Obukhova L.F. , Doctor of Psychology, Head of the Department of Developmental Psychology, Faculty of Educational Psychology, Moscow State University of Psychology and Education, Moscow, Russia, [email protected]
Pavlova M.K. , Candidate of Psychological Sciences, Moscow State Pedagogical University, Lecturer, Department of Developmental Psychology, Moscow, Russia, [email protected]

Full text

"M. I. Lisina was a striking phenomenon in the psychological
science and an event in the life of everyone whom fate brought with
her ... Anyone who fell into the orbit of certain contacts
with her, not only enriched himself considerably, but also
rose in his own eyes ... She left
students and colleagues to develop, refine and develop
their thoughts, ideas, hypotheses. Until now, it is being
and many years later their scientific testing will be carried out, and not
only by its closest collaborators, but by an ever wider
circle of scientists

A. G. Ruzskaya

The contribution of M. I. Lisina to child and developmental psychology is extensive. Her name is associated with the fundamental achievements of cultural-historical psychology in the second half of the 20th century. Her contribution to the theory of activity is associated with the enrichment of this theory with new facts that fix significant changes, turning points in the mental development of the child in the early stages of ontogenesis. As a child psychologist, M. I. Lisina had a rare ability to see and understand the signs of a child’s behavior, indicating his hidden mental states and needs, his emotional experiences in the process of interaction with close and unfamiliar people or in the course of actions with things. This ability allowed M. I. Lisina to describe for the first time in detail the specific features of the early forms of communication that arise at the pre-verbal stage of the child's mental development. If there are micropediatricians, then there must be micropsychologists who are able to see not only large periods or stages of development, but also microphases that differ in qualitative originality within the same age stage. M. I. Lisina belonged to the number of such specialists.

She studied child development not in the laboratory, but in the real life of children in the family, in the orphanage, in kindergarten. Her work makes a significant contribution to the ecological approach in the field of developmental psychology, which today is associated only with the names of J. Bruner and W. Bronfenbrenner.

In many branches of modern psychology, it was the first. Her work is the foundation of personality psychology. At the time when M. I. Lisina studied the formation of personality in the first months and years of a child’s life, there was no such branch of psychology in Russian science. Today in our country there are departments and even institutes with this name.

Tracking the development of self-consciousness in a child during the first seven years of life from the standpoint of the concept of communication developed by her as a communicative activity and analysis of the role of communication in the formation of a child's image of himself constituted another, new page in the theory of personality development. Identification of the periphery (knowledge about oneself) and the core (experience of constancy, identity and continuity to oneself) in the image of the Self and the identification of complex relationships between them is another step in building a theory of personality. The views of M. I. Lisina are close to the concept of identity in the concept of E. Erickson. Note that they were expressed when no one in our country heard the name of E. Erickson.

Child psychology is indebted to M. I. Lisina for the development of many particular problems that remain relevant at the present time. These include the formation and development of speech, the origins of the child's worldview, readiness for schooling, the formation of an internal plan of activity, mental development in conditions of deprivation, the features of the child's relationship with parents and other children, and many others. However, the main, pivotal line of her scientific developments is communicative activity and its role in the overall mental development of the child.

In communication, the child's attitude to himself, to other people, to the objective world is formed. MI Lisina emphasized the role of communication as the most important factor in the development of cognitive activity in childhood. Analyzing the role of communication in the cognitive development of the child, M. I. Lisina carried out such a detailed analysis of the concepts (activity, activation, mental activity, mental activity, intellectual activity, cognitive activity, cognitive activity, creativity, initiative, curiosity, curiosity), which is not in one scientific system, including the theory of intellectual development according to J. Piaget. She showed that cognitive activity is not identical to cognitive activity. Cognitive activity has a specific subject and result: its subject is the information contained in the object to which the child's attention is directed, and its result is a reflection of the properties of the object, its image. M. I. Lisina believed that cognitive activity is a component of the structure of activity, which is close in level to cognitive need. Activity - readiness for activity, this is a state that precedes activity and generates it. Activity is fraught with activity. It includes states that are not yet an activity, but already indicating readiness for it (signs of interest, attention), and these states can be empirically fixed, in contrast to a cognitive need, which was very important for M. I. Lisina as an experimenter. So, cognitive activity for M. I. Lisina was a kind of indicator of the presence of an effective cognitive need. The definitions of concepts proposed by M. I. Lisina should be included in the psychological dictionary. And the ability to differentiate concepts and construct them into a system can be used as a diagnostic tool to characterize the mind of a scientist.

M. I. Lisina believed that at different stages of childhood, the mechanisms of the influence of communication on cognitive activity are not the same. Communication with other people decisively determines the quantitative and qualitative features of the child's cognitive activity, the more the younger the child's age and the stronger relations with elders mediate his relations with the whole world around him. As children develop, the influence of communication on cognitive activity is increasingly mediated by personal formations and emerging self-awareness, which are imprinted by contacts with other people.

The experiments of M. I. Lisina and her collaborators are widely known, showing the enriching effect of communication on the cognitive activity of a child under 7 years of age. These primarily include experiments with infants (M. I. Lisina, S. Yu. Meshcheryakova), young children (M. I. Lisina, L. N. Galiguzova), preschoolers (M. I. Lisina, E. O. Smirnova), confirming the positive role of communication with adults. M. I. Lisina and T. D. Sartorius showed that specially organized plot-role-playing games with peers, taking place under the guidance of an adult, increase the level of communication with an adult, the overall cognitive activity of the child and his self-confidence.

M. I. Lisina suggested that communication with peers is important primarily as an equal interaction that contributes to the self-knowledge of the child in relating himself to others and the disclosure of his creative potential. The development of forms of communication with a peer lags behind communication with an adult: the very need for communication with a peer (its components: attention to other children, emotional response to their actions, the desire to attract their attention, sensitivity to their affective attitude) is fully formed only by the start of preschool. In communication with a peer throughout the preschool age, the third and fourth components of the need for communication dominate, that is, the child is not interested in a peer as a person, but “uses” him as a “mirror”. Probably, communication with a peer at preschool age remains at the level of situational-personal and situational-business, despite the fact that it is already verbal, since the peer does not satisfy the child's need for knowledge about the wide social world and does not interest him as a person. As the experiments of M. I. Lisina and her collaborators show, already at preschool age, communication with peers is necessary for the full cognitive development of the child, although the form of this communication may be of a lower level than the forms of communication with an adult.

The ideas of M. I. Lisina on the role of communication in the cognitive development of the child can be correlated with the work of Piaget's followers, who develop similar problems. In the concept of J. Piaget, the social factor in the development of the intellect begins to “work” only upon reaching the stage of specific operations, when coordination of points of view (co-operation) becomes possible and the child becomes able to perceive differences in his position from the position of others, including peers. At the same time, J. Piaget recognized that interaction with peers can play a special role in the development of intelligence, since it is based on the ethics of cooperation, and not coercion, as in relationships with adults. Communication with a peer, in which coordination of equal points of view takes place, should contribute to intellectual and moral development, but only at the operational stages of development, i.e., starting from primary school age.

In domestic psychology, such a radical denial of the role of communication in the cognitive development of young children, as is well known, caused sharp criticism, confirmed by experimental data, mainly related to communication with adults. The experiments of D. B. Elkonin, V. A. Nedospasova and E. V. Filippova showed the fundamental possibility of coordinating mental positions (overcoming cognitive egocentrism) already at preschool age, and, according to these researchers, role-playing game with peers contributes to such coordination. . This echoes the idea of ​​M. I. Lisina that communication with peers is, by definition, reflexive, since a child in communication with a peer constantly compares and relates himself to him. Perhaps this correlation of oneself with another is an important factor in cognitive development?

At the end of the last century, the followers of Piaget himself began to study the role of communication in the development of intelligence. In the works of A.N. Perret-Clermont made a fundamental turn - it is assumed that social interactions and the coordination of points of view associated with them precede the emergence of specific operations and prepare them. A.N. Perret-Clermont introduces the concept of sociocognitive conflict, which can be defined as a contradiction of different centers (points of view) that impedes the solution of a collective problem. According to A.-N. Perret-Clermont, the resolution of such a conflict is possible only through the coordination of points of view, which implies the construction of a new, more complex cognitive structure for one or more parties to the conflict. Conflict (contradiction) can be a source of cognitive development. A. N. Perret-Clermont believes that in order to resolve the conflict, i.e., to coordinate points of view, a dialogue is necessary between the participants in the conflict, during which they will put forward more and more new arguments, challenge the arguments of the enemy and nevertheless bring their positions closer . Argumentation in the course of solving a collective problem is a means of coordinating points of view, a means of resolving a sociocognitive conflict, building new knowledge and a new level of cognitive development.

This hypothesis has received empirical support. A number of experiments with preschoolers and younger schoolchildren who are at different stages of the formation of specific operations (according to the criterion of understanding the conservation of quantity, substance, liquid, length, etc.) showed that even a single placement of children in a situation of interaction with a peer in which they must argue their position and come to a common solution to the problem set by adults, leads to a subsequent improvement in the results of children in conservation tasks compared to control groups. In the course of interaction, children solved a “serious” task for them “here-and-now”, therefore, the form of such communication can be called situational-business with speech mediation, which corresponds to the ideas of M. I. Lisina about the delay in the development of communication with peers compared to communication with adults. Nevertheless, it is communication based on a genetically earlier form that leads to surprising results: children benefit not only from interaction with a peer of a higher level of cognitive development, but also from interaction with less advanced peers. A.N. Perret-Clermont comes to the conclusion that the very need to voice (i.e., reflect) one's point of view, to correlate it with the position of a peer leads to progress in intellectual development. Of course, for such progress, some basic level of development is necessary, which will allow the child to notice the contradiction between his own point of view and the position of another.

A.N. Perret-Clermont explains the specifics of the post-Piagisian approach to the study of the child's mental development. Offering a child the task of preserving quantity, Piaget told him: "Do and think." He studied what happens "in the mind" of the child, his logic. But thinking is not limited to logic. From the point of view of A.N. Perret-Clermont and her staff, in order to understand how a child thinks, it is necessary to analyze the argument in the course of solving the problem, and this can only be done in the course of a constructive dialogue. The organization of such a dialogue is a difficult psychological and pedagogical task. Scientists in different countries (Israel, Portugal, Italy, etc.) are currently developing the problem of how to help the teacher organize a dialogue in the process of solving problems from the field of mathematics, history, biology, geography, etc.

B. Schwartz, an Israeli researcher and educator, understands the argumentation in the spirit of L. S. Vygotsky as a mediating link between internal and external dialogue, which serves to spread knowledge between the participants in the discussion and to build new collective knowledge, the creation of collective meanings. The methods of argumentation developed in the team are internalized, becoming individual means of thinking. B. Schwartz is one of the authors of a special program (Kishurim), which has been implemented since 1998 and which is aimed at improving the process of school education. This program can also be used in student and adult education. It should contribute to the development of argumentation and dialogic thinking in students. This program is built on the following principles:

• cooperation(tasks are given to small groups of students with the installation that they are united by a common goal and the contribution of each is important);
• unobtrusive mediation(the teacher as a mediator of the learning process provides students with non-instructive assistance that supports cooperation: “Try to correlate different opinions”, “Try to come to a common understanding”. Thus, the teacher tries to provoke a discussion between students without imposing his authoritative opinion);
• critical dialogue(teachers encourage students to make reasonable arguments, to consider the issue from new positions, to openly challenge the arguments of others if they disagree, and to revise their own argument if the arguments of the opponents are compelling or the facts contradict the original point of view);
• ethical communication(respect for each participant in the discussion, regardless of the truth of the opinion expressed; evaluation of the quality of the judgment, and not its author);
• autonomy(recognition of the value of personal opinion; everyone is given the opportunity to develop their own ideas, albeit in interaction with peers; since the mental level of students is different, an individual approach is required here, more support for those who are lagging behind);
• the active role of the teacher in the planning of classes(the teacher chooses the means of presenting arguments (for example, computer ones), plans his intervention in the discussion, transforms the educational material presented in the traditional didactic form into the basis for the dialectical interaction of students);
• using resources to encourage dialogue(the teacher provides students with additional sources of information that they can use to search for arguments, and also uses special interaction tools, for example, a computer chat program designed for virtual discussions, where different participants and different forms of arguments are presented visually).

Compliance with these principles is necessary for the formation of creative and critical thinking of students. These principles are implemented in the collective solution of ambiguous tasks by students, for which there is no single correct solution and for which students have only preliminary worldly knowledge. The teacher poses a problem to the children (for example, “How does war affect children?”, “Can drugs be tested on animals?”) and prepares a variety of information resources that they can use in developing a solution. The decision must be reached in a collective discussion, i.e. in a discussion. The main idea of ​​the Kishurim program is the visualization of the discussion, bringing it into a visual (material) plan, which facilitates student reflection; they have to classify their own statements - is it just a statement, its justification, new information or a question? Does this statement support the other's point of view, oppose it, or have nothing to do with it?

For this, the Digalo graphical computer environment is used. Digalo is a map on which the statements of the participants are recorded in a visual form, and the links between them are indicated by arrows. So, the map can be represented by "goal", "argument", "information" and "question". Arrows can represent support, opposition, and connection. The map also shows the teacher's interventions during the discussion. If the teacher wants to achieve a common understanding, then he addresses the student with the words: “Try to correlate your point of view with others”, “Do you agree with ...?”. If the teacher wants to change the dialogic situation, he can say: "Try to change this point of view ..." or "Are you sure that your conclusion necessarily follows from the data that you have?". This is how a critical dialogue is built, in which the discussant maintains autonomy, and the teacher acts as a facilitator of the discussion. Written statements allow us to trace their dynamics, the form and content of the discussion (initial hypothesis, fact, reason, change of hypothesis). Thanks to Digalo, the discussion space is presented visually and simultaneously, which, in turn, allows the teacher to analyze the activity of each student.

The Digalo computer program can be used not only during discussions in the classroom, but also in distance learning. Digalo helps the teacher to show creative ingenuity in organizing the educational process, and children in practice acquire the ability to construct arguments in the course of resolving specific contradictions. Currently, Digalo is being used to research cognitive development and create modern learning tools not only in Israel, but also in Switzerland, Colombia and other countries.

The main psychological and pedagogical results of this approach are an increase in the cognitive activity of students, the quality of the argumentation they use and the level of reflection. Thus, the specific functions of communication with peers, which M. I. Lisina pointed out, are also manifested here - the functions of self-knowledge and the disclosure of the child's creative potential. At the same time, at school age, communication with peers, apparently, occurs at the level of extra-situational-cognitive and extra-situational-personal, which makes it possible to widely use collective discussions in education. An example is not only the developments described by B. Schwartz, a follower of A.-N. Perret-Clermont, but also in many respects similar systems of problem-based and developmental education according to the programs of D. B. Elkonin, V. V. Davydov, G. A. Tsukerman and other domestic scientists.

At one of the conferences, M. I. Lisina unexpectedly intrigued the audience, saying that in addition to the four forms of communication she identified - situational-personal, situational-business, out-of-situation-cognitive and out-of-situation-personal, there is also a fifth form. Her thoughts on this, apparently, the highest form of communication remained unknown. We allow ourselves to express the bold consideration that a specially organized discussion between peers, in which the limitations of individual points of view are overcome and a shift in cognitive development takes place, can also claim the role of a fifth, higher form of communication.

M. I. Lisina agreed that communication is the leading activity in the proper sense of the word only in two ages - infancy and adolescence. Despite this, she emphasized that in every childhood, communication plays a key role in development, and this role is age-specific, which manifests itself in forms of communication that naturally replace each other in the course of ontogenesis. In the works of M. I. Lisina and her colleagues, ways were outlined for studying the role of communication with peers in the development of the psyche and personality of the child. It was shown that the specific need for communication with peers is formed in ontogenesis later than the need for communication with an adult, from which it follows that the main forms of communication with a peer inevitably develop later than the corresponding forms of communication with an adult. M. I. Lisina suggested that equal communication with a peer, in addition to the natural function of establishing relationships in the children's team and with friends, contributes to the emancipation of the child, increased cognitive activity and self-knowledge. It is important that these functions appear in ontogeny as early as preschool age, being reflected in their own way in situational-business, out-of-situation-cognitive and out-of-situation-personal forms of communication with a peer, which is confirmed in empirical studies by domestic and foreign scientists. The studies cited by foreign psychologists, our contemporaries, showed that communication with a peer in the form of a discussion organized by an adult not only increases the cognitive activity of children, but also leads to a qualitative change in the level of cognitive development, and this effect can also be caused already at preschool age. Thus, the ideas of M. I. Lisina about the fundamental role of communication in the development of a child of any age, about the peculiar functions of communication with a peer, and about age-specific forms of communication with an adult and a peer continue to be confirmed in the works of researchers in various fields.

Education

Pedagogical

M.I. LISINA

PROBLEMS OF ONTOGENESIS

COMMUNICATIONS

Moscow

"Pedagogy"

Published by decision of the Editorial and Publishing advice Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR

Reviewers:

Full member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Doctor of Psychology Sciences,

Professor A. A. BODALEV;

Doctor of Psychological Sciences, Professor L. A. VENGER;

Doctor of Psychology, Professor S. N. KARPOVA;

Doctor of Psychology V. E. CHUDNOVSKY

Helped to prepare the text for printing

Doctor of Psychology A. G. RUZSKAYA

Lisina M.I.

L63 Problems of the ontogeny of communication / Scientific research. Institute of General and Pedagogical Psychology Acad. ped. sciences of the USSR. - M.: Pedagogy, 1986. - 144 p. 65 kop.

Based on a large amount of experimental material, the monograph presents an attempt to build a holistic concept of the genesis of communication. It deals with the emergence and early stages of development of communication between children (from birth to 7 years) with adults and peers; a description is given of four main forms of communication, which represent the age levels of development of the communicative activity of children: the situational-personal form of communication of infants, the situational-business form of communication of young children, the out-of-situation-cognitive, characteristic of middle preschool age, and the out-of-situation-personal form - the highest achievement of social development in early childhood.

For specialists in the field of general and child psychology, pedagogy.

4303000000-082

L t-- 29-86 BBC 88.8

005(01)-86 L63

© Publisher"Pedagogy", 1986

Introduction

This book is about communication. We will tell in it how a child, having been born, enters into his first contacts with people around him, how his connections with them become more and more complicated and deep, how a child’s communication with adults and peers is transformed in the first 7 years of life. Our book is also a book about self-knowledge. We will try to describe what a small child knows about himself, how he imagines his various abilities and the possibilities arising from them. Communication and self-knowledge are two big problems that have been worrying the minds of mankind for a long time. In recent decades, interest in them around the world has become even more aggravated. And there are many reasons for that. Nowadays, the development of means of communication and transportation has brought together different parts of the planet, made it "small", as Yuri Gagarin, who was the first to look at the Earth from space, said. But here is a paradox: the rapid and ever-accelerating pace of life simultaneously introduces alienation between people. Those who live very close to each other - in the same house, and often even in the same apartment. The destruction of the old, patriarchal life leads to the fact that that we seldom see our neighbours, meet little friends, lose intimacy with our loved ones.People feel loneliness invade their lives and suffer painfully from it.Is it not this experience that made Antoine de Saint-Exupery exclaim: "The only true luxury - this is the luxury of human communication! "? In conditions when the former habitual forms of existence with their slowness, constancy of ties and adherence to traditions are being replaced by new forms of being, characterized by dynamism and high rhythm, people are persistently striving to understand what it is - communication, how to save it and grow it for the benefit of mankind?

In a number of various scientific disciplines that can help solve the problem of communication, the primary place is given to psychology. After all, a psychologist

My essence of my profession is called upon to understand the spiritual life of a person, to find out his most secret needs and requirements. And about 30-35 years ago, almost simultaneously in different parts of the world, research was launched aimed at an in-depth study of the psychology of people's communication. From the very beginning, a special place among them was occupied by works devoted to the study of children's communication, especially the communication of a small child with adults who care for him. Significantly simpler than that of adults, the communication of babies promised quick success in its interpretation. Practical needs also played a big role. The involvement of women in large-scale production urgently required the development of public education of children. There was an urgent practical need to determine how to build contacts with them in conditions that are different from family relations that have developed over the centuries. Thus, society required psychologists to develop questions the genesis of communication- definitions of how it initially arises and then develops.

One of the first to start developing problems of the genesis of communication was the famous English psychologist J. Bowlby. Immediately after the war, his works came out, attracting close attention of the public. J. Bowlby, as well as Rene Spitz close to him in their creative positions [I. Spitz, 1945, 1946 a, b] in France, Anna Freud in Austria and some other European psychologists, have dramatically emphasized the paramount importance of the relationship with the mother for the correct mental development of a small child. The lack of communication with her, these scientists wrote, endangers the life of the child, hinders his physical and mental development. The lack of communication at an early age leaves a fatal seal on the subsequent fate of the individual, determining the formation of her aggressiveness, antisocial inclinations and spiritual emptiness.

A little later, US scientists showed interest in the study of the genesis of communication. In the framework of the theory of "social learning" they conducted in the 50s. many works aimed at analyzing the child's contacts with adults and with other children at different stages of childhood. The communication of a child with his mother and with peers was interpreted in their works as a kind of phenomena that obey the “stimulus-reaction” law.

In the early 60s. a broad study of the genesis of communication unfolded in the USSR. Soviet psychologists were based on strong traditions of studying the interaction of children with surrounding adults, created in the post-revolutionary years by prominent Russian pediatricians, physiologists and early childhood educators. Among them, first of all, it is necessary to mention the prominent scientist and organizer of the public education of young children N. M. Shchelovanov and his colleagues and students N. M. Aksarina [Education of children ..., 1955], M. Yu. Kistyakovskaya, R. V. Tonkov-Yampolskaya [Social adaptation..., 1980]. The school of studying the normal physiology of early childhood, created by N. M. Shchelovanov, still exists and is constantly expanding its work. But in addition to it, on the initiative of A. V. Zaporozhets, the leading specialist in child psychology in the USSR, a proper psychological study of the genesis of communication in children of the first 7 years of life was undertaken. The staff of the laboratory of mental development and education of preschool children of the Scientific Research Institute of General and Pedagogical Psychology of the USSR APS took part in this work. For about 20 years, the laboratory has been busy with an experimental study of communication with adults and peers in children of the first 7 years of life. The book brought to the attention of readers contains the author's theoretical generalizations of the results of 20 years of work. At the same time, the book outlines specific research carried out under our direction; without their contribution, the development of the genesis of communication would not have been possible.

We devote a significant place in the book, among others, to the problems of self-knowledge. What caused it? Why are communication issues considered in connection with problems of self-knowledge?

Self-knowledge is an independent problem that has occupied the minds of philosophers and scientists since ancient times. People have always eagerly sought to understand what they are - both each individual person and humanity as a whole.

The need for self-knowledge is not an empty whim: the individual could not exist without a correct idea of ​​what he is capable of. Apparently, this is why this need is so strong in each of us and gives rise to an insatiable interest in understanding and appreciating ourselves.

The main source from which we draw knowledge about ourselves is the experience that is born in vigorous activity, and at the same time collective. In the course of joint practice with other people, a person opens up the best opportunities for understanding his abilities.

Personal (in form) “at the same time social (essentially) relations with people that develop in the course of communication become the most important tool for self-knowledge. In the words of K. Marx, the other person is like a mirror in which we look in order to see ourselves.

Communication and self-knowledge are closely related to each other. Communication is the best way to get to know yourself. A correct self-image, of course, in turn affects communication, helping to deepen and strengthen it. In business contacts and friendships, it is equally important to be aware of one's actions, to judge oneself strictly and to evaluate oneself correctly.

That is why in this book we will talk about communication and self-knowledge as two inextricably linked, interdependent problems. We will consider them in relation to children of preschool age (from birth to 7 years). The first year of life - infancy - is still very little studied by psychologists, but the facts accumulated by science in the past two decades suggest that even in the first months after birth, the child is not “preparing to become a person”, but lives and actively acts, establishes complex relationships with surrounding people and the objective environment in which he lives. Early age - the second and third years of life - is peculiar in that children master culturally fixed ways of using objects and learn to speak, which immeasurably deepens the possibilities of their knowledge and interaction with people around them. Actually, preschool age - from 3 to 7 years - is an important stage in the formation of a person. The child is already relatively independent, he knows how to do a lot and actively moves from one activity to another: he examines, draws, builds, helps the elders, plays with friends. This means that he has many opportunities to test how dexterous he is, how bold he is, how he knows how to get along with his comrades, in order to recognize himself by his deeds. The preschooler, in addition, is closely connected with the surrounding people - adults and peers. Thanks to this, he has a communication experience that allows him to

To put yourself with peers, to hear the opinion of relatives and strangers about yourself and to recognize yourself by the assessments of others.

Thus, observing children, the psychologist gets the opportunity to see the features of their self-knowledge and the conditions in which it develops: the individual practice of the child and his communication with other people.

Our book is addressed primarily to scientists specializing in the field of child development - psychologists, physiologists, early childhood educators, neuropsychiatrists and psychiatrists. Acquaintance with her, perhaps, will also be of interest to everyone who is interested in the problems of general psychology, the psychology of communication and self-knowledge.

Chapter I

The concept of communication

The main attention in the book is focused on the presentation of the idea developed by us about the emergence of communication with other people and about its development in the next 7 years of a child's life.

But before proceeding to consider the genesis of communication, it is necessary to at least briefly inform the reader what meaning we put into the term "communication". The definition of communication is necessary, firstly, because the term itself is widely used in Russian everyday everyday speech, where it has an intuitively understood, but scientifically undefined meaning. Such a definition is also required because in the scientific literature the meaning of the term "communication" depends on the theoretical positions of the researchers who use it. That is why we devote chapter I of the book to a brief discussion of the question of what communication is.

Definition of communication

In the introduction to the book, we have already noted the fact that the field of communication in the last two or three decades has attracted close attention of researchers. The nature of communication, its individual and age characteristics, the mechanisms of flow and change have become the subject of study by philosophers and sociologists [B. D. Parygin, 1971; I. S. Kon, 1971, 1978], psycholinguists [A. A. Leontiev, 1979a, b], specialists in social psychology [B. F. Porshnev, 1966; G. M. Andreeva, 1980], children's and age [V. S. Mukhina, 1975; Ya. L. Kolominsky, 1976, 1981]. However, different researchers invest in the concept of communication is not the same meaning. So, N. M. Shchelovanov and N. M. Aksarina [Upbringing of children ..., 1955] call the affectionate speech of an adult addressed to a baby as communication; M. S. Kagan considers it legitimate to talk about the communication of man with nature and with himself. Some researchers [G. A. Ball, V. N. Branovitsky, A. M. Dovgyallo - in the book: Thinking and Communication, 1973] recognize the reality of the relationship between a person and a machine, while others believe that “talking about communication with the inanimate

With some objects (for example, with a computer) it has only a metaphorical meaning" [B. F. Lomov - in the book: The problem of communication ..., 1981, p. eight]. It is known that many definitions of communication have been proposed abroad. So, referring to the data of D. Dens, A. A. Leontiev reports that by 1969 alone in the English-language literature, 96 definitions of the concept of communication had been proposed.

And yet, inevitably, everyone, starting to write about communication, gives one more, his own definition of communication. We give this definition.

Communication is the interaction of two (or more) people,aimed at harmonizing and uniting their effortsin order to build relationships and achieve commonresult. We agree with everyone who emphasizes that communication is not just an action, but precisely an interaction: it is carried out between participants, each of whom is equally a carrier of activity and assumes it in his partners [K. Obukhovsky, 1972; A. A. Leontiev, 1979a; K. A. Abulkhanova-Slavskaya - in the book: The problem of communication ..., 1981].

In addition to the mutual orientation of people's actions during communication, the most important characteristic for us is that each of its participants is active, that is, acts as a subject. Activity can be expressed in the fact that a person, when communicating, proactively influences his partner, and also in the fact that the partner perceives his influences and responds to them. When two people communicate, they alternately act and perceive each other's influences. Therefore, we do not include cases of one-sided activity in communication: when, for example, a lecturer addresses an audience invisible to him on the radio or a teacher gives a lesson on television, and not in the classroom. The significance of this feature of communication is emphasized by T. V. Dragunova [Age and individual characteristics of younger adolescents, 1967], Ya-L. Kolominsky.

Communication is also characterized by the fact that each of its participants acts in the course of it as a person, and not as a physical object, a “body”. Examination by a physician of an unconscious patient is not communication. Communicating, people are tuned in to what the partner will answer them, and looking forward to his feedback. A. A. Bodalev, E. E. Smirnova [Thinking and communication, 1973] and other psychologists pay attention to this feature of communication. On this basis, B. F. Lomov
9

Claims that "communication is the interaction of people entering into it as subjects" [Communication problem..., 1981, p. 8], and a little further: “Communication requires at least two people, each of whom acts precisely as a subject” [ibid.].

We would like to emphasize that the features of communication listed above are inextricably linked with each other. The absolutization of interaction in isolation from other features of communication leads to an interactionist position, which sharply impoverishes the idea of ​​communication. With excessive emphasis on the exchange of information as the essence of communication, the latter turns into communication - a phenomenon that is also much narrower than communication. Recall that K. Marx, speaking about the phenomena of communication, did not use the English word "communication" - "communication", but the German "Verkehr" - a term that captures the connection of communication with relations in human society to a much greater extent [K. Marx, F. Engels. Works, vol. 3, p. 19]. (See the analysis of this word usage by G. M. Andreeva, G. M. Kuchinsky [The problem of communication ..., 1981], A. A. Leontiev.) And finally, the identification of communication with relationships, especially with relationships, also distorts the term in question; a clear separation of it from the term "relationships" has an important fundamental and methodological significance [Ya. L. Kolominsky, 1981]. We will return to the last question when considering the products of communication.

So, in the course of communication, people address each other in the hope of getting an echo, an answer. This makes it easy to separate acts of communication from all other acts. If a child, listening to you, looks into your face and, smiling in response to your kind words, looks into your eyes, you can be sure that you are communicating. But then the child, attracted by the noise in the next room, turned away or tilted his head, looking with interest at the beetle in the grass - and communication was interrupted: it was replaced by the child's cognitive activity. Communication can be separated from other types of human activity into a separate episode. This happens, for example, when people discuss their relationships with concentration, express opinions to each other about their own or someone else's actions, actions. In young children, communication is usually closely intertwined with play, exploration of objects, drawing and other activities and movement.

Cheers with them. The child is either busy with his partner (adult, peer), then switches to other things. But even brief moments of communication are a holistic activity that has a peculiar form of existence in children. Therefore, as a subject of psychological analysis, communication is a well-known abstraction. Communication is not completely reduced to the sum of the observed isolated contacts of the child with other people, although it is in them that it manifests itself and, on their basis, is constructed into an object of scientific study.

Communication and activity. Communicationhow activity

Propose a definition of communication - An important matter, but it cannot be limited; further it is required to give his understanding. Let us say right away that, considering communication as a psychological category, we interpret it as an activity, and therefore the synonym for communication is for us the term communicative activity.

Before revealing this thesis, let us say that Soviet psychologists, for all the difference in their approaches to interpreting the phenomena of communication, unanimously emphasize the inseparable connection between communication and activity.

The category of activity in general occupies the most important place in the system of concepts of Soviet psychology. In search of a concise indication of the main difference between man and other creatures, M. S. Kagan even suggests calling him "Homo Agens", that is, "acting man". Several different theories of activity have been developed. The concepts of S. L. Rubinshtein, B. G. Ananiev, L. S. Vygotsky,

A. N. Leontieva. The basis of his understanding of
we put the concept of activity, developed
tanned by A. N. Leontiev and developed by A. V. Zaporozhets
, D. B. Elkonin ,

B. V. Davydov, P. Ya. Galperin.
From the point of view of this concept, activity is a real process, consisting of a set of actions and operations, and the main difference between one activity and another lies in the specifics of their objects. To analyze any type of activity means to indicate what its object is, to find out the motivating

Formation of the child's personality in communication Lisina Maya Ivanovna

Problems of the ontogeny of communication

Problems of the ontogeny of communication