A special process of cognition of the world around a person is thinking. Preschool children quickly go through stages of development, which is reflected in the development of types of thinking.

Characteristics of thinking

Thinking is one of the basic psychological processes. Its formation has been well studied. It has been proven that it is closely related to speech. And it has the following features:

As the child matures and socializes, improvement occurs nervous system and thinking. For their development, you will need the help of adults who surround the baby. Therefore, already from the year you can start classes aimed at forming cognitive activity children.

Important! It is necessary to consider with what objects and how the child is ready to work. Taking into account individual characteristics children are being matched educational materials and assignments.

Features of the thinking of this age group are defined as follows:

• generalization - the child is able to compare and draw conclusions about similar objects;
• visibility - the child needs to see facts, observe various situations in order to form his own idea;
• abstraction - the ability to separate features and properties from the objects to which they belong;
• concept - a representation or knowledge about a subject related to a specific term or word.

Systematic development of concepts occurs already at school. But groups of concepts are laid down earlier. Along with the development of abstraction in children, there is a gradual mastery of inner speech.

Types of mental activity in preschoolers

At preschool age, children are able to acquire knowledge about the world around them. The more they know the synonyms and characteristics of objects, the more developed they are. For children of the preschool stage of development, the ability to generalize, to establish connections between objects is the norm. At 5–7 years old, they are more inquisitive, which leads to numerous questions, as well as independent actions to discover new knowledge.

Types of thinking characteristic of children before school:

• visual-effective - prevails at the age of 3-4 years;
• figurative - becomes active in children older than 4 years;
• logical - mastered by children aged 5-6 years.

Visual-effective thinking assumes that the child observes visually different situations. Based on this experience, chooses the desired action. At 2 years old, the baby's action occurs almost immediately, he goes by trial and error. At 4 years old, he first thinks and then acts. As an example, the situation with opening doors can be used. A two-year-old baby will knock on the door, and try to find the mechanism for opening it. Usually he manages to carry out the action by accident. At 4 years old, the baby will carefully examine the door, remember what they are, try to find the handle and open it. These are different levels of mastering visual-effective thinking.

It is important to actively develop thinking based on images in preschool age. In this case, children acquire the ability to perform the tasks assigned to them without the presence of an object in front of their eyes. They compare the situation with those models and schemes that they have met before. At the same time, children:

• highlight the main features and characteristics that characterize the subject;
• remember the correlation of the subject with others;
• able to draw a schematic of an object or describe it in words.

In the future, the ability to distinguish from an object only those features that are needed in a particular situation develops. You can verify this by offering the baby tasks like “remove the excess”.

Before school, the child can, operating only with concepts, reason, draw conclusions, characterize objects and objects. For this age period characteristic:

• start of experiments;
• the desire to transfer the acquired experience to other objects;
• search for relationships between phenomena;
• active generalization of own experience.

Basic mental operations and their development

The first thing that a baby masters in the cognitive sphere is the operations of comparison and generalization. Parents identify a large number of items with the concept of "toys", "balls", "spoons", etc.

From the age of two, the operation of comparison is mastered. Often it is based on opposition, so that it is easier for children to form judgments. The main comparison parameters are:

• color;
• magnitude;
• the form;
• temperature.

Generalization comes later. For its development, the already richer vocabulary of the child and the accumulated mental skills are required.

It is quite possible to divide objects into groups for children of three years of age. But to the question: “What is it?” they may not answer.

Classification is a complex mental operation. It uses both generalization and correlation. The level of operation depends on various factors. Mostly by age and gender. At first, the baby is only able to classify objects according to generic concepts and functional features (“what is it?”, “what is it?”). By the age of 5, a differentiated classification appears (dad's car is a service truck or a personal car). The choice of the basis for determining the types of objects in preschoolers is random. Depends on the social environment.

Questions as an element of improving mental activity

Little "why" - a gift and a test for parents. The appearance of a large number of questions in children indicates a change in the stages of preschool development. Children's questions are divided into three main categories:

• auxiliary - a preschool child asks older people to help in his activities;
• cognitive - their goal is to obtain new information which interested the child;
• emotional - their purpose is to receive support or certain emotions in order to feel more confident.

Before the age of three, a child rarely uses all kinds of questions. It is characterized by chaotic and unsystematic questions. But even in them a cognitive character can be traced.

A large number of emotional questions is a signal that the baby lacks attention and self-confidence. In order to compensate for this, it is enough to communicate face-to-face for 10 minutes during the day. Children aged 2-5 will assume that their parents take a lot of interest in their personal affairs.

The absence of cognitive questions at age 5 should alert parents. More tasks should be given for thinking.

The questions of children of younger and older preschool age require answers of different quality. If at the age of three a child may not even listen to the answer, then at the age of 6 they may have new questions in the process.

Parents and teachers of the preschool development system should know how detailed and in what terms it is necessary to communicate with the child. This is the peculiarities of thinking and raising kids.

The prerequisites for asking cognitive questions in children appear about 5 years old.

Auxiliary questions are typical for the period up to 4 years. With their help, you can form the skills necessary for further development and life in everyday life.

How to develop thought processes in preschoolers?

For the development and improvement of thought processes in the preschool period, it is necessary to gradually build up the conceptual apparatus and characteristics of objects. You can refer to the following data:

• improvement based on imagination;
• activation of arbitrary and mediated memory;
• the use of speech as a tool for setting and solving mental problems.

Attentive attitude to the child is a kind of guarantee of the normal development of cognitive activity. For those who want to save money, it is important to know that games can be bought "for growth". At the same time, a younger child should be shown some actions and explain basic characteristics. Over time, complicate actions and concepts.

To help in the development of thinking in preschool age can:

• various types of board games (lotto, dominoes, inserts, etc.);
• active dialogues with the child during walks or at home, which are not in the nature of individual lessons;
• explanations of actions carried out by surrounding people or animals;
• modeling, applications, drawing;
• learning poetry, reading books.

Important! Sometimes malnutrition and lack of vitamins lead to inhibited work of the nervous system, rapid fatigue of the child, which also affects the development of thinking.

In order for mental activity to be normal, you need to monitor the sufficient amount of B vitamins, iron, zinc, and magnesium in the food of children.

Thus, the psychology of the child involves a gradual immersion in the complex world of objects and phenomena of the external environment. The stringing of concepts, knowledge, actions develops the thinking of preschoolers. Only joint activity allows you to successfully acquire the skills that are needed for later life.

Reading strengthens neural connections:

The development of a child's logical thinking is no less important than the development of reading, writing and speech skills. Logic for children is the basis of good intelligence, it helps to think broadly, analyze, reason, compare and draw conclusions. The formation of the child's logical skills should be given attention already from early age.

The scientists emphasized that the development of logical thinking in preschool children is one of the main areas of development, so it needs to be given serious attention. This will help in the future the child to succeed in school and in the intellectual field.

How to develop logic in a child?

Logical thinking helps to separate primary information from secondary, to find a connection between various objects, to create conclusions, to find confirmation or refutation of them. Experts advise to train logical thinking, like any other skill. For younger children, specially designed games, exercises and tasks are great. These activities will help:

• increase the speed of thinking;
• increase its flexibility and depth;
• develop imagination and freedom of thought;
• increase the efficiency of thinking.

Development of thinking in children

Thinking is one of the highest forms of human activity. This is a socially conditioned mental process, inextricably linked with speech. In the process of mental activity, certain techniques or operations are developed (analysis, synthesis, comparison, generalization, concretization).

There are three types of thinking:

1) visual-effective (knowledge by manipulating objects)

2) visual-figurative (cognition with the help of representations of objects, phenomena)

3) verbal-logical (cognition with the help of concepts, words, reasoning).

Visual Action Thinking especially intensively develops in a child from 3-4 years. He comprehends the properties of objects, learns to operate with objects, establish relationships between them and solve a variety of practical problems.

On the basis of visual-effective thinking, a more complex form of thinking is formed - visual-figurative. It is characterized by the fact that the child can already solve problems on the basis of ideas, without the use of practical actions. This allows the child, for example, to use diagrams or mental arithmetic.

By the age of six or seven, more intensive formation begins verbal-logical thinking, which is associated with the use and transformation of concepts. However, it is not leading among preschoolers.

All types of thinking are closely related. When solving problems, verbal reasoning is based on vivid images. At the same time, the solution of even the simplest, most specific problem requires verbal generalizations.

Various games, construction, modeling, drawing, reading, communication, etc., that is, everything that a child does before school, develops such mental operations as generalization, comparison, abstraction, classification, establishing cause-and-effect relationships , understanding interdependencies, the ability to reason.

Ways to train logical thinking

• We train attention and observation. After all, it is these skills that will allow a preschooler to successfully analyze and classify the properties and characteristics of objects. Starting from 3-4 years old, you can safely offer the child to analyze this or that object from the point of view of its various features: shape, color, taste, smell.
• We decide logical tasks and exercise. Here, ordinary counting sticks will be good helpers. Teach your child to make different geometric figures, for example, two triangles of five counting sticks, or offer him exercises to continue the elements of the pattern you have compiled.
• We play opposites. We teach the child to find concepts that are opposite to the given ones: day - night, heat - cold, sweet - bitter, etc.
  The timely development of logical abilities in a preschooler will be extremely useful not only for his further education, but also in everyday life.

Games and exercises to train logical thinking

WHO LOVES WHAT?
Pictures with images of animals and food for these animals are selected. Pictures with animals and separately pictures of food are laid out in front of the child, they offer to “feed” everyone.

CALL IN ONE WORD
The child is read the words and asked to name them in one word. For example: a fox, a hare, a bear, a wolf are wild animals; lemon, apple, banana, plum - fruits.

For older children, you can modify the game by giving a generalizing word and asking them to name specific items related to the generalizing word. Transport - ..., birds - ...

CLASSIFICATION
The child is given a set of pictures depicting various objects. The adult asks to consider them and arrange them into groups, i.e. suitable with suitable.

FIND AN EXTRA PICTURE: development of thought processes of generalization, abstraction, selection of essential features.
Pick up a series of pictures, among which three pictures can be combined into a group according to some common ground, and the fourth is redundant. Invite the child to find the extra picture. Ask why he thinks so. How similar are the pictures that he left.

FIND AN EXTRA WORD
Read a series of words to your child. Suggest to determine which word is "extra".

Examples:
old, decrepit, small, dilapidated;
Brave, evil, courageous, courageous;
Apple, plum, cucumber, pear;
Milk, cottage cheese, sour cream, bread;
Hour, minute, summer, second;
Spoon, plate, pan, bag;
Dress, sweater, hat, shirt;
Soap, broom, toothpaste, shampoo;
Birch, oak, pine, strawberry;
Book, TV, radio, tape recorder.

ALTERNATION
Invite your child to draw, color or string beads. Please note that the beads must alternate in a certain sequence. In this way, you can lay out a fence of multi-colored sticks, etc.

WORDS REVERSE
Offer the child the game "I will say the word, and you also say it, just the other way around, for example, big - small." You can use the following pairs of words: cheerful - sad, fast - slow, empty - full, smart - stupid, hardworking - lazy, strong - weak, heavy - light, cowardly - brave, white - black, hard - soft, rough - smooth and etc.

HAPPENS-DOES NOT HAPPEN
Name some situation and throw the ball to the child. The child must catch the ball in the event that the named situation happens, and if not, then the ball must be hit.

You can offer different situations: dad went to work; the train flies through the sky; the cat wants to eat; the postman brought a letter; salted apple; the house went for a walk; glass shoes, etc.

COMPARISON OF OBJECTS (CONCEPTS)
The child must imagine what he will compare. Ask him questions: “Did you see the fly? And the butterfly? After such questions about each word, offer to compare them. Ask questions again: “Do the fly and the butterfly look alike or not? How are they similar? How are they different from each other?"

Children especially find it difficult to find similarities. A child of 6-7 years old should correctly make a comparison: highlight both similarities and differences, moreover, according to essential features.

Pairs of words for comparison: fly and butterfly; house and hut; table and chair; a book and a notebook; water and milk; ax and hammer; piano and violin; prank and fight; city ​​and village.

GUESS BY DESCRIPTION
An adult offers to guess what (what vegetable, animal, toy) he is talking about and gives a description of this subject. For example: This is a vegetable. It is red, round, juicy (tomato). If the child finds it difficult to answer, pictures with various vegetables are laid out in front of him, and he finds the right one.

SORT IN ORDER
Ready-made series of plot sequential pictures are used. The child is given pictures and asked to look at them. They explain that the pictures should be arranged in the order in which events unfold. In conclusion, the child writes a story from the pictures.

GUESSING FABRICATIONS
An adult talks about something, including several tall tales in his story. The child must notice and explain why this does not happen.

Example: Here's what I want to tell you. Yesterday, I was walking along the road, the sun was shining, it was dark, the blue leaves were rustling under my feet. And suddenly a dog jumps out from around the corner, how it growls at me: “Ku-ka-re-ku!” - and the horns have already set. I got scared and ran away. Would you be scared?

I am walking through the woods yesterday. Cars drive around, traffic lights flash. Suddenly I see a mushroom. It grows on a branch. He hid among the green leaves. I jumped up and tore it off.

I came to the river. I look - a fish sits on the shore, crosses its legs and chews sausage. I approached, and she jumped into the water - and swam away.

INCREDIBLE
Offer the child drawings that contain any contradictions, inconsistencies, violations in the behavior of the characters. Ask the child to find errors and inaccuracies and explain their answer. Ask how it really is.

Thinking is higher form cognitive activity of a person, the process of searching and discovering something new. The development of thinking in children is an important element of education, since developed thinking will help the child understand the patterns of the world around him, cause-and-effect relationships in relationships, life and nature. Logical thinking is a fundamental part of achieving success in life, which will help you correctly analyze any current situation or problem, choosing a rational solution.

Logical thinking needs to be constantly trained. So that the child does not use stereotypical thinking, which is characteristic of many people, logic should be developed from early childhood.

If each person turns to his childhood, then he will not be able to say at what point he began to think, remember, think logically. It seems that a person has had mental skills all his life. In fact, thinking requires its development, which occurs on the basis of the external environment in which the child of preschool age is. Parents are primarily responsible for development, who are the first teachers working with the physical and intellectual development of their child.

The Internet magazine site indicates that the development of thinking can be practiced at any age. However, the sooner the child receives the skills he needs, the faster he will adapt to social conditions. Parents should understand how their baby thinks and what exercises can be done with him during preschool age.

What is the development of thinking in children?

The development of thinking in children begins from birth, despite the fact that they still do not understand what surrounds them, do not have speech and cannot reason. The development of thinking begins with the conditions in which the baby is. So far, he only looks, observes and remembers what objects and people surround him, what phenomena occur, what actions are performed.

In parallel with this, the child learns those actions that his body allows. Thinking develops in parallel with the actions that a person performs. Thus, if the baby can already pick up toys, then he not only begins to see them, but also to study the composition, the manipulations that can be performed with them, the phenomena that the toys themselves perform.

It develops as the baby masters his body and begins to move on his own. If at first he can only observe and remember, then at an older age he develops fantasizing, imagination, reasoning, fabrication and presentation of his thoughts.

Understanding this, adults should create appropriate conditions for the development of their baby. They should not only feed and care for him, but also develop his physiological body, show the world around him, talk, tell, and also gradually invite the child to independently encounter the surrounding phenomena and objects, to feel and feel them for himself.

There are three stages in the development of thinking, which take a huge period of time, including school age:

1. Visual thinking, when the baby is only observing or performing primitive actions with objects.
2. Specific object thinking, when the baby is already starting to use objects, perform certain actions with them, use his hands to perform certain manipulations.
3. Logical-abstract thinking, when the baby begins to operate with words and images.

Development of thinking in preschool children

Preschool thinking is primarily based on the ideas that the baby has, based on his past experience. He is already familiar with certain objects and phenomena, so he may not contact them, but operate with images, which allows him to go beyond the existing situation and expand the boundaries of his thinking.

Gradually assimilating speech, the baby begins to expand the boundaries of his intellectual activity when:

• Speech is associated with actions and, accordingly, thinking - reasoning. In this process, the main question becomes. When a question arises inside a child, this indicates his desire to comprehend the problems and truths of the world around him (curiosity). Questions arise depending on what interests the baby has and how he looks at the world. Faced with a new subject, he wants to study it, find a place for it and harmonize with the past experience that he has.

Questions also arise when the child is faced with contradictions in outside world and the experience he has. If what he knows does not match what he sees or hears, then a question arises which he wishes to resolve.

Also, questions appear when the child wants to confirm his idea or conclusion. He speaks to adults whose competence he recognizes. Every year there are more and more such questions.

Here it becomes important to understand the causality of the events. The child gradually begins to notice patterns, sees the multiplicity of causes of the same phenomenon, asks questions for what reasons there are those phenomena that are new to him. He notes inconsistencies with reality. Critical thinking allows the child to form his own conclusions and conclusions, which makes him independent and independent from adults.

Sometimes children's inferences are unusual and new to adults. This is due to the fact that the thinking of the child is not yet the same as that of adults. He operates with the available knowledge and what he sees. Moreover, the focus of attention always occurs on the bright, unusual, inappropriate, which allows you to draw conclusions that simply cannot be made by an adult who does not notice what the baby sees.

A child has unusual thinking for three reasons:

1. Lack of knowledge, experience, information, so he cannot understand the essence of what is happening.
2. Underdevelopment of mental processes.
3. Lack of critical thinking. In what is happening, the child often highlights individual details, bright and visible at first glance, without noticing everything else.

Based on this reasoning, the kid is original, at the same time subjective (there is no objectivity here). The child proceeds from what he sees and hears, perceives and feels personally, not having the ability to look at the situation from different angles.

Such thinking allows the child to form the first rudiments of the world in which he appeared. Undoubtedly, his knowledge is superficial and shallow. However, gradually he will acquire knowledge, which will help him to more fully expand the horizons of his knowledge.

• Speech becomes planning, that is, to some extent, replace physical actions. This is associated with the experiments that the child begins to produce with surrounding objects. Even throwing a stone into the water allows him to see the phenomena that will follow his action. In the future, the baby will already be able to reproduce the experience in his head. The more experiments a child has in preschool age, the more knowledge he will have when he encounters new situations.

Existing experience allows the child to refer to it when it is necessary to decide what to do next. If the child has already encountered some phenomena, then he can already predict what will follow each of his actions. He begins to reason and choose what action to take, based on those cause-and-effect relationships that he has already encountered.

Gradually, the child begins to highlight not only the visible signs of surrounding objects, but also their invisible functions. This allows objects to be divided into types, to classify them, albeit in a primitive way: “edible” / “inedible”, “movable” / “fixed”, etc.

• Speech helps to activate the imagination.

Thus, the following features of thinking in preschool children can be distinguished:

1. Everything that the child sees and hears, feels and experiences, is perceived by him, remembered and creates the first ideas about the world.
2. The inclusion of speech allows you to additionally influence the world around you, reason, draw conclusions.
3. Mediated perception of the world, that is, when unfamiliar phenomena are explained by familiar ones. This allows the child to understand the world that is unfamiliar to him and fill in the gaps in information.
4. As experience is gained, the baby begins to analyze and reason more and more, and then takes any action.
5. The ability to operate with objects in the mind based on experience.
6. The division of objects into categories leads the child to use abstract thinking, when he perceives a world that does not exist, divides it.

The game is the main operation where the child begins to learn about the world around him. That is why it should be carried out under the supervision of adults who can, through play moments, influence how their child will perceive the world around them.

Logical thinking begins its inception when the baby begins to recognize and use words. First, he understands the meaning of words that characterize the function or concept of a particular object. Then the child understands the rules of reasoning and relations between objects and phenomena.

The development of logical thinking in children

Logical thinking is the main form of intellectual activity that distinguishes a person from an animal. A person perceives the world, makes judgments, operates with conclusions, concepts and abstract terms, expresses his thoughts - all these are forms of logical thinking.

In preschool children, logical thinking begins at the age of 3, when active knowledge of the world begins. It includes mental operations such as:

1. Analysis and synthesis.
2. abstraction and concretization.
3. Generalization and comparison.

The development of one kind of thinking inevitably entails the development of another. Also, parents should not skip the stages of development and exercises that are aimed at a particular kind of thinking, no matter how simple they may seem. Logical thinking is based on the child's ability to reproduce images in his head. And for their appearance, he must first perceive them at the physical level, work them out, and use them.

Creative thinking is based on the fantasies and imagination of the child. It also needs to be developed, despite the fact that it is based on a certain naturalness of manifestation. Logic often has a pattern and stereotype, that is, a person must think in a certain way, which is dictated by society. This creates limited thinking. However, thanks to the creative approach, the child can expand the boundaries of his mental activity.

Parents should develop all kinds of thinking, since they all complement each other and contribute to the development of the personality as a whole.

Outcome

Why know how children's thinking develops in a period when kids do not go to school yet? Parents must have this knowledge in order to contribute to the development of the mental activity of their children. First, adults begin to understand the motives for the actions of their kids, who often do what is considered bad and wrong in society. Secondly, they contribute to the development of their child, who will soon go to a school where all kinds of thinking will be useful.

Experts recommend paying special attention to creative thinking, which will allow their child at any age to go beyond the boundaries proposed, remain flexible and reasoning.

The study of child development is undoubtedly of great theoretical and practical interest. It is one of the main ways to in-depth knowledge of the nature of thinking and the laws of its development. The study of the ways in which a child's thinking develops is also of understandable practical pedagogical interest.

The ability to think is gradually formed in the process of development of the child, the development of his cognitive activity. Cognition begins with the brain's reflection of reality in sensations and perceptions, which form the sensory basis of thinking.

One can speak of a child's thinking from the time when he begins to reflect some of the simplest connections between objects and phenomena and to act correctly in accordance with them.

A detailed study of thinking requires the identification and special analysis of its various processes, aspects, moments - abstraction and generalization, ideas and concepts, judgments and conclusions, etc. But the real process of thinking includes the unity and interconnection of all these aspects and moments.

The intellectual development of the child is carried out in the course of his objective activity and communication, in the course of mastering social experience. Visual-effective, visual-figurative and verbal-logical thinking are successive stages of intellectual development. Genetically, the earliest form of thinking is visual-effective thinking, the first manifestations of which in a child can be observed at the end of the first - beginning of the second year of life, even before mastering active speech. Already the first objective actions of the child have a number of important features. When a practical result is achieved, some signs of an object and its relationship with other objects are revealed; the possibility of their knowledge acts as a property of any subject manipulation. The child encounters objects created by human hands, and so on. enters into subject-practical communication with other people. Initially, an adult is the main source and mediator of a child's acquaintance with objects and ways of using them. Socially developed generalized ways of using objects are the first knowledge (generalizations) that a child learns with the help of an adult from social experience.

Visual-figurative thinking occurs in preschool children aged 4-6 years. The connection between thinking and practical actions, although it remains, is not as close, direct and immediate as before. In some cases, no practical manipulation with the object is required, but in all cases it is necessary to clearly perceive and visualize the object. Those. preschoolers think only in visual images and do not yet master concepts (in the strict sense).

Significant shifts in the intellectual development of the child occur at school age, when teaching becomes its leading activity, aimed at mastering systems of concepts in various subjects. These shifts are expressed in the knowledge of ever deeper properties of objects, in the formation of the mental operations necessary for this, the emergence of new motives for cognitive activity. The mental operations that are formed in younger schoolchildren are still connected with specific material, they are not generalized enough; the resulting concepts are concrete in nature. The thinking of children of this age is conceptually concrete.

In children, the acquisition of a concept largely depends on the experience on which they rely. Significant difficulties arise when a new concept denoted by a certain word does not agree with what is already associated with this word in the child, i.e. with the content of the given concept (often incorrect or incomplete), which he already owns. Most often this happens in cases where a strictly scientific concept, assimilated by children in the basement, diverges from the so-called worldly, pre-scientific concept, already learned by them outside of special education, in the process of everyday communication with other people and the accumulation of personal sensory experience (for example, a bird this is an animal that flies, therefore butterflies, beetles, flies are birds, but a chicken, a duck are not, they do not fly.Or: predatory animals are "harmful" or "terrible", for example, rats, mice, and a cat is not a predator, it pet, affectionate).

Younger schoolchildren are already mastering some of the more complex forms of reasoning, they are aware of the power of logical necessity. On the basis of practical and visual-sensory experience, they develop - at first in the simplest forms - verbal-logical thinking, i.e. thinking in the form of abstract concepts. Thinking now appears not only in the form of practical actions and not only in the form of visual images, but above all in the form of abstract concepts and reasoning.

“The development of processes that subsequently lead to the formation of concepts has its roots deep in childhood, but only in transitional age those intellectual functions mature, take shape and develop, which in a peculiar combination form the mental basis of the process of concept formation.

Observation data from children suggests that the child begins to draw “conclusions” early. It would be wrong to deny that children of preschool and perhaps even preschool age have the opportunity to make some "inferences"; but it would be completely unreasonable to equate them with the inferences of adults, in particular with those forms of inference used by scientific knowledge.

A boy at the age of 4 years 6 months turns to his father: “Dad, the sky is bigger than the earth, yes, yes, I know that. Because the Sun is bigger than the Earth (he learned this from adults even earlier), and Vera (his older sister) just showed me that the sky is bigger than the Sun. And after 3 months in the summer after a walk by the stream: "Stones are heavier than ice." - "How did you know that?" - “Because ice is lighter than water; they go to the bottom in the water. This child compared visual situations of his experience and information about objects he received from adults.

The above fact clearly reveals the features of typical preschooler inferences. His thought still functions within perception. Therefore, his reasoning is very often carried out by means of the transfer of entire visual situations; the conclusion goes from a single fact to a single fact.

To characterize the specific form of these children's inferences, which dominates at preschool age, the psychologist V. Stern introduced the term transduction , distinguishing it from both induction and deduction. Transduction is a conclusion that passes from one particular or single case to another particular or single case, bypassing the general one. Transductive inferences are made on the basis of similarity, difference, or analogy. What distinguishes them from induction and deduction is the lack of generality. Piaget correctly noted that Stern only gave a description, not an explanation, of transduction. The absence of generalization in transduction is in fact not its primary, not defining feature. The child in transduction does not generalize because and insofar as he cannot isolate the essential objective connections of things from the random combinations in which they are given in perception. The situational attachment of the preschooler's thinking affects the transduction. But transduction is by no means the only leading form of inference in a preschooler. The development of the forms of children's thinking is inseparable from the development of its content, from the acquaintance of the child with a specific area of ​​reality. Therefore, the appearance of higher types of inference occurs at the beginning, so to speak, not along the entire front of intellectual activity, but in separate islands, primarily where the child’s acquaintance with facts, his connection with reality turns out to be the deepest and most durable.

Elementary causal dependencies are noticed by children early, as evidenced by numerous observations. However, one cannot, of course, ascribe to a preschool child a generalized understanding of complex causal dependencies. The mental activity of the child develops at first primarily in the process of observation, in the closest connection with perception. It is very instructive and vivid in its attempts to understand and explain what is observed when perceiving pictures. To explain their content, children often resort to a whole series of reasoning and inferences.

As long as the general is not yet recognized as the general, based on essential connections, but is reduced to a collective generality of the particular, the child’s reasoning usually comes down at first to a transfer by analogy from one particular case to another, or from the particular to the general as a collective set of particular cases (approaching that , which in logic was called inductive reasoning, through a simple enumeration) and from the general as such a set of particular cases to one of them. These transference-based inferences of the child are based on random single connections, relations of external resemblance, more or less random causal relationships. And sometimes the child has "inferences" from the presence of one object or feature to another due to the strong associative connection established between them by contiguity. As long as the child is not able to reveal essential, internal connections, his inferences easily slip into transfers of external associative connections from one situation to another, clothed in an external form of inferences. But along with this, in areas that are practically more familiar and close to the child, genuine inductive-deductive, of course, elementary conclusions begin to appear in him.

Thus, an analysis of a child's thinking reveals in him relatively very early - at preschool age and even at the beginning of it - the emergence of diverse mental activity. In a small preschooler, one can already observe a number of basic intellectual processes in which adult thinking takes place; questions arise before him; he strives for understanding, seeks explanations, he generalizes, concludes, reasons; it is a thinking being in which true thinking has already awakened. Thus, there is an obvious successive connection between the thinking of a child and the thinking of an adult.

It is only when the child becomes a teenager that the transition to thinking in concepts becomes fundamentally possible.

L.S. Vygotsky distinguishes three main stages in the development of concepts and, accordingly, in conceptual thinking.

The first stage in the formation of concepts is the formation of an unformed and disordered set, the allocation of a certain set of objects, united without sufficient internal relationship and relationship between its constituent parts. The meaning of the word at this stage of development is an indefinite, unformed syncretic linkage. individual items, one way or another connected with each other in the representation and perception of the child into one fused image. In the formation of this image, the syncretism of children's perception or action plays a decisive role, so this image is extremely unstable.

The second major stage in the development of concepts encompasses many functionally, structurally, and genetically diverse types of one and the same way of thinking in its nature. This thinking is called Vygotsky thinking in complexes. This means that the generalizations created with the help of this way of thinking represent in their structure complexes of individual concrete objects or things, united not only on the basis of subjective connections, but on the basis of objective connections that actually exist between these objects.

The meanings of words at this stage of development can most accurately be defined as "family names" combined into complexes or groups of objects. The most essential thing for the construction of the complex is that it is based not on an abstract and logical, but on a very specific and actual connection between the individual elements that make up its composition. The complex, like the concept, is a generalization or union of specific heterogeneous objects. But the connection underlying the generalization can be very various types. Any connection can lead to the inclusion of this element in the complex, as long as it is actually available.

Thinking in complexes includes several intermediate stages: 1) combining objects into “collections” - mutual complementation of objects according to any one attribute; 2) "pseudo-concept" - a complex association of a number of specific objects that are phenotypically, in their own way appearance, according to the totality of external features, completely coincide with the concept, but according to its genetic nature, according to the conditions of its emergence and development, according to causal-dynamic relationships, it is not a concept.

A child at the stage of complex thinking thinks the same objects as the meaning of a word as an adult, and this is the basis for understanding between them, but thinks with the help of other intellectual operations.

The concept in its natural and developed form presupposes not only the unification and generalization of individual concrete elements of experience, it also presupposes the isolation, abstraction of individual elements and the ability to consider them outside the concrete and actual connection to which they are given in experience. The concept development stage is also divided into several sub-stages: 1) the stage of potential concepts and 2) the stage of true concepts. Only the mastery of the process of abstraction and the development of complex thinking can lead the child to the formation of true concepts. The decisive role in the formation of a true concept belongs to the word. “From syncretic images and connections, from complex thinking, from potential concepts, on the basis of the use of a word as a means of forming a concept, that peculiar significative structure arises, which we can call a concept in the true meaning of this word.”

It is in the middle and senior school ages that more complex cognitive tasks become available to schoolchildren. In the process of solving them, mental operations are generalized, formalized, thereby expanding the range of their transfer and application in new situations. A system of interconnected, generalized and reversible operations is formed. The ability to reason, to substantiate one's judgments, to realize and control the process of reasoning, to master its general methods, to move from its expanded forms to folded forms is developed. A transition is being made from conceptual-concrete to abstract-conceptual thinking.

The intellectual development of the child is characterized by a regular change of stages, in which each previous stage prepares the subsequent ones. With the emergence of new forms of thinking, the old forms not only do not disappear, but are preserved and developed. Thus, visual-effective thinking, characteristic of preschoolers, acquires new content among schoolchildren, finding, in particular, its expression in solving ever more complex structural and technical problems. Verbal-figurative thinking also rises to a higher level, manifesting itself in the assimilation of works of poetry by schoolchildren, visual arts, music.

When and how to start the development of thinking in children?
The development of thinking in children is the primary task of responsible parents. How to teach a child to think? Someone thinks that this task should be solved by the school. And someone, on the contrary, seeks to stuff the baby with useful knowledge as early as possible. This article will help parents understand the peculiarities of thinking of children of different ages and correctly direct the development of intellectual abilities.
The ability to think is one of the most important human qualities. This is confirmed by the existence of many synonyms for the concept of "thinking": mind, reason, quick wit, logic, ingenuity, intelligence, ingenuity. Folk wisdom is expressed in numerous proverbs and sayings about fools and wise men. According to one of them: what Vanya did not learn, Ivan will not learn. This statement shows the phenomenal receptivity of the child's brain.

The baby has intelligence from birth. The development of thinking in infants is called the sensorimotor stage. The little one learns the world with the help of the simplest actions, such as sucking, looking and grabbing. And this means that environment should be filled with a variety of stimuli: wallpaper with a pattern, colorful pillows, images on the ceiling and mobile mobiles.
An empty room with neutral walls and a white ceiling significantly impoverishes the development of the child's intellectual abilities. Dear parents! When decorating a children's room, give preference to paintings by famous artists, rather than cartoon characters. Cultivate a child's taste for classical music. Babies love Vivaldi's concertos and Beethoven's 5th symphony.

As often as possible, take the child in your arms, stroke and hug him. This activates tactile sensations. Psychologists recommend using such methods of communication not only for mothers, but also for fathers. Talk to your child. He does not yet understand the meaning, but all the words are firmly imprinted in his brain. You should not lisp with the little one. Babble is not a sign of mental incompetence, but a stage in the development of the speech apparatus.
It is useful for the baby to see parents, to observe their actions. Never quarrel and do not sort things out at home. Infant intelligence is sensitive to negative emotions. Adequate methods of development of thinking should prevent the appearance of unhappy children. Stimulate your child's limitless potential with natural means to make life interesting and joyful. Any child will grow up smart if he is given what he needs and does it on time.

Intellectual abilities of a young child
The first three years of life are the most important time that determines the entire subsequent development of the child's intellectual abilities. It is during this period that connections between brain cells are most actively born. By the age of 3, 80% of all possible connections are formed. The further development of thinking in children will be based on this basis. Parents who have missed laying a solid foundation will try to teach their children how to work well on a bad computer.
AT early childhood(from 1-3 years old) the main occupation of the child is object-manipulative activity. The kid no longer just confidently grabs various objects, but also performs various actions with them. First he throws, then taps one cube against another, tries to make a pyramid, picks up the details in shape and size. This is how visual-effective thinking is formed.

The peculiarities of children's thinking at this stage are connected with the fact that the little one learns the world by trial and error. By manipulating objects, the child is faced with the first tasks that require reflection. The ball rolled under the sofa interesting subject located behind the closet door, the TV stopped showing your favorite cartoon. The perplexed kid enthusiastically proceeds to practical trials. He tries to get the ball with his hand, attracts improvised means.
Too quick parents immediately rush to the rescue, depriving the child of the pleasure of independent search. Dear moms and dads! Do not rush to solve baby problems. Don't rush or push toddlers who are testing their limits. Give the little one time to figure out the principle of operation of this or that mechanism, to catch the connection or sequence. Don't interfere with the future genius!

Techniques for the development of thinking in young children:

- "Freedom of Expression!". Active kids draw on wallpaper, tear books, soil clothes. These are the first acts of children's self-expression. It is difficult for a child to understand why it is impossible to leave a handprint on the wall. Excessive predilection of mothers for cleanliness harms the development of creative thinking. You can raise a very clean and tidy person, but he will definitely not offer the world a single original idea.

- "Throw an idea!". Young children do not yet have a conscious attitude to solving mental problems. They act intuitively, guided by random ways and tools. Noticing that the child cannot succeed in any way, unobtrusively draw his attention to a more promising option. At the same time, avoid direct instructions, act according to the principle: "What if ...".

Features of thinking of preschool children
Many parents hope that the development of the thinking of preschool children is fully provided cognitive activities in kindergarten. Indeed, kids attending a preschool institution demonstrate extensive knowledge in the field of natural phenomena, seasons, animate and inanimate nature, etc. All this is fine, but do not forget that the assimilation of the sum of knowledge is not thinking as such.
A thinking preschooler does not just memorize facts, but operates with information: compares objects, finds common and different, establishes causes and effects. At this age, the child acquires the ability to imagine an action before its implementation. Speak first, then execute. Such thinking is visual-figurative. This is not taught in kindergarten.

Methods for developing the thinking of a preschooler:

- "Associative Chains". Associations that connect objects and phenomena by similarity, contiguity and contrast form the basis of thinking. The development of children's intellectual abilities will be faster if they are taught to compare, to find similarities in different things. Throw a ball to the child and name any object. Let the preschooler, in turn, name something similar (by color, shape, size, weight).

- "Socks and Light Bulbs". Children love to fantasize. Nothing is impossible for a child's mind. Show the preschooler two unrelated objects. For example, a sock and a light bulb. Together, describe the main properties of each object. And then try to transfer the properties of one item to another. think about what might come of it.
Isn't it true, luminous socks would be very convenient to find under the bed. And woolen light bulbs would never break. Such methods of development of thinking contribute to the formation of flexibility and originality of the intellect, creativity. The child gets used to seeing the unusual in the ordinary, combining the incongruous, producing non-standard ideas.

The development of thinking in younger students
Efforts of educators kindergarten could well leave a preschooler indifferent. But the school is simply obliged to influence the development of the intellectual abilities of children. Confidently speaking, penetrating the secrets of the native language, mastering arithmetic operations, the younger student enters the time of verbal-logical thinking. Very soon, he will be quite free to compare, classify, establish patterns, reveal hidden properties and connections.
Parents who tirelessly shaped their children's mindsets from birth to school can take a breather. But not too long. The intellectual abilities of a child of primary school age without proper training can quickly wither away. By overloading the child's brain with new requirements and responsibilities, you can completely discourage any desire to think.

Methods for developing the thinking of a younger student:
- Bloom's Cube. A paper cube is used, on the sides of which it is written: “describe”, “explain how?”, “explain why?”, “evaluate”, “suggest”, “think up”. The child rolls a die and, depending on the side that has fallen out, describes the properties, mechanism of action, causes, pros and cons, gives an assessment, and offers his own solution. The development of the intellectual abilities of children using this method can be carried out both at school and at home.

- "Systemic effect". The world consists of more than just individual items. If you combine several objects, you get a system that performs certain functions. The systems are car, computer, phone. And even an ordinary mop is also a system consisting of many fibers. Teach children to find useful systems in nature and in human activity: family, flock of birds, sofa bed, reinforced concrete.

Methods for developing the thinking of a teenager
The brain of a teenager can be compared to a fairly powerful processor. During this period, the development of abstract theoretical thinking is in full swing. Teenagers love to put forward hypotheses, justify and refute, argue and prove. They can abstract from a specific situation, work out combinations, change proportions.
Teenagers do not trust adults and communicate mainly with their peers. Parents are unlikely to be able to exert a significant influence on the characteristics of the thinking of children on the threshold of adulthood. The leading role here belongs to an older comrade or an authoritative teacher who could become a mentor for a teenager. Quite often this is the coach of the sports section or the head of the circle.

Methods for developing the thinking of a teenager:
- "Smart question". The work of thought is the path from a question to an answer. In order to easily and quickly analyze any phenomenon, teach a teenager to find answers to 5 basic questions: “what?”, “Where?”, “When?”, “Why?” and why?". The intellectual abilities of the child are also manifested in the very ability to ask questions. Teach the younger generation to correctly formulate clarifying, problematic, reflective, leading and other types of questions.

- "Morphological box". This method of developing thinking helps to carefully analyze complex systems and not miss a single solution. To begin with, it is necessary to highlight all the important features (parts, properties, features) in the object or phenomenon under study and write them down horizontally on a piece of paper. All written vertically possible options existence or performance (shape, size, etc.).

Let's say you decided to draw a portrait of an ideal person. We write down horizontally: eyes, nose, ears, etc. Vertical: shape, color, size, etc. Successively filling in all the cells of the resulting table, we get the most Full description phenomenon being studied. The morphological box is used in solving a wide range of mental problems. The main thing is to clearly formulate the problem and correctly identify the columns of the table.

Conclusion: The development of thinking in children does not pursue the goal of forming geniuses. Raise your child to be kind, responsible and smiling. A flexible mind and a healthy body are the natural states of the human body. Do your best to support them!