Not all parents pay the necessary attention to the development of thinking in preschool age. However, researchers point to the existence of a relationship between thinking and speech. The earlier the development of intelligence is started, the richer the vocabulary of a preschooler will be.

Types of mental activity

Each age is characterized by its own specificity of perception of the surrounding world. Preschool age is sensitive for the development of thinking. In the first years of life, the child is distinguished by great curiosity. During this period, 3 types of thinking prevail in children:

1. Visually effective. Appears at 3-4 years. For children at this age, practical activities will precede theoretical ones. First, the kid sees the result of this or that action and only then displays the rule (to watch cartoons, you need to press a certain button on the television remote control, etc.).
2. figurative. This kind of thinking appears in 4-5 years. During this period, the baby first thinks, and only then acts. At the age of four, children no longer need to feel or taste an unfamiliar object. The connection between thinking and practical actions is gradually weakening.
3. Boolean. The development of preschool children reaches its peak at the age of 5-7 years. Logical thinking is the establishment of clear links between theoretical and practical action. A preschooler is able to cope with an unfamiliar situation in a logical way. At 5-7 years old, children should have well-developed figurative thinking. A preschooler can talk about a subject without its direct presence.

The preschooler can also find other forms of thinking. If parents devote enough time to the development of the thinking of a preschooler, use educational and educational games, the child can be ahead of his peers in the development. Types of thinking uncharacteristic for younger preschool age:

1. Empirical. The high intellectual development of preschool children allows the child to classify objects, to identify similarities and differences between them. It is believed that the empirical thinking of a child aged 5-7 years is quite natural. However, not everyone has it.
2. Analytical. Analytical abilities are the result of the development of logical thinking in preschool children. There is a formation of not only the perception of the event and the response to it according to the template. There are abilities to analyze, to delve into the essence of the phenomenon.
3. Intuitive. The mental development of a preschooler with good intuition helps him find answers to some questions without the help of knowledge gained by experience.

mental operations

There are several universal operations, the ability to perform which is characteristic of every mentally healthy person. The mental education of preschool children should be aimed at ensuring that the child can master all of the following operations:

1. Classification. Mental activity should be aimed at finding similarities and differences in surrounding objects. At the same time, thinking in preschool children should be directed to the realization of the fact that some objects may coincide in one way and differ in another (the table and the pencil are wooden, but the table is large and the pencil is small).
2. Synthesis. Mental action is aimed at combining the acquired knowledge into a single system. The purpose of the mental education of preschoolers is to prepare the child for school, where he will have to combine unrelated knowledge. An example of the successful development of synthesis is the ability to read (to add words from letters).
3. Analysis. The development of intelligence in preschool children should include the development of this operation. If synthesis requires the ability to connect, then analysis forms the ability to "dismember". Cognitive development teaches us to see the world not only as a whole, but also as a collection of individual fragments (a flower is not a single whole, it consists of a stem, leaves, petals, etc.).
4. Generalization and comparison. Some researchers consider generalization and comparison to be special cases of classification. Proper teaching and mental education of schoolchildren develop the ability to generalize a group of subjects according to a certain attribute. Even at the age of 3-4 years, the child understands what a spoon, fork, cup is and what they are used for. However, he is not yet able to call all these items dishes. The future student also needs the ability to compare objects according to the main features.

Children's questions

Older preschoolers always have significantly more questions than younger students. Constant "whys" should not scare parents. Father and mother can be convinced of the correct course of development of intellectual abilities in a son or daughter. Parents should, if possible, provide the baby with all the necessary information, at least in an adapted version. Questions fall into 3 categories:

1. Emotional. A child needs not so much information as support from adults in order to feel confident or safe.
2. Cognitive. Such questions are asked to obtain new information. With their help, parents and educators can track the development of thinking in preschool children. It is noted that mentally retarded children usually do not have questions.
3. Auxiliary. For the full intellectual development of children of senior preschool age, it is necessary to constantly replenish the piggy bank of knowledge about the same subject. Today he wants to know the purpose of the object. Tomorrow he will ask what this object is made of.

Keeping in mind the growing intellectual needs of a son or daughter, parents should be concerned not only with the development of the child, but also with increasing their level of literacy. A feature of the development of thinking in mentally retarded or autistic people is that the world around them is practically not interested. The child must be taken to a specialist for the diagnosis of thinking. Emotional issues should not be associated with childhood retardation. They indicate a lack of attention. Mom and dad should spend more time with children. Reading bedtime stories will suffice.

Creative thinking

Parents believe that the tasks of mental education of preschoolers are to teach the baby to count and write in block letters. But this is not enough for successful schooling. The child must learn to think creatively. At school, he will not only solve examples and write dictations. In both junior and senior grades, many tasks will be creative in nature. Diagnostics of the mental development of preschoolers shows that imaginative children do well both in writing essays and in solving problems in algebra.

The development of creative thinking begins at 3-4 years. The exercises that parents or caregivers use should be in the form of a game. If the activities for the development of the imagination take the form of a lesson at school, the result will not be achieved. Children quickly get tired of such exercises. In order for classes to be successful, it is necessary to take into account the peculiarities of thinking of preschool children.

The baby's imagination needs to be constantly stimulated. The development of creative thinking is a good activity during a walk in the autumn park. You can invite children to compose a fairy tale about fallen leaves. At home, you need to put on a play created by a children's writer or by the child himself. Friends of the son or daughter and their parents should be involved in the game. Such methods of mental education will lead to quick results and will captivate the child.

Parents do not always have enough time for classes. The development of the intellectual abilities of preschool children should not be interrupted. It is impossible to replace live communication, but it can be compensated with educational toys. The Lego constructor stimulates creativity and the development of logical thinking in preschoolers.

At the age of 6-7 years, the task should become more difficult. You need to get ready for school, learn to work with pencils and pens. It is necessary to take into account the peculiarities of the development of thinking of children at this age. A preschooler wants to express his thoughts graphically. The simplest task involves writing on a piece of paper several words that are not related in meaning, for example, tree, pen, cake, boots. The child should write a short essay in which all the listed words would be present. You can draw lines, dots or any abstract shapes on a piece of paper and invite the preschooler to finish drawing the objects.

Engineering Thinking

The mental education of preschoolers must keep pace with the times. The definition of the concept of "engineering thinking" is easy to give. This is the name of the type of cognitive activity aimed at getting acquainted with progressive technologies.

Working with engineering thinking of preschoolers is especially relevant today. Representatives of older generations had difficulty mastering computers and household appliances. Today's children 2-3 years old easily use smartphones, tablets and other gadgets. It is much easier for them to master new technologies than their parents and grandparents. Some fathers and mothers are trying to protect the preschooler from "harmful" equipment. Nevertheless, the full development of logical thinking in children of senior preschool age cannot do without the development of engineering thinking.

Cognitive education aimed at stimulating engineering abilities begins with working with a designer. You can use the already mentioned Lego constructor. Such means of mental education of preschoolers are focused on the development of creativity and abilities in the exact sciences at the same time. Experimental activity teaches to find a non-standard way out of difficult situations. The most suitable place for experiments may be the kitchen. Children love to help their mothers cook. Most of all they like working with the test. Senior preschoolers should be offered design and research activities, which involve collecting material about a particular subject, followed by a presentation of the collected knowledge.

The opinion that the direction of a child's development is chosen according to his belonging to the humanities or to those who have the ability to exact sciences is erroneous. The development of engineering logic for a preschooler is as necessary as learning to read and write.

Selection of exercises

Moms and dads should not be completely trusted with the development of a preschooler to a kindergarten teacher. The teacher will not be able to devote the same amount of time to all children. Parents should be aware of the theoretical foundations for the development of thinking in preschool age in order to work with the child on their own. The ideal option would be classes in kindergarten, alternating with home exercises.

Diagnostics of the mental development of children shows that by the age of 3-4 a mentally healthy child is able to give the main characteristics of objects. Education can begin with the development of visual-figurative thinking in preschool age. A developmental exercise can be as follows: remember the animal that you saw a month ago with your grandmother in the village, describe it, tell a fairy tale involving this animal.

By the age of five, an indicator of a high level of thinking is the ability to classify objects. At this age, the child knows the names of some animals and basic professions, is able to describe the appearance of people and count within 2-3 dozen. For the development of visual-figurative thinking in preschool children, an exercise is suitable: the child hides the picture and describes the object depicted on it to an adult who must guess the image. Then the roles can be reversed.

By the age of six, the child not only describes events, but also gives them his own assessment. Parents will need knowledge of the technology for developing critical thinking in preschoolers. An exercise for work might look like this: a mother asks a child to describe the weather outside, and then invites a preschooler to explain why the weather is like this today. The kid can also tell how he relates to a particular natural phenomenon. The correct answer is not required in this case.

Different schools of education may offer different criteria for assessing the mental abilities of children. For one school, action thinking must be developed by the age of four. Another system says that developing the same kind of thinking by the age of six or seven is the norm. Parents should not just copy ready-made educational models. It is necessary to adapt them to the characteristics of your child.

Taking information from the surrounding world, it is with the participation of thinking that we can realize and transform it. Their characteristics help us in this. A table with these data is presented below.

What is thinking

This is the highest process of cognition of the surrounding reality, subjective perception. Its uniqueness lies in the perception of external information and its transformation in consciousness. Thinking helps a person gain new knowledge, experience, creatively transform ideas that have already been formed. It helps to expand the boundaries of knowledge, contributing to a change in the existing conditions for solving the tasks.

This process is the engine of human development. In psychology, there is no separately operating process - thinking. It will necessarily be present in all other cognitive actions of a person. Therefore, in order to somewhat structure such a transformation of reality, the types of thinking and their characteristics were singled out in psychology. A table with these data helps to better assimilate information about the activity of this process in our psyche.

Features of this process

This process has its own characteristics that distinguish it from other mental processes.

1. Mediation. This means that a person can indirectly recognize an object through the properties of another. The types of thinking and their characteristics are also involved here. Briefly describing this property, we can say that knowledge occurs through the properties of another object: we can transfer some acquired knowledge to a similar unknown object.
2. Generalization. Combining several properties of an object into a common one. The ability to generalize helps a person to learn new things in the surrounding reality.

These two properties and processes of this cognitive function of a person contain a general characteristic of thinking. Characteristics of the types of thinking is a separate area of ​​general psychology. Since the types of thinking are characteristic of different age categories and are formed according to their own rules.

Types of thinking and their characteristics, table

A person perceives structured information better, so some information about the varieties of the cognitive process of cognition of reality and their description will be presented in a systematic way.

The best way to help understand what the types of thinking are and their characteristics is a table.

Visual-effective thinking, description

In psychology, much attention is paid to the study of thinking as the main process of cognition of reality. After all, this process develops differently for each person, it works individually, sometimes the types of thinking and their characteristics do not correspond to age norms.

For preschoolers, visual-effective thinking comes to the fore. It begins its development from infancy. Description by age is presented in the table.

Age period	Characteristics of thinking
Infancy	In the second half of the period (from 6 months), perception and action develop, which form the basis for the development of this type of thinking. At the end of infancy, the child can solve elementary problems based on the manipulation of objects.	The adult hides the toy in his right hand. The kid first opens the left, after failure reaches for the right. Finding a toy, enjoys the experience. He cognizes the world in a visual-effective way.
Early age	Manipulating things, the child quickly learns important connections between them. This age period is a vivid representation of the formation and development of visual-effective thinking. The kid performs external orientation actions, which actively explores the world.	Collecting a full bucket of water, the child noticed that he comes to the sandbox with an almost empty bucket. Then, while manipulating the bucket, he accidentally closes the hole, and the water remains at the same level. Perplexed, the kid experiments until he understands that in order to maintain the water level, it is necessary to close the hole.
preschool age	During this period, this type of thinking gradually passes into the next, and already at the end of the age stage, the child masters verbal thinking.	First, to measure the length, the preschooler takes a paper strip, applying it to everything that is interesting. Then this action is transformed into images and concepts.

Visual-figurative thinking

The types of thinking in psychology and their characteristics occupy an important place, since the age-related formation of other cognitive processes depends on their development. With each age stage, more and more mental functions are involved in the development of the process of cognition of reality. In visual-figurative thinking, imagination and perception play an almost key role.

Characteristic	Combinations	Transformations
This kind of thinking is represented by certain operations with images. Even if we do not see something, we can recreate it in the mind through this kind of thinking. The child begins to think this way in the middle of preschool age (4-6 years). An adult also actively uses this species.	We can get a new image through combinations of objects in the mind: a woman, choosing her clothes for going out, imagines in her mind how she will look in a certain blouse and skirt or dress and scarf. This is an act of visual-figurative thinking.	Also, a new image is obtained with the help of transformations: considering a flower bed with one plant, you can imagine how it will look with a decorative stone or many different plants.

Verbal-logical thinking

It is carried out with the help of logical manipulations with concepts. Such operations are designed to find something in common between different objects and phenomena in society and our environment. Here images take a secondary place. In children, the makings of this type of thinking come at the end of the preschool period. But the main development of this type of thinking begins in early school age.

Age	Characteristic
Junior school age	The child, entering school, already learns to operate with elementary concepts. The main base for operating them are: worldly concepts - elementary ideas about objects and phenomena based on their own experience outside the walls of the school; scientific concepts are the highest conscious and arbitrary conceptual level. At this stage, the intellectualization of mental processes takes place.
Teenage years	During this period, thinking acquires a qualitatively different color - reflection. Theoretical concepts are already being evaluated by a teenager. In addition, such a child can be distracted from visual material, reasoning logically in verbal terms. There are hypotheses.
adolescence	Thinking based on abstraction, concepts and logic becomes systemic, creating an internal subjective model of the world. At this age stage, verbal-logical thinking becomes the basis of the worldview of a young person.

empirical thinking

The characteristic of the main types of thinking includes not only the three types described above. This process is also divided into empirical or theoretical and practical.

Theoretical thinking represents the knowledge of the rules, various signs, the theoretical base of the basic concepts. Here you can build hypotheses, but test them already in the plane of practice.

practical thinking

Practical thinking involves the transformation of reality, adjusting it to your goals and plans. It is limited in time, there is no opportunity to explore many options for testing various hypotheses. Therefore, for a person it opens up new possibilities for understanding the world.

Types of thinking and their characteristics depending on the tasks being solved and the properties of this process

They also share the types of thinking depending on the tasks and subjects of the implementation of the tasks. The process of cognition of reality is:

• intuitive;
• analytical;
• realistic;
• autistic;
• egocentric;
• productive and reproductive.

Each person has all these types to a greater or lesser extent.

Ministry of Education of the Republic of Belarus

EE Vitebsk State University named after P.M. Masherova

Test No. 6

in the subject Developmental psychology

on the topic Development of thinking in children

Introduction

1.2 The development of speech and thinking in preschool age

1.3 Development of speech and thinking in early school age

Chapter 2. The theory of the development of children's intelligence according to J. Piaget

2.1 Basic concepts and principles of intellectual development

2.2 Stages of intelligence development according to J. Piaget

2.3 Egocentrism of children's thinking

2.4 Piagetian phenomena

Chapter 3. Intellectual development of the child according to J. Bruner

Table

Conclusion

Literature

Introduction

The development of the child's thinking occurs gradually. At first, it is largely determined by the development of the manipulation of objects. Manipulation, which at first does not have meaningfulness, then begins to be determined by the object to which it is directed, and acquires a meaningful character.

The intellectual development of the child is carried out in the course of his objective activity and communication, in the course of mastering social experience. Visual-effective, visual-figurative and verbal-logical thinking are successive stages of intellectual development. Genetically, the earliest form of thinking is visual-effective thinking, the first manifestations of which in a child can be observed at the end of the first - beginning of the second year of life, even before mastering active speech. Primitive sensory abstraction, in which the child singles out some aspects and is distracted from others, leads to the first elementary generalization. As a result, the first unstable groupings of objects into classes and bizarre classifications are created.

In its formation, thinking goes through two stages: pre-conceptual and conceptual. Pre-conceptual thinking is the initial stage in the development of thinking in a child, when his thinking has a different organization than that of adults; children's judgments are single about this particular subject. When explaining something, everything is reduced by them to the particular, the familiar. Most judgments are judgments by similarity, or judgments by analogy, since during this period memory plays the main role in thinking. The earliest form of proof is an example. Given this peculiarity of the child's thinking, convincing him or explaining something to him, it is necessary to support his speech with illustrative examples. The central feature of pre-conceptual thinking is egocentrism. Due to egocentrism, a child under 5 cannot look at himself from the outside, cannot correctly understand situations that require some detachment from his own point of view and acceptance of someone else's position. Egocentrism causes such features of children's logic as: 1) insensitivity to contradictions, 2) syncretism (the tendency to connect everything with everything), 3) transduction (transition from the particular to the particular, bypassing the general), 4) the lack of an idea about the conservation of quantity. During normal development, there is a regular replacement of pre-conceptual thinking, where concrete images serve as components, by conceptual (abstract) thinking, where concepts serve as components and formal operations are applied. Conceptual thinking does not come all at once, but gradually, through a series of intermediate stages. So, L.S. Vygotsky singled out five stages in the transition to the formation of concepts. The first - for a child of 2-3 years old - is manifested in the fact that when asked to put together similar, matching objects, the child puts together any, believing that those that are placed side by side are suitable - this is the syncretism of children's thinking. At the second stage, children use elements of the objective similarity of two objects, but already the third object can only be similar to one of the first pair - a chain of pairwise similarity arises. The third stage manifests itself at the age of 6-8, when children can combine a group of objects by similarity, but cannot recognize and name the signs that characterize this group. And, finally, adolescents of 9-12 years old have conceptual thinking, but it is still imperfect, since the primary concepts are formed on the basis of everyday experience and are not supported by scientific data. Perfect concepts are formed at the fifth stage, at the youthful age of 14-18 years, when the use of theoretical provisions allows one to go beyond one's own experience. So, thinking develops from concrete images to perfect concepts, denoted by the word. The concept initially reflects similar, unchanged in phenomena and objects.

Thus, visual-figurative thinking occurs in preschoolers at the age of 4-6 years. The connection between thinking and practical actions, although it remains, is not as close, direct and immediate as before. In some cases, no practical manipulation with the object is required, but in all cases it is necessary to clearly perceive and visualize the object. That is, preschoolers think only in visual images and do not yet possess concepts (in the strict sense). Significant shifts in the intellectual development of the child occur at school age, when teaching becomes its leading activity, aimed at mastering concepts in various subjects. The mental operations that form in younger schoolchildren are still connected with specific material, they are not generalized enough; the resulting concepts are concrete in nature. The thinking of children of this age is conceptually concrete. But younger schoolchildren are already mastering some of the more complex forms of reasoning, they are aware of the power of logical necessity.

Schoolchildren in middle and older age become more complex cognitive tasks. In the process of solving them, mental operations are generalized, formalized, thereby expanding the range of their transfer and application in various new situations. A transition is being made from conceptual-concrete to abstract-conceptual thinking.

The intellectual development of the child is characterized by a regular change of stages, in which each previous stage prepares the subsequent ones. With the emergence of new forms of thinking, the old forms not only do not disappear, but are preserved and developed. Thus, visual-effective thinking, characteristic of preschoolers, acquires a new content, finding, in particular, its expression in solving ever more complex structural and technical problems. Verbal-figurative thinking also rises to a higher level, manifesting itself in the assimilation of poetry, fine arts, and music by schoolchildren.

Chapter 1. Development of speech and its influence on thinking

1.1 Development of speech and thinking in early childhood

Early childhood is a sensitive period for language acquisition.

Autonomous speech of the child rather quickly (usually within six months) is transformed and disappears. Words that are unusual in sound and meaning are replaced by words of “adult” speech. But, of course, a quick transition to the level of speech development is possible only under favorable conditions - first of all, with full communication between the child and the adult. If communication with an adult is not enough, or, conversely, relatives fulfill all the wishes of the child, focusing on autonomous speech, speech development slows down. There is a delay in speech development in cases where twins grow up, intensively communicating with each other in a common children's language.

Mastering their native speech, children master both its phonetic and semantic sides. The pronunciation of words becomes more correct, the child gradually stops using distorted words and fragmentary words. This is facilitated by the fact that by the age of 3 all the basic sounds of the language are assimilated. The most important change in the child's speech is that the word acquires an objective meaning for him. The child denotes in one word objects that are different in their external properties, but similar in some essential feature or mode of action with them. Therefore, the first generalizations are connected with the appearance of the objective meanings of words.

At an early age, passive vocabulary grows - the number of words understood. By the age of two, a child understands almost all the words that an adult pronounces, naming the objects around him. By this time, he begins to understand and explain the adult (instructions) regarding joint actions. Since the child actively learns the world of things, manipulations with objects are a significant activity for him, and he can master new actions with objects only together with an adult. Instructive speech, which organizes the actions of the child, is understood by him quite early. Later, at the age of 2-3, there is an understanding of the speech-story.

Active speech also develops intensively: the active vocabulary grows (moreover, the number of spoken words is always less than the number of understood ones), the first phrases appear, the first questions addressed to adults. By the age of three, the active vocabulary reaches 1500 words. Sentences initially, at about 1.5 years, consist of 2 - 3 words. This is most often the subject and his actions (“Mom is coming”), the actions and the object of the action (“Give me a roll”, “let's go for a walk”) or the action and the scene of the action (“The book is there”). By the age of three, the basic grammatical forms and basic syntactic constructions of the native language are assimilated. Almost all parts of speech, different types of sentences are found in the child’s speech, for example: “I am very glad that you came”, “Vova offended Masha. When I'm big, I'll beat Vova with a shovel."

A child's speech activity usually increases dramatically between 2 and 3 years of age. The circle of his communication is expanding - he can already communicate with the help of speech not only with loved ones, but also with other adults, with children. In such cases, the practical action of the child is mainly spoken out, that visual situation in which and about which communication occurs. Dialogues intertwined in joint activities with adults are frequent. The child answers the adult's questions and asks questions about what they do together. When he enters into a conversation with a peer, he does not delve into the content of the other child's remarks, therefore such dialogues are poor and the children do not always answer each other.

In psychology, there are three forms of thinking in preschool children: visual-effective, visual-figurative and space-time (temporal). The features of the development of thinking of preschoolers of each of the above types will be discussed in this article. You will learn what stages a child goes through in the process of exploring the outside world and how the thinking of boys differs from the thinking of girls.

Features of the development of visual-effective thinking in preschool children

The development of a child's thinking at an early age occurs through direct perception of the world around him. He begins to interact with objects. Among all the processes developing in the psyche, the fundamental role is given to perception. Both the consciousness of the child and his behavior are almost completely determined by what he perceives at the present moment. All his experiences focus on those objects and phenomena that surround him.

Thought processes, which are external orienting actions, are visual and effective: with the help of this form, children discover numerous connections between them and the objects of the world around them. External actions are the basis and starting point, which serves as the starting point for the formation of all other forms of thinking.

The child receives the necessary experience when he begins to persistently and regularly reproduce the same elementary actions, as a result of which he receives the expected result. Ultimately, this experience will form the basis of more complex thought processes that develop in the child's head.

This experience at the initial stages of the development of visual-effective thinking in preschoolers is unconscious and is included in the direct process of performing an action. It is important to note that objects in this case are not only carriers of practical and consumer functions, but also of general characteristics, which are often abstract concepts. Those actions that the child performs with objects are aimed at isolating their main features.

How visual-effective thinking develops in preschool children

In the process of visual and orienting actions formed during manipulations with various objects, visual images are formed. At this stage in the development of visual-effective thinking in preschool children, for a child, the main features of things are their shape and size. In early childhood, color is not fundamental to recognizing things. Children pay attention to contours and overall shape.

A special role is played by correlative actions, which are aimed at the development of visual and effective thought processes. The kid here manipulates two or more objects and learns to gradually correlate their sizes, shapes, and the place where they are located. He begins to perform actions with several objects - he strings rings on a pyramid, puts cubes on top of each other. However, during these processes, he does not take into account the characteristics of objects, he will begin to select them in accordance with the shape and size much later, as well as arrange them in a given order.

For this reason, most toys designed for children of this age (this includes various pyramids, cubes, nesting dolls, etc.) involve correlating actions. At the same time, for the development of visual-effective thinking in preschool children, all of them should be aimed at obtaining a certain result, so that all manipulations have one common goal. Correlating actions can be performed depending on the order that the adult suggests. If a child is engaged in imitation, that is, he performs the same actions as an adult participant in the game, then the result will be obtained only with the direct participation of the mentor. However, for the formation of effective thinking in children, it is necessary that the baby independently learns to highlight the most important characteristics of objects, select the components and assemble them in the correct order.

This type of thinking in children is formed for the most part independently. The participation of an adult should be limited to only one thing: he needs to interest the child in the subject and cause a desire to start interacting with it. At first, the child can begin to practically try out objects, since he has not yet mastered the skills of visual comparison of size and shape. The peculiarity of the development of this type of thinking in children is clearly manifested in the example of playing with a nesting doll: by applying two halves that are not suitable for each other, the baby will try to get the desired result by force - to squeeze in the wrong part. As soon as he is convinced that his actions do not bring the desired result, he will begin to use other elements until the necessary part falls into his hands. To develop thinking in children, toys are designed in such a way that they themselves will tell you which of the elements is most suitable. Sooner or later, the baby will be able to independently achieve the long-awaited result.

After external orienting actions are mastered, the child begins to visually correlate the characteristics of things. Here the visual perception is laid down, when the qualities of one object are taken by him as a model with which the baby will compare the properties of other things. The manifestation of this ability lies in the selection of details by eye. This greatly speeds up the interaction with objects, since the practically directed action is performed immediately, the process of practical trials goes aside.

At the next stage in the development of thinking, when children reach the age of two, they are already able to select objects visually according to the model. An adult during the game offers the baby to give him exactly the same object, to which he must respond correctly and choose from the whole mass of toys the most suitable thing, in his opinion. However, the thinking here is directed to three key filters - first the child will look for an object that matches the shape, then the size, and only lastly the color. It turns out that a new perception is formed for already known characteristics that the child uses regularly, and subsequently it is transferred to less significant indicators.

It is worth noting that the peculiarities of the development of thinking in children at an early age are such that they cannot correctly select an object of a rather complex shape, especially if an adult offers the baby to find several things at once. In addition, the child may completely lose sight of the characteristics that seem to him not very important. For example, if he needs to build a pyramid of a certain size from cubes according to the model, then he will not pay attention to colors, although he already knows how to distinguish them.

A little later, with the development of this kind of thinking, children acquire permanent patterns with which they can compare all objects. They are things whose form is very pronounced, or ideas about them. For example, a baby may perceive everything triangular as a house, and everything round as a ball. This will tell parents that their baby has already acquired certain ideas about the shape of objects, and they are fixed in his brain in connection with certain things.

Ideas about the shapes of objects are formed depending on how quickly the baby begins to master the visual orientation. So that the development of this form of thinking in children does not slow down, and his ideas about the characteristics of objects become as extensive as possible, the baby needs to get acquainted with the properties of things when they are in a certain environment. He has to be in constant interaction with a rich sensory environment, and it is she who influences his further development, both physical and mental.

Correlating actions the child regularly reproduces and repeats. Due to this, certain mental actions are formed in his head. One of the features of the development of this form of thinking in children is that even at this age, children begin to have actions that they perform only in their minds, without resorting to external influences. For example, he can choose the most suitable detail in his mind through vision.

Psychology of the development of visual-figurative thinking in younger preschoolers

At the heart of the guess, the test that has passed through mental analysis is associated with the images of objects. Approximately about three years, visual-figurative thinking is formed in children of primary preschool age. At an early age, this form of thinking in children is only in its infancy, which is why the baby can use it only within a limited range of tasks. The psychology of the development of thinking in children at this age is such that they perform more complex actions with the help of a visual-effective form.

For the development of all types of thinking, children of primary preschool age require certain educational toys, without which these processes can be seriously delayed. The most suitable are compound toys, when using which the baby is required to correlate parts by size or color. Sometimes during the game two identical things are used at once, one of which serves as a model, and the second is needed in order to reproduce the action with the object.

One of the very first reproducing actions is nesting one object into another. Toward the end of the first year of life, the child takes his toys out of the box and puts them back. First he takes them out, and then scatters them. If an adult collects them back, then the baby will again get them. This continues several times in a row.

A few months later, the child quickly collects small toys in a certain container. An adult should support this initiative and, in order to form visual-figurative thinking in children, show how to collect toys in a small box, and then transfer them to some other container. If the child is interested in this, such an activity will greatly captivate him. However, he will begin to enjoy the process itself, and not the final result.

Interaction with inserts in the process of the formation of visual-figurative thinking in children is a more complex process. A similar set is several objects of approximately the same shape, but of different sizes. The main task of the child when playing with liners is to correlate the size of objects in order to develop hand coordination. These items are very useful for the development of not only perception, but also thinking.

How to develop visual-figurative thinking in preschool children

Another extremely useful toy is the pyramid. Parents should teach the child to play with her correctly - first of all, put on rings and take them off. For kids, a pyramid with large multi-colored rings located on a rod of short length (about 20 cm) will be most suitable. How to develop thinking in a child with this toy? An adult should put the rod in front of the child and show how to string the rings and how to remove them. The parent can take the baby's hand and put the pyramid ring into it. After the exercise has been done several times, you can let the child complete it on their own.

For the development of figurative thinking in children under one and a half years old, the pyramid requires the simplest - a maximum of five rings. An adult must take it apart himself and show the baby all the necessary manipulations. Now there are pyramids with rings of different sizes - this task will become more difficult for the child, but it will significantly speed up his development. At first, the baby will string the rings, not paying attention to the size, but in this case there is a way out: buy a pyramid with a conical rod. The ring that should be on top cannot be worn below.

When the baby is a little older, for the development of visual-figurative thinking of preschoolers, actions with a pyramid can be diversified. Invite him to fold the track, putting the rings from largest to smallest. At first, let him not pay attention to their size, but later he himself will learn to lay out a narrowing path.

A pyramid with multi-colored rings is an excellent material for teaching a child to distinguish colors. However, in this case, the adult will not only have to take part in the game, but also comment on it. Therefore, in this case, for the development of figurative thinking in preschool children, two pyramids will be required at once. The kid is shown a red ring and asked to find a similar color. If he coped with the task, he is shown that the rings matched in color and praised. In the case when the child brought the wrong ring, he is again asked to bring the ring of the right color, but the wrong option is removed.

At first, the baby's speech is inextricably linked with his actions, but over time, words begin to anticipate any actions. He will first say what he is going to do, and only then will he do what he planned. At this stage of development, visual-effective thinking passes into visual-figurative. The child has accumulated enough life experience to imagine certain objects in his head and perform certain actions with them.

In the future, the thinking of preschool children develops on the basis of the relationship between image, word and action, where the word begins to play an increasingly important role. Nevertheless, until about the age of seven, the child's thinking is concrete, that is, it is not isolated from what he perceives in the life around him. Starting from about the age of six, the development of figurative thinking of preschoolers allows them to skillfully apply the available factual material, generalize it and draw the necessary conclusions.

Development of a form of visual-verbal thinking in a child

The development of visual-verbal thinking in a child is based not only and not so much on the perception of objects, but on descriptions and explanations received from parents orally. Despite this, the baby still thinks in concrete terms. For example, he already knows that metal objects sink in water, so he is sure that the nail will sink. However, he reinforces this with personal experience, which is expressed by the words: "I myself saw how the nail sank."

At this age, children are very inquisitive and ask adults a lot of questions. For the development of thinking in preschool children, parents or educators must have an answer to each question. The first questions are often related to the disruption of the usual order of things, for example, when a toy breaks that used to work fine. The child is interested in adults, how to be and what to do. Somewhat later, questions arise about what surrounds him.

The development of thinking of children of middle preschool age and younger schoolchildren is accelerating. When a child goes to school, the nature of his activities undergoes significant changes. For example, the range of subjects that make up his interest is greatly expanding. The teacher guides the children in the classroom so that they can express their thoughts freely in words. They are invited to think first, and then perform a certain action. Despite the fact that at primary school age children still think in concrete-figurative concepts, abstract thinking is already laid in them. Their mental processes begin to spread to animals, plants, surrounding people, etc.

However, in this case, the pace of development depends, first of all, on how well the training program is chosen. If children are engaged in a program of increased complexity, then by about eight years of age their ability to abstract reasoning is much higher than that of their peers who are trained according to standard patterns. The main advantage of this method is that the teacher is always well aware of what factual material needs to be used and how the thought processes of a particular student are formed.

Stages of development of spatio-temporal thinking of children

Another type of thinking in preschool children is spatio-temporal or temporal. Adults are well aware that time is a very ambiguous and relative concept. Children also think about something similar, but initially they should be introduced to this concept. Child psychologists have long noted the fact that the main guideline for a child in relation to time is some bright event or a significant impression, the expectation of something. In this case, it turns out that the baby is perfectly oriented both in the past and in the future tense, but the present is absent. The child imagines the present as the current moment, what is happening this very second.

It has been observed that even very young children are able to learn what is repeated daily - morning, evening, night. It is easier for a child to navigate in time if the parents wish him good morning or good night. Due to the fact that thinking in preschool children is visual-figurative, it is difficult for them to operate with abstract concepts.

Time is just an abstract category - it cannot be seen, felt or heard.

One of the features of the development of temporal thinking in preschool children is the “natural sense of time”, because even infants are guided by their internal biological clock, embedded in them by nature.

If a clear time schedule was instilled in children from an early age, then it will be much easier for them to learn the time. Their body adapts to the existing rhythm of life, so the idea of ​​​​time periods develops in their brain much faster than those of those children who do not have a certain routine. If today the baby was fed at noon, and yesterday at 2 pm, it is much more difficult for him to navigate in time.

For hours, children begin to be interested from about three or four years old. If the baby has good natural data, then by this age he is able to navigate them. For the development of space-time thinking of children from an early age, parents should introduce them to the very concept of time.

This should not be devoted to any separate conversations, you just need to say words denoting temporary concepts in the process of playing and communicating with the baby. As a result, the adult simply comments on his actions and plans. It is these concepts that are initially fixed in the mind of the child. However, they may not refer to daily activities, but to what parents tell their offspring about.

A little later, you can start designating more specific time periods, so that the child has a concept in his head regarding the past, present and future. This is far from being as simple as it might seem at first glance, as the baby often confuses these words. It is difficult for him to understand abstract concepts, but over time he will master this too. You can immediately give information on calendar concepts - days, months, weeks, etc. In order for all of them to be constantly in his mind, you need to purchase a special children's calendar and hang it in the baby's room.

You should be prepared for the fact that spatial thinking in children is not sufficiently developed, and the baby is not immediately able to remember such complex words and concepts. Parents need to be patient, gradually and consistently teach the child time. Every morning you need to tell him what day of the week it is, the date of the month, etc. Over time, he will learn to independently determine them according to the calendar. Parents need to think about how to turn this process into an exciting game. It is most convenient if temporary concepts are mentioned in conversations and plans.

So that the child can quickly remember what a week is, it is easiest, starting from Monday, to circle each past day. When Sunday evening comes, the baby needs to be shown that 7 days have passed, which make up one line on the calendar. Due to the fact that the child thinks objectively and visually, it will be much easier for him to remember the concept of the week using this approach.

You can do it a little differently - get a calendar with large cells and draw an image in them every day. It should symbolize an event related to the life of the baby on this day. You can also mark important family holidays and other dates on the calendar. Thanks to this approach, by about the age of five, the baby will learn to prepare for future events, will begin to plan and allocate his time.

The features of the development of the thinking of preschool children are such that already at the age of two, the child is able to realize that the seasons are changing. This process may be accelerated if parents draw the baby's attention to the changes that occur in nature when the seasons change. You can not only tell the child about these changes, but also ask him, for example, about how the square or playground looked like quite recently. The kid, of course, will not be able to immediately remember the sequence in which the months go, so you need to return to this topic again and again. In books for children, one way or another, the concept of seasons and time in general is also affected.

Only after the child understands the days, weeks, years and months, you can move on to hours. So that these conversations do not go to waste, it is better to introduce him to the numbers from 1 to 12. The easiest way is to talk with the baby about the clock using the example of a large dial with divisions printed on it. Parents should tell him about how the minute and hour hands move, and a child between the ages of five and seven is able to perceive and assimilate such information.

After he has memorized all this, you need to train him day by day, asking where the arrows are when he gets out of bed or goes to bed.

Early Childhood Development: Differences in Thinking Between Boys and Girls

Studies have shown that girls are born more mature than boys. Boys start walking 2-3 months later and talk 5 months later. And already by the period of puberty, this interval increases to 2 years.

The different sexes of children are not only differences in primary and secondary sexual characteristics. This is also a different brain, and a different psyche and a different development of thinking: in younger preschool girls it is higher.

At preschool age, girls are ahead of boys in the development of verbal (oral, verbal) abilities. They do not differ much from them in terms of the speed of mastering speech, but after 2 years the girls become more sociable and willingly contact other children. Girls' speech is more correct.

Boys, unlike girls, have better spatial thinking. As a rule, it is more difficult for them to clothe their thoughts in the form of a correctly constructed statement.

The processes of perception, the development of thinking of younger preschoolers and their memory also differ greatly. When solving spatial problems, girls mainly use speech supports, and when solving speech or logical problems, they use figurative and emotional ones.

Boys are always more focused on information, and girls on relationships between people. If boys ask questions for the sake of obtaining specific information, then girls - to establish emotional contacts.

In preschool girls, the right hemisphere matures more slowly, while in boys, the left hemisphere matures more slowly. It is because of this physiological feature that girls up to 10 years old remember numbers better, and it is easier for them to solve logical problems. However, their memory development is completed faster.

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In preschool children there is an intensive development of thinking. The child acquires a number of new knowledge about the surrounding reality and at the same time learns to analyze, synthesize, compare, generalize his observations, i.e. perform simple mental operations. The most important role in the mental development of the child is played by education and training.

The development of the thinking of a preschool child is inextricably linked with the development of his speech, with the teaching of his native language. In the mental education of a preschooler, along with visual demonstration, verbal instructions and explanations of parents and educators play an increasingly important role, concerning not only what the child perceives at the moment, but also objects and phenomena that the child first learns about with the help of a word. However, it must be borne in mind that verbal explanations and instructions are understood by the child (and not acquired mechanically) only if they are supported by his practical experience, if they find support in the direct perception of those objects and phenomena that the educator speaks about, or in representations of previously perceived, similar objects and phenomena.

Thinking acquires in the preschooler the character of coherent reasoning, relatively independent of direct actions with objects. Now the child can be given cognitive, mental tasks (explain a phenomenon, solve a riddle, solve a puzzle). [ A. V. Zaporozhets. "Psychology", M., Uchpedgiz, 1953]

The main line of development of thinking is the transition from visual-effective to visual-figurative and at the end of the period - to verbal thinking. The main type of thinking, however, is visual-figurative, which corresponds to representative intelligence (thinking in representations) in the terminology of Jean Piaget. The preschooler thinks figuratively, he has not yet acquired the adult logic of reasoning. [Kulagina I. Yu. Developmental psychology (Child development from birth to 17 years): Textbook. 3rd ed. - M.: Publishing house of URAO, 1997. - 176]

A child of 3-6 years old is engaged in various activities that enrich his knowledge of objects and their properties. The preschooler more and more independently chooses and applies various methods and techniques for solving the practical problems that confront him. Special studies of the preschooler's thinking have shown that at this age stage there is a restructuring of the relationship between practical action and mental action. Along with the transition of the process of thinking to the “internal plan” (internalization), a restructuring of practical action takes place. Offering children 3-6 years old to make a picture out of planar figures against the background (garden, clearing, room) (A. A. Lyublinskaya, Z. S. Reshko), fix a spoiled toy (A. A. Lyublinskaya, Z. A. Gankova) , to choose a tool to get a candy out of a vase (I. M. Zhukova), or to keep a ball on a table with an inclined surface (A. A. Weiger), the researchers obtained data that allow us to draw some general conclusions.

Younger preschoolers (3-4 years old) do not always use an action that is adequate to the task. Children immediately begin to effectively solve the problem, sometimes making random, "groping" samples. Not seeing the connections that actually exist (in particular, spatial ones) and grossly violating them, three- and four-year-old children sometimes create completely meaningless pictures.

Thus, children of this age solve a particular problem by probing actions, and they comprehend the result obtained only after the action is completed.

In children of middle preschool age, the comprehension of the task and the methods for solving it are accomplished in the very process of action. The speech of five-, six-year-old children usually serves as a support, or accompaniment, of the action being performed (L. S. Vygotsky).

In children of older preschool age (6-7 years old), the relations of sensory perception, practical action and speech again change. Now, just by looking at the pictures, the child mentally combines them. He can, without resorting to practical manipulation of the figures, solve the proposed problem in his mind. After the solution found in the mind, the child quickly arranges the figures on a certain background. His story after the action performed essentially repeats what he said at the very beginning of the experience. The action has not added anything to the solution of the problem. [Lyublinskaya A. A. Child psychology. Textbook for students of pedagogical in-comrade. M.: Enlightenment, 1971. - 415 p. S. 243]

In order for a child to study well at school, it is necessary that during preschool childhood his thinking reach a certain level of development. A child should come from kindergarten to school with an interest in acquiring new knowledge, with a stock of elementary concepts about the surrounding reality, with the simplest skills of independent mental work. [ A. V. Zaporozhets. "Psychology", M., Uchpedgiz, 1953]

The basis for the development of thinking is the formation and improvement of mental actions. It depends on what mental actions a child has, what knowledge he can acquire and how he can use them. [ Mukhina V.S. Developmental psychology: developmental phenomenology, childhood, adolescence: A textbook for students. Universities.-7th edition, stereotype.-M.: Publishing center "Academy", 2003.-p.193.]