Primitive thinking in adults. Yaroslav Vsevolodovich Mikhailov is a man in the world. D. Algorithm for effective thinking

1.2 Weaving, weaving, “semi-weaving”, “primitive weaving” Weaving, i.e. the process of creating fabric, is one of the oldest crafts, and its history goes back thousands of years. This is evidenced by numerous archaeological finds. Fragments of fabrics, time of creation

The first years of a child's life are years of primitive, closed existence and the establishment of the most elementary, most primitive connections with the world.

All this, of course, cannot but have a decisive influence on children's thinking; the thinking of a small child of 3-4 years old has nothing in common with the thinking of an adult in those forms that are created by culture and long-term cultural evolution, repeated and active encounters with the external world. peace.

Of course, this does not mean at all that children's thinking does not have its own laws. No, the laws of children's thinking are completely definite, their own, not similar to the laws of thinking of an adult: a child of this age has his own primitive logic, his own primitive thinking techniques; all of them are determined precisely by the fact that this thinking develops on the primitive basis of behavior that has not yet seriously encountered reality.

Piaget characterizes the thinking of a small child (3 - 5 years old) with two main features: his self-centeredness and him primitiveness.

Characteristic of an infant's behavior is his isolation from the world, his preoccupation with himself, his interests, his pleasures. Try to observe how a 2-4 year old child plays alone: ​​he does not pay attention to anyone, he is completely immersed in himself, lays something out in front of him and puts it back again, talks to himself, turns to himself and himself answers himself. It is difficult to distract him from this game; contact him - and he will not immediately tear himself away from his studies. A child of this age can perfectly play alone, being completely occupied with himself.

39. J. Piaget's theory of intelligence.

Intelligence is needed to maintain a balance between assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation - assimilation, assimilation (in biology - assimilation of substances). Assimilation of material by means of what is already available (for example, a baby knows how to suck - then new objects are included, but the action itself does not change: that he sucks a finger, that he sucks a pacifier, that he sucks a rattle, etc.).

Accommodation - we change patterns of action (for example, our baby knows how to suck his fingers on pacifiers, rattles... We give him a balloon; the child has to come up with a new form of interaction with this object).

Development of intelligence - the ability to assimilate and accommodate, as well as find a balance between them. A scheme is a method of action.

Stages of intelligence development:

1. Sensorimotor intelligence. Substages:

o Reflexes (0-6 weeks). The baby’s connection with the world is carried out through reflexes (sucking, grasping, oculomotor, etc.).

o Primary circular reactions (6 weeks – 4 months). First skills, e.g. thumb sucking, turning the head towards a sound.

o Secondary circular reactions (4-8 months). Goal-directed behavior, such as visually controlled reaching for an object.

o Coordinated secondary circular reactions (8-12 months). Goals and means are distinguished separately. The object is stored in memory (before, if we covered a toy with a scarf, the child would forget about it, now not).

o Tertiary circular reactions (12-18 months). This is the last purely sensorimotor stage, characterized by the presence of a representation of an object; development of symbolic functions. A child can change habitual patterns, guided by the principle “let’s see what happens.”

o Representation (18-24 months). The ability to symbolize and imitate.

2. Visual (intuitive) thinking. Mastering speech. 1 year – ability to speak individual words; 2 years – first sentences (first two-word, then three-word). The representative stage is the beginning of the use of symbols. Piaget called the period from the beginning of the representative stage to the appearance of operations pre-operational. Subperiods of the preoperative period:

ü Pre-conceptual (2-4 years). Development of symbols, imagination, pretend play.

ü Intuitive (4-7 years). The child is able to perform mental operations (classification, quantitative comparison of objects) intuitively, without being aware of the principles that he uses.

Piaget identified two features of children's thinking that significantly limit mental operations at the stage of pre-operational intelligence: the egocentrism of children's thinking and animism (animation of inanimate nature).

Other difficulties: seriation (sticks are poorly laid out along the length), classification, preservation.

3. Specific Operations Stage(from 7-8 to 11-12 years). After seven years:

Egocentrism of thinking decreases;

The ability to understand the conservation of quantity, mass and volume develops;

The concept of time and space is formed;

The possibilities of classification and seriation are growing (this is important for school teaching) and many others. etc.

At the age of approximately 7 years, the child’s mental actions turn into operations, i.e. grouped into a balanced closed system. But the child’s capabilities are somewhat limited: he can solve a problem using one parameter, but if two or more parameters need to be used to solve the problem (scales: to establish balance, two parameters must be taken into account - the distance from the balance point and the weight of the weights), he cannot solve the problem.

4. Formal Operations Stage(from 11-12 years old). Transition to abstract operations, operations with operations. You can solve a problem by distracting yourself from directly perceived reality (mathematical problems, etc.).

40. Cultural-historical theory of the development of thinking

According to the cultural-historical theory, the main pattern of the ontogenesis of the psyche consists in the child’s internalization of the structure of his external, social-symbolic (that is, joint with the adult and mediated by signs) activity. As a result, the previous structure of mental functions as “natural” changes - it is mediated by internalized signs, mental functions become “cultural”. Outwardly, this manifests itself in the fact that they acquire awareness and arbitrariness. Thus, internalization also acts as socialization. During internalization, the structure of external activity is transformed and “collapsed” in order to be transformed and “unfolded” again in the process of exteriorization, when “external” social activity is built on the basis of mental function. The linguistic sign - the word - acts as a universal tool that changes mental functions. Here we outline the possibility of explaining the verbal and symbolic (see Symbol) nature of cognitive (cognitive) processes in humans.

Cultural-historical theory, at a general psychological level and from other methodological positions, put forward problems that were addressed by symbolic interactionists (see Interactionism) and supporters of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (see Linguistic relativity hypothesis). To test the basic provisions of the cultural-historical theory, L. S. Vygotsky and his colleagues developed a “double stimulation technique”, with the help of which the process of sign mediation was modeled, the mechanism of “incorporation” of signs into the structure of mental functions - attention, memory, thinking - was traced.

A particular consequence of the cultural-historical theory is an important position for the theory of learning about the “zone of proximal development” - a period of time in which the restructuring of the child’s mental function occurs under the influence of the internalization of the structure of joint, sign-mediated activity with an adult.

The cultural-historical theory was criticized, including by the students of L. S. Vygotsky, for the unjustified opposition of “natural” and “cultural” mental functions; for understanding the mechanism of socialization as associated primarily with the assimilation of sign-symbolic (linguistic) forms; for underestimating the role of objective and practical human activity. The last argument became one of the starting points when L. S. Vygotsky’s students developed the concept of the structure of activity in psychology. Currently, turning to cultural-historical theory is associated with the analysis of communication processes, with the study of the dialogical nature of a number of cognitive (related to cognition, processes (see Dialogue), with the use of the apparatus of structural-semantic research in psychology.

41. The role of thinking in joint activities.

The role of thinking in interpersonal cognition: the ability to “take another person’s place”, understand his train of thought, his motives, etc. Tikhomirov: “In the course of getting to know another person, the need arises to mentally correlate personal and situational factors influencing his behavior, to correlate his behavior with your own, to take into account the influence that the role he has taken on the behavior of another person, to take into account not only the actions performed, but and those that did not happen."

Thinking as a component of communication acts in different qualities:

§ Interpreting the reactions and movements of another person (blushing means he’s worried).

§ Understanding the results of a person’s objective actions and activities in general, actions (giving gifts means treating him well).

§ Understanding speech production.

Thinking and conflict. Properties:

ü Participants in the conflict try to “think for the other”

ü They have an internal mindset to fight (+ dislike for the enemy)

ü They are trying to catch the enemy’s mistake

ü Misinformation of the enemy

ü Recognizing the enemy’s plans (taking into account his individuality and external circumstances)

ü Increasing creative activity in conditions of escalating conflict

ü Concessions (“give to find!”)

Total: the goals of another person are one of the important objects of interpersonal cognition. Differences between identification and empathy. Interpersonal cognition includes a causal interpretation of another person’s behavior (search for true reasons; attributing them to a person). The most difficult task of interpersonal cognition is the knowledge of the true motives of another person’s actions (this also applies to Activity).

Thinking in the structure of influencing another person. Influence is expressed in the desire to limit (conflict) or expand (cooperation) the knowledge of another person. Methods of influencing the enemy’s personality: creating difficulties, disinformation, activity. The choice and specification of a technique is one of the manifestations of thinking in a conflict (Example: luring, waiting, putting forward conditions that are undesirable for the enemy and indifferent to oneself, etc., etc.). ADVIСE. What would I do in your place? Communication is determined and refracted by the motives of the participants in communication.

Thinking in conditions of joint activity.

The parameter of group organization (diffuse group, team, etc.) is important. Group members have their own roles (social roles). Collaboration of mental activity can take different forms, for example. discussion. The phenomenon of conformism – “equalizing” one’s opinion to the opinions of group members – often arises in joint activities. G.M. Andreeva: the phenomenon of “group polarization”: “During a group discussion, the opposing opinions held by different groups are not only exposed, but also cause their acceptance or rejection by the entire mass of group members. More “average” opinions seem to be dying out, and the more extreme ones are clearly distributed between the two poles.”

It is important to remember the convention of dividing mental activity into individual and joint: even when solving a problem individually, it includes the products of other people’s thinking; it is always, to varying degrees, focused on another person.

42. Methods for increasing the efficiency of human mental activity.

43. Analysis of the cognitive approach to the study of thinking.

44. Associationism in the psychology of thinking.

The first ideas about the universal laws of human mental life were associated with the principle of associations, i.e., the formation and actualization of connections between ideas (“ideas”). This principle served as the basis for designating a whole direction in psychology - associationism. The doctrine of associations, prepared by the works of ancient philosophers, was developed and widely disseminated in the 17th-18th centuries. The basic law of associations was formulated as follows: the more often it is repeated, the stronger and truer the association. Four types of associations were distinguished: 1) by similarity, 2) by contrast, 3) by proximity in time or space, 4) by relation

The psychology of thinking during this period had not yet emerged as an independent branch of psychological science. At this stage of the development of scientific knowledge there was still no idea of ​​thinking as a special form of activity of the subject. The involuntary following of images-representations was taken as a type all sorts of things mental process: thinking is always imaginative thinking, the process is always an involuntary change of images. The development of thinking is a process of accumulation of associations. The associationist approach to thinking coexisted with the formal-logical characteristics of thinking. For example, T. Ziegen considered a concept as an “association of ideas,” a judgment as an “association of concepts,” and an inference as an “association of judgments.” Although any association can be considered in two aspects - formation and actualization of an already formed association, experimental studies of mental activity within the framework of associationism concerned only the actualization of associations and measuring the speed of successive verbal associations. It was believed that mental processes could not be subjected to experimental study at all: thinking was proposed to be studied only from the products of human culture. Since the question of the reproduction of ideas was one of the main issues of the associative theory of mental activity, it is often called theory of reproductive thinking. Associations of similarity play a special role in thinking.

The principle of associations as a universal explanatory principle later gave rise to serious objections, but association itself as a fact is interpreted as an indisputable psychological reality. L. S. Vygotsky, objecting to the associationist interpretation of the concept, directly linked simpler forms of generalization (complexes) with the formation of associations (by similarity and contrast).

45. Wurzburg school of thought.

The concept of the Würzburg school (1901-1910-11). Külpe (student of Wundt, Bühler, Ach, Marbe, Watt, Messer, Mayer, etc.). Having subjected thinking to experimental research for the first time, the V. school introduced the method of presenting problems into psychology and transformed introspection into a “method of systematic experimental introspection” (Ach). High demands on self-observation. Consists of describing the entire process of mental activity (either after its completion or during the process itself, when a person was interrupted and asked to describe the course of his reasoning). Thinking as problem solving, as internal action. The idea of ​​intentionality of consciousness is expressed by the concept of a “determining tendency”, not subject to the laws of associations. The determining tendency is the mental state of a person, which determines the direction and selectivity of thinking depending on the task at hand. In experiments, this determining tendency is determined by the task posed (the question and the search for an answer). The very concept of “task” and the associated “goal representation” are introduced. Introduction of the concept of “attitude” as a characteristic of the state of the subject who accepted the task. Thus, the qualitative originality of thinking is indicated, irreducibility to the laws of associations (conditionality by purpose). Thinking as an independent mental process. Activity, purposefulness, ugly nature of thinking. Thinking is interpreted as an independent process, a special activity. It has a beloved, ugly character. Thinking is an awareness of relationships, independent of figurative ideas. Non-image thinking is thinking free from sensory elements (percepts and ideas). Using systematic introspection to study the processes of understanding words, sentences and passages of text, they discovered that understanding the meaning of verbal material occurs without any images arising in the mind. Focus and activity. The concept of the V. school refers (along with Selz's theory) to the teleological approach. Teleological approach: the main characteristic of thinking is its purposefulness and activity. The question is raised about the specifics of thinking. Emphasis on updating past experience as the basis for solving a problem. Experimental studies are based on the material of reproductive problems. The main features of this approach are: 1) the subject’s internal focus on achieving a goal (for example, solving a problem), 2) in thinking there is a search for the essential (relationship) as opposed to what is visually perceived, 3) mental. as an act of considering the relationships between the elements of a task. Question about the psychological structure of the task. This is what Seltz did. Structure of action to solve a problem: 1 S – situation, condition of the task 2 P – goal, requirement 3 m – means of achieving the goal “Theory of complexes”. To correctly solve a problem, all its elements must act as a single complex for the subject. m – P (contained in past experience). The transition S - m does not require special insight, but presupposes awareness of m (means) as an essential relationship between sensory representations S and P. Concepts: 1 A specific reaction is an objectively necessary response that is adequate to the goal. 2 Operation – a method of isolating such a response. 3 Method is an operation recognized and used by the subject as a means of solving a problem. Otto Selz, a student of Külpe, was engaged in experimental research on productive thinking. Described the thinking process. At the beginning, a problematic situation arises as the presence of a gap between what is available and what is sought, which is reflected in the anticipating scheme. The decision process is guided by it. Selz emphasizes integrity of thinking. That. The Würzburg school prepared the emergence of Gestalt psychology. Anticipation of the result and replenishment of the complex (according to Seltz) The basis for solving the problem is past experience. The principle of resonance (according to Seltz): the complex structure of the problem being solved is the resonator that, as it were, derives significant relationships from past experience, and thanks to this the subject anticipates and finds the desired result.

46. The problem of thinking in psychoanalysis.

47. Understanding thinking in behaviorism and neobehaviorism.

Watson's behaviorism. Watson: thinking becomes a general concept that includes all our silent behavior (inner speech, “speech minus sound”). Forms of thinking (according to Watson):

1) Simple development of speech skills(reproduction of poems or quotes without changing the word order).

2) The solution is not new, but rare tasks needing to be awakened verbal behavior(trying to remember forgotten verses).

3) Solving new, complex problems that require a verbal solution before any overt action is taken.

Thinking and learning. Thinking is intellectual behavior. Thinking is learning, education of the skill of solving an intellectual practical problem. How are skills of intellectual behavior formed from a set of motor reactions through their conditioning? The well-known theory of “trial and error” answers this question.

The concept of "trial and error".Problem boxes (cages) Thorndike. The animal (cats) is placed in a cage. He needs to go out. Chaotic search, trial and error, randomly finding a solution that is reinforced.

The problem of thinking in neobehaviorism (the concept of “intermediate variables”). Tolman. In contrast to Watson's elemental approach, Tolman (under the influence of contemporary Gestalt psychology) developed ideas holistic (“molar”) approach to behavior analysis animals and humans. A unit of behavior is a holistic act, driven by a motive, aimed at a goal and mediated by cognitive maps.

Cognitive theory of behavior (S→S instead of S→R). Behavior integrators are central processes (memory, attitude), therefore - central theory. The most important result of learning is the formation of some “cognitive structure.” The solvability of a problem is determined by its structure, on which the actualization of the organism’s past experience and understanding of the essential relationships included in the problem depend.

Cognitive map- a term proposed by Tolman to designate a holistic image (representation) of a certain situation, formed during the previous experience of an animal or a person and determining their behavior.

48. The problem of thinking in Gestalt psychology.

We started with the study of perception, but then the identified laws were transferred to thinking. Tikhomirov: Specifically, psychological ideas about thinking consisted in its interpretation as a sudden understanding of significant relationships in a problem situation, not prepared by immediate previous analytical activity.

Identification of productive thinking as a specific subject of research. Productive thinking. Example: there are all the elements of the situation (boxes, banana, etc.), but it is impossible to solve the problem trivially (you can’t just jump and get the banana). This is a task for productive (creative) thinking, this is a creative task. An adequate way to solve is through insight.

Thinking as an act of restructuring a situation. The solution to the problem is that the elements of the problem situation begin to be perceived in new relationships (a gestalt is formed); problematic situation will be restructured, as a result of which objects turn with new sides and reveal new properties.

The concept of “insight”, conflict, functional solution. Insight - illumination. It is opposed to random, chaotic finding of a solution (like Thorndike’s “problem boxes”). Insight mechanism (Köhler):

1. In the optical field of the body, the essential elements of the situation form a single whole, a gestalt.

2. Elements of the situation, inputs to this gestalt, acquire a new meaning depending on the place they occupy in the gestalt.

3. The formation of a gestalt occurs under the influence of some tension that arises in the body in a problem situation.

Conditions: the problem situation must be accessible to structuring; its holistic “vision” and understanding must correspond to the capabilities of the subject.

Understanding a problem situation is, first of all, understanding its basic conflict, i.e. specific contradiction between conditions and requirements. Understanding conflict has 2 sides: a) understanding a fact as a contradiction and b) focusing on eliminating it. The result of penetrating a situation in order to eliminate the conflict is finding functional solution.

Stages of solving a creative problem. Understanding conflict, finding functional solution, A functional solution is a way to resolve a conflict, realizable Further.

1. The idea of ​​the functional significance of a part of a situation in relation to the whole.

2. The presence of a subjective moment in thinking (insight).

3. The principle of isomorphism (structuring occurs in a single phenomenological form - the field of interaction between the subject and the object).

Ways of thinking:

1. Blind; according to the internal necessity of the situation, a meaningless association.

2. Meaningful.

The decision can be made according to the laws of structure or on the basis of past experience (blind to the given problem, meaningless repetition of memorized knowledge).

The generation of the 20th century consigned morality and spirituality to oblivion, replacing it with external rules of morality and religiosity.

1. Primitive thinking is the basis of mass consciousness

Mass consciousness is a new form of life for modern people who have forgotten their individuality and the right to be themselves, adhering to external rules of decency, and have turned into “sentient biomass.”

Thinking with “two buttons” has a huge advantage for controlling mass consciousness (crowd, herd, society) so that they don’t get lost!

Primitive thinking is a sign of limited knowledge, that is, thinking blocked by boundaries that do not allow human thought to freely penetrate the essence of things and beyond established boundaries.

Morality of a religious nature led to such a worldview, separating God and man, securing the sole right to spirituality (this thought states the result today, and not the historical purpose of religion).

This is an amazing phenomenon, which today is more and more manifested in people’s beliefs and behavior: I am small and weak - there is someone big and powerful! (It is customary to raise the eyes upward). Instead of cooperation with divine power, a slave philosophy of existence is proposed, dependent on everything in the material world of man.

Mass lack of spirituality and immorality in the 21st century are sad results for modern civilization. The consequences themselves are sad: the widespread rampant hypocrisy (double standards), greed and money-grubbing have become synonymous with prestige and social success.

Legitimization of aggression in the last century (20th century) - extremism quite recently had an aura of romanticism and was a symbol of the struggle of the humiliated for “mythical” freedom. That is, in the eyes of the average person, who himself is not at the epicenter of the conflict and is not a living witness to cruelty, this phenomenon is associated with something positive, evoking sympathy. It is precisely such associations that “settle” in the mass consciousness instead of objective information.

Thus, the very manifestation of aggression used by one group of people towards another received legitimacy at the end of the last century. It is important that the words covering true actions sound convincing and evoke associative sympathy.

At the individual level, the manifestation of aggression is not allowed by society, through laws and established rules regulating public order, which in turn are formulated on the basis of moral ideas. Religion offers its own way of relief from internal “sins”: repent! But the existing causes of internal aggression do not go away, and this is a manifestation of lack of spirituality, or what we mean by the concept of morality.

When a psychiatrist prescribes medication, it relieves the symptoms of “loss of control over the mental state.” It is customary to blame a person for sins and treat a person in a painful state. But the proposed methods do not open an internal channel of communication with the spiritual principle within a person. The rites of repentance and confession themselves are present in all religions and have not yet led to mass spirituality, unlike mass religiosity.

The exploited image of weak, unhappy peoples, built by analogy with a poor and unhappy person, which again evokes sympathy, is used in self-serving political games in order to seize power and gain access to finance. Let's think about what we veiledly sympathize with - the desire to kill, capture and rob? We are not talking about creating prosperity with our own hands, even with the help provided by more economically developed countries.

Passion for aggression becomes the central value of the “humiliated peoples.” But to create and create, to develop, even with the help of someone, is already a spiritual act. Here we clearly see the complete opposite of spirituality; under the guise of religious slogans, open evil is committed on a global scale and civilized society finds ways to approve what they themselves would not wish for.

The culmination of modern religiosity is the fanaticism of killers who openly demonstrate the power of Evil and prove the effect of their Power in the impossibility of stopping it, punishing it or defending against it.

Let's look at the results of what the formal understanding of morality, built into human consciousness through primitive thinking, led to. Seven billion of the Earth's population - what percentage of them are happy, successful, wealthy, healthy and powerful people? But the formal understanding of goodness and moral principles, strengthened in the mass consciousness, approve of precisely the opposite system of values, servility and sacrifice!

Here it is being realized before the eyes of all humanity! Do we like it? Does everyone sincerely want to join the ranks of prosperous earthlings? Or from sympathy for poverty, disease, primitivism and wretchedness (in the worst understanding) - to join the victims and “human waste” being blown up everywhere, as an “act of cleansing”?

As long as there is approval of Evil in the individual consciousness in the form of tolerance of bad things, as unreasonable sacrifice, the psychology of beggars and dependent people who do not believe in themselves, Evil as a phenomenon is ineradicable. It is fueled by our own dissatisfaction, fears for survival and natural defensive reactions - aggression towards personal evil within me, through negative (primitive) thinking.

2. Social dependence and complete paralysis of spirituality, through primitive thinking

The psychology of dependent people is imbued with the belief that they themselves are worthless and cannot - low self-esteem and a devalued sense of self-worth. This, in turn, gives rise to and maintains in an unchanged position the psychology of the “poor in spirit,” or people who have devalued the strength of their spirit and are accustomed to relying on others and not on themselves. Such people are obliged (according to the instilled pseudo values) to be afraid of everything, to look around at those walking next to them - have they fallen out of the general circle, from the general get-together, from the imposed stereotypes?

Any person who has escaped the influence of stereotypical thinking (we do not mean people with a disturbed psyche), who is able to think independently, looks in the eyes of the “correct majority” a little strange, different, alien and dangerous. But these are just primitive “assessments” based on the principle of polarity and dissimilarity. In a distorted worldview, they are read as a violation of established rules and a violation of following “generally accepted” norms, an imposed life path according to universal morality, which comes into conflict with individuality.

“Never go obediently, like cattle to the slaughter, in the lead of blind people who shamelessly pretend to be sighted and are ready to lead crowds of people who have trusted them to the very edge of the abyss in order to achieve their primitive goals.”(saying about false spiritual guides).

90% of the Earth's population, theoretically knowing what they should do according to moral principles, still cannot do it, they constantly stumble, make mistakes, sin and do not get to where there is a center of spiritual power!

Fulfilling the 10 commandments has become an impossible task for intelligent, developed, experienced and highly moral people. As a result, they receive only the promised suffering, assuming that this is “God’s punishment.”

A worldview formed on the foundation of religious morality led to limiting and regulating norms of social behavior. It is imbued with distrust of man.

The basis of spiritual development is faith or trust, and not fear of God or punishment. Fear itself is a symptom of threat or lack of trust. As a result, the entire civilized world looks at the work of its own hands and in horror seeks salvation in the same primitive regulations of sanctimonious morality, inventing double standards for different social groups.

3. The concept of spirituality has been replaced by the concept of religiosity

As soon as we focus our attention on the concept of spirituality, bewilderment arises - all people, by definition, are spiritual only because each of us is the owner of our own “individual soul”.

It is the helplessness of people who do not know what to do with this living, but not material part of their Self, that creates the applicant for “trading” in religion with “spiritual norms”. Under strict control and condemnation, spiritual knowledge becomes lifeless, that is, devoid of the very spiritual power, which is the only thing that makes a person capable and independently discriminating.

Knowledge is a form that contains the energy or power of knowledge itself. But forms that claim power and do not carry spiritual energy turn into an empty shell, that is, they are essentially meaningless, and therefore aggressive, defending themselves through imposition and suppression. When religious faith is based on fear, threat, authoritarianism, this is the most immoral act towards the individual.

Using the power of authority (religion) to suppress the individual will, instead of bestowing spiritual power to fill the individual consciousness and encourage growth, actually suppresses and prevents the individual from contacting the divine within himself.

Thus, over the course of many centuries, a primitive form of thinking was formed, characterizing itself as “forbidding” knowledge, preserving the eternal image of the “little man,” filled with fears, ignorance (ignorance), darkness (non-awareness).

Thanks to a primitive form of thinking, it has become very convenient to control the crowd or mass consciousness by pressing just “two buttons”: possible - impossible, good - bad, moral - immoral.

Weakness of personality with blocked individual spiritual activity is encouraged and approved, but also behind the scenes! But everyone knows that “obedient ones are convenient”; everyone also knows that initiative is punishable, the one who is the first to take responsibility will be the first to be “hit on the ears” if he did not please the crowd, breaking out of the stereotypes of imposed morality. That is, religiosity with its dogmatic morality stimulates the “ears”, instead of developing independent understanding that awakens the individual spiritual principle.

This paradox is also observed in the scientific sphere - in order to openly and freely comprehend the world in all its manifestations (physics, astronomy, biology, chemistry), scientists fundamentally leave the influence of religiosity, as a worldview that does not allow comprehension. That is, a disgusted attitude towards religion manifests itself precisely in associations of a primitive way of understanding the world, through limited thinking.

As a result, materialism found itself separated from spirituality and became the opposite of everything that is not comprehensible by known scientific methods. There are known things, but they do not bear traces of spirituality. There is a clear limit, a boundary to which the scientific methods themselves reach, that is, a tangible barrier where the cognized part is perceived as integrity or completeness. And this is what exists in the minds of materialists.

And the part that remains on the other side of this barrier is invisible, unknowable by existing means, does not exist! The essence of knowable things, reaching the visible limits of comprehension, is defined as non-existent, because it is not knowable.

The methods themselves create the illusion that everything that is less physical, in degree of increase from material to more spiritual (that is, in the dynamics of elevation to understanding) has its limit and finitude. And this is a fundamental mistake.

The first years of a child’s life are years of primitive, closed existence and the establishment of the most elementary, most primitive connections with the world.

We have already seen that a child in the first months of his existence is an asocial “narrowly organic” creature, cut off from the outside world and entirely limited by his physiological functions.

All this, of course, cannot but have a decisive influence on children’s thinking, and we must say frankly that the thinking of a small child of 3–4 years old has nothing in common with the thinking of an adult in those forms that are created by culture and long-term cultural evolution , repeated and active meetings with the outside world.

Of course, this does not mean at all that children's thinking does not have its own laws. No, the laws of children's thinking are completely definite, their own, not similar to the laws of thinking of an adult: a child of this age has his own primitive logic, his own primitive thinking techniques; all of them are determined precisely by the fact that this thinking develops on the primitive basis of behavior that has not yet seriously encountered reality.

True, all these laws of children's thinking were very little known to us until very recently, and only in very recent years, especially thanks to the work of the Swiss psychologist Piaget, we became acquainted with its main features.

A truly curious sight opened before us. After a series of studies, we saw that the thinking of a child not only operates according to different laws than the thinking of a cultured adult, but it is fundamentally structured significantly differently and uses different means.

If we think about what functions the thinking of an adult person performs, we will very soon come to the answer that it organizes our adaptation to the world in particularly difficult situations. It regulates our attitude to reality in particularly complex cases, where the activity of simple instinct or habit is not enough; in this sense, thinking is a function of adequate adaptation to the world, a form that organizes the impact on it. This determines the entire structure of our thinking. In order for it to be used to have an organized impact on the world, it must work as correctly as possible, it must not be separated from reality, mixed with fantasy, every step of it must be subject to practical testing and must withstand such testing. In a healthy adult, thinking meets all these requirements, and only in people who are mentally ill can thinking take forms that are not related to life and reality and do not organize an adequate adaptation to the world.

This is not at all what we see in the first stages of child development. It often doesn’t matter to him how correctly his thinking proceeds, how well it will withstand the first test, the first meeting with reality. His thinking often does not have an attitude towards regulating and organizing adequate adaptation to the outside world, and if sometimes it begins to bear the features of this attitude, it does so in a primitive way, with those imperfect tools that are at his disposal, which require a long development. to be put into action.

Piaget characterizes the thinking of a small child (3 - 5 years old) with two main features: his self-centeredness and him primitiveness.

We have already said that characteristic of an infant’s behavior is his isolation from the world, his preoccupation with himself, his interests, his pleasures. Try to observe how a 2-4 year old child plays alone: ​​he does not pay attention to anyone, he is completely immersed in himself, lays something out in front of him and puts it back again, talks to himself, turns to himself and himself answers himself. It is difficult to distract him from this game; contact him - and he will not immediately tear himself away from his studies. A child of this age can perfectly play alone, being completely occupied with himself.

Let us present one recording of such a child’s play, made on a child aged 2 years and 4 months*.

*The recording was borrowed from materials kindly provided to us by V.F. Schmidt.

Marina, 2 years 4 months, was completely immersed in the game: she poured sand on her feet, poured it mostly above her knees, then began pouring it into her socks, then took handfuls of sand and rubbed it with her whole palm on her leg. Finally, she began to pour sand onto her thigh, covered it with a handkerchief, and stroked it with both hands around her leg. The expression on her face is very pleased, she often smiles to herself.

While playing, he says to himself: “Mom, here... here... more... more... Mom, pour more... Mom, more... Mom, pour... Mommy, pour more. .. Nothing... This is my aunt... Auntie, more sand... Auntie... the doll still needs sand..."

This egocentrism of children's thinking can also be revealed in another way. Let's try to observe when and how speaks the child, what goals he pursues with his conversation and what forms his conversation takes. We will be surprised if we take a closer look at the child at how much the child speaks alone, “into space,” with himself, and how often speech does not serve him to communicate with others. It seems that in a child speech often does not serve the social purposes of mutual communication and mutual information, as in adults.

Let us present another record of the child’s behavior, borrowed from the same source. Let us pay attention to how a child of 2 years and 6 months plays. accompanied by “autistic” speech, speech only for oneself...

Alik, 2 years 6 months (coming to his mother’s room), began playing with rowan berries, began to pick them, put them in a rinsing cup: “We need to peel the berries as soon as possible... These are my berries. They are lying in the crib. (Notices the cookie wrapper.) No more cookies? Is there only paper left? (Eats cookies.) The cookies are delicious. Delicious cookies (eats). The cookies are delicious. It fell! The drop has fallen! It's so small... Big... Small cube... It can sit, cube... It can sit too... It can't write... The cube can't write... (takes the milkman). We'll put matches there and give them a pie (takes a cardboard circle). Lots of pie...”

The same Piaget, already quoted by us, established that the most characteristic form of speech in a child is a monologue, speech for oneself. This form of speech is retained by the child even in a group and takes on specific, somewhat comical forms, when even in a group each child speaks for himself, continues to develop his topic, paying minimal attention to his “interlocutors,” who (if these children are his same age) They also speak for themselves.

“The child speaks in this way,” Piaget notes, “usually he does not care that his interlocutors listen to him, simply because he does not address them with his speech. He doesn't address anyone at all. He speaks out loud to himself in front of others.”*

*Piaget J. Le langage et la pensee chez lenfant. P., 1923. P. 28.

We are used to speech in a group connecting people with each other. And yet we often do not see this in children. Let us present the recording again, this time a recording of a conversation between a 6.5-year-old child in a group of same-year-olds, conducted while playing - drawing**.

**Ibid. P. 14-15. Individual letters are children's names.

Pius, 6 years old (addressing Ez., who is drawing a tram with a trailer):

23. “But they don’t have a platform, the trams that are attached to the back.” (No answer.)

24. (Talks about the tram he just painted.) “They don’t have attached cars.” (Does not address anyone. No one answers.)

25. (Addresses B.) “This is a tram, it doesn’t have any cars yet.” (No answer.)

26. (Addresses Hey.) “This tram doesn’t have any cars yet, Hey, you understand, you understand, it’s red, you understand.” (No answer.)

27. (L. says out loud: “Here is a funny man...” Play after a pause, and without addressing Pius, without addressing anyone at all.) Pius; “Here is a funny man.” (L. continues to draw his carriage.)

28. “I’ll leave my carriage white.”

29. Ez., who is also drawing, declares: “I’ll make it yellow.”) “No, you don’t need to make it yellow.”

30. “I’ll make a staircase, look.” (B. replies: “I can’t come tonight, I have gymnastics...”)

The most characteristic thing about this whole conversation is that the main thing that we are used to noticing in a collective conversation is almost invisible here - mutual appeal to each other with questions, answers, opinions. This element is almost absent in this passage. Each child speaks mainly about himself and for himself, without addressing anyone and without expecting an answer from anyone. Even if he is waiting for an answer from someone, but does not receive an answer, he quickly forgets it and moves on to another “conversation.” For a child of this period, speech is only in one part a tool for mutual communication, in another it is not yet “socialized”, it is “autistic”, egocentric, and, as we will see below, it plays a completely different role in the child’s behavior.

Piaget and his collaborators also pointed out a number of other forms of speech that were egocentric in nature. Upon closer analysis, it turned out that even many of the child’s questions are egocentric in nature; he asks, knowing the answer in advance, only to ask in order to reveal himself. There are quite a lot of such egocentric forms in children's speech; according to Piaget, their number at the age of 3 - 5 years ranges on average between 54 - 60, and from 5 to 7 years - from 44 to 47. These figures, based on long-term and systematic observation of children, tell us how The child’s thinking and speech are specifically structured and the extent to which the child’s speech serves completely different functions and is of a completely different character than that of an adult*.

* Russian materials obtained during a long-term study by prof. S. O. Lozinsky, gave a significantly lower percentage of egocentrism in children of our children's institutions. This once again shows how different environments can create significant differences in the structure of the child’s psyche.

Only recently, thanks to a special series of experiments, have we become convinced that egocentric speech carries very specific psychological functions. These functions consist primarily of planning known actions that have started. In this case, speech begins to play a very specific role; it becomes in a functionally special relationship to other acts of behavior. One has only to look at at least the two passages we cited above to be convinced that the child’s speech activity is not a simple egocentric manifestation here, but clearly has planning functions. An explosion of such egocentric speech can easily be achieved by complicating the course of some process in the child**.

** Compare: Vygotsky L. S. Genetic roots of thinking and speech // Natural science and Marxism. 1929. No. 1; L u r i ya A. R. Ways of development of children's thinking // Natural science and Marxism. 1929. No. 2.

But it is not only in forms of speech that the primitive egocentrism of a child’s thinking is manifested. To an even greater extent, we notice features of egocentrism in the content of the child’s thinking and in his fantasies.

Perhaps the most striking manifestation of children's egocentrism is the fact that a small child still lives entirely in a primitive world, the measure of which is pleasure and displeasure, which is still affected by reality to a very small extent; What is characteristic of this world is that, as far as can be judged by the child’s behavior, an intermediate world is moving between him and reality, semi-real, but very characteristic of the child - the world of egocentric thinking and fantasy.

If each of us - an adult - encounters the outside world, fulfilling some need and noticing that the need remains unsatisfied, he organizes his behavior so that, through a cycle of organized actions, he can accomplish his tasks, satisfy the need, or, having come to terms with the need, refuse to satisfy a need.

Not at all the same for a small child. Incapable of organized action, he follows a peculiar path of minimal resistance: if the outside world does not give him something in reality, he compensates for this lack in fantasy. He, unable to adequately respond to any delay in the fulfillment of needs, reacts inadequately, creating for himself an illusory world where all his desires are fulfilled, where he is the complete master and center of the universe he created; it creates a world of illusory egocentric thinking.

Such a “world of fulfilled desires” remains for an adult only in his dreams, sometimes in his dreams; for a child this is a “living reality”; he, as we have indicated, is completely satisfied with replacing real activity with play or fantasy.

Freud talks about one boy whose mother deprived him of cherries: this boy got up the next day after sleep and declared that he had eaten all the cherries and was very pleased with it. What was dissatisfied in reality found its illusory satisfaction in dreams.

However, the fantastic and egocentric thinking of a child manifests itself not only in dreams. It manifests itself especially sharply in what can be called the child’s “daydreams” and which are often easily mixed with play.

It is from here that we often regard as children’s lies, from here a number of peculiar features in children’s thinking.

When a 3-year-old child, when asked why it is light during the day and dark at night, answers: “Because they have dinner during the day and sleep at night,” this, of course, is a manifestation of that egocentric-practical attitude ready to explain everything as adapted for himself, for his good. . We must say the same about those naive ideas characteristic of children, that everything around - the sky, the sea, and the rocks - all this was made by people and can be given to them *; We see the same egocentric attitude and complete faith in the omnipotence of an adult in that child who asks his mother to give him a pine forest, a place called B., where he wanted to go, so that she could cook the spinach like this; to make potatoes**, etc.

* It should be noted, however, that these data are typical for children who grew up in the specific environment in which Piaget studied them. Our children, growing up in different conditions, can give completely different results.

** See: Klein M. Development of one child. M., 1925. S. 25 - 26.

When little Alik (2 years old) had to see a car pass by, which he really liked, he persistently began to ask: “Mom, more!” Marina (also about 2 years old) reacted in the same way to a flying crow: she was sincerely confident that her mother could make the crow fly by again*.

*Reported by V.F. Schmidt.

This trend has a very interesting effect on children’s questions and answers to them.

We illustrate this with a recording of one conversation with a child**:

Alik, 5 years 5 months.

In the evening I saw Jupiter through the window.

Mom, why does Jupiter exist?

I tried to explain to him, but failed. He pestered me again.

Well, why does Jupiter exist? Then, not knowing what to say, I asked him:

Why do you and I exist?

To this I received an instant and confident answer:

For myself.

Well, Jupiter is also for himself.

He liked it and said with satisfaction:

And ants, and bedbugs, and mosquitoes, and nettles - also for yourself?

And he laughed joyfully.

** Reported by V. F. Schmidt.

In this conversation, the primitive teleologism of the child is extremely characteristic. Jupiter must necessarily exist for something. It is this “why” that most often replaces the child with a more complex “why”. When the answer to this question turns out to be difficult, the child still gets out of this situation. We exist “for ourselves” - this is an answer characteristic of the child’s unique teleological thinking, allowing him to solve the question of “why” other things and animals exist, even those that are unpleasant to him (ants, bedbugs, mosquitoes and nettle...).

Finally, we can catch the influence of the same egocentricity in the child’s characteristic attitude towards the conversations of strangers and the phenomena of the outside world: after all, he is sincerely confident that for him there is nothing incomprehensible, and we almost never hear the words “I don’t know” from the lips of a 4-5 year old child. We will see further below that it is extremely difficult for a child to slow down the first decision that comes to mind and that it is easier for him to give the most absurd answer than to admit his ignorance.

Inhibition of one's immediate reactions, the ability to delay a response in time, is a product of development and upbringing that arises only very late.

After everything that we have said about egocentricity in the thinking of a child, it will not be unexpected if we have to say that the thinking of a child differs from the thinking of adults and different logic, that it is built according to “primitive logic”.

Of course, we are far from being able to give here, within one short excursion, any complete description of this primitive logic characteristic of a child. We must dwell only on its individual features, which are so clearly visible in children's conversations and children's judgments.

We have already said that a child, egocentrically positioned in relation to the external world, perceives external objects specifically, holistically and, first of all, from the side that faces him and directly influences him. An objective attitude to the world, abstracted from specific perceived signs of an object and paying attention to objective relationships and patterns, has, of course, not yet been developed in the child. He takes the world as he perceives it, without worrying about the connection of individual perceived pictures with each other and about building that systematic picture of the world and its phenomena, which is for an adult cultured person; whose thinking should regulate the relationship with the world is necessary, obligatory. In the primitive thinking of a child, it is precisely this logic of relationships, causal connections, etc. that is absent and is replaced by other primitive logical techniques.

Let us turn again to children's speech and see how the child expresses those dependencies whose presence in his thinking is of interest to us. Many have already noticed that a small child does not use subordinate clauses at all; he does not say: “When I went for a walk, I got wet because a thunderstorm broke out”; he says: “I went for a walk, then it started to rain, then I got wet.” Causal connections in a child’s speech are usually absent; the connection “because” or “as a result of that” is replaced in the child by the conjunction “and”. It is absolutely clear that such defects in speech design cannot but affect his thinking: a complex systematic picture of the world, the arrangement of phenomena according to their connection and causal dependence are replaced by a simple “gluing together” of individual features, their primitive connection with each other. These methods of a child’s thinking are very well reflected in a child’s drawing, which the child builds precisely according to this principle of listing individual parts without any particular connection with each other. Therefore, often in a child’s drawing you can find an image of eyes, ears, nose separately from the head, next to it, but not in connection with it, not in subordination to the general structure. Here are a few examples of such a drawing. The first drawing (Fig. 24) was not taken by us from a child - it belongs to an uncultured Uzbek woman, who, however, repeats the typical features of a child’s thinking with such extraordinary brightness that we risked giving this example here*. This drawing should depict a rider on a horse. Even at first glance, it is clear that the author did not copy reality, but drew it, guided by some other principles, another logic. Having carefully looked at the drawing, we will see that its main distinguishing feature is that it is built not on the principle of the “man” and “horse” system, but on the principle of gluing, summing up individual characteristics of a person, without synthesizing them into a single image. In the drawing we see the head separately, separately below - the ear, eyebrows, eyes, nostrils, all this is far from their real relationship, listed in the drawing in the form of separate, successive parts. The legs, depicted in such a bent form as the rider feels them, a genital organ completely separate from the body - all this is depicted in a naively glued order, strung on top of each other.

*The drawing is taken from the collection of T. N. Baranova, who kindly provided it to us.

The second drawing (Fig. 25) belongs to a 5-year-old boy*. The child tried to depict a lion here and gave appropriate explanations to his drawing; he drew the “muzzle” separately, the “head” separately, and called everything else about the lion “himself.” This drawing, of course, has significantly fewer details than the previous one (which is quite consistent with the peculiarities of children's perception of this period), but the nature of the “gluing together” is completely clear here. This is especially clear in those drawings where the child is trying to depict some complex set of things, for example a room. Figure 26 gives us an example of how a child about 5 years old tries to depict a room in which a stove is lit. We see that this picture is characterized by the “gluing together” of individual objects related to the stove: firewood, views, dampers, and a box of matches (of enormous size, according to their functional significance) are prepared here; all this is given as the sum of individual objects located next to each other, strung on top of each other.

*Drawings were provided to us by V.F. Schmidt and taken from the materials of the Children's Home-Laboratory.

It is this kind of “stringing”, in the absence of strict regulatory patterns and ordered relationships, that Piaget considers characteristic of a child’s thinking and logic. The child almost does not know the categories of causality and connects action, cause, effect, and individual phenomena unrelated to them in one chain in a row, without any order. That is why the cause often changes place with the effect, and before the conclusion, which begins with the words “because,” the child, who knows only this primitive, pre-cultural thinking, turns out to be helpless.

Piaget conducted experiments with children in which the child was given. a phrase that ends with the words “because,” after which the child himself had to insert an indication of the reason. The results of these experiments turned out to be very characteristic of the child’s primitive thinking. Here are some examples of such “judgments” of a child (the answers added by the child are in italics):

Ts. (7 years 2 months): One person fell on the street because... he broke his leg and had to make a stick instead.

K. (8 years 6 months): One person fell off his bike because he broke his arm.

L. (7 years 6 months): I went to the bathhouse because... I afterwards it was clean.

D. (6 years old): I lost my pen yesterday because I I don't write.

We see that in all the above cases, the child confuses cause with effect and it turns out to be almost impossible for him to achieve the correct answer: thinking that correctly operates with the category of causality turns out to be completely alien to the child. The category of goal turns out to be much closer to the child - if we remember his egocentric attitude, this will be clear to us. Thus, one of the little subjects studied by Piaget gives the following construction of a phrase, which essentially reveals to us a picture of his logic:

D. (3 years 6 months): “I’ll make a stove... because... to heat.”

Both the phenomenon of “stringing together” individual categories, and the replacement of the category of causality, which is alien to the child, with a closer category of purpose - all this is visible in this example quite clearly.

This “stringing” of individual ideas in the child’s primitive thinking is manifested in another interesting fact: the child’s ideas are not located in a certain hierarchy (a broader concept - its part - an even narrower one, etc., according to the typical scheme: genus - species - family etc.), but individual ideas turn out to be equivalent for the child. So, a city - a district - a country for a small child are not fundamentally different from each other. Switzerland for him is something like Geneva, only further away; France is also something like his familiar hometown, only even further away. That a person, being a resident of Geneva, is also a Swiss at the same time, is incomprehensible to him. Here is a small conversation cited by Piaget and illustrating this peculiar “flatness” of a child’s thinking*. The conversation we present is between the leader and little Ob. (8 years 2 months).

Who are the Swiss?

This is who lives in Switzerland.

Friborg in Switzerland?

Yes, but I’m not a Friburger or a Swiss...

What about those who live in Geneva?

They are Genevans.

What about the Swiss?

I don’t know... I live in Fribourg, it’s in Switzerland, and I’m not Swiss. Here are the Genevans too...

Do you know the Swiss?

Very few.

Are there any Swiss people at all?

Where do they live?

Don't know.

*See: Piaget J. Le jugement et le raisonnement chez l`enfant. Neuchatel, 1924. P.163.

This conversation clearly confirms that the child cannot yet think logically consistently, that concepts associated with the external world can be located on several levels, and that an object can simultaneously belong to both a narrower group and a broader class. The child thinks concretely, perceiving a thing from the side from which it is more familiar to him; completely unable to distract from it and understand that, simultaneously with other signs, it can be part of other phenomena. From this side, we can say that a child’s thinking is always concrete and absolute, and using the example of this primitive child’s thinking, we can show how the primary, pre-logical stage in the development of thought processes differs.

We said that the child thinks in concrete things, having difficulty grasping their relationships with each other. A child of 6 - 7 years old clearly distinguishes his right hand from his left, but the fact that the same object can be simultaneously right in relation to one and left in relation to another is completely incomprehensible to him. It is also strange for him that if he has a brother, then he himself is in turn a brother to him. When asked how many brothers he has, the child answers, for example, that he has one brother and his name is Kolya. “How many brothers does Kolya have?” - we ask. The child is silent, then declares that Kolya has no brothers. We can be convinced that even in such simple cases a child cannot think relatively, that primitive, pre-cultural forms of thinking are always absolute and concrete; thinking abstracted from this absoluteness, correlative thinking is a product of high cultural development.

We must note one more specific feature in the thinking of a small child.

It is quite natural that among the words and concepts that he encounters, a huge part turns out to be new and incomprehensible to him. However, adults use these words, and in order to catch up with them, not to seem inferior, stupider than them, a small child develops a completely unique method of adaptation that saves him from a feeling of unworthiness and allows him, outwardly at least, to master expressions and concepts that are incomprehensible to him. Piaget, who perfectly studied this mechanism of children's thinking, calls it syncretism. This term means an interesting phenomenon, remnants of which are present in an adult, but which grows magnificently in the psyche of a child. This phenomenon consists of an extremely easy convergence of concepts that have only an external part, and the replacement of one unfamiliar concept with another, more familiar one.

Such substitutions and replacement of the incomprehensible with the understandable, such a shift in meaning in a child is extremely common, and in an interesting book K. Chukovsky* gives us a number of very striking examples of such a syncretic way of thinking. When little Tanya was told that there was “rust” on her pillowcase, she did not hesitate to think about this new word for her and suggested that it was the horse that “roared” to her. For small children, a horseman is a person who is in the garden, a slacker is one who makes boats, an almshouse is a place where “God is made.”

* See: Chukovsky K. Little children. L., 1928.

The mechanism of syncretism turns out to be very characteristic of the child’s thinking, and it is clear why: after all, it is the most primitive mechanism, without which it would be very difficult for the child to cope with the first steps of his primitive thinking. At every step he faces new difficulties, new incomprehensible words, thoughts, expressions. And of course, he is not a laboratory or desk scientist; he cannot go for a dictionary every time and ask an adult. He can maintain his independence only through primitive adaptations, and syncretism is such an adaptation that feeds on the child’s inexperience and egocentrism*.

*It is interesting that in one case syncretic thinking can be revived and flourish in an adult - this is in the case of learning a foreign language. We can say that for an adult reading a foreign book written in a language that is not familiar to him, the process of syncrete, rather than specific, understanding of individual words plays a huge role. In this he seems to repeat the more primitive features of a child’s thinking.

How does a child’s thought process proceed? By what laws does the child make his conclusions, build his judgments? After everything that has been said, it will be clear to us that developed logic cannot exist for a child with all the restrictions that it imposes on thinking, with all its complex conditions and patterns. The primitive, pre-cultural thinking of a child is constructed much more simply: it is a direct reflection of the naively perceived world, and for the child one detail, one incomplete observation is enough to immediately draw an appropriate (albeit completely inadequate) conclusion. If an adult’s thinking follows the laws of a complex combination of accumulation of experience and conclusions from general provisions, if it obeys the laws of inductive-deductive logic, then the thinking of a small child, as the German psychologist Stern puts it, is “transductive.” It goes neither from the particular to the general, nor from the general to the particular; it simply concludes from case to case, taking as a basis each time all the new, striking signs. Each phenomenon immediately receives a corresponding explanation from the child, which is given directly, bypassing any logical authorities, any generalizations.

Here is an example of this type of conclusion**:

Child M. (8 years old) is shown a glass of water, a stone is placed there, the water rises. When asked why the water rose, the child answers: because the stone is heavy.

We take another stone and show it to the child. M. says: “It’s heavy. He will make the water rise." - “And this one is the smaller one?” - “No, this one won’t force...” - “Why?” - “It’s light.”

** See: Piaget J. Le jugement et le raisonnement chez l`enfant. Neuchatel, 1924. R. 239 - 240.

We see that the conclusion was made immediately, from one particular case to another, and one of the arbitrary signs was taken as a basis. That there is no conclusion at all from the general position is shown by the continuation of experience:

The child is shown a piece of wood. “Is this piece heavy?” - "No". - “If you put it in water, will it rise?” - “Yes, because it is not heavy.” - “Which is heavier - this small stone or this large piece of wood?” - “Stone” (correct). - “Why does the water rise more?” - “From a tree.” - "Why?" - “Because it is bigger.” - “Why did the water rise from the stones?” - “Because they are heavy...”

We see with what ease the child throws away one sign that, in his opinion, caused the water to rise (gravity), and replaces it with another (magnitude). Each time he makes a conclusion from case to case, and the absence of a single explanation is completely unnoticed by him. Here we come to another interesting fact: there are no contradictions for a child, he does not notice them; opposite judgments can exist side by side, without excluding each other.

A child may claim that in one case water is displaced by an object because it is heavy, and in another - because it is light. He can say that boats float on water because they are light, and steamships because they are heavy, without feeling any contradiction in this. Here is the full transcript of one of these conversations.

Child T. (7.5 years old).

Why does a tree float on water?

Because it is light and the boats have oars.

What about those boats that don’t have oars?

Because they are light.

What about big ships?

Because they are heavy.

So, heavy things stay on the water?

Well, what about the big stone?

He's drowning.

What about the big ship?

It floats because it is heavy.

Just because?

No. Also because it has big oars.

What if they are removed?

He will feel better.

Well, what if we put them back?

It will stay on the water because they are heavy.

The complete indifference to contradictions in this example is completely clear. Each time the child makes a conclusion from case to case, and if these conclusions contradict each other, this does not confuse him, because those laws of logic that have their roots in the objective experience of man, in collisions with reality and verification of the provisions made, - the child does not yet have these laws of logical thinking developed by culture. Therefore, there is nothing more difficult than to confuse a child by pointing out the inconsistency of his conclusions.

Thanks to the characteristic features of children's thinking that we have indicated, which with extraordinary ease draws conclusions from particular case to particular case, without thinking deeper about comprehending real relationships, we have the opportunity to observe in a child such patterns of thinking that sometimes and in specific forms we find only in adults primitives.

When encountering phenomena of the external world, the child inevitably begins to build his own hypotheses about the cause and relationship of individual things, and these hypotheses must inevitably take on primitive forms that correspond to the characteristic features of the child’s thinking. Usually making conclusions from case to case, the child, in his construction of hypotheses about the external world, reveals a tendency to connect any thing with any thing, to connect “everything with everything.” Barriers to causal dependence, which exist in reality and which only after a long acquaintance with the outside world become understandable to an adult, cultured person, do not yet exist in children; in the child's mind, one thing can act on another regardless of distance, time, regardless of the complete absence of connection. Perhaps this nature of ideas is rooted in the child’s egocentric attitude. Let us remember how a child, who still has little distinction between reality and fantasy, achieves illusory fulfillment of desires in cases where reality denies him this.

Under the influence of such an attitude towards the world, he little by little develops a primitive idea that in nature, any thing can be connected with anything, any thing can in itself influence another. This primitive and naive psychological character of children's thinking became especially indisputable for us after a series of experiments that were recently carried out simultaneously in Switzerland by the already cited Piaget and in Germany by the psychologist Carla Raspe *.

*See: Raspe C. Kindliche Selbstbeobachtung und Theoriebildung // Zeitechrift f Angewandte Psychol .1924. Bd. 23.

The experiments carried out by the latter boiled down to the following: the child was presented with an object that, for well-known reasons, changed its shape after some time. Such an object could, for example, be a figure that gives an illusion under certain conditions; it was possible to use a figure, which, when placed on a different background, began to appear larger in size, or a square, which, when turned on its edge (Fig. 27), created the impression of enlargement. During the appearance of such an illusion, the child was deliberately presented with an extraneous stimulus, for example, an electric light bulb was lit or a metronome was used. And so, when the experimenter asked the child to explain the reason for the illusion that occurred, to answer the question of why the square grew, the child invariably pointed to a new, simultaneously acting stimulus as the reason. He said that the square grew because a light bulb came on or the metronome started beating, although, of course, there was no obvious connection between these phenomena.

The child’s confidence in the connection of these phenomena, the “post hoc - ergopropter hoc” logic is so great that if we ask him to change this phenomenon, to make the square smaller, he will, without any thought, approach the metronome and stop it.

We tried to repeat such experiments in our laboratory and invariably obtained the same result in children aged 7–8 years. Only a very few of them were able to slow down this initial response, construct a different hypothesis, or confess their behavior. A significantly larger number of children showed much more primitive features of thinking, directly declaring that simultaneously occurring phenomena are interconnected and causal. Simultaneously means as a result; This is one of the basic principles of a child’s thinking, and one can imagine what kind of picture of the world such primitive logic creates.

It is interesting to note that even in older children this primitive nature of judgments is preserved, and the figures that Raspe gives us confirm this: out of ten ten-year-olds studied, eight indicated that the figure had grown as a result of the inclusion of the metronome, one constructed a theory of a different nature, and only one refused to give explanation.

This mechanism of “magical thinking” can be observed especially clearly in children 3–4 years old. These guys immediately show how a purely external assessment of some phenomenon pushes the child to a hasty conclusion about its role. A girl observed by one of us noticed that the little instructions her mother gave her were successful when her mother told her two or three times what she had to do. Several times later we managed to observe the following case: when one day the girl was sent to another room with a small errand, she demanded: “Mom, repeat three times,” and without waiting she ran into the next room. The primitive, naive attitude towards the mother’s words appears here with all clarity and does not need further explanation.

This is the general picture of the child’s thinking at that stage when he is still standing before the ladder of cultural influence or at its lowest steps.

Starting his life's journey as an “organic being,” the child retains his isolation and egocentrism for a long time, and long-term cultural development is needed so that the primary weak connection with the world is consolidated and in place of the child’s primitive thinking, that harmonious apparatus that we call the thinking of a cultured person develops.