Leading activities in infancy: types, description

As the child grows and develops, the scope of his capabilities constantly expands. Over time, he experiences a transition from primitive manipulations with objects to more conscious activities. Various types of leading activities in infancy can have a positive impact on the psychological development of the child and form him into a truly versatile and interesting person. Any changes that occur during this period of time have a strong impact on the formation of the baby and the process of developing his personality.

Characteristics

Pediatricians and psychologists have identified the main distinctive features of the leading activities of a child in infancy:

• help the baby develop a number of new actions that he will fully master in the future;
• with their help, the emergence and restructuring of certain functions of the psyche of a growing baby occurs;
• influence the personality and make visible changes in it.

The mental development of a child depends on the appropriate type of leading activity. When changing activities, one can clearly say that the child has moved to another, more advanced stage of his development.

Answer: the situation of emotional unity of the child and mother

Question 5. The revitalization complex is characterized by: visual concentration, the first social smile, vocalization, and activation of movements.

Question 6. The leading activity in infancy is:

Answer: direct emotional communication

Question 7. The baby’s first psycho-emotional reaction in response to recognition by an adult is called... answer: Revival complex

Question 8. In the first half of the year, the following type of communication is observed between a child and an adult. Answer: situational-personal communication

Question 9. A new need arises in the depths of infancy….

Answer: the need for knowledge of objects in the surrounding world

Question 10. Chronological framework of infancy..... answer: from 2 months to 1 year

Question 11. Atavistic reflexes are received by a child from animal ancestors and most of them answer: True

Question 12. The revival complex approximately develops to the answer: 1.5-2 months

Question 13. The act of grasping occurs... answer: 5 - 6 months

Question 14. At 9-10 months, a child can transfer actions from one object to another, from one situation to another. answer: False

Frontier control

Question 1. Establish a correspondence between concepts and their characteristics in adolescence:

Aspiration to the future – Psychological new formations,

Educational and professional activities – Leading activities,

“Threshold” of independent life – Social situation of development,

Development of self-awareness – Psychological new formations,

Solving the vital task of realizing professional self-determination in terms of real choice – Psychological neoplasms,

Readiness for personal and professional self-determination – Psychological new formations,

Formation of worldview – Psychological new formations

Question 2. The leading type of activity at an early age…. o answer: object-manipulative

Question 3. The social situation of development can be indicated by the following formula

Answer: child-object-adult

Question 4. The active vocabulary of a 3-year-old child is the answer: 1200-1500 words

Question 5. By the end of early childhood, a new need is formed on the basis of neoplasms, which is called answer: the desire to act independently of adults

Question 6. The social situation of development in preschool age - answer: the child is a social adult

Question 7. At 7 years old, a child actively uses the answer: 2500-3000 words

Question 8. At 3-4 years old, the following form of communication develops: answer: non-situational-cognitive communication

Question 9. By the end of preschool age, based on neoplasms, a new need arises -

Answer: the desire to become a schoolchild

Question 10. During primary school age, the answer manifests itself more clearly than other types: intellectual reflection

Question 11. Chronological framework of early adolescence - answer: 15-18 years

Question 12. In the first half of the year, the following type of communication is observed between a child and an adult

Answer: situational-personal communication

Question 13. A new need arises in the depths of infancy….

Answer: the need for knowledge of objects in the surrounding world

Question 14. The leading type of activity is called:

Answer: which determines the main direction of its development at a certain stage

Question 15. The leading activity in infancy is:

Answer: direct emotional communication

Question 16. The social situation of development in infancy... answer: the situation of emotional unity of the child and mother

Question 17. Communication between a child and an adult begins with... answer: “extra-situational-personal”

Question 18. The period of early childhood is sensitive for... answer: speech development

Question 19. Form of communication (according to L.M. Lisina) at an early age... answer: situational and business

Question 20. Loss of spontaneity is characteristic of the crisis of ___ years. answer: 7

Question 21. The internal action plan applies to ____primary school age. answer: neoplasm

Question 22. A neoplasm of adolescence is not: answer: subordination of motives

Question 23. What is the name of the period of mental development of a child in which the leading activity is role-playing game: answer: preschool childhood

Question 24. The following social development situation is typical for preschool age: answer: Child – adult (social)

Question 25. Preschool age is a sensitive period for the development of... answer: imagination

Question 26. Stubbornness, negativism, obstinacy, protest-rebellion, self-will, devaluation of adults, despotism are characteristic features of: 3-year crisis

Question 27. Signs of a three-year crisis are: answer: negativism, stubbornness, devaluation of adults

Question 28. The highest level of development of gaming activity is: answer: role-playing game

Question 29. The system of incentives that forces a child to learn and gives meaning to learning activities is ... answer: motivation

Question 30. Leading activity in adolescence fulfills the main need of this period of development: answer: the need to be and be considered an adult

Question 31. What is the name of a teenager’s desire for independence, the desire to free himself from the guardianship of adults: answer: emancipation reaction

Question 32. Chronological boundaries of youth in Russian psychology: answer: 15 years - 23 years

Question 33. The leading type of activity in youth is: answer: educational and professional activity

Question 34. The leading need of preschool age is:

Answer: experiencing positive emotions when simulating more adult relationships in the game

Question 35. The revival complex is characterized by: increased movements, the first social smile, vocalization,

Visual concentration.

Question 36. Select the main neoplasms of early age:

Answer: active speech, objective-active thinking, sensory sensitivity

Question 37. The center of the social situation of a preschooler’s development is... answer: an adult as a bearer of a social function

Question 38. Primary school age is a sensitive period for the development of: answer: logical thinking

Question 39. Chronological framework of infancy..... answer: from 2 months to 1 year

Question 40. The revival complex approximately develops to the answer: 1.5-2 months

Question 41. The type of activity cannot be considered leading...

Answer: what the child does most of his time

Question 42. The act of grasping occurs... answer: 5 - 6 months

Question 43. The end of preschool age is marked by.... answer: 7 years of crisis

Question 44. Weapon actions are actions with two or more objects in which it is necessary to correlate the properties of different objects answer: False

Question 45. The memory and attention of a young child is voluntary. Answer: False

Question 46. The behavior of a young child is characterized by situationality answer: True

Question 47. In early preschool age, the main content of the game is relationships between people answer: False

Question 48. In preschool age, the development of voluntary and post-voluntary attention is observed answer: True

Question 49. A child’s behavior in preschool age turns from volitional to field (situational) answer: False

Question 50. By the end of primary school age, there is a significant increase in interest in learning, in the learning process itself. Answer: False

Question 51. Towards the end of late adolescence, a person experiences a crisis of separation from parental roots answer: True

Question 52. Atavistic reflexes are received by the child from animal ancestors and most of them fade away in the first half of the year answer: True

Question 53. At 9-10 months, a child can transfer actions from one object to another, from one situation to another. answer: False

End of form

Preschool age

Question 1. Loss of spontaneity is characteristic of the crisis of ___ years. answer: 7

Question 2. Acceptance and implementation of rules in role-playing games contributes to the development of __________ preschoolers : volitional self-regulation

Question 3. In the process of leading activities of a preschooler, the formation of his intellectual readiness for school occurs, which is based on... answer: the development of cognitive mental processes in the game

Question 4. The center of the social situation of a preschooler’s development is... answer: an adult as a bearer of a social function

Question 5. The end of preschool age is marked by.... answer: 7 years of crisis

Question 6. The social situation of development in preschool age - answer: the child is a social adult Question

7. At 3-4 years of age, the following form of communication develops: answer: non-situational-cognitive communication

Question 8. In early preschool age, the main content of the game is relationships between people answer: False

Question 9. In preschool age, the development of voluntary and post-voluntary attention is observed answer: True

Question 10. By the end of preschool age, a new need arises based on new formations - answer: the desire to become a schoolchildEnd of form

Youth

Question 1. The leading type of activity in adolescence is…….

Structure and main varieties

The process of human mental development in the period from infancy to preschool age is classified into three separate structures:

• persisting – moved from the previous stage;
• direct – determines the current stage of leading activity;
• nascent is a stage that is only at the initial stage of its development and will be the main one at the next stage.

Experts include the following among the leading types of activity in infancy and in subsequent periods:

• direct communication of the child with adults and people around him through emotions (age range from birth to one year);
• object-manipulative (from one to three years);
• play (from three years to the start of school).

For schoolchildren aged 6 to 11 years, the priority is the educational process, and for adolescents aged 11 to 15 years, communication with peers is the priority. The most important period of development for a child is the period from 0 to 7 years.

Leading activities of children at different age periods

1. New types of activities arise in it.

2. In this activity, individual mental functions are formed and restructured (creative imagination appears in the game).

3. The personality changes observed at this time depend on this activity.

Isolating the concept of “leading activity” is necessary to understand the essence of its impact on a person’s mental development. Consistent change of leading types of activity means that when moving to a new level of development, the previous activity does not disappear, but its determining role in development is lost. New types of activities are added to previously formed types of activities, and at the same time, an age-related qualitative restructuring of each type of activity occurs.

With age, some activities come to the fore, and other types of activities are relegated to the background, so that the hierarchy of leading activities changes.

Leading activity and formation of mental processes, personal formations.

Children's development occurs only under the condition of their own active activity, therefore learning and activity are inseparable. Children's development occurs simultaneously in many activities, i.e. This does not mean that only leading activities lead to development. If some activity is especially significant for a child, this will affect the development of his personality. but there will be no deep developmental effect from leading activities.

At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century. the development of developmental psychology was closely connected with pedology, the science of children, created by the American psychologist S. Hall (1846-1924), a student of Wundt. Studying the mental development of a child, Hall came to the conclusion that it is based on Haeckel’s biogenetic law. Hall argued that the ontogenetic development of the child’s psyche briefly repeats all stages of the phylogenetic development of the human psyche. The theory of recapitulation created by Hall stated that the sequence and content of these stages are given genetically, therefore a child cannot evade or bypass any stage of its development. Hall's student K. Hutchinson, based on the theory of recapitulation, created a periodization of mental development, the criterion of which was the method of obtaining food.

• from birth to 5 years – the stage of digging and digging. At this stage, children love to play in the sand, make Easter cakes, and manipulate buckets and scoops;

• from 5 to 11 years – the stage of hunting and capture. At this stage, children begin to be afraid of strangers, they develop aggressiveness, cruelty, a desire to isolate themselves from adults, especially strangers, and a desire to do many things in secret;

• from 8 to 12 years – shepherd stage. During this period, children strive to have their own corner, and they usually build their shelters in courtyards or in a field, in the forest, but not in the house. They also love pets and try to have them so that they have someone to care for and patronize. At this time, children, especially girls, develop a desire for affection and tenderness;

• from 11 to 15 years – the agricultural stage, which is associated with an interest in the weather, natural phenomena, as well as with a love of gardening, and in girls, floriculture. At this time, children become observant and cautious;

• from 14 to 20 years – the stage of industry and trade, or the stage of modern man. At this time, children begin to understand the role of money, as well as the importance of arithmetic and other exact sciences. In addition, the children have a desire to exchange different objects.

Hutchinson believed that from the age of 8, i.e. from the shepherd stage, the era of civilized man begins, and it is from this age that children can be systematically educated, which is impossible at the previous stages. At the same time, he proceeded from Hall’s idea that learning should be built upon a certain stage of mental development, since the maturation of the organism prepares the basis for learning.

Both Hall and Hutchinson were convinced that going through each stage is necessary for normal development, and fixation on any of them leads to the appearance of deviations and anomalies in the psyche. Based on the need for children to experience all stages of human mental development, Hall developed a mechanism that helps the transition from one stage to another. Since in reality a child cannot be transported to the same situations that humanity has experienced, the transition from one stage to another is carried out in a game, which is such a specific mechanism. This is how children's games of war, Cossack robbers, etc. appear. Hall emphasized that it is important not to constrain the child in the manifestation of his instincts, which are thus eliminated, including childhood fears.

Activities from 0 to 1 year

At the beginning of life, the baby is completely dependent on the mother or the person who replaces her. Therefore, it is impossible to determine the leading activity of infants in the period from 0 to 2 months.

With the beginning of the second period (age from two months to a year), the main process for the child becomes close emotional communication with a person close to him - his mother. It is this that helps create important processes in the baby’s mental system:

• the ability to share sensations and emotional states at a conscious level;
• involuntary attention (the child gets the opportunity to independently fix his attention on specific objects around him for a short period of time);
• the rudiments of visual and effective thinking begin to emerge in his mind;
• perception of surrounding objects;
• the appearance of autonomous speech.

Leading activity in infancy helps to form a central, basic new formation, which determines the transition to the next, more advanced stage of development of the little person. In the future, the need to communicate with people around you will become more and more acute.

Question 8. Reveal the features of the mental development of infants

The first year of a child’s life can be divided into two periods: neonatality and infancy. The newborn period is the period of time when the child is physically separated from the mother, but is connected to her physiologically, and lasts from birth until the appearance of the “revitalization complex” (at 4–6 weeks). The infancy period lasts from 4–6 weeks to one year.

Newborn crisis

- This is the direct process of birth. Psychologists consider it a difficult and turning point in a child’s life. The reasons for this crisis are as follows:

1) physiological. When a child is born, he is physically separated from his mother, which is already a trauma, and in addition to this he finds himself in completely different conditions (cold, airy environment, bright light, the need for a change in diet);

2) psychological. Separating from the mother, the child ceases to feel her warmth, which leads to a feeling of insecurity and anxiety.

Sleep acts as one of the main forms of existence of a newborn. A newborn spends approximately 80% of his total time sleeping. Sometimes it can be difficult to separate sleep from wakefulness. The main feature of a newborn's sleep is its polyphasic nature, when short periods of sleep alternate with islands of wakefulness.

One of the important indicators of the baby’s future development is the presence of innate unconditioned reflexes: sucking, food-orienting, grasping, etc. As the baby grows and develops, instinctive forms of behavior are lost, which makes it possible for the formation of new social forms of behavior that are developed during life.

Conditioned reflexes are formed on the basis of visual and auditory concentration on the face and voice of the mother, which occurs while feeding the baby in the position under the breast.

The infant's affective sphere is characterized by quite rapid changes. An important need for an infant is the need for emotional relationships with others. This is evidenced by the appearance of the so-called “revival complex” in the 2nd month of life. This is a positive emotional-motor reaction of an infant that occurs when an adult appears, including visual concentration on the adult’s face, vocalization (voice reactions), movements of arms and legs, and a smile.

Leading activities in infancy:

· direct emotional communication with adults;

· transition to object-manipulative activities.

An adult is an intermediary between the child and the world around him. The baby's life depends entirely on the adult, who satisfies the baby's growing need for a variety of experiences. The inextricable connection between a child and an adult persists throughout the first year of life, which is why the social situation of mental development in infancy “We.”

New developments of infancy are grasping, walking and the first word (speech).

1. Grasping is the first organized action that occurs at approximately 5 months. The act of grasping is of great importance for the development of object perception. Thanks to grasping, the child begins to develop a sense of space, since in order to grab an object, you need to extend your arm (the space of an outstretched arm). In addition, in order to grab an object, you need to unclench your fist, which leads to the development of your hand. The desire to reach out to an object and take it (grasp) stimulates the process of sitting. Objects appear that are impossible to reach; they can only be obtained with the help of adults. Therefore, a new type of communication arises between a child and an adult – situational and business communication.

2. Walking (by 9 months). D.B. Elkonin considered the main thing in the act of walking, firstly, to be the expansion of the child’s space, and secondly, that the child separates himself from the adult.

3. The appearance of the first word (speech).

Infancy ends with a crisis of 1 year . This stage is called “coming out of infancy,” the motto of which is “I AM!”

The emergence of the 1st year crisis is due to the following facts:

- “the child has gone” - mastering walking, on the one hand, expands the child’s living space, on the other, creates a sense of independence;

- “the child spoke” - the child learns with interest that each object has its own name;

- “the child felt his “I” - the child’s first achievements (walking independently, manipulating objects, etc.) form his first feelings of “I” and strengthen the need to expand “zones of independence.”

A year 1 crisis can cause a number of unpleasant consequences:

— disturbance of biorhythmic processes (sleep - wakefulness);

— violation of the satisfaction of a number of simple needs;

- emotional disturbances (sullenness, tearfulness, touchiness of the child).

Thus, the leading achievements in infancy are:

the first two forms of communication with adults take shape (situational-personal and situational-business);

mastering manipulative activities with objects begins;

the first social emotions directed at an adult appear, the need to communicate with him and the first “prepersonal” new formation - activity - are formed;

in the cognitive sphere, the idea of ​​an object arises as a constant, existing in space and having constant properties; the rudiments of thinking appear, the prerequisites for mastering speech arise.

Goals

The leading activity in infancy is a process that helps to form a full-fledged psyche of the baby, which allows him to move to a higher level of development. At this stage of life, the main role is played by object-manipulative actions, with the help of which the child explores the world around him, learns reality, which contains a large number of different and interesting objects. All these processes are carried out under the close attention of parents.

The main distinguishing feature of infancy is the separation of the lines of development of the psyche of girls and boys. Object-based activities are very important for boys, while communicative activities are very important for girls.

Such processes can be explained by the specifics of communication with children: cultural norms of relations in society are aimed at creating distinctive features of girls from boys through various types of activities. It is for this reason that boys have the strongest development of abstract thinking, and girls have the strongest socialization skills.

• 5.1. Newborn crisis
• 5.2. Mental development of a child during the newborn period
• 5.3. Neoplasms of the newborn period
• 5.4. Crisis of the first year of life
• 5.5. Leading activity
• 5.6. Neoplasms of infancy

Topic 5. MENTAL DEVELOPMENT OF A NEWBORN, INFANT

5.1. Newborn crisis

The first year of a child’s life can be divided into two periods: neonatality and infancy. Newborn period

is the period of time when the child is physically separated from the mother, but connected with her physiologically, and lasts from birth until the appearance of the “revitalization complex” (at 4–6 weeks).
The infancy period
lasts from 4–6 weeks to one year.

Newborn crisis

- This is the direct process of birth. Psychologists consider it a difficult and turning point in a child’s life. The reasons for this crisis are as follows:

1) physiological.

When a child is born, he is physically separated from his mother, which is already a trauma, and in addition to this he finds himself in completely different conditions (cold, airy environment, bright light, the need for a change in diet);

2) psychological.

Separating from the mother, the child ceases to feel her warmth, which leads to a feeling of insecurity and anxiety.

The psyche of a newborn child has a set of innate unconditioned reflexes that help him in the first hours of life. These include sucking, breathing, protective, indicative, grasping (“grasping”) reflexes. We inherited the last reflex from our animal ancestors, but, being not particularly necessary, it soon disappears.

The neonatal crisis is an intermediate period between intrauterine and extrauterine life. This period is characterized by the fact that at this age the child mostly sleeps. Therefore, if there were no adults nearby, he could have died after a while. Adults surround him with care and satisfy all his needs: food, drink, warmth, communication, restful sleep, care, hygiene, etc.

A child is considered unadapted to life not only because he cannot satisfy his needs, but also because he does not yet have a single formed behavioral act. Watching him, you can see that even sucking has to be taught to the child. He also lacks thermoregulation, but the instinct of self-preservation is developed: by adopting an intrauterine position, he reduces the heat exchange area.

The newborn period is considered a time of adaptation to new living conditions: the time of wakefulness gradually increases; visual and auditory concentration develops, i.e. the ability to focus on visual and auditory signals (for more details, see 6.2); The first combined and conditioned reflexes develop, for example, to the position during feeding. The development of sensory processes - vision, hearing, touch - occurs, and it occurs much faster than the development of motor skills.

5.2. Mental development of a child during the newborn period

During this period, the child is able to distinguish salty, bitter, sweet tastes and respond to sound stimuli. However, the most important point in his mental development is the emergence of auditory and visual concentration. Auditory

concentration occurs in 2–3 weeks.
The child freezes and becomes silent at a sharp sound, such as a slamming door. In the third or fourth week, he already reacts to a person’s voice. This manifests itself as follows: he not only freezes, but also turns his head towards its source. visual
appears . It happens like this: the child freezes and briefly holds his gaze on a bright object that comes into his field of vision.

Thus, thanks to the development of auditory and visual concentration in a child, by 5–6 weeks the foundation for the transition from sensations to perception begins to be laid. He can already perceive an object not in parts, but as a whole, follow a moving object with his eyes or turn his head behind a moving sound source. He reacts to the stimulus in the following way: he freezes and focuses only on the sound source or object, all other reactions stop at the moment.

Over time, after acquiring the ability to recognize the voice of the mother caring for the child and see her face, emotional contact with her is established. The so-called “revival complex” appears (see 5.3).

5.3. Neoplasms of the newborn period

From the first hours of a child's life, adults are sources of sound and auditory signals for him. They look at the newborn, show him various objects, talk to him, thus activating his indicative reactions.

When monitoring the birth and first weeks of the child’s life, the following results were obtained.

A child begins his life by crying, and this is considered normal. Then the cry becomes a manifestation of negative emotions. A newborn screams when unpleasant sensations arise associated with the need for sleep, food, warmth; the cry is a reaction to wet diapers, etc. The cry is accompanied by facial changes: wrinkling of the face, redness of the skin, in addition, the child begins to make uncoordinated movements.

In the first week of life, movements similar to a smile are observed on the newborn’s face during sleep. Since this occurs during sleep, the researchers considered them to be spontaneous and reflexive muscle contractions. Also, in the first week of life, an unconscious smile appears on the child’s face with high-pitched sounds and various sound stimuli, but by the fifth week of life, just a human voice does not cause a smile; the child needs visual stimuli, in particular the sight of a human face. The reaction to the image and voice of an adult is as follows: the child experiences inhibition of general movements, after 10 seconds an expressive smile appears on the face, which disappears after 35 seconds. This is how communication with an adult occurs, which is considered a manifestation of the child’s first social need.

Gradually, by about one month, the newborn develops a special emotional-motor reaction: when he sees his mother’s face, he fixes his gaze on it, stretches out his arms to her, quickly moves his legs, makes joyful sounds and begins to smile. This reaction is called the revitalization complex.

The appearance of the revitalization complex is a new formation of this period, is considered the end of the neonatal period and indicates the transition to infancy.

D.B. Elkonin wrote: “A smile on a child’s face... is the end of the newborn crisis. From this moment he begins an independent mental life. The further mental development of the child is, first of all, the development of the means of his communication with adults” (Elkonin D.B., 1989).

M.I. Lisina believed that the revitalization complex indicates the emergence of a child’s need to communicate with adults.

R. Spitz and F. A. Wolf in their studies proved that at the age of 2 to 5 months a child smiles at any person, and from 4–5 months he begins to smile at his mother and at the sight of other familiar faces. Through a smile, a positive emotional contact is established between the child and the parents, which leads to affection and a tender, warm relationship.

The revitalization complex comes to the fore when an adult comes into the child’s field of vision - then other needs lose their importance. The child begins to smile and move, wanting to attract the attention of adults. Such a reaction to close people suggests that for the child they are not only a necessary condition for development, but also its source. It has also been established that frequent, friendly communication between an adult and a child contributes to the development of a revitalization complex, while rare and indifferent communication hinders it, which can lead to a delay in the child’s mental development.

5.4. Crisis of the first year of life

In the first year of a child’s life, in infancy (from 1 month to a year), vision, perception, speech, memory, thinking develop, and emotional contacts with others are formed. Let's look at how this happens.

Vision

is one of the main human sense organs. Therefore, it begins to develop first. At first, the child can only focus his gaze on an object for a very short period of time. After the second month of life, visual concentration becomes longer and the ability to distinguish the simplest colors appears. At 2 months, while awake, the child is engaged in examining surrounding objects, especially when he is fed and in a calm state. At this age, the baby begins to distinguish people from surrounding objects, but vision is still weak.

By three months, a fairly good level of development of eye movement is noted, the duration of concentration reaches 7–8 minutes. The child begins to distinguish the shape of objects and can follow their movement. The baby's eye movements will develop faster and become more perfect if bright, attractive objects or people performing various movements begin to fall into the field of vision, which he will observe.

At 4 months, the child looks actively: reacts emotionally to what he sees, moves, squeals.

The variety of experiences an infant receives contributes to his cognitive development. Therefore, to satisfy his needs for new experiences, the environment must be made attractive and interesting - otherwise cognitive development will slow down.

Let us consider the development of perception. By one year, such a property of perception as objectivity appears. Objectivity

- this is the correlation of one’s feelings and images with the objects of the surrounding reality. The child can distinguish timbre, volume and pitch of sound, he develops the ability to remember and store images in his memory in their primary forms. Until three or four months of age, he can store the image of a perceived object for no more than one second; later, the storage time increases, and gradually the baby will begin to recognize his mother at any time. At 8-12 months, he begins to identify objects in the visual field, and not only as a whole, but also in parts.

Domestic psychologist A.V. Zaporozhets believed that the process of cognitive development in an infant proceeds as follows. At the age of three months, the perception of the shape and size of an object begins simultaneously with the formation of grasping movements. Further development of perception begins from the moment an object moves in space.

When studying the visual perception of children, it was found that objects located close to each other are perceived by the child as a whole. For example, taking a tower made of cubes by the top, a child wonders why not the whole tower was in his hands, but only part of it. A baby may try for a long time to take a flower from its mother’s dress, not realizing that it is drawn.

As a result of observations of children, it was found that when perceiving objects, they first focus on their shape, then on size, and only then on color (at the age of about 2 years).

Infants have a highly developed cognitive interest. They can look at objects for a long time, highlighting their contours, contrasts, simple forms, moving from horizontal elements of the design to vertical ones, paying special attention to color. They also have an exploratory reaction to everything new.

In the first year of a child’s life, memory actively develops .

All its genetic types develop: emotional, motor, imaginative, verbal.
Emotional
memory helps him orient himself in reality, fixing attention and directing his senses to the most emotionally important objects.
Motor
memory appears at 7–9 weeks.
The child can repeat any movement, and characteristic gestures appear. Then babies begin to develop figurative
memory.
If at 4 months he can simply recognize an object, then at 8–9 months he is able to reproduce it from memory. If you ask a child where a certain object is, he begins to actively look for it, moving his gaze, turning his head and torso. The development of figurative memory affects his communication and the formation of the motivational sphere. When a child learns to recognize, he begins to divide adults into pleasant and unpleasant. He smiles at people who are pleasant, but when he sees someone who is unpleasant he shows negative emotions. Verbal
memory begins to develop from 3–4 months, when the child begins to recognize the mother's voice. Then, from 6 months, he can correctly indicate the named object or find it if it is out of sight.

The development of reproduction leads to the emergence of the first motives.

They contribute to the formation of his personality and the development of independence from others. Incentives and motives appear that begin to guide the child’s activities.

, thinking develops

baby. For now, this is visual and effective thinking, which is expressed in manipulative hand movements and the formation of operational structures. As a rule, the longer a child looks at a toy, the more different qualities he discovers in it, the higher his intellectual level.

Speech develops

Until one month, passive speech is observed: the child simply listens and distinguishes sounds. At about one month of age, he begins to make simple sounds, such as ah, uh, uh. By the end of the first - beginning of the second month of life, the child develops special attention to speech, called auditory concentration. Then, at 2–4 months, humming occurs, and at 4–6 months, humming and repetition of simple syllables appear. At 4 months, the baby distinguishes adult speech by intonation, which indicates the ability to use speech as a means of emotional communication. From 6 months, babbling is observed, in which some repeating sound combinations can be distinguished, mainly associated with the child’s actions. He also focuses on the emotional tone, nature of the statement and rhythm. At 9-10 months, the baby speaks its first words. By the end of the first year of life, he understands 10–20 words spoken by adults.

L.S. Vygotsky called the speech of an infant autonomous, since it is very different from the speech of an adult, although its sound sometimes resembles “adult” words.

mental development occurs

child.
E. Erikson believed that in infancy a feeling of trust
or
distrust
of the world is formed, that is, closedness or openness to the world around us. The main role in the emergence of this feeling is played by parents, in particular the mother. It is this feeling that will subsequently help children adapt to the world around them, establish contacts with people and believe in the best.

The same opinion was shared by the English psychologist and psychiatrist D. Bowlby, the author of the so-called “attachment theory.” He believed that the close emotional connection established between a child and his mother from the first days of his life creates a sense of security and safety in the baby. If the establishment of this connection is disrupted, then problems may arise in the mental development of the child, primarily in the structure of his personality. So that he does not have problems in the future, in the first years of life, children must be given warmth and affection, which, according to D. Bowlby, are more important than any proper care and training.

These changes in the development of the child lead to a critical period, which is accompanied by stubbornness, aggression, negativism, and resentment. These qualities are not stable and disappear with the end of the crisis.

The one-year crisis occurs at the junction of two periods: the end of infancy and the beginning of early childhood. This crisis is accompanied by external manifestations and internal causes. External manifestations

are as follows: when an adult forbids something to a child or does not understand him, he begins to worry, scream, cry, tries to show independence, and affective states may even arise.
The internal causes
of the crisis are as follows: there are growing contradictions between the needs for knowledge of the world around us and the capabilities that the child has.

The essence of the crisis of the first year of life is that the child begins to feel more independent. The social situation of fusion between a child and an adult disappears, and two people appear: a child and an adult. And this is justified, because the child begins to speak, walk, and actions with objects develop. But his capabilities are still limited, since, firstly, the child’s speech is autonomous in nature, and secondly, an adult helps him in carrying out any action. This is clearly expressed in the construction of objects that the child manipulates. D.B. Elkonin pointed out that the child must be exposed to the social way of using objects. It is impossible to show this to a baby, so an adult has to construct the objects himself.

5.5. Leading activity

The leading type of activity in infancy is emotional and personal communication

with adults, i.e. with those who mainly care for the baby: mother, father, grandmother, grandfather or other adult. A child cannot do without the help of an adult, since at this age he is weak and completely helpless. He is not able to satisfy any of his needs on his own: they feed him, bathe him, dress him in dry and clean clothes, move him in space (take him in his arms and walk around the room, take him for a walk, etc.), monitor his health and, which is very important, they just communicate with him - talk. The need for communication arises in a child at 1–2 months. The revitalization complex that appears at the sight of a mother or another adult caring for a child indicates the emergence of a need for communication that must be fully satisfied, since with positive emotional communication with an adult, the child becomes more active, a joyful mood arises, which contributes to the development of his movements , perception, thinking and speech.

A child deprived of full communication with an adult (is alone in a hospital for treatment, placed in an orphanage, etc.) has mental retardation. This is manifested in the following: the child has a meaningless and indifferent gaze directed upward, he moves little, is lethargic, apathetic, and has no interest in his surroundings. All this leads to delayed physical development and late appearance of speech. Therefore, we must remember the following: in order for a child to develop normally both psychologically and physically, it is necessary not only to properly care for him, but also to communicate.

5.6. Neoplasms of infancy

New developments of infancy are grasping, walking and the first word (speech). Let's look at each act in more detail.

Grabbing

- This is the first organized action that occurs at approximately 5 months. It is organized by an adult and is born as a joint activity of an adult and a child. In order for grasping to occur, the baby’s hand must turn into an organ of touch, in other words, “open up.” The fact is that the baby’s hand is clenched into a fist, so only when he can unclench it will the act of grasping occur. The child’s behavior is very interesting: he looks at his hands, watches how his hand approaches the object.

This act gives him the ability to expand his ability to manipulate objects:

at the age of 4 to 7 months, the child begins to move objects, move them, and extract sounds from them; at 7-10 months, correlated actions are formed, i.e. he manipulates two objects at once, moving them away from himself and correlating them with each other (he takes the object away from himself and brings it closer to another in order to put it, place it, string it on it). From 10–11 to 14 months, the stage of functional actions begins: the child performs more advanced actions of stringing, opening, inserting, manipulating with all possible objects.

The act of grasping is of great importance for the development of object perception.

The image of an object arises when there is practical, effective contact between the image and the object. Thanks to grasping, the child begins to develop a sense of space, since in order to grab an object, you need to stretch out your hand. The space that appears in a child is the space of an outstretched arm. In addition, in order to grab an object, you need to unclench your fist, which leads to the development of your hand.

The desire to reach out to an object and take it (grasp) stimulates the process of sitting,

which, in turn, opens up a world of other objects to the child.
Objects appear that are impossible to reach; they can only be obtained with the help of adults. Therefore, a new type of communication arises between a child and an adult - communication that arises as a result of the child’s desire to master an object that is currently inaccessible to him. M.I. Lisina called such communication situational and businesslike.
With the change in communication, the way of influencing adults also changes: a pointing gesture appears.

Regarding this gesture, L.S. Vygotsky wrote: “At first, a pointing gesture is simply an unsuccessful grasping movement directed at an object and denoting an upcoming action. The child tries to grab an object that is too far away, his hands, extended to the object, remain hanging in the air, his fingers make pointing movements. This situation is the starting point for further development... There is a movement here that objectively points to an object, and nothing more. When the mother comes to the child's aid and interprets his movement as an instruction, the situation changes significantly. A pointing gesture becomes a gesture for others” (Vygotsky L.S., 1991).

The stages of development of the infant’s grasping and movements are given in Table. 4.

Table 4
Development of movements and actions
End of table. 4

By 9 months the baby begins to walk.

D.B. Elkonin considered the main thing in the act of walking, firstly, to be the expansion of the child’s space, and secondly, that the child separates himself from the adult, and it is no longer his mother who leads him, but he who leads his mother. This indicates a break in the old development situation.

The appearance of the first word (speech) –

another neoplasm of this age. Speech is situational, autonomous, emotionally charged, understandable only to loved ones, specific in its structure and consists of fragments of words. This kind of speech is called “nanny language.” Nevertheless, this speech is a new quality that can serve as a criterion that the old social situation of the child’s development has exhausted itself and a different content has arisen between the adult and the child - objective activity.

Table of contents

What does it include?

Regardless of the gender of children, leading activity in infancy is a factor that helps with:

• formation of self-esteem;
• the emergence of visually effective thinking;
• recognition of surrounding people, their image, voice, speech, type of behavior;
• development of active speech;
• developing involuntary attention in a child;
• development of personal qualities, the concept of “I am myself”.

During this period of time, the baby needs trust and greater independence.

Parenting in the first month of life

You should start training your baby from a very early age. It is important to remember that before one year, all the foundations for its further development are laid. Already at this stage, the child understands and perceives a lot: he reacts to sounds around him, determines the tone of conversation, melodies, distinguishes light from darkness, recognizes by smell that his mother is somewhere nearby, and feels all touches.

The child has well-developed innate reflexes, for example, he looks for his mother’s breast, sucks it, flinches from too loud or sudden sounds, walks with his legs, if you lift him and hold him in an upright position, grabs with his hands.

During this period of time, education should consist of simple methods. Develop color vision by placing bright rattle toys at a distance of about 30 centimeters from the child’s eyes. Teach gaze fixation by moving a bright toy in front of the child’s eyes at a distance of 20 centimeters, and then, after waiting for the gaze to fixate on it, move it to the other side and in the vertical direction. Form the baby's hearing by talking to him in a quiet and calm voice, turning on music and rattling rattles.

Experts also recommend carrying your child around the house, telling him about the objects around him and sharing interesting stories.

Second month of life

Communication is the leading activity of infancy. Physical contact with parents is additionally added to communication. The child needs to be given a feeling of security and closeness, carried in his arms, massaged, smiling and trying to evoke a response.

In the second month of life, parental education continues to focus on the development of vision and hearing. Objects for study are already placed at a distance of 30 to 50 centimeters. The sounds to learn become multifaceted.

In order to develop tactile sensitivity, the baby needs to be given toys and objects of different shapes. So that the child can hold his head independently in the future without any problems, they begin to roll a bright ball in front of him. The baby will watch him closely, thereby tensing his neck muscles.

Third month of baby's life

The leading type of activity in infancy of three months will be the ability to show emotions. In order for the baby to develop facial muscles, begin to laugh, walk, and show different emotions, it is important to pay increased attention to him. The parent should often hold the baby in his arms, talk to him for a long time, tell stories, read books, laugh.

Toys at this age will be bells, bells, balloons, rattles and everything that the baby can reach and feel tactilely. The parent is obliged to help the child explore the world around him and not forbid him to be curious.

At this stage of development, the baby begins to copy many of the parents’ gestures and habits, and also takes into account their attitude. For example, if the baby’s mother feels fear, the child will feel the same.

To develop only positive qualities in a child, you should show him as many positive emotions as possible, smile often and give him a good mood.

Early age

Yaroslavtseva Svetlana

Early age

Introduction

The position on the importance of the social environment and the child’s communication with adults and peers for mental development and personality formation is generally recognized in modern psychology. However, the question of the mechanisms of influence of the social environment on human development is interpreted differently depending on the theoretical model of development adopted in various schools and directions - behavioral psychology, social learning theory, epigenetic approach, model of ecological systems, psychology of operational development of intelligence, cultural-historical approach. In the doctrine of the structure and dynamics of psychological by L. S. Vygotsky introduced the concept of the social situation of development as the most important characteristic of age , revealing the relationship between the child and his social environment. The age specificity and content of the category social situation of development at stable and crisis ages were subjected to in-depth theoretical and experimental analysis in the works of domestic psychologists (L. I. Bozhovich, V. V. Davydov, M. I. Lisina, D. B. Elkonin, D. I. Feldshtein, etc.). It was shown that the features of the social situation of development decisively determine the direction, content and nature of the child’s development in the normative space of age-related development . At the same time, in modern child psychology there is an increasingly acute awareness of the need to specify the concept of “social situation of child development”

both theoretically and to solve urgent and important problems of optimization, prevention and correction of children’s mental development.

Early age covers the period from 1 to 3 years and is one of the key ones in a child’s life. It is characterized by a new social situation of development, since at this stage of his life the leading subject becomes ethno-manipulative activity, which replaces emotional communication with an adult (the leading activity of the infant; important new formations arise.

Social situation of development in early childhood .

The special significance of early childhood lies in the fact that it is directly related to walking. The ability to move, while a physical asset, has tangible mental consequences. Thanks to her, he begins to walk freely and communicate more independently with the outside world. Walking develops the ability to navigate in space, expands the ability to become familiar with the environment, and also provides a transition to independent objective activity. The baby is completely absorbed in objects, as a result of which his relationships with adults change. Emotional communication with them is becoming less and less common, giving way to situationally effective communication, practical cooperation, and joint actions with objects. An adult, as a rule, is disposed to communicate due to his business qualities, and not his emotionality. The social situation of development in early childhood has the following structure: “child - object - adult”.

Leading activities in early childhood .

For early childhood, the main activities are object activity, speech and play. The development of objective activity is associated with the mastery of methods of using objects developed by mankind. A child learns from adults how to use objects and understands the meaning of things. The difference between object-based activity and the simple manipulation of objects characteristic of the infant period lies in the subordination of the child’s methods of action with objects to their functional purpose in the life of a cultured person.

The means of carrying out objective activity, the instrument of mastering social ways of using objects, is communication. Despite the fact that emotional communication ceases to be a leading activity in early childhood , it continues to develop very intensively and becomes verbal. After all, communication connected with objective actions cannot only be emotional; it must be mediated by words.

Early age is sensitive (favorable)

period for speech development since it is at this time that language acquisition is effective.
By the age of three, the child masters speech breathing, all the sounds of his native language are given, his vocabulary is 1200-1500 words, he does not use common sentences (5-6 words, which indicates the mastery of the basics of syntax, he is active in verbal communication with adults and children, masters expressive and facial actions (smile, eye contact, movements, postures, touches, etc.)
If a child for some reason does not have the necessary conditions for speech development, then it is very difficult to catch up later. In the first year of life, it is necessary to especially and intensively engage in speech development.

For the development of a child, play is of particular importance - an activity aimed at orientation in objective and social reality.

Elements of the game are already used by infants, manipulating objects (toys, pacifiers)

.
In the second year of life, play becomes more spontaneous and meaningful. It is not just manipulation, but unfolds as an action with objects in which the child reproduces what adults do (for example, talking on the phone, drinking tea)
.
These are the first steps on the path to symbolic actions, common types of games at this age are pre-exploration play (playful exploration of the features of objects, construction play (independent construction of structures and playing with them, role-playing play ( child taking on the role of an adult)
game.

There are different views among researchers regarding the causes and purposes of play. Supporters of psychoanalytic theory, for example, believe that role-playing play helps a child cope with conflicts. However, being reflected in the game, psychological conflicts are not always its cause. If, while playing with a doll, a child cares deeply about it, it is quite possible that this expresses her need for love and compensates for the lack of parental warmth.

The child’s play activity is the basis for the formation of future skills and mental actions. In the process of gaming experimentation, many new complex abilities are formed. Up to two years old, children can already play elementary logic games (involve the use and development of logical thinking skills)

and thematic
(assigned by adults or independently
chosen ) games, demonstrating their ability to draw up an action plan.

With the development of symbolic (conventional designation in the game of objects, events, phenomena)

games change the child’s attitude towards other children. In the first year of life, they hardly interact with each other; children treat each other like living toys: they pull their hair, touch their eyes with their fingers, etc. At 18-20 months, they begin to interact with play partners and strive to play with each other. with a friend.

So, objective activity, speech and play indicate the mental development of the baby. These types of activities reveal certain mental neoplasms of early childhood .

Characteristics of full communication young child and adults :

— initiative towards the elder, the desire to attract his attention to his actions;

- preference for substantive cooperation with an adult, insistent demand from an adult for complicity in their affairs;

- gullibility, openness and emotionality in relation to an adult, showing love for him and a willing response to affection;

- sensitivity to the attitude of an adult, to his assessment and restructuring of one’s behavior depending on the behavior of an adult, a subtle distinction between praise and blame;

- active use of speech in interaction.

The social situation of development is “a completely unique, specific for a given age , exclusive, unique and inimitable relationship between the child and the reality around him, primarily social.”

An age crisis is a special period of transformation of the social situation of development: a new formation of the previous period destroys the old development situation and provokes the formation of a new one. According to Vygotsky, the age crisis is the norm of ontogenesis.

The concept of a social situation of development was introduced by L. S. Vygotsky as a unit of analysis of the dynamics of a child’s development, that is, a set of laws that determine the emergence and changes in the structure of a child’s personality at each age stage . The social situation of development determines the child’s lifestyle, his “social being”

, during which they manifest new personality traits and develop new mental formations.
Being a product of age-related development , neoplasms appear towards the end of the age period and lead to a restructuring of the entire structure of the child’s consciousness, to changes in the system of his relationships to the world, other people, and himself. The appearance of new formations is a special sign of the collapse of the old social situation of development and the formation of a new social situation of development, which is accompanied by crises of age-related development . The concept of social situation of development was defined by B. G. Ananyev and, in his opinion, it is aimed at overcoming ideas about the environment as a factor that mechanically determines the development of the individual. Subsequently, this concept received a detailed analysis in a macro-social-psychological context and was used to describe, for example, the ontogenetic development of a child’s personality by L. I. Bozhovich, D. B. Elkonin, who defined age characterized by the following main indicators:
1) a certain social situation of development - the specific form of relationships that a child enters into with adults in a given period;

2) main or leading type of activity;

3) the main mental new formations acquired at this stage of development (from individual mental processes to personality traits)

. And also as a relatively closed period, the significance of which is determined primarily by its place on the general curve of child development.

Thus, the social situation of development is specific for each age period , determined by the system of relations of the subject in social reality, reflected in his experiences and realized by him in joint activities with other people.

Object of study: children from infancy to adolescence .

Social situation of infant development.

This situation is determined by the complete helplessness of the baby and the absence of any means of independent existence and satisfaction of its needs. The only such “means”

there is another person - an adult who mediates absolutely all the manifestations of the baby. Whatever happens to the baby, he is always in a situation related to the adult caring for him. Objects appear and disappear from the child’s field of vision always thanks to the participation of other people; the child always moves in space on someone else’s legs and arms; the elimination of irritants that interfere with the baby and the satisfaction of his basic needs is always accomplished through other people.

he designates the main neoplasm of infancy with “couple - we”

, and implies by it the original mental community of mother and child.
Harmony and synchronicity of interaction between mother and child are the most important fact of the psychology of infancy. This fact suggests that not only the child “adapts”
to the mother, but she also adapts to the child’s actions. The child and mother mutually change and develop each other. It is in this ability for harmonious interaction and in the general disposition to communicate with adults that the baby’s activity is manifested.

Social situation of development at an early age .

At the end of the first year of life, the situation of unity between the child and the adult explodes from the inside. Two opposite but interconnected poles appear in it - a child and an adult. By the beginning of early childhood, the child , acquiring the desire for independence and independence from the adult, remains connected with the adult and objectively (since he needs the practical help of an adult)

and subjective
(since it needs an adult’s assessment, his attention and attitude)
. This contradiction finds its resolution in the new social situation of the child’s development, which represents cooperation, or joint activity of the child and the adult.

Communication between a child and an adult begins to be mediated by objects already in the second half of infancy. However, the child isolates only individual objects and considers the adult himself as an interesting object. In the second year of life, the content of the child’s substantive cooperation with an adult changes radically. The content of their joint activity is the assimilation of socially developed ways of using objects. The uniqueness of the new social situation of development, according to D. B. Elkonin, lies in the fact that now the child does not live with an adult, but through an adult, with his help. The adult does not do it instead of him, but together with him.

The content of communication becomes extra-situational, going beyond the perceived situation.

M.I. Lisina identified two non-situational forms of communication characteristic of preschool age - cognitive and personal.

In the first half of preschool age (3 - 5 years)

An extra-situational-cognitive form of communication between a child and an adult appears.
Unlike the previous one (situational business),
it is woven not into practical cooperation with an adult, but into
“theoretical” (why this is so)
.

Since it is not the situation that is being discussed, communication for the first time acquires an extra-situational character.

By the end of preschool age, a new and highest for preschool age - an extra-situational-personal form of communication. Unlike the previous one, its content is the world of people, not things. A preschooler is interested in a variety of aspects of an adult’s existence that are not visible in a specific situation and do not concern the child himself (where he lives, who he works for, whether he has children, etc.)

.
He talks just as willingly about himself (about his parents, friends, joys and grievances)
.

The need for mutual understanding and empathy of an adult is the main one for extra-situational-personal communication.

The contradiction in the social situation of a preschool child’s development lies precisely in the gap between his desire to be like an adult and the impossibility of realizing this desire directly. The only activity that allows you to resolve this contradiction is a role-playing game. In such a game, the child takes on the role of an adult as a bearer of social functions and enters into a certain relationship with other “ideal adults”

.

That is why role-playing game gives the child the opportunity to interact with aspects of life that are inaccessible to him in real practice, and it is the leading activity of a preschooler.

Regardless of the age period of the child’s development, the social situation is decisive and conditions the process of the child’s life, during which he manifests new personality traits and develops new mental formations, which in turn leads to a restructuring of the entire structure of the child’s consciousness, to changes in the system of his relations to the world, to other people, to yourself.

The social situation, being a unit, allows us to most accurately track the emergence and changes in the structure of the child’s personality at each age stage .

Thus, the social situation of development is a system of relations of the subject in social reality, realized by him in joint activities with other people.

New formations are achievements in development, characterized by a special type of personality structure and activity, as well as the child’s attitude towards himself and other people.

The most important neoplasm of the newborn period is the revitalization complex. The revitalization complex is an emotionally positive reaction that is accompanied by movements and sounds. Before this, the child’s movements were chaotic and uncoordinated. The complex develops coordination of movements. The revival complex is the first act of behavior, the act of distinguishing an adult. This is also the first act of communication. The revitalization complex is not just a reaction, it is an attempt to influence an adult (works by N. M. Shchelovanova, M. I. Lisina, S. Yu. Meshcheryakova)

.

The revitalization complex is the main neoplasm of the critical period. It marks the end of the newborn and the beginning of a new stage of development - the stage of infancy. Therefore, the appearance of the revival complex represents a psychological criterion for the end of the neonatal crisis.

Infancy and the 1st year crisis. By 9 months—the beginning of the 1st year crisis—the child stands on his feet and begins to walk. As D. B. Elkonin emphasized, the main thing in the act of walking is not only that the child’s space expands, but also that the child separates himself from the adult. For the first time, the unified social situation “We” is fragmented; now it is not the mother who leads the child, but the child who leads the mother wherever he wants. Walking is the first major new development of infancy , marking a break in the old developmental situation.

The second main new development of this age is the appearance of the first word. The peculiarity of the first words is that they are in the nature of pointing gestures. Walking and enriching object actions require speech that would satisfy communication about objects. Speech, like all neoplasms of age , is transitional in nature. It is autonomous, situational, emotionally charged and understandable only to those close to you. This speech is specific in its structure, consisting of fragments of words. Researchers call it "nanny language." But whatever this speech may be, it represents a new quality that can serve as a criterion that the old social situation of the child’s development has disintegrated. Where there was unity, there are two: an adult and a child. Between them a new content grew - objective activity.

Basic psychological neoplasms of early age . All major neoplasms are associated with the development of tool-object activity leading at an early age . Within this activity, mental processes develop - perception, memory, thinking, speech. In this activity, a new type is born, which will become the leader in the next psychological age . This is a plot-based game.

Comparing one’s actions with the actions of an adult (an image and a model, finding similarities between them is a necessary condition for the emergence of a tendency towards independence. When a single objective action disintegrates and the adult is separated from the child, the child for the first time sees the adult and his actions as models, it turns out that the child acts as an adult, not with him, not under the guidance of an adult, but as he does. As soon as the child saw himself in another, he saw himself and the phenomenon “I myself” appeared. L. S. Vygotsky called it new formation "external I myself." The tendency to independent actions is associated with the emergence of personal action. Personal action is an action that the child treats as if it was carried out by himself. The performance of such an action is accompanied by the appearance of the pronoun "I" in speech. Until this time, the child spoke about himself in the third person or called himself by name.

The beginning of personality is a long and multiphase process of early socialization of an individual, which occurs most intensively at two or three years of age .

B. G. Ananyev notes that the social formation of a person is not limited to the formation of personality. This is also the formation of a person as a subject of cognition and activity.

Conclusion.

L. S. Vygotsky defined the social situation of development as a special social space that an adult creates for the development of a child’s personality. It is determined by the system of social conditions that an adult organizes when interacting with a child. At the same time, the social situation of development turns out to be relatively stable during a specific age stage : the adult strives to preserve the conditions in which the child develops. But since the child himself changes, acquiring new qualities, his attitude to the social situation of development and to the process of interaction with adults changes - from acceptance to complete denial.

A. N. Leontyev, defining the social situation of development, proposed to characterize the basic relationship between the child and his environment through activity. According to A. N. Leontyev, there is a leading activity, that is, an activity that has a decisive influence on the development of the psyche in a specific age period . In infancy , the leading activity is the child’s communication with an adult, at an early age - objective activity, in preschool - play, in primary school - educational activity.

Fourth month of life

At the fourth month, the baby can already hold his head independently, can gesture well with his legs and arms, examines objects around him, and rolls over from his back to his tummy. At this time, he not only looks at objects, but also sees them. Perceives voices and sounds around. Feels the need for her mother not only to study herself, but also everything around her.

The parent must monitor the baby’s daily routine and adjust it if necessary. At 3-4 months, the average baby needs 15 hours of sleep. 10 hours are at night, and the rest are distributed evenly throughout the day.

If adults have decided that the child should sleep only in his own bed, then he should only be placed there, thereby instilling discipline and habit.

Features of education in the fifth month

The child not only hums, but also makes clearly distinguishable sounds. Seeing a toy nearby, he can touch it and also hold it firmly in his hands. He continues to perceive all things by taste and tactile sensations.

The child’s muscles and limbs have already become stronger, which gives him the opportunity to rise on his hands, stretch his legs and even get on all fours. It is important for the parent to continue to maintain as much physical contact with the infant as possible.

It is important to carry the child in your arms, talk to him often, respond to his sounds, and smile back. It will also be good to develop a sense of rhythm in the baby; for this, massage and gymnastics with counting and dancing to music should be done.

The child is very happy when he sees that he is happy. He shows emotions in different ways: he is capricious and cries to show discomfort, or he laughs and plays when he is having fun. It is important to remember that when crying loudly, the child is not manipulating his parents, but is simply showing his needs or dissatisfaction, since he does not yet know how to do this in any other way.