Read also: II. The body as an integral system. Age periodization of development. General patterns of growth and development of the body. Physical development……………………………………………………………………………….p. 2 II. Basic principles and rules of official conduct of state civil servants of the Federal Tax Service II. The main goals and objectives of the Program, the period and stages of its implementation, target indicators and indicators II. The main stages in the development of physics. The formation of physics (until the 17th century). III dynasty of Ur. Features of the political and socio-economic development of this period.

In the first months of life, memory manifests itself at the level of conditioned reflexes (for example, upon hearing the mother’s voice, the child stops crying). By six months, the process of recognizing what is more common is revealed; everything that surrounds the child (toys, parents, etc.). This age is characterized by the phenomenon of the “hidden period”: as soon as someone with whom the child constantly has contact disappears for several days, he ceases to recognize him. With age, the duration of the latent period increases. Related to this is the fact that the events of the first three years are poorly reproduced at an older age. (It was previously noted that the “failure” in memory for this period is due to the underdevelopment of the hippocampus at this age.) The process of reproducing information appears in the second year of life.

Preschool age is predominantly involuntary memory and the beginning of the development of socially conditioned types of memory (voluntary, indirect and logical). School age is characterized by intensive development of voluntary memory, which is due to the nature of educational activities. At the same time, until adolescence, priority in development belongs to natural memory, but subsequently this dynamics of natural and socially conditioned memory evens out.

It has been established that up to the age of 20-25, memory improves. By about 30-40 years of age, socially conditioned types of memory take over the “baton” in development, which maintain its general properties at a constant level. Further, a person’s memory “ages” and deteriorates. First, memory for current events weakens, then for knowledge, feelings and habits. By old age, a person “falls into childhood” - detailed episodes from distant childhood years are resurrected in memory.

In 1927, L. S. Vygotsky, together with a group of collaborators (A. N. Leontiev, A. R. Luria, A. V. Zaporozhets, L. I. Bozhovich, etc.) began to conduct an extensive series of experimental studies, the results of which allowed he will subsequently formulate the main provisions of the cultural-historical theory - the theory of the development of mental functions specific to humans (attention, memory, thinking, etc.), having a social, cultural, lifetime origin and mediated by special means - signs that arise in the course of human history . Moreover, a sign, from the point of view of L. S. Vygotsky, is primarily a social means for a person, a kind of “psychological tool.”

L. S. Vygotsky formulated the general genetic law of the existence of any human mental function: “... Every function in the cultural development of a child appears on the scene twice, on two levels: first - social, then - psychological, first between people... then inside child... The functions first develop in a collective in the form of relationships between children, then they become mental functions of the individual.”

According to L. S. Vygotsky, two types of mental development - biological and historical (cultural), - presented in a separate form in phylogenesis and connected by the relationship of continuity and consistency, actually exist in a fused form and form a single process in ontogenesis.

Basic laws of mental development formulated by L. S. Vygotsky:

Child development has a complex organization in time: its own rhythm, which does not coincide with the rhythm of time (a year in infancy is not equal to a year of life in adolescence).

The law of metamorphosis in child development (a child is not just a small adult, but a being with a qualitatively different psyche).

The law of uneven development: each side in a child’s psyche has its own optimal period of development.

The law of development of higher mental functions “from the outside in.”

Distinctive qualities of higher mental functions: indirectness, awareness, arbitrariness, systematicity; they are formed as a result of mastering special tools, means developed during the historical development of society.

Learning is the driving force of mental development, which creates the child’s zone of proximal development (the distance between the level of actual development and the level of possible development).

graduate work

1.4 Cultural-historical approach to the study of memory in the works of L.S. Vygotsky and A.N. Leontyev

In the book “Etudes on the History of Behavior” (1930) L.S. Vygotsky and A.R. Luria, for the first time in the history of memory studies, used the idea of ​​comparing data on the phylo- and ontogenesis of memory - a comparative genetic principle of research. Speaking about the memory of primitive man, the authors note its originality, expressed in concreteness and photographic quality. These properties find their counterpart in the child's memory when he is in the early stages of his development. However, L.S. Vygotsky notes that work and social life significantly transforms the psyche of a developing person. L.S. Vygotsky explains this by saying that these forms of human activity are built on the use of means-signs - artificially created stimuli, with the help of which directly occurring mental processes are transformed into mediated mental activity. According to L.S. Vygotsky, the highest mental forms of memory are initially born in social communication between people. According to L.S. Vygotsky, the peculiarity of primitive memory is that a person uses it, but does not dominate it, that is, memorization at this stage of development is spontaneous, uncontrolled. Gradually, the functional foundations of memory are transformed. So, L.S. Vygotsky talks about the emergence of various simple techniques of indirect memorization in the form of tying a knot for memory or notches that were used by a person to transmit information to other people.

In the most general form, the mediation mechanism was described by L.S. Vygotsky based on the use of the famous scheme: A - X - B, where A and B are stimuli, and X is a psychological tool (a knot on a scarf, a mnemonic diagram and other attributes of culture). In such a connection of stimulus and reaction - through a mediating link - “mechanism in the understanding of the psyche was overcome and the mental world of the subject in-itself-and-for-itself opened into a world for-another; this connection, representing both culture and subject, made it possible to establish the qualitative originality of the HPF."

According to L.S. Vygotsky, there is a sign function of auxiliary stimuli - it is due to it that a new relationship is formed between mental processes, mediation, which ensures the subject’s orientation in the activity he is mastering. “The use of auxiliary means - signs that act as external, begins to modify internal memory processes. Actually, “natural memory” gradually follows the path of losing its natural character and becomes “cultural memory”. It is precisely this culturally determined development of memory that was the foundation for the development of language, writing and other complex sign systems in the history of mankind.

Changes in the structure of the psychological process during memorization were observed by L.S. Vygotsky and his followers in experiments on double stimulation, where one series of stimuli performed “the function of the object (material) of the subject’s activity, the other - the function of signs with the help of which this activity is organized.” The most thorough results of using this method are presented in the experiments of A.N. Leontyev. His book “The Development of Memory” (1931) was one of the first attempts at an experimentally detailed substantiation of the social nature of memory development. The main objective of the work was to study the processes of mediation “simultaneously as a source and criterion for assessing the ontogenetic development of memory.” Describing the features of memory development, A.N. Leontyev says that when a person interacts with the social environment around him, he also rebuilds his own behavior, this is manifested in the transformation of “interpsychological” (interpersonal) processes into “intrapsychological” (intrapersonal) processes.

Memorization, based on internal mediation, represents the highest form and the last stage in the development of human memory. Its appearance means that the use of past experience takes a new form - “by acquiring dominance over our memory, we free all our behavior from the blind power of the automatic, spontaneous influence of the past.”

The process of memory development from elementary to its most complex forms is also understood by A.N. Leontiev and how a change in the relationship of this mental function to the personality as a whole, as a process of human socialization. And in this regard, he puts forward the idea of ​​the cultivability of memory in ontogenesis, which indicates the possibility of developing and implementing a specially designed program for memory formation. A.N. Leontyev talks about how important it is, given the patterns by which mental processes develop, to promote the development of higher forms of memory in students.

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Within the framework of the cultural-historical approach the process of memory development is considered as a transition from direct memory inherent in animals to voluntarily regulated, mediated signs, specifically human forms of memory.

Vygotsky reveals the problems of sociality and the mediation of natural memory characteristic of a small child or primitive person. Proving that the transformation of memory from a natural one into a higher mental function begins when a person moves from using his memory as a physiological ability to dominating it through sign systems. Moreover, first, ready-made signs existing in the culture are used (for example, a mother, sending her son to the store, gives him a piece of paper with a list of necessary purchases), and then the person learns to create effective mnemonic sign means for himself. The “growing” of the sign marks the transition from external to internal development of memory. At the same time, both the structure of memory and the way a person uses it changes.

Study of the development of higher forms of memorization was carried out by Leontyev using the double stimulation technique. In this technique, subjects are offered two series of stimuli. Memorizing one series is a direct task (stimuli-objects), while the second series represents stimuli-means with the help of which memorization should be carried out. Children of different ages and teenagers were given a list of 15 words and a set of cards with pictures. The instructions were: “When I say the word, look at the cards. Choose and put aside a card that will help you remember the word later.” In the control series of the experiment, the subjects were not provided with cards. The results of the study are marked on the graph (parallelogram of memory development). The bottom line is that, starting from preschool age, the rate of development of memorization with the help of external means (cards) significantly exceeds the rate of direct memorization (the graph recording the effectiveness of memorization with cards has a steeper shape). On the contrary, starting from school age, the increase in externally direct memorization indicators is faster than the increase in externally mediated memorization. According to Leontyev, behind the external neglect of cards (external means of memorization) against the background of the ever-increasing efficiency of memorization, there is a hidden process of “growing” of the external means, turning it into an internal, psychological means. The “memory parallelogram” principle is an expression of the general law that the development of higher symbolic forms of memory follows the line of transformation of externally mediated memorization into internally mediated memorization. Thus, during the development of memory as a higher mental function both in ontogenesis and in sociogenesis, memory becomes, firstly, mediated by various sign systems (primarily speech), and secondly, voluntary and consciously regulated. A person ceases to obey his own imperfect memory, but begins to manage it, organize the process of memorization and recollection, and structure the memorized contents.

Definition, types, functions of attention. Attention in classical psychology of consciousness and its modern understanding. Basic properties and their experimental studies. Attention disorders.

Attention is the focus of human consciousness on objects and phenomena of the surrounding and internal world. Direction should be understood as the selective nature of mental activity. Attention is an important condition for the success of cognition. In the waking state, a person is always attentive. He can only be inattentive to a separate object or phenomenon. Strong stimuli interfere with attention. Types of attention:

1) Natural – given from birth. Begins to function from 1 month of life.

2) Social – acquired in the process of life. Man has learned to manage this type of attention using means developed by society.

3) Involuntary - directed at an object due to interest without the participation of will and consciousness.

4) Voluntary – organized, regulated by will and consciousness. Strong stimuli interfere with this attention, weak ones strengthen the dominant.

5) Post-voluntary - sometimes it happens that a person has to force himself to do something without much interest, then interest appears.

6) External – attention to objects of the external world.

7) Internal - the object is located in our inner world.

Attention functions:

1. The function of control and regulation of activity - with attentive attention to any object, this object becomes the center of our consciousness, the rest is perceived weaker, the reflection becomes clear, distinct, and thoughts are retained in consciousness until the activity is completed.

2. Selectivity - a person selects only the information that interests him or that he needs at the moment.

3. Purposefulness - a person maintains his attention or switches it from one action to another as long as necessary to achieve the goal.

4. Activation – high performance and qualities, controlled consciously, for a long time.

Properties of attention:

1. Stability – maintaining attention for a long time at a more or less constant level. Distractibility is a periodic weakening of attention. The more focused you are, the less distractible you are. The more difficult the task, the deeper our attention.

2. Concentration - the degree of concentration on one thing while being distracted from everything else. There are always short-term changes in the degree of intensity - fluctuations in attention.

3. Distribution - simultaneous retention of attention on several different objects.

4. Switchability - the ability to quickly transfer attention from one object to another. Switchability is the reverse side of distribution.

All these properties are qualitative characteristics of attention. Quantitative characteristics: volume of attention - the number of objects that a person is able to keep in the sphere of his attention (for an adult, 3-9 objects). Volume is an untrained property of attention.

Attention is also expressed through gestures, facial expressions, posture, eye contact, etc. With good concentration, we may not notice what is happening around us.

Study of attention. The most accessible method is observation of human activity. Using Bourdon tests - proofreading. Violation of attention - absent-mindedness, is caused by a weakening of the power of concentration. Alternating visual, auditory and motor modalities of perception helps to overcome absent-mindedness.

Attention develops naturally as we grow older and gain more life experience. This development occurs in healthy people from birth to graduation. Artificial development of attention is an accelerated process associated with performing special exercises.

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The concept of memory development by P.P. Blonsky. Theory of cultural and historical development of memory L.S. Vygotsky. Development of direct and indirect memorization in children according to A.N. Leontiev. The role of speech in controlling the development of mnemonic processes. Structural organization of memorized material. Selection and use of effective incentives for memorization and recall. Other techniques to improve memory. Imagination and memory. Mental associations and memory. The negative role of interference in the reproduction of material.

Let us now turn to the question of memory development, i.e. about those typical changes that occur in it as the individual socializes. From early childhood, the process of development of a child’s memory proceeds in several directions. Firstly, mechanical memory gradually supplemented and replaced logical. Secondly, direct memorization over time turns into indirect memorization, associated with the active and conscious use of various mnemotechnical techniques and means for memorization and reproduction. Thirdly, involuntary memorization, which dominates in childhood, turns into voluntary in an adult.

IN memory development in general, two genetic lines can be distinguished: its improvement in all civilized people without exception as social progress progresses, and its gradual improvement in an individual in the process of his socialization, familiarization with the material and cultural achievements of mankind.

A significant contribution to the understanding of the phylogenetic development of memory was made by P.P. Blonsky. He expressed and developed the idea that the different types of memory present in an adult are also different stages of its historical development, and they, accordingly, can be considered phylogenetic stages of memory improvement . This refers to the following sequence of types of memory: motor, affective, figurative and logical. P.P. Blonsky expressed and substantiated the idea that in the history of human development these types of memory consistently appeared one after another.

In ontogenesis, all types of memory are formed in a child quite early and also in a certain sequence. Later than others it develops and starts working logical memory , or, as she was sometimes called P.P. Blonsky, “memory-story”. It is already present in a 3-4 year old child in relatively elementary forms, but reaches a normal level of development only in adolescence and young adulthood. Its improvement and further improvement are associated with teaching a person the basics of science.

Start figurative memory associated with the second year of life, and it is believed that this type of memory reaches its highest point only in adolescence. Earlier than others, about 6 months of age, it begins to manifest itself affective memory , and the very first in time is motor , or motor , memory. Genetically, it precedes all the others. This is what P.P. thought. Blonsky.

However, many data, in particular facts indicating a very early ontogenetic emotional response of the infant to the mother’s appeal, indicate that, apparently, affective, rather than motor, memory begins to act earlier than others. It may well be that they appear and develop almost simultaneously. In any case, a final answer to this question has not yet been received.

I looked at the historical development of human memory from a slightly different angle L.S. Vygotsky. He believed that the improvement of human memory in phylogenesis proceeded mainly along the line improving the means of memorization and changing the connections of the mnemonic function with other mental processes and human states. Developing historically, enriching its material and spiritual culture, man developed more and more advanced means of memorization, the most important of which is writing. (During the 20th century, after leaving L.S. Vygotsky from life, they were supplemented by many other, very effective means of remembering and storing information, especially in connection with scientific and technological progress.) Thanks to various forms of speech - oral, written, external, internal - a person was able to subordinate memory to his will, to intelligently control the progress of memorization, manage the process of storing and reproducing information.

Memory, as it developed, became increasingly closer to thinking. “The analysis shows,” wrote L.S. Vygotsky, - that a child’s thinking is largely determined by his memory... Thinking for a young child means remembering... Thinking never reveals such a correlation with memory as at a very early age. Thinking here develops in direct dependence on memory” 1. A study of the forms of insufficiently developed children's thinking, on the other hand, reveals that they represent a recollection of one particular incident, similar to an incident that took place in the past.

Decisive events in a person’s life that change the relationship between memory and his other psychological processes occur closer to adolescence, and in their content these changes are sometimes opposite to those that existed between memory and mental processes in the early years. For example, the attitude “to think means to remember” with age in a child is replaced by an attitude according to which memorization itself comes down to thinking: “to remember or remember means to understand, comprehend, figure out.”

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1 Vygotsky L. S. Memory and its development in childhood // Reader on general psychology: Psychology of memory. - M., 1979. - P. 161.

Conducted special studies of direct and indirect memorization in childhood A. N. Leontyev. He experimentally showed how one mnemonic process - direct memorization - is gradually replaced with age by another, mediated one. This occurs due to the child’s assimilation of more advanced stimuli-means of memorizing and reproducing material. The role of mnemonic devices in improving memory, according to A. N. Leontyeva, is that “by turning to the use of auxiliary means, we thereby change the fundamental structure of our act of memorization; formerly direct, direct our memorization becomes mediated " 1 .

The very development of stimuli-means for memorization is subject to the following pattern: at first they act as external (for example, tying knots for memory, using various objects, notches, fingers, etc. for memorization), and then they become internal (feeling, association, idea, image, thought).

Speech plays a central role in the formation of internal means of memorization. “It can be assumed,” notes A. N. Leontyev, “that the very transition that takes place from externally mediated memorization to internally mediated memorization stands in close connection with the transformation of speech from a purely external function to an internal function” 2.

Based on experiments conducted with children of different ages and with students as test subjects, A. N. Leontyev derived the development curve of direct and indirect memorization, shown in Fig. 47. This curve, called the “parallelogram of memory development,” shows that in preschoolers, direct memorization improves with age, and its development is faster than the development of indirect memorization. In parallel with this, the gap in the productivity of these types of memorization in favor of the first is increasing.

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1 Leontyev A.N. Development of higher forms of memorization // Reader on general psychology: Psychology of memory. - M., 1979. - P. 166. 2 Ibid. - P. 167.

Rice. 47. Development of direct (upper curve) and indirect (lower curve) memorization in children and young people (according to A. N. Leontiev)

Starting from school age, there is a process of simultaneous development of direct and indirect memorization, and then a more rapid improvement of indirect memory. Both curves show a tendency to converge with age, since indirect memorization, developing at a faster pace, soon catches up with direct memory in terms of productivity and, if we hypothetically continue further those shown in Fig. 47 curves, should eventually overtake him. The latter assumption is supported by the fact that adults who systematically engage in mental work and, therefore, constantly exercise their mediated memory, if desired and with appropriate mental work, can very easily remember material, while at the same time possessing a surprisingly weak mechanical memory.

If in preschoolers memorization, as evidenced by the curves under consideration, is mainly direct, then in adults it is mainly (and perhaps even solely due to the assumption made above) mediated.

Speech plays a significant role in the development of memory, therefore the process of improving a person’s memory goes hand in hand with the development of his speech.

Let us summarize what has been said about memory in this chapter, and at the same time we will try to formulate, based on the material presented here, some practical recommendations for improving memory.

The last of the facts we noted - about the special role that speech plays in the processes of memorization and reproduction - makes it possible to draw the following conclusions:

1. What we can express in words is usually remembered easier and better than what can only be perceived visually or auditorily. If, in addition, words do not simply act as a verbal replacement for the perceived material, but are the result of its comprehension, i.e. if the word is not a name, but a concept containing an essential thought associated with the subject, then such memorization is the most productive. The more we think about the material, the more actively we try to visualize it and express it in words, the easier and more firmly it is remembered.

2. If the subject of memorization is a text, then the presence of pre-thought-out and clearly formulated questions for it, the answers to which can be found in the process of reading the text, contributes to its better memorization. In this case, the text is stored in memory longer and reproduced more accurately than when questions are asked about it after reading it.

3. Storage and recall as mnemonic processes have their own characteristics. Many cases of forgetting associated with long-term memory are explained not so much by the fact that the reproduced material was not properly remembered, but by the fact that access to it was difficult during recall. A person's poor memory may have more to do with difficulty in recollection than with memory itself. Trying to remember something, to retrieve it at the right moment from long-term memory, where a colossal amount of information is usually stored, is similar to searching for a small book in a huge library or a quotation in a collection of works numbering dozens of volumes. Failure to find a book or quotation in this case may be due not to the fact that they are not in the appropriate repositories at all, but to the fact that we may be looking for them in the wrong place and in the wrong way. The most illustrative examples of successful recall are given to us by hypnosis. Under its influence, a person can suddenly remember long-forgotten events of distant childhood, impressions of which were seemingly lost forever.

4. If two groups of people are asked to remember the same list of words that can be grouped according to meaning, and if, in addition, both groups of people are provided with different generalizing stimulus words with which to facilitate recall, then it turns out that each of them is able will remember more of those words that are associated with the stimulus words offered to her.

The richer and more varied the stimulus-means that we have for memorization, the simpler and more accessible they are to us at the right time, the better the voluntary recall. Two factors, in addition, increase the likelihood of successful recall: the correct organization of memorized information and the provision of such psychological conditions during its reproduction that are identical to those in which the memorization of the corresponding material took place.

5. The more mental effort we put into organizing information and giving it a coherent, meaningful structure, the easier it is to remember later. One of the effective ways to structure memorization is to give the memorized material a “tree” structure (Fig. 48). Such structures are widespread wherever it is necessary to present a large amount of information concisely and compactly.

Organizing memorized material into structures of this kind contributes to its better reproduction because it greatly facilitates the subsequent search for the necessary information in the “storehouses” of long-term memory, and this search requires a system of thoughtful, economical actions that are likely to lead to the desired result. With the preliminary structural organization of the memorized material, along with it, the very scheme with the help of which the material was organized is laid down in long-term memory. When reproducing it, we can use this scheme as a ready-made one. Otherwise, it would have to be created and constructed anew, since memory also occurs according to patterns.

Rice. 48. The semantic structure of organizing material according to the “tree” type, most widely used in various “repositories” of information

Currently, a considerable number of different systems and methods of practical influence on human memory have been developed and are used in practice in order to improve it. Some of these methods are based on the regulation of attention, others involve improving the perception of material, others are based on the exercise of imagination, fourth - on the development of a person’s ability to comprehend and structure memorized material, fifth - on the acquisition and active use of special mnemonic means in the processes of memorization and reproduction, techniques and actions. All these methods are ultimately based on the facts of the connection between memory and other mental processes of a person and his practical activities established in scientific research and confirmed by life.

6. Since memorization directly depends on attention to the material, any techniques that allow you to control attention can also be useful for memorization. This, in particular, is the basis of one of the ways to improve the memorization of educational material by preschoolers and primary schoolchildren, which they try to make so so that it arouses involuntary interest on the part of students and attracts their attention.

7. Recall of material is also influenced by the emotions associated with it, and depending on the specifics of the emotional experiences associated with memory, this influence can manifest itself in different ways. We think more about situations that have left a vivid, emotional trace in our memory than about emotionally neutral events. We better organize the impressions associated with them in our memory, and relate them more and more often to others. Positive emotions tend to promote recall, while negative emotions hinder it.

8. Emotional states accompanying the process of memorization are part of the situation imprinted in memory; therefore, when they are reproduced, then, by association with them, the whole situation is restored in ideas and recollection is facilitated. It has been experimentally proven that if at the time of memorization a person is in an elevated or depressed mood, then artificially restoring the corresponding emotional state in him during recall improves memory.

9. Various methods of teaching so-called “accelerated” reading are based on the technique of improving the perception of material. A person here is taught to quickly discover the most important thing in a text and perceive mainly this, deliberately skipping everything else. To a large extent, such training, and therefore the improvement of memorization, can be helped by psycholinguistic knowledge about the semantic structure of texts.

10. It has been shown that imagination can be controlled. With thoughtful and systematic exercises, it becomes easier for a person to imagine what is visible in his imagination. And since the ability to visually imagine something has a positive effect on memorization, techniques aimed at developing imagination in children simultaneously serve to improve their figurative memory, as well as speed up the process of transferring information from short-term and operative memory to long-term memory.

11. The habit of meaningful perception of material is also associated with improved memory. Exercises and tasks for understanding various texts and drawing up plans for them are especially beneficial in improving students’ memory. The use of notes (for example, shorthand), drawing up diagrams of various objects for the purpose of remembering them, creating a certain environment - all these are examples of the use of various mnemonic means. Their choice is determined by the individual characteristics and personal capabilities of a person. When improving memory, it is best for a person to rely on what is most developed in him: vision, hearing, touch, movement, etc.

Let's look at some specific techniques for improving memory that anyone could use, regardless of how developed their individual mental functions and abilities are. One of them is based on a more active use of figurative thinking and imagination when memorizing and reproducing material. In order to remember something quickly and for a long time, it is recommended to perform the following sequence of actions regarding the material:

A. Mentally connect what is being remembered with some well-known and easily imagined object. Then connect this item with some other item that will be at hand exactly when you need to remember what you remember.

B. In the imagination, combine both objects in some bizarre way with each other into a single, fantastic object.

B. Mentally imagine what this object will look like.

These three actions are practically enough to remember what you remember at the right time, and thanks to the actions described above, it is immediately transferred from short-term memory to long-term memory and remains there for a long time.

For example, we need to remember (remember to do) the following series of tasks: call someone, send a written letter, borrow a book from the library, go to the laundry, buy a train ticket (this series can be quite large - up to 20-30 and more than units). Let’s also assume that we need to make sure that we remember the next task immediately after the previous one is completed. To make this happen, we will do the following. For each task, let’s come up with some familiar, easily imaginable, meaningfully related object that will definitely catch our eye at the right time and in the right place. In accordance with the series of cases indicated above, such items may be the following: telephone handset, mailbox, book, bag of laundry, money.

Now we act in accordance with the second and third of the rules formulated above: we connect the listed objects in pairs with each other into unusual associations and mentally imagine what we have come up with. The first such item could be, for example, a mailbox made in the shape of a telephone handset; the second - a huge mailbox filled with books; the third - a long arm wrapped in linen; the fourth - huge banknotes, stacked and tied in the shape of a laundry bundle. After this procedure, it is enough to consistently imagine what the objects we have invented will look like, so that at the right moment, when these objects catch your eye, you will remember the matters related to them.

One technique to keep in mind is based on the formation of associations. If, for example, you need to remember the text, or the proof of a theorem, or some foreign words as best as possible, then you can do the following. Set yourself the additional task of finding an answer to the questions: “What does this remind me of? What does it look like?"

As we read further the text or proof of the theorem, we will have to answer the following specific questions: “What other text or episode from life does this text remind me of? What other proof resembles the method of proving this theorem?” When becoming familiar with a new word, we must immediately mentally answer the following question, for example: “What other word or event reminds me of this word?”

The following pattern applies here: the more diverse associations the material evokes upon first acquaintance with it and the more time we devote to the mental development of these associations, the better the material itself is remembered.

The basic principle underlying many mnemonic techniques is the use of images that connect the memorized material with a sign, or the formation of such connections within the memorized material itself. In order to remember well a sequence of unrelated words, it is enough to do the following. Let’s imagine the path we take every day, going to school or work. Consistently going through it in the mind, we will “arrange” along the way what needs to be remembered in the form of objects related to what is being remembered in meaning. Once we have done this kind of work, then, following this path, we will be able to remember everything we need. It will be enough to simply imagine the appropriate path.

An important means of improving memory, as studies by domestic psychologists have shown, can be the formation of special mnemonic actions, as a result of the development of which a person is able to better remember the material offered to him due to a special, conscious organization of the very process of its cognition for the purpose of memorization. The development of such actions in a child, as shown by special studies, goes through three main stages. In the first of them (younger preschoolers), the child’s mnemonic cognitive actions are organized by an adult in all essential details. At the second stage, older preschoolers are already able to independently classify and distribute objects based on common characteristics into groups, and the corresponding actions are performed in an externally expanded form. At the third stage (junior schoolchildren), complete mastery of the structure and implementation of cognitive mnemonic actions in the mind is observed.

To better remember the material, it is recommended to repeat it shortly before your normal bedtime. In this case, what is remembered will be better stored in memory, since it will not be mixed with other impressions, which usually overlap each other during the day and thereby interfere with memorization, diverting our attention.

However, in connection with this and other recommendations for improving memory, including those discussed above, it should be remembered that any techniques are good only when they are suitable for a given person, when he chose them for himself, invented them or adapted it based on my own tastes and life experience.

Memory efficiency is sometimes reduced by interference, i.e. mixing one information with another, one recall scheme with another. Most often, interference occurs when the same memories are associated in memory with the same events and their appearance in consciousness gives rise to the simultaneous recall of competing (interfering) events. Interference often occurs when, instead of one material, another is learned, especially at the memorization stage, where the first material has not yet been forgotten, and the second has not been learned well enough, for example, when words of a foreign language are memorized, some of which have not yet been stored in long-term memory, and others are just beginning to be studied at the same time.

Nemov R. S. Psychology: Textbook. for students higher ped. textbook establishments: In 3 books. - 4th ed. - M.: Humanite. ed. VLADOS center, 2003. - Book. 1: General fundamentals of psychology. - 688 p. pp. 243-254.

In discussing the problem of memory, we have a series of discussions, a clash of different opinions, and not only in terms of general philosophical views, but also in terms of purely factual and theoretical research.

The main line of struggle here is primarily between atomistic and structural views. Memory was a favorite chapter, which in associative psychology was the basis of all psychology: after all, perception, memory, and will were considered from the point of view of association. In other words, this psychology tried to extend the laws of memory to all other phenomena and make the doctrine of memory the central point in all psychology. Structural psychology could not attack associative positions in the field of the doctrine of memory, and it is clear that in the early years the struggle between structural and atomistic directions unfolded in relation to the doctrine of perception, and only recent years have brought a number of studies of a practical and theoretical nature in which structural psychology tries break down the associative doctrine of memory.

The first thing that these studies tried to prove was that memorization and memory activity are subject to the same structural laws that perception is subject to.

Many remember Gottstald's report, which was given in Moscow at the Institute of Psychology and after which he published a special part of his work. This researcher presented various combinations of figures for so long that the subjects assimilated these figures without error. But where the same figure appeared in a more complex structure, the subject who saw that structure for the first time was more likely to remember it than the one who saw parts of that structure 500 times. And when this structure appeared in a new combination, what was seen many hundreds of times was reduced to nothing, and the subject could not identify the part that was well known to him from this structure. Following the path of Köhler, Gottstald showed that the very combination of visual images or reminder depends on the structural laws of mental activity, that is, on the whole in which we see this or that image or its element... On the other hand, research K. Levin, which grew out of the study of memorization of meaningless syllables, showed that meaningless material is remembered with the greatest difficulty precisely because a structure is formed with extreme difficulty between its elements and that in memorizing the parts it is not possible to establish a structural correspondence. The success of memory depends on what structure the material forms in the mind of the subject, who memorizes the individual parts.

Other work has taken memory research into new areas. Of these, I will mention only two studies that are needed to pose some problems.

The first, due to B. Zeigarnik, concerns the memorization of completed and unfinished actions and, at the same time, completed and unfinished figures. It consists in the fact that we invite the subject to perform several actions in disarray, and let him complete some actions, while interrupting others before they are completed. It turns out that subjects remember interrupted unfinished actions twice as well as completed actions, while in experiments with perception it is the other way around: unfinished visual images are remembered worse than completed ones. In other words, remembering one’s own actions and remembering visual images are subject to different patterns. From here it is only one step to the most interesting studies of structural psychology in the field of memory, which are illuminated in the problem of forgetting intentions. The fact is that any intentions that we form require the participation of our memory. If I decide to do something tonight, then I have to remember what I have to do. According to Spinoza's famous expression, the soul cannot do anything by its own decision if it does not remember what needs to be done: “Intention is memory.”

And so, studying the influence of memory on our future, these researchers were able to show that the laws of memorization appear in a new form in memorizing completed and unfinished actions in comparison with memorizing verbal and any other material. In other words, structural studies have shown the diversity of different types of memory activities and their irreducibility to one general law, and in particular to the associative law.

These studies received the broadest support from other followers.

As is known, K. Bühler did the following: he reproduced in relation to thought the experiment that associative psychology performs with the memorization of meaningless syllables, words, etc. He composed a series of thoughts, and each thought had a second corresponding thought: the first member of this pair and the second member of this pair were given separately. Memorization has shown that thoughts are remembered more easily than meaningless material. It turned out that 20 pairs of thoughts for the average person engaged in mental work are remembered extremely easily, while 6 pairs of meaningless syllables turn out to be overwhelming material. Apparently, thoughts move according to different laws than ideas, and their memorization occurs according to the laws of the semantic reference of one thought to another.

Another fact points to the same phenomenon: I mean the fact that we remember the meaning independently of the words. For example, in today’s lecture I have to convey the content of a number of books, reports, and now I remember the meaning well, the content of this, but at the same time I would find it difficult to reproduce the verbal forms of all this.

This “independence of memorizing meaning from verbal presentation was the second fact to which a number of studies arrived. These provisions were confirmed by other experimentally obtained facts from animal psychology. Thorndike established that there are two types of memorization: the first type, when the error curve falls slowly and gradually, which shows that the animal learns the material gradually, and another type, when the error curve drops immediately. However, Thorndike considered the second type of memorization as an exception rather than as a rule. On the contrary, Köhler paid attention to precisely this type of memorization - intellectual memorization, memorization immediately. This experience showed that, dealing with memory in this form, we can get two different types of memory activity. Every teacher knows that there is material that is memorized immediately: after all, no one has ever tried to memorize solutions to arithmetic problems. It is enough to understand once the progress of the solution in order to be able to solve this problem in the future. In the same way, the study of a geometric theorem is not based on the same thing as the study of Latin exceptions, the study of poems or grammatical rules. It is this difference in memory, when we are dealing with the memorization of thoughts, that is, with the memorization of meaningful material, and with the activity of memory in relation to the memorization of unintelligible material, it is this contradiction in various branches of research that has begun to appear to us more and more clearly . In the same way, both the revision of the problem of memory in structural psychology and those experiments that came from different sides and which I will talk about at the end, gave us such enormous material that confronted us with a completely new state of affairs.

Modern factual knowledge poses the problem of memory in a completely different way than, for example, Bleuler posed it; hence the attempt to communicate these facts, to move them to a new place.

I think we will not be mistaken if we say that the central factor in which a whole range of knowledge of both theoretical and factual nature about memory is concentrated is the problem of memory development.

Nowhere is this question more confusing than here. On the one hand, memory is already available at a very early age. At this time, if memory develops, it is in some hidden way. Psychological research has not provided any guidance for analyzing the development of this memory; As a result, both in the philosophical debate and in practice, a whole series of problems of memory were posed metaphysically. It seems to Bühler that thoughts are remembered differently than ideas, but the study showed that a child remembers ideas better than thoughts. A whole series of studies shakes the metaphysical ground on which these teachings are built, in particular in the question that interests us about the development of children's memory. You know that the question of memory has given rise to great controversy in psychology. Some psychologists argue that memory does not develop, but is maximum at the very beginning of childhood development. I will not present this theory in detail, but a number of observations actually show that memory turns out to be extremely strong at an early age and as the child develops, memory becomes weaker and weaker.

It is enough to remember how much work it takes to learn a foreign language for any of us and with what ease a child masters this or that foreign language to see that in this regard, early age is, as it were, created for learning languages. In America and Germany, pedagogical experiments have been made in relation to the transfer of language learning from high school to preschool. The Leipzig results showed that two years of study in preschool produced significantly better results than seven years of study in the same language in secondary school. The effectiveness of foreign language acquisition appears to increase as we shift learning to an early age. We are only good at the language we learned in early childhood. It is worth thinking about this to see that a child at an early age has advantages in terms of language proficiency compared to a child of a more mature age. In particular, the practice of upbringing instilling several foreign languages ​​in a child in early childhood has shown that mastering two or three languages ​​does not slow down the mastery of each of them separately. There is a famous study by the Serbian Pavlovich, who carried out experiments on his own children: he addressed the children and answered their questions only in Serbian, and the mother spoke and answered in French. And it turns out that neither the degree of improvement in both of these languages, nor the rate of progress in both of these languages ​​suffers from having two languages ​​at the same time. Jorgen's research is also valuable, which involved 16 children and showed that three languages ​​are acquired with equal ease, without the mutually inhibiting influence of one on the other.

Summarizing the experience of teaching children literacy and basic numeracy at an early age, the Leipzig and American schools come to the conclusion that teaching children to read and write at 5-6 years old is easier than teaching children aged 7-8 years, and some data from Moscow research says the same: they showed that literacy acquisition in the ninth year encounters significant difficulties compared to children who are taught at an early age.

The memory of a child at an early age cannot be compared with the memory of a teenager and especially with the memory of an adult. But at the same time, a three-year-old child, who learns foreign languages ​​more easily, cannot absorb systematized knowledge in the field of geography, and a 9-year-old schoolchild, who has difficulty mastering foreign languages, easily learns geography, while an adult surpasses the child in memory for systematized knowledge. knowledge.

Finally, there were psychologists who tried to take a middle ground on this issue. This group, occupying the third position, tried to establish that there is a point when memory reaches a culminating point in its development. In particular, Seidel, one of Karl Gross's students, covered a very large amount of material and tried to show that memory reaches its height at the age of 10, and then begins to slide down.

All these three points of view, their very presence, show how simplified the question of memory development is in these schools. The development of memory is considered in them as some simple movement forward or backward, as some ascent or sliding, as some movement that can be represented by one line not only in a plane, but also in a linear direction. In fact, approaching the development of memory on such a linear scale, we are faced with a contradiction: we have facts that will speak both for and against, because the development of memory is such a complex process that it cannot be represented in a linear section.

In order to proceed to a schematic sketch of a solution to this problem, I must raise two issues. One is covered in a whole series of Russian works, and I will only mention it. This is an attempt to distinguish two lines in the development of children's memory, to show that the development of children's memory does not follow one line. In particular, this distinction has become the starting point in a number of memory studies with which I am associated. In the work of A.N. Leontyev and L.V. Zankov provided experimental material confirming this. The fact that psychologically we are dealing with different operations when we directly remember something and when we remember with the help of some additional stimulus is beyond doubt. The fact that we remember differently when, for example, we tie a knot for memory and when we remember something without this knot is also beyond doubt. The study consisted in the fact that we presented children of different ages with the same material and asked them to remember this material in two different ways - the first time directly, and the second time we were given a series of auxiliary means with the help of which the child had to remember this material.

An analysis of this operation shows that a child who memorizes with the help of auxiliary material constructs his operations in a different way than a child who memorizes directly, because from a child who uses signs and auxiliary operations, it is not so much the power of memory that is required, but the ability to create new ones. connections, a new structure, a rich imagination, sometimes well-developed thinking, i.e. those psychological qualities that do not play any significant role in direct memorization...

Research has shown that each of these methods of direct and indirect memorization has its own dynamics, its own development curve...

What is theoretically valuable in this distinction and what led to theoretical research confirming this hypothesis is that the development of human memory in historical development proceeded mainly along the line of mediated memorization, that is, that man developed new techniques, with with the help of which he could subordinate memory to his goals, control the course of memorization, make it more and more volitional, make it reflect more and more specific features of human consciousness. In particular, we think that this problem of mediated memorization leads to the problem of verbal memory, which plays a significant role in modern cultured people and which is based on memorizing a verbal record of events, their verbal formulation.

Thus, in these studies, the question of the development of children's memory was moved from a dead point and moved to a slightly different plane. I do not think that these studies settle the question definitively; I am inclined to think that they rather suffer from a colossal simplification, whereas in the beginning I heard that they complicate the psychological problem.

I would not like to dwell on this problem as it is already known. I will only say that these studies lead directly to another problem, which I would like to make central in our studies - to a problem that is clearly reflected in the development of memory. The point is that when you study mediated memorization, that is, how a person remembers, relying in his memorization on known signs or techniques, then you see that the place of memory in the system of psychological functions changes. What in direct memorization is taken directly by memory, in mediated memorization is taken through a series of mental operations that may have nothing to do with memory; Consequently, it is as if some mental functions are being replaced by others.

In other words, with a change in age level, not only and not so much the structure of the function itself, which is designated as memory, changes, but the nature of those functions with the help of which memorization occurs, and the interfunctional relationships that connect memory with other functions change.

In our first conversation, I gave an example from this area, to which I will allow myself to return. What is remarkable is not only that the memory of a child of a more mature age is different from that of a younger child, but that it plays a different role than at a previous age.

Memory in early childhood is one of the central basic mental functions, depending on which all other functions are built. Analysis shows that the thinking of a young child is largely determined by his memory. The thinking of a child of an early age is not at all the same as the thinking of a more mature child. For a young child, thinking means remembering, that is, relying on one’s previous experience and its modifications. Thinking never shows such a correlation with memory as at a very early age. Thinking here develops in direct dependence on memory. I will give three examples. The first concerns the definition of concepts in children. The child’s definition of concepts is based on memory. For example, when a child answers what a snail is, he says that it is small, slippery, and can be crushed with one’s foot; or if a child is asked to write about what a bed is, then he says that it has a “soft seat.” In such descriptions, the child gives a condensed outline of memories that reproduce the subject.

Consequently, the subject of the mental act when designating this concept for a child is not so much the logical structure of the concepts themselves as memory, and the specific nature of children's thinking, its syncretic character, is the other side of the same fact, which is that children's thinking is primarily based on for memory...

Recent studies of the forms of children's thinking that Stern wrote about, and above all studies of the so-called transdeduction, i.e., the transition from a particular case to another, have also shown that this is nothing more than the recall of another similar case in connection with a given particular case. special case.

I could point out the last thing that is relevant here - this is the nature of the development of children's ideas and children's memory at an early age. Their analysis, in fact, relates to the analysis of the meanings of words and is directly related to our upcoming topic. But in order to build a bridge to it, I wanted to show that research in this area shows that the connections behind words are fundamentally different in a child and an adult; The formation of the meanings of children's words is structured differently than our ideas and our meanings of words. Their difference lies in the fact that behind every meaning of words for a child, as for us, there is a generalization hidden. But the way a child generalizes things and the way you and I generalize things are different. In particular, the method that characterizes a child's generalization is directly dependent on the fact that the child's thinking is entirely based on his memory. Children's ideas relating to a number of subjects are structured in the same way as our family names. The names of words and phenomena are not so much familiar concepts as surnames, whole groups of visual things connected by a visual connection... However, throughout childhood development a turning point occurs, and the decisive shift here occurs near adolescence. Studies of memory at this age have shown that by the end of childhood development, the interfunctional relations of memory change radically in the opposite direction; if for a young child to think means to remember, then for a teenager to remember means to think.

His memory is so logical that memorization comes down to establishing and finding logical relationships, and remembering consists of searching for the point that needs to be found.

This logization represents the opposite pole, showing how these relations changed in the process of development. In adolescence, the central moment is the formation of concepts, and all ideas and concepts, all mental formations are no longer built according to the type of family names, but, in fact, according to the type of full-fledged abstract concepts.

We see that the same dependence that determined the complex nature of thinking at an early age subsequently changes the nature of thinking. There can be no doubt that memorizing the same material for someone who thinks in concepts and for someone who thinks in complexes are completely different tasks, although they are similar to each other. When I memorize some material lying in front of me with the help of thinking about concepts, that is, with the help of abstract analysis, which is contained in thinking itself, then I have a completely different logical structure in front of me than when I study this material with the help of others. funds. In one and in the other case, the semantic structure of the material turns out to be different.

Therefore, the development of children's memory should be studied not so much in relation to the changes occurring within the memory itself, but rather in relation to the place of memory among other functions... Obviously, when the question of the development of children's memory is posed in a linear context, this does not exhaust the question of its development.

Vygotsky L.S. Memory and its development in childhood / Vygotsky L.S. Collection op. in 6 volumes - T.2. - Problems of general psychology. - M.: Pedagogy, 1982. -S. 386-395.