Chapter 3. Psychology of cognitive processes

1. Sensations and perceptions

Let us consider the structure of cognitive processes with the help of which a person receives and comprehends information, displays the objective world, transforming it into his subjective image.

When describing the process of constructing an image of a perceived object, a distinction is made between the stimulus and activity paradigms (S.D. Smirnov).

So, between these two thresholds there is a zone of sensitivity in which the stimulation of receptors entails the transmission of a message, but it does not reach consciousness. These signals enter the brain and are processed by the lower centers of the brain (subconscious, subthreshold Perception), without reaching the cerebral cortex and without being realized by the person, but this information, accumulating, can influence human behavior. The same effect of subconscious perception is possible if the exposure time or the interval between signals was less than 0.1 seconds, and the signals did not have time to be processed at the level of consciousness.

Intentional and unintentional perception

Depending on the purposeful nature of the individual’s activity, Perception is divided into intentional (voluntary) and unintentional (involuntary).

Unintentional (involuntary) Perception is caused both by the characteristics of environmental objects (their brightness, proximity, unusualness), and by their correspondence to the interests of the individual. In unintentional perception there is no predetermined goal of the activity. There is also no volitional activity in it.

IN deliberate perception a person sets the goal of activity, making certain volitional efforts for the better realization of the intention that has arisen, and arbitrarily selects objects of perception.

In the process of human cognition of the surrounding reality, Perception can turn into observation. Observation is the most developed form of intentional perception. Observation is understood as a purposeful, systematically carried out Perception of objects in the knowledge of which a person is interested.

Observation is characterized by great activity of the individual. A person does not perceive everything that catches his eye, but isolates the most important or interesting things.

By differentiating objects of perception, the observer organizes Perception in such a way that objects of perception do not escape from the field of his activity

The systematic nature of purposeful perception makes it possible to trace a phenomenon in development, to note its qualitative, quantitative, and periodic changes. Thanks to the inclusion of active thinking in the course of observation, the main thing is separated from the secondary, the important from the random. Thinking helps to clearly differentiate objects of perception. Thanks to observation, the connection between perception and thinking and speech is ensured. In observation, Perception, thinking and speech are combined into a single process of mental activity.

The act of observation reveals the extreme stability of a person’s voluntary attention. Thanks to this, the observer can make observations over a long period of time and, if necessary, repeat them several times. If a person systematically practices observation and improves the culture of observation, then he develops such a personality trait as observation.

Observation lies in the ability to notice characteristic but subtle features of objects and phenomena. It is acquired in the process of systematically doing what you love and is therefore associated with the development of a person’s professional interests.

The relationship between observation and observation reflects the relationship between mental processes and personality traits. Observation, which has become a personality trait, rebuilds both the structure and content of all mental processes.

Perception disturbance

With sudden physical or emotional fatigue, sometimes there is an increase in susceptibility to ordinary external stimuli. Daylight suddenly blinds, the color of surrounding objects becomes unusually bright. The sounds are deafening, the slamming of a door sounds like a gunshot, the clinking of dishes becomes unbearable. Odors are perceived acutely, causing severe irritation. Tissues touching the body appear rough. Visions can be moving or motionless, with unchanged content (stable hallucinations) and constantly changing in the form of various events played out, as on stage or in a movie (scene-like hallucinations). Single images (single hallucinations), parts of objects, bodies (one eye, half a face, ear), crowds of people, flocks of animals, insects, fantastic creatures appear. The content of visual hallucinations has a very strong emotional impact: it can frighten, cause horror, or, on the contrary, interest, admiration, even admiration. It is impossible to convince a hallucinating person that the hallucinatory image does not exist: “How can you not see, there is a dog standing, red fur, here it is, here...”. It is assumed that hallucinations occur in the presence of a hypnotic paradoxical phase of brain function, in the presence of an inhibitory state in the cerebral cortex.

Highlight pseudohallucinations- when images are projected not into external space, but into internal space: “voices sound inside the head,” visions are perceived by the “mind's eye.” pseudohallucinations can be in any sensory sphere: tactile, gustatory, visual, kinesthetic, sound, but in any case they are not identified with real objects, although they are clear images, in the smallest detail, persistent and continuous. pseudohallucinations arise spontaneously, regardless of a person’s will and cannot be arbitrarily changed or expelled from consciousness; they have the nature of an “imposition.”

The combination of pseudohallucinations with a symptom of alienation, “made” (“made by someone”) is called Kandinsky syndrome: a person develops a feeling of influence from the outside. There are 3 components of this syndrome:

ideational - “preparedness, violence of thoughts”, an unpleasant feeling of “inner openness” arises;
sensory - “made sensations” (“they forcefully show pictures...”);
motor - “made movements” (“someone acts with their arms, legs, body, makes them walk strangely, do something...”).

Illusions, that is, erroneous perceptions of real things or phenomena, should be distinguished from hallucinations. The obligatory presence of a genuine object, although perceived erroneously, is the main feature of illusions, usually divided into effective, verbal (verbal) and pareidolic.

Unlike cognitive processes (Perception, memory, thinking, etc.), attention does not have its own special content; it appears as if within these processes and is inseparable from them. attention characterizes the dynamics of mental processes.

Physiologically, this is explained by the fact that under the influence of prolonged action of the same stimulus, excitation, according to the law of negative induction, causes inhibition in the same area of the cortex, which leads to a decrease in the stability of attention.

However, the lack of stimuli and information is an unfavorable factor. Studies have shown that when a person is isolated from irritants coming from the environment and from his own body (sensory deprivation, when a person is placed in a soundproof chamber, wearing light-proof glasses, placed in a warm bath to reduce skin sensitivity), then a normal physically healthy person will quickly begins to experience difficulties in controlling his thoughts, he loses orientation in space, in the structure of his own body, he begins to have hallucinations and nightmares. When examining people after such isolation, they observed disturbances in the perception of color, shape, size, space, time, and sometimes the constancy of perception was lost.

All this indicates that normal perception requires a certain influx of signals from the external environment. At the same time, an excessive influx of signals leads to a decrease in the accuracy of human perception and response to errors. These limitations on the possibility of simultaneous perception of several independent signals, information about which comes from the external and internal environment, are associated with the main characteristic of attention - its fixed volume. An important feature of attention span is that it is difficult to regulate during learning and training. But you can still develop attention with the help of psychological exercises, for example:

"Indian Games" to develop attention span: two or more competitors are shown many objects at once for a short time, after which each individual tells the judge what he saw, trying to list and describe in detail as possible larger number items. Thus, one magician achieved that, quickly passing by a display case, he could notice and describe up to 40 objects.
"Typewriter"- This classic theater exercise develops concentration skills. Each person is given 1-2 letters from the alphabet, the teacher names the word and the participants must “tap out” it on their typewriter. They name the word and make a clap, then the person whose letter the word begins with makes a clap, then the teacher's clap - the second letter, the student's clap, etc.
"Who's faster?" People are asked to cross out any frequently occurring letter, such as “o” or “e,” in a column of any text as quickly and accurately as possible. The success of the test is assessed by the time it takes to complete it and the number of errors made - missing letters: the lower the value of these indicators, the higher the success. At the same time, it is necessary to encourage success and stimulate interest.
To train switching and distribution of attention, the task should be changed: it is proposed to cross out one letter with a vertical line and the other with a horizontal line, or, at a signal, alternate between crossing out one letter and crossing out another. Over time, the task can become more difficult. For example, cross out one letter, underline another, and circle the third.
The goal of such training is to develop habitual, automatic actions, subordinated to a specific, clearly understood goal. The time of tasks varies depending on age (younger schoolchildren - up to 15 minutes, teenagers - up to 30 minutes).
"Observation" Children are asked to describe in detail from memory the school yard, the path from home to school - something they have seen hundreds of times. Such descriptions junior schoolchildren do orally, and their classmates fill in the missing details. Teenagers can write down their descriptions and then compare them with each other and with reality. This game reveals the connections between attention and visual memory.
"Proofreading" The presenter writes several sentences on a piece of paper with omission and rearrangement of letters in some words. The student is allowed to read this text only once, immediately correcting mistakes with a colored pencil. Then he passes the sheet to the second student, who corrects the mistakes left with a pencil of a different color. It is possible to conduct competitions in pairs.
"Fingers" Participants sit comfortably in armchairs or on chairs, forming a circle. You should interlace the fingers of your hands on your knees, leaving your thumbs free. On the command “Start”, slowly rotate the thumbs around one another at a constant speed and in one direction, making sure that they do not touch each other. Focus on this movement. At the “Stop” command, stop the exercise. Duration 5-15 minutes. Some participants experience unusual sensations: enlargement or alienation of the fingers, an apparent change in the direction of their movement. Some will feel very irritated or anxious. These difficulties are associated with the unusual nature of the object of concentration.

Cognitive mental processes are channels of our communication with the world. Incoming information about specific phenomena and objects undergoes changes and turns into an image. All human knowledge about the world around us is the result of the integration of individual knowledge obtained through cognitive mental processes. Each of these processes has its own characteristics and its own organization. But at the same time, proceeding simultaneously and harmoniously, these processes interact with each other imperceptibly for a person and, as a result, create for him a single, holistic, continuous picture of the objective world.

1. Feeling- the simplest cognitive mental process, during which there is a reflection of individual properties, qualities, aspects of reality, its objects and phenomena, connections between them, as well as internal states of the body that directly affect the human senses. Sensation is the source of our knowledge about the world and ourselves. All living organisms with a nervous system have the ability to sense sensations. Conscious sensations are characteristic only of living beings with a brain. The main role of sensations is to quickly convey to the central nervous system information about the state of both the external and internal environment of the body. All sensations arise as a result of the influence of irritating stimuli on the corresponding sensory organs. In order for a sensation to arise, it is necessary that the stimulus causing it reaches a certain value, called absolute lower threshold of sensation. Each type of sensation has its own thresholds.

But the sense organs have the ability to adapt to changing conditions, so the thresholds of sensations are not constant and can change when moving from one environmental condition to another. This ability is called adaptation of sensations. For example, when moving from light to dark, the sensitivity of the eye to various stimuli changes tens of times. The speed and completeness of adaptation of various sensory systems is not the same: in tactile sensations, with smell, a high degree of adaptation is noted, and the lowest degree is with pain sensations, since pain is a signal of dangerous violation in the functioning of the body, and rapid adaptation of pain sensations can threaten its death.

The English physiologist C. Sherrington proposed a classification of sensations, presented in Fig. 8.

Exteroceptive sensations- these are sensations that arise when external stimuli influence human analyzers located on the surface of the body.

Proprioceptive sensations– these are sensations that reflect the movement and position of parts of the human body.

Interoceptive sensations– these are sensations that reflect the state of the internal environment of the human body.

According to the time of occurrence of sensations there are relevant And irrelevant.

For example, a sour taste in the mouth from lemon, a feeling of so-called “factual” pain in the amputated limb.

Rice. 8. Classification of sensations (according to Ch. Sherrington)

All sensations have the following characteristics:

♦ quality– an essential feature of sensations that allows one to distinguish one type from another (for example, auditory from visual);

♦ intensity– a quantitative characteristic of sensations, which is determined by the strength of the current stimulus;

♦ duration– a temporary characteristic of sensations, determined by the time of exposure to the stimulus.

2. Perception- this is a holistic reflection of objects and phenomena of the objective world under their direct influence in at the moment to the senses. Only humans and some higher representatives of the animal world have the ability to perceive the world in the form of images. Together with the processes of sensation, perception provides direct orientation in the surrounding world. It involves identifying the main and most significant features from the complex of recorded features, while simultaneously abstracting from the unimportant ones (Fig. 9). Unlike sensations, which reflect individual qualities of reality, with the help of perception an integral picture of reality is created. Perception is always subjective, since people perceive the same information differently depending on abilities, interests, life experience, etc.

Rice. 9. Classification of types of perception

Let us consider perception as an intellectual process of successive, interconnected acts of searching for signs necessary and sufficient for the formation of an image:

Primary selection of a number of features from the entire flow of information and making a decision that they relate to one specific object;

Searching in memory for a complex of signs similar in sensations;

Assigning a perceived object to a specific category;

Search for additional signs that confirm or refute the correctness of the decision;

The final conclusion about what object is perceived.

To the main properties of perception include: integrity– internal organic relationship between parts and the whole in the image;

objectivity– an object is perceived by a person as separate in space and time physical body;

generality– assignment of each image to a certain class of objects;

constancy– the relative constancy of the perception of the image, the preservation of its parameters by the object regardless of the conditions of its perception (distance, lighting, etc.);

meaningfulness– understanding the essence of the perceived object in the process of perception;

selectivity– preferential selection of some objects over others in the process of perception.

Perception happens externally directed(perception of objects and phenomena of the external world) and internally directed(perception of one’s own states, thoughts, feelings, etc.).

According to the time of occurrence, perception occurs relevant And irrelevant.

Perception may be wrong(or illusory), such as visual or auditory illusions.

The development of perception has a very great value for educational activities. Developed perception helps to quickly assimilate a larger amount of information with less energy expenditure.

3. Presentation- this is the mental process of reflecting objects and phenomena that are not currently perceived, but are recreated on the basis of previous experience. Ideas do not arise on their own, but as a result of practical activity.

Since ideas are based on past perceptual experience, the main classification of ideas is built on the basis of classifications of types of sensations and perceptions (Fig. 10).

Rice. 10. Classification of types of representations

Basic properties of views:

fragmentation– the presented image often lacks any of its features, sides, or parts;

instability(or impermanence)– the representation of any image sooner or later disappears from the field of human consciousness;

variability– when a person enriches himself with new experience and knowledge, a change in ideas about the objects of the surrounding world occurs.

4. Imagination- This is a cognitive mental process that consists in the creation of new images by a person based on his existing ideas. Imagination is closely related to human emotional experiences. Imagination differs from perception in that its images do not always correspond to reality; they may contain, to a greater or lesser extent, elements of fantasy and fiction. Imagination is the basis of visual-figurative thinking, which allows a person to navigate a situation and solve problems without direct practical intervention. It especially helps in cases where practical actions are either impossible, or difficult, or impractical.

Rice. 11. Classification of types of imagination

When classifying types of imagination, they proceed from the main characteristics - degree of volitional effort And degree of activity(Fig. 11).

Recreating Imagination manifests itself when a person needs to recreate the idea of an object based on its description (for example, when reading descriptions of geographical places or historical events, as well as when meeting literary characters).

Dream is an imagination aimed at a desired future. In a dream, a person always creates an image of what he wants, while in creative images the desire of their creator is not always embodied. A dream is a process of imagination that is not included in creative activity, that is, it does not lead to the immediate and direct receipt of an objective product in the form of a work of art, invention, product, etc.

Imagination is closely related to creativity. Creative imagination characterized by the fact that a person transforms his existing ideas and creates a new image on his own - not according to a familiar image, but completely different from it. In practical activity, the phenomenon of imagination is primarily associated with the process of artistic creativity in cases where the author is no longer satisfied with recreating reality using realistic methods. Turning to unusual, bizarre, unrealistic images makes it possible to enhance the intellectual, emotional and moral impact of art on a person.

Creation is an activity that generates new material and spiritual values. Creativity reveals the individual’s need for self-expression, self-actualization and realization of one’s creative possibilities. In psychology, the following are distinguished: criteria for creative activity:

♦ creative activity is that which leads to obtaining a new result, a new product;

♦ since a new product (result) can be obtained by chance, the process of obtaining the product itself must be new (new method, technique, method, etc.);

♦ the result of creative activity cannot be obtained using a simple logical conclusion or action according to a known algorithm;

♦ creative activity, as a rule, is aimed not so much at solving a problem already set by someone, but at independently seeing the problem and identifying new, original solutions;

♦ creative activity is usually characterized by the presence of emotional experiences preceding the moment of finding a solution;

♦ creative activity requires special motivation.

Analyzing the nature of creativity, G. Lindsay, K. Hull and R. Thompson tried to find out what interferes with the manifestation of creative abilities in humans. They discovered that interferes with creativity not only the insufficient development of certain abilities, but also the presence of certain personality traits, for example:

– a tendency to conformism, i.e. the desire to be like others, not to differ from the majority of people around them;

– fear of seeming stupid or funny;

– fear or reluctance to criticize others due to the idea of criticism formed since childhood as something negative and offensive;

– excessive conceit, i.e. complete satisfaction with one’s personality;

– predominant critical thinking, i.e., aimed only at identifying shortcomings, and not at finding ways to eradicate them.

5. Thinking- this is a higher cognitive process, the generation of new knowledge, a generalized and indirect reflection of reality by a person in its essential connections and relationships. The essence of this cognitive mental process is the generation of new knowledge based on man’s transformation of reality. This is the most complex cognitive process highest form reflections of reality (Fig. 12).

Rice. 12. Classification of types of thinking

Subject-effective thinking is carried out during actions with objects with direct perception of the object in reality.

Visual-figurative thinking occurs when imagining object images.

Abstract-logical thinking is the result of logical operations with concepts. Thinking wears motivated And purposeful nature, all operations of the thought process are caused by the needs, motives, interests of the individual, his goals and objectives.

♦ Thinking always individually. It makes it possible to understand the patterns of the material world, cause-and-effect relationships in nature and social life.

♦ The source of mental activity is practice.

♦ The physiological basis of thinking is reflex activity of the brain.

♦ An extremely important feature of thinking is the inextricable connection with speech. We always think in words, even if we don't say them out loud.

Active research into thinking has been conducted since the 17th century. Initially, thinking was actually identified with logic. All theories of thinking can be divided into two groups: the first are based on the hypothesis that a person has innate intellectual abilities that do not change over the course of life, the second - on the idea that mental abilities are formed and developed under the influence of life experience.

To the main mental operations include:

analysis– mental division of the integral structure of the reflected object into its constituent elements;

synthesis– reunification of individual elements into an integral structure;

comparison– establishing relationships of similarity and difference;

generalization– identification of common features based on the combination of essential properties or similarities;

abstraction– highlighting any aspect of a phenomenon that in reality does not exist as an independent one;

specification– abstraction from general features and highlighting, emphasizing the particular, individual;

systematization(or classification)– mental distribution of objects or phenomena into certain groups, subgroups.

In addition to the types and operations listed above, there are thinking processes:

judgment– a statement containing a specific thought;

inference– a series of logically related statements leading to new knowledge;

definition of concepts– a system of judgments about a certain class of objects or phenomena, highlighting their most general characteristics;

induction– derivation of a particular judgment from a general one;

deduction– derivation of a general judgment from particular ones.

Basic quality characteristics of thinking are: independence, initiative, depth, breadth, speed, originality, criticality, etc.

The concept of intelligence is inextricably linked with thinking.

Intelligence- this is the totality of all mental abilities, providing a person with the opportunity to solve a variety of problems. In 1937, D. Wexler (USA) developed tests to measure intelligence. According to Wexler, intelligence is the global ability to act intelligently, think rationally, and cope well with life's circumstances.

L. Thurstone in 1938, exploring intelligence, identified its primary components:

counting ability– ability to operate with numbers and perform arithmetic operations;

verbal(verbal) flexibility– the ability to find the right words to explain something;

verbal perception– ability to understand oral and written language;

spatial orientation– the ability to imagine various objects in space;

memory;

reasoning ability;

quick perception of similarities and differences between objects.

What determines development of intelligence? Intelligence is influenced by both hereditary factors and environmental conditions. The development of intelligence is influenced by:

Genetic conditioning is the influence of hereditary information received from parents;

Physical and mental state of the mother during pregnancy;

Chromosomal abnormalities;

Environmental living conditions;

Features of the child's nutrition;

Social status of the family, etc.

Attempts to create a unified system for “measuring” human intelligence encounter many obstacles, since intelligence includes the ability to perform completely different-quality mental operations. The most popular is the so-called intelligence quotient(abbreviated as IQ), which allows one to correlate the level of an individual’s intellectual capabilities with the average indicators of his age and professional groups.

There is no consensus among scientists about the possibility of obtaining a real assessment of intelligence using tests, since many of them measure not so much innate intellectual abilities as knowledge, skills and abilities acquired during the learning process.

6. Mnemonic processes. Currently, in psychology there is no single, complete theory of memory, and the study of the phenomenon of memory remains one of the central tasks. Mnemonic processes, or memory processes, are studied by various sciences that consider the physiological, biochemical and psychological mechanisms of memory processes.

Memory- this is the form mental reflection, which consists in consolidating, preserving and subsequently reproducing past experience, making it possible to reuse it in activity or return to the sphere of consciousness.

Among the first psychologists who began experimental studies of mnemonic processes was the German scientist G. Ebbinghaus, who, by studying the process of memorizing various word combinations, derived a number of laws of memorization.

Memory connects the subject’s past with his present and future - this is the basis mental activity.

TO memory processes include the following:

1) memorization- a memory process that results in the consolidation of something new by associating it with something previously acquired; memorization is always selective - not everything that affects our senses is stored in memory, but only what is important to a person or aroused his interest and the greatest emotions;

2) conservation– the process of processing and retaining information;

3) playback– the process of retrieving stored material from memory;

4) forgetting– the process of getting rid of long-received, rarely used information.

One of the most important characteristics is memory quality, which is due to:

♦ speed of memorization(the number of repetitions required to retain information in memory);

♦ speed of forgetting(the time during which remembered information is stored in memory).

There are several bases for classifying types of memory (Fig. 13): according to the nature of mental activity that prevails in the activity, according to the nature of the goals of the activity, according to the duration of consolidation and storage of information, etc.

Rice. 13. Classification of types of memory

The work of different types of memory obeys some general laws.

Law of comprehension: The deeper the understanding of what is memorized, the easier it is fixed in memory.

Law of Interest: interesting things are remembered faster because less effort is spent on it.

Installation Law: Memorization occurs more easily if a person sets himself the task of perceiving the content and remembering it.

Law of first impression: The brighter the first impression of what is being remembered, the stronger and faster its memorization.

Law of Context: information is more easily remembered if it is correlated with other simultaneous impressions.

Law of volume of knowledge: The more extensive the knowledge on a certain topic, the easier it is to remember new information from this area of knowledge.

Law of the volume of memorized information: The greater the amount of information for simultaneous memorization, the worse it is remembered.

Law of braking: any subsequent memorization inhibits the previous one.

Edge law: What is said (read) at the beginning and end of a series of information is better remembered; the middle of the series is remembered worse.

Law of repetition: repetition promotes better memory.

In psychology, in connection with the study of memory, you can find two terms that are very similar to each other - “mnemonic” and “mnemonic”, the meanings of which are different. Mnemic means "pertaining to memory" and mnemonic– “related to the art of memorization”, i.e. mnemonics These are memorization techniques.

The history of mnemonics goes back to Ancient Greece. IN ancient greek mythology it talks about Mnemosyne, the mother of the nine muses, the goddess of memory and memories. Mnemonics received special development in the 19th century. in connection with the laws of associations that have received theoretical justification. For better memorization, various mnemonics techniques. Let's give examples.

Association method: The more diverse associations that arise when memorizing information, the easier the information is remembered.

Link method: combining information into a single, holistic structure using supporting words, concepts, etc.

Place method based on visual associations; Having clearly imagined the subject of memorization, you need to mentally combine it with the image of the place, which is easily retrieved from memory; for example, in order to remember information in a certain sequence, it is necessary to break it down into parts and associate each part with a specific place in a well-known sequence, for example, a route to work, the location of furniture in a room, the location of photographs on the wall, etc.

A well-known way to remember the colors of the rainbow is where the initial letter of each word in a key phrase is the first letter of the color word:

To every – To red

hunter - O range

and wants - and yellow

h nat – h green

G de – G blue

With goes– With blue

f adhan – f purple

7. Attention- this is a voluntary or involuntary direction and concentration of mental activity on any object of perception. The nature and essence of attention cause disagreements in psychological science; there is no consensus among psychologists regarding its essence. The difficulties in explaining the phenomenon of attention are caused by the fact that it is not found in a “pure” form, it is always “attention to something.” Some scientists believe that attention is not an independent process, but is only part of any other psychological process. Others believe that it is independent process, which has its own characteristics. Indeed, on the one hand, attention is included in all psychological processes, on the other hand, attention has observable and measurable characteristics (volume, concentration, switchability, etc.) that are not directly related to other cognitive processes.

Attention is a necessary condition for mastering any type of activity. It depends on the individual typological, age and other characteristics of a person. Depending on the activity of the individual, three types of attention are distinguished (Fig. 14).

Rice. 14. Classification of types of attention

Involuntary attention– the simplest type of attention. It is often called passive, or forced, since it arises and is maintained independently of human consciousness.

Voluntary attention controlled by a conscious goal, connected with the will of a person. It is also called strong-willed, active or deliberate.

Post-voluntary attention is also purposeful in nature and initially requires volitional efforts, but then the activity itself becomes so interesting that it practically does not require volitional efforts from a person to maintain attention.

Attention has certain parameters and characteristics, which in many ways are a characteristic of human abilities and capabilities. TO basic properties of attention usually include the following:

concentration– this is an indicator of the degree of concentration of consciousness on a certain object, the intensity of connection with it; concentration of attention presupposes the formation of a temporary center (focus) of all human psychological activity;

intensity– characterizes the effectiveness of perception, thinking and memory in general;

sustainability– the ability to maintain high levels of concentration and intensity of attention for a long time; determined by the type of nervous system, temperament, motivation (novelty, significance of needs, personal interests), as well as external conditions of human activity;

volume– a quantitative indicator of objects that are in the focus of attention (for an adult – from 4 to 6, for a child – no more than 1–3); the amount of attention depends not only on genetic factors and on the capabilities of the individual’s short-term memory; the characteristics of perceived objects and professional skills the subject himself;

distribution– the ability to focus attention on several objects at the same time; at the same time, several focuses (centers) of attention are formed, which makes it possible to perform several actions or monitor several processes simultaneously, without losing any of them from the field of attention;

switching – the ability to more or less easily and fairly quickly transition from one type of activity to another and concentrate on the latter.

Emotions and feelings

Emotions and feelings are a person’s experiences of his relationship to objects and phenomena of reality, to what he knows, to himself and other people.

Emotion– this is a direct reflection of the existing relationship, an experience associated with the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of needs. Emotions are involved in all mental processes in any human condition. They are able to anticipate events that have not yet occurred and can arise in connection with ideas about previously experienced or imagined situations.

Feeling- a more complex, established attitude of a person to what he knows and does. As a rule, a feeling includes a whole range of emotions. Feelings are unique to humans, they are socially determined, they give fullness and brightness to our perception, so emotionally charged facts are remembered longer. Different peoples and different historical eras express feelings differently.

Emotions and feelings are inextricably linked with the physiological state of the human body: with some, a person feels a surge of strength, an increase in energy, and with others, decline and stiffness. Emotions and feelings are always purely individual. Some of them are congenital, some are acquired during life as a result of training and upbringing. The more complexly organized a living being is, the higher the level on the evolutionary ladder it occupies, the richer the range of emotions and feelings that it is capable of experiencing. The oldest in origin, the simplest and most common emotional experiences among living beings are pleasure obtained from the satisfaction of organic needs, and displeasure if the corresponding needs remain unsatisfied.

In psychology, there are several basic, or fundamental, emotions: joy, surprise, suffering, anger, disgust, contempt, fear, shame.

Depending on the combination of speed, strength and duration of feelings, the following are distinguished: types of emotional states: mood, passion, affect, inspiration, stress, frustration (a state of disorganization of consciousness and personal activity due to severe nervous shock).

Emotions and feelings are inseparable from a person’s personality. Emotionally, people differ from each other in many ways: emotional excitability, duration, stability, strength and depth of the emotional experiences they experience, the dominance of positive or negative emotions.

Improving higher emotions and feelings means personal development of a person. This development can be carried out in several directions:

Inclusion of new objects, people, events, etc. into the emotional sphere;

Increasing the level of conscious control of your feelings;

The gradual inclusion into the moral sphere of increasingly higher values and norms, such as conscience, decency, sense of duty, responsibility, etc.

So, creation mental images environment is carried out through cognitive mental processes, which are consolidated into a single, holistic cognitive mental activity of a person. The image of the surrounding world is a complex mental formation, the formation of which involves various mental processes.

Topic No. 3. Cognitive mental processes.

1. Sensation, types and properties.

2. Perception, types, properties.

3. The phenomenon of the attention process.

4. Memory general characteristics. Types and processes of memory.

5. Thinking.

Sensation, perception, thinking are inseparable parts of a single process of reflecting reality. Sensory visual knowledge of objects and phenomena of the surrounding world is the initial one. However, sensing, perceiving, visually imagining any object, any phenomenon, a person must somehow analyze, generalize, specify, in other words, think about what is reflected in sensations and perceptions. Sensations, perceptions, ideas, and thinking constitute cognitive processes.

Sensations and perceptions are closely related. Both one and the other are the so-called sensory reflection of objective reality, existing independently of consciousness and due to its influence on the senses.

The main source of our knowledge about the external world and our own body is sensations. They constitute the main channels through which information about the phenomena of the external world and the states of the body reaches the brain, giving a person the opportunity to navigate the environment and his body.

Sensation is a reflection of a separate sensory quality or undifferentiated and non-objectified impressions of the environment.

Sensations are a reflection of specific, individual properties, qualities, aspects of objects and phenomena of material reality affecting the senses at a given moment.

For sensations to arise, it is necessary, first of all, to have objects and phenomena in the real world that affect the sense organs, which in this case are called stimuli. The effect of stimuli on the sense organs is called irritation. In nervous tissue, the process of irritation causes excitation. The sensation arises as a reaction of the nervous system to a particular stimulus and, like any mental phenomenon, has a reflex nature.

The physiological basis of sensations is the complex activity of the sense organs. I. P. Pavlov called this activity analyzer, and the systems of cells that are the most complexly organized and are perceptive apparatuses that directly carry out the analysis of stimuli are analyzers (special nervous apparatus).

The analyzer is characterized by the presence of three specific sections, i.e. consists of three main parts:

Peripheral (receptor), the receptor is the perceiving part of the analyzer, its main function is the transformation of external energy into a nervous process;

Transmitting (conducting) section or afferent or sensory nerves (centripetal), conducting excitation to the nerve centers (central section of the analyzer)

The central (brain) section or cortical section, where the processing of nerve impulses coming from peripheral sections occurs.

The peripheral (receptor) section of the analyzers consists of all sense organs - the eye, ear, nose, skin, as well as special receptor devices located in the internal environment of the body (in the digestive and respiratory organs, in the cardiovascular system, in the genitourinary organs). This section of the analyzer reacts to a specific type of stimulus and processes it into a specific excitation. Receptors can be located on the surface of the body (exteroceptors) and in internal tissues (interoceptors). Receptors located on the surface of the body respond to external stimuli. Visual, auditory, skin, taste, and olfactory analyzers have such receptors. Receptors located on the surface of the internal organs of the body respond to changes occurring inside the body. Organic sensations are associated with the activity of interoceptors. An intermediate position is occupied by proprioceptors, located in muscles and ligaments, which serve to sense the movement and position of body organs, and also participate in determining the properties and qualities of objects, in particular when touching them with the hand. Thus, the peripheral section of the analyzer plays the role of a specialized, perceiving apparatus.

Depending on the location of the receptor, there are external analyzers (in which the receptors are located on the surface of the body) and internal (in which the receptors are located in the internal organs and tissues). An intermediate position is occupied by the motor analyzer, the receptors of which are located in the muscles and ligaments. Common to all analyzers are pain sensations, through which the body receives information about the destructive properties of the stimulus.

Types of sensations:

The following bases for classifying sensations are distinguished:

1) by modality (type) of stimulus:

Visual

Auditory

Olfactory

Flavoring

Skin (tactile - sensations of touch; temperature - sensations of cold and heat; pain). The tactile sensitivity system is unevenly distributed throughout the body. The largest accumulation of tactile cells is observed on the palm, on the fingertips and on the lips. Tactile sensations of the hand, combining with muscle-joint sensitivity, form the sense of touch - a specifically human system of cognitive activity of the hand, developed through labor.

2) according to the location of the receptors - interoceptive, proprioceptive, exteroceptive:

Nteroceptive sensations - signal the state of internal processes in the body, bring to the brain irritations from the walls of the stomach and intestines, the heart and circulatory system and other internal organs. Least conscious type;

Proprioceptive sensations provide signals about the position of the body in space and form the afferent basis of human movement, playing a decisive role in their regulation. Receptors are located in muscles and joints (tendons, ligaments);

Exteroceptive sensations bring information from the outside world to a person and are the main group of sensations that connect a person with the external environment. They are conventionally divided into contact and distance.

2) by the presence or absence of direct contact with the stimulus causing the sensation - distant and contact; Distant ones include vision, hearing, and smell; they provide orientation in the immediate environment; contact – taste, pain, tactile.

Thresholds of sensations

So far we have talked about the qualitative difference between types of sensations. However, quantitative research, in other words, their measurement, is no less important.

Not every irritation causes a sensation. For a sensation to arise, the stimulus must reach a certain magnitude. Minimum value stimulus, causing a barely noticeable sensation - the lower threshold of sensation. The maximum value of the stimulus that the analyzer is capable of adequately perceiving is the upper threshold. The interval between these thresholds is called the sensitivity range.

2. If, as a result of sensation, a person receives knowledge about individual properties, qualities of objects (something hot burned, something bright flashed in front, etc.), then perception gives a holistic image of the object or phenomenon. The properties of objects we perceive are localized in space. This process, characteristic of perception, is called objectification. Perception presupposes the presence of various sensations and proceeds along with sensations, but cannot be reduced to their sum. Perception depends on certain relationships between sensations, the relationship of which, in turn, depends on the connections and relationships between qualities and properties, various parts that make up an object or phenomenon.

Perception is the mental process of reflecting objects and phenomena of reality in the totality of their various properties and parts with their direct impact on the senses. Perception is a reflection of a complex stimulus.

Depending on the degree to which the individual’s activity is purposeful, perception is divided into unintentional (involuntary) and intentional (voluntary).

Unintentional perception can be caused both by the characteristics of surrounding objects (their brightness, unusualness), and by the correspondence of these objects to the interests of the individual. In unintentional perception there is no predetermined goal. There is also no volitional activity in it, which is why it is called involuntary. Walking, for example, down the street, we hear the noise of cars, people talking, see shop windows, perceive various smells and much more.

Intentional perception from the very beginning is regulated by the task - to perceive this or that object or phenomenon, to become familiar with it. So, for example, intentional perception will be looking at the electrical circuit of the machine being studied, listening to a report, viewing a thematic exhibition, etc. It can be included in any activity (in a work operation, in completing an educational task, etc.), but can act as an independent activity - observation.

Observation is an arbitrary systematic perception, which is carried out with a specific, clearly conscious goal with the help of voluntary attention. The most important requirements that observation must satisfy are clarity of the observer’s task and planned and systematic conduct. A significant role is played by the fragmentation of the task, the formulation of particular, more specific tasks.

If a person systematically practices observation and improves the culture of observation, then he develops such a personality trait as observation.

The relationship between observation and observation reflects the relationship between mental processes and personality traits.

Basic properties of perception

People perceive the same information differently, subjectively, depending on their interests, needs, abilities, etc. The dependence of perception on the content of a person’s mental life, on the characteristics of his personality is called apperception. The influence of a person’s past experience on the process of perception is manifested in experiments with distorting glasses: in the first days of the experiment, when the subjects saw all surrounding objects upside down, the exception was those objects whose inverted image, as people knew, was physically impossible. Thus, an unlit candle was perceived to be upside down, but as soon as it was lit, it was seen to be normally oriented vertically, that is, the flame was directed upward.

Perceptual properties:

1. Integrity, i.e. perception is always a holistic image of an object. However, the ability of holistic visual perception of objects is not innate, as evidenced by data on the perception of people who became blind in infancy and whose vision was restored in adulthood: in the first days after the operation, they did not see the world of objects, but only vague outlines, spots of varying brightness and quantities, i.e. there were single sensations, but there was no perception, they did not see whole objects. Gradually, after a few weeks, these people developed visual perception, but it remained limited to what they had previously learned through touch. Thus, perception is formed in the process of practice, i.e. perception is a system of perceptual actions that must be mastered.

2. Constancy of perception - thanks to it, we perceive surrounding objects as relatively constant in shape, color, size, etc. The source of constancy of perception is the active actions of the perceptual system (the system of analyzers that ensure the act of perception). Repeated perception of the same objects under different conditions makes it possible to identify a relatively constant invariant structure of the perceived object. Constancy of perception is not an innate property, but an acquired one. A violation of the constancy of perception occurs when a person finds himself in an unfamiliar situation, for example, when people look down from the upper floors of a high-rise building, cars and pedestrians seem small to them; at the same time, builders who constantly work at heights say that they see objects located below without distorting their sizes.

3. Structurality of perception - perception is not a simple sum of sensations. We actually perceive a generalized structure abstracted from these sensations. For example, when listening to music, we perceive not individual sounds, but a melody, and we recognize it if it is performed by an orchestra, or one piano, or a human voice, although the individual sound sensations are different.

4. Meaningfulness of perception - perception is closely related to thinking, to understanding the essence of objects.

5. Selectivity of perception - manifests itself in the preferential selection of some objects over others.

6. mobility and controllability - the image can be transformed and change depending on the task.

The Swiss psychologist Rorschach found that even meaningless inkblots are always perceived as something meaningful (a dog, a cloud, a lake) and only some mental patients tend to perceive random inkblots as such. That is, perception proceeds as a dynamic process of searching for an answer to the question: “What is this?”

Types of perception. There are: perception of objects, time, perception of relationships, movements, space, perception of a person.

They are also classified according to which analyzer is involved in perception.

Perception disturbance

Hallucinations are usually called perceptions that occur without the presence of a real object (visions, ghosts, imaginary sounds, voices, smells, etc.). Hallucinations are, as a rule, a consequence of the fact that perception is saturated not with external actual impressions, but with internal images. By a person in the grip of hallucinations, they are experienced as truly perceived, that is, during hallucinations people actually see, hear, smell, and do not imagine or imagine. For the hallucinating person, subjective sensory sensations are as valid as those emanating from the objective world.

The greatest interest is usually caused by visual hallucinations, which are distinguished by their unusual diversity: visions can be formless (flame, smoke, fog) or, conversely, seem clearer than images of real objects. The size of the visions is also characterized by a large amplitude: there are both reduced and enlarged, gigantic. Visual hallucinations can be colorless, but more often they are naturally or extremely intensely colored, usually bright red or blue. Visions can be moving or motionless, without changing content (stable hallucinations) and constantly changing in the form of various events played out on stage or in a movie (scene-like hallucinations). Single images (single hallucinations), parts of objects, bodies (one eye, half a face, ear), crowds of people, flocks of animals, insects, fantastic creatures appear. The content of visual hallucinations has a very strong emotional impact: it can frighten, cause horror or, on the contrary, interest, admiration, even admiration.

Illusions, i.e., erroneous perceptions of real things or phenomena, should be distinguished from hallucinations. The obligatory presence of a genuine object, although perceived erroneously, is the main feature of illusions, usually divided into affective, verbal (verbal) and pereidolic.

Affective (affect is short-term, strong emotional arousal) illusions are most often caused by fear or an anxious, depressed mood. In this state, even clothes hanging on a hanger can seem like a robber, and a random passer-by can seem like a rapist and murderer.

Verbal illusions consist in a false perception of the content of actually occurring conversations of others; it seems to the person that these conversations contain hints of some unseemly actions, bullying, hidden threats against him.

Very interesting and indicative are pereidolic illusions, usually caused by a decrease in the tone of mental activity and general passivity. Ordinary patterns on wallpaper, cracks on the walls or ceiling, various light and shadows are perceived as bright paintings, fairy-tale characters, fantastic monsters, unusual plants, colorful panoramas.

3. Attention is one of those human cognitive processes regarding the essence and right to independent consideration of which there is still no consensus among psychologists. Some argue that there is no special independent process of attention, that it acts only as a side or moment of another psychological process. Others believe that attention is a completely independent mental state of a person, a specific internal process that has its own characteristics (in the human brain there are special types of structures associated specifically with attention, anatomically and physiologically relatively autonomous from those that ensure the functioning of other processes. It was pointed out that in particular, on the role of the reticular formation).

In the system of psychological phenomena, attention occupies a special position. It is included in all other mental processes, acts as their necessary moment, and it is impossible to separate it from them, isolate it and study it in its “pure” form. We deal with the phenomena of attention only when we consider the dynamics of cognitive processes and the characteristics of various mental states of a person. Whenever we try to highlight the “matter” of attention, it seems to disappear.

However, one cannot help but see the peculiarities of attention, which run like a red thread through all other mental phenomena where it manifests itself, and cannot be reduced to moments of various types of activity in which a person is involved. This is the presence in it of some dynamic, observable and measurable characteristics, such as volume, concentration, switchability and a number of others.

The correct solution to the problem under discussion is to try to combine and take into account both points of view, i.e. to see in attention both the side of processes and phenomena, and something independent, independent of them. This means taking the point of view according to which attention as a separate mental process adjacent to others does not exist, but is a completely special state that characterizes all these processes as a whole. This position is confirmed by known anatomical and physiological data, the main of which are the following:

The dominant mechanism as a physiological correlate of attention can be observed on the entire surface of the brain, regardless of the projection zones of which specific analyzers are localized in them.

The reticular formation, the work of which is associated with the phenomena of attention, is located on the path of nerve impulses relating to almost all cognitive processes (nonspecific pathways of afferent and efferent conduction of sensory information).

Attention neurons—novelty detector cells—can be found on almost the entire surface and in some internal structures of the brain.

At the same time, all three named anatomical and physiological factors in the central nervous system exist autonomously and independently of individual sensory analyzers, which suggests that attention is still a special phenomenon that cannot be reduced to the others.

Attention can be defined as a psychophysiological process, a state that characterizes the dynamic features of cognitive activity. They are expressed in its concentration on a relatively narrow area of external or internal reality, which at a given moment in time becomes conscious and concentrates the mental and physical forces of a person for a certain period of time. Attention is the process of consciously or unconsciously selecting some information coming through the senses and ignoring others.

Attention has five basic properties: stability, concentration, switchability, distribution and volume.

Stability of attention is manifested in the ability to maintain a state of attention for a long time on any object, subject of activity, without being distracted or weakening attention. Sustainability of attention can be determined for various reasons. Some of them are related to the individual physiological characteristics of a person, in particular with the properties of his nervous system, the general state of the body at the moment; others characterize mental states (excitement, lethargy), others correlate with motivation (the presence or absence of interest in the subject of the activity), and others – with the external circumstances of the activity.

People with a weak nervous system or overexcited people can get tired quite quickly and become impulsive. A person who is not feeling well physically also tends to have unstable attention. Lack of interest in a subject contributes to the frequent distraction of attention from it, and, on the contrary, the presence of interest keeps attention in a heightened state for a long period of time. In an environment characterized by the absence of external distractions, attention can be quite stable. In the presence of many stimuli, it fluctuates and becomes insufficiently stable.

Focus of attention (concentration) is manifested in the differences that exist in the degree of concentration of attention on some objects and its distraction from others. A person can concentrate his attention on reading a book and not notice anything around him. At the same time, his attention can be concentrated on a certain part of the text being read, on a separate sentence or word, and also more or less distributed throughout the entire text.

Switchability of attention is understood as its transfer from one object to another, from one type of activity to another. This characteristic of human attention is manifested in the speed with which he can transfer his attention from one object to another, and such a transfer can be involuntary and voluntary. In the first case, the individual involuntarily turns his attention to something that interests him, and in the second, he consciously, through an effort of will, forces himself to concentrate on some object. Switching attention on an involuntary basis indicates its instability, but such instability is not always considered as a negative quality. It often contributes to temporary rest of the body, analyzer, preservation and restoration of the functioning of the nervous system and the body as a whole.

Two processes are associated with switching attention: inclusion and distraction of attention. The first is characterized by the way a person turns his attention to something and completely focuses on it; the second is how it carries out the process of distraction.

All three characteristics of attention are associated with special properties of the human nervous system: lability, excitability and inhibition. The corresponding properties of the nervous system directly determine the quality of attention, especially involuntary, and therefore they should be considered mainly as naturally determined.

Distribution of attention - the ability to distribute attention over a significant space, simultaneously perform several types of activities or perform several different actions. Note that when it comes to the distribution of attention between different types of activities, this does not always mean that they are literally performed in parallel. This rarely happens, and such an impression is created due to a person’s ability to quickly switch from one type of activity to another, managing to return to the continuation of the interrupted activity before forgetting occurs.

It is known that memory for interrupted actions can be retained for a certain time. During this period, a person can easily return to continuing the interrupted activity. This is exactly what happens most often in cases of distribution of attention between several simultaneously performed tasks.

The distribution of attention depends on the psychological and physiological state of a person. When tired, in the process of performing complex activities that require increased concentration of attention, the area of its distribution usually narrows.

The volume of attention is such a characteristic of it, which is determined by the amount of information that can simultaneously be stored in the sphere of increased attention (consciousness) of a person. The numerical characteristic of the average attention span of people is 5-7 units of information. It is usually established through experience in which a person is very short time a large amount of information is presented. What he manages to notice during this time characterizes his attention span. Because experimental determination Since the volume of attention is associated with short-term memorization, it is often identified with the volume of short-term memory.

Attention in human life and activity performs many different functions. It activates the necessary and inhibits currently unnecessary psychological and physiological processes, promotes the organized and targeted selection of information entering the body in accordance with its current needs, and ensures selective and long-term concentration of mental activity on the same object or type of activity.

Attention is associated with the direction and selectivity of cognitive processes. Their adjustment directly depends on what at a given moment in time seems most important for the body, for the realization of the interests of the individual. Attention determines the accuracy and detail of perception, the strength and selectivity of memory, the direction and productivity of mental activity.

For perceptual processes, attention is a kind of amplifier that allows one to distinguish the details of images. For human memory, attention acts as a factor capable of retaining the necessary information in short-term and operative memory, as a prerequisite for transferring memorized material into long-term memory storage. For thinking, attention acts as a mandatory factor in correctly understanding and solving a problem. In the system of interpersonal relations, attention contributes to better mutual understanding, adaptation of people to each other, prevention and timely resolution of interpersonal conflicts. An attentive person is described as a pleasant interlocutor, a tactful and delicate communication partner. An attentive person learns better and more successfully and achieves more in life than someone who is not attentive enough.

The following types of attention are distinguished: natural and socially conditioned attention, direct and indirect, involuntary and voluntary, sensory and intellectual.

Natural attention is given to a person from birth in the form of an innate ability to selectively respond to certain external or internal stimuli that carry elements of information novelty. The main mechanism that ensures the functioning of such attention is called the orienting reflex. It is associated with the activity of the reticular formation and novelty detector neurons.

Socially conditioned attention develops during life as a result of training and upbringing, and is associated with the volitional regulation of behavior, with a selective conscious response to objects.

Direct attention is not controlled by anything other than the object to which it is directed and which corresponds to the actual interests and needs of the person.

Indirect attention is regulated using special means, such as gestures, words, pointing signs, and objects.

Involuntary attention is not associated with the participation of the will, but voluntary attention necessarily includes volitional regulation. Involuntary attention does not require effort to maintain and focus attention on something for a certain time, and voluntary attention has all these qualities. Voluntary attention, in contrast to involuntary attention, is usually associated with a struggle of motives or impulses, the presence of strong, oppositely directed and competing interests.

Sensory attention is associated with emotions and the selective functioning of the senses. At the center of consciousness is some sensory impression.

Intellectual attention is related to the focus and direction of thought. The object of attention is thought.

Psychological theories of attention

One of the most famous psychological theories of attention was proposed by T. Ribot. he believed that attention is always associated with and caused by emotions. Ribot saw a particularly close connection between emotions and voluntary attention. The state of attention is accompanied not only by emotions, but by changes in the physical and physiological state of the body. Ribot was especially characteristic of emphasizing the importance of physiological correlates of mental processes and states. With this in mind, Ribot's concept can be called psychophysiological. As a purely physiological state, attention includes a complex of vascular, respiratory, motor and other voluntary or involuntary reactions. The state of concentration is also accompanied by movements of all parts of the body.

Movement physiologically supports and enhances this state of consciousness. The motor effect is that some sensations, thoughts, and memories receive special intensity and clarity compared to others due to the fact that all motor activity is focused on them. The ability to control movements lies the secret of voluntary attention. These are the characteristic features of T. Ribot’s motor theory of attention.

An interesting theoretical concept of attention was proposed by P. Ya. Galperin. The main concepts of this theory:

Attention is one of the moments of orientation-research activity. It is a psychological action aimed at the content of an image, thought, or other phenomenon that a person has at a given moment in time.

By its function, attention is the control of this content. Every human action has an orienting, performing and control part. This latter is represented by attention as such.

Unlike other activities that produce a specific product, the activity of control, or attention, does not have a separate, special result.

Attention as an independent, concrete act is highlighted only when the action becomes not only mental, but also abbreviated. Not all control should be considered attention. Control only evaluates the action, while attention helps to improve it.

In attention, control is carried out using a criterion, measure, sample, which creates the opportunity to compare the results of an action and clarify it.

Voluntary attention is systematically carried out attention, i.e. a form of control carried out according to a pre-drawn plan or sample.

In order to form a new method of voluntary attention, we must, along with the main activity, offer a person the task of checking its progress and results, developing and implementing an appropriate plan.

All known acts of attention, performing the function of control, both voluntary and involuntary, are the result of the formation of new mental actions.

There is another theory that links attention to the concept of attitude. The theory was proposed by D. N. Uznadze.

4. The concept of memory in speech occupies a leading place among all other psychological terms. This is primarily due to the real meaning of memory in human life and activity. Since ancient times, memory has been given great importance. We noted that psychology has its origins in the practical work activities of people, in the processes of their relationships and communication. At the initial stages of historical development, psychological knowledge is reflected in legends and myths as one of the earliest ways of human self-expression and forms of collective consciousness. Already from the legends of ancient Greek mythology, the large role that was assigned to memory in the development of human culture is visible. The goddess of memory, Mnemosyne, was the mother of the muses and was credited with the invention of speech and counting. By the name of its goddess, memory in psychology is often called a mnemonic activity.

The fundamental nature of memory phenomena and processes is noted in psychology. St. Augustine said: “...the soul is like memory,” essentially identifying all mental phenomena with memory. The philosopher A. Bergson wrote that it is in the problem of memory that it is possible to comprehend the spirit in its most expressed form.

In psychology, the problem of memory, in the words of psychologist P. P. Blonsky, is “the same age as psychology as a science.” Researchers see the special place of memory among mental functions in the fact that no other function can be carried out without its participation; each mental function seems to have its own mnemonic aspect. At the same time, it is pointed out that memory itself is unthinkable outside of other mental processes.

The relationship between memory and other mental processes and formations is clearly revealed when distinguishing its types. The connection between memory and perception is fixed in the allocation of figurative memory or memory for images. Figurative memory, in turn, is naturally divided into separate types associated with memorizing information received from certain analyzers: visual, auditory, gustatory, tactile and olfactory memory.

Fixation in subjective experience of abilities, skills, systems of movements and actions constitutes the task and content of motor memory. Emotional memory is characterized by remembering and preserving the emotions and feelings experienced by the subject in certain situations. Psychology has clearly established the fact that events associated with negative or positive emotions are remembered better.

The interdependence of memory and thinking is expressed in the distinction between semantic and mechanical memory. Semantic memory consists of the fact that the memorized content is subjected to active mental processing, the material is analyzed, logical parts are identified, relationships between parts are established, dependencies are generalized, etc. The connection between thinking and memory is fixed in the position established by psychology that what is understood is better remembered. We are talking here about specifically human semantic memory.

However, a person can remember content that he cannot or does not want to comprehend. By resorting to repeated repetition, the subject seems to “imprint” the memorized material into the brain structures. This procedure resembles the operation of mechanical devices, and therefore memory is called mechanical. Students resort to rote memory when they cannot logically comprehend the material. Some psychologists believe that rote memory owes its origin to school.

The subject can set a conscious goal, a task for memorization, for retaining the necessary content for subsequent action, organize voluntary mnemonic actions, and make volitional efforts to preserve the material. Such features of the subject’s actions are characteristic of voluntary memory: here the subject provides voluntary and volitional regulation of memory processes.

Recording impressions from the surrounding world without a purpose specifically set by the individual is realized through involuntary memory. This does not mean that the material is remembered in the form of a “continuous recording” or in a natural way, involuntarily we remember what we are actively working with, what is interesting to us, etc. In all these cases there is no special memorization task.

The dependence of memory on the needs, attitudes, motives and goals of the subject (on his motivation) is manifested in the features of short-term and long-term memory. Short-term memory provides operational retention of data for the period of the subject's activity with this data. The duration of retention of any material in short-term memory is due to the need to retain intermediate elements of activity, without which it is impossible to achieve the final result (for example, multiplying two-digit numbers in the mind requires retaining intermediate results of multiplication).

Long-term memory provides long-term (hours, days, years, decades) retention of material. Crucial for long-term retention of information is a person’s determination to remember it for a long time, the need for this information for the future, and its importance in a personal sense.

The classification of types of memory from the point of view of their genetic sequence was proposed by P. P. Blonsky. He identified four main forms of memory - motor, emotional, figurative and semantic. The formation of types of memory occurs in the listed sequence.

Memory is the process of organizing and storing past experience, making it possible to reuse it in activity or return it to the sphere of consciousness.

Psychological mechanisms of memory. The representation of memory in all psychological structures indicates its first distinctive, specific feature. The peculiarity of memory as a psychological process is that it is not directly aimed at reflecting the surrounding world; it does not deal with material objects and phenomena. The reflection of the objective world is carried out in perception and thinking. Memory deals with “second reflection”, with received images and concepts.

The difference between memory and other psychological formations presupposes a clear indication of its function, its place in total mental activity. A valid definition of the concept “memory,” as well as a meaningful description of each of its processes, requires an answer to two questions: what? and for what? - accordingly, it must contain two predicates. From this point of view, memory could be very succinctly defined as a mental process, which is a product of a previous action and a condition of a future action (process, experience).

According to this point of view, memory always exists on the “past-future” antinomy. Every cognitive process continuously turns into memory and every memory turns into something else. Any mental process turns into memory at the moment when it becomes a condition for the implementation of another process (or a subsequent step of the same process). This means that, turning into a “secondary” product, acquiring the ability to be realized in terms of representation, it can serve as an internal support for the further development of the process.

Consequently, an element of memory becomes everything that, “moving away” from the “material” determination of the psyche, turns into a “secondary” product, i.e. becomes a performance. We can say that any content of the psyche passes into memory at the moment when it ceases to be the actual “target”, actual element of the cognitive process and acquires a service function in relation to the new element that takes the place of the goal.

We can conclude that the main mechanism of human memory is its orientation to the future. A person’s memory determines not what “has been” (past), but what “will be” (future). In other words, what “was” is fixed in memory insofar as it is needed by what “will be”, i.e. memory determines in the exact sense of the word not the past, but the future. Serving the future is the main function of memory. Reflection of the past acts as a means of achieving a future result.

Memorization is defined as a process that ensures retention of material in memory, as the most important condition its subsequent reproduction. Memorization begins with imprinting, which is done unintentionally. Subsequently, a person can set goals for consciously capturing significant material; memory takes on the character of conscious memorization. IN special conditions(primarily in educational activities) there is a need to use special techniques, a special organization of memorization, and it takes the form of memorization.

Psychological research has revealed the dependence of memorization on the nature of the activity, on the processes of goal setting, and its connection with orientations towards the future and the future. At the same time, a paradoxical picture of the effectiveness of voluntary and involuntary memorization emerged. Research has shown that directly setting a memory goal is not in itself decisive for effective memorization; involuntary memorization is often more productive than voluntary memorization. In the experiments, children were asked to classify cards according to the content of the objects depicted on them. The study revealed two important dependencies of the memorization process. Firstly, what constitutes the purpose of the action is better remembered. Secondly, memorization processes included in mental activity (classifying cards), without the requirement of special memorization, turned out to be more effective than memorizing the same cards on demand.

In other words, involuntary memorization under these conditions turned out to be more effective than voluntary memorization. Therefore, if the material is included in the target content of this action, it can be involuntarily remembered better than if the subject set a goal to specifically remember it.

The effectiveness of memorization depends on the subject’s attitudes. It does a disservice to students to try to memorize material in order to answer in a seminar; After finishing the seminar, the material is quickly forgotten. Understanding the significance of the material for the future, for further education or professional activity. Material memorized with this setting is remembered longer.

Emotionally charged material is better remembered, since it is connected with the motives and interests of the subject and becomes vitally significant. Moreover, in some cases the pleasant will be better remembered, in others - the unpleasant, depending on what in this particular case is more relevant, more significant for the subject, what has found the greatest resonance in the hierarchy of his motives. A person’s general condition also has a significant impact on memorization: his mood, vitality, fatigue, etc.

Four mnemonic actions are identified:

1) orientation in the material, associated with the relationship of the elements of the memorized material to the experience of the subject;

2) grouping of material based on the established properties of individual

elements;

3) establishing intra-group relationships between elements of the material to be memorized;

4) establishment of intergroup relations (connections).

In this case, a mnemonic action is understood as “an action that is performed not in order to remember, consolidate, but in order to reproduce”; This provision is based on the statement that “the central function of voluntary memorization is not the consolidation and strengthening of the trace of influence, but the construction of an image of an object that regulates reproduction, determined by the upcoming use, the future.”

Reproduction is a memory process consisting in the restoration and reconstruction of the updated memory content. Reproduction can occur at three levels: recognition, or reproduction based on perception; actual reproduction as voluntary or involuntary actualization of material stored in memory; recall in conditions of partial forgetting, requiring volitional effort.

Reproduction, like memorization, is associated with mental actions. Thought is included in the process of reproduction, clarifying, generalizing, systematizing, processing and reconstructing the content. “In the very essence of reproduction,” wrote S. L. Rubinstein, “there is a reconstruction of what is being reproduced - as a result of its mental processing - as an essential aspect of reproduction.” In the reproduction of semantic content, transformation and reconstruction acquire special significance. The reconstruction reveals the impossibility of interpreting the process of reproduction only as a process of recollection, in its separation from the processes of thinking, speech, and attitudes of the subject. A person essentially never reproduces the content of memory in the form in which it was remembered.

Storage and forgetting are two sides of a single process of long-term retention of perceived information.

Preservation is not passive storage of material, not simple conservation. Conservation is a dynamic process that occurs on the basis and under conditions of a certain way of organized assimilation, including the processing of material. Psychologists note that the process of reconstructing material in memory has its own dynamics. In some cases, delayed reproduction may be more complete and perfect than earlier reproduction. This phenomenon in memory is called reminiscence. Reminiscence is associated with internal work to comprehend the material, its reconstruction, and mastery of it.

Reconstruction of the content of memory, the dynamics of the processes of storage and forgetting are always determined by upcoming goals and are associated with orientation to the future. What is forgotten is what is not included in the subject’s holistic system of goal-setting, what ceases to be essential and significant for him. Everything that lies in the system of consciously organized, planned life is preserved and remembered. From the past to the future, that which serves as a condition for setting new life goals of the subject is transferred and preserved.

There are three significant features that distinguish the mnemonic processing of the material of individual experience in the process of its preservation from its mental processing.

1. Memory is a continuous, never-ending process of “self-organization” of a person’s individual experience.

2. Memory is an unconscious process that is not directly amenable to introspection and is revealed to the subject only through its “products.” Memory processes can be controlled only with the help of voluntary mental actions.

3. Unlike thinking, memory corresponds not to the goals of activity, but to the semantic relations of experience, the semantic formations of a person, and his life values.

Memory, unlike other cognitive processes, has as its subject not the connections and relationships of objective things themselves, but the relationship of subjective ideas about things to the existing picture of individual experience. Memory does not obtain new knowledge about things, but only organizes and reconstructs what has already been acquired. If it constructs new knowledge, it is not through interaction with the things themselves, but from the reorganization of the ideas that correspond to them.

The area of actual creativity of memory is not a cognitive sphere, but a sphere of personality formation. At the same time, memory does not create personality by its own means. The basis of human formation is individual experience. However, if the products of this experience were preserved in a person in the same “elemental” and dissociated form in which they were originally given to him, they could not be structured in him in any way. By combining these elements into a certain subjective integrity, memory carries out a kind of psychological creation of the individual.

From these positions, the central function of memory is leading to unity, linking the subject’s internal experience into a whole. It is precisely due to continuous and simultaneous work with the entire cumulative picture of individual experience that the “breadth of memory” is opposed to the “narrowness of consciousness”, which expresses the “target” localization of all other cognitive processes.

The methods of organizing representations in memory processes are not inherent in memory “before experience.” As psychologists note, memory in its development always lags behind thinking by one step: new actions and operations first become (form) as mental ones and only in the process of repetition and consolidation do they turn into mnemonic actions, i.e. actions to transform and organize representations of internal experience.

At the same time, memory must “respond as a whole” to any details of experience. This means that at every moment of activity, all “past experience” is included in it, each element of “new experience” is always correlated with all “past experience”. This presupposes that experience must simultaneously appear in the form of an integrative whole. The continuous reproduction of such a whole as a necessary condition for developing life and activity constitutes the main function of memory.

Based on the foregoing, memory can be meaningfully defined as a psychological mechanism (a set of mental processes) of the systemic organization of individual experience as a necessary condition for the implementation of upcoming activities.

Our knowledge of objective reality begins with sensations and perception. But, starting with sensations and perception, knowledge of reality does not end with them. From sensations and perception it moves to thinking.

Starting from what is given in sensations and perceptions, thinking expands the boundaries of our knowledge.

Sensations and perceptions reflect individual aspects of phenomena, moments of reality in more or less random combinations. Thinking correlates the data of sensations and perceptions - juxtaposes, compares, distinguishes, reveals relationships, reveals relationships and essence.

In reality, what is already given in perception is not a simple sum of isolated elements; various properties and objects of reality are already given in certain relationships, combinations, and connections. We usually perceive things in certain situations in which they are given in certain relationships with other things. Things are perceived as equal and unequal, greater or lesser, as located in a certain way. But in perception, all things and phenomena, their properties, are given in random individual determinations, in an external combination of properties that are connected but not connected.

The task of thinking is to identify significant, necessary connections based on real dependencies.

Psychology studies the thinking process of an individual, i.e. it explores how and why this or that thought arises and develops, studies the patterns of the thought process, the process of developing mental strategies, and operations based on symbolic procedures.

Thinking is a socially conditioned, inextricably linked with speech, mental process of searching and discovering something essentially new, a process of indirect and generalized reflection of reality in the course of its analysis and synthesis.

In the process of thinking, using the data of sensations, perceptions and ideas, a person begins to cognize such phenomena of the external world, their properties and relationships that are not directly given in perceptions and therefore not directly observable. Thinking is an integrative function that includes all cognitive processes. Thinking is the highest cognitive process. It is associated with acquiring new knowledge. Thinking is an instrument of cognition; it promotes the movement of ideas, thoughts that reveal the essence of things and contribute to the development of theoretical and practical human activity. This activity is aimed at transforming the world and knowledge.

Thinking is a mental process of purposeful, indirect and generalized cognition by a person of significant connections and relationships.

The inextricable connection between thinking and language reveals the social essence of human thinking. The historical continuity of knowledge in the course of human history is possible only if it is recorded, consolidated, preserved and transmitted from one person to another, from generation to generation.

The thinking process is, first of all, analysis, synthesis and generalization, as well as comparison, abstraction, specification, classification, systematization.

Analysis is the identification of certain aspects, elements, properties, connections, relationships in an object....

Synthesis is the unification of the components of the whole identified by analysis. In the process of synthesis, a connection occurs, a correlation of those elements into which the cognizable object was divided. Analysis and synthesis are always interconnected.

Generalization is a process that allows you to draw a conclusion. We highlight the main thing related to abstraction.

Abstraction is a mental distraction from specific objects.

Concretization is the process opposite to generalization. The process of isolating a feature from the general and whole.

Classification is the selection of parts followed by dismemberment and unification.

Systematization - arrangement in a certain order.

Forms of thinking.

1. Concept

2. Judgment

3. Inference

A concept is a thought expressed in words. This is a symbolic generalized representation of objects, people or events that have at least one common feature that appears regardless of particular situations. Concepts can be general, distinctive, concrete or abstract. The concept acts as a form of thinking and as a special mental action.

Distinctive features of a concept from a representation:

A representation is always an image, and a concept is a thought expressed in a word.

The representation includes essential and non-essential features; only the essential features are retained in the concept.

The concept is the result of the cognitive activity not of an individual person, but of the practical, theoretical activity of many people. Different people have different ideas, but the concepts are the same.

Judgment is the basic form of the result of the thought process. A process that reflects connections between objects or phenomena. It is a statement based on something, or it is a denial. Judgments are distinguished as true and false.

Inference is the process of logical conclusion from judgments and concepts. They are inductive and deductive.

Types of thinking

It can be visual-effective and visual-figurative, verbal-logical, abstract.

Visual-effective thinking is a type of thinking based on the direct perception of objects, real transformation in the process of actions with objects.

Visual-figurative thinking is a type of thinking characterized by reliance on ideas and images; the functions of figurative thinking are associated with the representation of situations and changes in them that a person wants to obtain as a result of his activities that transform the situation. The situation is transformed only in terms of image.

Verbal-logical thinking – functions on the basis of linguistic means. It is characterized by the use of concepts and logical constructions, which sometimes do not have a direct figurative expression (cost, pride, honesty).

Abstract thinking is thinking in the form of abstract concepts and reasoning.

If we consider thinking from the point of view of novelty and originality of the problems being solved, then we can distinguish: creative (productive) and reproducing (reproductive) thinking.

Creative (productive) is the process of creating something new, it is aimed at creating new ideas, its result is the discovery of a new or improved solution to a particular problem. It is necessary to distinguish between the creation of an objectively new one, i.e. something that has not yet been done by anyone, and subjectively new, i.e. new for this particular person. Imagination and intuition are closely related to creative thinking.

Reproductive (summarizing) thinking is the application of ready-made knowledge and skills. In cases where, in the process of applying knowledge, they are tested and identified shortcomings and defects, we speak of critical thinking.

RELATIONSHIP OF THINKING AND SPEECH

Throughout the history of psychological research into thinking and speech, the problem of the connection between them has attracted increased attention. Its proposed solutions were very different - from the complete separation of speech and thinking and considering them as completely independent functions from each other to their equally unambiguous and unconditional combination, up to absolute identification.

Many modern scientists adhere to a compromise point of view, believing that although thinking and speech are inextricably linked, they represent relatively independent realities both in genesis and functioning. The main question that is now being discussed in connection with this problem is the question of the nature of the real connection between thinking and speech, their genetic roots and the transformations that they undergo in the process of their separate and joint development.

L.S. Vygotsky made a significant contribution to solving this problem. The word, he wrote, relates to speech as well as thinking. It is a living cell that contains, in its simplest form, the basic properties inherent in verbal thinking as a whole. A word is not a label pasted as an individual name on a separate object; it always characterizes the object or phenomenon denoted by it. generalized and, therefore, acts as an act of thinking.

But the word is also a means of communication, so it is part of speech. Being devoid of meaning, the word refers neither to thought nor to speech; Having acquired its meaning, it immediately becomes an organic part of both. It is in the meaning of the word, says L.S. Vygotsky, that the knot of that unity, which is called verbal thinking, is tied.

However, thinking and speech have different genetic roots. Initially they performed different functions and developed separately. The original function of speech was the communicative function. Speech itself as a means of communication arose due to the need to separate and coordinate the actions of people in the process of joint work. At the same time, in verbal communication, the content conveyed by speech belongs to a certain class of phenomena and, therefore, already presupposes their generalized reflection, i.e. fact of thinking. At the same time, such a method of communication as a pointing gesture, for example, does not carry any generalization and therefore does not relate to thought. In turn, there are types of thinking that are not associated with speech, for example, visual-effective, or practical, thinking in animals. In small children and in higher animals, unique means of communication are found that are not associated with thinking. These are expressive movements, gestures, facial expressions that reflect the internal states of a living being, but are not a sign or a generalization. In the phylogenesis of thinking and speech, a pre-speech phase in the development of intelligence and a pre-intellectual phase in the development of speech clearly emerges.

Mental processes: sensations, perception, attention, imagination, memory, thinking, speech - act as the most important components of any human activity. In order to satisfy his needs, communicate, play, study and work, a person must somehow perceive the world, paying attention to various moments or components of activity, imagine what he needs to do, remember, think about, express. Consequently, without the participation of mental processes, human activity is impossible. Moreover, it turns out that mental processes do not just participate in activity, they develop in it and themselves represent special types of activity.

What is the role of mental processes?

It is the function of a signal or regulator that adjusts action to changing conditions.

Psychic phenomena - these are the brain’s responses to external (environment) and internal (state of the body as a physiological system) influences.

In other words psychic phenomena - these are constant regulators of activity that arises in response to stimuli that act now (sensation and perception) and were once in past experience (memory), generalizing these influences or anticipating the results to which they will lead (thinking, imagination).

Mental processes - processes occurring in the human head and reflected in dynamically changing mental phenomena.
Cognitive mental activity begins with sensations. According to the theory of reflection, sensation is the first and inconspicuous source of all our knowledge about the world. Thanks to sensations we know color, shape, size, smell, sound.

All living beings with a nervous system have the ability to sense sensations, but only living beings with a brain and cerebral cortex have the ability to experience conscious sensations.

Feelings considered the simplest of all psychic phenomena; they are a conscious, subjectively represented in a person’s head or unconscious, but acting on his behavior, a product of the processing by the central nervous system of significant stimuli arising in the internal or external environment. The physiological apparatus through which sensation arises is the analyzer. In order for a person to have normal sensations, all three parts of the analyzer need to be in a healthy state: the conductive receptor; neural pathway; cortical part.

TYPES OF SENSATIONS
1. External sensations.
Visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, skin, tactile - with their help a person learns the properties of objects that are outside of him. The receptors for these external sensations are located on the surface of the human body, in the sense organs.

In turn, dwelling in more detail on individual types of sensations of this type, we can characterize them as follows: sense of smell - a type of sensitivity that generates specific sensations of smell; taste sensations have four main modalities (sweet, salty, sour and bitter); touch(skin sensitivity) is the result of a complex combination of four simpler types of sensations (pressure, pain, heat and cold).

2. Internal sensations.
Hunger, thirst, nausea, heartburn, etc. These sensations provide information from the receptors of those sense organs that are inside the human body.

3. Motor sensations.
These are sensations of movement and body position in space. The receptors of the motor analyzer are located in muscles and ligaments - the so-called kinesthetic sensations - provide control of movements on a subconscious level (automatically).

ALL SENSATIONS HAVE COMMON LAWS:
1. Sensitivity- the body’s ability to respond to relatively weak influences. The sensations of each person have a certain range, on both sides this range is limited by the absolute threshold of sensation. Beyond the lower absolute threshold, sensation does not yet arise, since the stimulus is too weak; beyond the upper threshold, there are no sensations, since the stimulus is too strong. As a result of systematic exercises, a person can increase his sensitivity (sensitization).
2. Adaptation(adaptation) - a change in the threshold of sensitivity under the influence of an active stimulus, for example: a person acutely senses any smell only in the first few minutes, then the sensations become dull, as the person has adapted to them.
3. Contrast- a change in sensitivity under the influence of a previous stimulus, for example, the same figure appears darker on a white background, and lighter on a black background.

Our sensations are closely connected and interact with each other. On the basis of this interaction, perception arises, a process more complex than sensation, which appeared much later during the development of the psyche in the animal world.

Perception - reflection of objects and phenomena of reality in the totality of their various properties and parts with their direct impact on the senses.

In other words, perception is nothing more than the process of a person receiving and processing various information entering the brain through the senses.

Perception, thus, acts as a meaningful (including decision-making) and meaningful (associated with speech) synthesis of various sensations obtained from integral objects or complex phenomena perceived as a whole. This synthesis appears in the form of an image of a given object or phenomenon, which develops during their active reflection.

Unlike sensations, which reflect only individual properties and qualities of objects, perception is always holistic. The result of perception is the image of the object. Therefore, it is always objective. Perception combines sensations coming from a number of analyzers. Not all analyzers are equally involved in this process. As a rule, one of them is the leader and determines the type of perception.

It is perception that is most closely related to the transformation of information coming directly from the external environment. At the same time, images are formed, with which attention, memory, thinking, and emotions subsequently operate. Depending on the analyzers, the following types of perception are distinguished: vision, touch, hearing, kinesthesia, smell, taste. Thanks to the connections formed between different analyzers, the image reflects such properties of objects or phenomena for which there are no special analyzers, for example, the size of the object, weight, shape, regularity, which indicates the complex organization of this mental process.

The construction of an image of a perceived object is closely related to the method of examining it. When an object is repeatedly perceived during the learning process, internalization occurs on one (external) side—a modification of the structure of actions with the object. It can be observed that the methods of examining an object are simplified and accelerated by reducing the number and fusing motor components into complexes. On the other (internal) side, an image of the object with which a person interacts is formed. Obtained through a motor examination in active interaction With an object, information about its properties (shape, size, etc.) is transformed into successive series of characteristics, from which integral representations of objects - images - are subsequently reconstructed.

Initially, human activity is directed and corrected by the influence of only external objects, but gradually it begins to be regulated by images. We can say that the image represents the subjective form of an object; it is a product of the inner world of a given person. Already in the process of forming this image, it is influenced by the attitudes, interests, needs and motives of the individual, determining its uniqueness and peculiarities of emotional coloring. Since the image simultaneously represents such different properties of an object as its size, color, shape, texture, rhythm, we can say that this is a holistic and generalized representation of the object, the result of the synthesis of many individual sensations, which is already capable of regulating appropriate behavior.

The main characteristics of perception include constancy, objectivity, integrity and generality (or categoricality).
Constancy- this is the relative independence of the image from the conditions of perception, manifested in its immutability: the shape, color and size of objects are perceived by us as constant, despite the fact that the signals coming from these objects to the senses are continuously changing. As is known, the size of the projection of an object on the retina of the eye depends on the distance between the object and the eye and on the angle of view, but objects seem to us to be of a constant size regardless of this distance (of course, within certain limits). The perception of color depends on many factors: illumination, background, intensity. At the same time, the color of familiar objects is always perceived the same, and similarly, the shape of familiar objects is perceived as constant, regardless of the observation conditions. The value of constancy is very high. Without this property, with every movement we make, with every change in the distance to an object, with the slightest turn or change in lighting, all the basic signs by which a person recognizes an object would almost continuously change. He would cease to perceive the world of stable things, and perception could not serve as a means of understanding objective reality.

An important characteristic of perception is its objectivity. Objectivity perception is manifested in the fact that the object is perceived by us precisely as a separate physical body isolated in space and time. This property is most clearly manifested in the phenomenon of isolating a figure from the background. Specifically, this is expressed in the fact that the entire reality observed by a person is divided into two parts of unequal importance: one - the object - is perceived as a concrete, clearly defined, closed whole located in the foreground, and the second - the background - as a more amorphous, indefinite, located behind subject and unlimited field. Thus, the perceived reality is always divided into two layers: the figure - the image of the object, and the background - the image of the space surrounding the object.

Any image integral This means the internal organic relationship between the parts and the whole in the image. When analyzing the integrity of perception, two interrelated aspects can be distinguished: the unification of different elements into a whole and the independence of the formed integrity (within certain boundaries) from the quality of the elements. At the same time, the perception of the whole affects the perception of the parts. Rule of Similarity: The more similar parts of a painting are to each other in some visually perceived quality, the more likely they are to be perceived as being placed together. Similarity in size, shape, and arrangement of parts can act as grouping properties. Elements that together make up a closed circuit, as well as elements with a so-called good shape, that is, possessing symmetry or periodicity, are combined into a single integral structure. The rule of common fate: many elements moving at the same speed and along the same trajectory are perceived holistically - as a single moving object. This rule also applies when objects are stationary, but the observer is moving. Proximity Rule: In any field containing several objects, those that are closest to each other can be visually perceived holistically as one object.

The independence of the whole from the quality of its constituent elements is manifested in the dominance of the integral structure over its components. There are three forms of such dominance. The first is expressed in the fact that the same element, being included in different integral structures, is perceived differently. The second is manifested in the fact that when individual elements are replaced, but the relationship between them is maintained, the overall structure of the image remains unchanged. As you know, you can depict a profile with strokes, dotted lines, and with the help of other elements, while maintaining a portrait resemblance. And finally, the third form is expressed in the well-known facts of the preservation of the perception of the structure as a whole when its individual parts fall out. Thus, for a holistic perception of a human face, only a few elements of its contour are sufficient.
One more important characteristic image is his generality. It means that each image belongs to a certain class of objects that has a name. This reflects the influence not only of language, but also of the person’s experience. As experience expands, the image of perception, while maintaining its individuality and relevance to a specific object, is assigned to an increasingly larger set of objects of a certain category, that is, classified. It is classification that ensures the reliability of correct recognition of an object, regardless of its individual characteristics and distortions that do not take the object outside the class. The significance of the generality of recognition is manifested, for example, in a person’s ability to freely read a text, regardless of the font or handwriting in which it is written. It should be noted that the generality of perception allows not only to classify and recognize objects and phenomena, but also to predict some properties that are not directly perceived. Since an object is assigned to a given class based on its individual qualities, then with a certain probability we can expect that it also possesses other properties characteristic of this class.

There is some functional similarity between all the listed characteristics of perception. And constancy, and objectivity, and integrity, and generalization (categoriality) give the image an important feature - independence, within certain limits, from the conditions of perception and distortion. In this sense, constancy is independence from physical conditions perception, objectivity - from the background against which the object is perceived, integrity - the independence of the whole from distortion and replacement of the components that make up this whole, and, finally, generality - this is the independence of perception from such distortions and changes that do not take the object beyond the boundaries of the class. In other words, generality is intraclass constancy; integrity - structural; subjectivity - semantic. It is clear that if perception did not possess these qualities, our ability to adapt to continuously changing conditions of existence would be much weaker. This organization of perception allows us to interact flexibly and adequately with the environment, and also, within certain limits, to predict the directly non-perceptible properties of objects and phenomena.

All of the considered properties of perception are not innate and develop during a person’s life.

A person does not need to perceive all the stimuli around him, and he cannot perceive everything at the same time. His perceptions are organized in the process of attention.

There are people who are always on guard; almost nothing can surprise, stun, or baffle. Their complete opposite is absent-minded and inattentive people, who sometimes get lost in the simplest situations.

Attention - This is the active focus of a person’s consciousness on certain objects and phenomena of reality or on certain of their properties, qualities, while simultaneously abstracting from everything else. Attention is such an organization of mental activity in which certain images, thoughts or feelings are recognized more clearly than others.

In other words, attention is nothing more than a state of psychological concentration, concentration on some object.
Relevant, personally significant signals are highlighted with attention. The choice is made from the set of all signals available for perception at a given moment. Unlike perception, which is associated with the processing and synthesis of information coming from inputs of different modalities, attention limits only that part of it that will actually be processed.

It is known that a person cannot think about different things and perform a variety of jobs at the same time. This limitation leads to the need to split information coming from outside into parts that do not exceed the capabilities of the processing system. The central mechanisms of information processing in humans can deal with only one object at a given time. If signals about a second object appear during a reaction to the previous one, then processing of new information is not carried out until these mechanisms are released. Therefore, if a certain signal appears a short time after the previous one, then the person’s reaction time to the second signal is longer than the reaction time to it in the absence of the first. Trying to simultaneously follow one message and respond to another reduces both the accuracy of perception and the accuracy of the response.

The mentioned limitations on the possibility of simultaneous perception of several independent signals, information about which comes from the external and internal environment, are associated with the main characteristic of attention - its fixed volume. An important and defining feature of attention span is that it is practically impossible to regulate during learning and training.

The limited volume of perceived and processed material forces us to continuously break up incoming information into parts and determine the sequence (priority) of analyzing the environment. What determines the selectivity of attention and its direction? There are two groups of factors. The first includes factors that characterize the structure of external stimuli reaching a person, that is, the structure of the external field. These include the physical parameters of the signal, for example intensity, its frequency and other characteristics of the organization of signals in an external field. The second group includes factors that characterize the activity of the person himself, that is, the structure of the internal field. Indeed, everyone would agree that if a signal appears in the perceptual field that is either of greater intensity than others (for example, the sound of a gunshot or a flash of light) or of greater novelty (for example, a tiger unexpectedly entering the room), then this stimulus will automatically attract attention.
The conducted studies turned the attention of scientists to factors of central (internal) origin that influence the selectivity of attention: the correspondence of incoming information to a person’s needs, his emotional state, the relevance of this information for him. In addition, actions that are not sufficiently automated, as well as those that are not completed, require attention.

Numerous experiments have found that words that have a special meaning for a person, for example his name, the names of his loved ones, etc., are easier to extract from noise, since the central mechanisms of attention are always tuned to them. A striking example exposure to particularly relevant information is a fact known as the “party phenomenon”. Imagine that you are at a party and are engrossed in an interesting conversation. Suddenly you hear your name spoken softly by someone in another group of guests. You quickly turn your attention to the conversation taking place between these guests, and you may hear something interesting about yourself. But at the same time, you stop hearing what is being said in the group where you are standing, thereby missing the thread of the conversation in which you participated before. You tuned in to the second group and disconnected from the first. It was the high significance of the signal, and not its intensity, the desire to find out what other guests think of you, that determined the change in the direction of your attention.

Peripheral tuning of the senses plays a major role in the organization of pre-attention. Listening to a faint sound, a person turns his head in the direction of the sound and at the same time the corresponding muscle stretches the eardrum, increasing its sensitivity. When a sound is very loud, the tension of the eardrum changes, reducing the transmission of excessive vibrations to the inner ear, just as constriction of the pupil eliminates excess light. Stopping or holding your breath during moments of highest attention also makes listening easier.

Looking closely, a person performs a number of operations: convergence of the eyes, focusing of the lens, changing the diameter of the pupil. If it is necessary to see most of the scene, then the focal length is shortened; when details are interesting, it is lengthened, the corresponding parts of the scene are highlighted and become free from the influence of secondary details. The selected area, being in focus, is thus deprived of the context with which it was originally associated: it is clearly visible, and its surroundings (context) seem blurred. Thus, the same area can take on different meanings depending on the purpose or attitude of the observer.

Theories that connect attention with motivation deserve special consideration: what attracts attention is what is related to a person’s interests - this gives the object of perception additional intensity, and with it the clarity and distinctness of perception increases. Thus, a scientist studying a given specific problem will immediately pay attention to a seemingly small detail, but related to this problem, which will elude another person who does not show interest in this issue.

The physiological aspect of all theories without exception is associated with the consideration of attention as the result of additional nervous excitation emanating from higher nerve centers and leading to strengthening of an image or concept. Its dynamics seem to be as follows: towards the excitation coming from the senses, the central nervous system sends signals that selectively enhance certain aspects of external stimulation, highlighting them and giving them increased clarity and definition.

To pay attention means to perceive something with the help of auxiliary mechanisms. Attention always involves several physiological and psychological insertions (of different nature and different levels), through which something specific is highlighted and clarified.
Thus, attention performs a kind of “feeling,” inspection, and analysis of the environment. Since it is impossible to feel the entire environment at once, a part of it is singled out - the field of attention. This is the part of the environment that is covered by attention at the moment. The analytical effect of attention can be considered as a consequence of its reinforcing influence. By intensifying the perception of part of the field and successively transferring this intensification to other parts, a person can achieve a complete analysis of the environment.

CHARACTERISTICS OF ATTENTION
A limited amount of attention determines its main characteristics: stability, concentration, distribution, switchability and objectivity.

Sustainability- this is the duration of attracting attention to the same object or to the same task. It can be determined by peripheral and central factors. Stability, determined by peripheral factors, does not exceed 2-3 seconds, after which attention begins to fluctuate. The stability of central attention can span a significantly longer interval – up to several minutes. It is clear that fluctuations in peripheral attention are not excluded; it returns all the time to the same object. At the same time, the duration of attracting central attention, according to S. L. Rubinstein, depends on the ability to constantly reveal new content in an object. We can say that the more interesting an object is for us, the more stable our attention will be. Sustainability of attention is closely related to its concentration.

Concentration is determined by the unity of two important factors - an increase in signal intensity with a limited field of perception.
Under distribution understand the subjectively experienced ability of a person to hold a certain number of heterogeneous objects in the center of attention at the same time. It is this quality that makes it possible to perform several actions at once, keeping them in the field of attention. Many have heard about the phenomenal abilities of Julius Caesar, who, according to legend, could do seven unrelated things at the same time. It is also known that Napoleon could simultaneously dictate seven important diplomatic documents to his secretaries. However, there is every reason to assume that only one type of conscious mental activity occurs at a time, and subjective feeling The simultaneous execution of several is due to rapid sequential switching from one to another. Thus, the distribution of attention is essentially the reverse side of its switching.

Switchability determined by the speed of transition from one type of activity to another. Important role This characteristic can be easily demonstrated by analyzing such a well-known and widespread phenomenon as scattering, which boils down mainly to poor switchability.

Many jokes are about the absent-mindedness of scientists. However, their absent-mindedness is often the flip side of maximum composure and concentration on the main subject of interest: they are so immersed in their thoughts that when faced with everyday trifles they do not switch and can find themselves in a funny position. Here are some facts of this kind. Much has been said about the absent-mindedness of the famous composer and chemist A.P. Borodin. Once, when he had guests, tired, he began to say goodbye to them, saying that it was time for him to go home, since he had a lecture tomorrow, and went to get dressed in the hallway. Or such a case. Borodin went abroad with his wife. While checking passports at the border checkpoint, the official asked his wife's name. Due to his absent-mindedness, Borodin could not remember her name. The official looked at him suspiciously. At this time, his wife, Ekaterina Sergeevna, entered the room, and Borodin rushed to her: “Katya! For God’s sake, what’s your name?”
This story is also known. N. E. Zhukovsky comes to his home, calls, and from behind the door they ask: “Who do you want?” He responded: “Tell me, is the owner at home?” - "No". - “And the hostess?” - “There is no hostess either. What should I convey?” - “Tell me that Zhukovsky came.”

And one more fact. Once upon a time, the famous mathematician Hilbert had a party. After one of the guests arrived, Madame Gilbert took her husband aside and told him: “David, go and change your tie.” Gilbert left. An hour passed and he still did not appear. The alarmed housewife went in search of her husband and, looking into the bedroom, found him in bed. He was fast asleep. When he woke up, he remembered that, having taken off his tie, he automatically began to undress further and, putting on his pajamas, went to bed. Here we are again faced with the deep interconnectedness of all characteristics of attention.
What is the reason for the described absent-mindedness? Mainly that, having developed everyday stereotypes, scientists took advantage of every opportunity to remove from consciousness control over their execution or timely switching to another program and thereby free up the field of attention for solving the main scientific problem.

Now let's turn to the following characteristic of attention - objectivity. As has already been emphasized, the central mechanisms of attention operate by changing the sensitivity (thresholds) of sensory organs of different modalities. But a person operates with specific objects, and not with a generalized modality. For example, you can listen to an orchestra without noticing a neighbor’s cough or the noise of a fan, watch a movie without noticing the hat of the viewer sitting in front, that is, highlight certain complexes of signals in accordance with central settings, personal significance, and relevance.

The mentioned characteristics of attention (stability, concentration, etc.) are to some extent characteristic not only of humans, but also of animals. But a special property of attention - voluntariness - is truly human. Animals have only involuntary attention.

TYPES OF ATTENTION

free- consciously regulated, focused on the object.

Involuntary- does not arise on purpose, but under the influence of the characteristics of objects and phenomena, such attention allows you to navigate changes in the environment.

Post-voluntary– arises consciously after the voluntary and does not require effort in order not to be distracted.

In the process of perception, with appropriate attention, a person creates subjective images of objective objects and phenomena that directly affect his sensory organs. Some of these images arise and change during sensations and perceptions. But there are images that remain after the cessation of sensations and perceptions or when these processes switch to other objects. Such images are called representations.

Ideas and their connections (associations) can persist in a person for a long time. Unlike images of perception, ideas are caused by images of memory.

We offer an interesting test (No. 4), with which you can check whether you have a good memory. After all, in everyday life we often have to remember a lot of different information.

Remember the words below along with the serial numbers under which they appear in the list.

Memory - this is a reflection of what was previously perceived, experienced, accomplished and comprehended by a person. It is characterized by processes such as the recording, storage, reproduction and processing of various information by a person. These memory processes are always in unity, but in each specific case one of them becomes the most active.

There are two types of memory: genetic (hereditary) and lifetime.

Hereditary memory stores information that determines the anatomical and physiological structure of the organism during development and the innate forms of species behavior (instincts). It depends less on the living conditions of the body compared to the lifetime accumulated long-term memory. Information in hereditary memory is stored in DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) molecules, consisting of long chains coiled into spirals. Moreover, each cell of the body contains all hereditary information. As a carrier of hereditary information, DNA has a number of special properties. It is resistant to damaging factors and is capable of correcting some of its damage, which stabilizes its information composition. These and a number of other properties ensure the reliability of hereditary information.

Lifetime memory is a repository of information received from birth to death. It depends significantly more on external conditions. There are several types and forms of lifetime memory. One of the types of lifetime memory - imprinting - is intermediate between genetic and lifetime memory.

Imprinting is a form of memory observed only in the early period of development, immediately after birth. Imprinting consists of instantly establishing a very stable specific connection between a person or animal and a specific object in the external environment. This connection can manifest itself in following any moving object first shown to the animal in the first hours of life, in approaching it, touching it, etc. Such reactions persist for a long time, which is considered an example of learning and long-term memorization from a single presentation. Imprinting differs significantly from ordinary memorization in that long-term non-reinforcement does not weaken the response, but it is limited to a short, well-defined period in the life cycle and is irreversible. In normal learning, what is shown last has (other things being equal conditions of significance, probability, etc.) the greatest influence on behavior, whereas in imprinting, the object shown first has greater significance. The main thing here is not the novelty of the stimulus, but its primacy.

So, it is easy to notice that imprinting as a form of lifetime memory is very close to hereditary in terms of strength, incorruptibility of the trace and the inevitable nature of its manifestations.

The following types of intravital memory are distinguished: motor, figurative, emotional and symbolic (verbal and logical).

Motor memory detected very early. This is primarily a memory for posture, body position. Motor memory underlies professional and sports skills, dance figures and countless automatic skills, such as the habit of looking first to the left and then to the right when crossing the street. Reaching full development earlier than other forms, motor memory in some people remains leading for the rest of their lives, while in others other types of memory play a leading role.

One of the forms of figurative memory is visual. Its distinctive feature is that during the period of holding the image in memory, it undergoes a certain transformation. Discovered following changes, which occur with the visual image in the process of preservation: simplification (omission of details), some exaggeration of individual details, transformation of the figure into a more symmetrical one (more uniform). The shape stored in memory can be rounded, expanded, and sometimes its position and orientation change. During the process of saving, the image is also transformed in color. Rarely encountered and unexpected images are visually reproduced most clearly and vividly. On the one hand, these transformations of the image in memory make it less accurate compared to the image in verbal memory. On the other hand, these transformations can be beneficial - turn the image into a general scheme and to a certain extent make it a symbol. Visual figurative memory is difficult to control voluntarily. It is good to remember only the special, the extraordinary - this does not mean having a good memory.

In A.P. Chekhov’s play “The Seagull,” an unlucky writer compares himself with a talented one: “He [the talented one] on the dam has a shining neck from a broken bottle and a black shadow from a mill wheel - so the moonlit night is ready, and I have a trembling the light of the moon, and the quiet twinkling of the stars, and the distant sounds of the piano, fading in the quiet fragrant air." Everyone has perceived and read the last description many times and therefore it does not evoke a vivid image. On the contrary, the shine of the neck of a broken bottle is an unexpected and therefore memorable image.

Figurative memory is usually more pronounced in children and adolescents. In adults, the leading memory, as a rule, is not figurative, but logical. However, there are professions where it is useful to have a developed figurative memory. It was found that you can effectively train figurative memory if you reproduce given pictures mentally in a relaxed, passive state with your eyes closed before going to bed.

Emotional memory determines the reproduction of a certain emotional state upon repeated exposure to the situation in which this emotional state arose for the first time. It is important to emphasize that this state is reproduced in combination with elements of the situation and a subjective attitude towards it. The peculiarities of this memory are the speed of formation of traces, their special strength and involuntary reproduction. There are claims that sensory memory, on the basis of which emotional memory develops, is already present in a six-month-old child and reaches its peak by three to five years. It is the basis of caution, likes and dislikes, as well as the primary sense of recognition (“familiar” and “alien”). A person retains strong, emotionally charged impressions the longest. Investigating the stability of emotional memory, V.N. Myasishchev noted that when schoolchildren were shown pictures, the accuracy of their memorization depended on the emotional attitude towards them - positive, negative or indifferent. With a positive attitude, they remembered all 50 pictures, with a negative attitude, only 28, and with an indifferent attitude, only 7. Emotional memory is distinguished by the fact that it is almost never accompanied by an attitude towards a revived feeling, as a memory of a previously experienced feeling. Thus, a person who was frightened or bitten by a dog in childhood then gets scared every time he meets a dog, but does not realize what this feeling is connected with. Arbitrary reproduction of feelings is almost impossible. Along with imprinting the sensory state that accompanied the perception of this or that information, emotional memory provides quick and lasting memorization of the information itself that caused this emotional state, but one cannot always rely on the accuracy of its storage.

Let's give an example. The following experiment was carried out: students sat in the classroom with their heads bowed over exam papers. Suddenly the door burst open and a young woman, approximately 1 meter 50 centimeters tall, dressed in jeans, a plaid cowboy shirt and a Tyrolean green hat, burst into the room. She quickly threw a carrot at a student sitting in the front row and shouted: “Federal herring! You stole my grades.” At the same time, a clapping sound was heard from the corridor outside. A student in the front row, wearing a sports society uniform, screamed and fell to the floor. When the attacker ran out of the room, two men dressed as orderlies ran into the classroom, pulled the victim to his feet and quickly led him out. The whole scene took a minute from the moment the attacker ran in until the victim was taken out. The impact of emotional shock and surprise was clearly demonstrated when students were asked to immediately describe the full picture of the events they witnessed by answering a series of questions. The result was amazing. Here are some questions and answers. Who was the attacker? One student wrote: "...big, Germanic type...like a Hollywood lifeguard." How was the attacker dressed? "In the uniform of a railway conductor." What were the weapons? "The killer used a knife with an open blade." Who was the victim? "A man wearing khaki pants and a blue sweater." Since the incident was highly unexpected and had a dramatic appearance, most witnesses did not remember either the appearance of the person entering or the circumstances of the invasion. In the described experimental situation, the deformation of traces in memory can only be attributed to emotional impact, because the time factor is excluded, and forgetting cannot be attributed to the transformation of information over a long period of storage.

Symbolic memory divided into verbal and logical. The verbal one is formed in the process of lifelong development following the figurative one and reaches highest power by 10-13 years. Its distinctive feature is the accuracy of reproduction. Another (and this is its advantage over figurative memory) is a significantly greater dependence on will. Reproducing a visual image is not always in our power, while repeating a phrase is much easier. However, even with verbal storage, distortions are observed. Thus, when memorizing a series of words, the initial and final ones are most accurately reproduced; in addition, the detail in the story that attracted a person’s attention tends to move to the beginning during retelling. Accuracy of verbal reproduction is ensured not only by repetition, but also by abbreviation. The text can be shortened and thereby facilitate the work of memory: the shorter it is, the fewer errors during reproduction. Brevity is effective not only due to simple cutting, but also due to the development of rules for highlighting the most essential. Gradually, logical memory develops through generalization.
The relationship between verbal memory and visual memory is complex. On the one hand, verbal memory itself is more accurate than visual memory, on the other hand, it can influence visual images stored in memory, enhancing their transformation or suppressing them completely. In this case, visual images in memory can be transformed to more closely match their verbal descriptions.

Based on the time it takes to store material, there are four main forms of memory:
- instant (or iconic - memory-image) is associated with retaining an accurate and complete picture of what was just perceived by the senses, without any processing of the information received. This memory is a direct reflection of information by the senses. Its duration is from 0.1 to 0.5 seconds and it represents the complete residual impression that arises from the direct perception of stimuli;
- short-term is a method of storing information for a short period of time. The duration of retention of mnemonic traces here does not exceed several tens of seconds, on average about 20 (without repetition). In short-term memory, not a complete, but only a generalized image of what is perceived, its most essential elements, is stored. This memory works without a preliminary conscious intention to memorize, but with an intention to subsequently reproduce the material;
- operational called memory designed to store information for a certain, predetermined period, ranging from several seconds to several days. The storage period of information in this memory is determined by the task faced by a person, and is designed only for solving this problem. After this, information may disappear from RAM;
– long-term memory is capable of storing information for an almost unlimited period. Information that has entered the storage of long-term memory can be reproduced by a person as many times as necessary without loss. Moreover, repeated and systematic reproduction of this information only strengthens its traces in long-term memory.

Features of memorization and recollection act as qualities of memory. These include volume (measured by the number of objects recalled immediately after their single perception), speed (measured by speed, that is, the amount of time spent memorizing and recalling the desired material), accuracy (measured by the degree of similarity of what is recalled with what is being recalled). perceived), duration (measured by the amount of time during which, without repeated perceptions, what was remembered can be recalled).
To sum up all of the above, we can emphasize that memory is a mental process of imprinting and reproducing a person’s experience. Thanks to memory, a person’s past experience does not disappear without a trace, but is preserved in the form of ideas.

Sensations, perceptions and ideas of a person reflect mainly those objects and phenomena or their individual properties that directly affect the analyzers. These mental processes, together with involuntary attention and visual-figurative memory, represent the sensory foundations of human cognition of objective reality.

But sensory foundations do not exhaust all the possibilities of human reflection. This is evidenced by the fact that a person does not feel or perceive a lot, but learns. He, for example, does not hear ultrashort or too faint sounds, does not feel small temperature changes, does not see the movement of light or radio waves, does not feel the processes occurring inside atoms, etc. The limitation of sensory knowledge is especially acute in the reflection of the past and future, that is, what objectively does not exist and does not affect on a person at a specific moment in his life activity.

Despite such limitations, a person still reflects what is inaccessible to his sensory knowledge. This happens through thinking.

Thinking - this is a generalized reflection of objective reality in its natural, most significant connections and relationships. It is characterized by community and unity with speech.

In other words, thinking is a mental process of cognition associated with the discovery of subjectively new knowledge, with problem solving, with the creative transformation of reality.

Thinking manifests itself when solving any problem that arises before a person, as long as it is relevant, does not have a ready-made solution, and a powerful motive prompts a person to look for a way out. The immediate impetus for the development of the thought process is the emergence of a task, which, in turn, appears as a consequence of the awareness of the discrepancy between known to man principles and methods of performing actions and new conditions that preclude their application. The first stage, immediately following the awareness of the presence of a task, is usually associated with a delay in impulsive reactions. Such a delay creates a pause necessary for orientation in its conditions, analysis of components, highlighting the most significant ones and correlating them with each other. Preliminary orientation in the conditions of the task is a mandatory initial stage of any thinking process.

The next key stage is associated with the selection of one of the alternatives and the formation of a general solution scheme. In the process of such a choice, some possible moves in the decision reveal themselves to be more probable and push aside inadequate alternatives. At the same time, not only the general features of this and similar situations from a person’s past experience are extracted from memory, but also information about the results that were previously obtained with similar motivations and emotional states. There is a continuous scanning of information in memory, and the dominant motivation directs this search. The nature of motivation (its strength and duration) determines the information retrieved from memory. A gradual increase in emotional tension leads to an expansion of the range of hypotheses extracted from memory, but excessive stress can narrow this range, which determines the well-known tendency towards stereotypical decisions in stressful situations. However, even with maximum access to information, a complete search of hypotheses is irrational due to the large expenditure of time.

To limit the field of hypotheses and control the order of search, a special mechanism is used, which is closely related to the person’s system of attitudes and his emotional mood. Before going through and evaluating possible approaches to solving a problem, you need to understand it, and what does it mean to understand? Understanding is usually determined by the presence of intermediate concepts connecting the conditions of the problem and the required result, and the transposability of the solution. The solution will be transposeable if selected general principle solutions for a class of problems, that is, an invariant is identified that can be used to solve problems of other classes. Learning to identify such a general principle means obtaining a universal tool for solving problems. This is helped by training in reformulating the problem.

The main elements with which thought operates are concepts(reflection of general and essential features of any objects and phenomena), judgments(establishing a connection between objects and phenomena; it can be true and false), inferences(the conclusion of a new judgment from one or more judgments), and also images And presentations.

The basic operations of thinking include analysis(mentally dividing the whole into parts and then comparing them), synthesis(combining individual parts into a whole, constructing a whole from analytically specified parts), specification(application of general laws to a specific case, the inverse operation of generalization), abstraction(highlighting any side or aspect of a phenomenon that in reality does not exist as an independent one), generalization(mental association of objects and phenomena similar in some respects), as well as comparison And classification.

It is important to note that the main mental operations can be represented as reversible pairs: analysis - synthesis, identifying similarities - identifying differences, abstraction - concretization.

The main types of thinking are theoretical(which, in turn, includes conceptual and figurative), as well as practical (to it includes visual-figurative and visual-effective).

The main properties of the mind include:
- curiosity And inquisitiveness(the desire to learn as much and thoroughly as possible);
- depth(the ability to penetrate into the essence of objects and phenomena);
- flexibility(the ability to correctly navigate new circumstances);
- criticality(the ability to question the conclusions made and promptly abandon a wrong decision);
- logic(ability to think harmoniously and consistently);
- rapidity(the ability to make the right decisions in the shortest possible time).

When studying thought processes, several types of barriers were discovered - specific obstacles in thinking, a kind of taboo. These are self-restraints associated with the inertia and conventional nature of our thinking, and admiration for living authorities (“N.N. himself was skeptical about the prospects of work in this direction”) and dead (“Poincaré even pointed out the insolubleness of a similar problem”), and prohibitions , based on a false analogy (“it’s like creating a perpetual motion machine”). One of the most effective ways suppression of new ideas is the idea that no one has the right to doubt any decision unless he himself offers a better or more conclusive one.

To overcome the listed barriers, it is useful to analyze the entire field of hypotheses, regardless of their expected productivity, at the beginning of solving a problem. And only as the analysis progresses should it focus on an increasingly narrower area that is more closely related to the problem being solved.

To make it easier to overcome these difficulties and not to miss important hypotheses during random enumeration, we have developed special method- morphological analysis. It consists of dividing the problem into functional elements and sequentially studying all possible compositions of these elements in all the diversity of their parameters. Another way to direct associations in the right direction is the method of “focal objects”. Within the framework of this approach, an analysis is made of the combination of properties of the object being studied and several random, but forcibly selected ones.

Another way to avoid stereotypes in solving is the ability to purposefully modify, “shake up” the conditions of the problem. For this purpose, you can change the size of an object either downwards - to zero, or up - to infinity; you can also vary the lifetime of the object from microintervals to infinity. The same effect is achieved when splitting an object into parts, and when searching for a solution for individual parts of the fragmented object. It is advisable to use the transfer of the solution to another space or the introduction of unevenness in the spatial features of the environment or object.

Conceptual thinking provides another opportunity to optimize the solution to a problem. The use of concepts of different levels allows, moving from less generalized concepts to more generalized ones and back, to escape from the beaten path of solution.

One of the effective ways to activate thinking is a hint. It can be offered either at different (early and late) stages of solving the problem, or at the same stage, use hints of different levels - more or less specific. As a hint for solving the main problem, you can use an auxiliary problem, which is less difficult, but contains the principle of solving the main one, which can be transferred. Let's consider an example from the book by A.V. Brushlinsky. Problem: will the candle burn in spaceship in zero gravity conditions? Solution: weightlessness excludes convection, and combustion is impossible, since combustion products are not removed from the flame and it goes out due to the lack of oxygen. At the first stages of solving this problem, two easier auxiliary hint problems can be proposed, the solution of which is also based on the principles of convection and diffusion. Why are water heating radiators located in the room below and not upstairs? (Convection.) Why does cream in milk settle faster in a cold room? (Diffusion.)

They use a variety of hints: reporting the next step of the solution, additional data, giving an analogy. However, one must keep in mind that a hint that coincides in time with the formation of one’s own decision can sharply slow it down or completely disrupt the so-called locking effect. The blocking effect often manifests itself in an exam if the examiner's hint, offered at the moment when the examinee has almost achieved the result, destroys the mental scheme of his own solution. He cannot even understand what is being suggested to him, he is so absorbed in the implementation of his decision.

All of the above methods of overcoming thought barriers are very effective when it is necessary to find a new, original approach to the analysis of theoretical and technical problems. However, in everyday life, a person is forced to solve problems of interpersonal communication every day, and then it turns out that here it is even more difficult for him to free himself from the strict control of traditional and stereotypical approaches. In recent years, even a separate direction in psychology - the theory of attribution - has begun to develop rapidly, studying the methods of everyday, everyday thinking. The field of application of the efforts of researchers in this area is the study of the influences of the social environment on how a person, forced to act in conditions of information uncertainty, puts forward hypotheses about the reasons for the observed behavior of other people.
Carl Jung considered two types of people according to the nature of their thinking: intuitive (characterized by the predominance of emotions over logic and the dominance of the right hemisphere of the brain over the left) and mental (characterized by rationality and the predominance of the left hemisphere of the brain over the right, the primacy of logic over feelings).

In psychology, the problem of thinking is closely related to the problem of speech. Human thinking and speech proceed on the basis of common elements - words. Speech arose simultaneously with thinking in the process of socio-historical development of man.

Speech is a system of sound signals, written signs and symbols used by humans to represent, process, store and transmit information.

Speech is the main acquisition of humanity, a catalyst for its improvement. Indeed, it is omnipotent; it makes accessible to knowledge those objects that a person perceives directly, that is, with which real interaction is achievable. In addition, language allows one to operate with objects that a person has never encountered before, that is, those that were not part of his individual experience, but appropriated to him from universal human experience. That is why they say that language marks the emergence of a special form of reflection of reality. The emergence of oral and written speech determined the specifics of the development of thinking.

It is known that there are concepts varying degrees generality and each concept has a corresponding name - a word (symbol). The participation of speech in this aspect of thinking is undeniable. It is much more difficult to imagine images that have gone through several stages of generalization. The development of written language allows us to trace the gradual transition from specific images to generalized symbols. At the origins of written language in ancient times, there were pictures that realistically depicted objects, but the relationships between objects were not depicted in them. In modern language, a word has lost any visual resemblance to the object it denotes, and the relationships between objects are represented by the grammatical structure of a sentence. The written word is the result of many stages of generalization of the original concrete visual image.

The impact of speech on other higher mental processes is no less significant and manifests itself in many ways as a factor that organizes the structure of perception, shapes the architectonics of memory and determines the selectivity of attention.

The generalized image of perception is compared with the name, and thus the reverse influence of the word on subsequent perception is predetermined. Each visual picture is perceived by a person in accordance with the concept to which he attributes the configuration.

The influence of speech on memory is no less clearly evident. As an example, we can recall that colors presented to a person for memorization are shifted in his memory to the names of the primary colors of the spectrum. However, as soon as a person is placed in conditions where he must use other categories to designate color, this shift is not observed. So, if you ask to remember a color, calling it cherry, orange or violet, and thereby correlate it with the colors of a specific, well-known object, that is, use different concepts than in the first case, then a different kind of shift is observed - in the direction of the properties of the named object . In a word, a hypothesis put forward on the basis of previous experience (memory) makes perception tendentious.

Another example: the designation in different languages of a flower called “snowdrop” in Russian, “Schneeglockchen” in German, “perce-niege” in French, and “snowdrop” in English. The origin of this word in Russian is associated with the early appearance of the flower in spring (under the snow), that is, the name draws attention to the time factor; in German, the word means “snow bell,” indicating its shape. The French name - "perce-niege" (drilling snow) is associated with movement. The English name "snowdrop" is based on another feature - shape. Although all these names for snowdrop refer to the same flower, a speaker in Russian provides additional information about the time of appearance of this flower, in German and English - about its shape, in French - about the method of its appearance. This example once again shows that a word has a significant influence on the content of information about an object stored in memory.

As special studies have shown, each word in memory is naturally connected with other words by more or less strong connections (associations). The structure where even weak connections can be traced is called the semantic field of a given word. It is assumed that the center of the field is characterized by closer connections - higher probabilities of combining these words, and the periphery contains words that form rarely occurring combinations. This organization of the semantic field of a word is manifested, for example, in the understanding of the figurative meaning of the word and humor. It is known that the use of unlikely combinations of words often causes laughter, but only active mastery of the entire semantic field of the word allows you to understand the essence of the joke and feel the low probability of the combination of words. This implies the importance of studying extensive vocabulary (and not just grammar) when mastering foreign languages.

Speaking about the main types of speech, we must emphasize that the process of exchanging thoughts is carried out in the form of oral and written speech, but it is necessary to remember about one more type - internal speech pronounced mentally. It does not perform the function of communication, but serves to carry out the thinking process (its main feature is precisely that the words are pronounced silently and, as a rule, do not have sound design; it differs from colloquial, external speech in its conciseness, brevity, fragmentary character).
Speech is also divided into active(speech of the speaker, writer) and passive(speech of the listener, reader).

A person’s speech in general and his individual speeches to those listening can be characterized by content, expressiveness and form.
A speaker in front of an audience must have a well-trained voice. The success of conveying content that is directed not only to the mind, but also to the feelings of listeners, largely depends on this. It is impossible to convey the full depth of the content, to influence the audience both emotionally and aesthetically, if the voice is hoarse, hoarse and monotonous. In addition, a hoarse speaker causes listeners an irresistible need to clear their throat by coughing. Speaking of cough. The audience's cough somehow prevented the lecturer from starting his speech. In response to his request to stop coughing, the audience responded: “What do you mean stop? The cough is uncontrollable.” “Imagine - we manage,” the lecturer answered and told about the Narodnaya Volya member N.A. Morozov, who, having found himself in the Shlisselburg fortress with a focus of tuberculosis in the lungs and knowing that coughing accelerates the painful process, by an effort of will ordered himself not to cough. When he was released 30 years later, the doctors were amazed: not a trace of tuberculosis remained. “By the way,” the lecturer finished, “pay attention: during the time I was talking, not one of you coughed.”

Speech should be balanced in pace. Haste, usually caused by the speaker's timidity, creates the impression that the speaker is "getting off." Sluggish speech is also ineffective, as it causes indifference to the topic of the speech. Reading a lecture very slowly leads to a weakening of perception; pauses that occur between words impose additional semantic load on each word; words acquire an unreasonably greater emotional and substantive significance, which makes perception difficult.

The understandability of the speech language depends on many factors: vocabulary, length of sentences, degree of syntactic complexity of the speech, its saturation with abstract expressions, foreign and special terms. It is very important to use words correctly. The inconsistency of the word used with its generally accepted meaning or stylistic norms causes negative emotions in listeners, which can negate the purpose of the speech. Overly pompous expressions make people laugh, trivial ones irritate, and incorrectly used words cause ridicule and irony. The outstanding Russian lawyer and orator A.F. Koni, who knew well the value of the accuracy of constructing a phrase, wrote: “It is worth rearranging the words in the popular expression “blood and milk” and saying “milk with blood” to see the meaning of a separate word put in its place ".

It is necessary to pay attention to the vocabulary of speech. Linguistically, judgments must be formulated in such a way as to correspond to the stock of knowledge of the listeners and, to some extent, to the nature of their expectations - social attitudes. An example of the flexible following of the changing situation in France in writing can be found in E. V. Tarle, who provides an observation of the specific selection of words in the Parisian press to describe Napoleon’s progress from the moment of his landing in Juan Bay until his entry into Paris (the Hundred Days period). The first publication: “The Corsican monster landed in the Bay of Juan”, the second - “The cannibal goes to Grasse”, the third - “The usurper entered Grenoble”, the fourth - “Bonaparte took Lyon”, the fifth - “Napoleon is approaching Fontainebleau”, the sixth - “ His Imperial Majesty is expected today in his faithful Paris." This entire literary gamut was extracted from the same newspapers, published under the same editorial staff for several days: situations changed and, along with them, words.

Sensation, perception, thinking are inseparable parts of a single process of reflecting reality. In the psychological structure of the individual, an important place is occupied by the cognitive sphere, which includes such processes as sensation, perception, memory, thinking, imagination, attention. Each of the listed mental processes performs its own special cognitive functions.

Feeling

Sensation is the process of mental reflection of specific, individual properties, qualities, aspects of objects and phenomena of material reality, affecting the senses at a given moment, in the form of special subjective formations. Through sensations we are presented with the physical and chemical properties of the surrounding world and even our own body. Sensations as subjective formations arise on the basis of a psychophysiological process similar in name.

For sensations to arise, it is necessary, first of all, to have objects and phenomena in the real world influencing the sense organs, which are called in this case irritants. The effect of stimuli on the sense organs is called irritation. Excitation of systems of nerve cells with the obligatory participation of cells of the cerebral cortex gives sensation.

The physiological basis of sensations is the complex activity of the sense organs. I.P. Pavlov called this activity analyzer, and the systems of cells, which are the most complexly organized and are perceptive apparatuses that directly carry out the analysis of irritations - analyzers.

The analyzer is characterized by the presence of three specific sections: peripheral(receptor), transmitting(conductor) and central(cerebral).

Peripheral department - all sensory organs (eye, ear, nose, skin), as well as special receptor devices located in the internal environment of the body (in the digestive and respiratory organs, in the cardiovascular system, in the genitourinary organs).

A person has quite a few different sense organs and corresponding sensations. They differ from each other in such an important property as modality. Modality is a specific subjective coloring that is characteristic of each sensation. Depending on the modality, the following groups of sensations are distinguished: visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, gustatory, painful, motor, organic, static and vibration. Let's characterize them:

Visual sensations arise as a result of the influence of light rays (electromagnetic waves) on the retina of the eye, which is the receptor of the visual analyzer. Light affects two types of light-sensitive cells located in the retina - rods and cones, so named for their external shape;

Auditory sensations(distant). Thanks to this type of sensation, a person is able to hear speech and has the ability to communicate. Stimuli are sound waves. Auditory sensations reflect the pitch of sound, volume, timbre. All auditory sensations can be reduced to three types - speech, music, noise.

Skin sensations (contact). The skin has several analyzer systems: tactile (touch sensations), temperature (sensations of cold and heat), pain. Tactile sensations of the hand, combining with muscle-joint sensitivity, form the sense of touch. Touch is a specific human system of cognitive activity of the hand, developed through labor. Temperature sensations are associated with the regulation of heat exchange between the body and the environment. The distribution of heat and cold receptors on the skin is uneven. The back is most sensitive to cold, the chest is the least sensitive. Painful sensations They signal to the body the need to move away from the stimulus and have a pronounced emotional tone.

Statistical feelings signal the position of the body in space. The receptors are located in the vestibular apparatus of the inner ear. Sudden and frequent changes in body position in space can lead to dizziness.

Vibration sensations. Vibration sensitivity is adjacent to auditory sensations. They have a common nature of reflected physical phenomena. Vibration sensations reflect vibrations of an elastic medium. This type of sensitivity is figuratively called “contact hearing.” In humans, vibration sensitivity is subordinated to auditory and visual. No special vibration receptors have been found for humans.

Olfactory sensations(distant) reflect the smells of surrounding objects. The olfactory organs are the cells of the upper part of the nasal cavity.

Taste sensations(contact) are caused by the effect on taste buds of substances dissolved in saliva or water. Taste buds - taste buds located on the surface of the tongue, pharynx, palate - distinguish between the sensations of sweet, sour, salty and bitter.

Interoceptive (organic) sensations occupy a special place and role in human life. They arise from receptors located in the internal organs and signal the functioning of the latter. These sensations form the organic feeling (well-being) of a person.

Depending on the functional purpose, sensations are divided into three groups: exteroceptive, interoceptive and proprioceptive. Receptors can be located directly on the surface of the body (exteroceptors) and in internal organs and tissues (interoceptors). An intermediate position is occupied by proprioceptors, which serve to sense the movement and position of body organs, and also participate in determining the properties and qualities of objects, in particular, when touching them with the hand, those located in the muscles and ligaments. Thus, the peripheral part of the analyzer plays the role of a perceiving apparatus. Receptors have a very strict specialization in the sense that each of them is capable of reacting only to certain physical and chemical properties of sensed objects and phenomena.

Sensations have some important properties, knowledge of which is of great importance for understanding many life situations and phenomena. In addition to modality, these include energy parameters, temporal characteristics, adaptation, sensitization and synesthesia. Let's look at them in more detail.

For a sensation to occur, the triggering stimulus must reach a certain magnitude. The minimum strength of the stimulus that causes a barely noticeable sensation is called absolute lower threshold of sensations. Stimuli of lesser strength that do not cause sensation are called subliminal. The lower threshold of sensations determines the level of absolute sensitivity of this analyzer.

The maximum strength of the stimulus, at which a sensation adequate to the current stimulus still occurs, is called the absolute upper threshold of sensations.

The most important property of sensations is intensity. The stronger the stimulus, the more intense the resulting sensation.

The minimum difference between two stimuli that causes a barely noticeable difference in sensations is called threshold of discrimination.

Latent period- the period of time after which a sensation occurs. A change in the sensitivity of the analyzer under the influence of a stimulus is called adaptation.

Sensitization– this is an increase in sensitivity under the influence of the interaction of sensations and exercises (hearing development in children with the help of exercises). Sensations of one modality can change under the influence of stimulation of other senses.

This happens as a result interaction of sensations(for example, visual sensitivity increases under the influence of certain olfactory stimuli).