6. FORMATION OF THE INTERNAL PLAN OF MENTAL ACTIONS

Mastering the skills to use in various activities and communication language, and later other sign-symbolic means, ensures the formation and development of the child's internal plan of mental actions. Often this psychic education in psychology is called consciousness. Mentally, a person can perform actions on ideas and concepts in the absence of real objects or phenomena. According to S. V. Malanov , an internal plan of mental actions underlies the totality of all human abilities and abilities that are associated with abstract forms of thinking, with arbitrary forms of regulation and planning of their behavior and activities, with the possibility of acquiring various knowledge based on verbal communication, etc. The ability to perform simple actions in the internal, mental plane is considered one of the necessary conditions for the child's readiness for educational activities.

The content of mental images, concepts, concepts and their mental transformations are generated in the course of the implementation of various types of external objective practical actions, as well as perceptual actions as they move into the internal plan of thinking (consciousness). Both subject content and methods of actions with it can be transformed into mental form. Numerous psychological studies on the formation of visual, auditory, tactile images and representations convincingly show that external practical subject-based motive-executive actions based on perceptual actions that are realized by the senses are, as it were, likened to structural features of perceived objects and phenomena. Further, the sequence of motor and perceptual actions and operations unfolded in time is rolled up into a simultaneously observable structure — an image. Following this, such a structure already as a presentation begins to function as an indicative basis for performing a certain range of actions.

As S. V. Malanov points out, formed images become the source material for a higher level of psychological orientation in the internal plane of ideas. The abbreviated fixed sequence of perceptual cognitive-orienting actions and operations “for oneself”, arbitrarily reproduced by a person, becomes a method of inner mental orientation and is subjectively perceived as a representation.

The formation of symbolic-symbolic functions and their inclusion in mental orientation leads to the formation and development of an internal plan of action. It is believed that this occurs as a person masters speech. Speech, and later other sign-symbolic means, begin to denote holistic, rather discrete figurative structures and their signs, as well as ways of their transformations and ways of establishing connections and relationships. Sign-symbolic means allow:

1) to abstract from perceptual experience (images and representations) individual elements and

arbitrarily establish relations and relations between them for various reasons; this leads to the formation of concepts of a higher level of generalization;

2) to carry out the subsequent psychological orientation, organized by symbolic-symbolic means.

In psychology, there are effective ways of learning, the basis of which is the arbitrary and controlled use of symbolic-symbolic means, and which allow you to intelligently and purposefully form and develop the child's ability to perform actions in the inner mental plane. Such methods of teaching various actions were developed under the guidance of P. Ya. Halperin and received the name of a planned gradual formation of mental actions. The main regularities of this method are used with great success for clarifying and practicing knowledge in the process of teaching children various skills. The basis of the method is the organization of consistent mental orientation. This orientation proceeds first in the external perceptual-motor form using either real objects, the knowledge of which is acquired by the students, or based on the symbolic means that replace them. At the same time, the central role is played by speech pronunciation, in which the sequence of perceptual-motor actions and relationships and relationships established on the basis of them are fixed in the maximally expanded form. When such a method of external expanded orientation begins to be performed without difficulty and is reliably fixed in speech form, it is gradually replaced by orientation in terms of representations, removing external objects and symbolic supports, but at the same time preserving outer-hype pronunciation.

Psychic orientation, which is organized by speech, i.e., a system of speech actions that allows one to establish properties, connections, relationships, then gradually decreases, passes under the control of speech “to oneself”, and then ceases to require reduced speech control for its implementation. A mental action is formed, which acquires an abbreviated, schematized (simultaneous) form and includes in its composition methods and results of performing perceptual-motor and speech orientations. Automating such a mental action leads to the formation of mental operations, mental skills, mental patterns, which become the means of preliminary orientation in the performance of certain actions, as well as the intellectual means to perform various other mental activities.

This psychological mechanism for the formation of mental actions is called interiorization . The process of interiorization can take place both spontaneously, unorganized, and relatively purposefully regulated by the subjects of educational activity. In connection with such a general psychological pattern of the formation of mental actions, already in childhood they usually seek to teach children to use speech as a means of transforming the external form of orientation into mental action. To do this, in the game and learning interactions with children include joint with adults, as well as independent stories of the child:

1) the various actions performed following their implementation;

2) about the actions and the sequence of their implementation before implementing such actions;

3) seek to indicate the main, essential guidelines, important for the correct implementation of certain actions (According to the materials of S. V. Malanova).