Features of visual-effective thinking in children. Development and diagnosis in preschoolers and beyond. How to develop thinking in preschool children Types of thinking in children 6 7 years old

Further improvement of visual-effective thinking based on imagination;

Improving visual-figurative thinking based on arbitrary and mediated memory;

The beginning of the active formation of verbal-logical thinking by using speech as a means of setting and solving intellectual problems.

1) questions that are posed by the child in order to receive help (i.e., their motive is the desire of the child to involve the adult in complicity in the various activities of the child himself);

2) questions expressing a desire to receive reinforcement (emotional empathy, evaluation, consent);

3) questions expressing the desire of children for knowledge, or cognitive questions: a) issues related to mastering the rules of conduct; b) cognitive questions in the proper sense of the word.

The reasons for the emergence of cognitive questions are:

1. Meeting with a new, unknown object that the child cannot understand, find a place in his past experience.

2. In case of violation of established ideas, when contradictions arise between what the child sees or learns, and his past experience, existing knowledge.

3. If the new representation coincides with the formed ones only in some respects, but differs in the rest.

The formulation of the question indicates the awareness of the problem situation.

At 3-4 years old, the questions do not yet have a cognitive orientation. Children often run away without even listening to the answer, or, having received an answer, repeat their question again. Questions like “Who? What? Which? For what?" wear chain character is a form of active communication with adults. At 4-5 years old - questions like “Why? Why?" already wearing cognitive character, but still unsystematic, disorderly and varied, no longer connected with direct perception. The child is not yet trying to generalize the acquired knowledge, somehow connect them. At 5-7 years old, the questions “Why? Why?" more diverse in content, the child is waiting for an answer, expresses doubts, objects. Children already compare the answers received from adults with what they know, they compare, express doubts, enter into an argument.

Thinking is a socially conditioned, speech-related mental process of searching for and discovering an essentially new, mediated and generalized reflection of reality in the course of its analysis and synthesis. It arises on the basis of sensory cognition and goes far beyond its limits.

Thinking is a process of mediated and generalized human cognition of objects and phenomena of objective reality in their essential properties, connections and relationships.

The foundations of thinking are formed in early childhood. Over time, on the basis of visual-effective thinking, visual-figurative thinking develops, the first generalizations are formed, based on the experience of practical objective activity and fixed in the word.

General characteristics of the thinking of preschoolers

At preschool age, the child learns the basics of knowledge about the world around him, the relationship of people, about external and internal qualities, the essential connections of objects. Older preschoolers are already able to make intellects and generalizations, their thinking is characterized by curiosity, activity, and the like.

The main directions in the development of thinking of a preschooler are the improvement of visual-effective thinking, the intensive development of visual-figurative and the beginning of the active formation of verbal-logical through the use of language as a means of setting and solving intellectual problems, the assimilation of scientific concepts.

AT THE AGE of about 2 years, the child is already able to name the same object in a few words, which indicates the formation of such a mental operation as comparison. On the basis of comparison, induction and deduction develop, which reach a significant level of development up to 3-3.5 years. Up to 4 years, thinking acquires a visual-effective character, which, despite the fact that this is an elementary level, persists for life. Gradually, there is a transition to visual-figurative thinking, which becomes the main thing at 4-5 years old.

The most important feature of the child's thinking preschool age is connection with the action of the first generalizations (the child thinks "acting"). For example, when a 4-5-year-old child is asked to determine the common and different between a ball and a cube, it is faster and easier for him to do this by holding them in his hands, and it is very difficult mentally. An adult can find out what picture is shown on the cubes without adding them up, but by analyzing the fragments depicted on each cube. The child cannot understand this, she needs to add the cubes.

An equally characteristic feature of children's thinking is its visibility. The child thinks based on available facts from experience or observation. For example, to the question: "Why can't you play on the road?" answers with a concrete fact: "One boy was playing and was run over by a car."

Over time, the child solves all the complex and diverse tasks that require the selection and use of connections, relationships between objects, phenomena, and actions. In playing, drawing, sculpting, designing, when performing educational and labor tasks, he not only uses memorized actions, but also modifies them, obtaining new results. Thanks to this, it finds and uses the relationship between, for example, moisture and pliability of clay during modeling, between the shape and stability of the structure, between the force of hitting the ball and the height of its bouncing, etc. The development of thinking helps to foresee the results of actions, plan them. The child's curiosity, cognitive interests of thinking in the knowledge of the world around are activated. These interests are much broader than the tasks of the child's practical activities. She constantly sets cognitive tasks for herself, looking for explanations for the phenomena that she has to observe, sometimes resorting to experiments. Increasingly, children talk about phenomena that are not related to their experience, which they know about from the stories of adults, TV shows, books, etc. Their thoughts are not always infallible, because they lack the knowledge and experience for this.

From clarifying simple connections and relationships, preschoolers gradually move to the knowledge and understanding of much more complex, hidden dependencies. One of the most important types of such dependencies is the relationship of cause and effect. 3-year-old children can only find a reason that manifests itself in an external impact on an object (the chair was pushed - it fell) 4-year-olds - they begin to understand that the properties of objects can also be the cause of phenomena (the chair fell because it has only one leg) 5-year-olds - take into account and are noticeable at first glance, the features of objects and their permanent properties (the chair fell because it has one leg, it has many edges, it is heavy and not propped up, etc.).

Observation of the course of phenomena, analysis of their own experience of actions with objects allows older preschoolers to clarify their ideas about the causes of phenomena, thanks to this, to come closer to a more correct understanding of them.

The development of an understanding of causal relationships occurs due to the child's transition from reflecting external causes to highlighting hidden, internal ones; by transforming an undifferentiated, global understanding of causes into a differentiated and accurate explanation; as a result of reflecting not single causes of the phenomenon, but its general patterns.

The child's understanding of new tasks, due to the assimilation of new knowledge, is a prerequisite for the development of thinking. The kid receives some knowledge directly from adults, the rest - from his own observations and activities, controlled and directed by adults. However, the enrichment of knowledge is not the main prerequisite for the development of thinking, because their assimilation in unleashing mental tasks occurs as a result of reflection. Assimilated new knowledge is included in the further development of thinking, is used in mental actions to solve new problems.

Even before the child enters school, he forms the primary picture of the world and the beginning of the worldview. However, the preschooler's knowledge of reality occurs not in a conceptual, but in a visual-figurative form. The assimilation of forms of figurative cognition contributes to the child's understanding of the objective laws of logic, contributes to the development of conceptual thinking, the basis of which is the formation and improvement of mental actions, on which the child's ability to assimilate and use knowledge depends. The mastery of these actions at preschool age occurs according to the law of assimilation and internalization of external orienting actions. Depending on the nature of external influences and their internalization, the child's mental actions occur in the same way as actions with images or actions with signs, words, numbers, and the like.

Acting mentally with images, the child imagines a real action with objects and its result, thus solving tasks that are relevant to her. Such thinking is called visual-figurative. Performing actions with signs requires abstracting from real objects, using words and numbers as their substitutes. The thinking that is carried out with the help of such actions is abstract, subject to the rules of logic, and is called logical.

Abstraction (lat. Аbstractio - branch) - a mental separation of signs and properties from objects and phenomena to which they belong.

Visual-figurative and logical thinking allow the selection of properties for various situations, the right decision various tasks. Figurative thinking is effective in solving problems that require imagination, the ability to see through a prism inner world. So, the child imagines the transformation of snow into water. Often the properties of objects and phenomena are hidden, they cannot be imagined, but they can be indicated by words, other signs. In this case, the problem can be solved on the basis of abstract-logical thinking, which allows, for example, to find out the reason for the floating of bodies. It is not difficult to imagine the floating of a ball, a wooden log, but the ratio specific gravity bodies, floating and liquids can only be denoted by words or the corresponding formula. Using an image in such a situation is unproductive.

To use the word as an independent means of thinking, which provides the solution of mental problems without the use of images, the child must learn the concepts developed by mankind.

Concept - knowledge about the general, essential and fixed in words signs of objects and phenomena of objective reality.

The concepts combined into a coherent system help to derive another from one knowledge, that is, to solve mental problems without using objects or images. So, knowing that all mammals breathe with lungs, and having found out that the whale is a mammal, it is easy to conclude that it has this organ.

By the time the child's thinking is visual-figurative, words for her express the idea of objects, properties, relationships that they designate. Words-representation of a child and words-concepts of an adult are essentially different. A representation reflects reality faster and more vividly than a concept, but not as clear, defined and systematized as they cannot spontaneously turn into concepts, but they can be used in the formation of concepts, children learn in the process of studying the basics of science.

Systematic mastery of concepts begins in the process of schooling. However, if organized learning is appropriate, some concepts can be learned by older preschoolers. To do this, it is necessary first of all to organize special external orienting actions of children with the material they are studying. At the same time, children, as a rule, must, with the help of their own actions, identify in objects or their relationships the essential features that should enter into the content of the concept. Further, the formation of concepts occurs during the transition from external orienting actions to actions in the mind. To do this, external means are replaced by a verbal designation.

In the formation of abstract concepts, both external orienting actions and the process of internalization are different "than when mastering visual-figurative thinking. After all, abstraction is associated with the replacement" of a real action with a detailed verbal reasoning, which over time does not occur aloud, but to oneself, is reduced and turns into the action of abstract-logical thinking takes place with the help of inner speech. At preschool age, it is still not possible to fully perform such acts, the child mainly applies them, reasoning aloud.

Not all parents pay the necessary attention to the development of thinking in preschool age. However, researchers point to the existence of a relationship between thinking and speech. The earlier the development of intelligence is started, the richer the vocabulary of a preschooler will be.

Types of mental activity

Each age is characterized by its own specificity of perception of the surrounding world. Preschool age is sensitive for the development of thinking. In the first years of life, the child is distinguished by great curiosity. During this period, 3 types of thinking prevail in children:

Visually effective. Appears at 3-4 years. For children at this age, practical activities will precede theoretical ones. First, the kid sees the result of this or that action and only then displays the rule (to watch cartoons, you need to press a certain button on the television remote control, etc.).
figurative. This kind of thinking appears in 4-5 years. During this period, the baby first thinks, and only then acts. At the age of four, children no longer need to feel or taste an unfamiliar object. The connection between thinking and practical actions is gradually weakening.
Boolean. The development of preschool children reaches its peak at the age of 5-7 years. Logical thinking is the establishment of clear links between theoretical and practical action. A preschooler is able to cope with an unfamiliar situation in a logical way. At 5-7 years old, children should have well-developed figurative thinking. A preschooler can talk about a subject without its direct presence.

The preschooler can also find other forms of thinking. If parents devote enough time to the development of the thinking of a preschooler, use educational and educational games, the child can be ahead of his peers in the development. Types of thinking uncharacteristic for younger preschool age:

Empirical. The high intellectual development of preschool children allows the child to classify objects, to identify similarities and differences between them. It is believed that the empirical thinking of a child aged 5-7 years is quite natural. However, not everyone has it.
Analytical. Analytical abilities are the result of the development of logical thinking in preschool children. There is a formation of not only the perception of the event and the response to it according to the template. There are abilities to analyze, to delve into the essence of the phenomenon.
Intuitive. The mental development of a preschooler with good intuition helps him find answers to some questions without the help of knowledge gained by experience.

mental operations

There are several universal operations, the ability to perform which is characteristic of every mentally healthy person. The mental education of preschool children should be aimed at ensuring that the child can master all of the following operations:

Classification. Mental activity should be aimed at finding similarities and differences in surrounding objects. At the same time, thinking in preschool children should be directed to the realization of the fact that some objects may coincide in one way and differ in another (the table and the pencil are wooden, but the table is large and the pencil is small).
Synthesis. Mental action is aimed at combining the acquired knowledge into a single system. The purpose of the mental education of preschoolers is to prepare the child for school, where he will have to combine unrelated knowledge. An example of the successful development of synthesis is the ability to read (to add words from letters).
Analysis. The development of intelligence in preschool children should include the development of this operation. If synthesis requires the ability to connect, then analysis forms the ability to "dismember". Cognitive development teaches us to see the world not only as a whole, but also as a collection of individual fragments (a flower is not a single whole, it consists of a stem, leaves, petals, etc.).
Generalization and comparison. Some researchers consider generalization and comparison to be special cases of classification. Proper teaching and mental education of schoolchildren develop the ability to generalize a group of subjects according to a certain attribute. Even at the age of 3-4 years, the child understands what a spoon, fork, cup is and what they are used for. However, he is not yet able to call all these items dishes. The future student also needs the ability to compare objects according to the main features.

Children's questions

Older preschoolers always have significantly more questions than younger students. Constant "whys" should not scare parents. Father and mother can be convinced of the correct course of development of intellectual abilities in a son or daughter. Parents should provide their child with all possible necessary information at least in an adapted version. Questions fall into 3 categories:

Emotional. A child needs not so much information as support from adults in order to feel confident or safe.
Cognitive. Such questions are asked to obtain new information. With their help, parents and educators can track the development of thinking in preschool children. It is noted that mentally retarded children usually do not have questions.
Auxiliary. For the full intellectual development of children of senior preschool age, it is necessary to constantly replenish the piggy bank of knowledge about the same subject. Today he wants to know the purpose of the object. Tomorrow he will ask what this object is made of.

Keeping in mind the growing intellectual needs of a son or daughter, parents should be concerned not only with the development of the child, but also with increasing their level of literacy. The peculiarity of the development of thinking in the mentally retarded or autistic is that the world they are practically not interested. The child must be taken to a specialist for the diagnosis of thinking. Emotional issues should not be associated with childhood retardation. They indicate a lack of attention. Mom and dad should spend more time with children. Reading bedtime stories will suffice.

Creative thinking

Parents believe that the tasks of mental education of preschoolers are to teach the baby to count and write in block letters. But this is not enough for successful schooling. The child must learn to think creatively. At school, he will not only solve examples and write dictations. In both junior and senior grades, many tasks will be creative in nature. Diagnostics mental development preschoolers shows that imaginative children are good at both writing essays and solving algebra problems.

Development creative thinking starts at 3-4 years old. The exercises that parents or caregivers use should be in the form of a game. If the activities for the development of the imagination take the form of a lesson at school, the result will not be achieved. Children quickly get tired of such exercises. In order for classes to be successful, it is necessary to take into account the peculiarities of thinking of preschool children.

The baby's imagination needs to be constantly stimulated. The development of creative thinking is a good activity during a walk in the autumn park. You can invite children to compose a fairy tale about fallen leaves. At home, you need to put on a play created by a children's writer or by the child himself. Friends of the son or daughter and their parents should be involved in the game. Such methods of mental education will lead to quick results and will captivate the child.

Parents do not always have enough time for classes. The development of the intellectual abilities of preschool children should not be interrupted. It is impossible to replace live communication, but it can be compensated with educational toys. The Lego constructor stimulates creativity and the development of logical thinking in preschoolers.

At the age of 6-7 years, the task should become more difficult. You need to get ready for school, learn to work with pencils and pens. It is necessary to take into account the peculiarities of the development of thinking of children at this age. A preschooler wants to express his thoughts graphically. The simplest task involves writing on a piece of paper several words that are not related in meaning, for example, tree, pen, cake, boots. The child should write a short essay in which all the listed words would be present. You can draw lines, dots or any abstract shapes on a piece of paper and invite the preschooler to finish drawing the objects.

Engineering Thinking

The mental education of preschoolers must keep pace with the times. The definition of the concept of "engineering thinking" is easy to give. This is what the species is called cognitive activity aimed at getting acquainted with progressive technologies.

Working with engineering thinking of preschoolers is especially relevant today. Representatives of older generations had difficulty mastering computers and household appliances. Today's children 2-3 years old easily use smartphones, tablets and other gadgets. It is much easier for them to master new technologies than their parents and grandparents. Some fathers and mothers are trying to protect the preschooler from "harmful" equipment. Nevertheless, the full development of logical thinking in children of senior preschool age cannot do without the development of engineering thinking.

Cognitive education aimed at stimulating engineering abilities begins with working with a designer. You can use the already mentioned Lego constructor. Such means of mental education of preschoolers are focused on the development of creativity and abilities in the exact sciences at the same time. Experimental activity teaches to find a non-standard way out of difficult situations. The most suitable place for experiments may be the kitchen. Children love to help their mothers cook. Most of all they like working with the test. Senior preschoolers should be offered design and research activities, which involve collecting material about a particular subject, followed by a presentation of the collected knowledge.

The opinion that the direction of a child's development is chosen according to his belonging to the humanities or to those who have the ability to exact sciences is erroneous. The development of engineering logic for a preschooler is as necessary as learning to read and write.

Selection of exercises

Moms and dads should not completely trust the development of a preschooler to a teacher in kindergarten. The teacher will not be able to devote the same amount of time to all children. Parents should be aware theoretical basis development of thinking in preschool age to work with the child independently. The ideal option would be classes in kindergarten, alternating with home exercises.

Diagnostics of the mental development of children shows that mentally healthy child by 3-4 years is able to give the main characteristics of objects. Education can begin with the development of visual-figurative thinking in preschool age. A developmental exercise can be as follows: remember the animal that you saw a month ago with your grandmother in the village, describe it, tell a fairy tale involving this animal.

By the age of five, an indicator of a high level of thinking is the ability to classify objects. At this age, the child knows the names of some animals and basic professions, is able to describe the appearance of people and count within 2-3 dozen. For the development of visual-figurative thinking in preschool children, an exercise is suitable: the child hides the picture and describes the object depicted on it to an adult who must guess the image. Then the roles can be reversed.

By the age of six, the child not only describes events, but also gives them his own assessment. Parents will need knowledge of the technology for developing critical thinking in preschoolers. An exercise for work might look like this: a mother asks a child to describe the weather outside, and then invites a preschooler to explain why the weather is like this today. The kid can also tell how he relates to a particular natural phenomenon. The correct answer is not required in this case.

Different schools of education may offer different criteria for assessing the mental abilities of children. For one school, action thinking must be developed by the age of four. Another system says that developing the same kind of thinking by the age of six or seven is the norm. Parents should not just copy ready-made educational models. It is necessary to adapt them to the characteristics of your child.

At preschool age, there is a further development of visual-effective thinking, the formation of elements of verbal-logical thinking. The main form of mental activity of preschoolers is visual-figurative thinking.

Preschoolers continue to use visual-effective thinking in solving problems, which is closely connected with practical actions that transform the cognized object. During the preschool age, under the influence of the child's expanding practice, growing needs, prompting him to set and solve more diverse and complex mental problems, speech development, visual-effective thinking is improved, moving to a higher level, different the following features:

in older preschoolers, the visual-effective solution of a problem is preceded by its mental solution in verbal form;
the essence of the actions performed by the child changes (trial actions are curtailed, lose their problematic nature, are increasingly replaced by executive ones).

The visual-effective form of thinking does not disappear; when solving new mental problems, the child again resorts to effective way their decisions. Speech is included in the process of solving such problems in one way or another. The formation by the child of an active and passive vocabulary and the grammatical structure of speech contributes to the understanding of the task itself, to the realization of ways to solve it. Speech, when included in the practical activity of the child, transforms his thought process, contributing to the transformation of practical action into a mental action that is complex in structure.

The dominant form of mental activity of preschoolers is visual-figurative thinking, in which the child does not act with specific objects, but with their images and ideas. This kind of thinking is formed on the basis of the ability to differentiate the plan of real objects and the plan of models that display these objects. Actions with models related to the original make it possible to further "separate" actions from specific objects and lead to their implementation in terms of representations. The most important prerequisite for figurative thinking is imitation of an adult, during which the child reproduces, models the actions of an adult and builds their image. The game can also be considered one of the forms of imitation, since in gaming activity the child has the ability to represent one thing through another.

The most characteristic feature of the imagery of a child's mental activity is syncretism - this is the quality of thinking inherent in a preschooler, in which he thinks in schemes, merged, undifferentiated situations in accordance with the image that he retains on the basis of perception, without its differentiation and consistent analysis, by arbitrarily connecting the brightest parts. Unable to isolate the essential properties of the object in the preserved image, the child singles out any features that are most accentuated for him. According to random signs, the preschooler recognizes one or another object. Syncretism is clearly manifested in the way children perceive unfamiliar content. In a small child, a word evokes a specific image of a single object associated with this word. This image is fused, it has not yet been analyzed, and therefore is used as a whole. The first disintegration of the image is carried out by isolating not an essential feature of the object, but a feature that has received the most powerful and "businesslike" reinforcement in the child's experience.

Another form of mental activity of the child is the verbal-logical thinking that develops towards the end of preschool age. Logical thinking is distinguished by operating with abstract categories and establishing various relationships that are not presented in a visual or figurative form. Children early memorize words denoting objects, their properties and actions with them, however, the concepts that are denoted by these words, as a generalized reflection of a set of homogeneous objects with common essential features, are formed in preschoolers only gradually.

Only by the older preschool age does the ability arise to single out those essential details in an object, but by which a particular object can be assigned to a certain category. However, when encountering unfamiliar objects, even the older preschooler again proceeds to a random enumeration of their external features or indicates the purpose of the object. Children can correctly group objects if they know the corresponding generalizing word-term. Of great importance for the grouping of objects are those of their properties and connections that the preschooler identifies in his practical experience.

The level of development of generalization in preschool age is directly dependent on:

the degree of familiarity of preschoolers with the variety of subjects included in this group;
knowledge of a word that generalizes all objects of a given group;
requirements imposed by adults on a child (among them, the definition of a concept is especially difficult, that is, the answer to the question "what is it?"; combining homogeneous objects into a group is easier for children).

The specific imagery of a preschooler's thinking does not exclude certain primitive forms of reasoning and inference. The logical thinking of a preschooler in any form is distinguished by some common characteristics: an easy setting in a problem and its solution in place of unfamiliar conditions more well-known on the basis of a “sense of familiarity”, the establishment of simple connections not only between the essential properties of objects, but also between random, external, secondary parties. This determines the originality of the thinking process of preschoolers (Fig. 9.4).

J. Piaget discovered certain psychological phenomena associated with the development of intelligence in children of middle preschool age, which later became known as Piagetian phenomena. They manifest themselves in erroneous judgments of children about the abstract properties of objects that are related to their measured characteristics (quantity, size, volume, etc.) and are due to the inability of preschool children to realize the reversibility of operations, a lack of understanding of the principles of preserving the amount of substance and the number of objects when their shape changes or mutual location. The thinking of preschool children is characterized by animism (indistinguishability of the mental and objective world), artificalism (consideration of natural phenomena as a result of the conscious activity of people) and cognitive egocentrism (a special intellectual position of the child, in which the whole world is viewed from its own point of view, the only and absolute, inaccessibility of understanding the relativity of cognition of the world and coordination of different positions).

Rice. 9.4.

Practical example

Tanya V., 6 years old, was asked: "Is the sun alive or not?" - "Yes". - "Why do you think so?" "The sun is moving."

There are complex and contradictory connections between visual-effective, visual-figurative and verbal forms of thinking. On the one hand, external actions with objects, being internalized, turn into internal ones, i.e. practical actions underlie all types of mental activity.

But the practical action itself requires taking into account changes in the object in the process of acting with objects using representations of the previous states of the object and comparing them with cash. In addition, the structure of the external objective action includes its goal, the future result, which exists only in terms of representations or concepts. The effectiveness of external action is directly dependent on the preschooler's understanding of the general semantic context and on his own accumulated life experience. Therefore, the implementation of practical actions always implies the existence of a figurative plan and is based on it. Ratio Data various forms thinking throughout preschool age are presented in Table. 9.3.

Table 9.3

Efficiency of problem solving by children based on the type of thinking at preschool age

Η. Η. Poddyakov singled out a special type of child's thinking - children's experimentation, which is a unity of visual-effective and visual-figurative thinking and is aimed at revealing the properties and connections of objects hidden from observation. Children's experimentation is not set by adults, but is carried out by the child himself. In the process of experimentation, the preschooler receives new, often unexpected information for him, which contributes to a change in the actions themselves and the child's ideas about the object. Transformations of an object lead to the discovery by the child of its new properties, which, in turn, allow new transformations of a more complex level to be carried out. The process of thinking involves not only the use of ready-made methods of action that have already been worked out, but also the creation of new ones (within the limits of the child's own capabilities). Experimentation activates the search for new actions and develops the courage and flexibility of children's thinking. Self-experimentation gives the preschooler the opportunity to try various options actions, to overcome the constraint of children's thinking with ready-made schemes. Mental activity develops not only from ignorance to knowledge (from obscure knowledge to more clear and definite), but also in the opposite direction - from understandable to incomprehensible, from definite to indefinite. The role of an adult in this process is reduced to the creation of special objects or situations that stimulate the cognitive activity of the child and contribute to children's experimentation.

Thus, the mental activity of a preschooler is a complex interaction and interconnection of visual-effective, visual-figurative and verbal-logical thinking, in which a gradual transition of external actions to solve a mental problem into an internal plan is carried out.

When meeting a childhood friend after many years, mental image manipulation enables a person to reproduce some the right details information and recognize in the changed appearance the features of a school friend. At this point, visual-figurative thinking kicks in.

Peculiarities

In psychology, this type of thinking is referred to as a symbolic mental act, in which a problem is modeled and solved with the help of representations. This involves mental work with operating objects and visual images. This type of thought process helps the subject to recreate the variety of different characteristics of a particular phenomenon or object, to establish their unusual combination.

Visual-figurative thinking is inextricably linked with real actions and objects. In this it differs from imagination, in which the image is recreated from memory. This type of thought process is subject to perception or representation.

It dominates in children aged 2 to 5 years. Toddlers think in visual images and do not own concepts.

Let's take an example. The child is shown two identical balls made of dough. He visually examines them, evaluates the volume. Then a cake is made from one ball. The volume has not increased, but the shape has changed. However, now the cake needs a lot of space on the table, which means, according to the baby, there is more dough in it than in the ball. In children, this type of mental activity is subject to perception, so it is difficult for them to abstract from what immediately catches their eye.

Older preschoolers and children of primary school age are also characterized by a visual-figurative thought process. When a teacher, when explaining new material, reinforces the information by demonstrating an object or its image, he uses the visual-figurative thinking of schoolchildren.

The mastery of manual craftsmanship is achieved through this type of thinking. In developed forms, such thinking is characteristic of people in creative professions. Writers, poets, designers, fashion designers, artists, sculptors, musicians, actors are able to vividly and vividly represent certain objects, phenomena or events.

The combination of some elements of the object, their movement, the ability to identify the main features in the mind create the basis for the formation of a visual-figurative thought process. For this purpose, special tasks have been developed.

combinational

This exercise allows the child create a new object based on a set of specific images. The source material can be numeric and alphabetic symbols, mathematical signs, geometric shapes. For example, a child is offered to depict a cat or a dog from digital characters. Often, the baby is given complete freedom of action and they look in which direction he directs his imagination.

Finding and restoring the missing part also belongs to the combination group of exercises. The game "Chessboard" is also used. The essence of the game is to create a field of various elements, while it is necessary to alternate the particles.

Gradually increase the size of the fields and the time for their reproduction.

transformational

For this type of exercise take a ready-made finished image and offer the child to change it, create something completely new. Usually, matches or sticks are used, from which a certain figure is folded. The kid must shift a few matches so that a new object is obtained. Sometimes it is suggested to remove a few sticks to change the image.

Drawing is an excellent task for speed. For example, all participants in the game are given leaflets with twenty depicted letters "M". Each graphic sign must be turned into a new object, but in such a way that all 20 created images can be recognized by others. Then the originality and recognizability of the objects depicted are discussed.

Why is it important?

This type of thinking is clearly manifested in preschool age. At this stage, there is an accumulation of various visual, tactile, sound displays, with the help of which it is easier for the baby to interact with the outside world. In the thought process carried out with the help of images, imagination is actively used, spatial perception, logical construction of structural chains, assessment of the situation. The child develops the ability to imagine an object without having it in sight.

The use of images forms the aesthetic component of the personality, develops creative mental activity, accelerates the solution of logical and mathematical problems.

How to form?

The active formation of such thinking begins with three years of age. Gradually, certain images are formed, information obtained in early childhood by feeling and examining things accumulates. Then the child's imagination develops rapidly, and the baby is able to think out or imagine a phenomenon, an object, a holistic situation. It is necessary to teach the child to mentally see objects in different spatial positions, to change their location in the mind.

To diagnose the necessary degree of development of the visual-figurative thought process, psychologists use various methods.

There is a way to deal with ridiculous images. The kid is offered a picture with a character who finds himself in an unusual situation, when the hero has to perform an action that is unusual for him. For example, a frog sits in the nest instead of a chick, and the bird brings her a bone for food. The child explains why the image does not correspond to reality. He must determine how it happens in nature and offer his own version of the development of events. If the child did an excellent job with 7 out of 10 tasks, then his visual-figurative thinking is at high level development.
The design method involves drawing the image. The speed and accuracy of the reaction are evaluated. The kid is given pictures with painted familiar animals, toys, geometric shapes. He must complete the drawing in a minute and a half. The speed of the task is important.
The Assemble the Picture technique involves restoring a whole image from familiar fragments. Evaluation criteria are determined by the speed of execution. With good figurative thinking in a child, several minutes should be spent on assembling a picture. During this time, the baby connects imagination, memory and applies the elimination method.
There is another technique based on the search for an extra image. The kid is given several pictures that are similar in some groups of signs. He must find a print that does not match the main composition of the grouped images.

Ways of development

Three year old child needed collapsible toys. First, he is shown the correct disassembly and assembly of the pyramid, then the baby must repeat the steps. Over time, the study of the properties of the subject is added. The kid learns to determine the shapes, sizes of objects, to distinguish between shades. It is important to interest the child, to involve him in drawing with pencils, felt-tip pens, crayons, paints. Before drawing or building a tower, the child should talk about his next steps.

Children 5-6 years old perfectly develop the imaginative thought process with the help of games with constructors. They master the construction of visual spatial models that reflect the connections and relationships of real things. The development of a figurative thought process forms flexibility, mobility and the ability to operate with visual images.

For older preschoolers, the development of the thought process with the help of images stimulates the use of the following methods and techniques:

observation of natural phenomena, followed by a description and image of the information seen or heard;
assembling puzzles;
solving puzzles, puzzles, riddles;
sketches from memory;
an image on a sheet of concepts that do not have visual signs: fun, joy, sound, friendship, melody, thought;
modeling from plasticine, clay;
visiting museums, exhibitions, excursions;
creation of various applications.

The development of preschoolers provides for the following main stages of education:

demonstration;
explanation;
collaboration;
independent actions according to the model and creativity, not limited by certain limits.

The formation of a child's thought process with images is facilitated by exercises where it is proposed to describe a rainbow, a sunset, a drop of dew, a massage brush or any other phenomena and objects. Exercises are widely used with varying sticks or matches, inverting some symbolic signs, for example, the letter “E” to get another letter: “Sh”.