Child development in infancy. Features of infancy - education and development

Infant age - age period covering the first year of a child's life. M. of century, in turn, is subdivided into three stages: neonatality, the first half of the year and the second half of the year of life. The neonatal stage covers the first month of a baby's life and, in terms of psychological content, is the period of a child's preparation for emotional, situational-personal communication with an adult.

The first six months of life is a stage of emotional (situational-personal) communication between a child and an adult, which at this age acts as a leading activity. At this stage, the child masters the expressive-mimic means of communication that are part of the animation complex. The main psychological neoformation that develops as a product of the leading activity - situational-personal communication - is the infant's affective-personal connections with close adults. These connections serve as the basis for the formation of the child's personality in the first half of the year and the key to his further development. successful development. Under the influence of communication with adults at this age, the cognitive activity baby, showing interest in the world around him. The child masters visual, oral and manual cognitive actions: fixes, examines, observes, sucks, touches toys with his lips and tongue, touches them with his hands, and, finally, learns to grasp objects.

The act of grasping is the beginning of the development of object-manipulative activity and marks the transition of the infant to new stage- in the second half of the year. At this stage, subject-manipulative activity is promoted to the leading position. At this age, communication with an adult is transformed from a situational-personal form into a situational-business form, which "serves" object-manipulative activity. In the process of situational and business communication, the child masters culturally conditioned actions with objects, the appearance of which indicates the formation of the actual substantive activity leading to the next age stage - at an early age. The main psychological neoplasm in the second half of the year is the activity of the child as the genetically first personal education. It manifests itself in active position the infant in relation to the surrounding people, the objective world and to himself.

If in the first half of life there was a deficit of emotional communication, then in the second half of the year the formation of object-manipulative activity and situational business communication is delayed, which leads to a deviation in personal development child: passivity in relation to people and the objective environment, unformed attitude towards oneself. With normal physical and mental development, an infant in the second half of the year masters more and more complex locomotion: arbitrarily changes posture, learns to sit, sit, crawl, stand up and take the first steps; begins to understand adult speech and pronounce the first words; masters the simplest skills (drinks from a cup, eats from a spoon, independently picks up and bites off bread, stretches out a leg or arm when dressing, etc.). The period of infancy ends with the crisis of the first year, in which the child's personality manifests for the first time.

S.Yu. Meshcheryakova

Definitions, meanings of the word in other dictionaries:

Psychological Dictionary

The period of a child's life between birth and one year of age. In infancy, three stages are distinguished: newborn - (the first month of life), when the child is preparing for emotional communication - with adults, the first half of the year - during which ...

Finally, a miracle happened, and your family has grown. Left behind are the worries and fears, worries and doubts associated with the expectation of a child. And ahead - new fears and doubts, worries and uncertainty. Now it seems to you that your earlier doubts were ridiculous. After all, the most important thing is how to interact with this little crying lump. Your thoughts are directed towards education. You are concerned about what kind of person your child will grow up to be. Understanding that the baby in its formation, maturation passes certain stages, on each of which it develops in accordance with the specifics of its age, will largely help you build your relationships correctly both with the baby and within the family.

Immediately after birth, infancy, the child still has a system unconditioned reflexes. He is helpless and cannot satisfy them without an adult. The biological essence of helplessness lies in the fact that the newborn does not have formed behavioral acts. Its entire existence is provided by an adult. The main reflexes of the newborn are food, protective and orientation reflexes. The basis for the development of a child at this age is constant contact with the mother and other close family members. The position of the father is very important. If, for example, the father wanted a son, but got a daughter and is not too pleased with this fact, then the girl feels everything. Well, if a boy is born second in this family, then the daughter, seeing the sincere and long-awaited joy of her father, may not forgive him for his attitude towards her in infancy.

If the upbringing in the family is set reasonably, then it is quite possible that this attitude will not be transferred to the brother. Conversely, if the conditions are unfavorable - more attention to the boy, expression of feelings of the father, grandmothers, admiration of friends, then, as a rule, the family will be shaken by mutual resentment of children, and even their enmity in the struggle for primacy in gaining parental love. Mother and child are "tied" and create a certain community, which is based on the inseparable unity of the child and the adult. An indicator of such unity is the positive emotional background which contributes to the normal physical and mental development of the child. The leading type of infant activity is emotional communication with the adults around him. The main need is expressed in the desire to be near an adult. It is enough to observe the born baby. He does not want to be alone if he is not sleeping. He needs company. In principle, he cries only when he wants to eat, when he is wet or something hurts him, and when he is “bored”. Therefore, it is quite natural if all family members actively communicate with the baby. Smile, tell him stories, discuss some events with him and not be embarrassed by the fact that outwardly he does not yet respond to communication. This behavior of adults forms the child's trust in the outside world.

During infancy, the child develops auditory perception, he reacts to his mother's voice and begins to attract attention with his voice.

Up to a year, a child has a strong leap in development. In the process of communication between parents and the baby increases vitality child, his activity is enhanced. This, in turn, creates the prerequisites for motor, speech and sensory development. Any parent will tell you what "leaps" of development characterize the first year of a child's life.

By the end of the first year the child already establishes a connection between the object that the mother shows him or with which he plays and with the word that designates it. By the age of five months, the child acquires grasping skills and holds objects tightly. The act of grasping refers to a behavioral act. Playing with various toys gives the child the opportunity to get acquainted with its properties. After all, grabbing certain objects, he is already actively watching them with his eyes. This is how object perception is formed. Yes, and the space for the child is expanding. After all, in order to grab, the baby stretches out his arm and increases the space around him by its length. The ability to grab allows him to manipulate objects, move them. His actions become more perfect. Each new day opens before him new world! The child's perception becomes objective and constant.

Early age covers the life of a child from one to two years and is marked major event in the life of a child - he gets on his feet and begins to walk. This is extremely important for him, because it allows him to actively explore the space. Mastering walking gives the child a certain independence, moving him away from the adult.

By the end of the second year the movements of the child from chaotic turn into more conscious. Improved coordination allows you to master actions that until now were difficult to perform. The child becomes more rhythmic. He can already get the thing he likes by climbing onto a chair or sofa. He can wash himself and is already using the potty or toilet. The leading activity at this age is objective activity. Therefore, it is very important to teach him how to deal with different subjects. This helps the child to adapt to the properties of different objects, the list of which is expanding every day. The development of objective action takes place in joint activities with adults, followed by separation from them and the transition to independent action.

At first, the child masters subjects only together with mom or dad, in the course of joint activities.. The adult controls these actions, and the child alone cannot do anything. In the course of the development of objective activity, the functions of an adult are partially transferred to the child. Mom or dad starts the action, and the child ends it. And only then the adult says how to do it, and the child does it. Of course, at first the child does not understand the functionality of objects. For example, he wears shoes. But you can wear it backwards. He watched how mother did it, but still does not know how to act with this object. Subsequently, mastering the methods of transferring objective activity, the child learns to compare his actions with the actions of adults. The role of mother, father, relatives in the eyes of the child is increasing, because adults are able to do what is still difficult or inaccessible to the child.

A variety of objective activities affect the development of thinking in an early age child. It has a visual-effective character, since the child first manipulates objects and only after that establishes connections between them. He learns to operate correctly with different objects, to move them, to use some objects to master others that are new to him. From the practical mastery of the properties of objects, the child proceeds to mental mastery, creating conditions for the development of verbal thinking. The appearance of the word is a feature of this age. The child's speech is transient. It is understandable only to close people, and even then not always. The speech of the child, as a rule, is bright, expressive, emotionally colored. He already speaks actively and knows a lot of words, but for those around him they are not entirely clear. The vocabulary increases and it is very noticeable - the child is constantly saying something. Sometimes by himself, but most often with adults. He already uses two-word sentences. This is a big leap in his development. The formation of speech during this period is the main event in a child's life.

The imagination of the child is not yet sufficiently developed. This confirms his craving for household items used by the child for play. He does not yet show much interest in toys, although the elements gaming activity already appearing. All activities of adults are aimed at expanding the world for the child, at preparing his transition to another age stage.

In objective speech, perception develops. Naturally, this is the initial stage of his development, which is expressed in the fact that the child fixes some one quality of the object and recognizes the object by this quality. The perception of the child is closely connected with practical actions. When meeting a new object, the child highlights it characteristics. If the vase has a sharp rim, then he perceives this rim as exaggeratedly sharp. And in the figure, the rim may be larger than the vase. Under the influence of perception, the development of other mental processes occurs. Memory is involuntary and does not yet operate as a separate process.

infant or infancy It is customary to divide into three stages: newborn (the first month of a child's life), the first and second half of the year. In terms of psychological content, the first stage is a kind of preparation of the child for situational-personal and emotional communication with adults. During the first six months of life, the infant gradually masters the expressive-mimic methods of communication, which are part of the revitalization complex.

At this stage of development, the leading activity of the baby is situational-personal communication with an adult. Under its influence, the main psychological neoplasm- affective-personal connection with close adults, which is the basis for the formation of personality and the key to the further successful development of the child.

Social aspect of infancy

A person by his essence can be considered through three hypostases:

• as a biosystem;
• as a social being;
• as a person.

IN normal conditions the emergence of a new man is the result psychological readiness mother for his birth. The newborn is initially helpless. As soon as he is born, he must adapt to conditions of existence that differ sharply from existence in the mother's womb. The life of a newborn depends on how his body can adapt to changing environmental conditions. For the body of many newborns, the very process of birth is a severe physical test that exhausts the body and creates a situation of stress. Having been born and having recovered from the shocks associated with birth, the child begins to live in the given conditions and develop in accordance with the innate potential and with the conditions created.

Neoplasms of infancy

Infancy is a period when a child quickly develops from a sedentary lifestyle and a sleeping state into a mobile, cheerful child. He learns very quickly eye contact with an adult, opens his hands visually, learns to grab an object, and then manipulate it.

Researchers distinguish two main neoplasms of infancy:

• the structure of the speech action (by the year the child can pronounce his first words);
• objective action (masters arbitrary interactions with objects of the world around him).

As a result of emotional communication, the cognitive activity of the baby develops intensively. A baby, whose age is more than 4 weeks, is already beginning to show interest in the world around him. He explores, examines the world in the nearest space; feels the object with his hands, pulls it into his mouth and gets acquainted with the object in such an infantile way; he listens and looks for the source of the sound; he constantly manipulates everything that comes to hand. He enters into an emotional relationship with his mother and other close adults. He begins to feel anxious at the sight stranger. In fact, from an asocial being, an infant quickly becomes a child capable of responding to the people around him with a smile, crying, joy, fear - in human ways. At the same time, he begins to distinguish between separate, often repeated situations and manifest himself in a certain way, he begins to distinguish between words denoting objects and significant people.

Infancy is the period when a child develops physically, mentally and socially extremely fast, passing a short time a colossal path from a helpless newborn with a small set of innate reactions to an active baby, able to watch, listen, act, solve some visually perceived situations, cry for help, attract attention, rejoice at the appearance of loved ones.

Speech development in infancy

As a rule, up to a year the baby's speech is passive - he already understands intonations and frequently repeated constructions, but he does not speak yet. However, it is in infancy that the foundations of speech skills are laid. They are formed by the children themselves, who try to establish contact with adults, first with the help of crying, gestures, babble, cooing and cooing, and then with the help of the first words.

The transitional phase from active to passive speech is autonomous, which is formed at the age of 10-12 months. Sometimes it is called children's jargon. In form, autonomous speech is communication, but in content it is a situational emotional-direct connection with adults. It has some of its own characteristics, in particular:

• does not coincide with active speech either articulatory, or phonetically ("b-b"), or in meaning (polysemy of vocalizations);
• it is distinguished by the peculiarity of the connection between words (reminiscent of a series of exclamations that are pronounced in a state of passion);
• communication is possible only in a certain situation and with specific people who are "initiated into the cipher" of children's speech.

Object activities in infancy

Activities with objects are closely interconnected with the development of the child's movements, while certain patterns are always traced in its sequence:

• Moving eye. This phenomenon is known as the "eyes of a newborn" and consists in the fact that the left and right eyes of the baby can look in opposite directions. These movements are refined only by the end of the second month, when the child is already able to visually focus on the subject. In the third month, binocular vision is formed, and the baby controls eye movement in almost the same way as adults.
• expressive movements.
• Movement in space. This is a prerequisite for the assimilation of objective activity. The child consistently learns various actions: from turning over and raising his head to sitting, crawling and taking the first steps. All these processes are characteristic of various terms, and the strategy of parental behavior has a significant impact on them. Mastering each new movement, the baby discovers new frontiers of space.
• Crawling (sometimes this stage is skipped).
• Grasping. By the end of the second stage of infancy, random grasping of toys acquire signs of intentional actions.
• Manipulation of objects. It differs from “real” actions only in that the object, as a rule, is used by the child for other purposes.
• Pointing gestures.
• Arbitrariness and controllability of movements, which become the basis for such a new formation as objective activity.

Infant communication

The basic need of infancy is the need for security and safety. Its satisfaction is the main function of an adult. Moreover, it is this factor that has a huge impact on development in infancy. If the child feels safe, he will open up to the world around him, trust him and master it much bolder and faster. Otherwise, the child will limit interaction with outside world in a closed space.

Many researchers believe that it is the infancy of a child that is decisive in the formation of a sense of trust or distrust in people, things and phenomena, which he will carry through his whole life. With a lack of attention and love or with abuse with an infant, he inevitably develops a sense of alienation. At the same age, attachment is formed. Experts distinguish three phases of the formation of infant attachment:

• the baby unconsciously seeks closeness with a loved one;
• learns to distinguish acquaintances;
• the baby has a feeling of attachment to especially significant people.

It has been scientifically proven that comfort and social interaction are more conducive to infant bonding than timely feeding.

12.4. Psychological features infancy

The social situation of the development of infancy is characterized by such a system of relations with a close adult, where all the needs of the child are satisfied by an adult who is the "center of any infant situation" (L. S. Vygotsky). "Great-We" is an essential characteristic of the social situation of development, in which the child and the adult are a single whole, and all forms of the child's activity in relation to the world are mediated by the activity of the adult.

Leading activity of infancy- direct-emotional communication between a child and an adult.

Infancy includes two phases - early infancy (2-6 months) and later (7-12 months). These two phases are fundamentally different from each other.

The first difference is connected with the leading form of communication (M. I. Lisina). In early infancy, this is situational-personal communication with an adult. At the heart of communication is the need for kindness.

Lecture 12

attention of an adult. In the second phase of infancy, the leading form of communication is situational business communication. Here the leading need is the child's communication about the subject, determined by a business motive. It is not the adult who comes to the fore, but the activity with the object. The means of communication are expressive-mimic; subject-effective (postures, in the second half of the subject actions and locomotion); verbal (towards the end of late infancy).

The second difference is related to the ratio in the development of sensory and motor skills. Sensory functions develop rapidly in early infancy. In the late (after 6 months), motility begins to develop at a faster pace - postural, locomotor and manual movements (actions with an object).

N. M. Shchelovanov, who studied the mental development of children in early childhood, proposed the following interpretation of the described heterochrony in the development of motor skills and sensory skills. The researcher believed that the main part of human motor functions is corticalized, that is, it has a cortical representation. This means that they are not innate, but are formed during the life of a person as a result of learning, understood in the broadest sense of the word. Obviously, learning requires orienting activity, including sensory processes. The sequence of development of functions - first sensory, and then motor skills - is proof of the position on a specific form of mental development as a process of appropriation of sociocultural experience.

Sensory processes in early infancy are characterized by a high level of development. Thus, in Bauer's experiments, it was shown that children at the age of two months show a constancy of magnitude and depth greater than the empiricist could assume, although less than the nativist could assume. This gave grounds to formulate a position on two levels of development of perception in infancy that are fundamentally different in terms of properties and mechanisms of realization: the level of preperception and the level of perception itself. The level of preperception is characterized by rather high global differentiation; relatively low constancy of perception; the absence of a detailed examination of an object according to the type of modeling of its properties by likening the receptive organs to the properties of perceived objects (A. N. Leontiev). Thus, preperception is a stage in the development of perception before the development of manipulation.

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lations and actions with objects and precedes the development of meaningful and objective perception. Sensory processes are regulated by novelty and orienting reinforcement, that is, they are "disinterested" in nature. In the second half of the year, sensory is rebuilt on the basis of motor skills, absorbing the experience of manipulating the object and locomotion of the child, and acquires the properties of constancy, meaningfulness and objectivity.

Here are the main indicators of the development of sensory processes in a child (the guidelines are given based on the study of the development of children in orphanages; when brought up in a family, the timing of the onset of neoplasms in the field of sensory turns out to be earlier):

■ 3-4 weeks - auditory concentration(listens, locates the sound source); #

■ 3-5 weeks - visual concentration (concentrates attention on an object 15-20 cm from the eye), stepwise tracking of the object;

■ 2-3 months - differentiation of visual objects, preference for objects characterized by novelty; independently holds the head in a vertical position;

■ 3-4 months - sitting with support;

■ 4 - 6-7 months - the formation of grasping;

■ 6-7 months - sits alone, beginning to crawl;

■ 9-11 months - walks with support;

■ 11-14 months - walks independently.

The development of manual (manual) movements begins with grasping, which includes two components - stretching and grasping. The development of grasping is based on two conditions - a complex of revival and emotional communication with an adult, in the context of which an adult includes an object and the development of orienting movements of the hand (palpation) and eye. Sensorimotor eye-hand coordination decisive condition grasp formation. Improvement of grasping occurs as an increasingly accurate assessment of the distance to the object, anticipation of the shape and size of the object.

The following stages in the development of manipulations with an object can be distinguished. At the stage of "preaction" (3-4, 6 months), the sensorimotor unity "eye-hand" is formed. The child can carry out simple manipulations with an object placed in his hand, but they are still carried out without visual control. At the stage of repetition

Lecture 12

effective actions (5-7 months) - the child performs the first manipulations under the control of vision: tapping, waving, attracting an object with subsequent examination, throwing, patting, etc. The repeated cyclical nature of these manipulations, on the basis of which they were called circular circular responses is due to the fact that they are based on orienting reinforcement. At the stage of correlated actions (7-10 months), the child manipulates two objects, establishing the ratio of objects to each other (for example, inserts a cube into a cube, a spoon into a cup, tries to string a pyramid, etc.) - Here, the differentiation of the functions of the hands into the leading and driven. Showing the action to adults and using the "method of passive movements" to teach the child these actions is of great importance for the development of correlated actions. And so, by the end of late infancy (11-12 months), the first functional actions are formed, which are based on the allocation of the function of the object: the child tries to put a sock on his leg, and a hat on his head, repeating the actions of an adult. If before the stage of functional actions the object appeared to the child as a physical object, now its social properties come to the fore. The birth of functional actions prepares the transition to a new leading activity - object-tool activity, aimed at mastering objects as social tools.

By the end of the first year, there is an understanding of speech and the first forms of active speech of the child. The peculiarity of speech is that it has an associative-situational character, that is, it can be understood only based on the situation, intonation, gestures. active speech the child develops from cooing, cooing and babble, which are "disinterested orienting activity" as an imitation of the intonation-rhythmic sound side of human speech. At first, imitation is reproductive and involuntary. The development of babbling is carried out in the direction of increasing the arbitrariness of imitation of adult speech. At 5-6 months, “pseudo-words” appear - vocal reactions of a relatively constant sound composition, expressing the emotional states of the child and used by him to influence an adult. However, they are not subject related. At the end of the first year of life, the child's speech is so peculiar both in semantics and in sound composition, morphology and syntax that it is called autonomous child speech.

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The development of memory in infancy is closely related to the development of perception and exists in the form of recognition. Three stages of memory development during this period can be distinguished: 1) motor memory- position during feeding, movements, actions; 2) emotional memory in the form of a recovery complex; 3) figurative memory in the form of recognition (for example, the bottle from which the child is fed, the beginning of recognition of “ours and foes”, the allocation of the mother's face).

Memory in infancy is not concerned with the ordering of events in relation to the time axis.

The development of emotions is associated, first of all, with the formation of a positive emotional attitude towards an adult and the birth of social emotions. At 8-9 months, a child's attachment to an adult is formed, based on the satisfaction of their need for security. The emergence of attachment is reflected in such emotional reactions as the manifestation of fear and fear of strangers, anxiety during separation from an adult. positive emotional attitude is transferred from an adult to a subject included in the context of communication with an adult. Features of the manifestation of emotions in infancy consist in extreme brightness, irradiation; fast switchability and lability.

By the end of the first year, the infant develops a stable sense of "I", revealing itself in an interest in the image of himself in the mirror and positive emotional reactions to it)