» Activity Theory

The theory of leading activity and the development of the psyche.
Alexey Nikolaevich Leontiev (1903-1979)

Alexey Nikolaevich Leontiev - Soviet psychologist, student of the founder of the cultural-historical school in psychology, Lev Vygotsky.

A.N. Leontiev made in the field of general psychology and methodology of psychological research. He studied the problems of the development of the psyche, its genesis, biological evolution, socio-historical development. He also studied issues of engineering psychology, the psychology of perception, memory, thinking, etc. First of all, Alexei Leontiev is known for his theory of leading activity and the concept of "shifting the motive to the goal."

Human subjectivity, human activity and their connection were the exit point of A.N. Leontsva. He wrote: “Psychological science has never risen above the level of purely metaphysical opposition of subjective mental phenomena to phenomena of the objective world. Therefore, she could never penetrate into their real essence, stopping in confusion in front of that moat that separates essence and phenomenon, or cause and effect. Leontiev defines an important position of psychological knowledge: "Activity practically connects the subject with the surrounding world, influencing it and obeying its objective properties." In this regard, the idea of ​​the psyche as an entity that has its own special existence, independent of external influences, was rejected.

Leontiev continues and develops the idea L.S. Vygotsky about internalization, pointing out that internalization as the gradual transformation of external actions into internal ones, mental, is a process that is forced to be carried out in the ontogenetic development of a person. Leontiev determines its necessity by the fact that the central content of the development of the child is the assimilation of the achievements of the historical development of mankind, including the achievements of human thought, human knowledge.

In order for the child to be able to construct a new mental action, it must first be presented to the child as an external action, that is, it must be exteriorized. In such an exteriorized form, in the form of a developed external action, a mental, cogitative action arises. Subsequently, as a result of its gradual transformations - generalization, specific reduction of links and a change in the level at which it is performed - its internalization takes place, which is already taking place in the mind of the child.

According to Leontiev, this process is of fundamental importance for understanding the nature of the formation of the human psyche. After all, its main feature lies precisely in the fact that it develops not in terms of the manifestation of innate abilities, not by adapting hereditary species behavior to variable elements of the environment. It is a product of the transfer and appropriation by individuals of the achievements of socio-historical development, the experience of previous generations. The creative movement of thought forward, which a person carries out independently, is possible only on the basis of mastering this experience.

To confirm his positions, Leontiev uses probable facts indicating that children, who develop from an early age outside of society and the phenomena created by it, remain at the level of the animal psyche. Not only do they not form speech and thinking, even their movements do not resemble human ones in any way. In addition, such children do not acquire the vertical posture characteristic of people.

Leontiev gives convincing examples of the fact that those abilities and functions that are of a social nature are not fixed in the brain of people and are not transmitted according to the laws of heredity. This idea opens the way to a theory of human self-consciousness. The latter acquires freedom from reflex reactivity and actively plans his behavior. It contains the rudiments of principles that will help to find new theoretical foundations for scientific psychology and advance its general theory.

In this regard, Leontiev rejects flat biologism, placing at the basis of human activity not the elementary physiological functions of the brain, but their combinations that arise in the course of individual development. 1 "The human cortex, with its 15 billion nerve cells, has become ... an organ capable of forming functional organs." The functioning of the latter is carried out on the basis of human activity.

Leontiev's significant contribution to psychology is that he revealed the nature and forms of this activity, showed its motivational driving force, and put forward the concept of leading activity. He calls the latter such an activity that causes the most important changes in the child's psyche. The leading activity is associated with mental processes that prepare the child's transition to a new, higher stage of development.

In the book "Problems of the development of the psyche" Leontiev gives a detailed description of activity in general, its structure and motivational complications. Activities are made up of actions. Actions are decomposed into separate operations. In activity there is an object and a motive. According to the author, the genetic separation of the subject and motive of individual activity is the result of the isolation of individual operations from a complex and multi-phase, but unified activity.

Historically, according to the way of its origin, the connection of the motive with the subject of action reflects not natural, but objective social connections and relations, that is, the division of labor leads to the division of the subject and motive. This is explained by the fact that in the process of division of labor a person performs only a part of the overall activity. Awareness of the action, its meaning as a conscious goal takes a person beyond the limits of this action only. On this basis, for the first time, the subject discovers the connection between the object of action (its goal) and that which induces to activity, is revealed in a directly sensual form - in the form of the activity of the human labor collective. This activity is now reflected in the human brain no longer in its subjective fusion with the object, but as an objectively practical attitude of the subject to it.

Leontiev comes to the need to include the idea of ​​"meaning" in the concept of motivation. It is necessary to find out what significance the subject has for me, what predetermines my action in relation to it. On the psychological side, meaning is a generalized reflection of reality that has become the property of my consciousness, a reflection that humanity has developed and fixed in the form of a concept, knowledge or even skill, as a generalized “mode of action”, norms of behavior, etc. In particular, the English psychologist F. Bartlett defines meaning as "the meaning that is produced by the totality of the situation". Leontiev formulates the position that "conscious meaning expresses the relation of motive to goal."

The term "motive", according to Leontiev, means that objective, in which the need for given conditions is concretized and what activity is directed to as what excites it. Leontiev also distinguishes between meaning and meaning. Thus, understanding the meaning of a certain historical date may have different meanings, for example, for a schoolchild and for a warrior. "Meaning" for Leontiev carries a personal burden. Introducing the difference between the personal meaning and the actual objective meaning for the psychological characteristics of consciousness, Leontiev notes that the differentiation of these concepts does not concern the entire displayed content, but only what the subject's activity is aimed at. After all, personal meaning expresses precisely the attitude to perceived objective phenomena. The subordination of actions and goals to outgoing motives expands the scope of the conscious.

With the expansion of this sphere, Leontiev associates the concept of " goal shift": a person under the influence of a certain motive begins to perform an action, and then performs it for its own sake. In this case, the motive seems to shift to the goal, and the action turns into activity. The motives of activity that have this origin, Leontiev calls conscious motives. He characterizes them by setting the ratio of the motive of narrow activity to the motive of activity and a broader one.

The fact that the shift of motives towards the goals of actions can be observed in human actions makes it psychologically understandable how new needs can arise and how the type of their development changes. Since the need finds its definiteness in the object, or, in other words, is objectified in it, Leontiev reveals in the given object the motive of activity, that is, what exactly excites it. Thus, the emergence of new, higher motives occurs in the form of the transfer of motives to goals and their awareness.

Pointing out the differences between action and activity, Leontiev notes that in action the motive does not coincide with the object. CA only happens in activities. Since the object of the action does not cause activity, in order for the action to arise, it is necessary that its object come forward before the su of the Object in its relation to the motive of the activity in which this action enters. In this case, the subject of action is perceived as a goal.

Leontiev distinguishes "only conscious" motives from "actually active" motives. Only under certain conditions can one motive turn into another. This transformation takes place in the following way: sometimes the result of an action is more significant than the motive that really induces this action. The child conscientiously prepares homework, wanting to go for a walk faster. As a result, this leads to significantly more, that is, to good grades. There is a new objectification of the needs of the child, which means that they change, develop, rise one step higher. Here Leontiev makes a pedagogical conclusion: the art of education consists in giving a higher value to the successful result of activity. This is how the transition to a higher type of real motives is carried out. If a child is given the task of remembering certain words, and then the same task is given in play activity, then in the second case the task will be completed with double efficiency. Here the specific motive of a specific activity plays a role.

Establishing the motives of action and the motives of activity, Leontiev shows their mutual transition. Motives of activity obeying higher motives, they become the motives of only individual actions and additionally support their implementation. Of course, the reverse process can also be observed. The subordination of motives denies purely reactive behavior, in which Leontiev sees great meaning. At the same time, he pays considerable attention not only to the problems of the individual in development. He is no less interested in the tortuous and colorful path of the historical development of the psyche.

Developing Marxist views on the historical development of the psyche, Leontiev subjects the naturalistic and sociological theories concerning this problem to a thorough analysis. Spencer, Gasri, Skinner and others in their theories of the psyche primarily biologize man. Theories of adaptation, adaptation vividly express the "naturalism" of these researchers. If they sometimes speak of language as a specific property of human adaptive actions, then language itself does not go beyond biological definitions.

The French school in psychology develops a sociological direction. “Society is the explanatory principle of the individual,” its representatives say. However, society itself is considered only in terms of consciousness and, in particular, "collective consciousness" Durkheim. By Piaget the emergence of connected systems of intellectual operations is considered as a product of cooperation (cooperation) transferred to the internal plane, which occurs in the conditions of social life. Even in the works of French psychologists of the Marxist direction (Politzer, Wallon, Myerson) the isolation of the natural from the social is noticeable.

Leontiev recalls that in the 1920s the "biosocial" theory dominated the Soviet Union. Already Vygotsky subjected it to serious criticism. His school, to which Leontiev belongs, developed in detail the thesis that the mental is a product, a derivative of the development of material life, external material activity, which turns into internal activity, into the activity of consciousness in the course of socio-historical development. The central task of the study was put forward - the structure of activity and its internalization. After the discussion on the topic of scientific heritage I. Pavlova an illegal turn took place in the direction of the physiology of the human psyche. The problem of the individual and the environment has been simplified on the basis of biological principles. Criticizing biologization in psychology, Leontiev notes that the concept of environment cannot be understood only as a set of external stimuli in their physical meanings. What the environment is for an organism depends on the nature of the given organism, on its specific situation, and most importantly, on its activity.

On the basis of extensive experimental material, Leontiev shows that in the course of anthropogenesis, social laws increasingly gained strength. The pace of human social development depended less and less on the pace of his biological development. In the end, the socio-historical progress of man is freed from this dependence. The era of the domination of exclusively social laws is coming

The accumulation and consolidation of the achievements of the socio-historical development of mankind is fundamentally different from the biological form of accumulation and fixation of phylogenetically arisen properties. Leontiev also shows the fundamental difference between the forms of transferring the achievements of mankind by individual individuals. These achievements are not fixed in morphological features in the form of hereditarily fixed changes. They are fixed in an external, exoteric form. The world of social relations faces every person as a task that is solved through activities aimed at mastering this world.

Developing the Marxist interpretation of the mental, Leontiev writes: “The spiritual, mental development of individual people is a product ... of assimilation, which does not exist at all in animals, just as the opposite process of objectification of their abilities in the objective products of their activity does not exist in them.” Mental abilities and functions that are formed in the course of assimilation are psychological neoplasms, the relations of which are inherited, innate mechanisms and processes are only necessary internal (subjective) prerequisites. But they do not determine either their composition or their specific quality. Here Leontiev means speech hearing, logical thinking, etc. The possibility of assimilation arises as a result of communication.

If the individual behavior of animals depends on species experience (instincts) and individual, and species behavior adapts to changing elements of the external environment, then in humans the assimilation of socio-historical experience is carried out by "mechanisms for the formation of mechanisms." There is a system of actions of the gun type.

Leontiev connects the historical development of the psyche with the formation of mental actions, which occurs with the help of internalization - the gradual transformation of external actions into internal actions. Indeed, activity is already objectified in external objects. For deobjectification, the child must carry out adequate activities. The same applies to spiritual products (concepts, representations, etc.). In this regard, Leontiev criticizes the naive associationist concepts of education and insistently emphasizes the role of adults in the mental development of the child. The adult unfolds the mental action in front of the child, and such processes as generalization, reduction of the links of the mental action, changes in the levels of performance take place already in the mind of the child himself. This is how a person learns socio-historical experience from childhood, which gives him the opportunity to creatively move forward.

Finally, Leontiev approaches the defining psychological problem - the brain and human mental activity. In principle, it is solved in such a way that in historical time the brain does not undergo significant morphological changes. Achievements of historical development are fixed in objective - material and ideal - products of human activity. A person masters them in the order of lifetime acquisitions. Leontiev shows the futility of attempts to localize higher mental functions in the spirit of naive psychomorphologism. In this regard, he criticizes the idea of ​​"imposing a psychological pattern on a physiological canvas." After all, the brain works as a whole in the case of any mental process. Leontiev consistently develops the idea of ​​"formation of functional associations". We are talking about the dynamics of the processes of emergence and extinction of systems of connections between reactions to sequentially acting complexes of stimuli. These lifetime formations, being folded, function as a whole and are original organs, the specific functions of which appear in the form of mental abilities or functions.

More Ukhtomsky noted that it is not necessary to associate something morphologically static with the concept of "organ". Organs, Leontiev develops this idea, are formed, like the process of internalization, with a certain reduction in effector actions. Their complete reflex structure can be unfolded. Innate structures do not allow this. By the way, in pathological cases, it is not the loss of functions that occurs, but the disintegration of the functional system, one of the links of which is destroyed. Even I. Pavlov did not strictly oppose "construction" and "dynamics". They go directly into each other.

Summing up his reasoning regarding the brain substrate of the mental, Leontiev writes: “The human psyche is a function of those higher brain structures that are formed in a person ontogenetically in the process of mastering historically established forms of activity in relation to the human world around him.”

The main works of Alexei Nikolaevich Leontiev:

1. Leontiev A.N. Perception and activity. - M., 1976.
2. Leontiev A.N. Activity. Consciousness. Personality. - Moscow: Politizdat, 1975.
3. Leontiev A.N. Problems of the development of the psyche. - M., 1992.
4. Leontiev A.N. Mental development of the child. - Moscow, 1950.

Romenets V.A., Manokha I.P. History of psychology of the XX century. - Kyiv, Lybid, 2003.

Leading activity (VD)- a concept that makes it possible to single out in the spectrum (system) of activities that which expresses the typical features of psychological age and determines the formation of key neoplasms.

VD as the basis for the periodization of the mental development of the child (Elkonin)

VD determines the typical features of psychological age and the formation of key neoplasms

VD is realized in the sphere "child - objective world" and in the sphere "child-adult", that is, both in the objective environment and in social relations

At various age stages, the predominance of the child's orientation either to the sphere of social relations or to the sphere of objective relations

Will and will

Appear as a result of the social development of motivation, mediate it.

Will as VPF:

Systemic: emotions, motivation, thinking, imagination, attention, memory are involved (which is why in the history of psychology there are very frequent attempts to reduce the will to motivation, then to attention, etc.),

Social in origin

Conscious by way of functioning.

Will functions:

Selective: choice of motives and goals.

Initiating: regulation of motivation to act in case of insufficient or excessive motivation.

Organization, arbitrary regulation of actions and mental processes into a system adequate to the activity performed by a person.

Stabilizing - maintaining the selected level of performance of the action in the presence of interference.

Mobilization of physical and mental capabilities in a situation overcoming obstacles when achieving the set goals.

One of the most important characteristics of volitional behavior is self-determination. By performing an act of will, a person acts arbitrarily, those. according to its own intention, not subject to the actions of external causes. He goes beyond the requirements of the situation.

Will criteria:

Arbitrariness and over-situation are the fundamental principles of volitional behavior.

Criteria for the manifestation of will Ivannikov:

1 – in volitional actions(conscious, purposeful, intentional, made by one's own decision, necessary on an external or internal basis, having an initial deficit of motivation (or inhibition), provided with additional motivation and ending with the achievement of the goal)

2 – in the choice of motives and goals(when choosing one of the incompatible actions; when choosing one of the goals due to different motives or leading to different results; when there is a conflict between the desired goal and the consequences of the action, or a given goal and personal motives)

3 - in the regulation of the internal states of a person (parameters of action, physiological and mental processes)

4 - in the volitional qualities of the individual: endurance, perseverance, patience, determination

“Volitional action is a conscious, purposeful action by means of which a person accomplishes his goal, subordinating his impulses to conscious control and changing the surrounding reality in accordance with his plan,” writes S.L. Rubinstein.

Will - the highest level of regulation of the psyche in relation to the levels of motivation, emotions and attention.

Motivational conflict. Levin.

The struggle of simultaneously actualized conflicting needs. Conflict types:

· Aspiration-aspiration conflict. Buridan's donkey. Given 2 simultaneously unattainable objects or goals, both have a positive and approximately equal demanding character. Solution: go to one.

· Avoidance-avoidance conflict (between 2 equal negative valences). An example is a punishment or an unpleasant task. The solution is an exit from the field (primitive - physical).

The conflict "desire-avoidance". The object has positive and negative valency.

Functional autonomy of motives. Allport.

The principle of functional autonomy: motives, arising on a biological basis, can become independent of it and function independently. Motives act as infinitely diverse, self-sustaining functional systems that grow out of the previous ones, but are functionally independent. It is important that the “new” motif does not reveal instrumental significance (a hunter with full reserves will hunt not just to merge aggression, but because he “likes” what he gets). The extent to which motives are autonomous determines the maturity of a person.

levels of autonomy.

· Perseverative autonomy – habits, circular mechanisms, stereotypes. Mechanisms: delayed extinction, self-perpetuating cycles in the nervous system, partial reinforcement, and the coexistence of multiple determinants. Examples: A rat, whose activity is explicitly determined by the habitual rhythm of food supply, will also behave during a period of hunger \ Zeigarnik effect \ Stuttering as a neurotic symptom is an independent motivational system, which is why it is so difficult to treat with psychoanalysis, you need not just to realize the root!

Propriative (own) autonomy refers to acquired values, feelings, intentions, main motives, self-image and lifestyle. For this, self-structuring is important, the process is possible due to the very essential nature of a person, the desire for change and growth of motives and their unification. EX: skill, when a person does as well as possible without external requirements, because he cannot do otherwise, he likes what he can do.

Consequences from the theory: a person is infinitely unique and original (combinations of environment and motives) \ the past is not so important for assessment and forecast.

According to LSW, free will:
A person placed in the situation of Buridan's donkey (there is no reason to make a choice) casts lots and thus gets out of the difficulty. It is an operation impossible in animals, an operation in which the whole problem of free will emerges with experimental clarity. The lots are given the power of motives (the die itself -1234, etc. does not mean anything, we ourselves attach importance to this).
CONCLUSION: Free will is not freedom from motives, it lies in the fact that the child is aware of the situation, is aware of the need for a choice determined by the motive.
More examples: Parent: we say to the child: "Well, one, two, three - drink the medicine." We are at the university for 1 pair: I got up because of the signal "three" (conditioned reflex), but I myself raised myself through the signal and connection with it in advance, that is, I master my behavior through an additional stimulus or auxiliary motive.

According to Ivannikov:

volitional regulation- part of voluntary regulation, the distinguishing feature of which is that it is performed on personal level (and not at the level of the natural or social individual, where arbitrariness already arises). Volitional act - deed, an act is a unit of personality analysis (Rubinshtein), and a means of volitional regulation is a change in the meaning of an action (personal education) => volitional regulation is the personal level of arbitrary regulation. The specificity of volitional regulation is in the level of regulation (personal decision) and in the use of personal means of regulation.

The structure of a volitional act according to S.L. Rubinstein:

1. The emergence of motivation and preliminary goal setting.

2. Motivation is expressed in striving. As the goal is realized, this desire turns into wish- Purposeful pursuit. + installation for implementation.

3. Discussion and struggle of motives. Active inclusion of cognitive processes. registration of the motivational part of an action or deed. The motives that appeared at the first stage in the form of desires may contradict each other - we analyze, we choose.

4. Making a decision. Occasions:

If there is no struggle of motives, goal setting conditionally coincides with decision making.

· If the motives are different in importance, the decision comes as a complete and final resolution of the conflict that caused the struggle of motives.

· If the motives are almost equal in importance and intensity - the decision is accompanied by special experiences, it all depends on the person.

5. The execution of the decision involves overcoming external obstacles.

The peculiarity of the course of a volitional act: the mechanism for its implementation are volitional efforts on all phases. Willpower- this is an act of manifestation of consciousness, aimed at mobilizing the mental and physical capabilities of a person necessary to overcome obstacles in the process of activity (also a construct).

A volitional act involves conscious regulation, forecasting the results of one's actions, and finding means to achieve the goal. In volitional processes, affect acts under the control of the intellect. The subject states the success or failure of his action and emotionally experiences it as success or failure.

The concept of leading activity (A.N. Leontiev) and periodization of the mental development of the personality (D.B. Elkonin).

The mental development of a person at all age levels is carried out in the process of various activities. It is in activity that he masters the socio-historical experience accumulated by mankind - he assimilates knowledge, skills and abilities and acquires mental properties and abilities characteristic of a person. However, not all activities are equally important for mental development. As A.N. Leontiev, activity as a whole does not consist mechanically of individual types of activity. Some activities at this stage play a major role in development, others are subordinate and play a secondary role. The main type of human activity that determines the very emergence and historical development of man, the formation of his consciousness is work; it is an activity aimed at the production of certain socially useful (or at least consumed by society) products - material or ideal. Other types of activity, such as play, teaching, communication, arose in the course of history in close connection with labor, partly as serving labor, partly as a form of preparation for it. In modern society, along with labor, the main activities are a game And doctrine. These main activities, however, do not exhaust all its wealth and are not of the same importance at all age levels. Labor in its mature forms is inaccessible to the child, but as for play and learning, each of these types of activity acts as a leader only at a certain age level, while at other age levels, other types of activity are leading.

Leading activity - activity, the implementation of which determines the formation of the main psychological achievements of a certain stage of personality development. It is characterized three main features: 1. Within the leading activity, other, new types of activity appear and develop, which themselves can acquire leading significance in the future, at the next age level. So, teaching initially appears in the form of a game: the child begins to learn by playing. 2. In the leading activity, separate mental processes are formed and developed. In particular, figurative thinking, active imagination are formed in the game, and abstract logical thinking is formed in the teaching. 3. The formation of the child's personality, its main changes in a given period, depend on the leading activity. For example, it is in the game that a preschooler, on the one hand, masters social functions and the corresponding norms of behavior of adults ("what is a worker, teacher, etc.") and, on the other hand, learns to establish relationships with peers, to coordinate their actions.

The activity-mediated type of relationship that a child develops with the most significant group or person is the leading factor in his development. The driving force behind development is the internal contradiction between growing needs and real opportunities to meet them. This conflict is not only unavoidable, but also contains the "energy" of personality development.

Each period, according to D.B. Elkonin, is characterized by its social situation of development, leading activity, central mental neoplasms and age-related changes in the entire psyche of the child as a whole. The main mechanism of mental development are contradictions of two types: between the needs and capabilities of the child and between the level of development of the child and his inadequate social position. The aggravation of contradictions gives rise to development crises - turning points in development. Within a specific age period, there are types of activity, and the development of the child in each of them is not the same (see table). At a certain time, his activity is aimed at actions with objects and objects of the surrounding reality, at their knowledge. This activity corresponds to the object-manipulative type of activity, during which the cognitive sphere develops. Then comes the period of the child's focus on the knowledge of relationships with people, it corresponds to communication as a type of activity. In the process of communication, the child first of all forms needs, goals, motives of activity. The personal sphere is developing. For example, the leading activity of a preschool child is a game, but if in the younger preschool age during the game he pays more attention to the knowledge of things, their properties, connections, then in the middle and older preschool age in the process of role-playing games the child is absorbed in knowing the relationships of people around him, which creates new needs.

Periodization according to Elkonin:

neonatal crisis

infant age (2 months-1 year).

Crisis of one year. Early childhood (1 year-3 years).

Crisis 3 years.

Preschool age (3 years-7 years).

Crisis 7 years.

School age (8 years-12 years).

Crisis 13 years.

Pubertal age (14 years-18 years).

Crisis 17 years.

Periodization of personal development according to Elkonin

The neonatal crisis separates the embryonic period of development from infancy. The crisis of one year separates infancy from early childhood. The crisis of 3 years is the transition from early childhood to preschool age. The crisis of 7 years is a connecting link between preschool and school age. Finally, the crisis of 13 years coincides with a turning point in development during the transition from school to puberty. Thus, a natural picture is revealed before us. Critical periods are interspersed with stable ones and are turning points in development, once again confirming that the development of a child is a dialectical process in which the transition from one stage to another is not evolutionary, but revolutionary. SOCIAL SITUATION OF DEVELOPMENT - a system of relations of the subject in social reality, specific for each age period, reflected in his experiences and realized by him in joint activities with other people. The concept of S. with. R. was introduced by L.S. Vygotsky as a unit of analysis of the dynamics of a child’s development, i.e., a set of laws that determine the emergence and changes in the structure of a child’s personality at each age stage. S. s. R. determines the child's way of life, his "social being", in the process of which he acquires new personality traits and mental neoplasms. Being a product of age-related development, neoplasms appear towards the end of the age period and lead to a restructuring of the entire structure of the child's consciousness, to changes in the system of his relations to the world, other people, and himself. The appearance of neoplasms is a special sign of the decay of the old S. s. R. and folding new S. with. r., which is accompanied by crises of age development. The concept of S. with. R. was aimed at overcoming ideas about the environment as a factor that mechanically determines the development of the individual. In the future, this concept was developed by B.G. Ananiev, who gave a detailed analysis of it in a macrosocial-psychological context, and by L.I. Bozhovich, who used it to describe the ontogenetic development of a child's personality. S. s. R. is a historical and cultural aspect of the life of the subject in society, which includes the following components: the objective conditions of ontogenesis and sociogenesis (social, political, economic, legal and other prerequisites for the development of personality), the social status of childhood (historical, cultural and chronological characteristics of childhood in given society) social roles that realize the general social position of the child (the system of his attitudes to conditions, status, roles, expressed in his attitudes, readiness to accept the values ​​and expectations of the reference group for him). Representations about S. with. R. in the study of childhood make it possible to organically fit the ontogeny of the child's personality into the socio-historical context.

Therefore, it is necessary to talk about the dependence of the development of the psyche not on activity in general, but on the leading activity.

A. N. Leontiev.

The concept of "leading type of activity" was first used by A. N. Leontiev in the article "On the theory of the development of the child's psyche" ( FOOTNOTE: "Soviet Pedagogy", 1944, N 4, p. 34-44). In this article, the main ideas of which were voiced back in 1938 in a report at a plenary session of a scientific session, the author formulates the main idea that "each stage of mental development is characterized by a certain, leading at this stage, the child's attitude to reality, a certain, leading type of his activity" . And a little higher: "Therefore, we need to talk about the dependence of the development of the psyche not on activity in general, but on the leading activity" ( FOOTNOTE: A.N.Leontiev. Fav. psychol. prod., v.1, p. 285). Here are three main features of this type of activity:

"Leading we call such activity of the child, which is characterized by the following three features.

First, it is such an activity in the form of which other, new types of activity arise and within which are differentiated. Thus, for example, learning in the narrower sense of the word, which first appears already in preschool childhood, first appears in play, i.e., precisely in the activity that is leading at this stage of development. The child begins to learn by playing.

Secondly, the leading activity is an activity in which particular mental processes are formed or restructured. So, for example, in the game for the first time the processes of the active imagination of the child are formed, in the teaching - the processes of abstract thinking ...

Thirdly, the leading activity is such an activity on which the main psychological changes in the child's personality observed in a given period of development depend in the closest way. So, for example, a preschool child learns social functions and the corresponding norms of people's behavior in the game ... Thus, the leading activity is such an activity, the development of which causes major changes in the mental processes and psychological characteristics of the child's personality at a given stage of his development " ( FOOTNOTE: Ibid., v.1, p. 285-286).