Thinking as a mental process is socially determined, associated with speech, consists in the search and discovery of a fundamentally new. Thinking and speech are connected with each other and practically do not exist one without the other.
Thinking is an active process, which involves processing, restructuring, changing information. The main role in the thinking process is assigned to analytical-synthetic activity, which represents the dialectical unity of two mental actions: the mental division of the whole into parts (analysis) and their combination into new compounds (synthesis).
Comparison is another important mental operation. Making comparisons of objects or phenomena of reality, we first divide them into components, highlighting individual signs and properties, and then compare them with each other. The following operations of the thinking process are abstraction and generalization. The first (abstraction) is the mental operation of mentally distracting from the non-essential in order to determine the essential quality, sign or property. The second (generalization) is the operation of thinking, which consists in determining the most common properties of the studied objects. On the basis of generalization, comparison and abstraction, as well as analysis and synthesis, concepts are formed.
A concept is one of the forms of thinking that expresses the general and main, significant qualities of objects. In the process of scientific knowledge, concepts play a very important role. The concept is defined by words, which once again emphasizes how thinking is related and speech. Language plays an indirect role in the process of thinking. Language is a sign system that is endowed with certain meanings and meanings. Thinking and speech are interconnected and this is one of the essential differences between a person and an animal. Thought does not disappear because it is formed and fixed in the word, in written or spoken language.
The connection between thinking and speech clearly shows the socio-historical essence of thinking. The knowledge and achievements of culture are transmitted from generation to generation only due to the fact that their fixation in a word is possible.
Scientists have found that in its development, thinking goes through the pre-conceptual and conceptual stages. Preconceptual thinking is divided into visual-effective thinking and visual-figurative. The first kind of thinking is based on real physical action with the subject. This species dominates in children up to two to three years old. In the presence of another — visual-figurative — a person works not only with objects, but also with their images, representing the object and everything connected with it.
But the main form is the conceptual, abstract, verbal-logical thinking, which develops on the basis of the means of language, which once again shows the relationship of thinking and speech. In children, it begins to form at about 7 years old, which is associated with learning at school. Thinking and speech, developing, have a mutual influence on each other. The basis of conceptual, abstract thinking is a concept that reflects the general, main and significant properties of objects.
Classification of thinking may be based on other characteristics. For example, according to the degree of participation of conscious or subconscious regulation of thought, one can divide thinking into logical and intuitive. The logical is built on conscious, precisely formalized conceptual structures, and the intuitive is based on unconscious representations and images.
In a situation where standard, conventional methods for solving problems no longer work, productive, creative thinking comes into play, which gives new ideas and solutions. This novelty can be objective (discovery or invention) or subjective if a person in the process of thinking discovers something already open to him, but he did not know it.