People are interested in everyday psychology, but they rarely study mental development. Nevertheless, this is an interesting topic that will help a person better understand themselves and better educate their child. The basic laws of mental development will be interesting to students, young people, the older generation, as well as current and future parents.
Wording
What is psychological development? This is a process of psychological changes that occur gradually and from quantitative to qualitative. The basic laws of mental development are such that this process proceeds in a spiral. A person learns something new, and then returns to the previous stage of his development, rebuilds the picture of the world and only then rises. This complex process begins to occur in the head of a child from birth. Who formulated the basic laws of mental development? The first Russian scientist was L. S. Vygotsky. He is the author of the concept, which tells that the environment and the environment have a serious impact on the formation of the human worldview and psychological functions. Education helps a person quickly and easily socialize in society, find their place in life. Mental development is impossible without a social environment, since for its full formation the experience of generations is simply necessary.
Cycling
The basic laws of mental development are divided into four parts. The first of these is cyclical. Mental development always spirals. It is impossible to imagine that human consciousness could be quickly formed. This process takes more than one decade. All people know that memory has limited resources that it cannot consume immediately and completely. Therefore, in order to assimilate new information, a person first needs to “digest” the old. The main laws of mental development in childhood are periods of intense recovery, and then a decline in development. According to this scheme, many psychological functions are formed. A child cannot immediately remember a whole poem. But if a mother daily teaches her child a new line, soon the child will be able to tell the quatrain. From this we can conclude that memory is cyclical. Speech too. Remember how the children learn to speak. First, their vocabulary is limited, and then, one day, the child begins to make sentences, and only then whole phrases. Such a phased development is necessary for the human brain to better remember the learned material. This technique is often used by teachers in the classroom and teachers in lectures. A child cannot learn skills and knowledge without repetition. No wonder they say that repetition is the mother of learning.
Uneven development
The second stage of the basic laws of mental development is its unevenness. Young parents may wonder how inconsistently their child puts new knowledge and skills in their heads. Today the child can actively learn to speak, and tomorrow the child will silently collect the designer. No need to be afraid of such differences of interest. Human development is uneven. Usually some area is better developed, some worse. Evenly and consistently toddlers to develop will not work. For example, if a child likes to listen to fairy tales, he can, after learning to speak, immediately master reading. While with logic, he may have problems. A strong imbalance should not be allowed, but you should not think that development should be uniform. The basic laws of age-related mental development survive their spiral modifications. That is, today a child could learn new information, and in order to digest it and continue to develop further, you need to wait a few days. Therefore, impatient parents should understand that you should not demand from the baby a demonstration of the skills that he learned yesterday. A child can show you learned movements or demonstrate his quick wits only after a few days or a week. During this time, the resulting material is processed and well absorbed.
Metamorphoses
Continuing to get acquainted with the basic laws of the child’s mental development, we need to talk about the fact that development occurs not only cyclically and inconsistently, but also metamorphoses. Knowledge and skills flow one into another. A child cannot learn to walk before he learns to crawl. One process flows smoothly from another. In order to learn to sing, a child must be able to speak, and for your child to laugh, he must first learn to smile. Such knowledge and skills that smoothly flow from one to another must be developed. Parents should know the sequence of development, because at a young age, and in adulthood too, the basics should not be missed. Information about the subject should be versatile. The main laws of a person’s mental development are related to his ability to apply knowledge in various fields. If a person has learned to draw on paper, he can try the same actions on fabric or on stone. Thanks to this skill, a person develops rapidly.
Reverse development
The place in memory is limited, so a person cannot remember everything he wants. The brain selects the right information, knowledge and skills. And unnecessary ones are either forgotten or transformed. The basic laws of the child’s mental development are based on this principle. When a baby is born, it has many abilities that die off over time. For example, children can babble, but when they learn to speak, the skill of illegible speech goes into oblivion. You can say that you have a lot of unnecessary information stored in your head, and sometimes the right one simply does not fit there. But it is not so. Memory works on a very interesting principle. You can put anything in it, but you can get only what you really need. Even the information that was learned by heart in school is already forgotten by the institute. How many adults with a liberal education can say what is the sine, and what is the cosine? But how many have needed this knowledge in life? The memory is unique. It helps a person to survive in the conditions in which he lives. If an individual is engaged in the same work every day, it passes from his consciousness to the subconscious. For example, a person whose driving experience is 10 years, drives a car without thinking about when to turn on the turn signal or press the brake. Actions occur automatically.
Plasticity of the psyche
Human consciousness is very complex. The basic principles and laws of mental development are determined by the plasticity of the psyche. What does it consist of? The fact is that at any moment she is ready to change under the influence of external factors or the experience acquired by the person. A young child can learn any language, regardless of his genes and what language his parents spoke. Everything will depend on the culture and the environment in which the baby will fall. What else is manifested plasticity and regularity of mental development? The main example may be a person’s ability to adapt to any conditions. For example, a visually impaired child will have good hearing, smell and touch. Compensations of this kind are found in people with various deviations from generally accepted norms. Another example of plasticity is the imitation of children by adult authority. The girl of the glamorous mother will behave in the same way. The desire to flaunt yourself and show others your talents is not spelled out in genes, it is laid down by upbringing.
Development factors
The basic laws and patterns of mental development can be divided into two forms:
- Internal ones are those that the child inherits from his parents. What is included here? Brain structure, sensitivity, unequal system, appearance and instinctive needs. A person can become an exact copy of his parents, or be born with some kind of mutilation. Deviation from the norm occurs under the influence of radiation, drugs or various types of drugs. All this constitutes the natural basis of the individual.
- External It is under the influence of society that a person undergoes psychological development. The social status of parents, education, environment, all this leaves its mark on the individual. There can be no psychological development without a society. If a person is brought up in the wild or in asocial circles, his behavior will be very different from the norm, and such an individual will not be able to exist normally according to the laws of a developed civilization.
Background
The main patterns and factors of mental development are formed not only under the influence of the environment. Prerequisites for development are formed on the basis of training and personal interest. How are they divided?
- External From birth, they begin to educate and educate any child. First, the children are told about how to behave in society, then about how an intelligent person should look, and then they are sent alternately to school and institute to obtain general and special knowledge. Under the influence of education and those people who are involved in this process, the child forms his own picture of the world, lays in his head knowledge and gets an idea of who he wants to be and who he needs to seem to earn respect.
- Internal For a person to develop normally, he needs to have intrinsic motivation. Personal interest in development helps children quickly learn a subject, learn a new skill or become aware of something. Motivation can be either internal or external. It works equally well. But it is the action, supported by personal desire, that will give the child a special joy. The ability to undertake work with enthusiasm is not given to people by nature. Curiosity and perseverance - these are the qualities that help a person develop his parents.
Development theories
There are several theories of the basic laws of mental development. Briefly, this list will look like this:
- Sensitivity is age-related. This is the period when a person should get one or another skill. If the person did not have time to acquire or learn something in the optimal time period for acquiring this skill, then filling in the gap will be more difficult. For example, a child who has learned to swim before age 5 will not experience any problems with this skill in the future. It is difficult for a person aged 15-20 to learn to swim, but it is possible. Mastering the swimming process at 30 will be almost impossible.
- Cumulative development. In the process of development, a person acquires many new skills and abilities. Due to metamorphoses, skills are transformed and mutated. This process contributes to mental development. An example is the chain of actions that a child must do in order to move on to verbal-logical thinking. Before the young creature will cope with this mission, he will need to go through a period of visual-effective, and then visual-figurative.
- Divergence - convergence. The ability of a person to invent something new based on old knowledge and skills.
Contradictions
In order to develop normally, a person needs to face contradictions. The difference between needs and aspirations and the inability to realize them pushes a person to search for other ways to solve the problem. Old methods do not work, so you need to come up with new ones or convert existing ones. Each age has its own needs, which means that there are contradictions. The period when they appear can be called a turning point. At such moments, you can determine the maturation of a person. New qualities of mental development form the basis for the transition to the next stage of development. For example, you can consider a baby whose social circle is limited to his mother, father and a small number of close relatives. An infant can ask others to satisfy his needs in only one way. Screaming and crying solve all the problems. But with age this becomes insufficient. The child has emotions. An emotional contact is established between the baby and the mother. A smile appears and facial expressions develop. When a child grows up, he wants to communicate with adults on equal terms, so the child learns a new way of communication for himself, he begins to utter words, then phrases and sentences. Thanks to this, he can express his thoughts and desires. The old form of communication does not disappear. A person, if necessary or with anger, can unconsciously break into a cry or, in the case of a deep spiritual wound, burst into tears. These instinctive childhood habits go into the subconscious and work only in conjunction with emotions.