8. FORMATION OF PSYCHE IN PRESCHOOL AGE

The formation of the psyche in preschool age is a very complex and diverse process. Therefore, it would be wrong to think that only a change in the general structure of activity that occurs as a result of the emerging connections, the motives of the new higher type, exhausts the content of this process. According to A. N. Leontiev , this change characterizes it only from one side and, moreover, only in the most general form.

Nevertheless, the selection of this change in the structure of the child's activity is crucial. It allows you to understand and establish the relationship between those specific psychological changes that are observed in the preschool years, and to approach these changes as a single process of psychological development of the child’s personality. But this is the only way to approach the issue, because the real subject of development, of course, is the child, and not his individual mental processes in themselves. The development of the ability to control one's behavior is one of the essential points that form the child’s psychological readiness for school. Schooling requires that a child not only owns a certain range of ideas and knowledge and has a certain level of development of physical strength, but also has certain requirements for the development of his psyche, for the features of his memory, for perception, and for many other processes. For example, already from the first days of school, a child must watch out for his external behavior: he should be built in a ruler correctly and sit at the desk, obey certain rules of behavior during changes. All this implies the ability to restrain their impulsive motor reactions, the ability to control their behavior, to control their movements.

A child of 6–7 years is not always easy to fulfill these requirements. These skills are brought up, but are not formed by themselves. It is necessary to educate them properly in a preschooler child, so that from this side to prepare him for school.

At first glance it may seem that this task does not deserve the attention of a psychologist, that it does not pose any significant psychological issues. This, however, is not the case. It is not about imparting purely mechanical skills, not about simple training. This was emphasized by K. D. Ushinsky . Speaking about the ability to control their motor behavior, we mean a relatively very complex process. “ Controlled” behavior is not just anchored in the skill, but consciously controlled behavior, and this control should not require special attention to it. A pupil should behave properly in a lesson - sit at the desk properly, do not spin, do not touch the objects lying in front of him, do not dangle their legs - in a word, do not forget for a single moment, no matter how absorbed his attention is by what he says in classroom teacher.

Experimental studies specifically devoted to the study of the arbitrariness of the motor behavior of a child have shown that the formation of arbitrariness, beginning in the early preschool years, goes through a series of qualitatively unique stages. At the same time, the development of arbitrariness of motor behavior is one of those special forms in which the change in the general structure of the child’s activity, which we discussed above, finds expression.

The technique of this study was that the children were faced with the task of arbitrarily retaining a certain pose (the pose of the sentry). Children aged from 3 to 7 years faced this task in various conditions, which made it possible to reveal not only the actual development of the ability to control their behavior, but also some important psychological prerequisites of this process.

It turned out that if the task of preserving an arbitrary pose is put in front of the child in the form of a direct task, then the youngest preschoolers can hardly cope with it, even when they take it with pleasure. This task has for them a certain motive, which consists in their attitude to the requirements of an adult who makes it quite meaningful for them. Hence, the reason that they cannot cope with this task and after a few seconds involuntarily violate their posture is not due to the fact that they do not internally accept it. As a more detailed analysis shows, they are not able to control their movements for a long time, to control them not from the external result to be achieved, but from the movement process itself, as it proceeds.

Another thing is older children. Already children of middle preschool age easily subordinate their activity to this peculiar task. For them, however, the preservation of posture is really a special task that requires special internal activity, and it absorbs them entirely. Therefore, it is enough to introduce any distractions so that the task of preserving the immobility is unfulfilled and the required posture is disturbed. A. N. Leontiev states that the management process of his

posture in children of preschool age is different. They are able to control their posture as well, provided they divert their attention to something else: their motor behavior can become truly under control, they can truly control themselves.

On what basic psychological moments does the development of the process of arbitrary management of one's behavior depend?

This question was answered thanks to studies that were structured in such a way that the task of arbitrarily preserving the same hourly pose stemmed from the role played by the child. Under these conditions, even children of 4 years old, who under the conditions of the first series did not have the task of arbitrarily maintaining their posture for a long time, coped with it perfectly. This is explained by the fact that in the conditions of the game the relationship between the goal - to keep the pose - and the motive to which it is subordinated is psychologically simpler for the child. The task itself to behave “as a clock” for a child already contains the task of standing “well” - not to allow sudden movements that violate the accepted position, etc. One directly follows from the other here. On the contrary, the task of preserving the posture and the motive to perform as best as possible the adult are psychologically in a much more complex relationship. This explanation was carefully verified by comparing the experimental data obtained in other specially conducted for this study. A. N. Leont'ev points out that the immediacy of the relationship, which connects the motive that motivates the child to perform the task, and the new goal that stands out for it - to look after itself, plays a decisive role only at the stage of the initial formation of arbitrary motor behavior. For older children, for whom the mechanism of arbitrariness has already been formed, this circumstance is not decisive. Managing their behavior becomes free from them, not only in the sense that it does not occupy their full attention, but also in that it is not limited to the framework of certain subject-semantic connections.

The study of the development of arbitrariness of motor behavior in preschool age makes it possible to detect the internal connections of this process with the general course of development of the child in two directions.

First of all, the behavior is associated with the formation of the higher mechanisms of the movement itself. The special investigations of A. V. Zaporozhts and his supporters, devoted to the study of the motor sphere, allow us to conclude that its general reorganization, observed at preschool age, is not the result of the maturation of the corresponding nervous mechanisms that is taking place independently, but is due to the fact that the child begins in his behavior to consciously allocate and set in front of himself special “motor goals”. In other words, the higher mechanisms of motion are formed in him precisely in connection with the development of the controllability of their motor behavior.

Already in the above-mentioned study of Z. V. Manuylenko, this connection was made very clear. For example, in younger children who consciously directed their activity towards the goal of maintaining the required posture, the mechanism of controlling oneself was still built according to the type of control of external objective actions: it took place almost under continuous control of vision. This, by the way, explains the child’s immense “connectedness” and the immediate loss of self-control, as soon as something outside distracts him. Thus, initially, conscious and arbitrary control of his posture is still based on the mechanism of conscious control of movements aimed at externally objective goals, which is formed much earlier. At the next stage, the development of self-control is transmitted to other nervous mechanisms. Control is carried out under the control of motor sensations. Of course, these sensations and before belonged to a decisive role in the movements, in their coordination, but now they begin to maintain precisely arbitrary, conscious control, albeit in a special form. Previously, the actual formation of new internal connections and relationships in activities is still on the same neurological basis, and then the foundation itself is rebuilt, and this, in turn, opens up new opportunities for the further development of control over their behavior.

Being controlled by the mind and completely arbitrarily regulated, the control at the same time acquires the features of an automatically proceeding process: it does not require continuous effort and does not occupy consciousness with itself. This is how self-management in senior preschoolers becomes, and it is this kind of management that is required of a child at school.

Relationships of another kind, as the study shows, are the links between the ongoing restructuring of motor behavior and the changes that occur during preschool age in the child’s internal, mental processes — changes in his memory, perception, and other processes. (According to the materials of A. N. Leontiev.)