Hereditary characteristics and innate properties of the body. Inclinations and abilities, the problem of their heredity. Fixed sets of actions
Verification work on the topic: “GNI”
Examples of tasks for monitoring student knowledge
(differentiated tasks)
1. Match:
1 alarm system speech
2 signal system perception of sounds, smells, images, impressions
about the actions taken
2. Choose the correct answer: Higher nervous activity is:
A) The emergence of nerve impulses,
B) the ability to conduct nerve impulses,
B) activity higher departments The central nervous system, which ensures the most perfect adaptation of the body to its environment
3. Enter the answer:
A) What processes are considered GNI?
B) What are the features of a person’s GNI?
Q) What is a reflex?
4. Match:
Reflexes: Features:
A) Unconditional 1) unstable, fade over the course of life, individual, B) Conditional a condition is necessary for development
2) are congenital, passed on from generation to generation, constant, do not fade
throughout life, species-specific
5. Choose the correct answer: The doctrine of the reflex principle of the body’s activity was developed by:
A) I.P. Pavlov,
B) P.K. Anokhin,
B) I.M. Sechenov,
D) A.A. Ukhtomsky
6. Experimentally proven reflex principle functioning of the body, introduced the term “higher nervous activity”, believed that it was equivalent to the concept “ mental activity»:
A) I.P. Pavlov,
B) P.K. Anokhin,
B) I.M. Sechenov,
D) A.A. Ukhtomsky
7. Created the doctrine of the dominant:
A) I.P. Pavlov,
B) P.K. Anokhin,
B) I.M. Sechenov,
D) A.A. Ukhtomsky
8. Developed the doctrine of functional systems:
A) I.P. Pavlov,
B) P.K. Anokhin,
B) I.M. Sechenov,
D) A.A. Ukhtomsky
9. Write the term. A specific state of the brain and the whole body, characterized by muscle relaxation, a weak reaction to external stimuli and a number of other signs is...
10. On average, an adult needs to sleep: A) 5 hours, B) 8 hours, C) 12 hours 11. To rest the organs and systems, adolescents need only 8 hours of sleep, and to fully restore the functioning of the brain: A) 4 hours, B) 8 hours, C) 10-12 hours
11. Write the term. The English philosopher G. Spencer described it this way: “An innate hereditary property, which is the ability of animals and humans to adapt to complex environmental conditions, characterized by the following features: the ability to know, universality, heredity...”. What feature of GNI are we talking about?
12. Explain the fact: “A small child was shown a lemon for the first time, he showed interest in it as a new object. An adult was given lemon and started salivating.”
13. What is the material basis of GNI?
Notes: 1- 6, 9, 12-13 tasks basic level
7-11 – increased
General structure of abilities:
General Abilities– a set of potential (hereditary, congenital) psychodynamic characteristics of a person that determine his readiness for activity.
Special Abilities– a system of personality traits that help achieve high results in any field of activity
Talent – high level of development of abilities, especially special ones (musical, literary, etc.). The presence of talent is judged by the results of a person’s activities, which are distinguished by fundamental novelty and originality.
Genius– the highest level of development of abilities. We can talk about the presence of genius only if a person achieves such results of creative activity that constitute an era in the life of society and in the development of culture.
The set of general and special abilities characteristic of a particular person is called giftedness. Giftedness determines a person’s particularly successful activity in a certain area and distinguishes him from other persons studying this activity or performing it under the same conditions. Gifted people are distinguished by attentiveness, composure, and readiness for activity; They are characterized by persistence in achieving goals, the need to work, as well as intelligence that exceeds the average level.
Excellence in a specific activity that requires a lot of hard work is called skill. Mastery is revealed not only in the sum of skills and abilities, but also in psychological readiness for the qualified implementation of any labor operations that will be necessary for the creative solution of problems that arise.
The structure of abilities for certain activities is individual for each person. Lack of abilities does not mean a person is unfit to perform an activity, since there are psychological mechanisms to compensate for missing abilities. Compensation can be carried out through acquired knowledge, skills, through the formation of an individual style of activity or through a more developed ability. The ability to compensate for some abilities with the help of others develops a person’s internal potential, opens up new paths to choosing a profession and improving in it.
Individual characteristics of a person that determine an individual style of activity:
1. High pace of learning in the relevant activity.
2. The breadth of skill transfer, which consists in the fact that, having learned to use an operation in one situation, a person is able to easily apply it in other similar situations.
3. Energy efficiency of performing this activity.
4. Individual originality of performing activities.
5. High motivation, desire for this activity, sometimes despite the circumstances.
Makings of– these are innate anatomical and physiological features of the structure of the brain, sensory organs and movement, which form the natural basis for the development of abilities.
The presence of certain inclinations in a person does not mean that he will develop certain abilities, since it is difficult to predict what kind of activity a person will choose for himself in the future. Therefore, the degree of development of inclinations depends on the conditions of individual development of a person, the conditions of training and education, and the characteristics of the development of society.
Question 46-47. Methods of psychodiagnostic study of a student’s personality. Analysis of the results and their use in pedagogical activity. Forms and methods of psychodiagnostic study of a student’s personality. Possibilities of forecasting and correction.
Personality- this is a person taken in the system of his psychological characteristics that are socially conditioned, manifest themselves in social connections and relationships by nature, are stable, determine the moral actions of a person that are of significant importance for himself and those around him.
Diagnostic methods are fundamental in personality psychology, since important practical conclusions are made on their basis. Their goal is to establish the level of development of one or another human property.
Survey methods exist in the form of a questionnaire (fixed questions and answers like yes, no, I don’t know), interviews (fixed questions and free answers), conversations (assumes only a topic; questions and answers are generated by the course of the conversation). To obtain reliable information, special questionnaires are created to obtain information that corresponds to a certain hypothesis, and this information must be as reliable as possible. In psychology, special rules have been developed for composing questions, arranging them in the required order, and grouping them into separate blocks. Assessing the survey method as a whole, it can be noted that it is a means of primary orientation and preliminary reconnaissance. The data obtained from the survey outlines further directions for studying an individual or group. A conversation is a more “psychological” form of questioning, since it involves interaction between subjects, subject to certain socio-psychological laws. The most important condition for a successful conversation is to establish contact between the researcher and the respondent and to create a trusting atmosphere of communication.
Sociometry method, developed by the Austrian-American psychiatrist J. Moreno, allows one to empirically identify, schematically (in the form of a sociogram) represent and interpret the structure of interpersonal relationships in a group. The purpose of the method is to establish who the leader and the outsider are, whether there are outcasts of this group.
Performance Analysis Method comes from the general premise of the connection between internal mental processes and external forms of behavior and activity. By studying the objective products of activity, one can draw conclusions about the psychological characteristics of its subjects. In psycholinguistics, a variant of the method of analyzing the products of activity has been developed - content analysis, which makes it possible to identify and evaluate the specific characteristics of literary, scientific, journalistic texts and, on their basis, determine psychological characteristics their author. Graphology is a specific form of the method for analyzing performance results. Psychologists have found that the characteristics of handwriting are associated with certain psychological properties of the author of the letter; They developed norms and techniques for psychological analysis of handwriting.
Biographical method as a way of knowing a person is based on the study of human psychology in the context of his history, through a description of his biography. Understanding inner world of a person, developed mental life is carried out through a description of the past stages of a person’s life. The biographical method can be implemented in the form of a psychological reconstruction of everything life path historical figure, outstanding personality, etc. The advantage of the method lies in the reliability and validity of conclusions about the psychological characteristics of a person. However, the method is labor-intensive and cannot be used very widely.
Genetic method Research on mental development studies the development of various social groups in the process of formation, in time dynamics.
Blinets method is based on clarifying the question: the environment or nature itself determines the psychological development of a person. Monozygotic twins that grow from the same mother cell are studied.
Mathematical methods in psychology are used as a means of increasing the reliability, objectivity, and accuracy of the data obtained. These methods are mainly used at the stage of hypothesis formulation and substantiation, as well as when processing the data obtained in the study. It must be emphasized that mathematical methods are not used in psychology as independent methods, but are included as auxiliary ones at certain stages of an experiment or test examination.
To know the laws of human development means to get an answer to key question: what factors determine the course and results this process? Although the word “factor” has already been used above, let us recall that this term denotes a compelling reason formed by the combined influence of several simple reasons (variables). What reasons determine personality development?
It has been established that the process and results of human development are determined by the joint influence of three general factors - heredity, environment and upbringing. The following diagram, borrowed from J. Švantsara, illustrates the relationship between the main factors of development. The base (see Fig. 3) is formed by congenital and inherited predispositions, designated by the general term “heredity”. Congenital and inherited predispositions develop under the influence of the main external influences - environment and upbringing. The interaction of these factors can be either optimal (equilateral triangle), or, when overestimating one or the other external term (vertex C 5 or C 2), inharmonious. It is also possible that the congenital and inherited base is not sufficiently developed by both environment and upbringing (triangle ABC 3). This scheme must simultaneously demonstrate that not a single factor acts independently, that the result of development depends on their coordination.
The natural (biological) in man is what connects him with his ancestors, and through them - with the entire living world, with higher animals in particular. Reflection of the biological is heredity. Heredity refers to the transmission of certain qualities and characteristics from parents to children. The carriers of heredity are genes (translated from Greek “gene” means “giving birth”). Modern science proved that the properties of an organism are encrypted in a kind of gene code that stores and transmits all information about the properties of the organism. Genetics has deciphered the hereditary program of human development. Facts have been obtained that force us to rethink many established pedagogical principles.
Hereditary programs of human development include deterministic and variable parts, which determine both the general things that make a person human and the special things that make people so different from each other. The deterministic part of the program ensures, first of all, the continuation of the human race, as well as the specific inclinations of a person as a representative of the human race, including the inclinations of speech, upright walking, labor activity, and thinking. External characteristics are passed on from parents to children: body features, constitution, hair, eye and skin color. The combination of various proteins in the body is strictly genetically programmed, blood groups and the Rh factor are determined. Inherited physical characteristics of a person predetermine the visible and invisible differences between people.
Hereditary properties also include features of the nervous system, which determine the character and characteristics of the course of mental processes. Flaws and deficiencies in the nervous activity of parents, including pathological ones that cause mental disorders and diseases (for example, schizophrenia), can be transmitted to offspring. Blood diseases (hemophilia), diabetes mellitus, and some endocrine disorders - dwarfism, for example, are hereditary. Alcoholism and drug addiction of parents have a negative impact on the offspring.
The variant part of the program ensures the development of systems that help the human body adapt to changing conditions of its existence. Vast unfilled areas of the legacy program are presented for subsequent additional training. Each person completes this part of the program independently. By this, nature provides man with an exceptional opportunity to realize his human potential through self-development and self-improvement. Thus, the need for education is inherent in man by nature. Hardly programmed hereditary traits are enough for survival for an animal, but not for a person.
The pedagogical aspect of research into the patterns of human development covers the study of three main problems - the inheritance of intellectual, special and moral qualities.
The question of the inheritance of intellectual qualities is extremely important. What do children inherit - ready-made abilities for a certain type of activity or only predispositions, inclinations? Considering abilities as individual psychological characteristics of a person, as conditions for the successful implementation of certain types of activities, teachers distinguish them from inclinations - potential opportunities for the development of abilities. Analysis of the facts accumulated in experimental studies allows us to answer the question posed unambiguously - it is not abilities that are inherited, but only inclinations.
The inclinations inherited by a person are realized or not. It all depends on whether a person will receive the opportunity to transfer hereditary potency into specific abilities that ensure success in a certain type of activity. Whether an individual like Raphael will be able to develop his talent depends on circumstances: living conditions, environment, needs of society, and finally, on the demand for the product of a particular human activity.
The issue of inheritance of abilities for intellectual (cognitive, educational) activity raises especially heated debates. Materialist educators proceed from the fact that all normal people receive from nature high potential opportunities for the development of their mental and cognitive powers and are capable of practically unlimited spiritual development. The existing differences in the types of higher nervous activity change only the course of thought processes, but do not predetermine the quality and level of intellectual activity itself. Prominent geneticist academician N.P. Dubinin believes that for a normal brain there is no genetic basis for variations in intelligence and that the widespread belief that the level of intelligence is passed on from parents to children does not correspond to the results of scientific research.
At the same time, educators around the world recognize that heredity may be unfavorable for the development of intellectual abilities. Negative predispositions are created, for example, by sluggish cells of the cerebral cortex in children of alcoholics, disrupted genetic structures in drug addicts, and some hereditary mental illnesses.
Idealist teachers consider the fact of the existence of intellectual inequality among people to be proven and recognize biological heredity as its root cause. The inclinations for cognitive activity, which predetermine upbringing and educational opportunities, are inherited by people to an unequal extent. From this the conclusion is drawn: human nature cannot be improved; intellectual abilities remain unchanged and constant.
Understanding the process of inheriting intellectual inclinations predetermines practical ways of educating and training people. Modern pedagogy places emphasis not on identifying differences and adapting education to them, but on creating equal conditions for the development of the inclinations that each person has. Most foreign pedagogical systems proceed from the fact that education should follow development; it only helps to mature what is inherent in a person by nature, and therefore should only be adapted to the inclinations and abilities of a person.
There is no particular disagreement between representatives of different pedagogical systems in determining special inclinations. Special inclinations for a specific type of activity are called special. It has been established that children with special inclinations achieve significantly higher results and advance in their chosen field of activity at a rapid pace. When such inclinations are strongly expressed, they manifest themselves at an early age if a person is provided with the necessary conditions. Special inclinations are called musical, artistic, mathematical, linguistic, sports and many others.
The question of the inheritance of moral qualities and psyche is especially important. For a long time, the leading position of Russian pedagogy was the assertion that all mental qualities of an individual are not inherited, but acquired in the process of interaction of the organism with the external environment. It was believed that a person is not born evil or kind, generous or stingy, and especially not a villain or a criminal. Children do not inherit the moral qualities of their parents; human genetic programs do not contain information about social behavior. The soul of a newborn, the ancients said, is a “blank slate” on which life writes its own writings. What a person becomes depends entirely on his environment and upbringing. Deciphering the genetic programs, scientists did not find there any genes for good or evil, nor genes for aggression or obedience, as well as other genes involved in morality.
Then why do many serious scientists adhere to the theory of “inherent evil”? And is the proverb that has come down to us from time immemorial true - the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree? Western pedagogy is dominated by the assertion that human moral qualities are biologically determined. People are born good or evil, honest or deceitful, nature gives a person pugnacity, aggressiveness, cruelty, greed (M. Montessori, K. Lorenz, E. Fromm, A. Micherlik, etc.). The basis for such conclusions is data obtained from the study of human and animal behavior. If science recognizes the presence of instincts and reflexes in animals and people (I.P. Pavlov), and instincts are inherited, then why should their inheritance by people lead to actions different from the actions of animals? This is how a bridge is thrown from animal behavior to human behavior, which in a number of cases is recognized as instinctive, reflexive, based not on higher consciousness, but on the simplest biological reflexes. This issue is very complex, and its solution must be approached with all responsibility. Nevertheless, recently domestic specialists have begun to take an increasingly definite, albeit cautious, position on the genetic determination of social behavior. Academician P.K. Anokhin, N.M. Amosov and other prominent scientists, at first veiledly, and recently openly speak out in favor of the hereditary conditioning of human morality and his social behavior.
Man as a biological species has undergone very minor changes throughout history. known to people the history of its development. This is another strong proof of the immutability of human nature, the strict genetic regulation of human essence. A change in the human species can only occur when scientists have the means to practically interfere with the gene code. What such attempts entail - good or evil, what they can lead to - is now difficult to imagine.
Do our grandmothers' school grades affect ours? school success? K. Peters provides interesting data on this matter. He compared school grades across three generations. It turned out that the children's average grades will be lower, the lower the grades of the two parents. Let us present one of the tables of K. Peters.
It is necessary from the very beginning to clearly distinguish between two sets of abilities in a person: firstly, natural abilities, or natural ones, basically biological, and secondly, abilities that are specifically human, which have a socio-historical origin.
By abilities of the first kind I mean such abilities as the ability to quickly form and differentiate conditional connections, or to resist the effects of negative stimuli, or even the ability to analyze, for example, sound signals, etc. Many of these abilities are common to humans and higher animals. Although this kind of ability is directly related to innate inclinations, they are not identical to inclinations.
According to the generally accepted definition proposed by B.M. Teplov, the makings are
these are congenital anatomical and physiological features. These are features that represent only one of the conditions of certain abilities, namely the internal condition lying in the subject himself. Thus, inclinations are not a psychological category at all (Teplov, 1941).
Another thing is abilities, including abilities that I called natural. These are not the makings themselves, but what is formed on their basis. A widely accepted definition of abilities is that they are properties of an individual, the ensemble of which determines the success of performing a certain activity. This refers to properties that develop ontogenetically, in the activity itself and, therefore, depending on external conditions.
As an example of natural abilities, the ability to quickly form conditional connections is given above. Of course, everyone normal person, like animals, there are the anatomical and physiological conditions necessary for this. However, the following fact is well known: in animals that have extensive “laboratory experience”, the development of artificial conditioned reflexes and differentiations proceeds faster than in animals that do not have such experience. This means that as the animal gains laboratory experience, something changes in its capabilities, some internal changes arise - the animal acquires the ability to more successfully solve laboratory problems (Leontyev, Bobneva, 1953).
The same is noted when it comes to the innate typological characteristics of the nervous system. They can also appear in development not entirely unambiguously: it is enough to refer to frequently cited facts characterizing animals raised in normal conditions and animals with “prison upbringing.” Finally, this position remains true when we turn to the development of sensory abilities. Isn’t this fundamentally evidenced by even such crude facts as, for example, those obtained in Berger’s famous old experiments?
So, already the analysis of the simplest facts indicates the need to preserve in relation to natural abilities the distinction between inclinations and abilities themselves.
From natural abilities it is necessary to clearly distinguish abilities of the second kind, which I called specifically human. Such are, for example, the abilities of speech, music, design, etc. This has to be specially emphasized, because the fundamental uniqueness of specifically human abilities has not yet been sufficiently identified.
What is the difference between specifically human abilities and natural abilities inherent to humans in terms of their origins and conditions of formation?
Let us consider from this side, first of all, natural, elementary abilities. They are formed on the basis of innate inclinations during the development of activity processes, including learning processes, which, in addition to the formation of connections, skills, also give a certain “formal” result, namely a change in those internal prerequisites or conditions on which further opportunities for carrying out activities depend. In a word, their development proceeds due to the “involvement” of inclinations (or internal conditions that have already changed in development) in activity and, as stated in the thesis of S.L. Rubinstein’s report, occurs in a spiral (Rubinstein, 1959).
It is quite obvious that the described process is a real process that characterizes the development of human abilities; a similar process exists in animals, in which the internal conditions of behavior also change during ontogenetic development.
The main question, however, is whether what has been said about the development of abilities applies to all human abilities; it has only limited significance in relation to man and does not exhaust the essential features of nature in the formation of abilities specific to humans, i.e. those that are unique to man and which, when speaking about human abilities, we usually mean.
Specifically human abilities have a different origin, are formed significantly differently than natural abilities, and, therefore, have a different, as they sometimes say, determination.
What has been said necessarily follows from the analysis of the process of socio-historical development of human abilities.
It can be considered scientifically established that from the moment the modern type of man appears, the process of morphogenesis itself stops. This means that the further development of man no longer occurs due to morphological consolidation, the action of selection and hereditary transmission of changes in his nature slowly accumulating over generations, i.e. his heredity; that although the laws of biological variability and heredity continue to operate, these laws now cease to serve the process of historical development of humanity and man, and they do not govern it. From this moment on, the development process begins to be governed by new laws - socio-historical laws, which apply both to the development of society and to the development of the individuals who form it. In other words, in contrast to the previous period - the period of human formation, the action of socio-historical laws is no longer limited by the successes of its morphological development, and these laws receive full scope for their manifestation.
This constitutes a point that is central to the whole problem and which must be fully understood. We are talking about the following alternative: either, in contrast to what has been said, it is accepted that a person’s acquisitions in the process of socio-historical development (such as, for example, speech hearing, instrumental actions or theoretical thinking) are fixed and transmitted hereditarily in the form of corresponding inclinations and that Consequently, people differ significantly from each other in their inclinations, which directly express these historical acquisitions of mankind; or the position is accepted that, although the makings, i.e. the anatomical and physiological characteristics of people are not equal (which also creates inequality in their natural abilities), they do not record and do not directly carry within themselves such abilities that correspond to the specific historical acquisitions of people, and that, therefore, abilities of this kind can only be reproduced in the order of their ontogenetic formation, i.e. as intravital neoplasms.
As for the first of these provisions, despite countless attempts to give its scientific substantiation, it remains unproven, since its argumentation, in particular, with the actual data of special studies, invariably turns out to be imaginary; it is enough to refer, for example, to the study of F. Mile, completely exposing the histological data of R. Bean, allegedly indicating the presence of histological differences in the structure of the cortex in representatives of the white and black races, or the established fundamentally identical distribution of indicators of “intellectual coefficients” of natural and adopted children in families of different social status, which, according to Essentially, it overturns the idea that there is a direct connection between these coefficients and hereditary characteristics.
But the point is not only that the thesis that the achievements of socio-historical development are fixed hereditarily is scientifically unproven. The main thing is that this position logically necessarily leads to the assumption of differentiation of people according to their innate inclinations into “primitive”, on the one hand, and “supermen”, on the other, that it is decisively refuted by the practice of the gigantic shifts in the level of spiritual development taking place before our eyes entire peoples, when countries with almost total illiteracy over the shortest historical period turn into countries of advanced culture with a large intelligentsia and when, at the same time, intra-racial and intra-national differences are completely erased in this regard, supposedly fatally destining some for the physical, and others for the professions, requiring so-called “higher” abilities.
Another opposite position comes from the fact that continuity in historical development human development is not determined by the action of biological heredity, but is carried out thanks to a special form of transmission of the achievements of previous generations to subsequent generations that arises only in human society.
The fact is that these achievements are recorded not in morphological changes, which are then passed on to offspring, but in the objective products of human activity - material and ideal - in the form of human creations: in tools, in material industry, in language (in a system of concepts, in science ) and in works of art.
Behind all these creations of people, from the first tool created by human hands to the latest technology, from primitive words to modern highly developed languages, lies the total work of specific people, their material and spiritual activity, which in its product takes on the form of objectivity. But this means that what is manifested in human activity, i.e. its essential properties, abilities, are embodied in the product.
On the other hand, developing in society, each individual person encounters a world transformed and created by the activities of previous generations, a world that embodies the achievements of the socio-historical development of human abilities.
But a person does not just “stand” in front of this world, but must live, act in it, he must use tools and instruments, use the language and logic developed by social practice; finally, he does not remain indifferent to works of art and enters into an aesthetic relationship with them.
He, however, does not have the ready inclinations to, for example, speak a certain language or discern geometric relationships. Although he, of course, is endowed with inclinations, but only inclinations for the abilities that I called natural; These inclinations are, as it were, “faceless” in relation to historically emerged types of human activity, that is, they are not specific to them. They stand in a fundamentally different relationship to the possibility of developing abilities to carry out these specifically human activities than the relationship in which they stand to abilities of the first kind, manifesting themselves in them directly.
A person’s abilities for socially and historically established forms of activity, i.e. his specifically human abilities are genuine new formations that are formed in his individual development, and not the identification and modification of what is inherent in him by heredity. This is the main feature of abilities specific to a person, abilities that have a socio-historical origin, a social nature.
The formation of specifically human abilities is a very complex process that needs special attention.
The development of these abilities in an individual occurs in the process of mastering (appropriating by him) what was created by humanity in its historical development, what was created by society...
I want to emphasize that the process of assimilation or appropriation cannot be confused with the process of acquiring individual experience, that the difference between them is absolutely fundamental.
The process of acquiring individual experience is, as is known, the result of an individual’s adaptation to changing environmental conditions on the basis of innate, inherited species experience, experience that expresses the nature of his species; this process is characteristic of the entire animal world.
In contrast to this, the process of appropriation, which does not exist at all in animals, is the process of a person acquiring species experience, but not the phylogenetic experience of his animal ancestors, but human species experience, i.e. socio-historical experience of previous generations of people. This lies not in the hereditary organization of a person, not inside, but outside - in the external objective world, in the human objects and phenomena surrounding a person. This world - the world of industry, science and art - expresses truly human nature, the result of its socio-historical transformation; He carries within himself something human - human.
Mastery of this world, appropriation of it by man is the process as a result of which those embodied in external form the highest human abilities become the internal property of his personality, his abilities, the true “organs of his individuality.”
The idea of the special nature of human mental development as a process based on the transfer and assimilation by individuals of what was accumulated by previous generations is increasingly accepted in psychology.
What is the very process of appropriation by individuals of the achievements of the development of human society, embodied, crystallized in the objective products of collective activity - a process that is at the same time a process of the formation of specifically human abilities?
Firstly, it must be emphasized that this is always an active process on the part of the subject. In order to master the product of human activity, it is necessary to carry out activities adequate to those embodied in this product.
Secondly, this is a process taken not only from the side of its so-called “material” result, but primarily from the side of its “formal” effect, i.e. a process that creates new prerequisites for the further development of activity, creating a new ability or function. Therefore, when, for example, we say that a small child has mastered a tool for the first time, this means that in the process of his activity he has developed the ability to carry out tool operations.
However, the ability to perform these operations cannot be formed in a child under the influence of the instrument itself. Although these operations are objectively embodied in the tool, for the child, subjectively, they are only given in it. They are revealed to him only due to the fact that his relations to the objective world are mediated by his relations to people. Adults show the child how to operate a tool, help him use it adequately, i.e. They are building gun operations for him. By this - if we keep in mind the early stages of development - they reconstruct, as it were, the very logic of the child’s movements and create in him, as a new formation, the ability to perform instrumental actions.
The situation is no different, of course, in the case when the child is faced with the task of mastering a word, concept, knowledge, i.e. ideal phenomena.
Let me note, by the way, that the implementation of the process of appropriation constitutes the function of human learning that qualitatively distinguishes it from animal learning, the only function of which is adaptation.
It is necessary to make one more remark in connection with the question of the relationship between inclinations and natural abilities, on the one hand, and higher, specifically human abilities, on the other. It was said above that the former are, as it were, “faceless” in relation to the latter. This means that, although they constitute a prerequisite for the development of higher, specifically human abilities, they do not positively determine their content. For example, for the development of speech hearing, it is, of course, necessary to have certain inclinations; however, whether the child will develop the ability of specific timbre analysis of sounds necessary for speech perception is determined not directly by these inclinations, but by the nature of the language that the child is mastering. As for the role of the inclinations themselves, they determine only some individual characteristics both the course of the process of formation of this ability and its final product. At the same time, the broadest possibilities of the so-called monosystem compensation are revealed, so that one and the same specific ability can have as its natural basis different ensembles of inclinations and corresponding natural abilities.
All these provisions determine, however, only the most general approach to the problem of the formation of specifically human abilities. The implementation of this approach in research encounters quite serious difficulties and raises a number of questions that require specific development.
One of the most important issues that require special research is the question of the nature of specific mechanisms that form the basis of the abilities that develop in humans as neoplasms develop during their lifetime.
This question arises from the following controversy. On the one hand, as was said, specifically human abilities are not transmitted in the order of biological heredity, that is, in the form of inclinations. On the other hand, it is, of course, impossible to admit the existence of abilities that would not have their own material substrate, their own organ. After all, ability is a property ready for manifestation, for functioning.
But then the question is, what exactly functions when we are talking about specifically human abilities that do not have their special and direct basis in innate morphological organs - inclinations?
The solution to this complex issue was prepared by the successes in the development of the physiology of higher nervous activity (First of all, I mean the classical works of I.P. Pavlov and his school, as well as the works of A.A. Ukhtomsky). It was also prepared by many psychological studies devoted to the formation and structure of human higher mental functions.
The fundamental answer to this question is that in the process of formation in a person of activity adequate to objects and phenomena that embody human abilities, functional brain organs capable of carrying out this activity are also formed during his lifetime, which are stable reflex associations or systems that are characterized by new special shipments.
Although we find the possibility of intravital formation of functional brain organs already in higher animals, it is only in humans that they for the first time become capable of realizing genuine neoplasms, and their formation becomes the most important principle of ontogenetic development.
In order to experimentally trace the formation of mechanisms of specifically human abilities and study their structure, we last years We were doing research in our laboratory on specifically human hearing. We reasoned like this. Man lives in a world of sounds created by people - in the world of music, in the world of audible speech. Therefore, he develops a special human hearing, i.e. ability to analyze specific features this human world of sounds.
I will not dwell on the details and will go straight to the most important results that we obtained. It turned out, firstly, that the pitch discrimination thresholds that interested us dropped sharply in these subjects. Secondly, we received the phenomenon of transfer to sounds of another timbre. Finally, thirdly, loud singing of compared sounds began to naturally give way to singing “to oneself” with an undoubted tendency to the formation of an internal, mental “representation”, in the words of B.M. Teplov (Teplov, 1947), the pitch of sounds, i.e. e. that very ability, which is a necessary condition for musical activity.
We were thus able to see in the laboratory, under conditions of precise recordings and measurements, the birth and formation of a genuine new formation, a truly new ability for these subjects, which was based on a new fundamental mechanism for analyzing the fundamental pitch of complex multi-timbre sounds.
At the same time, we were convinced that this ability, in cases where it was not formed spontaneously, by itself, can be actively built.
The above, of course, does not exhaust the problem of abilities. At the same time, I think that the position I put forward about the special nature and special process of formation of specific human abilities as formations that develop during life has not only a general, abstract meaning, but also allows us to orient specific research in this most difficult area.
The point is not to limit ourselves to the analysis of ready-made, already established abilities or to a description of the process of their ontogenetic development in conditions when the corresponding ability has actually already been determined, but to conduct further research, experimentally studying the mechanisms of their formation.
It is research that follows this path that will apparently have the last word on controversial issues of the problem of higher human abilities.
Abilities and heredity.
The fact that the natural prerequisites for abilities - inclinations - are contained in the peculiarities of the structure and functioning of the nervous system makes it reliable to assume that they, like all other morphological and physiological qualities, are subject to general genetic laws. At the same time, the hypothesis of the possible heritability of inclinations should not be identified with the idea of heredity of abilities.
This problem has a long history. Back in 1875, the book of the English anthropologist and psychologist F. Galton “The Heredity of Talent” was published. Its laws and consequences”, where the author, who studied the family ties of many hundreds of outstanding people, concluded that talents are inherited either through the paternal or maternal line. However, Galton's conclusions did not have scientific credibility. He could not provide any convincing evidence of the heritability of the talents of judges, politicians, and generals. The only conclusion that can be drawn from Galton's materials was that the families of wealthy, noble and educated people constitute a favorable environment where the qualities necessary for engaging in intellectual work can develop. No conscientious researcher would dare to draw any conclusions about hereditary predisposition to certain professions based on Galton’s data.
When discussing Galton's materials, one caveat must be made. Next to dubious evidence of the talent of families of judges, writers, generals, etc. he provides information that cannot but give the impression of a certain persuasiveness. In the Bach family, for example, musical talent was first discovered in 1550 and manifested itself with particular force five generations later in the great composer J.S. Bach and dried up after a certain Regina Susanna, who lived back in 1800. There were about sixty musicians in the Bach family, twenty of them outstanding. Galton also cites other facts: there were nine prominent musicians in the Bend family of violinists, five in the Mozart family, and two in the Haydn family.
All this allows you to do some general conclusions. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the study of the pedigrees of outstanding people (if we are talking about truly outstanding people) testifies not to biological heredity, but to the heredity of living conditions, i.e. those social conditions that are conducive to the development of abilities. Obviously, if everyone in the family lives by music, if the whole structure of life prompts the child to engage in it, if musicality is recognized as the highest dignity of everyone, then it is not surprising that musical talents arise in this family. However, the example of the Bachs gives some reason to assume that there is also a certain heredity of musical inclinations. It is possible that some features of the structure and functioning of the auditory analyzer (partial typological features) were inherited among members of this family from generation to generation. Galton pointed out that the musical inclinations of the Bachs were transmitted exclusively through the male line.
We can talk about hereditary professions and occupations that help identify relevant abilities. The theater dynasties (Sadovskys), circus dynasties (Durovs), scientists (Yakushkins, Fortunatovs), etc. are known. There are famous dynasties of sailors, steelworkers, woodcarvers and many other remarkable craftsmen. Naturally, the son chooses the profession of his father and grandfather and succeeds in this field. But at the same time, we can name countless outstanding people whose children and grandchildren do not adopt the special abilities of their parents and do not choose their path in life.
Serious statistics do not provide any evidence of the heredity of abilities and talents. The idea of heredity of abilities also contradicts scientific theory. It can be considered scientifically established that from the moment the modern type of man appeared, i.e. Cro-Magnon, who lived about one hundred thousand years ago, human development does not occur through selection and hereditary transmission of changes in his natural organization - the development of man and his abilities is governed by socio-historical laws.
The considered relationship between inclinations and abilities shows that, although the development of abilities depends on natural prerequisites, which are far from the same for different people, however, abilities are not so much a gift of nature as a product of human history. If in animals the transmission of the achievements of previous generations to subsequent ones is carried out mainly through hereditary morphological changes in the body, then in humans this occurs through a socio-historical path, i.e. with the help of tools, language, works of art, etc. Each person has to take up the baton: he must use tools, use language, enjoy works of art, etc. By mastering the world of historical achievements, people form their abilities. The manifestation of abilities is directly dependent on specific techniques (methodology) for the formation of relevant knowledge and skills that have historically been developed by people in the course of meeting the needs of society.
If we consider this issue from the point of view of the history of human society, it is easy to verify the correctness of the above statement. At present, for example, no one doubts the statement that every seven-year-old normal child can be taught to read and write.
However, two hundred years ago there was a fairly widespread opinion that not everyone can learn to read and write, but only those who have been “made wise by God,” that is, a person endowed with special abilities. And the rest (about two thirds of total number children) were recognized in advance as incapable of penetrating the secrets of writing and reading. This view of some special innate abilities was due to real learning difficulties.
A very imperfect method, associated with the need to memorize all the letters with their Slavic names (“az”, “buki”, “vedi”, “verb”, “dobro”), made the transition to syllabic reading extremely difficult. In the first half of the 19th century, a transition was made to more advanced teaching methods, and new ones appeared. teaching aids, built using the syllabic method, where a simplified civil font was used instead of Church Slavonic, and the names of the letters of the Slavic alphabet were replaced by abbreviated names (“a”, “be”, “ve”). This is how the problem of “innate grammatical abilities” was solved. Practice has shown that all children can learn to read and write.
After reading this work and discovering something new, each teacher will be able to decide for himself whether there is something in it that can be used practically, or whether this work is only informative. The result in each case is very subjective and completely depends on the personality of the reader. Having read, for example, the chapter where the concept of abilities is discussed, you can get a new picture of the abilities of students in the class, and more correctly select and use teaching methods taking into account this new picture, which will definitely affect the performance of the class as a whole and each student individually. What other conclusions can be drawn in connection with what has been said? There is reason to believe that almost the decisive factor on which determines whether a person will demonstrate the ability to perform a given activity or not is the teaching method. As a rule, we talk about innate abilities whenever the teaching method reveals its inconsistency and helplessness. Of course, the technique will be improved, and therefore the circle of “innate abilities” will inevitably narrow more and more. And we can assume that, in the end, such special “higher” abilities as poetic, musical, artistic, design, pedagogical, organizational and others, await the fate of “grammatical” and “arithmetic” abilities. Many psychologists are experimenting in this direction. Thus, experimentally it was possible to develop an ear for music in supposedly absolutely non-musical children, that is, students about whom it was concluded that they had no inclinations to musical abilities. Using a system of individual training (listening to music and simultaneously comparing and reproducing sounds - singing along), the researcher learned to develop an ear for music - an ability that was considered a classic example of innate inclinations.
In Russia, despite the difficult economic situation and internal instability, the problem of developing abilities and talents has been and is a major social and state problem. At the same time, the task of comprehensive development of abilities in all children is not opposed to the task of developing special talent in individual especially talented children.
Loading...