Diagnosis of cognitive development in early childhood. Cognitive development. Play and learning

The particular importance of early childhood for the mental and behavioral development of children. Upright walking, verbal communication and object-related activities are the main achievements of this age. Speech acquisition is the main new development of early childhood. Productive and reproductive subject activity. Mastering the semiotic function. The beginning of productive and symbolic activity. Major achievements in the development of young children.

Speech development in young children. The commonality of the initial and subsequent steps in the development of speech in all children. The main stages of speech development from one year to three years. Children's acquisition of phonetics and grammar. Development of the syntactic structure of speech. Improving the vocabulary and semantics of children's speech. The beginning of the manifestation of cognitive speech activity in the form of questions addressed to an adult. The main pathways of language acquisition in early childhood.

The emergence of object and play activities. The initial stage of development of subject activity. Mastering the rules for using household items. Inclusion of indicative and exploratory moments in children’s subject-related activities. The emergence of imitation by adults in objective activities as a prerequisite for the beginning of imitation games. The formation of creative (visual, design, etc.) activities of children. The beginning of individual object games, the emergence and development of symbolic functions in the game. Improving children's objective games by including indicative, exploratory, constructive and plot-role aspects. Transition to group subject and role-playing games. The importance of such games for the psychological development of children. The emergence of arbitrariness and purposefulness in children's design activities. Further development of imitation.

Perception, memory and thinking of a young child. The emergence of anticipation of the future result of an action as a sign of the development of working memory. The transition from visually effective to visually figurative thinking. The beginning of the process of active experimentation in external reality with the goal of deeper knowledge of it. The emergence of the ability to solve problems by guessing (insight). Two main directions of thinking development in early childhood: the formation of concepts and the improvement of intellectual operations. The initial stage of connecting speech with thinking. Selection of analysis and synthesis operations. Features of the development of visual-figurative thinking at the final stage of early childhood.

Emotional and personal development at an early age.

Background and symptoms of the 3-year crisis.

The 3-year-old crisis is the period in a child’s life when he turns from a helpless toddler into an independent person. As a rule, this happens for about three years. Psychologist L. S. Vygotsky identified the main signs (or symptoms) of this crisis.

Firstly, negativism. Parents suddenly notice that the child is doing everything against them. This negativism is different from disobedience. Disobedience is always aimed at opposing some requests, instructions, etc. Negativism is addressed specifically to a specific person - mom, dad, grandmother, etc. And the child does not care what this specific person offers him. Even if this is what the child really wants, he will still refuse, because his negativism “dictates” this to him. For example: “Eat porridge” - “I won’t!”, “Drink juice” - “I won’t!”, “Go play with the new car” - “I won’t!” An authoritarian attitude towards a child can increase manifestations of negativism.

Secondly, stubbornness. If a child is stubborn, he will insist on his own for a long time only because he said so, he demanded so, and not at all because he wants it. If adults try their best to overcome the child’s stubbornness, tension increases. The child resists as best he can. And when he feels that his strength is running out, he falls into hysterics.

Thirdly, obstinacy. Obstinacy, in contrast to negativism and stubbornness, is not directed at a person, but against the previous way of life, against the rules that a child had before the age of three. By showing obstinacy, the child demands independence. He wants to tie his shoelaces himself, pour juice into a glass, spread butter on bread with a knife, etc. And even if he doesn’t yet know how to do this properly, he still demands that he be allowed to do it himself. Authoritarian upbringing, in which parents often use orders and prohibitions, contributes to a clear manifestation of obstinacy.

In addition to these symptoms, often during the crisis of three years the child changes his value system. He suddenly devalues ​​his old attachments to things, to people, to toys. Sometimes a child begins to show despotism - he wants at all costs to ensure that everyone obeys him, so that all his desires are fulfilled. If there are several children in the family, the child begins to show signs of jealousy - he fights for power with his brother or sister.

Thus, during the crisis of 3 years, the nice little baby suddenly turns into an uncontrollable, obstinate, stubborn, tyrannical child. It is difficult for parents to adequately respond to these changes. They are trying to re-educate the child. However, this does not bring the expected result. The fact is that as the child changes, the parents themselves must change - in their attitude towards him, in their interactions with him.

The crisis of 3 years is acute only if adults do not notice the changes occurring in the child, if they strive to maintain the same nature of relationships in the family, which the child has already outgrown.

Some parents are surprised to discover that their child did not have a 3-year-old crisis. This means that the relationship with him during this difficult period was quite flexible and did not contradict the child’s new needs. His parents accepted and loved him for who he was.

The child tries to establish new, higher forms of relationships with others. As D.B. Elkonin believed, the crisis of three years is a crisis of social relations, and any crisis of relations is a crisis of highlighting one’s “I”.

The three-year crisis represents a breakdown in the relationship that has previously existed between the child and the adult. Towards the end of early childhood, a tendency towards independent activity arises, which marks the fact that adults are no longer closed to the child by an object and the way of acting with it, but, as it were, open up to him for the first time, acting as carriers of patterns of action and relationships in the world around him. The phenomenon “I myself” means not only the emergence of outwardly noticeable independence, but also at the same time the separation of the child from the adult. As a result of this separation, adults appear, as it were, for the first time in the world of children's lives. The world of children's life from a world limited by objects turns into the world of adults.

A restructuring of relationships is possible only if the child is separated from the adult. There are clear signs of such a separation, which manifest themselves in the symptoms of the three-year crisis (negativism, stubbornness, obstinacy, self-will, devaluation of adults).

Central new formation: External “I myself”, Subject – manipulative – socially developed functions of things the child himself cannot discover and therefore manipulative joint activity with an adult arises, and not through showing and words. Joint activity is subsequently replaced by divided action (under the control of an adult), and then independent action appears.

Background to the 3-year-old crisis - With the emergence of self-awareness, adults often begin to experience difficulties in communicating with the child. This period is called the crisis of 3 years; on the one hand, the child completely feels comfortable in the objective world and completely uncomfortable in the social environment.

Crisis BUT: pride in achievements, which is formed due to a specific parental position: the ability to think critically about the child.

Risk factors for a crisis will be the educational uncertainty of the parent: excessive cruelty, instability, limited independence

Ways to optimize: System of educational influences, Correct parenting style: there should not be excessive softness and cruelty, and not limit the child’s independence.

Symptoms: Negativism i.e. negative reaction to the proposal, but the same request of the person not included can be immediately fulfilled

Stubbornness - the child wants to be taken into account

Obstinacy - protest against order

Self-will –

Devaluation of adults

Protest and riot

The desire for despotism - the child tries to use his power.

teacher-speech therapist MADOU No. 62, V.Novgorod, Russia

SPEECH AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN

EARLY AGE

The first three years are an extremely important and particularly favorable period in a child’s life for speech and cognitive development. At this age, the formation of fundamental personal formations occurs, a giant leap is made in the child’s development: physical, neuropsychic, social. At no other age will the child’s psyche develop so dynamically.

We observe in a young child quantitative and qualitative changes that occur as a result of biological processes in the body and exposure to the environment. The focus is on aspects of physiology, cognition, and behavior that show changes as the child develops from birth to adulthood.

According to neurophysiologists, during early childhood the basis for effective interhemispheric interaction is laid, ensuring the somatic, affective and cognitive status of the child. It also increases the performance limit of the nervous system. Walking skills are formed and improved, motor skills and hand coordination develop, as a result of which the possibilities of understanding the surrounding world and speech development are significantly expanded.

For a long time, science has considered a baby as a creature that has limited behavioral capabilities - innate reflexes (I.M. Sechenov, 1952; J. Piaget, 1969; L.S. Vygotsky, 1997; A.N. Leontiev, 1977). In the activity theory of A.N. Leontev and activity-oriented theories: the phased formation of mental actions by P.Ya. Galperin (1966) and the theory of the development of perception through the formation of perceptual actions by A.V. Zaporozhets (2000), the leading role of action was affirmed. According to the activity paradigm, the infant’s repeated actions are reinforced and acquire a pronounced focus on objects and events that lead to changes in the external environment that are interesting to the child (secondary circular reactions). Gradually, the child acquires ideas about the world around him, mastering and improving external motor forms of behavior, which are subsequently internalized, transformed into images of objects. In the same way, in the theory of cognitive development by J. Piaget, it was suggested that the system of internal images develops in stages during direct manipulation of surrounding objects. Piaget also showed that speech becomes psychologically internal before it becomes physiologically internal.

The formation of speech in young children is the subject of research by scientists in various fields of pedagogy (E.F. Arkhipova, E.R. Baenskaya, N.D. Shmatko, M.I. Lisina, M.M. Liebling, O.S. Nikolskaya, O.G. Prikhodko, Yu.A. Razenkova, etc.). The speech system is formed and functions in inextricable connection with the development of the sensorimotor, intellectual, affective-volitional spheres of the child (P.K. Anokhin, N.A. Bernstein, L.S. Vygotsky, N.I. Zhinkin, V.L. Zinchenko and etc.).

A person’s cognitive (mental) and speech development is determined by a number of factors: genetic factors, the course of the mother’s pregnancy, environmental factors, the composition and social status of the family, the influence of the educational institution, and the personal characteristics of the child and parents.

Works by J. Gibson and E. Gibson (Gibson, 1988), T. Bower (Bower, 1967, 1985), A. Meltzoff and R. Borton (Meltzoff & Borton, 1979), E. Spelke (Spelke 1988, Spelke et all , 1995), R. Baillargeon (Baillargeon, 1994, Baillargeon, 2000) changed and enriched the idea of ​​early cognitive development. In their research, they hypothesized that perception is an active process from birth, and children are already ready to have an adequate understanding of the world around them.

Cognitive and speech development of a child in a social context as a separate direction in Russian psychology was founded by L.S. Vygotsky. M.I. Lisina, developing the idea of ​​L.S. Vygotsky, in her works showed the positive impact of communication with adults on the emotional, speech and cognitive development of infants and proved that communication is a necessary condition for the full development of a child. It should be noted that the child will speak in a communication situation only at the request of an adult. Only the presence of an adult who constantly addresses the child with verbal statements and demands an adequate response to them, including speech, forces the child to master speech.

Mastering speech rebuilds the processes of children's perception, memory, and thinking, improving all types of children's activities and socialization (in particular, relationships with adults and other children).

An important condition for the dynamics of a child’s cognitive development is the active stimulation of processes such as perception, attention, memory, thinking, and imagination. The inclusion of an emotional component in any message of a social nature either stimulates mental action aimed at a positive effect, or inhibits (to a certain extent) cognitive work with information. Emotional discomfort does not contribute to a child’s positive interaction with the reality around him.

The perception of a young child is affectively colored and is directly related to practical action. The emerging new type of perception allows the child to compare the properties of one object (as a sample) with the properties of other objects. First, children begin to focus on shape, then on size, then on color. By the end of early childhood, the child understands and can identify and name objects that have the same properties.

The memory of a young child is very plastic, although it is limited to directly perceived images. During this period, spatial visual involuntary emotional and mechanical (motor) memory predominates. At 2 years of age, a free form of verbal short-term memory allows children to specifically learn rhyming text. Memorization occurs after repeated repetitions of the rhythmic text. Long-term memory is formed in a child under the condition of an emotionally positive assessment of what is happening.

Symbolic play appears by the age of 1.5 years, with the inclusion of another person in it. It imitates familiar actions performed by adults. There is an increase in the number of imaginary actions. For example, a child can imagine and say that a wooden stick is a spoon, and the carpet in the room is the sea. Imagination has a recreative character. At the same time, the emergence of the phenomenon of symbolic representation is noted. By the age of three, a child can already imagine events told by adults. However, at this stage of development they are still confused in the main categories.

Thinking in young children is visual and effective. It arises when a child moves from manual actions to instrumental ones. By manipulating things, the child practically establishes connections between them.

J. Piaget, in his concept of imitation as a mechanism for the formation of a child’s thinking, says that a trusting emotional relationship between a child and an adult is a prerequisite for imitative actions. The slightest fear, wariness, or distrust of an adult can slow down development for a long time.

Mental stimulation from the first months of life can be crucial for a child’s cognitive and speech development. Children should grow up in microsocial conditions that will be a source of special motivating force, giving them the opportunity to communicate with different people, manipulate new objects, and learn new skills.

Literature.

1. Vygotsky, L.S.Developmental psychology as a cultural phenomenon: selected works. psychol. works [Text] / L.S. Vygotsky. – M.: Voronezh, 1996.

2. Bozhovich, L.I.Problems of personality formation: selected psychological works [Text] / L.I. Bozhovich; edited by D.I.Feldstein. – M.: Moscow Psychological and Social Institute, Voronezh, 2001.

3. Lisina, M.I.Problems of ontogenesis of communication [Text] / M.I. Lisina. – M.: Pedagogy, 1986.

4. Lubovsky, V.I.Development of verbal regulation in children. – M.: 1978.

5. Piaget, J.Selected psychological works [Text]/ Piaget J. – M: International. ped. acad., 1994.

Socially, as in everyone else, children at this age are still very immature. 3-year-olds and even 4-year-olds are very stubborn and intractable. True, by the age of 3, children gradually begin to do what the people around them expect of them. People around them are now more important in the lives of 3-year-old children than they were a year earlier, and therefore the child willingly makes contact with them. At this age, they already take into account how actions can affect their environment, and also receive considerable satisfaction from demonstrating their achievements to others.

Role-playing and social knowledge. Older preschoolers test their social knowledge in role-playing games. By imitating, pretending and acting out roles, they develop the ability to symbolically represent. Role-playing also allows the child to imagine himself in other people's shoes, put on different masks and expand the range of his thoughts and feelings. Such a game promotes a better understanding of both other people and oneself.

The role of peers. Given the opportunity, children spend much more time in direct communication with each other than with adults. Children play with their brothers, sisters and other children: at home, on the street, at school. Many cultures place greater importance on children's interactions with each other than do the average American society. Typically, in these public systems, infants and toddlers are looked after by 5-10 year olds.

When we look at the developmental changes that occur in early childhood, it is often difficult to distinguish between the effects of improvements in physical and cognitive abilities according to systems theory. Children often use their bodies to test their developing knowledge and understanding of the world and themselves. For example, a child throwing stones of different sizes into a river gains basic concepts of weight, force, angles, and trajectories.

Decades after Piaget’s research began, his theory continues to be one of the main ones that reveals the concept of cognitive development, although some scientists dispute many of the Swiss psychologist’s conclusions about cognitive abilities, as well as the approach itself that puts these abilities at the forefront.

According to Piaget, cognitive development consists of several discrete stages that children go through sequentially on the way to their understanding of the world. According to this theory, children actively construct their understanding of the environment. They construct their own reality through experimentation; children are “little scientists” who diligently comprehend the principles of the functioning of the world. They explore their environment and absorb new information based on their level of development and the means of understanding available to them. When faced with something familiar, a child assimilates it. When meeting something new, he makes accommodation, his thinking acquires the ability to accept and integrate new knowledge into the system of already accumulated experience.

Preschoolers have not yet acquired the cognitive abilities necessary to understand logical operations and more fully comprehend reality. The cognitive skills and level of understanding achieved during the pre-operational stage lay the foundation for later development.

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This topic belongs to the section:

Age-related psychology

Developmental psychology studies the process of development of mental functions and personality throughout a person’s life. Biological development of man. Psychophysiological organization. Development of man and his psyche. The structure of human development and his psyche.

Theories of J. Piaget

It will be interesting to consider the main theories of J. Piaget about the intellectual development of a child. About how he described pre-operational thinking, children's egocentrism, and animism at an early age.

Preoperational Thought Theory

This theory applies to children from 2.5 years old. Preoperational thinking is the time when the child gradually masters systematic, logical thinking. The child gradually moves from the sensorimotor stage to pre-operational thinking, during which the child develops more coordinated actions that are meaningful and consistent with social experience. Mental operations, according to Piaget, are internalized forms of those actions that the child has already mastered in practical form when comparing, combining and separating objects of the physical world. In early childhood, thinking is not entirely logical; a child can repeat the same movement many times without achieving success in completing some task. Therefore, the child needs systematization and mutual coordination. A key feature of a preschooler’s thinking, according to Piaget, is that he is able to keep the focus of attention on only one most noticeable sign or property of a problem situation. Piaget argues that the child is in the grip of the immediate appearance of things, as a result of which his thinking remains at a pre-logical level.

This can be shown using a Piaget problem presented to a child. This task tests the child's ability to think about the part and the whole at the same time. The child is shown a necklace of 10 wooden beads, seven of which are colored brown and three are colored white. Piaget asked the child: “Which are more, brown beads or beads?” The child usually answers that there are more brown beads than beads. Piaget believes that the child only compares part with part, but not part with the whole, because his thinking is a series of successive narrowly focused fixations on objects, which interferes with reasoning about the relationships between them. This and many other tasks convinced Piaget that preschoolers did not yet have sufficiently coordinated logical processes necessary for systematic reasoning.

Confirmation of the lack of systematicity in thinking can also be considered by bringing to attention the idea of ​​egocentrism. Egocentrism is a view of the world only from one’s own position or, in other words, the inability to distinguish between one’s own and other possible points of view. The child does not distinguish between subjective (i.e. private or personal) and objective (i.e. public knowledge about which we are sure that it is correct). This definition clearly shows that egocentrism has nothing to do with selfishness as a personality trait. The child simply unconsciously accepts only his own point of view. Speaking about speech, Piaget initially considered it to be egocentric and it is socialized only in the process of cognitive development. Therefore, the conversations of young children are more like monologues than dialogues. In Piaget's theory, language and communication depend on the development of thinking.

J. Piaget proves that the child egocentrically assimilates what he does not understand with what he already understands. A good example comes from Piaget's work on animism, which can be defined as the attribution of animation to inanimate objects. Piaget thinks that such confusion is egocentric because it is based on the inability to distinguish between living and nonliving nature. Animism is considered one of the characteristics of children's thinking until about 10 years of age. Piaget believed that children see activity as the absolute criterion of life and, therefore, attribute intentions to everything that can move, even inanimate objects such as a thunderstorm or a candle flame. The child is not able to draw a clear line between how things look and what they really are. A child at the pre-operational stage, Piaget is convinced, is simply unable to distinguish between appearance and reality. Since the child’s perception provides him with direct contact with the real world, the child’s cognitive development will directly depend on what he perceives.

In conclusion, we can say that the child’s thinking is very heterogeneous and often naive. Piaget, who tried to describe the universal stages of development, emphasizes the lack of harmony of the child’s logical structures, his difficulties in accepting the point of view of other people, in making judgments about appearance and reality, about cause and effect. He believes that the basis of all these difficulties lies in children's egocentrism.

Introduction

Early childhood is one of the most important periods in a person’s life. It is then that the child begins to become aware of himself, his actions, his memory, attention, thinking, perception develop, and his personality is formed. At this age, the child learns to communicate, acquires basic moral and moral norms, and for the first time develops volitional forms of behavior that are necessary both in adult life and when entering school.

The child’s activity capabilities contradict the emotional nature of his communication. A common object of activity between the child and the adult appears. During this period, children's cognitive activity develops very quickly.

Early childhood is a poorly studied period. A child is a slave of visual perception. I attract objects to a child. The child follows the actions of the adult, and tentative actions appear. Tests are observed in young children. During this period, solving intellectual problems is typical, and speech develops. Communication with adults begins.

childhood early activity subject

Development of cognitive functions in early childhood

General characteristics of early childhood

At the end of the first year the child gets on his feet. This acquisition is of such great importance that this period is sometimes called “walking childhood.” At first, walking upright is a special task associated with strong feelings, the solution of which requires the support, participation and approval of adults. Gradually, walking becomes confident, the child’s autonomy from adults increases, and freer and more independent communication with the outside world develops. The range of objects available to the child expands, orientation in space and a certain independence appear. The basic need of a young child is to understand the world around him through actions with objects. A child cannot independently discover the way to use tools and other specifically human objects; the way to use them is not obvious and does not lie on the surface. Psychological “Robinsonade” is not capable of ensuring effective human development. Based on the situational-personal form of communication, a new need for substantive interaction is built. There is a division of the subject and social environment. The emerging social situation of development, characteristic of early childhood, can be indicated by the formula: “child - object - adult.” The child wants to touch everything, turn it over in his hands, he constantly turns to an adult with a request, a demand for attention, an offer to play together. A completely new form of communication is unfolding - situational business communication, which is practical, business cooperation regarding actions with objects and forms the basis of interaction between a child and an adult up to 3 years of age. Contact becomes mediated by the object and the action with it. Means of communication are drawing attention to an object, exchanging toys, learning to use objects according to their meaning, and playing together.

For a young child, an adult is, first of all, a participant in objective activity and play. On the part of an adult, the attentiveness and kindness of the partner are important. In addition, he acts as a role model, as a person who evaluates the child’s knowledge and skills and emotionally supports him, reinforcing his successes and achievements.

Characteristics of full communication between a young child and adults:

initiative towards the elder, the desire to attract his attention to his actions;

a preference for substantive cooperation with an adult, an insistent demand from an adult for complicity in their affairs;

gullibility, openness and emotionality in relation to an adult, showing love for him and a willing response to affection;

sensitivity to the attitude of an adult, to his assessment and restructuring of one’s behavior depending on the behavior of an adult, a subtle distinction between praise and blame;

active use of speech in interaction.

The development of a fairly wide range of actions with objects and the emergence of the first attempts to walk independently makes the child relatively more independent of adults. Independent walking not only significantly expands the range of objects that the child encounters, but also - this is the main thing - changes the nature of the child’s contact with objects. On the one hand, only receptive contact with some previously inaccessible objects is replaced by direct practical contact: the child can not only look at these objects, but also approach them, touch them, act with them. On the other hand, objects become accessible to the child not only through showing them to adults, but also through his own handling of them. Adults themselves now demand relatively greater independence from the child. Thus, with the beginning of walking, the range of objects directly accessible to the child expands significantly; The scope of his orienting-cognitive activity is also expanding. The child begins to navigate not only among objects related directly to him, but also among objects and phenomena related to adults, their life and activities.

The expansion of the range of available objects, the tendency to master and act with them further exacerbates the child’s need to communicate with adults, confronting him - still unable to do without the participation of adults in his activities - with the need for even more intensive communication with them. Failures in performing certain actions with an object for the first time begin to cause an affective reaction on the part of the child. These affective reactions arise mainly in connection with acts of communication with adults. The most typical causes of these affective outbursts are:

misunderstanding by adults of the child’s wishes, gestures and facial expressions;

failure or opposition of adults to the actions of the child.

The nature and degree of manifestation of such reactions are determined by the specific living conditions of the child and the attitudes of adults towards him. These affective outbursts, which arise only under certain conditions of upbringing, are a symptom of emerging contradictions between the child’s increased needs and the possibilities of his actions with objects, contradictions between new needs and previous relationships with adults, when the child’s activity was directly mediated by the activities of adults and non-specific, non-verbal forms of communication. These contradictions are resolved through the emergence of actual verbal communication with adults and associated new relationships with them. The appearance of the first words with which a child addresses adults is a central link in the transition from infancy to early childhood.

The first words actively used by a child are characterized by two main features. The first feature of these words is that there are sharp phonetic differences between them and the words of the adults around the child. So, children have: a) words that are not similar to the words of adults (for example, “adiga” - fish oil; “ika” - scarf; “gigililicha” - pencil); b) words that are fragments of words from adults, mainly roots (for example, “how” - porridge; “pa” - fell); c) words that are distortions of the words of adults, but retain their general phonetic and rhythmic pattern (for example, “ti-ti” - clock; “abala” - apple; “ninyanya” - no need); d) onomatopoeic words (for example, “av-av” - dog; “mu-mu” - cow). The second feature of children's first words is their polysemy, that is, the relation of these words not to one, but to a number of objects.

To master speech, it is not at all enough to simply give the child words as models for borrowing, but it is absolutely necessary to create the need for their active use. A child very early, already in the second half of the first year of life, being in a joyful state, babbles a lot and can pronounce sounds or combinations thereof, similar in form to the words of adults: for example, “mmma - mmma”, “bba - bba”, or "dda". However, these sounds are not yet words; they do not serve as a means of communication. They turn into words only after they become a means of communication with an adult, when “mmma” turns into a call to an adult. Thus, the connection between a word and an object or a word and an action arises only if there is a need for communication, in the child’s system of activity, carried out with the help of an adult or together with him. The decisive condition for the emergence of both understanding of speech and its active use is the presence of a need for verbal communication. The collapse of polysemantic words is an indicator of the restructuring of generalizations, the emergence of such generalizations that are characteristic of speech itself; the word begins to relate to objects not only on the basis of capturing what is similar in them, but also by highlighting and generalizing what is different. The decisive thing is not when the child begins to pronounce words correctly, but that his words begin to reflect not diffuse, emotionally experienced situations of action, but ordinary, stable signs of objects and phenomena; they become carriers of a generalization of the objective characteristics of objects, identified on the basis of capturing how they similarities as well as their differences. It is on the basis of the development of generalizations that the correct identification of phonemes in a word occurs, although they may still be poorly pronounced. The end of the transition period in the development of speech is primarily associated with mastering the meanings of words. Outwardly, this is expressed, firstly, in a sharp increase in vocabulary, secondly, in the formation of two-word sentences, and thirdly, in the emergence of questions regarding the names of objects. These changes usually occur at the beginning of the second half of the second year of life and mark the emergence in the child of a new type of communication with adults - actual verbal communication associated with a word that has a certain objective, rather than situational meaning. Thus, during the period of transition from infancy to early childhood, significant changes occur both in the child’s activities and in his communication with adults. First of all, the child’s relationship to the people and things around him is significantly differentiated. Some relationships arise based on the satisfaction of the child's basic needs (food, sleep, dressing). Other relationships arise in connection with the child’s independent activity with various objects - toys and household items; still others - on the basis of the child’s orientation in the world of things that are not yet directly accessible to him, but have already interested him. However, with all the variety of relationships that arise at this age, all of them can be realized only in joint activities with adults. At the same time, the nature of this activity and the role of the adult are gradually changing. Thus, in connection with the increased capabilities of the child, adults try to involve him in independently satisfying basic needs: the child does not yet eat or dress himself, but he is already taking part in this as much as possible. The role of the adult also changes in the sphere of the child’s relationship with objects: the adult conveys to him socially developed, specifically human ways of using certain objects. Thus, the adult now acts more and more not only from the side of satisfying the basic needs of the child, but also mainly as a bearer of social experience of actions with objects that the child masters, and as an organizer, a leader of his orientation in the ever-expanding objective world.

The appearance of speech on the verge of infancy and early childhood significantly expands the child’s communication opportunities with adults and creates the preconditions for the emergence of a new type of relationship between them. The practical activity of a young child with objects from the perspective of his relationship with adults is characterized as a joint activity, the possibility of which is created by speech using words that have an objective meaning. In the process of mastering the ways of using objects and means of communication - language, which is the main content of a child’s life in early childhood, further development of his consciousness and individual mental properties occurs. Throughout early childhood, due to the complexity of relationships with adults and other children and due to the child’s mastery of objective actions, the emotional manifestations of children become more diverse. Success or failure in mastering objective actions when carried out independently, the presence or absence of communication with adults, permission or prohibition of activities by adults, satisfaction of the child’s basic needs - all this causes various emotional manifestations: the child is happy and capricious, shows sympathy or dissatisfaction, is offended , rejoices.