The role of visual-effective thinking is constantly changing in the lives of preschool children. Every year they become more and more independent in choosing and applying methods and techniques for solving practical problems, changing the attitude of practical action to mental action. With the transition of thinking to the internal plane (interiorization), practical action is restructured. Visual-effective thinking is a type of thinking that is directly included in practical action.
Younger preschoolers do not always use actions that are adequate to the task at hand. For example, when composing figures against a background, they often move them randomly, connect them, and get unexpected combinations; sometimes they create completely meaningless pictures (the figurine of a horse is placed upside down, the rider is placed head down). At the same time, they are happy to conclude that they have created a beautiful picture. That is, they solve a specific problem with trial actions, and comprehend the result after their completion.
Children of middle preschool age, in the process of action, comprehend the tasks and methods of solving them. their speech is the support of the action or accompanies it.
The relationship between sensory perception, practical action and speech changes in children of senior preschool age. Without going into practical manipulations, they can mentally solve the proposed task and then talk about it out loud. After finding a solution in her mind, the child quickly places the figures on a certain background, and her story after the action is completed repeats what she said at the beginning; the action itself did not add anything to the solution of the problem.
In preschool age, visual-effective thinking does not disappear, but improves and moves to a higher level. In older preschoolers, the effective solution of a problem is preceded by a verbally formalized solution of it mentally. In this regard, the essence of the child’s actions also changes. Younger preschoolers understand only the final goal, but do not see the conditions for achieving it. This determines the disorder (probability) of their actions. Clarifying the task makes the actions problematic and exploratory. The actions of older preschoolers cease to be tentative, lose their heuristic character, and become executive (before starting, the child solves the problem mentally). In accordance with this, his thinking also changes, which from action becomes verbal, planning. Despite this, effective thinking does not die out, but remains, as it were, in reserve. When it is necessary to solve new mental problems, the child resorts to it again.
Visual-figurative thinking of children
In preschool age, visual-figurative thinking predominates in a child, which is associated with the mastery of new types of activities: drawing, playing, designing, and the like. It helps kids solve problems mentally, without the participation of practical actions, but by operating only with images, since it is a type of thinking in which a person operates with images of objects and phenomena existing in his memory.
The ability to think in images is first realized as operating with ideas about specific objects and their properties. At the same time, it loses its connection with practical actions and direct perception of the situation. In the child’s activity, tasks of a new type arise, which provide for an indirect result of actions, the achievement of which requires taking into account the connection between phenomena occurring simultaneously or sequentially. Such problems arise in games with mechanical toys, in construction, etc.
Younger preschoolers solve them with the help of external indicative actions, that is, at the level of scientific thinking. While performing tasks based on indirect results, children of middle preschool age begin to move from external to mental attempts. After familiarizing children with several options for solving a problem, kids can use a new option without resorting to external influences with objects, but obtaining the desired result mentally.
Solving problems with indirect results contributes to the emergence of visual-schematic thinking, which is the next stage in the development of visual-figurative thinking.
Visual-schematic thinking is a type of thinking that ensures the display of objects of objective reality, regardless of the actions, desires and intentions of the child.
The child does not create them, but discovers them and takes them into account when solving the problem. Such thinking retains its figurative character, but the images themselves become different; they reflect not individual objects and their properties, but connections and relationships between them.
The visual-schematic thinking of middle- and older-aged preschoolers is reflected in many features of their activities. One of its manifestations is the sketchiness of a child’s drawing, which mainly conveys the connection between the main parts of the object and lacks its individual characteristics. A manifestation of schematic thinking is also the ease with which children understand various schematic images and their successful use (they recognize the schematic representation of objects, use diagrams such as a geographical map to select the desired path in their branched system, etc.).
The ability to create and use schematized images is a great achievement in the development of a child’s thinking, since visual-schematic thinking opens up opportunities to see essential aspects of phenomena that are inaccessible to visual-figurative methods.
The child’s experience is enriched unevenly. She often deals with some objects, repeatedly acting with them, recognizes their qualities, aspects, properties, which leads to their generalized representation. Other subjects are less accessible to children, as a result of which they learn one-sidedly. The images of these objects are merged and concrete. Operating with such images of individual things provides the thinking of a small child with a concrete figurative character. This is confirmed by children's judgments.
Tanya (4 years old), seeing the girl’s glasses, asks: “Why is this girl a grandmother?”; "Can a cat turn into a human?" - Asks the girl Julia (4 years old). - "No". - “What a pity... If only she were so soft, affectionate...”.
The specific imagery of children's thinking served as an argument for some psychologists (K. Büller, V. Stern, J. Salley), who considered imagery a certain type of thinking, a stage in the development of its highest forms. The most characteristic feature of such imagery is syncretism. Not being able to highlight the preserved essential or basic features of the object in the image, the child falls short of emphasizing the details for her. Based on these random signs, the preschooler recognizes a specific object.
Syncretism manifests itself in the child's perception and thinking. According to J. Chager, it is the main quality of children's thinking, characterizing its pre-analytical degree. The child thinks in schemes, merged (undifferentiated) situations in accordance with the image that she retains on the basis of perception, without analyzing it. Properly organized training helps to overcome the syncretism of images.
The unity of images is especially noticeable in children’s perception of unfamiliar content. For example, they misunderstand syncretically figurative literary statements, complex metaphors, allegories: “Both a cheerful and winged wind moves over the earth. This powerful fan blows a jet in the face” (E. Tarakhovskaya). After listening to this, 5-year-old children ask: “Why does he hit?”, “Who did he beat?”, “Where is the wind’s leg?”, “Where does he walk?”, “Does the wind laugh?”, “Why is he cheerful? ". Such questions and comments from children indicate that the word expresses a specific image of a single object to which it concerns. This image is fused, undivided (analyzed), therefore it is used holistically (if it “walks,” it must have legs, if it is “cheerful,” it laughs). For the first time, the image disintegrates not from the identification of an essential or characteristic feature of an object or phenomenon, but from signs that have received stronger reinforcement in the child’s experience. Therefore, not being able to abstract an idea with a sensually preserved image, the child does not understand poetic images.
According to L. Vygotsky, syncretism is of great importance in the development of children's thinking, since syncretic connections are the basis for identifying connections, are tested by practice and reflect reality.
In the process of playing, drawing, designing and other activities, the preschooler begins to master the construction of visual spatial models - special signs that reflect the connections and relationships of objective things. Many types of knowledge that a child cannot learn on the basis of verbal explanations from adults or in the process of actions organized by them with objects, she easily assimilates during actions with models that reflect the essential features of objects and phenomena. For example, when teaching mathematics to 5-year-old preschoolers, it was extremely difficult to explain to them the relationship between parts and the whole. In the process of becoming familiar with them using a schematic representation of the division of a whole into parts and its restoration from parts, children easily understood that any object can be divided into parts and restored from them. The use of spatial models also turned out to be effective in developing word analysis in children in the process of learning to read and write.
So, with appropriate training, imaginative thinking becomes the basis for preschoolers’ assimilation of generalized knowledge, and is also improved as a result of the use of this knowledge in solving cognitive and practical problems. Acquired ideas about significant patterns help the child to independently understand the particular manifestations of these patterns. Thus, having mastered the idea of the dependence of the body structure of animals on living conditions, older preschoolers can determine by external signs where the animal lives and how it obtains food.
The development of figurative thinking in preschoolers is characterized by the fact that their ideas acquire flexibility and mobility, children master the ability to operate with visual images: imagine objects in different spatial positions, mentally change their relative positions.
Model-shaped forms of thinking reach a high level of generalization, thanks to which they help the child understand the essential connections and dependencies of things. However, they are unproductive if the child needs to highlight properties, connections and relationships that cannot be represented visually or figuratively. Attempts to achieve this with the help of figurative thinking cause mistakes typical for a preschooler. Such errors are caused, for example, by the task of determining whether the amount of a granular substance changes when it is moved from a vessel of one shape to a vessel of another, or the amount of clay or plasticine changes when the object molded from them changes. Preschoolers respond in approximately the same way to the question of where there is more plasticine: in a ball or in a splashed piece made from the same ball in front of their eyes. This is caused by the preschooler’s inability to distinguish the level of substance visible to him in the dishes from its total quantity. In figurative thinking they turn out to be merged, so the quantity cannot be seen or visually represented as separated from the perceived quantity. The correct solution of such problems requires a transition to judgments based on images that use verbal concepts.
Thus, visual-figurative thinking overcomes in its development the stage of perceptual transformations of an object by a child with external help, as well as the stage of transformation of a situation at the figurative level on its own initiative. The transition from visual-effective to visual-figurative thinking can speed up special learning using substitute schemes.
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Visually effective thinking is implemented by trial and error. The operator acts in a similar way when equipment fails, the reasons for which are not completely clear; with a significant lack of information about the process, which the operator tries to compensate for with a flow of additional information through practical tests. This is how a driller acts when trying to restore normal drilling of a well by changing various parameters of the drilling mode.
Visual-effective thinking is a type of thinking that is carried out in the form of visual images.
The degree of expression of internal pronunciation depends on what type of thinking it is associated with: the greatest severity is noted with verbal-logical thinking, the smallest with concrete-figurative thinking, the least with visual-effective thinking. As internal speech improves in general, the pronunciation phase is replaced by the phase of internal speech itself, and the severity of speech articulations decreases.
It is present, as established in experiments, in higher animals. A characteristic feature of such visual-effective thinking is that the solution to the problem is carried out with the help of a real transformation of the situation, with the help of an observable motor act.
Verbal intelligence is an integral education, the functioning of which is carried out in a verbal-logical form, relying primarily on knowledge. Nonverbal intelligence is an integral education, the functioning of which depends on the development of visual and effective thinking based on visual images and spatial representations.
Not all basic processes have the character of discursive thinking. Isolating conceptual thinking in its pure form, for example in the form of planning, which Marx speaks of in his famous comparison of an architect and a bee, is not always possible in relation to industrial work. More common is visual-effective thinking in the labor process, associated with practical manipulation, the verbalization of which often causes significant difficulties.
A number of studies have noted that the predominance of processes of processing information from an external or internal source is associated with the inclusion of various levels of mental activity. Thus, when solving problems of information retrieval, the operator’s functions are aimed mainly at analyzing, correlating and evaluating the data of the information model. In this case, the operator’s activity is determined by the reflection in the form of representations of the essential properties and relationships of the elements of the presented information and can be considered as a level of visual-effective thinking. In other cases, when solving operational problems, it turns out to be insufficient to isolate only given objects and connections between them and it is necessary to find additional signs of their state that were not presented in the initial situation.
We can see that with visual-active thinking, the child also operates with a representation-image: in the case of the first experience, the solution to the problem is either an unconscious act, as a result of enumerating options and randomly finding a solution, which is immediately fixed as a conclusion (in a visual-figurative form) , or a conscious conclusion, i.e. preliminary mental manipulation of visual images and corresponding action. The internal aspect of visual-effective thinking turns out to be identical with visual-figurative thinking. From a philosophical point of view, it is precisely this commonality of the noted forms of thinking that is important; we can designate them as sensory-sensitive or sensorimotor thinking. The second term is more accurate, since it is more closely connected with the idea of human activity, the active influence of a person on an object, without which there is no human thinking.
Visual-effective thinking is considered more elementary and genetically primary. A person often faces problems that can be solved based on the data available in the problem situation itself. The field of vision of thinking coincides in this case with the field of action. Speech also carries out this type of thinking, although not in an expanded form. It is believed that in visual-effective thinking, especially among people of complex modern professions, the main thing is the high culture and professional development of intra-speech processes that ensure the creative connection of the visual-figurative with the effective-figurative link.
It is convenient to call this level of assimilation the level of familiarity, and the acquired knowledge - knowledge-acquaintance. Assimilation at the level of familiarity is limited by the most general ideas about the object of study, the most general features of its appearance. It is based on a feeling of familiarity. At this level, the student's thinking is limited to alternative judgments such as yes - no, either-or. At this level, activity is not limited only to recognition by sight or from a place, but can also be accompanied by an extensive process of intellectual activity, during which features and operations of varying depth can be used to recognize objects and phenomena, as well as materialized algorithms can be used. In all cases, however, this type of activity is characterized by one necessary condition: for its implementation, all possibilities for making a decision must be presented in the external plane, so that the act of visual-figurative or visual-effective thinking can take place.
Thinking is the process of generalized and mediated cognition of the essential properties and phenomena of the surrounding reality, as well as the essential connections and relationships that exist between them. Analysis is the mental division of objects and phenomena into their constituent parts, identifying individual parts, features, and properties in them. Synthesis is the mental combination of individual elements, parts and characteristics into a single whole. Concretization is a mental operation during which a person gives an objective character to one or another abstractly generalized thought, concept, rule, law. Generalization is a mental operation consisting of the mental unification of objects or phenomena according to common and essential characteristics. Visual-effective thinking is a type of thinking that is carried out by a person in the form of objective actions. Visual-figurative thinking is a type of thinking that is carried out in the form of visual images.
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Being closely connected with all other cognitive processes, such as perception, memory, attention, imagination, it is the highest mental process of a generalized and indirect reflection of reality.
Due to the generalized nature of thinking, on its basis a deeper knowledge of reality is possible in comparison with knowledge at the level of ideas and perceptions, since in the process of thinking connections are established between processes and objects. In ontogenesis, the development of thinking follows the path of increasing generalization of characteristics and combining them into larger classes. A reduction or distortion of the generalization process indicates a pathological change in thinking.
The most important characteristic of the thought process is the use as mediation of such means as actions directly related to practical manipulations, and language as a symbolic expression of thought and a means of communication between people.
The thought process generates new(new, perhaps only for a thinking subject) knowledge in the course of solving problems based on processing the information received.
Pre-conceptual and conceptual thinking
In its development, thinking goes through two stages: pre-conceptual and conceptual.
Preconceptual thinking operates not in concepts, but images and is the initial stage of development of thinking in a child. Features of pre-conceptual thinking are expressed in the fact that children’s judgments are singular, about a given specific subject; when explaining something, everything comes down to the particular, the familiar; most judgments are judgments by similarity or judgments by analogy, since during this period memory plays the main role in thinking. At this level, the main form of proof is an example.
Thinking in ontogenesis develops from visual-effective (up to 2-3 years) to visual-figurative (up to 6-7 years). Starting from 6-7 years old, i.e. from the moment of studying at school, the child begins to intensively develop the leading type of thinking for a person - conceptual, or verbal-logical. An adult can master all types of thinking, although they may be developed to varying degrees.
Theoretical and practical thinking
Theoretical and practical thinking are distinguished by the type of problems being solved and the resulting structural and dynamic features of the thought process.
Theoretical thinking is associated with the knowledge of general laws.
Theoretical conceptual thinking is operating with concepts based on logic and existing knowledge without directly addressing the hoof. The main factor for successful problem solving is the completeness and reliability of the initial information. Theoretical conceptual thinking is most characteristic of scientific theoretical research.
Theoretical imaginative thinking differs from conceptual in that its material is not concepts, judgments or inferences, but images, which are either directly retrieved from memory or creatively recreated by the imagination. This type of thinking is inherent in creative people - writers, poets, artists, architects, fashion designers, etc.
The main task of practical thinking is to prepare the physical transformation of reality: goal setting, creating a plan, project. In practical thinking, the possibilities for testing hypotheses are very limited, since it often unfolds under conditions of severe time pressure, which makes practical thinking sometimes no less, but more complex than theoretical thinking.
Visual-figurative thinking
Process visual-figurative thinking is directly connected with the thinking person of the surrounding reality and cannot be accomplished without him. By thinking visually and figuratively, a person is, as it were, tied to reality, and the images themselves necessary for thinking are presented in his short-term and operative memory (in contrast, images for theoretical figurative thinking are extracted from long-term memory and then transformed). This form of thinking is most fully and comprehensively represented in children of preschool and primary school age, and in adults - among people who make decisions about the subjects of their activities based on observation of them (for example, air traffic controllers).
Visual-effective thinking
Process visually effective thinking represents practical transformative activities carried out by a person with real objects. The main condition for solving the problem in this case is the correct actions with the appropriate objects, the so-called “manual intelligence”. This type is widely represented among people engaged in real production work, for example, a mechanical engineer or plumber.
In real life, there is no strict differentiation between types of thinking, and all of them are necessary for most types of activity. However, depending on its nature and ultimate goals, one or another type of thinking dominates. For this reason they all differ. In terms of their degree of complexity, in terms of the requirements placed on a person’s intellectual and other abilities, all of the above types of thinking are not inferior to each other.
In psychology, there are mainly three types of thinking: visual-effective (concrete-visual), figurative and abstract-logical (theoretical). The first two types are combined under the name of practical thinking. Visual-effective thinking is the simplest known type of thinking, characteristic of many animals and probably dominant among primitive people. It can be noticed in young children, starting from the sixth to eighth month of life. An example of this type of thinking is reaching distant objects by overcoming physical obstacles on the way to them. If a child wants to take an object that is attractive to him, which lies far away and which cannot be reached with his hand, then he can use a stick for this. If the attractive object is located high up, the child can use a chair to get it. All these are examples of visually effective thinking. It represents genetically the earliest type of human thinking and, at the same time, its simplest type.
PHLEGMATIC has high activity, significantly prevailing over low reactivity, low sensitivity and emotionality. It is difficult to make him laugh and sadden - when people laugh loudly around him, he can remain calm. In big troubles he remains calm.
Usually he has poor facial expressions, his movements are inexpressive and slow, just like his speech. He is unresourceful, has difficulty switching attention and adapting to a new environment, and slowly rebuilds skills and habits. At the same time, he is energetic and efficient. Characterized by patience, endurance, self-control. As a rule, it is difficult for him to get along with new people, he responds poorly to external impressions, he is an introvert, the disadvantage of a phlegmatic person is his inertia and inactivity. Inertia also affects the rigidity of its stereotypes and the difficulty of restructuring it. However, this quality, inertia, also has a positive meaning, contributing to the solidity and constancy of the personality.
MELANCHOLIC. A person with high sensitivity and low reactivity. Increased sensitivity with great inertia leads to the fact that an insignificant reason can cause him to cry, he is overly touchy, painfully sensitive. His facial expressions and movements are inexpressive, his voice is quiet, his movements are poor. Usually he is unsure of himself, timid, the slightest difficulty makes him give up. A melancholic person is not energetic, unstable, gets tired easily and is not very productive. It is characterized by easily distracted and unstable attention and a slow pace of all mental processes. Most melancholic people are introverts. The melancholic person is shy, indecisive, timid. However, in a calm, familiar environment, a melancholic person can successfully cope with life’s tasks. It can be considered already firmly established that a person’s type of temperament is innate, but what specific properties of his innate organization it depends on has not yet been fully clarified.
The way a person implements his actions depends on temperament, but their content does not depend on it. Temperament is manifested in the peculiarities of the course of mental processes. Influencing the speed of recollection and strength of memorization, fluency of mental operations, stability and switchability of attention.
Subject-effective thinking
The peculiarities of objective-active thinking are manifested in the fact that problems are solved with the help of a real, physical transformation of the situation, testing the properties of objects. This form of thinking is most typical for children under 3 years of age. A child of this age compares objects, placing one on top of another or placing one next to another; he analyzes, breaking his toy into pieces; he synthesizes, putting together a “house” from cubes or sticks; he classifies and generalizes by arranging cubes by color. The child does not yet set goals and does not plan his actions. The child thinks by acting. The movement of the hand at this stage is ahead of thinking. Therefore, this type of thinking is also called manual. One should not think that objective-active thinking does not occur in adults. It is often used in everyday life (for example, when rearranging furniture in a room, if it is necessary to use unfamiliar equipment) and turns out to be necessary when it is impossible to fully foresee the results of some actions in advance (the work of a tester, designer).
Visual-figurative thinking
Visual-figurative thinking is associated with operating with images. This type of thinking is spoken of when a person, solving a problem, analyzes, compares, generalizes various images, ideas about phenomena and objects. Visual-figurative thinking most fully recreates the whole variety of various factual characteristics of an object. The image can simultaneously capture the vision of an object from several points of view. In this capacity, visual-figurative thinking is practically inseparable from imagination.
In its simplest form, visual-figurative thinking appears in preschoolers aged 4-7 years. Here, practical actions seem to fade into the background and, learning an object, the child does not necessarily have to touch it with his hands, but he needs to clearly perceive and visually imagine this object. It is clarity that is a characteristic feature of a child’s thinking at this age. It is expressed in the fact that the generalizations that the child comes to are closely related to individual cases, which are their source and support. The content of his concepts initially includes only visually perceived signs of things. All evidence is visual and concrete. In this case, visualization seems to outstrip thinking, and when a child is asked why the boat floats, he can answer because it is red or because it is Vovin’s boat.
Adults also use visual and figurative thinking. So, when starting to renovate an apartment, we can imagine in advance what will come of it. It is the images of wallpaper, the color of the ceiling, the coloring of windows and doors that become the means of solving the problem, and internal tests become the methods. Visual-figurative thinking allows you to give the form of an image to such things and their relationships that are in themselves invisible. This is how images of the atomic nucleus, the internal structure of the globe, etc. were created. In these cases, the images are conditional.
Both types of thinking considered - theoretical conceptual and theoretical figurative - in reality, as a rule, coexist. They complement each other and reveal to a person different but interconnected aspects of existence. Theoretical conceptual thinking provides, although abstract, the most accurate, generalized reflection of reality. Theoretical figurative thinking allows us to obtain a specific subjective perception of it, which is no less real than the objective-conceptual one. Without this or another type of thinking, our perception of reality would not be as deep and versatile, accurate and rich in various shades as it actually is.
The peculiarity of visual-figurative thinking is that the thought process in it is directly related to the thinking person’s perception of the surrounding reality and cannot take place without it. The functions of figurative thinking are associated with the presentation of situations and changes in them that a person wants to obtain as a result of his activities that transform the situation, with the specification of general provisions. With the help of figurative thinking, the whole variety of different actual characteristics of an object is more fully recreated. The image can capture the simultaneous vision of an object from several points of view. A very important feature of imaginative thinking is the establishment of unusual, “incredible” combinations of objects and their properties.
This form of thinking is most fully represented among children of preschool and primary school age, and among adults - among people engaged in practical work. This type of thinking is quite developed in all people who often have to make decisions about the objects of their activity only by observing them, but without directly touching them.
Visual-effective thinking is understood as thinking that is a practical transformative activity carried out by a person with real objects. The main condition for solving the problem in this case is the correct actions with the appropriate objects. This type of thinking is widely represented among people engaged in real production work, the result of which is the creation of a specific material product.
All of the listed types of thinking act simultaneously as levels of its development. Theoretical thinking is considered more perfect than practical thinking, and conceptual thinking represents a higher level of development than figurative thinking. On the one hand, this is true, since conceptual and theoretical thinking in phylo- and ontogenesis actually appears later than practical and figurative thinking. But on the other hand, each of the named types of thinking can develop relatively independently of the others and reach such a height that it will certainly surpass the phylogenetically later, but ontogenetically less developed form. For example, among highly qualified workers, visual-effective thinking can be much more developed than the conceptual thinking of a student reflecting on theoretical topics. And the visual and figurative thinking of an artist can be more perfect than the verbal and logical thinking of a mediocre scientist.
Thus, the difference between practical and theoretical thinking is that practical thinking is aimed at solving any particular problems, and the work of theoretical thinking is aimed at finding general patterns. In addition, practical thinking develops under conditions of severe time pressure. In particular, for fundamental sciences, the discovery of a particular law in April or May is not so important, while drawing up a battle plan after its end makes this work meaningless. It is the time limitations for testing hypotheses that make practical thinking sometimes even more complex than theoretical thinking.
All of the listed types of thinking coexist in humans and can be represented in the same activity. However, depending on the nature and purpose of the activity, one or another type of thinking dominates.
The described classification is not the only one. Several “paired” classifications are used in the psychological literature.
