9. DEVELOPMENT OF MEMORY IN PRESCHOOL CHILDREN

Memory is a feature of a person, which is determined by the ability to accumulate, store and reproduce the experience and information gained; the ability to reproduce the events that occurred in the past with the specification of the place, the time of the event, as well as all the emotional experiences accompanying this event, in combination with the events of the surrounding world, occurring at that moment in time.

Memory components are the following processes:

1) creation - the emergence of the very fact of the presence of information that you need to remember;

2) saving - recording information in memory cells;

3) reproduction is the process of “playing back” the event (fact) that was memorized;

4) concealment is always relative, since some information is stored in our memory throughout life, but we can no longer “reproduce” it without outside help. Only the occurrence of any events resembling the required fact, can cause its reproduction in memory.

Also, the memory has qualitative and quantitative characteristics:

1) duration - a period of time during which the memory stores information and retrieves it at the right time without any outside intervention;

2) accuracy - an indicator of the reliability and detail of the information recalled;

3) volume - the amount of information stored per unit of time;

4) speed - the speed with which information passes from the state of “creation” to the state of “preservation”.

5) readiness to play - the speed at which the necessary information is retrieved from the memory.

All these characteristics depend on the person’s personality. A person who is attentive and painstaking will have high accuracy, but the speed of memorization will be low. And an impulsive person will memorize quickly, but the detail of information will be much lower than that of the first.

There are three opinions on the memory of preschool children. The first opinion expressed by a number of psychologists speaks of the existence of two types of memory in children, where the first is the physiological component, and the second is the psychological (spiritual) one. According to the second opinion, the child’s memory reaches development at an early age, after which its activity decreases sharply. The third opinion is expressed by the advocates of the culmination idea, who argue that the development of memory reaches its apogee at the age of 10 years, after which it gradually decreases.

P.P. Blonsky expressed his theory about the structure of a child’s memory, dividing it into four temporal components. The very first - motor (motor) - is a conditioned reflex, starting with the first movements of the newborn. The next component is the emotional memory of the child, which is based on the memorization of information and its assimilation in the form of emotions caused by this information. In the course of the formation of consciousness and the development of the child's figurative thinking, his memory becomes figurative , where information is stored in the form of images and concepts. And as far as

the development of a child of such a mechanism as communication, memory becomes verbal .

The study of Z. M. Istomina on the development of memory in preschool children showed that the main feature of memory processes that occur during this period is precisely that the processes of memorization and recall from involuntary are transformed into intentional, arbitrary. And this means that a conscious goal is set out before the child to remember, remember, and he learns how to actively achieve this goal. A completely analogous restructuring of the process takes place, as the data of N. L. Agenosova show, and in the processes of perception, which also become manageable at this age, acquire the features of genuine arbitrariness.

A. N. Leontiev indicates that the fact of the formation of arbitrary memory in preschool age is not unexpected, but the most important thing is how this process proceeds and how it is internally determined.

Z. M. Istomin, studying the memory of preschool children of different ages, ranging from the smallest to the oldest, changed their memorization motives. She showed that the restructuring of children's memory also stands in connection with the development of the overall internal structure of the child’s activity, which we discussed above, and that the turning point in this regard also usually falls on the age of about 4 years. She showed that the active selection and awareness of the goal of the child to remember, remember to be recognized earlier on such conditions, when the meaning of this goal for the child directly follows from the motive that prompts his activity. Under the conditions of this study, such were the conditions of the game, which required memorization of the instruction and its recall, which directly followed from the role played by the child. In other cases, these may, of course, be conditions of some other meaningful activity for the child. Children experience great difficulties when the goal is in a more abstract relationship to the motive, as is the case with memorization in laboratory experiments.

Changes occurring during preschool age in processes of different nature are internally linked to each other and have a common nature. Obviously, this commonality of changes is created by the fact that they are connected with the same circumstances.

The data obtained in the studies make it possible to clarify the connection of the studied changes with one central fact. This fact is that in the course of its development, the child actively penetrates into the world of human relations surrounding him, assimilating - initially in a very concrete and effective form - the social functions of people, socially developed norms and rules of behavior. This initially obligatory concreteness and effectiveness of the form in which the child masters the higher processes of human behavior necessarily require that the tasks that the tutor sets for the child are meaningful for him, so that the connection between what he has to do and what he is acts, and the conditions of its action was not formal, not conditional and not too complicated, but perhaps more immediate and close. Only under this condition can the new higher internal relations and ratios in the child's activity be initially tied up, corresponding to the complex tasks that confront a person with the socio-historical conditions of his life.

A. N. Leontiev believes that at the initial stages of the child’s mastery of a new task for him, education should not go along the line of strengthening the motive itself. This path does not lead to success. The strength of the motive itself and the aspiration caused by the child is not the decisive factor at these stages, but the conscious semantic connection between the child’s impulse and the action that he must subordinate to this impulse, this motive is really decisive.

The further development process goes exactly in the direction of overcoming such limitations, and this should also be taken into account in education. Therefore, for example, if at the first steps of the development of the voluntary-motor sphere of a preschooler child, there is a full use of “subject-role”, as they are sometimes called, tasks (“walk like a mouse”, “ride like a horse”, etc. .), then further it is necessary to give also tasks for movements of gymnastic type, i.e., motor tasks, which are much more abstract. The same is true in other areas of education. After all, the higher requirements that the school will make in the future for the child will set such tasks for him and make him strive to achieve goals that are far from always directly and directly flowing to a child from his general desire to learn and are not always directly related to his Consciousness with specific motivations that encourage it. (According to the materials of A. N. Leontiev.)