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L.F.Obukhov. Child (age) psychology

OBUKHOVA L. F., Doctor of Psychology.

Child (age) psychology.

Textbook. -- M., Russian Pedagogical Agency. 1996, -- 374 p.

This publication represents the first attempt in modern domestic psychological science creation of a textbook on child psychology. The content and structure of the textbook include existing foreign and domestic theories, diverse factual material and problems solved by science and practice in the field of developmental psychology.

The textbook is intended for students of psychological faculties of universities, pedagogical universities and colleges, as well as all those who are interested in questions mental development children.

FOREWORD

1. Historical analysis of the concept of "childhood"

2. Childhood as a subject of science

3. The specifics of the mental development of the child.

4. Strategies for researching the child's mental development

Chapter II. OVERCOMING BIOGENETIC APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF THE CHILD'S PSYCHE

1. Biogenetic principle in psychology

2. Normative approach to research child development.

3. Identification of learning and development

4. The theory of three stages of child development ..

5. Concepts of convergence of two factors of child development.

6. Approaches to the analysis of the internal causes of the mental development of the child

Chapter III. PSYCHOANALYTICAL THEORIES OF CHILD DEVELOPMENT.

1. The theory of Sigmund Freud.

2. The development of classical psychoanalysis in the works of Anna Freud.

3. Epigenetic theory of personality development. Erik Erickson

Chapter IV. SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY

1. Departure from classical behaviorism...

2. Education and development.

3. Critical periods socialization.

4. Encouragement and punishment as conditions for the formation of new behavior.

5. The role of imitation in the formation of new behavior.

6. Child and adult.

7. Family as a factor in the development of a child's behavior

Chapter V

1. Stages of scientific biography.

2. Key concepts of the concept of J. Piaget.

3. The discovery of the egocentricity of children's thinking

4. Discovery of the stages of a child's intellectual development.

Chapter VI. L. S. VYGOTSKY AND HIS SCHOOL

1. Change of scientific outlook.

2. Further steps along the path opened by L. S. Vygotsky.

Chapter VII. THE CONCEPT OF D. B. EL’KONIN. THE PERIOD OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.

1. Neonatal crisis

2. Stage of infancy.

3. Early age.

4. Crisis of three years

Chapter VIII. THE CONCEPT OF D. B. EL’KONIN. THE PERIOD OF CHILDHOOD.

1. Before school age.

2. The crisis of seven years and the problem of school readiness.

3. Junior school age.

Chapter IX. ADOLESCENT AGE IN THE LIGHT OF DIFFERENT CONCEPTS..

1. Influence of historical time.

2. Classic studies of the crisis of adolescence.

3. New trends in the study of adolescence (L. S. Vygotsky, D. B. Elkonin, L. I. Bozhovich)

Chapter X. UNFINISHED DISPUTES.

1. P. Ya. Galperin and J. Piaget.

2. About regularities of functional and age development child's psyche.

4. The problem of general and specific patterns of mental development of a deaf-blind-mute child.

CONCLUSION

Annex 1. CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD

Eternal gratitude to the teachers

FOREWORD

Currently, there are many textbooks on child psychology in the world. Almost every major Western university has its own original version. As a rule, these are voluminous, well-illustrated manuals, summarizing a huge number of scientific research. Some of them have been translated into Russian. However, none of these truly interesting books we do not meet the analysis holistic concept child development, developed by L. S. Vygotsky and his followers, which is a true pride and a true achievement of Russian psychology.

The lack of knowledge about such an essential concept makes us believe that any foreign textbook does not fully reflect the current level of psychological knowledge about the development of the child.

Domestic textbooks on child psychology are small in volume and poor in illustrative material. In addition, they also have a substantial drawback: generalizing the experience accumulated in our science, they give a very poor idea of the achievements of modern science. foreign psychology. The book brought to the attention of the reader was created mainly in order to fill in these gaps and present in a balanced and complete form the diverse approaches to understanding the mental development of the child, which were developed in the 20th century, that is, for the entire period of the existence of child psychology as a separate scientific discipline. The presentation of the material is based on several basic principles.

This is, first of all, the principle of historicism, which makes it possible, as it were, to string on one rod all the most important problems of child development that arose in different periods time. The book analyzes historical origin the concept of "childhood", the connection between the history of childhood and the history of society is traced, the historical prerequisites for the emergence of child psychology as a science are shown.

The second principle underlying the choice of the analyzed concepts of child development is associated with the development and introduction into science of new methods for studying mental development. Changes in ideas about mental development are always associated with the emergence of new research methods. “The problem of method is the beginning and basis, the alpha and omega of the entire history of the child’s cultural development,” wrote L. S. Vygotsky. weak sides to understand its fundamental justification and develop a correct attitude towards it means, to a certain extent, to develop a correct and scientific approach to the entire further exposition of the most important problems of child psychology in the aspect of cultural development. the historical path of child psychology from the first naive ideas about the nature of childhood to the modern in-depth systematic study of this phenomenon.The biogenetic principle in psychology, the normative approach to the study of child development, the identification of development and learning in behaviorism, the explanation of development by the influence of environmental factors and heredity in the theory of convergence, psychoanalytic the study of the child, comparative studies of the norm and pathology, orthogenetic concepts of development - all these and many other approaches individually and collectively reflect the essence and illustrate the connection between the concepts of mental development and methods of its study.

The third principle concerns the analysis of the development of the main aspects human life- emotional-volitional sphere, behavior and intellect. The theory of classical psychoanalysis 3. Freud develops in the works of M. Klein and A. Freud, and then goes into the concept of psychosocial development life path personalities of E. Erickson.

The problem of development in classical behaviorism is rethought in the theory social learning- the most powerful direction of modern American developmental psychology. Research cognitive development are also undergoing changes - there is a transition from the study of the epistemic subject to the study of a specific child in the real conditions of his life.

Against the backdrop of all these outstanding achievements of Western psychology, L. S. Vygotsky nevertheless made a genuine revolutionary revolution in child psychology. He proposed a new understanding of the course, conditions, source, form, specifics, driving forces of the child's mental development; he described the stages of child development and the transitions between them, identified and formulated the basic laws of the child's mental development.

L. S. Vygotsky chose the psychology of consciousness as the area of his research. He called it "top psychology" and contrasted it with the other three - deep, superficial and explanatory. L. S. Vygotsky developed the doctrine of age as a unit of child development and showed its structure and dynamics. He laid the foundations of child (age) psychology, in which systems approach to the study of child development. The doctrine of psychological age avoids biological and environmental reductionism in explaining child development.

Analysis of the concept of L. S. Vygotsky is the semantic core of this work. However, it would be a mistake to think that Vygotsky's ideas froze, turned into a dogma, did not receive a natural development and logical continuation. It should be noted that not only the merits, but even some limitations of the ideas of L. S. Vygotsky stimulated the development of Russian child psychology. A theoretical analysis of the ideas of L. S. Vygotsky and his followers shows that there is a completely different child psychology, still little known to most psychologists.

A large section of the textbook is devoted to characterizing the stable and critical periods of a child's mental development. Here, the analysis of the facts of child development is carried out on the basis of the teachings of L. S. Vygotsky on the structure and dynamics of age. The age structure includes a description of the social situation of the child's development, the leading type of activity and the main psychological neoplasms of the age. At each age, the social situation of development contains a contradiction (a genetic problem), which must be solved in a special, age-specific, leading type of activity.

The resolution of the contradiction is manifested in the emergence of psychological neoplasms of age. These new formations do not correspond to the old social situation of development, they go beyond its framework. A new contradiction arises, a new genetic problem that can be solved by constructing new system relations, a new social situation of development, indicating the transition of the child to a new psychological age. In this self-movement, the dynamics of child development is manifested. Such is the scheme for considering all age periods of a child's life from birth to adolescence, such is the logic of their development.

The final section of the book deals with some debatable problems of child psychology - about the reasons for the diversity of imitation in childhood, about the patterns of functional and age-related development of the child's psyche, about the general and specific in the development of a normal and abnormal child.

In our opinion, such a construction of the textbook will contribute not only to the assimilation of theory, facts, problems and methods of their study, but also to the development of scientific thinking in the field of child psychology.

This edition is close to the form of a textbook for students studying psychology and pedagogy. For each section, possible topics for seminars are indicated, which the teacher can develop in more detail. Themes for independent work aimed at expanding the general horizons of students. The recommended literature includes the most significant works in the field of child psychology. Reading them will deepen and expand the knowledge presented in the textbook.

I would like to take this opportunity to express my deep gratitude for various kinds of assistance to students and graduate students with whom I had the pleasure of working.

Chapter I. CHILDHOOD AS A SUBJECT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH.

1. Historical analysis of the concept of "childhood"

Today any educated person to the question of what childhood is, he will answer that childhood is a period of enhanced development, change and

learning. But only scientists understand that this is a period of paradoxes and

contradictions, without which it is impossible to imagine the process of development. ABOUT

paradoxes of child development were written by V. Stern, J. Piaget, I. A. Sokolyansky and

a lot others. D. B. Elkonin said that paradoxes in child psychology -

these are developmental mysteries that scientists have yet to unravel.

D. B. Elkonin invariably began his lectures at Moscow University with a description of the two main paradoxes of child development, embodying the need for a historical approach to understanding childhood. Let's consider them.

Man, being born, is endowed with only the most elementary mechanisms for maintaining life. By physical structure, organization nervous system, according to the types of activity and methods of its regulation, a person is the most perfect creature in nature.

However, according to the state at the time of birth, a drop in perfection is noticeable in the evolutionary series - the child does not have any ready-made forms of behavior. As a rule, the higher a living being ranks among animals, the longer his childhood lasts, the more helpless this creature is at birth. This is one of the paradoxes of nature that predetermines the history of childhood.

In the course of history, the enrichment of the material and spiritual culture of mankind has continuously grown. Over the millennia, human experience has increased many thousands of times. But during the same time, the newborn child has not changed much. Based on the data of anthropologists on the anatomical and morphological similarities between the Cro-Magnon and the modern European, it can be assumed that the newborn modern man does not differ in any significant way from a newborn who lived tens of thousands of years ago.

How is it that, under similar natural conditions, the level of mental development that a child reaches at each historical stage in the development of society is not the same?

Childhood is a period that lasts from newborn to full social and, therefore, psychological maturity; this is the period of the child becoming a full member human society. At the same time, the duration of childhood in a primitive society is not equal to the duration of childhood in the Middle Ages or today. The stages of human childhood are a product of history, and they are just as subject to change as they were thousands of years ago. Therefore, it is impossible to study the childhood of a child and the laws of its formation outside the development of human society and the laws that determine its development. The duration of childhood is directly dependent on the level of material and spiritual culture of society.

As is known, the theory of knowledge and dialectics must be made up of the history of individual sciences, the history of mental development child, baby animals, history of language. By focusing on the stories mental

development of the child, it should be distinguished as from the development of the child in ontogeny,

and from the uneven development of children in different modern cultures.

The problem of childhood history is one of the most difficult in contemporary child psychology, since neither observation nor experiment can be carried out in this area. Ethnographers are well aware that cultural monuments related to children are poor. Even in those not very special cases, when archaeological excavations toys are found, these are usually objects of worship, which in ancient times were placed in graves so that they served the owner in the afterlife. Miniature images of people and animals were also used for witchcraft and magic.

We can say that the experimental facts were preceded by theory. Theoretically, the question of the historical origin of childhood periods was developed in the works of P. P. Blonsky, L. S. Vygotsky, and D. B. Elkonin. The course of the mental development of the child, according to J1 S. Vygotsky, does not obey the eternal laws of nature, the laws of the maturation of the organism. The course of child development in a class society, he believed, "has a completely definite class meaning." That is why he emphasized that there is no eternally childish, but only historically childish.

Yes, in literature XIX century there are numerous testimonies of the lack of childhood among proletarian children. For example, in a study of the situation of the working class in England, F. Engels referred to the report of a commission created by the English Parliament in 1833 to examine working conditions in factories: children sometimes started working at the age of five, often at six, even more often at seven, but almost all children of poor parents worked from the age of eight; work time they lasted 14-16 hours.

only in XIX-XX centuries, when child protection legislation

child labor began to be banned. Of course, this does not mean that the accepted

legal laws are able to provide a childhood for the workers of the lower strata

society. Children in this environment and, above all, girls, and today perform

work necessary for social reproduction (caring for babies,

domestic work, some agricultural work). Thus, although

in our time and there is a ban on child labor, you can not talk about the status

childhood, regardless of the position of parents in social structure society.

"Convention on the Rights of the Child", adopted by UNESCO in 1989 and

ratified by most countries of the world, aims to ensure

full development of the personality of the child in every corner of the Earth.

Historically, the concept of childhood is associated not with the biological state of immaturity, but with a certain social status, with the range of rights and obligations inherent in this period of life, with a set of types and forms of activity available to it. A lot of interesting facts was collected to confirm this idea by the French demographer and historian Philippe Aries. Thanks to his work, interest in the history of childhood in foreign psychology has increased significantly, and the studies of F. Aries himself are recognized as classics.

F. Aries was interested in how, in the course of history, in the minds of artists, writers and scientists, concept childhood and how it differed in

various historical eras. His research in the field of fine arts

art led him to the conclusion that until the 12th century, art did not

appealed to children, the artists did not even try to portray them.

Children's images in the painting of the XIII century are found only in

religious and allegorical subjects. These are angels, baby Jesus and a naked child

as a symbol of the soul of the deceased. The image of real children was absent from

painting. No one, obviously, believed that the child contains

human personality. If children appeared in works of art,

then they were depicted as reduced adults. Then there was no knowledge of

features and nature of childhood. The word "child" for a long time did not have that exact

the importance given to it now. Thus, it is typical, for example, that

In medieval Germany, the word "child" was synonymous with the concept of "fool".

Childhood was considered a period of fast passing and of little value. Indifference towards childhood, according to F. Aries, was a direct consequence of the demographic situation of that time, which was characterized by high birth rates and high infant mortality. A sign of overcoming indifference to childhood, according to the French demographer, is the appearance in the 16th century of portraits of dead children. Their death, he writes, was now experienced as a truly irreparable loss, and not as a completely ordinary event. The overcoming of indifference to children takes place, judging by painting, not earlier than the 11th century, when for the first time the first portrait images of real children begin to appear on the canvases of artists. As a rule, these were portraits of children of influential persons and royal persons in childhood. Thus, according to F. Aries, the discovery of childhood began in the 13th century, its development can be traced in the history of painting of the 14th-15th centuries, but the evidence of this discovery is most fully manifested at the end of the 16th and throughout the 17th century.

According to the researcher, clothes serve as an important symbol of a change in attitudes towards childhood. In the Middle Ages, as soon as a child grew out of diapers, he was immediately dressed in a suit that was no different from the clothes of an adult of the corresponding social status. Only in the XV1-XVII centuries did special children's clothing appear that distinguishes a child from an adult. Interestingly, for boys and girls aged 2-4 years, the clothes were the same and consisted of a children's dress. In other words, in order to distinguish a boy from a man, he was dressed in a woman's costume, and this costume lasted until the beginning of our century, despite the change in society and the lengthening of the period of childhood. Note that in peasant families before the revolution, children and adults dressed the same. By the way, this feature is still preserved where there are no big differences between the work of adults and the play of a child.

Analyzing portraits of children in old paintings and descriptions of children's costumes in literature, F. Aries identifies three trends in the evolution of children's clothing:

Feminization-- a suit for boys largely repeats the details of women's clothing

Archaization- children's clothing in this historical time is late compared to adult fashion and largely repeats the adult costume of the past

era (so the boys got short pants).

The use for children of the upper classes of the usual adult costume of the lower (peasant clothes).

As F. Aries emphasizes, the formation of a children's costume has become an external manifestation of deep internal changes attitudes towards children in society - now they begin to occupy an important place in the lives of adults.

The discovery of childhood made it possible to describe the full cycle of human life To characterize the age periods of life in the scientific writings of the XV1-XVII centuries, terminology was used that is still used in scientific and colloquial speech: childhood, adolescence, youth, youth, maturity, old age, senility (deep old age ). But contemporary meaning these words do not correspond to their original meaning. In the old days, the periods of life correlated with the four seasons, with the seven planets, with the twelve signs of the zodiac. The coincidence of numbers was perceived as one of the indicators of the fundamental unity of Nature.

In the field of art, ideas about the periods of human life are reflected in the painting of the columns of the Doge's Palace in Venice, in many engravings of the 16th-19th centuries, in painting, sculpture. social functions people So, for example, in the painting of the Doge's Palace, the age of toys is symbolized by children playing with a wooden skate, a doll, a windmill and a bird; school age - boys learn to read, carry books, and girls learn to knit; the age of love and sports - boys and girls walk together at the festival; the age of war and chivalry is a man shooting a gun; maturity - a judge and a scientist are depicted.

The differentiation of the ages of human life, including childhood, according to F. Aries, is formed under the influence social institutions, that is, new forms public life generated by the development of society. Thus, early childhood first appears within the family, where it is associated with specific communication - "tenderness" and "pampering" of a small child. A child for parents is just a pretty, funny baby with whom you can have fun, play with pleasure and at the same time teach and educate him. This is the primary, "family" concept of childhood. The desire to "dress up" children, "spoil" and "undead" them could only appear in the family. However, this approach to children as "adorable toys" could not remain unchanged for long.

The development of society has led to a further change in attitudes towards children. arose new concept childhood. For teachers of the 17th century, love for children was no longer expressed in pampering and amusing them, but in a psychological interest in education and training. In order to correct a child's behavior, it is first necessary to understand it, and scientific texts late 16th and 11th centuries are full of comments on child psychology. It should be noted that deep pedagogical ideas, advice and recommendations are also contained in the works of Russian authors of the 16th-17th centuries.

The concept of rational education based on strict discipline, penetrates into family life in the 18th century. All aspects of children's life begin to attract the attention of parents. But the function of organized preparation of children for adulthood is assumed not by the family, but by a special public institution- a school designed to educate skilled workers and exemplary citizens. It was the school, according to F. Aries, that brought childhood beyond the first 2-4 years of maternal, parental education in the family. The school, thanks to its regular, orderly structure, contributed to the further differentiation of that period of life, which is indicated common word"childhood". The "class" has become a universal measure that defines a new marking of childhood. The child enters a new age every year as soon as he changes class. In the past, the life of a child and childhood were not subdivided into such thin layers. Class therefore became the determining factor in the process of differentiation of ages within childhood or adolescence itself.

Thus, according to the concept of F. Aries, the concept of childhood and adolescence is associated with the school and the class organization of the school as those special structures that were created by society in order to give children the necessary preparation for social life and professional activities.

The next age level is also associated by F. Aries with new form social life - an institution military service and compulsory military service. This is adolescence or adolescence. The concept of "adolescent" has led to a further restructuring of learning. Teachers began to give great importance form of dress and discipline, the education of stamina and masculinity, which were previously neglected. The new orientation was immediately reflected in art, in particular in painting: "The recruit now no longer appears as a roguish and prematurely aged warrior from the paintings of the Danish and Spanish masters of the 17th century - he now becomes an attractive soldier, depicted, for example, by Watteau" - writes F. Aries. A typical image of a young man is created by R. Wagner in Siegfried.

Later, in the 20th century, the first World War gave rise to the phenomenon of "youth consciousness", presented in the literature of the "lost generation". “So, the era that did not know youth,” writes F. Aries, “was replaced by an era in which youth has become the most valuable age” ... “Everyone wants to enter it early and stay in it longer.” Each period of history corresponds to a certain privileged age and a certain division of human life: "youth is the privileged age of the 17th century, childhood is the 19th, youth is the 20th."

As we can see, the study of F.-Aries is devoted to the emergence of the concept of childhood or, in other words, the problem awareness childhood as a public

phenomenon. But when analyzing the concept of F. Aries, it is necessary to remember

psychological laws of awareness. First of all, as JI said. WITH.

Vygotsky, "in order to realize, one must have what must be realized." And further studying the process of awareness in detail, J. Piaget emphasized that there is an inevitable delay and a fundamental difference between the formation of a real phenomenon and its reflective reflection.

Childhood has its own laws and, of course, does not depend on the fact that artists begin to pay attention to children and depict them on their canvases. Even if we recognize the indisputable judgment of F. Aries that art is a reflected picture of morals, works of art by themselves cannot provide all the necessary data for the analysis of the concept of childhood, and one cannot agree with all the author's conclusions.

The study of F. Aries begins with the Middle Ages, because only at that time did picturesque scenes depicting children appear. But care for children, the idea of education, of course, appeared long before the Middle Ages. Already in Aristotle there are thoughts dedicated to children. In addition, the work of F. Aries is limited to the study of the childhood of only a European child from the upper strata of society and describes the history of childhood without regard to the socio-economic level of development of society.

On the basis of documentary sources, F. Aries describes the content of the childhood of noble people. Thus, the children's activities of Louis XIII (beginning of the 17th century) can serve as a good illustration for this. At a year and a half, Louis XIII plays the violin and sings at the same time. (Music and dances were taught to children of noble families from the very early age). This is what Louie does before the wooden horse grabs his attention, windmill, spinning top (toys that were given to children of that time). Louis XIII was three years old when he first participated in the celebration of Christmas in 1604, and already from this age he began to learn to read, and at the age of four he knew how to write. At five he played with dolls and cards, and at six he played chess and tennis. The playmates of Louis XI11 were pages and soldiers. Louis played hide-and-seek and other games with them. At the age of six, Louis XIII practiced riddles and charades. Everything changed at the age of seven. Children's clothes were abandoned, and upbringing took on a masculine character. He begins to learn the art of hunting, shooting, gambling and horseback riding. Since that time, literature of a pedagogical and moralistic type has been read to him. At the same time, he begins to visit the theater and participates in collective games with adults.

But many other examples of childhood can be cited. One of them is taken from the 20th century. This is a description of Douglas Lockwood's journey deep into the Gibson Desert (Western Australia) and his encounter with the aboriginal Pintubi tribe ("lizard eaters"). Until 1957, most of the people of this tribe had never seen a white man, their contacts with neighboring tribes were insignificant, and thanks to this, the culture and way of life of the Stone Age people were preserved to a very large extent. The whole life of these people, passing in the desert, is focused on finding food and water. Pintubi women, strong and hardy, could walk for hours in the desert with a heavy load of fuel on their heads. They gave birth to children, lying on the sand, helping and sympathizing with each other. They had no idea about hygiene, did not even know the reason for childbearing. They did not have any utensils, except for wooden vessels for water. There were two or three more spears in the camp, several sticks for digging yams, millstones for grinding wild berries, and half a dozen wild lizards - their only food supplies ... Everyone went hunting with spears, which were made entirely of wood. In cold weather, nudity made the life of these people unbearable... No wonder their bodies had so many marks from smoldering sticks from camp fires... D. Lockwood gave the natives a pocket mirror and a comb, and the women tried to comb their hair reverse side comb. But even after the comb was put into his hand in the correct position, he still did not fit into his hair, since they had to be washed first, but there was not enough water for this. The man managed to comb his beard, while the women threw their gifts on the sand and soon forgot about them. “Mirrors,” writes D. Lockwood, “also did not succeed; although these people had never seen their reflection before. The head of the family knew, of course, what his wives and children looked like, but he never saw his own face. Looking in the mirror , he was surprised and intently examined himself in it ... The women in my presence looked in the mirror only once. Perhaps they mistook the image for spirits and therefore were frightened.

The natives slept, lying on the sand, without blankets or other covers, clinging to two dingoes curled up for warmth. D. Lockwood writes that a girl of two or three years old, while eating, put into her mouth either huge pieces of a cake, or pieces of meat from a tiny guana, which she baked it myself hot

sand. Her younger half-sister sat next to her in the dirt and dealt with

a can of stew (from the expedition's stocks), pulling out the meat with your fingers. On

pale morning D. Lockwood examined the jar. She was licked to a shine. More

one observation by D. Lockwood: "Before dawn, the natives kindled a fire,

to protect them from the cold gusts of the southeast wind. By the light

bonfire, I saw how a little girl, who still did not know how to walk properly,

I made a separate fire for myself. Bowing her head, she fanned the coals,

so that the fire spread to the branches and warmed it. She was naked and

she must have suffered from the cold, and yet she did not cry. There were three in the camp

small children, but we never heard them cry."

Observations like these allow us to take a deeper look at history. In comparison with the analysis of works of art, with folklore and linguistic studies, ethnographic material provides important data on the history of childhood development.

Based on the study of ethnographic materials, D. B. Elkonin showed that at the earliest stages of the development of human society, when the main way of obtaining food was gathering with the use of primitive tools for knocking down fruits and digging up edible roots, the child very early joined the work of adults, practically assimilating ways of obtaining food and using primitive tools. " Under such conditions there was neither need nor time for the stage of preparing children for the future labor activity. As emphasized

D. B. Elkonin, childhood occurs when the child cannot be directly included in the system of social reproduction, since the child cannot yet master the tools of labor due to their complexity. As a result, the natural inclusion of children in productive labor is pushed back. According to D. B. Elkonin, this elongation in time does not occur by building a new period of development over the existing ones (as F. Aries believed), but by a kind of wedge-in of a new period of development, leading to an “upward shift in time” of the period of mastering the tools of production . D. B. Elkonin brilliantly revealed these features of childhood in the analysis of the emergence of a role-playing game and a detailed examination of psychological features primary school age.

As already noted, the question of the historical origin of the periods of childhood, the connection between the history of childhood and the history of society, the history of childhood as a whole, without solving which it is impossible to form a meaningful concept of childhood, was raised in child psychology at the end of the 20s of the 20th century and continues still being developed. According to the views of Soviet psychologists, to study child development historically means to study the child's transition from one age stage to another, to study the change in his personality within each age period that occurs under specific historical conditions. And although the history of childhood has not yet been sufficiently studied, the very posing of this question in the psychology of the 20th century is important. And if, according to D. B. Elkonin, there is still no answer to many questions of the theory of the mental development of the child, then the path to the solution can already be imagined. And it is seen in the light of the historical study of childhood.

www.koob.ru

L.F.Obukhov. Child (age) psychology

OBUKHOVA L. F., Doctor of Psychology.

Child (age) psychology.

Textbook. -- M., Russian Pedagogical Agency. 1996, -- 374 p.

The textbook is intended for students of psychological faculties of universities, pedagogical universities and colleges, as well as all those who are interested in the mental development of children.

FOREWORD

1. Historical analysis of the concept of "childhood"

2. Childhood as a subject of science

3. The specifics of the mental development of the child.

4. Strategies for researching the child's mental development

Chapter II. OVERCOMING BIOGENETIC APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF THE CHILD'S PSYCHE

1. Biogenetic principle in psychology

2. Normative approach to the study of child development.

3. Identification of learning and development

4. The theory of three stages of child development ..

5. Concepts of convergence of two factors of child development.

6. Approaches to the analysis of the internal causes of the mental development of the child

Chapter III. PSYCHOANALYTICAL THEORIES OF CHILD DEVELOPMENT.

1. The theory of Sigmund Freud.

2. The development of classical psychoanalysis in the works of Anna Freud.

3. Epigenetic theory of personality development. Erik Erickson

Chapter IV. SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY

1. Departure from classical behaviorism...

2. Education and development.

3. Critical periods of socialization.

4. Encouragement and punishment as conditions for the formation of new behavior.

5. The role of imitation in the formation of new behavior.

6. Child and adult.

7. Family as a factor in the development of a child's behavior

Chapter V

1. Stages of scientific biography.

2. Key concepts of the concept of J. Piaget.

3. The discovery of the egocentricity of children's thinking

4. Discovery of the stages of a child's intellectual development.

Chapter VI. L. S. VYGOTSKY AND HIS SCHOOL

1. Change of scientific outlook.

2. Further steps along the path opened by L. S. Vygotsky.

Chapter VII. THE CONCEPT OF D. B. EL’KONIN. THE PERIOD OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.

1. Neonatal crisis

2. Stage of infancy.

3. Early age.

4. Crisis of three years

Chapter VIII. THE CONCEPT OF D. B. EL’KONIN. THE PERIOD OF CHILDHOOD.

1. Preschool age.

2. The crisis of seven years and the problem of school readiness.

3. Junior school age.

Chapter IX. ADOLESCENT AGE IN THE LIGHT OF DIFFERENT CONCEPTS..

1. Influence of historical time.

2. Classic studies of the crisis of adolescence.

3. New trends in the study of adolescence (L. S. Vygotsky, D. B. Elkonin, L. I. Bozhovich)

Chapter X. UNFINISHED DISPUTES.

1. P. Ya. Galperin and J. Piaget.

2. On the patterns of functional and age-related development of the child's psyche.

3. Forms and functions of imitation in childhood.

4. The problem of general and specific patterns of mental development of a deaf-blind-mute child.

CONCLUSION

Annex 1. CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD

Eternal gratitude to the teachers

FOREWORD

Currently, there are many textbooks on child psychology in the world. Almost every major Western university has its own original version. As a rule, these are voluminous, well-illustrated manuals summarizing a huge amount of scientific research. Some of them have been translated into Russian. However, in none of these truly interesting books do we find an analysis of the holistic concept of child development developed by L. S. Vygotsky and his followers, which is a true pride and a true achievement of Russian psychology.

Domestic textbooks on child psychology are small in volume and poor in illustrative material. In addition, they also have a substantial drawback: generalizing the experience accumulated in our science, they give a very poor idea of the achievements of modern foreign psychology. The book offered to the reader's attention was created mainly in order to fill these gaps and present in a balanced and complete in the form of diverse approaches to understanding the mental development of the child, which were developed in the 20th century, that is, for the entire period of the existence of child psychology as a separate scientific discipline.The presentation of the material is based on several basic principles.

This is, first of all, the principle of historicism, which allows, as it were, to string on one rod all the most important problems of child development that arose in different periods of time. The book analyzes the historical origin of the concept of "childhood", traces the connection between the history of childhood and the history of society, shows the historical prerequisites for the emergence of child psychology as a science.

The second principle underlying the choice of the analyzed concepts of child development is associated with the development and introduction into science of new methods for studying mental development. Changes in ideas about mental development are always associated with the emergence of new research methods. “The problem of method is the beginning and basis, the alpha and omega of the entire history of the child’s cultural development,” wrote L. S. Vygotsky. substantiation and developing a correct attitude towards it means, to a certain extent, developing a correct and scientific approach to the entire further exposition of the most important problems of child psychology in the aspect of cultural development. It was this principle, this attitude of L. S. Vygotsky that made it possible to analyze the historical path of child psychology from the first naive ideas about the nature of childhood to the modern in-depth systematic study of this phenomenon. The biogenetic principle in psychology, the normative approach to the study of child development, the identification of development and learning in behaviorism, the explanation of development by the influence of environmental factors and heredity in the theory of convergence, the psychoanalytic study of the child, comparative studies of norm and pathology, orthogenetic concepts of development - all these and many others approaches individually and collectively reflect the essence and illustrate the connection between the concepts of mental development and methods of its research.

The third principle concerns the analysis of the development of the main aspects of human life - the emotional-volitional sphere, behavior and intellect. The theory of classical psychoanalysis 3. Freud develops in the works of M. Klein and A. Freud, and then goes into the concept of psychosocial development of the life path of the personality of E. Erickson.

The problem of development in classical behaviorism is rethought in the theory of social learning - the most powerful direction of modern American developmental psychology. Studies of cognitive development are also undergoing changes - there is a transition from the study of the epistemic subject to the study of a particular child in the real conditions of his life.

L. S. Vygotsky chose the psychology of consciousness as the area of his research. He called it "top psychology" and contrasted it with the other three - deep, superficial and explanatory. L. S. Vygotsky developed the doctrine of age as a unit of child development and showed its structure and dynamics. He laid the foundations of child (age) psychology, which implements a systematic approach to the study of child development. The doctrine of psychological age makes it possible to avoid biological and environmental reductionism in explaining child development.

The resolution of the contradiction is manifested in the emergence of psychological neoplasms of age. These new formations do not correspond to the old social situation of development, they go beyond its framework. A new contradiction arises, a new genetic problem, which can be solved by building a new system of relations, a new social situation of development, indicating the transition of the child to a new psychological age. In this self-movement, the dynamics of child development is manifested. Such is the scheme for considering all age periods of a child's life from birth to adolescence, such is the logic of their development.

This edition is close to the form of a textbook for students studying psychology and pedagogy. For each section, possible topics for seminars are indicated, which the teacher can develop in more detail. Topics for independent work are aimed at expanding the general horizons of students. The recommended literature includes the most significant works in the field of child psychology. Reading them will deepen and expand the knowledge presented in the textbook.

I would like to take this opportunity to express my deep gratitude for various kinds of assistance to students and graduate students with whom I had the pleasure of working.

Chapter I. CHILDHOOD AS A SUBJECT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH.

1. Historical analysis of the concept of "childhood"

Today, any educated person, when asked what childhood is, will answer that childhood is a period of enhanced development, change and

learning. But only scientists understand that this is a period of paradoxes and

contradictions, without which it is impossible to imagine the process of development. ABOUT

paradoxes of child development were written by V. Stern, J. Piaget, I. A. Sokolyansky and

a lot others. D. B. Elkonin said that paradoxes in child psychology -

these are developmental mysteries that scientists have yet to unravel.

Man, being born, is endowed with only the most elementary mechanisms for maintaining life. According to the physical structure, organization of the nervous system, according to the types of activity and methods of its regulation, man is the most perfect creature in nature.

In the course of history, the enrichment of the material and spiritual culture of mankind has continuously grown. Over the millennia, human experience has increased many thousands of times. But during the same time, the newborn child has not changed much. Based on the data of anthropologists on the anatomical and morphological similarities between the Cro-Magnon and the modern European, it can be assumed that the newborn of a modern person does not differ in any significant way from a newborn who lived tens of thousands of years ago.

How is it that, under similar natural conditions, the level of mental development that a child reaches at each historical stage in the development of society is not the same?

Childhood is a period lasting from newborn to full social and, consequently, psychological maturity; This is the period of the child becoming a full-fledged member of human society. At the same time, the duration of childhood in a primitive society is not equal to the duration of childhood in the Middle Ages or today. The stages of human childhood are a product of history, and they are just as subject to change as they were thousands of years ago. Therefore, it is impossible to study the childhood of a child and the laws of its formation outside the development of human society and the laws that determine its development. The duration of childhood is directly dependent on the level of material and spiritual culture of society.

As is known, the theory of knowledge and dialectics must be made up of the history of individual sciences, the history of the mental development of a child, young animals, and the history of language. By focusing on the stories mental

development of the child, it should be distinguished as from the development of the child in ontogeny,

and from the uneven development of children in different modern cultures.

The problem of childhood history is one of the most difficult in contemporary child psychology, since neither observation nor experiment can be carried out in this area. Ethnographers are well aware that cultural monuments related to children are poor. Even in those, not very special cases, when toys are found in archaeological excavations, these are usually objects of worship, which in ancient times were placed in graves to serve the owner in the afterlife. Miniature images of people and animals were also used for witchcraft and magic.

Thus, in the literature of the 19th century, evidence of the absence of childhood among proletarian children is numerous. For example, in a study of the situation of the working class in England, F. Engels referred to the report of a commission created by the English Parliament in 1833 to examine working conditions in factories: children sometimes started working at the age of five, often at six, even more often at seven, but almost all children of poor parents worked from the age of eight; Their working hours lasted 14-16 hours.

only in XIX-XX centuries, when child protection legislation

child labor began to be banned. Of course, this does not mean that the accepted

legal laws are able to provide a childhood for the workers of the lower strata

society. Children in this environment and, above all, girls, and today perform

work necessary for social reproduction (caring for babies,

domestic work, some agricultural work). Thus, although

in our time and there is a ban on child labor, you can not talk about the status

childhood, not taking into account the position of parents in the social structure of society.

"Convention on the Rights of the Child", adopted by UNESCO in 1989 and

ratified by most countries of the world, aims to ensure

full development of the personality of the child in every corner of the Earth.

Historically, the concept of childhood is associated not with the biological state of immaturity, but with a certain social status, with the range of rights and obligations inherent in this period of life, with a set of types and forms of activity available to it. Many interesting facts were collected to support this idea by the French demographer and historian Philippe Aries. Thanks to his work, interest in the history of childhood in foreign psychology has increased significantly, and the studies of F. Aries himself are recognized as classics.