A.V.Akrushenko, O.A.Larina, T.V.Karatyan
Developmental and developmental psychology. Lecture notes
LECTURE No. 1. Developmental psychology as a branch of psychology
Developmental psychology– a branch of psychology that studies the age dynamics of development human psyche, ontogeny mental processes and psychological qualities of the individual. Developmental psychology can be called “developmental psychology,” although this term will not be entirely accurate. In developmental psychology, development is studied only in relation to a certain chronological age. Developmental psychology studies not only the age stages of human ontogenesis, it also considers various processes mental development in general. Therefore, it would be more correct to consider that developmental psychology is one of the branches of developmental psychology. Almost all researchers believe that development is a change over time. Developmental psychology answers the questions of what and how exactly changes; as subject developmental psychology studies the natural changes in a person over time and related phenomena and features human life.
Currently, there are many textbooks on child psychology in the world. The science of child mental development - child psychology- originated as a branch of comparative psychology at the end of the 19th century. Objective conditions for the development of child psychology that have developed to end of the 19th century century, were associated with the intensive development of industry, with a new level of social life, which created the need for the emergence modern school. Teachers were interested in the question: how to teach and raise children? Parents and teachers stopped viewing physical punishment as effective method education - more democratic families appeared.
The task of understanding little man became one of the main ones. The child's desire to understand himself as an adult has prompted researchers to take a more careful look at childhood. They came to the conclusion that only through studying the psychology of a child is the path to understanding what the psychology of an adult is. The starting point for systematic research in child psychology is the book of the German Darwinian scientist Wilhelm Preyer« Soul of a Child". In it, he describes the results of daily observations of the development of his own son, paying attention to the development of sensory organs, motor skills, will, reason and language. Despite the fact that observations of child development were carried out long before the appearance of V. Preyer’s book, its indisputable priority is determined by turning to the study of the most early years the life of a child and the introduction into child psychology of the method of objective observation, developed by analogy with the methods natural sciences. From a modern point of view, the views of V. Preyer are perceived as naive, limited by the level of development of science in the 19th century. For example, he considered mental development baby like private option biological. However, V. Preyer was the first to make the transition from introspective to objective research into the child’s psyche. Therefore, according to the unanimous recognition of psychologists, he is considered the founder of child psychology. As a rule, developmental psychology studies the patterns of mental development healthy person and is a branch of psychological knowledge. On this basis, they distinguish child, adolescent, youth psychology, adult psychology and gerontopsychology.
Ontogenesis(from the Greek on, ontos - “existing, birth, origin”) - the process of development of an individual organism. In psychology ontogenesis– formation of the basic structures of the individual’s psyche during his childhood; the study of ontogenesis is the main task of child psychology. From the standpoint of Russian psychology, the main content of ontogenesis is subject activity And child communication(primarily joint activities - communication with an adult). During internalization, the child “grows” and “appropriates” social, sign-symbolic structures and means of this activity and communication, on the basis of which his consciousness and personality are formed. What is also common to domestic psychologists is the understanding of the formation of the psyche, consciousness, and personality in ontogenesis as social processes that take place under conditions of active, purposeful development.
Thus, the focus of study and research is Human- a being who embodies the highest stage of development of life, a subject of socio-historical activity. Man is a system in which the physical and mental, genetically determined and formed during life, natural, social and spiritual form an indissoluble unity.
A person acts as an organism endowed with a psyche; individual (which means he belongs to the genus homosapiens); individuality (characterizing the difference between one individual and another); subject (making changes in the world around him, in other people and in himself); bearer of roles (sexual, professional, conventional, etc.); “I-image” (system of ideas, self-esteem, level of aspirations, etc.); personality (as a systemic social quality of an individual, his personalization, reflected subjectivity in other people and in himself as another).
Man is the subject of study of a number of sciences: anthropology, sociology, ethnography, pedagogy, anatomy, physiology, etc. Almost all psychology is addressed to the problem of man as an individual included in social connections, his development in the processes of training and education, his formation in activity and communication . The objectively existing diversity of human manifestations in the evolution of nature, the history of society and in his own life created his images that explicitly or covertly exist in culture at certain stages of its development.
In sociological, psychological and pedagogical concepts, there are the following “ images of a person" that have a direct impact on the research and practical work with people:
1) "sensing person"– a person as a sum of knowledge, skills and abilities; man as an “information processing device”;
2) "human consumer", i.e. a person in need, as a system of instincts and needs;
3) "programmed person", i.e. in behavioral sciences a person appears as a system of reactions, in social sciences - as a repertoire of social roles;
4) "active person"- this is a person who makes a choice;
5) man as an exponent of meanings and values.
In pedagogy, they start from the image of a “sensing person”, and the concept of a person is reduced to the sum of knowledge, his actions are regarded as a product of past experience, and the process of education is replaced by beliefs, persuasion, i.e. purely verbal influences.
As a result of the predominance of this approach in training and education, a process of “impoverishment of the soul while enriching with information” occurs.
The image of a person as a container of needs, instincts and drives has become established in a number of areas of psychology, primarily under the influence of psychoanalysis. Many founders of the trends ( individual psychology– A. Adler, neopsychoanalysis– E. Fromm and others) based their concepts on the image of a “person in need,” deducing psychological patterns from the study of the dynamics of realization and satisfaction of various needs.
The image of a “programmed person” determines ideas about him in sociobiology, which studies human development as the deployment of genetic programs in behaviorism, reflexology and neobehaviorism, sociological and socio-psychological human role concepts (behavior is considered as the enactment of role programs and life scenarios learned during socialization).
If the interpretation of a person in psychology is based on the image of a “programmed person,” then the influence one way or another comes down to a successful selection of stimuli and reinforcements to which living social automata must obediently respond.
The image of a “man-doer” is the basis for the construction of cultural-historical psychology, a system-activity approach to understanding man, humanistic psychoanalysis and existential logotherapy. Here he is understood as a subject of responsible choice generated by life in society,
Many scientists were interested in the peculiarities of the mental state of children back in the ancient period. Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, as well as other leading researchers, used examples of how children perceive new concepts or react to certain situations as evidence of the correctness of their views on the psyche. After some break, already in modern times, especially in the 18th century, scientists again turned to analyzing the psyche of children. These questions were posed mainly in connection with the study of approaches to learning, as well as in the context of studying the formation of the psyche, thinking and motives of activity of an adult. However, these problems were not identified as a separate topic of research, much less they became central to any of the psychologists.
The picture changed by the end of the 19th century, when two scientific directions, which until that time had developed in parallel and independently of each other, merged. This is research child development, which were related to natural history and medicine, as well as ethnographic studies of childhood and language, mainly the study of children's games and fairy tales. The works of the Brothers Grimm, Taylor, and Boas were especially popular. At the same time, developmental psychology finally began to be recognized by scientists as an independent field psychological science. The objective prerequisites for its formation were: the requirements of pedagogical practice, the development of the idea of development in biology, the emergence experimental psychology and development of objective research methods.
Requirements of teaching practice. Requirements for psychology regarding the need to develop objective foundations of pedagogy have been heard for a long time. Also in early XIX V. Froebel wrote about the need to take psychological data into account when developing methods of teaching preschoolers; Herbart emphasized the need for pedagogy to take psychological laws into account. In Russia, K.D. Ushinsky spoke about the importance of the connection between pedagogy and psychology. In his work “Man as a Subject of Education” (1867) he wrote: “If pedagogy wants to educate a person in all respects, then it must first get to know him in all respects,” i.e. In order to educate correctly, it is necessary to understand the patterns of mental development of children, especially their moral development. To do this, it is necessary to study the influence on children of such cultural forms created by the people as language, religion, law and art, which Ushinsky called formative of the human psyche. Speaking about mental development, he proceeded from Spencer's theory, exploring the associations that underlie the social activities of children. Therefore, while studying the formation of moral behavior in children, Ushinsky noted the importance of semi-reflexes, i.e. learned reflexes, habits that become the basis of a person’s moral life and behavior and are formed in childhood.
The problem of the connection between pedagogy and psychology has become especially urgent for scientists since the middle of the 19th century. in connection with the development of universal education. As long as education was predominantly at home, it was not difficult to form individual approach to each child, to understand his characteristics, interests, to make learning easy and entertaining for him. Not only the range of problems studied was selected individually, but also the pace of learning, depending on the speed of assimilation of the material by the child in question.
In the presence of a large number of children in classes (which was already the case in mass schools at that time), such an individual selection of adequate methods is not feasible. Therefore, it was necessary to study the mechanisms and stages of mental development common to all children in order to give objective recommendations on when, at what age and in what sequence any children can be taught, as well as which techniques are most adequate for children of a certain age.
These requirements also explain the range of problems that scientists of that time solved, since these were mainly studies of the driving forces and stages cognitive development, while the development of communication or personality traits in children has received little research.
Such a close connection between developmental psychology and practice caused fair concern among some scientists who feared that utilitarianism and dissolution in practice would interfere with the formation theoretical foundations this science and will limit its interests to the immediate tasks of school and education.
It was precisely this understanding of developmental psychology that the famous psychologist V. James warned against in his book “Conversations with Teachers about Psychology” (1899). He believed that psychology should not explain to teachers how to teach children, give them specific advice, but psychological knowledge should draw the attention of teachers to the need to study the inner life of students, they should understand the spiritual life of the student “as some active unity, as he himself feels it , and sympathetically reproduce it in the imagination.” Another famous psychologist, G. Munstenberg, spoke about the same understanding of developmental psychology. He emphasized that, unlike psychotechnics (of which he was the founder), pedagogy should focus on psychological knowledge primarily when studying deviations from the norm, for example, when studying the causes of student fatigue, sensory defects, but one should not demand from psychology specific instructions on how to teach children.
No less important for the formation of the genetic approach in psychology was the theory of the famous psychologist and physiologist I.M. Sechenov, who wrote that the only method of objective study of the psyche is the method of genetic observation. He also emphasized the importance of research into the mental development of the child not only for the practical needs of pedagogy, but also for general psychology. Sechenov's views, especially his idea of the internalization of mental processes, had a great influence on the further development of developmental psychology, in particular on Vygotsky's concept.
The founder of child psychology is considered to be V. Preyer, an English embryologist and psychologist, since it was he who set the task of a holistic study of the problem of child development and systematic monitoring of this. His book “The Soul of a Child” (1882), based on an evolutionary approach, is the first systematic work in the field of developmental psychology, as it contains Full description stages and stages of child development from birth to 3 years, and also explores the causes of individual differences in children, the main of which is biological heredity.
Preyer's task was not only to describe the stages and mental patterns of development, but also to develop methods for studying a child throughout his childhood. For this purpose, he developed a method of diary observation of the child’s development, i.e. in developmental psychology, the formation of its own research method is taking place, along with which later experimental and mathematical methods. It was these general psychological methods that subsequently made it possible to formulate the methodological foundations for the psychological study of children, in particular the use of tests and natural and formative experiments, which raised developmental psychology to a higher research level.
For a long time The only method for studying the mental development of children remained diary observations. Pestalozzi and Jean Paul also began keeping diaries of observations of their children. Of great interest are Darwin's diary observations of the development of his son Francis, which were published in 1877 under the title "Biographical Sketch of a Young Child." I. Ten described the process of speech acquisition by his daughter, comparing it with historical development language. The basis of both processes was considered to be the universal mechanism of associations. He also became the author of the first psychology textbook, which addressed issues related to the psychology of the child. At the same time, both in Tiedeman’s diary and in Tiedemann’s textbook, the problems of raising children were closely related to the previous analysis of their physiological and psychological characteristics.
With subject expansion psychological research the opportunity arose to develop new experimental methods that could be applied to study the mental development of children. Naturally, the previous methods used by general psychology, mainly the method of introspection, could not be used in the new science. Therefore, the emergence of experimental psychology by W. Wundt, as well as objective methods for studying memory developed by G. Ebbinghaus, was so important for its development.
No less important were the works of F. Galton, who developed many methods for experimental research of children, using methods of statistical processing of results for the first time in psychology. He also developed the first tests, further application and whose popularity is already associated with the name of A. Binet, who used special tests to study the intellectual development of children.
(07/04/1841, Moss Side, near Manchester, - 07/15/1897, Wiesbaden), German biologist and psychologist, founder of child psychology. He studied at the Universities of Bonn and Paris. He taught at the Universities of Bonn (1865), Jena (1866-1888) and Berlin (1888-1893). One of the editors of the leading psychological journal of his time, the Journal of Psychology and Physiology of the Sense Organs (Zeitschrift fuer Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane). Conducted research on a wide range of issues of general biology, embryology, physiology (in particular, he studied the activity of the sense organs), psychology and psychotherapy. He was a follower of Charles Darwin and in his works took an evolutionary position. Preyer's book "The Soul of a Child" ("Die Seele des Kindes", 1882; incomplete Russian translation, edited by I. A. Sikorsky, 1891; complete Russian translation, edited by V. Dinze, 1912) marked the beginning of systematic research into the psychology of the child. In it, Preyer described the results of daily observations of the development of his own son in the following sections: the development of sensory organs, motor skills, will, reason and language. Despite the fact that observations of child development were carried out long before the appearance of Preyer’s book, its priority is determined by turning to the study of the earliest years of a child’s life (from birth to 3 years) and introducing into child psychology the method of objective observation, developed by analogy with the methods of the natural sciences . From a modern point of view, Preyer's views are perceived as naive and limited by the level of development of science at the end of the 19th century (he, for example, considered mental development as a special variant of biological development). However, Preyer was the first to make the transition from introspective to objective research into the child’s psyche. Preyer's book is an example of a monographic method of studying a child. Russian scientists (I. A. Sikorsky, P. F. Kapterev, N. N. Lange, V. M. Bekhterev) highly appreciated the significance of Preira’s work both for understanding the patterns of mental and physical development, and for scientific justification pedagogical process. In Russian psychology, the monographic method was further developed (diaries of A. F. Levonevsky, 1914; N. N. Ladygina-Kote, 1935; N. A. Menchinskaya, 1948; A. N. Gvozdeva, 1949; V. S. Mukhina, 1969), The value and productivity of which lies in the fact that the observer is a combination of parent and scientist.
Literature: Nikolskaya A. A., The significance of Wilhelm Preyer’s works for the development of child psychology, “Questions of Psychology”, 1983, No. Z.