What is productive thinking. Reproductive thinking, being less productive, nevertheless plays an important role in - PedagogyStudy

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Human thinking includes mental operations of various types and levels. First of all, their cognitive significance can be quite different. Many scientists distinguish different levels of thought depending on any forms, features, criteria, etc.

In the psychological literature, three types of thinking in its elementary forms are distinguished, and several “paired” classifications are also used. In general, the relationship between different types of thinking has not yet been identified. However, the main thing is clear: the term "thinking" in psychology refers to qualitatively heterogeneous processes.

Thus, it is possible to distinguish the classification of types of thinking according to different criteria. The given classification is allocated conditionally and is not complete. Since all of the listed types of thinking in humans coexist in complex relationships and can be represented in the same activity (see Fig. 1). However, depending on its nature and ultimate goals, one or another type of thinking dominates. According to the degree of their complexity, according to the requirements that they place on the intellectual and other abilities of a person, all these types of thinking are not inferior to each other.

Rice. one

As shown in fig. 1, in thinking as in the process of generalized and mediated cognition of reality, its productive and reproductive components are intertwined in a contradictory dialectical unity, and their share in a particular mental activity can be different. Under the influence of the ever-increasing demands of life on its creative component, it became necessary to single out special types of thinking - productive and reproductive.

It should be noted that in Soviet literature there is an objection to the allocation of such species, since any process of thinking is productive. However, most psychologists who study thinking consider it appropriate to distinguish these types (P.P. Blonsky, N.A. Menchinskaya, Ya.A. Ponomarev, O.K. Tikhomirov).

In the literature, these types (sides, components) of mental activity are called differently. As synonyms for the concept of "productive thinking" they use the terms: creative thinking, visual-figurative, independent, heuristic, creative, artistic, lateral, unconventional. Synonyms for reproductive thinking are the terms: reproducing (non-creative) thinking, verbal-logical, visual-effective, rational, receptive, discursive, template, etc. In this work, the terms productive and reproductive thinking are used.

Productive thinking is characterized by a high degree of novelty of the product obtained on its basis, its originality. This thinking appears when a person, having tried to complete a task based on its formal logical analysis with the direct use of methods known to him, is convinced of the futility of such attempts and he has a need for new knowledge that allows him to complete the task: this need ensures high activity. subject performing the task. Awareness of the need itself speaks of the creation of a problem situation in a person.

Finding what is sought presupposes the discovery of signs unknown to the subject, essential for fulfilling the task of relations, regular connections between signs, those methods and techniques by which they can be found. A person is forced to act in conditions of uncertainty, to outline and try a number of possible options for implementation, to make a choice between them, sometimes without having sufficient grounds for this. He is looking for a key to a solution based on hypotheses and their testing, i.e. methods rely on a certain foresight of what can be obtained as a result of transformations. An essential role in this is played by generalizations, which make it possible to reduce the amount of information on the basis of the analysis of which a person comes to the discovery of new knowledge, to reduce the number of operations carried out in this case, "steps" to achieve the goal.

As emphasized by L.L. Gurov, it is very fruitful in finding a way to solve a problem when performing tasks is its meaningful, semantic analysis, aimed at revealing the natural relations of objects in a task. In it, an essential role is played by the figurative components of thinking, which allow you to directly operate with these natural relations of objects. They represent a special, figurative logic, which makes it possible to establish connections not with two, as in verbal reasoning, but with many links of the analyzed situation, to act, according to L.L. Gurova, in multidimensional space.

In studies conducted under the direction of S.L. Rubinstein puts forward "analysis through synthesis" as an effective technique used in productive thinking. On the basis of such an analysis, the desired property of the object is revealed when the object is included in the system of connections and relations in which it more clearly reveals this property. The found property opens a new circle of connections and relations of the object with which this property can be correlated. Such is the dialectic of creative cognition of reality.

In this process, as many researchers note, there is often an outwardly sudden vision of a solution - insight, "aha-experience", and it often occurs when a person was not directly involved in solving a problem when performing a task. In reality, such a decision is prepared by past experience, depends on the previous analytic-synthetic activity and, above all, on the level of verbal-logical conceptual generalization reached by the decisive one. However, the process of searching for a solution to a large extent is carried out intuitively, under the threshold of consciousness, not finding its adequate reflection in the word, and that is why its result, "breaking through" into the sphere of consciousness, is recognized as an insight, supposedly not related to the activity previously carried out by the subject. aimed at discovering new knowledge.

Although thinking as a process of generalized and mediated cognition of reality always includes elements of productivity, its share in the process of mental activity can be different. Where the share of productivity is high enough, one speaks of productive thinking proper as a special kind of mental activity. As a result of productive thinking, something original arises, fundamentally new for the subject, i.e., the degree of novelty here is high. The condition for the emergence of such thinking is the presence of a problem situation that contributes to the awareness of the need to discover new knowledge, stimulating the high activity of the subject solving the problem.

The novelty of the problem dictates a new way to solve it: spasmodicity, the inclusion of heuristic, "exploratory" tests, the great role of semantics, meaningful analysis of the problem. In this process, along with verbal-logical, well-conscious generalizations, intuitive-practical generalizations are very important, which at first do not find their adequate reflection in the word. They arise in the process of analyzing visual situations, solving specific practical problems, real actions with objects or their models, which greatly facilitates the search for the unknown, but the process of this search itself is outside the clear field of consciousness, it is carried out intuitively.

Weaving into conscious activity, being sometimes extended, in time, often very long, the process of intuitive-practical thinking is realized as an instant act, as an insight due to the fact that the result of the decision first “breaks through” into consciousness, while the path to it remains outside. it is realized on the basis of subsequent more detailed, conscious mental activity.

As a result of productive thinking, the formation of mental neoplasms occurs - new communication systems, new forms of mental self-regulation, personality traits, her abilities, which marks a shift in mental development.

So, productive thinking is characterized by the high novelty of its product, the originality of the process of obtaining it, and, finally, a significant influence on mental development. It is a decisive link in mental activity, as it provides a real movement towards new knowledge.

From a psychological point of view, there is no fundamental difference between the productive thinking of a scientist who discovers objectively new laws of the world around us that are not yet known to mankind, and the productive thinking of a student who makes a discovery of something new only for himself, since the basis is general mental laws. However, the conditions for the search for new knowledge are different for them, as is the level of mental activity leading to discovery.

In order to somehow designate these differences, most researchers prefer to use the term "productive thinking" in relation to this type of thinking of schoolchildren, and the term "creative thinking" denotes the highest stage of mental activity carried out by those who discover fundamentally new knowledge for humanity, create something original, unparalleled.

Psychologists have spent a lot of effort and time to find out how a person solves new, unusual, creative tasks. However, there is still no clear answer to the question of the psychological nature of creativity. Science has only a few data that make it possible to partially describe the process of solving such problems by a person, to characterize the conditions that facilitate and hinder finding the right solution.

One of the first who tried to formulate creative thinking was J. Gilford. He believed that the "creativity" of thinking is associated with the dominance of four features in it:

A. Originality, non-triviality, unusualness of the ideas expressed, a pronounced desire for intellectual novelty. A creative person almost always and everywhere seeks to find his own solution, different from others.

B. Semantic flexibility, i.e. the ability to see an object from a new angle of view, to discover its new use, to expand the functional application in practice.

B. Image adaptive flexibility, i.e. the ability to change the perception of an object in such a way as to see its new sides, hidden from observation.

D. Semantic spontaneous flexibility, i.e. the ability to produce a variety of ideas in an uncertain situation, in particular one that does not contain guidelines for these ideas.

Subsequently, other attempts were made to define creative thinking, but they brought little new to its understanding, which was proposed by J. Gilford.

E. Bono offers a different interpretation of creative thinking. He presents it as a special kind of non-template (lateral)

thinking that aims at new ideas. In some cases, the results of out-of-the-box thinking are ingenious creations, in others they are nothing more than a new way of looking at things, and therefore something less significant than genuine creativity. In most cases, creative thinking needs talent to manifest itself, while out-of-the-box thinking is available to anyone who is interested in getting new ideas.

E. Bono also divides stereotyped and non-standard thinking as productive and reproductive. He argues that the difference between the two is that in pattern thinking, logic governs the mind, while in non-pattern thinking, it serves it.

Creative thinking is characterized by the fact that it gives new, hitherto unknown results. At the same time, the opinion is expressed that the novelty of the products of thinking is a necessary but insufficient indicator of creative thinking. Thus, the question of new definitions of the difference between creative and non-creative thinking arises. A distinction is often made between these thought processes: non-creative (schematic) thinking is expressible with the help of an algorithm, while creative thinking is non-algorithmic.

However, most psychologists consider it appropriate to single out the types of thinking - productive and reproductive.

Characterized by less productivity, reproductive thinking, nevertheless, plays an important role in both cognitive and practical human activities. On the basis of this type of thinking, the solution of problems of a structure familiar to the subject is carried out. Under the influence of the perception and analysis of the conditions of the task, its data, the desired, functional links between them, previously formed systems of links are updated, providing a correct, logically justified solution to such a task, its adequate reflection in the word.

Reproductive thinking is of great importance in the educational activities of schoolchildren. It provides an understanding of new material when it is presented by a teacher or in a textbook, the application of knowledge in practice, if this does not require their significant transformation, etc. The possibilities of reproductive thinking, first of all, are determined by the presence of an initial minimum of knowledge in a person; research is easier to develop than productive thinking, and at the same time plays a significant role in solving new problems for the subject. In this case, it appears at the initial stage, when a person tries to solve a problem that is new to him using methods known to him and is convinced that familiar methods do not ensure his success. Awareness of this leads to the emergence of a "problem situation", i.e. activates productive thinking, which ensures the discovery of new knowledge, the formation of new systems of connections, which later will provide him with the solution of similar problems. As already noted, the process of productive thinking is spasmodic, part of it is carried out subconsciously, without adequate reflection in the word. First, its result finds expression in the word ("Aha! Found! Guessed!"), And then - the path to it.

Awareness of the solution found by the subject, its verification and rationale are again carried out on the basis of reproductive thinking. Thus, real activity, the process of independent cognition of the surrounding reality, is the result of a complex interweaving, interaction of reproductive and productive types of mental activity.

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PRODUCTIVE THINKING

M. Wertheimer

Max Wertheimer - an outstanding German psychologist, one of the founders of Gestalt psychology - was born on April 15, 1880 in Prague, died on October 12, 1943 in New York. In 1904 he defended his dissertation under the guidance of O. Külpe. For many years he worked at the University of Berlin. In 1933, M. Wertheimer, like other creators of Gestalt psychology, was forced to leave Nazi Germany and continued his teaching and research activities in the United States, working at the New School for Social Research (New York). Apparently, the reaction of the scientist to fascism explains the special attention of M. Wertheimer to the problems of human dignity, personality psychology, to the problems of the theory of ethics, which he developed in the last years of his life while working at this school.

In our country, M. Wertheimer is known mainly as a theorist of Gestalt psychology and an experimental researcher in the field of the psychology of visual perception. Gestalt psychology was formed as an opposition to associative psychology. M. Wertheimer, W. Köhler, K. Koffka, K. Levin and others put forward the principle of integrity as the basic principle of perception (and then other mental processes), opposing it to the associative principle of elements. They proceeded from the position that all processes in nature are initially integral. Therefore, the process of perception is determined not by single elementary sensations and their combinations, but by the entire "field" of stimuli acting on the organism, by the structure of the perceived situation as a whole. That is why this direction began to be called Gestalt psychology.

The approach to studying the perceived image as an integral structure (Gestalt) is the main principle of Gestalt psychology.

Introduction

What happens when thinking is productive? What happens when we move forward in thinking? What actually happens in such a process?

When we turn to books, we often find answers that only seem simple. But in relation to real productive processes - when we, even in connection with the most modest problem, have a creative thought, when we really begin to comprehend its essence, when we experience the joy of the productive process of thinking itself - it turns out that these answers are often instead of to openly admit real problems, carefully hide them. These answers lack the flesh and blood of what is happening.

Throughout your life, of course, you have been interested - sometimes even seriously - in many things. Have you wondered what is the thing called thinking? There are different things in this world: food, thunderstorms, flowers, crystals. Various sciences deal with them; they make great efforts to really understand them, to comprehend what they really are. Are we equally seriously interested in what productive thinking is?

There are excellent examples. They can often be found even in everyday life. Probably, you have experienced for yourself or, watching children, witnessed this amazing event - the birth of a genuine idea, a productive process, a transition from blindness to understanding. If you have not been fortunate enough to experience it yourself, then you may have observed it in others; or maybe you were delighted when something similar flashed before you while reading a good book.

Many believe that people do not like to think and strive to avoid it by all means, they prefer not to think, but to memorize and repeat. But despite the many adverse factors that stifle genuine thinking, people - even children - strive for it.

What actually happens in such processes? What happens when we really think, and think productively? What are the essential features and stages of this process? How does it flow? How does a flash, insight occur? What conditions, attitudes favor or do not favor such remarkable phenomena? What is the difference between good thinking and bad thinking? And finally, how to improve thinking? Your thinking? Thinking in general? Suppose we need to make a list of the main operations of thinking - what would it look like? What, in essence, should be guided by? Is it possible to increase the number of such operations - to improve them and thereby make them more productive?

For more than two thousand years, many of the best minds in philosophy, logic, psychology, and pedagogy have been trying to find answers to these questions. The history of these efforts, brilliant ideas, and enormous labor spent on research and creative discussion is a vivid, dramatic picture. Much has already been done. A solid contribution has been made to the understanding of a large number of particular issues. At the same time, there is something tragic in the history of these efforts. Comparing ready-made answers with real examples of brilliant thinking, great thinkers again and again experienced anxiety and deep disappointment, they felt that, although what was done had merit, it did not, in essence, address the essence of the problem.

And today the situation has hardly changed. Many books deal with these issues as if all the problems had already been solved. The existing opposing views on the nature of thought have serious implications for behavior and learning. When we observe a teacher, we often realize how serious the consequences of such views on thinking can be.

Although there are good teachers who have a taste for genuine thinking, the situation in the schools is often unsatisfactory. The actions of teachers, the nature of teaching, the style of textbooks are largely determined by two traditional views on the nature of thinking: classical logic and association theory.

Both views have their merits. To some extent, they seem to be adequate to certain types of thinking processes, certain types of his work, but in both cases the question remains whether this way of understanding thinking is a serious hindrance, whether it actually harms capable students. .

Traditional logic has approached these problems with great ingenuity. How to find the main thing in a huge variety of problems of thinking? In the following way. Thinking is interested in truth. Truth or falsity are the qualities of statements, judgments, and only them. Elementary propositions affirm or deny some predicate of subjects in the form "all S essence R" , or "none S do not eat R", or "some S essence R" , or "some S not the point R". Judgments contain general concepts - the concepts of classes. They are the basis of all thinking. For a judgment to be correct, it is important to correctly handle its content and volume. Based on judgments, conclusions are made. Logic studies the formal conditions under which conclusions turn out to be right or wrong. Certain combinations of propositions make it possible to obtain "new" correct propositions. Such syllogisms, with their premises and conclusions, are the crown, the very essence of traditional logic. Logic establishes various forms of syllogism that guarantee the correctness of the conclusion.

Although most textbook syllogisms seem completely fruitless, as in the classic example:

All people are mortal;

Socrates is a man;

Socrates is mortal

there are examples of real discoveries that can be considered as syllogisms in the first approximation, for example, the discovery of the planet Neptune. But both formally and essentially, these syllogisms do not differ from each other. The basic rules and characteristics of these stupid, and really meaningful syllogisms are the same.

Traditional logic formulates criteria that guarantee the accuracy, validity, consistency of general concepts, judgments, conclusions and syllogisms. The main chapters of classical logic relate to these topics. Of course, sometimes the rules of conventional logic remind us of efficient rules of the road.

Leaving aside differences in terminology and disagreements on secondary issues, the following characteristic operations of traditional logic can be named:

· definition;

· comparison and distinction;

· analysis;

· abstraction;

generalization;

· classification;

formation of judgments;

inferences;

drawing up syllogisms, etc.

These operations, singled out, defined and used by logicians, have been and are being studied by psychologists. As a result, a lot of experimental research has arisen on abstraction, generalization, definition, inference, and so on.

Some psychologists believe that a person is able to think, that he is smart, if he can correctly and easily carry out the operations of traditional logic. The inability to form general concepts, to abstract, to draw conclusions from syllogisms of certain formal types is considered as a mental disability, which is determined and measured in experiments.

No matter how we evaluate classical logic, it had and still has great advantages:

a clear desire for truth;

focusing on the essential difference between a simple statement, a belief, and an accurate judgment;

· emphasizing the difference between insufficiently clear concepts, vague generalizations and precise formulations;

· the development of a set of formal criteria to detect errors, ambiguities, illegal generalizations, hasty conclusions, etc.;

emphasizing the importance of evidence;

thoroughness of the inference rules;

· the requirement of persuasiveness and rigor of each separate step of thinking.

The system of traditional logic, the foundations of which were laid down in Aristotle's Organon, was considered final for many centuries; and although some refinements were made to it, they did not change its basic character. During the Renaissance, a new field arose, the development of which had a significant impact on the formation of modern science. Its main advantage was its introduction as a fundamental new procedure, which was not previously given much importance due to its insufficient evidence. This is the method of induction, with its emphasis on experience and experimentation. The description of this method reached its greatest perfection in the well-known canon of rules of induction by John Stuart Mill.

The emphasis here is not on rational inference from general propositions, but on the collection of facts, the empirical study of invariant relationships between them, and on observing the consequences of changes occurring in real situations - that is, on procedures that lead to the formulation of general propositions. Syllogisms are seen as tools with which to extract consequences from such hypothetical assumptions in order to test them.

· empirical observations;

careful collection of facts;

Empirical study of problems;

introduction of experimental methods;

correlation of facts;

development of decisive experiments.

The second major theory of thought is based on the classical theory of associationism. Thinking is a chain of ideas (or in more modern terms, a connection of stimuli and reactions or elements of behavior). The way in which thinking is interpreted is clear: we must study the laws governing the sequence of ideas (or, in modern terms, the elements of behavior). An "idea" in the classical associative theory is something like a trace of sensation, in more modern terms, a copy, a trace of stimuli. What is the basic law of succession, connection of these elements? The answer - captivating in its theoretical simplicity - is this: if two objects a and b often occur together, then the subsequent presentation, and will cause in the subject b. These elements are related, entities, in the same way that a friend's phone number is related to his name, or as meaningless syllables are related in experiments to learn a series of such syllables, or as a dog's salivation is related to a certain sound signal.

Habit, past experience, in the sense of the repetition of adjacent elements, is rather inertia than reason - these are the essential factors. That's what David Hume said. Compared to classical associationism, this theory is now very complex, but the old idea of repetition, contiguity, is still its central point. The leading exponent of this approach recently stated unequivocally that the modern theory of conditioned reflexes has, in essence, the same nature as classical associationism.

The list of operations looks like this:

· associations acquired on the basis of communication repetition;

the role of frequency of repetition, novelty;

recollection of past experience;

trial and error with occasional success;

learning based on repetition of a successful trial;

actions in accordance with conditioned reactions and habits.

These operations and processes are now widely studied using well established methods.

Many psychologists will say: the ability to think is a consequence of the work of associative connections; it can be measured by the number of associations acquired by the subject, the ease and correctness of learning and recalling these connections.

Undoubtedly, this approach also has its merits, which relate to the very subtle features observed in this kind of learning and behavior.

Both approaches encountered great difficulty in explaining meaningful, productive thought processes.

Consider first the traditional logic. Over the centuries, again and again, deep dissatisfaction with the way traditional logic has treated such processes has arisen. Compared to genuine, meaningful, productive processes, problems, and even ordinary examples of traditional logic, often look meaningless, flat, and boring. The logical interpretation, although quite strict, still often seems very fruitless, tedious, empty and unproductive. When we try to describe the processes of genuine thinking in terms of traditional formal logic, the result often turns out to be unsatisfactory: we have a number of correct operations, but the meaning of the process and everything that was alive, convincing, creative in it seem to disappear. It is possible to have a chain of logical operations, each of which is quite correct in itself, but taken together they do not reflect a reasonable train of thought. Indeed, there are logically thinking people who, in certain situations, carry out a number of correct operations, but the latter are very far from the true flight of thoughts. The role of traditional logical training should not be underestimated: it leads to the rigor and validity of each step, contributes to the development of a critical mind, but in itself, obviously, does not lead to productive thinking. In short, it is possible to be empty and meaningless, though accurate, and it is always difficult to describe truly productive thinking.

By the way, the realization of the last circumstance - along with others - led some logicians to the following categorical statement: the logic that deals with the problems of correctness and validity has nothing to do with real productive thinking. It has also been pointed out that the reason for this is that logic is not concerned with time and therefore does not deal in principle with the processes of actual thought, which are quite real and exist in time. This division has obviously proved useful in solving certain problems, but from a broader point of view, such statements often resemble the lament of a fox about the unripeness of grapes.

Similar difficulties arise in the associative theory: how to distinguish reasonable thinking from meaningless combinations, how to explain creative side of thinking.

If the solution to a problem is achieved by mere recall, by the rote repetition of what has been learned by rote by accidental discovery in a series of blind trials, then I would hesitate to call such a process intelligent thinking; and it is doubtful whether the accumulation of such phenomena alone, even if in large quantities, will be able to create an adequate picture of thought processes. In order to somehow explain the emergence of new solutions, a number of hypotheses were proposed (for example, the Selz constellation theory, or the concept of a systemic hierarchy of skills), which, by their very nature, turned out to be almost useless.

Parallelogram area

Among the problems I worked on was the problem of determining the area of a parallelogram.

I don't know if you will get the same pleasure from the results of my experiments as I did. It seems to me that you will get if you follow me, understand the essence of the problem and feel the difficulties that arose on the way and for overcoming which I had to find means and methods in order to psychologically understand the problem put forward.

I come to class. The teacher says: "In the previous lesson, we learned how to determine the area of a rectangle. Does everyone know how to do this?"

Pupils answer: "All". One of them shouts out: "The area of a rectangle is equal to the product of its two sides." The teacher approves the answer and then offers several problems with different side sizes, which were all immediately solved.

"Now," says the teacher, "we'll move on." He draws a parallelogram on the board: "This is a parallelogram. A parallelogram is a flat quadrilateral whose opposite sides are equal and parallel."

Here one student raises his hand: "Tell me, please, what are the sides equal to?" "Oh, the sides can be of very different lengths," the teacher replies. "In this case, the value of one of the sides is 11 inches, the other 5 inches." "Then the area is 5x11 square inches." "No," the teacher says, "this is not true. Now you will learn how the area of a parallelogram is determined." He labels the peaks a, b, with, d.

"I drop one perpendicular from the upper left corner and the other from the upper right corner. I continue the base to the right. I designate new points with letters e and f".

With the help of this drawing, he then proceeds to the usual proof of the theorem, according to which the area of the parallelogram is equal to the product of the base and the height, establishing the equality of certain segments and angles and the equality of two triangles. In each case, he gives previously learned theorems, postulates or axioms, with the help of which he justifies equality. Finally, he concludes that it has now been proven that the area of the parallelogram is equal to the product of the base and the height.

"You will find the proof of the theorem that I showed you in your textbooks on p. 62. Learn the lesson at home, repeat it carefully so that you remember it well."

Then the teacher offers several tasks in which it is required to determine the areas of parallelograms of various sizes, with different sides and angles. Since this class was "good", the tasks were solved correctly. At the end of the lesson, the teacher assigns ten more tasks of the same type as homework.

A day later, I was back in the same class at the next lesson.

The lesson began with the teacher calling the student and asking him to show how the area of a parallelogram is determined. The student brilliantly demonstrated this.

It was clear that he had learned his lesson. The teacher whispered to me, "And this is not the best of my students. No doubt the others learned the lesson well too." Written test gave good results.

Many will say: "A wonderful class; learning goal achieved." But as I watched the class, I felt some unease. “What have they learned?” I asked myself. “Do they think at all? "Not only could they repeat what the teacher said word for word, there was also some transfer. But did they even understand what was going on? How can I find out? What do I need?" do?" .

I asked the teacher for permission to ask the class a question. "Please," the teacher readily replied.

I went to the blackboard and drew this figure.

Rice. 3 Fig. 4

Some of the students were clearly confused.

One student raised his hand, "Master didn't explain it to us."

The rest took up the task. They copied the drawing, drew auxiliary lines, as they were taught, dropping perpendiculars from the two upper corners and continuing the base (Fig. 4). They were confused, puzzled.

Others didn't seem unhappy at all. They confidently wrote under the drawing: "The area is equal to the product of the base and the height" - a correct, but, apparently, completely blind statement. When they were asked if they could prove it with this drawing, they were quite puzzled.

Others behaved quite differently. Their faces brightened, they smiled and drew the following lines on the drawing or rotated the sheet by 45° and then completed the task (Fig. 5A and 5B).

Rice. 5A Fig. 5 B

Seeing that only a small number of students completed the task, the teacher said to me with a hint of displeasure: "You, of course, offered them an unusual drawing. Naturally, they could not cope with it."

Speaking between us, don't you also think: "It is not surprising that, having received such an unfamiliar figure, many could not cope with it." But is it less familiar than those variations of the original figure that the teacher gave them earlier and with which they coped? The teacher gave problems that varied greatly in terms of the length of the sides, the size of the angles and areas. These variations were obvious, and the students did not find them difficult at all. You may have noticed that my parallelogram is just a rotated original figure suggested by the teacher. With respect to all its parts, it differs no more from the original figure than the variations proposed by the teacher.

Now I will tell you what happened when I gave the problem to determine the area parallelogram to the subjects - mostly children - after briefly explaining to them how the area of a rectangle is determined, without saying anything more, without helping in anything, just waiting for what they would say or do. Among the subjects were adults of various professions, students whose reaction could be judged that they had completely forgotten this theorem, and children who had never heard of geometry at all, even five-year-old children.

Various types of reactions have been observed.

First type. No reaction at all.

Or someone said: "Ugh! Math!" - and refused to solve the problem with the words: "I don't like math."

Some subjects simply waited politely or asked, "What's next?"

Others said, "I don't know; I wasn't taught that." Or: "I went through this in school, but I completely forgot," and that's it. Some expressed dissatisfaction: "Why do you think that I can do this?" And I answered them: "Why not try?".

Second type. Others rummaged vigorously through their memories, trying to remember something that might help them. They blindly searched for some scraps of knowledge that they could apply.

Some asked, "Can I ask my older brother? He probably knows." Or: "Can I see the answer in the geometry textbook?" Obviously, this is also one of the ways to solve problems.

Third type. Some began to talk at length. They talked around the problem, talking about similar situations. Or they classified it in some way, applied general concepts, assigned the task to some category, or carried out aimless trials.

Fourth type. However, in a number of cases it was possible to observe the real process of thinking - judging by the drawings, comments, thoughts aloud.

"Here is this figure; how can I determine the size of the area? The area of \u200b\u200bthe figure of this particular shape?"

"Something needs to be done. I have to change something, change it in such a way that it helps me see the area clearly. Something is wrong here." At this stage, some of the children drew the figure shown in fig. 21.

In such cases, I said: "It would be good to compare the area of a parallelogram with the area of a rectangle." The child helplessly stopped and then resumed attempts.

In other cases the child said, "I must get rid of the difficulty. This figure cannot be divided into small squares."

Here one child suddenly said, "Can you give me a folding ruler?" I brought him such a meter. The child made a parallelogram out of it, and then turned it into a rectangle.

I liked it. "Are you sure it's right?" I asked. "I'm sure," he replied. Only with great difficulty, with the help of an appropriate drawing (Fig. 24), did I manage to make him doubt the correctness of his method.

Then he immediately said: "The area of the rectangle is much larger - this method is not good ..."

4) The child took a sheet of paper and cut out two equal parallelograms from it. Then, with a happy look, he connected them as follows.

In itself, this step was a wonderful find (cf. the solution with the ring, p. 78). I note that in a number of cases I myself gave the children two samples of the figure. Sometimes I encountered such reactions:

Some children even tried to superimpose one figure on top of another.

But there were times when thinking led straight to the goal. Some children, with little or no help, found the correct, reasonable, direct solution to the problem. Sometimes, after a period of extreme concentration, their faces brightened at a critical moment. What a miracle - this transition from blindness to insight, to understanding the essence of the matter!

First, I will tell what happened to a girl of five and a half years old, whom I did not give any help at all in solving the problem with a parallelogram. When, after a brief demonstration of the method for determining the area of a rectangle, she was presented with a parallelogram problem, she said, "Of course I don't know how This do." Then, after a moment of silence, she added: " Not good here- and pointed to the area located on the right, - and here too- and pointed to the area located on the left. "The difficulty is with this place and with this."

Hesitantly said, "Here I can fix it... but..." Suddenly she exclaimed, "Can you give me scissors? What's in the way there is exactly what's needed here. Suitable." She took the scissors, cut the figure vertically and moved the left side to the right.

Another child similarly cut off a triangle.

And she brought the left corner "in order." Then, looking at the other edge, she tried to do the same there, but suddenly she began to consider it not as "an extra part", but as a "missing one".

There were other actions as well. The girl, to whom I gave a long parallelogram cut out of paper (and in the previous examples it is better to start with a long parallelogram), at first said: "The whole middle part is in order, but the edges ..." She continued to look at the figure, clearly interested in its edges, then suddenly she took it in her hands and with a smile turned it into a ring, connecting the edges. When asked why she did this, she, holding the closed edges with her small fingers, replied: “But now I can cut the figure like this,” and pointed to a vertical line located somewhere in the middle, “then everything will be all right ".

My wise friend, whom I told about the scissors solution, exclaimed: "This child is a genius." But many psychologists will say: “So what? Obviously, this is a matter of past experience. Why such complex and difficult explanations? Randomly or through some mechanism of association, the child recalls a past experience associated with scissors.The rest of the children could not solve the problem because they did not remember the past experience, or because they did not have enough experience with scissors.They did not learn the connection , an association that could help them, or they did not remember it. Thus, everything depends on the recall of learned connections. It is memory and recall that underlie this process.

Of course, sometimes the use of scissors comes by chance or as a result of remembering external circumstances. It happens that even in good processes, memory hints are either checked and used, or rejected as useless. There is no doubt that in order for these processes to become possible or probable, in addition to present experience (whatever that means), significant past experience is required.

But is it adequate to use only theoretical generalizations to discuss such issues? For example, in our case, it is argued that the decisive factor is that the child remembers the scissors and the actions associated with them.

Suppose a child trying to solve a problem does not think about scissors. This content and related associations are missing. Why not take the theoretical bull by the horns? Let's give the kids everything they need and see what happens. If the most important thing is to remember the experience of using scissors, then we can immediately supply the child with scissors and not burden his memory with the need to remember them. Or you can introduce stimuli to facilitate such recall.

At the beginning of the experiment, I put the scissors on the table or even ask the child to cut a piece of paper. Sometimes this helps (for example, when I show the scissors after a period of hesitation in the child, after some remarks indicating that the child has sensed structural demands).

But in some cases it doesn't help. The child looks at the scissors, then again at the drawing. Seeing them nearby, he clearly begins to experience some kind of anxiety, but does nothing.

I'm stepping up "help". "Would you like to take scissors and cut the figure?" In response, the child sometimes looks blankly at me: he obviously does not understand what I mean. Sometimes children begin to dutifully cut the figure in one way or another:

It happens that the child after this begins to make another parallelogram out of two parts.

In what cases does the presentation of scissors help, and in what cases does it not help? We see that the presentation of the scissors and their ordinary use do not in themselves provide any help; they can lead to completely ridiculous and blind actions. In short, they seem to help if the child is already beginning to recognize the structural requirements of the task, or if they are cleared up with scissors; the latter are of little help in cases where the subject is not aware of the structural requirements, when he does not consider the scissors in connection with their function, their role in the given context, in connection with the structural requirements of the situation itself. In such cases, scissors are just another item along with others. Indeed, in some positive processes there have been attempts that testify to a certain understanding of structural requirements, which then led to such use of past experience or to such trials that were fundamentally different from blind recall of past experience.

Even if the positive procedure can be explained by the combined action of learned connections, on the one hand, and the goal - the idea of a rectangle, on the other, then in our case, apparently, one should take into account not just past experience, but its nature and how it is consistent with the structural requirements of the problem.

The introduction of "help" puts in the hands of the experimenter such a technical tool that helps him come to an understanding of the processes that are taking place. Sometimes it is more useful to give other tasks, which in some details may be even more complex and unusual, but have a more transparent, clearer structure, such as some of our BUT- AT- pairs of tasks. In such cases, the subjects sometimes have insight, they return to the original problem and find its solution. However, they may remain blind despite "help" that actually contains exactly what they need.

The results of such experiments apparently indicate that help should be considered in its functional meaning, depending on its place, role and function within the requirements of the situation.

Now it becomes clear why it is sometimes possible to draw one, two or even all three auxiliary lines as a hint, and this nevertheless does not provide any help. A child who does not understand their role and function may consider them as additional complications, incomprehensible additions. As a result, the situation may become even more complex. By themselves, the lines may not shed light on the problem.

And wasn't the lesson described at the beginning of this chapter an extreme example of such a procedure? The teacher showed exactly and clearly all necessary elements; he trained his students by filling them with knowledge acquired in routine ways, but he never achieved any real understanding, nor the ability to act in changed situations.

You cannot replace a meaningful process with a series of learned connections, even if as a result the students will be able to repeat and do what they have been taught.

In short, past experience plays a very large role, but it is important what we have learned from experience - blind, incomprehensible connections or understanding of the internal structural connection. It is important what and how we reproduce, how we apply the reproduced experience: blindly and mechanically or in accordance with the structural requirements of the situation.

The main question is not is not it past experience plays a role, which it is experience - blind connections or structural understanding with subsequent meaningful transfer, as well as how we use past experience: through external reproduction or on the basis of structural requirements, its functional correspondence to a given situation. Referring to past experience thus does not solve the problem, the same problem arises with respect to past experience.

It is very interesting to explore how what has been acquired in the past is being used; but for our problem, as a first approximation, it does not matter whether the material used is extracted from the past or from present experience. What matters is its nature and whether the structure has been understood, and also how this is done. Even if everything, including understanding itself, were explained, in essence, by the repetition of past experience - a hope that some psychologists cherish, but which, in my opinion, is false or at least unfounded - or if we approached from the point of view of the exercise even to meaningful structures, it would still be important to consider and study the described distinction, since it is decisive for the existence of structurally meaningful processes. In ordinary language, "gain experience" means for most people something very different from a simple accumulation of external connections, analogous to those mechanical connections that arose in our last example; meaning that something more meaningful is acquired.

Traditional logic has little interest in the process of finding a solution. It focuses rather on the question of the correctness of each step of the proof. From time to time in the history of traditional logic, hints have been made about how to proceed in order to find a solution. Characteristically, these attempts boiled down to the following: “Find some general judgments known to you, the content of which relates to some of the issues under discussion; select from them such pairs that, due to the fact that they contain a general concept (middle term), allow the construction syllogism", etc.

Teachers strongly recommend the study of geometry as a means of developing mental abilities in an atmosphere of clarity, evidence, consistency, which can help transfer the formed methods and mindsets to more complex and less clear areas.

This is one of the reasons why we have chosen these simple geometric examples for discussion in this book; apparently, it is more useful to first discuss the main theoretical questions on structurally simpler material.

Two boys are playing badminton.The girl describes her office

The main result of the previous chapters is the understanding of the important role of the factor of reasonable reorganization, reorientation, which allows the subject to see the given situation as new, in a broader perspective. This is what leads to discovery, or is discovery in a deeper sense. In such cases, the discovery means not just the achievement of a previously unknown result, the answer to some question, but rather a new and deeper understanding of the situation - as a result of which the field expands and great opportunities open up. These changes in the situation as a whole presuppose changes in the structural meaning of the constituent parts, changes in their place, role and function, which often leads to important consequences.

Before the thinking process has begun, or at its early stages, we often have a certain holistic vision of the situation, as well as its parts, which for some reason does not correspond to the problem, is superficial or one-sided. Such an initial inadequate vision often prevents the solution, the correct approach to the problem. If one adheres to such an initial vision of the situation, then it often turns out to be impossible to solve the problem. When there is a change in our vision, and thanks to this the problem is solved, we are sometimes amazed at how blind we were, how superficially we considered the situation.

Changing the structure of vision in accordance with the properties of the situation plays an extremely important role in the development of science. These changes play the same important role in human life, in particular in public life.

Such a change in the image of the situation is necessary, of course, only when a correct vision of it was absent from the very beginning. Often the first glance is not deep and clear enough; sometimes some property of this or that situation may not be fully realized. In such cases, finding a solution requires further clarification or crystallization of the situation, awareness of those aspects or factors that were only vaguely present at the beginning.

To study these transformations and their implications for the role and function of the parts, I have used special experimental techniques that lead to a radical change in the vision of the situation. Often the subjects react emotionally to the changes that are taking place. These techniques also allow you to study what happens to different parts of the structure when it changes: how the parts are organized and grouped; how the location of the "caesuras", the center, changes, which elements become structurally relevant; how gaps, violations appear; to what extent local conditions can change; in what direction the expectations of the subject, the properties of the whole, the requirements of the situation change.

When such transformations take place in the process of thinking, rational behavior is by no means characterized by the ease of voluntary change as such; it is also not a matter of being able in a given situation to see it at will, one way or another. Something else is more important here - intellectual processes are characterized by a rather decisive transition from a less adequate, less perfect structural vision to a more meaningful one. Indeed, experience seems to show that intelligent people, genuine thinkers (and also children), who are often quite capable of producing intelligent transformations, cannot and do not even want to carry out meaningless changes in these situations.

Sometimes it is necessary to move from a structureless sum of parts to an appropriate structure. But even more important is the transition from one-sided vision, superficial or incorrect structuring, from miscentered, distorted or insufficient vision to an adequate and rightly centered structure.

The main reason for unreasonable, blind behavior seems to be that, through perseveration or habit, a person clings to the old view and ignores or even actively rejects the more reasonable demands of the situation.

In order to show more clearly how such transitions occur, I will now give some simple examples from everyday life that I have studied in various experiments.

Two boys were playing badminton in the garden. I could hear and see them from the window, although they did not see me. One boy was 12 years old, the other was 10. They played a few sets. The younger one was considerably weaker; he lost all the games. productive thinking problem creative

I partially heard their conversation. Loser - let's call him AT- became more and more sad. He didn't stand a chance. BUT often served so skillfully that AT could not even beat off the shuttlecock. The situation got worse and worse. Finally AT threw the racket, sat down on a fallen tree and said: "I won't play anymore." BUT tried to convince him to keep playing. AT didn't answer. BUT sat next to him. Both looked distressed.

Here I interrupt the story to ask the reader a question: "What would you suggest? What would you do if you were the older boy? Can you suggest anything reasonable?"

The advice usually boils down to:

"We need to promise the youngest boy a bar of chocolate."

“You need to start another game, say a game of chess, in which the younger boy is as strong or even stronger than the older one, or offer to play badminton, then another game in which he is much stronger.” "Yes, bring him to his senses, soap his head. You need to be a man, not a sissy. You can't lose heart like that! He must learn to maintain presence of mind. Use your authority to reason with the younger boy,"

"Don't worry about him, he's a sissy. That will teach him a lesson."

"Give him a head start."

"Promise the younger boy that the older boy won't play at full strength."

Now I will continue the story. In addition, I will try to describe how, in my opinion, the boys thought.

1. "What's wrong? Why don't you play anymore?" said the older boy in a sharp, angry voice. "Why did you stop playing? Do you think it's nice to stop playing like that?" He wanted to keep playing. Refusal AT made it impossible. BUT liked to play, liked to win; it was so nice to deceive the enemy with his serve. AT prevented him, he did not allow BUT to do what he so desired.

2. But everything was not so simple. BUT he felt uncomfortable, he was uncomfortable. After some time, during which his expression changed - it is a pity that you could not see how he often looked askance at AT, and then to the side, - he said, but in a completely different tone: "Forgive me." Clearly, something has changed drastically - BUT clearly felt guilty that the second boy was so upset. He understood what was happening AT, how the other boy perceived this situation.

Perhaps this was helped by a sad, calm look. AT.AT turned his head once BUT, and BUT I understood - not immediately, it took some time - why the younger boy was so dejected, why, not knowing how to stand up for himself, he felt like a victim. For the first time BUT felt that his style of play, his cunning serve looked in the eyes AT a nasty trick that AT seemed to be treated dishonestly, BUT treats him unfriendly. And BUT felt that AT he was right about something...

Now he saw himself in a different light. His submission, which did not leave AT not the slightest chance of success, was not just dexterity.

3. "Listen," he said suddenly, "such a game is meaningless." She became meaningless not only for AT, and for BUT, meaningless from the point of view of the game itself. So the difficulty became more serious.

It seemed that he thought - he certainly did not think so, but only felt: "It is pointless for both of us to play in this way. The game requires some kind of reciprocity. Such an inequality does not correspond to the game. The game becomes a real game only if both have hope for success. If there is no such reciprocity, then the game loses its meaning, becomes disgusting for one or the other, and for both; without reciprocity it is no longer a game - just one tyrant drives his victim around the court. "

4. Then his expression changed. He seemed to be struggling to understand something, begins to slowly realize something, and then says: "Our game is kind of strange. I'm quite friendly to you..." He had a vague idea that what an adult would call "the ambivalence of the game": on the one hand, it's so nice to play a good game together, to be good friends; on the other hand, it is the desire to win over the enemy, to defeat him, to make his victory impossible, which in some circumstances may seem or actually become obvious hostility.

5. Then a bold, free and deeply consistent step was taken. He muttered something like: "Really?.." He clearly wanted to address the trouble directly, to discuss it honestly and directly. I interpret it "Really?" like "Is hostility really necessary if it ruins everything good in the game?". There is a practical problem here: "How can I change this? Can't we play not against each other, but..." His face brightened and he said: "I have an idea, let's play like this: let's see how long we can keep the shuttlecock in the air, and count how many times it will pass from me to you without falling. How can the score be? Do you think 10 or 20? We will start with easy serves, and then we will make them more and more difficult. "

He spoke cheerfully, like a man who has made some kind of discovery. For him, as well as for B it was new.

AT gladly agreed: "Great idea. Come on." And they started to play. The nature of the game has completely changed; they helped each other, acted together, stubbornly and cheerfully. BUT no longer showed the slightest desire to deceive AT; of course, his blows became more and more difficult, but he consciously shouted out in a friendly way: “Will you take a stronger blow?”.

A few days later I saw them playing again. AT played much better. It was a real game. Judging by his subsequent behavior, BUT really gained some life experience. He discovered something beyond the solution of a small problem that arose in the game of badminton.

From the outside, this decision in itself may not seem very significant. I don't know if badminton or tennis experts would approve of it.

It does not matter. For this boy, such a decision was not an easy one. It involved a transition from a superficial attempt to get rid of the difficulty to a productive consideration of the fundamental structural problem.

What steps led to this decision? Of course, when one considers a single case, there is still very little factual basis for conclusions. However, let's try to formulate the main points.

At first BUT considered his "I" to be the center of the structure of the situation (Fig. 105). In his thinking and actions, meaning, role, function B, games, difficulties and other elements of the situation were determined in relation to this center. In this case AT was just a face that I needed BUT, to play; so refusing to play, AT turned out to be a violator.

The game was "something where I show my abilities, where I win." AT represents a barrier standing in the way of egocentric impulses, vectors, actions BUT.

BUT did not insist on this one-sided, superficial point of view. He began to understand how he imagined this situation. AT(Fig. 106). In this otherwise centered structure, he saw himself as a part, as a player who did not treat the other player in the best way.

Rice. 106 Fig. 107

Later, she becomes the center a game, its integral properties and requirements (Fig. 107). Neither BUT, neither AT are now not the center, both are considered from the point of view of the game.

Logically BUT(his self-consciousness) changes with a change in position, other elements become different, dynamic requirements, vectors of the real situation. It is clear that the original game is different from the "good game".

But what in the structure of the game itself is the source of the difficulty? In a good game, there is a delicate functional balance: on the one hand, a pleasant pastime, friendships, on the other, the desire to win. Deeper guidelines than the simple outer rules of fair play make this delicate balance possible, distinguishing between a good game and a tough fight or competition, in short, a fragile one that can easily disappear - as it did in this situation.

Moments "against", "desire to win", which take place in a good game, acquire ugly features that no longer correspond to the game situation. Therefore, a vector arose: "What can be done? And done immediately?" Here is the reason for the difficulty. "Can you get to the bottom of the situation?" This leads to the consideration of structure 11.

Structure Ia >

Structure Ib ->

Structure II from rivalry to cooperation;

from "I" to "you" to "we".

BUT and AT as parts of a common structure, they are no longer the same as in structure I, they are not opponents, each of whom plays only for himself, but two people working together for a common goal.

All elements of the situation radically change their meaning. For example, a serve is no longer a means of beating B, of making the return pass impossible. In situation I, the player is happy if he wins and the other loses; but now (II) the players rejoice at every good hit.

The next steps indicate the transition to the consideration of the problem situation from the point of view of her merit, and not in terms of one side or the other, or the simple sum of both sides. The solution arises when a structural breach is recognized; then it takes on a deeper meaning. The tension is not overcome by purely external means, rather the new direction of the vectors is due to basic structural requirements leading to a really good situation. Perhaps you think I have read too much into the minds of boys. I do not think so. Perhaps you know too little about what can go on in the minds of boys.

Let us briefly highlight the following:

operations of re-centering: the transition from a one-sided vision to a centering dictated by the objective structure of the situation;

changing the meaning of frequent - and vectors - in accordance with their place, role and function in this structure;

considering the situation in terms of a "good structure" in which everything meets the structural requirements;

the desire to immediately get to the point, honestly consider the problem and draw appropriate conclusions.

...

And productive thinking

The experience of multiple effective actions of a person in various specific situations leads to the formation of neuronal models of these situations in his central nervous system. As long as the information coming into the brain is in accordance with these neural models, the response of a person can remain standard. Mental activity, conditioned by stimuli of this kind, is reduced to the reproduction, reproduction of the same habitual thoughts, thoughts-stamps, thoughts-conditioned reflexes. In this case, one speaks of reproductive thinking.

However, a person constantly has to meet with circumstances that are new to him, and, at the same time, require active action from him. Such situations in which a person must act, although the way of action is unknown to him, are called problem situations. For example, for a pupil, a student, a problem situation in the learning process arises, in particular, whenever he encounters a problem, the way of solving which he still does not know.

To overcome a problematic situation, reproductive thinking is not enough. A qualitatively different mental activity is needed, which should lead to the emergence of new ideas, to finding an adequate mode of action, new for a given individual, within a limited time frame. Thinking, the result of which is the emergence in the mind of a person of an idea that is new to him, is called productive thinking.

- The concept of "productive thinking", apparently, can be considered as a synonym for the term "creative thinking"?

It is possible, however, the words "creativity", "creative" are usually used to denote mental activity, "generating something new, never before". Another definition: "Creativity is a spiritual activity, the result of which is the creation of original values, the establishment of new, previously unknown factors, properties and patterns of the material world and spiritual culture" . In the above definitions, one can notice the social aspect of the concept of “creativity”: creativity, creative thinking results in the creation of ideas or material values in which they are embodied, new to humanity or, at least, to a significant part of it. Thus, thinking is recognized as creative only when it leads to a result that is new for other people. For productive thinking, however, the novelty of the product of mental activity is sufficient only for the person carrying out this activity. Got a significant difference?

- Yes, it is quite. But why then are creative and productive thinking often identified?

From the point of view of psychophysiology. Because all the processes that take place in the brain of a given individual during creative and productive thinking are the same.

- Yes, of course, you could guess yourself. A person, getting a new result for him, does not know that it is new only for him.

Quite right.

Let's go further. Research by Soviet psychologists has established that the participation of the emotional sphere is a necessary attribute of productive thinking. Emotional tension arising at certain moments of mental activity provides a sharp increase in its intensity. The functional purpose of emotions associated with cognitive activity (gnostic emotions), wide activation of the cerebral cortex. When developing new ideas for a given person, new forms of behavior, a new mode of action, new neural connections should be formed. Which nerve cells will participate in this will be revealed only after these models arise, that is, after the completion of productive mental activity, as a result of overcoming the problem situation. Therefore, in the process of productive thinking, through emotional activation, almost the entire brain is involved.

- That is, productive thinking and emotions are “tightly” connected?

Yes, and this is not a hypothesis, but a well-established fact. Convincing evidence of the participation of emotions in creative thinking was obtained by O.K. Tikhomirov and his collaborators.

- I wonder how you can determine whether emotions are involved in thinking or not? If only visually, then this is not a scientific fact, but a subjective point of view.

There is a traditional method for registering the occurrence of emotional stress in a person - a change in the electrical resistance of the skin. They were used by the researchers. At the moment of receiving or realizing information that is unexpected for a person, requires him to take immediate action, or at least worries him a lot, there is a sharp decrease in skin resistance and a change in skin potential. This electrical activity of the skin, associated with mental activity, was discovered as early as 1888-1890 by Feret and Tarkhanov independently and was called the galvanic skin response (GSR).

OK. Tikhomirov and his collaborators recorded GSR in the process of mental activity related to solving chess problems. It was found that GSR occurs (with a delay of up to several seconds) at the moment when the course of a person’s thought abruptly changes direction, when the subject has a feeling that he has found a promising approach to solving the problem. Numerous experiments have shown that in the process of solving a chess problem unfamiliar to the subject, in all cases when he manages to find a solution, at least one drop in the electrical resistance of the skin is observed. Often, during the search for a solution, the RGR was observed several times. Synchronous recording of verbal reasoning accompanying the decision, and registration of sequences of fixation points on the chessboard during position analysis, made it possible to unequivocally link the moments of GSR appearance with abrupt changes in the subject’s train of thought, that is, with the moments when the thought begins to work in a new, unexpected for him direction itself.

Productive, or creative, is thinking that does not rely on past experience. The significance of the study of this particular type of thinking for understanding the general mechanisms of problem solving in the absence of past experience was shown in the works of psychologists who considered themselves to be members of the Gestalt psychology school. One of the important principles of Gestalt psychology is the principle here and now which involves the description of psychological patterns, without referring to the description of the role of past experience. It was these principles that were used by the founder of the school of Gestalt psychology, M. Wertheimer, as well as by the German psychologist K. Dunker, already mentioned in the previous paragraph, to develop the theory of productive thinking.

According to K. Duncker (Dunker, 1945), thinking is a process that, through insight problem situation leads to appropriate responses. By insight, Duncker, like other Gestalt psychologists, understood the process understanding situation, penetration into it, when various and disparate elements of the situation are combined into a single whole.

The solution to the problem lies within itself, K. Dunker argued. Therefore, there is no need for the subject to turn to past experience, which not only does not help the process of thinking, but, on the contrary, can hinder the effective course of thinking due to functional fixation. The problem situation must first of all be comprehended by the subject, i.e. be perceived as a whole, containing a certain conflict.

Conflict is what hinders the solution. Understanding the conflict presupposes penetration into the situation of solving the problem. Take, for example, the well-known experiments of another founder of the Gestalt psychology school, W. Köhler, which he conducted during the First World War with great apes - chimpanzees - in the Canary Islands. In these experiments, the monkey was trying to get a bait that was too far or too high from her. Conflict This task obviously consists in the fact that the monkey cannot reach the bait with its forelimbs. Penetration into the situation should indicate to the monkey that its limbs are too short. Another example of conflict and penetration into the situation is related to the problem where it is required to prove that a metal ball bounces off a metal surface due to deformation, which nevertheless recovers very quickly. Conflict of this task lies in the fact that the subject cannot, due to the speed of deformation, check it. Penetration in the situation is expressed in the understanding that the two substances restore their shape too quickly to maintain the effect of deformation.

K. Dunker argues that the result of insight, or penetration into the situation of the problem, is to find functional solution tasks. It arises from a given problem situation and is found on the basis of internal and obvious connections with the conditions of the problem situation. To understand any solution of a problem as a solution means to understand it as the embodiment of its functional solution. At the same time, Dunker especially insists that if the subject is confronted with two different problems that have a common functional solution, successfully obtaining an answer to the first problem does not help him at all in the analysis of the problem following it, even if he solves these two problems in a row.

In the examples we have considered, the functional solutions would be, respectively, to "lengthen" the limbs of the monkey, which turn out to be too short, and to slow down or maintain the effect of deformation. You can "lengthen" the limbs using a tool - a stick, with which the monkey is able to reach the bait. You can save the deformation of the ball by covering it with a soft shell, such as paint.

Note that the same functional solution can have different ways of implementation. For example, a monkey will not take a stick, but a box, set it under the bait and climb on it. And instead of paint, which preserves the deformation of the ball, you can use a more technological version of video shooting.

Thus, in the theory of K. Dunker and other Gestalt psychologists, productive thinking is described as a two-stage process.

At the first stage, the study of the problem is carried out. It provides insight into the conflict conditions of the problem situation. At the second stage, the process of implementation (or execution) of the previously found functional solution is carried out, the choice of what is really needed to solve the problem, if the functional solution does not include its own implementation.

Despite the fact that the theory of productive thinking was developed by K. Dunker back in the 30s. of the last century, it still remains one of the most authoritative psychological theories of thinking. However, its critics very often point out that intelligence tasks, "Dunker" tasks, are only a small, if not insignificant, part of the tasks that we encounter in the processes of thinking.

This is why later theories of thought rely heavily on the processes of thought. reproductive character.

teacher-psychologist of the highest category,

Ph.D. Yesenzhanova A.A.

Thinking is productive and reproductive.

In thinking, various components are intertwined in a dialectically contradictory unity, in connection with this, the need arises to single out the types of thinking that interest us - productive and reproductive. Although in its essence any thinking is always productive to a greater or lesser extent, in a specific mental activity their share can be different. In Soviet literature, there is an objection to the separation of these types of thinking, since "any process of thinking is productive." But many scientists who dealt with the problem of thinking consider it appropriate to distinguish these types (P.P. Blonsky, D.N. Zavalishina, N.A. Menchinskaya, Ya.A. Ponomarev, V.N. Pushkin, O.K. Tikhomirov) .

The approach to characterizing the thinking of foreign scientists, as a rule, is one-sided: it acts only as a reproductive or productive process. Associationists (A. Bain, I. Herbart, D. Hartley, T. Ribot) characterized thinking from idealistic positions, believing that its essence comes down to isolating dissimilar elements, combining similar elements into complexes, and recombining them. The result, in their opinion, is nothing fundamentally new. Representatives of Gestalt psychology (M. Wertheimer, K. Koffka, W. Keller) expressed an approach to thinking as a purely productive process, considering productivity as a specificity of thinking that distinguishes it from other mental processes. They believed that thinking, arising in a problematic situation (which includes unknown links), leads to a solution, as a result of which something fundamentally new is obtained, which is not available in the knowledge fund. The value of Gestalt studies in the application of problematic tasks, the solution of which caused the subjects to conflict between the available knowledge and the requirements of the solution (M. Wertheimer, K. Dunker), but, attaching great importance to insight, “aha-experience”, they did not reveal that the insight was prepared past experience of active activity of the subject himself. Those. scientists did not show the very mechanism of the emergence of productive thinking, they sharply opposed it to reproductive processes, believing that past experience and knowledge act as a brake on the development of thinking. It should be noted that over time, the accumulated facts of research forced them to limit the categoricalness of the conclusions, to recognize the positive role of knowledge in productive thinking, considering them as a starting point for understanding and solving the problem.

Domestic scientists believed that reproductive thinking, although characterized by less productivity, plays an important role for a person in cognitive and practical activities, giving him the opportunity to solve problems of a familiar structure. In particular, Z.I. Kalmykova emphasized the importance of reproductive thinking in the educational activities of schoolchildren, believing that it provides an understanding of new material and the application of knowledge in practice when there is no need for their significant transformation. She believed that this thinking is easier to develop (than productive thinking), acting at the initial stage, plays a significant role in solving new problems for the subject, helping him to be convinced of the ineffectiveness of the methods known to him. “Awareness of this leads to the emergence of a “problem situation”, i.e., it activates productive thinking, which ensures the discovery of new knowledge, the formation of new systems of connections that will later provide him with the solution of similar problems.”

Of course, the mixing of types of thinking is quite arbitrary, it cannot be productive without relying on past experience, and at the same time, it involves going beyond it, discovering new knowledge. We adhere to the point of view of Z.I. Kalmykova, who took as the basis for the division into reproductive and productive thinking, the degree of novelty and the degree of awareness for the subject of the knowledge obtained in this process. “Where the proportion of productivity is high enough, they speak of productive thinking proper as a special kind of mental activity. As a result of productive thinking, something original, fundamentally new for the subject, i.e. the degree of novelty here is high.” According to M.V. Glebova, the most important property of mental activity is the derivation of some knowledge from others with the help of reasoning, which leads to the expansion of the original knowledge. "... In such an intensive multiplication of knowledge lies the productive nature of mental activity." It is the productivity of thinking, i.e. focus on the discovery of new knowledge, significantly distinguishes it from other mental processes. In addition to subjective novelty, supporters of this point of view emphasize the originality of this process and the impact on mental development, which is a decisive link, providing a real movement towards new knowledge.

The term "productive thinking" is widely used in pedagogical literature as a synonym for the student's creative activity. In the psychological and pedagogical literature, the following terms are used as a synonym for the concept of "productive thinking": "creative thinking", "heuristic", "independent", "creative"; to reproductive: “discursive”, “rational”, “verbal-logical”, “receptive”, etc. Most researchers prefer to use the term “productive thinking” in relation to the type of thinking of schoolchildren to indicate the difference in the concepts of “productive” and “creative” thinking. , and the term "creative thinking" denotes the highest stage of mental activity. We are close to their point of view, emphasizing that creative thinking is inherent in those who, carrying out mental activity, discover knowledge fundamentally new for humanity, create something original, which has no analogue. They believed that the concept of "creative thinking" is legitimate to use in relation to "persons who make discoveries that are objectively new for mankind" (Z.I. Kalmykova) and it is the highest form of productive thinking.

But we are interested in those indicators by which creative thinking is judged, since elements of creative thinking are inherent in productive thinking. In particular, K. Dunker attributed to them: originality of thought; fluency of thought as the number of associations, ideas that arise per unit of time in accordance with some requirement; the possibility of receiving answers that deviate far from the usual; "susceptibility" to the problem, its unusual solution; the speed and smoothness of the emergence of unusual associative connections; the ability to find new unusual functions of an object or its part (K. Duncker, 1935). The concepts of "creative" and "productive" thinking as synonyms were designated by P. Torrens, believing that it manifests sensitivity to shortcomings in existing knowledge, the ability to formulate problems, the possibility of constructing hypotheses about the missing elements of this knowledge, etc. (P. Torrans, 1964).

Based on research interest, productive thinking includes not only the ability to listen, understand information, speak, read, write, but also “the ability to be motivated and active, the ability to find various options for solving socially significant problems, getting out of various situations, forming general and future professional culture”.

Characterizing productive thinking as different from other mental processes, having its own specifics, we consider it appropriate to proceed to an analysis of the mechanism of action of productive thinking. An effective technique is “analysis through synthesis”, which was used in studies conducted under the direction of S.L. Rubinstein,characterizes the mechanism of thinking precisely as a process. In these studies, the subjectwas included in that system of connections and relations in which he was given the opportunity to most clearly discover the desired property, which in turn contributes to the discovery of a new circle of connections and relations of the object with which he correlates this property. This reflects the dialectic of creative cognition of reality, which can be fully attributed to productive thinking. Such a development of productive thinking leads to the origin and formation of new mental formations - new communication systems, personality traits, abilities, new forms of self-regulation, marking a shift in mental development.

According to Z.I. Kalmykova in a productive thought process there is no fundamental difference between a scientist who discovers objectively new patterns of the world around us that are not known to mankind, and students who make a discovery only of a subjectively new one, since their thinking is based on general patterns. But they are distinguished by the level of mental activity leading to discovery, the conditions for the search for new knowledge. Z.I. Kalmykova believed that productive thinking is inherent in adults and children, since they all make subjective discoveries when solving new problems. “... although, of course, the level of this thinking in the second case is lower, since it is carried out in a learning situation in which teachers are provided for the students to have an initial minimum of knowledge, visual supports that facilitate the search for a solution, etc.”

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