is fragmented, turning into a series of clear images: an image of a face in which individual gestalts (eyes, mouth, hair) stand out, images of a voice, body, etc. appear. Realizing the influence of the unconscious on behavior, psychologists came to the conclusion that it is necessary to draw the line between a person and other living beings, to understand not only the reasons for his aggressiveness, cruelty, satisfaction of needs (psychoanalysis), but also the foundations of his morality, kindness, culture. Research into child development has made it possible to understand many patterns in the development of perception, thinking and personality in children, although experiments and open facts are much more interesting for modern child psychology than many explanations of the results obtained.

Psychogenetics. J. Piaget believed that the basis of mental development is the development of the intellect. Mental development is a process of adaptation to the surrounding world. This does not take into account the development of personality, motives, needs, feelings and experiences. To clarify the relative role of the environment and heredity, the twin method is used, based on comparing the development of children, starting from infancy, with identical and different heredities, living in the same and different conditions.

Cultural-historical theory. L.S. Vygotsky viewed the baby as a maximally social being, since from the moment of birth all his relations with the world are mediated by close adults. In the first year of life, the entire mental life of a child is carried out in interaction with adults. The infant is not a passive being that responds to external signals. He not only accepts the influence of an adult, but also actively influences his behavior. D.B. Elkonin proposed an understanding of mental development, based on which the child is initially included in society. The "child and society" system is replaced by the "child in society" system. When the union between the child and society changes, the nature of the connection between the "child - object" and "child - adult" systems changes radically. From two independent and isolated, they turn into a single system, as a result of which the content of each of them changes qualitatively. ²

1.3. Characteristics of the social situation of development and the characteristics of communication with adults in infancy.

An adult organizes the child's life, evokes and maintains his activity, fills the baby's wakefulness with new impressions. The inextricable connection between a child and an adult persists throughout the entire first year of life, therefore the social situation of mental development in infancy L.S. Vygodsky called "Pra-we". It is characterized by the initial psychic community of mother and child, when the awareness of their separate "I" is preceded by the experience of the fusion of oneself and the other. First, the baby is not aware of his existence, his activity, his personality, does not distinguish his body from the surrounding objective world. So, he considers his arms and legs as foreign objects, and not parts of his own body. Secondly, for the infant, the social and objective situations, the relationship to a person and an object have not yet been dismembered. An object, as it moves away from the child, loses its attractive power for him, but this power reappears as soon as an adult appears next to the object in the same optical field. In this case, the child does not yet understand that he can turn to an adult for help in mastering the subject. These facts indicate that from the moment of birth, the child lives in internal communion with other people and it is through them that he perceives and cognizes the world around him, and the adult is the center of any situation of interaction with the child.

The first year of life is a completely exceptional period in the life of a child and his parents. It is difficult to compare with anything the path that a person takes in the first 12 months of his life. Everything that happens at this time is all for the first time: the first smile, the first games, the first movements, the first words, the first steps.

A baby already at birth has a large stock of instincts that allow him to adapt to the world and quickly progress in his development. This was discussed in the article. These organic needs ensure the child's survival and cannot form the basis of mental development. Unconditioned reflexes are not fixed in behavior, they gradually die off, because all forms of human behavior develop during their lifetime.

Leading Infant Activities- direct emotional communication. The life of a baby depends entirely on the adult. The adult satisfies the organic needs of the child - feeds, bathes, turns him over from one side to the other. The adult also satisfies the growing need for a variety of experiences: the infant perks up noticeably when picked up. Thus, a child develops a new type of activity - direct emotional communication between a child and an adult. Moving in space thanks to the adult, the child has the ability to see more objects, touch them, and then grasp. The adult also provides basic auditory and tactile impressions.
By 4-5 months, communication with adults becomes selective. The kid begins to distinguish his own from strangers, he is happy with a familiar adult, a stranger can cause him fear.

The need for emotional communication, which is of great positive importance for the development of a child, can, however, lead to negative manifestations. If an adult tries to constantly be with the child, then the child gets used to constantly demanding attention, is not interested in toys, cries if he is left alone for at least a minute. With the correct methods of education, direct communication (communication for the sake of communication), characteristic of the beginning of infancy, soon gives way to communication about objects and toys, which develops into a joint activity of an adult and a child. The adult, as it were, introduces the child into the objective world, draws his attention to objects, clearly demonstrates all kinds of ways of acting with them, and often directly helps the child to perform the action, directing his movements.

If the need for communication is not satisfied or is not satisfied enough (in a hospital, in an orphanage), the child lags behind in mental development. Up to 9-10 months, such a baby has a meaningless, indifferent look. The child does not move much, does not seek to grab toys that caught his eye, he is lethargic and apathetic, does not feel interest in the environment.

The specific reaction of a smile on the mother's face is an indicator that the social situation of the child's mental development has already taken shape. This is a social situation of a child's bondage with an adult. L.S. Vygotsky called it the “we” social situation (that is, the inseparable unity of a child and an adult).

The harmony of the interaction between mother and child is the most important fact of the psychology of infancy, which testifies to the fact that not only the child "adapts" to the mother, but she also adapts to the child's actions. The child and the mother mutually change and develop each other.

Mental functions and processes that develop during the first year of life:

1. Development of sensations.

The essence of sensations lies in the reflection by the child's psyche of individual properties of objects, such as heat and cold, hardness and softness, color, etc.

The baby begins to respond to sounds during the first week. At 2-3 months, the child begins to perceive the direction of the sound, turn his head towards the source of the sound. At 3-4 months, some children begin to respond to singing and music with a smile, general animation.

Vision in children develops slowly. The child begins to distinguish color only at the 5th month of life.

2. Development of sensing.

Visual concentration, which appeared at the neonatal stage, is improved in infants. By 3 months, its duration reaches 7-8 minutes. At this age, the child determines the shape of objects, can trace moving objects. At 4 months, the child is already actively looking: reacts to what he sees, moves, squeals.
In the second half of the year, the new task of vision is to direct and regulate behavior. Tactile sensitivity develops.
A child's cognitive development is facilitated by the variety of experiences he receives. Adults must meet the need for new experiences.

3. Development of perception.

By the end of infancy, almost all properties of the child's perception are formed - constancy, correctness, objectivity and consistency. Signs of object perception in a child begin to appear at the age of 2-4 months, when his actions with objects begin to form. Children learn to see an object from different points of view, to recognize it in different combinations, from different distances and from different points of view. The first sensory standards appear - permanent images of surrounding objects. Children relate new objects to these standards.

In the second month of life, the baby reacts to people, distinguishing and distinguishing them from the surrounding objects. His reactions to humans are almost always brightly colored.

4. Development of memory.

It is during the first year of life that all genetic types of memory are formed - emotional, motor, figurative and verbal. According to some data, the fetus already has emotional memory. In an infant, this type of memory is the main one in the first weeks of life, it helps the child to navigate in reality.

At 7-9 weeks, motor memory appears - the child can remember and repeat some movement, certain familiar gestures begin to appear (the beginning of future operations).

Up to 3-4 months of age, a child is able to store an image of a perceived object for no more than 1 second. After 3-4 months, the time for preserving the image increases, the child acquires the ability to recognize the face and voice of the mother at any time of the day.

At 4 months, children develop a figurative memory - first in the form of recognizing familiar objects, and at 8-9 months, the child perceives what he saw before.

At 8-12 months, the child selects objects in the visual field, and recognizes them not only as a whole, but also in separate parts. At this time, an active search for objects that suddenly disappeared from the field of vision begins, which indicates that the child retains the image in long-term memory. By 1.5 years, a long-term memory is formed, designed for long-term storage of information.

Gradually, the range of objects that the child recognizes increases. By the end of the second year of life, the child may know what he saw a few weeks before. Thus, by the end of the 2nd year of life, the child's memory reaches a level of development that ensures the further growth of all mental processes in his body.

The emergence of figurative memory significantly affects the child's communication and the formation of his motivational sphere.

5. Development of thinking.

By the end of the first year of life, children develop manual intelligence or visual-active thinking, which is associated with the development of the first independent movements. The development of orientation is also of great importance - reactions to new objects, the desire to examine them. The longer the child considers a new toy, the more different qualities he discovers in it, the higher his intellectual level.

6. Development of attention.

In the first months of life, the child has only involuntary attention. The child initially reacts exclusively to external stimuli (for example, when switching from darkness to bright light, with sudden loud sounds, with a change in temperature, etc.)

Starting from the 3rd month, the child begins to become more and more interested in external objects that are closely related to his life, i.e. closest to him. At 5-7 months, the child is already able to consider an object for a long time, feel it, take it in his mouth.

Voluntary attention begins to manifest itself only at the end of the 1st year of life. The game is of great importance here, because in the process of playing, the child learns to coordinate his movements in accordance with the tasks of the game and to direct his actions in accordance with its rules.

7. Development of speech.

Up to one year old, the child's speech is passive: he understands intonation, often repeated constructions. At this time, the foundations of speech skills are laid. Children themselves lay these foundations, seeking to establish contact with adults through crying, humming, babbling, gestures, and then the first words.

At the age of 1.5 to 4 months, short sounds are emitted - a hoot. From 4 to 6 months, the child develops a verbal hearing, and the child himself, with joyful animation, makes sounds called hum. Humming is characterized by the child's listening to his own voice, self-imitation, pronunciation of a chain of melodious sounds that train speech breathing.

At 6-7 months, babbling appears, in which you can distinguish some repetitive sound combinations (repeated syllables, chains of syllables), most often associated with the actions of the child. The child gets accustomed to the articulation of the adult, listens to himself.

For about a year, the child also develops his own, autonomous speech. In form, it is communication. In terms of content, it is an emotionally direct connection with adults and the situation. It should be remembered that at this age, the development of external speech goes from word to sentence, and the development of internal speech - from sentence to word. The beginning and end of the autonomous speech marks the beginning and end of the one year crisis.

With the beginning of understanding the speech of an adult and the use of the first words, the child himself turns to the adult, demanding from him communication, the names of more and more new objects.

Thus, by the end of infancy, language acquisition acquires an active character, becoming one of the important means of expanding the possibilities of communication between a child and an adult.