One of the most important aspects of human development at an early age is their mastery of objective activity. The prerequisites for this begin to form in babies in infancy. During this period, the child is able to perform some manipulations with objects, as well as learn certain actions shown to him by adults.
Time passes. Kids grow and evolve every day. Gradually, from the most primitive types of manipulations with objects, they move on to actions that are more conscious in nature. Each of them turns from pampering and frivolous play into the most important factor that affects the growing person and affects his mental development and personality formation.
Definition of a concept
Subject activity is the leading activity of young children. Its main features are:
- promoting the appearance of new manipulations in the child;
- the formation and restructuring of certain functions of the psyche;
- influencing visible personality changes.
Subject activity is the activity of children, which has a direct connection with the discovery of the purpose of objects. This fact distinguishes it from manipulations of the infant period.
Subject activity is such activity of the baby, thanks to which his cognitive interests are realized. She satisfies his curiosity and desire to get new impressions, and also helps in the search for new information about the world that surrounds him.
main parameters
The subject activity of a young child is able to have a developmental effect only through cooperation with adults. It is they who are for a small person carriers of modes of action and cultural means, as well as a source of discovering new meanings of his activity. Initially, the child performs certain manipulations on behalf of the adult and being next to him. This confirms the joint focus of such work.
In this regard, the following parameters of the level of its development can be distinguished in the subject activity of the child:
- Operating. This parameter is a direct characteristic of the actions performed. Its indicators are such types of actions with objects as manipulative (specific and non-specific), as well as actually objective, culturally fixed ones.
- Need-motivational. This parameter indicates the level that the child has reached in his cognitive activity. His indicators are the baby’s interest in objects, his desire for their examination, as well as actions with them, emotional involvement in such activity and perseverance.
- Communication with adults during substantive actions. The degree of acceptance of support and assistance from outside is an important indicator of the potential capabilities of the baby.
Key features
In the transition from infancy to an early age, a new attitude to the world of objects surrounding the baby develops. They become for him not just objects convenient for manipulation, but things that have one or another way of using and a specific purpose. That is, the baby begins to consider them from the point of view of the function that was entrenched to them thanks to public experience.
When performing manipulations by children, only external properties and relations of objects are used. That is, taking a spoon in the hand, the kids perform the same movements with it as, for example, a scoop, pencil or wand. With age, objective activity becomes meaningful. The world of the child is filled with new content. In this case, the baby begins to use only for their intended purpose.
Indicative actions
In the development of objective activity there are three stages. The first of them was observed in infants 5-6 months old. This stage is a subject manipulation. By 7-9 months, they are turning into indicative actions.
At first, all manipulations with objects in a child are carried out without considering their properties. The kid equally treats what falls into his hands. He sucks a toy or any other object, waves it, taps it, etc. At the same time, he still considers what is in his hands, shifts it from place to place and repeatedly repeats the same movement. And only a little later did specific manipulations begin to take shape. The child not only notices, but also uses the features of objects, their most simple properties. An example of such indicative actions is folding one object onto another, threading a toy through the grill of the arena. Kids also love to crumple paper and rattle. Moreover, their attention is attracted to objects created not only by man, but also by nature - sand, pebbles, water, etc.
The objective activity developing at this stage is one of the variants of research behavior that manifests itself due to the curiosity of the child and his cognitive activity. Carrying out experiments on objects of the surrounding world, the baby extracts information about them and learns to establish existing relationships.
The most intensively research behavior begins to develop after a small person learns to move independently, gaining access to various subjects. And here the communication of the child with adults is especially important. They are entrusted with the task of organizing the subject activity of the baby. Adults must create the environment necessary for the development of a small person, draw his attention to new objects, and support and encourage his curiosity.
At an early age, research behavior is constantly being improved. At the same time, it remains one of the most important components of creative and cognitive development not only in this period, but also in the future. By experimenting, the child gets real pleasure. He begins to feel himself as the subject of current events and the source that caused changes in the surrounding reality.
Related actions
By the end of the first year of life, the child’s activity in relation to the objects of the surrounding world takes on a slightly different character. His substantive and practical activity is based on the use of things for their intended purpose. How to deal with them - an adult demonstrates to the baby. Imitating him, the child begins to collect pyramids, build towers from cubes, etc.
At this level, objective activity is no longer isolated actions with various objects. After all, they are performed with objects in their interaction with each other. Such manipulations are called correlative. The child conducts various experiments with objects and determines the connections that exist between them.
Gun actions
In the second year of life, substantive activities again undergo some changes. They are acquiring a new quality. Actions become essentially objective and specifically human, based on the methods developed by culture for applying certain things. They are called guns.
How is the formation of these actions? By the end of the first year of life, the child begins to increasingly encounter those items that are related to the daily life of adults. It can be a comb or a spoon, a toothbrush, etc. Actions with them are called guns. That is, they imply the implementation of certain manipulations and obtaining the objective result of activity in the form of achieving the necessary goal. This can be a brush, chalk or pencil. This also includes the turns of the key to actuate the winding machine. At the same time, objective game activity also develops when the kids sprinkle sand in a bucket with a scoop, hammer pegs into the holes of the plank or into the ground with a hammer, etc.
Weapon technique
Mastering such manipulations at an early age is the most important acquisition of a child. Moreover, they are mastered by the baby gradually, because for this you will need to make some efforts and at the same time use a rigidly fixed way of owning a particular thing.
At an early age, children are able to perform only the simplest gun actions. They are drinking from a cup and eating with a spoon, digging with a scoop of sand, striking a pencil or pen on paper, folding and disassembling a pyramid consisting of 4-5 rings, and donning some of the simplest items of clothing.
Why is it so difficult for kids to master these actions? First of all, due to poorly developed voluntary movements. In addition, while learning to do gun actions, the child needs to subordinate his manipulations to a whole system of rules. For example, food with a spoon. Learning its use, the child already knows how to eat with his hands. To do this, he takes, for example, cookies and brings it to his mouth. The hand in this case moves from the table along an oblique line. Learning to use a spoon, he tries to do the same. However, none of this comes out. Food, passing the path from the plate, falls out on the table. To comply with the requirements for using this item, the child’s hand gets used gradually, and with considerable effort.
The meaning of gun actions
Various necessary items for a person appeared due to labor processes. Between themselves and nature, people put certain types of tools and began to influence the world around them. And in the future, using such objects, mankind began to pass on the accumulated experience to new generations.
Getting acquainted with the objective content of the activity, the child gradually begins to assimilate the fact that the impact on things can be carried out not only with the help of teeth, legs and hands. You can do this with things that are specially created for this. In the language of psychology, such a principle is called an indirect action.
Ways to manipulate objects
For the instruments used by man, certain actions are assigned. That is, everyone needs to know not only what to do with this or that thing, but also how it should be implemented. This is well known to adults. They should teach this to children. Of course, until the age of three, a child is unlikely to learn to skillfully master any tool, including one available to him. Nevertheless, he is trying hard to get the best result.
But there are other items that are not so often used in everyday life. They allow different methods of their application to obtain the same result. And this is often not understood by adults. They show the baby the result, believing that the child will come to him in the same way that they applied. But this does not always happen. An example of this is the disassembly and folding of the pyramid. An adult removes the rings from her and puts them on the table, and then, in order, starting with the largest, strung on the rod. He does all this with a child. However, two-year-old babies are not able to catch all the nuances. And they can’t compare rings in size either. If the children, sorting the pyramid, put all its details in order, then they can string them back in the correct order. But if an adult mixes the rings, then the task for the child will become impossible.
Sometimes children come to the desired result differently. They begin to string the rings indiscriminately, and then repeatedly move them until the pyramid becomes what it should be. Those kids who were previously taught to compare the rings in size by applying them to each other successfully solve a similar problem. Only in this way is the child able to choose the largest detail. He then uses the same principle with respect to the remaining rings. This gradually leads the child to collect the pyramid by eye, that is, to the method used by adults.
Therefore, teaching children the gun actions, they need to show not only the results of manipulations. Kids need to demonstrate the very way to complete the task, which will be available to them.
The origin of other activities
In the third year of life, that is, towards the end of the early childhood period, the child begins to get involved in playing, drawing, sculpting and constructing. In other words, new directions of cognition of the world around him begin to develop. But at the same time, subject-developing activity continues to be of no small importance.
At the end of early childhood, kids are happy to participate in role-playing games. By doing so, they strive to satisfy a social need, expressed in the desire to live together with adults, while playing their roles. Objective actions in this case fade into the background.
Prerequisites for the beginning of role-playing games arise during the entire period of early childhood. Moreover, they can be found in the subject activity itself. These are manipulations with toys that are offered by adults, and then independently reproduced by the baby. Such actions are already called a game. However, in such a situation, this name can only be applied conditionally.
Initial games are 2-3 steps. For example, feeding a doll and putting her to sleep. But in the future, when the child more and more endures the ways of adults acting on various objects of the world around him, games with more complex manipulations appear in him.